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Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.
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[contact me] My Blogger Profile View my photo galleries. Listen to my radio station. LinkblogOLD Blinklist Linkblog OLD BlogMarks Linkblog Currently ReadingThis is an Ottawa blog (Ontario, Canada). Cool blogs: McWetlog wood s lot La Tribu du Verbe Wil Wheaton Darren Barefoot Lectio.ca 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. 
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Saturday, August 18, 2001
I think local farming is cool. No trucking things across the continent from California. I read a thing referring to it in The Coast today. In Halifax there's the North End Community Gardening Association. For Canada I found City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes, including Community Gardening in Major Canadian Cities: Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver Compared. I also discovered there that Health Canada has an entire Healthy Lawns website. Your tax dollars at work. I swear in a GMC Envoy SUV ad I saw on TV they said it had "all the comforts of home" including "climate control with 25 degrees of separation". I heard this on CBC Radio news the other day: U.S. group wants Canada to seize hunting 'trophy'. I can't believe it in this day and age, but apparently 19th Century type hunting organizations like the Safari Club International still exist. They have something called "Grand Slams", in which you win by killing all varieties of one type of animal, or by killing a selection of different animals. Yes, that certainly does sound like an outdoor sports adventure. Give the animals guns, THEN that might be a real sports adventure. Or there's always the Celebrity Shoot. It's five hundred bucks, but it might be worth it, depending which celebrity you got to shoot. Is it just me, or does the newly rendered planet Vulcan from Star Trek: The Motion Picture DVD 
look like something out of a level from Quake? Income trusts can add juice to your portfolio from today's Globe and Mail (GlobeInvestor). Added to Money page. I think this image from the MFA in Boston is cool. Link from htmlstudio by giovanni ulloa. I tried to take some pictures of paintings in the Met in New York but I didn't have much luck. I'm not much used to taking pictures indoors, plus I feel kind of weird taking pictures in a museum, plus there were a lot of people going to and fro, PLUS I didn't hold steady enough, so it looked like I had taken the picture during an earthquake. I liked this art from Chris Mikkelsen's page. Westchester Mountain really does look like that in the winter (well ok, without the huge peak in the background). Hollywood Moves to Rent Movies Online (NYT - free registration required). Added to Multimedia - Articles. Now if you could rent good movies online, that would really be progress. Friday, August 17, 2001
If you're visiting my page often, and find it interesting, I would appreciate it if you would sign my guestbook. Since it is such a pleasant, gentle day, I couldn't resist retracing part of yesterday's route downtown. This time, I brought my camera and for once I actually planned ahead and charged one of my batteries in the morning before I left. It did me yeoman service, lasting with no problem through all 200 shots I took. Yes, I did take a few pics. Once I got my PowerShot S20 with 340 MB Microdrive I figured out the secret to good photography - take lots of shots and hope that a few turn out good. It's very freeing to just be able to snap anything that takes my fancy without having to worry about running out of space (it will hold about 300 pictures). I went into the Fort Massey Cemetary for the first time, to get a picture of the flag. I thought it went straight through to South Park, but it's blocked off from the other cemetary behind it by a fence. Then I went to Oland's fountain, with its inexplicable "DANGER: High Voltage" sign (is the fence electrified? the water?) and on into the Public Gardens. I think this is the best picture I took: 
© 2001 Richard Akerman Saw on the news yesterday that ITI went bankrupt. I went there 1993-1994, when it was still called the Atlantic Computer Institute (ACI). I thought it was an ok programme, but when I went it still cost less than $10k, as opposed to the $26k or so I think they were charging these days. I think they just tried to expand too rapidly. It's probablly going to hurt Roswell's too, since I think ITI got all their books there. Holy frack, the Unix Sys Admin book costs a hundred dollars from Chapters. Augh. I tried the AddAll book price search engine (as featured on my Canadian Online Shopping page) but all the prices it found were over $100 too :( Lovely day today. Sunny and warm without being hot or humid. Went to Roswell's book store to get the 3rd edition UNIX System Administration Handbook ("the purple book") but they didn't have it, so I guess it's more Chapters points for me. I would go to the actual Chapters store, but it's one hour away by bus :( Thursday, August 16, 2001
So I was looking into grad school registration for the fall (normally I would have started this much earlier, but things have been a bit confused around here). After clicking on my classes, it occurred to me that I should probably check when classes start. Indications seemed to be Sept. 6 but I wanted to be absolutely sure. So I went to the registrar page and looked for "important dates". There was nothing there. I looked through all the multicoloured pages in my registration package. Nothing there. So I went to the Dal search engine and typed in "when do freaking classes start", and the only hit was for Cassie's blog, which I thought was funny since I read her blog every day as it's in the Canadian East Coast webring. I finally found the "important dates" within the grad calendar web pages. I guess I wasn't expecting a calendar within the calendar. CBS News reports that, while traffic accidents kill 42000 (yes, forty-two thousand) Americans a year, the pollution from the cars may actually be killing even more than that.
I'd be happy if people worried more about traffic pollution and crashes. It amazes me the attention paid to miniscule risks like plane crashes, while car crashes kill hundreds of people every day, and injure ten times that many. I don't know what it is about old technology that has fallen into disuse, but I find some of it really fascinating. In particular, dirigibles. Slashdot has a thread about the recent flight of the Zeppelin NT. I thought CargoLifter was so cool I actually filled in a form requesting information about their stock offering. They sent me a big folder, including a sticker :) The other technology I like is pneumatic tubes. Here's a page on capsule pipelines. Went for a walk downtown. Oland's fountain (no, not that kind of fountain, sorry), through the Public Gardens, to Entitlement Books and TD Bank. The latter two weren't very successful, as Entitlement Books isn't there any more, and when I got to TD, I remembered that after having my TD card in my wallet continuously for the past seven years, I took it out of my wallet this morning because I "never use it". Wednesday, August 15, 2001
The Daily Show. On so late. But it makes me laugh. I like the special reports. Deeply religious pro-gun "leader" + family compound + Texas = TRAGEDY Yes, it's George Bush's "Compound W", suspiciously near Waco. So not only is it dry, but there is also the terrible burning fire. Perhaps if scientists had said "Global Fire and Drought" people might have listened... nah, probably not. Added to Page o' Doom, o' course. Awesome: I was just flipping channels and I discovered that YTV is showing ReBoot again. Even better... the ReBoot movie is coming to YTV in November! It's such a cool show, I have high hopes for the movie. Another show that was ahead of its time. Awesome graphics, plus intelligent and amusing, with a good story arc. I always thought they could have made a ton of money if they had been able to get a movie into theatres after Season 3. It would have been better than Final Fantasy, that's for sure. This guy on TV from Uniroyal Technology was talking about their bright LEDs. He said that one third of the world's energy goes to lighting. Edifice Complex has similar information:
The Globe reports on Winnipeg urban planning in The height of stupidity. It amazes me that 40 years after people like Jane Jacobs figured out how to do sensible urban planning, people are still making the same mistakes. It's as if they don't learn from history or something. Added to Articles: Canada. Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Macduff Everton does cool panoramic photography. I read about him in the March/April 2001 American Photo magazine (which doesn't seem to have a website). Link added to my web photos page. The Voyager episode with the metal people was on. It's so sad. All that they were, all that they had accomplished, gone. NASA's Helios flying wing is amazing. It's solar powered with a fuel cell that keeps it running overnight. As seen on Slashdot and television. CBC Consumers - Pesticides In Depth is about lawn chemicals and other such wonders of modern science. Added to Page o' Doom. I have spent yet even more time updating my Digital Photography, Sharing, and Printing page with accurate Canadian information. It seems it is now impossible to get cheap panoramic pictures from an online site to Canada :( Does anyone know any Canadian stores that will do panoramics? Golly, the Globe reports Drought, from coast to coast. Damn those scientists, they never said anything about Global Drought. Who could have ever expected this to happen... Added to the searingly prophetic Humanity Doomanity page. Is it just me, or does part of the ad that goes "It had been six weeks without snow..." sound like "In desperation, the town council turned to an Ewok elder." Yay. Lots of goodies from HMV - The Net on DVD and two CDs: Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album and Aimee Mann's "Whatever". Only drawback - shipment box was marked "Safe Drop", which the delivery guy said meant he would have had to leave it in the lobby if I hadn't been home. Also came with a coupon for $5 off $30 at Sunoco.ca which I can't imagine spending - I don't have a car. I don't even like cars. For some reason, my DVD player always starts with subtitles on. This time, in Spanish. It's kinda cool actually. Can you say "Angel. Fijemos una fecha para procrear." :) I got a pretty catalogue from Cruickshank's at !ndigo in the mail today, which is kind of weird, since their website doesn't even exist anymore. I ate my popcorn from VibeVision last night while watching a reasonably entertaining (if somewhat contrived) episode of Deep Space Nine. Of the 3 Star Treks since The Original Series, DS9 is the only one that's any good. It has the two essential elements for a good series: a story arc and strong characters. Sweet. Want to get rid of those awful x10 ads that are literally EVERYWHERE you go? In [Windows] IE, go to tools, internet options, security tab, Restricted Areas icon, sites button, and add *.x10.com to the list of restricted sites.(Info from It's All About Me, Me, Me.) In Mac IE, go to Edit->Preferences... Security Zones, then select Zone: Restricted sites zone, Add Sites... Add... Disclaimer: I'm not sure yet if this actually does anything useful. On the Mac, it does show up in the Restricted zone, but I don't know if that actually stops it from doing annoying things. More cool photography from Photo magazine, added to my web photos page: - Voyage au pays de la lumiere photos by Steve McCurry - Libres et sauvages photos by Art Wolfe An amazing face 
Monday, August 13, 2001
This is too cool: protest outside the White House, from the comfort of your own home. Link from Using Bees. I found this canadian.fr blog interesting. It's by a software engineering guy from Ottawa doing a workterm in southern France. It has a lot of pictures. They're talking on RobTV about interactive television (iTV), which I think is total baloney. It amazes me how these ideas get started and then never die. They've been doing iTV trials for the last 20 years. Every single one of them has been a dismal failure. Talk about a solution in search of a problem. It's just like e-books. Why the heck would I want an e-book? A regular paper book is an incredibly convenient, high-resolution display device. You can hit it with a hammer, leave it out in the sun, loan it to a friend... The batteries never run out. The license never expires. People get so wrapped up with technology. The key is appropriate technology. Television and books work fine already. They're well-developed technologies. They don't need to be "enhanced". VibeVision sent me free popcorn, woohoo. Ok I don't actually like popcorn all that much, I just like getting stuff free. They have more logical television packages than EastLink. With EastLink, in order to get CNBC, I have to get 13 other channels, most of which have nothing to do with news, like the Golf channel and the Comedy network. With VibeVision, CNBC is part of a "News and Information" package with 7 other related channels. But of course I'm sure there are lots of other factors that would have to go into chosing it, such as the set-top box and whether or not you get Internet from them as well. Still it's pretty cool to be in Halifax, we get all the latest technology way before the rest of North America. It's interesting to compare Life Magazine's Images of the Century (apparently the Century ended in 1968) with Les Photos Du Siecle chosen by photographers for Photo magazine. The Associated Press has Photos of the Century that go right up to the end of the 90s. I can't believe AP didn't select the Tiananmen Square picture. In Our Century's Images from The Nando Times, they do have this arresting image. The other image that stands out for me is the Hindenburg, from the Photo magazine set. Added to web photos page. I liked this article Windows, Windows Everywhere, which is really about the dangers of monoculture. They do have an annoying pop-up ad though. Those should be banned. Link from Slashdot. Added to Articles: Computers. Sunday, August 12, 2001
I just consolidated some of the image links I have been blogging, added Earth from Above / La Terre Vue Du Ciel photography by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and put them all on a new page Wondrous Photos Elsewhere on the Web. Related to a posting by sjr about George W. Bush, here are a couple links I think are cool: - county-by-county graphic of the 2000 US election - Let's Ditch Dixie: The case for Northern secession the latter link can also be found in my Articles: Other section. So I hear this sawing, and all of a sudden this tree branch falls right outside my balcony, which is pretty surprising to me since I'm pretty high up. I go out on the balcony and look around the partition to see there's a guy on a rope, at about my level up the tree next to the one directly in front of me, sawing off branches. This is not the sort of thing one expects to see when one is about 15 metres above the ground. Jesu Cristo, there was just a big craaack - it sounds like he's sawing the whole tree down. These are pretty cool: The 1905-1907 Breasted Expeditions To Egypt And The Sudan: A Photographic Study. I like old photographs. It also gives me an excuse to say "Breasted Expedition Photos". Link from wood s lot. Well, I figured out how the moths were getting in. Upon examination in the light of day, I find there is a one centimetre open gap between my screen door and the glass door next to it. My balcony has actually quite an elaborate set of overlapping glass doors, but apparently they don't quite overlap perfectly tightly. I can't believe I've been here over 5 years and I never knew there was like a 2.5 metre long, 1 cm wide air gap onto my balcony. Anyway, there's certainly enough room for a whole, um, swarm? mothitude? of giant moths to come in. HOME - |
