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09:29 |
2001/11/29
By train, all you do is board and relax. You eat, sleep, read, work or gaze out the window at Lake Ontario and the countryside. Sure beats flying.
An article about what I was doing as I posted this, and what you might be doing right now!
Welcome to the mouse potato generation of procrastinators. Instead of getting to the (less interesting) tasks at hand, many people are being consumed by computer games, messenging services and Web sites.
Gimme a break! Just what we need, more useless crap for the gadget generation:
The new telephones have a built-in camera and Nokia hopes they will encourage users to send tiny colour pictures of holiday destinations or school playground scenes to each other. A cover slips down to uncover a small lens on the back of the telephone. The picture is displayed in colour on the screen, which is about twice the size of most models.
This new 'Enhanced Multimedia Messaging Service' supposedly will add the ability to send sound files. What a great idea! This could eliminate the need to actually talk to another person altogether -- just record your message and send! I can just see it now: audio mail, yeah, a-mail!
Ottawa-based Chipworks Inc. has x-rayed the Xbox:
"The Microsoft Xbox game console is built around an Intel Pentium III processor running at 733 MHz,'' says Julia Elvidge, vice president, marketing and sales. "The whole console is in fact a stripped down medium-end PC with high-end graphics.''
Boo!
15:00 |
In Vancouver the recorded voice quickly became an outlet for the frustrations of angry phone users . . . the female voice became known as "the bitch" and the woman whose voice was used contemplated a lawsuit.
14:25 |
11:08 |
Here's a quick article about a small town employing wireless "last mile" approach to high speed access.
Boo! Ten digit dialing is headed to Ottawa as well in the next few years. Thanks, cell phone users/abusers >:|
From the U.S. Military, soon the bring you the Octobot:
Robot designers want to know how the octopus can control each arm without spending a lot of time deciding how to perform a specific arm movement.
I'll have to head down to Ottawa City Hall one of these days to check out the interesting art.
The Globe and Mail ran an interesting story on gender differences w/in the brain: Part I, Part II.
10:11 |
2001/11/28
14:24 |
2001/11/27
09:10 |
08:51 |
2001/11/23
It's been a great week, I've been quite the socialite. On Monday I made dinner w/ Tasha; Tuesday was games night at dEb's; Wednesday was dinner w/ Wong; Thursday was dinner w/ Tasha and friends for her bday; and who knows about tonight and the next . . . It's Friday and that's what counts ;)
09:15 |
2001/11/22
I just went and looked up the history of the hamburger. I was expecting something interesting, something cultural -- at least a little cultural -- but the story sounds pretty boring. Apparently, a beef patty made its way into a bun for the first time at the World Fair of 1904 in St. Louis. Ahh, I can just picture it: a bunch of 'Americans' chasing the American dream, so excited to have found the 'land of the free' and so busy carving their own culture that influence from other cultures was forgotten, or at least ignored. And what do we have to show for it now? An institution built around cheap greasy sandwiches. If only I could find a time machine.
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11:30 |
2001/11/21
09:32 |
2001/11/20
Yesterdayland.com
Transformers Archive
14:44 |
2001/11/19
09:44 |
2001/11/16
The real mystery is, why should we value - if we can define "value" as pay attention to, talk about, and identify with - our own life-events less than the life-events of characters we see on TV and in the movies (especially since the writers who invent those characters mostly just raid their own experiences for material)? When something funny or unusual happens to us, it is canonized as a Seinfeldesque moment. At that instant, it comes to life.
You know who you are . . .
10:51 |
Spend time with family and friends, rather than money on them ... If there's one thing the terror attacks have driven home this year, it's that the things no-one can buy – love, ritual, attention, sacrifice, freedom – are the only things worth pursuing, and exchanging.
That's right, 11/23 is Buy Nothing Day!
10:34 |
2001/11/14
Ludwig was convicted last year on five charges, but some community members are still concerned about the unsolved death of a local teenager on his property . . . Ludwig turned over the rifle that fired the fatal shot, but none of his 30 followers living on his Trickle Creek farm would say who pulled the trigger.
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09:34 |
09:19 |
2001/11/13
Went to my first annual general meeting at Industry Canada today. The keynote speaker was Stephen Lewis, the Former Canadian Ambassador to the UN. He used to live in New York full-time, and now frequents an apt. there regularily; he wasn't there on 9.11, but visited shortly after, and it was strange to actually here someone w/ first hand exposure there to speak in person. His talk was based on adapting to the new environment resulting from 9.11, and although he tried to wrap things up positively after reminding us of the disaster and comparing it to other atrocities (Rawanda genocide, etc.), I failed to grasp his forsight for hope. In short, his talk affirmed in me something that's been heavy on my mind lately, and that's that everything is about money; specifically that the majority of money held by goverments and large corporations is reserved for self-serving purposes; so until environmental and humanitarian concerns become profitable, such crusades may very will remain the focus only of underfunded NGO's and activist groups. Again, I am prompted to say, it is a sad world in which we live.
My weekend in Oshawa was pretty good. Got in lots of family time, and dug up my old model trains -- now that I have some free time on my hands, I think it's time to rehatch an old hobby :) Hung out w/ Rich and Duff and friends on Saturday night: a good time, though wouldn't it be fun if they came to Ottawa sometime? Hint, hint . . .
15:35 |
2001/11/09
It's not easy being a Bandido:
Immigration officers later requested that Mr. Winterhalder be detained in Canada for up to six months so they could have time to look into certain criminal allegations.
Yikes! The new anti-terror law could in fact have some scary implications in the way of privacy:
"The protection provided by the Privacy Act prevents this information from being used or disclosed for any purpose outside the Firearms Program," the commissioner said. "If the Privacy Act were nullified by ministerial certificate, there would be nothing to prevent information about someone's past emotional problems or alcoholism, for instance, from being provided to that person's employer or a relative, with incalculable and irreparable consequences."
This is WAY too close to home (from this article):
[Liban Hussein, w/ a house in Orleans, is a company agent for] Barakaat North America Inc. -- a money transfer service with an Ottawa branch run from a small grocery store on Bank Street -- which U.S. authorities have linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
A quote from this article eerily reminds me of the pasttimes described in Orwell's '1984':
[Bush] proposed that everyone serve their country and "defy and defeat the terrorists" by volunteering for community service to make homes, communities and workplaces safer by helping children, bolstering neighbourhood watch and Crime Stoppers organizations, volunteering in hospitals or joining military support organizations.
Hooray! Let's profit from 9.11:
"The new excitement in town is Sept. 11, and the government has built a tremendous expectation that there is going to be lots of new spending and people want to know how to get in on it," one industry consultant said. "Everyone is expecting the money to flow and waiting for the trucks to pull up."
One of the first things I noticed upon coming to Ottawa was how aggressive the buses are; the feeling I often get when driving is that if you're in the way, they'll mow you down. Now an initially STOPPED bus has managed to fatally strike someone!
Ottawa police said the man was attempting to cross the transitway from north to south when a bus, which was already stopped, turned into his path.
Nice one, OC Transpo!
11:49 |
What's w/ this no-bombs-during-Ramadan thing? ObL is quoted as saying that "to acquire weapons in defense of Muslims is a religious duty" (from this article about suitcase and dirty bombs). If he wants to wage battle under the guise of religion, why should anyone take pause for the same reason? That's similar to staring a war for the sake of Christmas, but then asking any retaliations to be held off during Easter. I know what I'm saying is quite a generalization, but I'm getting really tired of this 9.11 crap. (It's horrible that a group of fanatics are so deliberatly contributing to the negative view of their religion by others through their interpreations of its teachings.) I wish we'd all wake up from this crumby dream. Sometimes I really think humans are a sad kind.
Is this not disgusting!?
As part of a lucrative pay package, Nagel received options to buy 6.5 percent of the shares of the Palm OS business once the unit is made a subsidiary. Nagel, a Palm board member, also received two restricted grants of Palm
shares, a $620,000 salary, and a $200,000 hiring bonus, according to terms stated in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The same filing also noted that a spinoff to shareholders, an IPO, or third-party investment were all possibilities for the OS business.
Just his hiring bonus would keep me happy for a couple years!
Maybe I should take a break from reading the news . . .
09:24 |
2001/11/07
11:29 |
09:44 |
2001/11/05
Last week was one of the first weeks when it wasn't just about passing the time between Monday morning and Friday afternoon, I actually got out there doing stuff. Went to Babylon for the Halloween party, and went to the Museum of Civilization to see The Lands Within Me exhibit on Thursday. Well, I guess that doesn't sound like much here, but it felt like a full week following last weekend.
This weekend was pretty low key. Other than a little scooting, it wasn't too eventful. Monty Python's Quest For The Holy Grail is playing this week, so that's definately on the list, as is a trip to the 'shwa this Friday.
08:55 |
2001/11/01
14:02 |
Went to Babylon last night for their Halloween bash. Decked out in full robot attire, dEb and I won first prize for best costume! We take away 'gold passes,' which entitle us to free admission for a year :)
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