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!

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!!

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.

I find it sort of interesting that when you do a Google image search for Brian Crawford, the first image that comes up related to me in any way, is a comic I drew for work. The second is also a comic I drew for work. The third is a comic I did for Office Offline.

the first image that comes back with an actual image of myself, is this one, image #91 on the list.

I need to get some more pictures of myself, out there.

at a party last night I met a pretty tough looking guy who, in conversation, mentioned that he had just returned from his final tour of duty as an infantryman in Iraq, and was now working for a pesticide company here in town. When I pressed him for details about what it was like over there, he was unable to respond, and tears started forming in his eyes. I stopped him, shook his hand, and thanked him for all he had done for the United States, and for Iraq. It wasn’t the kind of answer I’d been expecting, but it was an answer nonetheless.

I haven’t posted in a while, so here is a brief Q&A, initiated by myself, to answer those questions that haven’t been asked!

where are you living? We’re back in Charleston, SC.

where are you working? At Blackbaud, as a program manager.

how’s the family? They are great! Callum is now 5, Mia is 3, and Lachlan is 1. More information about their antics can be found on Yvonne’s blog.

are you on Facebook? Yes, you can find my profile here.

have you been using Twitter? Yes, here (and on Identi.ca here).

have you been gaming? I am still playing some World of Warcraft, though not much… in fact, my main character has still not yet reached level 80!

then what have you been doing in your spare time, if not cranking those levels? I’ve been writing, and also creating music. And some studying.

what kind of music? The stuff I’m working on ranges from some more serious minimal techno to melodic club music with a purposefully high cheese factor.

can I hear some of your music? Yes, here is an example, though as a caveat I must mention that I still have a lot of work to do on the leveling and EQ. It sounds a bit muddy, and there’s too much sound bouncing back and forth.

so what’s the big news of today My sister is having a baby, right now!

you can learn a lot about a man by what he will or won’t eat after he’s dropped it on the floor.

last night I was telling stories to Callum and Mia before bedtime. Callum wanted to hear stories about trains. Mia wanted to hear stories about princesses.

so I spun a fantastic tale of how Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were having a tea party in their castle, when suddenly they heard a strange noise outside, so they snuck out of the castle through the secret back door and into the garden, with all its beautiful flowers, tall trees and hanging vines, and then out through the wrought iron garden gate, on the other side of which they found a worn set of train tracks, and then suddenly in the distance they could see the Santa Fe Super Chief approaching (!!!), with two A units and two B units, multiple passenger cars, a diner car, two dome cars and even an observation car. Strangely enough, cooped up in the castle all day, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were tiring of their non-stop tea parties and spent most of their time daydreaming about what it would be like to ride on a real train…

statistics dictate that people who have two kids have about a 50% chance of having one boy and one girl. I wonder if there is a market for stories like these.

here are some pictures from our Taiwan trip so far. It’s been a great trip! And Lachlan is a very sweet and happy baby boy. My very limited Chinese has come in handy, and we’ve seen many of the notable sites within Taipei.

Yvonne picking up the baby from his foster home.

Lachlan’s foster home in Taichung, where he spent his first six months.

me and some cool dudes at the Maokong Gondola.

Yvonne and a sleeping baby in the Maokong Gondola.

a view of Taipei from the gondola.

Lachlan in the hotel.

you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose…

you’ve awakened the gazebo, and it catches you and eats you.

so we finally made it to Taiwan!

the how and why of it all can be found here.

time for bed now… though it feels like midday to me…! Long, but good, days to come.