« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »
December 28, 2006
Happy Holidays...
Hope everyone had a nice holiday!
SFGate.com has the terrific tale of Sex.com - all crime and no sex.
"The only thing missing from the Sex.com story is a dead stripper found with a rubber alligator lodged in her throat -- though, by all estimates, to add this to the URL's outrageous legacy wouldn't be a huge shocker. It would only be adding some sex to the mix -- especially considering the Sex.com story includes a fugitive seized by U.S. marshals, hard-luck convicted felons hiding millions in Mexican shrimp farms and strip clubs, the fugitive's daughter caught smuggling over 200 pounds of pot, one multimillionaire dot-com scammer speed fiend with a Stanford MBA, a bizarre bid to buy Caesars Palace and a recent Tijuana gangland-style assassination attempt on a lawyer (nicknamed "The Toad") that left a Mexican cabbie and a 4-year-old boy wounded." read on!
C|net has an amusing article on the Top Ten Apple Rumours of All Time. Makes for interesting reading given Jobs & Co.'s recent stock option glitches...
If you're the nervous type, the CERTStation website compiles some of the 'net's best threat-assessment (to net security) rundowns and displays them all on a neatly-arranged page for easy access.
Of note to backyard astronomers and naked-eye stargazing buffs is this free e-book from Tammy Plotner of the Warren-Rupp Observatory: "365 Days of Skywatching" - beware, it's slashdotted at the moment so it might take a while to download.
Once again, Sports Illustrated has posted their photos of the year. Some really good stuff there!
Posted by Hamish at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2006
My Blurb Book Arrived!
I received my Blurb book yesterday. Encompassing 227 photos over 104 pages, with a nice dust jacket, it's what I came back with from our trip to London, Paris & the Loire Valley this past May and June. It looks terrific.
-----
Posted by Hamish at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
Top 100 names of 2006
Babycenter.com has released their stats on baby names - based on name data from their 370,000 members.
Top 5 girl's names:
1. Emma
2. Madison
3. Ava
4. Emily
5. Isabella
Top 5 boy's names:
1. Aiden
2. Jacob
3. Ethan
4. Ryan
5. Matthew
My son's name is #3. I am gratified to see that Hamish still hasn't cracked the top 100. My brother Adam's name comes in at #63, while my father John is #42. My daughter Chloe makes the list at #18, while my wife Christine doesn't make the list, nor does my mother Judith, nor does my mother-in-law Doris.
Posted by Hamish at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
So we switched to satellite radio...
Last week, Jack-FM (92.5 on the Toronto dial), the station we listen to for music [we listen to CBC Radio One for morning/afternoon drivetime for talk), which had hitherto been the only no-talk-all-music format radio station in the GTA, announced that it was adding a morning 'crew' - a pair of happy-go-lucky DJs to liven up the morning commute with their wacky antics and weightless repartee. Ugh. I'm a 21st century boy - I hate mainstream DJs with a passion and I was an early adopter for the iPod even before I had one. I've always programmed my own music, starting with home-made cassette compilations back in the early 1980's. So when Jack arrived in the Toronto listening area, I gave it a listen as they had no DJs and it was a refreshing experience. Soon enough, however, they discovered this isn't a terrific ratings pull (Jack hasn't broken a 3.0 rating since it began three or four years ago - CBC radio gets a 7.x and CHFI has a 9.x to give some perspective - higher is better!) but it is niche marketing, which they seemed to forget as they added DJs - first a morning crew, then an afternoon drive team and then a noontime request hour... basically the same thing all the other Toronto stations were doing. And then, early this year, they dumped their DJs again and marketed the change as "No DJs on Jack" with a comprehensive billboard and TV spot campaign. I had stopped listening to them in disgust, and now rejoined them as soon as the DJs were gone. They got rid of the DJs as adding them seemingly had no effect on ratings. So NOW they've gotten rid of the No-DJ format because that wasn't working again, either.
To my mind, the solution isn't to backstep a second (third?) time. Do something NEW, ferchrissakes. Cause a stir. How about this for an idea: let the listeners program the music. Let people upload playlists and play them out. Give people what they want - real variety and a little bit of control. If they want to harness or win back the iPod generation, they will need to play by the iPod generation's rules. Get a clue!
My solution to this situation, for the time being, is that I've switched to satellite radio. Sirius, to be exact. It has CBC Radio One and Three, BBC Radio One as well as 110 other channels - and most of the music channels have no commercials and no DJs! Wooo! Setup was easy. As to coverage, the nice thing is that I can drive cross-country without ever changing the station or losing signal. Apparently truckers really like satellite radio for that reason. All of this comes at a price, of course. $15/month and the unit cost >$150. But I'm willing to pay for quality. Free is too costly a price for what you end up with these days.
33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names Like the "octothorpe", or as we plebs like to call it, the # symbol.
A hand-drawn map of the internets. Wow!
Posted by Hamish at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2006
You can download a PDF
You can download a PDF version of the Iraq Study Group Report here. It's a very interesting read, even if the likelihood of its being followed by the current administration is low.
Posted by Hamish at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2006
Just in time for Chanukah
jewishfashionconspiracy.com is THE place to go for all your Chanukah giftgetting needs. Word to the wise, their products aren't the clothing you're used to.
--
Canada's documentaries lost to copyright
Canada's taxpayer-funded National Film Board has underwritten many brilliant documentaries that are no longer available due to the prohibitive cost of re-licensing the copyrights for the materials they incidentally feature. The Documentary Organization of Canada has released a new white paper(pdf) detailing the many Canadian treasures that are lost due to the greed of rightsholders and the spike in copyright liability insurance.Thanks to spiralling copyright licensing costs, payable to whoever holds the copyright (unions, archives, creators, corporations) -- and thanks, too, to the rising cost of insurance to protect against copyright claims -- more and more public film footage is no longer available to the Canadian public, nor for use by Canadian creators. That's the message of the DOC's new white paper, released yesterday by the 700-member organization. The Copyright Clearance Culture and Canadian Documentaries, written by Ottawa copyright lawyer Howard Knopf, cites many eyebrow-raising cases. An example: Quebec filmmaker Sylvie Van Brabant's film Remous/Earthwalk has been withdrawn from public circulation because its main character sings 30 seconds of a recognizable tune whose rights the National Film Board has deemed too expensive to renew.Link (from boingboing)
Posted by Hamish at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2006
Childsplaycharity.org
Penny Arcade is probably the world favourite blog of electronic gamers- they have a children's charity, Child's Play. It was set up because the guys at Penny Arcade were pissed that the media have repeatedly scapegoated the gaming industry for society's ills, everything from high school shootings to general malaise. Over the past three years CP has raised over $1million USD for toys, games and cash to be given to sick kids in children's hospitals around the world.
"With the help of hospital staff, we’ve set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, and movies. You can go to each hospital’s list and buy a toy, and that toy will be sent to the hospital. Some of these kids are in pretty bad shape. Imagine being stuck alone in a hospital over the holidays, getting something from a fellow gamer would really raise their spirits. Some of the stuff the hospital will give away for kids to keep, while other gifts (like consoles) will be kept by the hospital for patients to use throughout the year."
Here's the link to Toronto's - it's an amazon.ca wish list for Sick Kids' Hospital. All you have to do is pick an item from the list, buy it and it will be delivered to the kid who asked for it in time for Christmas. What a terrific idea.
-
Chinese coal mine celebrates world record number of simultaneous weddings held underground. Wait, someone's keeping track of this?
Some fool at the Christian Science Monitor (one of the world's best newspapers) thinks that the only solution for the secularized, commercial Christmas we enjoy/suffer through each year is to knock it off the holiday calendar. Oh, sure, so only Christians will get to take it off as a religious observance and the rest of us are screwed at work.
Posted by Hamish at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2006
There's a new bookstore in
There's a new bookstore in town: BMV Books, the overstock-and-used bookseller previously down the street from The World's Biggest Bookstore, have moved to an expanded location on Bloor Street near the Brunswick House - in fact, they're the lucky new tenants of the building that used to house the Hungarian Bakery, a wonderful deli that went out of business in the early 1980's and a crazy old bat who owned half the neighbourhood held on to it jealously until her death, after which it was finally sold a little over a year ago.
I went in to check out the location last night when I noticed it open last night around 11pm. Turned out it was their opening day and there was a lineup 20 people deep, even at 11pm! I always love checking out new bookstores 'cuz they always have the best stock... Takes about a month for the typical store to get picked clean by Toronto's bibliophiles and then it's back to the usual 'we can order it in for you' routine that drives me to amazon or indigo. Lots of treasures on the shelves (BMV's old location bought used books for good prices - I've sold to them many times - dunno if they'll still be doing that at the new location)... I picked up a collection of Japanese photography 1900-1970 for $12.99, and almost picked up a copy of the Toronto 150th special edition "Who's Who" for nine bucks but I'll come back for it later.. NO ONE BETTER BUY IT - I HID IT ANYWAY SO NYAH! Heh. Anyway, so get down there and check it out!
The Times Online is reporting that researchers have determined that the stones on the top levels of the Great Pyramids were made from concrete. Holy sh... that's so cool.
Posted by Hamish at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)