Back / Juan

Timbaaaa!!!You would have noticed I was down. My servers sit happily on PEI where hurricane Juan tore through last night knocking out electricity. I am in Ontario, 1500 km to the west. If you click on my favoured bloggers to your right (my left) you will find some other bloggers there getting up over the afternoon – Kevo is already up but as he runs the ISP there (where my web email sits) you would expect he’d be first.

ELMA - ESS JUAN - WHERE ARE YOU????My folks in Rusticoville said it was like a truck hitting the cottage constantly for 2 hours at the worst of it. Lots of trees down and there is a ship in trouble off Anticosti Island in the Gulf. It is also election day....sad to see... Halifax got hit with even stronger winds up to 150 km per hour. I do not know the name the sailing ship which is shown here sunk at its wharf. On CBC’s Maritime Noon, I heard tales of trees older than 200 years being ripped apart and many of those at the Public Gardens being badly damaged. I am waiting for Mike Campbell’s blog to get up and updated to read his prespective from inside the city.

Big ups or props or… whatever the young folk are saying these days…to silverorange for getting this up so fast care of the hunking Honda generator. Gas powered inter-provincial blogging in addition to awards for usability. Lots of pictures from Charlottetown here. Here is another Juan related graphic for the hurricane nerds out there:

Juan's aim

Ottawa

neat-oWas up in Ottawa overnight last night at brother Dougie’s. Played a little 1980’s Coleco and a little 1960’s Munroe, if you know what I mean. The old sets are getting a little tired but I still smoked him. He and me are hockey junk nerds and I took the opportunity to scan a few things including this dandy Golden Seals patch just like the ones I wore on my jeans jacket in elementary school. Made at Voyageur Eblems, New Hamburg, Ontario between Kitchener and Stratford and sold at every Canadian Tire front counter in the mid-70’s.

Took the kiddlies to the Canadian Museum of Civilization – and again wondered why there are not regional Federal museum branches with this stuff moving across the land rather than playing to pretty empty houses in Ottawa. Up on the fourth floor there was a pretty neat-o exhibit on the 1570’s summer iron ore mining expeditions of Martin Frobisher, namesake of my cat, to Baffin Island. [Did anyone call Martin “Frobie” and scratch his belly?] Exactly the kind of small exhibit that could move from province to province every 4 months or so on a tour.

Bag of real bagels for lunch.

Rats: “See ya, Ship!”

From Brother Iain’s yellow press:

As Ontario’s Conservatives continued to trail in public opinion polls, dozens of Tory aides, including senior staff, have been shopping their resumes around ahead of the Oct. 2 election. Among them are members of the office of Premier Ernie Eves, senior members of Finance Minister Janet Ecker’s staff, and an administrative assistant in Education Minister Elizabeth Witmer’s office. Many of the resumes — posted electronically on workopolis.com or monster.ca — [Emphasis mine] have been updated in the past week or two, and several in just the past few days.

Good web savvy reporting.

The Internet of 1945

The interview with Tim Berners-Lee at BBC news this morning includes reference to the work of Vannevar Bush.

…the idea of hypertext and links had actually been invented some time ago. In fact it was 1945, I think. Vannevar Bush wrote a great paper about how it could be done. But he imagined it all being done using microfilms and electric sensors and mechanics because he didn’t have computers and he didn’t have the internet then, and then Ted Nelson invented the idea of hypertext.

The Atlantic has a 1945 article by Bush on his ideas here where he “urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge”

Faskinatin’.

A Fund For George

I got an email from my pal Ann in Winnipeg about a mutual friend from University of Kings College days, George Earles, who died earlier this year. Brian Cormier, another Kingsman, has set up a web group. At Brians site, there is a bit of a bio of George and some posts from friends which goes with the picture at the right: “George Earles, BJ Hons. ’86, University of King’s College. Born on May 7, 1964, George passed away in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on March 4, 2003. Family, friends and colleagues are welcome to post messages and photos to remember George.” George was well loved by all who knew him, even if, sometimes, we suffered from his Newfie wit turned on our inability to keep up.

Ann wrote:

When I was in Halifax this August I dropped into the Alum Office inter alia (as lawyers say) to see how the endowment for George’s memorial scholarship was doing. I just got an update letter with my tax receipt saying that it is sitting at $7700 – $2300 short of the $10,000 needed for the endowment. Do you think there are any Crows who would be inclined to support the scholarship but haven’t gotten around to it or don’t know about it?

Here is the contact information for UKC alumni:

Bev Mahon, bev.mahon@ukings.ns.ca
Alumni and Public Relations Officer
University of King’s College
6350 Coburg Rd.
Halifax, NS B3H 2A1
Phone: (902) 422-1271
Fax: (902) 425-0363

Put the hand in the pocket, guys and give Kings a call. And if you have lost touch with someone…give them a call, too.

Wine by Radio

I was listening to the AM dial yesterday as summer’s close leads [as you all say with one voice] to improved amplitude modulation broadcast propagation and caught the oddest show on WHAM 1180 Rochester, New York: The WHAM wine show. I thought I was listening to good college radio. It was unstructured, amateur and funny. During the show the host and guest were popping corks, comparing wines, comparing glassware and talking over music they liked. It must have been live as they were also giving running scores for the Buffalo Bills game being played on rival radio stations, perhaps to a 95% market share, given western NY tastes.

Given the medium, the show could not rely on long pans of vinyard vistas or uncious hosts puckering their lips approvingly. They actually had to describe what was happening in their noses and mouth.