Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Friday Bullets For Your Mid-November

I am finally getting used to the clocks changing. I suppose I am getting used to the Obama victory and maybe even the Harper one, too. Maybe even getting used to not being half my age now that I think of it. Is autumn the season of acceptance? Do we rage or go quietly into these dark nights and mornings? Quietly I think. Placated by the promise of Christmas buffets to come. Visions of heaping plates with both ham and turkey with, yes please, gravy over both. Finding the brussles sprouts with bacon amongst the covered trays.

  • Sometimes I am amazed by the detail and effort given to high school sports coverage in small town America.
  • Speaking of the near and international, who knew about Galloo? You can now own it.
  • One thing I would buy if I could.
  • Remember when the choice was between green shift and the call to be square and prudent? Given the circumstances being foisted, I am not all that uncomfortable with square and prudent. You? But isn’t selling and leasing back a shell game?
  • Iggy. Let us consider Iggy. The Ig-meister. The Iggy-tron. Is there enough new or even known to make him compelling? He certainly wears the clever clogs but wasn’t the last guy a professor, too?
  • Now we know where the aliens who one day will destroy us live.
  • Jay has had enough. He has invented his own right-of-right party and I have to say I approve. The more splintering schizmists the better. Sure I wouldn’t vote for 66% of it but that is not the point. Conservatives have been duped out of the 1980s Preston Manning vision in the wilderness – even now by Preston Manning as far as I can tell – and they have every right to feel ripped off even if the drive to the right proposed will place them exactly back where Preston sat – nowhere’sville.
  • On a related note, isn’t it somewhat comforting that Chretien had the decency not to create a think tank in his name given how little Manning’s is actually being listened to by the new breed of moderat-o-conservatives?
  • Has Ian got a point?

I offered to make lunch for a meeting tomorrow that had been set for 18-20 but which is looking like 45 now. I am a church lady. I dream of failing to fill sandwich trays. I email myself webpages with sandwich making hints. Then I am going to see Dylan tomorrow night. A very odd day is in the works. I need to find ear plugs.

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Group Project: Defending Blogging – Stale Dated Or Free?

This is quite a charming piece. Doc Searle. Remember him? Rob1 (there used to be a Rob2) to the right posted it on Twitter and I thought it was worth asking you about. I, obviously, have something about blogging as I do it daily and have done so for about 12% of my life. But is it actually that zone of freedom that social networks lack? It could be. But it takes a heck of a lot of work, too, not to mention requiring a bit of an obsession.

I compare that to my very recently discovered obsession with Last.fm – finally a collaborative web thing. I have long kicked at the web for being such a loner zone. And you have to admit that even Facebook has that “I’m down here in this pit!” feel to it, right? So do blogs actually reign supreme? Or would only an obsessive blogger think so?

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Canada Votes Day 6: Friday Bullet Points For Week One

There is a certain pattern to elections. The days come and go and within only a few days some patterns seem to appear. Generalities. Themes. Motifs, even. So far in this one the main theme I see is that the Liberals have not collapsed through their own sheer incompetency. I think we all had suspected they might. That is victory in itself. Next, Stephen Harper is trying to be nice and, in doing so, is showing more confidence than his prior chippy habits allowed – though sooner or later it might cloy. Third, faction and gridlock rules. And a fair bit of ho-hum. Something is really going to have to break for anyone to get momentum. Frankly, I think the Tories have a plan to do just that after a quiet first third, a initial phony campaign. But what? What can it be? You will just have to wait.

Other news on Day 6:

Hmmm…for the rest of you unCanadians out there – what else is going on outside of mapled politics?

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Friday Bullets For You And You And You And You…

…and especially for you, little Jimmy.

We stayed up again for a speech. I like speeches so I am something of a sucker but I thought there was just the right measure of menace and warning to the Republican party that my expectation that he would govern as an unfettered independent remains in place. I seem to have liked it more that Tiger but maybe because McCain spoke more to a person like me (internationally transposed, of course) than the party faithful. I liked this: “Let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second crowd: change is coming.” Me first? Sounds like an attack on neo-cons and libertarians to me.

  • I Once Knew Someone Now Famous Update: I dimly recall taking civil procedure at 8:30 am on Monday or some other ungodly hour from Thomas Cromwell in 1989. I paid more attention to the fall of the Berlin Wall that year, however, than when to bring a third party action (know what I mean…nudge, nudge) or when to garnish (right before dinner is served, as I recollect). Wonder what grade I received. He must have done better as he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada today.
  • Up here, Dion seems to be getting all snippy. Will this help given this?
  • Earth to Fox News: you are the mainstream media, too.
  • Nice touch delivering right to Poti. What else is on board?
  • I tried the new browser Chrome from Lord Goog and the Googleplexians – but I can’t run it on my four year old computer at home! Drag. It is good. Like the recent tabs closed as well as the favorites selection when you open a new tab. Egghead debate points here.
  • One good reason to be thankful for blogs.
  • So far no “rats flee sinking ship” comments that I know of. Maybe Emerson wants to try as an NDP now but why, Monty, why? What’s that…because you never got what you deserved? Errr…because you want to start a western party that actually cares about about reforming Canadian politics? Makes sense.
  • Just in case you were wondering, Morton sucks so far.

Surely that is enough. Surely your incessant demands for more bullet points has an end, a satiation point.

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Norman Was By

Other than a friend’s parent when I was a kid and the Undertone’s song “There Goes Norman”, I have little contact with Normans. Norman, the internet service provider tech, however expanded the Normy part of my world by 50% yesterday when he was over to check the issues with our high speed. He showed me all the weird wiring in our house installed by the last owners, he rigged us up to a more powerful line in the next street over…he gave me his work cell phone number. Later today – on Norman’s direction – a switch should be thrown that allows us the most powerful access to the information super highway that has been known to mankind. Or at least the level of serivce I have been paying for for two years.

I didn’t tell him we had been checking out the competition but if he pulls this off I am sticking with Bell because that means sticking with Norman.

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Friday Bullets For The First Of August

Can you believe it’s August already? Can you believe the decade is almost over? This is crazy. Who sped up the clock? August is a month that is quite remarkable for standing for not much. Has anything remarkable happened in August? Here is a list of things that happened on this date. Hey, in 860 the Peace of Koblenz was signed by Charles the Bare, Louis the German and Lotharius II. Why didn’t I think of Lotharius when I was naming the boy?

  • I have written about Manny many times. I will write about him no more, however, as Manny is now a player for the Dodgers. Jason Bay, however, is a player for the Red Sox. I trust back bacon sandwiches and maple syrup laced cocktails are the order of the day where you are today.
  • I don’t cross pollinate the beer blog posts over here but this is a great example of DadLit.
  • Lawless? Would this be the same colonial French who in the 1680s took the leaders of the Iroquois nation invited to meet in Kingston, caged them and sent them to be galley slaves?
  • I like it when Harper stays away from policy and just taunts. He is better at mean than bright.
  • I hate the new Google little icon. I’ve looked at the damn lower case purple “g” for, what, a couple of months now and I swear it’s the stupidest logo I have ever seen. I’d ask them why they did swtiched from the old “g” but…
  • A great primer on the rainbow pitch.

Well, that is enough for today. What do you want from me? Find a TV set to watch the Sox v. Oakland today. Watch Jason Bay get a standing ovation and then watch him quietly play great baseball.

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Friday Bullets For Stay-cation Week

Well, I suppose that the promised break in the days of rain that have been mid-July in Easlakia has to stand for something. I can’t think when I last took a summer week off and did not load the family for somewhere – which is just as well as a van full of damp is not a happy van. It has been a time of napping and of reading something other than the glowing screen. I did not home repair. Of that you can be truly proud.

  • Byelection Fever Update: About 1% of the Canadian electorate go to the polls on 8 September. Woooot!!! This is what we have been waiting for.
  • Ben is proxy blogging Berlin. I hear we need change.
  • What do you think about the fence?
  • My new found status as Canada’s sixth most popular political blogger demands that I make some obtuse observations on the state of doings in Ottawa. Except nothing seems to be going on. Who cares about election plans – I want substance. But aside from the general quality of Federal leadership, there seems to be only one big issue: carbon tax. I still think this is a yawner and a loser for whoever gets marked with the green tint. It shouldn’t be so but as there are no strong answers yet, proposing the unpopular and the unlikely-to-succeed is seldom a yellow brick road to a majority hold on Parliament. And it’s no more than a plank at best. We need more.
  • So which Federal issues deserve more airplay?? The recent premiers’ gathering raised the prospect of actual steps towards First Nations reconciliation. Wouldn’t that be nice of real steps were taken towards that national quandary? How about infrastructure – Ottawa and Toronto have made nice to buy bridges and buses. But do you run an election on that? Rideology not ideology??
  • Al Purdy’s cottage is for sale. Owning that would be rather neato.
  • This week’s weather shattered the promise of a massive harvest for a lot of Ontario fruit growers. Hailstorms. We need to start the “Buy A Peach With A Bruise” campaign. Why do all the farmer’s protests have to be around the combine harvesters? Who’s behind this anyway?
  • Apparently the oversight committee decided to lay off hitting each other in the head with hammers. Who thought that was ever a good idea?

Full disclosure: I wrote most of this Thursday. Between the dodgy internet access and my new found love for not being up at 6:15 am, I thought it would be prudent to plan ahead so as to ensure you desk jockeys have your moments of bulletty bliss at the crack of dawn.

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Friday Bullets Without The Pain…Except For The Pain

I need a new back today. Despite the sit up and other exertions of unbelievable dedication, the back still goes. And it is quite prepared to go before just before the summer holiday begins. Such is life. Good thing I plan to do nothing.

  • Nevermind those who 3% of folk who think George W. Bush will be well remembered by history. He’s going to be considered a goofball if his final words to the G8 are anything to go by: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” He has to plan that sort of thing. That can’t be what he’s coming up with off the cuff.
  • I wish Google had reviewed the whole fewer and better ads thing with me. See that over there down to the right? Who am I to complain about who give me that big $350 bucks a year?
  • The Mets: 10 for their last 10.
  • I have never liked Paul McCartney that much so I guess I am with that 0.3% of Quebecers who are unhappy. Surely he is not the biggest act in the world, surely they could have gotten Plastic Bertrand.
  • Kottke noted a great illustration of the disutility of information technology this week. Because the information was not sortable by the critical factor, availability of restaurant seats, the application is practically useless.
  • No other politician generated more dancable tunes, though no ska that I know of. Happy birthday, Nelson!

My got to explore the home pharmacy some more. I understand one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. But which is which?

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Friday Bullets For The Greatest Weekend Of Your Life

Happy Fourth of July to our American Readers! I am doing a bit of research that points to our fair town being something of the refuge of the first terrorists of your fair land. Bands of Tory and Mohawk Loyalists in the 1780s left here, for example, to destroy all before them led by John Johnson, step-son of Molly Brant. Somewhere I read that of the 100 flour mills between Albany and Syracuse NY only one was left in operation that fall. These efforts kept the US army out of northern NY through lack of supplies and, hence, made a buffer that kept our small Loyalist fringe alive. In many ways, Kingston is Ontario’s Plymouth Rock but also factually related to New York. We should celebrate our own Ontarian (and therefore western Canadian) survival on this day as much as our southern pals do.

  • Speaking of our near neighbours, I came across this website of abandoned buildings of northern New York. Note LaFarge mansion to the lower left.
  • Two archeology blogs.
  • I have negotiated a 8000 character limit for blog comments. Please use these wisely as there us a character limit globally being studied by the UN.
  • I think it is time to agree with Harper’s point made yesterday – the founding of Quebec is a founding moment in Canadian history. We suffer from divisions that really are only in the mind. The idea now that there are two solitudes should be strange to us all – we have that egality now that was missing. Canada needs to understand itself to be French and English as well as First Nation, Scot and those who came after as well – not as 1970s multiculturalism but just as neighbours together. We need to find our own haka, remember and play baseball, cricket and rugby as well as lacrosse and snowshowing. And be thankful for Halifax, Quebec and Kingston, the three citadels that protected one young nation.
  • Darcey notes the passing of Bozo.
  • Wine is being grown by Lake Huron. What’s so wrong with global warming?
  • Gee, I sure hope the rude stuff I looked at on YouTube when it started up doesn’t come out in court documents.

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