If you thought the tweeting beer vendor was high tech, he’s just been blown away (you’ll see what I did there in a second) by the beer delivering drone.

The “OppiKoppi Beer Drone,” developed by Capetown’s Darkwing Aerials, will serve as a fully functioning beer delivery system during the Oppikoppi outdoor music festival in South Africa this August.

A video released by festival organizers explains that attendees will be able to summon the 8-propeller octocopter using their phones.

The drone will then swoop down and deliver beer via parachutes, based on the customer’s GPS coordinates.

The system hasn’t quite been perfected yet, so this year the drone will be guided by humans for greater accuracy and will only make deliveries to designated areas. The goal is to eventually have a fleet of fully automated beercopters up and running, but there seems to be no timeline as yet to indicate when we will all live in this wonderful future.

Listen up, kids. This is why the friendly officers always tell you to wear your seatbelt whenever you’re in a car. Either that or it’s why they tell you not to tool around town with your drugs in your lap. Either way, the point I’m trying to make here is that making life decisions the way this guy makes life decisions isn’t going to end well for you.

Police were conducting seatbelt checks on Upper James Street on the ramp heading up to the Lincoln Alexander Parkway around 11:30 a.m. when one officer noticed a driver with his belt undone and loose marijuana strewn across his lap.
“He also had a baggie of marijuana next to his leg,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Cox.
When police arrested the man, they said he was in possession of 14 grams of marijuana, along with 2.4 grams of cocaine, 123 grams of hash, a “large quantity of cash” and a replica firearm.

The street value of all of this is about $6500, according to police types who would know these things. It also adds up to a charge of possession of a controlled substance. Wait, just one?

If I told you that a hunt for some missing macaroni and cheese and a spilled beer lead to a knife in the gut from one brother to another, what state would you guess this happened in? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with F and ends with lorida.

A witness told deputies in Volusia County, Fla. that Randy and his brother, 47-year-old Edward Zipperer, started arguing over Randy’s missing macaroni and cheese, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. His younger brother helped him look, but during the mac-hunt, Edward knocked over a beer Randy had been drinking.
The spill allegedly made Randy even angrier, and deputies say he began waving around a knife that wound up inserted in his brother’s stomach.

The elder Zipperer didn’t admit to the stabbing when police arrived, but did offer that “I poked him a little with the knife, but I didn’t mean to.”

That was close enough for the authorities, who charged him with aggravated battery and obstructing an officer without violence.

Here’s a thief with some pretty horrible timing. He thought he was going to get away with a BMW right out of a guy’s driveway, but he happened to be getting ready to take it just as its owner remembered that he’d forgotten to lock it a few minutes earlier.

“Approximately 15 minutes, I remembered my car being unlocked — I never leave it unlocked — so I reached out the front door with my remote key and locked my car. Unbeknownst to me, I had just locked a thief in my car,” said Dave Spiers, inadvertent burglar catcher.

He didn’t discover what was going on until a few minutes later when the alarm went off. It was set off by the thief kicking out the window and escaping on a bicycle. What’s with bringing bikes to car thefts, anyway?

His escape was short lived, however, since he helpfully made himself pretty easy to catch.

At the scene, Spiers not only found his broken window and a man quickly cycling into the night, but also some change, the guy’s keys and a wallet complete with his ID.

The police, as one would hope in such a gimme case, have him now. He’s been charged with mischief over $5,000. His name has not been released, and hopefully neither has the rest of him.

My dad was a pretty solid handyman, but even he had his troubles. Remembering those and some of the new curse words they taught me as a child made this funnier to me than it may have been otherwise.

This is not, by any means, a full and complete list. But it’ll get even the most handy handyman started.
Skil Saw
A portable cutting tool used to make boards too short.

Belt Sander
An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.
Wire Wheel
Cleans paint off bolts, and then throws them somewhere under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, ‘Oh shit’.
Drill Press
A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.
Channel Locks
Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters.
Hacksaw
One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle — it transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.
Vise Grips
Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand. (Note the spelling: a “Vice Grip” is something else entirely.)
Oxyacetylene Torch
Used almost entirely for igniting various flammable objects in your shop and creating a fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.
Table Saw
A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity. Very effective for digit removal!
Hydraulic Floor Jack
Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.
Band Saw
A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to cut large pieces into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.
Two-Ton Engine Hoist
A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of all the crap you forgot to disconnect.
Phillips Screwdriver
Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.
Straight Screwdriver
A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws and butchering your palms. (Note: not the opposite of a Gay Screwdriver.)
Pry Bar
A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.
PVC Pipe Cutter
A tool used to make plastic pipe too short.
Hammer
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the object we are trying to hit.
Utility Knife
Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use. These can also be used to initiate a trip to the emergency room so a doctor can sew up the damage.
Son Of A Bitch Tool
Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling ‘Son of a bitch!’ at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need after using any of the above.

Having never tried it, I have no idea how simple identity theft is. Given the frequency with which it occurs, however, I assume that it must be relatively easy. But easy as it may be, it appears to still be too difficult for some.

Today, some equals an unidentified person or persons that police have not yet managed to locate.

They got the identity theft part right, managing to lift card info from a family in Anchorage, Alaska. They also seem to have had the buy as much stuff as you can before the victim or victim’s bank catches on and stops the gravy train in its tracks thing figured out, since they managed to buy somewhere in the neighbourhood of $5,000 worth of everything under the sun in an hour, give or take.

But it’s here that things head sideways.

The rule of scoop up as much ill gotten merch as possible, at least as I understand it, goes that when you place your orders, you should change the shipping details so that said merch goes to you and not to the person who’s money you’re spending. Somehow, this genius/geniuses kinda forgot that part.

Here are some of the “gifts” shipped to the Linfords’ home, according to the Daily News:

• A JVC car stereo
• A radar detector
• A baseball bat signed by Chipper Jones
• An autographed portrait of Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
• Several North Face jackets
• A linen scrapbook
• Women’s jackets from a store in New Jersey
• Martials arts gloves and shin pads

There was also an attempt made to join a fruit of the month club, but so far none has come in the mail.

But wait Steve, you say. What if whoever did this sent the goods to the victim on purpose? What if the plan was to mail them there, then swipe them from the porch?

Well, I reply. That seems pretty risky, but it’s certainly not unheard of. I might even be able to go along with it if not for one thing.

…the Daily News notes that Susie Linford traced the orders back to phone numbers and IP addresses in Kansas and Illinois…

Both of those places are a few thousand miles away from where the packages landed, so that’s a long run back and forth.

Numbers and addresses in Kansas and Illinois are so far all that investigators have to go on, but hopefully they can eventually round these clowns up.

When I saw the headline Meal in a Jar, my mind immediately jumped to some of the similarly named culinary classics that have been featured in this space through the years. But reading the article, my mind changed pretty quickly. This sounds like a really awesome idea. I immediately thought of Carin and how perfect an answer these could be on days when there are no leftovers for her to take to the office. No more settling for so so building pizza or having to hope she doesn’t miss the lunch lady cart.

The mason jar has long been linked with canning and preserving fresh foods, but a local company is turning that concept on its head by providing meals on the go for those looking for healthy options but don’t have the time to prepare it.
Meal in a Jar started in January when local health, wellness and fitness guru Irene Divaris was on social media site Pinterest and saw what turned out to be a workable solution to the conundrum of providing healthy lunches for your family when time is a factor.
“We were having a family situation of not being able to get lunches out on time, and I just decided to make a lunch very quickly and there just happened to be a mason jar right in front of me,” said Divaris. “My brain went to the picture I remembered seeing and I built it. I put it on Facebook because it was so pretty.”
She saw how people were putting together whole meals in glass mason jars, layered with colours and nutrition, to be opened up and eaten later that day or week. The goodness and freshness was preserved and it satisfied her desire to provide better nutritional options for her family.
“It just took off from there,” said Divaris. “It’s visual and you can see exactly what you’re eating.

“I got 12 different jars and built 12 different meals, and as I was finishing them I was putting them on a Facebook page called Meal in a Jar because I couldn’t think of anything else.”

She’s teamed up with a business student and they’re now selling these at a few stores around KW. There are plans to expand into more places here and into some nearby towns.

The menu has grown to feature items like mulligatawny soup, a lentil salad with brown rice and chicken, a Greek salad with chicken and quinoa, and zucchini Bolognese. The menu features both hot and cold options.

That sounds pretty great. I’m hungry now.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about 680 CFTR. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the day I put that up (May 7th) was a month to the day before the 20th anniversary of the change. In case you don’t know what I mean by the change, that was the day that one of the biggest hit music radio stations in Canada became an all news channel. And in case you’re curious, here’s what that sounded like.

I remember hearing this when it happened and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. To this day, I can’t hear We Built This City without having a flashback at least half the time.

By this point I was much more a fan of the DJs on CFTR than the music they played, but in my 13-year-old brain the decision to make such a huge flip was still insane and would never work. My 13-year-old brain, as it turns out, was incorrect. 680 News seems to be doing just fine, churning out 20 or 30 minute news cycles 24/7 for 20 years and counting, other than that time recently when they stopped to broadcast a Leafs game because the Fan couldn’t do it.

Remember Redigi? If not, you can catch up on them here and here.

I hadn’t followed this as closely as I’d planned (shocking I know), but the lawsuit that looked like it was on it’s way in that second post did end up getting filed near the beginning of 2012. In March of this year a ruling came down, and it wasn’t so great for Redigi.

Sullivan noted in his ruling that the doctrine does not apply to digital media because a digital music file is not the same as a material object, which can literally be handed over. Transferring digital media equates to making a digital copy (regardless if the “original” file is deleted), the judge said.
“The first sale doctrine does not protect ReDigi’s distribution of Capitol’s copyrighted works. This is because, as an unlawful reproduction, a digital music file sold on ReDigi is not lawfully made under this title,” he wrote.
“The court cannot of its own accord condone the wholesale application of the first sale defence to the digital sphere, particularly when Congress itself has declined to take that step,” Sullivan concluded.

This, with all due respect to Judge Sullivan, is silly. If you can buy a thing, then you should be able to sell a thing regardless of whether or not that thing is invisible. All this unlawful reproduction nonsense is just that, nonsense. The very nature of digital media requires a copy be made every time it moves from place to place. If you follow this through to it’s logical end, anyone who backs up anything digital he owns is a criminal because all but the copy on the server and the copy downloaded at the time of first sale are unlawful reproductions. This effectively means that even though we’ve made great strides in ridding ourselves of DRM infected music, we’re still legally obliged to act as though it’s alive and well.

A shade under nine months ago, I got my iPhone. At the time, that one iPhone was far more than enough iPhones for me. But since that day, I have, as I predicted I might in that post, grown to love the thing.

I must stop here to point out that I do not in any way love the iPhone as a phone. In fact, at the phone half of the smartphone job description, its performance is average at best and pretty miserable at worst. Other than handling elevators better, my old Nokia was orders of magnitude more competent at being a phone than my current iPhone is. The sound quality leaves something to be desired, and the thing has a call failure rate higher than that of most major league umpires.

But boy oh boy, does it ever nail smart. When they say “there’s an app for that,” it’s more than just marketing. What I like about the iPhone is the same thing I like about WordPress, which for those who are confused is the system that makes reading the VC possible. If something can’t be done straight out of the box, somebody somewhere has built something that makes that thing happen. I’ve got apps like Text Detective that can help me read print in a pinch, Voxer for staying in touch with friends without giving myself headaches from using an actual phone, TapTapSee for identifying colours and other characteristics of objects and BlindSquare, which has been super helpful to us as we figure out where things are in our new city.

Those, of course, are just a few of the major ones. I haven’t even touched all the different radio apps that are serving up all of the sports and music I can handle and then some. But now that I’ve mentioned those, I can get around to what my original point was going to be.

The iPhone has some pretty great radio apps available for it, but what it doesn’t have is the kind of sound you need to fully enjoy them. The single, tinny speaker may be fine if you’re going to tape the phone to your head, but for anything else it simply doesn’t cut it. So with that in mind, I took a trip out during the Victoria Day long weekend and plunked down some money on one of those portable docks. Long story short, it’s already paid for itself several times over. I’m listening to baseball on it right now, in fact.

But using your iPhone as a radio presents a problem, in that it makes it an awful lot harder to use it as an iPhone. It’s much more difficult to text, tweet, email, vox or take blind guy pictures of things when it’s attached to a set of speakers, and who wants all that other stuff interfering with your enjoyment of the game anyway?

Basically in less than a year I’ve gone from wanting less than zero iPhones, to depending on the one I have more than I ever could have expected and now to feeling like I need at least two of the things in order to enjoy the full experience. All of this and I really don’t even like Apple that much. So if you’ve got an old iPhone sitting around collecting dust, why not send it to your favourite blogger? Or if he doesn’t want it, send it to me. I promise I’ll make good use of it.