Robyn Hitchcock had his blue Fender Telecaster stolen in Toronto on Tuesday. For last night’s show he managed to borrow Barenaked Lady Stephen Paige’s black Tele.
I also suspect that his Fylde acoustic was stolen too. He was playing a small-bodied acoustic last night.
Mean people suck.
Lots of maps of power stations and their CO2 emissions on CARMA.
My strategy of dropping off my business card at every trade show booth that promises quality swag paid off. I just received an MP3 player from Genivar – thanks, folks!
It’s a weird little unit. Looks almost identical to a nano, but is your plain-vanilla USB mass storage device – something that Apple could learn from, but they’re in the business of selling players tied to iTunes. It also has a standard USB connector for days transfer and charging – Apple and iRiver please note.
It seems it’s an S1 type player, so can play videos in its own weird format. It also has a voice recorder, which again records in its own special format (likely some hacked version of GSM).
It will be fun playing with it.
Update: Looks like it’s an ATJ-2135 Actions Semiconductor player of some kind. It can record in ADPCM wav (which sox can convert), or its own weird ACT format (which can be converted using this Windows-only program).
Winter tires.
They are fitted now, but it happened to be chucking it down when I was changing them. No fun.
I really think that Ken Reaume‘s Four Horses could be my best album of the year. It’s been on repeat play all day.
And yes, he does work in Penguin Music.
I got Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael from the library on a friend’s recommendation. I tried, but I don’t feel the love for the psychic gorilla.
It’s not that the wise protagonist is a psychic gorilla. I can get past that. It’s just that the conclusions are so pat. I wonder how many readers come away with the romantic notion that they’re the only Leaver in a Taker society? (they’re wrong, of course; I’m the only one to which this applies …)
I also didn’t get the “Takers need prophets” deal. if you decide to follow the ideas in the book, what is Ishmael but a prophet? A not-for-prophet?
Writers like Jared Diamond (though flawed) and Julian Cope (though fried; but at least can play mellotron) wrote it better. Ain’t but the one way, as the Drude sang.
What I did like about the library copy that I borrowed was that it had clearly made an impression on a previous reader. Crabbed on every page in tiny, infra-neat madperson handwriting was a seemingly endless thesis about something. What, I can’t tell; the diligent guardians of the Toronto Public Library erased almost every word, so I couldn’t tell if a worldview had been shattered or affirmed. Maybe it was the wisdom of the ages. Who can tell?
Ottawa VIA Rail station has a circular spiral ramp that leads down from the concourse to the platform level. It has a smooth channel for a handrail which looks perfect for racing marbles or toy cars down.
Surely I’m not the only person who has ever wanted to do this? It looks so inviting!
I know the technology is not that nifty, but I amused and amazed myself by sshing into the home server whilst on the Via train somewhere between Smith’s Falls and Ottawa.
My Harmony banjo arrived today. For something essentially made of plastic, with a brown-painted neck, it sounds great.
I had assumed that an admin here at work liked obscure Shakespeare plays when they called our server cressida. But I found the real reason when I noticed that the Richmond server is called rav4 …
Well, that’s pretty much all for my BC trip. Got another day in the office, then fly out this afternoon.
I managed to be a bit more sociable this time. Dinner with Dave and Leanne in a very high-tone restaurant, curry with Kelly on Davie St on Halloween, then dinner with colleagues last night.
All our usual restaurants were busy, so we stopped at El Pulgarcito at 1210 Kennedy Rd. I’d never had pupusas before; these little filled maize pancakes are the best. We’ll be back.
We got our smart meter installed today. Unfortunately, Catherine didn’t quite understand why there was a knock on the door, then her computer went beeeeyyooooww … then all our clocks caught the <blink> tag.
While I like smart meters, this one isn’t quite as smart as it could be. To me, a smart meter needs to have a big display of your current demand, and needs to be inscribed with a suitable message like “Quit using so much juice, you cretin!” It also needs to hook into local time-of-use pricing, which me being green and a Bullfrog customer and all, I don’t get to take part in. Boo.
But what could have really gone sideways was my own desktop, which was quietly chugging away installing Ubuntu 7.10. Since I started using Linux in 1995, I don’t think I’ve ever had a system upgrade go totally smoothly. This time, though, I was lucky – the system must have fully initialised before we lost power.
I can’t honestly say I see any difference between Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon; they both are fairly pretty, and just work.