Country Keepers by Gary Petersen

Graphic Charts of the World’s Population

Gary Petersen — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:05:09 +0000

I Love Charts posted this graphic representation of the world’s population by latitude and longitude. Very cool.

Hat tip to Ken Norton for the link.

A Calvin and Hobbes Search Engine

Gary Petersen — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:54:24 +0000

Calvin and Hobbes was a wonderful cartoon by Bill Watterson. It was a must-read for me until Mr. Watterson stopped writing new strips many years back. Someone by the name of Michael Yingling has created a search engine for Calvin and Hobbes comics that is a lot of fun to play around with.

For example, you can read up on Calvin’s transmogrifier or see Calvin and Hobbes riding in a sled.

Very fun.

Good Prediction

Gary Petersen — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:45:48 +0000

A man in Russia was sentenced to 22 years in jail for assaulting a gypsy psychic who had told the man she saw jail time in his future. Here’s part of the story from the Moscow Times.

A man was jailed by a Kemerovo region court on Thursday for assaulting a Gypsy fortune teller who predicted that he would be jailed, the Investigative Committee said.

Gennady Osipovich tried to kill the unidentified female fortune teller, who told him she saw a “state-owned house” — a Russian euphemism for jail — in his future, the committee said in a statement on its web site.

I believe that psychic readings are a bad thing to have done and that most so-called psychics are nothing more than charlatans, but the irony of what became of this prediction is good for a grin.

The View Out My Back Door

Gary Petersen — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:23:53 +0000

Water. Lots and lots of water. We’ve had rain like crazy this month – July rainfall is currently at 17+ inches, more than three times normal. When it rains hard, a creek develops out back. Thursday night, it was about 150 feet wide and within 20 feet of our house.

Everything in this picture is normally dry. The bird feeder pole more or less in the middle of the picture is about 18 inches deep in the water. The water was about 20 feet from our house.

The good news part one is that our basement remained perfectly dry throughout this, despite the basement floor being several feet below the water level. The good news part two is that the water has been going away fairly quickly – once it stops raining. When it is high like in the picture, there is a pretty strong current flowing along. A day or so after, the level has dropped and the current slows considerably. And two or three days later, the water is gone.

I’m sure global warming is to blame – this couldn’t be just weather variation. Never mind that it rained like this in June two years ago.

Test Post from BlackBerry

Gary Petersen — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:17:45 +0000

I just added the WordPress app to my BlackBerry and am testing it out. It seems to represent the features of the blog well.