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Showing posts from October, 2007

Shadows from the corner of my eye

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Are you ever sitting, maybe eating, maybe reading, maybe doing something else fairly quiet and notice a movement out of the corner of your eye? You turn and there is nothing there. Does it happen to you frequently? It has been happening to me a lot, in the house in Ottawa, over the past week. Many times each evening, I will perceive a movement and when I turn to look - nothing. Almost nothing. It is fast. It vanishes without a trace; leaving me frustrated as I hunt for it because I know it was there. At first, I thought I was going mad. But I have seen them. I know they are there and I am not mad. It is not alone. There are many of them and as I hunt for one, another will tease me from the periphery of my vision, distracting me, pulling me away from my prey. But I am persistent. I have caught some and killed them. I will catch them all and destroy them. They beckon me and I follow them. I pursue them throughout the house. I don't know where they came from, but I know where I am sen

"When We're Together, I Am Alone"

The powerful opening to Bif Naked 's great song Tango Shoes , off her album Purge , that ranks right up the with the opening " When the Truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies " from Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love . The usual caveat, I prefer to just listen to the song without watching the video.

In the Year 2525

A brilliant video montage for the 1969 Zager & Evens song of the same title. Most times I advise ignoring the video and just listening to the song. In this case, the video complements the song perfectly.

"The day you no longer burn with love

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many others will die of cold." - Mauriac Photo credit: Jim Richey . With Permission. [Update: 29-October-2007 @ 17:17. Correctly credit photo] [Update: 30-October-2007 @ 07:26. Acknowledge that I have permission to use the photo]

What Classic Movie Am I

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Ghee kindly tagged me with this one a few days ago. What Classic Movie Are You? personality tests by similarminds.com My Thoughts : erm ... it doesn't end well.

Mr. Postman, Have You Got a Letter for Me?

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Despite my abject social skills, I did manage to make some friends while at University. Some came from various regions of Canada, though many were from overseas. I would say the majority where from overseas. At the end of the school year, when people were returning home, I would get their address (note, I only get addresses of people I am interested in. I am not polite enough to ask for an addresses I do not intend to use). I would then write a letter and mail it a week before they left, so the letter would arrive around the same time they did. It was a real letter, several pages long, no an anemic postcard with a trite “Welcome Home!” message along with "Don't forget to keep in touch" admonishment. I thought they would appreciate receiving a letter; knowing that they had not been forgotten once leaving Canada. Maybe it was naïve, but it was remarkably effective. I always received effusive replies of thanks back. Now there is only one left and pen and paper have long sin

And Darkness Covered the Land

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It was dark yesterday morning. Very dark. Unable to sleep, I was out of bed at 05:00 and, well, it is pretty dark at that time of the morning. I wasted some time on the computer and then headed upstairs to the kitchen at 07:00. Something was wrong. It should have been light outside, but it was not. I then realized they set the clocks back on Sunday. Only ... I didn't remember doing that and if the clocks had been set back an hour, the mornings would get brighter, not darker. Not only that, but I had taken my car for servicing the previous morning at 06:30 and it was reasonably light outside. I took a closer look outside and confirmed it was indeed night time dark. I double checked the clocks and they all agreed. The clouds were heavy and low and blocking out a substantial amount of light. I called Sofia in Montreal and she confirmed that it was very dark there as well. Even around 09:00, it was still a near dawn dark, though grey instead of red and gold. Image nabbed from here . It

What Instrument Should I Play?

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You Should Play the Harp You are a sensitive soul, with a great admiration for beauty. You definitely have what it takes to make beautiful music, but most instruments are too harsh for you. You are subtle, shy, and even a bit spoiled. You're very picky about most aspects of your life. It's just your style to play an eccentric, hard to transport instrument like the harp that few people consider. Overall, you have the relaxed demeanor of a leisurely upper class person, and your music would reflect that. Your calm yet soulful harp playing would be sure to help people forget their troubles for a while. Your dominant personality characteristic: your zen-ness Your secondary personality characteristic: your quiet independence What Musical Instrument Should You Play? Since it is midnight and I need to sleep and thinking is out of the question (and maybe you are all tired of pictures), I have done this meme instead (and fulfilled my goal of one post per day and can ignore it for the res

Genuine Montreal Spider

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I think it nicely compliments the Long Island spider photo I posted a while back. Photo credit: Richard of Forbidden Planet

Magical Cover

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Image scanned by me, but copyright remains with the publisher.

Thinking like a vegetable: how plants decide what to do

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If you happen to be in London this coming Wednesday, 24-October-2007, you can attend this lecture at The Royal Society given by Professor Ottoline Leyser. As the blurb for the lecture says: A good example is the number of branches a plant makes. It sounds like a fascinating talk. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend. Nor will I be able to listen in to the live webcast (since I will be at work). You can read the public notice here or you can just continue scrolling down to read it. The Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Prize Lecture 2007 By Professor Ottoline Leyser, Department of Biology, University of York Plants monitor a wide range of information from their surrounding environment. They combine information of multiple sorts, and respond in an appropriate way. In animals a large part of this job is done by the nervous system, with the brain acting as a central processor for the information collected. In plants there is no brain, and the information processing is distributed a

Uses for Waste Water

As tin-tin commented in my previous post , waste water can be reused for other pruposes. While I would not advocate reusing toilet water to water your garden or lawn (unless it is going into a septic tank - in which case, you are already reusing your waste water). You can certainly reuse dirty dish and bath water. Granted, the convenience of scooping the water out the sink, into a bucket and carrying out to your garden may be a bit much. However, here are two ways waste bath and sink water can be reused, rather economically, if only they would build houses this way: (1) irrigating lawns and gardens. It would be a fairly simple matter to have option of redirecting the water into the drainage tiles (like a septic tank) under your lawn. I envision the drainage for the bath and sink would be switchable between sewer and irrigation. Alternatively, it could be fed out to a cistern, though I am not sure I would want standing dirty water :P (2) waste heat could be reclaimed from the water (m

What's Wrong with this Ad?

The problem is not that the tap water is dirty (as the commercial implies), but rather that we are flushing perfectly potable water down the toilet.

Art and Fear and Changing Minds

"When Columbus returned from the new world and proclaimed the earth was round, almost everyone else went right on believing the world was flat. Then they died - and the next generation grew up believing the world was round. That's how people change their minds." Art & Fear : Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland This is a pretty good book if you are interested in thoughts and observations on artists and art making. It is a short book, but it has a number of interesting passages. "The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language" - Stanley Kunitz quoted in the above mentioned book. "... most artists don't daydream about making great art - they daydream about having made great art. What artist has not experienced the feverish euphoria of composing the perfect thumbnail sketch, first draft, negative, or melody - only to run headlong into a stone wall

"I want to jump."

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Said my friend Megumi, as we stood on the landing looking down. This did not reflect my own thoughts, which were more along the lines of "Why is this railing so low?" This is the other end of the hall (actually, it is the starting point of the Grand Hall ). You can see the sculpture at the far end of the photo - more like a white blob than anything clearly defined. Photo credit: Richard of Forbidden Planet. Photo was taken at the Canadian Museum of Civilization

Friendship Quote

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Photo credit: Richard of Forbidden Planet (picture was taken at the Canadian Museum of Civilization )

"A nation ...

... is a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours." - Ernest Renan (commonly quoted, though I have not sourced it yet).

Going Green

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Today is the Ontario provincial election. I voted for the Green Party. Not because of any ideological attachment to them (although, listening to the Green Party leader on CBC radio two weeks ago, he was far more reasonable, coherent, and less inflammatory and divisive than the main party leaders). No, I voted for the Greens because it was a strategic vote. I suppose I could have spoiled my ballot, but I have grown tired of that. I reckon the politicians ignore it and assume I am an idiot who doesn't know how to mark a single X next to a candidate's name. I figured it was better to give my vote to some non-mainstream party in the hope that it will spur greater choice and genuine debate. (At least in the Federal elections, doing so makes sense, since parties are funded according to the number of votes they get - assuming the cross a 3% of popular vote threshold. I believe that only the province of Quebec similarly funds its political parties). The hot button issue for this electi

MMP

It stands for Mixed Member Proportional. In the upcoming Ontario provincial election, we are also asked to vote on whether or not to change our current electoral system from a first past the post to a mixed member proportional system. As far as I can recall, this is the first time I have ever been asked to vote for a new government and in a referendum simultaneously. In Canada and all the provinces and territories, our electoral system is a representational system. That is, the region involved in the election is subdivided into smaller regions (for this election, Ontario is divided into 107 regions or seats). Each region elects a representative to the legislature. In general, representatives belong to one of the 3 major political parties in Ontario (Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, and New Democratic Party). There are other parties, but they are small and generally don't account for much of the popular vote. On occasion an independent candidate will be elected, however, he (c

Meming the Desktop

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I was invited (read tagged by Renny to show what my desktops look like. Most of the time, I do not see my desktop because it is covered with applications (much like the way I don't see my physical desktop because it is covered with documents and other stuff). This is my home computer desktop. This is the desktop on my laptop. Tania asks why I have Jason as my wallpaper, so, to be fair, I alternate wallpapers between them. This is my work desktop (with stuff blurred out so I don't run afoul of giving away anything confidential). I am going to tag the first five people in my Visitors Reflections column (left side of the blog). MOI , KayMac , breal , tin-tin , and Barbara consider yourselves tagged. The rule is simple, post a picture of your desktop on your blog.

Now 50% Older!

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Jason turns 6 today, making him about 50% older than in the photograph. And no, we do not get snow this early in October (the photo is from mid-December-2005). Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet

Fire Suppression Personnel

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When I was a kid, we used to call them firefighters (or firemen, for the non-gender inclusive). I heard this while listening to a news story on the radio about Ottawa not going ahead with a plan to fine people for false alarms. Apparently, there were 8000 false alarms last year, 33% of total calls, but the majority of them are first timers, so it was felt the effort and cost to enforce the Bylaw would not be worth it. (the online news article does not use this expression). Image nabbed from here .