« September 2005 | | November 2005 »
We've got a promising opportunity for one of our clients for some coverage. However, we're in need of some video conferencing kung-fu. Does any locals have a system which we can borrow, rent or steal?
Alternately, have you used any professional video conferencing services in Vancouver? Any recommendations?
As it's Hallowe'en and all, I thought I'd have a quick troll through today's web stats to see what ghoulish (or at least bizarre) things people are searching for:
How to buy a liver
psychologist and fake abduction
buy my parent
big flank sex
hollywood forever cemetary
3 cans of Coke a day
scariest places in New Jersey
Cain
extra safe condom prevent pregnancy
Every result tells a story, don't it? Thanks to MyBlogLog for the handy, easy to parse results.
The Movie Blog asks an interesting question: what scares you most in the movies? Their list, plus what their commenters say:
Creepy kids
Not seeing what should be seen - hidden faces, action off camera
Seeing something the character can't
...and similar to that one, seeing something before it happens
Thick forests at night
Noises off camera
Corn fields and children
And harrassing phone calls from within the home as I'm trying to babysit.
Calm people in violent situations
Gigli and Battlefield Earth
Amen on that last one. Let's see--what scares me? Yeah, creepy forest scenes always scare me. As Japanese cinema has demonstrated, dirty water is pretty freaky. Things inside people (a la Alien) creep me right out. This reminds me of an old post called Childhood Terrors, in which we discuss what scared us as kids. That stuff probably still scares us.
What have you got?
I remember reading and enjoying The Children of Men nearly a decade ago. It's the only James novel I've read--I think most of her work is in the crime and mystery genres. Here's a plot summary:
The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set in and around a dystopian London fractious with violence and warring nationalistic sects, Children of Men follows the unexpected discovery of a lone pregnant woman and the desperate journey to deliver her to safety and restore faith for a future beyond those presently on Earth.
Today I learned that it's going to be adapted for the screen, to be released in 2007. Alfonso Cuarón, whose previous work includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Y tu mamá también (a film concerned with another aspect of reproduction) will direct. The cast looks excellent--Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine (excellent, by the way, in The Weatherman), Clive Owen and Julianne Moore.
Last fall I wrote about the brilliance of Stephen King's Dark Tower books. I mostly quoted Cory Doctorow, actually, who put it better than I could. I haven't read the final novel of the seven-book series, but I'm looking very forward to it.
Happily, Slashdot reports that King and Marvel comics are going to collaborate on a comic book based on the series. Can a movie (or movies) be far behind?
Thinking about a possible movie, I've been puzzling over who should play the lead--essentially, a younger Clint Eastwood. My friend Matthew offered the obvious solution: Viggo Mortensen.
The folks at Simon & Schuster contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in reading and writing about Degrassi Generations: The Official 411. What the heck, I said. I was a pretty loyal watcher of "Degrassi Junior High" and "Degrassi High", and I'd seen a couple episodes of "Degrassi: The Next Generation".
The book covers all the shows, from their origins in "The Kids of Degrassi" to TNG. Predictably, there's a heavy emphasis on the latter--the book's obviously being published based on the current success of the show.
It's your bog-standard guide for fan-boys and fan-girls, covering everything you'd expect to find in a thorough who's-who and what's-what about the shows. There are detailed profiles of the casts, an episode guide, and short essays on show elements like the music or set. My favourite bit was the "where are they now" section on the original cast. Stephanie has a band in Toronto, Rebecca works in child mental healthcare, and the twins are both teachers.
Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Chasing Amy fame, is an original fan-boy, and wrote the introduction. Smith and I shared (well, we've still got it) a deep affection for Caitlin, played by Stacie Mistysyn. He writes:
Caitlin Ryan was the girl of my dreams: she was smart, soulful, beautiful, socially-conscious, and handicapped (if, indeed, epilepsy can be categorized as handicapped). That combination meant that she could stand on her own two feet, yet still needed to be cared for and protected from the cruel, harsh world as well.
Smith, of course, went on to direct and star in three episodes of TNG.
For the hardcore fan of either shows, The Official 411 is probably worth picking up. The Internet offers up a lot of the content in this book, but it's sometimes hard to find, and hardly works as a collector's item.
Bonus Link: A charming musical summary of the new show (thanks to Lex).
I applaud the folks at RocketBoom for continuing to try new things. The casual news anchor shtick works well, but they're clearly not married to it. Today's episode is an amusing parody of some school dress code video.
The BBC is awesome. After Rachel Weisz, it's the best thing Britain ever made. Via Wonderland, the Ancient History section of their website has a cool looking free Web game called Death in Sakkara: An Egyptian Adventure. I got through about 30 seconds of it before it killed Firefox on my PowerBook, but that's probably because Firefox for Apple sucks.
Wired has an article on the dearth of women-friendly online sex games, and discusses what's on the horizon:
One of the questions I get asked most frequently is "where can I find good cybersex?" And one of my answers is games, with the caveat that you shouldn't join a MMPORG just for sex. Rather, games are places to meet other people who share at least one interest with you, and sometimes the relationships that arise lead to flirting and cybersex. Sometimes they don't.
Frankly, the links are the best part of the article. There's the International Game Developers Association's sex blog (who knew?), and an article on the forthcoming Spend the Night. Oddly, the article doesn't cite the weird German game Singles: Flirt Up Your Life.
As I mentioned last week, there's a lot of buzz about Flock, the new social browser built on top of Firefox. There's been a few anti-Web 2.0 articles, but here's some serious anti-buzz: Flock Sucks, the weblog. It begins with "Flock’s website doesn’t even tell you what Flock is. How web 2.0". What follows are 80 posts with a clear-eyed hate on for Flock. The blogger here clearly has some technical aptitude, and is clued into the space. It'll be interesting to watch how long they last before they wear themselves out.
Andy, a Flock developer, replies:
I guess I should make some sweeping controversial statement. Hmm. Web 2.0 is a cynical attempt to drive ad revenue to websites and is just a response to popup-blocking in browsers (Thanks Ian, you master of sweeping controversial statements, you); Web 2.0 is so yesterday, the new hot thing is Flock 0.5.
Then we've got Xeni Jardin's article in Wired--Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show. It features the usual discussion of Wikipedia's editing model, and so forth.
Lastly, this has nothing to do with the backlash, it's just worth mentioning. EirePreneur points to Tablane, apparently a new Flockesque browser built in County Mayo, Ireland. They're apparently going to release the first alpha, or some more information, in about 20 minutes.
I know, I know, this has been a week of my constantly asking for your help, my dear readers. This will be the last one for a while. It's sometimes hard not to abuse this hive mind, though, you know?
As I mentioned a while back, we're running QA Podcast for one of our clients. These are 15 to 20 minute informal conversations between two or more software professionals about quality assurance issues. The talks are pretty specific, and generally pretty technical.
We've been very happy with the response--the subscriber base is happily growing and we even got a little mainstream press. I'd be remiss in not throwing some love to the Bryght guys, for letting me borrow their podcasting setup for local chats.
We're scheduling guests for upcoming shows (we try to do one every two weeks), and I thought I'd throw the door open for suggestions. Feel free to suggest yourself, or somebody you know who's passionate about QA (and, I'll bet, great fun at a party). You can comment or just email me. Guests can be local, or we've done a couple of sessions over the phone if they're not.
What about some of you Web 2.0 folks? How does QA change in a slippery read/write world?
An old friend writes with an odd question from her law professor:
Can you set out for me a little list of major literary rewrites of Hamlet and of the Odyssey, particularly those looking at the story from different angles? An example of the former is John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius (telling the Hamlet story as centred around G & C), and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; an example of the latter is this new Penelopeiad by Margaret Atwood telling the story from Penelope's point of view.
He is looking for 4 or 5 of the best-known or most important retelling on each of them with a bit of information about what is unique about each retelling.
Can you help? I'll try to free up my brain later in the day to think about it, but for now all I've got is O Brother, Where Art Thou? I'm pretty sure she's not looking for movies, though. There's also Stephen Berkoff's heavy revision of Hamlet, but that's more a mashup than an actual retelling.
After all the discussion of TiVo coming to Canada around here, I couldn't resist posting Heather's amusing photo. Heather and Jen (that's her with the tongue) broke for the border to join the Cult of TiVo.
A brief and amateur history of memory assistance.
How will my one-month old nephew remember the world, when he's got all this technology to do it for him?
Earlier today, I asked for some help in convincing my friend, er, Nils to dispense with a dubious SEO company. Thanks to everybody who offered suggestions. Here's the email I sent to my misguided friend:
Before committing to any particular SEO strategy, you want to ask a lot of specific questions about the nature of the company's approach. Julie mentioned that you're paying an SEO company to include you in a series of 'directories'. This, to me, sounds a lot like link farming, which, of course, is a form of spamdexing. Why is this bad?
What's the foolproof way to do SEO, that the search engines will always like?
- Most importantly, search engines frown on it. To quote the article I linked to: "Search engine operators consider link farms an abuse and attempt to detect them, to remove them from their indices or penalize their content rank." These strategies can get you banned from Google and Yahoo.
- That's right: banned. To quote from Google's guidelines for webmasters: Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or 'bad neighbourhoods' on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."
- This sort of SEO strategy is an eternal moving target. First, search engines constantly change, and an ingenuine SEO approach must keep up with it. You may recall a time a few short years ago when meta tags were the best strategy for SEO. Today, they're basically useless.
- At the same time, you need to continue to pay the SEO company. As soon as you stop, any advantage you've bought goes away.
- This constant battle to 'game' the search engines keeps the SEO companies rich, and may not, in the long run, have much of an upside for you. On the other hand, you're risking deleterious effects to your site's long-term health.
- Create relevant content on your site. As we've discussed, blogs and forums are great ways to do this.
- Engage with the online community, fostering incoming links.
- Write good copy, and uses effective (relevant) naming techniques for your files, domain, title tags, and header tags.
If you don't believe me (and trust me, I'm just quoting a bunch of experts), here's a sneak peak at Capulet's web stats. See the steady growth over the last year? That's all due to our weblog. If you drill down, you'll see that it currently receives roughly four times the number of hits as the home page. I see a similar pattern in clients who have added blogs to their site.
I have a friend. Let's call him Nils. Nils is the CTO of a software company--let's call it Purple Monkey Dishwasher Software. He's desperate to beat his competition in the search engine wars. So desperate, that he's ignored my advice about blogs and constantly creating compelling content (thank you, Roland) and spent a lot of money with a search engine optimization firm.
This firm's latest strategy is to, for still more money, include Purple Monkey Dishwasher in a whole swack of 'directories'. Essentially, this sounds like a thinly-veiled link farm strategy.
Now I understand why this kind of spamdexing doesn't fly. The search engines are clever, and constantly adjusting and can't be gamed for long. They'll turn around and punish Purple Monkey Dishwasher for dubious linking. I know that, in the long run, this strategy won't work.
However, Nils is a pragmatist. Like most other humans, he's not drinking the Koolaid--he just wants results. All he sees is money = better search engine ranking. How do I dissuade Nils from using this SEO approach? I've got the big picture view I described above, but I'm not telling the entire story very well.
Yesterday, while considering going to a local public house to watch some of the Canucks vs. Minnesota pay-per-view game, I consulted this list of pubs showing the game. It's just one big, unsortable table covering all of BC. Unless you only looking to confirm that a particular pub is showing the game, it's nearly useless.
I wondered aloud (as I was by myself), "wouldn't it be cool if somebody could feed all this data into Google Maps, and I could use that to determine which pubs were closest."
Today, via Lifehacker, I discovered the very promising Excel Yahoo! MapMaker. Here's what it does:
Yahoo! MapMaker for Excel is a Microsoft Excel template that enables any user of Excel to plot data on a Yahoo! map without programming. Just enter your data into the spreadsheet, and after a few clicks, whammo, instant map. No web server required. You can provide address/city/state, latitude/longitude pairs, or a column containing nothing but ZIP codes. Optionally you can assign titles and descriptions to each map point.
That's exactly what I want to do! The gods were finally listening! And it's so simple even an idiot like me can do it. Alas, I tried it out, and it balked. I'm guessing that it only works in the US. If anybody's interested to play with it, I entered 5 pubs in this excel file. After the jump I'll dump the RSS (RSS?) that it spat out.
NERDY QUESTION: I put <pre> tags around my RSS markup below. How come it isn't displaying the entire file?
UPDATE: Jeffrey McManus, the guy who built this nifty spreadsheet, heard my plea and has developed a version that supports Canadian addresses. I gave it a try by adding the addresses from the Canucks' list. Unfortunately, I had to go find postal codes for each address, so I only did A through C. Still, it works like a charm. Unfortunately, I can't link to the map because Yahoo gives me the rare 414 error message: "The requested URL's length exceeds the capacity limit for this server." That's not Jeffrey's fault, it's Yahoo's, and it's peculiar. Didn't they figure somebody might want to work with an array of 30+ locations using their web service?
This time I saved it as an Excel template file. If anybody's keen, feel free to find some more postal codes for Vancouver PPV locations.
Yahoo! MapMaker
http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/
Your data on a Yahoo! map.
en-us
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 8:24:52 GMT
14th Avenue Pub
Foo 14th Avenue Pub 32516 - 14th Avenue
Mission, BC
V2V 2N7
17 Mile House Pub
Foo2 5126 Sooke Road
Victoria, BC
V9C 4C4
50 Bourbon Street
Foo3 50 West Cordova
Vancouver, BC
V6B 1C9
5th Street Bar and Woodfired Grill
Foo4 1028 Hillside Avenue
Victoria, BC
V8T 2A3
Active Pass
Foo5 14817 - 108 Ave
Surrey, BC
V3R 1W2
There are a few interesting events happening this week around town, which I've been meaning to mention:
I've got a theory
That it's a demon
A dancing demon
No, something isn't right there.
In the most recent issue of MacLeans, Mary Dwyer has an article called Sinners in Cyberspace. It's concerned with a series of confession sites which most of you are probably familiar with:
In recent years, a number of confessional websites have appeared, and there's no shortage of people logging on to unburden their souls. But based on the number of hits the sites are getting, it seems many more people are visiting to read about the misdeeds of others.
This sort of mainstream media trend-spotting article always frustrates me. They unilaterally have a self-congratulatory tone of "look what I just discovered" to them, when the clued-in among us have known about the topic for months. Additionally, these articles almost always lack sufficient context, usually because the writer has failed to educate themself sufficiently. Ms. Dwyer's use of 'cyberspace', for example, suggests her ignorance of the subject matter.
Regardless, it is worth gathering all the confession sites in one place, so here they are:
Over at Crows to Burnaby, Kirsten links to Townie Bastard, a 'former disreputable media type'. He's written a four-part piece on how to pitch an entertainment reporter. Though I don't do it much anymore, I've done my fair share of arts promotion. There are plenty of obvious but oft-ignored truths here:
You have to think of it this way--it's not the Entertainment section, it's the entertainment business section. Ninety per cent of the stories I wrote for Jiggs and Reels in The Express were people promoting a product, whether it was art, music, books, etc. If your product is going to succeed you have to put as much thought into marketing and promoting it as you did in creating it. Because if you can't make it exciting enough to make a reporter, with space to fill, want to write about it, then you're in trouble when it comes to getting the rest of the general public engaged.
And this is where most artists fail. They create it and then think magically people will flock to it. It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did.
I see this in theatre all the time. Talented artists get together, make great art and then no one's willing to do the marketing work to bring people in. They take a "build it and they will come" attitude which, sadly, almost never works.
Here's the aforementioned Bastard's advice, in four parts:
I am shamefully ignorant about Vancouver's municipal politics. Over the years, I've paid it very little attention. I have few excuses, except that my interests have always gone from big to small. Which is more compelling, Canada's policy on the war in Iraq, or surcharges for local waste disposal?
Regardless, there's an election on November 19 to choose a new mayor and sundry representatives. I found some handy introductory information on the City of Vancouver's website, but I'd really dig it if somebody could point to or write a brief synopsis of the mayor candidates, their parties and their positions. I'll take objective evaluations, raging critiques or anything else which will educate me on the who's-who of the municipal election.
I rarely don the spiked helmet and navy blues of the Fashion Police. After all, I'm hardly a clothes horse, and I'm generally ignorant of trend. That said, I'm moved to point out a small but easily fixed faux pas that I've repeatedly observed around Vancouver: the cuff label.
Fall is well upon us, and men are buying new jackets. Many of these jackets (such as this one) are made of heavy, natural fabrics like wool and go over the hip. Does anybody know the correct term for this type of coat?
These jackets often have the makers' label stitched loosely near the cuff of the left arm (I'm guessing, that it's probably to make them easier to locate in a rack). The label is only attached loosely because it's meant to be removed as soon as you get it home. Yet if I wander around downtown Vancouver for any length of time, I'll spot a jacket forearm complete with label. Men of Canada, remove your labels.
It's figure skating season again, so there's more yelling at the television than usual. I was watching some of Skate America today, and they mentioned that the graceful Alissa Czisny was wearing an innovative new hinged skate.
At first, I thought they were referring to some variation of the clap skate used in speed skating. In fact, the blade isn't hinged--the boot is. Apparently it profoundly reduces the wear and tear on your hips, knees and spines that results from jumping. This makes sense, as joint injuries are chronic among figure skaters. Coincidentally, top American skaters Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen both missed Skate America with hip injuries. Ms. Czisny discusses her decision to adopt the boot in her online journal.
Sports equipment innovations tend to run like wildfire through a sport. The adoption of the clap skate and the graphite hockey stick seemed to take a single season. I wonder if everybody will be using a hinged boot next year?
Bonus fact: Alissa Czisny has a twin sister, Amber, who's also a national level skater. Their parents must be broke.
Back in August, Tod Maffin did a piece on review blogs and the rising power of the Web-enabled consumer. He intereviewed me about a post I'd written entitled The Asshats at CIBC Visa. If you Google 'CIBC Visa', my post is the third result. As a side note, I'm proud to report that I'm responsible for the term 'asshat' being approved by the CBC's word police.
I've got to confess: I'm really dig the consumer power this site gives me. I do my best to be responsible in criticising companies, but I really dig how blogs can make your complaints public and (relatively) permanent. There's a profound difference between sending off a fiery snailmail letter to some customer service manager and publishing that letter on your website.
One particularly powerful example of this is Digital Photography Review. They've got great search engine woofie. So much so that when you search for 'Nikon D70', you find their review ahead of Nikon's site. Their review is positive, but imagine if it wasn't? How many lost sales would that amount to?
Here are some entries which, judging by searches at least, consumers are reading:
They're not all bad, either:
This December, I'm going to Banff. I'm on the faculty (doesn't that sound fancy?) for Blogs 'n' Dogs, 'a master workshop series on blogging and social networking'. It runs from December 4 to 8 et voici le spiel:
In this 4 day event, participants will learn about the philosophies behind the blogosphere. Additionally, they'll develop and refine their blog finding, reading, and writing skills. We'll also be covering social bookmarking, tracking topics, social networking, and emerging practices in audio and video blogging.
Raincity Studios are putting the event on in partnership with the Banff New Media Insitute Accelerator Program. They hardly had to twist my arm, but you know what really convinced me to do this badboy?
The dogsledding. That's right, on December 6, there's 'a two hour tour of the breathtaking Canadian mountain landscape'. Powered by dogs! You know, Nanook of the North, mush, mush, and all that. I'm psyched.
I don't know how I got in with these heavyweights, but the rest of the faculty are:
Alexandra Samuel, Social Signal
Darren Barefoot, Head Geek, Capulet
Eric Rice, Audioblog.com
Kris Krug, Event Blogger, Sales Director, Bryght
Lee LeFever, Principle, Common Craft
Robert Scales, Managing Director, Raincity Studios
Roland Tanglao, Chief Blogging Officer, Bryght
Will Pate, Sales and Marketing Director, Raincity Studios
All for a mere CAN $660.70 ($550.26 for a shared room, extra for the dogsledding). That includes tuition fee, meals, accommodations, and processing fee. Alternately, Raincity is running a contest for one lucky blogger.
Lots of alpha geeks are all atwitter about Flock, a social browser built on top of Mozilla Firefox. It aspires to bring blogging, RSS consumption, Flickr madness and del.icio.us (bloody URL) together in a browser experience.
At the moment, it's in early open beta, and it shows. It won't play nice with my Movable Type 3.2 blog (a known issue), and I can't figure out how to get it to suck in my OPML file. It does have a sexy looking UI, though, and I like the way it handles the baleful world of tags.
Flock has also received a tremendous amount of mainstream buzz. I agree with Mark Evans, who says:
In many ways, I think Flock sadly epitomizes the hype surrounding Web 2.0 where alphas/betas moving into markets dominated by big players attract fawning media coverage from Wired and BusinessWeek. Hey, I'm all for the little guy but this whole build it (cool technology) and they (millions of users) will come thing is getting out of hand...This is one of the frustrating parts of Web 2.0 - everything is hell-bent on creating cool browsers and search engines and RSS readers and "to do" lists but few people can actually come up with a business plan to go along with these new R&D projects. It's like the dot-com era but worse.
I think the business model is pretty clear (and nothing to be ashamed of): get bought by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or some other big player.
Speaking of tagging, social bookmarking and weird URLs, I know a secret.
Over at Geeky Traveller, Fumio writes with this question:
I would like to know the practicality of PDA-GPS combo for walking tour, not for driving. For example, walking around Venice or Buenos Aires (European cities and South America). Where can I get such info?
That's a darned fine question. I've blogged about a few MP3 walking tours (and I recently saw some on Audible), but nothing that combines GPS data. Good idea. Somebody get on that, eh?
I don't read The Onion's AV Club very often, but they've got some pretty good material. Their list of the underrated movies of the last decade is spot on. Here's their assessment of Starship Troopers:
Among the most subversive and widely misunderstood studio films ever produced, Paul Verhoeven's anti-fascist satire was falsely interpreted as an endorsement of a fascist utopia that sends pea-brained young recruits on a dire, meaningless offensive against giant space bugs.
A few choice selections: Spartan, The Rules Of Attraction, Vanilla Sky, American Psycho, The Ninth Gate, Bringing Out the Dead, Crash, Kundun, The Frighteners.
Apparently this coincides with a new AV Club feature called The Underrated List. It's where I learned that Elijah Woods is very, very gay.
A friend of mine works for the BC Recreation and Parks Association. As part of a new initiative, they want to create a database of members. Their requirements are quite low, but I have little to no experience in this area. Basically, they're looking for a simple solution that's got a user-friendly UI. It doesn't necessarily need to be Web-based, or have a Web front-end, but that might be advantageous. There's some of our email exchange after the jump [more]. Any suggestions?
1. What are you actually trying to achieve?
We'd like to set up a database for the Active Communities Initiative to store information pertaining to contact info./registration, grant applicants, workshops, etc. We'd like to be able to pull information/create reports on the information we collect (e.g., which registered communities haven't taken workshops).2. Do you have an existing database?
Currently the organization I work for (BCRPA) has a database (Access) but the initiative I manage is called Active Communities and it's a separate initiative delivered by BCRPA (i.e., we're housed here) so we don't use their database. Currently we're keeping registration and workshop info. in Excel files but we'd like a more comprehensive management system.3. What's your highest priority? Budget? Security? Ease of use? Scalability (that is, will the database be growing a lot)?
From my perspective our highest priorities are usability and budget. Scalability would be low - we don't need a complex database because we won't have thousands of clients/registrants (so a relatively simple database would do).4. Will you need to access the database over the Web?
As for web-based access - it's not a requirement because everything will be internal access. Participants (clients) won't access the database and data will be entered onsite in the office, rather than from remote locations.
After 17 seasons, The Simpsons are finally coming to the Arab world. However, there are a few changes:
So MBC is making some changes as the characters go from American to Arab. They will remove references to things forbidden by the Koran, such as bacon, beer and other references that might be construed as offensive.
Homer Simpson's ubiquitous Duff beer will now be soda in the Arab version of the show. Hot dogs will become Egyptian beef sausages, and donuts will become popular Arab cookies called "kahk." Moe's Bar has been completely written out of "Al Shamshoon."
Sex is out as well. And what will the Arab audience make of the Christian, Jewish and Hindu stereotypes?
I'm not sure this is going to fly. The political, religious, literary and pop culture references in The Simpsons are so dense, so central to the humour and so North American. I imagine it'll be a bit like us watching Japanese gameshows with a combination of bemusement and disgust.
Via Johnny K, I read about the geekiest sex toy ever. It's haughtily named The Toy and, uh, it's 'worn internally':
The Toy is a hi-tech vibrating bullet. Connected to a mobile phone with Bluetooth it becomes an intimate, silent connection between two lovers, regardless of distance. Custom designed for your pleasure, it is intelligent, sophisticated and invented for bliss.
The Toy is worn internally, linked to a mobile phone and controlled by sms text messages sent to the phone. Once read, the message is transported automatically to The Toy, which turns it into vibrations - with a huge range of movements, depending on what you have written. Just say what you feel, The Toy will do the rest.
SMS and Bluetooth? Nothing says 'let's do the dirty' like daisy-chained transport protocols. I was checking out the thing's tech specs, and was disappointed to read that 'The Toy is not discoverable in a bluetooth search'.
While surfing my hotel room's 14 channels the other night, I happened upon an odd gameshow on the UK's newest terrestrial TV station, Channel Five (unrelated, apparently to Channel Four or BBC's 1 through 37). It's called Hot Tub Ranking, and it's the ultimate in British yobby laddishness. I couldn't find an official website, but here's something from a game show site:
A group of women go through a series of beauty contest-style rounds. A group of men, meanwhile, are rating the women for attractiveness behind a two-way mirror. There's rounds for the face, bum, boobs and the overall package. For every girl that places themselves in the correct position of the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 order, they win £500 for the collective prize pool. There's something not quite mathematically correct about this, since 5, 1, 2, 3, 4 gives no matches with the correct order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 even though essentially only one person is in the wrong place. In the final round, they get to double their money if they get the correct order based on their overall looks, with useful information gained from the previous rounds.
Hurray for progressive British television! To ensure that everybody's offended, the hostess is a young, buxom Japanese actress spoofing stereotypical Asian madames. And, in the final round, the three judges strip down to their skivvies and the five women reverse the process.
I just noticed an ad for another program on Channel Five--"Hidden Lives: Having a Baby Ruined My Life". Tragically, I'm leaving the country before this on airs.
This is a couple of days old from Boing Boing, but I'd been meaning to take a closer look. The author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies compiled the Science Fiction Film Canon (he describes them at 'the most significant').
I'm going to do the standard memey thing, and bold those movies I'd seen in the list after the jump. There are a couple of dubious inclusions: The Incredibles? 28 Days Later? Jurassic Park? All are decent films, but are they cinematically significant? I'd have replaced these with movies like Dark City or possibly (if it qualifies as sci-fi) City of Lost Children.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)
The guys at Engadget have documented the purchase and opening of their new iPod with video magic:
Believe it or not, no one at Engadget actually has an iPod (at the time of this writing), so we had to leave it to our pal Garrett M. to pick one up on behalf of, well, his damn self. So check out the iPod’s unboxing if you’re too broke, too cheap, too not ready yet, or too not-down-with-iPods to buy one for your damn self.
Finally, I can leave the house confident that all my Avril Lavigne videos are in my pocket.
Bonus link: how to get recorded TV shows off of your TiVo and onto your iPod.
Via eHub, I came across a couple of nifty Google Maps mashups:
Both of these sites remind me of a common complaint I have about Google Maps hacks. They tend not to implement the "Link to this page" feature, which enables you to grab a hyperlink for an exact map view, including zoom level, map style, and so on.
Just a few notes about yesterday's successful Tech Camp. It had just enough organization--sessions were fluid and lively. The facility--the Northside Civic Centre--was great, though it's in a pretty grim neighbourhood on Dublin's northside. Here are some photos from the event.
Two sessions I enjoyed in particular were the aforementioned spiel on Digital Rights Ireland, and Gavin Byrne's session.
Gavin's an IT guy at the Centre itself for Near FM radio. One of their outreach programs involves delivering Internet access to 'sheltered housing projects', mostly seniors who aren't particularly mobile. They've whipped up this van with a huge antenna. They drive it around to local neighbourhoods, and wheel out some laptops on a cart for people to use. The antenna needs a line-of-sight with the antenna on top of the Centre, and they've got a range of three or four kilometres. Compared to all the geeky tech-talk of the rest of the day, the van represents a real improvement in normal humans' lives.
Gavin also talked a bit about the podcasting they do at the radio station. He noted, interestingly, that this, as far as he can tell, is the first podcast in the Irish language.
Though my speaker's notes on Web 2.0 marketing are on the Tech Camp wiki, I thought I'd dump them here as well [more].
Introduction
What is Web 2.0?
Does Web 2.0 Change Marketing?
What Now?
Word of Mouse
How to Spend Your Money
I'm currently at Tech Camp, listening to a pretty fascinating presentation from Digital Rights Ireland:
I've had a very urbane kind of day in Dublin so far. A lunch meeting at the Merrion, a visit to the Natural History Museum, sitting on a bench and reading the paper in Merrion Square and then hot chocolate and some work at a coffee shop.
My worlds did collide when I walked into the coffee shop. Off to one side, there was a floor-to-ceiling rack of Tim Hortons doughnuts! I had no idea they were exporting these things, and to Europe, no less. I recall Ireland being fairly free of doughnuts, as they'd embraced all of the (finer, frankly) European pastry delights. Still, there they were, chocolate and maple glazed and all the rest.
On a related point, Dublin has finally started introducing wifi to cafes and restaurants. I had a BTOpenZone monthly usage card, which is what my hotel uses. For 60 euros, I get unlimited usage in the hotel and at a purported 170 other locations around the country. Given the typically exorbitant rates for Internet access at hotels, I thought 8.50 euros a day (I'm staying for seven nights) was quite reasonable. Coincidentally, Roland doesn't dig BTOpenzone's prices (20 pence a minute, or 12 pounds an hour) at Heathrow. As I've previously remarked, I hate everything about Heathrow. Happily, this trip only featured a 1.5-hour layover.
I have been both blessed and cursed by an unusual last name. Blessed, because I never experience mistaken identity (excepting, of course, being mistaken for my brother). Plus, it's a highly recognizable moniker--nobody's ever going to ask "er, which Darren Barefoot do you mean?" On the other hand, I suffered my fair share of schoolyard abuse growing up. In adulthood, I must tolerate hearing the same five jokes about my last name.
My Irish colleague Tom has a different set of name-related issues:
My parents, God bless them, weren’t the most imaginative when deciding on my name. It's a proud family name, but Tom Murphy isn't exactly exotic. Indeed a quick search finds a playwright, the mayor of Pittsburgh and thousands of other similarly named individuals. We all have the same problem. There was an analyst at Meta Group (R.I.P.) called Tom Murphy and for years we used to receive each other's media queries. It's funny we now both work at Microsoft and the confusion has continued unabated.
But in the past week or so, the media in Ireland and the UK have been focussing in on an unsavoury Tom Murphy or to give him his full title, Tom 'Slab' Murphy (no relation). He is the alleged chief of staff of the IRA and has been linked with some dodgy property dealings in the UK amongst other things. The story has been on every TV news bulletin, radio bulletin, broadsheet, tabloid and online news service over here.
The lesson? If you're going to be notorious, do everybody a favour and change your name to something unique.
Back in July, I mentioned a rumour about plans for a new soccer stadium in Vancouver. Apparently the Vancouver Whitecaps are going to confirm that rumour (scroll down to the bottom of the article) later in the week at a press conference.
Apparently the stadium will be located "north of the Sea Bus terminal". I'd guess that means this empty parking lot on the water. It will apparently seat 15,000 but be expandable to up to 30,000 (whatever that means). While I dig Swangard Stadium, this would be a fantastic spot for a soccer stadium--centrally located on a Skytrain line, with a view of the water. Other organizations, including the BC Lions and Rugby Canada are also interested in the facility. And why not? BC Place was always too big, and isn't likely to last long after the 2010 Olympics.
As I mentioned, I'm off to Ireland for a week. It's mostly business, so I'll be on email and probably posting to this site with regularity. On Saturday, I'm participating in Tech Camp Ireland. Here's a blurb about the talk I'm giving: (Un)marketing and the Web 2.0 company. Feel free to edit that page, if anything strikes you.
Banksy, the controversial graffiti (and guerilla) artist, has a new exhibition in a secret Notting Hill location:
Monet's lilly pond littered with shopping trolleys, a dead museum guard and some rats. It doesn't sound very appealing - and it's certainly not for the squeamish - but in fact it's what the grafitti artist Banksy hopes will attract people to his new exhibition.
Check out this 3 minute video preview (WMV, sorry), in which a very brave (and kinda hot) Channel 4 correspondent gives us a taste of the exhibition.
Over at Capulet, one of our clients has some soul-destroying work that needs doing. They completed a marketing effort, and want to do some follow-up calling for market research purposes. The work involves calling 75-100 Canadian companies and asking them a few questions (did they receive the collateral, what did they think, and so on). There's no sales involved--it's strictly research. We didn't discuss a pay rate, so you're welcome to propose something (and obviously they'd reimburse you for your long distance costs).
If you're interested, don't email me! I'm going to be out of email range for 36 hours or so. Use the contact form on Capulet's site to email us.
Because I'm a geek, I recently set up my Bluetooth-enabled phone to talk to my Apple PowerBook, enabling me to 'dial up' and check my email from anywhere there's a cell signal. I did so while traveling from Nanaimo to Vancouver on the (very handy) HarbourLynx.
I was online for about 16 minutes, and used my ISP's very basic Web client to check my email. In the midst of business correspondance, Fido, my mobile service provider, bent me over the boat rail and gave me the rodgering of my young life:
112 bucks for 3 megabytes? It would have been cheaper to send and receive the data via foie gras-fed marbled murrelets!
I know all you cheeky bastards out there with your Blackberries and Sidekicks and HipToparamas are guffawing manfully to yourselves. Me, I don't want to carry around a hockey puck in my pocket, and I'm rarely without my laptop.
I know I only have myself to blame for not checking the rates. And I imagine there's a better data transmission plan out there. The lesson is, however, that we're a long way from affordable, truly wireless computing.
Hockey fans may recall how Sidney Crosby's World Juniors Team Canada jersey was stolen out of his luggage back in January. It was eventually returned to him when the thief's (rather dimwitted) daughter wore the thing to school.
Now it seems Crosby's lost another jersey. This time it's the Pittsburgh Penguins one he wore in his first NHL game. Once again it was stolen out of checked luggage--in this case, Crosby's father's. You'd have think the Crosby family would have clued-in by now, and, you know, put the valuable stuff in their carry-on bags.
The latest Google Maps hack enables you to (very roughly) identify the location of your site visitors, based on their IP address. It's called gVisit, and that's pretty much all I know about it. gVisit creators--you need an About page. You can check out where some of my recent visitors have come from. Okay, who's reading my site from Upper Marlboro, Maryland? Is that even a real place?
Incidentally, O'Reilly, let me know if you want me to write Google Map Hacks--I really dug Google Hacks. What am I talking about? The thing's probably already at the presses.
Locals may have spotted an article on Luxury Link in the Vancouver Sun this weekend, but it's probably news to the rest of you. It's essentially eBay for high-end travellers:
Founded in 1997, Luxury Link is the world's premier online luxury travel resource. Showcasing more than 1000 extraordinary hotels and resorts, cruises, tours and villas in more than 60 countries, Luxury Link provides unparalleled access to exclusive offers and insider tips for the sophisticated traveler.
I wouldn't normally make a big thing out of a site like this, but there are some sweet deals to be had. To start locally, consider this auction for a two-bedroom cottage at the swankalicious Poet's Cove on Pender Island. Four nights accomodation, breakfast every day, one dinner for four, $75 spa credit for each guest--an apparent retail value of US $2151.00. The auction closes tomorrow afternoon, and the high bid is currently at US $1075.00. I know CAN $300/night ain't cheap, but divide that among four people, and that's excellent value for luxury accomodation.
Or, if you're feeling flush and altruistic, pay US $13,000 and rent a luxurious 6-bedroom oceanfront home for a week in Costa Rica. Make 14 of your friends happy.
Generally, I post three to five entries per day on weekdays. For the next few months, I'm planning on reducing that pace to one to two items a day. I'm not enjoying this site any less (if I was, I imagine it'd be apparent). I've just got some other projects that require some of the creative energy that this site gets.
Months and months ago, I happened to read Derek K. Miller's recommendation that "Jones Soda's Sugar Free Wild Black Cherry is the best diet pop I know of." Being somebody who's trying to drink less Coke on an ongoing basis, I'd been meaning to confirm his allegation. You know what? He's right. This drink kicks the ass of every other diet soda around, and I've tried them all.
Heather's photo of Jones Soda bottles (including the wild black cherry) reminded me of this, so I thought I'd pass on the product endorsement.
Apparently Google Reader was just launched at the Web 2.0 conference. At first glance, it's a Bloglines killer. Here's the tour that explains how it works.
At first glance, it's really, really slow. That's because every geek on the planet is trying it out.
UPDATE: Cool, I got the story on Slashdot.
That fact comes from the British Colubmia Teacher's Federation website. If you graduate with a Bachelor's of Education and step into a job, the minimum starting salary is about CAN $35,000 (and those are 2001 numbers).
Over the past 15 years, the ratio of educators to students has increased by an average of 1.1 students (sources are here and here).
These are facts that the BCTF doesn't exactly emphasize in their current job action for "improved learning conditions, restored bargaining rights, and a fair salary increase" (but not, I expect, precisely in that order).
Author James Howard Kunstler's (readable, but tres 1997) website was quoted on page A3 of today's Vancouver Sun. This was undoubtably because he's making fun of Calgary, but I liked what he said:
Now it has become an archetypal city of immense glass boxes in a sterilized center surrounded by an asteroid belt of beige residential subdivisions -- sort of what Rochester, New York, would be like if it had an economy. The vast suburbs ooze out onto the prairie to the east, along with their complements of strip malls, power centers, car dealerships, and fry-pits, and on the west they bump up against the foothills of the Rockies.
What's going on in Calgary, with new subdivisions of half-million dollar houses opening every month, is the North American tragedy in microcosm. Because every new suburban house built, every new Target store opened, every new parking lot paved, every highway widened will be a project in the service of a living arrangement with no future. It is a true madness that beats a path to historic tragedy.
Well put. To put Calgary's appalling urban sprawl in some context, consider that, according to Stats Canada (PDF), the Calgary health region (a common measure for this sort of thing, apparently) has an average of 27 people per square kilometre. Vancouver's is 4238.75. Heck, even south Vancouver Island is 139.
Neither of these Saturday Night Live sketches are particularly hilarious (unlike the NPR Christmas show or James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub Party), but I'm posting them as reference points for a couple people. I'm afraid they're both WMV files:
On a private mailing list I read, there's a tedious argument going on about the relative merits of the RSS autodiscovery mechanisms from MyYahoo and MyMSN. Are you already as bored as I am? Predictably, I had something to say on the subject, and thought it bore repeating here:
As I see it, the debate about MyYahoo vs. MyMSN is based on the theory that there are 3 kinds of people:
- Those who fully understand and are sold on RSS
- Those that have some grasp of the subscription model, and are MyYahoo or MyMSN users
- Those who don't even remotely understand anything about RSS, subscription or the right mouse button
If I'm guessing, the percentage of users for those three categories breaks down like:
- Those who fully understand and are sold on RSS - 3%
- Those that have some grasp of the subscription model, and are MyYahoo or MyMSN users - 2%
- Those who don't even remotely understand anything about RSS, subscription or the right mouse button - 95%
Knowing about existing or impending RSS support in Firefox, Safari and Windows Vista, I've given up trying to explain it to normal humans. I'm happy to convince people that it's important, that they'll never need to hear about or understand the acronym and that it'll be native in future generation of familiar products. For the most part, I tell them to wait.
Yes, RSS is a wonderful thing. Yes, it will change the way you use the Web. But you know what? If you're an average human (not a young, university-educated and familiar with computers human), you don't need your computational life complicated right now. Trust me in knowing that the next time you buy a new computer, it will contain wonderful, simple ways to 'subscribe' to websites and be notified when they're updated.
UPDATE: Conveniently, here's some Ipsos research from Yahoo (PDF), which, surprise, surprise, flatters MyYahoo (thanks, Robert). 4% of surveyed users use RSS. Apparently 27% of users unknowingly use RSS through MyYahoo, MyMSN, and so forth. This smells highly dubious to me, and has me wondering:
The survey's methodology describes the question, which might be confusing, but doesn't give any details on where the participants came from.
With the exception of brides and new grandparents, I think pet owners are the softest touches in retail. Neuticles are a glowing example of too much money and attention being paid to one's pet:
Over 100,000 caring pet owners Worldwide have selected Neuticles as a safe, practical and inexpensive option when neutering. Neuticles allowing your pet to retain his natural look, self esteem and aids in the trauma associated with neutering. With Neuticles- It's like nothing ever changed!
You know, implant or not, I'm guessing the dog knows something's changed. ABC News reports (via Dvorak) that the creator of the Neuticle recently won an Ig Nobel prize, and has made over US $500,000 on his invention.
I hope dog owners don't get testy about this entry--I had a ball writing it. Ah, they're nuts anyway. If things get too hairy, I can just excise it.
I'll stop now.
I'm very late getting onto this story, but Alex Tew has raised over CAN $300,000 by selling pixels on a web page. Yes, you read that correctly:
His website displays a grid, divided into 10,000 squares, each containing 100 pixels. He sells each square for $100. So far firms from around the world have been buying. Alex, from Cricklade in Wiltshire, said: "I'm in a state of disbelief. I thought I'd make some cash but not this much and not this quickly."
Gimmicks, man, that's where the money is. This is even more absurd than Save Karyn or that site (which I can't correctly find) where a woman was raising money for her breast implants. Let us invent a more absurd web gimmick, and make zillions.
Recently, I've been thinking about the idea of humble performers and small audiences. I imagine that there are millions of 'hobby' artists out there who don't aspire to super stardom, but would like to perform before a small, encouraging audience. There are two problems to this approach--finding venues, and connecting willing audience members (or 'on the bench' artists) with performers.
Via Beyond Robson, In the House appears to have solved these problems:
The concept of the festival is to have a multitude of performances within people's living rooms and back yards. Performances include music, theater, dance, spoken word, film, story-telling, comedy, and much more.
The proximity of the audience to the performers creates a warm sense of intimacy that is rarely if ever found in traditional venues. A relationship is created and both the artist and the audience come out with a new appreciation for what the performance means.
Great concept, tres old-school website. Would someone get these guys a Bryght site?
Tonight in Vancouver there's a brainstorming session for something that Boris calls the Innovation Commons. The goal is to "build a physical, 24/7 space where Vancouver's entrepreneur community can gather to motivate each other's innovation." Here are some more details:
- provide 24/7 access on a membership basis -- work on your great ideas any time of day or night, without pesky cafe closing times
- provide affordable office space and shared resources for entrepreneurs and start ups
- serve as a location/funding organization where motivated co-op students (see University of Waterloo, University of Victoria) can spend semesters developing their own business ideas and/or working on open source projects, rather than more traditional work placements with actual companies
- bring the power of small teams to large companies: rent space and buy memberships for your employees (I'm looking at you, ActiveState and Blast Radius) to interact with the wider universe of small teams and innovative ideas; or even let your employees do "20% work" on their own projects like Google does, working at the commons one day per week
- providing a physical space for various meetups; ActiveState does a great job of doing this now, but we need access to the Internet, people! And, it should be open to everything from Vancouver Company of Friend's Sunday Jams to Biodiesel enthusiasts and social venture groups
- (insert more ideas here -- create a new page on the wiki)
Sounds like some kinda commune-who are these hippy nutters? Just kidding. It sounds like an interesting idea, and is something that artists have been doing for hundreds of years. In fact, the IC organizers ought to talk to some artists who have successfully run collective spaces, and learn some valuable lessons.
They should also learn not to schedule these things on the night of the Feist concert and the opening night of the hockey season. I'll be attending briefly, before the puck drops.
Who's John Densmore, you ask? He's the drummer for a defunct band you may have heard of. They're called the Doors. As Boing Boing reports, John recently turned down Cadillac, who offered the band $15 million for the use of "Break on Through (to the Other Side):
"People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music," Densmore said. "I've had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn't commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That's not for rent."
As regular readers probably know, I find the commercial use of music pretty reprehensible.
Yesterday somebody called me from 179-336-0280. The caller ID didn't indicate where they were calling from (and you know how I feel when scary states call). Having no idea where the 179 area code was, I did a quick Google search for the number. As it turns out, it's apparently associated (check the comment thread) with an Indian call centre selling security systems and other crap. So, apparently you should be wary of numbers beginning in 179.
I've mentioned them before, but I really dig Moxie Cinema. It's a blog about opening an independent art house cinema in Springfield, Missouri. Readers have been able to follow the process from acquisition through renovation and they recently had their grand opening. Here's a post about recent box office success:
By 7:00, Rock n' Roll Space Patrol was completely sold out, breaking our previous record of 54 admissions for one showing. It was amazing! Kudos to Mr. Jim Bultas, the director of R&RSP, for bringing in such a huge crowd. We even had to turn people away! Had Justin and Kelley not been there, Nicole and I would've exploded into a million gooey pieces of wriggling flesh. Then came the 9:15 show - our last showing of Murderball. Thirty-one people! That's insane. We actually tied the total attendance record that we set on opening night! AWESOME!
Why do I dig this site? As usual, it's all about the content. They write intensively about one thing: opening a cinema. It's a dream of mine to run a little movie theatre some day. Plus, the blogger's a good, friendly writer and the site's got a clean, readable design. If you're looking to blog for either personal or professional reasons, the Moxie blog is a great example. The only improvement? They need to post more often.
Via Chris Anderson, I read about Ning. Their goal, as I understand it, is to make it simple to create niche social software applications. Maybe, for you example, you want to create a map-based restaurant review site, or Friendster for bulldogs? Here's the spiel:
On Ning, you can either develop an app from scratch by viewing the source code of other running apps to get ideas, or by cloning any running app and modifying it in any way you'd like. You can do this easily by clicking through any View Source or Clone This App link on the Ning Sidebar found on the right 225 pixels of any app.
Ultimately, though, you still need to understand PHP (or Ruby and Python soon) to build an application. So, as Roland comments in his review, "I love PHP but it ain't Programming for the People and it ain't Hypercard". Mostly what's happening so far are x vs. y games, such as, er, Got Milf?
Lee Fever and his wife Sachi are going on a year-long, five continent trip (the bastards). They're going to blog the whole trip, live from the world using a Palm Treo 650. With the help of the Raincity Studios hoodlums, he's made a super-cool site to track their trip: The World Is Not Flat.
Right now, he's soliciting travel advice and experience from people who have visited the countries they're going to. For example, I posted about going on safari in South Africa. You can also check out their dispatches via this nifty Google Map hack.
It's the eve of the long-awaited return of the NHL. I gotta tell you--I'm excited. I was pretty bitter through the whole labour dispute, but I'm pleased that the planets have re-aligned and that hockey has returned to Our Frozen Nation. In celebration of the NHL's return, I give you the most boring thing I could find. It's a transcript of a conference call among league officials and GMs:
Players are bumping and grinding and pushing off in front of the net all the time. But you cannot pull a player with a hook away from the puck. And you can't cross-check a player anywhere on the ice now where it's done to punish.
Players are what? Regardless, if you survived that, I'll reward you with this nifty highlight video, courtesy of Theo.
On a related note, I didn't say it here, but I said it elsewhere: the CBC lockout would never survive the start of the NHL regular season.
In a bittersweet turn of events, I've got to go see Feist tomorrow night at the Commodore. So, I guess I'll be taping the game.
UPDATE: Here's an amusing series of flash pieces about hockey. If I were guessing, I'd say this was a viral marketing campaign hatched by the NHL to bring people back to the sport.
Last week I mentioned that the TiVo was coming to Canada, sort of. Travis subsequently wrote about how he didn't understand why I wasn't drinking the TiVo koolaid. Yesterday his TiVo arrived, and he writes about the experience of setting it up north of the border:
Once it was up to date, I fell in love with it all over again. First of all, I used the built-in TV Guide, and discovered The Simpsons was on a channel that I didn't know it was on at 7:00. Then, I was disappointed that I was going to have to make dinner and would miss part of it, when I remembered that I could pause live TV.
Ultimately, I don't think I'm man enough for a TiVo. I'm unwilling to expend the time and money to set it up. I know, but I'm lazy that way. And I want to watch less TV, which seems unlikely with a smart box like that around. Instead, I'll probably just get a dumb DVD recorder, which just sits there like roadkill until I tell it to do something.
Back in February, I wondered what the deal was with cling wrap. CB writes from Fine Vantage with an explanation:
If you are using LDPE Cling Wrap, it cling well with glass, ceramic and stainless steel with shinny surface. LDPE does not cling well with plastic container or stainless steel with sand blasted surface. LDPE is the safest plastic when it comes down to food packaging. Look at all the food storage bags. All of them, under all brand name and size, are made of LDPE. Some company (one example is our company) are starting to add LLDPE into the LDPE to increase the "Cling". LLDPE is a plastic very similar to LDPE and is just as safe. LLDPE enhances the "Cling" and the tensile strength of the film, could be a prefer choice for some users.
PVC cling wrap can cling well on almost anything and that is a prefer choice for catering business (restaurants and supermarket). There is a potential of you having to swallow the plasticizer into your body. If you pay attention, you will see all the PVC wrap product pictures on the unit box are wrapping fruit only. I mean no meat, no fish, just fruit. This is my understanding that PVC film is not good in blocking out moisture and air. Your meat being wrap in PVC film in the freezer or fridge, may dry out in just 10 days. Your food being wrap in PVC film and being reheated in microwave, the plasticizer will get very excited under high temperature and get more into you food.
How to tell if the plastic wrap is a LDPE or PVC wrap? First look at the product label. Second, look at the plastic film, if the film is white in color, it is LDPE. If the film is yellowish (or in blue, red, purple, etc.), it is PVC. I hope my explanation here is helpful.
Fine Vantage are apparently makers of 'high quality cling film', so they ought to know.
I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but I'm heading to Ireland in a couple of weeks to participate in Tech Camp. This one-day event follows in the rich tradition of Foo Camp, Bar Camp and Moose Camp. I'm be talking for 15 minutes on '(Un)marketing and the Web 2.0 company'. I must figure out what I meant when I came up with that topic. I'll be in Dublin from October 13 to 20.
For some reason, I ended up on this page of my site, which discusses strategies for equine insemination and, essentially, RealDolls for horses. I glanced at the Google ads on that page, and the first one I read "Foal Cams Live" (see the screenshot for details). I, of course, couldn't resist, and visited myHorsecam.com, "your complete source for all things equine". Check out this deal:
View your horse 24/7 on our web site with a live horse camera starting at only $9.95/month. Take advantage of our free comprehensive classifieds and shop at your leisure at our online tack shop featuring over 5,000 items for your selection.
Ultimately, this is less dirty than I thought, as it's not just about viewing anybody's horse, it's about viewing your horse. Still, it's a little weird.
If you visit their cam samples page, and click on #5, you'll see, not a horse at all, but a fluffy little, er, labradoodle. If you ask me, that breed just shouldn't be. Are these dogs pissy and haughty on odd days, and loyal and friendly on even ones? Do they turn up their noses at every second ball thrown for them? Do they only retrieve rare, gently roasted ducks?
I had no idea the world of horsemanship was so, uh, rich. Another ad on that same page is for Equifone, a device which calls you when your mare is giving birth.
Meetup fired me today. It's because I've been busy, and ignoring their emails about paying for another six months of their service. Apparently being tardy with the cash gets you fired as Meetup leader.
That's cool, though, because I need to hand the reins to somebody anyway. Looking at the schedule for the fall, I'm not going to be able to make any of the next three meetings. Plus, I've done it for a year or so, so I think it's fair to let somebody else have a turn at bat. There really isn't much to it--you just pick a venue, make the reservation and notify the list using Meetup's email service. I'll be happy to still blog about upcoming meetups.
If you're interested in wearing the Meetup Tiara, visit this page.