We're going to Hungary next month, and we have to jump through hoops to get Nikki's passport. They didn't accept her birth certificate, it was "void", so we have to wait until one arrives that cost us $65 because we added an extra $30 to the price to make sure it gets here in 5 business days. Anyway, back to the passport thing... Here's a beautiful document justifying why a Canadian passport costs $87CAD: http://www.ppt.gc.ca/support/faq.aspx?lang=eng&id=540

The fee for an adult passport is CAN$87. Of this amount, CAN$25 is used to recover the costs incurred by the Department of Foreign Affairs in providing consular services to Canadians abroad.

As for the remaining CAN$62, the breakdown is as follows:

- 47% towards security fees (e.g.: examination, guarantor checks)
- 43% towards production fees (e.g.: material, printing)
- 6% towards administration fees (e.g.: business sustaining)

Couple of questions arise:

1) Isn't the abbreviation for Canadian Dollars "CAD"

2) "For the remaining $62, the breakdown is as follows" ... 47%+43%+6% = 96% ... What? Where's the extra 4% going?

3) Let's forget the mistakes on the site, do our taxes not already pay for government employees to sit on their ass and do their job? Or is their job strictly to sit on their ass and collect good money? Any "actual" work gets added on and broken down into 47%=THEIR already paid manual labour, 43% WE pay for their ink and paper and 6% administration fee a.k.a. just to round it off to 100% .. or wait...

What a bunch of bull.

Coolest signup form: http://huffduffer.com/signup/

Inspiring photos.
http://www.dawnleblanc.com/index.php

http://golang.org/

I would've never thought that a place like this exists.
Map: http://jui.cc/ub, Homepage: http://pimaair.org/

Nikki found her sleeping like this today.

She's been known to sleep in weird positions.

This static site probably took a long time to build. But beyond that, note this guy's résumé.
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/the_traveler.htm

Miles of MUTE photographed the 2010 Canadian International Autoshow for a Torontoist article. Great job, Miles.

I had the Salmon Teriyaki -- delicious!
http://www.princesteakhouse.com/

Peter and his coworkers over at Virgo have been working all week to get a flash project working that will stream their former prime minister's speech live (2010-02-05 14:00 GMT).. It has a live twitter feed and has voting capabilities. As a programmer, stuff like this is exciting when it's on such a large scale: http://backchannel.virgo.hu/

A1, A2, A3, A4 .. etc etc. My cousin asked for some A4 size prints today and I had no idea what that actually is... so for the North American folk, here's a conversion chart lifted from Wikipedia:

ISO paper sizes in inches

Format	A	B	C
0	33.1 × 46.8	39.4 × 55.7	36.1 × 51.1
1	23.4 × 33.1	27.8 × 39.4	25.5 × 36.1
2	16.5 × 23.4	19.7 × 27.8	18.0 × 25.5
3	11.7 × 16.5	13.9 × 19.7	12.8 × 18.0
4	8.3 × 11.7	9.8 × 13.9	9.0 × 12.8
5	5.8 × 8.3	6.9 × 9.8	6.4 × 9.0
6	4.1 × 5.8	4.9 × 6.9	4.5 × 6.4
7	2.9 × 4.1	3.5 × 4.9	3.2 × 4.5
8	2.0 × 2.9	2.4 × 3.5	2.2 × 3.2
9	1.5 × 2.0	1.7 × 2.4	1.6 × 2.2
10	1.0 × 1.5	1.2 × 1.7	1.1 × 1.6

Awesome site design too.
http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/holden-caulfield-is-unactable.html

http://www.yahooanswerfail.com/

I first heard about the Monty Hall Problem in grade 10 finite class... And I never understood it... Then I forgot about it. Somehow I just thought of it and realized I still don't understand. Thanks to the Wikipedia article and its illustrations, I finally get it.

Welcome to yet another "duh" moment of my life! :)

Oh man I haven't been to thinkgeek.com in a while. I love the design changes they made. I especially like the CSS zombies that appear in the background image as you scroll to the very bottom of the page:

Bin Laden is starting to be like Jesus... appearing conveniently when people need him to appear:
http://jui.cc/AQ
(Shit... jui.cc picks the URL codes randomly and it came up with AQ for the above news article... I take back what I said... maybe Bin Laden is real and is controlling everything!)

via peopleofwalmart.com

This is great, because it made me feel stupid for liking Avatar. (I still like it though.)
http://autotelic.com/avatar_-_the_metacontextual_edition

An amusing article Jessyel posted on his blog accompanied by some nice black and white shots:
http://dailysnap.com/log/2009/10/timessquare.html

http://lottery1.sympatico.ca/Home

How come I have not seen this until now? Genius.
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/XMAS/greeting.htm

http://toki-woki.net/p/scroll-clock/

http://code.google.com/closure/

http://www.karenglaserphotography.com/

Back when Obama was 100 days in office, I made a site called howlonghasobamabeenpresident.com as sort of a gag... Not many people visit it, and I don't really expect them to - it's a gag site! Anyway it's interesting to note that in the recent weeks, people have been searching "how long has obama been president" more frequently. On October 9th, for example, 32 people found the site because they searched those keywords. Why are people searching this all of a sudden? Is it around that time when people start wondering? I guess when the answer "less than a year" isn't enough...

... for not being George W. Bush: http://jui.cc/lK