Good Planning

Pub, Art, Hair, Curry, Texmex. I like this block – kitty corner to S&R – which incorporates a 1870’s firehall, some limestones a few decades older as well as a new brick build with a hair place that fits in the scheme. Next to it, tucked behind down the alley to the right is Curry Village, one of the great Indian restaurants in the downtown. Behind to the left you’ll see a Holiday Inn which was built on an old wharf like others in the downtown – rather than on land occupied by historic buildings. At the intersection, Cornerstone is a private art gallery with Inuit art among other things. The 1876 firehall half shown to the right of the picture is a Lonestar. To the left, the newish pub Merchant MacLiam built in the last year or two fills the oldest space in the scene, an 1840 warehouse with a very similar build to Halifax’s Lower Deck with more of a Middle Deck crowd. The pub, curry and texmex all meet in patios at the back with view of the river.

Poached

Have a look at this. Someone is taking my RSS feed and those of others I know and aggregating them on another site and sticking up advertising. How odd. I don’t know if I feel good about this or bad. I certainly have not been asked permission or offered a share of the likely tiny revenue stream from the Google ads. Reminds me of all the bother in the mid-90’s about deep linking, focusing on two news web sites on the Shetlands. Whose stuff is this that I do? I understand it to be mine under the Copyright Act. To the credit of the aggregator, there is no doubt that the attributation to me is there. But does someone else get the chump change for my writing that ought to buy me that Friday Guinness?

Three Winter Ales

These are three great candidates for the best have-one-bottle beer.

Nothing for the faint hearted, though: Young’s Double Chocolate Stout ($3.10 for 500 ml at 5.2%) from London, UK; Victory Storm King Imperial Stout ($2.40 for 355 ml at 9.1%) from Pennsylvania; and Anchor Liberty Ale ($3.55 for 650 ml at 6.2%) from San Francisco and all at the LCBO these days.

Each one is big in its own way – Liberty is massively hopped, Youngs has chocolate malt as well as real chocolate and the Victory is like licking the coffee grinds out of the percolator. Maybe you have to brew to like beers this big but I have so I do. Snazzy labels, too.

World Upside Down

Just watched Bill Maher on Larry King and heard the extraordinary statement from Maher – unchallenged by King – that on 9/11 President Bush’s father was having breakfast with Osama’s Dad. Is that right? The connections between the Bush’s and the Saudi rich are well documented and the spiriting of many of them out of the USA soon after the attacks a simple fact. If it is true, however, that they were having breakfast, it is amazing that this is not well known. If it was the case in the previous presidency, it would have been something you would never have heard the end of from Limbaugh or Brudnoy. Imagine Churchill’s Pappy having a snack with Adolf’s Dad in September 1939. We’d know. Michael will tell me if it is untrue.

In other mindboggling news I learned about today, I saw this story on local North Country NY TV news this evening:

St. Lawrence County’s Amish community can open the curtains once again. A Gouverneur man is behind bars, charged with public lewdness for allegedly flashing Amish households.

St. Lawrence County sheriffs investigators say 24 year old Timothy J. Thomas would park in front of Amish houses along County Route 10 in the Heuvelton area, jump out of his vehicle naked, flash the Amish, then calmly return to his vehicle and continue on to work. Investigators say Thomas is suspected of a number of such incidents but January 16th is when he pulled it off again, leading to his arrest.

Weather records for January 16th show the temperature that day hovered around zero, meaning Thomas risked exposing his extremities to frostbite by the time he hot-footed it back to his car. Thomas, of State Rt. 58 in Gouverneur was arraigned today on the misdemeanor count and jailed in lieu of $1,000 cash bail or $2,000 bond. Investigators say he may have targeted Amish houses because of their lack of phone service to summon authorities.

So much so wrong with the whole plan – let alone the journalists’ idea that being entirely naked is “flashing”. Why bother the Amish? There is actually a history of attacks on them [which they do not report on principle] despite theirs being a society of consent – even if unlike your average life at the mall.

The Carnival of Canada’s Prize for Week Seven

When I walk by all I can hear is shouts of 'crouch', 'flashbang', 'spray the room!!!' over and over...

In addition to my best picks post for this my week as editor of Carnival of Canucks, I am awarding a prize, a sort of lifetime achievement medallion. It is not going to a person. It is not for a blog. The winner of the first weekly award of merit [and perhaps the last unless the next editors pick it up and run with it] is this somewhat unassuming building in Charlottetown PEI where 12 or so people work and 8 or so blogs are maintained. It is the home of two small web application and design firms, silverorange Inc. and Reinvented Corp. – or something like that. At the moment the following blogs are being updated on a fairly regular basis:

  • Acts of Volition: this blog covers web news, pop culture and attracts an amazing volume of readers – when Steve posted petition on a bit of a whim, he got over a thousand responses. When he points out design issues in some web products, the creators sometimes pipe up. He has also started Acts of Volition Radio. Update: they are even talking about Steve this thursday at the Berkman Bloggers Meet.
  • CEO Blues: Dan has been on the longest Outward Bound trip in history which has apparently lasted for months up a glacier in BC. He is currently on Day 19 of 21 and, in finding himself, has found himself stinky and mouse infested. It’s time to come home.
  • Delta Tango Bravo: Daniel has a gift for the superlative and likes to write about things that strike his taste – paintings, film, archetecture. His taste is good and his white on black design natty.
  • newrecruit.org: Stephen runs an on-line hockey web site, talks about web news and posted the best post about advent of winter I have ever seen – important for any award of merit in Canada.
  • Reinvented: run by my fifth cousin-in-law, Peter has a run the site since May 1999 and, while it started as a business web site for business news without only 13 posts in 1999, it has evolved and for years been a blog where a discussion can get started and go off in any direction. Update: and when he gets a head of steam, he can get quite specifically upset. Good post.
  • Silverorange Labs: Stuff for web application brainiacs. I don’t get much of it. But that’s me. If you are a web
    design brainiac read it. Free code here. Is that like saying “free beer tonight” for the rest of the world?
  • Reinvented Labs: Ditto but more for the Linux and Mac stuff…I think. Unlike the guys at silverorange, Ruk is pretty much a one man show on the tech end and explains things from start to finish.
  • Reinvented World: The Rukster’s truest recent obsession are travel books. He most recently reviews a book about a trip in 1950 across the Atlantic in a modified jeep. Scans of gatefold maps a plenty. If you ever, like Pete, have dreamed of having rich pals called Nigel and Geoffery Hyphenated-Name who invite you to tag along in a queue of Land Rovers crossing Bolivia, this place is for you.

Amazing. One red building in a small town Canada and eight views of the world. Oops, forgot one thing. They ran a conference last fall that attracted Dave Winer out of the blue and which also had a blog, too. Nine. Maybe there are more hidden there that I don’t know about.