Manifesto Multilinko |
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Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.
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[to search, use Blogger search in top bar] HOME ---- [contact me] My Blogger Profile View my photo galleries. Listen to my radio station. LinkblogOLD BlogMarks Linkblog Currently ReadingThis is an Ottawa blog (Ontario, Canada). [blogroll me] Cool blogs: (* = recently updated) Blogger profiles in Ottawa Hot links: delicious - popular - new Other good sites: Slashdot Wired News Mark Morford's Notes & Errata This page uses Extreme Tracker which is determining your referrer by running some JavaScript. The commenting system is Reblogger. BlogCanada webring This blog is listed on BlogShares. |
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: 1950, ottawa, urban planning 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: climate change, doom 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 Labels: copenhagen, cycling, ottawa, urban planning Monday, October 19, 2009
everything you need to know about capitalism
National Geographic - Redwoods: The Super Trees - October 2009 (quote from page 6 of the online article) Labels: doom 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 Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat Visitor Program Labels: ottawa 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:
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. Labels: books, science fiction 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: meta
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. ![]() 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. HOME - |