GLOBADOM

There’s precious little to report, but I feel guilty when I go a week without updating this space. Rest assured that I am dumping my brains all over the Vancouver metblog.

On the weekend, I get to meet my new niece, Olivia. This week I went to watch the Pickton voir dire hearings, but I can’t tell you what I heard. And I have enough projects cooking to make me feel sort of productive.

That is all.

Today, at work, I answered an emailed support request from a client. The issue she was facing had gone on through several emails to that point, and each time the client had given her response in doggerel verse.

I sent her back an unsophisticated 18-line poem, which included specific troubleshooting guidance for her problem. An excerpt follows.

A savvy user just recalls computing’s rules three:

-Do not go to the sort of sites your mother wouldn’t favour
-Do not download from parts unknown: on this, never waver
-Eschew the dreaded peer-to-peer, it’s parlous for the new
I do these things myself, you know, and troubles I have? Few.

It’s a pretty good job.

Turner Classic Movies once again justifies the existence of television, this time with a great little interstitial documentary. The topic? Widescreen movie presentation versus pan and scan. The documentary is a gloriously visual thing, using clever graphics and comparisons to show exactly what is lost in the cropped versions of classic widescreen films (the touchstone example is Ben-Hur), but the punchline comes near the end of the show, when they show a pan and scan treatment of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, featuring six visible apostles.

By the way, the Wikipedia entry on pan and scan seems a little off: this article points out that some recent movies are filmed such that both the full-frame and widescreen versions of the same film are crops of the original, larger image. I believe from what little I know of cinematography that almost all modern cameras and on-set monitors show both aspect ratios with framing marks, and thus the director can shoot with both formats in mind should they desire.

How far Turner has come: once the demonic colorizer, now the purveyor of a purist, no-commercial, uncut, original-aspect-ratio-preferred channel devoted to old movies.

If you’re going to have a sidearm around the house, surely this one is the one you want.

Between that pistol and watching most of Apocalypse Now Redux on TV last night, I need only see Patton again for the pearl-handled trifecta.

It occurred to me as I typed that title that there are two chairmans Steve, and in fact the one I wasn’t thinking of has more claim to that title, and he’s in the news right now too.

The one I was thinking of was the one who is on the brink of getting a better house in Ottawa. The reason I brought him up is this: there’s a quote of his I love. It came up n response to a question about a “tobacco-free Canada” initiative the Liberals were proposing: “People will have a drink and people will have a smoke and that’s the way life goes.”

A politician who occasionally concedes the existence of reality is a wonderful thing. He added another one, which I must thank Andrew Coyne for digging up:
“Canadians don’t hate things. That is not the nature of Canadians. Canadians can disagree but it takes a lot to get Canadians to intensely hate something or hate somebody and usually it involves hockey.”

Context etc. on Coyne’s post, but if Harper gets to move to Sussex Drive soon, the fact that he’s been standing around wonking about policy and saying reasonable things like this all campaign will be a big part of it. That, and the Gomery inquiry.

One or two more election items, as long as I’m blowing my Trotskyite cover: Andrew Coyne is strongly recommending that you not post early election returns in his comments section, though he suggests that posting the results of some imaginary, fictional election that doesn’t involve the Canadian parties might be acceptable, so that’s probably a place to not look for early returns when you’re not violating the law. If you aren’t looking there, here’s a quick key: the four major parties of this imaginary land are the Fascists, Crooks, Commies and Traitors. No further hints should be needed.

Two other guesses: the WIkipedia entry on the 2006 election is likely to be frequently updated, and among American bloggers, Captain’s Quarters is most likely to spurn Canada’s noble election law.

Why am I so fascinated by enplaned, a gossipy blog of the airline industry? Why has digg taken over from Slashdot as my nerdfeed of choice? Why did I feel so beat up on the club ride yesterday? Why did the lower hinge bolts break on the Beetle’s driver-side door? That just doesn’t happen. Why do I still feel so tired after that club ride? Is the Old Yale Cream Ale just the best beer ever? What does it mean that in rough order of joy, my liquor preferences go something like: sherry, beer, really good red wine, gin martini? Why is KCPQ showing Men With Brooms?

That’s it, I’m going back to having a life. For small values of life.

Macleans has assembled a pile of bloggers for their election coverage, including favourites of mine like Colby Cosh and Liberal bete noire Warren Kinsella. Of five bloggers, I count three who line up as decidedly right-of-centre, and two centrists. All are competent, but the real fun is in watching Maude Barlow, designated lefty, just utterly melt down as she stares into the abyss of a Conservative government. Apparently the Conservatives are going to cause everything from a National Water Crisis to the Weaponization of Space. She doesn’t actually accuse Harper’s gang of eating babies, but she’s willing to go so far as abandoning them.

Of course, for someone of my exquisite taste in babies (you knew I was a baby-eating Trotskyite, right?) this only makes the case in favour of the Conservative bogeymen, and with a completely unworthy (but delicious) side of harmjoy thrown in.

I gotta go do push-ups.

Bruce Sterling on China. Andrew rightly smacked me around a bit in the comments the last time I posted on China, so it’s gratifying to see Bruce concerned about corruption in China, too.

Here’s the sixty-four dollar question: is corruption in China worse than in Singapore? I understand that Singapore is crony-ridden but not bribe-crazy, which seems to be just clean enough for prosperity. Singapore’s per capita GDP is higher than that of South Korea or Taiwan, but lower than Hong Kong’s.

Good gravy. The door hinge on The Good Thing broke. The bolts on the lower hinge sheared off.

That doesn’t normally happen to normal cars.

So add that to the “bad” list.

The annotated Cane
Originally uploaded by rcousine.

As promised, the Motobecane 2.0 (beta) is rolling, and now I have pictures of the build. I did some pretty fun things in building this bike up, including cutting the head tube, respacing and aligning the rear end, an unethical experiment with a Suntour front derailer and STI shifters, and more.

The notes on this photo in flickr make it clear how much this bike was a product of generous friends, bargains, and . The original bicycle came from a garage sale, picked up for $10 with two other bikes. I then have upgraded every part on this bicycle except the BB, rear brake, and seatpost. Well, maybe one of the brake cables is original. I have several other pics in my photostream, so I encourage you to check out the gory details of the build there.