It’s been like this for weeks …

It’s been like this for weeks …

So where’s the “Will not help at all” option at Budget 2010: How does this budget affect your family? – Point of View
Had a really good chicken roti from Tropical Desires (224 Adelaide St W, Toronto). Really tender chicken, good veg, mild spices. They’ve only been open a couple of weeks, but I’m planning to be a regular.
It still amazes me that Burrito Boyz is full every day, yet this place is empty.
We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.
— Michael Foot, 1983
My neighbourhood, Kennedy Park, is pretty much defined by the CNR tracks at the southeast and northwest corners. This is Toporama Web Map Service data overlaid on the toronto.ca | Open neighbourhood polygon:

It’s all lit up! These are the houses in my streets, each one highlighted in QGIS:

More GIS nerdry at Numpty’s Progress.
Every thousandth track from my library:
| Track | Title | Artist | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us | R.E.M. | New Adventures in Hi-Fi |
| 2000 | Lesson 8 / Ex 3 | David Hamburger | The Acoustic Guitar Method, Book 2 |
| 3000 | Way of Woe | Peter Stampfel | The Jig Is Up |
| 4000 | Exercise: Changing Chords | Jack Hatfield | First Lessons Banjo |
| 5000 | The Edison Museum | They Might Be Giants | No! |
| 6000 | Got The Jake Leg Too | Ray Brothers | |
| 7000 | Light Is Returning | Rise Up Singing: The Teaching Disc O | |
| 8000 | Birmingham Sunday | Rise Up Singing: The Teaching Disc J | |
| 9000 | Bring Me A Leaf From The Sea | Carolina Tar Heels | Mountain Frolic (Rare Old Timey Classics 1924-37) – Disc D (1925-30) |
| 10000 | Window to Mars | Elf Power | In a Cave |
| 11000 | The Book Of Doves | Alasdair Roberts | Spoils |
| 12000 | Grounded | Pavement | Wowee Zowee |
| 13000 | O Holy Night | Classic Carols | Classic Carols (Piano-Vocal Harmonies) |
| 14000 | Track 23 | Peter Gelling | Teach Yourself Harmonica |
| 15000 | Priscilla | The Soft Machine | The Soft Machine |
| 16000 | Colours | Gorp | Shapes And Colours Game |
| 17000 | The Mayor Of Simpleton | XTC | Upsy Daisy Assortment |
| 18000 | Jóga | Björk | Homogenic |
| 19000 | Everything Merges With the Night | Brian Eno | Another Green World |
| 20000 | Great Races – The Marathon | Ivor Cutler, et al | King Cutler, Part 6 |
| 21000 | Coal Creek March | Dock Boggs | His Folkways Years (1963-1968) Disc 1 |
| 22000 | The Ghost You Draw On My Back | Múm | Summer Make Good |
| 23000 | Tidy (Previously Unreleased Demo) | Dressy Bessy | Little Music: Singles 1997-2002 |
| 24000 | Careless Soul | Daniel Johnston | 1990 |
| 25000 | Introduction | Joyce Ochs | First Lessons: Dulcimer |
| 26000 | On A Monday Morning | Rachel Unthank and the Winterset | Cruel Sister |
… There are lots of instruments that I’d always really wished to own or be able to play, a piano, a cello, a harp, a clarinette… but I would never had expected that one day I could fall in love with a banjo.
Yes, Julia Kotowski did a banjo album, and it’s free to download: Entertainment For The Braindead – Roadkill.
This puts me in a huge listening dilemma today, as Kyle Creed’s Liberty arrived yesterday. Which to listen to first?
Paul Hart just released Your cellphone’s virtual receptionist – Ringthink. It’s rather clever. Voice recognition is a bit messed up with my thick n’ heavy accent, but it’s not bad.
(and if anyone says that Google Voice does this, well, it does – but not in Canada.)
Unless you really like spiders, I don’t recommend you see my picture spider in the basement.
One book put me off geography for ever, and it was called Find the Place. Each page had a map of the UK like this

Next to it, was the numbered list of places. What you were supposed to do was memorize the name and location, and then (with the list covered by the pupils) the teacher would go through the class by turn and you’d have to say the place name. “Find the Place”; clever, huh?
I’ve always been allergic to rote learning, and I never even tried to get these. I just remember trying to hide when that part of the lesson came round. I don’t think there was any theme to the places; they weren’t even the five main glove manufacturing towns in the Midlands, or anything. Just random dots.
To try your mad geog skillz, those dots are real places. Can you name them? Answers after the fold.
(more…)
I’ve had the Batavus for just over a year. It’s still awesome.
Most of the hydro corridor path was snow free.
Moat of the DVDs at the Toronto Public Library sale yesterday were donations that didn’t quite make it to circulation. Catherine picked up a copy of Monster in Law, which looks very professional at first glance:
Look a little closer, and all is not well.
Found these on top of the fridge during a cleanup.


I remember thinking they looked pretty cool at the time.
Robyn Hitchcock has a pretty dismal record of cancelling shows in Toronto. I found a couple of tickets for shows that never happened


I’ve started another blog: Numpty’s Progress. It’s more directed to what I want to do with GIS for now.