Tales from a Grouch

Grammar Nazi's Triumph

2012-01-28T22:14:00.002-05:00

Kettleman's Bagels has had a couple of unfortunate connections to stories in the media. There was the time that I caught them with taxi hands, and more recently, some of their product was recalled due to insufficient labeling. Of course, I still go there, because the bagels taste good.

But the thing that gets me most about Kettleman's is the motley signage. Lots of notes are scribbled in permanent marker on white paper, taped to various surfaces. And they all have apostrophes galore where they don't belong.

They renovated their store this past fall, and redesigned their garbage bin to have a hole for recycling. A nice new container, with modern stylings.

Then they slapped this onto it:

"Recycle only / glass + can's please."

Now, I'm easily perturbed by such miscarriages of punctuation as this. I also like a good challenge. The easy thing to do (aside from ignoring it) would be to scratch out the apostrophe, but that would just draw more attention to it and make it look uglier. It'd be sufficiently passive-aggresive, but clumsy. Also, not much of a challenge.

I could also point out the typo to a staffperson, but nobody likes to feel patronized by being called out that way. (The store has a few signs where apostrophes were clearly added after the fact, so getting them to make a new handwritten sign would likely have little long-term effect). Generally with this type of thing you want to give the offender an 'out' so they learn what their error was while still saving face, pretending that they knew all along how it was supposed to be.

I figured if I was going to fix this, I was going to fix it completely. No leaving the Kettleman's sign-scribblers to solving it halfway. I am a perfectionist, when I have the patience to see something through.

My solution? I made this sign, with Kettleman's trademark red and yellow colours (mimicking the arched text of the word "BAGEL" on their outdoor sign). As an added flourish, I used the whitespace for a not-so-subtle plea for an end to apostrophe abuse:

This isn't just a piece of paper, it's a big sticker. You see, when I took the picture of the sign in the first picture, what I was really after was the hole, using the pop can for scale. From there I could tell how big a curve I needed for a sign to fit neatly in.

I've got a little device designed for cutting circles in paper (functionally equivalent to a compass with an X-Acto knife at the end), with which I scored the arced bottom edge of the sticker, and I used a straight edge and knife to score the sides.

As for delivery, again, subtlety and minimalism is the rule of the day.

Sure I could go there, tear off the taped sign and stick this thing on, but there are enough staff in the store that I'd probably get some questions. And the whole point of this exercise is to avoid directly confronting them about their bad grammar and terrible sense of signage style.

So I did what any psychology-conscious trickster would do: I brought in a newspaper, read it during my visit, and left it there. Underneath the newspaper on the counter was the sign. Odds are, I gambled, that a staff person would be the one to put the newspaper away, and would see the sign.

I told a few people about this plan, with various responses. One person was particularly incredulous that the plan would succeed, and suggested I should have just put the sticker on myself. But the next time I visited, lo and behold:

Now that's satisfying. The best part, aside from the perfect size and design, is that the plan involves the intervention of the target. That's the key to any successful practical joke. The requirement for conscious thought on the part of the mark changes things from a mere object to a message.

And try to imagine what would be going through someone's mind: somebody, somewhere, went to the trouble of making this very specific sign for this very specific purpose, and just left it here. Who would have done that? What was their motivation? On its own, it's such an innocent sign that you can't deduce any reasoning from it.

Unless they thought that some other manager had left it there, I'd like to believe that after a certain amount of head-scratching they gave up, shrugged, and thought to themselves, God thinks it's Friday.

The only kink in the plan--a very minor one--was that the offending sign had already been replaced with another paper-and-marker sign, sans erroneous mark of possession. Obviously someone had gotten the message through to them, making my little "stop abusing apostrophes" message redundant. In the interests of minimalism, I pulled that part of the sticker off, leaving just the "Recycling" sign. This left it with even less context, adding to the psychological aspect.

This isn't the first time I pulled this kind of thing. One of these days I'll tell you about the prank I pulled at Bridgehead.

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com, who does a lot of this kind of stuff (like the McDonald's drive-thru menu prank and the TGI Friday's Menu Prank).

Also, a shout-out to Elmaks (RIP), whose swap boxes helped me realize that anything we can touch, we have the power to change.

- RG>

Whoring myself out some more

2012-01-27T21:20:00.002-05:00

Despite being on Twitter now (as @RealGrouchy, of course), I still have very few followers, and don't really have much going on there.

I guess that's really a success, since I don't particularly care for being social.

Nevertheless, I am self-conscious--and to an extent, competitive--and having so few followers doesn't jive with my business plan:

1. Get lots of Twitter followers
2. ???
3. Profit

With so few followers on Twitter, I feel I need to do something to compensate.

So I've put a Twitter feed in the sidebar of the blog.

Watch me be a twit.

- RG>

Other things washed away by the weather

2012-01-27T19:15:00.005-05:00

I distinctly remember posting--or at least drafting--the annual réprise of my Waterlude logo a couple of weeks ago. I remember searching Google for "Waterlude" and finding that post being the second result (strangely, now third), after a MetroOttawa article using the same Napoleon reference on the same day as my blog post.

Still, my picture-perfect "Waterlude" sendup of the "Winterlude" logo is from a year prior. (And is still the first Google Images search result for "Waterlude")

I also remember that when I drafted the post, either the canal hadn't opened yet, or it had just opened, and because of this, I was having second thoughts about the timing of such a post. But I don't remember deleting it...

My best guess is that I did post it, but that the rain and mild weather melted it away. What tragic irony.

- RG>

Bless this mess

2011-12-31T15:24:00.002-05:00

I woke up this ~~morning~~afternoon to discover someone has been in my apartment. I discovered this as I got up to go to the living room. While I had already started this blog post in my head (save for this intro) during that time between waking up and getting up, as I walked into my living room I was instantly shocked by something wrong with my furniture.

I wasn't worried about any furniture having been moved; none was. Nor was any damaged or removed or replaced.

The shocking thing about my furniture was that I could see it.

You see, for the longest time my living room has been covered in stacks of papers from various meetings or newspaper clippings that I'd been meaning to file. The default filing method was simply to stack it up. After a while, I started using a motley of cheap plastic stacking trays (one stack shown here beneath Three Hole Punch), though many unsorted stacks remained.

Also for the longest time, it had been on my list to tidy/file/archive these documents, but the sheer volume made it too daunting to even know where to start. As is usually the case with these large projects, once you break off a piece of it into a small project, you get a better understanding of the rest of the problem and the attack plan is easier to see. It's like getting your foot in the door. But getting that first bit started is very hard.

A couple weeks ago, I'd gotten through a few stack-inches of newspapers, clipping out the articles I had kept them for and discarding the rest. The newspapers, while mixed in with the other documents, were a distinct project. I already had files for various categories of newspaper clippings, so this wasn't so bad. The plastic trays, however, were closest I had for a filing system for my other documents, and those trays are the very things I'm trying to get rid of.

I knew the solution would involve hanging files (I'd even bought a nice wooden file cabinet to facilitate this), because if I didn't file things in a way I could find them, I'd be no better off than throwing them all out. I also knew that once I started filing, whatever system I used to organize the documents couldn't be changed mid-stream; I wasn't going to be going through the files on a lazy afternoon weeks from now looking for files that could be sorted further. The whole point of putting things away is to put them away. But that was pretty high-level. I still had no starting point.

But last night.

Oh, last night...

Last night I'd sat down early in the evening intending to hack away at the pile by filing some more newspaper clippings. A couple of days ago, I'd cleaned up enough to get my place to the point that I wouldn't be embarrassed to have company over, and this evening I wanted to build on that. Instead, I diddled the rest of the night away with a heavy dose of Internet. It is the holidays after all; I wouldn't want to get too much stuff done.

Knackered at 3 a.m., I glanced at the stacks of papers on my desk next to my laptop and decided they could wait for some other day. I went to bed, tapped out the last remaining bit of energy by reading and doing some puzzles, and finally put my head down to sleep. As I laid there, without anything to distract me, my mind was free to wander. Unfortunately, the very act of putting my book away and turning off the light woke me up just enough to give my mind some fuel for wandering.

It wandered over to those stacks of paper and started to file them. I was following my mind as it did this, and I realized that what it was doing made a lot of sense. It had found the keystone--the one weak spot in the pile that, once felled, would cause the rest of it to follow.

Despite my attempts to ignore this clever little suggestion and go to sleep, it kept bugging me.

I wasn't going to remember this in the morning, was I?

Damn.

So I got back up and started on it. I filed, and filed, and filed some more. When I got through the stacks that were already sorted, I went through the stacks that were not, and sorted those too. I even ran out of file folders.

I got about five inches of papers put away, and I'd sorted much of the rest into broad categories, resulting in the collection in the trays shown above. I still had five assorted inches of what I suspect are mostly related files, three inches of small newspapers, and two inches of "miscellaneous" (in the technical sense of "that which does not fit into any other category"), the last of which was left over from the previous round of sorting.

Five in the morning and I felt I'd accomplished enough for one night-morning.

Can I go to bed now?

No. No, you can't.

Damn again.

Having made sense of the piles of paper, the little things scattered around the living room now stood out. Now they were nagging at me. I'd done so much tidying, yet the living room didn't look tidy like I'd always imagined it would after this much work. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing the results of my efforts. If I left it like this, what I'd take away from it is that it's futile to try to clean because no matter how much you do it will still look like a mess.

Since I'd already brought my place to a certain stage of tidiness, it was only a few things here and there that needed putting away (or at least consolidation into yet another pile) keeping me from this goal. I put some things away. At this point, I was so tired I was starting to feel sick.

No. It still doesn't look right.

You can't sleep yet.

Well, by this point, it was getting downright weird. I wanted to go to sleep, but something inside of me wouldn't let me. It was past putting things away, now I was at the point that the stuff that is meant to be left out had to be arranged right. The pillows had to be arranged symmetrically on the sofa, the square coasters had to be aligned with the edge of the table, that sort of thing. I did this.

I sat on the sofa for a couple of minutes and finally concluded there wasn't anything else I could do without it becoming another project. I scribbled those projects onto my to-do list, and finally was able to sleep.

So when I got up today and walked into the living room, even though I was thinking about the previous night and composing this blog post in my head, it was a foreign sight to see surfaces of things that usually had piles of paper on them. I wasn't used to seeing the furniture. And thus, I was shocked.

It was as though my living room was cleaned by someone else during the night.

I'd had this late-night organizing impulse before, back in February, when I completely rearranged my cutlery drawer at 2am.

The thing is, it's not illogical. The reason it takes me so long to tidy things is that I want to do it right. I remember in the first episode of M*A*S*H that featured Charles Emerson Winchester III, he said during surgery, "I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on."

For me, tackling this kind of project is a real commitment. I know that when I start I'll want to keep going until it's finished, no matter how long it takes (heck, this blog post has taken me three hours to write and I haven't even had breakfast yet!). If I do something halfway, like putting my papers into piles to "tidy" my living room, the problem just comes back because the root of the problem--no proper resting place for the papers--hasn't been dealt with. And I also know that I might not have the time, energy, patience, or motivation to finish it if I stop partway through, at least not before it reverts to its original scale.

If instead a project is done right, done methodically, and done completely, the system used in so doing can be easily maintained and it will stay "done".

This is how I rationalize it, at least. In the end, I probably spend more time worrying about projects--and worrying that I might have to do them over if I don't do them right the first time--than it would probably take to just do them. I have a similar pattern at work.

But here's the thing: I'm right. I just now pulled open my cutlery drawer and took a picture.

It's still sorted, nine months later.

And that's my light at the end of the tunnel.

The only other worry is whether I'll still be able to occupy my time once everything is clean. Or, as expressed in another saying of which I'm fond (source unknown):

"A neat house has an uninteresting person in it."

- RG>

Bike tip: Safely stowing the air horn

2011-12-28T01:17:00.004-05:00

You know how annoying it is to work on your bike and accidentally set off the air horn? Bike mechanics like it even less because it's not even their bike. Many mechanics ask you to disarm your air horn before bringing it in. This has the unfortunate consequence of needing to remember to reinflate the reservoir before leaving the shop.

So do this:

A simple Shraeder valve cap will stick on top of your AirZounds air horn. It doesn't actually screw on, but when you push the button back down, it can't activate the horn, and the cap doesn't fall out.

Your greasemonkey can safely operate on your bike while you can ride home knowing you can scare the shit out of any pedestrian who walks into the street without looking first.

- RG>

Physics Wins Every Time

2011-12-01T20:09:00.004-05:00

A blog post by the Incidental Cyclist about idiot newspaper article commenters inspired quite the mental image, approximated here:

"Cars and bikes don't belong on the roads. Physics wins every time!"

- RG>

RG's Workshop: Projector and screen mount

2011-11-28T18:52:00.002-05:00

A few months after buying my LCD projector in an agonizingly long and painful process (the recounting of which is probably equally long and painful to read), I realized I could use it for entertainment, and not just for meetings.

To do so, I needed a blank wall or screen, and somethingorother to hold the projector in the right place. This is the story of that somethingorother.

Projectors have little threaded holes on the bottom specifically for mounting them. I strategically stuck two decorative shelf brackets on a board they came on, and on the part that sticks out from the board, I drilled a second hole into the end of one of them to line up with the hole on the other (the mounting spots on the projector are not lined up, so it took some finagling). You can see that in the background of the picture below; the part that goes against the wall is lying flat. I happened to have some small bolts with the same size threads.

The trick was finding a way to get that board onto the wall. I still needed the projector for meetings, after all, so I would need an easy way of removing it.

I cut a solid steel L bracket (above) in two, and temporarily held the two ends together with a bolt to keep them aligned as I cut a slot into them.

I got lazy and wrangled the tabs out from the photo above instead of finishing the cut, resulting in what we see below. Unfortunately, much filing and fidgeting was required to obtain sufficient clearance for my desired goal.

That goal is to use these metal bars as hooks to latch onto screws that will be embedded into something else that is permanently mounted to my wall. In this photo, I'm measuring where to put the screws. The trick is not putting them too high; you need clearance between the two boards to lift the projector mount up to get the hooks on the mounting screws.

Like so. Two drywall screws with a nice smooth bevel under the head. Keep them loose enough. Note: the screws holding the the plates to the projector mount backboard need to be short (so as not to poke through) and kept a bit loose so the plates can spin freely. If I were doing this again, I'd have put them just a bit closer to the top of the board, because there isn't enough clearance for the left one to fold down for storage (i.e. 180 degrees from the currently shown position). Also if I were doing it again, it would be much easier now that I have a Dremel^® rotary hand tool.

I also discovered after-the-fact that I had a very tight clearance for the monitor cable, so I chiseled out a little channel for it. If I were doing this again, I would probably cut a whole slot out of the side of the board before attaching anything to avoid crimping the cable.

Phase one complete. Now to get something to project onto.

As luck would have it, someone was throwing away a couple of screens. It's actually not that rare an item at the curbside; I've found at least four, all in working order. When planning your projection setup, make sure your screen is big enough for the image being projected. You may have to mount it on the ceiling a foot out from the wall, for example, if you have a smallish screen and a projector with a wide throw angle like mine.

My screen is not small-ish, and the spring-lock mechanism depends on this flat bit sticking out of the end. I had a bunch of these little brackets kicking around that I'd found a few years ago, and they were perfect for it (I even made a set for Allison and Chris). In retrospect, I should have flipped the screen around the other way so the screen is further from the wall, in order to clear the lintel (also projected, albeit in a different way) over the window.

Again because I was lazy and didn't have a rotary hand tool, I drilled three holes in a row and forced a screw into the holes to open them up.

Then I crawed the opening wide enough with a flathead screwdriver. Crude, but functional. Nobody's going to see the jagged edges anyway.

The other end was easier, it was just a round peg. The peg plunges down so you can fit it the screen between two fixed mounting points. (Be very careful to leave enough clearance to get the peg in, but not so much clearance that the screen falls out!)

The best thing about this setup is it rolls up to be out of the way when not in use...

...or pulls down to take whatever image you throw at it.

And the projector sits on the opposite wall underneath the hat rack, easily removed with the two hooks (and a Roberston screwdriver to detach the projector itself from the mounting bracket)

Like many of my creations, it's based on the spare things I have available, so the combination of things you have kicking around probably won't let you recreate this setup exactly, but you'll find your own somethingorother to whip up. This post should at least give you some ideas.

I can just hear you now: "Hey, I have an idea: RealGrouchy is a clever guy!"

- RG>

I'm on the toilet, you twit!

2011-11-27T15:23:00.005-05:00

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging lately. I sure have. Lots of stuff going on keeping me busy and otherwise preventing me from doing so.

After a very thorough thinking-about-it-for-a-couple-of-minutes that involved talking to a wide variety of nobody, I impulsively decided that getting onto Twitter will help me get back into blogging. Impulsively is, of course, the only way to open a Twitter account; I can't imagine anyone dedicating a few days of their time toward deliberating on whether or not to begin to tweet. Any medium that is so accessible as to make announcing one's bodily functions seem noteworthy is obviously designed with the impulsive in mind.

Who knows, after I might even "get" Twitter (and the jokes that the Oatmeal makes about its users' habits). At the very least, it will allow me to share some of the random shit that comes into my head. They let you swear on Twitter, right?

So just to reiterate: if you hear anyone say that "RealGrouchy once said he'll never, ever, create a Twitter account," well, they had the right sentiment but obviously heard wrong.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go visit the bathroom so that I may tweet about it.

- RG>

A very strange taxi ride

2011-10-23T00:40:00.000-04:00

I don't take taxis a lot. Partly because I'm cheap, partly because a lot of them are jerks.

Last night, I had occasion to take one, and it was a rather surreal experience.

As I got in and told him the landmark nearest where I wanted to go (not very far), his reaction reflected a superposition of knowing and not knowing where it was. I was a bit distracted by his exact response because I was having difficulty buckling my seatbelt.

I told him I'd be paying cash, but I wanted a receipt. He replied, "we don't take cash... only jewellery." I didn't know what the hell that meant either. I mean, I could tell the jewellery part was a joke, but the pause was too long for me to tell whether the whole thing was a joke, or just the part about the jewellery. I put away my cash and readied my credit card.

Throughout this exchange, an annoying beeping was coming from the dashboard. I leaned forward and saw over the driver's shoulder what looked like the "fasten safety belt" indicator flashing in time with the warning. I looked over next to the driver's seat, and the seatbelt was snugly holstered. He was probably keeping it in its original packaging so he could later sell it to a collector in mint condition. After getting more frequent and annoying, the beeping eventually stopped and the light just flashed silently for the rest of the ride.

This was good, I thought: This guy's must drive so safely that he knows he doesn't need his seatbelt. My faith in this hypothesis waned as he crept his nose past both lines of the crosswalk while the crossing traffic still had a green light. At least *I* was buckled up. I ignored the traffic signals and just looked both ways as we crossed for indications I should brace myself for a collision.

Finally, we got to our destination (double-parked, of course), and I handed the driver my credit card. He stared at me. He looked down at the credit card machine in the front seat. "I'm sorry. Were you kidding about the cash thing earlier?" I asked. He explained, vaguely, that the credit card machines were new and he wasn't yet very familiar with their operation.

I put my credit card away and pulled out a US $20 bill that I'd been trying to get rid of since I returned from a trip a few months ago. "Is US cash alright?" I asked. "It's not alright, but I'll take it" he said, again, cryptically.

As I unloaded my bags onto the sidewalk (made more awkward by the line of parked cars separating the sidewalk from the car door), the driver prepared a receipt for me. By the amount of time it took him, I figured he was trying to get the machine to prepare it for me, but it turns out he was just taking an unusually long time writing a couple of numbers onto a small card.

After taking my chances riding in a taxi, I was relieved to be at my destination, in one piece. I hope his other passengers will be able to enjoy that relief, too.

- RG>

Hey buffleheads! It's National Grouch Day!

2011-10-15T07:29:00.000-04:00

Oh, sure. You're celebrating Zoom's birthday today.

You're even celebrating National All Bufflehead's (sic) Day.

But are you celebrating National Grouch Day? You know, Oscar the Grouch's birthday?

Figures.

You probably wouldn't even have noticed the apostrophe if I hadn't sicced Latin annotations on it.

- RG>

Dear Mr. Quebec car driver

2011-10-04T22:19:00.004-04:00

Dear Mr. Quebec car driver,

I appreciate—and even share—your desire for you to get the hell out of my neighbourhood, but I would appreciate it if you didn't treat the other direction's light turning yellow to mean that you can proceed from the red light at full acceleration.

I see the blast from my bike's air horn brought this reminder to your attention, as you came to a stop just after your rear bumper passed the stop line and you waited patiently for the green light in your (and my) direction.

I hope you noticed and were ashamed by the "slow clap" from the hipster pedestrian at the corner. Were it not for the scorn and ridicule from him and the other pedestrians at this intersection, I would have considered reporting your behaviour; however, no punishment available to the police would be as severe, nor as immediate, as that you have already encountered.

In closing, I particularly hope you achieve that desire of getting the hell out of my neighbourhood, and that this desire never again goes unfulfilled.

But please do it safely.

Sincerely,

- RG>

Pink irony

2011-10-02T22:15:00.003-04:00

There were a few articles in the news lately about "pinkwashing": slapping a pink Breast Cancer Awareness Month ribbon on a product to make it sell better. One story in the Ottawa Citizen, Pink Fatigue describes the difficulty some groups face with the many caveats placed on the amounts given in these campaigns, and that money needs to go towards prevention, not just treatment. It's a controversial topic that I won't wade into too deeply.

Except to post this photo of the same issue covered last year.

I wonder if there was any effect on Telus' "Go Pink" campaign after the ad was placed right next to an article decrying just those types of ads!

- RG>

Accented characters in domain names are a terrible idea

2011-09-27T00:40:00.003-04:00

Normally I ignore the various e-mails I get from CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which oversees .ca domains). This includes requests to vote for CIRA boards of directors, and other stuff that I don't remember because I ignored it.

However the current consultation on internationalized domain names for .ca domains is worrisome.

At the consultation home page you can follow the links to the (relatively straightforward and plain-language) proposal, and provide feedback on how they should implement it (not whether it's a good idea).

There is also a discussion forum that discusses four questions. The first three are variants on "isn't this such a great idea?" and the fourth is "any other comments?"

There are some recurring themes--almost entirely emphatically opposed to this idea as proposed--and I submitted the following comment to the thread (note: my questions are literal, not rhetorical. The intent is for the consultants and CIRA to consider those issues; I don't need to know the answers myself).

I've read through the entire thread and I have a number of comments:

I am one of those Ottawa-dwelling folks who spends a lot of time thinking about how to properly deliver services to my members, clients, and correspondents in the language of their choice. I hope the consultants thank CIRA for the big paycheque and tell them how bad an idea this is.

The logical decision would go like this:

1. It is fair to allow people to register accented domain names.
2. In order to prevent abuse, "Names that differ only in accents should not be allowed to be registered to different organizations." (as worded by ahooper in comment 60)
3. This would require considerable resources to implement.
4. To pay for this implementation, either domains will have to get a lot more expensive, or CIRA and/or DNS operators will have to take a big hit and allow all variants to be registered to the same user for the current price
5. If the goal of the policy is fairness (point 1), it would be unfair if the policy reduced the accessibility of domain names to individuals and organizations with limited finances.
6. Similarly, it would be unfair to require DNS operators to absorb the full cost of this implementation
7. Therefore, the benefits of the proposal are far outweighed by the costs of implementing it.

Other new comments not already raised:

I have experienced problems with automatically-generated usernames based on the user's name (e.g. FirstnameLastinitial). For StéphanieR, there are some OS/Browser combinations where she will not be able to enter her username; the system will interpret it as StÈphanieR and reject the user. I've experienced similar problems with database exports that have similar errors if they aren't opened in Windows. What will CIRA do to ensure that input from all browser/OS combinations will be correctly interpreted by the DNS?

The company I work for recently received its registration certificate for a couple of its French trademarks. The name on the government-issued certificate was spelled IN CAPITAL LETTERS with obvious accents omitted (i.e. MON NOM REGISTREE). How would we be able to enforce our rights to the domain monnomregistrée.ca if even Industry Canada is ambivalent to accents? (My mind is further blown to learn that CIRA operates under the auspices of Industry Canada)

People need to recognize that not every domain registrant is a corporation with millions of dollars of annual revenue. It is not so simple for some organizations to register the variants. I am involved with some community groups whose annual income is in the tens of dollars, and the domain registration is one of the few expenses. While they are all Anglophone groups, there are likely Francophone groups in the same situation who cannot afford both mélange.ca and melange.ca (not to mention mèlange.ca and mêlange.ca). Fredjubs' suggestion in comment 71 (that business information sugh as a GST number be required for domain registration) does not work for individuals nor for non-incorporated organizations (like many community groups). Further, there are (or at least there should be) privacy implicaitons if more and more information (passport number?!?) is required just to register a domain name.

Are accented characters case-insensitive, as unaccented characters are in DNS?

Elaborations of and rebuttals to other comments:

Elaborating on other comments: I'm offended by those who think that the only people who speak French are in Québec. There are many Franco-Ontarians (including many towns, like Sudbury, where many do not speak English), Manitoba was the first province to be officially bilingual (though it isn't any longer), and New Brunswick is recognized as being officially bilingual in the Constitution. So any solution based on "only for .qc.ca domains" is entirely insufficient. I don't consider myself to be one of these people, I'm merely offended by the total ignorance of those who make this suggestion.

Reiterating cbehnke's point in comment 53: When I give a website over the phone, and I say président.ca (in French), it will be very cumbersome for me to specify to the message recipient whether or not the domain has an accent, especially if the person is not french speaking.

Entering accented French characters is not a "solved issue":

As mentioned elsewhere, IDN is fine in countries like Germany or Spain where the entire population is expected to know how to speak and type accented characters in the dominant language of the respective country. However, since many, if not most, in the Internet-using population that corresponds to .ca domains do not normally speak and type accented characters, I believe this will become a net obstacle to universal access to the internet, not an enhancement.
- On macs (and apparently on Linux) it is easy to do. However, you must know how to do it. Those who generally correspond only in English (including with bilingual francophones who have domains with accented characters) will not know how to use it.
- On Windows, you have a few cumbersome options: if you have French installed, AND you have activated the desktop/menu bar icon for fast keyboard switching, AND you alreay know what keys to use to enter accented characters, then it's easy. If you don't, then you can use Character Map, which I'm sure a vast majority of users wouldn't even know where to look for it, if they knew it existed, and even then it is not simple or convenient.

User Laplante in comment 52 linked to a Microsost KB article on international keyboards. First, a user shouldn't need an FAQ to type a simple domain name. Second, how will a user know to visit that article when they discover they don't know how to type an accented domain name? You could put a link on the homepage of the domain name, but the user won't be able to go there! Catch-22!

I echo amadha's analogy in comment #45 about bilingual names vs. English and French names. Instead of typing "ottawapubliclibrary.ca", I have to type "biblioottawalibrary.ca", which is much more cumbersome, and harder to remember, even as a bilingual person. The point of the analogy is that it's intended to be more fair but ends up being more confusing.

pdobeda@acm.org in comment 86 suggests that two names with similar names will have already addressed the issue with their corporate registrations. This is a false assumption: for example Apple Computer and Apple Records both operate under the name "Apple" (not to mention numbered companies). And while accents aren't usually used with them, acronyms are often shared among many organizations.

If you have additional comments, or just want to give your "no" vote, I suggest you head on over to the IDN Consultation website and speak up before we all get inundated with spam messages from ínfÒ@vÌ4grá.ca.

- RG>

Coffeeshop toilet humour

2011-09-18T22:48:00.003-04:00

At the coffeeshop the other day, the two people at the next table got to talking about "best before" dates and food safety. I, of course, pretended I wasn't listening to them as I did stuff on my computer, while listening to the interesting bits of the conversation, which was essentially all of it.

One point that stuck out was along the lines of "just because it says 'best before' doesn't mean it's 'worst after'". In other words, food isn't necessarily bad past the expiry date, just not at its best. Yogourt, for example, can last for months.

The man went on to talk about how eating food after the best before date is about making an informed decision. Unless there's a flaw in the manufacturing process, he posited, anything you can get from food (aside from meat) that isn't obviously spoiled isn't going to be very dangerous. Or as he put it, "at my age, I can afford to spend an extra 25 minutes on the toilet if I end up eating something that's a little off." I grinned behind my hand, on which my chin was resting.

The conversation continued to spiral downhill from there, still with me pretending that I didn't have an ear on them. Eventually the woman leaned over to me and said "you're going to have quite the stories to tell your friends about what you overheard today, aren't you?"

I did not miss a beat. I replied drily, "oh, I've got a laptop. I can sit on the toilet all day if I have to!"

A few minutes later, she stopped laughing.

- RG>

Joseph A. Belanger research institute suggests returning to paper $1 and $2 bills

2011-09-03T11:51:00.003-04:00

I established this blog many year ago in part to rant about the stupid stuff I read in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, and this letter to the editor by Joseph A Belanger certainly fits the bill. He provides an irrefutable argument that Canada should scrap the $1 and $2 coins and return to paper money.

You see, metal coins aren't recyclable, but paper money is. "Really," you ask? Metal coins can't be recycled? Well, Belanger suspects that they can't, so, he concludes, it must be true. It's not like they're all made by the same organization or have dates on them to help suggest what materials were used in their manufacture. And metal is such a new substance, we still don't know how to recycle it. Will it melt down if you heat it enough? John A Belanger doesn't know, so it's safest to assume it would just crumble. You probably also can't wash them in the laundry machine.

Besides, there are practical benefits to Canadians. To make the transition back to paper $1 and $2 bills even more convenient, you'll no longer have to lug around heavy coins in your pocket. You'll just have to go to a coin-dispensing kiosk somewhere in the city to find coins to feed the parking meter (another expired technology Belanger must also want to reintroduce).

Never mind that the Royal Canadian Mint and the federal government spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on the production of circulation currency and likely have a pretty good idea of whether paper or metal money has more efficient lifecycle costs. Even if their research says that paper money lasts a fraction of the time in circulation than coins, paper money is recyclable, and recycling doesn't cost any time, energy, or money, right?

- RG>

Beat the heat with RG's Purple Slush Drink

2011-07-21T01:00:00.001-04:00

It's possible that you don't live in Ottawa, or you're reading this in December, or you're one of those people who goes from their air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned garage to their air-conditioned car to their air-conditioned office garage to their air-conditioned office (in which case, that's real weak). Otherwise, you'll likely know that it's fucking hot outside, like 37 degrees not counting the humidex.

During the previous heat wave, I had run out of my soft drink of choice, and either it was too late or hot or I was too lazy to go to Bridgehead for my favourite slush-based drink. It occurred to me that I had purple stuff mix of a certain vintage, allowing me to make the next best thing.

Here's what you need:

Drink Mix (can be Gatorade powder or sugary drink mix or try out something else--on a per-drink basis the stuff is dirt cheap)
Blender
Mason Jar, or County Fair Drinking Jar (with screw top)--I've seen them at Canadian Tire
Ice
straw (at least 0.5cm diameter; not pictured)

The amount of ice I used in this sample was not enough. It should come loosely to the shoulder of the jar, or about 3/4 full. Too much and there's no room for it to blend; too little and the drink is too watery.

Add the Purple Stuff mix (2 heaping tablespoons tingles my sweet tooth just right, though you might want less)

Add water to the shoulder of the jar. Again, this is a bit too low. You might want to put the water in first to make sure the mix doesn't stick to the bottom.

Unscrew the bottom of the blender jug and reattach it to the jar. This makes for one less thing to have to clean afterwards. Don't tighten it too much! If you do, it is a bitch to unscrew it. The rubber seal works well.

Put the jar with the blender attachment on the blender. Yes, it feels weird turning a container full of drink upside down. Get over it.

Once again, this doesn't have nearly enough inside to blend properly. Here's one I did during the last heat wave that blended much better:

I had to add more water to this one, which made for a poor ice-to-water ratio. This shouldn't have layers like this; it should be more homogeneous.

Either way, it's an iced drink, and if you used Gatorade powder, it has electrolytes too. Pop a straw in and drink! Drink it without a straw at your own risk!

So there you go. It's easy, cheap, and fast.

Unless, I guess, you don't have a blender or a compatible jar or glass. In that case, you'll probably have to buy air conditioning, which is probably not easy, cheap, or fast.

- RG>

RG's Workshop: RG's Laptop Box

2011-07-02T20:00:00.000-04:00

Last year, I bought a new laptop after the audio jack was irreparably damaged on my previous one from being bumped around in my bike panniers too much. (The one before that got a broken screen from the same thing)

Since I didn't want yet another laptop to start breaking up on me, I'd known before I even bought my current laptop that I wanted to build a box for it. So within days of receiving my laptop, I built myself a box, custom-sized for my brand new laptop:

I'd spent the previous few weeks keeping an eye out in trash piles for just the right type of particle board to use. I didn't want it to be too thick, but I wanted it to be strong enough to sit on. You see, the benches at Bridgehead are a couple too inches to comfortably use for typing or writing, and I'd wanted to build myself a laptop box to serve this alternate purpose. Knowing I'd be buying a new laptop soon, with different dimensions, I had to wait until I'd bought (and received) the new one. The old laptop was already busted, so why bother trying to protect it with a box?

I didn't take any photos of the initial construction, but it was almost entirely used materials, including these antique hinges from a cabinet door somebody was throwing out. The side pieces were cut from IKEA Lade bed boards (featured in the 90-minute glove rack) sliced down the middle. While attractive, functional, and perfectly sized, the hinges were a bit loose, especially since they were going in the end of the particle board. I glued the screws in to keep them tight:

The finish on the board I'd chosen had some water damage in some places and was peeling, but there was enough undamaged wood to use for the box.

This was a feature, not a bug, as I was able to use it to veneer the ends of the side boards.

The box was quite oversized for my panniers, threatening to rip them open, but inspiring further creativity in its repair (my 15" screen was a size or two too big with the box wrapped around it).

To economize on space, I cut a notch out of one of the side boards for the laptop's protruding battery case to slim down the box's profile. I also, unfortunately, had to angle the top ends of the side boards, cutting off the DIY veneer in the process. You'll also notice a little metal plug next to this notch (the kind used for adjustable shelving units), which keeps the top aligned and thus solves the loose hing e problem.

In addition to a laptop protective box and a booster seat, the box serves many other purposes. It provides a hard flat surface to rest your drink when lounging on a couch, a writing surface, and, shown here, a laptop lifter to bring the screen to a more comfortable viewing height when, say, watching videos of the masturbating Santa Claus:

A few months later, I calculated that a well-placed 1/2" hole...

...lets me plug in the laptop to charge it while still in its box.

It's the laptop box!

Want your own? Want the plans? Too bad. Figure it out and make your own fucking box!

- RG>

RG hears a what?

2011-06-17T20:05:00.002-04:00

Superhuman hearing can be a curse at times.

So I'm sitting in my living room, watching a TV show about explosions on the internet, when I become aware of a beeping sound. It sounded a bit like a busy signal; a low noise with a constant, slow rhythm. After sitting through two commercial breaks with the sound still going, I figured I should check it out more closely.

At first I thought it was my stereo speakers (through which I wired my laptop's sound), since they can often pick up sounds from the radio. Nope, wasn't that.

Then I thought it was the relatively new (to me) and relatively expensive printer, which prefers sleep mode to being turned off. Maybe it was throwing an error. Nope.

It was louder in my living room than in the room to the left, and it was louder than in the room to the right. But I could hear it out of the window at the front of the house. It still sounded louder from my living room window. It must be outside.

I could hear it outside, not much louder than I did before; the sound would be obscured if a car went by or a squirrel farted. My living room window is just above the hydro meters on the side of the house, but it wasn't those, and it wasn't an alarm (or a phone off the hook) from the unit downstairs.

I followed the sound across the street and down two or three houses, and narrowed it down to one of two middle units in a rowhouse. The volume subtly adjusted with the subtle variations in the wind. Maybe it was a smoke or CO₂ detector going off, or maybe old lady Fletcher has fallen and can't get up again.

It didn't look like either one had been broken into, and there were no signs of fire. I narrowed it down to one unit, but couldn't tell if it was the basement, (raised) ground floor or upper floor.

The ground floor window was open, and I was able to close it from the outside, but this had no effect on the volume of the sound. Looking in the front door yielded no further clues, though it did look like the place was unoccupied. I didn't want to knock on the door yet, since I wouldn't exactly want to startle a burglar who might have broken in the back door.

I also didn't want to yell out if someone was in need of help. I seemed to be the only one who could hear this noise, and I'd rather not draw attention to the drunk guy on the second floor patio two doors down, yelling out slurred approximations of partial '70s song lyrics. I also wouldn't want to challenge his title of craziest guy on the block. I could imagine people reacting to my calls: "Drunk? Sure, but that guy who hears noises? He takes the cake!"

So instead I went around back to see if it could yield more clues. As I approached the rear of the row, I saw it was fenced off and could block my vantage point, but to my fortune, there were a couple people on the rear patio of the unit in question. I called out and asked if they could check on the beeping that I heard.

Then I waited as he went in.

And waited.

Awkward!

Finally, he came out and confirmed that someone had left an alarm clock on. Presumably the higher frequencies were muffled by the windows and/or doors, leaving only this quiet, low beep that only I was obsessive enough to notice or care about.

I promptly thanked him and walked back home, trying my best to ignore whatever else he was trying to say about why the alarm had gone off (probably trying to ensure the blame would not fall on him).

I was reassured once again that I am not crazy.

Now to get someone to turn off the attempted singer!

- RG>

The Great Glebe Garage Sale Song!

2011-05-22T23:40:00.001-04:00

"Normal" people go to garage sales, and the biggest one around is in the Glebe. It's fucking crazy (for example, this is at Lyon Street, a full block away from Bank Street, the main street through the Glebe, which is even insaner)

People like to share stories about the best thing they've gotten at the Great Glebe Garage Sale. The 25th anniversary of the sale is this Saturday, and in honour of the occasion I've recorded a hokey little song called "I got you in the Glebe". It's about going to the Garage Sale and finding something special. (Lovey songs, you see, are not only the hokiest, but also the easiest to write, despite the difficulty of fitting "Great Glebe Garage Sale" into a lyric. I also write songs about things I don't like.)

Despite my musical training, I'd never really properly learned to play guitar or sing, or recorded a song, or mixed one, or uploaded one. So I had to find a microphone, buy some hosting space, etc., but the half-assed result is here: Listen to and/or download "I Got You In The Glebe"

I trust you will find that the song itself, like the Glebe Garage Sale, is nevertheless great.

If you want tips on how to navigate the GGGS, I'm not going to try to duplicate David Scrimshaw's guide to the GGGS. Ottawa start apparently has one as well.

Personally, I much prefer curb shopping for free treasure on garbage night or moving days when there aren't zillions of people and vehicles. The best stuff is free, and usually harder to find.

- RG>

Technology is great (when it works)

2011-04-29T22:57:00.003-04:00

I'll part from my usual rants about what essential gadget of mine is broken to write about what happens when gadgets do work.

Every now and then, I get a little reminder that I do live in the future, and sometimes I take it for granted.

Like Star Trek for example, just because it's an easy one.

In Star Trek (from TNG onwards, for the sticklers), you had a little communicator that you could tap, say the name of who you wanted to talk to, and then talk to them. We have that now. Many smartphones, when you press and hold the button on your hands-free headset, will automatically recognize your voice and match it to the name of someone in your address book, and call them. My previous non-smart phone even had a similar option, where I could record up to ten or twenty names to associate with people in my contacts.

In Star Trek, there were doors that open automatically for you. Okay, that's old hat. Supermarkets have had those for a long time.

But they also had fancy ways of turning on lights. Like by yelling "lights!" when you walk into a room. I don't even have to do that. In my office, if I walk into the hallway, a sensor will detect my movement and automatically turn on all the lights in the hall. If I walk into the washroom or kitchenette, I get the same thing, except all the lights were off. I no longer have to remember to turn the light off when I leave a room, and I'm almost at the point where I've overcome the instinct to think about turning the lights on when I enter them. Meanwhile, the building owners save money on electricity.

Those are the ones that I notice most, but laptops and tablet computers also have their Star Trek equivalents. Skype allows video conversations, and YouTube and the internet let people record their own daily log, blog, and vlog. (Qaplog!)

And while it's not quite the same as a replicator, when I walk into Bridgehead, the servers know that what I want is a Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.

- RG>

For a free press, you must abandon your privacy

2011-04-23T02:31:00.002-04:00

I tried commenting on the Ottawa Sun's new website, where they use this assheaded "Disqus" platform that tries to be a hell of a lot more than it is.

After typing my comment, I clicked on the "post as" button. Up came a dialog asking me to sign in using my Facebook, Twitter, Google, OpenID, or other account. I tried to sign in with my RealGrouchy google account, and it asked me if I wanted to remember this authentication (i.e. Google account with Disqus) or just do it this one time. It displayed "[name] realgrouchy@gmail.com" and I clicked "OK" expecting it to take me back to the comment form to customize how my name will appear and preview my comment.

Instead, it posted my real name, which was linked to http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy. I do not associate my real name with RealGrouchy; it is an alias. I have plenty of other accounts to which I associate my real name, and if I wanted to use my real name I would have used one of them. The Ottawa Sun's "Sun and the City" blog (managed by Sue Sherring and Jon Willing) has posted comments before signed as RealGrouchy and linking to this blog, as has Citizen blogger David Reevely and even Ken Gray. This is because RealGrouchy has a reputation for making cogent (if sometimes aggressive) comments about relevant matters. I can be contacted to defend my comments, just as can those who sign with their real names. Sure it's an alias, but I could just as well have used an alias that looked like a real name and people would be none the wiser (actually, they'd be actively deceived).

Getting back to the Ottawa Sun/Disqus/Google website comments, I couldn't even access "http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy" to change these settings because Google thinks my browser isn't new enough (it uses the same fucking engine as Firefox 4). When I am finally able to log in with Internet Explorer, if I change what name is associated with my account it doesn't change the previous comment. I can't customize any settings for my "google profile" account because it says I have to create a public profile to even access the settings, and I doubt it will help.

I've edited the comment, and sent a message to the Sun through their feedback form. That also doesn't appear to be working right, so I sent an e-mail to a couple people too explaining the situation and the nuances that should be investigated to improve the integrity of the system (I managed to temper it down to what I think was a rather polite message, from an angry "fuck you and your stupid comment system" type of thing, which wouldn't really help to encourage them to help me).

The Sun seems to be opening itself up to liability here, since it is allowing private contact information to be posted on their site without express authorization from the individual. That is in direct contravention to Canada's privacy legislation. Even if Disqus and Google aren't Canadian companies, it's still being published on the Sun's website.

The irony is that they instituted this comment thing to protect themselves from liability. Remember how Ken Gray always harps on about 'not being able to verify the identity of every commenter'? The Citizen also now requires you to log in to comment on their site, so I have ceased contributing to discussions on their site. Had they had a simple form that asked for name, required (but promised not to publish) an e-mail address, and offered the ability to add a URL, I could have commented and attributed my comment precisely as I wanted it to be published.

While I'll give the Sun the benefit of the doubt, since their new website is only a few days old and still in "beta", the way things are moving it seems that the mainstream, corporate media not only wants to store all sorts of information on your computer in the form of cookies (who knows how much information it tracks about you), but it also wants to take what information it does know about you from shared services and publish it against your will.

In essence, you must sell your soul and waive your right to privacy in order to participate in the information economy.

No wonder the comments sections on news sites are filled with posts by fucktards.

- RG>

Why do I even bother not stealing movies?

2011-04-17T12:45:00.005-04:00

It turns out my issues with the fucks who decigned Dexter DVDs were grander than I thought.

Microsoft's insidious collaboration with the movie industry has finally hit me. I've kept Microsoft from installing WGA on my computer (I don't need a tool to know that I purchased this copy of Windows XP fair and square, or to keep me from using it once Microsoft's servers stop responding to WGA's requests), and I've stuck with Windows XP because of the DRM inherent to the more recent versions of Windows.

I just rented two DVDs from the video store--you know, instead of simply pirating them which would actually be easier and cheaper--and neither of them would play in Windows Media Player. They wouldn't open in the other program on my laptop, and they crashed my old laptop when I tried any of the three DVD players installed on it.

After over an hour of troubleshooting, my guests and I instead watched TV shows online.

This morning, I called Dell and asked them for help. The guy I spoke with essentially said, "oh yeah, some rental DVDs don't play on computers due to rights somethingorother" (he didn't say "somethingorother" exactly, but he sure didn't know it by name). At least I didn't have to go through dozens of prompts or wait on hold for hours to get this response.

He said the solution is simple: "when I get that problem, I just pop the DVD in to the DVD player and watch it on the TV." Well fuck you. I don't have a DVD player or a TV, and I'm not about to buy one knowing that the industries behind them are out to prevent me from paying for and watching their content.

Of course, the irony is that I specifically rented the videos out of some latent guilt about downloading (thanks to all sorts of fearmongering and propaganda from the movie industry), yet the movie industry itself is behind the restrictions that prevent me from watching these legally-obtained borrowed copies of the films. Not that this is news to anyone, especially me: anyone who follows slashdot has heard all the latest tricks of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), collectively and pejoratively referred to as the MAFIAA.

After my failed tech support call to Dell, I did a quick Google search, which returned VLC Player a free, open-source, cross-platform video player that is a project on SourceForge.net, a sister-company to Slashdot that hosts open-source development.

VLC player is able to play my DVDs flawlessly. I wish I'd found it last night when my friends were still here!

Anyway, I've learned my lesson about paying for copyrighted content. I'm going to go download some Bittorrent software and start getting my movies from the pirates, who are more trustworthy than the film industry.

PS: The Conservative party wants to facilitate this process of screwing media consumers and make the punishments stronger--their failed bills would have given Canada one of the most restrictive copyright regimes in the developed world. They scare you by saying the Liberal party will institute an "iPod tax", which is essentially what we already have, and which makes filesharing quasi-legal in Canada. If the Pirate Party has a candidate in your riding in the current federal election, go listen to what they have to say about copyright restrictions. They're not a joke party like the NeoRhino party, they're a serious one-issue party like the Marijuana party.

- RG>

Taxes: check

2011-03-30T01:43:00.001-04:00

After catching up on my finances last night, I completed the first draft of my taxes tonight (ending around the same time... one of these days I'll get sleep).

I was pissed off to find out a rather significant RSP contribution wasn't processed by my bank prior to the deadline (and I don't know if they ever even received it!).

Claiming Ontario tax credit for renting is a lot more convoluted this year than it was previously. On top of the Ontario Credits form, you have to fill out the ON-BEN form at the back of the book (which isn't colour-coded pink like the other Ontario forms) whose goal is essentially to write the same numbers, without any arithmetic manipulation, that you then write again in the Ontario Credits form. (there's no addition of the numbers). On the Ontario Credits form, you then have to complete the "occupancy cost", "energy component" (for "long term care home and home energy costs on a reserve"), and "property tax component", even if, for example, you didn't pay property tax or live on a reserve.

It was sort of similar last year, but much more straightforward. Instead of being on two sheets at opposite ends of the forms book, it was all included in the Ontario Credits form, and in the "property tax credit" section it clearly asked you to enter "Rent paid in Ontario in 2009", so you wouldn't have to wonder, as I did, I didn't pay property tax; do I still have to fill out the "property tax component"?. And even though the ON-BEN form is now on a separate page, it still only gives you two lines to fill out residence information. (Not that I've had to use more than one for many years, but I've bounced around in the past).

I guess it's the bottom line that matters. I'm getting a refund, and it's not too much smaller than what I got last year, despite making more money and having fewer credits to claim. It'd have been even bigger if I tended to donate money to groups with charitable tax status, instead of contributing time and money mostly to groups that are too small (efficient; less red tape) or advocacy-oriented to qualify for status.

And with my finances and taxes done, and their respective piles of paper cleared from atop my desk, I can move on to the next pile of things to file.

- RG>

Le fin

2011-03-29T02:00:00.001-04:00

I did it! I finally got caught up on my finances!

I'd been months behind for the last year or so. When I did my taxes in April 2009, I remember I only did my finances as far as December 31, 2008, and I didn't really do much to get caught up since then.

In the last month or so, I've been whittling away at it, taking bigger and bigger bites out of the pile, and now I've finished!

I made a couple of interesting observations:

- Over the last year and a half, I've had three mysterious withdrawals for which I don't have the bank machine slip. I always take the slip, so this is strange. Also strange is that these are only at the Somerset and Bronson bank machine. There's no conclusive evidence to conclusively say that I did or didn't make these withdrawals. I checked my e-mails, my photos, my Blackberry calendar (including backups of my tasks, notes, and appointments), and my known cash expenditures between the previous and next withdrawals, but nothing conclusive.

- Adjusted for contributions, my RRSP fluctuates each month as much as the equivalent of a plus or minus 20% APR (and as much as +47% in one month, if my math is right).

- I have not yet made any credit card purchases on a Saturday this year.

Of course, things are never always done. I have yet to do my taxes, and seeing as it's 2am and I have a couple other things to do, that can wait until closer to the April 30 deadline.

- RG>

It's that hour again...

2011-03-26T02:26:00.000-04:00

Well, it's time for my fourth annual Earth Hour-bashing post. As I've said in past years, I don't like to celebrate events that consider it special to turn the lights off for an hour; it's something I do for many hours every night. Twenty-four hours for Earth Day is enough in my books.

Some self-promoting environmentalists are promoting a candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill. Of course, candles are a much less efficient way to convert energy into light than electric lights are, and paraffin candles, being pure hydrocarbon, produce considerably more CO₂ emissions than whatever the hell was burned to power that light you turn off. I'll laugh if some people drive downtown to get to the vigil.

So then people use beeswax candles, which they claim are 'carbon neutral' because it's from honeybees instead of million-year-old dinosaur bones. Notwithstanding that honeybees are producing less and less each year, if you want to reduce your CO₂ emissions, you'd toss the beeswax candle into the trash. Once it gets to the landfill, its carbon will be stored and sequestered, which is much better than releasing it into the air by burning.

Then there are those who turn off the lights but still watch TV in the dark, because they're so superficially environmentalist that they can't even peel their arses off the couch for an hour to spend some time with the kids. Or there's the people who use battery-powered flash lights or unplug their laptops--apparently oblivious to the fact that they're simply using the electricity (converted and stored less efficiently) in advance in the batteries. These ones are the worst because they don't even get the theoretical message the Earth Hourers are trying to spread with this overhyped event. Does Jim Watson really need yet another event to pack into his agenda?

Speaking of the hype, I wouldn't be surprised if the energy "saved" by people turning off their lights is less than all the energy that goes into producing all the advertisements, posters, candles, publicity events, and three-fucking-storey-tall banners (below), plus the hot air from those of us pointing out how inane it is to celebrate a holiday that lasts only one hour. People are so disconnected from reality that the greenwashers have them convinced that electricity is the only form of energy that counts toward CO₂ emissions.

In previous years, Earth Hour has gone by so quickly I didn't even get a chance to turn on all my lights and appliances. This year I've got plans outside the house in the evening, so instead of leaving my house dark as it normally would be when I'm not inside it, I'll have to leave my lights on all day to make sure they'll be on during Earth Hour.

I wouldn't want someone walking by to see a dark window and think I'm an Earth Hour sycophant.

- RG>

I'm on a new drug (which hopefully does what it should)

2011-03-08T17:40:00.001-05:00

So after I wrote the previous post in which I 'came out' as depressed, I learned why most people hide depression.

The Oatmeal summed it up nicely in his explanation of the worst thing about Valentine's Day: people say they don't celebrate/recognize Valentine's Day, yet they won't shut up about how they don't celebrate/recognize Valentine's Day.

The analogy doesn't translate perfectly, but essentially many people hide depression in order to carry on somewhat with social activities. When you make it known that you're depressed but that you're working to get over it, people feel all sorry for you and shit. "Oh, yes, RG! I've suffered from depression, too! Was your form of misery similar to mine? Let's talk about how miserable you are some more and focus on that." So you end up engaging in fewer social activities because everyone treats you like you have a terminal disease instead of partaking in the social activity that you're trying to do in order to feel better.

I'll have to edit the list of advice from the previous post:

If you are also depressed, what you choose to do with this knowledge is up to you:

- buck up and stop acting depressed

- take solace in knowing that you're not as alone as things might look

- realize that maybe your depression isn't prominent in others' eyes

- for god's sake keep it to yourself (and your doctor)

As for the meds my doctor put me on, at the 4-week checkup we decided to change drugs. I was on a fairly low dose and my doctor hadn't encountered itching as a side effect.

I also raised the prospect of ADHD, fearing my doctor would instead diagnose me with hypochondria, and to my surprise my doctor didn't dismiss the idea. They're all to do with something wrong in your brain, and the names we give them aren't black-and-white.

So we split the difference: she put me on something else that isn't as strong on depression, but has an off-label use for ADHD. Without the side effects, I could at least bullshit myself into a psychosomatic recovery. Being a mechanically-oriented person, I have a hard time grasping how a drug can affect your mood (or the concept of "mood" to begin with), so I was hoping that at least my subconscious would fall for the placebo effect.

I think the new drug (or the placebo effect) is working. Or maybe I feel better because the absence of the first drug's side effects makes me feel better.

I do notice that I've been more productive at work and at home, and I've had a natural urge to get many things done, instead of simply feeling guilt for not getting it done. When I would previously put something off to the next day, I've found there are more instances when I just do it and get it out of the way. That's been coupled with a few good days where I thought or feared that it would be a pain in the arse, but things went smoothly or something I didn't want to do was cancelled.

I actually woke up in the morning last weekend, instead of staying in bed.

As for the ADHD thing, I don't know too much about it, and haven't even read up on it on the web (which my doctor suggested. Fancy that.). It's hard to know if I'm feeling "worse than normal" because my lifestyle is too all-over-the-map to have a sense of what "normal" is supposed to feel like.

But what I do know is that I have a tendency to start big, ambitious projects and leave them very shortly thereafter. shorter projects are more likely to get done. It's a miracle I still blog instead of Twittering.

Also, I might be confusing ADHD with OCD. When I do get onto something, I often can't stop in the middle of it. That's why there are so many gigantically long posts on my blog posted in the wee hours of the morning (which, in my book, is anything before 9am). Like the first post in the Ken Gray series. I woke up at 6am and couldn't get back to sleep until three hours later after writing out the blog post. By 11am that day I was very tired. Or how a quick impulse purchase of a digital projector turned into a month-long bout of depression.

A couple of nights after switching to the new pill, I reorganized my cutlery drawer. See?

I was up until 2am doing it and two of the other kitchen drawers. I'd have vacuumed, too, if I knew it wouldn't disrupt the neighbours. My latest theory (which I propose tongue-in-cheek) is that I must have had underlying OCD, but the depression was keeping it at bay because I could never motivate myself to bother.

More rationally, the new drug isn't supposed to have an effect until 4-6 weeks in, so I assume the different behaviour is either from withdrawal from the first one, or from the placebo effect, or possibly from the first drug no longer making me feel worse.

What's the point in all this? I dunno. Maybe you find it interesting. Maybe it's just to spite Ken Gray by pointing out I don't give a flying fuck if my blog posts are so long that nobody in their right mind would read it (helps that most of my friends are crazy). Or maybe it's to say that there's a very real possibility that RealGrouchy's back.

- RG>

The Ken Gray comeback tour

2011-03-01T12:12:00.004-05:00

[Edit: added Ken Gray image. How could I forget!]

Ken Gray has returned from retirement. Last week, the 33-year veteran of old media announced that he was done with telling bloggers how not to blog.

He reiterates the old hyperbolic themes in this latest single, Truth through the mob. Read it now while it's still there!

This makes it awkward for the Ken Gray cover blogger (Ken Gray, an Ottawa citizen), who nevertheless appreciated the paranoid shout-out.

Me, I'm still working on sorting out the various different things said by Ken (and others), in order to write up at least 5 posts (so far) pointing out the many uncorrected (and certainly unapologized-for) errors, contradictions, ironies, and dare I say it, lies by Ken Gray.

At the moment, my screen looks like a web browser equivalent to this:

Once I get all the arguments sorted out, the jabbing puns put in the right place, and the references properly cited (something that Ken Gray says bloggers don't do), I'll post them up.

I've also been saving backup copies of all of Ken's posts and the comments thereon, lest some of them mysteriously disappear...

Unfortunately, I've been pretty busy lately at work. You see, I deliver little baggies of bulldog poo to mailboxes citywide, and lately there has been a mysterious increase in shipments... So I'm just squeezing out this little update in my lunch break.

- RG>

RealGrouchy upgrades again

2011-02-26T03:40:00.001-05:00

(Yes, the timestamp is accurate. I've been somewhat awake since I started the previous post at 6am on the 25th) After I finished the previous post, I read it aloud to myself and liked how it flowed. I wanted to podcast it.

The resulting efforts have resulted in the biggest change since in 2006, when I rebranded the blog. (Which is to say that the template is still the same old off-the-shelf one I picked in 2004, and a couple of details here and there were tweaked.)

After some digging around discovered I'd need some hosting space of my own for podcasts, and of course a domain. With RealGrouchy.com being taken by some squatter in Virginia, I registered RealGrouchy.ca. I used hostpapa.ca which I've had experience with and I know their services are versatile. That said, I just looked at configuring it so that Blogger publishes on RealGrouchy.ca and it looks too complicated, so I just set it to redirect to the ol' Blogger blog.

I also set up a RealGrouchy WordPress account, to make it easier to subscribe by e-mail to comments on people's WordPress-based blogs. It used to be that you just click the checkbox. Then you had to click a link in a confirmation e-mail (missing out on any comments that were posted before you next checked your inbox). Now, and for the last few months, it has required you to follow a link in an e-mail, then click a confirmation button on the other side of that link.

I also set up a GRAvatar (globally-recognizable avatar, IIRC) with my usual RealGrouchy icon (though it wanted me to crop the photo down, chopping off the top and bottom; it wouldn't let me expand the box, so that took more time, making the avatar square in GIMP). Creepily, WordPress automatically associated all my old comments with my new WordPress account and added in my new GRAvatar and blog link.

That's better than LiveJournal, I guess. A couple years ago, I went to register the RealGrouchy handle on LiveJournal to comment on the OC Transpo livejournal, only to find that http://realgrouchy.livejournal.com was publishing a carbon copy of my blog, without my permission, using what they call a "syndicated account". They promptly deleted this copied blog, but told me that syndicated accounts can't be converted to regular personal accounts. Instead, they can delete the account, I can create a new one under a different username, then get them to move the RealGrouchy username for a $30 fee. How nice of them to charge me $30 for stealing my content. I declined, and it's probably just as well that I don't waste time trying to talk sense in the OC Transpo LiveJournal forum.

As for the podcasts, I didn't really have time today to prepare a podcast, much less preparing a podcast and setting up all this hosting stuff.

But the next time I feel the urge to podcast, I'm already a third of the way there (step 1: get web space, step 2: figure out how to podcast, step 3: record and edit the actual podcast for posting).

- RG>

Ken Gray wants you to stop blogging

2011-02-25T08:59:00.005-05:00

Ken Gray is a Serious Journalist. Like other isms (think "sexism" and "racism"), "journalism" in the way Ken Gray practises it means he doesn't like it when other people keep journals.

In other words, Ken Gray doesn't want you to blog.

Of course, he can blog, but that's because he's a Serious Journalist. Gray's blog is called "the Bulldog", at http://www.ottawacitizen.com/bulldog (I post the link reluctantly, because I really don't like driving traffic to him). Living up to his name, a lot of what he says about blogging and social media is bull.

The latest round of his drivel about bloggers started with the post "Pity the poor blogger", in which he compares his Well-Visited Blog to the lesser citizen journalists who resort to Twitter because they are ashamed of how few people read their blog.

You can also follow Ken Gray on Twitter at @KenGray.

The self-appointed Minister of Truth followed up that post with "Blogging and the law: let the bloggers beware," in which he asserts that bloggers (and tweeters) shouldn't be trusted because they don't always get their facts right.

I'm not going to waste my time arguing with Ken Gray on the topic, but if you want to get into that discussion, I recommend this post by Twitterer Keenan Wellar and the comments to Ken's posts linked above. He's actually approved a couple of them that make decent points, and Ken graciously inserted his own comments into their comments instead of replying in a separate comment. It's like a Ministry of Truth certificate of inspection.

If you're really lucky, like me, Ken Gray will keep your comments all to himself. You see, Ken Gray upholds standards of Truth, and will only approve comments on his blog that are True, because as publisher he can be sued for libel. For example, one Truth is "Ken Gray is not a Hypocrite". I suspect it must be libelous to say otherwise, or to point out clear examples of hypocrisy by Ken Gray, as he will often not approve comments where you do so. I guess he's afraid that Ken Gray might sue the Citizen for defamation if the comments are allowed.

As a concrete example (which are definitely not allowed on the Bulldog blog when referring to Ken Gray being a hypocrite), the following comment must be libelous, because Ken Gray did not approve it when I posted the comment on his aforementioned post, "Bloggers and the Law: let the Bloggers Beware":

"I thought journalists were in favour of the widespread sharing of information; not restricting it to a select few approved by authorities. Of course, that assumes your oft-repeated definition of journalism applies to you.

And you even admit you yourself make factual errors once in a while (an understatement, I must say), yet you contradictorily seem to think that people should not blog unless their posts are entirely without errors. You also lump all bloggers together, insulting an entire community en masse, including people who mostly write about knitting and pets.

Don't worry; I don't expect you to approve this comment. I've saved up a collection of my comments that you have censored, and your latest set of posts about bloggers has rekindled my urge to post them all on my own blog, where Ken Gray, self-appointed Minister of Truth can't veto them."

Well, Mea culpa. A couple of years ago when he went on one of his tirades about the anonymous ZeroMeansZero blog, I naively told him about the Streisand effect, and pointed out that by talking about ZMZ he was broadening its viewership with free advertising.

And as the ZMZ example illustrates, this is by far not the first time the Bulldog has come out at full bark on bloggers, or boldly expounded his virtuousness while cowardly concealing his foibles. Ken Gray's style is to make sweeping generalizations about groups of people or things when he doesn't agree with one or two members of those groups, and "bloggers" is perhaps his favourite group to talk about in this way.

I've got lots more to say about how Ken Gray is a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, but for now I'll just say that people should follow his advice to not pay attention to blogs, starting with his.

To keep up with my upcoming series Ken Gray exposées, follow the ones that are tagged KenGray.

- RG>

Furey vs. Motherhood and Apple Pie

2011-02-16T14:11:00.000-05:00

The Ottawa Sun's editorial page editor, Toronto expat Anthony Furey, made an antagonistic first impression last month by shouting out his opinion on how the City of Ottawa should be run, context bedamned.

He's at it again, questioning the status quo. Only this time instead of siding with the failed 2006 efforts of rookie politician Larry O'Brien, he's siding with the failed 2000 efforts of veteran councillor Alex Cullen.

Like the 2009 Atheist bus ad issue and the 2007 Support Our Troops fight, which prompted me to create the yellowribons label for blog posts on such groupthink issues.

Like those two more recent issues, Cullen alone in 2000 in voting to remove the prayer from the start of council meetings. Furey thinks this idea's time should come around again. And while the City of Ottawa is a secular corporation, and 1 in 6 Canadians and Ontarians were non-religious in 2001, Furey doesn't realize that we can never risk offending the other 5.

Furey needs to learn that if he wants to make it in small-town Ottawa, he's going to have to support Motherhood and Apple Pie.

- RG>

NCC faces its Waterlude

2011-02-16T13:06:00.004-05:00

With warm weather coming up this weekend, I guess it's time to pull out ol' rainful, my cleverly-crafted parody of the Winterlude logo.

First debuted last January. Like so many of my subversive efforts, the changes were so subtle and so seamless that I think it went unnoticed in plain sight.

It would be a terrible thing if someone were to print it out and paste it over official Winterlude materials...

BTW, I'm a great fan of the canal and Winterlude. Aside from the Beavertails, it's a free festival for all to enjoy in the middle of a miserable season.

- RG>

I'm not getting you down at all, am I?

2011-02-14T23:43:00.001-05:00

I've had a few people remark to me that I haven't blogged in a while (just over a month, actually), and what gives.

Long story short:

- I've been busy at work

- I've been busy outside of work

- I've been procrastinating the things I should be doing in the previous two categories

- I've been depressed again.

I do want to elaborate on that last point. There were a few depression-related newspaper articles a month or so ago that would have made good launching points for this post, and I never got off my arse to actually do it. The Sun and the Metro both had a depression-related article one day, and sometime last week there was something about wearing purple to raise awareness for mental health. I never found out exactly what it was, but I wore purple that day for the heck of it. They all generally fall under the category of "[some campaign] says that not enough people talk about depression", so I figured I'll just talk about mine.

I'd previously seen a shrink and taken pills for a number of years (including all through high school), and went off and back on and back off pills and psychotherapy (which is just a fancy word for "talking"). It has been well over half a decade since I last saw a shrink for depression, and I've been able to work out my own personality problems myself.

In the intervening years, I'd have downswings, often after pushing myself too hard, from which I'd recover after I ease up. It helps that I can be very stubborn.

But things have been going squarely downhill lately.

It doesn't help that I have a really complicated lifestyle, where I don't really have a routine but I'm always got many projects on the go, in each of my personal, work, and extracurricular lives. My sleep schedule is pretty erratic, as are my eating habits. So I've never had a baseline for how I "normally" feel.

So as I dealt with my new job and adjusted to its new full-time hours and new location (and the new pay--at least I didn't have money issues to compound problems), my extracurriculars also demanded more and more from me. If I was falling behind on one, I assumed it was due to pressure from the other.

But both were falling further and further behind, and the things I did to cheer myself up, didn't. It's not that I didn't want to get these things done (I did), it's not that I didn't know what to do (I did), it's that I realized I had absolutely no motivation to do anything productive. I didn't derive satisfaction from completing a project.

To a utilitarian like me, this was a serious problem.

Quitting wasn't really an option. I enjoy my job--when I actually accomplish things--both in absolute terms and relative to whatever else I might get. And it's not like I'd be successful at any other job in this state. Unemployed, I'd just waste away my savings doing nothing until I was depressed and destitute.

Over a month or so, I tried every trick in the book to get back on the wagon. I tried various forms of lists, reminders, and angry notes to myself. I tried (and generally failed at) tricks like drinking more water, changing my sleeping arrangements, and eating healthier. I tried directing my procrastination into lower-priority things that at least needed to get done.

Finally, at a certain point I had reached a low where I didn't want to even bother trying anymore. I was afraid that I had hit a dead end with no escape strategy.

I didn't clue in to the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with me until one day when I realized that I not only accomplished nothing at work that day, but I also didn't work on any of my personal projects either. I had pissed it away reading news articles, commenting on blogs, diddling away on my stupid Blackberry's games, and snacking. When a deadline would approach or pass, I'd make excuses or pithy apologies.

I finally remembered my Psych 101 classes, that sometimes there is something physiological going on. Maybe I was...depressed.

Sadly, this epiphany by itself did nothing to alleviate the situation. But at least I found another corner to follow on my erstwhile dead end.

My doctor--the one who once said "maybe it's just you" when I complained of chronic fatigue--graciously* fit me in between some other patients the next day, and prescribed me some medications (apparently our ~~overstretched~~ modern medical system has replaced the psychologist with a flowchart as the primary diagnostic tool for depression). She said I probably won't feel the effects until 3 or 4 weeks into taking the pills daily. I'd always found this peculiar because Psych 101--or maybe Wikipedia--also taught that bouts of depression usually last only 2 weeks. Obviously mine had already stretched longer so I was hoping for more than a placebo effect.

(*Not being sarcastic this time. Normally the earliest appointment is two weeks away or more and I don't know what I'd have done if I had to wait that long.)

I'm now 3 weeks in, and still feeling pretty damn shitty. I had five major work/personal tasks I needed to get done on the weekend, and woke up in a panic in the middle of the night last night, realizing I hadn't done any of them.

While I haven't noticed any good effects of the drug, the side effects began pretty much from day one. I've been keeping a list on my Blackberry. The form that came with the drug said I should have notified my doctor immediately about the itching (which I didn't even realize was the drug for a few days), but I'll wait until the 4-week checkup.

There is a moral to the story, and it doesn't really come through well in the above paragraphs. In fact, it's not a very uplifting one, either.

I've always just assumed that everybody else was just as miserable as I am and kept it to themselves--not a bad coping mechanism, actually. But the occasional media campaigns on depression remind me that there are lots of depressed people who don't make this assumption. (And, implicitly, that there really are "normal" people out there who really don't feel like shit all the time. Burst my bubble, why don't you!)

So I thought I'd put it out there that there do exist people who appear to be organized and productive and who have made a name for themselves in their community. But beneath that outer shell of accomplishment, bear in mind that some of them--like me--suffer from depression, and are just good at hiding it.

If you are also depressed, what you choose to do with this knowledge is up to you:

- buck up and stop acting depressed

- take solace in knowing that you're not as alone as things might look

- realize that maybe your depression isn't prominent in others' eyes

If you've read this far hoping for some happy resolution or magic solution to depression, I'm afraid there isn't really one.

But if you are also depressed and my story has made you feel better, or if it has somehow inspired you, what I'd really like you to know is that I am very much not in the mood to care.

- RG>

Notice previously given

2011-02-14T21:22:00.004-05:00

Back in November, I pointed out some street art popping up on streetposts around town called Take Notice. Coyote noticed them too.

Turns out it's an art project by Paul Roorda, which is currently on display at City Hall. Not the first time I've seen former street art on display in an gallery (though it looks like this one was only put out on the street in order to later go into a gallery. Not sure if the street art scene likes that)

There are a couple other of Roorda's projects (of similar format) on display also.

Coyote doesn't include text in his blog, so I don't think he'll scoop me on this update!

Take Notice is on display at City Hall until April 3, 2011. It's open daily from 9am-5pm. No admission; just walk right in!

[Cool visual illusion: if you scroll up and down so that the second photo goes past the bottom of the page, and stare past your screen, it looks like the little squares are zooming in and out or moving. Or something. It did for me.]

- RG>

In which RG demonstrates genius

2011-01-13T19:58:00.004-05:00

I don't go through too much cornstarch, but the cornstarch I do use I keep in this jar. I have to refill it about every year. To do so, I go to Herb & Spice on Bank Street, which sells it in bulk.

It seems that the last time I refilled the jar, I noticed how difficult it was to get the powdery cornstarch into the narrow-mouthed jar with the wide scoop. So I scribbled on the bottom of the jar in permanent marker, "Need large mouth funnel to refill".

Good that I did, because in the time that had passed since I had last refilled my cornstarch jar, I had forgotten about the funnel requirement; however, after washing the jar and inverting it onto the dishrack, I saw the note and was reminded!

Ain't that clever?

- RG>

Another swap box at Elgin Bridgehead, another repair by RG

2011-01-05T23:46:00.009-05:00

[Edit: added photo of hook to close swap box at end.]

Heading out from Bridgehead last night, I was thrilled to find a new one of el maks' trademark Swap Boxes on the post which formerly held this box, which helped save a life. Here 'tis:

Unfortunately, on opening it, I found it to be very empty. There was about $0.13 in change, and a gambling chip I had just put in (I always have a trinket with me In Case Of Swap Box*). While the box was large, it was shallow, making it hard for anything to stay inside. I took this photo with a ruler so I could fashion something of the right size help hold things in. I was thinking along the lines of a panel of clear plastic packaging stapled across the front.

(*title for your next book, Maks?)

Getting home, I looked at my inventory of paraphernalia and found a Ferrero Rocher box my dad gave me at Christmas (a tradition. I was very disappointed the year he gave me Toblerone instead of Ferrero Rocher for Christmas, though I would have accepted Toblerone and Ferrero Rocher). The box was exactly the right width, it just needed to be opened on one end. Here it is trimmed, taped on the sharp cut edge, with some of the cutting tools I employed to try to cut it to the right size. (The laziest, easiest way I found was scoring it with a knife and/or glass-cutting tool, then clipping it with wire clippers carefully. It will not be a clean cut on the discard side).

I had also pre-drilled some holes in the plastic for small screws to hold it in, making sure not to put the holes too close to the edge, lest my hand and the mini-screwdriver not fit in the gap. I then installed it in situ tonight, first marking the holes, then pre-screwing the screws to make the holes, undoing them, then putting them back in with the plastic piece in place. Worked like a charm (and I only measured once!). El Maks approves! See comments.

Then I populated the box with some new stuff I had brought, "swapping" out the gambling chip I had put in the night before (it had been so long since I'd seen a swap box, I had gotten used to this thing in my pocket) and most of the useless goddamn pennies. The extra benefit of this Ferrero Rocher box is that there is a bevelled edge, making it easier to pull things out of the box.

Unfortunately, maks painted the wooden box over its smooth finish, and the paint is chipping off in the cold. Nothing we can do about that.

Also, because of the way the box is attached to the post, the door doesn't close very well.

I fashioned a simple hook out of a piece of wire just now and will install it next time I'm down there, so that the box's contents will be protected from the elements. [Edit: done. See below.]

I'm grateful to Maks for making (and installing?) the box. It's been so long since we've had one in Centretown since he moved to Montreal. It's up to us to make sure it's well used and well kept!

- RG>

This is why I don't buy music from online

2011-01-03T18:02:00.005-05:00

Fuck Windows Media Player.

A while back, I used Audacity to rip my LP of Billy Joel's the Stranger to mp3 so I could listen to it on my Blackberry.

More recently, I noticed that a few of the tracks weren't on the album.

Today, I discovered the source of the problem: Windows Media Player ~helpfully downloaded updated track information for this album, including numbering half the tracks as Track 4. It then overwrote the file information on my hard disk with these new details.

Because it saw a number of "Track 4"s, it also did me the favour of removing the extras from my library. And apparently the default setting is to automatically delete files from my hard drive when deleted from my library.

Now that I've disabled those settings, I'm hoping that I will have the original on my backup drive at home. If not, at least I still have the LP and I can rip it again.

- RG>

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #12

2011-01-03T01:56:00.004-05:00

Tidying the house isn't so much about putting things away as it is about moving things one step closer to where they belong.

Previous undefined period of time: 1 month, 17 days, 17h24

- RG>

War on the penny: take prisoners!

2010-12-30T14:22:00.004-05:00

It's been a few years since I've actually bothered to take home the pennies I get in my change. Usually, I'll ask the clerk for no pennies, I'll leave them on the store counter, or I'll use the leave-a-penny tray. This is an informal version of the rounding that would take place on cash transactions if the penny were eliminated.

You see, I'm one of the 55% of Canadians who support eliminating the penny from circulation, and my response to receiving a penny in my change is downright civil compared to many.

Pennies drop on the ground and nobody picks them up anymore, that's how little value they have. The one-cent coins cost more to produce and distribute than their face value is worth.

But I think I've been doing it wrong. In order to help catalyze the elimination of the penny, I shouldn't be refusing them access to my pocket, I should be welcoming them.

More specifically, hoarding them.

The more pennies are removed from circulation, the more need to be produced to fill the gap. That will drive up the government's cost of keeping the penny, and in turn help along the case to eliminate it.

Seeing that I'm a natural hoarder, I can't believe I didn't think of it before. And once the penny is formally given the pink slip, they'll be a nostalgic collector's item to give to grandkids, like a $1 bill. Or I guess the $2 bills. Hm, maybe I should collect some fivers too, just to be sure.

- RG>

Bad saxophone music hurts my head

2010-12-29T05:15:00.003-05:00

So let's say I've got this "friend" who has a genuinely good point on a couple of issues, but she only really cares about those issues. And she's a true believer in them. She has a somewhat wide audience and makes a lot of noise about her pet issues. Admittedly, not too many people take her seriously, but she likes to think they do.

Every now and then, she makes dramatic, sweeping generalizations to support her causes, and cites her two--well, I can't decide if they're sacred cows or a pair of one-trick ponies.

Anyway, she makes sweeping generalizations that support her cause, but only ever uses her handful of causes to support those generalizations. And whenever somebody brings an example of a similar case that falls under that generalization, she uses her platform to totally shit on that similar case. I guess it's a way to not always talk about her couple of issues.

Occasionally, someone will point out a major flaw in her argument--either it's based on a false premise, or the generalization is so broad that it goes way beyond the scope--sometimes to the point that she labels innocent people as malicious villains. (As you might guess, I've been this 'someone' on more than one occasion)

When this happens, she'll sometimes issue a quiet apology, but then will erase all trace of the error--by censoring the criticism, erasing the apology, and sometimes even the original argument. A surprising feat, really, in the age of information.

Unfortunately, one of these one-trick ponies (I guess this is the third, though this one has been dead for a while--and not beaten recently. If a fourth comes up, it'll be the apocalypse) is when she goes on about how much she values honesty, integrity, and sticking to one's word. Which kind of goes against the whole 'not admitting mistakes (or not for long)', 'censoring criticism', and censoring oneself after the fact.

In my mind, he's a hypocrite and a fucking coward, but what can you do?

What can I do?

- RG>

5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic

2010-12-29T00:33:00.003-05:00

There's a great article on Cracked.com from October called 5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic. Got the link from the depressing hanzi smatter blog (which I got to from a slashdot comment. It tells people what their stupid Chinese tattoo really means).

This is a pretty solid article, and it's only long from the snarkily-captioned images.

But bring the superstition from a foreign culture, and suddenly you are in business. You can apparently still convince a shockingly large portion of the population that you can see the future if you're doing it with Tarot cards. They come from the gypsies after all. Of course, these same people would slap you if you offered to tell their fortune from a standard card deck.

Despite being pretty stupid, feng shui got particularly hot in the 90's, with Donald Trump, Oprah, and firms like Salomon Smith Barney hiring feng shui consultants to maximize their chi. Of course, this is the equivalent of a Chinese Executive pinning 4-leaf clovers all over his office.

Unfortunately, our homegrown homeopathy (not mentioned in the article) breaks the trend: it was invented in a different culture--in time, not in geography--and people still flock to it.

Pity, that.

- RG>

City flip-flops on tunnel length

2010-12-21T13:42:00.003-05:00

I'm not as hellbent against Ottawa's proposed transit tunnel as Ken Gray is, though many details and options were glossed over in the decision to go with the current transit strategy. This is a slight improvement over the previous plan, which was entirely mired in secrecy, to the point that Councillors had to sign a non-disclosure agreement just to see the contract they were approving.

Citizen blogger David Reevely has been reading the City's Interim geotechnical report (which I haven't read). Apparently, as reported in an article posted to the Citizen's website this afternoon, they want to shorted the length of the tunnel by almost one-third from the current 3.2 km.

That would bring it to about 2.5km. Which is what was originally proposed in 2008 for the tunnel. At some point since then, the length of the proposed tunnel was extended 0.7km to bring the end of the tunnel closer to Lees station. At the time, it was cited that this would make it logistically easier to extract the TBM, and would be less disruptive than if the tunnel had to make a steep climb up near Laurier. City staff said the cost difference wouldn't be significant.

Now we're hearing the reverse.

We've been told time and time again that the price tag on the rail project is a "very conservative estimate" that will come down as details are worked out, and that the project includes a $100M contingency to cover unexpected increases in cost. This was the party line repeated time and time again by then-Mayor Larry O'Brien and then-Transit Committee Chair Alex Cullen--neither of whom were re-elected.

Now we're hearing that the geotechnical parameters of the tunnel exceed those of the "very conservative estimate."

While it might be tempting to think this apparently new recommendation came about because we have more information, how new can that information be if the original proposal suggested the same thing?

- RG>

Lol, we all do this, don't we?

2010-12-21T12:42:00.000-05:00

On the weekend, as I was preparing to leave the house for the day, I turned on a light to get something out of a cupboard.

Just before I stepped out the door, I had a sense that I had forgotten to pack something, so I went back into the house. There I found the light, still on, scorching a cushion that had fallen on it (and blocked its light).

I promptly turned off the light, and suppressed the urge to worry about what would have happened if I had left for the day if I hadn't.

- RG>

Desk

2010-12-11T14:04:00.005-05:00

My uncle gave me this desk, which was my childhood desk growing up. In a recent de-cluttering exercise I decided it no longer fit in my apartment, so I'm getting rid of it. I want it to go to a good home, because it's a nice desk. I'm also too lazy for stuff like Kijiji.

As you can see, it has a map of the world on it. As best I can tell from the countries, the map dates from around '63.

It's 40" wide by 20" deep by 30" tall. It has seven drawers, three on each side and one in the middle. I've got some looseleaf held together with a binder clip in one of the drawers for perspective.

It's a nice desk, but I've switched to a larger desk with a keyboard drawer and hanging files. Much as I'd like to keep this desk, it's really just acting as an oversized container for stationery and it's in the way.

Woodsy's got dibs on it, but if anyone else can give it a good home, let me know. I don't want it to go to the dump.

[Edit: it is safe and sound in a new home.]

- RG>

And you already thought I was sick...

2010-12-09T13:40:00.004-05:00

I didn't find my phone, and ended up spending the better part of two days switching over from Bell to one of the new carriers.

(The main hitch with the transition was that my address with Bell was a PO box, buit the new provider's form required a street number, so the records didn't match. After waiting on hold for half an hour, I got in touch with a upper-tier CSR who found a solution and waited while I called Bell to implement it. To Bell's credit, they were prompt and polite when I called to switch--and effectively cancel--my account)

I've gotten another BlackBerry after having experimented previously with alternatives, and because I'd be able to restore my backup from my previous phone (even though my most recent backup was a month old and so all of my current schedule had to be rebuilt from my emails and memory, which typically is the other way around)

Like previously, I don't have a data plan, but my new phone has wifi, which occasionally works (consistently at home and work--you know, where I usually have a computer on--but not at hotspots. My phone kept rebooting itself whenever I tried to use the Royal Oak's hotspot at lunch yesterday). The upshot is that I'm typing this in bed on my BlackBerry, which I guess is kinda cool, if tedious.

The reason I'm in bed is that for various reasons--including, I suspect, pushing myself too hard--I have been sick this week. I took the day off to try to get some rest, and some Bell workers outside have been performing a life rendition of a "soothing Nature sounds" cassette, rendered in backhoes and jackhammers.

Vengeance for switching providers, I guess.

Now to head off to work to catch up on my self-destruction.

- RG>

City Council governance notes

2010-12-05T13:05:00.004-05:00

There are a whole bunch of governance-related recommendations to City Council, including a number of additional reports linked at the bottom of that 66-page one. These are recommendations like establishing a Transit Commission and a Board of Health, and restructuring City Committees and how they run their meetings.

I'm still going through it all, but there are a couple of interesting, sometimes ironic, elements:

- The report says the clerk's office spoke with outgoing members of council for their feedback on what to fix in the upcoming term, but not all incoming members. However, many mentions are made of discussions with the incoming mayor, but none with the outgoing one. (Probably a good thing--he's 'fixed' enough already!)

- For all the talk about creating a Transit commission, the only thing that will effectively change is that instead of being a committee of 9 Councillors, it will be 8 councillors and 3 citizen appointees. For all the desire for OC Transpo to be "fixed", the report talks a heck of a lot about how much won't change.

- The governance report expounds the City's goals of public input, yet the recommendations are not being heard at any Committee (including Committee of the Whole) where members of the public will be able to speak to any of these recommendations.

- Interestingly, the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation wants to add an additional community-member seat to its board, in order to allow retiring Councillor Peggy Feltmate to continue her activities. If I read things right, this will put the representation of councillors to non-councillors on the board at 50/50.

- The feedback from Advisory Committees includes recommendations from something referred to as "EDAC", without any references to the full name of the committee. Ironically, this is the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee, whose job it presumably would be to ensure that people can understand what's going on at City Hall.

- The Advisory Committee (AC) feedback document contains a lot of duplication, since each committee wrote them separately based on a joint meeting of AC chairs and vice-chairs. I'm pretty sure that these joint-AC initiatives were instigated by the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee, yet there is no feedback from that committee listed here.

- There is a draft petition policy, meaning that petitions you may have submitted to Council in the past had no official standing. The new policy comes with some pretty stringent standards:

Petition Requirements
The petition must be addressed to the City of Ottawa/ Ottawa City Council and request a particular action within the authority of Council.
Petitions must be legible, typewritten or printed in ink (no pencil)
The text of the petition must be listed at the top of each page for multiple-page petitions. Pages should be numbered and total number of pages indicated.
The petition must be appropriate and respectful in tone, and must not contain any improper or offensive language or information.
Each petitioner must print and sign his or her own name. A paper petition must contain original signatures only, written directly on the petition.
Each petitioner must provide his or her full address.
For electronic petitions, petitioners must provide name, address and a valid e-mail address.
The petition must clearly disclose on each page that it will be considered a public document at the City of Ottawa and that information contained in it may be subject to the scrutiny of the City and other members of the general public.
Submission of Petitions
Petitions containing original signatures should be sent to the attention of the City Clerk by mail or delivered in person to Ottawa City Hall or and City of Ottawa Client Service Centre.
Petitions may also be submitted to the Mayor or any member of City Council.
Electronic Petitions may be submitted electronically the attention of the City Clerk at petitions@ottawa.ca.
All petitions that meet the above standards will be presented to Council at its next regular meeting, or the meeting at which the subject of the petition is to be discussed.
Standing Committees cannot formally accept petitions. Petitions received at Standing Committees will be forwarded to the Clerk and presented to full Council at its next regular meeting, or the meeting at which the subject of the petition is to be discussed
Council has the discretion to accept the petition, and Council’s decision is final.

It's nice that they're accepting electronic petitions (easier to manage on their end, too!), but I wonder what happens to all the petitions that were started before this policy comes into force? Will this mean that petitions that would have previously been received (albeit without formal protocol) will be outright refused and can't even be submitted informally?

The report is a thorough, if dry, review of the City's existing and proposed governance structure. While I'd recommend it for people who participate in municipal affairs, I don't think it's required reading, unless you work in City Hall yourself. It's more of a theoretical framework than a practical guide of how you can participate. Read the main recommendations (summarized in bold at the beginning of the governance review document) and skim over the document for items of interest, including the attachments.

There are some curiosities, like the ones listed above, but for the most part it's housekeeping. Yes, things will change, but that's a given with any new mayor and council.

- RG>

Mayor Watson: Where are my Timbits?

2010-12-01T23:53:00.010-05:00

City Council's swearing-in ceremony was on the evening of December 1, 2010, held at Shenkman Arts Centre in Orléans. Much ado was made about Jim Watson's decision not to have it catered, but instead to get Tim Horton's to provide free snacks.

Since it wasn't open to the public, I made sure to take lots of photos. Here are some highlights of the night:

My one time going to the suburbs and our car got into a fender bender. Remarkably, the car that hit us from behind in stop-and-go traffic had two occupants. A rare suburban non-SOV.

Shenkman isn't that bad a place, once you get there and inside.

As I took a seat, I thought I passed our not-to-be-named former mayor. Thankfully it was just a decoy.

Sally Robinson on the piano accompanying the warm-up choir.

Look, two guys with turbans! The crowd is really representative of Ottawa's vibrant multicultural fabric! Just kidding, it was mostly white guys.

Ever wondered what it would be like for a perky, hyper children's entertainer like Marie Soleil to MC an inauguration ceremony? Neither did I, but we all found out anyway.

Singing cop was hella loud. Kudos for holding that last note and all, but it hurt my ears.

Great speech by Algonquin chief. "Welcome to our territory. We'll talk."

The official mayor's robe.

Philistines in the audience laughed at the soldier's ceremonial stomping as he delivered the Mayor's chain of office. (Seen here stomping after the about-face to exit.)

Councillors sworn in all at once. Four oaths total instead of 48 (two in each language).

Egli is pronounced Keith Egg-lye (as the MC pronounced it), not Egg-lee as I'd have guessed. Didn't get a chance to ask Hubley if MC's "Hubely" was correct. [Edit: it was, as time and the commenter below confirm.]

Couldn't photograph Doug Thompson. Reflection of his white hair oversaturated every attempt.

Musical Interlude with French folk singers/dancers dragging out their set with three (albeit catchy) songs. Rick Chiarelli shows his only sign of interest the whole night; otherwise was pouty.

Jim Watson is crazy mad about Katie Holmes. No, wait. He's angry. No, I think it's just the long exposure.

New trick: Point & Shoot camera + Tripod + Binoculars = half-decent telephoto shots.

See what I mean? Pouty. And this was when everybody was supposed to be singing along to "this little light of mine." Diane and Keith have the spirit.

Jan Harder's shoes were the talk of the evening.

David Chernushenko, Maria McRae, Katherine Hobbs applauding. Peter Clark slouched the whole night, blocking any decent photos of Diane Holmes.

Congratulations, class of 2010. Katherine Hobbs salutes you. Or she's saluting the lighting techs. Ironically, of course.

The refreshment table, provided by Tim Horton's. Those flat discs, by the way, are NOT timbits. I am disappointed that Jim Watson didn't live up to this promise. Aside from coffee, everything else was sugar-based. Sorry, diabetics!

Shenkman centre has a nifty art exhibit of metal fish made of tuna can lids (and similar materials). Tempting to add the treasure label to this post.

To be honest, this actually worked better as a venue than City Hall would have. City Hall isn't big enough for this many people, and these folks will be spending enough time there. As for the catering cut, I'm not a wine-and-cheese guy, but this was pretty chintzy. Note to visiting heads-of-state: Canada's Capital is B.Y.O.B.

Fuck! I lost my phone!

2010-12-01T17:00:00.003-05:00

I lost my phone today. I last saw it while I was at my office, or possibly when I was stopping over at home before a meeting at 1pm.

It's not in any of my pockets.

It's not in my panniers.

It's not at my office.

It's not a home.

It's not in a car, in a bar, on a train, or on a plane.

It might have fallen out of my pocket in a lane.

I guess this is my opportunity to switch from Bell, who are a bunch of fucks, though I'll stick with a Blackberry to avoid the poison apple.

My last backup was a month ago, though. Which is good that I backed up, but sucks that I've lost everything since then, as well as my unsaved voice notes (many!) and the microSD card in there.

I'm going to have a hell of a time retrieving my various scheduled events and reminders, because my phone is where I kept them. Also any contacts and memos-to-self that I added since the last backup.

And I'll have to do it quickly, because I've been invited to the swearing-in ceremony for Council, and I'm hungry for timbits.

- RG>

RG's Workshop: The 90-minute glove rack

2010-11-24T19:08:00.001-05:00

(note: I have added the label "Workshop" to the previous posts about stuff I've built, in addition to the "Treasure" label for discarded stuff I've found)

Last night, I got creative again. Like the pieces that became the "Three Hole Punch" that I talked about last December, gloves have outgrown my little basket for them and are in overabundance on my kitchen table. They could use a proper nesting place. At 10pm, it was already a bit late for woodworking projects, but I figured I could manage a quickie.

I'd already worked out roughly how I wanted to arrange them, and like the Three Hole Punch, it would be vertically, on the wall. I didn't have any spare dowelling (or broomstick, the trusty dowel substitute) handy, but I did have a bunch of narrow pieces of wood, which would actually work better for gloves, since they'd hold the gloves in the right orientation.

The first step was seeing how much wood I'd need. To do this, mount various gloves onto a scrap piece of similarly-sized wood and mark how far in it goes. This leather one didn't go in very far, but a couple others went further down on it.

The wood I use is from a the slats of a popular IKEA bedframe called "Lade", which I presume is pronounced "Lay-deh". This Lade is a queen. You can find these Lade slats on the curb often enough because the frames that hold them break, or the owner upgrades their bed.

As shown in the diagram on the label above, and in the photo below, the slats come strung together on a ribbon. It's not very difficult to remove the ribbon if you have the right tools. You might want to do it gently and slowly, but I prefer a more rough and vigorous approach, because it's faster and more satisfying.

Once the ribbon is removed, you can put the Lade slats on a rack and arrange them nice and tidily. Lade slats come in a variety of sizes, though the slats are the same size within each set. This stack has slats from two different size Lade sets, and the one in the previous picture was a third size somewhere between these two.

Finally at 10:25pm I began cutting. I ended up being able to get six 5" handles out of each 30" Lade board. Fitting the wood snugly in a mitre box, I first cut it into three 10" pieces with a 90 degree cut, then cut each of those into two with a 22.5 degree cut so that they would stick up slightly.

I next gauged the screws I would be using, by lining up the backboard and the handles to see how I should arrange the pieces to safely penetrate the Lade bits.

I used the wider Lade for the backboard and mounted pieces from the smaller Lade on top. I started with two in order to test the angle and separation with gloves on, and got them on at 10:40. I pre-drilled the holes through the backboard to avoid splitting, but just pushed into the bare wood for the handles with brute force.

The wider Lade was long enough to allow eight glove mounts, each three inches apart. Since I could only get six mounts from the smaller Lade, I had to get a second one to finish the job. I got all the pieces ready for screwing at 11:00pm. The square ends needed to be sanded vigorously to ensure a smooth insertion into the glove.

Finally, at 11:23pm, I got all the pieces assembled. The angle in this photo makes some of the slats look a bit crooked. (Yes, the camera angle...) I intentionally used a warped piece of wood for the mounts because I knew with the gloves on, nobody would be able to see how warped it is.

I have yet to decide on a mounting mechanism to get this glove rack on the wall (hence one hand in this picture), but that's a job for another day. I also have to stain it, but I need to be careful not to use a cheap stain--that's no way to treat a Lade.

Anyway, here it is, with the gloves on. Wave hello!

This rack only carries four pairs of gloves/mitts. I have many more for various purposes. I also carry a couple spare pairs in my bike bags to prepare for changes in weather when I'm out on the road, and I have a couple of backup pairs of gloves (like the lobster winter cycling gloves) at home for when my primary pair is misplaced, dirty, or wet. And of course I keep different sets of gloves handy for different seasons. Considering how easy it was to build this one, I think I'll build a second rack for my off-season gloves, too.

- RG>

Green Bin Blues

2010-11-22T13:35:00.004-05:00

The City announced this morning in a PSA that green bin pickup will be switching to bi-weekly. Starting immediately.

Unfortunately, this message came after the green bin pickup for my street. This morning, when I realized my almost-full green bin wasn't put out last night, I didn't rush out of the house to put it out, because I knew I would just be able to put it out next week. Other bins on my street were already picked up before I left for work this morning.

Yet this PSA was only posted on the City's website at noon today, hours after bins on our street had been picked up.

Residents using collection calendars B & D will not have Green Bin pickup during the week of November 29 to December 3.

Residents using collection calendars A & C will not have Green Bin pick up during the week of December 6 to 10.

Luckily I'm on calendar A, according to the Property Resport results when I search my address on emaps, so I'll be able to put it out after all. If I were on calendar B or D, my nearly-full bin would have had to accommodate two more weeks of material, on top of the stuff already in there after not putting it out this week.

For all the people the city's communications department hired in the last year, you'd think one of them would have a decent sense of timing.

- RG>

Santa Claus dances like a jerk

2010-11-22T00:14:00.004-05:00

This life-size dancing Santa Claus doll was at pho tonight, and presumably will be there until that pagan whatchamacallit day. It sings songs in French and dances. And as we noticed, its left hand moves somewhat... suggestively. The clacking sound the hand makes as it hits the belt buckle will certainly leave a lasting impression.

I won't be going on his lap anytime soon.

- RG>

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #11

2010-11-16T08:32:00.002-05:00

The man who hides his words is as much a coward as the one who hides his name.

Previous undefined period of time: 5 months, 27 days, 7h24

- RG>

Who the fuck designed the Dexter DVDs?

2010-11-12T22:35:00.002-05:00

So I'm watching the TV show Dexter, and being the good (and lazy) person that I am, I am doing so by renting the DVDs from my local video store, instead of downloading them illegally from the internet. I did the same thing for House, which was powerfully addictive. Once you get past the hokey acting, it's an interesting show that keeps you wanting to see what happens next.

I'm now at season 3 of Dexter, and there are some major issues with the way they designed the DVD.

First off, you get about thirty seconds of FBI warning and Showtime advertisement that you can't skip through.

Then you get some ad that thankfully you can skip through.

But then you have to sit through the animation/advertisement for the disc menu. In previous seasons, you could just click on the "disc menu" button and it would skip the animation. With season 3 (or at least disc 2), if you click the "disc menu" button in the middle of the animation, it takes you back to the beginning of the animation.

What a piece of garbage.

Then, when you finally get the episode started, it starts with a couple minutes of "previously, on Dexter" clips. Only I guess the producers don't realize I'm watching the fucking DVD. I know what happened previously and want to start seeing the next part of the story.

So I click the "next chapter" button. On the House DVDs, clicking "next chapter" at the beginning of the episode would take you to the start of the opening credits, and clicking a second time would take you to the end of the credits--the beginning of the episode. With season 3 of Dexter, if you click "next chapter" at the beginning of the episode, it skips the first few minutes of the actual episode.

What benefit do the producers think they gain by forcing me to first sit through adverisements for the show I just paid them to watch, and then not be able to conveniently access that content?

On top of this, the bonus features in the DVD suck monkey balls. There are promo episodes of miscellaneous TV shows that I can only assume sucked too badly to make it to air, then there are text biographies and photos of the cast with cludgy interfaces. LAaaaame.

I think for season 4 I'll just download the torrent. Lazy as I am, at least the DVD producers won't punish me anymore for acquiring their content legally.

- RG>

RG's guide to pedophilia

2010-11-11T10:56:00.004-05:00

Apparently somebody is selling a book on Amazon called "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct". It's making a lot of people angry.

No doubt it is. Quite the scam.

I've got my own Code of Conduct for people who want to have sex with children, which I'll share for free:

Step 1: Stay the fuck away from children
Step 2: Don't even think of it

I admit, it could use a bit of refinement. Maybe once a publisher accepts my guide, they can trim off the wordy bits, or maybe add a sequel: "repeat steps 1 and 2".

Until then, sorry, Amazon--you won't be making any money off this guide!

- RG>

Take Notice: there's a new street artist in town

2010-11-07T12:16:00.003-05:00

I saw these two "Take Notice" installations on street poles around Elgin and MacLaren yesterday:

Looks like Coyote has seen them, too. One is his picture of the day today.

Looks like Ottawa has a new street artist in the neighbourhood (or at least a new campaign by an old hand). I'm not sure if the images have a specific message, or if "take notice" is simply an instruction to the people who are so tuned out that they don't see these creative invaders as they walk or drive down the street.

Either way, I think it's a good message.

- RG>

Rats! The NCC does it again!

2010-11-04T00:05:00.000-04:00

The NCC took something out of Confederation Park.

No, it's not about the rat poison they took out, after putting it there to try to get rid of unwanted guests.

It's the shrubs they took out of the park in November 2008 to get rid of unwanted guests. Only there was no mention of rats at the time; they didn't like people sleeping in the park and leaving litter and clutter.

In that article, a man who used to sleep in the park said the park was kept clean by the homeless people who slept there. It sure makes sense--if you sleep someplace, you keep it clean. He says any litter was left by the people who pass through there.

Since the NCC didn't say anything about rats when they removed the bushes, I can only assume the rats arrived after they removed the shrubs--and the homeless residents. Maybe the homeless people were no longer there to keep it clean.

I can only wonder if the NCC brought about the rat infestation themselves by removing the shrubs that gave it housekeepers.

- RG>

Front-page funnies

2010-10-30T11:04:00.002-04:00

The Citizen has a feature article in the Saturday Observer section with a headline that made me laugh uncontrollably for a good couple of minutes this morning:

The fall and fall of Larry O'Brien

It's what it sounds like, a chronicle of Larry's political career, and the latest campaign. Which, like a Mr. Bean movie, is at times painrul and at times hilarious to watch (and sometimes both).

Here's a gem:

Five days before the election, O'Brien attended the book launch of Citizen columnist Randall Denley at the Heart and Crown on Preston Street. The place was crawling with journalists and politicians. He chatted for more than 20 minutes with Citizen reporter Gary Dimmock, whose stories led to O'Brien facing influence peddling trials. Why were they chatting? Because the mayor didn't recognize Dimmock.

"Didn't you use to have a moustache?" he said after discovering Dimmock's identity.

Pity he didn't succeed in giving the city swagger. I think swagger is a good thing, and one of these days I'll actually write out my thoughts on that.

On the bright side, thanks to this article, I don't think anybody will need to suffer through reading the book Larry promises to write.

- RG>

RG the master Lego architect

2010-10-26T12:27:00.007-04:00

This is the Falkirk Wheel. I helped design it.

Photograph of the Falkirk Wheel, 2004, by Sean McClean, who likes to save photos in a license that requires me to write his name here

At least, according to the Wikipedia article on the Falkirk Wheel.

Of course, it doesn't say that directly, and I've never been to the UK (especially not as far back as 1994), but then again...

After the above image was featured on Wikipedia's main page a few years ago, I read up on the Falkirk Wheel, and scratched my head a bit while I figured out how the caissons (the water-filled containers that hold the boats) stay level.

I eventually figured it out, but discovered that I wasn't the only one. In January of 2007, I wrote up an explanation of how these gears work on my user talk page, from first principles, using Lego Technic gears. Someone then added a link to this explanation to the Falkirk Wheel article.

Photograph of a Lego model of the Falkirk Wheel, 2007, by RealGrouchy, an awesome guy who marks all the photos he uploads to Wikipedia with a Public Domain license so as not to have to bother himself or others with copyright issues (but who retains copyright on his other photos in order to reserve his right to be a prick to those who reproduce them without his permission).

Fast forward three years to February of 2007, when some wank at the BBC writes a fluff piece about Lego, writing erroneously (as newspeople often do) that the designer of the Falkirk Wheel used Lego in the design process. The offending bit has since been removed from the article, and apparently there was also a video (presumably the one on which the article is based, if the BBC works like the CBC) which either was removed or just isn't playing on my browser.

Anyway, that article was then referenced by this guy as a source when he added to the Wikipedia article the claim that "Lego was utilised in the design process to establish how to keep the caissons level whilst the wheel is turning."

Since, as Stephen Colbert tells us, reality is what the wiki says it is, the Falkirk Wheel was designed using Lego, and since I created the Lego model in question, therefore, I must have designed the Falkirk Wheel.

Nice work, if I say so myself.

- RG>

Election 2010: Score one for the white guys

2010-10-25T23:48:00.000-04:00

With women comprising a whopping sixteen percent of the 130 candidates in Ottawa's municipal election, the old boys' club at City Hall was definitely in for a scare.

Luckily, of the retiring and ousted candidates (all white men themselves), all were replaced by white men, except Christine Leadman, who was replaced by Katherine Hobbs. This includes outgoing Kanata-South Councillor, Peggy Feltmate, whose seat was taken up by Allan Hubley. Not all of them have grey hair, but that will come with enough time at City Hall.

Outgoing council had 7 women; the incoming one will have 6, so I guess score one for the white guys.

- RG>

Error: Friday not found

2010-10-21T00:05:00.005-04:00

A childhood friend of mine, with whom I still get together regularly, only just figured out one of my tricks last week when he had me over for Vegan Lesbian Thanksgiving. "You're just putting together random words [that don't make sense], aren't you?" he asked, after something I said hurt his brain.

Well, close. It's actually a bit of an art--hacking the brain--to put together a combination of words whose meaning is truly ambiguous, and not simply silly or wrong. It's easy to take a common expression and toss a "not" in front of it, and people will understand what you're saying, find it doesn't flow well, think you unoriginal, then go right on disagreeing with you. If you instead create a puzzle whose pieces cannot fit, those who try to piece it together stumble because they can't.

As a case study, take the expression "Thank Goodness It's Friday". I never bought the claim that the "G" in "TGIF" meant anything but "God". As a stubborn Atheist, this is one of the reasons I don't use the expression in any form.

The easy way out is simply to rearrange the words to say something cheesy like "Good Thing It's Friday", which is at least unambiguous that the G doesn't stand for "God". But the people who do this are the same people who refer to Christmas as "Holiday"--it's a copout.

Really, in satire, you've got to really make a go for it--don't just use a cheap euphemism. If you're going to bastardize a well-known acronym, don't just try to say the same old thing while politely avoiding the parts you don't like; say something that doesn't make a damn bit of sense--but sounds like it should.

Therefore, I present to you the new slogan for Thursdays (sic):

GTIF: God Thinks It's Friday

Think about all the things this might mean, none of which stands out from the others: What does this mean? If you said this because you were offended by TGIF, surely you'd have taken the "God" out of it? Am I sure I heard you right--you didn't just say "Good Thing It's Friday," did you? And what do you mean that God thinks it's Friday--surely God knows damn well what day it is! Or are you just trying to tell me you won't be coming in to work tomorrow? Does it mean that God is optimistic? or just wrong? If you're trying to say "God is wrong", it sure is a roundabout way of getting your point across...

It's the logical equivalent of smoke bomb: use it to make your escape from an uncomfortable argument while your opponent's brain is occupied trying to figure it out. There's a certain type of person that is unable to move on until they've figured out this type of puzzle. If your adversary isn't this type of person, they'll act like they understood what you just said, or at least ignore it. In that case, it's usually safe to assume they won't notice you just walking away either.

For other logical brain-hacks, pore through the archives of NotAlwaysRight.com (H/T Loth). Especially the ones where the last line is "What???" That's the response you're looking for.

- RG>

Larry O'Brien is right

2010-10-16T22:34:00.003-04:00

According to the Citizen, Mayor Larry O'Brien says the race isn't over yet.

He's right. He hasn't lost it yet. I wonder if he's looking forward to him losing as much as I am.

He's already admitted the first two years of his term were bad. Help remind him the last two years weren't very good either (remember 2009? Bus strike? His trial?).

If you haven't already voted, make sure to vote on October 25 for someone who's not Larry O'Brien. It'll mean that much to him.

- RG>

A RealSherlock in the making

2010-10-15T18:42:00.000-04:00

Sitting at Bridgehead this evening, I noticed something a little...different.

Working on a hunch, I texted my friend:

RG: "Did Umi close or something?? There's all sorts of hippies in my coffeeshop today."

My friend, who lives near Umi Café, promptly confirmed that the worker collective-operated coffeeshop at Somerset and Percy had been "bought out" by the Korean restaurant next door. As of yet they haven't updated their website.

Be on the look out for drum circles as Umi's clientele disperses throughout the city. (That link courtesy of today being National Grouch Day)

In related news, Exile Infoshop also closed their permanent location recently, after a three-year run. They're still active, just without a physical space (which took a lot of their time, energy and money to keep open).

- RG>

National Grouch Day required reading: the Oatmeal

2010-10-15T00:00:00.001-04:00

October 15 is National Grouch Day (as far as I'm concerned, at least), which I try to acknowledge on the blog.

I'm still quite fond of last year's National Grouch Day entry, 15 ways to celebrate National Grouch Day, so instead of trying to top it, I'll recommend you some other grouchy content.

If you haven't been before, head on over to The Oatmeal. Sticklers for clear, unobstructed communication will appreciate his cartoon-like rants. Like the recent entry, If you do this in an e-mail, I hate you, which displays caricatures of egregious e-mail faux-pas. Or another social error, misuse of the word literally in conversation.

The Oatmeal also has helpful tips about grammar. Helpful, that is, for those of us who are tired of always having to point out these errors. Some examples:

How to use i.e.
How to use a semicolon (Note: I used a colon twice in this paragraph; in neither instance would a semicolon be appropriate!)
10 words you need to stop misspelling, and, of course,
How to use an apostrophe

The whole website is written, designed and coded by a fellow named Matthew Inman. Being a web designer, he has assembled a repertoire of tips and commentary about that field. For example, he has a list of 8 websites you need to stop building, he explains why printers were sent from hell, and provides sound advice on why it's better to pretend you don't know anything about computers.

While much of his work is bitching about various things, there are some other less hostile pieces that are nevertheless enjoyable. Things like Why Captain Higgins is [his] favourite parasitic ringworm, 10 reasons it would rule to date a unicorn, and 20 things worth knowing about beer.

So check it out, subscribe to his RSS or Twitter feed, and maybe buy some of his shit to keep him chained to his desk producing funny pictures for our enjoyment.

And in honour of National Grouch day, if you find his site to be an unentertaining waste of time, please fuck off. :)

- RG>

Grammar Nazi's Beware

2010-10-09T15:38:00.004-04:00

Jim Watson's prospects for mayor are slipping; I found this in the Centretown News:

I might just have to vote for Clive.

- RG>

Only for hip, urban, planners

2010-09-24T20:06:00.003-04:00

I'd heard the term "forced road" used in City Hall transportation meetings before. Since it was in the context of "Goulbourn forced road"--i.e. someplace I didn't expect to find myself anywhere soon--I didn't pay the term too much attention.

Then the other day I heard a more recent--and local--reference to the term regarding Richmond Road. I looked it up, and didn't find it in any online dictionary.

I did a google search and had to dig around. Apparently it's primarily a Canadian/Ontario term.

I was quite pleased with myself when the definition I provided was accepted by Urban Dictionary.

I was even more amused by the mugs, t-shirts, coasters and other "forced road" souvenirs you can buy. They have an interesting software that displays the word and definition on the product as though it were a picture, with the text curving with the folds.

Not sure what a forced road actually is? Duh, look it up!

- RG>

The next HUGE internet fad...

2010-09-23T18:13:00.005-04:00

As regular followers of my blog know, I can sometimes write out rather long, drawn out posts. I sure as hell don't want to start twittering.

In a Slashdot conversation on the horrors of redirects and URL shorteners (like TinyURL and bit.ly), someone posted a link to HugeURL.

This, I think, is just what this blog needs. No more having to remember a difficult address like "http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com".

From now on, all you have to do to get to this blog is enter this link into your browser:

http://www.hugeurl.com/?MTU0MThlZmMyZmEwYmVhYTNhMmM0ODEwNjdm ZWFlYzMmMTQmVm0wd2QyUXlVWGxWV0d4V1YwZD RXRmxVU205V01WbDNXa2M1VjFac2JETlhhMk0x WVd4S2MxZHFRbFZXYkhCUVZqQmFZV015U2tWVW JHaG9UVlZ3VlZadGNFZFpWMDE1VTJ0V1ZXSkhh RzlVVjNOM1pVWmFjVkZ0UmxSTmF6RTFWVEowVj FaWFNraGhSemxWVm0xb1JGWldXbUZrUjFaSFYy MTRVMkpIZHpGV2EyUXdZekpHYzFOdVVtaFNlbX hXVm1wT1QwMHhjRlpYYlVaclVqQTFSMXBGV2xO VWJGcFZWbXR3VjJKVVJYZFpWRVpyVTBaT2NscE hjRlJTVlhCWlZrWldZV1F4VGtkVmJGWlRZbFZh Y1ZadGRHRk5SbFowWlVaT1ZXSlZXVEpWYkZKSF ZqRmFSbUl6WkZkaGExcG9WakJhVDJOdFNrZFRi V3hUVFcxb1dsWXhaRFJpTWtsM1RVaG9XR0pIVW xsWmJGWmhZMnhXYzFWclpGaGlSM1F6VjJ0U1Ux WnJNWEpqUld4aFUwaENTRlpxU2tabFZsWlpXa1 p3VjFKV2NIbFdWRUpoVkRKT2MyTkZhR3BTYkVw VVZteG9RMWRzV25KWGJHUm9UVlpXTlZaWE5VOW hiRXAwVld4c1dtSkdXbWhaTVZwelkyeGtkRkp0 ZUZkaVZrbzFWbXBKTVdFeFdYZE5WVlpUWVRGd1 YxbHJXa3RTUmxweFVWaG9hMVpzV2pGV01uaGhZ VWRGZUdOR2JGaGhNVnBvVmtSS1QyUkdUbkphUm xKcFZqTm9XVlpYY0U5aU1XUkhWMjVTVGxOSFVu TlZha0p6VGtaVmVXUkhkR2hXYXpWSFZqSjRVMW R0U2toaFJsSlhUVlp3V0ZreFdrdGpiVkpIVld4 a2FWSnRPVE5XTW5oWFlqSkZlRmRZWkU1V1ZscF VXVlJHZDFkR2JISmFSemxxWWtad2VGVXlkR0Zp UmxwelYyeHdXR0V4Y0hKWlZXUkdaVWRPUjJGR2 FHbFNia0p2Vm10U1MxUXlUWGxVYTFwb1VqTkNW RmxZY0ZkWFZscFlZMFU1YVUxcmJEUldNalZUVk d4a1NGVnNXbFZXYkhCWVZHdGFXbVZIUmtoUFYy aHBVbGhDV1ZacVNqUlZNV1IwVTJ0a1dHSlhhR0 ZVVmxwM1lVWndSbHBGT1U5aVJYQXdXbFZhVDJG V1RrWlRiVVpYVFc1b1dGbFhjekZYUmtweVdrWm 9hV0Y2Vm5oV1ZFSnZVVEZzVjJKR2FHcGxhMXB4 V1d0YWQyVkdWblJOVldSVlRXdHdSMWt3V25kWF IwVjRZMFJPV21FeVVrZGFWV1JQVTBkR1IyRkhi Rk5pYTBwMlZtMTBVMU14VVhsVmEyUlZZbXR3YU ZWdGVFdGpSbHB4VTIwNWJHSkhVbGxhVldNMVlW VXhjbUpFVWxkTmFsWlVWa2Q0YTFOR1ZuTlhiRl pYWWtoQ1dWWkhkR0ZXYlZaSVVtdG9VRll5YUhC VmJHaERUbXhrVlZGdFJtcE5WMUl3VlRKMGExZE hTbGhoUm1oYVZrVmFNMVpyV21GalZrcDFXa1pP VGxacmNEVldSM2hoVkRKR1YxTnVVbEJXUlRWWV dWUkdkMkZHYkhGVGExcHNWbXR3ZVZkcldtOWhW MFkyVm01b1YxWkZTblpWVkVaelZqRldjMWRzYU dsaVZrcFFWa1phWVdReVZrZFdibEpPVmxkU1Zs UlhkSGRTTVd0M1YyNWtXRkl3VmpSWk1HaExWMn hhV0ZWclpHRldWMUpRVlRCa1IxSXlSa2hpUms1 cFlUQndNbFp0ZUc5a01VMTRWVmhvV0ZkSGFIRl ZiR1EwVm14c2NsZHRSbXBTYkhCNFZrY3dOV0V5 U2tkalJXaFhZbFJCTVZaWGMzaFhSbFoxWTBaa1 RsWXlhREpXTVZwaFV6RktjMVJ1VWxCV2JGcFlW RlJHUzA1c1draGtSMFpYWWxaYVdWWlhkRzloTV VwMFZXNUNWMkpIYUVSVWJYaGhWbFpPVlZKc1Zr NVdia0YzVmxjd01WTXhVWGhYYms1VVlrZG9WbF p0ZUhkTk1WbDNWMjVLYkZKdFVubFhhMXByVmpK RmVsRnFXbGRoTWxJMlZGWmFhMUl4VG5OWGJYQl RWak5vV1ZkV1pEQmtiVkY0WWtab2FtVnJXbGhV Vm1SVFpXeHNWbGRzVG1oV2EzQXhWVmMxYjFZeF dYcGhTRXBhWVd0YWVsWnFTa3RTTWtaSVkwZDRh RTFZUWpSV01XUXdXVmRSZVZaclpGZFhSM2h5Vl dwQ1lXTkdWblJsU0dSc1lrWnNOVnBWYUd0WFJr bDNWbXBTV2sxR1NsQldNbmhoVjBaV2NscEhSbG RXTVVwUlZsZHdTMU14U1hoalJXUmhVbFJXVDFW c2FFTlRNVnB4VW0xR1ZrMVZNVFJXVm1oelZsWm tTR0ZJUmxaaVIxRXdWbTE0YzJOc1pIVmFSM0JU WWtoQ05GWlVTWGRPVjBwSVUydG9WbUpIZUdoVm JHUlRVMFpzVlZGWWFHcGlWWEJHVmxkNGExUnNX WGxoUkVwWFRWWndhRlY2Umt0ak1WSjFWV3hPYV ZJeFNuZFdha0pyWW0xV2MxZHJaRmRpVlZwaFZt cEdTMU5XV2xoa1J6bG9UVlZ3TUZaWE5VTldNa3 BJWVVWU1ZrMXVhSEpXYWtaaFpFVTVWMVpyTlZk aWEwa3hWbXRhWVZZeVJYaFhXR2hoVWxkb2IxVn FRbUZXYkZwMFpVaGtUazFXY0hsV01qRkhZV3hh Y21ORVFsWmlWRVYzVm1wS1MyTnNUbkppUm1ST1 lteEtlVmRZY0VkV2JWRjNUVlZzYVZJd1duTlpW RVozVjFaa1dHVkhPVkpOVmtwSVZsZDRZVmxXU2 xkalNFNVdZbFJHVkZZeWVITmpiR1J6Vkcxb1Ux WkZXalpXVkVreFlqRlplRmRZY0doU01taG9WV3 RXWVZsV2NGWlhiWFJyVm14YU1GcFZXazlYUmtw eVkwWndWMkV4Y0doWFZscHpWakZTY2xwR1pHbG hlbFpZVjFjeGVrMVdXWGhYYmxKc1VqQmFXRmxy V2t0V01WcFlUbFYwVmxac1dsWlVWVkp5VUZFOV BRPT0= (all one word)

You're welcome.

- RG>

Larry O'Brien signs on

2010-09-16T20:44:00.005-04:00

Ottawa Sun columnist/blogger Sue Sherring notes a Larry O'Brien campaign sign on a lawn on Baseline Road, despite claiming to not use campaign signs this time around. (Protip: if riding/walking/driving on Baseline gets you down, try pronouncing it like "Vaseline")

I noticed this Larry O'Brien sign up on a balcony of the Bell Street apartments on in early August. They (or two very similar signs) were on the balcony of one of the houses across the street a few days prior.

Tough call. On the one hand, it gives him exposure. On the other hand, it associates him with a major downtown eyesore.

- RG>

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak is a road hazard

2010-09-15T17:12:00.002-04:00

In this article, Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak says, of Premier Dalton McGuinty:

"He wanted to pull cellphones out of cars and now he wants to allow them in the classrooms. I just don't see any consistency in that thinking."

Guess what, Tim: you can't run someone over while sitting in a classroom. Maybe you didn't see that because you were too busy texting.

But then in politics, you don't have to make any sense, you just have to claim the other guy doesn't.

- RG>

It takes a douche to know one...

2010-08-25T21:36:00.000-04:00

Did you hear the one about the porn store told to take down their sandwich board? Wilde's, on Bank at Gilmour, was paid a visit by a by-law officer because the sign out front of his store was apparently 'offensive'. Turns out seeing the sign reminds somebody of a bad childhood experience, and that somebody wants by-law officers to censor it.

So what's the sign a picture of? An older man eyeing a young boy? Some crazy BDSM nightmare fetish? A big white van (which would trouble him if he's an asthmatic like me, because it would remind him of the onset of rampant gas-guzzlers, prior to which air was fresh)?

Nope. No picture at all, just words. You can read them yourself, all you have to do is list the bristol board cover that says "This covered sign has been Censored by the City of Ottawa ANAL By-law #2004-239."

And lift it is what a number of people did when I was in the area recently. Young couples, middle-age couples, individuals. Universally, they read the sign and had a giggle:

"Put a smile in your ass with our anal douches :*)"

Of course, the by-law officers mindlessly followed this guy's complaint--you know, 'just doing their job to enforce by-laws'--and forced Wilde's owner, Robert Giacobbi, to cover the sign.

Of course, had they really been doing their job, they would have noticed the boobies on display across the street at Wicked Wanda's. (Then again, maybe they did notice, but aren't quite so hard on Wanda)

Quoted in Capital Xtra, the complainer, Richard Cormier, says that "children don't have to see that."

Also on the list of things children don't have to see is grown adults breaking shop windows to keep them from speaking freely. Which must be why Cormier smashed the window in the middle of night, while children are asleep.

Now if only we can get them to stop advertising those white vans...

- RG>

I'm poor again (but not for long!)

2010-08-08T03:22:00.005-04:00

I recently got a new job, which pays considerably more than my old one (I wanted to link to the comment I left on someone's blog sometime about all the things that were good about my previous job, but I can't find it). The main downside is that it's full-time, whereas the old one was flexible part-time.

The upshot is that by making more money, I'm no longer poor, at least until the term is up at the end of next July. I'll have lots of time to save up between now and then.

I'm not entirely sure exactly what the after-tax income will be, as I haven't yet had a complete pay period. I do know that It's a lot more than what I was making before, which was nearly enough to live comfortably. Being unable to budget for a new high-falutin' lifestyle, I've kept to my old, miserly ways.

Except for the laptop I just ordered online.

I figured it was time, since my laptop is breaking again (the sound is going and I don't feel like taking it apart and re-soldering it again, the replacement battery I bought isn't hold its charge as long as it used to, and the SD card reader remains broken). I had also wanted to buy a spare AC adapter, keyboard/mouse, and replace the battery again, and since I'd been planning on getting a new laptop soon anyway, now was as good a time as any. This one has served me well enough, and this way I can give it to a friend who has had to computer-surf (using other people's computers, as in couchsurfing) since her computer died.

The outgoing laptop's a Dell Vostro 1000 that I bought in September 2007. I chose once again to go with Dell--this time a Latitude E5500--because I like:

The many ways Dell lets you customize your machine (choose the "small business" option ALWAYS!)

I can still get it with Windows XP

I've been able to buy replacement parts for my old laptop at reasonable prices (this time I've gone for 3-year full hardware support since I can afford it upfront)

The online repair documentation is thorough

Many of Dell's business laptops have minimal amounts of crapware/bloatware (this was the advertised feature that first attracted me to the Vostro, is what turned me off this time to the XPS, and appears to still apply to the Latitude)

it comes with 4 USB slots, not two like so many other laptops (or only one, like the MacBook Air!), plus an SD card slot

the new laptop will come with a clit mouse. I haven't had one of those since my old IBM ThinkPad, three laptops ago.

Not all the after-market money I spent on the Vostro is lost, either: I had bought a 500GB hard drive to replace the 120GB one that came with it and filled with photos (did you know that computer stores can copy the drive's content to a new drive, so you don't have to reinstall Windows and all your programs? So convenient!). I can swap the 120GB drive back and use the 500GB in my new lappy.

Since I haven't been spending much more than I did before the new job, this purchase will delay my plans to pad up my savings. On the bright side, it also means no more impulse buys for at least a couple pay periods. Which means I'm poor again, but not for long!

- RG>

Robin, Robin, where are you?

2010-08-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

Ottawa photoblogger extraordinaire Robin Kelsey has been having troubles with his blog recently. Yesterday he couldn't access it from home, and today I notice that it says "This Account Has Been Suspended" (Curious that it doesn't say who the account is with, and the URL gives no hints). The RSS feed still appears to work, as I can see that the entry "Skull" was added 16 hours ago.

Anyhoo, since you can't leave comments on a page that's down, so I thought I'd put up a message here at my place. Hope things get sorted out soon, Robin!

- RG>

BBC Rail Safety applies to cyclists, too

2010-07-24T13:43:00.004-04:00

BBC show Top Gear's host Jeremy Clarkson has an important safety message about level train crossings:

Of course, this life-saving lesson applies to cyclists and pedestrians, too. If you're going to ride the wrong way across a bus route or walk across a restricted-access freeway, always wear a helmet and high-visibility jacket.

- RG>

Summer e-mail catch-up

2010-07-13T00:56:00.002-04:00

I think the reason I was getting the doldrums last September was because normal people tend to take vacation over July and August, so e-mails slow down in general. The corollary to this is that they pick back up again in September.

I'm rather glad I wrote that post, if for nothing else than to know that at the time I had about 650-660 unread e-mails in my inbox, and ten months on I've whittled it down to 620, only a handful of which are less than a month old. My gmail space usage has also increased to over 50% of capacity (from 35% in September 2009), presumably from a larger number of attachments. (Curse Gmail for not letting you delete e-mail attachments!!!)

I could probably even get it down further if I looked at the older ones and archived or deleted the messages that are definitely no longer relevant, but at a glance, all the ones on the first page of 50 are things I'd still like to attend to (reading reports, filing files, reminding me to post stuff on websites, etc.)

The important thing is seeing that 620 number being lower than what it was before. It means progress.

- RG>

Step 1: Make a list

2010-07-03T22:53:00.004-04:00

1. Allison has a list for this weekend. She blogged about it.

2. XUP also had a post on lists a while back. It was long enough ago that I've decided I'm too lazy to look it up.

3. I use many lists of various kinds to organize myself. They are helpful to keep from forgetting things.

4. Seeing many items crossed off your to-do list can give you a great sense of accomplishment.; electronic to-do lists are bummers because you only see the items you haven't yet completed.

5. Reusable checklists are also useful, to track processes that you are likely to repeat...:
a) ...frequently, because you're more likely to use it
b) ...infrequently, because you're more likely to need it

6. If you have a lot of things to do in a short period, like things to get during lunch hour or places to go on Saturday, number the items in the order in which you plan to do them. Put your list on your handlebar-mounted clipboard to track your progress.

7. Be realistic. If you have too many things to do for the time available, put a section at the end of the list for things (both pleasurable and painful) to not do. At the end of the day, feel good for having not done the ALL things on your to-not-do list. (I just discovered this today and it works great!)

H. Sherman's Lagoon had a really funny Sunday strip a few years back about lists, which I can't find online anywhere. Probably 2004 or 2005ish. I cut it out and gave it to my dad, which I think is lost. Hawthorne (the crab) was telling Sherman (the shark) about how useful his list is.

8. Among the gems in the strip was the line (paraphrased from memory), "and if you do something that isn't on the list, you can put it on the list and strike it out!" And the punch line:
a) Sherman: "Wow. I need a list."
b) Hawthorne: "Here, take mine!"

9. I lost my list once. It made me quite...distraught. (You thought I was going to say "listless", didn't you? That would have been too easy.)

10. Lists only work if you remember to consult them. This is what differentiates "list people" and non list people.

11. Lists are generally non-transferrable. Even for highly organized people, everyone uses and understands lists differently.

12. You can make a quasi-list from technologies not traditionally list based, for example:
a) Leaving messages unread or starred in your inbox;
b) Writing draft blog posts;
c) Stacking your unpaid bills;
d) Leaving tabs open in a browser

13. Similarly, when I remove my shirt at the end of the day (and it's still clean), I hang it in the closet to the left of all the other shirts. Over time, this creates a quasi-list of shirts I've worn, from most to least recently.

14. I like to use lists as insurance against forgetfulness. I think I might have said that already. See items 3 and 10.

15. Fifteen is about the most things you should have on any given list. Ten is popular, but fifteen is the maximum. Mmmmm... fifteeny

- RG>

Vietnam Noodle House: the last supper

2010-05-30T20:32:00.008-04:00

Tonight at our weekly dinner, the Human Powered Vehicle Operators of Ottawa (HPVOoO), the local gang of people who ride crazy, fun, kustom, and otherwise interesting bikes, were informed that the Vietnam Noodle House was closing after tonight.

We've been coming here since it opened in 2004, every Sunday, plus Mondays on long weekends, making it over 300 dinners there.

It's located at Humphrey Plaza (the name of which I only discovered last December), at Somerset and Arthur, in the lower level. For reference, that's the same block as the Yangtze.

One of the things we liked about it was it was spacious. We had previously alternated between Istanbouli shawarma place (on Richmond Road near Island Park Drive, which has since moved to Holland Avenue) and Pho Thu Do on Somerset, which was far too small, didn't have vegetarian options, and aside from that had very little variety. (Some say they preferred the pho there, though.)

Another thing I enjoy about the weekly HPVOoO dinners is that they're very anarchistic. Whoever shows up, shows up. Some people show up late, some early. Some weeks there are lots of people, some weeks there are only a handful. I've been there nearly every week, though I don't take photos every week. On this night in early June 2006, there were about two dozen people, including some leaving and others taking their spot. We could build various permutations of tables to suit the attendance.

There was also ample bike parking, both inside and outside.

More recently (and I have no idea if that is months or years), they'd turn the tables down the middle for us every Sunday, and we'd extend it as long as necessary. We regularly get 8-12 people. The guy with the blue collared shirt is one of the servers.

Grant and Mike Watson also come out. Mike built the bike I ride, and often brings new creations of his to showcase. Grant is... let's say he's taught me a few things about how to successfully annoy people (randomly telling someone "you don't know that!" in a conversation, for example). Our weekly dinners, and by extension the VNH, is also a prime distribution hub for Momentum magazine in Ottawa.

Tonight, this was the Last Supper. While they gave us free spring rolls and shakes, it was still a very sad and depressing end to an otherwise very fun weekend.

Goodbye, Vietnam Noodle House. We'll miss you!

The hunt is on for a new affordable, family-friendly, vegetarian-optional, spacious, central, bike-friendly weekly hangout.

- RG>

RG's Workshop: How can you mend a broken Swap Box?

2010-05-27T00:07:00.006-04:00

A month or so ago, I was talking to one of the folks at the Bytown Museum, who was telling me about their upcoming exhibit, Evocative Objects. It's loosely tied to the Capital Neighbourhoods project, and involves everyday-type objects that have a lot of story in them.

I immediately thought that a swap box would fit right in to this concept, and I knew exactly where to get my hands on one. The museum folks were interested.

For those who prefer to read books or text while walking blindly around the city, a swap box is a form of interactive public art, a box placed in a public location just below eye level, from which you are encouraged to take something from it, and leave something in return. Not only are they fun, but they save lives, too.

Anyway, this one was broken. After getting it from Woodsy, I needed to fix it. Wouldn't be my first time fixing one.

Here's the patient. Found torn from its roost, broken in half, with only one nail holding its front on.

It would need to be glued together, which means it would need to be held together while the glue sets. I don't have any clamps big enough for that, so I'd better figure that out first. Right up there with Swiss Army knives, duct tape, and binder clips in terms of utility are used inner tubes. I tied one around the box:

Looked pretty good. Closed the seam up pretty well, without completely hiding it (satisfying Woodsy's primary condition of letting me fix it)

Unfortunately, it didn't hold the back side together too well; the crack was being pulled open on the backside. Time for more troubleshooting.

My next attempt was definitely a longer shot. These pegs are from my mitre box, and I had drilled holes in a piece of two-by-three to peg them into. Unfortunately, I also didn't have the right diameter drill bit, and the holes were too big and the pegs didn't stick out straight. I then tried holding the top ends of the pegs together with the piece of innertube, also unsuccessfully.

Perturbed but not defeated, I tried again, and realized I could drill the holes all the way through the wood and thread the innertube through it.

A bit of a two-steps-forward-one-step-back approach, but it worked. Both the front and back were straight and tight when I tied off the innertube behind the block. The tapered edges of the swap box allowed me to tighten or loosen the makeshift clamp by moving it up or down the box.

I then applied glue, nailed the box part of it together, and re-clamped it.

The wood block held the back side straight.

The next morning, it was nice and sturdy, especially with the box nailed back together. I sent it off to the museum with some goodies to 'seed' the swap box with. The binder clips were just obligatory. Shit, I should have taken a second look at that golf pencil before tossing it in; it was from a hotel I stayed at in Beijing.

Mounting it was difficult because the upper screw holes were broken off. At the same time, you can't just loosely hang a swap box on a wall, because people are going to be poking around in it. The museum staff did an excellent job of mounting it, right across from the Evocative Objects exhibition on the second floor. And in true Swap Box form, it was mounted without any identifying plaque--people have to discover it for themselves.

The Bytown Museum is funded mostly by the City of Ottawa, yet a significant majority of its patrons are from out of town. More locals need to visit; it's a great trove of Ottawa's history.

This means you!

Lansdowne Consultation Fail

2010-05-21T02:22:00.005-04:00

My calendar today listed the Lansdowne Park open house at City Hall from 10am to 8pm.

So when I got there around 1pm and saw an empty display area, I was confused. As I walked back to my office, I called 3-1-1 to find out when the open house was to be. After a couple minutes of waiting on hold while he searched various e-mails and websites in vain, I gave up and decided I'd have better luck calling my councillor's office (no answer, I didn't bother leaving a message).

As I got back to my office, my boss, who actually listens to the radio, said that there was a press conference at 3pm, so presumably the consultation would be from 3pm to 8pm. Back I went to City hall, a couple minutes before 5pm.

The boards were on display, sure, but there were no City Staff there to helpfully explain what the hell we were supposed to be doing there as part of this alleged consultation. In a move that would make Douglas Adams say "I told you so", the display was behind curtains, and you had to go through another group's event to get to it. (The curtains in the photo below are located where the entrance to the hall is usually placed. On the other side is the main corridor.)

I complained to the only person who looked like she worked there, who said that the event people were to be coming by soon to remove the boards. Meanwhile, I checked out the table of photocopied take-home materials, of which the English copies were all gone, but for some small pads of paper on which was written a website address where you can go to submit comments (great if you have internet access, which many people still do not).

Someone I know arrived around 5pm, which was apparently the time they were telling people on the radio to come on down to check it out. Poor choice of timing, because that's when they were taking the displays out of Jean Piggott Hall. People were astonished when they finished reading one display that the next one was no longer there.

I happened back a couple hours later and the displays were in the rotunda. This time, I didn't see any paperwork for people to take. It looks like the only way to provide input is through a form on the City's website. Learn from my error: save a copy of your comments and make sure cookies are enabled in your browser before you click "submit". If you don't have Internet access and you want to submit comments to this consultation process, go sit on your thumb (not quite the City's words, but it seems to be in line with their message).

On a related note, Designing Ottawa, the blog of Ottawa Citizen writer Maria Cook, hasn't published in over two weeks. She's traditionally followed the Lansdowne Park issue very closely, and it's surprising she hasn't posted anything on this latest leg.

I e-mailed her about the silence and she gave me the one-line reply, "The Citizen is in the process of reviewing our blog strategy and I'm concentrating on in-paper content in the meantime," which I don't for a minute believe is a complete answer. Gray and Gardner are both still blogging daily. David Reevely is even blogging about Lansdowne Park. But none of them gave as much coverage to the anti-Lansdowne Live people as Maria Cook did, and it's hard to believe that there isn't a connection.

Greenberg and his crew keep saying that they want what's best for this city. I guess they figure ownership leads to stewardship.

- RG>

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #10

2010-05-20T01:08:00.000-04:00

I haven't done a Thought of the [undefined period of time] for quite a long time. So much so that when I started using labels I completely misapplied the Thoughts label (fixed). Most of them were from before Blogger even had labels.

I also hadn't posted them because I had typed out a few and lost track of them. I wanted to put them in chronological order and calculate the undefined period of time. Screw that. Here's a scanned one from 2005:

I sit on a lot of committees, and this rings true in every one.

Previous undefined period of time:
Time of thought since #8: 2 months, 5 days, 6h56.
Time of posting since #9: 4 years, 11 months, 16 days, 14h23

- RG>

Advancing to 2003

2010-05-10T17:16:00.000-04:00

So I did it. The Bell guy on the phone confirmed that my daytime usage is under the 200 minutes/month, so I can safely drop the $10/month for free incoming minutes (except for one month, where I'll have to reinstate it or pay $50 extra if my usage is the same as last year).

Then I added a $5/month texting plan, which includes unlimited incoming texts and 250 outgoing texts/month. So the bunch of fucks will be getting five dollars less per month of my money, and they won't be charging me fifteen cents every time somebody sends me a hundred and sixty-odd characters of information I'd care less about.

Since the people who complain about not being able to text me are the same people who tell me they read this blog, I figured I'd might as well mention it here, and sod the rest of 'em.

That is to say, I will now receive your newfangled text communications, but don't get the impression that I'll actually read them, much less acknowledge or respond. E-mail is still the best way to contact me. If you want to reach me, just remind yourself that grouches like to be distant.

- RG>

Of Black Berries and Poison Apples

2010-05-10T01:04:00.000-04:00

Seeing as Bell and Blackberry are a bunch of fucks, as recently established, I figured I'd might as well find a way to wean myself off of them.

Considering I paid $109.95+tax for the extended warranty and they wanted to charge me $92.66 before they even look at what's wrong with it, and considering they're selling new ones of the same model for $199 without a contract, and considering I had the same problems with the (presumably not broken) loaner phone... well, there's no real conclusion, other than that they're a bunch of fucks. I just hoped saying it again in a slightly different way would help me feel better.

The problem with Bell is an easy one to treat. The goal is to give them as little of my money as possible, without wasting any. The problem is that I'm in a contract, and the monthly cost of breaking the contract ($20) exceeds the savings from going elsewhere ($14).

To ease the pain, I recently got an e-mail from them telling me that they wanted to charge me $2/month to continue to receive bills by e-mail. Either they're bluffing (wouldn't be the first time), or I need to call them up and get them to find four dollars more to charge me per month so that I can justify breaking up.

Also, I realized that if I drop the $10/month free incoming minutes charge, I have ten dollars' worth of leeway to spend on a texting plan, while still giving them less money than I am now.*

As for the Blackberry, that was a tougher nut to crack.

I use it for four things, all of which would have to find new homes if I switched away from it:
- Phone/addressbook
- Music player
- Calendar/to-do list
- Audio recording

The audio recorder was the first one I wanted to replace, since it is no longer working on the Blackberry at all. I went around to a couple stores and found that they're all crap. But then a twinkle under the counter gave me a thought: if a smartphone can make a good voice recorder, so would a sleek new mp3 player, designed in California.

Now, if Microsoft, and Rogers and Bell and Blackberry all disgust me, Apple makes me sick. Their devices--and I do mean their devices: you just buy the right to look hip with one--are designed to be controlled entirely by Apple unless you break into them. You can't even change the damn battery on one without sending it out for repair. They can remotely shut off iPhones, and you can only load music onto the iPod that Apple software lets you put onto it. (By contrast, I just load music onto a microSD card and the Blackberry scans and reads it. The Blackberry even acts as a reader for my microSD cards when I plug it in with the cable.)

But I have to admit the guy at the Apple store knew his shit. When I said I'd go to research the audio recording quality on the web before deciding to purchase, he recited the bitrate and format from memory. He also told me that the cables are included in the $40 AppleCare warranty, whereas the headset that no longer works with my Blackberry--yet surprisingly works perfectly well with the iPod--isn't covered by jack shit, which is why I have to buy a new one every three months or so. The AppleCare is also transferable if I sell the iPod or upgrade to a different model, which, at the very least, gives the impression of decency.

He also told me that the AppleCare also covers a free battery replacement, which is usually such-and-such amount of money, and that a user might need to replace it in every few months or years, depending on usage.

I bought the shiny dark purple iPod Nano, with the knowledge that I'd have to pay a 10% restocking fee if I returned it within the allotted 14 days. My boss is an Apple fanboi, so to speak, and I've heard her make use of the AppleCare, so I opted for that too.

So far, it's pretty neat. It's got FM radio that uses the headphones as antennae (I haven't listened to radio in years, and discovered I haven't missed anything), and it's got a pretty decent audio recorder. I've only put music on it from my work computer, because I don't yet have the heart to infect my Dell laptop with the iTunes software I downloaded (nor the Songbird setup file on my hard disk waiting to be clicked).

And I realized that I missed the Blackberry.

More specifically, the music playing isn't what's wrong with the Blackberry (well, with the latest firmware it is wrong, but otherwise the intended functionality satisfies my needs). I suppose it could be the headset or the headset jack, but the primary irritant is with the calendar and to-do list reminders that keep freezing. And the iPod can't replace that (yes, it has a calendar feature, but no keypad to add entries!). If anything, I'd be better off getting a PDA calendar and keeping the Blackberry for everything else.

Furthermore, the iPod doesn't fit my wardrobe. I stick it in my shirt pocket so it doesn't get scratched or crushed in my pants, but that won't work when I wear a t-shirt--or a sweater.

The input on the Blackberry is better, too. I can use it when I've got my cycling gloves on, and I can even push the volume up/down buttons when it's in its holster and my winter jacket is covering it. If I'm traveling with my iPod in my ear and suddenly the music gets a bit too loud, I've got to unzip my jacket, dig under the scarf, fish the iPod out of my pocket, remove my glove and do the click-wheel thingy to turn it down. Unless it's in radio mode and I accidentally pressed one of the buttons, in which case I just changed the station, or rewound the station (it does a tivo-like thing for radio, which is also cool when it's not getting in the way).

More importantly, the reason I wanted an audio recorder was to be able to quickly turn on the record mode. With the Blackberry, I've programmed one of the side buttons to switch to audio record mode, then I just click the button on the headset when I want to start or stop recording. With the iPod, I've got to do a whole lot of clicking and scrolling to get to the audio record mode, and that's not the least bit discreet (in the event that discretion is necessary).

Splitting the phone and audio modes to different devices also means I can't use one set of wires for both functions (wireless headset isn't an option either: the wireless sound quality is shit and the wires help to tether the device if I drop it, which has saved me on many occasions). And if I had to choose, I'd put the headset on the phone, and I did with all of my pre-Blackberry, non-music-playing cellphones.

Oh, and just one more complaint before I move on: the iPod charges with USB, whereas the Blackberry comes with an AC adapter that I plug into at night. During the day, I'm at work and I want to listen to the damn thing, so I can't plug it in. At night, my laptop is off to save power (he says, using an LCD projector to type a blog post). At other times, my laptop is packed away in my bag or it's on my lap, where I don't want white wires hanging about.

All of this is sounding like an argument in favour of Blackberries, which is troubling considering my thesis is that they're a bunch of fucks. But don't be worried: it's an argument in favour of what the Blackberry promises, not what it delivers. I'd much rather put all this time and energy into finding the cause of this problem, so that a Blackberry programmer could fix it. Which I could do, but it would be pointless, because Blackberry's repair people want me to pay $92.66 to get them to replace the faceplate and tell me there's nothing else wrong with my phone. Therefore... (wait for it) fucks.

So after less than a week, I'm breaking up with the iPod. But I'm not bitter, not even about the 10% restocking fee.

Okay, I am bitter, but the bitterness is toward Bell and Blackberry. This little Apple affair helped to reinforce my resolve to, well, resolve the situation.

I may not win with Bell and Blackberry, and it may not even be a zero-sum situation, but if I can at least come out neutral, I can at least do my best to make the sum negative.

- RG>

*Alas, when I checked my bill to confirm that my usage is under my limit, I discovered that nowhere in my bill or my contract does it say how many minutes are included in the motherfucking "Preferred All In 35" plan, nor can I find it on their website. This is leading me to write a complaint to the ministry of consumer affairs for not having a clear contract. I also might complain about the warranty thing, if I can figure out the tangle of legalese surrounding that too. Unfortunately, that requires me to contact Bell in writing, and I'd rather not spend an all-nighter writing an essay. It'd probably take less of my time to pay the fuckers to break my contract and work some more hours to earn the money for the difference, but that's probably just what Bell's lawyers and actuaries bank on. I'm too stubborn to roll over.

Electoral Thought Experiment

2010-04-29T02:12:00.000-04:00

I was looking at Cesar Bello's mayoral platform and I just read the Citizen article on Mike Maguire's blue-belt proposals.

While I'm flattered by the suggestion that I'd be good in office, I politely decline the suggestion.

And with real candidacy off the table, it sort of got me thinking about hypothetical ones.

Seeing as many of these candidates register to run for Mayor and likely don't have a hope in hell of winning, what if it were the other way around? What if someone were to campaign and get their face in everyone else's, but not actually register as a candidate?

How would it play out? Would the media cover it? Would they be able to avoid it? What are the precedents? Perhaps a cross between Stephen Colbert (before the writers' strike) and Marg Delahunty? Are there laws against it? Would they still be able to collect donations (assuming they're upfront about their non-registered status)? Could they break restrictions on running ads? The questions go on.

It would make a good film, maybe even a mocumentary. Or Documentary. (Wait a minute...) Well, if it were about a municipal election in Ottawa, I guess the best it would do is a good short story or maybe a blog series. Fiction, of course, but then fiction and reality would be pretty blurred anyway in this situation.

Seeing as it's two in the morning and I still have a couple of reports to write, I think I'll leave this thought where it is and let your own imagination explore where it could go.

- RG>

Bell and Blackberry are also a bunch of fucks

2010-04-26T15:28:00.000-04:00

For the last two weeks, I've had a loaner Blackberry from Bell, because my phone (a Blackberry Pearl 8130) was sent in for extended warranty repairs. You see, when I had tried to update my firmware to the latest version, it caused a bunch of problems.

Because it's been more than a year since I had my phone, the extended warranty required me to take my phone into the store, rather than them send me a new phone and I return the old one (which is what happened when my phone broke inside the standard warranty period). So this inevitably long trip takes time out of my work day.

Finally, two weeks after giving in my phone, and having to put up with the various problems from transferring data to the loaner, I get a call that my phone is back.

Good, I thought. They found out what's wrong with it.

Nevermind that the exact same problems I had with my phone, I also encountered with the loaner phone. This despite the phone rep I had spoken to (the one who told me I'd have to take it into the store) assuring me that it must be a problem with the handset, otherwise he'd be getting calls like mine all the time. I have long been convinced that the problems I've had were with the Blackberry firmware, but there's no way to file bug reports, so the best you can do is update to the latest firmware when it comes out and hope they fixed your problems (which it never does)0.

Anyway, I went in today to pick up my phone.

They handed it back to me with a note saying that Blackberry didn't look at it because there's damage to the casing (from frequently being taken out of and replaced into the holster), and they'd charge me $92 or so before even looking inside it.

Excuse me? Warranty mean anything to you? My problems are with the inside, not the outside.

They asked if I wanted to pay the $92 and I asked them how much it would cost for a new phone (starting at $129), and how much it would cost to break my contract ($260!).

I was about to leave, when I realized that they didn't pay me back my deposit for the loaner. Also $280--more than they sell a new one for with no contract!

After about fifteen minutes of looking around, they concluded they lost the record of my deposit and I'd have to come back into the store (again!) with my receipt so they can refund me.

So these are my options:
- I pay $92 to have them send my phone away for another two weeks or more with the possibility that they fix the problems that I was also encountering with the loaner phone

- I keep my phone on the old firmware, voiding the extended warranty (which requires the customer to keep the phone's firmware up to date)

- I stay with Bell and switch to a different, cheaper phone (at least $130 plus tax and transferring fees)

- I pay $260 to drop my contract and move to a different provider (a "door #3 provider"), probably also invoking a bunch of other hidden fees, not to mention the price of the phone I'd probably have to buy with the new provider.

And this doesn't even include the saga of all the bullshit I had to take from Bell when I got this Blackberry in the first place!

I wish they still sold real cell phones, the kind that don't have cameras, try to play mp3s do your laundry.

Because the people who sell the things we have now are all a bunch of fucks.

- RG>

Bedard by-law meeting tonight

2010-04-22T11:18:00.000-04:00

This notice was apparently sent out by Councillor Georges Bédard's office. There's a public meeting at City Hall tonight about the "nuisance" by-law, which, among other things, would make swearing on public punishable by a $300 fine.

NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING
MAINTAINING SAFETY
AND HARMONY
ON CITY STREETS
Consideration is being given to the possibility of amending
the Use and Care of Roads By-law to include provisions
that would prohibit disorderly conduct on City streets or
prohibit activity that would interfere with the general public
using City streets or with adjacent property owners.
We would welcome public comment on the subject and invite
you to attend a meeting to share your views, as follows:
Thursday, April 22, 2010
7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
City Hall, 110 Laurier Avenue West
Andrew Haydon Hall (Council Chambers)
Comments may also be submitted in writing by May 31,
2010, by fax at 613-580-2719 or by e-mail to Christine.
Hartig@ottawa.ca. For more information, please contact
Ms. Hartig 613-580-2424, ext. 25629.

I've spent enough mental energy on City Hall this week, and am going to skip this meeting, fun as I'm sure it will be.

- RG>

Thank you for this.

2010-04-22T01:27:00.001-04:00

Yesterday at Transportation Committee, City Staff presented councillors with an offer from New Flyer for some discount buses. The councillors who were let in on the deal before the meeting were told not to talk about it.

The report itself wasn't available in advance of the meeting, and isn't on the agenda for the meeting (unless it's the blandly titled item 4, "FLEET ACQUISITION STRATEGY", which doesn't link to any report). Additionally, the Committee had to waive the rules of procedure in order not only to hear the report without advance notice (to councillors or to the public), but also to discuss and decide on it.

The Committee approved the recommendation, thus sending it to Council to consider (not sure exactly when, but I suspect May 12). If any member of the public wanted to scrutinize the details, they had between the time the report was presented and presumably a few minutes after that to review the information and make a presentation.

The details of the offer are now available--after the Committee made its decision--but none of the articles I've seen so far have been able to explain the secrecy.

I e-mailed Transit Committee Alex Cullen asking for the report, and asking about this secrecy, since he chairs the committee and new about the deal before the meeting, and also because he's very big on transparency and fairness in government.

His reply:

Thank you for this. First, I am not Chair of Transportation Committee, but Chair of Transit Committee*. Second, you should be able to find this report on the City's web site under Council & Committee Agendas & Minutes. Third, this is not a sole-source contract but is well within the existing contract that the City has with New Flyer Industries. What has happened is that New Flyer had a large order from Chicago cancelled (they are going through some tough economic times there) and came to us with an offer to accelerate our bus replacement program at a far cheaper price, with the additional benefits of better warranties (5 years instead of the industry 2-year norm) plus lower maintenance costs and higher fuel efficiencies. It is a very good deal and very affordable.

It is unfortunate that, due to timing issues (the final proposal from New Flyer came last Friday, and staff have been working hard to analyze it and provide due diligence) this report could not be made public beforehand, but it is too good a deal to ignore. Transit Committee did spend quite a bit of time on this matter and did endorse this proposal for Council's consideration.

[*RG: this was my bad, two of four references in my original e-mail were to Transportation Committee, which I'm more used to dealing with]

Hopefully you didn't read it all looking for the reason why it had to be kept under wraps until the meeting and why it had to be considered so urgently, because there's nothing of the sort in his reply. Just stuff about how it's such a good deal, which placates some and not others.

The report wasn't on the Committee Agendas & Minutes page, though Ken Gray posted something official resembling the report on his blog in the intervening time of the messages. Since the meeting wasn't broadcast or webcast, the public will have to wait for the minutes to be posted to hear how the committee members scrutinized the deal they were just told about.

When I replied to Councillor Cullen reiterating my question about the need for urgency, he replied:

Thank you for this. New Flyer had a time-limited window to make this offer, as they had to cover the cancelled order or lay people off - another reason for the good price.

I'm sure Alex is a busy guy with lots of stuff to do--running for mayor, being one, so he probably didn't have time to answer this question, and the question of why everyone was sworn to secrecy beforehand (reminiscent of the horrible N-S LRT project killed in 2006 whose secret contract ended up costing us $37 million for nothing), but I'm surprised that most of the mainstream coverage completely skips over this issue now that it's passed. Makes it really frustrating for those of us who weren't in the room to figure out why our elected representatives did this.

It's tough because I'm usually on the same side as Alex (I've even held back a few punches in this post), but on this one there are simply too many loose ends that are being swept under the rug.

- RG>

Ottawa City Hall: Let Me Be Open

2010-04-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

Back on March 1, there was a report presented to the City of Ottawa's little-known Information Technology Sub-Committee of the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee about Open Data. It made its way up to Council before being referred back to ITS, who will be discussing it tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.

It's important that Council pass this policy, but what does it mean?

Nowadays, when you visit a website, what's really happening is a machine (specifically a webserver) is looking up entries in a database, then plugging the results into a template that makes it nice for you to look at.

Case in point, this blog is stored in a database on Google's servers, and it could be presented in a variety of ways. That's how how I could change the look and feel of my blog without having to republish every single entry. It's also you can pull the RSS feed of my blog in order to read it in a format that is more suited to your viewing habits (especially convenient because I don't publish on a regular basis).

Blogs are one form of data, but our governments also produce a vast amount of data. As a simple example, bus schedules. Ten years ago, if you wanted to know when the next bus was supposed to come, you could either check out the schedule posted at the bus stop or you could find a printed schedule, which would tell you when the bus was to come to the nearest timepoint.

Nowadays, OC Transpo's website can look up the schedule for the exact place you want to get on the bus and tell you when it is supposed to arrive.

But the databases that store this information are locked up with OC Transpo. If you wanted to create a more convenient interface, like Craig Davey did, you'd have to file a freedom of information requestto access that data.

Not so with an Open Data policy. While machine-readable datasets may not be the sexiest topic, the ability to mash them up and interpret them in the context of other datasets is invaluable is a tremendous power.

This five-and-a-half minute talk by Tim Berners-Lee (the man who created the World Wide Web) gives some examples of how open data can be useful. In one case, a map of water main access overlaid on a map of the race of residents showed clearly that only white people had clean water in an Ohio neighbourhood.

Closer to home, there is a website called OpenParliament.ca, which parses the Hansard transcript and allows you to browse by MP, by topic, and in other ways. David Eaves, who created the website, also created www.datadotgc.ca, which publishes a list of known Government of Canada datasets.

Berners-Lee is part of an Open Data movement that is pushing governments and institutions at all levels to release their data, not only for the media to be able to correlate the previously uncorrelatable, but also so that enterprising individuals can make that data useful for the public, as with the OCTranspo.net site.

As a second example of what you can do with these types of datasets, here is Gary Flake with a TED presentation about Microsoft Pivot, which allows useful browsing not only of demographic data, but even more tangible information like Time Magazine covers:

One of the areas of contention at Ottawa City Hall was that it would cost the City a certain amount of money (a couple hundred thousand dollars at the most) to release this data, so why not charge companies like Google and Microsoft when they want to use it?

This, unfortunately, shuts out people like Davey and Eaves--regular citizens with a bit of programming skill who want to make existing information more useful and more accessible to people.

I have little doubt that the programs created by individuals using open data from the City of Ottawa would bring a substantial return on the meagre investment required for the City to publish that information in the first place. Far more useful than if the City put that money into creating those resources itself.

And if there's any better example for the need for this type of service, the agenda for tomorrow's meeting would have been posted to the City's website a week earlier. But I only heard about it on Friday afternoon in the City's "meetings next week" e-mail. If Council and Committee agendas and minutes were released as part of an Open Data policy, I would have written this post a week before the meeting, instead of the night before.

- RG>

The Binder Clip Fan Club

2010-04-10T06:36:00.000-04:00

Something happened in the blogosphere yesterday. Maybe a belated April Fool's Day Joke, or maybe a conspiracy that I'm not in on (yet).

Whatever it was, the changes were, shall we say, binding.

I know a trend coming along when I see one, and I knew I'd have to run at a pretty fast clip to catch up with it. So hastily, I registered www.BinderClips.ca and created a Blogger blog to act as a landing site for now. This evening I created some basic content:

For me, the first sign of the apocaclips was a link on the blog of binder clip fan (and self-declared Binder Clip King) David Scrimshaw, David Scrimshaw's blog, repeating a post by binder clip enthusiast Megan Butcher on her eponymous blog.

Megan had discovered a user for binder clips: a ceiling cleaning mop mod.

Megan's post linked to a post on Mae Callen's blog, Driving fast on loose gravel, wherein she had devised a mounting system for silk scarves.

This led Woodsy to post on her blog her own binder clip story (which she knows by their French nickname, "des clips," not to be confused with the nickname for Desmond Clipson, the infamously hard-to-Google actor*). In that post, she summarised the previous three links as Ottawa bloggers who enjoy the creative use of ~~bull~~ binder clips.

*You may not remember him. He plays a conveniently-named bit character on blog posts.

I was disappointed not to see any links to my blog on her list. Then I realized that my binder clip affection is still a secret on this blog! The closest I've come is the recent post on creating a handlebar-mounted clipboard.

Meanwhile, others are way ahead of me: both David Scrimshaw and Megan Butcher have made enough relevant posts to have a "binder clips" tag on their blogs.

But you are not alone! I have a longstanding addiction to binder clips!

Here is a photo of a box of binder clips shortly after I picked it up from my supplier last August. The blue thing is a letter size file folder for comparison.

When people visit, I always offer them a handful of clips for the road.

And this was the third such box that I got from my supplier, having already exhausted two. You find a lot of uses for binder clips with that many around.

As for www.BinderClips.ca, I'm hoping it will be a resource for all the many uses people find for binder clips.

To be honest, I kinda just registered the domain and hoped the rest would come together. As far as I could see, there weren't any Binder Clip fansites out there, so this is new territory. I guess I'm vaguely thinking of a cross between theme blogs like el Maks' Swapbox blog, I Can Has Cheezburger and Always Use Zipcode, and collaborative blogs like Apartment 613 and the ELgiN StreEt iRReguLars.

Damned if I know how it's going to work, but if it does, I want to make a similar site for local fans of used inner tubes.

I guess the question is, who's in? Clip fans--speak up!

- RG>

Field research for Dan Gardner

2010-04-04T11:48:00.001-04:00

In his latest blog post, Ottawa Citizen columnist asked, "Are they ignorant, dishonest, or both?" about the bewildering chasm between Conservative Party rhetoric about crime policy and actual crime trends.

This exclusive photo reveals the identity of the Conservatives' prison farms consultant, which in turns answers a lot of Dan's questions:

Makes for a splendid image, but what does it mean?

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure offhand--I recall hearing about it--but I think there's something to be learned about it in a recent panel that included Dan Gardner (described by Zoom! here), the transcript of which can be downloaded from CBC here (mp3). I've downloaded that podcast, but I've yet to listen to it. Considering the Conservatives' terrible record on criminal justice policy, I'd probably agree with it anyway.

- RG>

April Foo-UCK!!!

2010-04-01T16:44:00.003-04:00

In the last couple of weeks, I've had more than my share of problems with electronics.

- My cell phone keeps freezing

- My laptop shut down spontaneously before a meeting, losing all the files I had prepared for the meeting

- My printer died in the middle of a job

And most recently, this morning the virtual XP machine on my mac at work died.

Luckily, there wasn't too much data loss in any of these circumstances. A printer loss, no doubt, but it wasn't really mine anyway and it clears up some space in my apartment.

The most stressful one--aside from the recurrent stress of having to resist the urge to throw my cell phone across the room--was the machine at work.

Luckily, I started a few weeks ago to do weekly backups of my virtual machine image, which itself I only really use for the accounting program, which I also backup weekly. But it being year-end, we had done a lot of year-end transactions this week.

The worst part is, I had finally got it to restart at one point, and got into Windows, but the accounting program wasn't opening up the file for some reason. At that point, I should have saved a copy of the file on the host OS before doing anything further. Instead, I simply shut it down and tried to do a repair installation of Windows XP.

And of course, something broke with the repair installation partway through (it ran out of disk space?!? Not technically possible), which corrupted the file beyond repair.

Luckily, after a good three or four hours of failed troubleshooting, and after restoring the backups from last Friday, we were able to re-create all the transactions that were done in the last week (thank goodness for triplicate!)

But between all this stress (which kept me inside for lunch), plus stress from a few other battles going on in my life, plus being sick last weekend, it's been really hard to not just say "fuck it" and go live on an island.

It's also been terribly depressing, which I hear is going around.

Hopefully I'll recover, and will get back to using this blog to bitch about other people, instead of just myself.

- RG>

Why did I ignore the warning signs?

2010-03-26T16:36:00.004-04:00

Here I thought it was burnout, fatigue, malaise. That I was depressed, unmotivated, dispirited. That Ann Coulter's recent visit and people's failure to shut up about it were getting me down.

Turns out it's none of these things; I'm just falling sick. I'm at my desk with a space heater blaring away, wearing a scarf and toque, with my eyes burning and my head aching, trying hard to stay awake. It's not very cold here, it's just me.

Malaise or maladie, the result is still that I probably won't get as much done as I wanted to this weekend. Grr.

- RG>

Someone went ahead...

2010-03-25T17:08:00.005-04:00

It seems anonymous comments aren't just for blogs anymore.

Last night, amidst a gruelling week of boring and stressful meetings and e-mail battles, I was feeling quite tired and dispirited.

When I left the meeting, I was thrilled to see this note left on my bicycle handlebar clipboard:

It totally made my day!

Thanks, random person. You're cool too!

- RG>

Save the world this Earth Hour

2010-03-24T12:25:00.003-04:00

Last year, I spoke about the 8759 hours in the year that aren't Earth Hour--you know, that one time of year for people who consider a whole day too long to be an environmentalist?

Last night, however, I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep (you know, that time every single night when you turn off the lights for a whole bunch of hours?) when I got to worrying about Earth Hour.

You see, last year, I turned on all my lights and appliances during Earth Hour mainly to be a contrarian dick, and to distance myself from this superficial, contrived event for SUV-driving armchair environmentalists. But this year I might actually save the world by doing so, and you should too.

To complicate matters, I've been invited to an event that night, and that means that I'll either have to turn on all my appliances for the entire time I'm out of the house, or I'll have to inadvertently mark Earth Hour the same way as all the wannabes--by turning off my lights and appliances.

Either way, I'll be damned if I burn any candles. Do you know how wasteful those things are?

But the real reason I'm worried is that my traditional (well-illuminated) celebration of Earth Hour might actually be helping the environment.

You see, power generation isn't a linear thing. When the grid needs to pull more electricity than normal, you turn on more power plants. There are various plants that can be easily activated for peak use. After all, spikes in power consumption are literally an every day occurrence. Have a look at the near real-time Ontario Wholesale Electricity and Prices. It is these peak usage times that strain our electricity system, requiring electricity retailers to import power from other jurisdictions (often coal-fired plants from the US) at ridiculous prices.

The real problem for the electricity grid is when power consumption drops below the normal consumption. While there are plants that can be easily activated and deactivated for peak use, the majority of the power comes from base load power plants, which produce a generally consistent amount of power. Think nuclear plants, which can take days to turn on and off.

Weekends are not a peak usage time. So much so that when Hydro Ottawa introduces time-of-use billing, weekends (all 48 hours of every one) will be priced at the lowest pricing range.

Now, Earth Hour--which is held on a weekend--is only a recent phenomenon, but thankfully I chronicled it in 2009 and 2008. As its popularity grows, the risk of damage does too.

If enough people and greenwashed organizations actually cut their power usage at a time of low electricity demand, they run the risk of leaving the province with a significantly oversized supply of base-load power and no way to turn off the tap. In this type of circumstance, they have to burn it off and waste the electricity. In a doomsday scenario, it might actually cause damage to our power grid, but that's just wild speculation on my part.

Based on this, if I really wanted to be a dick, I would actually go along with the Horoterrestrial Deluminants to help demonstrate they're doing more harm than good.

But then, in the days of Glen Beck and Ann Coulter, if we're going to resort to wild speculation, we'd might as go all the way:

Maybe with the knowledge (er, 'knowledge') that this could do major damage to our power supply, turning off all my lights during Earth Hour at the behest of jingoistic governments and environmental groups might actually consist of conspiracy to commit terrorism!

If anything, it's my civic duty to leave my lights and electronics running during Earth Hour!

- RG>

Leftover Monster

2010-03-12T23:00:00.000-05:00

I came home today to find the Leftover Monster in my living room. Here he is.

I wrote him a song:

Leftover monster, how are you doing?
I've been waiting to see you all day.
Leftover monster, what is brewin'?
I bet it's the same as yesterday.

- RG>

RealGrouchy's Workshop: Bicycle Handlebar Clipboard

2010-03-09T23:47:00.001-05:00

When you spend a lot of time on your bike, there are some good reasons to have a clipboard on your handlebars. Holding a map, a shopping list, or directions to your destination. Taking notes when you're hit by inspiration. Or by cars.

I've thankfully never been in a serious bicycle collision, thanks to my attentiveness. I've had a few very close calls, all while I was obeying the letter of the law. You often have only a few seconds to write things down before you forget or lose sight of the license plate number, plus a description of the car's make, model, approximate age, colour, driver skin colour, age, gender, hair, etc. While I've always got a pen and paper on me, by the time I pull over and fish them out, I sometimes forget if the license plate was AXYZ 132 or AXZY 123.

The other day, I was on the phone with 3-1-1 reporting a street light that I had seen burned out earlier, but I could only remember that it was at number 283; I couldn't remember which street! With a clipboard, I'd have been able to jot it down without having to interrupt my ride for more than a few seconds.

I used to have this clipboard on my handlebars. The board was from the bottom part of a standard clipboard, and the low-profile clip was salvaged from some age-old binder that had otherwise fallen apart. I had cut two horizontal slots and threaded a metal hose clamp through them and around my handlebars, but as you can see, that wasn't sturdy enough.

I still have the rest of the original clipboard in my workshop's junk pile, but I didn't want to use it on account of the large clip. I also didn't want to replace its perfectly good (although large) clip with this smaller one, because that would be a waste.

I decided instead to figure out a new way to mount the old board to my handlebars.

This little wooden thing was in a box of miscellaneous bits someone was throwing out a couple years ago. It contained some odd things; tracks for a keyboard tray (which recently found a new home with a friend in need thereof), feet for a coat stand, and this...thing. Maybe it was for holding eggs?

Anyway, the holes in it are the same diameter as the middle area of my handlebars. The only part of my handlebars not yet occupied.

The plan was to cut off the outermost holes and make little clamps out of them. To do so, I had to drill holes large enough for the only bolts I had in my workshop that were long enough. This took a few passes with successively larger bits, as it was dense hardwood. To ensure proper alignment of the bolts, I drilled the holes before slicing apart the 'clamps'. I also had to mitre a couple centimetres off the end of one side so they'd have the same depth.

The back part of the wooden thing helped align the saw for the inside cuts, and the remaining four inside holes could still theoretically be used again, should I ever find another use for them.

Here are the bits for one 'clamp' after cutting, before sanding the edges. The rounded edge is actually a bit offset, which later helped in matching the pieces for each clamp pair.

Here's a dry test on the handlebars. It seemed there was a bit of a gap between the pieces from where the saw cut, but the diameter was definitely a match. I discovered that I hadn't cut the bolt holes exactly parallel, which meant the bottom piece needed a bit of finagling to attach.

Thinking that the wood would slip on the handlebar, I figured the universal rubber spacer--used inner tube--would be suitable. This just made the gap between the two halves even wider, and I didn't have thick enough washers to fill the gap with, so I abandoned the innertube spacer idea.

I discovered that I had cut the hole in the smaller side a bit too close to the opening. This caused the washer to rub against the handlebar and keep the clamp from clamping. Using the file pictured above at right, I shaved off an edge from the washer.

Turns out I'd only need per clamp set to get the spacing right, and the wood on its own ended up being plenty tight on its own without a rubber gasket. Having proved the concept, I then made the second clamp.

The next step was to cut holes in the clipboard to mount it onto the clamps. Notice that I put the thicker side on top, so that the clipboard would clear the stem bolt. Since the bolts placement was entirely freehand, I needed a way to transfer their pattern to the bottom of the board. I suppose I could have traced over it with a piece of paper and then flipped the paper over onto the board.

But what I ended up doing, and coincidentally what worked, was I used a flipchart marker to colour the heads of the bolts, then pressed the board against the heads of the bolts to transfer the locations. If you use this method, I suggest using something with more body, like white out, to transfer the pattern of the entire bolt head.

I started by drilling small holes where I guessed that the green markings told me to drill, then put some small screws through these holes. I put this up against the heads of the mounting bolts to confirm the alignment. This method would allow me to adjust if necessary when widening the holes to their full size.

And here we are with the clipboard mounted. I had to turn my light mount upside down, which in turn conflicted with the cables coming out of my brake/shifter levers, so I had to adjust those too.

Oh, and the gaping hole and big fat bolt heads are a bit of a problem too, but I'm sure I can overcome that, maybe by using a cardboard backboard with holes for the bolt heads, resulting in a relatively flat surface. In the meantime, I've got some cardboard facial tissue box covers as note pages, which are thick enough to provide their own flatness. An elastic band keeps them from flapping in the wind.

I guess the lesson here is, anybody can make a clipboard for your handlebars, so long as you have some miscellaneous clipboard bits, some serendipitous scraps of wood with holes the right diameter, and some bolts.

- RG>

[Continuity postscript: I posted about the clipboard when I initially created it back in 2004, before it broke]

OCome on, Transpo

2010-03-03T02:25:00.004-05:00

The Citizen's Hugh Adami has yet another column about a ridiculous case of zero-tolerance OC Transpo fare rules. The page doesn't have a comment section, so I'm posting my comments here.

In this case, Sean Nagasar, an Algonquin College student with dyslexia and another condition that makes it very difficult to write, didn't have the numbers filled in on his transit pass, which he bought on Saturday. He did not have an opportunity to get a friend to fill it out for him before Monday morning (March 1st), when he first used it.

You have to fill in the numbers on your pass with the numbers on your photo ID card because the passes are non-transferable. The article says it's been required to fill in the numbers since 2007, but I stopped riding the bus a couple years before that and I ran into a similar situation with the fare inspectors.

Actually, in my years-old case, it was the second of the month and I didn't have my new pass yet (not like any of the four drivers who saw my pass on the first of the month were bothered to mention it). Seeing the two previous months' passes stuffed in my holder, the fare inspector let me off with a warning. I think he even got the driver to give me a daypass so I could get to school and then to a place to buy a pass.

And you know why he let me off? Because these rules are designed to stop people from cheating the system, not to require them to pass stupid little trials. The fare inspector in my case had the common sense to realize that, in the middle of the school year, since I had the previous two months' passes, chances are I would be buying the current month's pass. Maybe in 2007 OC Transpo management revoked fare inspectors' ability to use common sense.

If Nagasar fights his ticket in court, the fare inspector could easily testify that the student had not filled in the numbers on his pass. But he'd have a hell of a hard time arguing that he suspected Nagasar was trying to cheat the system--the problem this technical rule aims to solve. For fuck's sake, he doesn't even have the dexterity to write, much less swap out bus passes with his buddies.

Alex Cullen, Chair of the City's Transit Committee, tells the Citizen, "...supporting our fare inspectors doing their job will make me look as insensitive as you have portrayed them, and taking the side of the student undermines their work on behalf of taxpayers. It’s a lose-lose situation."

Well, Cullen's lost it indeed. Fare inspectors' "work on behalf of taxpayers" is to catch people who abuse the fare system, not to waste their salaries ticketing disabled students (and testifying against them in court) for not being able to write.

- RG>

Earthquake in a bottle

2010-03-01T19:24:00.004-05:00

I was reading this Globe & Mail "Project Jacmel" blog entry about a Naturopathic 'doctor' using homeopathic mixtures on Haitian quake victims. The comments are consistently (and reassuringly) critical of the article and its subject.

The best comment, however, is the one at the end of page 3 of the comments, by user Bede:

Does he put some earthquake in a bottle and mix 10 million to 1?

If you don't get the joke, read up on Homeopathy. He accurately describes how homeopathic remedies are prepared: take a substance that causes the condition, dilute it to infinitesimally small amounts, then apply it to the patient.

Not the best place to look is my December 2008 blog entry, Don't ask the homeopath if you need a haircut.

- RG>

Urban Sprawl is no joke

2010-02-23T14:38:00.001-05:00

Did you hear the one about the councillors and mayor who thought about reconsidering their motion?

They actually claimed that potential lawsuits over a major Official Plan amendment was 'new information'!

(If anything, it would be news if there weren't OMB appeals on an OP amendment!)

There's another "Hold The Line" rally at City Hall (Lisgar entrance) tomorrow at noon. Let's try to get council not to flip-flop on these big decisions just because developers want to make even more money building far-flung developments that cost taxpayers an arm and a leg to service!

- RG>

Tales from a Grouch

Grammar Nazi's Triumph

Whoring myself out some more

Other things washed away by the weather

Bless this mess

Bike tip: Safely stowing the air horn

Physics Wins Every Time

RG's Workshop: Projector and screen mount

I'm on the toilet, you twit!

A very strange taxi ride

Hey buffleheads! It's National Grouch Day!

Dear Mr. Quebec car driver

Pink irony

Accented characters in domain names are a terrible idea

Coffeeshop toilet humour

Joseph A. Belanger research institute suggests returning to paper $1 and $2 bills

Beat the heat with RG's Purple Slush Drink

RG's Workshop: RG's Laptop Box

RG hears a what?

The Great Glebe Garage Sale Song!

Technology *is* great (when it works)

For a free press, you must abandon your privacy

Why do I even bother not stealing movies?

Taxes: check

Le fin

It's that hour again...

I'm on a new drug (which hopefully does what it should)

The Ken Gray comeback tour

RealGrouchy upgrades again

Ken Gray wants you to stop blogging

Furey vs. Motherhood and Apple Pie

NCC faces its Waterlude

I'm not getting you down at all, am I?

Notice previously given

In which RG demonstrates genius

Another swap box at Elgin Bridgehead, another repair by RG

This is why I don't buy music from online

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #12

War on the penny: take prisoners!

Bad saxophone music hurts my head

5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic

City flip-flops on tunnel length

Lol, we all do this, don't we?

Desk

And you already thought I was sick...

City Council governance notes

Mayor Watson: Where are my Timbits?

Fuck! I lost my phone!

RG's Workshop: The 90-minute glove rack

Green Bin Blues

Santa Claus dances like a jerk

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #11

Who the fuck designed the Dexter DVDs?

RG's guide to pedophilia

Take Notice: there's a new street artist in town

Rats! The NCC does it again!

Front-page funnies

RG the master Lego architect

Election 2010: Score one for the white guys

Error: Friday not found

Larry O'Brien is right

A RealSherlock in the making

National Grouch Day required reading: the Oatmeal

Grammar Nazi's Beware

Only for hip, urban, planners

The next HUGE internet fad...

Larry O'Brien signs on

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak is a road hazard

It takes a douche to know one...

I'm poor again (but not for long!)

Robin, Robin, where are you?

BBC Rail Safety applies to cyclists, too

Summer e-mail catch-up

Step 1: Make a list

Vietnam Noodle House: the last supper

RG's Workshop: How can you mend a broken Swap Box?

Lansdowne Consultation Fail

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #10

Advancing to 2003

Of Black Berries and Poison Apples

Technology is great (when it works)