Moving on out

Hi. I'm moving this blog to a new location: http://www.davetill.com/blog/. Please update your links, notify your neighbours, etc.

Everything on this blog - posts, comments, tags, the lot - should have successfully moved over to my new home. (I've removed and disabled commenting here, since this version of the blog is now obsolete.)

I am moving the blog because I want to have it on my own space, where I have complete control over it. And I want to use the WordPress technology, which has more features than Blogger.

Goodbye for now!

Not a good idea, parts 1 and 2

This afternoon, I was exiting the subway at the west exit of the Bloor-Danforth subway platform. This is the exit that bypasses the Yonge-University line and goes straight up to Yonge Street. Because this exit isn't used much, you use a revolving gate instead of a turnstile to exit.

If you're not familiar with the TTC's revolving gates, let me see if I can describe one to you: it's like a revolving door, except that it has horizontal metal bars instead of glass panels, and there's a barrier to keep people from revolving all the way around and back into the station. The basic idea is that it lets people out but doesn't allow people in. Got it? A friend of mine used to call these gates "people strainers".

When I got to the exit gate, a man was just getting through it. After he left, he felt compelled to put the gate back in the condition he found it, so he abruptly stopped its motion as I was about to enter. He wasn't being malicious - it was just an instinctive act of tidying up. But I have no idea what he was thinking. Had I been in the gate, I probably would have been somewhat injured, as I would have been people-strained.

I looked at him, politely but questioningly, as if to say, "Dude - what the?" He looked startled, and then rueful. And then he realized that this exit didn't lead to the Yonge subway, and slunk back in. Just another day on earth...


I was surfing the net tonight, and ran across a site claiming to list the bird courses offered by Canadian universities. (Of course, "bird" in this context means "easy".) I looked up the list for my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, and discovered that the data there is not entirely reliable: CS 452 - Introduction To Real-Time Programming is listed as a bird course. As the recommendation puts it, "Easiest course ever! Earning credits for playing around with trains, how easy is that!?"

When I was in school, taking this course meant that you had no life for four months, as you were doomed to spend all your time in the lab. I avoided it like the plague.

Cool pictures

Yesterday, while searching for random images, I ran across Today's Inspiration. This blog discusses illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s. If you're into this stuff (as I am), you should check it out.

And I know I've mentioned it before, but Shorpy, The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog also totally rocks my world.

Attack, attack, attack!

I'm watching the baseball game this afternoon, and I've seen three attack ads from the Ontario Progressive Conservatives in the last two innings. They all hammer on the same point: Dalton McGuinty has broken his promises.

The problem with this is that I already know what Dalton McGuinty has done. What I want to know is what John Tory is likely to do. These ads don't give me any help with that.

Politicians on tour, and Thomas Frank's view of the market

We're in the middle of a provincial election campaign in Ontario. Whenever there's an election in my part of the world, I stand a good chance of having many of the candidates come right to my door. This is because I live in a 21-story building - campaigners can get the message out to dozens of people without having to travel too far. And those candidates that I don't meet in person in my building are likely to be waiting, campaign literature in hand, at Broadview subway station on a weekday morning, hoping to catch commuters on their way to work.

My current sitting MPP, Peter Tabuns, holds the record for most visits. I've met him three times now: once for the current election, once for the by-election in which he got his seat, and once when he was helping a candidate for the most recent Toronto municipal election. You have to give him credit for getting himself out there.


Just re-read the following, from Thomas Frank's "The God That Sucked", and found it thought-provoking enough to quote here:

The market is a god that sucks. Yes, it cashed a few out at the tippy-top, piled up the loot of the world at their feet, delivered shiny Lexuses into the driveways of their ten-bedroom suburban chateaux. But for the rest of us the very principles that make the market the object of D'Souza's worship, of Gilder's awestruck piety, are the forces that conspire to make life shitty in a million ways great and small. The market is the reason that our housing is so expensive. It is the reason our public transportation is lousy. It is the reason our cities sprawl idiotically all across the map. It is the reason our word-processing programs stink and our medicine costs more than anyone else's. In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an ever-more-arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in catering only to the fortunate.

My own belief is that, somewhere down the line, something went wrong with the free market system. Ideally, the market should provide quality goods for customers, a decent living wage for employees, and a fair return for investors. Right now, the market seems to be only providing the latter. How do we fix this?

Go home

If you're fond of mashups, you might want to know about this: Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions has put his entire catalogue up on the Web for downloading.

(Mashups, as you probably know already, are the result of two or more songs mixed together.)

Maybe you can get too much exercise

Something I keep forgetting: if I go for a long walk, and then sit on a public transit vehicle for half an hour, I get one or more sore thigh muscles. They hurt like a son of a bitch at times. And how do you rest a sore muscle when sitting or lying down aggravates the injury? Argh.

Anyway, enough whining. Yesterday, I received not one, but two registration notices for the upcoming election: one for me, and one for somebody I've never heard of, who apparently lived at my address some time ago. Since I've lived where I am for over 6 1/2 years, and somebody other than the name on the other notice lived there before me, I'm wondering where the provincial electoral officers are getting their voters lists from.


The University of Waterloo (my alma mater) is trying to sell me life insurance (emphasis theirs):

Please remember - the comparison-shopping has been done for you. We proudly recommend this plan as one special alumni advantage you can't afford to overlook. And, because the whole idea of insurance is protection against the unexpected at any time, now is the time to act.

How do they decide where to put the bold-facing?


I think it's kind of cool that the Canadian dollar has now reached parity with the American dollar. For one thing, it means that if I buy any books, I'm going to buy them online with American sellers and save a whole whack of money. (An increase in cross-border shopping will no doubt lead to Canadian retailers lobbying for heavy customs duties on imported purchases. They may be doing this already.) But I wonder: if the Canadian dollar keeps appreciating, will we have to throw away all our American spare change?

For years, Canadian retailers have treated American pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters as equivalent to Canadian: it's too much of a hassle to sort between them, and the difference between the currencies was never too great to worry about. But if an American quarter suddenly becomes significantly less valuable than a Canadian one, will people start refusing to take them?

Down comes the curtain

I don't think I've ever seen summer end so abruptly. At 4:00 today, it was about 29C and sunny, and people were swimming in my building's pool. I am writing this just before 6:30, and it's now 14C and raining. It's as if the show has ended and Mother Nature has pulled down the curtain: it's time to go home, everybody.

Away, my songs

This morning, I got another meaningless spam message. The subject header was "hcjqx", which suggests that somebody was testing out their spambombing software.

Here's the message, in its entirety:

Traces of those deep cuts lie thickly upon
Again awaken from your being gone to find
Point, after all, when finally one reaches
Preface to the 1948 Edition
to matter, for the flushed boys are muscular
Is it almost honey, is it snow?
The winged winds, captives of that age-old foe
Away, my songs, must we goat balls hit again and again toward her offspring

It's spam poetry, is what it is. I love it. The second and third-last lines rhyme, even.

Humour and stoplights

Here's some advice for you: if you're looking to buy a humour book, there's an easy way to tell whether a book is likely to be bad. If you can tell from the title of the book what its comic premise is, it's probably not worth buying.

For example, 103 Uses For A Dead Politician is likely to be bad, whereas Three Men and a Boat is more likely to be good (which it is).


For a pedestrian, the corner of Broadview and Danforth is very frustrating. If you just miss a light, you have a long wait ahead of you. For example, if you're standing on the southwest corner waiting to cross Danforth:

• First, there's the advance green from Danforth to Broadview. During rush hour, this is long enough to send about 10 to 12 cars through the intersection.
• You then have to wait a long time as the through traffic travels on Danforth before the light finally changes.
• Then, there's another advance green for traffic turning left from Broadview towards the viaduct.
• If a streetcar is going through the intersection on the advance green, the advance green won't change until the streetcar is through, even though the streetcar isn't turning.
• Finally, the light goes green on Broadview, and pedestrians can cross. Though not for very long.

It's a minor annoyance, I know. But a lot of people cross Broadview just north of the lights, and I'm convinced that part of the reason for this is that the light takes so long to navigate.

Letter of complaint

Lately, I've been playing a lot of Scrabble on the Internet, thanks to Facebook's Scrabulous application. After having played, well, rather a lot of games, I've noticed that there are quite a lot of vowels in the Scrabble letter set. Which led me to write a letter of complaint.

Dear manufacturers of the popular board game "Scrabble":

I have been a satisfied user of the English alphabet for many years. Each and every one of the 26 letters is like my own personal friend. (Except for J, with which I have had a running feud for some time.) But I love consonants and vowels with equal fervour. Which is why I am writing this letter to you: why, oh why, is Scrabble so vowel-drenched?

Now, don't get me wrong: vowels are important. After all, you cnt wrt ndrstndbl sntncs without them. But the Scrabble tile bag has been overloaded with no fewer than 42 vowels.

This means I'm always stuck with letter combinations such as AIIAUOI. I become so frustrated that I want to feed my tiles to an AI (a three-toed sloth) or fling my game into the AA (a type of lava flow). This stress is not good for my blood pressure or my disposition.

If you do not correct this imbalance immediately, the resulting global level of frustration could be devastating. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Now, if I can only figure out where to send it.

Insult on top of injury

Today, I went down to the laundry room to - you guessed it - do my laundry. Somebody had pinned a note to the laundry room noticeboard:

This basket was stolen from us in this laundry room about 3 weeks ago. If it's you who took it, I hope you're enjoying it.

Presumably, a picture of the missing basket had been included with the note. By the time I saw the note, the picture of the basket had been stolen too. I wonder whether the two thefts were by the same person.

Assistants of manager

As I think I've mentioned before, I love spam written in badly fractured English. I got this one today:

Manager Assistant

A big international company with great experience and potential is looking for assistants of manager because of growing of its business.

We will be happy to see you in our team if you fit our requirements:

You must:

• Be creative
• Be honest
• Have an access to the Internet
• Have a possibility to check you e-mail several times a day
• Be a citizen of the US

That last requirement rules me out. Rats.

Bleh

We are experiencing a smog alert in Toronto as I write this. It's pretty bad today: this morning, it took me several minutes to cough the gunk out of my lungs. The air both inside and outside my apartment is like bus exhaust.

According to the Environment Canada web site, the Air Quality Health Index is 6, which represents Moderate Risk. If this is Moderate Risk, I'd hate to see High Risk.

And, in sort-of-related news, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is blaming Canada's environmental record on the Liberals. Again.

Odd conversation

I just had an odd conversation that went something like this:

(phone rings)

CALLER: Hello, is [some name other than mine] there?

ME: No, sorry, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.

CALLER: I'm calling on behalf of John Tory. I'll try again another time.

(hangs up)

I assume that the poor caller is on autopilot after having called about six zillion numbers this afternoon, which is why she said she'd call back. It's too bad she didn't have the correct name: I would have found it interesting to hear what she had to say about Tory and the Tories, even though I am not likely to vote for them.

("Tory and the Tories" would make a great band name. You could picture them covering "At The Hop" at party conventions, or something.)

Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower

I have always been fascinated by spam that isn't trying to sell me something. Why does it exist? By random accident? Because of bored high-schoolers who've gotten hold of software from somewhere and want to try it out? What gives?

For example: yesterday, I received a spam email with the subject header "pritchard". The message, in its entirety, was:

venison

The spoofed address was from somewhere in France, if that helps. Which it doesn't.

Perhaps it's a secret message. Or the true meaning of life. Venison. Now I know.

Toronto life

I was at the North York Centre library today, and found some old Toronto Life magazines from the late 1960s. Some of the more interesting items that I found in these magazines include:

• A June, 1967 article entitled "Where would Canada be without Toronto to hate?" Some things change, and some things stay the same.
  
  
• A February, 1968 profile of Mel Lastman, back before he entered North York politics:
  
  But do you know Mel Lastman? Probably not. Mel Lastman is a shy, self-effacing appliance dealer until he steps into a phone booth and emerges as (Shazam!) The Bad Boy.
  
  
• A November, 1966 portrait of Barbara Amiel.
  
  
• The society pages always described married women using their husband's names, as in "Mrs. John Smith".
  

But what caught my attention the most was an ad in the May 1967 issue that advertised a new luxury apartment complex. The ad featured a drawing of a charming executive couple, and this copy:

Are you old-fashioned enough to accept the idea of a morning stroll to the office? You'll meet an awful lot of people doing exactly the same thing. You know, they smile a lot more too.

The apartment complex offered the following amenities:

• Private health club and gymnasium
• Tennis, squash and shuffleboard courts
• Indoor pool in each building
• Own shopping centre
• 20 acres of parkland
• Two outdoor Olympic-size pools
• Artificial skating rink
• A full-time recreation director
• Putting green
• Adult-only living (no children allowed)

And what was this New Utopia, you might ask? None other than St. James Town.

I sometimes wonder whether the huge condominium blocks currently being put up are running the risk of a similar fate.

Tory versus Tory

On the weekend, I was walking on King Street near Parliament and saw this election poster:



Clearly, somebody has decided that the John Tory name will sell better in Toronto than the name of the party to which he and Ms. Taylor belong. This ad refers to the Progressive Conservative party only once: "PC" appears, in small print, at the right of the dark blue line under the stylized John Tory signature at the bottom left of the ad. (Ms. Taylor's web site does contain a copy of the PC logo, and is in proper Conservative blue.)

I'm not sure that emphasizing "John Tory" over "Progressive Conservative" is going to be an effective campaign strategy, for one obvious reason: he's named Tory, and his party is nicknamed the Tory party. Clearly, John Tory's destiny was to preside over the Tories. (Of course, given this logic, I should be working in retail.)


On a totally unrelated subject: I think I've mentioned this before, but I find it frustrating that healthy food costs more than crappy food. If I want to eat cheaply, the easiest way to do it is to go to my local pizza outlet, which offers a medium pepperoni for $6. Of course, this has enough calories to choke a horse and enough nutrients to sustain an ant, but it's cheap.