Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the 5 of us. All our best for 2006!!

Love, The Chapmans

Test your nerd score

Found this test on a friend's blog. Ends up that I am a High-Level Nerd (but then again you people probably already knew that). Now I have to decide if I should be proud or ashamed... lol

The 12 Pains Of Christmas

Its been a few years since I heard this song, and it still cracks me up. "One goes out, they all go out!!" LOL.

Click on this link, and the music will start. You can follow along with the lyrics.

12 Pains Of Christmas

Sarah's Christmas Concert

Sarah's pre-school class held their Christmas concert on Thursday night. Click the video below to play their rendition of "Jingle Bells". Isn't she a cutie?!?! :-)

Random pictures

Here are some pictures of us cutting down our Christmas tree, the girls having some fun, and Abby's FIRST haircut. :-)

Abby the Elf

Getting our tree

Playing their favourite game "Hide in the closet"

Sarah in her "big girl" pose

Abby's first haircut (long overdue). Not too happy...

Not liking the blow-dry...

All done!

Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!

Welcome to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!

Always a funny website.... I wonder what the electricity bills are for some of these places?!?

Talk to MSN Encarta

Here is a neat tip for anyone using MSN Messenger: You can ask questions of Microsoft’s Encarta in MSN Messenger, just by adding encarta@conversagent.com as a Messenger contact.

Kinda cool... It opens up a side-window of Encarta where it will show you maps, searches, etc.

Christmas Lights Gone Wild

NERD ALERT!! No matter how this was done - someone had way too much time on their hands. Hilarious... Click the image below to play the clip. Its long, so it might take a while.

Snow.... :-(

Here's what it looked like here today. Good thing I put my snow tires on my Prelude or else I would be stuck in a snowbank somewhere right now. The roads were a mess tonight - really slippery. What happened to Indian Summer?!?

Snow?!

Its a pink marshmallow! :-)

Happy Halloween!!!

Sarah's dance class

At the pumpkin patch

Princess Sarah

Killer bunny!!

Sister hug

SMOOCH!
Hoppity little bunny

The girls

Movie Trailers - Redux

What if "The Shining" was a 'feel-good' family movie?

A post-production house organized a competition where assistant editors ‘re-cut’ trailers for famous movies to try and make them seem like different movies . . . . this is the one that won:

Shining (Quicktime file)

Some other good ones:

• What if "Titanic" was a horror movie? Recut of Titanic
• Was "West Side Story" a zombie movie? Recut of West Side Story
  

More about the contest and winner from the NY Times:

Robert Ryang, 25, a film editor’s assistant in Manhattan, graduated from Columbia three years ago with a double major in film studies and psychology. This week, he got an eye-opening lesson in both.

Since 2002, Mr. Ryang has worked for one of the owners of P.S. 260, a commercial postproduction house, cutting commercials for the likes of Citizens Bank, Cingular and the TriBeCa Film Festival.

A few weeks back, he said, he entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Mr. Ryang won the contest, and about 10 days ago, he said, he sent three friends a link to a “secret site” on his company’s Web site where they could watch his entry.

One of them, Mr. Ryang said, posted it on his little-watched blog. And that was that. Until this week, when he was hit by a tsunami of Internet interest.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ryang said, his secret site got 12,000 hits. By Thursday the numbers were even higher, his film was being downloaded and linked to on countless other sites, it had cracked the top 10 most popular spoofs on www.ifilm.com, and a vice president at a major Hollywood studio had called up his office, scouting for new talent.

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Not sure if I was going to do well, and I did guess on one of them... :-)

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

How To Carve A Pumpkin

In honour of Halloween, here is a Flash tool to show you how to carve a pumpkin.

How To Carve A Pumpkin

Fixing Firefox's memory leak

I have been having lots of problems with Firefox eating up all system memory after being open for a long time (several hours to days). I did some Googling, and found this link:
Fixing Firefox's memory leak

Seems to be working for me, so any other FF users may want to do the fix as well.

Happy Thanksgiving !!!

Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. We went for a little walk in the park to find some leaves for a centerpiece. Here are some pics.

The woods
Our little leaf pickers

Choosing a leaf

Walking with Dad

A kiss for Mom

Picture break

The piggyback ride home

The many crazy smiles of Abby

"How do these things go on?"

"HEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!"

"Look at all my teeth! Cheeeese!"

"BOO!"

"Here I am!!"

"Just take those old records off the shelf..."

"Thought I should vaccuum up all those Cheerios..."

"Reading is fun! Especially upside down"

GMail Drive shell extension

Here's a nifty little extension that allows you to use your Gmail account to store up to 1gb of files and access them through windows. I've tried it out, and it works great for transfering files to different locations (work, home, etc.). I know I was never going to fill 2.5 gigs of space with emails... (Obviously) only works if you have a GMail account.

Talk Like A Pirate Day - September 19

YARRRR! Ahoy there all ye land lubbers! Today is the International Talk Like A Pirate Day: "a"

Top Ten Pickup lines for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …

1. Prepare to be boarded.

Bonus points for anyone who answers their phone today by saying "ARRRRRRR!" hahahah

Jim - aka "The Dread Pirate Vane"

TaskSwitchXP

Here is a great little app called TaskSwitchXP which replaces the standard Windows ALT+TAB with a new powerful one. I've used other replacements in the past, and this one is by far the fastest and best. For Windows XP users only.

Pics from Sarah's Birthday Party (2)

Sarah's "official" birthday party was this weekend. Lots of fun had by all - especially the birthday girl.

Barbie Cake... yummy


Birthday Girl!


Marsha, David, Jake, Julien, Abby, Sarah and Ethan


Abby and Ethan


Playing outside

Pics from Sarah's Birthday Party

We had a little party for Sarah after dinner tonight. Just a "warm-up" for the party this weekend. Check out the video clip (pretty funny), and some pics below.

New Barbie Princess dress

Some ballet in her new dancing outfit

Opening Snow White

Big smiles all around!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!!

3 years old already... Wow - time flies. Have a great day my little Princess.

Love,
Daddy

AP Offers Satellite Image of New Orleans - Yahoo! News

AP Offers Satellite Image of New Orleans - Yahoo! News: "The Associated Press is offering Internet access to a satellite image that covers most of New Orleans, detailed enough that viewers can zoom in to check on particular neighborhoods and streets.

The image's resolution is high, at 2.4 meters per pixel. It is posted in a format that allows quick viewing of any area a user zooms in on. Users can quickly see what areas are under water and what structures are still standing.

The initial image was taken Wednesday and supplied by the company DigitalGlobe. AP will offer updated satellite images as as they become available.

The image is available HERE.

Day at Kidspark

Every year at Victoria Park in Kitchener, they hold a 2-day festival for kids called Kidspark. We went to check it out last weekend. One of the highlights of the day was a parade of cartoon character "mascots". Sarah went right up to Clifford to get a hug. Unfortunately, it was during the end of the session where the mascots were lining up for pictures... Sarah of course goes to the end of the line and starts posing for everyone. Too funny....

Abby double-fisting some corn (Ok, this has nothing to do with Kidspark, but it made us laugh)

Sarah in the cartoon character line-up

Clifford isn't *that* big!

Wedding Crashers

Ok, I made this a while ago, but never posted. Anyone who has seen "Wedding Crashers", and who knows me and Dave will crack up at this. All I can say is - check it out (and who are those two studs??) CLICK HERE FOR "CRASHED" TRAILER.

Leah and I saw the movie a few weeks ago, and laughed sooooo hard. Great flick!!