I'm Greg. This website is about my adventures with the electricfrog - my Honda Insight gas-electric hybrid car. It's also my own little random soapbox and amateur photo gallery. Request an account if you'd like to recieve updates.

1 | 2 | 3      Page 1 of 3  

weblog

WHO Says Climate Change Killing 150,000 a Year. The European heatwave killed 20,000 people this year, and the World Health Organisation is claiming that's just the tip of the, um, iceberg. Read more...  :: Greg Searle 04:30 pm, 11.12.2003

Telemarketer Killer - Automatically hang up on telemarketers and get your phone number removed from their Death Star databases with TeleZapper.  :: Greg Searle 07:42 pm, 10.04.2002

Laugh - added some priceless new pics.  :: Greg Searle 08:24 pm, 10.02.2002

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a treasure trove of inedible post-war American cuisine. It explains in graphic detail the culinary trauma that suburban housewives visited on the scarred Baby Boomer generation. Sam Cowling says of his favourite beet'n'bacon sandwich: "It's food like this that makes eating a habit!"  :: Greg Searle 03:36 pm, 10.02.2002

Bigger, Better Terrorism? Acclaimed Canadian intellectual Thomas Homer-Dixon thinks September 11 could have been unthinkably worse. He paints scenarios of domino-effect destruction in a fascinating article in FOREIGN POLICY magazine. "Complex terrorism operates like jujitsu�it redirects the energies of our intricate societies against us."  :: Greg Searle 02:52 pm, 09.02.2002

Hitler's last relatives end the lineage. Three ordinary men in Long Island have sworn to end the bloodline of Adolf Hitler. The brothers are the last known remaining relatives of the Fuhrer, and they say they won't procreate. Read more.  :: Greg Searle 02:18 pm, 09.02.2002

100% Pure Urine. While reading up on Wavy Gravy, the famous clown-philanthropist who MC'd Woodstock '69 and '94, I accidentally stumbled across ClearTest, a company that will send you "drug-free urine" in the mail to help pass employment drug tests: "Concentrated Urine and The Urinator help you to pass the urine drug test by using our drug-free urine instead of your own." That's 1-800-248-5655, folks.  :: Greg Searle 05:00 am, 03.01.2002

Dog-dancing: "America's fastest growing sport." Have way too much time on your hands? The World Canine Freestyle Organization can teach you how to dance with your dog. They offer groovy training videos, Western doggy costumes, and a list of Canine Musical events coming soon to a County Fair near you. Entertaining videos include: Wag Time Ragtime, Disco Doggie Dance, Top Hat & Tails, Rhythmic Paws, Dog Boogie Shuffle and The Canine Cabaret.  :: Greg Searle 10:49 pm, 02.01.2002

Must... buy... clever soda pop... Jone's Soda gets to me. I don't believe their remarkable advertising hype, but the hype triggers my finely-honed consumer reflexes just the same. Jones' smart mediacrats tap into the jaded river of collective unconscious that flows through my misshapen Gen-X cranium and make me buy their soda pop.

Deep down inside, I admire raw advertising power. Imagine if we could harness that power for the Forces of Good.

The folks at Jones have actualized the philosophy of the Cluetrain Manifesto better than anyone else I've come across. The message on the front page of the Jones site: "What's your quote or do you have a photo for our labels?" They incite the consumer toparticipate in the production of their message. It should come as no surprise that my generation, raised by sitcom parents and MTV babysitters, make such a fat target for advertisers of the "Markets Are Conversations" school.  :: Greg Searle 08:35 pm, 09.12.2001

St. Luke's, the world's greatest advertising company, finally have their new website up, and it goes mooooo! I've been looking for their site ever since I read about St. Lukes in Fastcompany #06 - December 1996. These guys stormed out of Chiat/Day with a mind-blowing new advertising concept: telling the truth.  :: Greg Searle 11:50 pm, 06.12.2001

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is now available as a lovingly twisted Powerpoint presentation by witty Peter Norvig, the resident Artificial Intelligence expert at Google. I made the little graphic on your right and offered it to Peter, who added it to his page and kindly referenced electricfrog in the interesting Making of... page.

I nabbed this link from the weblog of like-named Doc Searls (my last name is Searle), Linux luminary and co-author of the thought-provoking Cluetrain Manifesto, which is highly recommended reading.  :: Greg Searle 05:26 pm, 06.12.2001

"He's not the smartest tool in the shed." Overheard at lunch today at Cafe Shafali.  :: Greg Searle 03:49 pm, 06.12.2001

I have a lot in common with Millionaire Space Tourist #2. You see, just like me, Mr. Mark Shuttleworth is in his late 20's. He's an internet entrepreneur, too.

That's where the similarities end. Mark milked $500 million out of the dot com bubble, and now he gets to ride a Soyuz rocket into space. Me, I get to stay on boring old Earth, martian-green with envy.

Since I was 4, I've had a simple dream: to go to space. Lying in bed in my spaceman pyjamas, I would spend excited nights mentallyassembling robots to accompany me on spacewalking excursions. I'd imagineer them out of vacuum cleaner parts and shoeboxes, and they'd clank around the stars with me speaking metallic Oxfordian English.

These days, I lie in bed in my spaceman pyjamasdreaming of equal opportunity to space tourism. Is that so much to ask?  :: Greg Searle 04:59 pm, 05.12.2001

A headless goat will help Hamid Karzai, the new interim Afghan government leader, celebrate Afghanistan's first traditional assembly of tribal chiefs in decades. Karzai says he and his fellow Afghans will wrap up the much-anticipated Loya Jirga (where tribal chiefs select Afghanistan's new ruler) with a wild game of buzkashi, in which horsemen battle for possession of a headless goat.

Karzai also seems to have a knack for leading by example: while out on the front lines in Kandahar commanding his troopsyesterday, he was lightly wounded by the same errant 2,000-pound bomb that killed 3 American soldiers and wounded 19.  :: Greg Searle 03:56 pm, 05.12.2001

Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle. Those maestros of industrial design at IDEO went into a dark closet with Scott Adams, the man who gave us Dilbert, and came out with Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle: "The resultis a modular cubicle that allows each worker to select the components and create a space based on his or her tastes and lifestyle." We're talking serious lego-style ingenuity here, folks: pop-up floor storage is just one highlight. Read more at CNN.  :: Greg Searle 02:45 pm, 23.11.2001

You too can bring box-cutters on airplanes. I've taken a small box-cutter on every single flight I've been on since 9/11 - that's over a dozen times! It's not an intentional thing, really - I've carried that box cutter for years in my wallet. Even at the now-infamous Boston Logan, departure point for many departed hijackers, security guards broke the little file off the nail clippers I also carry with me - but overlooked the far more lethal push knife!  :: Greg Searle 06:37 pm, 20.11.2001

Powell Jr. for President? Michael Powell, Colin Powell's son and head of the Federal Communications Commission, is riding a political bullet-train as the Republican Party's rising star. The masters of satire at Adbusters ran a thought-provoking article on Mr. Powell's curious track record at the FCC.  :: Greg Searle 06:23 pm, 20.11.2001

Leonard Cohen autographed pumpkins in the village I live in on Sunday - and I missed it by half an hour! I stopped to buy a whole family of pumpkins from Dennis, the guy who sells organic produce in Wakefield. He said Leonard had just bought some apples from him and had autographed pumpkins for the other customers. Such a shame that I missed my chance to grovel - he's one of the few people I idolize.

I wonder if he now signs the dharma name, Jikan (Silent One), that he chose for himself when he entered that Buddhist monastery inthe San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles.  :: Greg Searle 09:42 am, 24.10.2001

Do the Canadians run Hollywood? This American Life, hosted by radio personality Ira Glass, did a fun radio show entitled "Who's Canadian". It's all about Americans' perception of distinct Canadian culture (or lack thereof), and the insidiousness of iconic Canadian entertainers in U.S. media.  :: Greg Searle 03:11 am, 22.10.2001

Christmas Carol Controversy - Humming Good King Wenceslas to myself this afternoon while planting daffodils, I discovered a serious plot inconsistency: If the poor man's dwelling was "up against the forest fence", what was he doing "a goodly hence" away "gathering winter fuel"? His backyard was full of it!

Also, the song leaves out all the seedy stuff about the Good King: Wenceslas became Duke of Bohemia after his mother was deposed for murdering his grandmother. He zealously Christianized Bohemia before being murdered in 929 AD by his younger brother, who hoped to return Bohemia to traditional pagan beliefs.  :: Greg Searle 02:26 am, 22.10.2001

1 | 2 | 3      Page 1 of 3