Author: scruss
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sometimes, I’m not sure if my colleagues understand me
It’s been like this for weeks …
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conservative bias at the CBC!!!111!!!
So where’s the “Will not help at all” option at Budget 2010: How does this budget affect your family? – Point of View
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life-changing roti experience
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.
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RIP Michael Foot
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
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trying to determine whether my side of the tracks is the right one
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. -
jukebox sampler
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 -
she did a banjo album? she did a banjo album!
… 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?
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ringthink
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.)
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arach, no phobia
Unless you really like spiders, I don’t recommend you see my picture spider in the basement.
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Find The Place: a bloody waste of bloody time
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.
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out on the bike
I’ve had the Batavus for just over a year. It’s still awesome.
Most of the hydro corridor path was snow free.
big machines and snow pile 
a sunny day by the UL -
weirdness on a pirate dvd cover
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.- The subheading on the front cover is in German, despite the English packaging: “Sie traf perfekten Mann. Dann traf sie seine Mutter”
- The printed credits are for Dragon’s World: A Fantasy Made Real.
- The URL for the movie is for Constantine, as is the barcode
- I haven’t a clue what this is supposed to mean:
- The DVD inside is marked DVD-9 with Chinese characters under the title.
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time hasn’t been kind to them
Found these on top of the fridge during a cleanup.
I remember thinking they looked pretty cool at the time.
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invisible hitchcock
Robyn Hitchcock has a pretty dismal record of cancelling shows in Toronto. I found a couple of tickets for shows that never happened
