the pod bay door

:: It’s one of those days where it’s hard to keep up. I read a post on Geoff’s site that led to comments from Lucas about Textile – A Humane Web Generator, and my brain exploded. It’s like, my brain couldn’t handle one more piece of new, state-of-the-art, cutting-edge blogging/HTML/coding technology today.

:: Tonight I need to rehearse for a Saturday, May 3rd, concert, and refresh my memory about Blogger for an upcoming presentation in May. I’ve done neither yet.

:: Read this post mortem on Napster.

:: Karlin Lillington follows up her interview with William Gibson with this incredible post that links to a 1967 CBC broadcast called Yorkville: Hippie Haven – Yorkville was Canada’s equivalent to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco at the time. It’s a 14-minute clip, but worth watching. A 19-year old Bill Gibson appears at the beginning and the end of the broadcast – he speaks over top of scenes of him walking about Yorkville. The CBC page notes that the show’s featured hippie, Bill Gibson, is none other than the author of the classic 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, and the man who coined the term “cyberspace.”

:: Dear Dirtbag in St Louis: Please stop making intrusion attempts to my machine. Thank you.

¦¦ I just finished a workout, 30 minutes on the cross-trainer, and it felt excrutiating. But upon returning home, the sun has just appeared, and that feels so nice.

¦¦ Here’s a fascinating proposal: A barn-raising for civilization.

¦¦ I’ve never played a round of golf, but like millions of Canadians last weekend, I was thrilled when Mike Weir won the Masters. It was a nice diversion from the rest of the world’s woes, and a morale boost for the country. Nice to also hear that he’s made the cover of Sports Illustrated.

¦¦ This is interesting: QuickTopic, a service which allows users to create their own one-topic bulleting boards/group discussion space. Also offered is a service called Quick Doc Review, to allow collaborative review of HTML or Word documents.

¦¦ What Liberal Media?, sez Eric Alterman.

¦¦ Another Canadian band worth supporting: The Boomers, led by Ian Thomas, brother of Dave (SCTV) Thomas, and a Canadian music icon in his own right. Here is a good, concise “omni” of their musical output to date. Their newest album is called Midway. Thomas’s lyrics focus on love, life, and getting older, and the music is laid-back but intricate and multi-layered.

¦¦ Last Tuesday, while driving home after work, and later while on the cross-trainer at the Y, I was thinking about having lived in Edmonton since Dec 1978, and considered that I’ve spent half my life in Winnipeg, and half in Edmonton. From Sept 1976-April 1977, and Sept 1977-April 1978, I lived in residence at the U of A while attending library school, but never really considered that “living” in Edmonton. While still living in Winnipeg in the 70s, I had an aquarium in my bedroom. When I moved here permanently in the fall of 1978, I decided not to set up another aquarium, thinking I wouldn’t necessarily be here for a long time. I’m still here, and haven’t set up another aquarium.

What’s odd is that Edmonton still doesn’t feel like home. Winnipeg will always be my home town, that can’t change. I’m not sure why Edmonton has never felt like “home”; I’m no longer sure, if ever, what the word means anymore. Perhaps I’ve never known the meaning.
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¦¦ The Edmonton Journal published a feature on blogging in the Friday 14 March 2003 edition. Written by Mairi MacLean, the two pieces feature comments from a number of locals, including Geoff, Robert (in Lethbridge), Jen, myself, and a mention of Kelly‘s site as well. Given the small amount of coverage available in a newspaper, I thought Mairi did a good job introducing blogging to the EJ readers. My only quibble: the URLs for the websites mentioned were not included in the print or online(!) versions of the articles.

¦¦ In the world of You-Gotta-Be-Sh*tting-Me, a woman in Germany began emerging from a 6-year coma when her parents took her Regensburg to listen to a Bryan Adams concert. My favorite take on the story left me in tears from laughing. Previously Bryan Adams was known only for Waking Up The Neighbours, not comatose fans. Meanwhile, in Kenya, sadly, three people died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that fell into an open-pit latrine.

¦¦ It’s unfortunate that you need to subscribe to read stories from the NYTimes Magazine online. The March 9 issue features three fascinating articles on: face transplant surgery, “smart-mobbing” the antiwar movement, and a disturbing piece on Mel Gibson and his father, orthodox Catholic theologian Hutton Gibson. Discussed is The Passion, Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, with the actors speaking in Latin and Aramic only. There will be no subtitles. “Gibson has has said that he hopes to depict Christ’s ordeal using ‘filmic storytelling techniques’ that will make the understanding of the dialogue uncessary.” (NYTimes, 9 March 02, p53) The publication of the article has infuriated the younger Gibson. What is disturbing about the article in the NYTimes Magazine are some of Hutton Gibson’s beliefs such as: the Sept 11 jets were not flown by Al-Qaeda operatives but were remote-controlled, and that the Holocaust never happened.

¦¦ Why are there not enough hours in the day to do what you want to do?

¦¦ Forthcoming project: to record in a notepad every song that appears in my head in one day from wakeup in the morning to going to sleep at night the same day.

The temperature in Edmonton at the moment is -33C. The long range forecast for next Friday is +12C. There is hope.

¦¦ This is so annoying. But if you look closely, notice that the template of symbols changes every time. That has to have something to do with how it works. D’oh!

¦¦ For those interested in the Sept 11 building performance information, two good engineering publications exist, one online. The American Society of Civil Engineers has just published The Pentagon Building Performance Report. The report concludes that original design features, modified by recent upgrades, limited the collapse of the building after the airliner crashed into it. Within the report is a blurry picture taken by a security camera that catches the plane, barely a few feet off the ground, if at all, just before it crashes into the first floor of the Pentagon. Some illustrations from the report are available for viewing.

ASCE was also involved in the World Trade Center building performance study , released in the fall of 2002 by FEMA.
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:: 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?