We Saw a Chicken …

Author: scruss

  • ebay chicken

    For the last week or so, I’ve been playing eBay Chicken. I have to say, I’m pretty good at it.

    The trick is to bid as high as possible on an item that you might want, but not high enough so you might actually get it. So far, I have bid on about 7 items, and quite failed to get any of them. I’m pleased to say that on a couple of them I was the second-highest bidder.

    In a small way, I’m doing my part for the world gross domestic product. And doesn’t that feel good?

    Update: The above is all well and good unless you happen to be in a just woken up and befuddled state, and realise that the auction you just bid on was in GBP, not CAD, and thus you’re just about to pay twice as much for something …

  • stickers

    stickers on a storefront, spadina north of queen

  • yum

    grill sign from freshwood

    I think that the Freshwood Grill (293 Roncesvalles – freshwoodgrill.com) could just be my new favourite restaurant.

  • his & hers superbes

    Two Raleigh Superbes, on Yonge St

    The small image doesn’t do them justice, but I saw two Raleigh Superbes locked together near Dundas on Yonge.  These were the deluxe ones with the locking steering column and the front dynohub. Lovely bikes, definitely sensible.

  • five great years

    Catherine & I have been in Canada for 5 years.

  • Vaughan Wind Turbine

    wind turbine in vaughan

    A modified AOC 15/50 wind turbine at a Honda dealership in Vaughan, ON. If you click through the link, you should be able to get to the full-sized image.

  • In which we prove that we invented everything after all

    Wikipædia, the first encyclopædia in the Scots leid.

    (and although I’m Scottish, and Scotland’s about the size of a Wal*Mart parking lot, I don’t know anyone who uses the word leid for language. Everyone knows the right word is langwidge …)

  • headless

    I’ve finally re-resuscitated the Thinkpad T21 into a basement server. Quiet it isn’t (its fan cooler and hard drive are loud), but it just works. It used to run OpenBSD, but now it’s running Ubuntu Server. I really tried to like OpenBSD, but it was a bit too spartan for my tastes.

  • Ozwitch: Professor Bellamy speak with forked tongue

    Ozwitch: Professor Bellamy speak with forked tongue

  • WindShare AGM

    is tonight.

    … and I wasn’t expecting to, but I ended up back on the board of directors of WindShare.

    … and I got to sing with the Raging Grannies!

  • dove on the line

    A mourning dove sits on the CN rail. It watches me. I watch it. We have an understanding.

  • The pataphysical world of Fred Lane. | MetaFilter

    Someone posted one of my old pages to Metafilter: The pataphysical world of Fred Lane.

  • a poem I’ve been trying to memorize for years

    When tiger-men sat their mercurial coursers,
    Hauled into shuddering arches the proud fibre
    Of head and throat, sank spurs, and trod on air—
        I was not there. …

    When clamorous centaurs thundered to the rain-pools,
    Shattered with their fierce hooves the silent mirrors,
    When glittering drops clung to their beards and hair—
        I was not there. …

    When through a blood-dark dawn a man with antlers
    Cried, and throughout the day the echoes suffered
    His agony and died in evening air—
        I was not there. …

     â€” Mervyn Peake

  • energy does matter; energy *is* matter …

    I’m going to Energy Matters for the next couple of days.

  • tidyin’, fixin’, payin’, all the while livin’ off plastic

    • Income taxes filed. Some tidying was required in order to find all the necessary paperwork. I know it’s ages before the deadline, but Catherine needs it early for her US taxes.
    • Noticed the last two water bills were double what they should have been. A $3 flapper valve for the loo should sort that. You’d never get that with a British syphon flush …
    • One of the neighbours just got a Linksys wireless router (with no encryption and default passwords, no less), so I had to rename and rechannel ours. Most hassle was getting the WET54G wireless bridge to talk to the new location. It didn’t help that it had the oldest version of the firmware in the world, plus it kept trying to rejoin the neighbours’ network.
    • Braved IKEA. I now have a basement server/printer rack fashioned from multiple Rast bedside tables screwed together.
    • Opened up the outside tap, now that the threat of -20°C weather is gone for the year.
    • Paid many, many bills, some of which were routed from their mulching sleep while I was  looking for tax paperwork.
    • Joined worthy societies like FOE and Greenpeace.
    • Saw Sharkwater. You should, too.
    • My new Interac card is less than interactive. I’m sure I managed to get it to work once, but now it’s gone dead. This means a trip to the Honkers & Shankers on Spadina, always a joy …

  • a small form of happiness is

    … a USB key with the irritating U3 software uninstalled.

    Seriously, U3 is a major annoyance if you:

    • use Mac
    • use Linux
    • work on a PC with locked-down permissions
    • work on a PC with a one-letter drive gap (like having D: and F:, but no E:); U3‘s read-only system will appear in the gap, but your data won’t be accessible.
      (It’s not really U3‘s fault. The fact that Windows still has drive letters amazes me; why don’t they go for the whole 70s thing and have punch cards and gargantuan 5MB hard disk packs?)

    All four of the above apply to me, so u3 uninstall.exe is my friend.

  • syndactyls, revolt!

    I used to be devoted to Vibram soles on my boots, but now I’m not so sure. Vibram fivefingers are an affront to my people, the syndactyls.

  • that would be wonderful

    In my Ephemera gallery, I have this image:

    World Full of Weirdos

    I scanned it years ago from the magazine Strange Things Are Happening, which was a short-lived publication from Phil Smee’s insanely great Bam Caruso record label. It was attached to an article about early SoCal punks The Weirdos. It never actually said if it was one of their flyers or posters.

    Since Francky, Ellen and Linda want a better quality version of it, there’s the 300 dpi PNG linked above, plus a couple of vectorized versions I produced: World Full of Weirdos (PDF), World Full of Weirdos (EPS).

  • Ephemera

    Ephemera – images I’ve found along the way. Some are copyright, some offensive, but for some reason, I kept ’em.

  • acned, yet inscrutable

    acned yet inscrutable

    (it’s actually the USB connector from my Kingmax Super Stick …)