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I noticed this morning that there was a snowflake button on the YouTube video viewer this morning. It appears to be on videos that don’t show advertisements. Click it, and let it snow! Below is an image of one of my Unfriendly Giant cartoons. It’s just an image so that when summer rolls around and YouTube removes the snow button you can see that it was there. Click the image to go to the video and then click the snowflake to see what happens. Merry Christmas!

Jerome the Giraffe and Snow Flakes on YouTube

Let me start off by stating that I’m not one who advocates tossing garbage out the car windows, and I think it’s a good thing to recycle and simply accumulate less stuff. I’m also not one who is aboard the Greenpeace vigilante train, because I think they’ve got some priorities just as out of place as those they’re seeking to bring down (because of mis-placed priorities.) And with that out of the way…

Let’s enjoy a couple fun videos that combine my enjoyment of Volkswagen and Star Wars. In case you missed it, this VW spot was one of the most viewed ads of the year. It features a young Darth Vader unsuccessfully using the force all around his parents house. But he gets it right when he uses it to start his dad’s VW.

Next, Greenpeace parodies the VW ad. My only comment is that I’m happy to own two VW TDIs that get better milage than most other cars out there per litre of petroleum distillate.

And, kids dancing (badly) in StarWars costumes, the Danish version!

Now that we are somewhat used to the new addition to our family, I’ve been trying to spend more time with the Dude. Something that we’ve been doing together as a dad-and-eldest-son-exclusively lately is taking a “snow walk” in the evening. It started out just walking around the block, on neighbourhood streets covered with snow. Then it became walking down the back alleys (don’t worry, I live in a residential neighbourhood, I’m not taking my two-year-old dumpster diving or anything like that… yet.) Sometimes we (he) crawls along the boulevards/snowbanks.

Now that there’s enough snow, we’ve been hitting the sledding hill beyond our backyard. So, our snow walks have turned into sledding outings, and the Dude loves it! I shot some video one evening of him having a riot while hurtling down the hill in his little “baby sled.” That last slide still makes me smile and I’ve watched it dozens of times.

What do you think? Am I in for trouble when he gets older?

Disclosure: If you click on any of the ads on any of my videos, I might get a few pennies.

This year, dad’s apple tree started really producing apples. It’s a Norland Apple tree (mom thinks), probably ten or fifteen years old. They were going to make jelly out of the apples. I asked him to save me some, because a friend of mine has just acquired a press. He thought that was a good idea, so we decided to use all his apples for cider.

He picked them in late September and brought them over to my place one Sunday afternoon to press them. My friend Marlene, who let me borrow the press, had hammered her apples prior to pressing them, with so-so results. So, we tried quartering the apples before loading the press. It was hard work and didn’t work well. So, we brought out the food processor and ran them food the “coleslaw” blade. That mash pressed great!

In the end we got over fourteen litres from about three bushels of apples. We fermented it with some Lavalin 1116 fruit wine yeast, racked it a couple weeks later and bottled it. For half the cider, we primed it to add some carbonation in the bottle, making a sparkling cider. The carbonation worked great to offset the tartness of the cider. It was a lot of fun, a nice way to produce our own local cider and a good time with the family.

I don’t think anyone who actually reads my blog would want me to apologize for yet another Star Wars related post, right?