Rainy Season - Again

I always said that it rained a lot in the fall here; today was a particularly beautiful day.

Well, we lost

Turnout in the Surrey-Panorama byelection was low, but the left won nonetheless.

I attended a couple of functions with these candidate; the guy who just got himself elected knew less about these issues than anybody I’ve ever met. He was, quite simply, ill-informed.

This was a protest vote; the people of Surrey-Panorama ridge will regret this…

Today is Richard Charteris’ Birthday

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Resuls Ontario: The McGuinty Government’s report

The McGuinty government in Ontario has released Results Ontario

The report is a collection of statistics, photos and testimonials on the status of life for the citizens of Ontario.

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Bike Fenders: Good

Although I’ve been cycling for well over 20 years, including sunny, rainy and Ontario winter days, I’ve never owned a set of bike fenders.

Having just slapped a pair of SKS Race Blade Road fenders on my Trek racing bike, and I can only say: what the hell have I been thinking?

I just got back from ride in the rain and I was, to a great extent, dry. These things are awesome. On in a snap, off just as easily and while they don’t provide 100% coverage, they certainly seem to provide enough.

New Forms Festival 2004

More to come, including some of the exhibits.

Vancouver Votes Against Wards

Results are in, and Vancouver has voted against wards by a slim majority - just 4%.

Most surprising was the turnout, which came in at 22.6%. As noted below Peter Ladner predicted either 10% or 15% (wrong again Peter) and to the best of my knowledge, both the Yes and No sides expected it to be less than 15%, although there appeared to be little polling done on the issue. 22.6% is appallingly low, but it’s less appallingly low than 15%.

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Letter to the Georgia Straight

I sent this letter to the Georgia Straight in response to “this editorial about wards:http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=5670, which distorts the facts wildly.

To the editor, Georgia Straight:

I read with great interest your editorial in favour of wards. I was especially amused by the glaring errors.

Your editorial states that “For the first time in almost 70 years, citizens can create a city government that listens a lot more to average people and perhaps a little bit less to the political and financial elites.” This is obviously incorrect, as Vancouver voted on the ward system in 1873, 1978, 1982, 1988, 1996 and 1935. Perhaps the Straight is implying that these past votes were all undemocratic?

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Peter Ladner needs an editor

Peter Ladner needs a new editor. Note the difference in the percentages.

Not a big deal, but Peter - aren’t you the editor of a newspaper? Isn’t this kind of embarassing?

CBC’s new streaming format

The CBC, in their infinite wisdom, has changed their choice of streaming media formats.

In 1996 I purchased a RealMedia server and was - I think - the second customer in Canada for Real; the first was CBC. While Real’s format was revolutionary at the time, it also required expensive dedicated servers to provide reasonable throughput. An HTTP streaming option was available for those who didn’t need much capacity, but this was never widely used or announced.

Ditching Real was a good thing, but why would CBC choose Microsoft’s Windows Media Player?

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Ashes of American Flags?

It’s a cliche to suggest that the Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the best album released a couple of years ago; it made virtually every top ten list in every publication. It probably missed Def Jam’s, but—you know—we won’t go there.

There was a great song on that album called Ashes of American Flags which rolled right into Heavy Metal Drummer. The former is the best song on the album, the latter is the most fun.

I was digging through old slides and found this, which I had completely forgotten about. This flag was hanging somewhere up north of Goderich along the shores of Lake Huron, and I wonder if its owner intended to make a political statement or not. If he did, it probably wasn’t much more than Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic or something like it.

The flag is, of course, inherently political. I’m not even sure that I recognize the band on here, but I think it might be Bon Jovi. I’m not sure that it matters. Maybe it does. Maybe there’s some meaning in the particular stars that are obstructed by the photo of the band, maybe not.

I would like to salute the Ashes of American flags, with all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.

Wards in Vancouver

In less then a week, approximately 15% of Vancouver’s voters will go to the polls to vote on the issue of whether or not the city should adopt Thomas Berger’s ward system.

My sense of this one is that the pro-Wards side is going to win, largely becuase of the lack of compelling argument on the no-side. The spokespeople that have been trotted out have been less than compelling, and the general perception is that Vancouver is the odd man out in terms of wards.

The sad truth is that wards or no wards, this is not going to solve the problems with government in Vancouver.

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Cormorants require more maintenance than originally expected

So as it turns out, our Cormorant helicopters require substantially more maintenance than originally thought.

Were the Liberals right after all, way back in 1993?

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New Apes?

According to the BBC researchers have discovered a new species of ape. of uncertain origin.

This doesn’t, of course, change my favourite kind. It will always remain the same.

Big Daddy Chuck in the Speaker’s Chair

It’s nice to see Chuck Strahl in the speaker’s chair. I like Chuck - he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve met in the Conservative party, and very popular with his constituents.

This guy’s going to do a great job. Keep an eye on him.

The 12 inch iBook

If you ever feel a compelling reason to buy a PowerBook, do not under any circumstances buy a 12 inch iBook. This has been my advice for some time now, but having just done a hard drive upgrade on one I feel even more passionately about it now than I did before.

It’s just not worth it; at some point, you’ll have a problem and the price difference will be more than made up for by the cost saved on repair.

Exceptions will be made for those who absolutely need the smallest laptop they can get, and are on a tight budget.

The Martin throne speech

I shan’t go on at length about the throne speech - it was, I believe, fairly predictable.

There’s been a lot of talk about Martin’s need to appease the opposition, and I’m not so sure that this is what to do here.

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Condcordia ignores the need for free speech

From today’s Globe & Mail:

In 2002, Benjamin Netenyahu was scheduled to speak and Concodia erupted in violence with a clash between Concordia’s Israeli & Palestinian student groups.

So much for French & English Canada being described as “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.” Based on what’s happening here, it seems like the Israelis and the Palestinians are never going to get along.

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The Liberals won the X-Prize by taking off from Mt. St. Helens

It’s been an exciting weekend on the west coast, where everything old is new again. This of course all started on Saturday with the Globe & Mail’s printing of the news that the Liberal government set aside its own rules - less than 6 months old, and never applied - to hire the newly appointed president of Canada Post.

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Wards & cops

This was how my night started:

and by the way, Gloria Macarenko is even nicer than my friends have told me she is.

This was how my night ended:

That’s not me being arrested, it’s just some I’m seeing from the balcony.

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