We Saw a Chicken …

Author: scruss

  • T’aint what you coup (it’s the way that you do it)

    I know I shouldn’t, but every time I see the name of Fijian military coup leader Frank Bainimarama, the songs of this eighties girl group come to mind.

  • Costco Photo Centre: cheap, but stupid

    So I’ve got the holiday photos, and want to print them for those that like that. I’d used Future Shop in the past, but Costco is offering such cheap prints, I thought I’d give them a try.

    Probably a mistake:

    • Their drag and drop uploader is an ActiveX control that only works under IE on Windows. Use any other browser, and you get presented with an old-school HTML form. For 94 pictures, that would get dull quickly.
    • The uploader transmits several images at once. It seems that if any of the uploads should fail, all the files uploading at that time also fail. Uploading a few at a time doesn’t seem to help much; around one in ten files will fail randomly.
    • While the uploader does warn you when an upload fails, it’s up to you to remember which files haven’t worked. Clicking Retry just takes you back to the uploader, and since it’s an embedded applet, there’s no browser history to take you back to note your failed uploads.
    • The albums store files in the order uploaded, and can’t be changed.
    • Long file names get truncated, and then get uselessly used as the title on the back.

    Still, I’ll let you know how it all went when I get the prints in a couple of days.

  • extremely childish fun with US$1 and a marker pen …

    Thanks to Kathy (whose name I have probably misspelled) in Kansas City for showing us this:

    FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE becomes FART, teehee ...

    (please note: no actual US currency was defaced to make this blog posting.)

  • ack bleah

    I picked up a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme Coffee Flavored (as they say) Gum in Missouri last week. I strongly advise that you don’t.

    To use the crude but apt expression coined by Jay Primeau to describe a badly-mixed Kahlua cocktail, it tastes like coffee flavoured ass. While chewing, it causes the gorge to rise (I think it’s the slightly minty edge of the gum base), and has an aftertaste akin to latte barf.

    Canada’s own Thrills Gum may still taste like soap (as it says on the package, and they’re not lying), but this is just … eww.

  • home again

    The 4000km holiday roadtrip is over. We’re back home now. It was good to be away, but it’s also good to be back.

  • 365 Days – The Project Returns

    The 365 Days Project — the year-long net music weirdness that made 2003 bearable — is back!

  • Year of ZOOT

    Happy 2007, folks!

  • thought for the day

    Dance as if no-one were watching.
    — anon.

    Laugh as if watching someone dance as if no-one were watching.
    — me.

  • Carter Arter Blues

    For Paul Carter: Carter Arter Blues – Alan Walsh (mp3).

  • what day is it?

    Why, it’s Rush Day – 21/12 – of course. So have a good one, straight from the land of the Rand-fanciers themselves.

  • happy solstice

    And we didn’t even need to sacrifice anything to bring the sun back. But don’t forget the old Scottish saw: “As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.”

  • bye bye bikeshare

    BikeShare is no more, sadly.

  • take me to your lieder

    Now playing: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, by Josephine Foster. Classical German lieder, with overlaid psych guitar. Good and weird, but weird and good.

  • definitely clean

    iTunes 'clean' marker

    iTunes‘ clean/explicit labelling worries me. Shouldn’t I, at the age of Dennis the Communist Peasant, be able to decide what’s good for me? Not merely that, but it takes up a bunch of the song title entry, and they label songs by artists who don’t produce bowdlerised versions. Gah!

  • From Eldoret to Sighthill (to Toronto)

    Daniel Aliangana is a medical technologist from Eldoret, Kenya. In 1994–95 he was studying at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, and living in the apartment blocks in nearby Sighthill. He recorded these tracks in his spare time, and gave me a tape before he left for Kenya.

    Daniel recorded these on a double cassette deck, carefully overlaying each track by recording live over the top. He used a classical guitar, an electronic keyboard, and some kitchen objects for percussion.

    There are occasional harmonies which might have been provided by Catherine‘s former flatmate Grace Achiya. Grace is also from Kenya, and it was through her that we got to know Daniel.

    I don’t know where Daniel is these days, but there’s a Mr D. Aliangana listed as Chief Technician in the Department of Medical Physiology at Moi University in Eldoret. Wherever you are, Daniel, I hope you are well, and thanks for the music!

    1. Huyu Odote
    2. Dada Margaret
    3. Usikoti
    4. Mama
    5. Binadamu
    6. Mama Watoto

    (originally linked from my music page.)

  • This is beautiful …

    Ian Stevens’ Toronto transit map

  • make-do drummer

    Slogan seen on a pair of drumsticks in Kensington Market: “Maybe you can’t find the more favorable sticks!”

  • best of 2006

    In no order you’d care to guess:

    • The Information — Beck
    • Awoo — Hidden Cameras
    • The Optimist’s Club — Casper & the Cookies
    • Cue Are Es Tea You — Mayor McCa
    • The Sole Inhabitant — Thomas Dolby
    • The Jig Is Up — Peter Stampfel
    • Black Gold — King Biscuit Time
    • Calico — Erynn Marshall
    • Ys — Joanna Newsom
    • Olé! Tarantula — Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
    • Cannibal Sea — The Essex Green
    • Just Like The Fambly Cat — Grandaddy
    • Back To The Web — Elf Power
    • The Eraser — Thom Yorke
    • The Crane Wife — The Decemberists
    • either Tales of the Rat Fink Original Soundtrack or In Concert Vol. 1 — The Sadies
    • The Way the Wind Blows — A Hawk and a Hacksaw

    Discoveries of 2006: Karen Dalton, Nic Jones, Lee Hammons.

  • words fail me

    Just as they were beginning to find something, ‘National interest’ halts arms corruption inquiry.

  • When you really haven’t chosen not to trust: Citrix, Mac OS X, and Entrust certificates

    NB: this article is a few years old, and I haven’t tested any updates since I wrote it. It may still work; who knows?

    This is one that the support desk of my employer really should’ve answered, but they gave their usual, “You mentioned Macintosh in your e-mail, so this conversation stops here” response.

    Anyway, they’ve just upgraded their Citrix access, and what used to work now gives the rather cruddy response:

    SSL Error 0: You have not chosen to trust

    Just what SSL Error 0: You have not chosen to trust “Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority”,the issuer of the server’s security certificate. Error number: 183 is supposed to mean to anyone, I don’t know. (Well, actually, I do know, but in rants like this it’s customary to feign ignorance in a huffy manner. Work with me here, people.)

    So, to fix this:

    1. Make sure that Citrix ICA Client is installed
    2. Go to entrust.net/developer and click on Download Root Certificates
    3. Select Personal Use, and click on Download Certificates
    4. Download entrust_ssl_ca.cer and entrust_ssl_ca.der to your desktop
    5. Open a terminal (it’s in Applications/Utilities), and enter the following:
      cd /Applications/Citrix\ ICA\ Client/keystore/cacerts/
      cp -p ~/Desktop/entrust_ssl_ca.* .
      ln -s entrust_ssl_ca.cer entrust_ssl_ca.crt
    6. Exit the terminal, and try your Citrix session again.

    There might be some unnecessary steps there, and this might all be fixed by downloading the latest release of the ICA client, but this works for me now.