dominic hamon

I could watch this all day - dogs captured in 1000 fps slow...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:04:08 -0800

I could watch this all day - dogs captured in 1000 fps slow motion.

The dog police, part 2

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:16:49 -0800

Part 1 here.

And as I said at the end of that, it’s not over yet.

After the last incident, I sent a friendly letter to our neighbourhood git suggesting politely that we might be adult about things and have a conversation about his issues with living next to Oliver. Failing that, perhaps we could reach an agreement regarding our mutual behaviour and avoid each other at all times.

I did not receive a reply.

Instead, I was told by another neighbour that the police had once again been at my apartment as they were called out regarding a vicious attack claim. Being the conscientious young man (read geek) that I am, I started reading about dog law.

31602. ‘Potentially dangerous dog’ means any of the following: (a) Any dog which, when unprovoked, ontwo separate occasions within the prior 36-month period, engages in any behavior that requires a defensive action by any person to prevent bodily injury when the person and the dog are off the property of the owner or keeper of the dog. (b) Any dog which, when unprovoked, bites a person causing a less severe injury than as defined in Section 31604. (c) Any dog which, when unprovoked, on two separate occasions within the prior 36-month period, has killed, seriously bitten, inflicted injury, or otherwise caused injury attacking a domestic animal off the property of the owner or keeper of the dog.

31603. ‘Vicious dog, means any of the following: (a) Any dog seized under Section 599aa of the Penal Code and upon the sustaining of a conviction of the owner or keeper under subdivision (a) of Section 597.5 of the Penal Code. (b) Any dog which, when unprovoked, in an aggressive manner, inflicts severe injury on or kills a human being. (c) Any dog previously determined to be and currently listed as a potentially dangerous dog which, after its owner or keeper has been notified of this determination, continues the behavior described in Section 31602 or is maintained in violation of Section 31641, 31642, or 31643.

By these definitions, Oliver is not even a potentially dangerous dog, let alone a vicious dog. I should remind the reader that the gentleman bringing these claims is a lawyer and really should know this stuff.

I should also reiterate that I only know of two occasions when I’ve even seen the neighbour, and he and Oliver never had contact.

Anyway, legal technicalities aside, I have been summoned to a hearing to determine if Oliver poses a danger to society. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad that a person can be so bitter, so angry at the world, that he’d rather take the time to file a claim and go to a hearing than just sit down and have a conversation.

So here I am preparing evidence of Oliver’s temperament and pulling up logs of email conversations with my building manager, all to satisfy the whim of some twisted old coot with too much time on his hands. I just hope he realises the seriousness of his actions; that someone who is less prepared and less conscientious might have their dog destroyed, just because he doesn’t like them. I can only, in my optimistic outlook, assume that he really doesn’t understand what a dog means to an owner. How they are part of the family just as much as a child would be.

The alternative, that he understands exactly what he’s doing and is pursuing this nonsense with vindictiveness and determination, is too awful to comprehend.

So you think you can spot green-screen, cgi and compositing at...

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:04:50 -0800

So you think you can spot green-screen, cgi and compositing at work?

Jamie Oliver’s talk in acceptance of the TED prize 2010. A...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:14:14 -0800

Jamie Oliver’s talk in acceptance of the TED prize 2010. A brilliant talk reminding us why knowledge is such an important thing to share with the next generation.

The dog police

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:42:43 -0800

It’s been a while since I’ve had any juicy stories to post, and this is a doozy. First, as always, a little background.

In the first week in this new apartment, I had an interaction with my new neighbour. He was halfway down the corridor outside my apartment, I was at the door. We were a good four metres apart. Oliver, being Oliver, strained at his leash to say ‘Hi’ to this new person. He didn’t bark, he didn’t growl, he may have panted excitedly. A few days later, we received word that an official complaint had been entered against our aggressive dog. This is Oliver we’re talking about.

I felt briefly outraged before putting it down to some childhood experience he’d had with a dog, and resolved to stay out of his way. A few days later we were vindicated as the building manager finally met Oliver and spent some time cooing over him before apologising for the misunderstanding.

Cut to today.

Between then and now, the only glimpses I’ve had of this neighbour have been as he’s been arriving or leaving in his car; there has been no interaction between us at all. Today, as myself and Mirto entered the building with Oliver and Eddie, we saw our neighbour and his wife entering the other end of the lobby. Being the considerate sorts, we stayed at the entrance to allow them to enter the elevator first.

Instead, the neighbour walked towards us in an aggressive manner before dropping some files he was carrying on a bench that runs along the side of the lobby. At this, Oliver reacts quite normally for a dog by barking. Once. Please note that he didn’t stand up, strain at his leash, growl, snarl, snap, slobber or bite. He barked. Once.

Our neighbour uttered a phrase that is about as diplomatic a conversation starter as assassinating Archduke Ferdinand:

“You should put a muzzle on that thing.”

If you don’t own a dog, that may seem like a reasonable suggestion. If you do, however, that’s akin to telling a parent to muzzle their screaming baby. I responded by telling him he was being ridiculous at which point I was informed that if I did not muzzle him, he would report my dog as aggressive.

It’s worth an aside here to note how fearsome this threat is. The power to have a government service swoop in and take a dog from an owner parallels that of having social services swoop in to take a child into care. It is a very powerful threat and should never be used lightly to a dog owner.

Sadly, at this point I lost my temper and called him an arsehole. Not my finest hour, I’ll admit, and I instantly regretted it. Well, almost instantly. First I told his wife she should muzzle her husband.

Anyway, once upstairs I realised I’d crossed a line and decided to apologise immediately. As they exited the elevator I stepped out of my apartment and offered my sincere apologies for swearing at and insulting him. I was told most emphatically that the apology was not accepted and to get lost.

Just as the initial shock of the altercation was dying down, we had some friends arrive and, three-and-a-half hours and a bottle of wine later had mostly forgotten about the incident, or at least had relegated it to the frustrating and disappointing folder.

Then it was time for the nightly walk so we left the apartment and went down to the lobby to find, wait for it, the neighbour, his wife, and two police officers. As we walked through them, I willed Oliver to be on his best behaviour and he was a shining example of well-mannered dogginess. As we got to the front door, I heard “That’s them, officer” and stifled a chuckle at the cliche.

Turning around, I was ushered outside by an officer who asked me to stay around to give my statement. I expressed my surprise and made it clear I wasn’t sure exactly what horrible crime I was meant to be describing, and he made it clear that he didn’t know why he was there either. Skipping the gory details, twenty minutes later the police were driving away as baffled as we were about their inclusion in this tale, and I’m now trying to shrug the whole thing off as the result of a sad little man feeling scared and not knowing how to deal with it.

I have a feeling this is not over yet.

Beautiful retro-inspired luxurious PC from Design Hara (via...

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:18:43 -0800

Beautiful retro-inspired luxurious PC from Design Hara (via unplggd)

Just Khan't Get Enough

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:55:11 -0800

This may or may not be a surprise, given where I work, but sometimes geeky questions are asked, and geeky responses are necessary. After one such conversation regarding how many ‘a’s are canon for the imperative “Khaaan!”, I decided further investigation was necessary:

It is clear that a strong power law relation is present for low eigenkhans after the initial spike at eigenkhan 1. However, above eigenkhan 100 we enter a new realm that requires further investigation. In both power law regions we have an exponent of ~-2.68 (-2.60 for Google, -2.77 for Bing), which should be considered the canonical khansponent.

This is a slightly extended version as I have more results than I did when I wrote the first email. I can now see that the extended tail above eigenkahn 100 suggests an exponential relation, however I still do not have enough data to create a conclusive model.

In fact, this data follows a distribution known as the Pareto distribution and is related to the Bradford law of diminishing returns. In this case, the distribution has x_m = 1 and α = 2.68. The expected value is, then, 1.6 with a variance of 11.12. Therefore, anything from “Kahn!” to “Kaaaaahn!” is within expectations, though there is no incorrect length.

…

Better things to do with my time? Why yes, why do you ask?

Voices of Babylon

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:40:58 -0800

I have Google Voice set up for my phone, which is great as it makes me far more reachable wherever I am. It also provides a service that transcribes my voicemail.

Mirto has an accent that floats between Sweden, Greece and London. Google Voice is apparently confused by this which leaves me with wonderfully surreal messages that I like to imagine make sense to some parallel version of me. That or the messages have been translated to-and-from another language. Here is one I just received:

Hey, I’ve got that Boston’s in 5 minutes to take effect until about update,
I found at 12 o’clock shop. If you call me. Let me know what you want.
I was wondering. 14. I’m going to get the size of the coffee.

Science meets food meets eggs

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:58:51 -0800

Science meets food meets eggs:

Combining cooking with science fascinates me, and this article starts from the basics: The perfect egg.

Italian photographer Stefano Bonazzi produces these wonderful...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:42:29 -0800

Italian photographer Stefano Bonazzi produces these wonderful surreal portraits. I particularly like this one as it reminds me of Magritte.

November rain

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:59:48 -0700

First, the great news: My better half has a permanent job! She’s been working on contract for a while and they finally realised, as I did some time ago, that they couldn’t possibly live without her and have insisted she stay on.

Now, the less good news: As part of her new permanent contract, our mutual friend must fly to Shanghai next week and stay there for ten days. This is very exciting, and a great opportunity for her to reveal herself as the rock star of apparel quality and vendor management that I know her to be, but I’m selfish and am going to miss her tremendously.

Finally the silver lining: NaNoWriMo starts this coming week and unlike last year, I don’t have the excuse of being new to the country, moving apartments or having a new job to fall back on and use to justify my failing to complete a novel in a month. And now I have an apartment to myself (and two dogs) for the first week.

I have also made some changes to my approach this year, which I’m hoping will improve my chances of completing the challenge:

Handwriting instead of typing
By handwriting, I hope not to get sucked in to the temptation of premature editing which should enable me to keep the creative flow going. Assuming I can get the creative flow started.

No planning
Last year, I started with an outline for a novel and a title, however once I stepped out of the bounds of that plan I became blocked. By not having a plan, I expect to be freer to just write.

Expect updates here as the month continues.

Photo

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:33:53 -0700

Alive

Sat, 30 May 2009 19:45:49 -0700

Yes, I am still alive. Between work, other bloggery, twitter and other projects (coming soon), this blog has fallen by the wayside I’m afraid.

Still, I’m posting this! Which is a really lame way of keeping it ticking over. Sorry.

Hopefully, the Other Half will post some news soon that she’s been waiting to talk about.

A fantastic reinterpretation of Little Red Riding...

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:05:43 -0700

A fantastic reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

Let's get physical

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:31:31 -0700

Burpees.

The other day, I saw this followed shortly after by this. I felt inspired: here is an exercise routine that I can do without gadgets, without a gym, without memorising weights and rep counts.

So I started two days ago to just do a few every day and see what happens.

Day 1: Two burpees in I realised just how hard they are to do (insert caveat about my fitness level here). I made it to 35 total over four sets.

Day 2: I expected it to get easier for some reason, but I’m in pain. I have muscles aching that have clearly never been used in my day-to-day life sitting at a desk typing. Should I be surprised? I made it to 40 total over four sets, but it HURT.

I don’t think I have the right form as I’m just not strong or fit enough, but I think that will come as I continue to do them. I just have to keep pushing myself to try to do them ‘right’.

Homeward bound part 2

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:19:57 -0800

[A continuation of Homeward bound]

We pick Eddie up tomorrow morning.

Homeward bound

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:51:13 -0800

After a late night with the Watchmen last night (I won’t bore you with another review, but it was everything I hoped it would be) we woke late in a mad panic to get to the vet appointment we’d booked foolishly early. Oliver’s all good, but has an ear infection that needs to be monitored.

While we were waiting for results to come back for a swab, a young man came in with a beautiful fluffy pup. The pup looked like a healthy young thing so it was a surprise to learn that he was fifteen. His owner went to speak to one of the vets in attendance. I didn’t hear what he said, but the vet stated clearly “I can’t do that.”

Myself and Mirto looked at each other as we’d both heard it, and had reached the same conclusion: Had the owner just asked for this sweet, healthy looking pup to be euthanised? Our fears were realised when the owner left without the pooch some minutes later.

Mirto was brave enough to ask after the pooch, and indeed that’s what the owner had asked. Apparently, the reasoning is that he has a tendency to pee in the house. Now I don’t know about you, but that made me surprisingly angry. I can’t presume to know the full background to this family’s story, and I must hope that the decision was not taken lightly, but when that’s the reason you give, I’m glad that you’re handing the dog over to someone else. I’m also cheered that we have a vet who is unwilling to euthanise and instead had decided to contact rescue services to try to find a willing new owner to take care of this distinguished little man.

We talked and made it clear to the staff that we’d be interested in taking on the challenge of fostering and possibly adopting Eddie the PBGV. We’re now awaiting the tests that are being done to ensure that he’s not seriously ill, and might have a new addition to the family this week.

To be clear, this is not something that we’re entering into lightly. We’ve talked about fostering and adopting a pup who needs our love for a while, and this just seems to be a great opportunity to give a home to someone who needs one. We’ll find out in the next couple of days if Eddie will be homeward bound.

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:53:15 -0800

Saturday Morning Watchmen:

I’m having flashbacks to my youth…

Here’s a potentially very silly, but also very fun, way...

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:13:00 -0800

Here’s a potentially very silly, but also very fun, way to make fake album covers for fictional bands. Here’s my first effort. Actually, I like this so much I’m going to keep it for when I’m a rock star!

Courtesy of @RonKJeffries. Picture courtesy of Rachel Lake.

I love a sausage

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:49:48 -0800

One thing about moving countries that is often overlooked is the problem of finding new versions of home comforts. Whether it’s the channel that shows the rugby (or where to find it online) or where to find the best pizza, these are the things that make your new life in your new country easier and better.

After many years of moving around, I’ve realised that my most important home comfort is vegetarian sausages. Now, this may be because I was spoiled for choice in London. From a supermarket I could get these Lincolnshire sausages made from tofu from a company named Cauldron Foods. They were wonderfully seasoned with all the right herbs, and the consistency was not too meaty, and not to obviously veggie. I should note here that I’m incredibly picky with my sausages; if they’re too reminiscent of a meat sausage in terms of texture, I’m not interested.

If I wanted to get something a little more special, while living in London, i had only to pop over to Greenwich, home of the National Maritime Museum, the Meridian Line, Henry VIII’s tournament grounds, the Cutty Sark, and the finest sausage stall known to man. The market that housed the miraculous sausage stall also was the place to go for fresh tea, home-made caribbean hot sauce and jerk seasoning, and the finest selection of cheese known to man. The sausage stall stocked sublime meat sausages but I would obviously skip those and head straight for the mushroom and tarragon, or spinach and feta, or one of the other delectable delights on offer. They were loosely bound, i.e., they had no skin, but had chunks of ingredients and were freshly made. They were never oily, but unlike many vegetarian sausages, they were never too dry either. As the ones with cheese cooked, the cheese would melt inside to form little pools of hot deliciousness…

Excuse me, I need to take a break to wipe the drool from my chin.

Ok, so what happened when I moved to Canada? Well, I had hoped that being on the West Coast, the liberal side, as it were, that I would find all manner of exciting new vegetarian sausage options. Sadly, I was very mistaken: The only options I could find were frankfurter type affairs.

We shall skip over that sad, sad episode and move on to the Singapore portion of the search for vegetarian sausages. Here I had high hopes once more, as Singapore seemed to be far more conscious of the vegetarian lifestyle (no, not yoga, incense and tie-dye, just not eating meat) than the great white north had been. I was once again disappointed for the first few months, until I found something marketed as breakfast links. They weren’t up to those ambrosia-filled heavenly packages from Greenwich market, but they tasted great in sandwiches. The only down-side was their size. I prefer my sausages to be, well, substantial; to have one or two fill a sandwich at most. It took five or six of these things to fill a sandwich and I often ended up just cooking the whole packet, which made me feel like a terrible glutton. Still, one has to do what one must when desperate times are abound.

Finally, we come to the last stage of this great tale of longing and desperation: The return to North America, this time to the sandwich filling of the great Western continent, and specifically to the liberal, healthy-living, pilates-loving California. Here, surely, there must be vegetarian sausages to rival those of Greenwich! Here, surely, there must be riots when vegetarian sausage quality drops or supplies run low! Here, surely, I will find a sausage worthy of fulfilling my Sunday morning craving!

After nearly four months, I was once again ready to give up. Then, just the other day, I spotted some succulent little buggers all wrapped up with “Spinach and Feta” proudly proclaimed on their packaging. Could it be? Could I have found them? Well, no. They turned out to be chicken, written on the packet in criminally small type. My wife, the carnivore, thought they looked delicious, much to my chagrin.

But what’s this? What are these just next to the deceptive bastard chicken sausages? Italian flavour vegetarian sausages… Apple, sage and onion flavour vegetarian sausages! Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

I think I yelled “SUCCESS!” as I brandished the fruits of my long, globe-spanning search to all who came near.

For those still with me, the brand is Field Roast and while taste trials are continuing, we appear to have a winner.