Posts Tagged ‘toronto’
Friday, October 26th, 2007
We got our smart meter installed today. Unfortunately, Catherine didn’t quite understand why there was a knock on the door, then her computer went beeeeyyooooww … then all our clocks caught the <blink> tag.
While I like smart meters, this one isn’t quite as smart as it could be. To me, a smart meter needs to have a big display of your current demand, and needs to be inscribed with a suitable message like “Quit using so much juice, you cretin!” It also needs to hook into local time-of-use pricing, which me being green and a Bullfrog customer and all, I don’t get to take part in. Boo.
But what could have really gone sideways was my own desktop, which was quietly chugging away installing Ubuntu 7.10. Since I started using Linux in 1995, I don’t think I’ve ever had a system upgrade go totally smoothly. This time, though, I was lucky - the system must have fully initialised before we lost power.
I can’t honestly say I see any difference between Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon; they both are fairly pretty, and just work.
Tags: linux, smart_meter, toronto, ubuntu
Posted in Wind Things, computers suck | No Comments »
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
We saw The Wailin’ Jennies at Hugh’s Room last night. As ever, their harmonies were beautiful, but what amazed me was their one piece in unison. They were so close that it didn’t just seem to be the one breath, but as one heartbeat. Wonderful stuff.
Tags: jennies, toronto, voice
Posted in choons | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Tags: camp-combo, mp3, music, toronto
Posted in choons | No Comments »
Monday, October 15th, 2007
Tags: ferry, lx2, toronto
Posted in photo | No Comments »
Friday, September 28th, 2007
Around Toronto today, I saw three Lamborghinis and five Ferraris. I think I saw fewer SmartCars, so as usual, smarts are in shorter supply than muscle.
Tags: car, dumb, smart, toronto
Posted in cars suck | No Comments »
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
I just heard some music by Ken Reaume - and I need to hear a lot more.
Tags: guitar, toronto
Posted in choons | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
I finally got to see Thomas Dolby play live last night. A real brass section (the Jazz Mafia Horns) really added to Thomas’s all-electronic sound. Good show!
Tags: mod-club, thomas-dolby, toronto
Posted in choons | No Comments »
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
We saw The Aliens at Lee’s Palace last night. Shame the place was only half full (have people really forgotten about The Beta Band?), but it was a great show. They’re really high-energy live. Gordon has big hair!
Tags: aliens, lees-palace, toronto
Posted in choons | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
Tags: enwave, lx2, toronto
Posted in photo | No Comments »
Monday, September 17th, 2007
Tags: peace, quaker, toronto, white-poppy
Posted in o canada | No Comments »
Monday, September 10th, 2007
- Go to <http://toronto.craigslist.org/>
- Enter your search term in the “search craigslist” box
- When you get the results, scroll to the bottom. There is a final paragraph that says “RSS (?)”. Copy the RSS link address (move the mouse pointer over the RSS link, right click, and select “Copy Shortcut”)
- Open an new window (Ctrl-N in IE)
- In the new window, go to <http://www.rssfwd.com/>
- Paste the link you copied from craigslist into the “Enter a feed to subscribe” box - the link should look something like <http://toronto.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=this%20that&format=rss>, and hit Subscribe
- Enter your e-mail address on the next page - before you hit Subscribe again, you might want to check the preview of the feed that’s shown on the page to see that it’s finding what you want. You probably want to keep the e-mail type as “Normal - Send each update as individual e-mails”, and uncheck the “Share at Popular Feeds” page
- You will get a confirmation e-mail - hit the confirm link, which will take you to a page you probably don’t need to understand
- rssfwd should mail you within a couple of hours of new items being posted. Each e-mail should have unsubscription information
Tags: craigslist, email, rss, rssfwd, toronto
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Saturday, September 8th, 2007
Tags: clean-energy, ontario, toronto
Posted in WAGDAIYF | No Comments »
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Downtown, many people are carrying potted plants. I wonder why?
Who are these plant people? What is their mission?
Tags: plants, toronto
Posted in goatee-stroking musing, or something | No Comments »
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
We had a wildlife day today. At breakfast, we had a large raccoon amble across the deck. At lunchtime when I was setting up the grill, this large hawk was looming above me:
What alerted me was the skrrt, skrrt of it rubbing its beak on the aerial, as in the last picture. Once it had finished gnawing on its recently deceased dinner, it sat about for a bit (quite literally fed up) seeming unperturbed by me sticking a big ol’ lens at it. But then, if you had Leatherman tools for hands and tin-snips for a face, you wouldn’t be worried about anyone trying to mess with you either.
Tags: aerial, beak, d70, fed-up, hawk, raccoon, toronto
Posted in photo | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
An old open-top Routemaster tour bus turned past me onto Bay today. The diesel smell and the distinctive bogla bogla groom! as it pulled away reminded me of UK public transport.
Tags: bogla, bus, routemaster, smell, toronto
Posted in goatee-stroking musing, or something | No Comments »
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
The city decided to change its trash collection today, and most of our street (us included) didn’t know. We all got little yellow snarky notes saying that it was the wrong day. As I’ve never got one before when I mistakenly put out the wrong kind on the wrong day, they must’ve been expecting this.
The city really should’ve waited until next month, when last year’s trash calendars would have run out. As is, the reaccoons are going to have a banquet tonight on everyone’s trash at the curbside.
Tags: calendar, toronto, trash
Posted in o canada | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
We just saw Hairspray. As the movie of the musical of the movie, it acquits itself quite well, but the edge of the original is lost under the sugar coating. I was about to add that we didn’t need a remake so soon after the original, but Waters’s version is 19 years old, which is an age in movie time.
The good bits? Nikki Blonsky is a wee honey, with huge cartoony eyes and a winning smile. James Marsden adds a little extra sleaze to the role of Corny Collins. The musical numbers are infectious; but then, they should be, coming straight off the stage.
The mediocre? Travolta’s face padding made his eyes look way too close together, and he’s no Harris Glenn Milstead. The cameos from the original are a little too cameo (didja catch Ms Lake as one of the talent scouts?), and the racist baddies are too bland to be disagreeable.
I recognized many of the Toronto locations: the high school’s on Spadina just north of College, most of Tracy’s neighbourhood was around Roncesvalles, the TV studio looked to be on Dupont, and yes, those streetcars were old Red Rockets (one even with an Eastern Avenue destination). If you didn’t know Baltimore, you might think it passed, but it’s nothing like the real thing.
It’s a pretty good summer movie, charming and fluffy, but the original is still better.
Tags: baltimore, hairspray, movie, musical, roncesvalles, streetcars, toronto
Posted in goatee-stroking musing, or something | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Looks like they’re finding some interesting old building remains on the Shangri-La site at the corner of Simcoe & Adelaide. There are archaeologists all over it!
(did I already say how happy I was to see the monstrous ad-scaffold gone from this site?)
Tags: archaeology, toronto
Posted in o canada | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
There was a full-on police manhunt in our neighbourhood last night. Between about 3:30-4am, a police car vroomed and screeched round the streets with its lights off. Maybe it was a manhunt, or maybe they just had their Starsky & Hutch on.
Tags: police, screech, toronto, vroom
Posted in cars suck, o canada | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
I was mildly incensed to see an ad truck tootling about downtown. What was even worse was that it advertised cleanourair.com, a site purporting to help individuals reduce their carbon footprint.
Get this: the founding sponsor of the site is VisionAdz, a company whose sole purpose is to have ad trucks tootling about downtown, polluting our air and my eyes.
Bill Hicks was right about advertising types.
Tags: adtruck, rant, toronto
Posted in WAGDAIYF, cars suck | 1 Comment »
