Mock Turtle » Techboy

Our little part to contribute to Global Warming

Techboy — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:43:52 +0000

New car!

Torontoist’s TTC Survey

Techboy — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:44:02 +0000

Thought the TTC survey was a bit skimpy? You might like this one better. I know I did!

Edit: link fixed. Now how did that get there? Sheesh…

In the “silver lining” category…

Techboy — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:01:26 +0000

Well, at least we were home at the time. Friday morning we were procrastinating over breakfast & the newspaper when there was a crashing noise from downstairs followed by the sound of water rushing through the pipes. We ran to the basement to see water gushing through one of the potlight fixtures in the basement bedroom, shortly thereafter joined by two of the others. A few minutes later we had the mains turned off but an almighty mess on our hands. And we spent the rest of the day arranging and supervising an emergency plumber effort, followed by much of the weekend drying out the carpets (via rented carpet cleaner and borrowed dehumidifier). The bedroom now has some very unsightly holes in the ceiling, and the pipes leading to the back bathroom now have shutoff valves (which are shut off).

Seems the renovator who created that back bathroom forgot about insulation for a portion of the wall. The pipes were separated from the outside brick by about 3 inches of open air.

Obviously we’d have to call this a minor disaster, but at the same time we were immediately conscious of how lucky we were. Half an hour later, or if we’d been more prompt in leaving for work, and that water would have been gushing for the entire day. *shudder*

High Dials

Techboy — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:58:53 +0000

Definitely my favorite music discovery for 2006 (though the album came out in 2005) was “War of the Wakening Phantoms” by Montreal indie group the High Dials. I often listen to new finds somewhat obsessively for a while and then burn out on their sound and can’t enjoy them as much any more. This album’s kept me going back for more. The band has a great energy, with primary focus well balanced between guitar, drums and vocals. I’m not sure what their lyrics are really about, but they’re really good.

Spacing Magazine

Techboy — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:50:43 +0000

Possibly old news to some of the better informed members of the blog, but I only heard about Spacing yesterday. Who knew that Toronto was big enough to support a magazine just about the use of public space in the city? I will have to search out a copy.

Wanted: good photo-management web site software

Techboy — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:59:47 +0000

Having returned from vacation with a ginormous collection of beautiful photographs, I’m once again confronted by the out-of-date complex nonsense that is the photo album software on my web site, “powered by Slooze”. (The name kinda says it all.) The effort required to tag and resize my images, upload them to the site, and load them into the Slooze database makes me feel tired just thinking about it. What I need is a nice free drag & drop package, that can handle such things as generation of thumbnails, uploading of images and/or directories from my brower, and (preferably) a nice front end for my visitors. Any suggestions?

Bev Oda doesn’t have any friends at Boing Boing

Techboy — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:59:31 +0000

Our Heritage Minister Bev Oda’s press on Boing Boing keeps getting worse and worse, with Torontonian Cory Doctorow’s latest post continuing the trend. The Canadian Recording Industry Association, which embarrassingly now only represents American companies, is facing off against, well, pretty much everyone else: recording artists, Canadian record companies, composers, the Bare Naked Ladies, Michael Geist, etc., but they still have a lot of money and a lot of access. It’s a bit concerning as Minister Oda is currently working on revisions to the Copyright Act which are expected to support Digital Rights Management technology and further restrict Canadian’s rights to make private copies of their music. Not that the Liberals had a better record on this issue…

And in other news…

Techboy — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:24:31 +0000

The Guardian has a fascinating article with an update on the state of the Sunni insurgency in Baghdad. Seems like they’ve woken up to the possibility that as a minority, triggering a civil war might not be the best strategy. Rather too late, it appears.

Soon-to-be invisible blogger

Techboy — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:57:22 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment is releasing their first expansion to World of Warcraft, titled The Burning Crusade… well, later tonight.

Been nice knowing you!