Rotundus.com

At the moment I'm wondering if there's any way to motivate myself to study. Having a week prior to your first exam, and then the rest almost back to back does wonders to your brain. My mind was definitely not working at peak efficiency already a couple of weeks back (witness one botched history paper), and at the moment I think that I reached my mental saturation point a couple of days as I simply can't well concentrate on my studies.

Just a few more days of this (approximately 69.5 hours as of the time of writing), and then it'll finally be time for a little relaxation, so perhaps I can finally regain a little sanity.

Now that my car is no longer insured, my brother Roger has been starting to talk of getting his own set of wheels to use.

Anyways, it doesn't look like he'd be interested in buying my car, but he seems to be interested in renting it from me, or perhaps working out some sort of shared usage arrangement.

At the moment I'm kind of clueless as to what to charge him for said usage, and also wondering if there's any advantage to having the car road-worthy rather than sitting around for a half-year or so (ie. prevent something from stiffening up or something). Any suggestions?

Today is the day that the insurance runs out on my car, so I made it out to the tracks in the vehicle one last time, and "studied" while awaiting some trains in the overly hot weather.

One idea that came to mind during that time was the possiblity of doing something with Google Maps. They have fairly close-in satellite views from around my house (a coal train running past Ryan's workplace in the shot that they've got), but unfortunately this doesn't extend into the canyon.

Assuming that they've got most of the Fraser Valley covered, using the Google Maps API one might be able to throw together a nice site with a list of railfanning spots for the Fraser Valley. I know that people can use the API and add in their own location markers, so something like this might work rather well.

On the topic of religious freedom in Canada, there was an interview recently broadcast on CBC radio from a retired professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.

A few quotes from this interview for you:

• "We could also help the general cause of religious freedom by introducing a code of moral practice for religions," he said. "They will never achieve unity so why not try for compatibility? Can't religious leaders agree to adjust doctrine so all religions can operate within the code?"
• "I won't try to propose what might be in the new code except for a few obvious things: A key item would have to be a ban on claims of exclusivity. It should be unethical for any RRP to claim that theirs was the one true religion and believers in anything else or nothing were doomed to fire and brimstone. One might also expect prohibition of ritual circumcisions, bans on preaching hate or violence, the regulation of faith healers, protocols for missionary work, etc.,"