Len Sorensen

OK, I will try one of these then

2008-06-26T15:20:47Z

angrykat had this one so I figured I would try that out.

Book list. I loves to read meme.
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (OK, still working on 6 and have 7 to go)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible * (some of it)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (although I guess I have seen plenty of TV versions)
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (only a few)
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl *
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Well it seems I have read around 10 entries so far, which beats the average, but isn't great either. I have certainly heard of at least half the books on the list, and seen copies of close to that many, so I am aware of their existence. I have seen TV or movie versions of a number if them, although that doesn't quite count and in the few cases where I have both read the book and seen the movie, the movie has usually been quite disappointing.

Typing speed

2008-01-18T20:34:08Z

So chocolatecoffee posted about typing speed so I just had to go see how I was doing at it too. Well here is my result.

71 words

free Touch typing

I know I don't follow quite normal typing patterns but something related to it modified to be efficient at hitting symbols required for programming too. I do wish someone would make a keyboard with a faster or stronger shift key spring since I very often manage to end up with the first two letters capitalized in a word by hitting the second key before the shift key has managed to be released fully.

How do people post journal entries so frequently?

2007-09-12T21:46:24Z

I don't seem to post here very often. I think about lots of things, but hardly ever figure what I am thinking about would be very interesting to anyone else. Perhaps I am wrong, or maybe I am just too shy to put my opinions in the open. Anyone have any suggestions?

At least Carolyn is now off doing her Masters at UofT, which will of course go very well. She already has some interesting ideas for projects and such to work on. I hope she doesn't try to get involved in too many things at once, although too little is bad too. I think she needs just the right balance of things to keep her busy to be happy. I will help out where I can.

Hmm, my lunch's fortune cookie says: Confucius Say: Top of ladder nice place... but very lonesome. A google search on that found a site with more clever little bits of wisdom here. Google always seems immensely helpful.

The house is looking much better

2007-08-17T17:30:43Z

We spent about half of last week cleaning up the house, adding more furniture (needed space to store stuff better), which involved spending close to $2000 at ikea (my poor credit card), but at least it seems much better now. We have actually eaten dinner at the kitchen table for almost a week straight. I still have to finish sorting the pile of random stuff in the basement to make it usable again (I emptied all the shelves and put the TV down there instead, complete with the mythtv box hooked up (finally) which will be nice). Having the TV downstairs rather than in the living room might actually make it easier to avoid leaving clutter in the living room, and hence make it much easier to spontaneously invite people over for dinner or playing board games (which by the way are now on new shelves in the living room, right next to the large table that is perfect for playing games or eating dinner). Getting all that done seemed helped a lot by having taken a week off and spending half of it cleaning up (doing it in the evenings only just never seems to get very far after a day at work).

Oww!

2007-08-01T15:26:24Z

I am so sore today, after yesterday's ultimate game. Two hours of running around chasing a frisbee in the heat sure hurts afterward. Probably the occasional wipe outs don't help things. And we lost again (although only 13-10 which was better than the 21-11 last week). We were down 10-3 by half time, and then got 5 in a row to make it 10-8, after which things went back to more even resulting in 13-10.

We were playing probably the best team in our little league of 6 teams, but neither team had very many players show up so we were rather short on substitutes. I think in general our team is outrun by most of the other teams, but we still put in a good effort.

We also need to work on not throwing the disc away so much. No point playing good defense and forcing a turnover just to thrown it away on the first or second pass again. That just causes too much extra running without at least getting points rewarding it.

Being my second year playing, I think I am doing pretty good. My passes are usually good, and my catches not too bad if I manage to get to the disc in time. My running is too slow, and I don't have enough endurance either. I seem to have a natural ability to make the disc go far and fairly straight, although I seem to have caused many sore fingers when people try to catch some of my passes.

Well it's fun at least. So does anyone else want to come join us next year or for pickup games starting in august when the league games end? It's good exercise.

lsorense @ 2007-07-25T11:14:00

2007-07-25T15:16:54Z

I still have one of these livejournal things it would seem. It seems I stopped reading it for a while, because some people where writing so much and I didn't have time to read it all, and for some reason I seem to have to read either everything or nothing, so it seems to have been nothing for the last 4 or 5 months, but I just read the last few weeks, and even wrote a few comments. I guess I haven't ever really posted very much here anyhow. Like who really cares what I think. 8^)

Yesterday we went to a TMBG concert. Excellent (although a bit loud. Need to remember ear plugs for these types of concerts it seems, since I find the distorsion makes it hard to hear things at that volume, while dampened a bit, everything is much clearer). The encores managed to cover a couple of songs that they just had to do (Particle Man and Istanbul, including an amazing acustic bit as an intro) among others. Of course the concert did mean going to bed way way too late. chocolatecoffee somehow forgot about it. Like how is that possible? We got her the autographed CD though.

...

Of course LJ had to go down while I was typing this at 5pm yesterday, so well it gets to be posted now, only delayed by 18 hours.

lsorense @ 2007-02-05T18:48:00

2007-02-05T23:48:38Z

We had a few people come over for dinner yesterday on not much notice, which is about how I tend to plan things (in other words: not at all). Primerib turned out nicely, stirfry seemed OK (OK, so I really have no idea how to cook without meat involved, unless it is baking). Now I should plan my birthday party, invite people (which means decide who to invite, which in turn means, remember who you know that might come), clean up the house, etc. Any ideas for who I should invite?

I also have to decide what to bring for the indulgence party at the end of the month. Brownies are always popular, but I shouldn't always be too predictable.

Crap, I think I am getting a cold or something

2007-01-05T22:46:26Z

My head is a bit sore, and I am not very enthusiastic about doing anything that I would normally love to do.

I did just catch up on reading my LJ friends pages, after having apparently not done so for about 5 or 6 weeks. It seems my reading of LJ is almost as bad as my posting. Found a few interesting posts that I am glad I didn't miss.

I think for this year I really should aim to:
* Have people come over for dinner and hanging out more often.
* Play board games and such more often (may be related to the previous idea).
* Go diving more often (once just isn't very much).
* Go biking more (that leg injury seemed to limit me to only a few times out last year).
* Get more exercise (My weight is very slowly going up, which is not a good thing). I just got a bike trainer thing that I will put my bike on for the winter. Now I can exercise and watch tv (something I am apparently about 30 hours behind on) at the same time.
* Post more thoughts on LJ.

I am trying to get used to the new fact that when Carolyn listens to her ipod now, talking to her is completely pointless, since she won't even know. Apparently those Shure e3c earphones really do what they claim.

I should probably go home from work now since it is Friday, and it's getting close to 18:00, and I am not actually accomplishing anything useful anymore.

lsorense @ 2006-10-16T20:03:00

2006-10-16T20:08:52Z

I finally managed to go diving this year. I went to a treasure dive/underwater pumpkin carving contest dive in Barrie. Water was about 10C, visibility was almost none by the time people had been swimming around looking for red and white floaty bobs on a string with a lead weight in the silt for a bit. I had trouble seeing my buddy an arms length away from me, and I nearly ran into the bottom and the rocks at the edge of the water a few times when it suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

This means I finally got to try out my BCD, wetsuit, and whatever else new I got in the last year without actually getting a change to use it. Also meant I got to play with Carolyn's regulator set and her computer (which I still have to figure out a bit more) although I don't think I made it past 15feet depth at any point.

It was fun though. Now I have to see if maybe Carolyn has time to go jump in humber bay some time before it gets too much colder.

Good grief is this still taking place?

2006-10-05T16:50:03Z

Apparently SCO is still suing IBM. Someone at least tried to add to its humour factor:
http://blogs.linux.ie/frankly/2003/12/05/not-quite-a-cheese-shop/

On that note, I really should start watching some of the Flying Circus eppisodes the mythtv box has recorded.

Isn't the internet great?

2006-10-04T21:33:00Z

You can find everything there that pops into your head. Like this for example:

TRAVELER (Jim Henson):
I started on a journey just about a year ago,
To a little town called "Morrow" in the state of Ohio
I'd never been much of a traveler and I really didn't know,
That Morrow was the hardest place I'd ever try to go.

So I went down to the station for my ticket and applied
For tips regarding Morrow not expecting to be guide
Said I, "My friend, I'd like to go to Morrow and return,
No later than tomorrow for I haven't time to burn."

Said he to me,

CLERK:
Now let me see if I have heard you right
You'd like to go to Morrow and return tomorrow night
You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back today,
For the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way
If you had gone to Morrow yesterday now don't you see,
You could have gone to Morrow and returned today at 3
For the train today to Morrow if the schedule is right,
Today it gets to Morrow and returns tomorrow night.

TRAVELER:
Said I, "I'd like to go to Morrow so can I go today,
And get to Morrow by tonight if there is no delay?"

CLERK:
"Well, well," I said to him, and I've got no more to say,
"Can you get anywhere tomorrow and get back again today?"

TRAVELER:
Said I, "I guess you know it all, but kindly let me say,
How can I get to Morrow if I leave this town today?"
Said he,

CLERK:
You can not go to Morrow anymore today,
For the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way.

TRAVELER:
I was so disappointed, I was mad enough to swear
The train had gone to Morrow and it left me standing there
The man was right in telling me,

CLERK:
You are a howling jay
You cannot go to Morrow...

TRAVELER:
Well I guess in town I'll stay.

FIDDLER (Frank Oz):
I don't get it.

Unfortunately it really is best when Jim Henson sings it. It makes too much sense when you read it.

The muppets have had so many great songs on over the years they ran. I really hope season 2 comes out on DVD soon. Watching season 1 made me realize that as a kid I missed an awful lot of what went on.

On another note

2006-08-26T01:49:19Z

Look, I made a picture for my livejournal. Now I just have to try posting regularly and I will be all set. Thanks to Svan for the picture (I needed to find a picture with me in it somewhere after all, and his pile had one that I could crop nicely). I will have to go through realsoonnow's picture pile to find some more for variety.

I need better willpower.

2006-05-14T14:57:05Z

I just ate the remaining third of the cake I baked last night for breakfast. I now have to get some milk.

So for making cakes I have:
Pros: They usually turn out pretty good.
Cons: I might actually eat them. (All of them).

At least I am doing laundry now, so I am getting something useful done.

I got more divegear

2005-11-14T17:56:18Z

I managed to get a BCD that fits me (with various amounts of neoprene even) for about half price at scuba2000s annual sale. And some new boots and a few other handy itmes at 20% off. I like discounts on stuff I want. Now all I need to have everything without renting for going diving is my own regulator, and well there is that darn tank thing, but renting those is not a big deal.

Now to make time for diving (and finding places to do it).

So I created a livejournal...

2005-11-02T20:23:50Z

It seems everyone else already has one, so I thought I could have one too (Not that I usually do things just because they are trendy or anything), so well... here it is.

My unofficial updated 2.6.12 kernel netinstaller for the unofficial Debian port of Sarge 3.1 for amd64 seems rather popular. Someone pointed out I really should include the sources for license reasons and such, so I made a giant tarball of it (Using it for something useful on the other hand without instructions isn't easy. I find it hard to use and I should know how by now, but I still don't have my own clear list of steps. I work at it until it seems done and release it into the wild).

The nVidia driver on Debian howto is also quite popular it seems, at least by the number of 'thank you' emails I get about it. It seems clear instructions are sometimes appreciated.

Well that's it for the first post. Maybe I will remember to add more later.