Snow!

Sure enough, the -17C temperatures seemed to keep the number of skiers down, but a few of us were out at McMiller in the Southern Kettle Moraine state forest today. It was actually a beautiful sunny day, even if slightly cold.

The have shooting ranges there, but they were closed this weekend, so we had peace and quiet.

( photo )

POD music

While watching old This Old House episodes on the DIY channel, I saw an ad for the Woolite pod, which is apparently a product for cleaning carpets. My first thought was that it ought to play MP3s. What Woolite music would be like, I do not know.

How Random Stuff Is Made

I was watching "How It's Made" on the Discovery Channel and was struck by the utter randomness of the topics. Do they organize the show after consuming large doses of LSD? Suits of armor, streetlight poles, bent hardwood, and membrane switches. Golf balls and parking meters. There is, naturally, a somewhat obsessive Wikipedia entry about the show that lists the topics of each episode. Episode 48, for example, was car engines, flour, recliners, and envelopes.

It is a reasonably interesting show, notable primarily, I think, for all the video taken in the factories. It does suffer from the usual issues for this sort of thing. It tends to zip through things in a big hurry, and suffers using roughly the same amount of time for every topic no matter how many or how few steps there are to show. If you didn't know better, you'd also be left with the impression that everything in the world is made by highly skilled workers taking the greatest care, rather than by poorly-paid people who already have lead poisoning.