Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

NCYO’s New Look

There are few blogs that really look as good as they can look but recently NYCO has undergone an upgrade which is visually attractive, well designed and functionally useful. This might leads one to suppose that I am praising its usability but I hate that word-like thing.

Anyway, even through there are three columns and blank space to the right and left, it words as the blank space compliments the rest in its natty grey. The shadowing between the columns keeps it from looking two-dimensional and cluttered. The “yellow box” to the upper-right with the lead side-story is a nice touch on the side-blog idea.

So it looks good and it works well. Good thing she is a good writer, too.

Last Friday Chat of The First Half

Tomorrow is closer to 2007 than 2005. We have already passed the solstice. Funny how it all just trips away. No nevermind, however, as there are do-ins to do and a long weekend before us. And we’ll see how far we get with today’s bullets as high-speed from Sympatico is chugging like a tramp steamer. No doubt all the new GX40 surveillance technology. Don’t be holding your breath waiting for spelling corrections today, all you grade-five ruler-tappers you.

  • Update3 : Rick Moranis – almost as Canadian as Paddle to the Sea.
  • Update 2: Michael and Aaaarold. I have a white shirt, too, by the way. Wore it today. I like white shirts. They are coming back. You never see ska band members in patterns or stripes. No way.
  • Update: YouTube is good because you can watch the Morton score amazingly anytime you want. It is bad because it does not have the NFB’s film Paddle to the Sea, the one thing that both expresses the soul of the nation and brings it together and brings us all together. Tommorrow, on Canada Day, children all over the land ought to be brought into elementary school gyms to watch Paddle to the Sea and eat creamsicles.
  • The Red Sox. I have not been talking about them and they go on a twelve game winning streak during June’s interleague play. Last night was apparently Coco-riffic with even Steve Somers of the Mets home station, WFAN in New York, going gaa-gaa about his “diving into a swimming pool” catch last night in the eighth to save the game. The view shown here with his head aimed at the green monster in mid-flight should give you some sense of the moment. A video of the catch is available at this page. Easier to watch on TooYube.
  • Two ailments I have which are exceedingly minor but which bug the heck out of me. First, rogue eyelashes. They stick in my eye. It only happened once I hit 40 and it drives me mental. Second, a comb-over sideburn. I have a bald patch 1/4 the size of a stamp. It changes everything. There. I have written something about myself. That is it. No more.
  • Today’s two World Cup games are a gem and a dud. If Italy wins, it should have won but if it loses it should have won. Germany v. Argentina, however, could be the game of the tournament. It is still early enough that the fear will not lock the knees of players gripped with the angst that they might make the play that loses the Cup. Luncheon table booked for second half.
  • Never one to see a high ground he won’t avoid, Junior is going to keep on holding on to the good things that got him all his success:

    President Bush told reporters he promised to take the findings of the court “very seriously”. But he signalled he might seek congressional approval to resurrect the tribunals. “To the extent that there is latitude to work with the Congress to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court, we will do so,” he said. “The American people need to know that this ruling, as I understand it, won’t cause killers to be put out on the street.”

    You can trust that the good politicians who need to get elected in the fall will ensure there is a sprinkling of natural justice throughout the process so that while the ding-bats will say the tribunals continue the kangaroo will no longer be in the room.

  • Did I mention coffee is good? Kicking Horse Sumatra this morning.
  • TVO is getting redone. I have enjoyed the now-axed Studio 2 but the format may have gotten tired and, yes, there is no doubt that half an hour a week of actual discussion of actual provincial politics would make any government tired of sending cheques. Too bad we do not have the benevolent giving class of our neighbours to the south where benefactors ensure that institutions like National Public Radio are becoming more and more independent of government support and influence and more and more able to address the needs of the community. Sadly, there are few other voices attending to the current affairs and life of Ontario as opposed to Canada. Good to see that Steve Paikin continues in a new news show called The Agenda that may make all my fears for naught.

That is it. It was like doing it on dial up and, while doing it on dial-up is what made the Internet what it is today, I do not like doing it on dial-up.

Upstate Blogging And Me

I am happy to see that NYCO has reorganized the Upstate Bloggers map. I am pleased to note that I am an honourary upstater – upon which badge [Ed.: …and you do get natty badges] I earned one tiny gold star recently as I helped organize an NCPR outreach session here in Kingston. Who knew there was a blogger in Watertown? If they wave will I see them?

Next trip south to the north comes Saturday to the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton which has a natty new website. Then, on Friday the 16th, Watertown plays Genesee Valley. Good field. I just figured out that Wakefield started his career in Watertown. Who knew?

The Redesigned CBC.ca

I came across the new vision for CBC.ca and it appears bland is in. Grey upon grey in an exciting vibrant riot of greyness:

  • The weirdest thing is the use small font of a medium grey on a coloured background for titles. It makes for very squinty reading. Sadly, before the CBC wallowed in white text on a black or other dark background. It was apparently too useful.
  • Other than that, the use of orange to highlight lesser points of interest on a page is just weird. You would think on the “Canada” news page the most important links are RSS, sign-in and services. Someone in tech clearly had a strong voice at the committee table. Otherwise “new” might have gotten the more visually important link.

I made some other pomposities here.

Friday Post-Spam Clean-Up Chat

Nothing like waking to a manual spammer who has left 47 identical comments on 47 separate posts. The decent spammers, the ones you would kick in the shin rather than higher if you had the chance, post a bunch of comments on one post so they are easy to delete. But no, the Romanian spam sweatshop has a new keener and he wants to comment on separate posts. Anyway, eleven minutes of my life gone but at least the place is clear and tidy again. That is what they say about me: he sure keeps a tidy blog.

  • I will not see The Di Vinci Code and not because it is trendier not to that to go. I really see no movies, considering such evenings an opportunity to go to pubs or practice lawn bowls. But this is weird:

    The 23-year-old University of Guelph graduate is one of a hundred or so Campus Crusade for Christ volunteers who’ll be visiting theatres across the country trying to get moviegoers to listen to a “Christian response” to Dan Brown’s bestselling book and the blockbuster movie it has spawned. “We’re not out to protest the movie at all,” Mr. Bellingham says. “We think this movie gives us a great opportunity to talk about Jesus Christ.”

    Jesus would be pleased. As He was pleased by the swarming to Mel’s movie as some sort of authorized version. Would the time not be better spent shoeing the children and feeing the poor and doing justice as the actual directions given might suggest? Harass movie goers…which letter of the apostles was that in exactly?

  • Coffee going. What else is going on? The Globe’s Harper kissy-kissy didn’t last long. I think the guy’s is getting a raw deal. Seeing as he campaigned on the “Government of One” slogan, we should not now be saying that the one desk in the PMO running everything is bad. Here, however, is what I think is going to happen. Sooner or later at question period, questions directed at anyone other than the PM will have the tag line at the end “sure you do not want to check with your boss?” Sooner or later his own backbench and cabinet will stop liking being treated like children. But that will be rude buecause there was that slogan…right?
  • Dang spammers. I hate being behind on Friday mornings. What else is going on? Here is a somewhat Canadian headline, though perhaps sharable with Norwegians and Wisconsinianians:

    Beware of moose, mayhem on holiday drive

    More than a million vehicles will hit Highway 400 alone this weekend in one of the busiest — and deadliest — weekends of the year, police say…

    I tend to beware of moose every weekend. But this is the holiday weekend that does start off the whole summer thing. We have no access to cottages but will be going to Ottawa to praise our rural overlords in the streets check out the trains at the Museum of Science and Technology. I have never understood why in a country so many thousands of miles across all the Federal museums are in one spot but there you have it. I can see the big trains so I will see the big trains. I will also have to find a statue of Queen Victoria and leave a few nickles at the base. I strongly highly urge you to do likewise just in case.

  • Mr. Lovery is apparently going to stay at Arsenal for the next four years, years of his prime, which is good. I missed the Champions’ League final this week in which we was robbed but as Morton has missed that game once again my expectation of disappointment has long been commonplace.
  • This is good breaking news but I wish we had Taleban and Al Queda packs o’ cards like we did for Saddammy and his pals back in 2003. It was a great PR piece as well as informational and wonderfully foreshadowed the growth of poker as a TV spectator sport. So can the power of the internet tell me who Mullah Dadullah is and what he did? This clip from the front page of the Google search is almost bad James Bond rip-off:

    Two of the council members, Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a confidante of Mullah Omar and the one-legged former intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah, are also names…

    He is also former two-legged. Anyway, nice to see him in a tiny cage.

That is it for today. Dang spammers. Get me on the nerves.

Friday Chat Or The Chat For The Day After The Red Sox Win!!!

Eight AM meeting across town so I may be brief today. Rainy Friday in May here, by the way. It’s close enough to winter still that you think rain is great.

  • Yes, the Red Sox took the Yankees in the final game of this series and did so in high style 5-3. It was a close game even if the Yanks got two of their three in the first inning when Wakefield’s knucklebal was wonky. After that is was all horsetails and flies. But the Red Soxs left the bases loaded three times so it could have been a bust out but for some good defence by the Yankees at the right times. Big outing for Loretta, the Sox second, who went 4/5.
  • I am inordinately fixated on baseball this weekend with the first GX40 Rewards ProgramTM Event at Cooperstown when Gary and I and maybe even portland will converge for the Hall of Fame Game as I got tickets. There have been rumours of later events such as a Thousand Island BBQ and the Flea says we can all go to Toronto one day and play with his vintage Twister games.
  • You know, I probably believe George when he says the government wasn’t “trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans” but should you really put yourself in the position where you have to say that? I believe him in the sense that the technology and personnel are simply not there to listen to everything and make coherent sense out of it all. And telephone records are always compellable by the courts on a subpoena issued on the request of a lawyer as opposed to by a judge upon a hearing. This is not really the stuff of privacy anymore than the internet is. Yet…there is that whole appearance thing and, more importantly, the mishandling of the appearance thing. Will he lose Congress to a hapless opposition. Will he be look back on one day as the US’s Paul Martin?
  • Apparently nice is the new cool. You have to look who is behind these sorts of studies, though, and I have it on good authority that the money for this bit of work came from the Association of Grannies and Librarians of Maine as well as the Cardigan Manufacturers Association of Indiana.

    He said fewer people identify with the classic image of cool than one would expect. For most, the new cool is someone who possesses more “socially desirable” characteristics. “I don’t know if I can blame marketers, or if there is even anyone to blame, but the mainstream got a hold of coolness and turned it into a mainstream version of coolness,” he said. “People now identify passionate and warm as cool, which is almost oxymoronic.”

    This, of course, is the leading edge of the new neo-socialist movement that will whip neo-cons off the map from 2008 to 2022. It’ll start with nice, move through additional arts classes in high school and end up in news papers dropping their business sections. Mark my words.

  • My Google – because I own one share – is getting more open. Hoo-ray!

    Talking to the BBC, Mr Schmidt also reflected on Google’s decision to adhere to Chinese government censorship rules in order to launch its new site in China. He said the decision was “the hardest the company has ever made” but added that, despite it being heavily criticised, he still felt it was the correct move. Mr Schmidt also believed that competition in the internet search business, especially from Microsoft and Yahoo would drive up prices and increase revenue rather than threaten them. Google appeared to be benefiting from its “limitless growth model”, he said, adding that more users, more advertisers and more content would fuel further demand.

    Excellent. More kowtowing to totalitarians and bizarre enununciations on economics please. These are the snippets you cherish after the bubble bursts.

Gotta run. Someone spell check this thing, wouldja?

Reader’s Survey: How’s It Going?

Time for a readers’ survey to give me an update:

  • Where are you?
  • How often do you read?
  • Do you think I am a bit manic?
  • What are your favorite topics?
  • Should I encourage portland to write more?
  • Which topics do you prefer: food and drink, politics, disdain for blogging, sports?
  • Do I go on and on?
  • No, really…where are you?
  • Do you follow the comments?
  • Are you a stalker?
  • Should I delete the wacko comments or let them ride?
  • Do you also read our sister station A Good Beer Blog
  • Do you read as many blogs as you did two years ago?
  • Is your time with blogs time you later regret giving to blogs?
  • Is the Flea right or me?
  • Is David Janes right or me?
  • Anything else?