30 September 2004, mid-morning
Threadless sells cool t-shirts. I found out about the place through either Dave or Mezan, though I can’t recall who now. I own one t-shirt from the store, titled Monkey Attack. You can see a picture of me wearing it in the gallery now. This picture earned me a “Threadless Point”, which translate into some store credit. If you frequent the site, it may be in your interest to submit photos of yourself in your t-shirts.
Threadless is an interesting idea for a online t-shirt store; essentially Threadless is community driven. People submit ideas for t-shirts, and the rest of the community votes on the designs. Popular t-shirts will be printed, and the creators win money and credit at Threadless for their submission.
I’m a fan of the t-shirts, if only because you probably won’t bump into someone else wearing the same t-shirt as you. Soon I will be the owner of Corporate Zombie and Mmm… Oranges. If you live in Toronto, don’t buy these two t-shirts. Well that is if you and I are prone to bumping into one another.
Other t-shirt sites of some note are: the controversial t-shirt hell, which is probably not safe for work, and the sometimes funny Busted Tees. Now and Zen make some great t-shirts, and I own several. You can buy their wares from Bluenotes if you live in Canada. Their t-shirts usually aren’t as interesting as those from Threadless, but are generally quite funny. My favourite simply has the phrase “I’m like a superhero with no powers or motivation”.
There is a world of interesting clothing out there, so stop shopping at the Gap already.
[4] Life
27 September 2004, terribly early in the morning
When I was in high school I was over at Rishi’s house one day and he played me a song from the film 1942: A Love Story, a Hindi movie. The details of why he would play this particular song I don’t remember at all. I don’t even think I was at all interested in Hindi music at the time. Regardless, I thought the song was brilliant. I find that songs I don’t understand all end up in my head sounding melancholy. This song was no exception. To this day I listen to it when I am in a bad mood. Today, I decided to look up what the songs title meant in English. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga means “When I saw this girl, I felt…”.
[20] Life
25 September 2004, mid-afternoon
Today’s West Indies vs. England ICC Champions Trophy cricket match was absolutely brilliant. England were bowled out for 217, a low score for one day cricket. However, England’s bowlers came back and managed to keep the West Indies at bay, bowling out all their top batsmen. (Lara was out for 14!) By the 34th over, Chanderpaul was out for 47 runs, and it looked like there was no hope left for the West Indies. They had 9 wickets, so the only batsmen left to bat were the teams bowlers. The batsmen left to bat were Browne and Bradshaw. Bowlers usually don’t make for good batsmen, but the Browne and Bradshaw partnership ended up winning the game. I have never seen bowlers play so well. Generally bowlers whack away at the ball and try to score some big points. Browne and Bradshaw were both playing like seasoned batsmen. The West Indies team has apparently been rather weak in recent years. I wonder if their winning this championship game will signal a change for their team. It was a exciting match that could have been won by either team.
[4] Life
23 September 2004, the wee hours
LoFi Cameras
I went downtown with Mezan and Carvill to try and find a broken-ass camera. I was originally interested in purchasing a Lomo LC-A. The problem here is that they’ve become so trendy they are being sold at boutique prices. For example, Pikto in Toronto sells the camera for $270 canadian. $270 dollars for a broken-ass camera is just not right. So, instead of getting a Lomo, I am thinking about getting a Kiev 35, Minox 35, Olympus XA-2 or a Cosina CX-1 or 2. The Lomo LC-A is a Soviet copy of the Japanese Cosina.
Toronto’s Pawnshops
Toronto has an area at Church and Queen with a few camera stores and a lot of pawn shops. My hope was that in this area we would find some interesting cameras.
We started off in Henry’s, a popular Canadian camera store. They actually had a used Minox and Olympus for sale, but both were selling for around $180 dollars. That struck me as a bit excessive. To be fair, they didn’t have the stank model of either camera. The versions they were selling probably would take nice photos, which isn’t what I am really looking for. Nevertheless, the prices seemed rather inflated.
That was a bit disappointing, but the pawnshops in the area were a whole other kind of disappointment. Most carried very few cameras, and the few that did have cameras were selling them at exorbitant prices. And these are pawnshops—no warranties or money-back guarantees. A crazy Eastern European man who had a large selection of cameras was willing to sell me an Olympus XA-2 for $80 dollars and a Minox for something like $150. It seemed excessive. I would have tried to bargain the price down, but he scared me. He was so crazy.
Thankfully, eBay is full of people in Ukraine shipping out cameras on the cheap.
[6] Life
20 September 2004, early evening
So, for those of you who have been reading this site for sometime may recall, my copy of Apple’s email client stopped downloading my mail. I have been making due with Mailsmith, Thunderbird, and other clients all the while hoping one day my “Mail” would just start working again. Today I got sick of waiting. Well, I also only had 5 more days to demo Mailsmith.
After scouring the discussion boards at Apple’s web site, I came to the conclusion that perhaps one of the emails on 1and1’s servers was some how corrupt, and that this was causing Apple’s email client to choke. My solution was to download all the emails I had been saving on the 1and1 server. ( I had been keeping them there in the hope that when Mail started downloading email again, it could grab them all.) I used a clean copy of Mailsmith to do this, and when I grabbed all the mail, I exported it all into an mbox file. My 1and1 server was now empty of all email.
That was all I needed to do. Mail is now happily downloading my email. I imported all the mail that has been collecting all these months, and things are back to normal. I feel good.
Life | Apple Computers
10 September 2004, late evening
Toronto has a pretty good public transportation system. I mean, compared to other cities I have spent time in I am unimpressed, but it’s better then nothing. I recently had to make a trek from my house in the East end to an appointment in the West end. And when I say West end, I mean West; this place was at the very edge of the city. Here are the notes I made on my trip back to the East end:
- The time it took to get from my appointment to Kipling station via buses was 25 minutes.
- The time it took to get from Kipling Station to Kennedy station on the subway was 50 minutes. For those not from Toronto, this subway line run East to West, and crosses the entire city almost. This was the longest step in my trip.
- The time it took to get from Kennedy Station to the Scarborough Town Centre station on the Rapid Transit train was 10 minutes.
- The time it took to get from the Scarborough Town Centre Station to my kitchen was 20 minutes by the bus followed by a little walking.
- From my appointment back to my home took just over 2 hours on the TTC. 15 minutes of that time was waiting for the first bus I would take on my trip.
So those are some fun little TTC facts.
[8] Life
6 September 2004, mid-afternoon
I got an email from my GMail account sent to my Funkaoshi account. Now, I didn’t send it. At first glance I thought someone had hacked my GMail account, but had been nice enough to send me the new password, since the message looked like this:
Looking forward for a response :P
password: 28382
But when I logged into Gmail, I didn’t see the letter in my sent mail box. Well, also, I didn’t need to use the new password. Damn, a virus I thought. I didn’t notice at first, but the message contained an attachment. You needed to use the enclosed password to open the attachment. Once open, there is a .src file. Now, on a PC, perhaps at this point bad stuff would have started happening. On my Mac, things are less exciting. The .src file opens in GraphicConverter of all programs, and just ends up showing me a lot of hex code.
The question I have for you out there is this: has anyone else seen something like this? Has anyone else got this email from me? The message is called __ meay-meay!_ and has a playful little message inside. It is a little bit creative in that it plays on peoples curiosity.
On a side note, I get all my virus spam email from South Africa.
[4] Life | Technology
4 September 2004, evening time
I now have 4 GMail invites up for grabs. Now, I will probably give one to my brother if he wants one. I don’t think any of my friends want one, but I may be wrong here. Anyway, if you want a GMail account, let me know.
Update: I have 11 GMail invites now, and no one I know seems to need them. Anybody still without GMail? Comment below if you want one. I’ll give them out at random or something.
Update: Done and done.
Update: Grab GMail account at the GMail Spooler.
[24] Life
24 August 2004, terribly early in the morning
I check my referrer logs every other day or so to see who has been suckered into reading my site. Usually it’s poor people willing to wade through 17 pages of google search results before ending up at my site, probably disappointed they didn’t find any Bukkake. You poor sons of bitches. Hop off Kazaa already. If you search for Fuck Moveable Type I’m the third result. I would have never learnt that without checking my referrer logs. (Forget the fact the company calls themselves Movable Type — whatever that is — and that the article google brings up isn’t critical of SixApart.) Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised to find a new site linking to my blog because they like it. Well, I’m not certain people linking to my site like my site; that is presumptuous I suppose. I mean, I watched You Got Served just to laugh at how bad it was after all. My point is that your referrer logs can be full of interesting surprises.
Today, before I was about to go to bed, I noticed someone visited my site from Kotte.org. Now that was a surprise and a half. A link from Jason Kottke? That is nice. It almost makes my wasting the whole summer to work on my web site worthwhile. Almost.
We’re Bad Boy baby. Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop.
[7] Life | Weblogs
22 August 2004, early evening
I’ve been a fan of platform diving since I met my friend Tiffany. Her obsession with China’s thoroughly brilliant diver Fu Mingxia was quite infectious. China had two great divers in this years Olympics, Li Ting, and Lao Lishi. They both were amazing to watch. I was hoping Li Ting would do better, she ended up placing 6th. Her last dive was incredible though; flawless. It was the highest scoring dive of the heat with a score of 91.80. Lao Lishi got the silver medal, just shy of the Australian Chantelle Newburry. The competition this year was also interesting to watch since Canada had two women in the finals, Emille Heymans and Myriam Boileau. Heymans was looking like she might be in medal contention till she mucked up her last dive. So yet again, Canada comes up short. Least we won a gold in gymnastics.
[14] Life
6 August 2004, early evening
Promised a night of indie, brit, and soul, Simon and I headed down to Labyrinth to see our friend Matt kick of his latest weekly residency. As you may recall, Matt also spins Tuesday’s at IV lounge, and Sundays at Cobalt. Thursday nights he now spins at Labyrinth for a night he has dubbed Vanishing Point.
Labyrinth lounge is a nice enough place. It doesn’t compare to the places I’ve been going to recently at College and Bathurst, but it is still quite nice. The place is split in two, one side being the bar, the other side being the lounge. The lounge is actually quite nice, the bar less so. There is plenty of room to sit and enjoy a drink.
The music was great, which was to be expected. The set is quite similar to what Matt spins at Cobalt, a mix of British music. The crowd was really in to the music, and seemed quite knowledgeable about what was playing. Many of the songs I heard that I enjoyed turned out to be requests from the crowd. The crowd at Labyrinth was quite friendly and laid back. Victor showed up by chance, which was quite a surprise.
Drinks at Labyrinth are cheap, university town cheap. Domestic beers were $2.50, which is quite rare to see in Toronto. Apparently mix drinks were a similar price. Matt had a $40 dollar bar tab, which he was gracious enough to share with Simon and I; we were more then happy to impose. Martini’s at Labyrinth are quite good, and more to the point, quite cheap. The fact that Simon and I got ours for free was a nice bonus though. I think Simon and I—well mostly I—drank up more then half of Matt’s tab.
I suppose there may be some bias in everything I’ve just written. I know Matt from high school, and to boot, he bought me drinks. I think despite this the facts remain the same: Vanishing Point is at a nice venue, features great music, and has a cool crowd. What else do you need?
Life | Music
5 August 2004, mid-afternoon
Drinks @ Butt’r
Simon, Steph and I parked a fair bit west of Bathurst on College and started wandering around. The first place we ended up checking out was a place I saw on Martini Boys earlier, a resturant called Butt’r. To say we were impressed with the place would be an understatement.
The resturant has a very clean look to it. There are basically only two colours used throughout the place, brown and cream, with the occasional hint of silver to switch things up. There are several small tables suitable for intimate dining with your significant other, as well as a few larger tables for bigger groups. The three of us grabbed one of the larger tables.
The music they were playing when we arrived was house. Originally they had some mix CD on, but by the time we left there was a DJ playing. The music was chilled out and quiet. We were able to carry on a conversation without resorting to yelling.
Our waiter, who was also the bar tender, was friendly and courteous. I ordered two Gin and Tonic’s to drink, which you can’t really mess up. Simon tried the Butt’r Martini, which was probably Vodka, Rum and Pineapple Juice or something like that. I had a sip and would say it was quite good. Steph tried the house white wine, which she also enjoyed. Drinks were a bit on the expensive side, but you are paying for the ambience I suppose.
We glanced at the dinner menu, which looked quite impressive. The food was reasonably priced for a restaurant that looked as nice as this one. Since we didn’t actually do any eating, I can only guess what it would have tasted like. Reviews of the place are quite favourable, and can be read at the restaurant’s web site.
The place was empty this Wednesday night. We wanted to check another place out before we headed back home, so we started walking again. We originally were thinking of going to Orbits, which looked a lot like Alleycats. Instead we decided on a European bar called Beba.
Dancing @ Beba
Beba was a lot more lively a place then Butt’r. The bar was far from full when we arrived, but there was a much bigger crowd of people. If I had to guess the bar catered to your older Ginos and Ginas crowd, though there was a bit of a mix to the place.
Beba was dark, with bizarre paintings on the walls. I wanted to buy one of EZ-E that some dude had done, but I am broke. And I don’t think I can bring myself to spend any serious money on such art. I digress. The bar is basically split into three sections. At the front is a bar and some small tables, but mostly it is an area to get drinks and stand around chatting. The middle section is where there are sofas and tables for people to sit around and relax. Finally, the back of the bar features a dance floor. There was a set of sofa’s in the corner of this back section as well, which is where Simon, Steph and I sat for the first half of the night.
When the music picked up a bit we started dancing. The music was more or less bad. There were lots of old house and dance tunes you might remember from when you were a little kid, but nothing new. They played a tiny little hip hop and reggae set, featuring more played out or old songs.
Highlights of the night included: a drunk porn-star-looking-Gina who was dancing with the back of her tight black pants undone—charming, a group of girls with bizarre—thought I imagine stylish—haircuts, and a older lady who was trying to dance up on everyone.
Beba was fun, though I’m not sure if I would go back. Butt’r is definitely worth checking out again.
[1] Life | Restaurants and Bars
4 August 2004, late afternoon
For my 18th birthday, Dave bought me a copy of the movie A Clock Work Orange. Around this time, Dave was also in the habit of giving out fridge magnets he would make. Basically he would glue an interesting picture on top of a flexible magnet. I think all my friends received fridge magnets from Dave for their birthdays that year. The magnet he made me had a picture of Jack Nicholson from another Kubrick film, the Shining, on it.
Dave made a box that fit around the video tape he bought. He stuck the fridge magnet on the top corner of the box, and wrote me a short message on the rest of the space. The video tape and the box it came in were slid inside the shell-of-a-box Dave made. He wrapped the whole package up in Dr. Doom wrapping paper if I am not mistaken.
I thought I had lost Dave’s fridge magnet. Today I found the magnet where I had left it, in between the box for the tape and the box Dave made me. I also found this note Dave left me:
Brother Nam: in an ideal world, this would be Fantastic Four wrapping paper. however, this is not such a place, otherwise we’d all be Communists and could eat all the strawberries we would want, whenever we wanted to (besides, we all know that Dr. Doom was a Commie deep down inside. he was a benevolent dictator after all).
Finding something you thought you lost years ago is always a good feeling.
[5] Life
2 August 2004, early evening
Carvill showed up at my house a little after 5:00. The two of us went to get some Sushi since my house was being overrun by my brothers friends. While eating raw fish we discussed the best way to spend the evening. I watch a lot of movies, so movies are always an option. However, sometimes it is nice to do something a bit different. The two of us came back to my place, and looked up what was happening in the city. I remembered my friend Matt was spinning at a club downtown, and looking up its address I learnt the club was at College and Bathurst. There were lots of places in that area worth checking out, so the two of us decided on some places we could go see, and left to begin our adventure downtown.
Read the rest of this post. (1086 words)
[5] Life | Music
1 August 2004, terribly early in the morning
I returned to Zaffron today with a small group of my friends. Gary and I were the only two people who had been to the restaurant before. Both of us had Persian food for the first time at this restaurant, and both of us have had an obscene amount of Persian food at Shandiz in Waterloo since. Well, I should qualify. I have had an obscene amount of kebobs since my first experience with Persian food. Gary has actually made an effort to try all the dishes at Shandiz, and as such probably has a great appreciation for Persian cuisine.
The first time we were at Zaffron, I think my friends and I were all very pleased with the amiable attitude of our waiter. He explained what the different dishes were, made recommendations, and was generally quite courteous and friendly. Compared to our first visit to Zaffron, the service this second time there was quite disappointing.
The food however was quite good, much as it was the last time we went. I had the Koobideh Kebob, which is a ground beef kebob served with rice. It was quite tasty, and the rice was excellent. I have become a big fan of Persian rice since meeting Shima. I also ordered kashkeh bademjan, an egg plant dish that I love. The dish was great, not too oily, and not too salty.
Zaffron is definitely worth checking out if you are in the mood for Persian food.
[7] Restaurants and Bars | Life
28 July 2004, the wee hours
Criterion make some very nice DVDs. They are expensive as fuck, don’t get me wrong, but there is still something satisfying about owning one. They are like the Apple Computers of DVDs. Criterion have been hard at work making sure that cinema classics are maintained and presented in a stunning manner. For whatever reason, that apparently costs a lot of money. Their DVDs seem to have a median price of 50 dollars.
Why am I talking about Criterion? Well today I went to the Scarborough Town Centre with Steph, looking to blow a 100 dollar gift certificate valid at any store in the mall. The Scarborough Town Centre is, for the most part, a pretty lame mall. For example, there are three different stores that sell Rocawear and Sean Jean clothing. Trust me, you don’t need three stores supplying that stuff. One is more then enough. I decided early on to buy a DVD, a gaudy overpriced Criterion DVD I wouldn’t buy with real money.
I settled on Black Orpheus, a film I have been meaning to see for quite some time. I am a big fan of Bossa Nova music, and this movie is credited with exposing it to the rest of the world. I’ll write a ‘review’ of the film after I watch it. This is the first movie I have spent 50 bucks on. I don’t know if I can bring myself to do it again. Time will tell. I also bought the Office, a British television series that is supposed to be quite funny. I’ll write more about that as well.
If you are interested in buying some Criterion DVDs, there are sites dedicated to selling them, as well as Amazon’s own Criterion site
[4] Life
21 July 2004, the wee hours
So I received a book in the mail today, a $130 dollar book. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet. I bought the book at Indigo. I should have known better. I should have bought it at Amazon. I’ve had problems with Indigo’s lacklustre shipping performance twice before. Today they left my book out in the rain. So, my book is a little bit wet. I’m looking at it now, about 6 hours or so after they dropped it off, and it’s still wet.
I should also bitch out the people that did the actual delivering of my book, Canada Post. What kind of a fucking idiot leaves a package in the rain. One in a cardboard box no less.
Incase you can’t tell, I’m really anal about my books. Really anal. In a strange and obsessive sort of way.
[7] Life
18 July 2004, late afternoon
Update: Read this post carefully. I am trying to talk about not letting your curiosity get out of hand. Somethings are better left unknown.
Sometimes the word Bukkake comes up in conversation. Almost always, a girl who is out with my friends and I will ask, “What’s Bukkake?” We of course reply, you don’t want to know. This actually happens a fair bit. I’m not sure why Bukkake keeps coming up in conversation. My friends and I are a bit odd I suppose.
I found this little tidbit of advice, and I thought I would share it with you guys that don’t know what Bukkake is:
Curiosity is good, but remember: there are a lot of things out there that, if you go research them, will stick in your brain. Forever. Like “bukkake.” So be cautious. Once some shit like bukkake gets in there, it ain’t never coming out. You could be in the middle of a job interview or something, and your brain might start whispering, “Bukkake. Bukkake. Bukkake.”
From Bad News Hughes
[13] Life | Interesting Links
14 July 2004, late at night
Today Steph, Simon and I went to Jump, a chic restaurant in downtown Toronto. During the Celebrate Toronto Street Festival a lot of fancy resturants offer up cheaper ‘summerlicious’ menus so that patrons like myself, broke and unemployed, can go and check them out. The same thing happens in the winter, and is called ‘winterlicious’.
Jump was excellent.
All the wait staff we dealt with at Jump were quite friendly. Our waitress was this friendly blonde girl who looked, talked and smiled exactly like Kirsten Dunst. I kid you not, the resemblance was uncanny. Simon eventually told her we thought she looked like Kirsten Dunst, and she replied her sister, who had just seen Spiderman, agreed with us. I think she was in fact Kirsten Dunst, training for a role.
The restaurant itself is quite nice. Half the restaurant is covered by a glass ceiling, so the whole restaurant is quite bright during the lunch hours. There was a small lounge and bar when you enter on your left, where you can drink while you wait for tables, and a private dining area in the back. The kitchen is more or less open, but tucked away in one corner of the restaurant. The general ambience of the restaurant is rather nice.
Yes, I did eat. I had a grilled Atlantic salmon for lunch, which was done quite well. Admittedly, it’s hard to mess up fish. Simon said he enjoyed his pasta as well. The chilled golden gazpacho with sweet chili and basil that Steph and I started with was really good as well. I’ve never had cold soup before, and I didn’t think I would like it, but I would have to say it was very interesting. For desert I had some home-made ice cream. The cookie they put in the ice cream was amazing.
I would definitely go back to Jump again. Well, as soon as I get myself a job.
An interesting side-note ( well interesting for friends anyway): Jump is actually owned by the company Oliver & Bonacini. Their most recent restaurant is the self-named Oliver & Bonacini Café and Grill in Bayview Village. Shima refuses to go there, but that’s a story for another day. They also own the very swanky and expensive Canoe.
[7] Restaurants and Bars | Life
13 July 2004, evening time
I went out and bought myself a wireless router today. A Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router to be exact. My computer only has a 802.11b card, but I thought I may as well get the faster router just incase Ahilan decides to get a wireless card.
I am curious if people have answers to the following questions I have:
- I am pretty sure there are all sorts of third party firmware upgrades for the router made by linux-nuts. Anyone know where I can find stuff like that? And anyone use any thing like that?
- Is there any way to use WPA with an Apple Airport card.
I think you need an Apple Airport Express card to use WPA, but I was wondering if there is someway to use the better standard with the old Airport cards. Update: The old cards do work with WPA if they are running version 3.3+ of the airport software. You need to set your router to use WPA first. Once you do this, the option to enter a WPA password, will show up when you try to connect to the router.
I am currently using WPA to secure the network, not broadcasting the SSID of the router, and limiting access to my MAC address only. Normally I wouldn’t be so paranoid (well maybe that’s a lie) but our net connection at home already sucks ass without my neighbours mooching it. That old couple next door look a bit too techno-savvy for my liking.
[11] Life | Technology
13 July 2004, late afternoon
I basically stopped watching Smallville when I went back to Waterloo last year. I missed all of season 3. I also missed the second half of season 2 for the same reason. When I was in Waterloo living with Lien and Cathy I would end up watching reality television instead. I’ve been watching the DVDs for season 2, and have now reached the first episode I missed.
The first new episode I watched was the episode where Whitney returns from the war. The episode ends with Lex telling Helen, the drop kicking doctor, that he doesn’t want to become his father. I think it’s the first point in the show that you see Lex truly vulnerable. The scene plays out quite well. I think the actor who plays Lex does an excellent job with the character. He is definitely the most interesting person on the show.
I have about 13 more episodes left to watch for this season. I haven’t decided whether to wait for season 3 to come out on DVD, or to download them. I’m torn.
[3] Life | Television
28 June 2004, late evening
Today is election day in Canada. There are 5 national parties running in this election today, the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the new kid on the block, the Green Party. This is the first time the Green party has got a person to run in every single riding in Canada.
The system we have in Canada is a First Past the Post system, which is common to colonies of the United Kingdom. The flaw in a system such as this is that popular support doesn’t always translate into seats in the House of Commons. (This would be the case if you have numerous ridings where the results will be close.) Of course, the problem with a simple proportional system in a country such as Canada is that it would most likely lead to minority governments. Generally no party ever gets more then 50% of the popular support. The US on the other hand, with its two party system, is a ripe candidate for some form of proportional representation of votes.
This election may be interesting because there is no forced media blackout, results will be reported as they are tallied. So for the first time, people in British Columbia will know the results in all of Atlantic Canada, a few hours before their polls close. Mind you, with the internet, this was possible last election as well. I am curious to see if people in British Columbia will vote differently given this extra information.
I voted for the NDP, who will probably have no chance of winning in my riding. I just want them to at least have some reasonable numbers for popular support. I suggest you vote for the party you think will do the best job. I’m not a fan of voting strategically, it seems to go against to the whole idea of voting and democracy. In my riding Derek Lee is going to win. I’m calling it now, a few hours before the election results are out. This is the first time my vote isn’t totally wasted, since the popular support each party gets will get translated into funding for their campaigns in the next election.
Update 9:30 PM: I’ll post little things on my mind through out the night I think—well at least this one time. Average voter turn out in Canada has historically been 74% (with a standard deviation of 5.7) [source]. Turn out has been down for the past three elections, since 1988. I am wondering if the fact that this election is predicted to be so tight will bring out the voters.
Update 10:16 PM: The NDP are showing good numbers so far, and their share of the popular vote has risen a fair amount. It’s still quite early, the results of many polls have yet to be shown. I wouldn’t mind a coalition government with the Liberals and the NDP. We might get something a little more left leaning out of our government than we have seen in quite some time.
Update 11:42 PM: Thank you Jesus! It looks like the NDP and the Liberals will form a coalition government. I just heard Layton and Broadbent give their respective victory speeches. I can’t stress how happy I am to see this situation. I only hope that the Liberals and the NDP can successfully work together. The Liberals under Martin are a lot further from the left then one would expect a liberal party to be.
Update 2:20 AM: I may have spoke to soon, but I sincerely hope I haven’t. Apparently the NDP and Liberal numbers have dropped to the point where they may not be able to get a majority of the votes in the house.
Update 3:18 AM: Well, the official numbers are in. The final standing is:
| Party |
Seats |
% of Votes |
| Lib |
135 |
36.71% |
| Con |
99 |
29.61% |
| BQ |
54 |
12.40% |
| NDP |
19 |
15.69% |
| NA |
1 |
0.13% |
| OTH |
0 |
5.47% |
This means that the Liberals and the NDP only have 154 seats if they vote together. So, the Liberals will have to work closely with the Bloc as well if they hope to stay in power for any period of time. Apparently the average life span of a minority government in Canada is on the order of 18 months. I expect another election soon.
In my riding, the numbers were also pretty much what I expected them to be:
| Candidate |
Party |
Votes |
% of Votes |
| Derek Lee |
LIB |
22114 |
57.32% |
| Raymond Cho |
IND |
6905 |
17.9% |
| Tony Backhurst |
CON |
5326 |
13.81% |
| Fauzia Khan |
NDP |
3557 |
9.22% |
| Kathryn Holloway |
GRN |
676 |
1.75% |
Derek Lee managed to get 57% of the vote in my riding. That wasn’t much of a surprise. I just find it hard to believe 18% of the people who live around me were stupid enough to vote for Raymond Cho.
You can look up the numbers for your riding at a few web sites. I was using Election Canada’s web site at first, though CBC also provides the same set of information and seemed to be updating it stats much later into the night.
[10] Life | Politics
27 June 2004, terribly early in the morning
Ahilan got me the second season of Smallville on DVD today. I actually started watching the show during the second season. My friend Carvill also seemed to get hooked on the show during the second season. My friends bought me season one of Smallville for my birthday last year, which I managed to watch over the course of a few days in Waterloo. Gary watched the show with me at this time, and so he ended up getting hooked on the show as well. He promptly downloaded the second season, and started downloading the third season as the episodes came out. The show is about Superman as a teenager. I don’t know what it is about the show that makes people like it so much. I mean, really, it’s the kind of show I should hate. It’s like a Dawsons Creek or an O.C. or any other stupid teen drama. But, there’s just something about it that I think is brilliant.
I can’t wait to watch this season again. I’ve just finished all of Mezan’s CSI DVDs, so Ahilan’s timing couldn’t be more perfect.
[5] Life | Television
26 June 2004, terribly early in the morning
I can now say I have been to the nicest club in Toronto.
Tonight was Steph’s birthday. We celebrated by heading out to a new club, Lucid, that has filled the vacant space left after Pladium closed. Lucid is three stories, and looks like something out of a movie. Everything about the club is nice and slick. Whoever designed the place did a great job.
The club was empty mind you. Not totally empty, but it may as well have been. Pladium was huge; this club is also huge. The capacity on the first floor of the club was something like 1021 people, according to a sign on the wall. The club has two other floors that weren’t even open. Lucid is the sort of place you need a lot of people to show up to, or it’ll just look far too empty. Unfortunately for the owners, they didn’t get that critical mass of people needed to keep people in the club. While we were there we saw plenty of people walk in, take a look around, and then promptly walk out. If you show up to a place at midnight, you are expecting a party, not a 100 or so people standing on a dance floor that can accommodate ten times that many people.
All in all, I think Lucid is going to be one of the nicer spots in the city.
(Happy birthday Steph!)
Life
23 June 2004, the wee hours
I attended a talk today by Henrik Lenstra on Escher and the Droste Effect. The talk examines the mathematics behind M.C. Escher’s print of a man viewing a painting in a gallery that turns in to the gallery itself. Escher left the middle of this print blank, thought it apparently need not be. The talk was quite interesting, and the art produced from the research is really quite amazing to see.
I was already aware of Lenstra from his work in cryptography. Lenstra seems to have been involved in number theory for quite some time. His name comes up when discussions turn to factoring integers, in particular the Number Field Sieve. The Number Field Sieve is the fastest algorithm to factor integers. It is based on another factoring method called Random Squares.
I think the notation used to talk about running times of algorithms similar to the Number Field Sieve was developed by Lenstra, though I could be mistaken on this. The running time for an algorithm is the number of primitive operations needed to solve an input problem of a given size. The running time for algorithms based on the Random Square method generally have the form e(c + o(1))(ln n)α(ln ln n)1-α, where α and c are constants, and n is the size of the input. This is usually abbreviated to Ln[α,c]. The running time of the Number Field Sieve is Ln[1/3,1.98], which is a sub-exponential algorithm.
[7] Mathematics | Life
