crows to burnaby

I've moved!

2004-11-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

Alright, I've got everything ported over to b2evolution except the comments, which I'll get to sometime this week, I suppose. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds if you've got 'em: crowstoburnaby can now be found at http://www.crowstoburnaby.com. The new RSS2 feed is http://crowstoburnaby.com/xmlsrv/rss2.php?blog=2 - you can also get RSS 0.92, 1.0 and Atom feeds, just come on o'er to the site to find the URLs. This Blogspot site is most likely not going to be updated any more.

Expect service interruptions

2004-11-19T15:09:00.000-08:00

for the next little while, as I move crowstoburnaby over to a new server. If you're accessing this from crowstoburnaby.blogspot.com, you won't be affected; if you're arriving via crowstoburnaby.com, bad things will happen. Basically I can't configure b2evolution until the domain name is pointed at it properly - I was hoping to set it up behind the scenes and then transfer the domain name, but noooooo, b2evolution hard-codes the domain name in so I have little choice. It'll be alright.

Take the blue pill

2004-11-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

There's an increasing number of rants online advocating that Democrat/"blue" areas disassociate themselves from the Republican/"red" areas, and pointing out that the division isn't red vs. blue states, it's country vs. city living. So one site advocates that Democrats and urban dwellers focus all their efforts on the cities to make them the sorts of places that we want to live. Which is all very well and good, but it seems that city living makes you die sooner. I suppose that'll make the Republicans happy, especially if anti-Bush protestors keep killing themselves.

What is hype and what isn't?

2004-11-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

I get a warm fuzzy feeling from looking over del.icio.us and feeling like I'm seeing the pulse of browsers everywhere. I get a quiet joy from the ease and elegance of flickr's interface, a simple idea done well. And, as previously mentioned, I'm ridiculously happy about the idea of moving to a better blogging interface.

But there's a nagging part of me that wonders, especially after some conversations I've had lately, how much of it all is just another bandwagon. I do think there's some real value in all of these tools... but sometimes I feel a bit sheepish talking about them. Is it just the phenomenon of "it's so popular it's unpopular", which is what kept me from starting a blog in the first place? Is it a reluctance to sit on the crest of a great wave that'll inevitably crash, leaving me looking foolish in a wreck on the shore? Or is it just the simple realization that while these are all great tools, they aren't panaceas for anything that's wrong online, either in education or the rest of the net? Having a wiki doesn't mean people will use it. Having a blog doesn't mean your content is worth reading. And I still think it's only a matter of time before Furl and del.icio.us are obscured by spam, the way wikis are being overrun, the way you can't do a Google search on a popular topic without finding scores of meaningless sites all pointing in circles to inflate their scores.

The thing is, these tools are fantastic for people who are already motivated to use them. But there's still a fundamental need TO motivate the tech-phobic, the disinterested, the standoffish, particularily in education. And that has less to do with building cool tools, and more to do with basic interface design and basic content development.

I think what's great about the tools is that people are looking at building new kinds of software and new kinds of tools that they hadn't before, making collaboration more intuitive and streamlined, and giving people the power to adapt the tools themselves (such as the API for del.icio.us). That's what I can allow myself to get excited about, perhaps; not what's out there now, but what'll be out there next.

Goldilocks and the Three Bands

2004-11-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

Went last night to sample some more New Music West shows, this time at Voda. The first band was... too derivative. The second bad was... too... ummm... just not my style. But the third band was juuuuust right.

All three were actually very, very good. The first was Whitfield, a three-piece Brit-pop-style band. (Their website says they're looking for a lead guitarist, if anybody's interested.) Very talented, enjoyed it a lot, but they do wear their influences on their sleeve; they could understudy for Coldplay. When not sounding like Chris Martin, the lead singer's vocal style is very, very obviously influenced by Thom Yorke - and hey, there's nothing wrong with that, but you get the feeling he hasn't yet found his own voice. Maybe in time they'll grow into their own. Maybe they won't. We'll see. Either way, they were more than listenable, and I'd check them out again.

Second band was Welkin. Also very talented, but more of a stadium-rock style, a bit too big for the room. Their site says their major influence is I Mother Earth, who I don't know, but if you know them maybe that'll give you a better idea. More of a heavy/prog-rock sound than I like - but that's just me. If you like that style, you'll like Welkin, I expect; they were good musicians.

Oceanic was last up. Whenever I've gone out to see random local bands, I've always hoped that somebody would play something I could really get into; I am often bitterly disappointed. This time I actually found a band I could get excited about. Thoughtful, dynamic, textured, lovely music; guitar-and-sample based with pleasing bassline patterns. I'll definitely see them again sometime, and I highly recommend you give them a listen or go to a show.

They did a beautiful cover of The Verve's "Life's an Ocean" - accurate enough that you recognize the song, different enough that they gave it their own feel. They also had a projection screen with a nice atmospheric slideshow. I bought their EP, and it's very good, though I was surprised that it seems to have more of a "same-ness" about it than I thought they had live. Still, I don't mind, since it's more of a good thing and so on. They've really got some potential and I hope they get the backing they'll need to get where they want to go.

(The bassist had the most gorgeous bass, too; I think it was a Warwick but I'm not sure. I've seen them in the store but they look much better being played. And a wonderful warm rich sound. Yum.)

While I'm in the habit of recommending local music, I must point you to Marcus Martin's solo work at projectarctic.com. It's great to watch Marcus live - he records his guitar loops as he plays and continues over them, adding new elements here and there; the result is a much richer and more intricate sound than you'd expect from one man with a solo guitar, and he's got a wonderful pure voice that weaves throughout it all. Go listen to some tracks.

Finally, a l'il anecdote on the way the Web works these days. I spotted Stephen Hedley at the show last night, and stopped him to thank him for suggesting the bands at Voda that night. Turns out that between my last blog post on Friday afternoon and the concert on Saturday evening, he'd Googled his name to look for any reviews, and found my comments! Funny - it had occurred to me that people I mention here might eventually turn up these posts, but I didn't think it would happen that fast. The virtual and real worlds don't just occasionally collide the way they used to; they are now fully integrated. By way of thanks, he kindly gave me a copy of his EP - you can listen to samples of the tracks at his site here. It's wonderful rainy-Sunday-morning-with-a-cup-of-tea music. And there's a lot of rainy Sunday mornings in Vancouver, so you're obviously going to need this music.

That's a lot of listening homework I've assigned you. Better stop reading and get to it.

This blog wants to MOVE.

2004-11-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

Of course, as it turns out, there is no easy way to import Blogger posts into b2evolution. Ain't I lucky? There seem to be some tweaks you can try at the database level... but now since I'm not installing it myself I probably won't have that access after all. Tee hee; what fun. I've only got 30-some posts, so far (although here I go, adding to the list). Hopefully I can just set the timestamps so it looks like I posted them when I originally posted 'em. And I'll just add any precious comments into the body of the post.

It does seem a bit silly that I can't just export & import. Wouldn't XML/RSS be awfully handy for this kind of thing? Shouldn't I be able to just export a nice XML listing of all my posts from Blogger and then feed those into b2evolution and let 'er rip? Is this too much to ask for?

Other than that, I can barely wait. I'm quite geeked out about this whole thing. Categories!!!

Plans for the weekend: the New Music West festival has some daytime events over the next few days, but it'll put me in the wrong part of town for the East Side Culture Crawl. I'm volunteering with NMW - worked at the door last night at a show that featured the MacGregors, Stephen Hedley, and Myke Madison. (The MacGregors turned out to be a set of fourteen-year-olds playing cheery poppy songs; the harmonizing lead singer sisters also play some fiddle tunes. It's like Hanson except they actually are girls.) Liked Stephen Hedley's material a lot; good voice, nice harmonies, solid music. It was actually the second time in a week I'd seen him perform alongside a few other bands, and he was the standout both times. Myke Madison didn't impress me overmuch - loud, fidgety drumming overwhelmed what otherwise seemed to be a potentially musical and versatile group (more violins, at least).

NMW really is a neat way to see bands - if you don't like what you're listening to, take your wristband and wander up the street to see something else. I'm not sure if the conference section in the afternoon will be all that valuable to me - it's mostly about how to promote your music to A&R, publicize, manage, and so on. It's more schmooze-related, less about the actual music creation, which is what I would prefer to get into - I haven't written a song I'd want publicized, and don't expect to ever spend any time aggressively pursuing A&R types, so I don't expect I'd want to hang around with them any more than necessary.

Next weekend: The East Side Culture Crawl is always good (well, a large proportion of it, anyway). I'm beginning to get attached to Arleigh Wood's prints... mostly features crows, circles, leaves, and other natural elements worked into designs. She was at the Drift on Main a while ago - conveniently she has two studios and can take advantage of both events. Nice work.

But tonight: all-you-can-eat sushi followed by karaoke. Have yourselves a lovely little weekend. Maybe somewhere in all this other stuff I'll get a chance to start shifting things over to b2evolution. I'll post when that's happened, and you can update your bookmarks to http://www.crowstoburnaby.com. No idea if anyone's subscribed to my newsfeed, but I'll holler when that's changed too.

Bass and beyond

2004-11-09T10:19:00.000-08:00

I'm proud of my bass-playing calluses. I love it when my fingertips are tender after a bass practice. It's akin to having slightly sore muscles after exercise, just enough so you know you've done yourself some good. Of course, I'd far rather play my bass than exercise, so I'm starting to become more familiar with sore fingertips than sore muscles.

I also love the sound of the band downtuning before playing Muse's "Hypermusic". It's like an airplane getting ready for takeoff.

I'm getting better at singing while playing, too. It's still tricky when I first start learning a new song, and there's some songs that I doubt I'd ever be able to handle the bassline AND the vocals at the same time, but I'm getting more reliable. Marcus suggested practicing it by emphasizing just the words that are sung as you're playing a note (particularily when they're on the beat), and then the rest sort of fills in over time - that's helped a lot. I've even noticed that sometimes I can tell whether the lead singer plays an instrument or not while they sing, depending on how naturally the vocals match the beats.

Other miscellaneous notes for the day:

While I was scanning my spam folder for valid emails accidentally misplaced, I noticed the name 'Pat Pfirmphh" in one of the From fields. I didn't take note of what he/she was selling (no doubt the usual prescriptions, p3n1s enlargement, prizewinning notifications or the mystifying Christian Debt Relief) but I have to give some kudos to the spammer for coming up with the creative name of Pfirmphh. Come to think of it, it was probably for a prescription... the name sounds like an expression of great discomfort.
The bus I take to work passes a grade school. Usually I've got my nose buried in a book or my eyes closed, but I was looking out yesterday and noticed that instead of backpacks, many of the kids were lugging small suitcases, like flight attendants. I'm not good at judging ages, but these kids must've been around, what, 7-10 years old. Has the curriculum really gotten so intensive that the poor things have to carry around that many massive books at once? Are they learning that much more? Someone explain this to me. What's it like to be a grade-schooler these days? I've obviously missed out on the changes in the past 20+ years.
Finally, I think I'm going to switch this blog over to b2evolution sometime in the next few weeks, if I ever get time. It seems to be getting a lot of good feedback. Part of me really likes using a maintained system like Blogger - it's like having a day at the spa; some of it is stuff you didn't need or could've done yourself but it's just so nice not to have to worry about it. But I feel like Blogger is stagnating, and it seems kind of silly to go to TypePad when I can in fact host something myself on my own server. So we'll see how it goes. I hope there's an easy way to import old posts so I don't have to copy and paste all my archives... ugghh. Any tips? [UPDATE: I just found out that my host, Ace of Space, does provide b2evolution support - I just need to upgrade from an Admin Suite account to a CPanel account, something I've been thinking about doing for a while. Plus, they have wikis and more! WOOHOO! I can't wait!!]

So much for corporate activism.

2004-11-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

There's a little conversation going on at blinkit here and here about the TELUSphere petition I started, which has pretty much died in its infancy. (You can see my response in the comments under the first link.) This is fairly typical of the response I've seen online - basically, if Telus wants to support a building, Science World should be happy and we shouldn't complain because we get improved services.

I'm kind of past discussing it any more - you can read my thoughts on it if you want, and if nobody else thinks it's worth kicking and screaming about then I'm not going to belabour the issue - but I'm honestly very, very surprised that this is the response in Vancouver. This is the city where Adbusters was born. This is the home of the makers of The Corporation. This is a city of activists, where there is a protest for the slightest infraction by any company or government.

Of course, it's also the city where there are two Starbucks on opposing corners, and people also write furious letters to the local papers complaining about bubble machines, so perhaps I should not be so hasty to assume.

Random Vancouver comment. Within one block of each other are two restaurants, Monsoon and Typhoon. Does this tell you anything about the quantity of water we receive every year? Luckily it's near the top of a hill, so the area is unlikely to flood.

So how's the blogging going, anyway?

2004-11-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

To revisit some earlier ramblings, I set this blog up mostly as an experiment in blogging, and because one of my main computer interests has become social software - so I really ought to be involved in actually using the tools that interest me! And what do I think so far, you might ask?

Well, I'm hooked. I really am. I am starting to get to the point when I make mental bookmarks of things that I think would make good blog posts. I was ecstatic when I got a comment, and I love seeing my traffic grow (I'm using reinvigorate.net for site stats). The process of blogging has led me to all sorts of wonderful online discoveries that I wouldn't have made otherwise.

I've had my own web site(s) for years - aahlookout.com for personal stuff, outsideinthesun.com for business, back when I was freelancing. I chose to make this blog a stand-alone entity on blogspot.com because I wanted to see how easy or difficult it was to emerge from nothing on the Web. Of course, I got impatient, because I'd rather be part of a big network than a wallflower in the corner. Human nature and all. And now I've got a third site to deal with - crows to burnaby. I just bought the domain name and I'm pointing it to this blog; should be good to go in a few hours. Is this not a bit silly, though? crowstoburnaby and aahlookout should be lumped into one site, but I can't bring myself to part with either name.

I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with blogger.com forever. First, it's been having some server issues (coincidentally, the server started returning errors while I was writing this post, and if I hadn't copied it into the buffer, I would have lost it). Also, I'm finding myself increasingly impatient for some of the features that other blog services offer, like categories and TrackBack. And there haven't been any hints forthcoming from Blogger on when they're going to incorporate any of these features. I'm a bit surprised that they're so far behind, given that Google (who owns Blogger) is usually right on top of things and blogs are a pretty hot & trendy topic at the moment. Makes me wonder what's going on with them internally. Anyone care to enlighten me?

My other social-software dilemma is, of course, Furl vs. del.icio.us. I've grown to very much like Furl. I appreciate that you can make links private - not that I need to often, but it's nice to have the choice. I get the feeling when using del.icio.us that it's more of a broadcast to the world, whereas Furl feels like my personal bookmark collection that I just happen to be sharing with anyone who seeks it out. Maybe it's an illusion. In any case, I'm going to keep using them both for the time being - I've only been using del.icio.us for a few days, so I have yet to get a real feel for it. It seems a little less organized and haphazard than Furl, but that does have its own charm.

And Flickr still rocks.

Branding and indifference

2004-11-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

Here's an article from Wired about how brands are becoming passe, and consumers are now so savvy that they have abandoned brand loyalty since they can do research online and find out which products are best. I do think this is partly true, though a little optimistic. We're so innundated with branding that eventually we just tune it out. Perhaps this is why I've gotten a lukewarm response to my TELUSphere petition - what's another big logo on the skyline matter when most of the available space is filled with ads anyway? (Or perhaps it's because @#$%^&* petitiononline.com has been down for the entire past day.) Many people are irate about the change, but a lot are just indifferent, and don't see how the TELUSfear is any different from GM Place or the CN Tower or the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Is it worth arguing over? I waver back and forth about it. It seems so insignificant compared to the politics going on just south of here, but at the same time at least it's something local and I should, in theory, have some say in the matter.

In other, unrelated news, my band has spontaneously renamed itself after my dog.

Preparing for the Exodus

2004-11-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

Since this morning I've talked to three friends in the States who are wistfully pondering the idea of leaving the country. They're certainly not the only ones to think of it - Harper's offers a repatriation guide for the dissatisfied American, and there's a discussion on Plastic about people who threaten to leave if their guy loses.

It would be a wise move right now for Canada to loosen its immigration requirements for academics, scientists, doctors and innovators. The climate in the States for the next four years is not exactly going to favour innovation and scientific development, nor free speech and exploration. Here in Canada we're facing a shortage of physicians, and as always need to foster and encourage academic growth and technological innovation. Liberal and educated people in the United States, frustrated at the state of the country, are considering emigrating. It's a perfect match, and a good opportunity for Canada to bolster its capabilities in science and technology while the USA lets itself go.

In the meantime, any of our friends are welcome to sleep on our couch if they feel like hopping over the border to check things out. And you can learn more about Canadian immigration at http://www.cic.gc.ca. It's a tedious and sometimes difficult process, but it's worth it.

Election results

2004-11-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

At the time of writing, John Kerry has recently conceded the election to George Bush.

I said that if Bush won I'd lose my faith in humanity, which is largely true. I expected that if Bush won again, I would rant about how I can't understand what's wrong with half of America, how can people be so blind, etc etc. But I've done that before and it isn't really the point any more.

Instead, I've shifted into a sort of resigned tolerance. If this is what America truly wants for themselves, then maybe it's what they should have. If their ideal world is a conservative, religious, semi-fascist regime run by a fear-mongerer who puts corporate interests above the needs of his people, then maybe they made the right choice. I really wanted to believe that there were enough sensible, rational people to carry things through. But it looks like we have hit that critical bump where the ignorant outnumber the rational. And ignorance has a way of begetting ignorance, so it's all downhill from here. I just wish that they weren't going to take the rest of the world down with them as they slide - our environment, our security, our economies will all be affected.

Watching this change in the United States has been rather like watching an acquaintance suffering from a long, slow, dehabilitating illness - and last night they finally passed away. It's upsetting, but at the same time I knew it was coming; it looked for a little while like there was some hope, but in the end it was inevitable that they slip away, out of reach.

Today's a day for the paranoid!

2004-11-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too paranoid about not revealing statistics about myself like my full name and my employer, especially given that I work for a pretty cool university with people that do some pretty spiffy and forward-thinking things in e-learning.

Then I see something like this post from James Farmer, who has been warned by his (unnamed) university to "cease supporting and promoting weblogging, wikis or any other technology not officially supported by the University". It looks their admin is a little touchy on anything that might compete with their CMS, and does not wish to see commentary (read: criticism) on the topic. Never mind, of course, that blogs and wikis can be used to supplement and enhance a CMS; his research is apparently cause for disciplinary action.

That's a startling message from a type of institution, which is, in theory, supposed to be a supportive environment that encourages exploration and discovery. And of course, it may not be representative of the whole picture: perhaps it's just one or two members of the administration who are so short-sighted, and the other people there are actually quite reasonable.

But that's exactly why I don't make a big show out of who I work for and what we do; who knows if I've said something here, even unrelated to e-learning, that could piss off the wrong person. Perhaps Telus is a major sponsor of some program here and they don't want to see an employee of this university babbling about the TELUSfear. Perhaps one of the profs is a staunch Republican and wouldn't want to work with someone as anti-Bush as I am. I'd just rather be safe than sorry.

In other news for the paranoid, tonight's election night! Not that we're going to know the winner for quite some time, of course. The absentee ballots don't have to be in until the 9th, and they're expecting a large number of them this year. Besides, there'll be some recounts and some lawsuits and some appeals to go through in the meantime.

I don't really drink much, but I was thinking a drinking game might be appropriate for tonight: something like, chug every time you hear "too close to call", "a dead heat", or "neck and neck"... any other suggestions? It might make the process bearable.

I'm curious to see what happens after the election results are final, for either side. There's been an awful lot of pent-up emotions for the past year. Are we due for riots? I'm thinking there'll be some smashed windows, a few fights in a few cities. Nothing on a civil war level, hopefully. But it's been a pretty intense time, and people do have a tendency to vent when the pressure has been building... of course, the steam may very well die down over the course of the next few weeks while they decide the winner. We'll see.

The TELUSfear

2004-10-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a scary story for Halloween. I was horrified to learn last night that Vancouver's Science World is about to be renamed to TELUSphere, as part of a sponsorship agreement between the facility and phone service provider TELUS. I find it difficult to fully express the deep loathing I feel towards this naming decision - but I'm going to try.

First of all, there's the obvious: the growing trend towards selling out our notable landmarks and slapping a corporate sponsor's name and logo all over them, thereby embedding even more advertising into our already media-saturated and consumer-driven lives. No longer will I gaze upon the twinkly lights of Science World at night, like a firework captured in mid-explosion; instead, I'll find myself resenting the imposition of the TELUSphere upon my view.

Had the learning centre merely been renamed "TELUS Science World", I would have grumbled. I would have shaken my head, and ranted a bit to friends and colleagues, and thumbed my nose at the logo as I biked past - and eventually picked up the pieces and moved on with my life. But part of what I find so abhorrent about this new name is that it eliminates any trace whatsoever of the purpose or content of Science World. There is no suggestion of science, or learning, or even fun. There is nothing in the word "TELUSphere" to indicate that the giant shiny globe is anything but a showcase for TELUS. To the uninitiated, it could be a wireless networking superstore, or a corporate research station, or an amusement park ride.

So I certainly won't be patronizing the "TELUSphere" or the Omnimax within it any more, if the name changes goes ahead. Had I children, I would not bring them there; I would not want them to grow up associating the brand of TELUS with the fundamentals of science and technology (particularily when the cell phone signal at my office is so unreliable). And I've got an online petition started, for what it's worth. Once there's enough names on it I'll send it to Science World's Board of Governors and see if they'll consider a more appropriate name. I'd also encourage anyone else who is bothered by this to send letters to Science World and the newspapers. It can't hurt to at least make our feelings known.

Standing ovation for Flickr.

2004-10-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

First of all, I just set up a Flickr account, and I loooove it. I only have a few photos up yet, but so far I think the interface is fantastic - it's incredibly easy to use and edit. I greatly appreciate that when you view your own photos, you can change the title or description with one click - so much more natural and efficient than clicking on an edit button, making the changes, saving it, going back to your photos... it's more like editing a web page within the page itself (something I quite like about WebNote). Hey, and Flickr is by a Vancouver company, too.

Secondly: have interest rates risen on basic audience applause? It seems like it's impossible to go to any large-scale performance by anyone known to the public without at least one standing ovation required. Back when I was a little girl (*creak of rocking chair*), a standing ovation was reserved only for the most sublime performance the likes of which were rarely seen. Now it's become a general show of support, an acknowledgement of a person's fame, or a chance to stretch your legs; it doesn't mean anything any more. What are we supposed to do now when we really are impressed by someone? Throw clothing?

What the hell happened to Olympus? [+ updates]

2004-10-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

I've owned an Olympus C3000Z camera for, oh, five or so years. It's a good workhorse - bit bigger than I'd like it to be, but I can add lenses if I'm so inclined, the quality is great, and I've been very happy with it. Someday I'll get a nice little micro that I can port around, but not now.

With my old computer, I used Olympus's software, Camedia Master, to connect to the camera and download images. It was fine for my purposes, but I only had it for OS 9; when I bought my new computer I needed software for OS X. I went to their site to download it; of course, I couldn't just download the new software, I had to buy the new version, 4.2. And I couldn't even download THAT - they had to send it via Purolator in an old-fashioned CD case. Well, whatever, such is the way of things; I coughed up the money and hit Submit.

A few weeks later, I still hadn't received the software; Purolator had no record of the software being shipped, although I had a tracking number. I called Olympus and a sullen woman said she'd check with shipping. A few days later I got a notice of the new shipment. It arrived in due time but I had to drive out to the airport to get it.

Camedia Master 4.0's interface is astoundingly nonintuitive. It has cryptic icons that do not describe their functions with text or rollovers. I do like the fact that you can view your photos by album OR by file folder, something I wish basic iPhoto would do. But when I downloaded some images from the camera, I could not for the life of me find how to delete the images from the camera! No reference to it in the help files. This is fairly fundamental functionality that was available in Camedia 2.0. And while I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for the initial shipment of the software, I discovered that I didn't really need this software at all: iPhoto can connect to my camera and download the photos just fine.

Feeling like an idiot, I emailed Olympus to ask them how I can get the software to delete the images from my camera. It took them two days to get around to telling me that it can't be done:


> The only way to delete picutrers from the camera is on the camera.

> The software has no way of deleting picuters.

I emailed them to ask for a refund; I feel a bit ripped off paying for an upgrade of software I don't need that has less functionality than it started with. I got a response, the same day this time, that asked me to call their Emporium phone number, and added:


Also let me inform you that deleting pictures from the computer can 

damage and corrupter the card.

Now, this may be true, but I can't say I ever had a problem with it in the years I've had the camera and the previous software. But I'm just one example. Maybe it goes wonky on Windows machines.

I called the Emporium around 9:30 AM PST and sat on hold for twenty minutes. The woman I spoke to did not seem to have much technical knowledge; when I told her that the software I used in OS 9 had the delete functionality but it had been removed in OS X, she asked "So you're using something called Oh.. Ess Ex?" (I informed her it is the standard Macintosh operating system.) She told me I probably couldn't get a refund since I'd opened the software package, and she would get her supervisor to call me after lunch. It is now 2:15 PST, and after closing time on the Long Island, where Olympus is located; I never received a call.

I can understand that, to prevent piracy, Olympus might not want to give me a refund. But at the very least they could put a little effort into their customer service, particularily when they know they've got a disgruntled long-term customer waiting for a response. It's not abysmal - at least they answer their emails, and they haven't sworn at me yet - but it just comes across as rather shoddy and haphazard.

I'll keep you posted if I get any kind of response from them, but I've already blacklisted them as a source for future cameras, barring a Herculean effort of customer support.

UPDATE 10/26: I just got an email back from an Olympus representative giving me instructions on how & where to return the software. Hooray! So they get a few points back for that. I'll send it back this week.
UPDATE 10/28: The representative told me to go to the Olympus store online to get the return form, and gave me the link. Currently, the link goes to a page titled "Error" on which the only text is "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.". This is becoming a saga.

Random thought about RSS

2004-10-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Isn't it a bit ironic that with RSS feeds, we've actually headed backwards to something more like the text-based, hierarchical menu structure of the Gopher days? When Mosaic emerged, everyone was awfully excited about the potential of ditching menus and including images in our content. Now RSS has emerged and we're awfully excited about the potential of grabbing the content and placing it into a menu. Hey, I love RSS and I see how spiffy it is to extract an XML feed and import it into another interface and all - but when you think about it, it's good for a chuckle.

Saving the world, etc.

2004-10-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the WWF released a report about how humans are using 20% more natural resources than the earth can produce, and describes the repercussions that we're already well aware of: decreasing biodiversity, increasing ecological footprint, overdependence on fossil fuels, and so on. This is so discouraging, especially when I see that Bush, the most environmentally unfriendly president in history, is likely to be re-elected, so the US (one of the worst offenders) is not going to change their ways any time soon. Even if you were to assume that the WWF is slightly biased, you know the numbers are still awfully high, and the evidence of climate change is everywhere.

We went to a talk in the evening by Jane Goodall in support of the Spirit Bear, and she had much to say on the topic of hope and making a difference. It was obviously meant to be inspiring, but didn't really help my pessimism. I have huge amounts of respect for individuals who go forth and make some noise and get things done, but I've never felt that passionate drive necessary to do it myself. I feel strongly about many issues, but not enough to really get deeply involved in an issue, and so then I feel guilty about that. And when it comes to taking on corporate powermongers whose existence depends on the continued destruction of the environment, I feel utterly useless. A donation here or there, and then I wimp out, even despite living in Vancouver, where activism is as common as rain.

But I felt much better today when I read that Russia has ratified the Kyoto treaty, thus breaking the stalemate and allowing the treaty to be implemented. That means something huge has shifted, and there will be some change. Not today, not tomorrow, I'm sure there'll be some weaselling out of some regulations, and it may be a while before we really see the effects... but it's a positive step on a large scale.

And in the meantime, while I may not be singlehandedly sallying forth to fight for an endangered species or a rare patch of bog, I try not to add to the problems too much: I avoid driving as often as I can, I shop locally, I recycle. This week I started collecting rainwater to use on my plants so that I use less tapwater. It's a drop in the bucket (so to speak!), and it's not going to save the world on its own, but I'm listening and so are a lot of other people. We'll see what happens.

People will play anything!

2004-10-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Just discovered BlogShares, a fantasy stock market site where the "companies" are weblogs. To my surprise, this very blog is worth $1k in fake money. It would probably help if somebody was, y'know, linking to me. Makes me think of the Hollywood Stock Exchange - my husband used to play that religiously, and accrued quite a bit of virtual wealth by investing in things like X-Men 2 many years before it was made. There's actually a HSX stock ticker along a street in Los Angeles - amused me greatly when I saw that.

Currently reading a most excellent book by Stephen Pinker called The Language Instinct. It explores mankind's natural tendency to develop language, something that's always fascinated me. He has such a wonderful way of explaining things - he doesn't dumb it down, but describes a theory and offers examples in such a way that you feel you understand it. Some aspects of it I'm already familiar with from his other books or from computer science, such as generative grammars; much of it is new to me. I'm actually finding some of it to be an exciting read because I've wanted to know about some of it for so long. What I'm really looking forward to is learning about how we developed language in the first place; how did we first agree that a particular sound means a particular action or object? Oh, the suspense.

More blog-related musings: I am starting to feel slightly limited by Blogger, knowing that MoveableType's TypePad offers features like post categories and TrackBack. Blogger, however, is free. At one point they had a pay feature, but they seem to be doing some re-evaluating and it's not available any more. I'm not sure I'd really want to pay for it, come to think of it, given that I already have a few domains that I could use... but those extra features sure would be nice.

By the way, here's my Furl archive, if you're interested.

More about Furl

2004-10-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

How embarrassed am I that I didn't even notice that Furl caches the pages you save until recently? I already thought it was a wonderfully useful tool, but apparently missed about half the point of it all.

Here is also an excellent article by Amy Gahran about Furl and copyright infringement - since Furl does save a local version of each page you furl, there's been some concern that publishers will consider their content to have been republished, and take issue. As far as I'm concerned it's on the same level as Google's caching system - which has, as Gahran points out, been gently bumped around in the legal system a bit as well. Perhaps, though, the difference might be that Google actively requires page caching in order for the search engine to work - whereas Furl offers it as a stand-alone feature, but the service itself does not (AFAIK) need caching.

Now that Furl and del.icio.us are catching on, how long before they start to be abused by spammers just like blog comments and Google searches? When will we see the top line on Furl: "Make money fast! furled by 4818 members"? You know somebody's going to try.

Time to dip into politics.

2004-10-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

Well, one of the obvious things to do in a blog is vent about politics, especially right now. I was emailing a friend recently about the current election; the conversation started because one of his friends ran into troubles registering to vote in Florida. (FYI, did you know that Jeb Bush is using the same Florida felon list, despite it being inaccurate and illegally preventing thousands of valid residents from voting? Well, it worked last time....) I got myself worked up into a nice little rant just talking about it all, and I thought: let's take some of this bitterness and frustration and throw it up on my blog!

A friend of ours spent the summer doing research in Missouri. She said most of the people she worked with were anti-Bush - but most of THEIR friends were voting for Bush. And the one sole reason they were doing so? Bush's stance on same-sex marriage.

That disturbs me on a number of levels. I fully support gay marriage, so you'd expect that response from me. But here's my main problem - that these Bush supporters see his desire to ban gay marriage as more of an important issue than ANYTHING ELSE THAT'S GOING ON IN THE WORLD right now? That it would be the only thing that affects your vote, regardless of a corrupt government, an out-of-control illegal war, corporate scandals, $4 trillion in debt, the destruction of the environment, the growing hatred or resentment from the rest of the world - ANY of it? I absolutely cannot comprehend this. It's not as if Kerry has agreed to legalize gay marriage, he only has said he won't ban it. And yet this is more of a sticking point for people than the fact that their government is throwing truckloads of money and troops towards a war that is bankrupting the country while benefiting a very small percentage of the population - which happens to be connected to these same government members?

What is the problem here? Is it too complicated for people to understand? It's not like it's a particularily complicated situation, or a conspiracy theory without a leg to stand on. Boiled down to the very basics: Bush and Cheney and/or their friends and relatives stand to profit from a war in the Middle East. It is in their interests to be at war. It is not in your interests. They are robbing your country and feeding it back, indirectly, towards themselves. And yet some of you are not bothered by this. You are bothered much more by the idea that two men or two women in love want to spend their lives together. I do not understand.

New tools, old tools

2004-10-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

I've added a a blogroll of my RSS feeds to this site. I thought I'd give Bloglines a try and see if I would rather use it than my desktop-based RSS aggregator. So far, I'm underwhelmed; I like the fact that I can get at my feeds from multiple computers, but that's about it. The notifier that it uses basically only puts a teeeeny tiny little red dot on the icon when there's a new article - I suppose the dot has a number on it, but with my icon in the Dock it's too small to see, and the icon in DragThing doesn't acquire the number at all so it really doesn't do me any good there - you click on it and you just get sent to the Bloglines page, hey ho.

In another computer news, I finally sold my beautiful little tangerine clamshell Revision A iBook. *sigh* I really loved that computer when I got it - it was such a comfortable laptop, so natural to use, and it served me well when I was commuting on the Long Island Railroad (*gag*) to New York every day. But I hadn't used it as a laptop in about two years, and it's rather hard to upgrade an original iBook - you can only use the original AirPort card on it (which is more expensive than the new Airport Extreme card!) and replacing the hard drive is a monumental, tech-savvy task. It has found a new home with a student here, and hopefully it will be well cared for. *sniff*

I have a question about blog audiences. Do people browsing blogs read more than the latest few entries, usually? Is everything I type pretty much forgotten after a day or two, except by the occasional search engine? How long does it take before my posts are considered stale? I'd invite you to comment, except that I know (thanks to reinvigorate) that very few people are reading this yet, and you probably won't respond. *thumbs nose*

A note about music.

2004-10-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

In November of 2003, I turned 30. This happens to most people, if all goes well. Also like most people, I went through a bit of angsting over not having achieved great things by the time I turned 30. One of the things that was nagging at me was that I wasn't in any real way involved with music.

To give a little background: when I was growing up, I took lessons on piano and cello (and also violin and clarinet, but those went by the wayside fairly quickly). My parents are major classical music aficionados, and both play instruments, so it was only natural that I would play something too. They tried to get me started pretty young first, I suppose on the off chance I was a protege or something (always worth checking, eh? ;) I wasn't, and it was a few more years before I really took any instrument seriously. I can't remember exactly when I finally succeeded in begging out of taking piano lessons - maybe around age 13-14? I played cello in the Newfoundland Symphony Youth Orchestra for a good few years, and finally quit when I started university. I quite enjoyed cello, and was pretty decent, but nothing spectacular.

I didn't really listen to any rock music until I was about 13 or 14, when a friend got me into Sting, Peter Gabriel, and R.E.M. While I was living at home, though, it wouldn't really have seriously occurred to me to take up a rock instrument. Even if it did, I probably would have thought it would hurt my parents' feelings to switch to rock, and wouldn't have made the move. In the meantime, though, I went to a lot of local shows and concerts. In retrospect, I see I should've gotten more involved with musicians or sound crews - but I've always seen myself as somewhat bumbly and awkward, and rock musicians and sound crews always seemed so cool and unapproachable. (I didn't wear nearly enough black to talk to them.)

Eventually I decided I needed to try something. In late 2000, while I was living on Long Island, I bought a Roland XP-30 synthesizer and started mucking about with it (the link is to an ancient blog/journal I kept of the process). But I was working in a void - I didn't know anybody else who I could ask about keyboards and electronic music. I wrote a few songs, liked some things about them, disliked other things, didn't really play keyboards very well in the first place, knew nothing about the technology, felt very dissatisfied with the whole thing, and when we moved in 2002 I never got around to unpacking the keyboard (partly because we didn't have space for it, but...)

I felt that my biggest problem was that I didn't have any contact with other musicians, couldn't bounce ideas off anyone or learn from them. I also don't think I'm a particularily good songwriter. I can write decent lyrics, but my melodies always seem kind of insipid and uninspired to me. I suppose with time and practice they'd improve, but, again, I needed feedback.

I also wanted to sing - I have a decent voice and really enjoy singing. But people out there who have decent voices and really enjoy singing are a dime a dozen. I don't think I have an overwhelming artistic "vision" or "drive" with which to lead a band yet, either - plus with my complete inexperience in the rock world, who'd need me?

I got tired of standing on the sidelines waiting for something to happen, and made the decision to learn bass a little over a year ago. It seemed like the natural choice, having been a cellist; it's the "low end", it's not the most attention-seeking instrument, and it's a little easier to sing & play at the same time (though that's still a challenge for me a lot of the time!). Guitar wasn't right for me since I don't expect to ever be truly fantastic at my instrument, as I'm not a professional and I haven't been immersed in it since being a teenager; an average bass player is still more useful and tolerable than a mediocre guitarist. And turning 30, I realized that if I want something to happen, I've got to do something to set it in motion.

I took some lessons, got competent and confident enough after a few months to advertise online to see if there was a band who could use a rank amateur bassist. And then I broke my right wrist and was out of commission for about two months. Just before I got my cast off, I got an email from a guy at UBC - a guitarist in a band made up of UBC graduate students and ex-graduates - whose bassist was moving to Norway. Once my arm healed up, I met up with them and we've been getting together to play about once a week every since.

This has really been exactly what I need - low-pressure supportive environment with the occasional opportunity to play out somewhere, where everybody has a day job that they expect to keep. We play a nice range of covers, and everybody's around the same level. We have a lead singer, but myself and the two guitarists occasionally do some singing too. This is also perfect for me right now - I can only sing & play at the same time if the bassline is pretty simple, and I'm happy to not always be in the spotlight at the moment. *grin* On top of everything, everyone's great - easy to get along with, really super people.

Anyway, the reason I'm going on about all this today is that last night we had our first gig at a UBC party of about 100 people or so. 3 of the other 4 have played before with two other musicians, but it was our first show ever all together, and my first rock gig ever. It went, I'd say, really well - a few rough patches that we sort of knew were coming (I mangled a Smiths bassline that I just learned last week), some great moments where everything just came together beautifully ("Other Side" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers). I sang Radiohead's "Creep" and "There There" and it all worked nicely. Our second set was better than the first; also enhanced by the fact that it was more upbeat anyway and people were drunk enough to start dancing and singing along. I hadn't really given a whole lot of thought to what the audience would be like; it was nice that we were good enough to dance to, I think. :)

One of the guitarists had a friend at the party who I guess at some point was a professional guitarist, and he joined us for a third impromptu set. This was a bit of a weird experience for me - partly because the guy was pretty damn good and had a real energy that the rest of us are still somewhat lacking; I know for my part I'm not perfectly confident in my playing and so I guess I don't really throw myself into it like a professional. He also had some of that "lead guitar ego" which I'd never directly experienced - I was a bit bemused, not quite sure how to react when he took my bass from me and started playing it because I didn't know the bassline for "Jumping Jack Flash". (He did, in exchange, hand me a guitar and say "You can play, right?" - which I can't...) It was educational, in any case, both a little good and a little bad. And hell, I'm in this to learn.

So I've finally played my first gig in a rock band, about a year after setting out to do so. It's something I've wanted to do for quite a while. It's a good feeling. I like accomplishing major goals now and then. So where do I want to go with this now?

More gigs, obviously - it's fun and it's essential. (Though maybe starting out at age 30 wasn't the best lifestyle choice - late nights can really mess with my sleep cycle...) Someday, maybe, we can play on an actual stage.

Becoming a better player - practice practice practice, and a few more lessons here and there from a variety of teachers. I doubt I'll ever be truly "great", but I can always be better.

I want to be involved with original music - I'd be happy just writing my bassline (as long as I like the music and lyrics, of course ;)

I still want to learn more about electronic music and sound production. I'm taking a course through Continuing Studies on ProTools in a few months. I suspect it's overkill for what I need, but since I'm UBC staff I get a tuition waiver, and I do have access to a ProTools system so I might just be able to make use of it. I would also like to learn some things like Reason and Live. I'd like somebody who understands it to step me through some of it. I'd like to collaborate with someone.

I do dream of being lead singer of something someday. Not our band right now - I don't want to take Jen's job, she's doing great! I don't really have any huge expectations... but I do dream.

An extremely cool little utility

2004-10-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Take a look at WebNote. It's very much like a wiki - a collaborative document-building system - but with moveable post-it notes, more like a literal bulletin board. What I love about it is that it's collaborative content but done in a WYSIWYG fashion - basically you're building a dynamic page without using any HTML or special markup (but you can use HTML if you are so inclined). It's a nice intuitive visual device. I am determined to find a real-life practical use for it instead of just poking about with it. I'll keep you posted.

Gossip

2004-10-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

One of the differences between a blog and a diary - for me, not for everybody - is that I can't bring myself to post anything negative about anybody, personal or professional, on the off chance that eventually they or somebody they know will read it. I can make vague general statements (ie. "I had a meeting recently with a person who kept interrupting and talking over me to the point where it was insultingly ludicruous"), but I can't deconstruct a disagreement or vent about an individual, even if I don't use their name. Some of this is just me, since I'm a naturally cautious person. But things you post online can be surprisingly permanent for such a nebulous and insubstantial medium - I wonder how many people have done damage to their friendships or jobs by ranting about someone in their blogs, only to have that person read it & recognize themselves?

I'm going to link this blog now from my other sites, aahlookout.com and perhaps from outsideinthesun.com (though there's not really an obvious place to link it). I thought at first it'd be an interesting experiment to see how quickly or slowly I made headway into the blogosphere without using my existing connections, but I'm a bit bored of waiting, and in the meantime my posts are getting stale, so what's the point? I'd rather see a comment once in a while. Heyo.

Thanks, Getty!

2004-10-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Anyone care to explain why, when searching for royalty-free images using the term "Canada", this is one of the results?

Marginalizing the Mac

2004-10-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

Interesting blog entry about how important it is to support the Mac in social computing efforts, because Mac users themselves tend to be the eclectic, innovative geeks who will help connect and propagate new and alternative technologies. It's followed by a slew of comments, one side supporting the author and the other side saying "You Mac users with your superiority complexes should get a fucking life", etc. etc.

I suppose there are good reasons why Mac use is considered a cult or a church, why we talk about "converting" or being a "Mac evangelist", and so on. Like religious people, us Mac users have discovered something that we feel has made our lives a whole lot better, we don't understand why other people don't get it, and we just know everybody else would love it too if they'd just give it a chance. Users of other systems get tired of hearing us bemoan our persecution ("why don't people write things for Mac?") and get into heated debates about "platform wars" with deep fervour and devotion to our chosen system. And while I would consider it extremely rude to attempt to change someone's religious faith, I find myself dropping gentle hints and trying to steer those wayward Windows users onto the right path. As far as religious belief goes, I'm an atheist who says "if you're not hurting or bothering anyone, believe what you want" - but switch the topic to operating systems and suddenly I'm ready to spread the "word" (and that's not Microsoft Word).

Of course, to me the Mac does have measurable, tangible benefits. I "converted" from Windows in 1997 and never looked back; although I'm plenty techie and can use a PC just fine, I just find the Mac to be more intuitive, more natural, and more stable. As a result, I'm more comfortable using it. It's more secure and less prone to viruses - though of course some of that is due to market share; what's the point of writing a worm for 2% of the population? I love OS X - it's not perfect, sure, but it just makes sense to me at some fundamental level. It just feels like the authors thought about it more.

I'll freely admit it's not for everybody, though - if you're a serious programmer or hardcore gamer, you don't really want a Mac. (Although since OS X is Unix-based, a lot of programmers are discovering it's a very comfortable platform for them...) I advocate it mainly to the graphics/music/video crowd and for the casual email/word processing users. It's powerful enough for the experienced and intuitive enough for the novices. It just depends what you need it for. YMMV, etc.

In case anyone's wondering, the first half of my root canal went fairly badly and hurt like hell, and then the second half went perfectly well and all is now right with the world. So that's the end of that little adventure in pain for the time being. I hope.

A few words about pain.

2004-10-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

So last week I was rendered nonfunctional for a few days because of a cold. During that last weekend I had a mild occasional toothache, which is highly unusual for me, so I made a dentist's appointment for after my cold was gone. Well, by the time the appointment rolled round (I even got it moved back a day, to Thursday) I was in quite a bit of pain, and it's only gotten worse from there. I have to have my first-ever root canal on Tuesday and I can't wait. As long as it makes the pain stop, I will be celebrating.

If it was just a constant dull ache, I could tune that out; I'd whine a bit, but I'd be able to carry on my day. Instead, the tooth will be perfectly fine for minutes or an hour or two, and then the pain will start to ramp up until I can't think or do anything else, and the preferred way of handling it is to curl up into a little ball on the bed until it subsides. Although I try to avoid antibiotics, I started a penicillin treatment on Friday night - anything that'll help! - but that's only supposed to start working sometime later today. So yesterday I took some of the leftover codeine from when I broke my arm in the spring (first & last time snowboarding) - got three or four delightful hours of relief before the pain came back, and was in happyland for all that time. The second dose didn't work as well, though, so now I'm back to (slightly milder) intermittent pain.

All the reading I've done online about root canals just tells you want to do about pain afterwards, or if you're feeling pain then make an appointment with your dentist - they don't suggest anything you can do UNTIL you get the canal! My dentist is wonderful - she let me call her on the weekend and said that if I really can't take it she can try to get me in with a specialist for an emergency canal on Monday. I'm trying to wait it out and see... I'm hoping I might be halfway functional at work, and my band has a practice today and a small (1/2 hour) gig Monday night, so if I'm not writhing in agony on the floor at that point I'd like to push through.

I keep reminding myself that Leida would be happy to take my place, which offers me a grudging amount of perspective, but oh it does hurt. I am grateful that I do seem to be sleeping incredibly soundly all this week, although last night I was dreaming about eating ice cream despite the cold sensitivity and woke up with my tooth gently throbbing. And so far this morning it hasn't really gotten bad, but then I've only been up about 15 minutes and haven't had anything to eat or drink yet, so we shall see. Maybe the penicillin is doing its job.

From this window I can watch some pretty little chickadees dancing around a tree and a hyper dog (no, not ours, who's pretty hyper) racing up and down the street. It's a beautiful sunny day out, and if I'm not in too much pain, I'm hoping to check out the Drift on Main today before band practice. Keep your fingers crossed!

Things overheard

2004-09-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

I love overhearing fragments of conversations, or walking in on very odd statements completely out of context. It adds a delicate touch of the surreal to any ordinary day. So I was pretty happy to discover In Passing, a collection of overheard comments that people find worthy of sharing. It looks like the home page hasn't been updated in a while, but people are adding new things, so dig around and you'll find some good stuff (click on the categories).

I feel like I've been getting more value from my web surfing these days. It's like having tapped into another branch of this tree we call the web. BTW, I wholeheartedly agree with Wired's style decision to make "internet" and "web" lowercase; it's time to consider it just another medium like television or radio, and writing someone about what you watched on Television last night would look rather silly, wouldn't it?

On a related note, when will the internet and web no longer be considered "new" media? I know, I know, that's been pointed out over and over since ages ago. But I do need to know, since I was just put down for an order of business cards with "new media developer" as my title. I like the term "new media". It still feels fresh-faced and exciting. I could've gone with "interactive" instead, I suppose - I like to have as vague a title as possible so that my job can encapsulate any number of things. (I am a generalist, without question.)

Blogging in academia

2004-09-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting bit from a woman who suggests weblogs have a valid place in academic writing and research, and feels that her weblog should be considered in her application for tenure. What I find strikes a chord with me is her wondering where her semi-personal weblog fits in; it's not traditional academic writing, nor is it purely personal, but she knows it has a place somewhere. Seems awfully close to how I feel about this blog - I'm not quite sure why it's here, but I enjoy it, and I think it'll become clearer to me as time goes on.

Perhaps blogging just is what it is - a new form that we haven't quite come to terms with, that hopefully remains more or less stable after the hype dies down. I'm curious to see what happens to blogging once everybody stops gushing about it. Will it suddenly become a faux pas to give out your URL? Will people roll their eyes and snicker when you say you maintain a blog? Will our comments become a wasteland of spam? I've never been particularily good at predicting trends (I remember the first time I saw Mosaic - I thought "um, the Web is just like Gopher but with pictures"). All I can say for sure is things change.

Pleasant Street

2004-09-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to see a documentary called Pleasant Street at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It's about the two neighbours of the director, who herself battled breast cancer. One of her neighbours, Ken, has pancreatic cancer, and the other, Leida Finlayson, has metastized melanoma.

I knew Leida while we were both at university; the summer in between high school and university especially, I was part of a great group of friends of whom Leida was one. I didn't spend a lot of time with her individually, but she was a staple of the group, and a really super person. Eventually the group drifted apart, and I moved away, and never kept in touch with Leida; just got occasional news about her through a friend.

She was told in December 2002 that she had about six months to live; I heard about it from the other side of the continent, through our mutual friend. I was stunned, and hoped for the best, but I couldn't help feeling detached from it all - we hadn't been in touch, and I was so far away. All I felt I could do was send a card and hope. She made it through about seven months. She was 31, a year older than me.

Over a year later, I still felt disconnected from it all until watching the movie and seeing the last five months of Leida's life. At the start, she's just like I remember her, just a bit older, like any of us. Bubbly, vibrant, always positive - it sounds like such a cliche to say that about someone who's died, but it was true. She's the sort of person who makes people say "it always happens to the nicest people". She was.

And seeing her at the end, almost unrecognizable, bald, her face swollen from steroids, her words drifting from the painkillers, but still underneath it all the same voice, the same eyes, the same positivity; that's what brought it all home for me. That this is what she went through, this is what happened. This is what it was like.

I'd never seen that experience happen to someone I know. A friend of mine had Hodgkin's when I was in junior high school, but I never really saw its full effect on him, I just knew the radiation made him nauseous sometimes. And fortunately, he made a full recovery. I know someday I'll watch someone I know well sicken and die from cancer. Could be me. It's inevitable - it's a big unknown killer, and given enough people and enough time, the odds increase that someone you know gets it. But 31 years old! That's so, so young to be told that's it, that's all you get.

Right now I've got a cold - stuffy nose, sore throat, the usual - but all I can think is how Leida would love to be alive right now with nothing more than a common cold to complain about. Being alive and mildly ill is far, far better than not being alive at all.

Leida, I'm so sorry that we all take life for granted. Something like this happens, and we evaluate how lucky we are for a little while, and then it fades away and we're back to regular programming. I'm so sorry we can't even fully appreciate what you haven't got.

Distributed blogging

2004-09-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting that you barely need a computer to blog. Having been working in web design & development since the web existed, I'm used to the arrangement whereby you have webspace on a server, and everything is centralized on that server: all your content, your stats, your mail. For this blogging experiment, on the other hand, I've got webspace at blogspot.com, my stats are handled by Reinvigorate, my pictures are handled by Photobucket, my mail lives at Yahoo, and I bookmark notes about it all at Furl. And so far, it's all free - and, importantly, ad-free, except for the little Blogger navbar and icon that I'm perfectly willing to grant them.

It gave me a strange nomadic feeling at first - like I'm homeless if all my content isn't cozily bundled together in one place - but it's growing on me; I like the interconnectedness of it, as if I'm part of something. So far you'd never know I'm part of something because I haven't received any comments and my traffic is probably next to nil, but all things in time. I'm trying genuinely to start from scratch here. I could leverage my existing sites and connections by linking them to this blog, but maybe not for a month or two yet; I want to see how this thing grows organically.

Let's talk about wikis for a minute. I quite like them. For the uninitiated, a wiki is a collaborative system for document building of pretty much any kind. It's anarchic - anyone can edit anything in the document. We use it at work for taking notes on various projects, and it's especially important in cases where other people might have to come in to the project partway through and need to get caught up. (I guess what I'm describing is a rudimentary knowledgebase.) I use one at home as well, but it's sort of futile, since I'm the only one editing anything and I haven't convinced anyone else that they have a need to share in it. But damn it, I just want to wiki.

I think part of what makes wikis successful is their pure & utter simplicity. In order to add information, you don't have to log in to a proprietary system with special software, check out the file, mark your changes in red, cross things out, etc etc. You just hit the page and go. No muss, no fuss. Well, you do need to learn a few markup codes, but really they're right there on the page with you so there's nothing to memorize. And we do actually have our system password-protected to discourage the occasional wandering vandal, but that's not unreasonable. Wikis are very malleable to whatever your purpose may be.

The nature of blogging

2004-09-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

I thought one interesting application of this blog might be to see how easy it is to form a sort of detached version of myself on the Net. I have a lot of stuff online here & there, and it's not hard to find connections to me wherever. This blog could be a stand-alone entity, with no connections whatsoever to my normal existence, and it might be interesting to see what sort of social interaction forms around this disconnected-me, or if it becomes an inevitable trail of obvious clues that point to me.

But that also would limit what I could talk about on the blog. For example, I just set up a Furl account, and I was going to link to it from here - but then there it is, that same default name I use online, and it would be a connection to my regular online self. Does it matter? Well, no, not particularily, but it would defeat the purpose of the experiment if I did decide to make this blog an isolated event.

Huh, the sun just came out. I certainly wasn't expecting that.

Here's a thought about the vastness of the net. Before we had the internet, if you had a good original idea, you could play with it and coax it and build on it and think about where it could go. Now, when you have a good original idea, you can do a search for it on Google and immediately discover that six other people have already thought of it, produced it, and are capitalizing on it. Upon discovering this, you become disheartened and lose interest in your perfectly good idea. Or maybe it's just me.

Yesterday I figured out how to hook up & record my bass guitar through a Roland UA-30 to my G5 using GarageBand. It is sweeeeeeet. I feel a world of potential at my fingertips, etc. Of course, I also was browsing some old MP3s and found some songs I recorded of myself singing, accompanied by some weak attempts at keyboard. They made me very self-conscious and completely uncertain of any musical talent I may possess. I think this is why I play bass: it's an instrument that provides support rather than standing in the spotlight. I'm too self-deprecating to be a lead singer, however much I may dream about it. God, I would hate to be one of those amateur rock singers who thinks they sound really great while the audience
knows better. It's often a good thing to have confidence and all, but there are some people out there performing who should perhaps have a little less confidence than they do. (Do I even have to mention those American Idol auditions they show?)

But, um, to end on a positive note, I was really really really happy to start playing with music and my computer and I can't wait to get into it even more. There.

The blog begins to solidify.

2004-09-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

Been reading a whole bunch about social computing today, particularily on how to encourage interaction in a group online. At work we're developing an online course about medical terminology, which has typically involved massive amounts of rote memorization. Some of that memorization is necessary; there's room, though, for critical thinking and expansion of ideas. However, there probably won't be as much testing on the critical thinking. So the question here is, how to get students interested in interacting with each other and sharing their knowledge when the topic material doesn't really encourage dialogue as much as other courses? I've got some ideas... posting them on the development site as we go.

I'm still not sure what this blog is, by the way. I notice there's a lot of social-computing blogs out there, and part of me thinks I'd like to go that route, but I feel I'm still at the sponge stage of my knowledge development: still learning what's out there, what's been done; I have thoughts but nothing to judge them by. Plus I would like to have space to ramble now and then about non-work-related topics, and whine about being very tired today, and if this was a purely work-related site I couldn't do that.

What's next, then? Political rants? I could go on about US vs. Canadian differences... that'll be a good topic someday. Links to other sites? Check out Show and Tell Music, a collection of record cover art. If you feel like being disturbed, go to "Christian cover art" and listen to the MP3 by "Lil' Markie", which is positively freakish. Let's just say it puts a new spin on Phil Collins' "Mama".

Oh, so I also finally changed the graphics on this site to something other than the default, having at last settled on a usable blogname. Guess I might as well flip the switch and make 'er live. I did notice an interesting bug in Blogger when using Safari 1.2: when you edit the CSS, sometimes when you save or preview the CSS, it nukes ALL the CSS in the file after the change you just made. Isn't that nice?

Satellite

2004-09-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

So today I'm working out of our satellite office near Main Street. It has the advantage of being extremely near to my home, and very quiet. Very very quiet. Really, too quiet; I'm getting a little bit punchy and resisting the urge to IM everybody at work for no apparent reason, just for some kind of human contact. It also turns out that I MISSED a BBQ today at work - a welcome-back for all university staff. Sure, the ONE DAY I work offsite, and this is the thanks I get... ;)

One bonus when I was freelancing was that I could play with the dog and have all the comforts of home around... make myself a cup of tea, stare at the plants. This office is absolutely spartan, devoid of any decorations whatsoever. If I am going to work from here every once in a while I will HAVE to fix it up a bit... it's so barren it stifles creativity. On top of this, I can't even listen to music because I'm using an iBook I checked out for the day and the speakers are way too tinny. Maybe some headphones would help.

[minutes pass] The security guy just came by and we chatted for a few minutes - human interaction!

My new computer is sitting at home waiting for me, too, just waiting to be set up and for me to be dazzled by its astounding speed. I'm actually slightly intimidated by it, which never happens to me - it's more power than I need right now, but not more power than I might need in a year or so, and it's unusually tall and sleek and heavy. (It's a PowerMac G5.) It doesn't fit in my tower-holder on my desk. (I thought computers were getting SMALLER?) Anyway, I'm finding it hard to stay focused on what I need to do at work today... the environment of this office is uninspiring, the laptop is kind of cramped, and I know I've got sublime power waiting for me at home. Hey ho.

[a while later] I just spent about 20 minutes reading other peoples' blogs... something I haven't done in a while, because the last time I looked it was all fifteen-year-olds bitching about their traumas. This time I got something in Arabic I couldn't read, a few people blathering about sports and politics, someone who replaces "the" with "da" everywhere in every post, and a young black single mother of a 1-year-old writing out her day-to-days. The last I found particularily interesting because her life is so, so, so different from mine... reading what somebody writes about their lives, themselves, is far different from watching a TV show or movie about it, or reading an article written by a third party. It's actually kind of voyeuristic in a way - spying on someone else's personal issues, their fights with their friends, their relationships. And yet she's put this private information out for me and anyone else to read. I don't think I'll do that, myself! Sorry all you avid readers, but you don't get the dirty details. While I do love to talk about myself *sigh*, I am pretty reserved about anything truly personal, and the whole time I'm typing I'm aware that this is going out on the airwaves (how anachronistic).

...Actually, that isn't an anachronism at all, since I'm connecting with a wireless modem at the moment. Irony.

Music music music

2004-09-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've gotten hooked on last.fm at work lately. I hate radio, so being able to set a playlist of stuff I love and let it randomly select from it is a sweet sweet thing. And I've been bemoaning the fact that since Napster went away I haven't been exposed to as much new music - Last also lets you listen to other peoples' preferred music or plays you a profile radio of stuff it thinks you'll like based on your preferences. I'm very much looking forward to having a decent computer setup at home so I can play stuff there.

Granted, it doesn't have EVERYthing I like (no Clinic, a few missing albums even of popular artists), and ideally it would be nice to be able to beam music wirelessly to the stereo or something like that. Someday... someday. Add it to the list.

New computer's supposed to arrive tomorrow. *crosses fingers* Ohboyohboyohboy.

All the best names are taken.

2004-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

I've been ignoring this blog, as predicted, for several days, but it's still been in the back of my head. And I've been rereading some Heinlein I haven't read in several years. He makes use of the acronym TANSTAAFL fairly often ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and it dawned on me that that wouldn't make too bad a blog name. But lo and behold, somebody's already got taanstafl.blogspot.com, and they haven't updated it in two years, damn it.

I've got a default name I use in situations like this, but I'd like to use something else for a change; branch out to something new. But of course everything I think of, somebody has already thought of in the years that Blogger has been around. I know I could host the site myself and call it whatever the hell I want, but I don't feel like it.

Thought crossed my mind today. As an adult, when was the last time you played leapfrog? Like, the actual children's game leapfrog, where one person squats down on the ground and the other person presses on their shoulders and hops over them? There's a game that adults simply do not play in polite, clothed company - it looks awkward and ungainly and potentially suggestive.

[30 seconds pass]...In a fit of optimism I just checked out leapfrog.blogspot.com, and that ALSO exists and hasn't been updated since 2002. Bloody hell. Of course, who am I to judge - I do have some blogs that sort of reached natural conclusions that I have no intention of updating. But these people appear to have just abandoned their blogs in midstream... much as I expect to do with THIS blog within a month or two. Hey ho.

So the next question is...

2004-08-24T16:26:00.000-07:00

...do I make this damn blog public, or do I just sit here talking to myself every few days? I mean, really, I'm not participating in the blog world unless somebody can see it... but until I've got some actual content in here and have redesigned the site to look like something other than a cookie-cutter template, there's not much point, is there? I don't want anybody to see it in this half-hearted state of being.

In the meantime, I have GOT to water these plants before they all collapse.

The whole blogging thing

2004-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

While I feel like I've got a more-than-adequate understanding of the blog phenomenon, there's a part of me that thinks I can't claim to understand it thoroughly unless I've had a "personal" blog running for a while. I have had other, topic-specific blogs online from time to time, but never a general-purpose meandering blog.

Why haven't I done this before? Basically, two conflicting fears:

1) I don't want to prove myself to be one more person with nothing new to say
2) If I have do something new to say, I don't want somebody else to steal it.

It's a bit of a quandary. I want to blog something of substance, but I'm afraid that if I do post something of substance that it'll appear somewhere else on the web under somebody else's name. But I'm also afraid I won't really have anything of substance to post in the first place.

Perhaps I should make this a blog of my concerns, fears, and things I worry about. I have a tendency to look for the worst-case scenario in everything. The other day I was asking myself why I do this, why it's easier for me to visualize something really terrible happening than something really fantastic. And I realized it's because when you imagine something horrible, and you make yourself stop imagining it, there's a great rush of relief when you acknowledge it wasn't for real. ("Why did the little moron beat his head against the wall? Because it felt so good when he stopped.") Whereas when you imagine something wonderful happening, sooner or later you have to come back to reality and discover that it never happened.

Oh, I do often visualize myself in *realistic* good situations - succeeding in things, whatever - I'm talking about spectacular events of one kind or another. I can imagine them just fine but I make myself stop before I get too caught up in it, or convince myself that it's real.

But I've wandered off topic. Why am I blogging? Do I want a public diary? Is this an experiment? I think it is.

Well, isn't this nice.

2004-08-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've never intended to start a proper blog before, but at the moment I'm in a training session and there's been a bit of an extended slow patch. I'll probably abandon it within a month or two, honestly, but it's a nice amusement. I don't flatter myself that anybody really wants to read my ramblings - in fact, I think I'd get a bit creeped out if anybody is too interested. But hey, let's see what all the fuss is about.