Manifesto Multilinko
Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.

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    Sunday, October 25, 2009
    1950 Plan for the National Capital

    Ok, I can't claim to have read this yet, but the diagrams and images are awesome.

    The root is

    http://qshare.queensu.ca/Users01/gordond/planningcanadascapital/greber1950/index.htm

    Images and Diagrams I liked:
    * Residence Distribution of Civil Servants, 1947
    * Existing Railway System (can't make out the date)
    * Distribution of Street Cars and Buses, 1948
    * Daily Volume and Distribution of Street Car and Bus Passengers, 1948
    * Existing Open Space, 1946
    * Scale Model of the Centre of Ottawa, 1938

    In particular, check out
    * 204. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa-1900
    * 205. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa- 1940
    (which looks beautiful to the modern eye, but looked unspeakably backward to them - and also this view explains a lot about the features of the landscape, like the War Memorial, that don't read well any more but made perfect sense then)
    * 206. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa-1950
    (a vision of the future, part of which they built, as evidenced by the giant f-up that is the area around the old Union Station now, and which looked fantastically modern to them, while looking heart-stoppingly chilling to us today)

    Labels: , ,

    posted by Richard at 20:48 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Thursday, October 22, 2009
    why Canada doesn't matter

    World CO2 emissions in 2007 (from energy), megatonnes = 29914
    USA = 6006
    China = 6283
    Canada = 590

    Canada is in the noise level.
    Do we suck per-capita? Oh my yes.
    Do we have enough people that that makes any difference? Not really.

    (India, in case you're wondering, is an order of magnitude "better" per capita, but has so many people its emissions are still 1400 megatonnes.)

    The US and China are so big in this (to a large extent because of coal), that even the top 5 tells the tale of how this is basically a bilateral problem.

    1 China = 6283
    2 USA = 6006
    3 Russia = 1672
    4 India = 1400
    5 Japan = 1262

    (Canada is 7th, in case you're wondering.)

    Note that I am not saying we shouldn't consume less and live in harmony with nature. I'm just saying even if all of Canada went pre-industrial, the US and China alone can take us over the climate tipping point.

    When I tried to make this point to Tim Flannery at Writers Fest, he said something to the effect of we all have to pull together and do our part and such. Which probably makes for good politics, but it doesn't seem to reflect the fact that even if the entire world outside the top two emitters gets together and holds hands, our climate fate will still be set by US and Chinese decisions on energy policy.

    Labels: ,

    posted by Richard at 11:11 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Tuesday, October 20, 2009
    Ottawahagen - where is our urban plan?

    Ottawa council is well-aware of the issues covered in this great article about urban planning lessons from Copenhagen, but I have yet to see them take the necessary steps to transform the downtown.

    On your bike: What the world can learn about cycling [and urban planning] from Copenhagen - The Independent - 18 October 2009

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    posted by Richard at 09:46 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Monday, October 19, 2009
    everything you need to know about capitalism


    It's hard to have a conversation about forestry practices in the redwoods without hearing the name of Charles Hurwitz, CEO of Houston-based Maxxam, Inc. In 1985 Hurwitz orchestrated the hostile takeover—underwritten by junk bonds provided by the financier Michael Milken—of Pacific Lumber, which had been run conservatively by the Murphy family since 1905. By leaving some of their old growth standing, the Murphys, men who learned the lumber business from the chain saw up, had planned to sustain their timber harvest and jobs well into the 21st century. "When the Murphys owned PL, they cared for their employees," Hall says.

    With Pacific Lumber, Hurwitz inherited roughly 70 percent of the remaining old redwoods in private hands. In his first meeting with the employees, the dark-suited businessman told them—in a now famous quote—that he believed in the golden rule: "He who has the gold, rules." Hurwitz then proceeded to break up the company and sell its assets. He sold Pacific Lumber's office building in downtown San Francisco and a profitable welding division, and he cashed out the workers' pension fund, replacing it with an annuity from a poorly rated insurance carrier.

    Most important for the redwoods, Hurwitz adopted a business model of clear-cutting, doubling—and some years even tripling—the annual amount of timber harvested from the company's holdings, which eventually reached 210,000 acres.

    National Geographic - Redwoods: The Super Trees - October 2009
    (quote from page 6 of the online article)

    Labels:

    posted by Richard at 09:39 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Sunday, September 13, 2009
    stuff happening in Ottawa - Fall 2009

    A selection of stuff that I think is interesting.



    * = events I am attending

    UPDATE 2009-09-14: Added Chamber Music Festival. ENDUPDATE
    UPDATE 2009-09-19: Yarr, added Thirteen Strings, mateys. ENDUPDATE
    UPDATE 2009-10-03: Added Carleton Butterfly Show. ENDUPDATE
    UPDATE 2009-10-15: Ottawa International Animation Festival October 14-18, 2009. National Science and Technology Week October 16-25, 2009. One World Film Festival October 15th, 23rd, 29th and 30th, 2009. Also added recent Social Media Breakfast and upcoming Third Tuesday. ENDUPDATE
    UPDATE 2009-10-17 Ottawa Baroque Consort ENDUPDATE

    The Aga Khan building - you can visit this spectacular building

    The Visitor Program will be held every other Wednesday between the hours of 5:00pm and 7:00pm, and every other Saturday between the hours of 2:00pm and 4:00pm.

    Upcoming dates for September and October include:

    * Saturday, September 19
    * Wednesday, September 23
    * Saturday, October 3
    * Wednesday, October 7
    * Saturday, October 10 **Additional Visitor Program date for Thanksgiving Weekend
    * Wednesday, October 14
    * Saturday, October 24
    * Wednesday, October 28

    The Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat Visitor Program

    Labels:

    posted by Richard at 09:09 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Saturday, September 12, 2009
    Marge Atwood talks a lot of nonsense

    Writers know that words mean things.
    Atwood's denial that her work is science fiction can only be one of three things

    1. She's being deliberately disingenuous
    2. She doesn't actually know what science fiction is
    3. She is hiding in the "literary", invented non-genre of "speculative fiction", lest she be put on shelves with--shudder--books by men! for boys! about space! ewww

    I suspect #3.

    Look at this total nonsense:

    What the book absolutely is not, she insists, is science fiction – a statement she has made repeatedly since the 2003 publication of Oryx and Crake, a novel that shares the same future as Flood and some of the same characters.

    Science fiction takes place “somewhere in space, far, far away in a distant galaxy,” she explains. “That's where hell and heaven went after Milton, escaping literarily.”

    On Planet X, you can still have voices speaking out of burning bushes and “strange creatures with bat wings and horns on their heads flying through the air – dragons, of which I'm very fond.” But “speculative fiction” of the sort she writes deals strictly with things people can experience on Earth “without being stoned,” she says. “It has to be based on real technology, real science, real possibility.”

    Atwood: ‘Have I ever eaten maggots? Perhaps …' - Globe and Mail - September 12, 2009

    Ok first of all, "somewhere in space" is the definition of space opera, a 1950s era sub-genre of SF that, while still the popular image of much SF in clueless media circles, hasn't actually been written SF since the Golden Age of Heinlein and such.

    Second of all, she then conflates space opera with fantasy, which is a completely different genre.

    Third of all "based on real technology, real science, real possibility" is the DEFINITION of hard science fiction.

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    posted by Richard at 10:52 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Wednesday, August 26, 2009
    meta: tech in progress

    I'm going to be using my blog more for tech-in-progress notes, it's something I used to do but I got out of the habit.

    Detailed reviews will still be in my reviews blog, not here.

    Labels:

    posted by Richard at 23:43 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

    Windows 7 here I come?

    Got a new PC, mostly to try out Windows 7. HP e9180f from Radio Shack (which I'm supposed to call "The Source" these days). It's... well it's ok, lots of fancy stuff hardware-wise, I'm blogging this on it right now, but seems a bit flaky around the edges. Have had one blue screen, one instance where it wouldn't sleep/wake properly (was stuck on a black screen, I had to shut it down), problems with Windows Update (maybe due to the bluescreen) meant I had to use System Restore to rollback, then weirdness with NIC card update meant I went to HP and got their recommended driver rather than the one MS offers. Oh and also one time Firefox seemed to get stuck in virus scan for downloaded Irfanview installer... wouldn't work until I rebooted.

    Hmm, when I list them all seems quite a lot of problems really.

    It is fast, Intel i7 920 with 4 cores hyperthreaded, makes it look like 8 CPUs to the OS.

    [Windows Task Manager 24082009 114329 PM]

    Did a PhotoSynth test versus the AMD 3-core HP a6530f and the new machine was twice as fast (2.5 minutes vs. 5 minutes).

    I also did a bit of an endurance test, downloaded all 6.5GB of the World of Warcraft current edition (yes, gigabytes), then the 1.2GB of updates, then played the game for a while - although this is more of a video card stress test than a CPU test, it did keep the network, disk and RAM busy for hours, and there weren't any problems.

    SIDEBAR:
    In general I wouldn't recommend buying towards the high end of the range, you're much safer and will get more bang for buck in the midrange. I don't think it's worth it for most users to have a machine that is pushing the limits of storage/RAM/CPU. My HP a6530f may not have three balanced RAM channels of 3GB each or whatever the heck the e9180f does, but the a6530f has been pretty solid for almost a year now. I did have to upgrade the power supply in the a6530f in order to be able to drive a reasonable video card for WoW, but the whole thing came in under $1k including the power upgrade and video upgrade.
    END SIDEBAR

    Submitting the Windows 7 request was fairly painless, HP has a whole system set up (Internet Explorer only though). If you run it on the target machine, it scans for the serial number and does everything, all you have to do is upload a pic/scan of your receipt. Then you have to wait for "approval" of your submission. Win 7 won't be out until October 22, 2009 so it will be a while yet before I have anything to report.

    UPDATE: Oh and if you're getting an HP, you may have to get a replacement keyboard and mouse - the HP keyboards are heavy on multimedia buttons (which I never use) but have very shallow flat keys, which I find to be unsatisfying for either typing or gaming. I use the chunky keyboard (that I think came with my old Dell) on the a6530f. Be aware that the e9180f has no traditional PS2 keyboard or mouse port (the "purple and green" ports), only USB (I don't actually know what you can get in terms of PS2 to USB adapters; I know there are ones to go the other way.

    Labels: , ,

    posted by Richard at 23:25 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric) / comment

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