I briefly visited the Toronto Dollarevent this evening. While I’m a huge fan of local currencies, this one’s a bit too local to claim the Toronto name — looks like it circulated in about two blocks downtown. C’mon, people, Scarborough’s Toronto too … should I found the Scarborough Lek in parallel?
Category: General
new icon
Like the new icon? I thought the Atari ST character set image of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs was getting a bit tired, so I found a suitable chicken-related image on openclipart.org. Seems to work in my browser, don’t care about yours.
I should really have used the Nong Shim Worried Chicken, but there’s too much editing, copyright and glutamate-consumption—condoning there.
Instructions on how to make a website icon for Unix users are from Matthias Benkmann, “How To Create And Install A favicon.ico“.
new favourite white chocolate
Catherine bought me a bar of El Rey Icoa for Easter. It’s extremely special, which a much more robust flavour and texture than any other white chocolate I’ve tried.
music nite!
We were at Hugh’s Room last Thursday to hear The Wailin’ Jennys. Support was Gregory Hoskins, who has the voice of Jeff Buckley, and the sensibilities of Tom Waits.
The Jennys were on fantastic form. Their lineup has recently changed, with Annabelle Chvostek. We’d seen her open for Evalyn Parry a while back.
Canadian music is a small world. Earlier in the week, I’d been told not to miss The Duhks, but I couldn’t make the show. Wouldn’t you know it, but WJ Ruth Moody was the lead singer of Scruj MacDuhk, the precursor of The Duhks.
The Passing of The Grammarian
In subsequent years, friends at the magazine would visit or send gifts: books, flowers, a basket of cheeses and fruit. But after a while she found such attentions hard to bear. She missed the work that she could no longer do. To one correspondent she sent a beautiful letter, frank and kind, needlessly grateful, which ended with the sentence “Please forget about me.â€
When astroturfing a blog, don’t do it from the office …
Ah, the Grocery Gateway/Longo’s buyout debacle. I thought it was but a distant memory until I received this comment to the blog. Here it is, in its raw, uncommented, unedited form:
Author : Bob C (IP: 206.186.239.130 , mail.longos.com)
E-mail : mephistopholes_826@hotmail.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=206.186.239.130
Comment:
I have been ordering from Grocery Gateway throughout the entire mess, and they have really improved. Finally I can get all that I need, on time, and in reasonably good condition. What they need is to carry all the products on Longos stores (Longos is excellent) and debit.
Look at the posting address: 206.186.239.130, aka mail.longos.com. Yeah, that’d be a Longo’s employee trying to be teh smrt d00d and pretending to be a loyal, and above all not-in-any-way-related-to-Longo’s, customer.
Jings, what do corporate lackeys have for brains these days?
bird, ice
red tail hawk flying over frozen credit river.
12 hours to Burns night
So it’s Burns Night tonight. Will I partake of haggis? It’s basically made of the bits of an animal that no-one would pay to eat.
I’d just like to point out that, in Scotland, it’s Burns Night. For some inexplicable reason, it’s known as Robbie Burns Day here. Canadians, stop doing it, I beg of you. Burns Day is only celebrated by UK Accident & Emergency ward staff on November 6th.
I’d also like to point out that I’ve never been to a Burns Supper. Scottish celebrations (like tonight, Hogmanay, and St Andrew’s) seem to be an excuse to get thoroughly munted in the dark side of the year.
Uncle Doug’s gift of a journey
Catherine’s Uncle Doug died suddenly last week at his home in central Pennsylvania. His nephew, Phil, was with him when he died. As we’re the nearest (geographical) family, Phil asked us to come down to help out with tidying up Doug’s house.
We drove down Saturday, and what an remarkable journey it was. The US immigration folks friendly and helpful at Buffalo; sure beats the grouchfest at YYZ. Once into Pennsylvania, the scenery was beautiful. Hills, valleys and forests running down to the Alleghenies. Didn’t think there could be such crinkly countryside so close to the flat plains around Lake Erie.
Doug’s house was entirely self-designed and built. It sits very well in the green countryside. The nearby town of Huntingdon is as nice a town as you could hope for, with a working main street that looks like it has escaped the ravages of Wal-Mart.
So, we’ll miss you very much, Doug, but thanks for the journey.
fusion snack
now snacking on: tea biscuits spread with dulce de leche, washed down with a mug of tea.
more gmail invitations
I’ve finally got 4 more from gmail; seems I’m pretty much last in line for them. First four people who asks for one can get ’em. Though it seems strange that you need an e-mail address to get one …
no ‘ole
The ‘ole in the ground is gone, and we have water again. Yay!
‘ole
There’s now a huge hole in the pavement outside our house where the city have been repairing the main drain. Yay civilisation!
get mini
from The Mini-Mizer.
We saw some cows
We were at the Royal Winter Fair today. There were many cows.
objectivity
You’ve got to love bicycle helmet advocates:
This bill is absolutely right. I, quite frankly, am not going to bear any arguments. I’m not going to hear them, I don’t want to hear them, about whether we have enough police to enforce it. We need it to be enforced. We need to do it for rollerbladers, in-line skaters, anybody, any contraption. It needs to happen.
— Michael Prue, Ontario Legislature House Debate, 4 Nov 2004
So, Michael, I don’t see you wearing a helmet in that picture on your website when you’re out on the street. Don’t you know the number of pedestrian head injuries?
Don’t make me wear that eggbox …
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 12:06:02 -0500
To: Lorenzo Berardinetti MPP <lberardinetti.mpp.co/ at /liberal.ola.org>,
John Milloy MPP <jmilloy.mpp.co/ at /liberal.ola.org>,
Harinder Takhar MPP <htakhar.mpp.co/ at /liberal.ola.org>
Subject: Bill 129, Highway Traffic Amendment Act, 2004
I am an experienced cyclist. I am strongly opposed to compulsory bicycle helmet legislation. Its discussion is a waste of legislature time, and its implementation would be a waste of police time.
Bicycle helmets do little to reduce injuries. Better preventative measures include cyclist awareness training for drivers, and proper assertive cycling skills for bicycle riders.
It is unfair to single out the users of “muscular powered vehicles”. Pedestrians and motorists also suffer head injuries in collisions, and so should be compelled to wear helmets too.
Toronto has a culture of utility cycling. We do not ride bikes for sport or recreation, but as an integrated part of urban mobility.
It is no coincidence that the countries with the highest levels of cycling are also those with the lowest levels of helmet use. Please do not harm the health of Ontario by providing barriers to cycling.
I urge you strongly to drop support for this bill. It does nothing for the cyclists in Ontario.
Please acknowledge receipt of this e-mail.
Yours sincerely,
Stewart C. Russell
Mozilla more than a third
From October 31, 2004 to November 6, 2004, more than a third of my readers were using Mozilla. Less than a year ago, it was about 10%. The real common sense revolution rolls on!
Happy Samhain!
Not bad for my first attempt at pumpkin carving. It smells pretty bad when it’s got the full complement of candles charring the inside.
Update, 9:30pm: Phew — it’s over. We handed out something like $60-worth of candy tonight. I had to make two emergency runs to the shops to get more. I have to say, this “Trick or Treat” thing is getting off lightly. When I was a kid in Glasgow, we’d go guising, all costumed up, and we each did a little party piece (song, poem, joke) to earn our loot. We had a retired teacher as a neighbour, and she was a difficult audience. You’d spend about five minutes inside each house, not just a few seconds at the door. Kids today, eh?
big win for Ontario Renewables
From the resolutions from the upcoming Ontario Liberal Party Conference:
Be it resolved that the Government of Ontario encourage the use of renewable energy by implementing Advanced Renewable Tariffs that will allow distributed solar, small hydro, or wind energy to be established by farmers, co-ops, and locally owned enterprises and to be able to market this energy on the provincial grid.
Be it further resolved that the Government of Ontario make a subsidy available for the purchase and installation of all major Green” technologies which can be utilized to provide energy for residential dwellings, offices businesses and industry (products such as geothermal heat systems, solar-assisted hot water heaters, heat pumps, small-scale wind generators, net metering equipment, etc.).
I think we have Paul Gipe to thank for that.