All One Word

BC Consumer Tip on Frozen Orange Juice

2012-01-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Once you've switched to organic frozen orange juice, you'll never go back. However Capers/Whole Foods keeps charging me 12% HST. On a $4.99 can/week or so this adds up to significant change over the year. I always get a refund, after a 10-minute quibble where the customer service agent says they'll change their computer system.

Next time I'm bringing in my own copy of
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gi/gi-036/gi-036-e.pdf

Specifically, this paragraph:

Frozen fruit juice beverage concentrates are zero-rated if the percentage of natural fruit juice in the concentrate is 25% or more by volume. If the percentage of natural fruit juice in the concentrate is less than 25% by volume, the concentrate is taxable.

If SunPac organic OJ is less than 25% by volume, it's time to start making my own juice from scratch. As well as building a greenhouse to raise my own orange trees.

A Perfect Opportunity to Study Gravity

2011-06-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not ready to leave the Stanley Cup riots behind and go back to my usual non-blogging. But one last word.

Yesterday the local papers published a few heartfelt apologies from some of the rioters. Or in this case, non-rioters who happened to get caught up in the activity and, without bothering to find actual quotes, "lost their heads". Friends and relatives said this isn't who they really are. They're actually quite nice people.

I'm sure they are. I bet none of the people who danced around the burning cars last week would ever consider heading downtown on a premeditated plan to take a hockey stick to a bank window in the middle of the night, let alone during daylight. But the recurring theme was that these nice kids "got caught up in the moment", "lost their heads", and before they knew it, were walking out of a store's broken windows with a souvenir stolen item and a smile [quotes not exact...].

I can tell you who these people weren't. They weren't among the hundreds of people who left downtown in disgust before 9 PM, walking across the nearest bridge before the sidewalks got covered with broken beer bottles. They didn't leave the scenes of the burning cars, the fistfights, and the shouting. No, they hung around, as if they were participating in their own reality show. The expected anonymity of being in a mob full of Canucks jerseys would give them the protection they needed, or at least that's how things used to work before everyone had a camera phone and a Facebook account with insufficient privacy settings. But it seems to have been very easy for too many of these people to cross the line from spectator to participant. And as they work their way through the legal system, I'm sure this question will come up again and again. Some of the commenters on the various news sites are calling for severe penalties. But the way some of these people have been identified, having saddled their names with this action is going to cost them plenty. At least those who really were nice people, and would never have done something like this otherwise.

I look at last Wednesday night as a pop quiz in ethics. You get an A if you left downtown, a C- if you hung around watching, providing cover for the rioters and keeping the numbers slanted against the police and fire fighters being able to do their job, and an F if you broke or stole something, or hit someone.

There's another quote I can recall, but can't find the source, but I recall it was a British physicist who once said that a man in a falling elevator has an ideal opportunity to study gravity. And many of these "nice kids" who fell into the mob now have the perfect chance to study that big question of the social sciences, the one that is still trying to explain how proper German citizens could ignore the roundup of Jews on their way home from the opera; how Hutu neighbors could quarter their Tutsi neighbors in Kigali; how Bosnian Serbs turned against their neighbors of decades. These "nice kids" have given themselves extra insight into this question. They just need to look in the mirror.

Link of the Day: The Rule of 72

2011-06-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of time, but this post took me back in time.

First, I learned about the Rule of 72 from my uncle, back in the
days of double-digit interest rates. It was a quick way of figuring
out when an investment was expected to double. Conversely, you could
use it to figure out how long it would take for the amount you owe
your credit company to double as well, if you couldn't pay it off.
At the time I remembered the Taylor expansion of e (or is it the
Maclaurin expansion), and could derive why this worked.

About ten years later I met Terry Jones at Indiana U, learned how to
bounce five balls (and why bouncing five balls looked so much better
than the much harder accomplishment of keeping seven balls in the air).
Terry soon after left the 80s-era computer science of Hofstadter's
office for the emerging, cooler complexity theory of Santa Fe,
and now runs a startup in NYC.

And today I was pointed to his post yesterday about the rule of 72.
Go read it, and amaze or bore your less financially literate buds.

http://blogs.fluidinfo.com/terry/2011/06/20/back-of-the-envelope-calculations-with-the-rule-of-72/

John Gray: Nothing's Changed

2011-06-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

This morning CBC Radio played an essay local playwright John Gray broadcast after the 1994 riots. Just like last week, he blamed the destruction on suburban adolescents who have grown up in a desolate car-focused environment. The only anachronism in his talk was his frequent references to Dunkin' Donuts, so you can see just how successful Tim's and Starbucks have been at taking over that market.

It's always fun to blame the suburbs, but as the press has been naming people involved, they're invariably suburbanites. And since Thursday there have been an onslaught of for-sale postings on Craigslist for Louis Vuitton and Coach bags, and most of the locations are either Surrey or Burnaby on the Skytrain line.

Shame, Accountability, and the Stanley Cup Riots

2011-06-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

From the Vancouver Sun, June 19, 2011: "Nathan Kotylak and family face
post-riot backlash, forced to leave home"

"...the young man's father, a Maple Ridge surgeon, has had to temporarily close his medical office.

"The mob mentality that took place at the riots is now happening on social media. The family is very disturbed ... they have concerns for their safety"

Another article I saw, which I can't find now, reported that the family has left their home. His father's rating average on a rate-your-doctor site has plunged.

People have been decrying the mob mentality that has formed seeking revenge and retribution. It's understandable -- what happened Wednesday was a crime against the city, and most people don't want to see Vancouver become another Detroit or Newark. But three days later, all the windows at the Bay are still boarded up, and have become a major tourist attraction. No one wants to let the people who were involved in the riot off easily.

And in the age of the internet, as any rioter who wasn't wearing a hoodie or bandana has learned, anonymity has become a scarce commodity. Which gives us a chance to reintroduce two aspects of society that went missing during the 20th century: shame and accountability. Mobs are no longer amourphous masses of people, smashing windows or beating up other people. They're now identifiable by Facebook, and they're being monitored not by Big Brother, but by their big brothers, their sisters, and their parents and friends, and being held to account for their actions.

Kotylak's father had a chance to defuse the vigilante attitude towards him and his family by publicly announcing their shame, rather than heading for this hills like a coward, hoping to ride out the current storm of rage. I doubt the courts will give his son a jail sentence, but this is an ideal time to assign a term of public service equivalent to the estimated damage he did. I haven't seen any figures, but if the riot has cost the city and businesses $10 million, and about 1,000 people have been caught in a non-central involvment, let them each be held accountable for $10,000 worth of public service.

So I would have liked to see an announcment from Dr. Kotylak that Nathan would put in $10,000 worth of community service to make up for his actions in the riot. That's about 1,000 hours, and seeing how he's probably going to lose his water polo scholarship, and that's more time than you can do in a single summer, this would be an ideal activity for the kid to spend next year doing, before heading to university. I'd even be happy if he takes time out between jobs picking up garbage or washing off graffiti, and went into the high schools talking about what he lost through his one stupid action. He won't even have problems finding some slides to illustrate his talk.

Richmond River Road Ride -- Psycho!Geography with RedSara

2010-07-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

So Velopalooza, the big bike love fest, came and went, and I didn't bother going on any rides in the rainy weather. But the tradition of spontaneously organizing rides has hung on, and when I heard about a ride RedSara, a local artist, had proposed, a twilight ride along the north arm of the Fraser River, I was hooked.

Our intrepid leader, RedSara

I'll let the pictures tell most of the story, but I stopped taking shots after sundown, but I'm now on the lookout for a bike-friendly collapsible tripod. Hopefully the pictures can convey how the trip straddled Vancouver's two worlds -- the peacefulness of the river on its last legs to the sea, mixed with a few former and working vestiges of the industry that used to blanket most of this area.

We started at the Marine Drive station on the new Canada Line skytrain, meeting by the sculptures. After allowing for the inevitable latecomers (we are in Vancouver after all), we headed over the pedestrian/bike bridge over the river. I've crossed enough times over the R. D. Laing[*] and Oak Street bridges to know that I'll probably always make the detour for this bridge now. It's that cool.

View from the Canada Line bridge

New views of the city

The route east from the bike bridge is a mixture of riding on the dike and River Road. Most of this route went through Richmond's warehouse district (I know, you're probably wondering what part of Richmond isn't the warehouse district). The district ends at the site of the Night Market, and as we passed under the Knight Street bridge (which boasts an average of two accidents/weekday, one at each end), we got to enjoy a bit of nature, before encountering the plywood factory, an amazing piece of industrial kinetic sculpture backed with symphony of buzzsaws, drive chains, and reversing forklift trucks. Sara pointed out a couple of picnic tables next to the plant, a logical place to stop for a snack while on the route.

The sites after the plant are a blur of more industrial spots, farms (including the Rabbit River egg place), a few houses, and the incongruously located Riverside Ballroom, located somewhere between No. 6 and 7 Roads. We caught the end of the sunset off a pier located somewhere due south of the new residential developments at the southeast tip of Vancouver proper. People were fishing, and they were even keeping their catch for later eating. When the Fraser used to be dotted with industry on both sides, you wouldn't think of fishing it. We contemplated the gains of fresher air and water, and a more peaceful environment, results of that big exchange that's taken place over the last few decades, where we traded industrial jobs and their side-effects with our overseas partners, and got a better environment in return. The harder problem is to figure out how to reduce pollution worldwide.

We biked along the east end of River Road in darkness, joined by the occasional car, and farm workers walking home with bags of groceries they bought at one of the big malls in Queensborough. And there was no missing Queensborough. The last paved part of River Road dumped us onto Westminster Highway, and we went from the world of rabbits, fish and beaver to the land of the car. Queensborough has it all -- the Stardust, the kind of tawdry casino that Las Vegas razed in the 90s; what looks like the biggest Big Box mall in the lower mainland; and the piece de resistance, the ICBC write-off lot, sprawling below us as we biked over the Queensborough bridge to the 22nd St. Skytrain station, and our return to the city.

If You Go

As Dennis pointed out (the guy in the recom trike), there were about 15 of us on the ride, but it's easily accessible to a few hundred thousand other Vancouverites. All you need is a bike and the cash or tickets for two skytrain rides, and you too can enjoy this triangle ride. From downtown, you can take the skytrain to one of the two terminals, either the Marine Drive station on the Canada Line, or the 22nd St. station on the Expo line, find your way to River Road, bike along it, and take the other train back home. In the evening, it makes sense to bike east, so you don't have the sun in your eyes (or in the eyes of the drivers approaching behind you). But I would prefer to start with the car-oriented nightmare of New West/Queensborough, and end on the Canada Line bridge. Except for the two bridges, the ride is completely flat.

There are also a few logistical details to work out at some point, mainly getting to/from River Rd. and Westminster Hwy., and 22nd St. There is a bike path along Westminster, and since Hwy 91 opened, Westminster isn't that busy. There are also signs pointing to New West for bikes; you want to ride on the west side of the Queensborough bridge. The bike path on the bridge actually feels quite safe, compared to other bridges in the city, like the ones to the North Shore. A solid barrier separates the bikes from the cars, and the outer railing is high enough to soothe all but the most acrophobic.

If you're concerned about hitting a forklift truck at the plywood factory, you can detour around via Vulcan Way, but then you'll miss the special bike tunnel that goes under the assembly line. It really needs to be seen, but if you're bringing kids along, I can understand giving it a pass. But then I'd advise waiting until the kids are at least 10 or so, and will appreciate the plant.

Finally, there aren't a lot of cars on River Road, but most of the ones we encountered were driving fast. Be sure you're visible, especially if there's only one of you, as opposed to a group of 15 or so (not that that guarantees safety, these days).

[*] Isn't it about time we rename this bridge after the sometimes local writer, instead of a long-forgotten Trudeau-era hack? Whose legacy is still around anyway?

Recession Bellingham & the 3rd of July

2010-07-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

Tough times are finally showing up in Bellingham. Five years ago the town boasted that it was on a top ten list for expensive residential real estate in the U.S., and now the place is full of for sale signs and boarded up businesses.

This video store has been at the local mini-mall, near Lake Whatcom, since we started coming here ten years ago. But it was no match for the 1-2-3 punch of Netflix, internet downloads, and a moribund economy. The swimming pool's also closed this summer, due to a budget shortfall this year, and a deficit last year of about $27,000.

Things aren't any better in big-box land. I don't even remember when these two places opened, if they did. They're behind the Value Village off Meridian near Bellis Fair mall, a can't miss location two years ago. Now it's an asphalt wasteland.

Hey, Baby, it's the 3rd of July

Every year Sudden Valley puts on a fireworks display. For some reason it was scheduled for Saturday night, the 3rd, this year. Very weird, considering that most people with jobs most likely had Monday the 5th off, and the kids could sleep in.
It turns out that a Sudden Valley family has been sponsoring the fireworks display for the last couple of years, and they couldn't stay for Sunday (maybe they're from Canada). So the association happily set the fireworks off on Saturday. Here are some shots.

A photo I'd like to see

2010-04-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

If anyone here knows anyone good with photoshop, this is what I'd like to see:

A shot of the crowd during one of the Olympic hockey games. This needs
to be recognizable, maybe by the Olympic logos on the ice.

Zoom in on a fan in the stands holding up a hand-painted sign with the
Olympic rings, and in all-caps "LETS CLOSE SOME SCHOOLS!" Can we
make the "fan" Gordon Campbell (premier of BC)?

I know you have it in you, Lazyweb.

A web app I'd like to see

2010-04-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

This is for those of us who've deactivated our fb accounts, but would still like to see friends' updates, particularly from those people who've stopped using email and phones.

This app connects to facebook, reactivates your account, gets your friends' status updates, writes them out to a personal RSS feed, and then deactivates your account again. More like a cron job than an app...

After a quick glance at the API I don't see access to the activate or deactivate functions. Still...

Welcoming Social Restaurants

2010-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

On the way to work this morning, I noticed yet another one, the "Edge Social Bar and Grill". This continues the trend started with "Browns Social House" and "Pinkys steakhouse[*]", in which spaces and apostrophes are dropped like they might be carrying H1N1, but things are more social. While making for more questionable grammar, I hope this finally brings an end to all those anti-social steak houses, where you'd get ignored by the haughty waiters, the sullen chef dropped cigarette ashes in your overcooked T-bone, and the Maitre D' would always go running after departing diners demanding a bigger tip.

[*] So there's no "Social" in the name, but calling it "Pinkys" should let you know that this isn't going to be a place where the waiter will make fun of your wine choice.

Mirabel 101

2009-11-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

If you were reading Canadian newspapers in the 70s, you know this already.

A current thread at Metafilter is covering this white-elephant of public works projects, while agreeing that the 1970s probably marks a golden decade of graphic communications. The airport cost a ridiculous amount of money, and was an utter failure, as the thread shows.

However, no one on the thread pointed out that if you take the map of the expropriated area and rotate it to the left by about 50°, its an unmistakable image of a robber. Not only was Quebec unparalleled in corruption those days, they even made it look good.

Introducing: Yodie

2009-11-29T09:52:00.001-08:00

A land where there's no iTunes and the Beatles are still together

2009-11-12T11:48:00.000-08:00

http://thebeatlesneverbrokeup.com/

Read the full story at http://thebeatlesneverbrokeup.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=53

How do we know it's true? From the FAQ, you can use this gem as an example of circular reasoning.

1. Hi, I'm Nathaniel and I just read your article. How can you prove that this tape isn't just a really nice cover band of The Beatles? - Nathaniel

A: You bring up a good point Nathaniel, though during my discussion with Jonas about music and the music industry, I learned that in his world there were no such thing as cover bands, something about an ultra strict copyright and musicians were only allowed to play music they wrote themself.

RP: "These are the terrines of our lives"

2009-11-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

See http://montcarte.umbrela.com/2009/10/21/these-are-the-terrines-of-our-lives/ for all the inspiration you'll need for your next Sunday brunch.

I needed something to keep the blog alive. BTW I found that link at
http://montcarte.umbrela.com/2009/10/21/these-are-the-terrines-of-our-lives/

Yep, it's nice to be able to use full links and more than 140 chars. Now back to your
usual social networking thing...

Passwords: to show them or hide them?

2009-06-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

In reference to http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/the_problem_wit_2.html:

People have gotten worked up this week on whether programs should show passwords as they're being typed or not. The following is idle speculation, as to what's going on now...

Typing passwords is so 1970s. Researchers at Microsoft are toiling away as we speak, rescuing the shards of the failed SongSmith project. Given that most machines of the last decade are capable of decent voice recognition, we know they still aren't perfect. But the SongSmith group noticed that when people sing to the computer, they leave an easily identifiable, unique fingerprint, even allowing for variances, including colds. The main purpose of the SongSmith video was to get us used to the idea that it's no more unusual to sing a few bars in a public place as it is to type or talk on a cell phone.

So all together now: 0-2-1-3-4

Typical Canuck fan

2009-05-01T17:20:00.001-07:00

Why no posts lately

2009-04-19T10:43:00.001-07:00

If you haven't noticed, most of my posts here have been on the short side, unlike the lengthy word bombs I drop even less frequently on my work blog. It turns out that twitter is great for this kind of thing, twitpic even more so when there's an image attached. So if you've been missing those things, you'll find plenty of them at twitter/@ericpromislow

Hey Tibor, it's throwing season again.

Copyright: Adding them up

2009-02-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

I saw two interesting talks this week, with a very interesting overlap.

Last night my brother and I went to see Richard Stallman speak at
a union hall deep in the bowels of the old semi-industrial part
of Vancouver, a neighborhood that's doing all it can to resist
the inevitable onslaught of gentrification, modulo a weak economy.
Stallman covered the origins of American copyright law, its
intention to further progress, and how it became subverted in
the late 20th century due to certain works of art being owned
by corporate interests that had outlived the humans who were
actually behind the creations. Thanks to Disney, we're now
in the age of the never-expiring copyright. The gist of the
talk was that this attitude has created a situation where copyright
law is now used to restrict consumers' rights, whereas its
intention was to restrict publishers'.

A couple of days earlier I caught Mike Daisey's monologue
"Monopoly!" as part of the Push festival. I've been a fan
since I read his 21 Dog Years account of his stint at Amazon.com,
but this was his first show in my area code. I won't go into
the details -- you need to see him perform -- but at one point
he talked about how the charter a corporation would form
itself with in the industrial age included plans for its
dissolution, after it had accomplished its mission. The notion
of the eternal, ever-morphing corporate entity is a new one.
Daisey suggests that this requires such organizations to
always expand. It could even lead, he says aghast, to
multi-nationals that are above the law of the countries
they operate in.

And of course, as I saw this week, to the eternal copyright.

So what would happen if Mickey Mouse did fall into the public
domain? Would watered-down versions of Disneyland spring up
in former rust-bucket towns like Youngstown, Ohio? Would
kids be willing to put up with an inauthentic version for
their family vacation? All those parents, who bought Disney
videos in the 90s, and then the same DVDs ten years later,
wouldn't they mind getting them for a fraction of the cost?
Yeah, of course the shareholders, many in it for the long
haul, wouldn't approve.

It's going to be another interesting decade as the conflict
between the stakeholders of ossified copyright, and the net,
and its ease of dissemination, further escalates.

What's wrong with Satellite Radio

2009-01-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Last fall we installed a new deck in the car with a USB hub
(I want to call it a "tape deck", but the installer guy
said "what's a tape?"). Not only do the CD and USB readers
both do MP3, but they also let me easily skip over folders.
And with the $15 8GB stick I bought at a Boxing Day sale
(that price will look laughingly high next year, won't it),
I can put the equivalent of two DVDs worth of songs on it.

How long is that? As an experiment I put the Rolling Stone's
500 top songs on it, and it took up about 2GB. At an average
of 3.5 minutes/song, that's close to 30 hours. So let's say
that stick can hold 120 hours of audio -- and unlike a CD,
when I get bored of something, I can delete it. Which I did
with the RS tunes -- turn on a classic rock station, and
chances are you'll hear one of those songs. I think I can
get plenty of satisfaction without hearing that tune again,
as earthshaking as it was in... 1964.

The net provides a wide source of interesting, freely available
audio. Chances are pretty good I'm not even going to have a
chance to listen to everything I put on that stick, especially
considering I do most of my traveling on my bike. But when
I first heard satellite radio in a rented car in San Diego
in 2004, I thought it was pretty cool. Now the concept strikes
me as obsolete.

Net-enabled car radio.... that's something else.

Photo to go with previous post

2008-12-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

Knew I forgot something.

Russian dating spam word soup

2008-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Hi my new friend!

I only wished to write to you the letter and to tell as in general my
letter got to you! First I would like to speak a little about myself
my name is Marina to me 29 years I live in Russian Federation to
Novochebocksarsk. All the others my data and a photo in the appendix
to the letter data which is called (my_data_full). I was in agency of
acquaintance and to me advised yours e-mail the address I do not know
whence they him took but they gave me yours e-mail that I could have
acquaintance to you. And I only wanted that you have spent about 10
minutes both looked my a photo and my data and received from you the
answer you would like to have acquaintance to me or you only would not
like this? Tell to me I so only the nobility it much would like. Also
I shall wait much your answer. I started to search the man as to me
very alone and 29 years and I do not have man if you wish to begin
with me correspondence or easier to begin acquaintance tell to me your
answer. I shall wait much! I hope your new friend well I hope that I
can become for you friend Marina!

Can you send me you photo and story life on my personal e-mail: NovochebocksarskFox@gmail.com

Shake up those words, pour them out, and send them out as your own
brand new Russian dating scam letter!

Looking for a book on the current economic situation

2008-11-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the things I think should be in it:

A top-to-bottom look at the subprime mortgage mess, not too
different from the study This American Life ran last spring,
but since it's a book, it can go into more depth. For
example, I'd like to understand what happened every step of
the way, from the strawberry pickers thinking they could
buy McMansions in the California central valley (if such
a thing happened), to the people at the top.

I picture a pyramid when I think about this. Maybe there
was no one person at the helm at the top, but there had to
have been some people who understood the house of cards
they were building. But I'm more interested in hearing
from the people at the bottom. You know the Irvine
Housing Blog (IHB)? Every day Irvine Renter focuses on a
property in Orange County CA, but only speculates on
what kind of lives were lived there. This book should
dig in, protect their anonymity as much as possible,
but give us an idea of how the middle class tried to
borrow its way into gilded prosperity. So while IHB
discusses specific properties but omits the people,
I'd rather read about the lives lived, and be vague
about the actual house.

A recent issue of Harper's had a long feature buy a
writer who occasionally helps his father clean out
foreclosed houses in central Florida. Definitely
worth reading, and that kind of person needs to have
a spot in this book as well.

So many other positions in this chain ... the real
estate salespeople, mortgage brokers, and the other
people who worked in the chain between lending the
victim the money, and handing the mortgage off to
be collateralized. Were there also other scams
going on from the general subprime credit world,
like selling the victims bogus credit insurance?

I want to see a chapter on Eliot Spitzer here as
well. He was writing about how the subprime
mortgage situation was threatening the economy
in early 2008. Next thing you know he's the
victim of a sting involving a hooker, and he's
out of the picture.

Next, the Bush white house. People have gone
over it again and again, but not in the context
of how the media and the American voters gave
Bush and his cronies free reign over the country's,
and by extension, the world's economy. Why did
the press get so worked up about Clinton's blow job,
and basically write Bush an 8-year-long free pass,
including two disputed elections? Actually Al Franken
covers that somewhat lightly in his Liars and Truth
books -- how the media are businesses after all,
and as long as they were acting on behalf of their
shareholders it made more sense to support the
Republicans than the Dems.

Ahh, the Republicans. The book needs to explain
how they were essentially sabotaged by none other
than Nixon. My theory is that Watergate was a
fallout from events like Kent State and how the
Vietnam quagmire was failing to dry out. Nixon
felt he had to steal the '72 election, and ended
up discrediting the Republican brand as it had
been defined in the Eisenhower era. This left the
way open for Reagan to seize control of the party.
And while the mid-80s saw the start of 20 years
of choppy but increasing prosperity in terms of
asset values -- housing prices and the stock market --
it also saw the start of America's deindustrialization.
Reagan's faceoff against the air traffic controllers'
union was a key event, like it seemed to have scared
off the other unions. When the lunch bucket crowd
voted for Reagan, they ended up trading their
middle-class jobs and wages for... increasing access
to credit.

You see where this is going.... Take a side-trip
through the work of Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard
law professor who has taken a close look at how
too many middle-class people ended up mortgaging
their future in pursuit of nothing more than
a middle-class lifestyle. This book should show
exactly how average wages and living costs have
trended since the 1950s, but for different
strata of America. I would suspect while the
costs for those at the top have skyrocketed
compared to people expecting to buy less,
their income has more than kept pace. So
while the price of an ivy league education
has hit the stratosphere, so have the incomes
for those people at the top, while their
taxes have conveniently dropped. At the
bottom the two curves are inverted.

Speaking of education, can we agree that if
America is going to come out of this slump and
maintain its position as a world leader, it needs
to fix its educational system and stop rewarding
ignorance? Word is that the Repubs are now the
party of the lower-educated masses, but the problem
with a constituency like that is when you're in power
you're not motivated to improve the education
system. No wonder they're fans of privatizing
the schools.

There are a few other books out there that dovetail
with this material. When I look at works like
Bakan's Corporation, Klein's Shock Doctrine, and
Wolf's End of America, we're at an obvious
denouement.

So that's what I thought about during a bike ride
home in the dark November drizzle. There's no
doubt more here. I'm not looking forward to wading
through yet another take on 9/11, Iraq, and
constitution thrashing, but I suspect it's a
necessary part of the picture.

So anyone know where I can find this book?

This book should fit into that fine
basket.

An analysis of what would happen if Citibank were to fail.

The American Conservative Reality Distortion Field At Work

2008-11-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

From http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022038.php:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

Of course. Google says "Results 1 - 10 of about 312,000 for bushisms. (0.07 seconds)".
I'd have a look, but I'd get sucked in by the sheer bounty, and lose the rest of
the day.

Where do these guys come from?

The Lloyd Bentzen quote no one remembers

2008-11-08T23:01:00.000-08:00

As Dan Quayle was yammering on about America's prosperity
under Reagan, Bentzen replied "If you let me write
$200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give
you an illusion of prosperity too."

20 years later, it takes about 5 times that much to
keep the ruse up.

Advice for American Conservatives

2008-11-04T21:40:00.000-08:00

So I'm out there with everyone else throwing my shovelful of dirt over the coffin containing the last days of the Reagan age. But I'm a small-l liberal, and believe that a strong society needs to have a strong sense of plurality. The right-wing radicals tried to destroy that over the last eight years, and we're already finding out from writers like Naomi Wolf how they stickhandled America on a path to fascism. Today a majority of Americans not only stuck their heads out their windows and yelled that they weren't going to take it anymore. They did something about it. And the Republican party lies in shreds.

I blame it on Nixon. If not for the excesses he brought into the political world, the Repubs would never have had to turn to the unholy alliance of the Milton Friedmanites and the Christian radicals (aka "the base"). They could have shuffled through their Gerald Fords and Howard Bakers until they found their next T.R. or Eisenhower, but got seriously derailed.

It's time to split your grand old party into two. The moderates have to seize back the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and spin off the fundamentalists and bigots into their own backwoods organization. Of course that scenario has no place for a McCain/Palin ticket, since McCain would be in the established party, and Palin would be banished to the Reform or Conservative party, or whatever they would call it. An even bigger advantage is that there's no place for a G W Bush in this scenario. Your country can't take another one of those.

So yes, I'm realizing due to the winner-take-all nature of American elections that I'm asking the GOP to banish itself into the political wilderness for 8 years or so. Fine. Let the Christian right marginalize itself to the periphery where it belongs, while the old party can rediscover the position where at times its policies would be barely distinguishable from the Democrats. The Canadian conservative party went through something similar, going from 2 seats in 1993, splitting into two separate parties, and finely eking out two consecutive minority governments ten years later.

America took a big step into the 21st century today. It would be good if America's second party could as well.

The 21st Century Finally Starts

2008-11-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

Nothing more to say here. Wow.

America today

2008-10-31T11:57:00.000-07:00

From http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/10/31/oliverStonesNixon.html:

At the end of Oliver Stone's biopic, just before Nixon resigns in disgrace, he delivers a powerful line. In front of the White House portrait of John Kennedy, he says: "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are."

We're at that summing up moment of the 2008 Presidential election, before we know the outcome, but probably most of it has already happened, and that seems to be the choice we have made in the last two elections, and the choice facing us in the next one. Vote for who we are or who we want to be?

...

Going back to the Nixon soliloquy -- when the people in rural America see Obama, they see who scares them, they see the future that one way or another, is coming. In that way Obama is like Nixon; when they look at him they see who they really are. When they look at McCain they see who they want to be. In urban America, it's exactly the opposite. We look at Obama and see who we want to be and look at McCain and worry that's who we really are. Permalink to this paragraph

And one of the best posts I've read comes from fellow British Columbian Kurt Cagle, jumping into the discussion at Tim O'Reilly's post http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/why-i-support-barack-obama.html:

One of the most significant problems that the US faces right now is the high degree of polarization that eight+ years of oligarchic rule have induced on the electorate.

The progressive side for the most part is made up of people who believe that constructive dialog and discussion are a necessary condition for any form of governance.

The conservative side, on the other hand, has been made up of dogmatists who feel that autocratic rule, absolutes of morality and social policy, and the dictates of the individual are key virtues.

This latter viewpoint, embodied in eight years of an autocratic president and twelve years of autocrat rule in Congress (1994-2006) have led us to a state where we are in two costly wars, where trillions of dollars have effectively "evaporated" from the market, where pollution (the politically incorrect term for global warming) is causing the polar ice caps to melt even in winter and causing drought and massive hurricanes to form, and and where the physical and social infrastructure that the US built is now collapsing around us.

Yet what I see of the McCain campaign is an ill, frail old man who has had four cancerous lesions removed and a governor of a state with a population not much larger than my home here on Vancouver Island, who has an appallingly minimal amount of education and who has shown herself to be an ideologue of the most extreme stripe. They have offered few policy changes to the existing (and largely heinous) existing political climate, and they have shown, singly and together, a very disturbing tendency to use the presidential bully pulpit not to build consensus but to incite hate and violence.

Even if I did not admire Obama (and I do, highly, as an extraordinarily intelligent, thoughtful and capable man) I would vote for him. With McCain, I see only a descent into madness, a continuation of a dangerous set of policies that will lead this country to bankruptcy and ruin.

Kurt (if you get this), please give it more visibility. It doesn't deserve to be buried here.

And everyone, go get Naomi Wolf's End of America. Fascinating, chilling stuff.
Hopefully the next president of the US will have read it.

/me back to work

Two coat quotes.

2008-10-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

Well, that's about it. That's what we have. And that's what we owe. It isn't very much. But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she'd look good in anything.

Richard Nixon, September 23, 1952 (from the "Checkers" speech).

It is so nice to be back here in the Sunshine State and quite warm which I love and grabbed a jacket this morning to put on not realizing how warm it would be. My own jacket.... from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska.

Sarah Palin, October 26, 2008

All she needs now is the dog.

What bond raters talk about when they talk online

2008-10-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

Homeland Security Revisited

2008-10-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ever notice how a yuppie at a computer in a Wall Street office building can wreak far more economic damage than a hijacker on a plane bound for that same building?

On a positive note, Paul Kedrosky reports on British PM Gordon Brown's call to action at http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2008/10/15/gordon_brown_ta.html. This is what happens when you don't have a caretaker put in charge of a nation.

Hey Blogger.com, what happened to the Preview button?

2008-10-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

I make mistakes once in a while, ya know.

The economists just got richer

2008-10-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

Back in the 70s and 80s a new edition of the first-year
Economics textbooks came out almost each fall, ruining
the used book market, while still failing to clearly
explain the puzzling prevailing conditions at the
time (unemployment and inflation at the same time?
imagine!).

Time for a new edition again. If you're taking the
course right now, I'd advise selling an option to
purchase your book to a gullible high school senior
right now. Maybe even get your class together
and collateralize a group of those rights in a
CDO. You'll learn as much from the experience
as you would from whatever's in that 23rd
edition of Lipsey Sparks.

Meanwhile the rest of us are all monetarists again.
And I mean that in a good way.

The World Banking Crisis Explained in One Sentence

2008-10-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

[Disclaimer: except for a couple of first-year economics and commerce courses
I took many years ago, I have no background in this.]

Have a look at this chart:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=.TEDSP%3AIND

It means that the world's main banks got badly burned in
the subprime pyramid scheme, or have associates who did,
and no longer trust one another.

Video challenge: count the convicted felons

2008-10-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Plenty of unconvicted but presumably guilty there as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qZfN7cdm_M

Palin and the Kim Campbell Effect

2008-10-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

It's been said that America is fundamentally a conservative country, which is why the Republicans have been able to hold the presidency with only three interruptions since 1952. Every once in a while they screw up, and the Democrats get a shot at it. That's when the GOP runs a sacrificial lamb, a Kim Campbell to keep their place on the ballot until they can figure out how to claw their way back to power. And I don't intend to slight Ms. Campbell(*). She's easily one of the better people who've been prime minister since Trudeau, but was in the unfortunate position of holding the broom after Mulroney had made a mess of the country.

Maybe the GOP felt guilty about how Bush stole the nomination from McCain in 2000, and gave him the nomination as a sop. Fine. It would have been a boring election, but McCain's team added to the entertainment level with their pick for VP. I don't need to list any specifics. For the real thing, go to youtube and watch her interview with Katie Couric, her non-answers and scrambled syntax at the debate, or go for the Tina Fey renditions for the best-of.

This election should be a walkover, except I'm concerned that voters in Ohio will get the third-world treatment again like they did in 2000 and 2004. And I haven't heard that the issues behind the Dibold machines have been resolved. Maybe this is a good time for the Democrats, but I'm not confident it's a good time for the democracy.

Disclaimer: we used to be distant relatives

File under: More Barrel Fish Shooting

2008-10-01T12:04:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkWebP2Q0Y

Why does the first woman who stands a serious
chance to be vice-prez have to be this person?

How do we get the U.S. to reinstitute passing
a literacy test as a requirement for voting?

Go see Dream Science Circus this week!

2008-09-24T12:49:00.001-07:00

If you're in Vancouver, that is. They're at the Waterfront Theater
through Sunday Sept. 28, 2008. Seeing how they're from Bellingham,
the home of kinetic and static human sculptures, there'll be
plenty of acrobatics. Any more and I'd be spoiling the surprise.
http://www.dreamsciencecircus.com/, of course.

There's a $2 discount for the weekday shows if you give the password
when you order them. Email me for the secret vord.

Finite Jest

2008-09-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

I just found out David Foster Wallace offed himself last
Friday. I'm one of those people who actually enjoyed
Infinite Jest. I had to devour it when it came out, as
I had it on a one-week loan from the new books section
of the library. That ran to about 140 dense pages a day,
but I finished with two days to spare.

Wallace's genius was more readily available in a few
stretched out pieces he wrote for magazines like
Harper's -- a famous one called "Getting Away from
Getting Away from it All" on the Illinois State
Fair, an expose of 7-day Caribbean cruise ship
vacations ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never
Do Again"), and most recently, a hypertext-on-print
analysis of right-wing talk stations.

And now it's over, without so much as a footnote.
Crap.

Canadian Cash Cab Debuts Tonight

2008-09-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

From Adam Growe:


Hi There,
 
I'm even going to watch it. and I was there!
 
The Discovery Channel (and every Wednesday)
8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
 
Discovery HD (Fridays)
8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT
 
You'll like it too.  Thanks for watching.
Adam.

Don't miss it - support Canadian culture (or at least Canadian imports of American versions of British creations).

Because +it +is contains +a

2008-08-15T16:14:00.001-07:00

Some people are better than me at presenting Google results. I don't have time to compete, so here are the raw results:

From http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Templates/Talk:

Unfortunately, your current username is in violation of the username policy because it is: contains a bad word See our username policy for more information.

From http://www.northland-camping.co.nz/activities.htm:

Houhora Harbour is unique because it is contains a fast flowing deep water.

From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/3/92459/6822:

Please be sure to have a clean pair of cleanex on hand, when reading because it is contains a slew of comedic responses. A Dkos classic.

And finally, from DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE CRAB CLAW PROCESSING SYSTEMS
TO MINIMIZE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:

The waste stream from this is of particular concern because it is contains a high five day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), ranging from 7,000 to 15,000 mg/L, and a chloride ion concentration of 135,000 to 150,000 mg/L (Harrison, 1993).

This all started with this Python error message:

SyntaxError: import * is not allowed in function 'yevtushenko' because it is contains a nested function with free variables

What other "because it is contains a"'s are out there hiding from Google's prying eyes? Share yours on the comments page.

Best use of the word "recently"

2008-07-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

"We have recently changed our menus so please listen carefully".

Dealing with cat pee is no miracle

2008-07-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

So we had a couple of families over for dinner on Friday, and then sure enough Sophie peed on our bed sometime after everyone left. This time the pee soaked through the mattress lining, so we sprayed it with this solution called "Nature's Miracle". Next morning it still stunk. I gave it another drenching, waited an hour, and it was still bad. So I hit the net and got some advice.

Cat pee is mostly ammonia, so a 50/50 solution of white vinegar took care of that, and then I applied a paste of baking soda and water to neutralize the vinegar. As soon as I vacuum up the residue we'll have a clean bed again for the neurotic cat (and us) to sleep in.

But I had a look at that "Nature's Miracle" label. For eight bucks, you get water, "Nature's Enzymes", isopropyl alcohol, and "citrus scent". Something smells here, and it's not lemon fresh. From what I recall from my bio-science courses, all enzymes are nature's, and isopropanol probably does a good job of denaturing them. But it is a good disinfectant.

So here's my plan. I'm going to pick up some isopropanol for a fraction of the price at the drug store, and mix it with 2 parts water in the spray bottle. Next time Sophie pees on the bed, I'll try the cheap miracle to disinfectant the area, followed by the vinegar and baking soda, and report back here.

Tabhunter picked up by mac.softpedia.com

2008-07-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't even submitted it for Mozilla review, but Tabhunter was picked up and made available for download by the mac.softpedia.com site (http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Tabhunter.shtml)

Meanwhile the downloads off the google-code page are nearing 100, not counting my own test runs.

And I'm actually using this thing, constantly. Apparently a few other people are too. It would be great to hear from them.

Tabhunter - A Firefox Extension for the Tab Hoarders Among Us

2008-07-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

First, let me get the obligatory apology for being too busy to blog. And like George Carlin's memorable moment, it's gone[1]. Let's move on. We've got a lot of work to do. For one thing, work, or at least my work, has become increasingly more web-based. And since I never was one to write URLs on post-it notes, and I find the bookmarks manager tedious to clean up, I developed a habit of using my pile of tabs as an ever-present todo list. It was convenient, but with 50 or 60 tabs spread over 3 or 4 windows it was getting harder to quickly find things. Especially partially filled in bugzilla reports.

So rather than streamline my work habits (and clean off my desk while I'm at it), I took the developer's usual way out, and wrote a Mozilla extension. It offers two main ways to navigate to any tab in any window -- either use the Tools|Tabhunter popup menu, or try out the Tabhunter Panel, where you can type a substring (actually a JavaScript regex), and it will show all tabs with matching URLs or title fields. So now I can easily switch between bug reports I'm working on, plow (ActiveState's source code search engine), mxr (Mozilla's), "^att" to see the attachments I'm currently working on, and any other pages I'm working on. Finally I don't have to close any tab before its time has come.

Just like building freeways temporarily reduces congestion, only to see an increase in total vehicle usage, I now typically have 100-120 tabs loaded these days, as opposed to the 50 or so I was struggling with a short month ago. And it's a snap to find the tab I need. Yes, you probably want to have a decent amount of RAM to really take advantage of this one. My FF3 sessions tend to run at 300-350 Megs, which these days couldn't cost much more than a pack of post-it notes.

I submitted Tabhunter a week ago to addons.mozilla.org, but it doesn't seem to have gone live yet. But you can get a sneak-preview at http://code.google.com/p/tabhunter/downloads/list (at version 0.6.0 right now). Unfortunately code.google.com doesn't serve XPI files as Mozilla extensions, so you'll need to save it and open it in Firefox manually, and do the usual extension song-and-dance. Tested with Firefoxes 2 and 3 on the big three platforms, and just for fun, Flock 1.2.1 on Vista. Mozilla rocks.

If any of you are wondering why my side projects always seem to pay homage to pop-culture folks, well, hi David. Once I had the concept down, the name quickly followed, and I couldn't resist passing up the chance to write something with that name. That it turned out to be useful, at least for me, is icing on the cake. For the rest of you wondering what I'm talking about, Tab Hunter (or as I prefer to pronounce it to avoid any confusion, "Tab Space Hunter") is an actor whose career made a meteoric double-start in the late 50s with both #1 songs and Hollywood starring roles (mostly in movies that, shall we say, have not held up over the years). With the arrival of the British invasion and the demise of the American B movie, Tab's career shifted to television, first with his own show, then mostly in supporting roles. People in my generation probably first saw him in the revival of his film career in John Water's Polyester -- we were old enough to know he used to be famous, but too young to know what for. You all know how to google and wikipedal for more info.

I'm reminded of a more recent film: There Will Be Bugs. Please report them to http://code.google.com/p/tabhunter/issues/list. In particular, I'd love a better icon, especially one that combines elements of hunting crossbar scopes and that early-1960s look with champagne glasses and pastel colors.

[1] Apparently NBC reran the very first SNL episode after Carlin's passing. I still remember one of his routines, where he tried out a you-had-to-be-there-and-stoned piece on the momentariness of moments. But in that same routine there was that classic line about how everyone on the road is either an idiot or a maniac--and isn't it amazing with all the idiots and maniacs out there, things work pretty well?

Clay Shirky is back and talking managing surpluses

2008-05-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Did I miss April? Not really, but I hit three different conferences --
RubyFools in Copenhagen and Oslo, Open Web in Vancouver, and
Linuxfest in Bellingham. All three conferences I'd recommend in the
future, although I think Norway could stand a good five-cent cigar.

Anyway the blogosphere has posted this link, I might as well too:

Read it at http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Watch it at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010218.html

-----

According to blogger the next one's #100. Any suggestions for a topic?
I'm leaning to an imaginary tale myself.

Those banjo players again

2008-03-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080327.worchestra0327/BNStory/Entertainment/home?cid=al_gam_mostview:

This is not a good day. One of my favorite CBC programs is Two New Hours,
where I can end my weekends listening to new compositions, sometimes
performed by this orchestra. CBC claims this will free up $1 million of
their budget to record other music. If their budget is that tight,
how far can it be before CBC starts syndicating NPR material?

I have a high regard for Nancy DiNova, and this quote sums it up:

> It's almost like open warfare on classical music in this country. I
> just don't understand what people are thinking who are in charge of
> the CBC here," said Nancy DiNova, a violinist who used to play with
> the orchestra and whose husband and son are both members now. "The CBC
> is now going to spend more money on banjo players."

Next time I hear Bela Fleck or Tony Furtado Sunday night, I'll know why.

Bon appetit!

2008-03-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

Looks good. Anyone know if this place is still open? Google says:

Your search - kamouraska "hotel maurice richard" - did not match any documents.

Dress Code

2008-03-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

Now revised so you can read it top-to-bottom. And the names changed to
protect the usual. I figured if you're used to reading blogs, then
you've grown accustomed to the bottom-to-top form. But I haven't.
_____________________________________________

Hi Joseph K,

It has been brought to my attention that you are sporting a mohawk and it doesn’t meet the employee handbook policy requirements regarding a professional appearance. The policy allows for casual dress, but we still must maintain a professional appearance.

I understand you will be visiting a client site in early April. The Utepils Senior Management Team feels that the Mohawk is inappropriate and will not properly represent professionalism during your visit. As per the policy, you must appear professional.

We cannot send you to a client site if you appear unprofessional. Utepils is booking your travel tomorrow, therefore, I require you to confirm you understand the policy by end of business today.

9.2.1 Casual Dress

Employees must be dressed and appear professional. Employees are able to wear casual clothing, but employees must also appear neat and well-groomed. If you are not sure, you can ask the HR manager for guidance.

Thanks,

HR Manager

_____________________________________________

Hello HR Manager,

I will try my best to modify my hairstyle to conform to the company dress code standards. Unfortunately I cannot guarantee that it will be long enough to be fixable before the time I am scheduled to be on site.

I do have a question regarding the dress code policy. Since the decisions of what is considered professional and what is not are solely dependent on the judgments of each individual, do we have a standard definition of what a professional appearance is?

Thanks,
Joseph K

_____________________________________________

Hi Joseph K,

I appreciate your willingness to adhere to the policy in the future.

We didn’t make the policy strict to the point we had to say how your hair style should be or how long your shorts need to be, etc since we are creating a policy for people that are intelligent and reasonable and it gives some room for flexibility within the policy. If we need to go to the point of describing every detail of your dress and how you should appear, then it doesn’t seem fair to other people who have a reasonable understanding of what “Professional Appearance” means. We don’t want to treat the employees like they are not intelligent and that we need to tell them exactly what to wear. I also stated in the policy that if you are unsure of something to come and ask me about it.

Let me ask you, do you think that a Mohawk is considered, by a reasonable person, to be professional?

I will follow up with (my manager) regarding who will be going to the client site.

Thanks,

HR Manager

_____________________________________________

Hi HR Manager,

I do not appreciate the manner in which the company policies have been explained. My first impression after reading the description given is that anyone with alternative views of what professional attire is is either unintelligent or unreasonable. I believe that I asked a straightforward and non-confrontational question when I requested more details of the company policies. The response that I was given was far from non-confrontational.

I am fully willing to modify my attire to comply with the company policies but I am not willing to have my character and personal judgment demeaned.

Thank you,
"Joseph K"

_____________________________________________

Names and prices changed to protect the innocent

iPhones Considered Dangerous to Your Social Life

2008-03-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

From the "I knew that" category in the this LA Times article:

"It's turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up," said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. "It's not a social advantage."

...

.... Backstage recently in a Little Rock, Ark., theater, actress Natalie Canerday said the cast of a play was enjoying debating the year Bruce Springsteen's album "Born to Run" was released. Then the director took out his iPhone. All conversation stopped as he sought the answer: 1975, according to Wikipedia.

"Everyone said, 'Oh,' " Canerday recalled. It was another awkward iPhone moment.

Man, I remember seeing the ads for that album in National Lampoon and Rolling Stone that summer. Shows I can be annoying without paying the $400.

In Memory of Arthur C. Clarke

2008-03-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

Actually, the only memories I have of ACC are pretending to understand both the book and the movie in grade 5, and hearing about the inventing of geosynchronous orbit over and over again (pun intended). So this is more a memory recounted by a friend in Ottawa. Many years ago David dodged a winter in Sri Lanka, and recounted his many encounters with Arthur C. Clarke in his Scribbles magazine (ISSN something or other...). Read about it at
http://ca.geocities.com/scribbles.magazine@rogers.com/files/ClarkeQuest.htm

The Algebra of Commitment

2008-03-16T21:48:00.001-07:00

Trust Me

2008-03-14T21:56:00.001-07:00

Send your kids here with their questions

2008-03-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

http://ask-us-now.blogspot.com/

The kids do all the writing. I showed them how to choose templates, change colors, and it helps to have a dad who knows how to write a bit of CSS (realizing there's no evidence of that here). Kids only please.

Here's the ad for the web site. Feel free to pass it around.

Steve Gerber RIP

2008-03-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

After posting these this morning, I just found out Steve Gerber died
last month at the age of 60, cause not stated, but possibly related
to having been ripped off through much of this career.

Cultural speedup

2008-03-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

When was that Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duet thing released, last December?
Like three months ago? I forget what show the kids were watching last weekend,
but an ad came on using one of the tunes as background. Three months: that must
be a record for the gap between when a song is released and when it's used to move
products. The X-Ray Specs needed 25 years, while an out-of-left-field country
compilation needs less than 100 days.

Now I gather Bob doesn't need the money, and Alison probably has a nice
spread in Fort Wayne or somewhere else in middle America where the living
is easy and not so expensive. No, this is how the record companies are
making their money now. Let the album out, figure out its audience, and then
use advertising to bring in the revenue. I knew the labels would figure it out.

Spy vs. The White Stuff Guy

2008-03-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

So the meme of the week (or maybe last week, or last month, but I just heard about it) is the Stuff White People Like blog. While it's mildly amusing, the part that gets me is how each entry is attracting hundreds of comments. If he called it "Stuff Yuppies Like" he wouldn't get nearly as much response, particularly from people who identify themselves racially.

Meanwhile my wife found an anthology of Spy magazine at the library. I had forgotten all about that magazine, but now see it as a vital cultural link between National Lampoon (when it was funny) and whatever biting satirical publication is making the rounds now. What's that, there isn't one? Exactly. We live in sad times. Yesterday I opened the book to an article on "Yuppie Porn", featuring items with matte black, digital readouts (remember this was the late 80s), and other stuff that people bought to make a statement about how they stood out. Things haven't changed that way, at least.

Show of the year: Grace Potter at the Media Club

2008-02-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't understand Vancouver. Here's this talented band from the northeast,
currently playing venues like the Fillmore in San Francisco, and they come to Vancouver
and play the tiny Media Club to about 70 people, maybe 80. The listings said the doors opened
at 6:30, so I showed up at 7:30 just as the main act came on. And my friends Matt and
Lena didn't arrive until 8, coming in mid-way through the show-stopping "Stop This Bus".

After 90 minutes they came back for one encore, a 15-minute Down by the River that let them
show their jamming abilities one more time, and then it was time to break down the stage,
chat a bit at the merch table (I didn't have a chance to ask her about Java House, my
favorite living-room-size room in Canton, New York), and we got kicked out of the place
at 9 so they could set up for a punk show.

The band is playing somewhere in Idaho tomorrow, no doubt to a crowd about ten times the
size of the group on Saturday. At least we had that moment here.

It was 20 years ago this coming April

2008-02-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

My first juggling convention:

> April 8-10
> Amherst, Mass.
> "Return to Amherst" Juggling Mini-Convention. The 9th Annual! Start juggling at
> 5 p.m. Friday and keep it up until you drop. 48 hours of non-stop juggling in
> the spacious Robert Crown Center on the Hampshire College Campus just four miles
> south of Amherst on Route 116. A $15 registration fee covers the entire weekend,
> including public show, workshops and door prizes. Bring your sleeping bag if you
> want to sleep on site. For more information, call Carol at 203-878-3121 and
> leave a message on the machine.

And the first is still the best. I met tons of great people that weekend, including Mark Nizer, 9-ball wizard Sue Kirby, economics prof Arthur Lewbel, and even the irrepressible Brad Zentmeyer.
The on-site sleeping area was in the karate room adjacent to the gym. We had the use of the sauna nearby. It was the first time I had been served brown rice in an otherwise unassuming Chinese restaurant. And I have a feeling the Cafe Classé is history, but at the time their Sunday
brunch was unrivaled. OK, all our tastes have matured since then.

If you got bored of juggling, there were also workshops on bicycle repair and reproductive freedom happening on campus that weekend as well. And the muted beauty of an early spring New England weekend added to the perfection.

Honesty in Spam

2008-01-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

Today's winning entry comes from a Mr. Jin Renqing:

Hello,

I wish to crave your indulgence in assisting me in receiving a large sum
of money on my behalf.
If You are Interested, kindly send your response to my personal email
:[deleted because I crave your indulgence even more than he does].

Thank you and i look forward to a good business relationship with you.

Sincerely,
Jin Renqing

What sort of bugs do spammers on Rails file?

2008-01-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

See http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/10919. Maybe even contribute a fix. Courtesy sbaker.

Everything you wanted to know about stoner rock

2008-01-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

http://orexisofdeath.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

The link is to a Russian blogger's page, but the content looks like it's been
lifted from a rock encyclopedia or two. Starts with Vancouver's own Mock Duck,
mentions the venerable Retinal Circus, and then it's a wild ride all over the place.

Book review: Wandering Home

2008-01-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

I just read "Wandering Home" by Bill McKibben. A little book about a walk
he did from his current home at Middlebury to his old home in the eastern
Adirondacks. I find him the prototypical young folgie, but his descriptions
of the Adirondacks took me back to all those hikes I used to do there
when I lived in Ottawa. The contrast between Vermont and New York, separated
by a thin lake, are brought home clearly. The Adirondack natives drive
Ford pick-ups, not the SUVs and Subarus so common in Vermont.

We'd usually stop at a store for cheap dairy on the way home from those
hides, and invariably someone in the lineup would be paying for their
groceries with food stamps, something you rarely see in most parts of
the states frequented by visitors. The book's worth the two hours or
so it takes -- it certainly reminded me of the many charms of
those mountains.

Celebration of Bland Architecture

2008-01-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.vancouverspecial.com/ makes for a perfect
starting point. These houses sprouted like weeds in the 60s and 70s in
Vancouver, and some say have the same aesthetic value.

Every North American region has its own kind of pedestrian residential
architecture. Where are the web sites devoted to the Levittowns, the
suburban townhouses of the mountain states, the strip malls of Southern
California? I found the Suburban Frontyards International Pool at http://flickr.com/groups/354832@N23/pool/,

but they seem to be trying to hard to post photos of interesting buildings.
I want the ordinary that we pass by every day without noticing.

Harlan Ellison on Getting Paid

2008-01-14T15:53:00.001-08:00

http://www.thevancouverite.com/vancouver_film/harlan_ellison_on_paying_write/

"I don't take a piss without getting paid for it."

The site doesn't have comments, but I wonder how much Ellison got paid to do that rant.

Anyone remember Harlequin Ellis? The guy in the film looks nothing like the cool
dude from the comics.

Irony in Wikipedia, Example #308

2008-01-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

They'll most likely fix this soon enough, so check it out now.
The page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_linkage_clustering on Single linkage clustering starts with this notice:

This article is uncategorized.
Please categorize this article to list it with similar articles. (December 2007)

I know, I know, it's a wiki. I can fix it, but this is too precious.

Good article on Zep, Guitar Hero & Gilligan

2008-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

http://thetyee.ca/Music/2008/01/10/LedZeppelin/

Can you outsmart Ayumu the chimp?

2008-01-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Click here and find out.

UUID poll

2008-01-03T12:18:00.001-08:00

Admit it, when you need to generate a GUID, do you create a dozen or
so, and select the most aesthetically pleasing?

Year-End Roundup: Magazine of the Year Award...

2007-12-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

Goes to Garden & Gun magazine, available here (only in the US, pity):

http://tinyurl.com/ypqkm8
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000O1PKOG?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=B000O1PKOG)

Something tells me this isn't a joke. Here's the sort of review you can
write even if the magazine doesn't exist:

> Like the reviewer before me, I liked this magazine, but didn't find it
> as in-depth as Home and Howitzer. But it does appear to fill in the
> heretofore missing category of small-arms/small garden. Air
> power/ecology is well covered with Nature and Napalm, and naval
> enthusiasts have long looked to Battleships and Beaches to cover their
> spectrum of interests. It's long overdue for us in the .50 cal and
> under group to get our own magazine.

I like the way his first line echoes Robbie Robertson's "Night they drove
old Dixie Down".

Egg Foo Christmas

2007-12-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

From http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=w1uZ_W7atDE:

... Judy Chicago was asked to do a dinner plate for an art exhibit on Xmas. She painted a picture of a video tape and shinese [sic] takeout box.

This is too much like the "Dress them as harlequins." quote attributed to Picasso from Even Cowgirls get the Blues, supposedly when the French military consulted the artist for ideas for redesigning the paratroopers' uniforms.

I can't vouch for either story, but I like the parallels.

The video at the top of the link is worth watching too.

My new favorite blog is everyone else's

2007-12-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

If you read this, you probably follow everything, and have
already discovered http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/, Carrie Brownstein's latest project. Yes, that Carrie Brownstein, former (or soon-to-reunite?) guitarist/singer from Sleater-Kinney, still my favorite post-millennium-era punk band (and my favorite pre- one would probably still be X, but Exene's not blogging anywhere I know of). But if you haven't found it, now's the time. Enjoy, and don't forget to write.

Facebook Fun & Games #2: Editing Messages

2007-12-11T10:09:00.000-08:00

Hey, Facebook guys, please review your notes from your HTTP programming 101 course.

When you go to compose a message to someone, the call that brings up the form
is a GET call. It doesn't change anything on the server. Firefox should be able
to cache the text I've typed in any fields when I run into problems with your captcha
service, and then I won't have to retype everything because you didn't provide a
Cancel button in the captcha box.

Lesson learned: when I want to send a message to someone, I'll poke them, give them
my email address, and hold a normal electronic conversation.

Beating the US Border Lines on a Bike

2007-12-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

My wife and I were in White Rock Saturday morning, about three miles
from the main US border crossing. Waiting for us on the other side
was one of the nephew's presents, at a "convenient" mail drop business
in Blaine, Washington. Since the US dollar's dropped, and the Canadian
hasn't, the lineups have been crazy, up to three hours each way this
past Black Friday.

So I loaded my bike on the rack. After the meeting I dropped my wife
at a cozy cafe on the boardwalk, biked about two miles to the border
crossing, where I was able to zip past 15-car lineups heading south.
After the 20-minute wait in immigration, I was only behind by about
20 minutes now.

The line back to Canada was longer, about 20 cars in each line. The
woman at customs said since the Black Friday horror stories the lines
have dropped down to where it was six years ago, when the Canadian dollar
was worth about 60 cents Canadian.

At least it was a sunny day, good for cycling.

Found photos (site #1?)

2007-12-07T13:15:00.001-08:00

http://www.bighappyfunhouse.com

I'm onto something here, and if you like found photography, you will be too. Follow the funhouse to http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/, and the only word I can find to describe the ordinariness you'll find there is "splendid". Well, maybe "voluptuous mediocritude". Joe Bob sez check it out.

Vista #7: ¿Dónde es mi Dora libro?

2007-12-06T16:37:00.001-08:00

Once in a while something that used to work fine on Win2K, XP, and even
Windows Server 2003 breaks down in Vista. So I head off to Google,
type in my finely crafted search, and half the time, the top link is
some Spanish web site that has nothing to do with working around
software incompatibilities, and more likely has photos of pretty
views someone in Madrid took on their last vacation.

While I know enough French to pick my way through Spanish text, I'm
looking for answers, not slides from someone's ski trip in Grenoble.

"Vista .Net#". Now that would have been much more searchable. Maybe.

Vista #6: Your friend, the Program Compatibility Assistant

2007-12-06T12:01:00.001-08:00

Once you start migrating existing practices to Vista, you'll frequently be greeted with this dialog box:

I haven't run into any problems building apps here. Maybe relying on these old programs is incompatible with the future growth of Microsoft's bottom line. Press "Don't show this message again", then press "Run program". Or as those of us who hit it frequently know it by, "Alt-D Alt-R".

Vista #5: Installing VC6 for Mozilla building the Unix way

2007-12-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

If you need to build one of the Mozilla apps, or the core, on a Vista machine with VC++ 6.0, you'll need to go through a few hoops. Others have documented them, like here, but if you're the type of person who would rather use patch than notepad, you've come to the right place.

After you do a vanilla install of VC6, start it up to build a hello-world app, and then get service pack 5. I'd go to http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Windows_Build_Prerequisites, so if the publisher changes its location, only devmo needs to update the link. Have the bits dumped into a fresh directory, and apply this patch (watch out for line-breaks -- each non-directive line should start with a number):


--- vc6sp5/sp598ent.stf Wed Jan 31 19:19:32 2001
+++ vc6sp5/sp598ent.stf Wed Dec  5 17:34:56 2007
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
 11 yes Floppy Install  AppMainDlg 13 12     No %m    
 12 yes &Complete Complete install of VS 6.0 Service Pack 5 Group  13 44 53 60 65 74 84 86 80 70 40 89  sp598ent.dll,104        
              
-13    Group 28 36 38 29 30 32 26 27 14 25 16 17 20 18 19 15 39 21 22 24 23 43         
+13    Group 28 38 29 30 32 26 27 14 25 16 17 20 18 19 15 39 21 22 24 23 43         
 14    CustomAction """sp598ent.dll"", ""GetPathFromReg"", ""HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0\Setup,VSCommonDir"" "     %d\Common    
 15    CustomAction """sp598ent.dll"", ""GetPathFromReg"", ""HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0\Setup\Microsoft Visual Studio,ProductDir"" "     %d    
 16    CustomAction """sp598ent.dll"", ""GetPathFromReg"", ""HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0\Setup\Microsoft Visual C++,ProductDir"" "     %d\VC98    
@@ -51,9 +51,7 @@
 32    Depend 16 ? 34         
 33  VCwinCEtoolkit Installed  DetectOlderFile "wceremove.exe,5.0.0.8008"     %16    
 34    DependAsk 33 ? 35         
-35    CustomAction "sp598ent.dll,ExitInFinalize,34"         
-36    Depend "27 ?  : 37"         
-37  IsWin95  CustomAction "sp598ent.dll,CheckForMDAC"         
+35    CustomAction "sp598ent.dll,ExitInFinalize,34"
              
 38    CustomAction "sp598ent.dll,MoveRegData,""LOCAL,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run,Machine Debug Manager,LOCAL,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices,Machine Debug Manager"""

Now run setupsp5.exe in the directory, and it should happily install. Build a hello-world-again app or something to verify.

Uke Springsteen's myspace page

2007-12-06T10:23:00.001-08:00

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=30035437

Vista #4: Sorting columns incorrectly

2007-12-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

The new open-file dialog presents the list of files and folders in
two-column mode, when it can, which is a nice use of space (see
my previous rant).

Unfortunately they're sorting the items by row first, and
then by column, like so:


    a   b
    c   d
    e   f

instead of


    a   d
    b   e
    c   f

It's easier to program the first way, but it's harder to find
things the first way, for two reasons, one obvious, one not so
obvious.

Suppose I have a dense list of items, and the one I want starts with
a "t". With column-based sorting, I can figure the item will be in
the second column, jump to the bottom part, and find it quickly.
With row-based sorting, I know it's going to be in the bottom half
of the dialog, but I don't know which column it will be in. I have
to scan horizontally, back and forth.

Guess what -- humans can scan information vertically much faster than
horizontally. You know how you-yes you-find web pages with horizontal
scrollbars annoying. That's part of the reason. You know how newspapers
use thin columns to produce long, narrow articles instead of short fat
ones? That's why.

Here's an physical proof that the smart guys are all doing column-sorting.
I don't care which city you live in, open up a phone book. Sorted by
columns.

I don't know if MS still gives little programming challenges during their
job interviews, but maybe column-sorting should be up there.

Quick update: if you sort a view by small icons, you get the row-based
sorting. Choose list-based sorting, and you get column-based sorting.
One more step where my vista machine looks a lot like a Win2K machine...

Fun and Games: Everything's Bigger in Vista

2007-12-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

The desktop icons occupy about 50% more surface area, for no good reason.
I haven't found a setting to use smaller icons.

The title bar of every window in XP gained a pixel in height, and Vista
seems to have given each window another pixel or two. Wasted space. I
don't need that much more space to grab windows and move them around.
Fortunately I could revert to the "Windows Classic" theme, which makes my
desktop look a lot like it did 7 years ago. Nice.

The Windows Messenger notifications are bloated as well. I realize
that isn't a Vista change per se, but it's part of the same trend from the
same company.

Changes 2007

2007-12-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the ways I shook up my work habits this year...

1. Moving from perforce to subversion. It's tough to do
open-source with a perforce back-end. On the plus side, it's
become a snap to put all my home projects on svn.

2. Moving to Vista (someone had to do it).

3. Giving up a 10-year-plus cygwin habit for msys. It's tough.
Ironically enough, perforce is happier in an msys environment.

4. Relying less on emacs, using Komodo more. One result is
many JavaScript macros have been written ... maybe I'll
whip up a .komodo file to load them at startup.

Facebook's Real Accomplishment: The ID Problem

2007-12-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

The net is full of neat goodies. They're mostly independent of one another.
Any compelling app that aspires to be more than a solitaire game requires you
to identify yourself in someway or other. Using the same password is a bad
idea because most sites don't store hashed passwords (you can tell my
requesting your password -- if it bounces back in an email, stop using it,
because the site made the double violation of storing it in plain text and
then emailing it in plain text).

In some sense, Facebook has solved the identity problem -- you login once, into
Facebook, and can then access any app in the Facebook world without having
to create yet another identity. You lose much of the anonymity the
internet provides, but given the vast numbers of people that are interested
in slinging sheep and dressing as pirates, many don't care.

This is what single-sign-on looks like in the constrained mini-net world
defined by Facebook. Will it happen in the big bad net?

Fun and Games #2: Review of Microsoft Powertoys for Vista

2007-12-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

If you like short reviews, you've come to the right place.
There is no Powertoy suite for Vista, and it looks like
none is forthcoming.

Obviously letting people change the way Windows behaves
can introduce security flaws into the OS fabric. So
let's toss this baby out as well.

After a year I figured MS would have determined that
the nut hovering over the keyboard is the biggest
security risk to any system, and do something about it.

And I realize they did, and I installed it.

Fun and Games #1.5: Why dragging explorer => command window doesn't work in Vista

2007-12-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

Back on track for substantive items (relatively speaking)...

If you've ever dragged an explorer icon to a command window
in order to get the quoted full path in the shell, you'll be
saddened to find out that this doesn't work on Vista. You'll
also be late to the party, like me -- beta testers discovered
this drop in functionality in late 2006.

Raymond Chen explains why in
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=689594&SiteID=1 :

> Sadly, this functionality was a victim of Vista's stricter security
> policies. Csrss is a high-privilege process and you can't drag/drop to
> a process with higher security.

Wow. I suppose if the drag is initiated by someone other than the dropper,
this is a good thing. It means that no one can ever grab my mouse, select
a file's icon, hand me the mouse with the button held down, and make me
drop it on my precious command window under duress.

Raymond, could we have a scenario of where this can result in a
security breach?

Plus ça change: border-crossing follies

2007-11-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid the Canadian dollar was at par with the US dollar, and our family would often make trips south of the border where the parents could get cheap California wines, not available in Canada, and we kids would throw as many of the boxes of the junky cereals and candy bars that we saw on TV but couldn't get in the north.

Over three decades later, we've outgrown the Trix, and can get M&Ms here, but we're heading south for not-sold-here iPhones. And I suppose if anyone actually wants one, Kindles.

Fun and Games with Vista #1

2007-11-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

When I get good and tired of it, I'll turn off UAC. But until then it's providing some amusements.

For example, the new machine has a C and D drive. When I went to copy old files to the D drive, I was prompted that the disk needed to be formatted, and would I like to format it? Yes. And the UAC dialog comes up asking me if I initiated that action.

Science Fiction Novel Waiting to be Written

2007-11-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

A subscription to Wired for less than a buck an issue is still too expensive when you figure all the good articles are available on-line for free, and are more readable that way. But our bathroom still is off the net, so I bought, and read an interesting nugget this morning on how, with blogs and feeds like twitter and facebook, individuals are becoming increasingly corporate-like. And books like Joel Bakan's The Corporation show how commercial companies exhibit human behavioral traits, not all of them beneficial to society.

So it's only a matter of time before somebody writes about the day when the distinction between the two disappears. Don't look at me - I don't even have a line from that book yet. And like I said earlier, I'm not exactly the most voracious reader of the genre. But it seems like the best way to explore the idea.

Facebook: at least get this basic grammar lesson right

2007-11-29T11:58:00.001-08:00

From this indispensable piece of news in my FB feed:


Updated: Bill the Kidney, Bobby Kaplotnick and Doctor Woo has received a new FunWall post.
Click here to view Bill's video

"has". Right. From a multi-billion-dollar company.

Side point: Bill's video isn't bad, for a kidney, but you probably knew that already.

The Future of Facebook is Hominids

2007-11-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't read the book by Robert J Sawyer (in fact, the s.f. books I have read in the last 30 years would make a good post), but I heard him talk about it on DNTO last week. The gist is that in this parallel world all humans have a black box implanted in their wrist. The data it emits is stored on a server run by what seems to be a benevolent dictatorship -- other individuals can't access this data, but the government can use it to hold people fully accountable for their actions.

It would seem that Facebook Beacon, which publishes your actions on participating partners outside Facebook into your Facebook feed, is a step in this direction. I can only say, about time. I'm looking forward to the day when everyone with a wireless-net-enabled device can participate as a Beacon publisher.

I'll be able to follow the feeds of my friends to see not only what they ate for breakfast, but also if they remembered to put the recyclables in the blue box, how much did they give the street person busking outside the skytrain station, who's cheating on their diet, and who's cheating on their spouse.

Some people say Facebook is the new AOL, but AOL never came up with this great idea.

Why the Kindle Will Flop

2007-11-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

You're reading a blog, I assume you know what a Kindle is.
It's a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist.

It's too bad Jeff Bezos and his team didn't pay attention
to the speeches Voyageur founder Bob Stein gave back in
the 90s on Text, the New Frontier.

Text, unlike the other media, is self-contained (and can
be self-referential, but that doesn't apply here).

You don't need a device to play a book or magazine, just
a decent source of light.

The reasons iPods worked was because they were the first
elegant successor to the Discman and Walkman for digitally
encoded tunes. Music hasn't been self-contained since Edison
put an end to the sheet music industry (and even then
many people preferred their local orchestra or marching
band as a convenient device for converting instructions
to sounds, compared to their own playing). Film and
video will always need a device.

Printed books are so cheap there is little incentive in
finding a downloadable version of a book to bypass
purchasing it. And since the Kindle doesn't even load
HTML files, it won't even pick up that audience.

Parkinson's Fundraiser this Sunday

2007-11-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

I met Marg Meikle at a school meeting last night -- her son is the
same age as our younger daughter. She didn't mention their annual
fundraiser is coming up this Sunday, so I will.

http://www.porridgeforparkinsons.com/

Sunday November 25th, 8:30- 11:30 a.m.

Go to the site for the Kits address.

It's been a decade or two since Marg was the Answer Lady on CBC,
but you can see the disease has not suppressed her sheer intelligence
and striking wit. This was an advocacy meeting, and I'm very happy to
have her on board with us.

An excerpt from the future

2007-11-20T10:47:00.001-08:00

From a story yet to be written...

She could tell from the weathered Pearl Jam shirt and the flecks of
grey in his beard that they were both among the youngest Americans
who would remember a time when Starbucks was considered cool.

An excerpt from the past

2007-11-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

[When we don't have anything new to put here, we sometimes dip into work from the distant past. This one came up today during an otherwise unrelated conversation.]

The setting: a Motel 6 in a non-descript town somewhere between Seattle and San Francisco:

Suddenly, Wanda got up, turned off the TV, and jumped into your bed.

And whispered in your ear, "Duane, talk to me about Emacs."

You gulped, and blurted out a sheepish "Well, actually I just use vi". Wanda
slipped back into her bed, and you punched another ticket on the night-alone express.

High-tech/media quote of the day

2007-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

From http://www.ddj.com/architect/202802995?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All,
Michael Swaine's Architecture & Design column in Dr. Dobb's Journal:

That there exists such a thing as the Larry King podcast proves to me that I know nothing about media demographics.

How to slaughter a pig

2007-11-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

From Kendall Clark's XML newsletter, an interesting aside showing what happened when a Moldavian living in Switzerland went back home for a visit, a trip through time as much as space. I'm one of those people who eats meat, but not that often, so acquaintances often assume I'm a vegetarian. If you aren't, and you're put off by these pictures, it might be time to reconsider your diet.

This article reminds us westerners how we aren't so removed, by time or distance, from how people used to live before inventions like Pez dispensers.

http://fxcuisine.com/default.asp?Display=119&?

What would George have done?

2007-11-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

Three in a row from Mike Daisey. Maybe there's an underlying message there.

Sociological Geometry

2007-11-08T23:25:00.000-08:00

Another gem via http://mikedaisey.com/.

Suicide Assistant

2007-11-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

No wonder this problem was unexpected

2007-11-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

From http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/todmaffin/~3/177876967/errormessage:

No wonder it had trouble parsing the URL. Sounds like someone dropped a zero somewhere.

Obvious nexus: Sopranos and 60s Garage Rock

2007-10-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.littlestevensundergroundgarage.com

Great listening while programming.