Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.



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copywrong

Dear Canadians, it's important to remember that even if you're a total US political junkie, you... umm... well no matter how hard you think about it, you're not actually having any effect.

How about focusing some effort on our own government, which also cranks out daft ideas on a regular basis.

The latest being our copyright situation.
If we're not careful, we'll get WIPOed out.

www.digital-copyright.ca

Darren Barefoot: Copyright Reform and the WIPO Copyright Treaty. posted by Richard at 20:28 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

tons more fun with maps

Darren Barefoot locates even more cool red vs blue maps.

If you looked at this year's map of the US voting and thought, 2000 all over again, this map shows just how true that is.

Switch

This is one that shows (using the US, rather than the Canadian colouring) where the red zones are up north: Canada, by comparison.

In case you're wondering what the effect is of me blogging these maps...

Manifesto Multilinko hits

02 Nov, Tue  	  58  	

03 Nov, Wed  	  106  	

04 Nov, Thu  	  119  	

05 Nov, Fri  	  168  	

I suppose considering there are 300 million people in the US, plus interested Canadians, an increase of 50-100 hits per day is not exactly dramatic. posted by Richard at 20:17 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Blogger makes most everything you enter into your profile a clickable search group link thing.

So here are all the people with Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in their profile. posted by Richard at 10:20 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

wiki

I haven't been paying any attention to the Wiki world.
I finally decided to try it out as a better way to quickly organize and edit info (I have a mania for organized lists of links).

Tried Friki, but I didn't like its link syntax. It's nice though in that it's just a .war you can drop in a Tomcat server.

In this process, I discovered that Wiki has Yet Another syntax for editing text and links, different from HTML. Sigh.

Am now playing with SnipSnap. I like its (nonstandard) link syntax and extensive out-of-the-box capabilities. It's a completely standalone system.

I made my first Wikipedia modifications: I didn't like some of the stuff in the List of well-known ports (computing) page so hey presto, I deleted some of the (non-registered) ports and added some explanatory text. posted by Richard at 13:38 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

oh blogger, you POS

status.blogger.com reports

Friday, November 05, 2004

We had another significant problem with a database server last night that would have resulted in a large number of errors and problems with accessing posts. We are working to migrate data off of this troubled server and replace it with better hardware.

Posted by Jason at 10:06 AM

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

One of the database servers was having performance trouble for several hours this morning starting at about 5am PST. This has slowed down the site overall and we're working to address this problem.

Posted by Jason at 11:22 AM

posted by Richard at 13:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Rogers Photo is now operational.

rogersphoto.ca

4x6" $0.39
8x10" $4.95

RP is powered by siberra
and Siberra is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Best Buy Canada
and Best Buy owns FutureShop, including FuturePhoto.ca

So if you can figure that one out, you understand business better than I do.

Added to Digital Photo Print Services Available in Canada. posted by Richard at 17:16 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

This is awesome: Canada 2.0

I would only argue slightly that it should also be a thin strip through Washington and Oregon on the west coast, as they have depicted for California, because it's really only the cities in a strip on or near the Pacific that vote Democratic.

Via Place + Thyme.

UPDATE: McWet found a bunch more cool maps for his maproom.

I particularly liked the "purple" maps, that use the mix of red+blue in each state or county. Here's the 2004 US Election county-by-county purple map.

The Americans haven't quite got their US-Canada integration maps correct. Correctly done, there should be some southern chunk of Alberta that joins the Red US. Maybe some southern slices of the other prairie provinces too?

UPDATE 2004-11-06: Slashdot links to a cool 3D map, but I'm not sure how useful it is. Not quite certain what the different heights represent. posted by Richard at 07:45 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Went to Savana Cafe last night.
Oh my god it was so delicious.
The place was packed. I am happy to see them doing so well.

Previous blogged visits to SC:
2002-09-23
2003-02-26
2003-03-22 posted by Richard at 07:41 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

I find the county-by-county US election result map interesting.
Keep in mind again it's total by state that is used, not individual counties.

Here are the 2004 results so far from USA Today. Click and you will get their website where (if you can fight off their ads) you can click back and forth between 2004 and 2000.



Here's a cool map I found that I'm pretty sure is the 2000 results.

Lastly, my copy of the classic 2000 USA Today county-by-county map. posted by Richard at 03:43 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

More exit poll respondents -- about 22 percent -- called "moral values" the election's most important issue then cited the economy, terrorism or Iraq. Those expressing this sentiment backed the president overwhelmingly, 80 percent to Kerry's 18 percent. Bush did similarly well among the 19 percent who identified terrorism as their top issue.

Kerry won overwhelmingly among the 20 percent who pointed to the economy and jobs as the most important issue -- taking this group 80 percent to the president's 18 percent. The 15 percent who named the Iraq war as the race's top issue backed the senator by a 3-1 margin.

The president's supporters were overwhelmingly positive about the current situation in the economy and Iraq. Those with more pessimistic views on these topics resoundingly said they voted for Kerry.

Small inroads make difference for Bush

Here is the thing: the two camps care about completely different things.
The Democrats can't believe someone would vote for Bush purely on some religious values thing.

But they do.
Oh boy, do they ever.

The Republicans are acting much like the Saudi Royal Family.
That is, they keep themselves in power by supporting religious extremists.
The danger for the US and the world is that, in either nation, the religious extremists may get tired of just being courted and appeased by the government and may want to become the government.

The Democrats, and the rest of the Western world, regard this march to an American theocracy with a combination of disbelief and fear.

I think I have had enough with these topics until 2008. posted by Richard at 18:04 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

This amused me

CNN.com - Voter turnout highest since 1968

The 120 million figure represents just under 60 percent of eligible voters -- the highest percentage turnout since 1968, Gans said.

CBC.ca - [Canadian Election] Voter turnout lowest since Confederation

At 60.5 per cent, turnout was down from 2000, when it hit the previous low of 61.2 per cent.

In case you can't parse this, this year's "highest US election voter turnout since '68" was slightly less than the worst voter turnout ever in Canada. posted by Richard at 14:09 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

2 best rolex spams

"News: Red Sox get Rolex watches"
"Fake Rolex Watch"

'Rolex' spam taps into bling-bling culture

I am keeping count in this posting. posted by Richard at 06:57 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

So they had this huge election campaign month after month after month plus analysis and talkety talk, and the results are... exactly the same as 2000, except maybe for Ohio.

It's almost like the US electorate is frozen into red or blue mode.

Daily Show last night was ok.
I liked Jon's closing, something like "and in the upper right you see the blue states, where I expect we (Democrats) will huddle for the next four years, possibly weeping".

Perhaps it's time to recall a story I have linked and blogged a number of times:

Let's Ditch Dixie: The case for Northern secession (Slate, March 14, 2001)

O! Come! Blue states (or blue cities, anyway)... join Canada.

I liked the Dixie article so much I blogged about it
2001-05-26
2001-08-12
2001-12-30
2003-03-20
2004-06-01 posted by Richard at 06:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

red vs blue

Bush 254
Kerry 252
270 needed to win

Other news outlets are still considering more states undecided.
New York Times has B 249, K 242.

USA Today map (non-interactive)



Only US cities vote Democratic.
For example, you may look at Washington State and think oh, solidly Democratic.
But it actually looked like this in 2000 (Economist map)



and like this in 2004 (CNN map)



I have done a previous posting comparing the maps of the last (2004) Canadian election with the 2000 US election. posted by Richard at 06:14 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Did some minor updates to Paper Vote Canada.

Tomorrow's US election will almost certainly provide lots of material.
I'm hoping I can use the US experience to help argue against the expansion of electronic voting in Canada. posted by Richard at 21:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

October hit parade

October 2004 (Sept 2004)

main site
total 144271 (132110)
port-table 103267 (92148)
oracle-port-table 1432 (1594)
trojan-port-table 16165 (16591)

Google saw
port+oracle 110,663 (98,910)
port-table 106,639 to Oct 30 (96,959)
oracle-port-table 1,358 to Oct 30 (1,567)

Extreme Tracking saw
this blog Manifesto Multilinko 1862 (1615)
Paper Vote Canada 399 (229)

Also see
Sept 2004 hits
Aug 2004 hits posted by Richard at 06:04 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

My US election prediction: a fiasco of unprecendented proportions.

Jon Stewart, also with the same idea.

Daily Show: Election 2004: Fiasco Preview

As you DS watchers may already know, JS will be doing a live special election night Tues Nov 2, 2004 @ 10PM Eastern.

I am now officially not writing anything more about the election.

P.S. Bush sucks.
P.P.S. If you're American, please go vote on November 2. posted by Richard at 21:48 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)