We Saw a Chicken …

Month: March 2007

  • for a reason

    I walked past a store in the PATH that advertised “Hard To Find Fragrances”. I’m guessing they stock such classics as Mulch de Chanel, Calvin Klein GOAT, and Balmain’s Haleine d’Ail.

  • a pox on nonstandard USB cables and those who would create them

    I’m trying to get all the bits of my Sony Cybershot P100 kit together, and I can’t find the dad-blamed USB cable. It’s a weird connector, and two reputable camera dealers have cried ixnay on the vailabilityay. So I have to find it.

    I have already turned the house over looking for it. Yes, I know that the recipient could just use a card reader, but it wouldn’t be so good.

    Gah! Things! They’ll get you in the end.

  • not even enough for a haiku

    A single swan on the Don

  • raise your double-doubles in a toast

    I’ve been Canadian for a year … pauses … eh?

    (did that come out natural, like?)

  • more on WordPress dates

    I got sick of the annoying date display bug, and so dug through the default theme files looking for specific references to date formats. And there were many …

    I found that, instead of using the WordPress the_date() function, there were many calls to the_time('l, F jS, Y'), which forces a specific date format. If you replace instances of the_time('l, F jS, Y') with the_date(), your date and time format set in the Options panel will work as expected.

    How hard was that? Not very. How easy would it be to be modified in the default template?

  • no false positives

    There was some low-level kvetching on a WordPress blog that Akismet was marking too many false positive comments as spam. Concerned, I trolled through all 11 pages of spam – and didn’t find one real comment.

  • tasty bytes

    my ibook status

    I just upgraded my iBook to 1.5GB, the most it’ll take.  The CD·ROM Store took a bit of time to get the memory in, but when they did it was $50 less than I was originally quoted.

    It took me four heart-stopping tries to get it installed. It went like this:

    1. black screen – eek!
    2. appeared to work, but no extra RAM recognized.
    3. black screen – double eek!
    4. works- yay!

    Each tim required power off, battery out, the keyboard to come off, a fiddly little plate to be unscrewed (which was  nothing like the Apple instructions said), the SODIMM reseated, fiddly plate restored,  keyboard in, battery in, power on. My old ThinkPad was a lot easier – I once installed RAM in it on a subway train …

  • three sixty five

    Happy first birthday, Kingsbridge Wind Power Project – commissioned a year ago today(ish). I hope there’s cake …

  • ctrl + alt + down

    … may cause hilarity when inflicted on an unsuspecting cow-orker’s PC.
    (ctrl + alt + up fixes it, btw. If it doesnt: you tried something you read on some random blog?!)

  • a dreadful pipistrelle-related pun

    I don’t particularly understand why my industry gets singled out for killing wildlife, and having to carry out lengthy studies where other equally guilty plants and installations don’t. But apparently, radar ‘saves bats at wind farms’.

    So, if this is really true, and it were installed, would it be a bat mitzvah?

  • not taping

    I’m off to hear Of Montreal – and I’m not going to tape it!

  • strida ryda

    Saw my first Strida folding bike in the wild today.

  • the discarded galosh

    discarded galosh, king and university, toronto

    Winter is nearly over …

  • the drug of the nation, now at your station

    I’m annoyed to see that United Mobile Broadcasting Corp has installed TVs in the GO trains. It will be all ads. As if we don’t have abbotances on the train. I wonder how much of a discount we’ll get on our passes now that GO has all this new revenue?

    I’m particularly sensitive to moving images. I have to be prepared to see them (like in a cinema) else I get disoriented. Maybe I’ll barf on the train.

  • a small piece of genius

    Dylan Hears A Who!

  • music for and by molluscs

    Dan Jones & The Squids‘ new album Totally Human is out now – yay!

  • flash bang wallop

    I’m rather taken with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2. Not merely does it look like a proper camera, it doesn’t handle like a gimmicky electronic toy. I love the wide-aspect images, and it stores all the EXIF information I need for panoramas. I could do without the proprietary USB/video connector, and it would have been really nice to have auto-bracket enabled on raw shooting for exploring HDR images, but it is not a huge deal. Neatest basic function is the ability to view your pics as a calendar, each day opening up the ones you took then. Nice.

    Barnack’s ghost is probably troubled by the use of the Leica name on such a frivolous device. I will be able to claim the famed “leica glow” on my shots now, though.

    I’m thinking that this camera is targeted towards the sophisticated grandpa. It’s able to track the ages of two children, so your pictures can be tagged as being of Baby X at age Y. Useless? Well, someone could use it.

    Oh okay … some photos are here: http://scruss.com/gallery/v/lumix_lx2/

  • site search broken

    I don’t think that WordPress‘s search function works any more.
    Ah, it’s been fixed in 2.1.2.

  • audible minority

    Everyone says I don’t have a very strong accent, but I’m sick of being misunderstood. I have been offered Wild Turkey when I asked for water, and my house number – 36 – is a constant source of confusion. Bell got it wrong for a couple of hours when we first got our phone in 2002, and so the poor folks at 56 have been getting our junk mail ever since.

    Last straw came during the last power outage. Toronto Hydro has an automated voice recognition system which first asks your postal code, then your street name, then the house number. It got the code and the street right, then assumed I was saying big ol’ 56 again. It took me right back to the postal code question, even after confirming it and the street name before.

    Rather than going postal, I ended up having to slur out my mooshiest “thihrdheesihx” before it took it. C’mon people, consonants, consonants!

    Hate to think what it’d have made of the Glaswegian ‘thehrty’, which my Gran always decried as “common” …

  • camerangst

    I told myself that I wouldn’t upgrade my P&S until the pixel count doubled for an affordable price. I didn’t define ‘affordable’, though, leaving myself perhaps too much consumer wiggle room.

    Anyway, 10+ megapixel compacts are here, but there are many contenders. The Panasonic DMC-LX2 has a nice lens, but is expensive and looks a little soft unless you shoot raw. The Canon SD900 is lovely and tiny, but maybe that’s all.

    Do I really need to upgrade at all?