Our Geek Candidate in Scarborough-Guildwood

Posted by rae in politics, the Net
at 1:44 pm on Monday, 23 January 2006

Rogers has a CanadaVotes page from which you can see videos of all the candidates of your (or any other) riding.

Our family originally ran across this on Rogers On Demand’s free stuff list. There was one candidate that surprised me. Andrew Thomas His name is Andrew Thomas and he is basically a “Geek Party” candidate.

No, he doesn’t actually have any party affiliation (he’s just an independant), but his main campaign website is a Wiki. Yes, you do in fact have to click on “Cancel” a couple of times to get to see his actual page. *sigh*

So far I agree with his views. It’s unfortunate that his on-screen personality was a bit weak. I did appreciate the fact that he was one of only two candidates that were not obviously reading from paper or cue cards (and I suspect the other one, incumbent McKay, may have been using a teleprompter). So either he memorized his speech, or he was just being direct. I think it’s the latter.

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My Work Blog

Posted by rae in Reid, web site, work
at 8:07 pm on Friday, 13 January 2006

I’ve started up Chomping at Chandler mostly because it will be all about work, which won’t interest most people.

Read about my errant boingboing post and how my day has been. :-)

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Hollywood’s MP

Posted by rae in entertainment, politics, the Net
at 2:12 pm on Thursday, 12 January 2006

hollywood's MP
Sam Bulte, Hollywood’s MP
The story of “Hollywood’s MP” is showing enormous staying power at BoingBoing: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] (hover over link for headline).

But now we have video from an all-candidates meeting in Toronto’s Parkdale/High Park riding, in which she is heard to say:

“I will not allow Michael Geist and his pro-user zealots, and Electronic Frontier Foundation members to intimidate me into silencing my voice.”

Of course another word for “user” is “voter”. And I don’t know about you, but I hold the EFF in high regard.

online rights canada

The EFF and Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic have gotten together to launch Online Rights Canada, which describes itself thusly:

Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public’s interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world.

EFF
Electronic Frontier Foundation 		CIPPIC
Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic 		ORC
Online Rights Canada

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Copyright wrong

Posted by rae in the Net
at 1:58 am on Saturday, 7 January 2006

Read this to learn about the facts of the history of copyright, and how it “was designed by distributors, to subsidize distributors not creators.” Seriously.

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PyInjector - embed Python in Cocoa apps

Posted by rae in development, work
at 2:09 pm on Friday, 6 January 2006

PyInjector is an interesting little tool that lets you “inject” a Python interpreter as well as an F-script object browser into any Cocoa app on Mac OS X.

You can also embed it into your own apps, which sounds like an easy way to whip up a Chandler widget for OS X.

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HDTV cables - HDMI, DVI and “component” - $$$

Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, hardware
at 2:37 pm on Wednesday, 4 January 2006

When we bought our HDTV at G&G, they told us that the cable to hook up our DVD player to our new TV was $40. This cable was an “HDMI” cable, which connects up both HDTV video and audio (it may be digital, but I’m not sure). I thought at the time that the price was pretty steep and I would look elsewhere.

The other day I went to Future Shop and checked out their selection of cables. They had two lengths of HDMI cable: 1m and 3m. The 1m cable was $120, and the 3m cable was $150 (roughly). Yikes!

Back to G&G, where yesterday I bought a 3m HDMI cable for $40. I also got an HDMI-to-DVI cable so I can plug my PowerBook into the HDTV and use it as a second monitor. That one was $80. Luisa wasn’t too happy about the price on the second cable!

Meanwhile, our Rogers digital terminal is a 3100HD, which only has component out. Since we have all our boxes below the TV in a cabinet, we drilled two holes for the cables. Having the Rogers box use 3 cables for video and two for audio (normal RCA cables) makes for some crowded holes! I am hoping we can trade up to a later model with (a) HDMI or at least DVI, and (b) more features (right now when we go to the TV guide, the HD channels do not display, whereas we are certain later models do display).

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New Year’s at Andy’s

Posted by rae in friends
at 5:21 am on Sunday, 1 January 2006

Well, almost. We ended up leaving a bit early since Michael was stuck at home feeling sick and we thought Ronnie should maybe get home a bit early. Ah well, at least we had a chance to say goodbye to Bronwyn, who is heading off to India for a ***YEAR***. Wow.

Jenny is going too, for 6 weeks. The last week will be in Europe, to “unwind” and “reaclimate” to western society. :-)

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