24 August 2011, early afternoon
Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
— Jack Layton, in an open letter to the country.
Jack Layton passed away this week. My co-worker sent me a message while I was away in New York to let me know. During his press conference he looked to be in pretty bad shape, but I didn’t think things would move so quickly. Cancer is like that, I suppose. Jack Layton was an amazing politician. The NDP are now the official opposition party of Canada, I suspect largely due to his charisma. His death is a real loss for this country. We have so few truly engaging political leaders.
[2] Politics | Toronto
2 August 2011, late evening
“These overnight text editors don’t reflect well on the genre or the platform. We are raising the bar, elevating the standard.” — Bare Bones Software President Rich Siegel in 2005
A lot of Mac users you meet today switched as Mac OS X matured, over the last 7-8 years or so. I switched when Windows 95 came out. I sincerely enjoyed using various flavours of DOS on my trusty 486. Windows 95 launched with a series of shitty betas (you had to pay for) followed by a snazzy ad campaign. Though I was a young man, I could tell that Windows 95 was a piece of junk. I did the sensible thing and switched to a Powerbook 5300cs running System 7.5.3. Believe me when I say, “it was dope.”
I used my Powerbook during my first term of University. By this point Macs were running OS 9. I would write Java programs in BBEdit and build them using the OS 9 Java toolchain. Programming in Java on a Mac in 1999 was pretty horrible. BBEdit on the otherhand was pretty great. I used it as my text editor of choice throughout university. (At least when I was working on my Mac. On the school’s Unix machines I used Vim.) The last big project I worked on using BBEdit was my compiler.
This blog has been around long enough that I can look and see when I first linked to the then new TextMate. Upon its launch it was greeted with a lot of confusion and mixed interest. Between 2004 and 2006 TextMate went from this fringe application used by a few people to basically the defacto text editor for the Mac. BBEdit’s core userbase always struck me as people who had used it prior to the launch of MacOS X. By 2006 lots of people were coding up the next hot Rails app on their brand new Mac using TextMate. 2006 was when I switched from BBEdit to TextMate.
The latest version of BBEdit launched with the release of Lion. It brings with it a slew of new features and updates. TextMate on the other hand hasn’t had any real updates of note since 2007. Any advancement in the application really came from its bundles. With the launch of Lion came a wiki page for TextMate outlining what was broken and possible work arounds. TextMate 2 has been in development for something like 5-6 years. I stopped using TextMate a little while ago because it started to feel sluggish on my iMac. I now exclusively use Vim. (MacVim to be precise.) I remember reading the Rich Siegel comment in 2005 and thinking he was being a bit of a dick. It took 6 years, but it turns out maybe he was right about TextMate.
BBedit 10 is now priced at a pretty aggressive $40. I’m curious to see if it can win back its place as the number one text editor on the Mac.
[1] Technology
29 July 2011, late evening
Photography
14 July 2011, early morning
As in past years, Shima and I travelled to Montreal for the weekend. This year was a little bit different in that we had a baby tag along with us. (This was Mythilli’s second big trip: the first was to Windsor for a wedding reception.) We flew with Mythilli, who was quite well behaved on the flight. (Though, it’s not like a 5 month old has any real control over any of their actions or behaviour.)
I wrote this on the plane ride:
Shima and I are boarded on our flight earlier than everyone else, since we now have a baby. We aren’t seated next to each other because we were so slow to check in online. A pretty blonde lady sits next to Shima, who was too slow or polite to ask her to trade seats with me. Shorty after a tall handsome man approaches me to take his seat next to mine. I ask if he wouldn’t mind trading seats with my wife and he agrees—of course, who wouldn’t give their seat up to a young lady and her baby. He swaps places with Shima and is now sitting next to the pretty blonde lady. The rest, as they say, is history. Well I assume so, they have been chatting the whole flight. Shima and I plan take full credit for their future marriage.
Travelling around the city with a baby is eye opening. Montreal is so incredibly inaccessible, much more so than Toronto. (And after travelling around the city with a broken leg, I can say that Toronto sets the bar pretty low.) We carted our stroller up and down stairs, over turnstiles, and through the rough terrain of Montreal’s streets. In previous years we would take the metro around the city, but on this trip we walked most places because the Metro is such a pain to take with a stroller. I don’t know what people in wheelchairs or with broken legs do in the city. I assume they are carted to the edge of the city limits and left to fend for themselves.
The trip was exhausting, but lots of fun. Montreal is a great city. (One that looks to be on the verge of falling down at any moment.)
Life
Shima: We left a toy on our flight to Montreal last Friday.
Him: What kind of Toy?
Shima: A girafe.
Me: It’s a squeaky toy.
Him: You mean a Sophie?
— Our conversation with a gate attendent from Porter. Apparently everyone knows what a Sophie is.
Me: Why are you carrying a dog
Him: It’s a wolf.
Me: Why are you carrying a wolf?
Him: I’m a taxidermist.
— My conversation with a fellow holding an embalmed dog.
5 July 2011, early morning
I was listening to Marco Arment’s show on 5by5 yesterday. Normally it is pretty on point, but yesterdays show seemed so wrong about Google+ I thought I’d say a few words. (A few of the Apple tech blogs that I read seems to be hating on Google+, seemingly because it’s from Google or because they hate social networks. This 5by5 show just stands out in my mind since I spent so much time listening to the damn show.)
To start off, Marco hadn’t even used Google+ when the show was recorded. Many of the tech blogs I read are also critical of the service despite not being invited to use it. Criticizing something you haven’t used before is silly. I would think that goes without saying.
Marco felt that Google had nothing to offer beyond what Facebook currently offers, all the while lacking the user base Facebook currently has. He talks about how if he could log in to Google+, he’d expect to see 4 geek friends, each talking about the testing out the site, and that’s about it. Meanwhile, even his Grandmother is on Facebook. My mom is on Facebook. That’s some serious market penetration. That said, she wasn’t on the site anywhere close to day one. Facebook at launch was full of Ivy League kids, and it expanded from there. Like today, when it launched there was a big well established player with a huge user base. People move from network to network when there are compelling reasons to move. I used to use ICQ, then switched to MSN, and am now settled on Google Talk. Each switch happened organically. All it really takes is a couple people who you have to talk and their communication medium of choice will usually win out. The question is whether Google+ will snag that set of key people. I would add that these sorts of social networks don’t have to be a zero-sum game. If the user base for Google+ never moves beyond a bunch of nerdy boys and girls that isn’t the worse thing ever. I suspect for many people, a social network their mom isn’t on is actually a compelling feature.
It also seems clear to me what Google is trying to do to differentiate itself from Facebook. Without looking at their crazy demo site, here are three things that come to my mind after using the site briefly and reading some blog posts from Google.
- Google is quite up front about how it plans to share what you post to the site. I commented upon logging in for the first time that all the requests to use this and that information were creeping me out, but they were really doing nothing different from Facebook, they were just not being secret about any of it. Google+ also has a very clear model for how you group your friends and family, and share information with them. Facebook’s privacy controls are inscrutable. Worse, they seem to be obfuscated on purpose.
- Google makes it very easy to export your data out of Google+. (It plans to make it easy to export data out of all of its services.) Facebook is a black hole for your stuff.
- Google makes it very easy to delete your account, and everything associated with it. You don’t have to find a page on WikiHow explaining what you need to do to delete your account. You don’t have to understand what deactivating your account means. You don’t have to wonder whether your account is actually gone or not. This is actually the one thing I like most about the service.
I don’t think I’ll use Google+ any more than I did Facebook. I don’t think Google is any less creepy than Facebook. Still, I can see that Google+ is a well thought out and well executed product, especially for something that just launched. I think it has a good chance of doing well. (Assuming they let other people use the site, anyway.)
[4] Technology
19 June 2011, early evening
Today is Father’s day. This is the first year I celebrate the day as a father. Shima made me t-shirt to commemorate the occasion.
That’s what I’m talking about.
[1]
26 May 2011, early morning
I gave Rdio a very brief whirl this month. Foolishly I signed up for the site ages ago, so I had already eaten up my chance to use the free month they give new users. I forked up $9 for their unlimited streaming subscription for your desktop and mobile devices.
I use Last.FM to listen to random music from genres I like, but am not that familiar with. For example, I love the Blue 6 radio station when I want to hear some solid Club Monaco House music—music that is played at Club Monaco stores. I realize now that this is actually all I really want from a streaming music service. I like to own the music I enjoy. It’s very rare that I’ll be hooked on an album, want to listen to it for a week or two, and then never listen to it again. Having to keep paying a subscription to listen to my music isn’t appealing to me. Rdio does artist based radio stations as well. I’m not sure they work better than Last.FM’s. (I don’t think they are worth the premium i’d have to pay over Last.FM’s.)
The Rdio application requires Flash, as does Rdio’s web interface. I actually don’t even have Flash installed on my MacBook Air. So their native client doesn’t work on my Air at all, and the website only works in Google Chrome, which ships with Flash installed. Last.FM has a pretty shitty Mac client, but at the very least it is a proper native Mac application. It’s other big advantage over Rdio’s is that it can stream music to my Airport Express. Not being able to use Rdio with my Airport Express is a big let down. I listen to a lot of music in my living room on my bigger speakers using via my Airport Express.
All of the griping aside, Rdio is a pretty amazing service. I can see how it would appeal to a lot of people. The website and iPhone application are pretty amazing. They make it very easy to queue up music to listen to later, create playlists, collaborate on playlists, hear what your friends are listening to, etc, etc. It’s a much bigger service than Last.FM. Right now it’s just more than I need.
[1]
Bein’ a dad can sure make you mad
Man it even can drive you crazy
It’s as hard as it looks
You gotta read them dumb books
And you end up despising Walt Disney
— “Bein’ a Dad” by Loudon Wainwright
16 May 2011, early morning
In Between Days is the first film by Korean/American director So Yong Kim. Shima and I saw her second film Treeless Mountain at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008. Treeless Mountain was slow going and bleak. Watching her first film, I can see that her follow up was par for the course. In Between Days looks at the life of a teenage Korean immigrant. She writes lonely letters to her father, who is presumably still in Korea. She occasionally talks to her mostly absent mother. Her only friend seems to be a boy she clearly has a crush on. It’s also clear he reciprocates her feelings, but being teenagers both of them seem incapable of letting the other one know what’s up. The film is full of passive-aggressive attempts at communicating ones feelings. It’s a good look at loneliness. It leaves you feeling a little bit cold.
The official In Between Days website.
Movies
2 May 2011, evening time
The 2011 federal election is taking place today. For the first time in my entire life the NDP might actually do well. Our riding, Davenport, is one of CBC’s ridings to watch. The Liberals have been coasting here for ages. If Andrew Cash wins our riding I will lose my shit. This is Mythilli’s first election. We are both in our NDP orange. Things should start getting exciting in a few hours.
Update 10:38 PM: There are some tight races. Ours doesn’t seem to be one of them. With 20 polls reporting Andrew Cash has 50+% of the vote. What! I hope the numbers stay the same. Even more miraculous, my parents riding looks like it is going to go to the NDP as well, though that race is a much closer so far.
Update 11:04 PM: The CBC has declared my riding and my parents ridings for the NDP. Oh hells yes.
[5] Politics
20 April 2011, mid-morning
Podcasts have been around for a million years, but I never really got into them. iTunes has support for downloading and subscribing to podcasts, but like many parts of iTunes I found the support awkward. You can sync podcasts to your iPod (or iPhone in my case) and there they sit till you sync again. Because I have MobileMe syncing my contacts and calendar items I rarely actually plug my phone into my computer. I would never have up to date podcasts on my phone. A long time ago I stopped bothering with them. Ideally podcasts should arrive on your phone while you are on the go and remove themselves from your iPod after you’ve listened to them. It’s 2011 after all.
I read about the solution to my problems with podcasts in a pretty extensive review of a new iPhone application called Instacast. I think the sign of a well done application is that it solves a need you didn’t even think you had. Because I found my workflow around podcasts so messy I really wasn’t interested in listening to them at all. I didn’t feel like I was missing out. Now I listen to podcasts a fair bit.
I’ve been listening to two podcasts on my way to and from work: WNYC’s Radiolab and NPR’s Planet Money. They are both superlative. Radiolab in particular is so well produced and I can’t say anything bad about it whatsoever. This episode about cities is a good introduction to the podcast and what it’s like. 5by5 is producing a ton of podcasts that look like they would be right up my alley, but they are all so rambling I can’t get into them. I feel like there might be good stuff there, if only they were better edited. Are there other podcasts I should be listening to?
[6]
6 April 2011, evening time
Shima and I watched 127 Hours while up in Barrie over the weekend. It’s directed by the consistently awesome Danny Boyle. The film is based on the book by the same name, which is based on the real life story of Aron Ralston. For those who don’t recall his story, he was mountain climbing when he fell down a chasm and had his arm pinned to a cavern wall by a boulder, which he couldn’t move. He was trapped like this for 5 days, after which time he broke the bones in his trapped hand and cut it off with a dull knife. Seriously. Most of the film is spent in the cavern, watching him try to deal with the situation he is in. It’s surprisingly engaging and exciting. This is probably due to the great job James Franco does playing Ralston. The scene where he cuts off his arm isn’t glossed over at all. It’s very graphic. You know it’s coming from the start of the film, but when it finally happens it’s something else. 127 Hours is a good film, well worth watching.
The official 127 Hours website.
Movies
If I told you in 2007 that in 2011 we’d be killing Soc. Security, torturing Americans & bombing Libya, who would you guess won the election?
— Phineas X. Jones
4 March 2011, late evening
Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay about the evolution of Mickey Mouse, from his Steam Boat Micky form to the version we know today. He argued that Mickey evolved over time to more closely resemble the proportions of a human baby. The eyes got bigger and bigger. The torso grew in size while the arms and legs shrunk. I hadn’t really paid much attention to how the character had changed till I read the essay. Sometimes Mythilli sleeps stretched out, her arms above her head. I couldn’t do this comfortably since I’d be half way down the bed. Her arms barely reach the top of her head. Walt Disney was on to something.
Life
13 February 2011, the wee hours
Around this time two weeks ago and a day Shima started having contractions. At the time we didn’t think much of them. We were watching Six Feet Under. We didn’t stop because of the contraction. Shima didn’t seem particularly bothered by them, all things considered.
Read the rest of this post. (800 words)
[5] Life
2 February 2011, late morning
There is a pretty obvious blog post in the works, but before I write it up I wanted to post something for my brother. His friend Krisy desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. She’s younger than me and has cancer. You can help by registering to be a bone marrow and stem cell donor. Please read my brother’s message to me, below.
—
At the end of 2009, Krisy was working as a legal assistant and she and her boyfriend Dan had just moved into their first home together. What they didn’t know was that less than 2 weeks later, Krisy would be diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
After months of intensive chemotherapy, Krisy’s condition improved and she remained in remission for most of 2010. However, her leukemia recently relapsed and this time, Krisy needs a bone marrow transplant. Sadly, her family is not a match, so her hope now is to find a match from an unrelated donor. That’s why we need your help.
What can you do? All it takes is a simple and painless swab of the inside of your cheek.
Please register at an event being held on:
Thursday, March 3rd between 2:40 to 8:30pm
Donald Cousens Public School
315 Mingay Ave, Markham, ON (map)
You can also learn more and register yourself on www.onematch.ca, a bone marrow and stem cell donor matching network.
Why should you do it?
- Minority groups are hugely underrepresented within the global stem cell network. Asians, for example, represent only 3.8% of potential donors. The likelihood of finding a match is from one’s own ethnic group. I am asking as a friend for you to register as part of this database; while you do not get to know or choose whom you donate to, you could potentially save a life, maybe even Krisy’s.
Who can do it?
- Anyone between 17 and 50 years of age (covered under government health care, e.g. OHIP)
- In good general health (click here for eligibility)
For more information and future events please visit our Facebook page.
Krisy is a girl with a sunny personality and a big heart. If you asked for her help for something, she would do just about anything for you … which is why we are trying to do the same for her.
Even if you are unable to register, please help us spread awareness and encourage others to join.
[2] Life
23 January 2011, late afternoon
If I wasn’t superstitious, back in August I probably would have posted this picture.
Couples usually keep the fact they are expecting a baby a secret till they pass the first trimester, because the chances you will have a miscarriage are much higher early on in your pregnancy. I am so superstitious this is the sort of secret i’d want to keep till there was a walking talking baby to show people. In the real world this secret gets harder and harder to keep because of pretty obvious physical changes that take place in the mother to be. On the Internet you don’t really have that problem. Shima and I are going to have a baby. We’re at the point where it’s probably going to happen any day now.
[13] Life
17 January 2011, early evening
Fantastic Mr. Fox was fantastic. (The film is available on Netflix, which I now officially love.) I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson and this film was very much a Wes Anderson film. It’s amazing how well all the things that make his films so unique translate to stop-motion: the wardrobe, the sets, the shots, the music, etc. The film’s writing is great and the voice actors are all excellent. You’ll probably recognize every other voice in the film. I’d love to watch the film with some children to see if it’s as enjoyable for them as it is for someone my age. This film is definitely a must watch.
The official Fantastic Mr. Fox website.
[2] Movies
2 January 2011, evening time
Shima and I watched Hunger over the Christmas holidays. (It’s not really a “Christmas” film.) Hunger is about the final days of Bobby Sands. The movie starts with near the tail end of the ‘no-wash’ protests and moves on to the Bobby Sands hunger strike. The movie is very terse. The whole film is about an hour and fifteen minutes long. There is barely any dialogue. The film jumps between being beautiful and haunting and ugly and brutal. There is a conversation between Sands and his priest in the middle of the film that takes the entire film to a whole other level of amazing. Hunger was excellent. You should watch it. The film will probably make you want to celebrate the death of Tatcher with champagne — if you weren’t planning on doing so already.
The official Hunger website.
[3] Movies
25 December 2010, mid-morning
Merry Christmas everyone. 2010 is almost over. It’s been a pretty crazy year.
[2]
2 December 2010, late evening
My friend Jonah was giving away rolls of Kodachrome. His only condition to claim a roll was was that you had to actually use the stuff before Dwayne’s — the last place in the world that still develops the stuff — stopped processing the film. I wanted to shoot with the film at least once in my life and so I told him to save a roll for me. The film I was given was Kodachrome 64, from 1992. That makes it 18 years old. I shot all 36 frames on my birthday, mostly taking portraits of my friends hanging out in my parents backyard. Some photos are better than others. This photo I quite like.
Photography
1 December 2010, late at night
We have a new mayor in Toronto. It’s his first day and there is already so much stupid. At least I’ll be able to ride a gravy train to Scarborough. I miss Miller.
[3] Toronto
29 November 2010, early morning
WikiLeaks has released 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables. I haven’t looked at them all, but I am guessing this is the best one:
PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN
PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. ITS ANTECEDENTS LIE
IN THE LONG IRANIAN HISTORY OF INSTABILITY AND INSECURITY
WHICH PUT A PREMIUM ON SELF-PRESERVATION. THE PRACTICAL
EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION
WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS
OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE’S OWN.
— By Victor L. Tomseth, from the Tehran Embassy, Cable 79TEHRAN8980, NEGOTIATIONS.
This was written/sent a few months before the hostage crisis. He was one of the top three ranking people captured when the students took over the embassy. He is on LinkedIn, which is both strange and interesting.
Update: This was originally just a link-post.
[9]
