Tag: 2006

  • och jings, we won!

    Scotland beat France 1-0 yesterday. Here are some Scots enjoying the health benefits of smoking in the drizzle:

    mmm, booze

  • look out!

    I see that my company’s Outlook Web Access does much niftier things on IE than on FireFox:

    outlook web access on IE

    You don’t get those options of Firefox. Bah

    But in true MS dunderhead fashion, when you quit the mail client, it clears all your cookies — including the ones of sessions on other sites. Microsoft, this isn’t DOS; people multitask these days …

  • providing cannon fodder for empire since 1867

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the toll of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan is the price Canada is paying for playing a leadership role in world affairs.

    I reckon that if I took a random street poll anywhere (anywhere outside Canada, that is), no more than 3 out of 10 people would consider Canada as having a leadership role. I do not wish to make light of the soldiers’ plight; I just don’t want them there in my name.

    (I was going to make a comment about the nearest thing to a role to most Canadians would be a Swiss Chalet 1/4 chicken dinner, but that doesn’t work in a written context, and barely works when spoken.)

  • half-yay pedelecs

    Electric bikes hit the road in Ontario — but you have to wear a helmet, for some reason.

  • that’s what you wanted

    A pentadecagram:

    pentadecagram

    Download: star.ps (and you can edit it to change the number of points)

  • about to be gone

    This corner of Bloor & Bedford is about to be gone:

    244 Bloor W

    It has memories for us, as the first place we stayed when we arrived was just up the road. Breakfast was at Country Style (which became a Booster Juice after the massive Tim’s opened across the road), lunch was from Pita Factory, the daily paper from Gus at the Mac’s, dinner was sometimes at Swiss Chalet #1; all on the same block, all going to be gone.
    If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that hugin neatly severed a couple of heads. It might smart a little, but with some bactine and gauze, it’ll grow back in the morning.

  • that was easy

    upgraded mac

    I upgraded Catherine’s eMac last night, which up until then was probably the last Mac on the planet running 10.1. It now talks to the network better, and runs quite a bit faster.

  • pastry abuse

    Excel can (but probably shouldn’t) be used to make charts like this:

    hyperdonut

  • more big boats

    algoisle

    Algoisle loads grain.

    algosoo

    Algosoo loads salt.

  • oheeay

    I’m at the OEA conference. The energy industry is a strange little ecosystem.

    Nice view of the falls, though.

    niagara falls, from Fallsview Sheraton

  • stones, as current vernacular would have it

    Finatics' sign, by Big Al's

    I’m no fan of billboards, but I have to congratulate Mike of Finatics for sheer gall when he put up this sign. See the plastic shark on the building behind? That’s Big Al’s, one of the biggest aquarium stores in Canada. Mike’s probably not going to get any favours from them any time soon.

  • hpshopping.ca really hates French people

    hpshopping.ca really doesn’t like Francophones. If you go to the section for the HP Compaq dx2200 series, you’ll see the following:
    $589 for an english machine, $9999 for a french machineYup, the French version’s nearly 17x the price of the English one.

  • don’t give up … there is hope!

    I think that Microsoft Picture Viewer is a bit overly concerned about your welfare if the picture you are looking for is not there:

    there_is_hope.png

  • almost as much fun as X-CAD Designer

    Just played with QCAD for a bit, and remembered how much fun I had doodling with my ancient Amiga CAD package.

    yin and yang

  • ex Ex

    We’re just back from the Ex, a little urpy from the rides and a surfeit of Tiny Tom donuts. It was worth it.

    taken at the Ex, 2002

  • the computer does work

    Picked up the new computer from Canada Computers yesterday. High-end it isn’t, but it’s more than adequate. It’s an AMD Sempron 3000+ (on a Foxconn K8M890M2MA-RS2H motherboard), with 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA disk and a DVD±RW drive. There was change out of $400, including tax.

    It’s running Ubuntu for AMD64. While there are a few things I don’t have configured, it was all installed in under an hour. It reminds me a bit of OS X. There’s one thing it does better than the Mac; it knows about duplex printers, and assumes you want to be able to print duplex. Under OS X, you have to choose two-sided every time you print. Thanks to Davey for originally putting me on to Ubuntu. My life’s too short to mess with linux configs.

    Now I need to move the old hard drive over as a spare, and fit the various cards from the old machine.

  • people are stupid

    There’s going to be some ranting here, so I advise folks to look at this nice picture of a monarch butterfly I took at Bluffer’s Park today, and move along:

    monarch butterfly - spotty!

    In the park there was a gull that wasn’t moving like the others. I got close to it, and discovered there was a large fishing lure lodged through its beak. I had no way of helping it, and a nearby parks crew couldn’t do anything either. It could fly, just, but the big lure slowed it down, and the trailing fishing line mad it stumble.
    I know gulls are often seen as nuisance birds, but no animal deserved
    this fate. There’s no fishing and no kite flying in this park because there are so many birds. I’m angry that someone could be so thoughtless.

    There’s a picture below the fold. You probably don’t want to see it.

    (more…)

  • a joy forever

    a thing of beauty

    I finished fixing up the brakes on the Super Galaxy, and put new handlebar tape on the bars. I still suck at fitting bar tape; should’ve stuck to my old standard Benotto tape, which, while almost useless for shock absorption, is cheap and easy to fit.

    Once all was fitted, I took it for a spin. The new brakes are a delight; very positive and extremely powerful. I will enjoy riding again.

    (And yes, you bike nerds, there is no straddle cable in that picture.)