This is a small posting of thanks to the folks on the OCTranspo 95 Orleans bus who put up with my cluelessness and large luggage on the very busy rush hour transit. I got to Ottawa station quicker than any taxi, and for only $3. I’m a fairly seasoned TTC rider, and you wouldn’t see that kind of friendliness at this time of day in Toronto.
Author: scruss
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fin
I have just sat what I hope is the last law exam I ever need to sit.
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i wonder
… what Smokey Amps have to say about Minty Amps?
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very poor
It just took my work computer more than 5 minutes to create a new folder on the desktop. How am I supposed to get my work done?
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not very walkable here
Walk Score rates our neighbourhood at 32%, which isn’t very good. There are some errors in its analysis — we have a library kittycorner on the main intersection, and not 12km away, as Walk Score claims.
But yeah, there are problems. Our nearest bookstore? Cupid’s Boutique, where I’m sure they sell many illustrated periodicals for the discerning gentleman …
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best of 2007
I said I’d bend the rules a bit, but here’s the ten best albums I heard this year, in alphabetical order:
- The Aliens — Astronomy For Dogs: add a Lone Pigeon to a few remaining Betas, and the result is funkiness. This album has more earworms than is safe. They are even better live.
- Animal Collective — Strawberry Jam: I pretty much have to be alone and sitting down to listen to this. For Reverend Green especially; it’s all involuntary limb movements, sinuses exploding with joy (this probably doesn’t happen to you, I hope), and ullulating Oo oo weeuh yeh … ee yeh yeh etc for me. Other Animals didn’t do so badly either this year: Panda Bear’s Person Pitch was joyful, and even the bafflingly backwards Pullhair Rubeye from Avey and KrÃa had something.
- Colleen — The Golden Morning Breaks (2005): very sparse but beautiful notes. I’ll Read You a Story is the sound that angels make.
- A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble: featuring magyar madness, crafty cimbalom, and the only piece of bagpipe music that won’t make you want to hack your ears off with a meat cleaver. It’s doubly nice that it features Zach Condon actually playing with his heroes, rather than just trying to sound like them.
- Ideal Free Distribution: lush 60s rhythm and harmonies, with a ton of mellotron laid on top. Poppy enough that no-one I’ve played it to doesn’t like it.
- Dan Jones and The Squids — Totally Human: Dan has clearly listened to a lot of both Robyn Hitchcock and The Minutemen, and has come up with a noisy but thoughtful album, which we play all the time.
- Old Man Luedecke — Hinterland (2006): merge sly alt.country lyrics with pretty clawhammer banjo, and you’ve got the Old Man. Bonus points for coupling the words “oracular bent” in a song, and getting away with it, too.
- Ken Reaume — Four Horses: Ken quite modestly compares himself to Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. He’s easily the equal of both. Beautiful fingerpicking and whispered confessional lyrics.
- Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter — Like, Love, Lust, & The Open Halls of the Soul: you’ll fall for Jesse’s world-weary lisp and the drawling psych guitar. I did (and unfortunately discovered her other two albums, Reckless Burning and Oh My Girl, are almost identical. Oh well; very good, but very samey).
- Porter Wagoner — Wagonmaster: if you’re gonna go, go out on a high note. That’s exactly what The Thin Man From West Plains did. It’s very straight country, but the decades of experience polish it brighter than rhinestones.
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an end to triangular, aching thumbs …
I could use a Thumbthing. I have been known to fall asleep reading in bed, with my thumb jammed in the spine of a book. Waking up hours later, my thumb is aching and decidedly tobleroneform …
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You know you’ve been studying engineering law too much when …
… you think that you’d want to start a band called The Tortfeasors, with stage names derived from precedents: Hedley Byrne, Rivtow Marine, Junior Books, Donoghue Stevenson, Lambert V. Lastoplex …
Then you realise that would be a bad idea. On every level. Not least that I wouldn’t know what to do in (or with) a band.
I’m resitting the legal part of my PPE for the PEO next Saturday. Was somewhat taken aback when I heard I’d failed it first time, but now studying again, and seeing my notes and sample answers from last time — what, if anything, was I thinking?
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I’m still waiting
One of the side effects of Catherine’s Library Quest is that she digs through the sale books. She’s found a library getting rid of National Geographics for 25¢. September 1969’s issue, published when I was less than a season old, has a great and hilariously dated article The Coming Revolution in Transportation. It’s all hovercraft and personal transport pods (though none less than the Federal Highways Administration’s The Rambler cautions don’t blame the future when we read this article).
My favourite prognosis from the article is this one, on electric cars:
Electric cars should be common within a decade. They will be “pure” electrics, if batteries become lighter, more powerful, and longer lasting; otherwise, “dual-mode” vehicles—battery-powered in town but propelled by gasoline engines on cross-country trips.
It took just a little longer than this, and it sure wasn’t GM who brought the first ones to market, despite this picture of a hybrid Opel from 1969:
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low
I played some tunes tuned down to eBEG♯B. I like it; extreme plunky tones.
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indigo’s most overpriced yet
I saw the most obscene markup in indigo this evening: the Linux Format OpenOffice.org special edition was priced at a hefty $34.95. This costs £10 in the UK.
The thing is, UK prices are quoted tax-inclusive. The ten quid you see is the ten quid you pay. Not so in Canada. In the most boneheaded move ever, our prices don’t include tax, so that $34.95 really costs you $39.84 (in Ontario, at least).
According to Google, £10 is $20.53. Indigo’s markup is almost 100%
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a great what?
Just got an e-mail which signs off, “Thanks and have a great.”
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skiffle is fun
I’m listening to “Skiffle – The Best Of”, and it’s interesting to see what pre-rock British artists did with folk, gospel and trad jazz tunes on the cusp of the 1960s.
It clearly came out of the Trad boom (to which my father is still very much attached) – not just because folks like Barber and Colyer played both styles – but there are weird echoes of rockabilly. In a way, it was a short-lived answer to the US “folk scare” of the time.
Some of it’s quite quaint and dated now. The faux American accents, untrained by constant US TV exposure are hilarious, hovering somewhere between New Orleans and Brooklyn. Lonnie Donegan’s is especially funny – “this man, he was thoisty” he sings in “Being Me A Little Water, Sylvie”.
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Micro-wind turbines often increase CO2
Micro-wind turbines often increase CO2, says study | Environment | The Guardian
The Building Research Establishment Trust, which advises the government and private sector, has found that in built-up towns and cities weak winds and turbulence mean turbines are likely to add to, not subtract from, a home’s carbon footprint.
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do not do
Don’t be tempted to clean the foam pads on your Etymotic ear phones with anything vaguely solvent like. They will never be quite the same again.
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a lot of letter writing, but …
definitely worth it: The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do.
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goodbye, stamps
Bullfrog Power are going to stop issuing their own bills, and go through the local utility. Though I understand it is a bunch cheaper to get Toronto Hydro to do it, I’ll miss getting my bills with a stamp affixed.
Hmm, now that I have a smart meter, does that mean I can access the metering information? Bullfrog doesn’t do time-of-use (yet), but the stats would delight this nerd.
