Living in virtual reality

I don't need to leave my apartment any more: all I want to know about the world, I can learn from my spam. Here's some recent subject headers:

Singing next to the police station isn't a lot of fun
The photographer dislikes talking
Castro up and talking in new Cuban video
Pentagon halts sales of F-14 parts
Now or later, up to you
New, fresh and optimistic symbol
'Kidnap plot' behind terror raid
Second witness contradicts Libby
Four die in gas station blast | Video Video
Joe's girlfriend is not practicing skiing in London
Opera star, underwear tossing:Nope
Shootings kill sheriff's wife, deputy, two suspects
That we can do without
US Airways told to cut out some alcohol sales
Basic choice Fish

Now that I think of it, some of these sound like sample phrases from a language instruction audiotape: "The photographer dislikes talking." "Il photographer ha antipatia per la comunicazione." (I love Babel Fish.)

I couldn't resist linking to this: the Globe has an article about author Michael Keren, who claims "[I]ndividuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world." Well, I happen to disagree with Mr. Keren. And so does my giant invisible rabbit best friend, Mr. Pookie.

Random disorganized thoughts

I have not much to offer in the way of coherence today. It's been a long day, and I still have traces of The Cold That Wouldn't Die - the gift that just keeps on giving and giving.

There were two separate door-to-door salespersons going around my building this evening. One wanted to offer me three free magazines as part of some promotional deal or other. When he asked me whether I read magazines, I saw a way out: I said no. (I actually don't, at least not much.) The second salesperson was offering an alternative electricity plan, or something. I'm not sure. He showed me a sample bill, and guaranteed my rates wouldn't go up. Or maybe not. I was pretty sure I didn't want whatever it was.

My worst fears, in no particular order: death, being trapped in an enclosed space, drowning, poisonous snakes, any height I am at risk of falling off of, wearing out my welcome. Especially this last. I would rather hide away from the human race than go where I am not wanted.

I guess I'm officially middle-aged now: my hair is starting to go more and more gray. I swear it's like time-lapse photography. If this keeps up, I'll have to get a new driver's licence, as I won't look like my picture any more.

According to the CBC, Stephen Harper was less than supportive of the Kyoto Agreement when he was the leader of the former Canadian Alliance. In 2002, he wrote a letter that included the following: "Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations." Gosh!

A weighty problem

Recently, Discover magazine posted an article entitled 20 Things You Didn't Know About Obesity. Here's a couple of the most startling ones:

• In 2000, airlines spent $275 million on 350 million additional gallons of fuel to compensate for the weight of the passengers they were flying. (And it's not like people have gotten thinner in the meantime.)
• The average weight of Americans increased by 8.5 pounds in the 1990s.
• In 2004, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration increased its estimate of the weight of the average American male from 170 pounds to 184.
• Hardee's, a food chain in the eastern U.S., offers a Monster Thickburger, which is 1420 calories and contains 107 grams of fat. (According to their nutrition guide, their ordinary Thickburger is a mere 850 calories, with 57 grams of fat.)

The conventional definition of whether you are overweight or not is the Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement. And I've got to say that it's a tough taskmaster. I'm a little over 6'2" and weigh about 200 pounds; I don't look fat or even close to it. (Of course, you have to not pay attention to my Middle-Aged Waistline.) But, according to the BMI, I'm overweight - I would have to slim down to 194 pounds to make it into their "normal weight" range. If I list myself as 6'3" - only a slight exaggeration - I'm allowed to bulk up to 199 pounds.

According to a daily calorie requirement calculator I found on the net, someone my size who is exercising lightly should consume 2519.4 calories a day. Being a big person means that it's easier for me to maintain my weight than it is for a smaller person - according to this, I could consume roughly 1.7 Monster Thickburgers without gaining weight. Of course, I would consume enough fat to stop up my arteries and eventually my heart, but I wouldn't be a fat corpse.

One thing I've noticed as I've grown older is that my metabolism has slowed down. Until I was about 27, I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. When I was in university, and on a meal plan that allowed me to eat as much as I wanted, I once had something like 11 grilled cheese sandwiches in one sitting. (Now, my alma mater doesn't offer unlimited food, possibly for precisely that reason.) And I used to order spaghetti and lasagna for dinner. Now, I have to be much more careful than that.

Which is why it scares me when I see a younger person carrying extra weight. If someone is overweight when they're 17 or 22, they're likely to be even heavier as they get older. If obesity is becoming a problem, it might become even more of a problem a few years from now.

Selling conservatism

The Globe and Mail reports that the federal Conservative party is about to launch a new series of television ads. These spots apparently mock Stéphane Dion and his party's record on the environment. These ads will appear in prime time, and at least one will be broadcast during the Super Bowl.

According to the Globe, the Tories apparently have more money than they are allowed to spend during an election campaign, which is why they're spending it now. They have more cash than any of the other Canadian political parties.

Needless to say, there have been a lot of comments on the Globe's web site about the Tories' decision. One thing that one commenter pointed out was that some of the official Government of Canada web sites have been redesigned to have more Tory blue in them. For example, the Prime Minister's official web site now has quite a lot of blue in it. And it is using the same slogan ("Getting Things Done For All Of Us") as the Conservative Party's web site.

The Government of Canada main page doesn't quite go so far. It has a blue background, but it's a muted blue, and the maple leaf and many of the headings are in official Canadian red. I suppose that you have to sympathize a bit with the Tories on this: it's not their fault that red is both one of the colours of the Canadian flag and the principal colour associated with their political opponents.

But the Tories' on-line web presence illustrates one of the things that bother me about their government: they seem to play dirtier than their opponents, and they spend a great deal of time badmouthing them. For example: their web site currently has the headline "Sponsorship Scandal: Dion Flipflops (Again)", and shows an animated image of Dion switching from facing left to facing right and back again. (Compare this to the Liberal site, whose headline is "Liberal Team Looks To The Future".) As a voter, I want to know what the government is planning on doing, not what they think of the other guys.

Because the Tories seem to be spending all their time attacking their opponents or carefully crafting their own optics, I sometimes get the impression that, deep down, the Tories think that most Canadians don't really want what they're offering. Perhaps one of the following is true:

• The Tories believe that their policies are the legislative equivalent of cod-liver oil: it's good for you, even if you don't like it.
• The Tories are serving the interests of their own political constituencies (choose one or more of the following: Albertans, the oil patch, social conservatives, rural Canadians) at the expense of others.

I don't know whether either of the above is true. All I know is that I'd be happier with the Tories if they were running on their record.

(Edit: Rob Pettapiece, in his blog, points out that the Canadian government's official apology to Maher Arar sneaks in a shot at the former Liberal government. As Rob puts it: was this necessary?)

Manzilla! and climate change

As usual, my daily ration of spam includes messages from eager overseas sellers of assorted pharmaceuticals. One message offers to sell me Vixxagra, Vaxxlium, Cixxalis (ask your docxxtor!), Xaxxnax, or Amxxbien. At reasonable prixxces, too, no doubt. All I have to do is give them my credxxit card number, thus giving them the opportunity to commit lots of fraxxud. What could be more fair than that?

And then there's this:

Manzilla! Size does matter! You seen this on TV!

Yes! Manzilla! The giant, er, member that threatens the unsuspecting population of Tokyo!


The Globe and Mail is devoting a large chunk of today's paper to articles on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is about to release its latest report, which will state, in no uncertain terms, that there's a lot of warming going on and that we humans are mostly responsible for it.

And people are realizing this: according to the Globe's article, 26 percent of the people who responded to a recent poll listed the environment as their number one concern. The figure for last May was 3 percent. The same article states that a majority of respondents "would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half, and have the economy grow at 'a significantly slower rate' to help clean up the environment."

For me, the biggest change I have to make to be more environment-friendly would be to use fewer non-recyclable items. I love to eat takeout food - I don't like to cook - and most of it comes in non-recyclable plastic packages. I did find out that Toronto allows residents of multi-unit buildings to recycle cereal boxes, paper and junk mail, and milk cartons; these were things I didn't know could be recycled. You can now also mix all your recyclables together - they'll sort it out for you.

Maybe I can find takeout places that serve food in recyclable containers. Hopefully, that will be possible. I'd like to leave a smaller footprint, if I can.

Over and over and over again

So I'm at home, still battling this [extremely unpleasant string of unbelievably foul words deleted] cold. And I'm watching basketball. I watch basketball a lot, which means I see the same commercials again and again.

There's the cell phone commercial in which a young man and woman try to say "I love you" on the phone, but aren't sure whether they are getting through to each other. There's a brief moment of awkward silence: does he/she still love me? I'd like to think that their relationship would be strong enough to survive one bout of bad cellphone reception, but you never know. Hey, I'm that insecure, so I suppose other people are too.

And then there's the toothpaste commercial featuring Brooke Shields and her daughter, which is on over and over and over again. I'm not sure why they think that the average basketball fan is that much into toothpaste. Or cute, googly babies. Or Brooke Shields. She doesn't look bad in denim, but still.

And Dennis Hull and his wife have lost a lot of unwanted pounds using a weight-loss program. Good for them, and it's good to see that Dennis can now remove his 1972 Team Canada ring from his finger if he wants to. I suppose it makes sense to show this one a lot: the average sports fan is likely to be a couch potato and probably could use a weight-loss program.

One final commercial that comes up often is for Tim Horton's. Now, this seems to be a logical connection: basketball fans are likely to be donut eaters. But the ad is for a berry explosion. Berry explosion? What the?


Today, Metafilter featured a link to the Ultimate Table Hockey Experience. Oooh! Me want!

So you want to be a technical writer

I earn (what could laughably be called) my living as a technical writer, and I thought I'd share a few things I've learned about the trade.

The hardest part is getting the information. Technical writing is more than just sitting at a word processor and cranking out paragraphs. You have to go out there and get information from people. And these people are usually very busy; talking to technical writers ranks slightly below going to the water cooler on most people's list of priorities.

Usually, you have to physically travel to the other person's desk to get the information you need. People almost invariably ignore email. A polite, friendly, but persistent approach is usually the most effective.

The second-hardest part is understanding and organizing the information. After all, if it wasn't complicated and hard to understand, they'd have an administrative assistant write it up for half your salary.

Sometimes, not knowing anything about a subject is very handy for a technical writer. After all, your readers aren't going to know anything about the subject when they start reading. What you need to know to understand the subject is what they need to know, too. And you can figure out the order in which they need to know it.

The writing is the easiest part. Okay, there are some rules you have to remember - active voice good, passive voice bad; be task-oriented whenever possible - but the actual writing isn't that hard if you've organized everything beforehand. You don't need a fancy vocabulary to be a technical writer - your readers aren't necessarily going to understand big words, so you shouldn't use them.

Check your ego at the door. For the most part, people don't want to see any evidence of personality in their technical documents. Reading documentation is like visiting the dentist - they want to get in, get it done, and get out as quickly as possible. (That's one of the reasons why I write a blog and other things - I want to be able to rock and roll a little in my spare time.)

It's not done until your manager says it's done. Any document you write - no matter how complete it seems to you - is not complete until everybody with clout has agreed that it's complete. All other versions of the document are drafts. Always be prepared to rewrite.

Get to know the developers. They're the ones who have the information you need; you can't function without them. They'll also be the first to know if your product changes: if your organization is dysfunctional, this may be the only way that you'll find out whether your documents need to be updated.

Always keep the document as complete as possible. It's a bad idea to put "TBD" in a section, or notes to yourself ("Dave, fix this") in a document. Just leave the incomplete sections out until you get to them. Here's why: some senior manager may suddenly want the latest version of the document to give to an unexpected client, and he or she will want a "complete" version.

Do the screen snaps last. The look of the application you are documenting will always change about 11 times at the last minute. You don't want to have to do the same work 11 times.

Sometimes, you have to suck it up. Technical writers have to ask people dumb questions; it's part of our job. And some of these people are going to talk down a bit to you when they answer the questions. After all, they are Code Gods, and all of this is perfectly obvious to them. Just nod, smile, and write down what they tell you. Comfort yourself by realizing this: while you can't do their jobs, they can't do yours either.

People probably won't read what you write. Many people don't bother reading the manuals. They just go ahead and try the product. If you're looking for fame, this isn't the profession for you.

And a couple of notes for anyone who employs technical writers and happens to be reading this:

Please, please show up for your meetings. Because technical writers are low on the food chain, managers and developers often blow off meetings with writers in favour of more productive activities, such as toenail clipping. We have schedules too, goddamn it; help us meet them.

For the love of God, don't ask us to take notes at meetings. Just don't. Okay?

Blah, revisited

I got a copy of Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain out of the library today, and found this fascinating statement:

Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes. That probably explains why 85 percent of twenty- to thirty-year old males think about sex every fifty-two seconds and women think about it once a day - or up to three or four times on their most fertile days.

Some comments:

• How did she come up with 52 seconds? That's a startlingly precise figure. How does she know that it's not 53 seconds, or perhaps 51?
• The 15 percent of young men who don't think about sex every 52 seconds must feel rather bad about themselves after reading this passage.
• I feel sorry for anyone - man or woman - who only thinks about sex about four times a day at most. Thinking about sex is kind of fun.
• It's cruel to use O'Hare Airport as a metaphor for sex. After all, everything arrives late there, and people are constantly rushing back and forth in a bad temper. (And the planes are often circling the airport waiting to land. I don't know if I want to take that metaphor any further, thank you.)
• Small country road? Okay, Ms. Brizendine, you may be right, but I'm driving one badass car down that road.
  

Speaking of emotions: for some reason, I'm really kind of down today. It might be winter, or that it's Day 6 of my cold, or that I'm in the middle of the work week, or all of the above.

One thing I've noticed about being down is that my brain starts sending me false information: I become convinced, for instance, that many of my friends and all of my casual acquaintances - including any women I am even remotely interested in - really can't stand me but are just being too polite to say so. I've learned to tune this out - especially when events prove that my pessimistic assumptions are wrong. But it does mean that it's hard to sort out what is actually happening in the real world. After all, if you can't trust the data coming from your brain, how do you make correct decisions?

Reading the small print of the service manual

I'm battling a headache right now - it's Day 5 of my latest cold - so this will be a short entry.

I'm just starting to read U2 by U2, and found this from Bono:

Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time. One of the extraordinary transferences that happen in your spiritual life is not that your character flaws go away but they start to work for you. A negative becomes a positive: you've a big mouth: you end up a singer. You're insecure: you end up a performer who needs applause.

And:

That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.

As I see it, this is one of the few advantages of growing older: I've started figuring out a little bit more about how my thought processes function. This means that, hopefully, I am causing less harm to self and others, and maybe I can possibly make the world and other people slightly better off for having me around. At least, I can hope.

Blasts from the past

Recently, when looking through old backup CDs, I found a backup of my personal website from 1999. Besides having a home page that is now extremely embarrassing to look at, it had some collections of links. Most of these links are long gone now, but a few are still active.

So here are some links to pages that have been around since before the new millennium started:

• The Institute for Official Cheer has long been one of my favourite sites. It's a collection of old advertisements, comic books, postcards, and other unusual stuff from the past.
• The Butt Page is now a page about rectal foreign bodies.
  
• Entropy Gradient Reversals is still around, but it doesn't look like it's been updated since 1999.
• The Critiques of Libertarianism page is still going strong: it's celebrating its 10th anniversary.
• Canadian Commentary still exists, but has not been updated since 2004.
• The Fill-Out Form That Doesn't Do Anything is still there.
• Computer Stupidities is a collection of dumb things people have said to technical support representatives.
• Project:Denny's is a mission to visit every Denny's restaurant in the world. It was still active as of May 2006.
• Totally Useless Office Skills is a way to ensure that you will never be named Employee of the Month.
• Here's a collection of viola jokes. (Viola players are not the most highly respected members of symphony orchestras.)
• The Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer has been around since 1996.
• Seven Wonders is a collection of interesting web sites.
• The Bartleby Library is a collection of online books.
• Banned Books Online is an online repository of books that have been banned in one jurisdiction or another, such as Ulysses.
• Suck.com is still online, but hasn't been updated since 2001.
• Strikethree.com is a baseball-related page based out of Seattle.
  

Some domain names have become transmogrified since 1999:

• amused.com used to be the Center for the Easily Amused, but is now a commercial enterprise, I think: it's only got a home page and a privacy policy.
• standonguard.com, which used to be the home page for Canadian World Domination, is now a collection of links to home security products.
• meat.com used to host the Netscape Hall of Shame, and is now a collection of links to sites where you can buy meat. It reminds readers, "Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak."

Life under contract

I've been a contract technical writer for nearly a year and a half now, and I'm still weighing the pros and cons of life as, basically, a glorified temp.

On the good side:

• I never get stuck in a rut.
• I'm always learning new things.
• If I don't like where I am right now, I know that I'm not stuck there forever.
• I get paid more per hour than I would be if I was full-time.
• If I have to work overtime, I get paid for it, since I am paid by the hour.
• I like the idea of being a hired gun.
• I can take large chunks of time off. (I spent most of this past summer by my apartment building's outdoor pool, or in it. This was very enjoyable.)

On the bad side:

• No job security of any kind. (Mind you, I got laid off from my last two full-time jobs, due to circumstances beyond my control both times. Believe me when I tell you that job security is an illusion.)
• No benefits package. I hope I never need major dental work or expensive pharmaceuticals, because I can't afford either.
• I have to constantly prove myself useful to new bosses.
  
• Unemployment can be really stressful if you want to work but can't find any.
• Watching your bank balance go down can be even more stressful.
• Going for interviews is even more stressful than unemployment or watching your bank balance go down.
• Turning down a potential job lead because you don't like it is even more stressful than going for interviews.
  
• I'm not good at networking, to put it mildly. So looking for work is hard for me.
• A lot of contract jobs on offer are really awful.

I think I would take a full-time job again if the circumstances were right: a short commute, an interesting job, reasonable job security. But in my line of work, the only people who are offering full-time jobs are small startup software companies, and that's not exactly a stable, secure environment. Besides, I don't want to work in a room full of desks again. (People who complain about cubicles don't know when they're well off. I haven't worked in a cubicle of my own since 2000.)

I guess the bottom line is this: sure, a contractor's life is one of uncertainty. But who among us is ever guaranteed anything in life?


Some indie rock bands have the coolest names. Here's a partial list, from collections I've seen lately:

• We Are Scientists
• People In Planes
• Pornopop
• Suburban Kids With Biblical Names
• Be Your Own Pet
• As The Poets Affirm
• Mr. Hudson & The Library
• You, Me, And Everyone We Know
• My Morning Jacket
• The Boy Least Likely To
• Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
• Small Leaks Sink Ships
• Boyfriendgirlfriend
• Explosions In The Sky
• The Morning After Girls
• Math and Physics Club
• I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
• The New Sound Of Numbers
• Your Code Name Is Milo

These names are all basically awesome. The music's probably interesting too.

Fresh, healthy winter air

It's clear and cold as I write this: it's -12C outside, which is cold by Toronto standards. One thing I noticed while I was briefly outside: the air is always fresher and cleaner when it's cold out. I assume that this is because it's coming from the north and is uncontaminated by urban pollutants. For whatever reason, it was extremely refreshing.

Of course, like all good Canadians, I quickly retreated back inside, where it's warmer.


Lately, I've become addicted to two things. One of them is updating my Flickr photo site. If you pay up and become a "pro" member, they give you unlimited storage for your pictures. So I'm busy uploading larger versions of each of my pictures, whenever possible. Since I have 264 of them, this is taking some time. But I'm gritting my teeth and getting it done.

My other addiction is to Nethack, which is an old, old adventure-style game. In this game, you are represented by the @ character, and you go wandering through a variety of rooms and hallways. Along the way, you encounter various monsters, represented by letters of the alphabet. For example, "a" can refer to a giant ant, a killer bee, a soldier ant, or any of a variety of assorted enemies, depending on the colour of the "a".

I've gotten into this game because it requires strategic thinking and because it is so damn hard. I usually only get about six levels down before I get killed by something really unpleasant, often without warning. Thankfully, Nethack comes with an explore mode, which allows you to automatically regenerate yourself when you die. I want to use this mode to get all the way through the game, just to see what happens. I want the Amulet of Yendor, and I want it now!

As you can guess, I am a games geek, and have been for years. Every now and again, I go through another burst of Civilization III addiction (the last was this summer). And I've never bought a games console, because I'm afraid to: I spend way too much time at home on my computer as it is. If I bought a Wii or a PlayStation, I'd probably never leave my apartment, and I would eventually die bitter and alone. This is not good.


So Hillary Clinton is running for president, is she? This will be interesting, just to see what the right-wing cranks try to do to discredit her. (I can picture Ann Coulter accusing her of dining on freshly killed babies, or something like that.) I'm not sure whether she would make a good President, but she can't help but be better than the guy currently holding the job. And she won't have trouble finding somebody with experience in the position to give her advice if she needs it.

Cleaning out my mental refrigerator

It's Day 2 of my cold, and I've left today's blog entry rather late. Don't expect miracles here, people.

Something I've added to the list of things that annoy me: people who stand at the banking machine and slowly count their money while they make everybody else stand in line and wait. I don't see the point: I've never known a banking machine to get the money wrong. That's Job 1 for banking machines, when you think of it. And even if it shortchanges you, there's nothing you can do about it. So move, already.

I found this on Metafilter: My Little Pony. I lasted 30 seconds into it before being forced to close the window - there's something about kids in commercials that really annoys me. They're not aware that they're being used as shills.

A shoutout for one of my favourite sites on the web ever: Mechapixel. Lots of cool people and entertaining pixel manipulation. It's basically my home away from home on the intarwebs.

The Globe is reporting that Canadian Tire is complaining that the warm December weather has cut into their corporate profits. A spokesman was quoted as saying, "We didn't get the cold weather or the snow in December, and as a result of that we didn't sell any shovels and tires, and windshield wipers and wiper blades and those kinds of things." I seem to be unable to summon any compassion. Perhaps I've just grown callous with the passing years.

Here is the greatest link in the history of the Internet: a complete collection of all the movies that have been re-enacted by bunnies. Yes!

Actually, this is the greatest link in the history of the Internet: zombo.com. You can do anything at zombo.com!

Or perhaps this is it: The End of the Internet.

Good night, everybody. I'm off to drink plenty of fluids and rest.

The evils of presenteeism

I've finally caught a cold. To be honest, I'm surprised it took this long: I've been taking the subway to work every morning during rush hour, so I am constantly surrounded by teeming masses of humanity. And, at this time of this year, many of the teeming masses are sick.

Posters on TTC subway platforms are advising sick commuters to cover their sneezes with their sleeves to keep germs from spreading. And there is even an entire book devoted to the subject of teaching people to cough and sneeze properly. On the subway, unfortunately, covering sneezes or coughs is impractical: most commuters are holding on to a pole with one hand and reading with the other, leaving no hands free to block germs. Plus, sneezing or coughing on your sleeve is just plain gross.

Related to this is a CBC news article that talks about the evils of "presenteeism", which is going to work even though you're sick. The article mentions that presenteeism costs the American economy up to $150 billion a year, but also points out that one in four adults can't afford to miss work for even as little as a week.

What the article doesn't say is that many of us are now contractors - and contractors don't get any sick days. If I don't go into work, I don't get paid. And I can't afford not to get paid. So unless I'm really, really sick, I gotta go in. (A technical writer sometimes gets to sit at a desk and write, but usually has to spend a lot of time asking people questions. So a lot of my work can't be done at home.) Sorry, everybody - I'll try not to get too close to people tomorrow.


According to the Christian Science Monitor (linked via Metafilter), Iran apparently offered concessions to the United States back in 2003, but was refused. And now, the U.S. is sending an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. All I can say is this: Mr. Bush, please please please don't invade Iran. Please. Don't. Please.


And here's a Flickr photo set from a Wal-Mart in South Carolina that is in less than perfect condition. Warning: some of these photos should not be viewed while eating lunch.

Too much information

For the past few days, I've been migrating my photos over to Flickr. (How did they come up with that name?) One thing I've learned: most digital cameras save additional information with every JPEG image they capture. My new camera, a Nikon D70S, saved the following with one picture:

Orientation: Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution: 300 dpi
Y-Resolution: 300 dpi
Software: Ver.1.00
Date and Time: 2006:05:27 13:32:59
YCbCr Positioning: Co-Sited
Exposure Program: Shutter priority
Date and Time (Original): 2006:05:27 13:32:59
Date and Time (Digitized): 2006:05:27 13:32:59
Compressed Bits per Pixel: 1 bits
Maximum Lens Aperture: 36/10
Metering Mode: Pattern
Sub-Second Time: 10
Sub-Second Time (Original): 10
Sub-Second Time (Digitized): 10
Color Space: sRGB
Sensing Method: One-chip colour area sensor
CFA Pattern: BLUE GREEN GREEN RED
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1/1
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 27
Compression: JPEG
Quality: BASIC
White Balance: AUTO
Sharpening: AUTO
Focus Mode: MANUAL
Flash Setting: NORMAL
Thumbnail IFD Offset: 1430
ISO Speed Requested: 200
Photo corner coordinates: 0, 0, 3008, 2000
AE Bracket Compensation Applied: 0/1
Tone Compensation (Contrast): AUTO
Lens Type: 6
Lens Min/Max Focal Length, Min/Max Aperture: 180/10, 700/10, 35/10, 45/10
Shooting Mode: Single Frame AE/Flash Bracketing Off White Balance Bracketing Off
Colour Mode: MODE1a
Lighting Type: NATURAL
Noise Reduction: OFF
Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x009A: 78/10, 78/10
Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x00A0: NO= 3005154c
Tag::Nikon Type 3::0x00A2: 710366
Total Number of Shutter Releases for Camera: 1348
Image optimisation: NORMAL
Saturation: NORMAL
Image Width: 3008 pixels
Image Height: 2000 pixels

I'm only surprised that it didn't include latitude and longitude.


Today, I got a spam message with the following header: DRIVING ON THE SEWARD HIGHWAY MAY BE DANGEROUS AT TIMES ESPECIALLY IN AND NEAR PORTAGE VALLEY. Thanks for the warning. Someday, my spam may save my life.


Today's Globe carried an Associated Press story about a nine-year old boy who is determined to travel to Texas from his current home in Lakewood, Washington. He has been caught three times stealing cars, and was recently found in San Antonio after having sneaked onto two separate flights. Obviously, somebody needs to keep a closer watch on him, but you have to give him credit for being extremely resourceful.

Large peninsula in northwest lying

Today's spam poetry is from a message I got this morning, titled "Kates studio":

Large peninsula in northwest lying.

Ancestors house stuart important maternal line duke.

Bilingual provided ordinary resistance may signage rarera influx.

Signs can coat armsfrench, only official republic.

Expanded restricted reduced finds itself dominant revival gaining!

Only official, republic spoken throughout.

Mead wild, honey chouchenan apple eaudevie.

Influenced chief male ancestors house stuart.

Coast vriadbatz vazmolne sunglnan inizi groebelle!

Large peninsula in northwest lying.


The Globe reports that the Conservatives are sending potential candidates to campaign training school, in preparation for a potential spring election. According to the article, candidates learn how to dress, how to handle an all-candidates debate, how to bring out the vote on election day, and how to use the Constitutent Information Management System. Candidates also "are asked to assimilate the party's policies and told how to deal with the news media". You have been assimilated!

The article also reported that the Tories are experimenting with a new slogan, "Getting Things Done For All Of Us". This slogan currently appears on their web site. Compare this with the main slogans on other party sites:

• Liberal: Healthy Environment, Healthy Canadians
• NDP: Achieving Kyoto and beyond
• Green Party: no slogan; the headline is "Elizabeth May goes One On One with Peter Mansbridge"
• Bloc Quebecois: J'Investis Pour Le Quebec

You will notice that the Liberals and NDP are focusing on the environment. It occurs to me that many voters will be less concerned about climate change now that normal winter temperatures have returned to Canada. (As I write this, it's -12C out.) Dealing with climate change is still important, or perhaps even essential, but global warming seems less real when it's freezing out.

Freezing rain, and yet more war

This morning, we're finally getting winter in Toronto. (Brief pause to allow anybody from Winnipeg who is reading this to snort dismissively.) Today's forecast calls for ice pellets and snow lasting most of the day. I'm actually relieved that the weather today is really crappy. For one thing, it means that global warming hasn't totally screwed up the seasons. And I've always believed that we have to endure a predefined amount of really bad winter weather every year: if we don't have it now, we have to go through it in April, and I'd prefer to go through it now.


According to the Globe, President Bush has decided to continue to pursue his Iraq policy, regardless of what the U.S. Congress proposes. The article quotes Bush as telling 60 Minutes, "I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward."

Vice President Dick Cheney added: "[Bush is] the guy who's got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force. And Congress obviously has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So they've got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that. But you also cannot run a war by committee." Cheney later said, "This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term."

And, to top it all off, the U.S. is making threatening noises in Iran.

The Bush article has a comments section, and the first comment was:

'... no matter what Congress wants', no matter what two thirds or three quarters of Americans want, no matter what the community of nations wants, no matter what the vast majority of the world population wants, no matter what Heaven and Hell want, no matter what God wants, no matter... no matter.

Can the world survive another two years with these guys running America?


Some interesting links: Metafilter posted a link to the Online Pig Disease Problem Solver and a history of computing at Columbia University (with pictures of oldtime computers and the people who were running them).

PHP hackers and death by water

This weekend, I moved some photos from my web site over to flickr. For some reason, this generated a flood of error messages on my web hoster's server. After removing a couple of PHP files (in case they were creating security holes), and creating some zero-length files to replace some of the more frequently accessed files that were now missing, the problem seems to be solved. I hope.

When looking at the error log a little while later today, I noticed that some diligent hacker was looking to try to find a copy of phpMyAdmin to exploit. The hacker ran a script that looked for any of the following files:

phpMyAdmin/main.php
PHPMYADMIN/main.php
pHpMyAdMiN/main.php
PhPmYaDmIn/main.php
PHPmyadmin/main.php
PHPMYadmin/main.php
phpMYadmin/main.php
phpmyADMIN/main.php
pmamy/main.php
pma/main.php
PMA/main.php
myadmin/main.php
MYADMIN/main.php
MYadmin/main.php
myADMIN/main.php
MyAdmin/main.php
PMA/main.phpmain.php
mysql/main.phpmain.php
admin/main.phpmain.php
db/main.phpmain.php
dbadmin/main.phpmain.php
web/phpMyAdmin/main.phpmain.php
admin/pma/main.phpmain.php
admin/phpmyadmin/main.phpmain.php
admin/mysql/main.phpmain.php
mysql-admin/main.phpmain.php
phpmyadmin2/main.phpmain.php
mysqladmin/main.phpmain.php
mysql-admin/main.phpmain.php
main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.9.1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.9.0/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.9.0.2/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.9.0.1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.8.2.4/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.8.2.2/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.8.2.1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.7.0-pl2/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.7.0/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.6.4-pl4/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.6.4/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.8.1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.2.7/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.2.7-pl1/main.phpmain.php
phpMyAdmin-2.2.0/main.phpmain.php
myadmin/main.phpmain.php

So if anybody out there is using phpMyAdmin, you might want to try putting your files in a directory other than any of these ones.


The Globe had an article recently about a woman who died of water intoxication. She was an entrant in a contest in Sacramento called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii". Contestants were asked to drink as much water as possible without going to the bathroom; presumably, the person with the strongest bladder won a game console. This is a horrible, sad tragedy, of course, and it was a dumb contest idea too, but: I had no idea that too much water can kill you. Is there anything out there that can't kill you?

Survival of the fittest

I am a world-class procrastinator. One of the things I do is let my junk mail and flyers pile up, and then clean them up all at once.

This week, I got two separate glossy flyers from fitness clubs in my neighbourhood. Their advertised rates and alleged range of services offered leave me wondering how they stay in business.

Fitness Club A is offering a rate of $2 per week for their first 100 new members - with, apparently, no hidden fees and no long-term obligations. The first 50 new members get a free gym bag, even - of course, the free bag has their logo written on it in very large letters, but that's to be expected. The brochure features lots of pictures of what presumably is their club, or perhaps one of the other clubs in their chain, and it's kind of startling: row upon row of gleaming new machines, which are only too eager to remove those unsightly pounds and bulges from our bodies. And their "fitness system" offers:

• Body Composition Analysis (mine is probably mostly water, gristle, and assorted inert elements)
• Fitness Assessment
• Fitness Goal Setting
• Exercise Program
• Workout Orientation
• Nutrition and Weight Management ("Put that pizza down! Now!")

There's also "unlimited group fitness", including Power Abs. (Hurray for power abs! They helped win the war!)

But there is a catch. The fine print at the bottom of the brochure, written in gray in a very very small point size on a black background, tells me that the $2 per week only applies if I sign up for a prepaid two-month membership. And they reserve the right to substitute a gift of "equal or greater value" for the gym bag. Hmph. Overall, Fitness Club A might not be a bad deal, if the number of machines in the actual fitness club actually comes close to the number of machines in the brochure, but I don't like brochures with very small and hard-to-read print in them.

So, it's on to the flyer for Fitness Club B. Like Club A, they offer a free but logo-drenched gym bag to the first 50 new members. They don't advertise their prices, but claim that they will offer a lower rate than that of any other fitness club - provided, of course, you join the other fitness club first.

Fitness Club B offers (all capitalization theirs):

• Latest Cardio Equipment with Personal Screen TV's
• Cutting-Edge Free-Weight and Resistance Machines
• New Private Group Exercise Studio
• New Men's Changeroom with Luxurious Showers (Was the women's room already luxurious? Or are women denied the gender-based privilege of shower luxury?)
• Certified Personal Trainers
• Tae Kwon Do featuring Toronto's Gold Medal and Trophy Winners Master Trainers
• Tae Kickboxing
• On-site Child Care
• Massage
• Free Parking

They also offer a 6 week fitness boot camp, which frightens me.

The brochure for Fitness Club B features smaller pictures of rows and rows of exercise machines, plus photos of happy kids in child care, smiling personal trainers, and a woman getting a massage. The only sign that all is not well in the world of Fitness Club B is that the club is under new management, according to the brochure. I can't help but think that the club can't be in great shape if the previous management bailed on it.

So I won't be joining Fitness Club A or Fitness Club B, alas. If I want to go for a workout, I might just hit the local community rec centre - the one at Eglinton west of Yonge has a weight room and a running track, and I don't have to commit to a membership to use them.

By the way, my pile of flyers also included discount coupons for McDonald's, which would kind of undo all the hard work put in at Fitness Club A or Fitness Club B.

It's a "bits of stuff" day, I'm afraid

This will be a "bits of stuff" day today, as I'm brain dead because I went out last night with friends and tried karaoke for the first time in ages. I learned that, perhaps, the high note from Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock" is a bit outside my range. It's pretty safe to say that a career as a singer was never in the cards for me.


The Globe reports that people who know two languages develop dementia symptoms later in life than unilingual people. Uh oh. I only know English (well, I know a tiny bit of French, but not enough to understand conversations). Maybe I can fend off dementia by using quite a lot of English.


The BBC web site has a list of greatest living British cultural icons, as voted on by viewers. Here's the list, in order:

• Sir David Attenborough
• Morrissey
• Sir Paul McCartney
• David Bowie
• Michael Caine
• Stephen Fry
• Kate Bush
• Alan Bennett
• Kate Moss
• Vivienne Westwood

Imagine: Moz ahead of Beatle Paul. (I must confess that I didn't know who David Attenborough was. I can identify everybody else on this list.)


Today, I got some spam that was Highlighted with Random Capitalized Words:

Good Day!
They are searching… They could not find you – your potential Customers.
Can this be helped? Quite easily!
Let us list your Web Site in Major Search Engines used daily by thousands.
The more Customers find you the bigger your revenues become - that’s the ABC of business world.
Now, you can find all the details here (site deleted)
Let Their Search be successful. Let them find you.


Before I go, a shout out to my friend Scott's video blog, You, The Viewer. I particularly recommend his January 4th entry, He's The Computer Man. I have never seen so many people without rhythm attempt to dance at one time.

The headline spam network

So my daily intake of spam has taken a new, almost user-friendly, twist: the subject headings are headlines from recent news stories. Here's the ones I've gotten:

Man in hot pants struts in boots, cheers city
N.J. suspected as source of stench
Suzanne Somers' Malibu house burns
Neuwirth gets to 'wiggle again'
Mom charged with stabbing kids
Dems start 100-hour clock
School sent parents 'obese student' warnings
Howard Stern earns $83M bonus
Senator's condition upgraded after brain surgery
U.S. gunships target Al Qaeda suspects in Somalia
Must be fit, have nice face to get Chinese baby
O'Reilly, Colbert on each's shows
Witnesses: Al Qaeda targeted
Kennedy fights 'new mistake' of troop surge
House Dems start 100-hour agenda
Latest updates on world's top stories
Hilary Swank: 'Yes, I am in a relationship'
Wind advisory remains in effect until noon AST today

Another spammer countered with this:

Well, folks that's about it for this week, so until next time, keep your eyes on the skies.

And a third sent this:

Re: !

And someone is offering a "dilpoma", and yet another message was sent by someone named "stormi boote".


The CBC reported recently that Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have been found in the pockets of at least three American contractors who have visited Canada recently. Security experts are baffled by this: for one thing, the transmitters that were most likely used aren't effective over long distances. And, as one expert pointed out, the target could very likely just spend the money.


Apple has just announced the iPhone, a new handheld device that contains, among other things, a Web browser. iPhone users in wireless hotspots can surf the web just like they do at home. Two thoughts occurred to me when I read about this.

• Older people are not going to be able to use this. When most people get past a certain age, it gets harder and harder to read small print. The iPhone's viewscreen will be just too small to read anything in, unless the older viewer does a lot of zooming and scrolling. If the iPhone takes off, there may be a generational divide between people who can use modern technology and people who can't.
• A lot of people (well, men - in particular, young men) use the net to surf for porn. Will they want to do that on an iPhone?

The last question was only half-serious, but: if people weren't wanting to surf for porn or download music and movies, would broadband Internet connections have become so popular so quickly?

Okay, I'm a pack rat

My brain is a bit tired today - I actually had to think at work. So, in lieu of thinking, here's a list of all the stuff on my computer desk, as of 7:05 PM today.

• The salad I'm finishing up as I write this
• A piece of cardboard that used to hold a Pizza Pizza slice (which, now that I think of it, tastes much like cardboard)
• A napkin to go with same
• Two external hard drives
• The bowl I ate my cereal from this morning
• My water glass
• My monitor
• Three books to put my monitor at the optimal ergonomic level (the top of the screen should be at eye level)
• My keyboard and mouse
• Three "All American Ads" books, which put my keyboard and mouse at the optimal ergonomic level
• A Wacom graphics tablet
• A pen for same
• Several sheets of paper that reminded me to do stuff at some time or other
• My cellphone
• Warranty information for my cellphone
• CDs containing my business card and brochure (for taking to a copy shop)
• The lid from a plastic tub that held mushrooms three days ago (I threw this out as soon as I realized what it was)
• An Albert Einstein action figure! Yay! E=mc squared!
• A pen
• A copy of Douglas Coupland's Microserfs
• A copy of Karen Hines' Hello, Hello
• My Society for Technical Communication 2007 annual dues notice
• A notice from my landlord reminding me of my City of Toronto rent decrease (the property taxes went down on my unit, so the city wrote to tell me that my rent was down about five bucks a month - yay again!)
• A stack of various CDs containing data I burned off my computer at one point or another
• A copy of my friend Cary West's film, Method Porn (I play a very small role as somebody doing something embarrassing with underwear)
• Some Partridge Family trading cards (from the blue and yellow series!)
• A stack of blank CDs
• Another stack of blank CDs, because I forgot about the first set of blank CDs and went out and bought more
• A plush black cat toy, made by my friend Brenda Green; I was going to give this to my niece, but I liked it so much that I kept it
• A scrap of paper containing some writing ideas - the ideas suck, but I hate throwing anything out
• A credit card, which I had to cancel this week (long story)
• A glasses case
• Family snapshots
• My computer speakers
• Some old computer speakers
• Cal Ripken and Eric Hinske bobblehead dolls
• Scotch tape
• Duct tape
• An empty medicine container, which used to hold the medication that treated a nasty arm infection I had two years ago (I keep it as a souvenir, I don't know why)
• Six vegetable crackers, wrapped in plastic, which have long since gone stale
• A collection of all my old business cards
• The user's guide for Turbo Texas Hold'Em for Windows
• The installation CD for something or other that I don't remember
• A yellow highlighter that doesn't work any more
• More family pictures
• Assorted salt, pepper and "Refreshing Towel" packages
• A cable that connects something with something else - I've forgotten what
• Another highlighter - I haven't used this one, so I think it still works
• Some notes on how much leading goes best with particular point sizes
• Still more family snapshots
• Some old-style floppy disks
• A mouse pad with Marvin the Martian on it
• Another mouse pad
• Chapstick
• Flotsam
• Jetsam
• Junk
• That's it

Perhaps I should clean this up sometime soon.

Cranky

I'm feeling cranky today, so it's time to write about things that annoy me.

First off: today, I was walking across Broadview Avenue at Danforth, in front of a car waiting to turn right. The car that was waiting for me was cool, but somebody about three cars back in line started honking. Um... what does that driver want to have happen? Does he want the car in front to run me over so that he can get to where he's going about thirty seconds faster? I hope I never wind up in the same lifeboat as that guy, as no doubt he'd try his best to toss me over the side.

Something else that has annoyed me a lot lately: people who walk right in front of the bottom of a moving escalator. Where, exactly, am I supposed to go?

I've been having to take the subway a lot during rush hour lately, and I have a message for everybody in Toronto: do not lean against the doors. Seriously. We're not going anywhere until you do. Argh.


If you're fabulously wealthy, and are looking for something to give to somebody you really care about, why not buy him or her a country? The Globe reports that Sealand, a 550-metre square platform about 12 kilometres east of England, is for sale for a mere $1.14 billion. The tiny floating country has its own coins and national anthem. Wikipedia states that the country, which isn't officially recognized by anybody at the moment, sponsors a slot car racing team and two players on the mini-golf tour.

OMG I have a cellphone now, Part 2

So I got a shiny new cellphone on the weekend. Before I bought my new toy, I hadn't used a cellphone of any kind in years. I was so uninformed about them that I wasn't quite sure where you were supposed to talk. There isn't an obvious mouthpiece on my new phone. How does it hear what I say? I soon discovered that if I hold the earphone to my ear and just talk normally, the phone picks up my voice just fine. OK, that's one problem solved.

If that isn't bad enough, I still am not quite sure how to answer calls and ensure that my part of the conversation is getting through. I got an unexpected call today on my new phone; when I answered it, the caller couldn't hear me talking, and hung up. I eventually figured out that the Answer button on the phone becomes a Mute button when pressed again. Presumably, if I press Answer for too long, my phone interprets it as Answer plus Mute. Hmmm. Fortunately, there's a way around this. If I press the Call key to answer the phone, my end of the conversation is less likely to be non-existent.

I have decided that, if this happens again, I'll look up the caller's phone number, return the call, and then blame a phantom "reception" problem. Hopefully, that will fool him or her (unless the caller happens to have read this blog).

Okay, now on to the ringtones. By default, my phone's ringtone is the Telus theme music. It's tolerable, but a bit too perky for my liking. The only other bearable ringtone is one called "Agency", which sounds like a land-line phone ringing. That's the one I picked. All the others, basically, suck. Here they are:

• Bloom, which sounds simultaneously perky and melodramatic.
• Espionage, which is meant to sound dramatic and mysterious, but sounds kind of twee - it's the ringtone equivalent of people who think that obvious puns are funny.
• Festival, which sounds vaguely like a Caribbean band. Yeah, like I want to hear that in the middle of winter.
• Fiesta: my phone is, basically, doing the mambo. If I can't do the mambo, I'm not going to allow my phone to, either.
• Halo, which sounds cutesy. Cutesy doesn't work for me.
• Jink, which is intended for somebody into hip-hop. I'm whitebread, so that's not me.
• Memory, which is more cutesy than Halo. Ick.
• Nocturnal, which is meant to sound dramatic and mysterious and like hip-hop. I might be too old for my cellphone.
• Nokia tone, which is the old-school cellphone ringtone. I am not nostalgic for the old days of cellphones (when phones were the size of your shoe), so this doesn't work for me.
• Nuance, which sounds like Easy Rock. I hate Easy Rock with a passion.
• Oceanic, which is the aural equivalent of a really cheesy souvenir shop.
• Party: absolutely the last thing you want to hear when you're hung over.
• Stargazing: sounds exactly like one of those cheap Casio synthesizers. I don't want to hear this when I'm hung over, either.
• Tumbler: sounds like Eurodisco. I don't lead a glamorous enough life for this ringtone.

I still haven't figured out how to do text messages yet, and I've accidentally started to dial somebody's number by mistake about six times already. (If you're a friend of mine, and your phone rang once either yesterday or today, it was probably me. Sorry about that.) But I have figured out how to use the camera - my video screen wallpaper is now a rather nice shot of the Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto, if I may dare say so myself.

The moral of the story: technology is cool, even if I haven't quite mastered it yet.

OMG I have a cellphone now, Part 1

So I finally broke down and bought a cellphone this weekend. For me, this is a radical step, as I hate talking on the phone. But I spent a lot of time during the holidays trying to find pay phones - which are getting harder to find because more people have cellphones. It's a perfect example of destructive circular logic. I figured it was time for me to step, tentatively, into the 21st century. Besides, it's probably a good idea to be able to contact somebody right away in case of emergency.

I decided to go with Telus as my service provider for two reasons. One was that some of my friends were already with them. The other was that I'm already using Rogers for my cable service and my high-speed Internet, and I didn't want to be too dependent on one provider: Rogers once mistakenly disconnected my service for a day when someone else in my apartment building defaulted on their cable bill. They restored it as soon as was practically possible, but this sort of thing could happen again. (This is also why I keep my credit card at one bank and my RRSP and savings account at another - if something goes wrong with my credit card bill by mistake, the credit card bank can't just take money from one of my accounts to cover the card balance.)

So I went to Telus's site, and was quickly overwhelmed by the number of phones and service options available. They offer 22 different phones for sale with their PCS mobile service, all of which boast approximately six zillion features each. How on earth was I going to be able to choose between them? Then, I noticed that if you sign a contract, they offer a discount on their phones. If I was willing to spring for a three-year contract - and hey, go big or go home, I say - then I could get a fairly snazzy phone for quite a low price. So I narrowed my options down to the phones that were just a little more expensive than free if you sign their three-year deal.

I eventually went with the Nokia 6265i, because it had lots of gadgets - like all geeks, I love gadgets - and because the online reviews for this phone were generally very good. Okay, that's one problem down and one to go: next, I had to decide what plan I wanted.

Once again, there was a bewildering array of options. I could choose Talk 20, 25, 50, 75, 100, or 150. Or Super Talk 20, 25, 30, or 40. Or Talk To Me 25, 30, or 45. Or Talk Canada 30, 50, 100, 150 or 250. Eek. After a brief whimper and a bit of time lying down (and reading A.N. Wilson's The Victorians), I settled on Super Talk 20. It was the same price as Talk 20, and offered more evening and weekend minutes, which is when I'm going to use the phone if I ever use it at all.

Okay, that was settled. I marched into the local wireless store on the Danforth, and told them exactly what phone and service I wanted. They gave me a long contract to read and sign, and then gave me a choice as to what phone number I wanted. Whee! I've never gotten to pick a phone number before! Logically, I picked the one that was easiest to remember. (Side note: the program that they use to display available phone numbers had an "Asian friendly" option. As I recall, the number 4 is bad luck in China. A friend of mine lives in a condo that is geared to the Asian-Canadian market: there is no 4th or 14th floor, and no fours on any of the suite numbers. This means that the next floor after the 12th is the 15th, as we Caucasians think that 13 is bad luck.)

When I got home, I took out my new phone and realized something: I had used a cell phone so infrequently that I wasn't even sure how you're supposed to use it. No, seriously. This entry is getting long, so tomorrow I'll get to how I figured that out, along with a detailed description of the default ringtones available and why I can't stand any of them.


One quick music note: am I the only one who can't tell Radiohead and Muse apart? Their lead singers sound almost identical. As a general rule, Muse is a bit more intense than Radiohead, so I see it like this: if Thom Yorke of Radiohead had just gotten dumped or was suffering an existential crisis, he'd be Matthew Bellamy of Muse. (By the way: according to the All Music Guide, Muse used to call themselves Gothic Plague, Fixed Penalty, and Rocket Baby Dolls. Cool.)

Is the sky falling, or isn't it?

As I understand it, there seem to be two visions of the working world of the future, and they're heading in opposite directions from one another.

One view could be called the Global Pessimist point of view. In this view, everything that can be moved to lower-wage countries will be. We've already seen this in the manufacturing sector: how many of the clothes we wear are now made in countries such as China, Indonesia or Vietnam? And how much are the workers who are making them being paid?

The development of universal high-speed broadband Internet connections means that it is now possible for knowledge work to be outsourced in the same way. The most well-known example of this is customer call centres: many major companies have moved these tasks offshore to countries such as India. But many other jobs could go offshore, or are doing so already: software development, graphic design, web applications, and other language-independent tasks can be done for less money overseas. (By the way, Rohan Jayasekera has recently discussed this issue in his blog.)

Does that mean we're all doomed? Are we all going to be forced to work in fast-food restaurants or at Wal*Mart? Are we condemned to a life of simply struggling to get by? (And are we excessively fond of rhetorical questions? Sorry.) Perhaps not, if an article in today's Globe is to be believed.

According to workplace reporter Virginia Galt, the North American workplace needs to brace itself for a major change. Many of the baby boom generation will be retiring in the next ten years. And those of us who will be remaining in the job market are insisting on maintaining a healthy balance between work and life. According to this view, employers will need to be more flexible in order to attract employees, as workers will have more options available from which to choose. (A personal aside: as somebody who has been struggling to find meaningful work in the last few years, I say that it's about time.)

So you can now mark me down as confused. Is the future going to be better for the average worker, or not? My prediction is that a whole bunch of totally unexpected events will change the modern workplace in ways we can't possibly imagine yet. That's kind of why it's worth sticking around for a while - I, for one, want to see what happens.

Goats in trees

Today's Toronto high temperature only reached 11C today, not the 13 or more that was threatened. But, still: yikes. In case you have forgotten what normal winter is like, the usual high for this time of year is -2C. I think 11C still beats the all-time record for today.

Not surprisingly, Stephen Harper is making the environment more of a priority for his government. The Globe's analysis of his recent cabinet shuffle suggests that he is trying to position himself more in the political centre, in an attempt to lure voters away from the Liberals. (There's more Globe analysis here.) Obviously, this is a good thing. I still can't imagine myself ever voting for the Conservatives, as the party contains too many knuckle-dragging Reformers and anti-Toronto attack dogs from Mike Harris's Ontario Tories. But I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a more centrist government.


Metafilter reports that Moroccan Argan trees are being threatened with extinction, thanks to climbing goats. Apparently, it's a global warming thing: the meadows of Morocco have been reduced by drought, so the goats have to climb to try to get the moisture they need. Humans have also been cutting down the trees for their wood.

Here is another link to the Argan tree, along with a picture of a tree with a lot of goats in it. (The Metafilter page also has lots of links to goats in trees.)

Uninformed music reviews, Volume 1

Recently, I went out and got hold of some albums by musicians I'd never heard of, in a possibly vain attempt to seem up to date. Here's some comments on a few of them.

I can't help but like a band that calls themselves And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. (According to the Allmusic Guide, they're named after a prayer to Mayan corn gods.) Their So Divided album is definitely going to be worth listening to a few times. To my non-expert ears, they sound like all of the following at one time or another: Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Matthew Sweet, a crowded restaurant, ELO with bongo and accordion accompaniment, a symphony orchestra getting into a bar fight in mid-overture, Pink Floyd in the Atom Heart Mother era, what Oasis would have sounded like if they had played brass instruments, Blur, My Chemical Romance, and a folk-rock band forced to stay up for 34 hours straight before recording. And that's only the things I could think of. I'm going to have to go back sometime and see if I can add to this list.

The Arctic Monkeys have become one of the most popular bands in Britain. After listening to their Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not album, I'm not surprised. They sound a bit like Oasis - what with the northern accents and all - and they also sound a bit like those old Madchester bands of the early 9os that seemed to be enjoying a never-ending party. They're not bad, but I'd like them more if they weren't obviously having much more fun than I've had lately. Blaah. I don't like it when the music I'm listening to makes me feel old.

After seeing Joanna Newsom's name on some critics' favourites lists, I got a copy of her Ys album. Alas, I lasted about a song and a half before giving up. I just can't endure her singing voice. Sorry.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled album reminds me a lot of the Talking Heads and their More Songs About Buildings And Food. The guitars are doing all sorts of interesting things that blend together, and the lead singer's voice is a bit, erm, adenoidal. I'm going to be listening to this again.

And, while I'm thinking about music, I just wanted to mention that I've fallen in love with Bikini Kill's "Feels Blind". Three chords, feedback, and attitude. That's all you need to be great.


Today's Toronto Star contains the results of a Decima Research poll that named the environment as the issue that was troubling Canadians the most. I'm not surprised. It's 10C as I write this. In January. Did I mention yet that I'm scared now?

The worst moment of my life

I'm not sure exactly what the worst moment of my life has been, but I think I can make a good guess.

The first thing you need to know: I seem to have a relatively high pain threshold. No, I'm not bragging - I'm actually a big baby about pain. It's just that there's been times when I've hurt myself, and was able to keep going when I really really shouldn't have. One of those times was when I sprained my back.

A few years ago, I was absolutely nuts about playing recreational volleyball. I was playing three times a week at the recreation centre at Eglinton just west of Yonge. One day, I stumbled over somebody's foot, and fell over. The next morning, I couldn't turn my head to the right. I mean, not at all. This was a warning sign. I ignored it.

The next Monday morning, I bent over to pick up some laundry. It wasn't even wet laundry, as I recall. When I bent over, I felt a sharp pain in my back. But I could handle it, I thought, so I went to work as usual. On the subway, I bent over to pick up my knapsack, and it hurt a little worse. I made it to work.

By mid-afternoon, my back was stiffening up as I was typing away. I tried to get up to go get a drink of water. And then realized that I couldn't stand up. Immediately, I saw that I had two choices, neither of them wonderful. I could inform a co-worker that I could no longer stand up. I would have had to have been wheeled out on my chair, down the elevator, presumably to a taxicab. Or, I could grit my teeth, suck up the pain, and stand up.

I stood up.

That may have been the worst moment of my life, right there.

The next day, my back was literally bent over at about a 40 degree angle. I didn't go into work. When I wandered into my bathroom and looked in the mirror, I would do my best Peter Lorre imitation. That was the only fun part of the whole thing. It took a year and a half, and a bunch of physio appointments, before my back fully healed.


This morning's Globe contains a report of a man who saved someone's life on the New York City subway. The person in danger had fallen off the platform, and his rescuer saved him by pushing him into the rut between the train rails, allowing an oncoming train to pass over them both. Neither of them was hurt. Wow. Imagine having that much nerve and presence of mind to think and act that quickly.

Too many things in my wallet

I have altogether too many things in my wallet. I guess it's time for a culling.

Here's what's in there as I write this, going from front to back, in order:

• My laundry card (which also gives me two free 12-hour tickets for my building's visitors parking lot every month)
• A January 2007 Metropass
• The address of a party I was invited to, written on the back of a business card
• A December 2006 Metropass
• Another address, on another business card
• The envelope that a Chapters gift certificate came in ("A Special Gift For You")
• A business card from a friend of mine who lives in Windsor
• Yet another address
• A receipt for an iPod power adapter I bought from Compusmart ($45.59, including tax)
• One more address
• The date and time for the last job interview I had (I got the job)
• A November 2006 Metropass
• Another address
• My University of Waterloo Alumni Membership Card (which, I believe, allows me lifetime admission to their Grad Club pub)
• My Royal Bank client card
• A credit note from Chapters, after I returned a potential Christmas gift because I realized it was stupid
• Two actual business cards
• A piece of paper with the dollar value of the savings bonds in my safety deposit box (now out of date, as I cashed some)
• One more address
• My Toronto Public Library card
• My access card for work (which has a picture of me that makes me look like a serial killer)
• My TD Canada Trust client card
• A Chapters iRewards card, good until next July
• A Chapters gift card (the one that the envelope used to hold), with "Joy to the Word" written on it in script
• My Royal Bank credit card
• The name of the hotel I was staying in on Christmas Eve
• Still another address
• A card that activates the Metro Reference Library's copying machines
• The date and time of my last appointment related to this
• My driver's licence
• My health card
• An official receipt for my December 2006 Metropass, entitling me to a tax deduction
• A note advising me to keep my January 2007 Metropass as a receipt, as the TTC is no longer issuing separate receipts for Metropasses
• My Society for Technical Communication membership card
• My Bad Dog Theatre Company membership card
• A card with my GST number on it, as there's no way I'm gonna remember that
• My blood donor's card (I haven't given in a long long time, alas)
• Email addresses of the people I was sitting with at the career planning workshop I went to
• About a dozen of my own business cards (I have two kinds - one normal, and one with lots of wonderful qualifications written on it)
• An almost totally destroyed Mountain Equipment Co-op membership card
• Pictures of three of my nephews (which are quite out of date now)

Oh, I almost forgot: I've also got $65 in there.

Pwned!

Today's online Globe and Mail contains an article on Lake Superior State University's annual list of banished words, which they have been producing every year since 1975. The words that the university would like to see banned this year are:

• Gitmo instead of Guanatamo Bay: as one complaining reader points out, this "conjures up an image of a fluffy and sweet character from a Japanese anime show".
• Combined celebrity names: say goodbye to TomKat and Brangelina.
• Awesome: given a one-year moratorium in 1984, now banished forever.
• Gone or went missing: this makes it sound like "missing" is a place you can visit.
• Pwned: originally a mistyping of "owned", now sometimes actually used in speech.
• Now playing in theaters: where else would movies be shown? (On DVD, I suppose.)
• We're pregnant: actually, one of "we" is usually a bit more pregnant than the other.
• Undocumented alien: according to one disgruntled reader, this is like saying a drug dealer is an "undocumented pharmacist".
• Armed robbery/drug deal gone bad
• Truthiness
• Ask your doctor: the "chewable vitamin morphine of marketing".
• Chipotle: I had to look this up, as I've never heard it before: it's apparently a type of jalapeno.
• i-anything: iPod, and its brethren. e-anything made the list in 2000.
• Search: has, apparently, been replaced by "google".
• Healthy food: as one reader points out, if her fish were healthy, it would be swimming somewhere. The correct word is "healthful".
• Boasts, when used to describe houses: "The master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces". However, phrases such as the "The bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum" are never used.

I'd write more today, but I'm feeling pwned at the moment. Happy New Year, everyone.