Things Change

For those who follow me and may or may not be wondering why the blogging is even slower than usual, I haven't bothered to say that things in life change.

Basically I haven't told anyone that I haven't seriously worked for a year and a half and it makes a boy nervous. Thanks to the right wing ideal of unregulated markets, I'm broke now.

But I've started doing something I haven't done since I was in my twenties; renovating houses. I have to tell you I was worried after spending the last twenty years sitting at a computer and pushing a mouse around for a living if I could even do it. I was sore for the first few days but that seems to be over and I'm having a blast!

I get to do something I always loved, I get to talk to people all day, I can get dirty and by the end of the day I look like something I always fantasize about anyway, what more could a boy want?

I'm still perusing graphics jobs, in fact I have to put together a proposal this weekend, but I'm a much happier boy.

Good Question

Now that good old Phred Phelps and Co. at Westborough Baptist "Church" are back in the business of declaring that god hates everything, including, I can only assume god too, It's nice to see counter protesters having a little fun with it:



That's a very good question.

Via: Box Turtle Bulletin

CBC and Copyright

Now that everyone is in a flap over the CBC using some American "vigilante firm" to get people to pay copyright fees for their material, something in the back of my mind told me I heard about this last year. Turns out I did, this has been going on for a year, and it's voluntary anyway.

Faced with cutbacks, declining newspaper subscriptions, and the possibility of extinction, news organizations everywhere have been experimenting with different sources of income, such as licensing. For more than a year now, CBC.ca, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, have been using iCopyright, a Seattle-based online copyright licensing service, to license their content to users.

Here’s how iCopyright works: if you want to print an article from your printer, just click the little print icon beside any story, and an iCopyright window pops up asking you how many copies you'd like to make. Printing is free, as long as you're making fewer than six copies. If you want to print six or more, iCopyright asks you to pay per article. The system works the same way if you're trying to email an article, and it can also be used to quickly purchase republication rights.

Of course, this is all voluntary, as the service works on the honour system. If you don’t want to pay, there’s nothing stopping you from refreshing your browser and printing off more copies or copying and pasting the text into an email. In fact, it’s so easy to bypass iCopyright’s system that it's a wonder that it's even implemented at all. [Emphasis mine]

Now I'm no legal beagle, but it seems to me that an American corporation has no business enforcing Canadian copyright law anyway. If anyone in Canada wants to use material from the CBC, they should feel free to do so; we own the company after all. Of course one should always provide a link back to the source at the very least as a courtesy.

I'm not saying the way they’re going about it isn't somewhat sleazy, but then look at who they hired, some outfit called iCopyright.

I seriously have to question the principles behind a company that claims to protect copyright interests when their very name is a direct rip-off of Apple Computers' branding program. Sure, everyone is doing it, including the CBC, but given the nature of their business one could reasonably expect something better than that.

The million dollar reward for snitching is a nice touch too, stay classy, dudes.

Osama bin Laden, Eco Warrior?

Oh please, this how you can tell when despots are trying too hard. Apparently the boy has been living in a cave for far too long. Although, I have to admit that cave life probably has a very low carbon footprint, if indeed that's what he's actually doing.

In a new audiotape that surfaced today on the al-Jazeera network, Osama bin Laden has pronounced himself a believer in climate change and blames America and other industrialised economies for failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the atmosphere.

"Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury — the phenomenon is an actual fact," the tape says according to al-Jazeera. "All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis."

Osama, Sweetie Darling, your idea of fighting for a better world and mine don't quite match up, you don't go around blowing people up and saying you're making the world a better place. Seriously honey, between this and claiming responsibility for that guy who blew his nuts off at Christmas, you really are trying too hard.

Trippy Thursday

It would have sounded better if that was Trippy Tuesday but it's not Tuesday, so there.

I've been working on renovating a house and I'm tired, but I feel good. So Steve can do whatever the hell he wants for now, I know the rest of you are on his case anyway. It's been a while since I've done that kind of work, long enough that I didn't have to put on glasses to read a tape measure before. Such an old fart.

This video is an artistic collaboration between Innerlife Project and TimeLapseHD. It's soooo Vancouver with its ambient, electronic sound, funny how some things haven't changed in 40 years.

Vancouver City Featuring Linda Ganzini

The Power of Punctuation

Admittedly, punctuation isn't the best of my skills. I tend to overuse or under use commas in particular. Nonetheless, I thought this was good:

An English professor wrote the words:

"A woman without her man is nothing"

on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.


All of the males in the class wrote:

"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All of the females in the class wrote:

"A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Sometimes it's the little things that make the difference that can change the world. It can really be as simple as that.

Steve, Sweetie Darling, This Is Your Cue

Now would be a good time to look at the faces in the crowd and ask yourself if these are the chattering classes or people who actually vote. Obviously we’re not looking at a bunch of idealistic teenagers thinking they can change the world, these people have the power to change the world, even if they only do it through ballots.





I went with Rick and as we were standing in the sea of happy, smiling protesters, who just happen to be people who really do vote, I looked up at that horrendous building that was erected solely for the purpose of hanging billboards, and said to Rick, let’s treat ourselves to a beer and get some shots from there. As soon as they saw my camera, I was told that I cannot associate their establishment with any of my photos. It’s in one of the other photos and it ain’t the Hard Rock. Funny, we never bothered to get a beer.



On the way home a few hours later I saw a woman get off a bus on Parliament Street still carrying a sign from the rally, that’s always nice to see. It was a good day.

Prorogation Rally Today!

Join everybody at the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Toronto Protest!

This is your chance to show Dear Leader (when he's in the mood) that government is not an exercise to be offered at Steve's own discretion, but a duty that must be respected by virtue of the fact that he is only an appointed leader, not a de-facto one.

Prorogation is a cowardly act to avoid the realities and responsibilities of good governance, things that Stephen Harper apparently can't deal with.

Come to Dundas Square today and show that you don't want government to exercise autocratic control through a single act of a single man who doesn't know how to run a nation any other way. Make this nation yours, this is your Canada, demand a responsible Working government and demand it now.

Or we could end up with this,

Autocratic Discretion

Watching TV this morning, it was refreshing to see Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon exhibiting a little thoughtful discretion in his update on the government of Canada's response to the Haiti disaster by not referring to the Government of Canada as "The Harper Government", but instead calling it "The Government of Canada, lead by Stephen Harper", subtle. We should all take the cue and remember to value human crises for what they are, marketing opportunities, soooo Canadian.