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By Brian, March 2, 2010 1:33 pm

a few days ago while the 2010 Olympics were in progress I posted this tally of how many Olympic medals countries were earning per million people, to help to gauge how countries were performing compared to the number of potential athletes available to choose from. Now that the Olympics are over I’ve updated the tally, and here it is:

1. Norway: 23 medals, 4,769,274 population, 4.823 mpm (medals per million)
2. Austria: 16 medals, 8,344,319 population, 1.917 mpm
3. Sweden: 11 medals, 9,220,986 population, 1.193 mpm
4. Canada: 26 medals, 33,311,389 population, 0.781 mpm
5. Germany: 30 medals, 82,140,043 population, 0.365 mpm
6. Korea: 14 medals, 48,607,000 population, 0.288 mpm
7. France: 11 medals, 62,048,473 population, 0.177 mpm
8. United States: 37 medals, 304,059,724 population, 0.122 mpm
9. Russian Federation: 15 medals, 141,800,000 population, 0.106 mpm
10. China: 11 medals, 1,325,639,982 population, 0.008 mpm

and just for fun, here’s a quick chart that gives a graphical representation of how it turned out:

I realize that the results are skewed – some countries have a lot more snow than other countries, and therefore a lot more of an interest in winter sports – but regardless, I found this an interesting exercise. At any rate I’m pretty pleased at Canada’s performance on a per capita basis during these Olympics, though you can see from the chart that Norway totally crushed it!

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By Brian, February 27, 2010 6:53 pm

Edit: I’ve updated this list – see the final results for the 2010 Olympics medals per capita.

currently, the United States is leading the Olympic medals count, with 35 medals. My native Canada is in third place, with 23 medals (we also have the highest number of gold medals, with 12)! I was thinking that in comparison to the United States we’re actually doing pretty well, as we have roughly a tenth the population that the USA has… in which case, per capita, we’re earning many more medals than the United States is.

that got me thinking… of the current leaderboard, who is getting the most medals, per capita? Is it Canada, or someone else? I assumed it was someone else, and I was right… but I was pretty amazed to see by just how much that other country is getting more medals per capita than my own!

of the current top 10 medal holders (I didn’t calculate for 11+), the tally looks like this:

1. Norway – 4.403 medals per million!! (21 medals, population 4,769,274)
2. Austria – 1.914 mpm (15 medals, population 8,344,319)
3. Switzerland – 1.179 mpm (9 medals, population 7,630,605)
4. Canada – 0.690 mpm (23 medals, population 33,311,389)
5. Germany – 0.341 mpm (27 medals, population 82,140,043)
6. Korea – 0.288 mpm (14 medals, population 48,607,000)
7. France – 0.177 mpm (11 medals, population 62,048,473)
8. United States – 0.115 mpm (35 medals, population 304,059,724)
9. Russian Federation – 0.106 mpm (15 medals, population 141,800,000)
10. China – 0.008 mpm (11 medals, population 1,325,639,982)

this medals per million leaderboard is going to change as soon as I publish this, of course – perhaps I’ll make another post with the final tallies when the Olympics is over. But I have to say… way to go Norway, for cranking out four and a half Olympic medals per million people… that is simply amazing!!

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By Brian, February 13, 2010 7:59 pm

this afternoon I took the two eldest kids to the Charleston Beer Exchange (don’t worry, we also took a nice walk downtown and hit up the mall for a Valentine’s Day present, so it wasn’t like I took the kids on a beer run). The Charleston Beer Exchange had a special today where you could drop by and pick up a growler of Chimay Cinq Cents, with which you get a free limited edition Chimay 25th anniversary (in the United States, much longer in Belgium) glass chalice. The growler was pretty expensive, but hey, this is one of the best beers in the freakin’ world, and on draft – not a guzzling beer by any means – and I rarely get a chance to drink fine Belgian beers here in the States. They also had a large plate of Chimay cheese samples with water crackers. Chimay cheese is a semi-soft cheese made with hops and washed with beer, so even the kids got to sample the Chimay this afternoon, albeit in a roundabout manner.

needless to say the beer is excellent! And that’s all there is to say about that.

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By Brian, February 7, 2010 6:46 pm

Mia chats with a pretend friend on her plastic phone.

happy Super Bowl Sunday!

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By Brian, February 5, 2010 11:58 pm

while mucking around in my web directories, I found this page that I made seven and a half years back, and promptly forgot about – part one (though I don’t think I ever made a part two) of a chronicle of Yvonne and my adventures in Europe. This was our last big trip before we had Callum (who is now six and a half). Kind of neat to find this… almost like finding an old scrapbook stashed away in the bottom of a dresser drawer somewhere, but of the virtual kind.

plus, I could really go for one of those big ol’ Stiegl beers right about now…

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By Brian, January 24, 2010 6:57 pm

this afternoon I created this page on my personal web site, with links to my various profiles online – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and so on. I made it for two reasons – the first, and most obvious, is so that people who are seeking to contact me can do so in whatever way they care to. But I also realized that I usually can’t remember which handle I’ve used for each social networking site, and in fact I often can’t remember which social networking sites I’ve signed up for at all (for example, I realized just now that I have two Orkut profiles, neither of which I use, and I can’t even remember how to log onto one of them). I assume this list will grow as I remember old profiles I’ve used, or create new ones into the future.

what amazed me the most about this exercise is how many profiles the average Internet user posesses. I wouldn’t even call myself a “power social networker” and yet I have a whole page full of ways to contact me or figure out what I’ve been up to online. Aggregators, created to make sense of and unify the many profiles people maintain online, turn out to be yet another profile that users then need to keep track of.

another thing I find interesting is how different social networks vary in popularity depending on which part of the globe they’re used in. Facebook is the most popular social networking site here in the United States; Orkut in Brasil; while QQ (I don’t even know what that is!) in huge in China.

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By Brian, January 18, 2010 10:44 am

“let’s go to the Aquarium,” I suggested to the two eldest kids. “Why don’t you guys go pick out some clothes, and we’ll head off!”

and these are the clothes they picked out…

at any rate, we’re off to the Aquarium so Callum and Mia can stun hapless sharks into submission with their stunning array of colorful clothes. Then, this afternoon, a dentist appointment – ’cause that’s how I roll on my vacation days.

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By Brian, January 16, 2010 9:54 pm

yesterday I left work a bit early to head downtown to the Gaillard Auditorium, where the Charleston Symphony Orchestra was rehearsing for this evening’s performance. A friend of mine, and a fellow Sigma Chi, is one of the directors of the symphony and, knowing my interest in violin, invited me to check out a rehearsal. I found myself a seat in the very middle of the auditorium, somewhat in front of the balcony, sat back, and watched the whole thing. For a while I was the only person in the entire audience, watching the full Symphony play their performance, just for me! Well, mostly for David Stahl, the Music Director and Conductor, who was leading them through the rehearsal, but I was there too. At any rate, it was incredible.

one of the pieces played yesterday afternoon was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Charleston Symphony’s Concertmaster, Yuriy Bekker, on lead violin. This guy put on a heck of a performance, with such amazing speed and grace with his violin (a 19th century French instrument by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume) that any sort of sound I could make come from such an instrument would sound like chickens scratching on a tin fence in comparison. Pretty daunting!

at any rate, it was a great experience to be the only guy in the audience to hear such a masterful piece of work, and not something I’ll soon forget.

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By Brian, January 12, 2010 6:38 pm

the kids are well.

(don’t worry, the update is not quite over yet!)

Here is Callum, doing some reading on the couch (probably because he was told to, to be honest! – but hey, reading is reading) in his pajamas in a quilt that Yvonne crocheted. Callum is in second grade, and progressing well. He’s big into math, science and music, which is good. Even more than these things, he’s into LEGO… for Christmas we got him the LEGO Hobby Train, which features 30 different models that you can build from one set, and he’s a big fan of that. The kit comes with one set of instructions for an attractive red and white train, and there are 29 (and possibly more) instructions that can be downloaded online.

Mia is huge into music, horses, Webkinz, horses, superheroes, and horses. She has a massive imagination – one minute she’s Hawk Girl, the next she’s Storm from X-Men, and occasionally she turns into a pegasus unicorn and flies around the house. That’s right… more than just a plain ol’ pegasus or unicorn… we’re talking a horse with a unicorn horn and pegasus wings. She is quite mighty. She’s been doing kindergarten classes; writing, colors, simple math, and the like. She also loves to read. So far, she’s not sure if she would like to grow up to be a doctor, a dentist, or “one of those check-out people at the grocery store”. Lately she’s been leaning toward the latter, but eh, she’s only four, and the grocery store is one of her favorite places – mostly because she gets to eat what she calls “stamples”!

Lachlan has started to speak, albeit a bit behind schedule, which may be because he heard no English during the first six months of his life in Taiwan. Regardless, he’s a good chap, with boundless energy. He can play a never ending game of fetch (although don’t worry, I don’t yell “fetch!” when I throw the ball for him to chase after).

that’s it for now! Callum and I are off to music class.

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By Brian, January 4, 2010 8:57 pm

so if only because I don’t really have anything of interest to say right now, I thought I’d post another short story. This one I wrote back in 2007 for a Machine of Death story competition that I didn’t win, so before the CD-R I have it saved on cracks and I lose it forever, I’m putting it up here! Problems with the story, aside from, you know, problems with the writing itself, include the fact that the plot is too similar to that of the movie Minority Report (which in my defense I’ve never seen, so while writing this story I had no idea) and also the word CRACK!, but I’m not gonna change anything at this point.

so if you care to, you may read it here.