There's been all kinds of rumors floating around lately as to who might be buying flickr, so I really had to laugh when I opened flickr.com to see their new logo. (you need to be logged in to see it)

This morning as I past the McDonald's near my office the automatic doors opened and out rushed the smells of grease and tobacco smoke into the frigid morning air. This combined with the sight of commuters side stepping their way around the puddles of icy slush after a night of snow reminded me of living in Ontario. It's funny the things that can trigger such vivid memories no mater how repulsive or unwelcome.

This year, one by one, all three of us received an influenza shot. And without fail, all three of us came down with the flu. Mine came shortly after making me take a few days off work, Masako just recovered from her bout, and now unfortunately it's Frankie's turn. Our bedroom permanently smells of Vicks VapoRub, which isn't such a bad smell but nevertheless wouldn't be something you'd want to make into a candle scent or air freshener.

If I knew switching style sheets was so simple I would have done it long ago. Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets (A List Apart).

If you're not, I suggest you take a seat and hold on to something solid. Pink, green and blue. Impressed are we? That's what I thought. Like I needed proof my web skills are years behind high school kids.

I posted to my fotolog for a few months last year and had a handful of favourites I regularly browsed. A year later fotolog.net is completely off my radar and I haven't heard anyone even mention the name until I came across the fotolog.net group on flickr. A place where floggers re-introduce themselves and start threads like "I think Fotolog is dead!". Fotolog still boasts a massive user base of a million users, but no info on how many of that million are active.

Fotolog did have their limits (like restricting posts to one a day, and painfully slow server response at times) but it was free to use and void of advertising, things we lose sight of sometimes. I had to use wayback machine to verify the point about advertising because I see they're using google ads now.

As for me, I've been blown away by flickr and plan on using it from time to time to post photos directly from my phone, until the novelty wears off --- again.

I had John Leland's Hip: The History in my hand right up until the sales clerk pointed out that I was looking at the price in American dollars, and with tax it would have come out to more than $45 Canadian. After rolling my eyes back to their previous position I politely informed the clerk that I had changed my mind, leaving the book on a stack of marked-down Atkins material. Every book shop I walked into in Canada had the same outrageous prices, which is a shame as I enjoy browsing the shelves of brick and mortar shops as apposed to Amazon or other online book retailers. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be the guy that supports local shops but when Amazon can sell me the same book for almost half the price there's not a lot of debating going on in my head.

Leland's website has plenty of great information including a series of top ten lists like, Hipsters We Could Imagine Hanging With and People Who Don't Seem Hip But Probably Are (Karl Rove? Maybe it's cool, or rather hip to say to a guy like Rove is hip when in fact he's the furthest thing from it). The Hip timeline is also worth checking. Currently, as Leland puts it, we're in the sixth hip convergence. As the product description says, without these hipsters (pimps, hustlers, outlaws, junkies, scoundrels, white negroes, Beats, geeks, beboppers and others) we might all be listening to show tunes.

I replaced our wireless router this past weekend with Apple's portable AirPort Express (branded the AirMac Express in Japan). Plugged it directly into the wall outlet, ran the simple set-up and that was that, though this time with WPA authentication. Apologies go out to our neighbours who've been borrowing our Wi-Fi for the last few years. Sorry folks, but your trial has expired.

I've been following Vincent's Now and Then photographs of Yokohama since he started posting them in September. His shots of modern day Sakuragicho, Yamashita-koen, Motomachi and nineteen other city landmarks contrasted against postcards of Yokohama during the Meiji Era (1868�1912) are quite interesting.

A chocolate sculpture of the Mona Lisa from Tokyo's Salon du Chocolat. They had a few other pieces on display including a miniature five-story pagoda and a women's dress, all made out of chocolate.

Browsing through Amazon last night for my nephew�s birthday gift I came across the strangest product review for the Raffi Singable Songs CD. Raffi (Raffi Cavoukian) is Canada's most regarded children's performer and author, and his album Singable Songs has been a classic since the 70's. Most reviews are of a similar nature; "My kids love it, blah, blah, blah" "This is our kids favourite..." until you get to the review by someone from Langley, VA. Someone's got an interesting sense of humor, but on the other hand this explains why my caretakers always strapped me down before every Raffi listening session (as they were called) in the room with a giant wall-mirror. And no, Ethan I didn't get you the Raffi CD. Don�t forget I'm the cool uncle who lives far away and doesn't have to help assemble anything ;-)

I haven't seen any on the streets yet but certain sects of the Japanese public sure have cottoned to the iPod Shuffle. Reload the page to shuffle the top four images. [via tuaw]

Last night I changed my hosting account to a business plan for the desperately needed diskspace and bandwidth upgrade. I held off upgrading for some time because I was previously told by my host that I'd have to transfer to a different server, which meant re-installing all web apps including Moveable Type. Now they're making the exception and just adding the extras to my existing account. I'm now able to restore all previous video files as well as post a clip from the episode of Millionaire the other night.

The question she turned over to her brains (lifelines) was, "Where was John Lennon killed?" and the choices were Liverpool, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. I figured that was common knowledge, but I guess my perception of common knowledge is slightly distorted. If you want the video (40MB Quicktime) choose from the following.

Here's a torrent file (use that if you can) or if you're not familiar with bit torrent you can grab the direct download here. If you have problems with the torrent file let me know as I just installed Blog Torrent and there may be a few kinks to iron out.

Update: Anyone have luck with the torrent?

I hate to pooh-pooh on the Japanese health care system, as I was quite impressed by the whole child birth experience, but why does this not surprise me? Doctor Riviera, Doctor Nick Riviera. Please report to the coroner immediately.

If you're in front of the tube tomorrow evening check out Millionaire on channel 8 (Fuji TV) at 7pm. They will air the episode which Masako's friend Hiroko competes on. They will also air video of Masako, Frankie and the rest of her brains as there was a camera on them in Hiroko's home during the entire show. And please folks, do not adjust your television set. Frankie really is that cute.

Update: 2,500,000 yen ($24,000) ain't too shabby eh? I've got the video in Quicktime but don't have the diskspace to host it just yet. The video is here.