the pod bay door

¦¦The late, great band, Big Country, released an album in 1988 that remains one of my favorites, called Peace In Our Time. The title song always struck me as a powerful, simple message – can we achieve peace before we leave this earth? This past weekend, tens of millions of people on the planet let our governments know that they subscribe to this theory. Geoff noted that sadly, the US Government doesn’t give a damn about public opinion regarding their foreign policy. If the voices of millions mean nothing, what must happen to make them heard? There was a rally in Edmonton to protest the impending war against Iraq, but I did not attend.

There are some interesting web sites supporting anti-war activism. In Alberta, there is wage-peace.org. In the US, check out United For Peace and Justice.
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¦¦Imagine receiving a phone call from Jack Nicholson (courtesy The Morning News.)

¦¦Sunday began with dim sum, after which I returned home and fell asleep again for 90 minutes. I dragged myself to the Y for a workout, then went to dinner at a friend’s place, then returned to watch Kingpin and L&O:CI. Tomorrow is a holiday in Alberta, time for more laying about and doing lots of nothing.

¦¦Earlier today, my browser (IE6.whatever) was “hijacked” by another website, searchex.com. (NOTE: DON’T go there!) The result was, whenever I opened my browser, it would default to the searchex homepage. Bastards. Anyway, I searched for a solution, and found it at Spywareinfo.com. This could happen to you at any time. I’d recommend you go to the site, which has good suggestions for preventing, fixing and removing a hijack. Among the programs recommended are SpyBot Search and Destroy, BHODemon, and Hijack This. I was running AdAware 5.0, unaware that it had been upgraded to 6.0.

I’ve created a Spyware/Scumware section on the computer page of my website. If you know of other good spyware/scumware programs, please let me know.

¦¦I saw Confessions of a Dangerous Mind this afternoon, based on Chuck Barris‘s autobiography. Whether or not he did kill 33 people for the CIA may never be known, but the movie works well, anchored by Sam Rockwell‘s outstanding performance.
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¦¦ Spam seems to be getting worse by the day. This morning my work e-mail Inbox had at least two XXX-rated messages waiting for me, along with the daily e-mail from Nigeria asking for money, offers of mortgage and loan assistance, and a note to help me get my Bachelor’s degree from home. In the 9 feb 2003 edition of the New York Times Magazine, James Gleick, author of Chaos, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, and most recently, What Just Happened, examines the worsening spam epidemic, and what’s being done to (attempt to) deal with it. Mentioned in his article are SpamAssassin, and SpamSieve, two programs that attack spam on your computer.

¦¦ Sometimes you discover a site on the ‘net, and you start singing the line, “I’ve got…too much…time on my hands“. (Not that I admit to having ever been a fan of Styx.) Anyway, here is such a website that put the song in my head: ticketstubs.com. The deal here is that you upload an image of a ticket stub from an event you attended – could be a movie, live theatre, music, standup, what-evah. Together with the pic of the stub, you tell a story surrounding the event. The site is new, so there is but one story from Canada to date. Now that I think of it, this may be a cool idea. Still, the creator must’ve had, well, too much time on his hands…

¦¦ Mike sent a link to this article on blogs as social networks. The author examines blogs as a social network, using power law distributions. Some of his conclusions are interesting, including how the A-List bloggers may eventually morph into mainstream media-types as their audiences grow. He also suggests that the term “blog” itself may drift into the background as blog technology becomes a platform for other types of online publising.

¦¦ It seems like a lot of “serious” bloggers are now analyzing blogging in their blogs – does this sound a bit redundant? I thought this was supposed to be all kinds of fun!

:: Yes, it’s been snowing here quite a bit lately. The last 48 hours have seen between 5-10 cm of snow fall to the ground. This afternoon I visited friends who are moving to Toronto, and just had a baby. I drove back and forth in front of the house where the reception was happening, finally parking and immediately getting stuck. When I went to leave, it took four men to help me push the car out of the ruts in the street. Very frustrating. I grew up in Winnipeg in the 50s-70s, and was spoiled by the snow removal there – in weather like this, graders and front-end loaders would be on all the streets within hours. In Edmonton, side streets and minor throughways are ignored by the City, which tends to clear the main drags only. What a drag.

:: I’ve returned to a three-column template, and I’ve been experimenting with light background colours. As you can see, I’m having some difficulty lining up the right-side column with the body of the page. Any suggestions from you CSS/HTML/MT wizards out there?