Lauren Wu dot com

This is curtesy of my sister, Michelle. These questions about Canada were posted on an international tourism web site:

Q: I have never seen it warm on Canadian TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)

A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around and watch them die.

Q: Will I be able to see polar bears in the street? (USA)

A: Depends how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Vancouver to Toronto. Can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)

A: Sure, it's only 4,000 miles. Take lots of water.

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Canada? (Sweden)

So it's true what they say about Swedes.

Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed beaver. (Italy)

We won't even touch this one.

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Canada? Can you send me a list of them in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax? (UK)

What did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Canada? (USA)

A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Ca-na-da is that big country to your north. Oh, forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Calgary. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is north in Canada? (USA)

Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into Canada? (UK)

A: Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)

Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is ... oh, forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Vancouver and in Calgary, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in Canada? (Germany)

No. We don't stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Canada? (USA)

Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q: Can I wear high heels in Canada? (UK)

You are an American politician, right?

Q: Can you tell me the regions in British Columbia where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)

Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada? (USA)

Only at Thanksgiving.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Toronto and is milk available all year round? (Germany)

No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter-gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Canada who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)

All Canadian rattlesnakes are perfectly harmless and can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Canada but I forget its name. It's a kind of big horse with horns and it is in the cartoons. (USA)

It's called a moose. They are tall and very violent, eating the brains of anyone walking close to them. You can repel them by spraying yourself with your own urine before you go out walking.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)

A: Yes, but you will have to learn it first.

I can't believe it. I successfully installed Movable Type (MT) today! I didn't really know what I was doing, but managed to follow the well written installation instructions. The big question now, is whether to transfer my Blogger stuff to MT.

I found a visually stunning blog today called Mandarin Design. What caught my eye was a post (complete with sample picture) about a drawing tool, The Scribbler. I tried creating my own masterpiece, but alas, to no avail.

I use Phil Ringnalda's archive script generator to display a dropdown menu at the top of my blog's navigation bar so readers can jump to an archive page for a particular month. It works great... except for on my home computer.

For the longest time, I could not figure out the problem. At first, I thought I had turned off javascript in my browser... Nope. Then I thought it may be the combo of my browser and operating system. That wasn't it either. I finally selected "View Source" on my browser, and saw unfamiliar code:

<script>
<!--
function SymError()
{
  return true;
}

window.onerror = SymError;
var SymRealWinOpen = window.open;
function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes)
{
  return (new Object());
}

window.open = SymWinOpen;
//-->
</script>

Further down, I saw some more:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
window.open = SymRealWinOpen;
//-->
</script>

Where the heck did this come from? I searched my Blogger templates and archive page to make sure that I hadn't inadvertently added these unwanted lines but they didn't show up there. I did a Google search on these unwated function names, and found a well written page explaining that the culprit is Norton Internet Security (NIS). Unfortunately, the only way to disable this "feature" is to uninstall NIS from my home computer which is less than ideal since there are many features of NIS that I think are helpful. More worrisome is that other visitors (okay, all 3 of them) who come to my site may experience the same thing but won't know that something is wrong. What a pain. Another reason to switch to Movable Type?

Back in the day when I used the Mozilla Firebird browser (now called "Firefox"), I noticed that little icons used to show up in the browser's address bar and bookmarks for selected websites. For instance, if you go to Yahoo!, you may see an icon in the address bar that looks like a red "Y!".

I wanted an icon for my own website but had no idea to create one. I didn't even know what they were called until I read Zeldman's post referring readers to Photo Matt's instructions on creating favicons in Windows. A-ha! These gizmos are called favicons!

It only took me three months to get around putting one together, but I finally did it. I created my own favicon using the free online tool at www.favicon.co.uk. It's supposed to work with IE5+, but it's not showing up on my home computer with IE6. It does show up when I use Firefox so I know I've done it correctly :-) I've read that favicons are temperamental creatures that may only work sporadically.