Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

I was wasting some time on YouTube today and decided I should post with some of the cool videos I’ve watched recently.

Ocean stuff first. First you have to check out this octopus that changes colors. It’s unreal. Then you should check out this octopus eating a shark. And finally a hammerhead attacks a tarpon while these guys are fishing. I would not be walking around my boat like that.

Now for a couple of random other videos. An owl that turns super skinny after getting scared. Gold. Short video of Darth Vader being a smartass. Can’t go wrong. And this one has been around for awhile but in case you haven’t seen it was kinda cool, the evolution of dance.

And now onto some awesome online shows. The first one that you have to check out is called Ask a ninja. There are quite a few episodes already out, and you should start from the beginning so here are all the links. Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. They also have some “special delivery” episodes that are worth checking out. Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So by now you should have urinated on yourself. Go cleanup and then subscribe to Ask a ninja either in iTunes or via RSS (you know, when I told you how to do that last post).

A new series that has started called Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager. I posted episode 1 and now episode 2 is out. Keep up!

And the final show that you need to check out is called Tiki Bar TV. The first couple episodes are kinda weak but they get a lot better. There are even a couple of episodes with one of the chicks from BSG (you know, Battlestar Gallactica). Anyways, here are the links for episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, bonus ep, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. And once again you should subscribe in either iTunes or as a RSS feed

If you don’t know what RSS is then this post is for you. RSS is a way for websites to tell you when they have updates. It makes it so you don’t have to keep checking a website over and over just to see if they have updated anything. (My friend Hemant has a much more articulate post about RSS as well) If this kind of interests you then you should sign up for a free account at bloglines. They have lots of help/guides there to step you through using their web-based product. Pretty much any website you are reading will have a RSS feed that you can add into bloglines. So when you sit down at your computer you can just goto bloglines and it will show you all the updates on all the sites your interested in. If bloglines seems too daunting for you then you should check out google reader (also free). I think for most people google reader will be more than enough.

(Continue reading here if that first paragraph lost you)
If you are saying to yourself “I have no idea what the hell he is talking about” then this paragraph is for you. Instead of using a new program that you need to check when a website is updated you can have the new updates sent to your email. How do you sign up for this awesome service? Well for my blog just enter your email address below “Notify via Email” on the right hand side and click Notify. It will send you an email verifying your email address works and that will be it. The next time I make a new post you will receive an email. If you want to unsubscribe there are instructions in each email. You should sign up (Yes Mom and Dad. This means you guys too)

Now what about other blogs that you read? Web comics? News? Movie news? There is another awesome free service for you to use called RSSFWD. If you goto their page just paste in the RSS feed URL (my URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/JeffreyVannestesPersonalBlog and Rachel’s is http://feeds.feedburner.com/RachelVanneste ) and then enter your email address and click Subscribe. You can find other RSS feed URL’s on any page, look for the picture or anything mentioning “RSS”. You could also just search in google for “site_you_want_to_subscribe_to rss” and it will probably return a RSS feed for you.

If I haven’t convinced you to use some sort of RSS service then my role as your geeky friend has failed. I expect everyone of my friends to be using RSS for my site. If I find out you are still checking all the time to find out if I posted I will find out. Some how.  Your punishment will be severe.  Once you start using RSS you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Went up to Waskesiu again this weekend.  Saturday was a really cold day so I took it pretty easy, and by pretty easy I mean I got up at 1:30pm, watched some TV for 3 hours, took a nap for another 3 hours, ate supper, watched The Matrix and got to bed by 11:30.  Now that’s what I call a busy day.  What I did discover is that I should never ever watch movies formatted for TV ever again.  Man was Matrix butchered.  They took out the “There is no spoon” part, literally, there was no spoon.

Sunday Rach and I prepared for our big kayak adventure out to Crean Kitchen (which is just on the mouth of Crean Lake).  We left at 6pm so we would only have to rent the kayak for one day.  The lakes were super calm.  I would have awesome (not really) pictures posted if I hadn’t forgot the camera in Waskesiu.  I’m sure Rach will post some later on and I’ll put them up eventually on flickr.  We managed to get lost on the way up which added 20 minutes or so.  Total paddle time, 1 hour 40 minutes.  How long did it take before I started to complain? About 3 strokes.  When we got to Crean Kitchen we saw another tent was setup.  Rach figured they were out fishing but I guessed that a bear had ate them and stole their boat.  We were both wrong as another couple showed up in 2 kayaks (they had been making out, I saw them).

Rach and I had a fire going so we could cook some marshmallows so we offered for them to come and chill by the fire (can you chill by a fire?).  I offered them some marshmallows to which they offered some graham crackers and chocolate (we came out ahead, suckers).  We made some mean smores and I learned that you can stick chocolate into the marchmallow before cooking it to make a wonderful smore.  Did you know real smores taste just like smore flavored poptarts?

We left Crean Kitchen the next day at around 9:30am thinking that would be plenty of time to get back before noon (so we would only pay for one day rental).  Well much to our demise the wind had picked up and we had to paddle directly into it the whole way.  I threw some rocks into the lake to make sure it knew I was displeased.  On the way back we managed to get lost yet again but we ended up getting back at 12:10 (thanks to my gigantic pipes).

That was pretty much my weekend.  One more weekend and then I’m off to Montreal.