Another Human Being

CodeBlueTO: Stintz's Position

2011-09-15T15:11:00.000-04:00

I received one particularly interesting response to my e-mail yesterday about the Port Lands. It comes from Councillor Stintz, and it lays out her position on the issue. This is of interest because Stintz is one of Mayor Ford's close allies, and up until now, she had not voiced a position publicly. Last night we learned that there is at least one member of the mayor's inner circle prepared to vote against him, and it now appears there is another.

In her e-mail, Councillor Stintz expresses support for Waterfront Toronto and its plan, and my readis that if forced to choose, she would vote against transferring control to the Toronto Port Lands Company.However, her preference is clearly to reach some kind of face-saving compromise for the mayor.

Here is Stintz's text:

Dear Neighbours and Fellow Residents,

Thank you for taking the time to contact me with your concerns about how the lower Port Lands will be developed.

There is a proposal coming to City Council next week that will ask for the Toronto Portlands Corporation to be the lead development agency for the Portlands. The assumption is that the Portlands Corporation can develop the land more quickly and economically than Waterfront Toronto. Over the last few weeks, I have met with the Toronto Portlands Corporation and Waterfront Toronto.

I am convinced that Waterfront Toronto has done a complete and comprehensive plan for the Portlands and has done so consistent with the City's vision and the requirements of Ministry of Environment.

I believe that the current proposal put forward by the Toronto Portlands Corporation should be studied but the proposal departs significantly from the City's current vision that the Portlands would be developed as a neighbourhood community with mixed uses.

I will be working with my colleagues on amendments that will continue to advance the work of Waterfront Toronto while also attempting to achieve of some under lying goals of the proposal by the Toronto Portlands Corporation, such as realizing the vision for this land more quickly.

Thank you for your concerns and interest in this important city issue.

Yours truly,
Karen Stintz
City Councillor,
Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence
City of Toronto
Chair, Toronto Transit Commission

CodeBlueTO: Saving the Port Lands

2011-09-14T23:30:00.000-04:00

Toronto lurches toward its next crisis, as our charming and tireless mayors, Doug and Rob Ford, are plotting to upend waterfront development plans for the Port Lands. CodeBlueTO has all the information you need to help protect the people's plans for the waterfront. Ford for Toronto's Matt Elliot has again compiled a list of undecided or potential swing votes on Council. However, in light of mounting opposition, I have decided to write to all members of Council not named Ford. Here is my letter:

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to express my opposition to Mayor Ford's move to transfer control over the development of the Port Lands from Waterfront Toronto to the Toronto Port Lands Company. I urge you to vote against the Executive Committee's recommendation when the issue comes before Council on September 21.

I am strongly supportive of the existing, approved plan for the Toronto Port Lands and of the process of extensive public consultation by which it was created. Waterfront Toronto is doing excellent work, mixing development with unique and engaging public spaces, like Sherbourne Common and Canada's Sugar Beach. The plan to renaturalize the mouth of the Don River and provide expansive green space and public access to the waterfront, along with high-value mixed-use development, is affordable and would meet Toronto's wants and needs perfectly.

By contrast, the mayor's "vision" is stunning and almost comical in its extravagance. We have no need for a monorail, a giant Ferris wheel, or a mega-mall, and the obvious question is, how could we ever pay for them? The mayor would have us believe that the private sector will happily foot the bill, but that is the stuff of pure fantasy. Taxpayers deserve to see concrete plans and a full and proper accounting for this "vision" before any steps are taken that would put the current waterfront plans at risk.

That Mayor Ford and Councillor Ford developed their fanciful "vision" in the back rooms of City Hall, with lobbying from unregistered foreign developers, is a slap in the face to all of the Torontonians who participated in Waterfront Toronto's open process. The mayor's actions demonstrate not only disrespect for citizens, but alarming disrespect for Council as well: Council unanimously approved the current plans just one year ago.

If the mayor is concerned about the pace of Waterfront Toronto's development plans, as he claims, he should engage with the organization and work towards a solution that would accelerate them. The very idea that we can speed things up by throwing away five years of planning and starting from scratch is absurd.

The citizens and taxpayers of Toronto are relying on you to do your job and protect us from the mayor's reckless gamble. We have a secure investment in Waterfront Toronto, and the mayor has no mandate to put that at risk. Please vote to safeguard it by rejecting EX9.6.

Special thanks to Jaime Woo for suggesting the wording that I used (approximately) in my concluding paragraph.

The Biggest Ball of Fail

2011-08-26T10:03:00.003-04:00

For some reason (or, more likely, no reason), The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota popped into my head this morning. Naturally, I tried singing it to see if I'd remember all the words. The first 5 verses went really well (including all the decals from all the places where we've already been), but I couldn't remember what happened after the kids were so happy they started singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall for the 27th time that day. And then, it all just kind of fell apart. I was positively crestfallen.

So, this is to refresh your memory and mine. Enjoy!

Glee 3D Highlights

2011-08-13T22:33:00.002-04:00

Just got back from seeing Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. Since it's only going to be in theatres for two weeks, I'm sure some unfortunate souls will miss it. For those people, I now present the top three highlights:

3. Heather Morris's in-character backstage Brittany quips.
2. The girl with the "Jew Fro" Born This Way T-shirt.
1. Absolutely zero Matthew Morrison!

Early Thoughts on Google+

2011-07-09T20:46:00.005-04:00

I've been on Google+ for almost two weeks now, but it's just starting to get interesting. Two large influxes of new users (I suppose we should still be calling them testers, actually) over the last few days have brought many of my friends to the service. It's still a lot quieter than those other services, but it doesn't feel too soon to give a few early thoughts on Plus.

It seems to me that Google is trying to position Plus in between Facebook and Twitter, and then expand out from there. With its asymmetric relationships, Plus is more like Twitter in providing the opportunity to find interesting new people for purely online interactions. But, with circles, some of those relationships can be privileged, making it more comfortable to do the kind of oversharing common on Facebook. I think the model is meant to provide the best of both worlds, which just makes sense competitively.

Facebook is so firmly entrenched in people's real lives, which is a major challenge to a would-be competitor. Think about it: When was the last time you used a service other than Facebook to invite people to an event? So, I think the Google+ strategy includes providing Twitter-style relationships and interactions while building up the user base to the point where competition with Facebook is possible. I won't even try to predict whether it will work, but here are a few promising observations.

First, circles are cool. Some have argued that they offer little-to-nothing more than friend lists on Facebook, but I disagree. I think their presence from the start and their prominence in the sharing UI, combined with the asymmetric relationships in Plus, makes circles much more useful and powerful. Even with lists, I've never felt comfortable adding acquaintances or coworkers as Facebook friends. But I really do believe that I could use Plus as a single online home for these different types of relationships, without worrying about sharing the wrong kind of information with the wrong people.

Second, the implementation is great, and already beats Facebook in many respects. The Web UI is top-notch, and I love the integration with Picasa Web Albums (a service I haven't used in the past, but plan to now). And on mobile? From day one, Google+ for Android wipes the floor with Facebook's app. Even the mobile Web version on iPhone (the native app is apparently awaiting approval) is better than the Facebook app there.

Third, I'm hearing a lot of people expressing excitement about the opportunity to dump Facebook. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising, and it's a sentiment I definitely agree with. We hand over all kinds of personal data to this company that holds it captive and gives us reason after reason not to trust them with it. Why? Because there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative. What's interesting, though, is that I'm now hearing these anti-Facebook sentiments from people I wouldn't expect to be concerned about issues of privacy or lock-in.

A final couple of thoughts on glaring omissions from Plus. Huddles and Hangouts are interesting new features, but I really don't think they make up for what's missing. Notably, that's some facility for company/organization/brand presence (i.e. Pages on Facebook) and events. Apparently, the former is already a work in progress, but I'd argue that the latter is just as important, if not more so. As I alluded to above, I think Facebook Events connects with people's real lives more than any other feature, so it's vital for any would-be Facebook replacement. Google has the opportunity for another integration, with Google Calendar, which could be very interesting.

Even at this point, well in advance of its official launch, Google+ is an impressive offering. I'm looking forward to seeing where Google takes it next. Happy +ing!

Jarvis Bike Lanes

2011-07-06T21:02:00.002-04:00

As you probably heard, the Jarvis Bike Lanes are on the chopping block. The War on the Car is over, long live the War on the Bike.

City Council is set to vote on the issue on July 12 or 13. If you support the bike lanes, please write your councillor (you can find your councillor and his or her e-mail address here). You might consider cc'ing all of the "mushy middle" councillors and the hard-line Ford supporters who previously voted for the installation of the bike lanes in 2009.¹ Their votes will decide this.

Also, give the mayor a call at 416-397-FORD. He claims to be hearing only from people who want the lanes gone, but I doubt that's entirely accurate.

In any case, here is the e-mail I sent to my councillor, Kristyn Wong-Tam, and the others mentioned above:

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to express my concern about the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee's recommendation to remove the Jarvis bike lanes, and to you urge to oppose that measure when it comes before Council. As a driver, a cyclist, a resident of the neighbourhood, and a taxpayer, I strongly believe that such a move would be a big mistake.

I live on Jarvis, so I have seen first-hand the dramatic improvement resulting from the addition of the bike lanes. The reality is that cars and bikes are coexisting much better than they ever had before.

I drive on Jarvis daily, and my observation is that traffic has not become noticeably worse since the centre lane was removed. The recent staff report supports this view, demonstrating that average travel times have increased only slightly. It also makes recommendations for advance left turn signals that could address what congestion does exist.

The same report shows that, while vehicle traffic has not been reduced at all, bike volume has tripled since the lanes were installed, increasing Jarvis's total capacity by almost 5%. This is great news for everyone: The gridlock problem we face in Toronto will only be ameliorated by using our limited infrastructure more efficiently.

Moreover, I'm very worried that removing the bike lanes will just add that new bike traffic back into the vehicle lanes, slowing them down as a result. Separating bike and vehicle traffic allows both to travel better, keeping bicyclists safe and drivers moving.

What concerns me most is the apparent rush to push through a decision on removing the bike lanes, without due consideration or any kind of consultation with the public. Even my local councillor was cut out of any discussion before the Committee's decision.

Does the proposal to remove the bike lanes even include a plan for what to do with the road space that would be recovered? If it does, the public hasn't been told, and we certainly don't know what it would cost. The indications are that it could be very expensive, indeed. The disrespect for taxpayers, and for citizens of the area in particular, is galling.

Once again, I urge you to please vote against the removal of the Jarvis bike lanes.

---
[1] Thanks to Ford for Toronto for the full list: councillor_milczyn@toronto.ca, councillor_grimes@toronto.ca, councillor_mammoliti@toronto.ca, councillor_nunziata@toronto.ca, councillor_digiorgio@toronto.ca, councillor_colle@toronto.ca, councillor_palacio@toronto.ca, councillor_bailao@toronto.ca, councillor_matlow@toronto.ca, councillor_robinson@toronto.ca, councillor_crawford@toronto.ca, councillor_kelly@toronto.ca, councillor_moeser@toronto.ca

Yet Another CRTC Fail

2011-02-07T22:42:00.001-05:00

In January, the CRTC proposed a change to rules prohibiting false or misleading news broadcasts on radio and television. Naturally, those changes would weaken the rules, paving the way for more public disinformation. Great, just what we need.

The changes are currently open for public comment, but only for two more days. Here is my brief submission.

1. I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed amendments to the Radio Regulations, 1986; Television Broadcasting Regulations, 1987; Pay Television Regulations, 1990; Specialty Services Regulations, 1990; and the Broadcasting Information Regulations, 1993, that would relax the existing prohibition on broadcasting false or misleading news.

2. I am a citizen who is greatly concerned about the quality of news and information in the public sphere, and I fear that the proposed changes would constitute a giant step backward on that front.

3. The new requirement that false or misleading news "endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public" is unduly narrow, failing to account for other important societal harm that such reporting can cause. The existing prohibition without qualification is certainly more appropriate. If there are particular exceptions that require special consideration, such as satire, those should be enumerated specifically.

4. I am appalled that these changes have been proposed without any apparent justification and without a significant public consultation. They have the potential to damage Canadian society and our democratic institutions, and as such warrant significantly more attention and input than they have received.

***End of document***

I'd encourage you to submit your comments using the online form. Note that you must number your paragraphs and end your submission with the line ***End of document*** (to indicate that the document has not been truncated).

Check out posts from Michael Geist's and the Green Party for more information.

Not Dead, Resting

2011-01-02T16:14:00.004-05:00

It's no secret that this blog, like so many others, doesn't get the attention from its scribe that it once did. However, let me reassure you -- and it -- that it's not dead.

And on that note, I've done a bit of updating. Most notably, I've enabled a mobile view, which the good folks at Blogger finally got around to implementing a couple of weeks ago.¹ I also updated to a matching "new" template² and tweaked it to my taste. Finally, I couldn't help but notice that all my links were ancient and most are now defunct. So they're gone, and replaced by an index of my posts by label. I may, when I have a few spare minutes, post some new ones. Or not.

Oh, and I have now, almost four years later, made good on my expressed will to start using footnotes.

Happy New Year!

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[1] Blogger users can enable it via Blogger in Draft.
[2] "New" in quotes because these were actually introduced back in June.

Transit City II

2010-12-03T13:21:00.006-05:00

I just accepted an invite for the the Facebook "event" Support Transit City, send a quick email. If you care about public transit in Toronto, you should, too.

I'm not really one to send a form letter, so here's what I ended up sending to Rob Ford and the new TTC Chair, Karen Stintz.

Dear Mayor Ford,

I am writing to express my support for Transit City and my concern about your plans to scrap it. In particular, your statement Wednesday that "Transit City is over" seems premature, ill-considered, and entirely disrespectful of council's authority.

You have frequently claimed that people want subways, and I have no doubt that is true. However, there is no denying that subways are extremely expensive. The TTC estimates that your proposed Sheppard subway extension would cost 3-4x as much as the planned LRT line, despite being only two-thirds its length. Wanting something doesn't mean you can afford it.

As a citizen of Toronto and a taxpayer, I believe we cannot afford to see the tax dollars already been spent on Transit City go to waste. Contracts have been signed, work has begun, LRT vehicles have been ordered, and the city of Toronto will be on the hook for costly fines and penalties if we change course now. Scrapping this plan would also represent the loss of billions of dollars of federal and provincial infrastructure money for Toronto.

I am both a driver and a public transit user, and I do not believe that Transit City represents "a war on the car." Only by rapidly improving public transit options can we begin to reduce congestion on the roads and make things better for everyone. Throwing out almost a decade's work on an affordable city-wide rapid transit plan would be the height of irresponsibility.

Mr. Mayor, you promised respect for the taxpayer. Abandoning Transit City would demonstrate exactly the opposite.

My Favourite Android Apps

2010-07-25T10:53:00.025-04:00

I was recently asked for a list of the Android apps I use. I figured, why not do it as a blog post? So here, for anyone who's interested, is my list of favourite Android apps, compiled after about four months of Nexus One ownership. These are the apps that assist me, inform me, delight me, and keep bringing me back, day after day.

Note that I'm using the latest version of Android (FroYo, or 2.2). Some of these apps may not run on older versions. You won't even see unsupported apps when you search in the Android Market.

Swype

Swype is an amazing replacement for the default Android virtual keyboard that makes typing easy and fast! The idea is that you can quickly swipe your finger around over the keys, and it traces the shape to guess what word you wanted. It works very well, and keeping your finger on the screen for each whole word makes it possible to type while walking or riding in a moving vehicle (as a passenger, of course). Unfortunately, it's not in the Android Market yet, but you can sign up for the beta. It will take some time before you're invited to join, so register now.

FourSquare

With FourSquare, you can share your location with friends, find out who else is wherever you are, and earn mayorships and badges in the process. Who cares about privacy, anyway? I'm going for the Super Mayor badge!

Chrome to Phone

This was a tech demo for FroYo's push messaging this year at Google IO. But, it's also a super handy little app that I use all the time. With Chrome to Phone, you can send Web pages from Chrome or Firefox on your desktop or laptop directly to your phone. Google Maps links open directly in the Maps app, and other pages are opened in the browser. Imagine this: You receive an e-mail on your desktop with the address of an event you'd like to attend. Find it on Google Maps, click a toolbar button, and the address is pushed to your phone, opening right in Maps automatically. With just two presses on your phone, you can get turn-by-turn directions in Navigation.

This should be the stuff of ads, but for some reason I can't even begin to understand, Google never even bothered to put this app in the Market. So, you'll have to download it from its Google Code site. The Chrome extension is available from the same place. You can get the Firefox extension, called Send to Phone, from the Firefox Add-ons site.

Twitter

The official Twitter app was released just a couple of months ago into an already crowded field of clients for the popular service. It distinguishes itself with its beautiful, playful UI and its widgets, which, in my opinion, are the best available by far. It doesn't have all of the advanced features that some others do, most notably multiple account support. Power users may need to look elsewhere (for them, I'd recommend Seesmic).

One caveat: I had a significant problem with the official Twitter app around the time I upgraded to FroYo, though I'm not certain whether or not the upgrade was the cause. Automatic refresh stopped working, so tweets in the app and the widget wouldn't update unless I manually hit the refresh button. That was a major pain, and the lack of response from Twitter on the issue was disappointing. In the end, just clearing data for the app (in Settings > Applications > Manage applications) resolved the problem.

Shazam

Shazam identifies the music you hear. Just hold up your phone and it records a snippet, analyzes it, and it tells you what song it is. Seriously, how cool is that?

Places Directory

Places Directory lists nearby places in categories like Restaurants, Bars, Shopping, Movie Theaters, and Hotels. See photos, reviews (from multiple sources), and location/contact information. There are certainly other popular apps of this sort out there (notably Yelp), but I prefer Places Directory for its clean UI and its slick integration (Dial, Map, Share, and Add to Contacts).

3G Watchdog and APNdroid

If you have a limited data plan, 3G Watchdog will help you to avoid going over your quota. It can even use APNdroid to automatically shut data off when you've used too much. I said a whole lot more about these apps previously.

My Tracks

My Tracks uses GPS to record your hiking, cycling, running, and climbing trips. It plots your tracks and reports stats including time, speed, distance, and elevation. You can even share your tracks on Google My Maps and upload them to Google Spreadsheets.

Barcode Scanner

Barcode Scanner photographs and decodes barcodes and QR codes. It can automatically open links in the browser, add contacts and calendar events, and configure wi-fi settings based on the information encoded in a QR code. A great way to exchange information with the outside world.

Squeeze Commander

If you have a Logitech Squeezebox, you'll love Squeeze Commander, the best Squeezebox remote control app out there. It fully controls your Squeezebox server, plays Internet radio, and is packed with delightful surprises, like volume control via your phone's volume buttons and auto-mute, pause or volume down on incoming calls. It can even download songs from your Squeezebox server to your phone.

Note: this is a paid app, costing €2.99 and well worth every penny.

ES File Explorer

Yup, there's really a file system in your phone. You can use EStrongs File Explorer to see and manage the files on your SD card and, if you really feel the urge, in your phone's internal memory. You can also transfer files with remote systems via SMB, FTP, and Bluetooth.

Astro is another popular file manager, but I do find EStrongs' UI to be a little bit cleaner and more friendly.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a service that automatically synchronizes files across multiple computers and even lets you share folders with other users or the Web at large. The Dropbox app lets you download files from your Dropbox to your phone and upload files to be synchronized across your computers.

Movies

Movies provides listings, trailers and Rotten Tomatoes ratings, all courtesy of Flixster. Never wonder what to see again.

Google Earth

Google Earth lets you explore the globe in 3D, right on your phone. Just wow.

NewsRob

NewsRob is an RSS/Atom feed reader that syncs with Google Reader. Perfect for keeping up with your daily reading while on the go. It offers really nice synchronization features, including the option to only sync while on wi-fi.

TripIt

TripIt allows you to easily access travel plans. You just forward your itineraries TripIt, and it creates trip plans, including flight and hotel information, maps, and weather forecasts. You can that access all that information, and other people's trips that they've shared with you, via the app.

OI Shopping List

OI Shopping List is, unsurprisingly, a simple shopping list app. It supports multiple lists, as well as quantities, prices, and tags on items. You can remove crossed out items from the view by shaking the phone, and then later pick them again to add to your next list.

AK Notepad

AK Notepad is a really simple notepad app. You can set reminders on notes, share them, and sync them with Snaptic.com.

URLy

URLy is a simple but handy URL shortening app. It supports 38 URL shortening services, including bit.ly, is.gd, and tinyurl.com, and integrates nicely for easy use from any other application.

Wikidroid

Wikidroid provides friendly formatting of Wikipedia content for your phone.

Honourable Mentions

The following five apps sound like great ideas, but in all honesty, I haven't had much opportunity to use them yet. Still, I think they're worth mentioning.

Google Sky Map

Google Sky Map is an augmented reality app that displays the planets, stars, and constellations as you point your phone around the night sky.

Carrr Matey

Carrr Matey is a parking app that helps you keep track of where you've parked and, optionally, how much time is left on the meter. It seems like a good idea, especially for really big lots.

Open Spot

Open Spot is another parking-related app, but to help you find parking spots in the first place. As you leave a spot, you use the app to report it (you can also report spots that you just happen to notice are empty). Then, when you need a spot, you can search for open spots that others have reported.

I love the idea of Android users banding together to help each other. Who knows if it will actually work, though!

Bump

Bump lets you exchange contact information, photos, and apps with others just by bumping your phones together. This is a cross-platform app, allowing you to share with both Android and iPhone users.

Key Ring Reward Cards

Key Ring creates a digital copy of all your customer loyalty and membership cards on your phone. You can scan the barcodes from your cards, or just enter the numbers manually. When you retrieve a card, the barcode is displayed so that it can be scanned right off the screen. This seems like a nice way to lighten your wallet, but to be honest, I haven't had the guts to ask anyone to scan my phone yet.

Without question, there are huge numbers of fun and useful apps available for Android. I've listed my faves, but I'm sure there are some great ones I haven't discovered yet. Did I miss a great app? If so, please let me know!

Finally, don't forget to support Android developers. If you can afford it, I think it's a great idea to show your appreciation for apps you like by buying or donating. It's the best way to ensure a steady stream of great apps to come!

Bill C-32

2010-06-13T23:27:00.002-04:00

The Conservatives are taking another kick at the Copyright can. This time, they've come up with Bill C-32. Here is my letter to the Minister of Industry, Tony Clement. Please get informed and speak out!

Dear Mr. Clement,

I am writing to express my concerns with the recently introduced copyright bill, Bill C-32. Professionally, I am a software developer and a published author, so I am dependent upon copyright to make my living. I am also an enthusiastic consumer of copyrighted works, particularly music and software, so I view the issue from both sides.

The bill represents a significant step forward from your government's previous attempt at copyright reform. In all areas but one, it appears to take a balanced approach. Unfortunately, the one exception, the digital lock provisions, destroy that balance by giving producers of content a final technological veto over any and all rights that would otherwise fall to consumers. Thus, in its current form, Bill C-32 is critically flawed.

The inclusion of such strict protections for digital locks is surprising, to say the least. They appear to have survived, virtually unchanged, from the failed Bill C-61, in spite of the outpouring of opposition during last summer's Copyright Consultation. Indeed, the most commonly heard opinion throughout the Consultation was opposition to C-61-style anti-circumvention provisions (expressed in 6641 of 8306 submissions). One cannot help but wonder what purpose the Consultation was meant to serve when its strongest message has been ignored, no doubt in deference to the wills of a powerful American corporate lobby. As one Canadian who made the effort to have my voice heard, I am deeply upset by this result.

The DMCA-style hard line that has again been offered in Bill C-32 is clearly not supported by Canadians, and it is not necessary for Canada to meet our obligations under the WIPO Internet treaties, which require only “adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies” for digital locks. In other countries, including India and New Zealand, WIPO implementation has been achieved with more balanced approaches to digital locks.

A copyright balance requires that consumers' rights be protected in all cases, not left to the whims of the dominant media corporations. Circumvention of technological measures can be necessary to exercise those rights, so it is simply unacceptable to criminalize such circumvention for non-infringing purposes. I strongly urge you to amend Bill C-32 to make the anti-circumvention provisions applicable only to circumvention for the purpose of copyright infringement.

Android Data Diet (Postscript)

2010-06-09T14:41:00.005-04:00

Last week, I blogged about how, after accidentally burning through my monthly data allowance in one day, I configured my Nexus One to use minimal data, and how I started using a couple of apps to measure and limit that usage. Yesterday was the beginning of a new billing cycle, so I was able to see the damage from my excesses and gauge how successful the ensuing diet was.

My extra data charges for this month: $5.60. Phew, not too bad!

At 5 cents/MB, that means I used 112 megs beyond my 500 meg limit. But 87.6 megs of that was on the day I exceeded my limit and the day after, before I realized what had happened. Once I put my phone on the diet, it only used 24.4 megs over 20 days (1.22 MB/day on average), costing me just $1.22.

I'd say the diet was a resounding success! I managed to keep my data usage very low while still staying relatively well connected. I was manually syncing my mail and contacts, but at least I could check them when I wanted to and look up things on the Web. I did miss having my Twitter and Facebook feeds kept up to date, though.

Now that I have a full month's data available again, I have happily re-enabled all my data-hungry settings, like auto-sync and Twitter notifications. I did leave the unfortunate Wi-Fi sleep policy disabled, and I'm continuing to use 3G Watchdog to monitor my data usage. I have increased my daily quota to 30 megs, which should give me lots of room to do whatever I want, but prevent any more runaway data use in the future.

On an unrelated Android note, Google has rolled out free turn-by-turn navigation to Canada, along with 10 other countries. This is a killer feature of Android, and it's great to have it available here. It also gives us something new to play with while we're waiting for the FroYo update.

Android Data Diet (Part 2)

2010-06-03T22:31:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I described how I curbed my Nexus One's appetite for tasty (but pricey) mobile data. But what's a diet without a scale? I still needed a way to monitor just how much data I was using and warn me or, better yet, stop me if I used too much.

Cue the apps.

As I mentioned yesterday, Android doesn't do this out of the box, but fortunately there are at least a couple of great, free monitoring apps available. I tried NetCounter and 3G Watchdog. I think NetCounter has a really nice UI, and it provides the ability to monitor both mobile data and Wi-Fi, but I ended up choosing 3G Watchdog for its excellent quota features.

You can use it to set a daily, weekly, or monthly quota, and then have it warn you when you exceed a given percentage of that quota. Moreover, you can have it shut the mobile data right off if you exceed another given percentage.

I have set an extremely low daily quota of 2 MB, with a warning at 50% and auto-disable at 99%. I'll keep this setting until the end of the billing cycle -- recall from yesterday that I've already exceeded my data limit for the month and am now paying for each meg I use. The idea is to try to keep below 1 meg a day (which only costs me five cents), and cut myself off at 2 megs. That should keep my extra data fees for the remainder of the month under a couple of dollars.

So far, this approach is working: With the changes to my settings that I described yesterday, I'm finding it easy to stay well below 1 meg most days, and on the couple of occasions where I have exceeded 2 megs, auto-disable has worked like a champ.

Once my monthly data usage resets, I'll re-enable auto-sync and my Facebook and Twitter updates, and I'll increase my daily quota to something like 40 MB. That should give me plenty of room to stay connected and use lots of data when I want to, but will prevent any further disastrous 450 meg days.

By default, 3G Watchdog permanently adds a notification indicating the current state of your data usage relative to your quota. I find that quite intrusive, but fortunately it has an option to disable the notification. I did, and added its attractive little widget to my home screen instead. Even that may not stick around once my data diet month is over.

You can install 3G Watchdog by scanning the following QR code with an Android device (or just by touching it if you're reading this on one):

Finally, I should point out that to use 3G Watchdog's auto-disable feature, you'll also need to install another app: APNdroid. It's a handy little app that simply disables mobile data by appending a suffix to your active APN. It also has a widget that can be placed on the home screen for easy access.

Here is the QR code for APNdroid:

Thanks to Richard Fruet and Martin Adamek, the creators of these great apps. They're life savers...or at least money savers!

Android Data Diet

2010-06-02T22:26:00.011-04:00

A couple of months ago, I got myself a smartphone. No, not that one; something better. I got a Nexus One, Google's flagship Android phone. Though younger, Android is already significantly more capable than iPhone OS. It's also open source, Linux-based, and uses Java as its primary development language. Throw in the top-notch development tools based on Eclipse, and it was a total no-brainer for me.

Oh, and did I mention it's dead sexy?

I actually got my Nexus One while I was in California for EclipseCon at the end of March. Google sells the phone directly online (though they recently announced they're ending that experiment and pursuing more traditional sales channels), but I saved myself the costs of international shipping and customs duties by having it delivered to my hotel in Santa Clara and bringing it back with me after seven days in the US.

Since then, I've been absolutely delighted with it, but for one most unfortunate incident: A couple of weeks ago, my phone allegedly decided to eat through my entire month's data allowance in one day. My Telus bill shows over 450 megs of data on one Sunday, and I have no idea how that could have happened. Telus was, of course, completely unhelpful, refusing to share any information about which specific hosts or domains my phone was supposed to have accessed. That information could have helped me determine if and how that kind of data usage actually occurred, but Telus wouldn't even confirm whether or not they actually keep such information (even though Canadian privacy law requires them to, on request, inform an individual of the existence of all personal information and give him or her access to that information). Unfortunately, Android doesn't report data usage out of the box, and I hadn't even thought of installing an app to do that.

So, it's impossible for me to go back and find out what happened that fateful day, but it was immediately clear that I couldn't let it happen again. I was only about a week into my monthly billing cycle and was suddenly being charged 5 cents per megabyte of data. So, the first priority was to severely restrict my data use for the rest of the month. Beyond that, I'll need to put in place a strategy to prevent me from getting into this situation again.

The first thing I discovered was alarming, and it's my only real complaint about Android so far: by default, Android is configured to put Wi-Fi to sleep whenever the phone's screen shuts off, in order to save battery. So, while the phone is sitting at home, unused, it falls back to mobile data, instead. But just because the screen is off, that doesn't mean the phone's not doing anything. I had it configured to automatically sync my Gmail, calendar, and contacts, and to constantly refresh my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Though I wouldn't ever expect this kind of activity to result in 450 megs of traffic in a day, megabytes or even tens of megabytes are certainly quite possible.

So, the first thing to do was to disable this Wi-Fi sleeping behaviour, but for some reason, the setting is very well hidden. From the home screen, you'll need to navigate to Settings > Wireless & networks > Wi-Fi settings to find it. Then, you'll need to hit the menu button, and finally select Advanced. Only then can you switch the Wi-Fi sleep policy to Never. I would highly recommend every Android user do this, as unintentional data use can cost you money. I haven't experienced any noticeable effect on battery life, either: I'm still easily able to get through a day on a single charge. I really think Google selected a poor default, and I've told them as much in this bug. Hopefully, it will be remedied in the future.

Since I'm not always in a location where Wi-Fi is available, my next step was to try to disable all background data usage. All account synchronization can be turned off in one place, which is most convenient: Settings > Accounts & Sync > Background data. Once this is done, you'll need to synchronize manually, such as by selecting the Refresh menu item in the Gmail app. Also, this setting must be re-enabled temporarily in order to use the Android Market. I currently do both of these things only when I'm on Wi-Fi.

Finally, I went through all of my apps and looked for any settings related to background data use or notifications. For example, Seesmic has a notifications feature that relies on polling the Twitter server to update the feed. I disabled all such features, and now my data use has slowed to a trickle.

Still, there was something missing: I needed a way to track my data and be notified if it gets too high. Fortunately, there are at least a couple of great, free apps for data usage monitoring available on the Android Market. I'll talk about those tomorrow...

Transit City

2010-04-18T22:43:00.004-04:00

I just wrote the Premier in support of restoring provincial funding for Transit City. Please take action to help, too. Here is what I wrote.

Dear Premier McGuinty,

I am deeply disappointed by your recent decision to delay previously promised funding for the Transit City Light Rail plan. Delaying funding now will only compound Toronto's severe transportation woes, and could very well kill this vital project altogether. It would be most unfortunate if your lasting legacy was undoing all the work and collaboration that has already gone into developing this plan.

In December 2009, as construction began on the Sheppard East line, Minister Bradley was quoted as reaffirming your government's commitment to quickly building a comprehensive public transit network in Toronto. He said, "By providing more convenient, affordable, faster rides on public transit, we are tackling congestion, creating jobs, stimulating the economy and improving the air we breathe." He was corrrect: Transit City will allow Torontonians to make a contribution to the critical cause of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, provide desperately needed transit access to Toronto's inner suburbs, and stimulate the economy with thousands of jobs.

Although the province's budget deficit is unfortunate, public transit funding is not the cause of this deficit, and cutting this funding is not the solution. Nothing has changed since Minister Bradley's statement last December.

As a long-time Liberal supporter, I am also concerned about the impact of this about-face on your government's prospects for re-election. If another party campaigns on a promise to restore Transit City funding in the next election, I fear that I will have to give them my vote. I cannot think of another issue that is more important than this one.

I ask you to please deliver on your promise and return the $4 billion to the Transit City budget to keep this plan on track. Transit City is too vital to the health of our city to be put on hold.

Squeezebox Server

2009-10-28T18:06:00.003-04:00

I just upgraded from SqueezeCenter 7.3.3 to Squeezebox Server 7.4.1. I bought my Squeezebox in early 2006, and this is the second major update to the cross-platform, GPL'ed server software since then. Both times, the capabilities of the Squeezebox were expanded, and the experience of using it improved. Now that's what I call value!

This isn't as big an update as the switch from SlimServer to SqueezeCenter, which overhauled the browser-based UI and added the ability to synchronize playback across multiple players. Indeed, at first glance, it appeared to me that not much had changed in Squeezebox Server.

However, looking a bit closer, there are a few really nice improvements. The most prominent new feature is the introduction of applications (everyone's got to have apps, right?). For example, there's a CBC app that helps you easily find their radio streams and podcasts, and a Facebook app that lets you browse your news feed and post updates about what you're listening to (check my profile to see what I'm listening to as I write this!).

Also impressive is a major improvement to Internet radio support. The listing and organization of stations is great. You can see a very complete listing of local stations (66 for Toronto, all classified and with icons) with just a couple of clicks of the mouse or remote control, and easily browse or search thousands of stations from all around the world. One more click adds the station to your favourites, for easy access from the main menu.

Big kudos to the Squeezebox team and to Logitech. I never would have expected such great things when Logitech bought Slim Devices in 2006. It's all enough to make me pine for one of their newer devices.

My Copyright Consultation Submission

2009-09-04T16:44:00.009-04:00

The Copyright Consultation wraps up on Sunday, September 13, so there's just over a week left to make your submission! I finally finished mine today. Here it is.

Thank you very much for receiving this submission, and for holding this consultation in the first place. I hope that hearing the views and concerns of all Canadian stakeholders will lead to new copyright legislation that is more balanced and forward-looking than the deeply flawed Bill C-61.

The primary reason for this submission is to express, in the strongest terms possible, my opposition to the DMCA-like anti-circumvention provisions of Bill C-61. Banning all circumvention of technological measures (as opposed to just circumvention for the purposes of infringement) and banning technologies that can be used for circumvention are extreme measures that destroy all balance in copyright.

We do not achieve balance by allowing copyright holders to decide for themselves exactly how their works may be accessed and then legally protecting the technologies that enforce those decisions. If a consumer has purchased a copyrighted work and a technological measure attempts to, for example, override Fair Dealing, protect the work beyond its copyright's expiration, or revoke access on the whim of the distributor, the consumer must be allowed to circumvent that measure to access the work.

The DMCA has been wholly ineffective in preventing widespread copying in the USA. The realities of modern computing and communication -- that copying and distribution now have essentially zero cost -- have led to an explosion of file sharing in that country, just as they have here in Canada and in the rest of the world. The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA didn't stop DVD-CSS or FairPlay from being defeated. Rather, they have been used and abused to limit interoperability, deny access to persons with disabilities, disrupt security research, and slow innovation. The American situation is absolutely not one we should be trying to recreate here.

Instead, I believe we should take a wider view on modernizing copyright, as I will explain in my responses to the five specific questions posed for the consultation.

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?

I am affected by copyright law both as a producer and a consumer of copyrighted materials. Professionally, I am a software developer and a published author. Like most members of the general public, I am a consumer of music, movies, and the written word. I am a strong supporter of Canadian artists.

In both my professional and personal lives, I am a user of, contributor to, and advocate for Free and Open Source Software. While this type of software is usually distributed without charge and without any restrictions on end users, it relies on copyright law to control distribution and use in derivative works. Free and Open Source software thrives in open environments, and it is vulnerable to abuse of copyright law to restrict compatibility and interoperability with other software and hardware.

Canadian copyright law is in need of modernization. In particular, I believe it should be simplified and brought into line with current technological realities and public sentiment.

Copyright law currently just doesn't feel relevant to most individuals, especially younger people. Millions of Canadians engage in file sharing, without believing that they're really doing anything wrong. For most people, sharing feels good. Sharing music tends to build communities of fans and promote the artist whose work is being shared.

The overall effect of a decade of file sharing on the music industry has been most decidedly negative, but in the last few years, we have seen dramatic growth in online music sales beginning to offset the losses. It is hard to pinpoint the reasons for this change, but the music industry's long-overdue move to abandon DRM could be one of them. It is also too early to tell whether, given enough creativity and technical savvy on the part of artists and the industry, this could mark the beginning of a turnaround.

What is abundantly clear, however, is that file sharing is not at all comparable to commercial, for-profit copyright infringement. If non-commercial copying is to be outlawed, this should be specified expressly in copyright law and the punishment must fit the crime. In the USA, individuals have faced multi-million dollar lawsuits for sharing a handful of files. This is an unreasonable and disproportionate response. Statutory fines on the same scale as a speeding ticket (total, not per file or per transfer) would seem much more appropriate.

Moreover, copying for one's own personal use (and for the use by other members of one's household) should not be subject to any copyright restrictions at all. Once a consumer has legitimately purchased a work, he should not be prevented from making a backup copy or transferring the work to another format or device. Any restrictions only undermine the credibility of copyright and artificially diminish the value of new technologies that could otherwise help users enjoy the content they have purchased.

In the not-too-distant past, copying and distributing creative works was difficult and expensive, which meant that these acts were generally only carried out for commercial purposes. If someone was going to make money from copying the work, it certainly made sense to ensure that it was the creator, so as to provide an incentive to create. Today, copying and distribution is effectively free and instantaneous, making personal and non-commercial copying commonplace. Copyright law should reflect this reality.

2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?

Technological neutrality and flexibility are key to ensuring that copyright law can withstand the test of time. Rights and exceptions can be specified without ensorsing or banning particular technologies, leaving the courts with sufficient flexibility to apply the principles to the relevant technologies of the day. Bill C-61 was very poor in this regard, attempting to carve out exceptions for specific uses of specific technologies, many of which were already obsolete.

3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?

I believe that all of the changes I have described so far would have a positive effect on public perception of the credibility and relevance of copyright law. If fewer Canadians are inclined to violate copyright law, then creators will be better able to receive the benefits that the law intends.

Beyond that, the best way to foster creativity is to ensure that copyright law does not negatively affect people's ability to create new works based on existing ideas. Creative people have always built on what has come before, and with the help of technology that is now more true than ever. More flexible Fair Dealing, most especially including parody and satire, would be helpful in this regard, and certainly the public domain must be protected by not extending the current term of copyright.

4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?

Once again, I believe that technological neutrality in copyright is key to fostering competition and investment in Canada. Banning particular technologies would be damaging to the software and electronics industries.

5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

Certain large players in the content industries are having trouble adapting to the new, digital economy, and they are pressing for extreme changes to the copyright balance. It is worth noting again that these changes have not had the desired effect in other jurisdictions that have adopted them, and that artists and creators, themselves, are not at all convinced.

I believe that the more reasonable proposals described so far in this submission would be much more effective in helping position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy.

Thank you again for receiving and considering this submission.

Perform and be Glamorous!

2009-02-23T22:38:00.002-05:00

What better time to write on one's long-neglected blog than when trying to shamelessly plug something?

That time has come! (And, no doubt, it will come again soon.)

Swingin'OUT, Toronto’s queer swing dance group, is holding a fundraiser to for The 519 Capital Campaign, and we're looking for performers. Our fundraiser, Glamorous: A Tribute to the Jazz Age, will be an incredible evening of glitz and glamour, with a 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s theme.

Dance, drag, burlesque, cabaret, or any other performance style...if you can work with our theme, we'd love to hear from you! Check out our Call for Performers for all the details.

My Letter to the Governor General

2008-12-03T22:49:00.003-05:00

I just sent the following e-mail to the Governor General. It's not too late to have your voice heard. Write to info@gg.ca to express your opinion.

Excellency,

I am writing to encourage you to allow Parliament to express its non-confidence in the government and, if it does so, to ask the Liberal-NDP coalition to form a new government.

As I am sure you know, the concept of Responsible Government forms the basis of our democracy. Yesterday in Question Period, the Prime Minister faced repeated demands to allow Parliament to express its lack of confidence in the government with a vote. I was shocked to hear our Prime Minister dismiss these demands as an attempt to "hide behind parliamentary niceties."

Such profound disrespect for this defining principle of our democracy is appalling.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the Prime Minister plans to seek prorogation of Parliament for no reason but to avoid facing a confidence vote. But without the confidence of Parliament, the Prime Minister lacks the authority for this action. The use of such tactics to hide from a confidence vote would set a profoundly troubling precedent, severely damaging our parliamentary democracy. I urge you to deny such a request.

You have been entrusted with the great responsibility of upholding Canada's parliamentary tradition, and I am confident you will act appropriately.

Vote Wisely

2008-10-13T13:25:00.003-04:00

Some more thoughts on the day before we go to the polls...

Stephen Harper's probable perjury is just the latest reason to want him out of office. From a surplus-killing $12-billion GST cut to a climate change plan that will allow emissions to rise, from arts cuts and film and TV censorship measures to the Canadian DMCA, from the MPs' handbook on obstructing parliament to In & Out, this has been the most disastrous Canadian government in recent memory. And the most secretive, least transparent government ever. Oh, and who can forget about broken promises on income trusts and fixed election dates?

Just four-weeks ago, Leader Harper made this prediction: "My own belief is if we were going to have some kind of crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now, a year into the crisis." Since then, the TSX has dropped by 26%, and Scotiabank and TD have said that the country is headed for a deep recession. Isn't it great to have a PM with a Master's in Economics?

Some two thirds of Canadian voters do not want to see the Conservatives reelected tomorrow, but we're poised to hand Harper another minority government, nonetheless. Here are the latest poll results from Nanos and seat predictions from democraticSPACE and Election Prediction Project, all of whom most accurately predicted the vote in 2006.

Hopefully, they'll prove sobering for anyone who bought Layton's line about running for PM. He doesn't have a shot. Either he's deluding himself or he's merely trying to delude you. If you're a staunch New Democratic Party supporter, I would think you're facing a really difficult decision tomorrow: will you vote for the NDP or against Stephen Harper? Unless you live in one of a handful of ridings, you really can't do both.

The same is true for Green Party supporters, but the situation is even more dire. There are but two ridings in which Green candidates might possibly be elected: Central Nova and Vancouver Centre.

If you oppose Stephen Harper, I really hope you've given some serious consideration to how you'll vote. I hope you've read all the parties' platforms and thought about the course this country will chart over the coming years. If you care about the environment, I hope you've reflected on how, for the first time ever, a major party has put an environmental issue at the heart of its campaign, and what it will mean for the future if that move is seen as a big part of the reason for its defeat. I hope you've at least used the tools available to see which candidates in your riding can defeat a Conservative.

Please vote, and please vote wisely.

Our Perjuring PM?

2008-10-13T12:00:00.008-04:00

On Friday evening, it was revealed that Harper's expert witness found that the Cadman tape was not altered. A couple days later, that story seems to have dropped off the radar, but it's really significant.

In 2005, Conservative-turned-independent MP Chuck Cadman voted with the Liberal government, passing the budget by a single vote and preventing the government from falling. At the time, Cadman was battling malignant melanoma. After his death, his widow, Dona Cadman, revealed that her husband had been approached by two Conservative Party officials with an offer of a million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for his vote against the Liberal budget. Under section 119 of the Criminal Code of Canada, it is illegal to bribe an MP.

At the beginning of this year, a tape-recorded interview by Vancouver journalist Tom Zytaruk came to light, in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged that he had approved of making an offer to Cadman.

Zytaruk asked, "The insurance policy for a million dollars, do you know anything about that?"

Harper responded, "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions. This is not for publication?" He went on to explain that the offer to Cadman was "only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election," and he failed to address specifically the allegation of a million-dollar insurance bribe.

Last March, Prime Minister Stephen Harper sued Stéphane Dion and the Liberal party for defamation over allegations made linking Harper to the affair. So as to avoid demonstrating malice, the Liberals were forced to remove allegations from their Web site.

This August, Harper testified. During cross-examination, he was asked about Zytaruk's question regarding the insurance policy and responded, "That is not the question as he put it. He has done some editing there.

"What I do know is that this answer is not the answer to this question, I think there's been some editing in this question, so I don't think it goes from this question to this answer."

Harper tried to delay the proceedings until after the election, but on Friday lawyers for the Liberal party filed an analysis of the recording by Harper's own audio expert. His findings?

The key portion of the recorded interview contains no splices, edits or alterations.

The best information available to the public now suggests that Prime Minister Stephen Harper made verifiably false statements on a material matter while under oath in a court of law.

Mr. Harper has already made history with his defamation suit, which seems to have been engineered to silence any discussion of the matter until after the election. He is the first sitting prime minister ever to have filed such a suit. If Canadians return him to office tomorrow, he may also become the first sitting prime minister ever to be charged with perjury.

Reassurance

2008-10-04T14:47:00.004-04:00

Concerned about the economy? Worry no more.

Lego Memories from Gizmodo

2008-06-24T14:17:00.008-04:00

This week, gadget blog Gizmodo took a trip to Lego in Billund, Denmark. The most amazing post to come out of it was about a trip through the vault containing almost every Lego set ever manufactured. They included a video of their journey, from which I took the following two screen captures.

The first Lego set I ever owned:

The last Lego set I ever owned:

From the 4,720 set in the vault, they pulled out 10 boxes and showed them to the camera like this. It's hard to believe that my two most memorable Lego sets were included. The rush of memories is just incredible. Thinking about those simpler days is the perfect antidote for all the complexities in life right now.

My View on Organ Donation

2008-01-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

On Monday, the story about Health Canada's new regulations for organ donation broke. CBC reported on the rules, which came into effect in December and prevent several high risk groups from donating. Included among these groups are injection drug users, people with tattoos, and any men who had sex with other men in the previous five years.

After reading the article, I went to CBC's Your View section to read some comments. As expected, there was a range of opinions, from outrage to blatant homophobia. What I found particularly troubling was the way people were misreporting, misinterpreting, misstating, and downright making up various numbers to try to back up their arguments. So, I set down to find some actual numbers and do some very rough calculations to try to interpret them. When I went to post my analysis, I discovered that they have a 2000-character limit. So, I broke it into two pieces and was able to post the first half. But, for whatever reason, the second half never appeared. I checked their Submissions Policy and found no restriction on multiple, related posts, so I tried submitting it again from another IP address, just in case they automatically screen out multiple submissions as a guard against spam. No dice, so I guess someone actually reviewed it and decided not to post it. Anyhow, the discussion is now closed, so I figured I'd just post it here...

First off, in response to the ridiculous non-statistics that have been bandied about, I'd like to offer some actual figures and back-of-envelope calculations.

2005 HIV Infection Numbers (from Health Canada):

58,000 HIV-infected people in Canada
29,600 are MSM (men who have sex with men)
2,250 are MSM-IDU (injecting drug users)

You'll notice that about 50% of HIV infected people in Canada are men who have had sex with men. Some people have inverted this claim and said that 50% of MSM are HIV-infected, which of course, is not at all the same thing. As we'll see in a moment, the real number is a tiny fraction of that.

Canada's population in 2005 was approximately 29,271,200. That's interpolated from the 2001 and 2006 census numbers (from Wikipedia: Canada).

I'll work on the assumption that 2.5% of the population are MSM. Of course, various studies have offered wildly differing figures, but I think it's reasonable to assume that 5% of men have had sex with men as a "consensus figure" for my rough estimations (from Wikipedia: Demographics of Sexual Orientation). Of course, I've halved that since I'm looking for the percentage of the population as a whole.

Using these figures, let's estimate HIV infections rates among...

MSM: 29600 / (0.025*29271200) = 0.040
MSM+ISU: (29600+2250) / (0.025*29271200) = 0.044
Non-MSM: (58000-29600 - 2250) / (0.975*29271200) = 0.00092

So, by my rough estimate, 4% of MSM are infected with HIV, compared to just under 0.1% of the rest of the population.

As a gay man, I find that pretty alarming. A man who has sex with men is more than 40 times more likely to be HIV+ than anyone else. The immediate reaction might be to take the steps that Health Canada has taken. But of course, a couple of statistics don't tell the whole story.

What you really have to look at is how small a risk those numbers actually represent. All donated tissues are tested, and those tests are considered to be highly effective, with false-negative rates of just 0.003% for HIV testing (from Wikipedia: Accuracy of HIV Testing). So, multiplying that out, we can estimate the chances that a donated organ that tests negative for HIV will actually carry the disease...

MSM: 0.04*0.003 = 0.00012
Non-MSM: 0.00092*0.003 = 0.00000276

Yes, that's right. A negative-testing organ from an MSM is "only" 99.988% safe, while a negative-testing organ from someone else is 99.999724% safe.

Now, given the choice, who wouldn't want the safer organ? But, of course, that's not the choice we face in reality. There is a chronic shortage of donated organs available and people are dying on the waiting lists. That's why those people in need of organs are willing to take that extra risk, as they expressed in their responses on the CBC's forum.

So, the appropriate question to ask is this: does the benefit of additional organ donations outweigh the increased risk of infection? My figures, while just estimates, suggest that it does, and by far. If we also apply the 2.5% MSM estimate to the pool of organ donors, then we can calculate the overall risk when they are included in the system:

Total: 0.025*0.00012 + 0.975*0.00000276 = 0.00000569

Removing this "high risk" 2.5% of the donor pool improves the safety of the system by a mere 0.000293%. The numbers strongly suggest that we're best served by maximizing the size of the donor pool and relying on existing, highly effective testing to identify unsafe organs. Even if these estimates are out by orders of magnitudes, how can the new regulation possibly be justified? Of course, if it had been debated in the open, we would be able to see and evaluate Health Canada's reasoning. But, I'd suggest, the way it was adopted in secret and announced a month later doesn't reflect well on that reasoning.

Gay and bisexual men may feel unduly targeted by this regulation, but we're not its real victims. Those people in need of organ transplants are.

Are You Smarter Than a Global TV Executive?

2007-10-25T09:34:00.001-04:00

I just caught Collin Mochrie on the radio promoting a new show he's hosting on Global: Are You Smarter Than a Canadian 5th Grader, adapted from the American Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, natch.

Okay, I have no issue with these limited-run adaptations in general. I don't think anyone honestly expects Global to come up with original Canadian programming ideas. All they do is air American shows anyway, so doing an occasional local version is a slight improvement, at least.

But this title is simply beyond the pale. Even if no one at Global noticed, surely one of the clever kids on set would have pointed out that, in Canada, we say grade five.

Idol-struck!

2007-08-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

Last night was Madonnarama (apologies for the MySpace link) at Fly. That's right: all Madonna's music, all Madonna drag, all night! I was pretty excited, as was just about every other gay in Toronto, it seems. Doors opened at 10, we were there by 20 after, and we still had to stand in line for an hour. When we got in, the dance floor was already packed.

It was really a fun, if sticky, night. But, I found out, it wasn't just the gays who were there to revel in the music and aura of Madonna. Oh no, there was also a real-life diva among us.

None other than Melissa O'Neil, winner of Canadian Idol's third season. I was thrilled when Kevin told me he'd seen her there, as I adore her and I feel that embracing your gays is a key step towards divadom. When we saw her later, I went up, said hi, told her that I thought she's fantastic, and that I saw her concert at Massey Hall last year. All true, of course.

So yes, at this point, my inner 12-year-old girl had broken free and taken over. But Melissa was super cool: she put out her hand and asked if I wanted to come upstairs and dance. So, we hit the floor with her other gays and had a great time! Of course, everyone was singing along to all the songs they were playing, and it was just amazing to hear her powerful pipes up close!

Well, the details of how and when I left Fly are a little sketchy, but I'm still pretty excited about the whole experience today. Thanks Melissa for making this boy's night!

Montreal Pride in Facebook Mobile Status Updates

2007-08-06T22:40:00.001-04:00

Divers/Cité was this weekend, which meant that 90% of Toronto's gay population, including me, was in Montreal. This also marked the first weekend that I truly embraced Facebook Mobile. So, I thought it might be fun to post the weekend's status updates, which also serve as a very sketchy, in-joke-laden record of the trip.

Friday, August 3

Dave is passing the big apple. Next stop: Kingston! (10:36am)
Dave is pretty sure that an average 12 year old has a larger bladder than he and Paul combined. (11:39am)
Dave is at Mado just wanting to have fun. (10:51pm)

Saturday, August 4

Dave is sipping a martini on the 25th floor, looking out over old Montreal. (7:46pm)

Sunday, August 5

Dave is surprised at how much the stairs hurt. (3:53am)
Dave is hoping Deanna will text him at 647-xxx-xxxx, since he forgot to bring her contact info to Montreal. (10:54am)

Monday, August 6

Dave is dancing at Sky Bar. Unity has a $30 cover and a longer line for refunds than to get in. No thanks! (1:45am)
Dave is sad that it's raining and his flight is delayed. (12:29pm)
Dave is enjoying watching red cars. (4:35pm)
Dave is flying home on the gayest flight in the history of aviation. (7:17pm)
Dave is home sweet home! (9:38pm)

A Brief Homecoming

2007-07-31T12:18:00.000-04:00

My brief visit to BC is just about to end, as I'm at Vancouver International, waiting at the gate for my plane to board. I flew out here on Thursday and then went with Chris and Theresa to Nanaimo on Friday for Sam and Mike's wedding. I've been back in Vancouver since Sunday evening.

The wedding was fantastic. Mike's parents hosted the ceremony in their yard, overlooking the water. Sam looked fabulous. Mike, unsurprisingly, cried. And Sam gave quite the go-ahead-make-my-day look when we were asked if anyone knew of any reason why they should not be wed.

The reception was great, too. It began with the couple's first dance. This was not just a dance, it was a performance. Clearly, much instruction and choreography had gone into it, and apparently there was a strong desire to get it over with before dinner, which led to its unconventional placement on the program.

Speeches followed dinner, including what was quite possibly one of the best I have ever heard, delivered by Sam's brother Nick. Sam's "ring box", a shiny MacBook, then made an appearance to play the slide show and be the DJ, running an iTunes playlist that was determined by online vote, held in advance. The whole event was a great time.

Otherwise, the visit to Nanaimo was quite uneventful. It's a pretty town, but not all that exciting, and the locals, many of whom fit squarely in the retirement set, didn't prove to be the friendliest. The demographics took a dramatic turn for the better on Sunday morning, as the hotel was overrun by a young rugby team (or several teams?) visiting from England (or Australia?). Whatever the case, yum.

It was really great to get together again with Chris, Karyn, and Gippy and their (apparently very patient) significant others. Much laughter ensued as tired old jokes were resurrected and many new ones emerged.

My time in Vancouver was far too short, but enjoyable. I got together with Jodi and Karen for lunch yesterday, and then got to meet Jodi's pretty new kitties. And, in the evening, a special treat: I met up with Genevieve for a coffee and to catch up. We hadn't talked since high school grad, but had just reconnected through Facebook (thanks Facebook!). As it turned out, we each got to enjoy a free chai (thanks Starbucks!), and Gen was a riot.

She reminded me about how, after her final choir solo (which was self-accompanied on the guitar), I had congratulated her and said, "I didn't know you were talented." A perfectly typical foot-in-mouth moment for me, but fortunately she had taken it as intended.

Anyhow, she just got married, is teaching high school English, and is working on her Master's. Not that any of this was surprising, but it's nice to see that she's doing so well.

So, those are the highlights of my visit. I'll be back in Toronto in about five hours, and I'm already thinking about heading off to Montreal on Friday!

Island Play

2007-07-06T15:34:00.000-04:00

Kevin and I left Toronto for PEI last Friday, with both bikes in tow on Kevin's fancy new hitch-attached bike rack. It was a two day drive, with a night in Quebec City.

The first day of driving was complicated by the first nations' national day of protest. An 80 km detour from the 401 slowed us down by two and a half hours, which then put us in Montreal for rush hour. It seems Montreal drivers really are as bad as everyone says: we were caught in no less than five different back-ups, all but one caused by a minor accident. It took two hours to cross the city on Autoroute 40. After twelve and a half hours of driving, we were definitely ready for bed.

The second day's driving went much more smoothly, and we were treated to some very nice scenery. The rolling hills of the Gaspé Peninsula and New Brunswick had me photographing madly. Sadly, these vast landscape scenes, beautiful as they are, just didn't translate well into photos, especially when taken from a speeding car.

Finally, we crossed the Confederation Bridge on Saturday evening.

Impressions of PEI in four words: everything is ridiculously cute. This applies to the landscape, the buildings, the bottled pop, the accents...and especially to Kevin's family.

Oh, one exception to the cuteness rule: the mosquitoes. They're nasty buggers, and I'm covered in bites. There are three particularly awful ones on my neck.

On Sunday, we saw the Canada Day fireworks in Charlottetown, which were billed as the biggest such display in the country. There were probably a couple of thousand people at the waterfront for it, which created some entertaining people watching opportunities. There were many cute grain-fed (potato-fed?) boys, too, but Kevin said they're 16, and have girlfriends and drinking problems.

The fireworks didn't disappoint. Neither did the T-shirt selection at Cows.

On Monday, we went with Kevin's sister Paulette, her husband Charlie, and their son Emery to the beach at Greenwich, in the PEI National Park. We enjoyed a nice long walk along the beach, and even helped Emery climb up the dunes, for which he seemed most grateful. The beach was long and beautiful, with white sand, gracefully curving to a point in the distance.

In the evening, we went back to Charlottetown to see Anne of Green Gables, the musical. It was, unsurprisingly, very cute. And really well performed, though all but a few of the actors seem to be "from away".

Kevin went on a long bike ride on Tuesday morning, and Paulette and I went to collect him at Tea Hill. Along the way, we stopped off at Subway to pick up some lunch (the new lobster sandwich: PEI only, or available everywhere?). Then, we walked along the beach. This one, though not as pretty as the last (which must be why this one was only a provincial park) did feature the famous PEI red sand. In the evening, we met up with Luke and Kevin's friends Amy, Kim, and Louis for dinner in Summerside. Then, we tore up the town. As Luke put it, we climbed two relatively sketchy structures, visited an empty mall, had hair-filled ice cream and examined the local newspaper all in one night!

On Wednesday, we picked up Kevin's parents at their house in St. Hubert and went to Cavendish. We visited the National Park there and Kevin and I went for a short bike ride, while his parents walked down to the beach. Our ride took us along a spectacular shore line and, good news, resulted in no knee pain for me. Next, we got into serious tourist mode and visited Green Gables. Well actually, it's a restoration of what they think the original Green Gables, which inspired L.M. Montgomery's descriptions in Anne, might have looked like. The house was owned by cousins of Montgomery's grandfather at the time, but Parks Canada took a little creative license and labeled the rooms "Matthew's," "Marilla's" and "Anne's." We also walked down Lovers' Lane to the Balsam Hollow Trail, through a woods that apparently provided great inspiration to the author.

Fun facts: Anne of Green Gables and Green Gables are trademarks and official marks of the Anne of Green Gables Licencing authority. L.M. Montgomery is a trademark of the Heirs of L.M. Montgomery.

Kevin spent the night at his parents' place, and then did another bike ride on Thursday. I used the time to get connected to the Interweb, and catch up on e-mail and other online distractions. I had meant to post this blog entry, but didn't quite finish before Kevin called me to come pick him up.

It was a long drive, over 90 minutes, back to his parents place. Actually, considering that this is supposed to be a small province, there have been a surprising number of really long drives on this trip. It seems everything is at least 45 minutes away, and that's traveling at 80 km/h on just about every road. On the upside, the drives provide an opportunity to enjoy the absurdly cute scenery. There are seemingly endless pastures and potato fields everywhere, with pretty woods and rolling hills in the distance. Little barns and houses dot the landscape.

We're spending the day today at the new home of Kevin's other sister, Jeanne. They just moved yesterday into this very cute house. And they have Webbernet access. Yes!

Tomorrow, we'll head to Halifax, and spend the day with Chris. We actually saw him for 10 minutes after the fireworks on Sunday. But it'll be very nice to spend some more time with him, and to see Halifax! Then, it's two more days of driving back to Toronto.

I'm Sorry, Knees!

2007-05-29T00:20:00.001-04:00

Sad but true: I'm almost 30. I think my body has decided to make that clear to me.

I didn't get on my bike this year until May 12. And, for some reason, I decided that it would be fun and wise to go along with Kevin and Stu on a 50 kilometre ride that day.

At some point around the 35 kilometre mark, my left knee started feeling kind of funny. But, we were out in the middle of nowhere, so there was nothing much I could do but keep pedaling. I ended up favouring that leg until my right knee started feeling funny, too. By the time we finished the ride, it hurt just to walk.

A few hours later, I couldn't even flex my left knee. I was walking with a locked knee for the next couple of days.

It's now two weeks later and my knees were feeling fine again. With the Ride for Heart fast approaching, I was eager to get back on the bike. This evening, we went out for what was to be a short ride, and after just 8 kilometres, my left knee was feeling a little funny again. So, we turned around and headed back. Shortly before getting home, I was feeling slight, but unmistakable, pain in both knees with each stroke. I got off the bike and walked the last bit.

So, I guess I did some damage two weeks ago, and it'll take some more time to recover. The Ride for Heart is out the window. Now I'm just hoping my knees are in good enough shape to dance tomorrow and back to normal in time for our trip to PEI, as we've been planning to do some cycling there.

All I can say to my knees is, "I'm sorry! Get well soon!"

A Deal with the Devil for an MD Lie, Oh!

2007-05-03T17:53:00.000-04:00

This just makes me laugh. I call it "ESL Idol."

Here's my best attempt at transcribing the lyrics:

I figure without
I was haba-long and ebrie-thin between
I was Ricky-wide
Baby to know what a mean
Till there was you
Yeah you

Something was wrong
Made a deal with the devil for an MD lie, oh
Been to heel and bah, burra angel was looking through
It was a you
Yeah you

It's all because a you

You are the reason
You are the reason
I wake up every day
Sleep to the night
You are the reason
The reason

In the middle of the night
I'm golden eye 'cause I won you
I want to torch you
I want to floor you
You are the reason baby

Her name is Alberta, She lives in Vancouver

2007-04-25T01:24:00.000-04:00

Rejoice! Avenue Q is coming to Toronto!

If you don't know why this is exciting news, you should probably go check out some videos. I saw the show on Broadway in 2005, and it was fantastic. The whole concept is incredibly clever, the cast does an amazing job as puppeteers and actors simultaneously, and the songs are brilliantly funny.

Oddly enough, I was quite recently musing about the unlikelihood of this very happening. I figured that we'd never see Avenue Q mounted here because much of its humour is quite mature [1] and, occasionally, a little puzzling to those who don't hail from New York. [2] What with the mixed success of musical theatre in Toronto lately, it just didn't seem like a safe bet.

Well, it seems there's a new theatre company in town looking to shake things up a bit. Great, I can't wait! Actually, I guess I'll have to, since the month-long run won't start until July 29, 2008. Fortunately, they're planning a number of Broadway hit before then, starting this September.

And, there's always a certain movie to look forward to...

---
[1] This includes graphic puppet sex.
[2] Even the name of the show is based on New York geographical trivia.

Footnotes

2007-04-02T22:57:00.000-04:00

Note to self: use footnotes in posts. Others do, and come across terribly well. They're a splendid way to manage tangents.

Oh, and continue to use more British expressions.

Life of a Mii

2007-03-23T12:11:00.000-04:00

This is *so* worth watching, especially if you're a tad Wii-obsessed (as I am). It's an ontological examination of the mii.

Wii

2007-03-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to write something about the greatness of Wii since I finally managed to get one in January. But when ever I start thinking about how fun it is, I end up playing on the darn thing, and no blogging occurs.

Believe the hype. This really is the greatest thing to happen to video games since...ever. Now, I haven't been any kind of gamer for over a decade, but that's really the point. Wii is fun for everyone.

It's quite a beautiful machine, with a bit of an Applesque look to it. The remote feels perfect, down to the slight rumble when you pass the pointer over a button on screen. It's responsive and accurate. Just try a bit of bowling or tennis in Wii Sports, and you'll immediately feel what an incredible little device it is.

This week, I finished WarioWare: Smooth Moves. It is basically just a bunch of random microgames strung together by a series of bizarre vignettes, rendered in quite beautiful, cartoonish 2-D graphics. In the last microgame, I just had to hold the remote and dance. I was represented by a figure on screen, the last of four in a line, and I had to follow the others to complete a little routine. Here is how that looks.

And it was most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Of Wii's numerous built-in features, the one most worth mentioning is miis. A mii is a cute, cartoonish avatar that you can build in the Mii Channel, and then use in Wii title games, like Wii Sports and Wii Play. Here's mine:

You can also use your mii to cast votes in the Everybody Votes Channel. Silly questions appear here, and you choose between two possible answers by placing your mii on the corresponding side of a circle. You can also predict how others will vote. When the results of the poll are announced a few days later, your mii will jump for joy if you are correct, or hang his head dejectedly if you're wrong. The whole thing is ridiculously cute and totally addictive.

Miis have become a hit online, too. You can copy miis onto a Wii remote to play with at a friends' house (you can also just send them to another Wii directly over the 'net). Because the remote is just a standard Bluetooth device, someone was able to write software for transferring miis between a remote and a PC. Now people are sharing their celebrity (and other) miis online, at sites like MiiPlaza.net. Someone else wrote a fantastic flash-based mii editor, which I used to create the image above.

Jannada AM

2007-02-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

Jann Arden was on Canada AM this morning to promote her new album. Paul is doing a stint as an intern there, and was able to invite me to be in the audience for the broadcast. It was intended to be an intimate performance, and in the end only about 20 people showed up! Metro had held a content to select audience members, but either they messed things up, or none of their winners bothered to trek out to Scarborough.

I ended up sitting right in the front row! As we were walking into the studio, I joked, "Will I be sitting in Jann's lap? Or will she be in mine?"

The mini-concert included just two songs, but it was fantastic! I was literally 6 feet away from Jann the whole time.

Jann kept saying how incredible it was that we had shown up so early to see her. During one of the breaks, she was chatting with Seamus and Marci, the hosts, and somehow, they started talking about me. I guess it was hard to miss me, sitting there in the front with a characteristically huge grin on my face. One of the hosts had pointed me out, and Jann said I had a nice smile!

Marci asked if I was a fan, and I replied, ironically, "a l'il bit." Someone said something about how she has such huge fans, and I said, "it's funny today because you don't have the stage to protect you from us."

I guess Jann was amused. She assuredly said, "nooo...", ran over, and sat in my lap! Of course, I was totally cool about it all. I believe my insightful words were, "ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod." I'm really good with celebrities.

Anyhow, Jann asked what my name was. I was actually able to remember, which was good. She thanked me for coming, and I thanked her...for sitting on me, I guess.

After the show was over, I had the chance to get this picture with Jann. My flash was off, since obviously we had been asked not to take flash photography during the show. So, unfortunately, it's a little grainy. Still, it's a fantastic memento of the day!

Gorgeous!

2007-01-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

It's pretty fantastic to have funny, creative friends. While I was in Vancouver, Jodi gave me this card. I just had to immortalize it in my blog!

Outside

Inside

Photo Progress

2007-01-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

I'm heading back to Toronto tomorrow.

I've really enjoyed my visit back to Vancouver, especially catching up with friends that I hadn't seen for ages. However, it was a long stay. That gave me some time to make headway on a project that's been sitting on the back burner for far too long.

I've managed to post and tag my photos on flickr up to the end of November, 2005. Alas, this has been a long process, and I'm still quite far from the present day (damn you flickr, and your alluring per-photo tags!). Still, it's a key milestone because I've now exceeded what was on the old Yahoo! photos site. So, I've switched over my photos link on the right, so it now points at flickr: here.

Enjoy them, in all their full resolution beauty!

Time Warp

2006-12-20T00:02:00.000-05:00

[Quick background note: I'm back home in Vancouver for the holidays.]

This evening, I went with Phi to our old high school's Christmas concert.

It's been 11 years since my grade 12 Christmas concert, so it was a little mind-blowing to be there. Most of the songs were familiar, as they were songs I had done in my last two years of school. Mr. O. and Mrs. Roberts were still leading the band and choir, and Mrs. Mulder was in the audience, as always.

The highlight was the last number, Silent Night. The concert always ends with a really beautiful choral arrangement of Silent Night, performed from the balcony at the back of the church. The program said that all alumni of the concert choir were invited to participate, so we went up to join the group, and stood in the back row. I'm pretty sure we were the oldest ones in the lot.

Just like 11 years ago, we had picked up candles which we would be holding during the performance. I shook slightly as I tried to light mine, once again feeling the slight nerves before singing. Then, the most fantastic thing happened. Mrs. Roberts was looking around to make sure that everyone could see her. She noticed me, and mouthed, "oh my God, it's David." I mouthed back, "oh my God, it's Franny."

We performed the song and, of course, I still knew every note. Phi later confirmed that she did, too. The last note rang across the church, ending an amazingly exciting experience: a brief trip back in time.

Best. Headline. Ever.

2006-12-19T02:00:00.000-05:00

Here.

Happy Chanukah!

Mandi, Mandi! You're so grandy!

2006-12-08T14:30:00.001-05:00

Once again, I'm motivated to post about jazz with Mandi at Swingin'OUT. I fear that this blog may soon turn into nothing more than a record of these classes, but really, would that be so bad? Anyway, I warned you back at the beginning that the primary purpose of this blog is to act as my personal memory aid. And, I really don't want to forget this stuff.

I'll start with the whole routine, and then explain the new and tricky moves below.

The Routine

Messing around
Trucking (right foot first)
Suzie Q to the left
Trucking (left foot first)
Suzie Q to the right
Fall off the log/cross-over step
3 more cross-over steps
Boogie drops (right then left)
Shorty George with hold on four (finish with right foot on 7)
3 sets of reaches (up first)
Jazz hands break and turn (end with stomp off)
3 sets of Tacky Annie
Break with kick ball change and turn
2 sets of raise leg, hold, triple step (raise right leg first)
2 sets of boogie forward/fishtail back

...repeat from trucking!

Trucking

1. Step inward on heal of right foot.
2. Pivot right foot outward and tap toe. Left foot raises and weight transfers to right.
3. Step inward on heal of left foot.
4. Pivot left foot outward and tap toe. Right foot raises and weight transfers to left.

Left hand on waist, raise and wiggle index figure of right hand.

Fall off the log/cross-over step

8-3. Like regular fall off the log, but focus shifts to cross-over step (right in front of left) on 3.
4. Hold.
5-6. Step left, right.
7. Cross left in front of right.

Reaches

Turn 90 degrees to right.

1. Step on left foot, and reach up to left, with left hand above right.
2. Hold.
3. Step on right foot, and reach down to centre, with hands next to each other.
4. Hold.
5. Up left.
6. Down right.
7. Up left.
8. Hold.

Second time has same rhythm, but down right first. Third time, up right first again.

Jazz hands break and turn

1. Pushing off with right foot, scoot forward onto left.
2. Step forward on to right foot.
3. Bend left leg back at knee. Arms out, with left up right down. Jazz hands!
4. Left foot down, beside right.
5. Cross right foot behind left.
6-7. Turn over right shoulder.
(and) 8. Stomp-off.

Break with kick ball change and turn

8. Step onto right foot.
1. Touch left foot behind right.
2. Step onto right foot.
3-4. Kick ball change with right onto left.
5. Jump into lock step, right foot in front of left.
6-7. Turn over left shoulder.

Raise leg, hold, triple step

8. Raise right foot with straight leg, and slap leg with right hand. Left arm straight up.
1. Hold.
2-3. Triple step on right foot.
4. Raise left foot with straight leg, and slep leg with left hand. Right arm straight up.
5. Hold.
6-7. Triple step on left foot.

Thanks again, Mandi, for a fabulous class! Indirect thanks to Frida Segerdahl of the Harlem Hotshots, from whom Mandi says she "borrowed" most of this routine.

Wow, Stephane!

2006-12-02T18:02:00.000-05:00

Stephane Dion has just been selected as the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

I've been watching the convention all day. It's been amazingly exciting, even though it feels like it's been moving in slow motion.

I've been a big fan of Dion since he wrote his open letters to Lucien Bouchard and Jacques Brassard. He has always displayed a clarity of thought and intellectual honesty that's too often lacking in politics. And his embrace of a strong environmental policy is most heartening.

Gerrard Kennedy, of whom I knew nothing before, has earned a lot of my respect, too. By abandoning his own bid after the second ballot and throwing his support behind Dion, he pushed Dion to the head of the pack. For me, that was a clear demonstration of commitment to his values and principles.

With Michael Ignatieff leading throughout the campaign, I was not looking forward to voting in the next election. Now all of a sudden, I can hardly wait!

wink

2006-11-15T23:40:00.000-05:00

Yup, this is the post I was musing about yesterday. I guess I was bothered enough by the fact that I hadn't posted in over a month that I decided to finish it...

Several weeks ago now, Alex invited me and Kevin to watch some stand-up comedy at the Laugh Resort. The whole evening was a good time, but things got really interesting for me while the headliner, Michael Somerville, was on stage.

He was talking about how, when he gets back into town from touring, he meets his girlfriend at a bar, and they try to pick each other up. They make it interesting by giving each other a little assignment or challenge for the night. One time, he was to whistle at her, and she was to wink at him. But, at the time they had given each other these assignments, they didn't know that he can't whistle and she can't wink!

Well, when he started talking about how she couldn't wink, I cheered. I did that because I can't wink either.

He noticed, and asked if I was cheering because I can't wink. "That's right," I said.

He got pretty excited by this, and said that I'm the only other person he knows of who can't wink. He invited me up on stage, to demonstrate to everyone how funny it looks when someone who can't wink tries to. I declined, and he carried on with his story.

Then, right at the end of his set, he was summing up: "and really, that's all there is...unless Dave wants to come up and wink for us" (or words to that effect...hey, it was weeks ago, remember!). Well, in the interim, he had mentioned that he had a CD, which he would be selling after the show. Without missing a beat, I said, "I'll do it for a a free CD."

Why did I do that? I really didn't want to get up on stage and be laughed at, did I?

Anyway, he brought me up on stage, and shared his plans for me. We were going to reenact the scene in the bar, and I would of course be playing his wink-less girlfriend. I said that I hadn't realized this would be a whole big dramatic presentation, and added that the CD had better be signed.

So, I sat on a stool, and he walked across the stage. We glanced at each other, trying not to hold eye contact. Then, he started blowing air, attempting to whistle, and I started scrunching up my face, trying to wink.

The scene was pretty funny, from where I was sitting, anyway. He seemed to be really amused, too. But, the whole experience was quite surreal, so I don't actually remember if anyone in the audience was laughing.

In the end, he started faking a whistle sound, as he'd described earlier in his bit. Not willing to be outdone, I used my hands to hold one eye open and force the other one shut. I think this might have been met with laughter and applause, but I may be imagining that.

Anyway, the whole thing ended quite quickly. But, after the show, he did honour our deal, and I got my free, signed CD.

If you get the chance to see Michael doing stand up, take it! He's a funny guy!

The Heavy Digital Pen

2006-11-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

Is there some kind of statute of limitations for blogging?

Something interesting happened weeks ago, and I meant to write about it. But, things got busy, yada, yada, yada...and I never got around to it. Now, the digital pen just seems too heavy. I can't motivate myself to do it.

Well, maybe I'll start a draft...

Le Jazz Hot!

2006-10-06T23:08:00.001-04:00

Swingin'OUT was fantastic last night! Mandi Gould was our guest teacher for a special jazz class, and it was just too much fun!

Amazingly, we spent most of the 75 minute class on just four basic jazz moves:

boogie back
boogie forward
fish tail
Shorty George

First we focused on timing and polish. We practiced really opening up our upper bodies and putting our hips into it.

Then, we started combining the moves. For instance, four counts of boogie forward with four of Shorty George. Or, four counts of fish tail with four counts of boogie back. Or, even just pieces as small as 2 counts from each move!

Next, we broke into three small groups to create some tiny pieces of choreography. Each was to be 4 sets of 8 counts and use just those four basic moves. Well, actually, if we really wanted to, we were given permission throw in something else simple.

For posterity, here's what my group did. We were a group of five people, and we started in a straight line.

8 counts: people in position 1, 3 and 5 boogie forward; 2 and 4 fish tail
8 counts: people in position 1, 3 and 5 fish tail; 2 and 4 boogie forward
4 counts: everyone boogie forward
4 counts: everyone Shorty George
8 counts: everyone boogie drops (4 counts right, 4 counts left)

We even arranged ourselves for colour balance in our shirts (by coincidence, we had 2 green Swingin' OUT T-shirts, 2 pink T-shirts, and one white T-shirt) and had time to choose a name.

Each group performed its little numbers for the others, and everyone was suitably impressed. Ours might have been the flashiest, due to the fact that we added boogie drops and had different people doing different moves at the same time. But, the other two groups were more inventive in the way they combined the four basic moves. In all, it was really fun to see what each group came up with!

Then, we got back into a big group, and started experimenting with the rhythm of the moves. For instance, instead of doing Shorty George as "kick-ball step step step step step step step," we dd "kick-ball step (hold) step (hold) step step step."

Finally, we broke out again into three smaller groups, where we did little jam circles. We went around the circles and each person had to do 2, then 4, sets of 8 counts in turn. Again, we were limited to the moves we had done that night, which we could combine however we saw fit.

Considering this was the first time many people had done anything like this, it went amazingly well. I guess because we had really reinforced the moves already and no one was expecting anything ridiculously inventive, people weren't all that nervous. It felt like we were even playing off each other a bit in my circle, which was great.

Thanks Mandi, for making jazz so non-scary and...fun!

Reruns in Syndication

2006-10-06T21:40:00.000-04:00

If you're subscribed to my Atom feed, my apologies. I just switched over to Blogger Beta, and it seems the only negative effect was a modification to the entry IDs in my feed. The result is that your feed reader will probably see duplicates of my last 25 posts or so.

I wonder if I should try playing around with a new layout?

Idol-tastic!

2006-09-17T22:51:00.000-04:00

Yay! Go Eva!

Boston (Part 3: A Touch of Silly)

2006-09-15T21:53:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, while exploring Quincy Market in Boston, I saw bakery selling these cookies. And all I could think was, "Go 50 times!"

I do believe I have a new saying!

Boston (Part 2: Observations on the City)

2006-09-10T17:05:00.000-04:00

Since EclipseWorld ended on Friday, I've been exploring, and enjoying, Boston. I'm now at the airport waiting for my typically delayed flight home. Here are a few thoughts about and observations of the city.

[Note: obviously, it wasn't Sunday anymore when I finished this post.]

Jogoholism: Bostonians are afflicted, en masse, by an addiction to jogging. The pathways along the river are packed with joggers. And it shows. There's no shortage of very attractive people here.

Beauty: No, I'm not talking about the joggers anymore. Boston is a really beautiful place. There's an abundance of waterfront, generous public spaces like the Boston Commons, and a striking assortment of interesting architecture. Walking the narrow streets of the North End really takes you back a few centuries, but just beyond them, beautiful new condos line the shore of Boston harbor. And the financial district's towers soar above the historic Old City Hall and State House. To be fair, there's some significant ugly to be found, too. It seems the bulk of it is in and around the T (the public transit system).

Volume: Politically, Massachusetts is about as liberal as the US gets. So, you might think that Bostonians might bear some other resemblance to Canadians. You'd be wrong. If we're quiet and polite, they're unabashedly loud and brassy. Today, I was treated to the spectacle of an traffic cop trying to convince a taxi driver not to stop on a congested street. "I don't care who called, you better move it out of here," he bellowed. "Before I move it for you!"

A Touch of TO: There was one surprisingly familiar sight to be seen in Boston -- the TD logo emblazoned on the hockey/basketball arena formerly known as the FleetCenter.

Apparently, TD made its entrance to the American banking scene in 2004 by purchasing a majority share in Banknorth, a northeastern banking and insurance company formed through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the previous two decades. Also that year, FleetBoston Financial Group merged with Bank of America and in 2005 negotiated a release from Fleet's naming rights agreement. TD Banknorth bought the rights and the arena's name changed to TD Banknorth Garden July 1, 2005.

Walking: I really enjoyed walking around Boston. Really, everything is within easy walking distance, as it's quite a small city. Chris said there's about 600,000 people in Boston and Cambridge, which is about the same number as in Metro Hamilton. After living in Toronto for five years, when I look at a small map, I'm used to mentally inserting 5 or 10 streets between every one on the map. But, the little map I was using here actually showed every street. On Saturday evening, I was able to walk from the south end of downtown back to my hotel in Cambridge (across a river, to the North of downtown) in about 35 minutes!

The Freedom Trail: One great place to walk was the Freedom Trail, which winds through all the buildings of historical significance in the North End and downtown. I wonder if there are plans to revoke it, and replace it with the Security Trail.

Covering Up: There's a very odd looking strip of construction running around the eastern side of downtown Boston.

It's the last of the Big Dig: a project to move the elevated Central Artery, Interstate 93, underground, and to extend the Massachusetts Turnpike under Boston Harbor to the airport. Construction of the tunnels was extremely complicated and expensive, taking the last 15 years to complete. Now, work is underway on reclaiming the land vacated by the interstate, to create the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which is to consist of public spaces along with cultural and recreational buildings.

In July, a ceiling section in one of the tunnels collapsed on a passing car, killing its passenger. That section of the tunnel was closed, rerouting traffic above ground and delaying work on the Greenway. The parks now aren't expected to open until mid-2007. Financing problems and other issues have delayed and jeopardized plans for the various buildings. The New Center for Arts and Culture will not open until at least 2011.

The potential for this space is huge, but only time will tell if that potential is realized. Still, the sheer audacity of a project of this magnitude (especially in a relatively small city) is impressive.

The Down-low: On Friday, I went out with Chris and some of his friends to a straight club called Gypsy, and had a fabulous time. The music was as fun as anything you might hear at Buddies, although the ADD-DJ never seemed to want to play more than a minute of any given song. Still, it was great for dancing, and we tore up the floor until the wee hours.

On Saturday, I was on my own, and I thought I'd try to check out the gay scene. There doesn't seem to be a gaybourhood like the Village here. The clubs are spread out a bit more, and some straight places have weekly gay nights. I decided to try a video bar called Club Cafe, which was recommended as the happening spot.

From the street, the place looked like it was just a restaurant and lounge. I actually walked past once, looking for a bar entrance, and then circled back around the block to avoid looking overly lost. But, you actually enter through the restaurant, pass the bouncer, and head to the bar in the back. Once found, it was a bit of a disappointment. The place was packed with people standing around in little groups. The dance floor was full, but no one was dancing. There was nowhere to sit with a drink. So, for someone like me, on my own and shy, it just didn't offer anything. I stayed all of about 10 minutes.

So, score one for the straighties and zero for the gays of Boston.

Boston (Part 1: EclipseWorld)

2006-09-10T01:43:00.000-04:00

If you've been reading my blog from the beginning and remembering every word (and who hasn't been?), you may recall that I went to EclipseWorld in New York last summer to give a presentation on EMF. For some reason, they asked me back to this year's conference in Boston (well, technically Cambridge, right across the river).

The conference ran this week from Wednesday to Friday, and now I'm spending the weekend here playing tourist in the city. I'll share my impressions of the city in another entry, but today I'll talk a bit about the conference.

My presentation went over really well. The room was packed, and people asked a lot of good questions that suggested they were paying attention. They even laughed at my lame jokes. Unfortunately, the questions slowed down the talk, so I really had to compress the demo portion. Still, it was easy to see that people were impressed.

Last year, it seemed that everyone wanted to know how they could use a database to store their EMF-modeled data, and I was only able to make mention of a couple of projects that had recently been started to work on this. This year, those two technologies (Teneo and CDO) have moved into the EMF Technology project at Eclipse.org, and have improved and developed significantly. I took the time to get familiar with them, and so I was able to include a Relational Persistence section in my talk. I showed a simple demo of an EMF-generated editor for an ordinary model that used a Hibernate resource to transparently persist to an HSQLDB database. Pretty slick!

A number of people came to me with more questions and comments over the rest of the conference. One person said that my presentation and our conversation were the only highlights of the conference for him (poor guy!), and another was talking about abandoning the application his team had been working on for about a year, replacing it with a GMF/EMF/Teneo-based solution.

I attended some pretty interesting sessions, too. Notably, Chris did a good job live demoing eRCP (embedded rich client platform), and I also enjoyed learning about Java Server Faces and dynamic help.

Oh, and I'm proud to say that, of the three days' free lunches, the one provided by IBM was the tastiest.

More Cool Stuff From Google

2006-08-22T23:01:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at work, I heard about Google Web Toolkit (GWT) for the first time. I read their docs and played with a couple of the samples last night, and I'm quite convinced it's really cool stuff!

Basically, it's a framework for AJAX development. It includes a DOM/HTML-based widget toolkit and facilities for localization and asynchronous RPC over HTTP. You use these to write and debug your client in Java, and then use their tools to convert it into JavaScript, which can be added to host HTML and served up from any old Web server. The server side of your application runs as Java bytecode, with the RPC mechanism providing seamless object-based communication between the two.

Not surprisingly, my original motivation for looking at this technology was to try to integrate it with everyone's favourite modeling technology to provide instant browser-based model editor UIs. I'm not sure it's terribly well suited to this task, since with AJAX, you're typically trying to put as much into the client side as possible. The client side is ultimately JavaScript, so of course the EMF runtime isn't available there. So, it seems that some significant glue would be needed to get data across. Also, GWT lacks an equivalent to JFace viewers, so demand-populating a widget like a tree might be more difficult, too.

Anyhow, I think it might be more fun to use this stuff to try to develop some sort of practical Web application, rather than the kind of generic framework stuff that I do all day at work.

Hmm...I just need a good idea...

Food Poisoning 2.0

2006-08-15T21:44:00.000-04:00

Much improved from the first release! Faster and less painful! No hospitalization required!

Seriously, can you believe it? Food poisoning for the second time this year. The saddest part: I'm convinced that I got it at a restaurant I love.

Ouch!

2006-07-24T20:20:00.000-04:00

This summer, Kevin has been getting more and more suntanned, while I've remained my usual pasty white. No doubt it's partly a matter of exposure and partly of predisposition.

He has certainly seen a good amount of sun during his Friends for Life training rides, while I've spent much of that time indoors. But I would assert that, had I been along with him for those rides, either I would have applied lots of sunscreen and remained just about as pasty as I am now, or I would have not applied lots of sunscreen, burned and peeled repeatedly...and remained just about as pasty as I am now.

For the last decade or so, I've been quite convinced that I simply can't tan.

I don't really know if it was jealousy of Kevin's fantastic skin, simple vanity, or maybe a desire to challenge my own assumptions that pushed me to act yesterday. I paid a visit to a local, well respected tanning salon to get some fake and bake UVA goodness.

I filled out a consent form, noting on it my tendancy to not tan, my tendany to burn, and my lack of sun exposure. They recommended seven minutes in a 200W Sun Capsule VHR. I was warned that I might very well see no effect from the session, reassured that we were just trying to start a base, and promised that I'd start to see something after a couple more tans.

"No worries," I replied. I'd rather take a few seesions to get results than to overdo it and end up getting burned.

The seven minutes passed quite quickly, and I felt fine the whole time. On emerging from the machine, I checked myself out in the mirror. As predicted, I didn't see much difference. My face and arms might have looked a bit darker, and I had a general glow about me. Interestingly, the combination of the ambient heat and the blowing cool air had left my hair looking fantastic. I went home feeling quite satisfied and planning to return on Tuesday for another session.

It only took another half hour for the burn to develop. My arms and face remained fine, but my torso and upper legs turned bright, bright red. If Kevin hadn't borrowed my camera for his ride, I'd post a picture of my burn line. It's pretty shocking. Every time I look in the mirror, I'm reminded of Kevin's red body paint last Halloween.

Today, I'm pretty sore. The worst spots are my outer thighs and under my armpits.

Once it all fades and peels, I'll have to decide whether I should give up on tanning for good or go back and give it another go...maybe for a four minute session.

Convenient Delusions

2006-07-04T22:21:00.000-04:00

Last night, I saw An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about Al Gore's campaign to raise consciousness of global warming. It was truly alarming.

I would love to summarize the points he made, but I don't think I'd be doing him justice. Most alarming for me were the revelations about the melting and cracking that's already occuring in arctic and antarctic ice. It's happening quickly -- in many cases, more quickly than previously predicted -- and the potential consequences are dire. The melting of Greenland's shelf ice would raise global sea levels by over 20 feet, submerging many costal cities around the world. Scarier yet, ocean currents may be affected in totally upredictable ways, completely altering global weather patterns.

The response to Gore's science mirrors a point he makes in the film: the scientific consensus is there, but it is denied by those who find it politically convenient to pretend that there is a significant disagreement within the scientific community.

Anyhow, I would encourage anyone and everyone to see the film.

This morning, I was enraged by conservatie pundit Ezra Levant, who appeared on Sounds Like Canada to promote his book, The War on Fun. In this book, he argues that nasty, liberal do-gooders are trying to control our every action and take away everything that's fun. Apparently, he defines "everything that's fun" as smoking, over-eating, and producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide. He was actually speaking from his new Hummer, as if to prove how obnoxious and disconnected from reality he is.

He tried to claim that, while we should have the freedom to do what we want, we also need to take personal responsibility for the outcome of our actions. But, he utterly failed to address any notion of collective responsibility for outcomes that affect us all. He might be just fine driving around Calgary in his Hummer, but if the Netherlands wakes up under water, how is he going to take responsibility for his part in that?

Big surprise, it's not even an issue for him. Ezra doesn't seem to believe in global warming. Without citing any science at all, he brushes off global warming as lacking a scientific concensus, and asserts that climate change certainly isn't the most pressing issue facing us.

I guess that's his convenient delusion.

Interestingly, Ezra's live-and-let-live attitude towards personal liberty only seems to go so far. On one hand, we shouldn't let something petty like a desire not to radically alter the world's climate stand in the way of his gas-guzzling fun. But, please, let's not offend his sensibilities by daring to extend equal treatment by the state to gays and lesbians. Fun is all well and good, but, two boys kissing? That's just gross.

Ride for Heart

2006-06-04T13:08:00.000-04:00

I just got back from the Ride for Heart. It was a really good ride. It's incredibly fun to ride on the highways and to watch the way the crowds of riders move around and past each other. Best of all was going past the financial district at around 8:30, before the city had really woken up.

We finished in just over 2 hours. The first half of the ride was a bit of a slog: it's more uphill, and the wind was against us. The second half was just wonderful. I feel good, but my legs are pretty tired.

Thanks very much to my sponsors. Together, we raised $400 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Bring on the Idols!

2006-05-29T21:35:00.000-04:00

Tonight marks the start of season four of Canadian Idol. I recognize that it's the same old, but for some reason it's still so much fun to watch. Somehow , it just seems a little more real than that other idol show, which I suppose is always good for a reality show: the contestants, the judges, even dorky old Ben Mulroney. And don't tell, but I think we've got better singers, too.

Today's episode didn't disappoint. My favourite moments came when Zack almost wheeled himself off the stage in Kitchener Waterloo, when one girl was preparing herself to start singing and she farted, and best of all, the girl who did impressions of Britney, Cher, and Sharika. What I want to know: did they put her through to Toronto?

But apparently, this episode was brought to you by the oil industry association of Alberta. What was with that little tribute to the oil patch workers? Maybe they just had three minutes of air to fill?

Anyhow, I can't wait -- bring on the idols!

Oh, and Gameshow Marathon looks pretty exciting. You know, in that bloody, gory train wreck sort of way.

More Painting

2006-05-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

Since last weekend was a long weekend, I decided to use the time to try to do the painting that I hadn't managed to finish before moving into my new place. If you're an avid reader, you may recall that I had left the kitchen and entraceway unpainted (and you may want to look harder for interesting things to read on the 'net).

Anyhow, I figured that finishing up would be about a two-day job, but painting never goes as planned for me (really, what does?). It ended up taking Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday evening, Wednesday (I took the day off work), and a couple of hours Thursday...and Kevin helped me all day Sunday and Monday...and I'm still not quite done yet. Basically, I just need to fix up a few little mistakes now.

I still don't really understand how it took so long. The closets and doors took a long time; they were much more complicated to paint than the simple, sliding doors in the rest of the unit. The ceilings were a huge pain, too. I made lots of mistakes that took time to correct. I had to move appliances around, blocking off areas I needed to paint. And, I ended up having to deal with three different paints (two colours, one in two different finishes) plus primer, which meant lots of time cleaning brushes and waiting for them to dry. But still, pretty much five days in total?!

The worst part is that I haven't done anything with the bathroom (though happily I really have no plans to) and there's still the balcony door step that needs to be painted with an oil-based paint.

Cycling

2006-05-14T20:31:00.000-04:00

I first mentioned a couple of months ago that I had bought a bike. Turns out that I've actually been using it!

Since Kevin is going to be cycling to Montreal in July, he's been doing a lot of training, and I couldn't help but get caught up in it. I've been doing a couple of rides per week for the last few weeks, and I even signed up for the Becel Ride for Heart. So, I'll be riding 50 km along the Gardiner and DVP (they'll be closed for the event) on June 4. If you're so inclined, you can sponsor me online. It's for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, a very worthy cause, and of course it's tax deductible.

I just did 50 km for the first time today, and it was pretty hard. I think it would have been much more manageable if weren't for the strong headwind for the last 15 km or so, which pretty much finished me off. I expect I'll be pretty sore tomorrow. But still, I think I'm in pretty good shape for the ride, with another three weeks to go.

We rode along the lakeshore to the Humber river, and then took the Humber trail up almost to Lawrence Avenue. It's a really beautiful trail; it's almost hard to believe such a thing exists in Toronto.

Canadian Music Creators Speak Out

2006-04-26T21:08:00.000-04:00

Today a new voice was heard in the debate over copyright reform in Canada: a group called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition was launched to represent the views of artists. Which artists, you ask?

How about Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Raine Maida, Billy Talent, Broken Social Scene, and Sloan, for starters? These are some of the biggest names in Canadian music. Some are signed to major labels, and other to independents. They've banded together to clearly reject the notion that the major labels and their lobbyists speak on their behalf, and to advance a decidedly fan-friendly agenda.

Here are their three guiding principles for the copyright reform process:

Suing our fans is destructive and hypocritical
Digital locks are risky and counterproductive
Cultural policy should support actual Canadian artists.

They expand on these principles to oppose the RIAA-style lawsuits and the harsh statutory copyright damages that make them possible, as well as DRM and DMCA-style legislation that protects it. Moreover, they advocate the notion of fair use to protect consumers, in place of our current, more limited fair dealings provisions, and call on the government to strengthen initiatives that really benefit Canadian artists, like The Canada Music Fund and FACTOR.

This couldn't come at a better time. The new federal government will be taking a fresh look at copyright reform, after Bill C-60 died with the previous session of parliament. They will now be faced with a strong voice putting forward these principles, and I'm sure they will find it difficult to ignore the artists.

C-60 may have seemed quite civilized compared to the DMCA, but viewed through the lens of these principles, it looks positively draconian. Hopefully copyright sanity will prevail in Canada, and the Canadian music will continue to flourish.

And now, I shall go listen to Train Wreck with glee.

What would you do? What would you do?

2006-04-08T22:15:00.000-04:00

I think I had my first celebrity encounter today. Well, sort of celebrity, anyway.

Kevin and I were walking down Queen Street today, just approaching Yonge, when we saw a familiar face. Well, it's been familiar only recently, since we started watching VJ Search on MuchMusic a few weeks ago. It was Sean! I held in my squeal, and Kevin and I just looked at each other. Then we noticed that he was walking with Nikki! We actually walked right behind them for a few steps before I couldn't hold it in anymore, and I squealed like a little girl.

They turned around and Kevin said "hi." There was an awkward silence before I stammered out, "so you guys don't know yet? Is it, like, in real time?" And she said yeah, that they'd find out on Monday, and the voting's still going on. I said that was exciting and that it seemed I was more nervous than them. Sean said he was waiting for them to announce, "and the person with the least number of votes is...Sean!" But then, he's been underselling himself the whole time.

I don't really remember everything that was said, but I do know that Nikki pointed out a couple of times how cute I was. "Cute" as in "freaky, scary, get-this-stalker-away-from-me cute," I guess. Sean didn't really say much. Maybe he was kind of annoyed by the attention, or maybe he's just not used to thinking of himself as a celebrity.

They both looked really good, like maybe they got to keep the clothes from the show and use the stylists on their off time. Nikki was gorgeous; she has a great smile.

I quickly ran out of things to say. We somehow got in front of them at a traffic light (we were in a hurry) and walked off. I didn't even think to wish them luck!

Camera Update

2006-04-04T15:09:00.000-04:00

I just heard from the camera shop, and it will be $180 plus tax to repair my camera. A new camera would be about $450 and wouldn't be much of an improvement (6 megapixels instead of 5, but otherwise not terribly different), so it's a bit of a no-brainer.

I should have my camera back in 2-3 weeks. Of course, I haven't updated my photo site in months, so sadly that doesn't do you much good.

New Toy!

2006-03-30T17:49:00.000-05:00

After having talked about it for several months, I bought a bike today! Kevin did much research for me, and answered many of my dumb questions, and I think we got a pretty fantastic deal on a pretty fantastic bike.

For now, it's sitting in my den, but taking it up in the elevator was a violation of my condo's rules. I need to get a clamp in my parking spot to hang it from. And I still need a lock, locking skewers, and gloves, at a minimum. But, I'm very excited. I can't wait to take it out for a ride!

In not so happy news, I was just about to take some pictures of it, and I dropped my camera. The lens won't retract, and it won't turn on.

So, to recap Dave's toy situation: +1 bike, -1 camera. Net score: a wash, I suppose.

Goodbye, Las Vegas!

2006-03-26T23:41:00.000-05:00

My trip ended today, as I said farewell to the fabulously tacky world of Las Vegas and returned to good old Toronto.

I had a great time there with mum, but I've got to admit, it'll never become a favourite destination for me. It's just too big, too loud, too fake. And I don't think I'll ever get the appeal of gambling. I took another crack at slots, and I got so bored that I just wanted it to end.

Some of the sights were definitely impressive, like the fountains at the Bellagio the view from the mini Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, and the inside of the Luxor. And I was pretty excited to get a cute new swim suit at the Fashion Show Mall (I had forgotten to bring one). Okay, not too cute -- I was with my mother, after all!

We saw the main attraction, Celine's A New Day... last night and it was just amazing. Apparently, it was the anniversary of the show's launch three years ago, so it was clearly a big deal for her and for the rest of the performers. She was so "on", I couldn't believe it. I've never heard such a flawless live vocal performance before. The dancing, staging and effects, as promised, were quite spectacular. "I'm Alive," "At Last," "I've Got the World on a String," "I Surrender," an Italian song that I didn't know, "I Wish," and "My Heart Will Go On" were especially effective. "The Power of Love" was just bizarre, with its strutting peacocks and weird technicolor wormhole background.

Well, that's the way Vegas went. Now it's back to the old grind.

EclipseCon Wraps

2006-03-23T13:54:00.000-05:00

EclipseCon is winding down. This morning's keynote was by Ted Neilson, the CEO of Borland. He's an ex-Microsoftie, and somehow I just didn't find him totally convincing explaining how Borland "gets it" with regard to open source. Well, if nothing else, it's pretty clear that Microsoft stands alone against open source. Right now, a consultant with both Visual Studio and Eclipse experience is comparing the two environments, and coming down quite squarely on our side.

Tuesday and Wednesday were excellent. Joel Spolsky's keynote was entertaining, if not overly insightful. There was something about emotional appeal and polishing and misattribution. But, most notable were the numerous pictures of pretty men. Hey, I'm not saying! I'm just saying...

Greg Stein, from the Apache Software Foundation (and Google) gave the keynote yesterday, and made several good points about software, licenses, and communities. His key point was that Apache is about building communities first, and creating code second. He seemed a little anti-copyleft for my taste, though. I'm of the opinion that licenses mostly get chosen in a sensible way. Whoever starts the project tends to choose a license that meets their needs and desires. Usually in an open source project, those align quite well with the needs and desires of the users, or the project will fail spectacularly. Obviously, for a project like Eclipse, started by IBM to enable itself and other companies to build proprietary products on it, the chosen license will allow that. For Linux, the GPL is a an excellent choice: it keeps it free, encourages its rapid development, and does nothing to interfere with the abilities of individuals and companies to make use of it. Linux is thriving, in part, because of the GPL -- certainly not in spite of it.

I saw many good presentations over the last couple of days, covering topics like VE, the TPTP GUI test recorder, open source business models, GMF, profiling, the Jazz project, BIRT, platform undeveloped operations, Apache Harmony, GCJ and GNU/Linux distribution packaging, and the JET editor. Phew.

There's lots of cool stuff going on in Eclipse. I'm itching to try out some of this for myself. But somehow, I can't help thinking about the next few days...Vegas calls!

EclipseCon

2006-03-21T07:39:00.000-05:00

It's day two at EclipseCon.

We presented our tutorial yesterday, and it went reasonably well. There were some hickups with getting people started on the exercises, as some hadn't downloaded all the stuff they needed and a few were using the Sun 1.4 JDK, with the buggy Cirmson DOM implementation. But, once we got those kinks worked out, I think many people were able to follow the material and do the exercises.

By comparison, I was totally lost in the tutorial I attended in the afternoon. The exercises were ridiculously ambitious. I think the only people who had any success were the ones who had already been working with technology for months.

So now, I'm practically on vacation. Joel Spolsky, from Joel on Software, is going to be giving the keynote this morning. I'm mildly curious what he has to say, but I've never really taken him seriously since he said that Mozilla should have turned the Netscape codebase into something useful by refactoring, instead of rebuilding from the ground up.

(Interestingly, Tracksy tells me that 67% of visitors to my blog use Firefox, a mere 25% use IE.)

Then, there are a whole slew of presentations and demos happening today. Gee, I guess I'd better pick some...

Gastric Adventures

2006-03-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

In my post this morning, I made an out-of-left-field comment about by stomach. Maybe you're wondering what that was about. Don't you just love a good mystery?

I'd intended to say more, but I didn't have time before the taxi arrived to take me to the airport. I'm now on the plane, and taking the opportunity to explain that. Though, actually, I don't really want to go into too much detail.

Last Monday I got food poisoning, which resulted in one of the longest nights of my life. I was really sick, severely and often. And, actually, in quite a lot of pain. It had passed by mid-morning Tuesday, but my gut is still pretty sensitive. So, I'm trying to be very gentle on it, and hoping for the best. It's really inopportune timing, since I'm going to have to eat whatever's available for the next week. I just can't wait to be done with the tutorial tomorrow, so at least I can return to a normal stress level.

I'm Goin' to California

2006-03-19T09:13:00.000-05:00

I'm heading off to Santa Clara, California today for EclipseCon 2006. I'll be instructing a tutorial (on EMF, of course) along with Nick. Fortunately, that's tomorrow morning, which means I can just relax and enjoy the rest of the conference after that.

After the conference, I'm meeting Mum in Las Vegas for the weekend. I've never been before, and I don't think I'd really want to...if it wasn't for a certain show.

I shouldn't be so nervous, but I'm kind of afraid my stomach might misbehave...

Fingers crossed.

Shout Out to MSN Search!

2006-03-17T19:37:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I started using Tracksy to collect stats on visitors to my little blog. I figured it would be interesting to see how many people are actually reading it, where they're coming from, and so forth. Actually, it hasn't disappointed. Today, I found that one visitor had been referred by search.msn.com. Looking closely at the URL made it apparent that he or she had simply searched for "human being". I decided to give that query a go, and the results surprised me!

Go on. Try it.

Yup, that's right: Another Human Being is the number 7 result for "human being" on MSN Search! How is that even possible?

I tried the same search on Google and looked through 10 pages of results before giving up on ever finding myself.

Anyhow, if you used MSN Search to find me today, a special "halla" to you! Oh, and some advice: use Google. As I've just demonstrated, it's clearly the superior search engine.

...But I Know What I Like

2006-03-13T11:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening, I went to Snap!, a photography auction to raise funds for the AIDS Committee of Toronto. I actually bought a piece in the silent auction, which I'm very excited about.

It's called Piki, and the photographer's name is John Fairley. Here is the photo, with a link to it on his Flickr site.

I can't get over how human her expression looks. And so mischievous -- she's definitely a heart breaker. I love the composition, too: the way her face is framed, and the other doll, out of focus in the background.

My empty walls are very excited, too!

WiFi for All!

2006-03-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

According to The Star, Toronto Hydro is planning to roll out city-wide WiFi coverage, starting as soon as this Fall.

Bring it on! Bell et al. have totally missed the boat with their awful Hotspots at Starbucks and the like. Seriously, $7 per hour to use the Internet? What is this, 1995?

Yay for big government! Make it cheap, and drive those bums at Bell and Rogers out of business!

Unexpected Visitors

2006-03-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

I'm working from home today, and I had a teleconference at 3:00 in the afternoon. I was quite surprised when, halfway through the call, there was a loud knock at my door. I opened the door, phone in hand, and found my condo developer's deficiencies team behind it.

They had finally come to address the various deficiencies that I, and the previous owner of the suite, had reported over the last 8 months or so.

I'd been trying to get some response about these deficiencies for ages, but the guy who handles this for the developer went silent weeks ago. Now, with zero warning, people arrive with hammers in hands. Oh well, better late than never!

I just went over the list with them, and I'm cautiously optimistic that most of the issues will be resolved today and tomorrow.

Support Kevin and Stu!

2006-03-03T14:49:00.000-05:00

I've just added a link to Stu & Kevin's Friends For Life bike rally blog. This July, they'll be cycling, along with about 300 others, from Toronto to Montreal to raise money for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. Until then, they'll be blogging about their fundraising and training. Hopefully, they'll also find a way to do some audio blogging during the ride.

So, about that fundraising...they each have to raise $2000 to participate. Now, if you know Kevin and/or Stu, you've probably already heard about this. But, even if you don't know them, you shouldn't let that stop you from making a pledge. I mean, you know me, or at least you're sufficiently interested in me to be reading my blog. So, two degrees of separation and a really good cause should be enough to motivate at least a small pledge, shouldn't it?

You can find links to their pledge pages from their blog.

The Morning After

2006-02-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

Well, we all survived the party. Mike and Mum had a minor blow-up over lemon slicing, but they made up and moved on after that.

The caterers didn't bring the salmon, but the lamb was good, and everyone was well fed. I'm pretty sure Mum thinks she could have done a better job of the food, and she's probably right.

I think Kevin had a pretty fun night. He sent his last text message at 3:39 AM, his time. I have no idea what he's gonna do with EZ Barnett's number, though.

Whoever said it would be a vacation?

2006-02-18T16:05:00.000-05:00

I've been home for a couple of days now, and it occurs to me, I'm really quite stressed out.

Family get-togethers usually follow a pretty standard script: Mum invests huge amounts of time and effort into putting on the best event possible, with lots of yummy food and meticulous cleaning and setup. However, managing all of this stresses her out, she falls behind schedule, and any bit of resistance or second-guessing from anyone else infuriates her. Dad gets stressed out by the fact that things are running late, and starts expressing some not-so-helpful opinions. Mike and Mum never play especially well together, and some disagreement eventually blows up into a bit of a falling out.

In the end, the heartache subsides, and everyone enjoys the event, is terribly well fed and well entertained.

So, I'm kind of waiting for all that to happen today, while hoping against hope that it doesn't. It's almost 4:00 and all's well so far.

There's a big change to the recipe this time. Mum's party is being catered, so there's been no frantic food preparation. The caterers will show up shortly before the event, food in hand, to set up, they'll serve during the party, and they'll take away the dirty dishes with them.

The other thing weighing on my mind is Granny Maro, who has been living with my parents since December. Her memory is failing quite seriously, leaving Mum responsible for thinking for two. It's really hard on her, and going through the same situation with her own mother took a huge toll on Granny.

This afternoon we were looking through some photos, and Granny wasn't recognizing Lis (Mike's wife), and kept thinking that Mum was Lena (Granny's sister). It seems like she has the most trouble with most recent memories, and so probably Mum now looks like how she best remembers Lena. I corrected her a few times, but each time she'd forget again after a couple of minutes.

It's really tough to watch. I remember Granny Maro as being really quick, and having little trouble keeping up with her two rambunctious grandkids, in spite of the language barrier.

It's still mostly fun to be around her, though. She responds so well to us; she doesn't say a lot, but you can tell she's practically oozing love.

Homeward Bound

2006-02-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I'll be heading to Vancouver for a few days, to celebrate my mum's 60th birthday and catch up with friends and family.

It's been eight months since I was last there (for Omi's 90th birthday, in fact), but it seems even longer. Maybe that's because it was also only for a few days.

I'm trying to pack my calendar so I don't miss out on seeing anyone. It's so weird thinking about how rarely I've seen these people, who were once all over my life, in the last half-decade. I'm excited, though. In the past, it's been like no time has passed at all.

I'm also hoping I'll find out if any reunion activities are afoot. Ten years - yegods!

Don't Cry for Me

2006-01-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

Aidan, a friend from work and a really great photographer, visited Argentina in December and he took some incredible photos. He sent me this link to his Web site, and I thought I'd share.

http://www.aidantierney.com/

Enjoy!

Earth To Elections Canada

2006-01-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

I was surprised to read that the publication ban on voting results is back in effect for this election. Does anyone really believe that bloggers and small Web sites won't publish results before the polls close across the country?

Here's a simple solution to the problem: don't start counting any ballots until all the polls are closed! Now, I realize that might mean that Eastern and Central Canadians would have to either (a) stay up late, or (b) wait until tomorrow morning to hear the results. But, you know, I think that's a little bit more reasonable than trying to bend the Internet to Elections Canada's will.

Politics and Sheep

2006-01-23T11:12:00.000-05:00

I just don't get it: how could Stephen Harper have been so scary in 2004 and not now? The shift in public opinion has been huge, and I fear that we're going to see major policy reversals that will change a great measure of what we tend to think of as Canadian values. I can think of a few possible explanations...

1. I have, along with the Liberal and New Democratic parties and much of the press, a skewed view of Canadian values. Canadians' tendencies really aren't as socially progressive as we might imagine. Those of us who live in the cities (I've only ever lived in Vancouver and Toronto) probably underestimate the how different the world-views held in much of the rest of the country are.

2. Canadians really aren't concerned about social issues right now. They don't agree with the Conservative position on same-sex marriage, for instance, but they're willing to put their differences aside in order to send a message that they will not tolerate what they perceive as waste and corruption. Other institutions of government, notably the courts, and public opinion will probably constrain a Conservative government, preventing them from significantly altering the country's path on sical issues.

3. Apparently, Harper has been much nicer to the press in this election. Last time, he didn't give them much time or access, but in this campaign, they say he's actually been friendly with them. As a result, his coverage has been much more positive and Canadians have decided that he must be an okay guy. In other words, we're a bunch of sheep.

I fear that the third explanation might be the most accurate.

Back to Work

2006-01-03T13:29:00.000-05:00

It's been 2 weeks since I've had to work (not counting finishing my PBC at the last possible second last Friday), and I was a little nervous logging on to the VPN this morning. It's been the usual kind of day so far, with most of my time spent helping other people. It's rewarding, but frustrating -- there are things I need to get done, too!

Today, I helped someone in Germany debug his XML Schemas, and now he wants to send me a Bavarian beer glass. I still haven't even managed to catch up on my notes (what normal people call e-mail), much less do anything productive.

I had an odd dream a couple of nights ago, where we were told that the lab had been shut down and all development was moving offshore. Then, I found out that the very best, top-performing people were actually keeping their jobs and would have to do all the development work themselves, and that I was in limbo -- it hadn't been decided whether I was in that group or not.

It was such a long and involved dream that, by the time I woke up, I wasn't sure whether I would actually have a job to go to today. But, it's just back to business as usual now.

Anyhow, it's time for me to take my long-delayed lunch break. I'm going to go and see if I can exchange a lighting fixture. I bought and installed some track lighting on the weekend, but one of the fixtures is screwed up. Hopefully they'll take it back, and I can finish up this lighting project (add the missing fixture and install the dimmer) in the next couple of days.

Happy Holidays

2005-12-25T11:17:00.000-05:00

It's Christmas today and Chanukah starts tonight. This kind of convergence is a rare occurrence. I wish I were celebrating the holidays, but, alas, I'm packing instead. Nonetheless, in case anyone is actually still reading my blog, after a month and a half of silence, I'd like to wish you and yours a very merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, and all the rest.

It's been very hectic lately, which is why I haven't posted and why I'm packing. I'll be moving to my new condo on Wednesday, which gives me just three days to finish packing (I started yesterday). Considering the pace that it's going, I think it should work out. At Consuelo and EB's solstice party last Thursday, Maureen and Consuelo were talking about their packing prowess. Well, I packed all my books and CD's yesterday, and I didn't take forever or leave great gobs of empty space in any of the boxes. Hopefully they'd be proud! It was actually much less painful than I remember it to be, which reaffirms Amy's claim that practice definitely helps.

Over the previous couple of weeks, I've been painting the new place. I almost finished, getting two coats done in the living/dining space, the bedroom and the den. The kitchen and entranceway still need to be done, but my goal was to finish the rooms where all my stuff will be. Painting was hell. I've helped others out with painting before, but it's not something I've ever done from start to finish, and there was much to learn. Surprises abounded, like the oil-based paint on the baseboards and doors, requiring them to all be primed. Oh, and the unsweepably large mountain of dust generated by sanding a skim patch (though I'm still not sure if I even was supposed to sand it!). Oh, who can forget the should-I-shouldn't-I? drama about painting the caulking. Well, it's pretty much done now, and I think it looks good, so that's a relief. It wouldn't have been possible without help from Kevin, Alex, and especially Stu. Thanks a million, guys!

Kevin's back home on PEI for Christmas. It's not even been two weeks, but I do miss him like crazy. We've been talking on the phone every two or three days and texting in between, but it's not the same. I just don't understand how people pull off long-distance relationships. Anyhow, it's good for him that he hasn't been around to share in all of my stress, and he'll be back on Friday. Can't wait!

So, that's the kind of holiday I'm having.

Bleeder

2005-11-24T19:29:00.000-05:00

Today at lunch, I got my flu shot. After it was done, the guy who administered it asked me to hold a little piece of cotton over the hole for a few seconds, to give it time to stop bleeding.

When he removed the cotton, I guess it was still leaking blood, since he apologized and covered it again.

The second time he checked under the cotton, he asked if I'm "a bleeder." I said that I probably am.

The third time, he said he'd never seen anyone bleed so much from a shot.

Apparently, they don't like using those little band-aids anymore, since some people are allergic to the adhesive. Eventually, the bleeding did stop, and I was on my merry way.

So, the conclusion: I'm not just a bleeder, I'm one helluva bleeder. If ever you see me walking down the street, please don't stab me. I've got a much better than average chance of bleeding to death.

Winter

2005-11-18T16:31:00.000-05:00

It's started.

When I popped out to pick up some lunch from Quiznos today, I couldn't help but notice that fluffy flakes of snow were falling from the sky. Now, there's a light dusting across the roofs of all the buildings around me.

Well, our extra mild, extra extended autumn was sure nice, but now it's time for five or six months of winter. Lordy, wake me up in May.

Halloween

2005-11-15T21:50:00.000-05:00

Here's the last entry in my three day, catch-up series. I've been meaning to write something about Halloween for a couple of weeks now.

I've never been a huge Halloween person. I mean, I've always enjoyed Halloween parties, but I typically wait until the last minute to start thinking about a costume, and then come up with a pretty silly idea and have no time to do a decent job of it. A couple of years ago, I did a pretty cool Sister Wendy, but last year, I didn't even bother to go out, since I was working like a maniac on the second edition of the EMF book (which, incidentally, still isn't finished).

Kevin, on the other hand, appears to do the opposite. He always seems to put together really cool costumes, putting a lot of work into them. So, this year was a great time to depart from my sad old approach. We decided to do a costume together, as a couple, and quite quickly came up with the idea of an angel and a devil. And almost as quickly, we decided to make it an angel and devil in shorts.

I think Kevin wanted to paint himself red, so he suggested I be the angel. In fairness, he claimed his motivation was something about me looking better nearly naked, without paint. Strangely, whenever I would tell a friend about the costume, the reply was, "you should've been the devil!" And, whenever Kevin did, it was, "good thing you're the devil!" As it turns out, I'm really glad we took the roles we did: I don't think I could've dealt with all that red body paint.

We found the shorts at the BodyBodyWear clearance sale, nice and cheap; I borrowed the wings from Roberto; Kevin found a red vest at Value Village; and most of the rest of our costumes came from Malabar -- though there were other bits and pieces from various dollar stores and such.

We went out in costume three times: on Saturday, we went to Buddies; on Sunday, Temple at the Phoenix; and on Monday (Halloween, itself) we did Church Street and Woody's. The preparation took a really long time, especially on Saturday (we got better as we went along, and Kevin started using a type of paint that was easier to apply on Sunday), but I think the results were fabulous.

(Unfortunately, I'm not wearing my halo in this picture. It was pretty cool: we poured the chemicals from a glowstick on it, to make it glow in the dark. But, they slowly ate through the fluff, so that by Monday there wasn't really much left.)

We got to Buddies really late and had to wait in line for a long time. I was wearing my wool jacket, but it was still really cold, especially on my legs. Inside, it was so busy that I was constantly bashing my wings into people, so I quite quickly checked them. We had a great time, but by the end of the night, my non-angelic behaviour had resulted in a rather large, red stain on the front of my shorts. How embarassing!

So, I did much washing the next day, which also had to be repeated on Monday. My boa got pinker and pinker as time went on, too.

Temple was also fun. The costumes were much better than at Buddies, as there was a big competition hosted by Sofonda. We entered ourselves, but didn't make it into the top 10. Lots of boys seemed to want to dance with me (wonder why!), and I was having too much fun to resist. Kevin was too polite to do the same, not wanting to cover everyone with his red paint, so he just poked the boys with his pitchfork to keep them away from me. Also, we hooked up with Richard and Mark there: Richard was dressed, as always, as a sailor, and Mark was in some pretty superb drag.

The Monday night street party on Church was just hilarious. I was expecting to freeze my little tuchis off, but once we got there, with all of the crowds, it wasn't bad at all. Most of the time, we couldn't go more than two seconds without being photographed. Seriously, we must have had our pictures taken over a hundred times. Now I really feel for those poor celebrities who are constantly having to smile and pose and be the centre of attention! Such a drain! We met up with Alex and Daryl, who I'm sure grew tired of our celebrity quite quickly. And then, we lost them when it started to rain, prompting us to get indoors before Kevin's paint melted. We ended up inside Woody's, for another failed attempt at costume contest supremacy. But, we saw some more fabulous costumes and met some nice people. In all, it was a very entertaining night.

Home Sweet Home

2005-11-14T21:36:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, I got an e-mail from Karyn:

I believe somebody has news that they haven't shared with ME!

radio city, eh?

It's true. I've actually had news since mid-October that I just haven't had the chance to share with many people at all, much less blog about...

I bought a condo -- my first home!

As Karyn indicated (she must have had some inside information, huh?), it's at RadioCity, a new, two-tower development on the former site of CBC Radio, near Jarvis and Carlton:

I just got back from the handover meeting, where control passed from the developer to the condominium corporation, and a board was elected. So, it seemed like a perfect time to write about it all. I'm hopeful that we've elected a pretty good board: it seems to include a fair amount of experience and a variety of viewpoints and concerns.

Interestingly, the biggest issue seems to be around the art installation in the courtyard: a collection of little, metallic houses that light up inside. One owner referred to it tonight as "scrap metal." Apparently, all of the original purchasers were surprised to find that they were paying for it directly, as part of their closing costs. Since my purchase was a resale, I'm not feeling (or seeing, at least) that pain. Perhaps that's part of the reason why I quite like the piece.

Anyhow, on to the good stuff: my suite is a one bedroom plus den, of 705 square feet. My purchase closes on December 2, and I'll be moving at some point between then and January 1, when I have to be out of my current place. I'm hoping to paint the walls and buy some living room furniture before then. I had also hoped to have the kitchen counters replaced with granite, but apparently that time frame isn't realistic. So, it'll have to wait until after I move in.

Here are some photos:

Notice the yummy exposed concrete ceiling.

Unfortunately, the windows in my suite are not quite as spectacular as in some of the others. In particular, the corner units have windows all along the two outside walls, from floor to ceiling. The left corner of my suite, in the picture above, is actually part of the structural wall, so obviously it can't be glass. Nonetheless, the place is still quite bright, especially when one of the bedroom doors is open:

You can see that there's a window in the bedroom along the length of the balcony, but that the balcony actually opens into the living room.

Here's a shot from the opposite direction, showing the kitchen:

Finally, the unit faces south, so it gets lots of light, and it has a pretty fantastic view from the balcony:

You can see the financial centre and the CN tower in the distance, and Maple Leaf Gardens on the right side of the picture. This historic arena, which has been empty since the Leafs moved to the Air Canada Centre in 1999, is being converted to a Real Canadian Superstore. Hockey fans in Toronto are outraged. I'm excited!

So, things are going to be pretty busy in the coming weeks: I need to finalize my mortgage and then complete the closing. All the while, there's much shopping and packing to be done. Then, I have to figure out when to move and whether to hire movers or do it myself.

But I can't wait to be living in my new home!

Janntastic!

2005-11-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

I was lucky enough to see Jann Arden's latest tour, in support of her eponymous album, twice last week -- on Tuesday and Thursday at Massey Hall. The reason for my double attendance is quite a story, itself, but I won't get into that now. Anyhow, I was really happy to be able to see the two shows, and to share the experience with both Kevin and Alex.

For the first show, Kevin and I had fairly poor seats: we were way over to one side of the second balcony, practically on top of the right end of the stage. So, it was often hard to see, and the sound was pretty poor, with the drum kit drowning out pretty much any subtlety or nuance in the vocals and the rest of the band. Fortunately, there were two gorgeous acuostic sets, which sounded wonderful. In the first, Jann did a solo version of "I Would Die For You", after which Kevin asked me if it was too early for a standing ovation. She was then joined by Bob Kemmis, who had opened for her, for "Unloved." Later, for her encore, she performed accoustic versions of "The Sound Of," "Waiting In Canada," and "Insensitive" with her band.

As for the rest of the setlist, it included about half of the tracks from the new album ("Calling God," "Where No One Knows Me," "All Of This," "How Good Things Are," and "Willing To Fall Down"), mixed in with various older songs (including "Waiting For Someone," "Will You Remeber Me," "Could I Be Your Girl," "Good Mother", "The Sound Of," "Holy Moses," and "Wishing That"). In all, I think it was really good selection, and I was happy to hear some songs from Time For Mercy and Happy? that I hadn't in a long time. In an ideal world, though, she would have done one or two of my current favourites: "Saved," "Into The Sun" and (big surprise) "Another Human Being." A couple of the more uptempo songs, "Where No One Knows Me" and "Willing To Fall Down" in particular, seemed a little unsteady and not too tight, like there was some struggle between the drummer and the rest of the band over tempo. Later, from reading Jann's journal, I learned that the click track wasn't working that night, which would explain that.

Of course, Jann was a riot. She told an extensive tale about a trip to the movies, a large popcorn and drink, the long ride home after an insufficient pee check, and a surprisingly located stray kernel. And the comic quips never stopped, especially when she was talking about her band. She explained the secret to her long-term working relationship with her guitarist and co-writer, Russ: "we've never seen each other nude." And, when introducing Darcy on the keyboards, she commented that they had meant during a short stint in the adult film industry...in Fort McMurray.

The second show was even better than the first, mainly because of where Alex and I sat: front row, centre -- literally, the best in the house. The photo up above was taken from my seat that night (the rest of them are here). At one point, Jann introduced and thanked the guy from A&M Records who first signed her. All I could think was, "our seats are so much better than his!" The sound was truly excellent up there; the vocals were clear in all the songs, with the drum kit blending in much better.

The setlist was the same as in the previous show, but it was a much more "on" crowd, giving greater response to everything...more applause for the songs, more laughter at the jokes, and several spontaneous outbursts of emotion: "Thank you Jann!" "We love you Jann!" "You look great tonight, Jann!" And she really did, wearing this cute yellow leather jacket and jeans that really flattered her figure.

Alex said I was probably the biggest fann there, mouthing along to all the songs and screaming a lot. A few times, I'm sure Jann looked right at me, and I felt foolish, stopped mouthing along, and just smiled. We had a little moment, too: Jann was asking a visibly pregnant woman in the front row about when she'd be having her child (turned out she was having twins, actually!), and if she'd decided on names. On hearing that she was expecting for March and she hadn't yet, Jann suggested that, since her birthday's in late March, maybe she should think about "Jann" or "Arden" or something. I thought that was a brilliant idea (I'd do it), so I yelled out "yeah!" Jann noticed my outburst, and without missing a beat, yelled "yeah!" right back, looking straight at me. I think I was mocked by Jann. How fun!

My only negative experiences were with security. I brought flowers, which I'd hoped to give to Jann after the encore was over. But, before the show, a big guy came over to where we were sitting, said he was in charge of security for the show, and gave us his card. He'd seen the flowers, and didn't want me to hand them to her during the show. I tried to find out what the concern was and reason with him, but he was having none of it, and I eventually I had to surrender the flowers. He said he was going to take them straight to Jann's dressing room, and I hope he did, but that's kind of not the point. I wanted to give them to her -- I wanted her to look down and see my face, and connect with me for a moment, and know that I'm one of her fans. I suppose it's kind of silly, immature and selfish, but it's what I wanted.

Once the concert started, after I had been snapping pictures like crazy during the first song, an usher came down and asked me to put away the camera, claiming that they weren't allowed. It didn't say anything about that on the ticket, and I wasn't using flash, but I did put it away, anyway. I'd already taken a couple of really nice pictures, so I'd have something to remember the show by. Obviously I wasn't the only one there with a camera, as I kept seeing flashes go off during the rest of the show. And by the time "Good Mother" came around (it was the last song before the encore), I subtly (I hope) whipped out the camera again for a few last shots.

In all, the concerts were a fantastic experience.

Link Check

2005-10-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

I added that nice little link to Rick Mercer's Blog a couple of months ago, and I just want to be sure you're using it. He stopped updating about that time, so you might have given up on checking it but, honestly, that's what an RSS reader is for!

He's back and he's in fine form. Just a teaser, in case you're not convinced:

Once you get past all the fun with photoshop, you'll find an uplifting summary of his recent trip to Afghanistan, which is well worth reading.

It Gets Better...

2005-10-25T13:17:00.000-04:00

If you haven't read yesterday's post, The Jig is Up!, you should probably go read that first. Then you can come back here for the postscript.

I just got back from talking to the property manager about yesterday's little salt bust. As I thought, it was the contractor doing the fan coil service who noticed the bag of sea salt on my counter. By policy, he had to report it to his supervisor, since I suppose seeing it could endanger him. The company then contacted our property management office, who then called the police.

There had been a miscommunication between the two property managers: the one who had taken the call from the contractor told the other that I was the person who'd been having problems with his air conditioner. Apparently, there was another person who had been having such problems, and that's who she described to the police.

After she called the police, two officers arrived and waited outside my door for about an hour and a half. At the same time, they were trying to obtain a search warrant. The two others arrived just before I did, when they determined that they didn't have strong enough cause for a warrant.

Before leaving the management office today, I had to ask if anyone had noticed the pieces of my halloweeen costume lying around my living room, and what they had thought of that. I'm going to be an angel, so there were wings, a halo, and a white feather boa that I just dropped off when I got home on Sunday evening.

Apparently, the superintendent had noticed them, and described them to the police as "paraphernalia." Of course, they probably assumed he meant drug paraphernalia, not party paraphernalia. They did clarify, but I wonder if having angel parts strewn around made me seem like more of a druggy little party boy.

The Jig Is Up!

2005-10-24T23:41:00.000-04:00

Nothing in this post is fiction. Seriously.

First off, I should give you some background. Back in Augst, I got my nipple pierced. As recommended, I've been applying a sea salt solution to help it heal. The sea salt was only available in a large, 2 kg bag, so when I travelled to New York, I took a smaller amount in a ziplock bag. Each application requires such a small amount of salt that I've been working through that little bag-full ever since. For convenience, I leave it out on my kitchen counter.

Today was in-suite fan coil servicing day in my building.

When I got home from work this evening, one of the women from the property management office was waiting in the hallway near my door, along with four people that I'd never seen before. As I walked past, one of them joked that they were tax collectors, but the property manager reassuringly said that they weren't there for me.

When I stopped to open my door, one of the other four suggested that maybe she had been mistaken, said my name, and asked if that was me. I said yes. That's when he pulled out his badge and identified himself as being from the Toronto Police Service. And that's when I started to shake.

Immediately my mind started racing, trying to figure out why four plain-clothed officers would be waiting for me outside my door. He explained that, when my suite had been entered earlier in the day, the contractor had seen a bag containing white powder, and he asked if I wouldn't mind getting it so that he could take a look.

I grabbed the bag of salt and explained what it was and why I had it. He took a sniff and seemed satisfied. Relief.

The property manager said that she had thought that I was someone else -- she had described a taller, older man, dressed a suit.

One of the officers commented that they couldn't believe me until they saw the piercing. Well, eager to prove my innocence and, frankly, always happy to show off my new addition, I lifted up my shirt and showed them. They seemed amused, and they thanked me for my time, apologized for any inconvenience, and were off.

I was still shaking at dinner 20 minutes later.

Potent Quotables

2005-10-15T17:45:00.000-04:00

"Less dance, more geek."

- Sam, on hearing that I'd replaced mythy (my homebrew PVR) with a PVR from Rogers because I wanted less electronics around my living room and I'd never have to recompile its kernel.

See the hoop? Jump through it!

2005-10-11T09:57:00.000-04:00

I just enabled word verification for comment posting, a nice little feature that Blogger provides to reduce comment spam. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope it works.

Yet Another Press Citing

2005-10-11T08:26:00.000-04:00

Kevin and I, along with Kevin's friend Mo, were in fab again this week:

Perhaps it's time to hire our own photographers to follow us around, taking photos that can then be sold to the press via a blind bidding process.

Can you tell I'm amused by this?

Giving Thanks

2005-10-10T16:29:00.000-04:00

It hit me on the bus ride in to work this Friday: for some reason, I feel especially thankful this year. Maybe it's just that I have a new means for expressing it, or maybe I'm finally becoming mature enough (no, seriously!) to recognize how fortunate I am. In any case, I'm thankful...

...for Canada. There are few, if any, societies that are as peaceful, diverse, and tolerant as this country, and we have much more than our fair share of wealth and opportunity. So, I'm terribly fortunate to have been born here.

...for my job. It's challenging and stimulating, if at times a bit overwhelming. I work with a team of talented people who appreciate my efforts and abilities. IBM, while sprawling and often political, is still an excellent company to work for, progressive and employee-focused, and with an inspiring history. It's easy to take for granted the ability to be out at work, but that's only thanks to the efforts and sacrifice of many.

...for family. Just about anything nice that you could find to say about me, I can trace it back to my parents. They've both been wonderful to me and excellent role models for as long as I can remember. They've taught me so much about love, generosity, compassion, hard work, and pride that I truly cannot thank them enough. And although it seems that Mike and I live in quite different worlds, I'm most appreciative for his efforts to include me in his whenever possible.

...for friends. Since I'm naturally quite introverted, I found it difficult to establish myself socially in Toronto. The first year was especially lonely. But, in the last year or so, it seems like things have really clicked. I've now got a number of wonderful people that I consider friends, supporting me through the tough times and helping to create the great ones. And of course, there are still some great friends back in Vancouver and elsewhere with whom I've been lucky enough to keep in contact.

...for budding love. In the past weeks, one of those friendships has developed into more. We've already shared some wonderful times together, and I don't think I've ever felt happier.

...for good fortune. It's been impossible not to be struck by the amount of suffering in this world of late. I'm thankful that my family, friends and loved ones have thus far been spared.

Blog Spam

2005-09-30T21:08:00.000-04:00

Seriously, what's the deal with all these spam comments? I mean, who's fooled by them? Does anyone actually make money off of them? Or do they just live to be annoying?

Well, fuckers, bring it! You just keep on posting your spamtatsic little comments, and I'll just keep on nuking them as fast as you do.

Pride and Hope

2005-09-28T20:24:00.000-04:00

Ever since the CBC lockout started, I've been pretty out of it when it comes to current events. I rarely listen to the radio these days, and I never watch TV news. Pretty much all I know is what I read in the free papers and on the Net.

So, yesterday, I was totally oblivious to Micaelle Jean's investiture as Governor General of Canada. But this morning, as I walked past the newspaper boxes on my way to the subway, I couldn't help but notice the pictures and headlines. Writers from the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and, yes, even the National Post seemed to be falling over themselves to heap praise on the new vice-regent.

Huh? What happened to the hasty appointment, the lack of background checks, the ties to Quebec sovereigntists and the FLQ? I picked up a copy of the Globe to find out more.

Here's what happened: Canada got to see and hear Michaelle Jean.

Now we understand what Paul Martin must have seen when he first met her, immediately deciding that she should be Governor General. I wonder if he's been laughing to himself a lot over the past few weeks, as an anglophone press that clearly knew nothing of the woman questioned her allegiance to Canada.

In her installation speech yesterday, Mme. Jean answered their concerns beautifully, and went far beyond:

The time of the "two solitudes" that for too long described the character of this country is past. The narrow notion of "every person for himself" does not belong in today’s world, which demands that we learn to see beyond our wounds, beyond our differences for the good of all. Quite the contrary: we must eliminate the spectre of all the solitudes and promote solidarity among all the citizens who make up the Canada of today. As well, we must make good use of our prosperity and our influence wherever the hope that we represent offers the world an extra measure of harmony.
And that is how I am determined that the position I occupy as of today will be more than ever a place where citizens' words will be heard, where the values of respect, tolerance, and sharing that are so essential to me and to all Canadians, will prevail. Those values, which are paramount for me, are linked inextricably with the Canada I love.

Canada is known for its values: freedom, tolerance, respect, and generosity. It's on those values that we've built our remarkable society, and it's in those values that we will find our better future. The soveriegnty movement isn't just misguided -- it's irrelevant.

And, on the subject of the future, this:

Most of all, I want our young people to be our standard-bearers. I want them to dip into the enormous treasure trove that is Canada. I am the mother of a little girl whose story opened my eyes to certain very harsh realities that we must not ignore. My daughter, Marie-Éden, has changed my life. She has taught me that while all children are born equal, they don’t all have the same opportunities to flourish. This is as true for children here as it is for children in the third world...

Nothing in today’s society is more disgraceful than the marginalization of some young people who are driven to isolation and despair. We must not tolerate such disparities. After all, our young people are helping to redefine the great family we all belong to, in a world that is less and less impermeable, more and more open. They are the promise of our future and we have a duty to encourage them to join us in this reinvention of the world.

In every photo, Jean is stunning, with her warm smile radiating youthful vitality. It's a marked contrast to the series of old, white men who held the post before Jean and her predecessor, Adrienne Clarkson. She is dignified and glamourous, yet comes across as authentic and relatable. She's an truly an exciting personality in political climate that seems nasty, disconnected and irrelevant.

As John Ibbitson gushed in the Globe, "but here is this beautiful young Canadian of Haitian birth, with a smile that makes you catch your breath, with bemused older husband by her side, and a daughter who literally personifies our future, and you look at them and think: Yes, this is our great achievement, this is the Canada that Canada wants to be."

As for me, I'm proud. Proud that Michaelle Jean has chosen this country to live in, and of the words she choses to describe it. Proud that this country recognized this woman and lifted her to one of its highest offices. And today, I'm hopeful for its future.

Oops! We did it again!

2005-09-28T01:44:00.000-04:00

It seems that Kevin and I are getting more media attention than Britney lately. Now we just need our "We are the Canadian Dream" T-shirts.

Here we are, last Friday at 5ive:

The photo is from AT Productions, who were presenting Bitch Slap Friday, and promoting Feast, on October 9.

It's here...

2005-09-25T23:51:00.000-04:00

I'm just heading downstairs to get it!

...Sorry, that was really sad. My intent was to create about 10 minutes' worth of curiousity and anticipation as I went downstairs to get "it" and plugged it in, and then to write an entry on "it", explaining what "it" was.

Of course, work had me tied down on Thursday until I left for swing in the evening, and I worked late again on Friday, and then I was barely in on the weekend, and well, now it's now.

Anyhow, "it" is my new monitor. I'm quite excited because it's, finally, an LCD, and I'm fairly convinced that it's years of staring at a cathode ray tube that has made me as blind as I am. Ever since I started using a laptop at work, my vision has been degrading at a far less alarming rate. So, after a further two years of intending to buy myself an LCD for home use, I have.

The other thing is, it's really pretty.

Ubuntu - Humanity to Others

2005-09-18T13:30:00.000-04:00

So, I warned you that you'd have to deal with the odd geek-oriented post from time to time, didn't I? Well, it's time.

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, my desktop PC died right before my trip to New York. There was a bad storm, the power briefly cut out, causing the machine to reboot, and it never came back up after that. Basically, it would just hang at different points during the boot. Rather than spend ages picking through that 6-year-old kludge clone, trying to determine which parts were fried, I decided to just cut my losses and move on.

So, I grabbed Mythy (my MythTV-based homebrew PVR), deciding that it would make a nice, new(er) desktop. This leaves me without a PVR or DVD player for now, but that can be remedied in the future. I bought a new, bigger hard drive, and set about installing an operating system.

Of course, that operating system would be a GNU/Linux distribution. I've been using Debian for over 5 years now (and other distributions for at least a couple before that), and I have grown utterly accustomed to understanding how the system works, to running for months without rebooting, and to having every kind of application I could ever want at my fingertips, for free.

But lately, I've been hearing so much about Ubuntu that I decided I'd give it a try this time. Ubuntu is a Debian-derived distribution that's meant to be more user-friendly. Not that it's the first, mind you. Other Debian-based distributions, like Xandros, Linspire, and Mepis, have tried to fill this niche, but they've never been hugely popular. In my opinion, their focus hasn't been correct. They've been too concerned with prettifying the desktop and supplying do-it-all configuration tools, and, in the process, have sacrificed the distributed cohesion that is embodied in Debian's elegant architecture.

I've believed, for quite some time now, that Debian would most benefit from having someone smooth over it's long release cycle, and that's exactly what Ubuntu does: every six months, it provides a stable release containing a subset of packages from Debian Unstable that have been frozen and tested. Some new software has been added to Ubuntu before making it into Debian, like the X.Org implementation of the X Window System. As the system has matured, there has been increasing divergence from Debian, which has been the subject of much controversy and of some efforts to address the issue. Hopefully, the two projects' developers will be able to keep the differences to a minimum. That would surely benefit all.

So, the big question: how is it?

Wonderful.

The install is slick, simple, and complete. It autodetects hardware, it suggests a partitioning scheme (and provides remarkable control if you want to tweak it yourself, even handling LVM configurations), it asks a minimum of questions, and it's fast. There's no flashy GUI, as Debian-Installer is used to provide all this nice functionality, with a simple, character-mode interface. I strongly believe that just the video mode has no effect on the ease or difficulty of an installation. It's the information presented and the questions asked that make a difference.

Ubuntu installs a much larger base set of packages than Debian, in order to provide a complete desktop out of the box. However, for security's sake, it doesn't install any servers. The desktop is a slick, well configured GNOME 2.10 (KDE fans would probably prefer Kubuntu).

For the most part, things just work, with no additional effort. My sound card, a Sound Blaster Audigy2, was detected and ALSA was configured appropriately. I was briefly stymied by the fact that it defaulted to optical output, leaving my little old analog speakers silent. A bit of Googling led me to look through the mixer settings until I found the right switch.

On plugging in my camera for the first time, it was automatically mounted, with an icon appearing on my desktop for it, and a dialog popped up asking if I wanted to import the photos into my photo album.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with the initial graphics configuration. It rightly detected that I have an NVIDIA graphics adapter, and so it configured X to use the open source nv driver. That failed to give me a resolution above 640x480, which isn't so much fun. Had it simply opted for the vesa driver, things would have worked fine. Fortunately, Ubuntu packages the proprietary nvidia driver, so properly fixing the situation was easy.

I think that these kinds of problems are inevitable when you're trying to support the huge collection of random PC hardware that's out there. Fortunately, Ubuntu's not just a pretty face. It's pretty under the hood, too: consistent and relatively easy to understand. So, when things do go wrong, it's much easier to fix than most other "user-friendly" distributions.

Ubuntu's rapidly growing user community has been contributing excellent documentation, too. The Unofficial Ubuntu Guide is simply brilliant: it helped me out with my X driver problem, and also showed me the simplest ways to install all those handy proprietary programs and plug-ins like Java 5.0, Flash, and Acrobat Reader. It even covered the often tricky issue of multimedia codecs and DVD playback.

By default, apt, the Debian package management tool, is well configured. The sources.list contains entries for local mirrors of the two supported Ubuntu repositories (Main and Restricted) and, importantly, the coresponding security repositories. A third Ubuntu repository, Universe, includes almost every package from Debian Unstable that isn't officially supported in Ubuntu, rebuilt to have all of the right dependencies for the distribution. It can be addded to the mix simply by uncommenting two clearly marked lines. I also found that it was easy to automatically build packages right out of Debian, myself.

There's one other particular quirk in Ubuntu that has received a fair amunt of attention: root login is disabled. Instead, sudo is used to allow the first user to execute commands as root, using only his own password for authentication. This approach works very well. The user doesn't have to remember a second password, and is strongly discouraged from using root unnecessarily. This compares very favourably to Linspire's Windows-like approach, in which the root account is used for everything. It's still smooth and unobtrusive, with all the GUI administrative tools that require root priviledges using gksudo to autheneticate on launch. Still, I quickly found myself missing su, as I occasionally want to run multiple commands as root, with proper command compleition. In such cases, "sudo -s -H" does the trick, and be aliased to "su".

So far, my day-to-day use has been uneventful (that's a good thing). I've been using applications like Firefox, Evolution, GAIM, Rhythmbox and GnuCash without any problems.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are." It's a beautiful sentiment and an apt name for such a community-driven free software project.

Go Melissa!

2005-09-14T16:54:00.000-04:00

Tonight's the final episode of Canadian Idol. If Melissa doesn't win, I'll be crushed.

There have been some decidedly bad choices in the past. Remember in season one, when Toya and Audrey didn't even make the top 3, and then Ryan Malcolm won? Hmm...whatever happened to him, anyway?

Still, even the horny 15-year old girls shouldn't screw this one up. Rex is simply a piss poor singer. And he's not even good looking! What do they see in him?

Kevin and I voted for Melissa 20 times last night. If that's not enough, what is?

Photos

2005-09-14T07:52:00.000-04:00

I've finally finished posting my photos from New York and Beachfest. Hopefully, you've already noticed that little My Photos link on the right, which will take you there.

I had taken something like 400 photos. So, it took quite a bit of time to wade through them all, and I ended up discarding about two thirds. Such is the benefit and the curse of digital photography. Too often, I'll even take two or more photos of exactly the same thing, framed exactly the same way, and decide later which is the keeper.

The other delay was trying to upload them all to Yahoo! Photos. I've been uploading them at full quality, which takes so long, but you can only view them at 480x360. And you have to do the uploading 10 at a time with a standard HTML form, or use their IE plug-in to drag and drop a whole album at one. I was happy to discover they'd added a Mozilla/Firefox version, but I don't think it's quite fully baked yet, as it actually garbled a good number of the photos I was trying to upload.

There must be something better for photo hosting out there. I've heard many good things about Flickr. Their free account only allows 20 megs of uploads per month, which wouldn't suffice, but maybe I should just suck it up and pay.

I can't help but notice how many of my photos are scenery. I still find it quite difficult to take pictures of people sometimes. It seems so intrusive, even though I usually enjoy it when other people photograph me. I guess I figure that others aren't quite so vain.