The 365 Days Project — the year-long net music weirdness that made 2003 bearable — is back!
Tag: blog
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iCaved
Yeah, I caved in and bought a 2GB iPod Nano at the weekend. I had various gift cards and cheques come in, so…
It’s a lot better than the Shuffle was. I still don’t particularly like being tethered to iTunes, but I can live with it.
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Dexit® INSTEAD? No, Dexit is dead
I see that the number of Dexit terminals has reduced to almost nothing, and now they’re offering refunds of outstanding balance. Looks like it’s dead.
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Dexit. It was almost a great idea, but offered no significant advantage over cash from the bank machine. I wonder how long it will be before you can buy the old terminals in Active Surplus?
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computer joy
Uhoh, there’s a huge Canada Computers opening just up the road; next to this sign, in fact. I’m glad I no longer commute past it; the temptation would be too strong.
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hey livejournal, quit claiming my content
Read this. Oddly familiar, huh? It would seem that LiveJournal is republishing my blog on its own site http://syndicated.livejournal.com/wesawachicken/.
The thing about syndicated publishing is that the author has at least given permission that it takes place. I gave LiveJournal no such permission. Sure, I have a public RSS feed, but I don’t expect people just to grab my whole site and publish it for their own ends. That’s not syndication, it’s theft.
They also have the gall to claim there’s a “syndicated user” wesawachicken. Again, I didn’t set that up. I wonder if I can make it implode by getting it to syndicate its own feed? -
Wind Blog » Men’s Breakfast
Glen Estill tells it as it is about wind energy: Men’s Breakfast
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see, I told you ages ago
Trendy roof turbines are not as green as they look says The Observer. <smugness/>
Paul Gipe has some thoughts on this:- Rooftop Turbines: Rooftop Mounting and Building Integration of Wind Turbines
- Roof Top Over the Top in Britain
- Roof Top Windsave in Scotland
The last one has a couple of pictures I took when we were in Scotland.
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you go, Glen!
Congratulations are due to Glen Estill, who got his two Vestas V82s on the Bruce Peninsula running today. Glen is a pioneer of wind energy in Ontario, and we’re all grateful to him for his tireless work for the industry.
Update: further to my wind turbines from space obsession, I found Glen’s original V80 turbine at 44° 56′ 46.42″ N, 81° 15′ 47.12″ W.
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tunes I must learn (eventually)
Not all of these could be classed as banjo tunes, but I’d want to try, anyway:
- The Coo-Coo Bird (it’s not optional)
- The Old Plank Road (Uncle Dave’s delivery, which was more demented than the Rounders)
- Hot Corn, Cold Corn (like HMR; just how does one spell moo’m moo’m moo’m de boo’m boo’m de boo’m?)
- I’m Going In A Field (Nic Jones style)
- Bridges & Balloons (Joanna’s song’s just crying out to be covered with a broad Glasgow accent)
- Needle of Death (too many banjo tunes are too happy)
- Ghost (the Neutral Milk Hotel one)
- something by Sufjan (even if Peter Stampfel says he plays banjo kind of boringly)
- I Love How You Love Me (like Mangum, not Spector)
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a good reason to blog less
Yesterday went to The Twelfth Fret and traded in the Goodtime for this:
It’s a Gold Tone Bob Carlin Signature. It sounds beautiful, and unlike me, plays like a dream. So if I’m not blogging so much, this might just be the reason.
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tasty Eid treats
Shaira & Azim next door gave us some wonderful Eid sweets, plus a teatowel with an appropriate motif. Yay, thanks!
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peace out
This year, unlike 2004, I’ll have White Poppies for sale at Toronto Quaker Meeting.
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outlook contacts to palm, iPod, etc …
This is a neat workaround: Export Outlook Contacts using a small VB script. It works, too — I now have all my work contacts in my Palm.
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shiver me statistical tables!
Today would be an apt day to revisit The Wit and Wisdom of Paul Hart, part 37(b)
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back to 32-bit
I think I’ll have to install Ubuntu for i386 on the Sempron box, as too many hardware things don’t work. At the moment, I’m stuck with unaccelerated graphics and wired etherent; the via graphics driver isn’t yet 64-bit clean, and none of my wireless adaptors have 64-bit drivers, either.
Maybe at the next release I’ll go 64-bit.
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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.
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free food from Dexit
Though I still hate Dexit, I have found a place to use the remaining balance — the Pizza Pizza at the corner of Vic Park and Sheppard. Yes, their pizza is still like damp cardboard, but they have passable salads.
They still need to work on the reliability of their terminals, and training staff. The other day they said my debit was authorised, when clearly nothing had come off the tag. They wouldn’t take the cash I offered (their screen showed a green thing), so yay Dexit, free food!
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more sunflowers
For my mum, who didn’t believe that you could have multiple heads on the one plant:
 