October 2006

Trick or treat

Posted on by Patrick

Hol­low Bean approach­es once again, and this year there’s a cute li’l Jack-o-lantern in my win­dow to greet the hordes of chil­dren that come to ring my bell and get loot.

Ready for Hallowe'enies

See? Ain’t he cute? And look, the pic­ture’s full of “mys­te­ri­ous orbs”, too. Must be a flock of ghosts, vis­it­ing each oth­er, get­ting into the Hol­low Bean spirit.

Or maybe it’s just the snow that was falling all day long.

Have a hap­py and safe Hol­low Bean, everyone.

Election Time!

Posted on by Patrick

So today I did my civic duty™ and vot­ed in the local may­oral elec­tion. I was­n’t alone, either; accord­ing to the local access chan­nel (which is the only chan­nel actu­al­ly cov­er­ing the local elec­tion, since it was also elec­tion day in the cap­i­tal and around the province), there was almost a 40% vot­er turnout. I have no idea if that’s high, low, or meh.

Any­ways. I cast my bal­lot, went and got flang about (this being a judo night), went to Tim Hor­ton’s and got inter­viewed re: the elec­tion in the park­ing lot, and then came home. Hop­ing to find some info, I traipsed over to the local news­pa­per’s web­site, and got this:

Brandonsun.com will be down for maintenance until Thursday Morning (October 26th). Sorry for the inconvience.

What? What kind of fool kills the web­site for the only paper in town on elec­tion night? Crap.

But they’re on the local access chan­nel, like I said, so at least I now know that the incum­bent has a wal­lop­ing 63% of the vote, with about 25% of the polls report­ing. So it does­n’t look like any of the mem­bers of the so-called three-hand­cuff cir­cus* will be get­ting in…

The cov­er­age of the elec­tion remind­ed me this evening of one of my pet gram­mat­i­cal peeves. Bear with me; this may seem pedan­tic. (Well, actu­al­ly, it is pedan­tic. But this is my blog, so I’ll do what I like.)

Now, ever since Microsoft added the so-called “Smart” Quotes to Word, their word proces­sor, I’ve always gone in, found the set­ting in Tools->Options, and dis­abled them. Why? Because they’re stu­pid, that’s why.

“Smart” Quotes work fine in the con­text they’re intend­ed: wrap­ping a word or phrase in match­ing quotes. The prob­lem comes in when you try to use them in a con­trac­tion like ’tis or ’06 (when you’re so lazy you’d rather type ’06 instead of 2006).

So let’s say, for instance, that you want to have a big, huge head­er on your TV screen that says “ELECTION ‘06”. Here’s what it should look like:
ELECTION ’06

Here’s what it looks like on CTV:
ELECTION ‘06

Note the apos­tro­phe. If you can’t see the dif­fer­ence, you’re insuf­fi­cient­ly uptight about gram­mar. Some­times I’m amazed I ever went on dates.

___________________
* We’ve got three out of six may­oral can­di­dates who have his­to­ry with the law. One was con­vict­ed of fraud about 15 years ago, served his time, and is now try­ing to get his con­vic­tion over­turned; one went to court today on var­i­ous charges; and a third goes to court on Octo­ber 30th for his part in an alleged assault on anoth­er can­di­date. I tell you, at least it ain’t boring.

Flickrblogging–IMG_3355

Posted on by Patrick

IMG_3355
Dis­cov­ered in Toby Lee’s Flickr photostream. 

Not the best first date ever, thought Mon­i­ca. I don’t think he’s said two words to me all day, he’s pret­ty weak since I’m doing all the pulling here, and his cologne smells an awful lot like varnish.

Still, he does dress like a pirate…

Flick­r­blog­ging on Technorati
Flick­r­blog­ging explained–join the fun!

Amusing comments

Posted on by Patrick

I like find­ing that peo­ple who write code have a sense of humour:

This lets you spec­i­fy which char­ac­ters are per­mit­ted with­in your URLs. When some­one tries to sub­mit a URL with dis­al­lowed char­ac­ters they will get a warn­ing message.

As a secu­ri­ty mea­sure you are STRONGLY encour­aged to restrict URLs to as few char­ac­ters as pos­si­ble. By default only these are allowed: a‑z 0–9~%.:_-

Leave blank to allow all char­ac­ters — but only if you are insane. 

Well, it made me laugh.

Election Time

Posted on by Patrick

There’s a gen­er­al elec­tion com­ing up in town, mean­ing that signs adorn lawns and medi­ans every­where you look, cov­ered with pithy say­ings like “It’s Time for a Change!” and “Vote [NAME GOES HERE] for [POSITION GOES HERE]”.

Back when I lived in res­i­dence, in my sal­ad days at the uni­ver­si­ty, there was a bylaw on the books that I rather liked. In an elec­tion, any can­di­date whose signs were still up by mid­night on the night before the vote was dis­qual­i­fied. Now there was a lot about rez elec­tions that I would­n’t want to car­ry over into the realm of–shall we say–grown-up pol­i­tics*, but I have always, always liked that rule.

“Hmmm, the votes are in, and the may­or-elect is John Smith. Too bad he’s still got eight hun­dred signs up all over the city. Oh well. Who came in sec­ond? Lord Volde­mort? Are you sure? Check again. All right, all right. Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democ­ra­cy sim­ply does not work.”

And I know that a lot–probably a majority–of the signs in ques­tion are not put up by the can­di­date. But if you real­ly sup­port your can­di­date, you can take down the signs you put up for him or her, right? Right?

I thought so.

_______________________
* Things like bal­lot-box stuff­ing and vot­er intim­i­da­tion, for instance. Not that that sort of thing does­n’t hap­pen in grown-up pol­i­tics; I just wish it didn’t.

5

Posted on by Patrick

I’ve been tagged!

List five truths. Five things that are on your mind. Good, bad, it mat­ters not. Lift some weight off.

  1. Some­times hang­ing out with friends is more impor­tant than a good night’s sleep.
  2. Just about any­thing can be found on the inter­net.
  3. There’s always some­one who knows more than you. Learn from him, her, or it.
  4. Being cold sucks worse than get­ting “toque hair”.
  5. I may not know art, but I know what I like.
  6. Lat­er: I real­ized I for­got a most impor­tant truth: “The truth, Bink­ley, is that you look like a carrot.”

Then pick five peo­ple to do the same.
Craig. Doug. Gabriele. Clark. And you, who­ev­er you are.

If you don’t have a blog, you can reply in the comments.

More writing

Posted on by Patrick

More from Salyx:

Some­times Igraine would have to go down the axis to the ship’s engine room, where the walk­ing dead worked, men and women so rid­dled with can­cer that they did­n’t both­er to pre­tend any­more that they’d sur­vive. They had a ghast­ly humor down there, a gal­lows humor, and one of them had set up a spher­i­cal force-field and filled it with water, just to see it glow with blue Cerenkov radi­a­tion. Igraine hat­ed hav­ing to go to the engine room, hat­ed see­ing the thin, crow­like engi­neers, sprout­ing dark tumors and cough­ing out blood and teeth, rain­ing hair. She’d go in, hand them the flow cor­rec­tions she’d cal­cu­lat­ed, and flee, hat­ing her­self for her fear.