Can I just say that feed on feeds, the server-side RSS aggregator, rocks?
Blog
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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! -
no white poppies
Further to They’ll turn white soon enough, I’ve heard from CFSC that you can’t get white poppies in Canada. Maybe that’s a project for next year.
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Muppets!! On Stamps!!!
I am no philatelist (though I was a half-hearted member of The Stamp Bug Club — and no, I didn’t know who Alain de Cadenet was, either) but this is the best thing ever: Muppets to appear on U.S. stamps.The article says:
Kermit and his friends are not the first puppets to be featured on a U.S. stamp
… That’s strange, I don’t remember seeing a stamp with George W. Bush on it. -
Remember, Remember …
It’s so nice to have a November 5th without having neds lobbing rockets and firecrackers about the place.
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car + greenwash = carwash?
(click on the image for larger versions)Ford Canada really have excelled themselves with the Escape Hybrid. It’s a great big huge SUV, but that doesn’t matter because it’s one of those lovely clean hybrids. Yes, that’s right, you can feel good about driving it, because you’re only supporting repressive regimes a bit.
But the best bit is in the writeup (emphasis mine):
Giving back to the environment doesn’t just stop at printing this advertisement on recyclable paper. …
C’mon guys, it’s just a regular car glossy. All paper is recyclable. If you’d have printed it on recycled hemp paper using vegetable inks, maybe, just maybe, you’d be giving something back. But this is just a sop to the car-besotted consumer.
As they go on to say:
We keep thinking about the environment.
There’s a huge gap between just thinking, and actually doing something useful. -
Winsome Newsom
On several people’s recommendation, I bought Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender CD. It is quite remarkable. Her lyrics remind me of Mervyn Peake‘s nonsense poems (
… Even mollusks have weddings, / though solemn and leaden / but you dirge for the dead, / take no jam on your bread …
). She sings of catenaries and dirigibles, rephrasing words into unfamiliar shapes. It’s not the most common act, a harpist with a fey wee voice who can also raise up a real backwoods caterwaul, but it works for me.Here’s a video of one of her songs: Sprout and the Bean.
(Norvin, you’d hate it. In fact, you’d hate it so much that I’d advise you listen to it, just so folks around you can experience the ‘neitzen’ effect.)
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torrent: Mayor McCA, Lee’s Palace, 18 June 2004
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12213
Mayor McCa
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
18th June 02004172MB, FLAC format
Set List
========I’m So Poor. Buy My CD : 4’13”
That’s A Wrap : 3’14”
Hey Man, You Gotta Nice Job : 4’58”
I Got A Haircut : 3’11”
Funky Fresh Beets : 7’45”
I Can’t Pay The Rent : 3’13”
You Better Watch Out : 4’34”Recording Details
=================Audience recorded by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone -> iRiver H120 digital WAV recorder
(Direct digital file transfer to host Linux box)
Tracks split using Audacity
Levels normalized using the ‘normalize’ command-line tool.This recording was made with CA Smith’s permission.
About the Artist
================CA “Mayor McCa” Smith — One-man Band Singing Sensation, Cartoonist,
Tapdancer, almost-Mayor of Hamilton, ON — is probably best explained by
visiting his website: < http://mayormcca.com/>.MP3s live here.
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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?
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Dough D’oh!
Whenever you have to defrost live bread dough, make sure you don’t do it in a sealed polyethylene bag. It looks like a squid has been at it …(the resulting bagels were great, though.)
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torrent: Circulatory System – Lee’s Palace, Toronto – 13 April 2003
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12198
Circulatory System
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
13 April 2003Audience recording by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone
-> Sharp MD-SR60 minidisc
-> analogue PC soundcard.Tracks split with Audacity, normalized with ‘normalize’.
Compressed with ‘flac –best’
288 megabytes.Track List:
1 Yesterday’s World
2 Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?
3 [door/days]
4 Joy
5 Round
6 The Lovely Universe
7 Diary of Wood
8 Outside Blasts
9 [now]— Pause to repair Will’s guitar —
10 Lately/Realize
11 Days To Come (In Photographs)
12 Waves of Bark & Light
13 AwayTrack names in [square brackets] are unclear from the recording, and are from the (still) upcoming album
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They’ll turn white soon enough
So everyone’s getting these red-centred quarters in their change from Tim Hortons:
They’re apparently the world’s first bicolour coin. The red in the middle has already started to look very distressed , ‘cos everyone’s scratching them to see if the colour comes off. And it does.
If Canada were really serious about peace, they’d have made the coin like this:
… like the white remembrance poppies I used to get from the Peace Pledge Union in the UK.
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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.
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The return of Mr Nae Friends
Okay, so now I have an Orkut account, it appears no-one I know is on it. Is this exclusivity, or something else?
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Hey Kids, It’s The Coalition of Negligence!
I misread this CBC headline “Allawi accuses U.S.-led coalition of negligence in ambush of Iraqi recruits“, and I thought, wow, that’s a whole new coalition, and a whole new ballgame!
