On the way to Canwea in Quebec, I stop for food – and find the place oddly familiar. Seems that Catherine and I stopped in this same A&W in St Nicolas on the way to PEI.
It’s not as if we sought out A&W; it’s just what was there.
Month: September 2007
a demented dimension
There’s a banjo-uke on craigslist described as: “… it has that banjo twang that just makes people smile! … Add a new demention to your music.” Ah yes, banjo-uke players are a bit demented.
Stupid HP!
My printer required a software update to change a reference to an HP web page that had moved:
Stupid HP! Don’t you know that cool URIs don’t change?
common as muck
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.
Mr Dolby — eww!
I’m a big fan of Thomas Dolby, and I don’t even mind admitting that it was one of his songs that initially got me thinking about what to do with my life (“… etch out a future of your own design”, and all that) . I got Thomas’s Live in Chicago DVD, and was a bit shocked by the visuals he used for wind power:
Those are some old wind turbines. This would be a bit like going for some modern computer imagery, and plunking for a picture of a VIC-20.
I mean, eww – those blades are filthy!
Ken
I just heard some music by Ken Reaume – and I need to hear a lot more.
there is no enemy
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!
barefoot hydrodynamics
Ever since I discovered them, I have been fascinated by the Foxfire books. Not that I’m planning to go back to the land or anything, just they they often display flashes of ingenuity and craftsmanship.
Take this, for example:
It’s clearly a turbine runner, but it’s made from a slab of solid pine, pinned together then held in compression by steel bands around the rim.
It was made by Georgia craftsman Sam Burton, and is documented in Foxfire 2 (Wigginton et al, 1973, pub. Anchor Books, ISBN 0-385-02267-0, pp. 142-163).
wee hairy beasties
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!
most 70s book cover ever
Floaty-haired woman motif? Check
Happy couple riding a horse? Check
Elaborate, possibly ill-advised, used of perspective? Check
Fashions suggesting high polyester content? Check
Friends, I give you Mel Bay‘s Fun With The Dulcimer:
beware of those you pay to beat you up
Alternative therapy for backache ‘can kill or disable’ | UK News | The Observer
Spinal manipulation, used by chiropractors to treat hundreds of thousands of patients a year, poses serious risks …
It’s probably heresy to say this in Ontario (‘cos DD was from Pickering) but I’ve always thought that having someone smack your spine about was not the smartest thing to do. But then, my one of my secondary mottoes for life is Allopathy Now!
now then?
The Danish Poet
If you haven’t seen The Danish Poet, you should. I had some time to kill on Thursday evening, so went into the Mediatheque. I’d heard that the animation had won an oscar, so I looked it up. It’s a really sweet (if extremely convoluted) story of true love and Scandinavian coincidences.
no hybrids for canada
I was looking to perhaps rent a hybrid for a longish business trip. My company’s preferred supplier, National, doesn’t do them in Canada, but does in the US:
Why do they get them, and we don’t? Don’t say there’s no demand; I‘d rent one …
one to one
Whoa, $1 US = $1 Canadian. As Glenn says, it’s not that the loonie is strong, it’s that USD is very, very weak. Way to go, George!
serene detachment
The office network has been down all day. I don’t keep paper copies of anything. Therefore, today has been quite quiet, detached from everything.
baby
Today’s instalment of The Perry Bible Fellowship surpasses its usual standard for twisted humour.
not there yet
I’m at a Hydro One seminar on distributed generation connection issues. The speaker just said that the breakeven for vanadium flow battery power storage is $280/MWh. Ouch!
largo
I just installed IBM® Lotus® Symphonyâ„¢. I don’t have the pokiest PC on the block, but in order to make it run at any speed at all, you’d need to have a bit of grunt in your PC. My VIA SP13000 box takes a couple of minutes just to bring up the main window.
To be fair, OpenOffice isn’t the fastest starter either; none of them have large bits of themselves running in the Windows system code, unlike MS OfficeThey both work, and are free – and Symphony looks a deal prettier than OpenOffice. As there’s no Mac version of Symphony yet, I’m unlikely to switch just yet.
enwave reflections
