Year: 2007

across the universe, or eula à gogo

In the Holiday Inn Express in St Louis again. Their clickwrap EULA for wireless access from Zerowire Networks is hilarious. The whole text is quoted after the cut, but the highlights include:

  • anything you transmit over the network (like your credit card details, your login for legopr0n.com, or this blog posting) belongs to the hotel, and “may be processed, used, reproduced, modified, adapted, translated, used to create derivative works, shared, published and distributed by HOTEL in its sole and absolute discretion in any media and manner irrevocably in perpetuity in any location throughout the universe”. So I’m sure the murals at the first Holiday Inn Express on Mars will be decorated with credit card info.
  • Riddled with typos and random copy-and-pasted sections, you nonetheless “waive any right to claim ambiguity or error in this Agreement!” [yep, the exclamation mark’s part of it too]
  • About half way into it, it starts representing Hilton Hotels, rather than Holiday Inn. I suspect Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V here.
  • Gives up-to-the-minute advice for setting cookie preferences for IE4, a browser that became obsolete in 1998.

As it’s such a mishmash, I think I’m pretty much exempted, ‘cos I crossed my fingers behind my back before clicking “Accept” …

Continue reading across the universe, or eula à gogo

wiggly

Can I just say that the road from Busch to Eureka Springs, Arkansas is the most gratuitously wiggly route I’ve ever driven?

Our route down from Kansas City was longer than I thought; place not blind trust in GPS routing, especially when you’re close to the edge of the maps you’ve uploaded. Due to one wrong turn on my part, we ended up in Overland Park, KS — rather than being on Hwy 71 all the way south. In future, I shall upload all the maps I need, plus all the states/provinces surrounding, so you don’t get that terra incognita/here be dragons feeling of falling off the edge of your wee scrolly map.

the awfully nice people on the 95 bus

This is a small posting of thanks to the folks on the OCTranspo 95 Orleans bus who put up with my cluelessness and large luggage on the very busy rush hour transit. I got to Ottawa station quicker than any taxi, and for only $3. I’m a fairly seasoned TTC rider, and you wouldn’t see that kind of friendliness at this time of day in Toronto.

very poor

It just took my work computer more than 5 minutes to create a new folder on the desktop. How am I supposed to get my work done?

not very walkable here

Walk Score rates our neighbourhood at 32%, which isn’t very good. There are some errors in its analysis — we have a library kittycorner on the main intersection, and not 12km away, as Walk Score claims.

But yeah, there are problems. Our nearest bookstore? Cupid’s Boutique, where I’m sure they sell many illustrated periodicals for the discerning gentleman …

best of 2007

I said I’d bend the rules a bit, but here’s the ten best albums I heard this year, in alphabetical order:

  • The Aliens — Astronomy For Dogs: add a Lone Pigeon to a few remaining Betas, and the result is funkiness. This album has more earworms than is safe. They are even better live.
  • Animal Collective — Strawberry Jam: I pretty much have to be alone and sitting down to listen to this. For Reverend Green especially; it’s all involuntary limb movements, sinuses exploding with joy (this probably doesn’t happen to you, I hope), and ullulating Oo oo weeuh yeh … ee yeh yeh etc for me. Other Animals didn’t do so badly either this year: Panda Bear’s Person Pitch was joyful, and even the bafflingly backwards Pullhair Rubeye from Avey and Kría had something.
  • Colleen — The Golden Morning Breaks (2005): very sparse but beautiful notes. I’ll Read You a Story is the sound that angels make.
  • A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble: featuring magyar madness, crafty cimbalom, and the only piece of bagpipe music that won’t make you want to hack your ears off with a meat cleaver. It’s doubly nice that it features Zach Condon actually playing with his heroes, rather than just trying to sound like them.
  • Ideal Free Distribution: lush 60s rhythm and harmonies, with a ton of mellotron laid on top. Poppy enough that no-one I’ve played it to doesn’t like it.
  • Dan Jones and The Squids — Totally Human: Dan has clearly listened to a lot of both Robyn Hitchcock and The Minutemen, and has come up with a noisy but thoughtful album, which we play all the time.
  • Old Man Luedecke — Hinterland (2006): merge sly alt.country lyrics with pretty clawhammer banjo, and you’ve got the Old Man. Bonus points for coupling the words “oracular bent” in a song, and getting away with it, too.
  • Ken Reaume — Four Horses: Ken quite modestly compares himself to Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. He’s easily the equal of both. Beautiful fingerpicking and whispered confessional lyrics.
  • Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter — Like, Love, Lust, & The Open Halls of the Soul: you’ll fall for Jesse’s world-weary lisp and the drawling psych guitar. I did (and unfortunately discovered her other two albums, Reckless Burning and Oh My Girl, are almost identical. Oh well; very good, but very samey).
  • Porter Wagoner — Wagonmaster: if you’re gonna go, go out on a high note. That’s exactly what The Thin Man From West Plains did. It’s very straight country, but the decades of experience polish it brighter than rhinestones.