Ready, Aye, Ready

Link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/07/13/pie-bronc.html?ref=rss

The linked-to article is about Calgary's Mayor Bronconnier commenting on the use of the cream pie as a medium of dissatisfaction, or as he puts it:

"the method of choice" of those who want to make a political statement.

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Link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/07/13/algaue-cowansville.html?ref=rss

This CBC article caught my eye solely because I know the area; while Cowansville is indeed south east of Montreal, it is no more in southeast Montreal than Red Deer is in northern Calgary.

Link: http://mcsweeneys.net/2007/7/9weaver.html

The Transformers movie did indeed suck. However, this throwaway from McSweeneys is much more funny, better written and conceivably has snappier dialogue. Lacks a little on the special effects though.

(Via Ezra Klein)

Link: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070710/K071008AU.html

Helium balloons. Lawn chair. Why does this just sound like it's leading into a bad joke?

And yeah, I would love to hear this exchange:

Walters managed to surprise an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair.

Link: http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/

This article about the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner (has it out hyped the iPhone yet?) has a statement that really jumped out at me:

They had their team travel around the world 5 times in economy class before they started!

As a fairly regular flyer, that's what I call dedication to one's art.

Link: http://crunchgear.com/2007/07/05/creative-charges-999-for-enhanced-vista-drivers/

Creative, makers of the Audigy, SoundBlaster cards as well as my unloved wireless media player, have decided to start charging for the Vista versions of their drivers. I'm very much opposed to vendors doing this; one would expect that the software and hardware were considered to be the same bundle and that fixes to drivers should be part of the purchase deal. Given that Creative's software is invariably as buggy as all get-out when initially released, I don't tend to trust what's supplied on the CDs with the equipment.

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Link: http://www.google.ca/search?q=googlestreets&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

While looking at the referred searches, I noticed a lot of hits from people looking for entries on "googlestreets"; it looks like we've got the #1 hit on Google for the term.

What's interesting is that GoogleStreets is not even a Google approved name; it's just referred to as the "Street View" of GoogleMaps on their site. I'm rather surprised that Google's not gone out of the way to own it as it appears to have been chosen organically. As the great philosopher-poet, Scott Adams, said (well, more or less) about naming his feline HR character: "If people spontaneously give a character a name, who am I to argue?"

Link: http://www.nowpublic.com/photography_banned_downtown_silver_spring_maryland

When's a public street not a public street? The answer is "When it's a diguised shopping mall". There's a case at the moment where a development partially funded with public money using a public street is now covered by faux-anti-photography laws because it's a privately-owned establishment. If the locations were indeed security sensitive (military installation, bank internals) or privacy related (invasion of personal privacy, stalking of customers) I might understand, but this seems to be neither.

It's not the first time this has happened either. Here's another incident from an Australian shopping centre and here's an earlier example from Los Angeles. This has been going on for a while; here's a Slate article about it from 1995 which is where I first came across the issue.

(Via BoingBoing)

Link: http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

(ƃuıoqƃuıoq ɐıʌ)

(¡ɥɔnɯ ʇı ƃuısn ǝq ll,ı ʇɐɥʇ ʇou) ʇı ǝʌol ı ˙ʎɹǝʞɔɐɥ ɟo ǝɔǝıd ɔıssɐlɔ ɐ sı sıɥʇ

The Dutch have a term called an "oorworm" ("earworm" or "earwig" in English.) It's defined as a tune that you can't get out of your head or that you play over and over and over and over and...

Well, here's a recommendation: Murray Gold's soundtrack CD to the current Doctor Who series is superb, but skip track 30 with Neil Hannon called "Love Don't Roam". I think I'm up to the 40th repetition in succession and I still can't stop listening to it.

In the time it's taken me to get this far, it's now 44 and counting. This'll probably take the big guns to displace...

Update: It didn't; on the Wikipedia page about earworms, there's a link to a site called "Maim That Tune" that plays catchier tunes than whatever's driving you to distraction. It certainly works, although perhaps not in the intended way: the MIDI renditions are so painful that whatever tune was bothering you is blasted away.

It's probably just me, but every time I hear Canadian AOR staple Chilliwack's "Fly At Night" I'm utterly convinced it's a missing Neil Young song.

Yeah, it probably is just me.

Updated: Corrected the song title as per the comment thread :)

This isn't a review per se as it's just a look at the new reissues of three Alan Parsons Project albums: "I Robot", "Eye In The Sky" and "Vulture Culture". Besides, if you've reached this second sentence, the chances are you already know the original versions and I see no need to cover them again. So, on with what's different.

Full story »

Link: http://calgarygrit.blogspot.com/2007/06/your-daily-herald.html

I've not been much of a reader of the Calgary Herald since they started putting columnists on the front page and the editorial page has been annoying me for a lot longer than that, but the linked selection of comments culled from the online Calgary Herald feedback page is a doozy.

And, Calgary Herald, if you want to try to sell me a subscription over the phone, at least hire someone with a 403 area code to make the call.

(From CalgaryGrit)

Link: http://www.workopolis.com

For fun (and after much badgering,) I took a look at workopolis.com, a Canadian job site. In the top right corner of the screen I noticed a link labelled "Boss Panic Button". So I pressed it.

This is what you get: a browser window with a Windows backdrop, a generic MS Word document, and a thumping great big label on the title bar saying "http://www.workopolis.com - Boss Panic Button". I think they need to fix that one.

More importantly, it opens up to fill the entire default primary screen which is exactly where I don't have my browser...

I spent the day away from the computer so forgot to post this on the correct date.

Hope you had a good one!

(Oh, and a good Canada Day quiz from CalgaryGrit; check out the sly comment about Canadian prime ministers not buried in Canada.)