massed roadworks lights on Roncesvalles
Author: scruss
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and i wish and wish again
Fully installed at Midwest Banjo Camp at East Lansing. It’s green, there are chipmunks, and many, many banjo players – oh, and Clif Ervin, bones player extraordinaire.
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speeding motorcycle
Twee popsters rejoice! The complete works of Trixie’s Big Red Motorbike will be re-released on CD this year!
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scary movie
I’m watching Jesus Camp; and it’s about the most alarming thing I’ve ever seen.
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a word on domestic wind turbines …
From Real Goods, who’ve been doing the sustainability thing for almost 30 years:
We generally advise that a good year-round wind turbine site isn’t a place that you’d want to live. It takes average wind speeds of 8 to 9 mph [3.6-4 m/s, or 12.9-14.5 km/h] and up, to make a really good site. That’s honestly more wind than most folks are comfortable living with.
— Solar Living Sourcebook, 12th ed., p.80
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the same desiccant
Pelican Peli desiccant pack, as sold by Vistek – $21.99.
40g Silica gel dehumidifier from Lee Valley – $6.95.
Can you spot the difference?(and I’m not particularly picking on Vistek; they’re as cheap as anyone for this product when sold as a photo accessory.)
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probably doesn’t sell well in Glasgow
I’m guessing that “Hummer” brand cologne doesn’t sell too well in Glasgow, where a hummer isn’t an obscenely-proportioned vehicle, but merely someone who smells bad.
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your vote counts – or does it?
I was a little bemused about Ontario wanting 21 extra MPs, so I did some sums to see how many MPs each province/territory should have:
2005 Population ‘Fair’ Ridings Actual Ridings %age over/under represented Canada (total) 32,270,500 308 308 Newfoundland and Labrador 516,000 5 7 +42% Prince Edward Island 138,100 1 4 +203% Nova Scotia 937,900 9 11 +23% New Brunswick 752,000 7 10 +39% Quebec 7,598,100 73 75 +3% Ontario 12,541,400 120 106 -11% Manitoba 1,177,600 11 14 +25% Saskatchewan 994,100 9 14 +48% Alberta 3,256,800 31 28 -10% British Columbia 4,254,500 41 36 -11% Yukon Territory 31,000 0 1 +238% Northwest Territories 43,000 0 1 +144% Nunavut 30,000 0 1 +249% The population data is from StatsCan for 2005, and the riding counts from Wikipedia, and checked on CBC’s election 2006 site. My analysis is a bit simplistic; everyone counted as population gets the same federal representation.
Ontario, BC and Alberta are getting stiffed. Quebec is the fairest of them all. But if you really want your vote to count, and you can’t handle the Territories, move to PEI.
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Erie Shores Wind Farm
We stayed over in St Thomas the other night, and on the way back came through Erie Shores Wind Farm. I spent a lot of time working on the layout design for this project, but up until now I’ve never seen it built. Sure, I saw some holes in the ground, but nothing higher. Here’s my gallery of mediocre photos: Erie Shores Wind Farm (and man, I must clean my D70’s sensor).
There’s clearly good local acceptance of the project. The beach washrooms have been repainted with a mural that includes a wind turbine, Bayham’s building an interpretive centre, and in downtown Port Burwell, there were cars with Support Wind Energy stickers. It made me happy.
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Tim’s Discourse (in which soup nearly comes down Stewart’s nose)
Grabbed a Tim’s lunch today, and glad I sat in, otherwise I would have missed the following:
One: I heard this astrologer say the science shows …
Two: Astrology’s not a science!
One: Okay, well, but he says a lot of professors agree with him, and he’s got scientists working for him, and he says you can predict things.
Two: What sort of things?
One: Well, he said that on 9/11, Saturn and Mars were aligned with Uranus …
Two: Wasn’t my anus!(I think they may have been discussing Richard Tarnas, who was on CBC last night.)
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GPS Central: in stock, with a silent “not”
For the upcoming midwestern trip, I’d ordered some Mapsource maps from GPS Central to help navigate across the mitten. They said they were in stock; indeed, they still do at time of writing:
I was very disappointed to get a note today saying that they were really out of stock, and they can deliver after the time I need it. GPS Central had previously been great, but they let me down by misrepresenting on their website. I cancelled the order.
Prairie Geomatics came to the rescue. They’re shipping tomorrow, for the same price (and cheaper shipping). I spoke to a real person to confirm. -
every day, but not everyday
I contributed today’s music for the 365 Days Project: 365 Days #136 – Daniel Aliangana – From Eldoret to Sighthill (which previously lived here and here).
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oh noes!
Ghali Kitchen – home of the unbelievable Rasta Pasta – is no longer on Queen West. Seems like they went back to their roots at Queen E and Greenwood.
They shall be missed, though my cholesterol level will stay sane.
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big camera
Got the RB67 back from Kominek, and they did a great job. While it still looks a bit beat-up, everything runs silky-smooth. It did cost a bit more to CLAÂ than the camera cost to buy, but I’m very happy with what they’ve done.
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pigs!
Kunekune are very cute. Quite stubby.
(and this boar snoozing amongst the apples is a picture of contentment.)
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my guitar teacher can climb through a tennis racquet, yours can’t
I went to The Friendly Rich Show for the first time last night, and my mind capsized completely. I’d seen Friendly Rich & The Lollipop People before, but never as their full-on, prank-calling, burlesque-puppeting avant-cabaret show.
The Lollipop People are incredibly tight as a band, which must be hard when you’ve got a harpsichord, a bassoon, a full concert harp, and a banjo (binga-banga in Rich-speak) in the mix. I put it down to skilled musicians having fun, and Rich’s excellent direction.
The show is run by Soot, the almost wordless but entirely malicious stage manager. He grumbles his way from musical number, to animal trick show, to song, to prank call. Last night’s call was to order pizza from Pizza Pizza, and they didn’t take it too well. Nichol S. Robertson did indeed climb through a tennis racquet.
Last night’s show was a little different, in that they performed Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (complete with Hammond and turntables). What was a lot more different was, while they were playing, a naked man in a wild man mask set fire to his, um, self. That’s gotta smart.
They’re playing again at the Tranzac on the last Friday of June. You should be there. It’s exactly like nothing else!
