Going Home

Tonight we begin the long drive home. It's a ways - The roadsigns will tell you it's about 1,400 kilometers, but google maps says it's closer to 1,200. I was having a chat a few days ago with an Italian gentleman and his jaw just dropped at the thought of driving that far and not leaving the country, let alone the province.

It's a long journey for sure, but it's an amazing drive through a series of distinct ecosystems.

Affordable Solar Power

Mmmmm. It warms the heart, and hopefully some homes in the very near future.

The world's lowest cost solar panels are becoming real.

Yay!

And they are shipping, or at least auctioning one of their first on ebay.

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National Pasta Association

THEY EXIST!

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Bucky Awards!

My favourite Canadian music awards are being... well... awarded tomorrow.


The Bucky awards win because of the fantastic categories. Best music to listen to in the fetal position, most unpronounceable name, best yacht rock...

Great Music

I thought I'd point you towards some really good music.

B(oot)log - Bootleg blog. Sweet.

And while you work (if you work by a computer with speakers, HAHA ELENA) stream yourself some Messiah from NPR. It's a great recording and the writeup is interesting.

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Indie rockers all smoke right?

Labels Seek Apology From Rolling Stone for Camel Ad

I've talked about hating bad advertising before right? I actually don't mind this so much, but only because it's basically another brick in the wall between me and wasting five bux on a crappy magazine.

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Joystick 2007

Joystick makes some dope poles and clothing.


Every skier needs some.

Anthony somehow manages to ski like a madman, work on joystick, make movies, and maintain the best personal skiing related website around. I don't know how, but he does.

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Chinatown

Best place for Christmas shopping ever. Everyone wants a bottle-cozy tailored to look like a traditional Chinese wedding dress right? RIGHT?

Honestly, it was uncrowded and inexpensive. That's two big advantages over any shopping mall or downtown core in the country right now.

I loves you Chinatown.

Edit: Oh, and the BBQ pork buns. DAMN!

The post office opens your mail and I hate advertising

I stumbled across a post by Scott Rosenberg about deep packet inspection. He likened the practice to a the post office reading your mail. It's not the perfect analogy, only because the post office would then also have to put RFID tags under your skin and monitor your every move and use that information to push targeted advertising at you.

Right now Rogers is using a kind of deep packet inspection to let users know when they near their bandwidth limit. Any bets on how long it's going to take for them to begin serving ads in the same way they serve bandwidth notices?

It's a new revenue stream that could make them a lot of money, but it's an invasive technology that scares the shit out of me. What the hell, the internet is loosing its cool.

Dear Advertising,
You ruin good television, good radio, and now you are ruining the internet.

Please don't, I like the internet. It's a lot like I thought radio was like before I learned that the different public broadcasters were the exception rather than the norm. I hated you for a long time when I learned that 99% of the radio out there is little more than a vehicle for advertising. I even hated radio its self a little when I worked there and realized how much more money and effort went into advertising than went into content - music included.

My hate turned to a mere dislike as I began to explore the internet, and you became a neighbour instead of an enemy. You could have commercial TV and radio (god what a sick, sick thing) and I could have my telnet, archie, and gopher. As that all changed to my ie and netscape, mozilla and safari, you began to creep in, and my hatred of you returned.

These days my hatred is back in full friggin force. You're trying to creep in to my conversations on Facebook, you change your colours like a chameleon depending on where I shop on-line, and you pose as real people with real blogs when all you are is goddamn commissioned lies.

Advertising, I hate you and I want you to leave me alone.

Sincerely,

Michael Boronowski

Someday I swear I'm going to snap and move to a little cabin in the arctic, then someone is going to start experimenting with monetizing the channel that is my trap line.

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Online Rights

I'm still obsessing over copyrights.

They be good

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Copyrights?

We need over restrictive copyright legislation like babies need rabies.

Help a bunch of people put pressure on the government and Industry Minister Jim Prentice to really go out on a limb and consult the stakeholders and consider their input before radically changing Canadian copyright laws.

I like to write letters so I mailed M.J.P. and my MP Bill Siksay. Bill Siksay's party - the NDP is probably going to oppose the bill, so yay NDP on that one.

You can find your local MP with a handy government website.

Jim Prentice can be reached at:

Jim Prentice Constituency Office
Suite 105
1318 Centre St NE
Calgary, Alberta T2E 2R7
403 216-7777
Fax 403 230-4368
Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca

You could also join the facebook group, but it'd be cool if you took it a step further and actually did something because while facebook is great for letting people know what you want to believe in, it doesn't actually contact MP's or Jim Prentice on it's own.

To find out more ways to help - or some info to open your eyes to the potential threat Jim's bill poses to our rights and educators, researchers, reporters, musicians, artists, Canadians, and human beings, have a browse through Michael Geist's writings and linkings on the matter.

I think someone from the pro-evil-copyright-laws camp has invaded my pc, it crashed twice just trying to post this.

I just wanted to add something - Jim Prentice has said no to Search Engine's request for comments. This story has generated more comments and questions than all their others combined, but Prentice won't respond to the obvious concern and confusion Canadians are feeling regarding this bill.

iMove - Motorists - Home

I love maps. This is probably because I have such poor sense of direction in unnatural settings. I'm pretty good out in the wild, but as soon as streets and drives come in to play, well I'm pretty much buggered without having first checked a map.

Seriously, it can take me three or four trips somewhere before I can navigate confidently sans-carte.

Because I dislike driving into downtown cores I tend to use transit, and here's my issue:

Transit maps or transit websites are generally a cumbersome thing. Translink's website has a really hard time understanding that when I type in something like "Granville Station" I really do mean "Granville Station." It also doesn't let me check road conditions when I'm debating whether to drive or to transit somewhere.

I was really excited a few days ago when I stumbled across google-transit, but now I'm really excited about iMove. Traffic conditions, transit directions, cycling paths, colour-coded density... It's awesome. Seriously, or for cereal as I like to say, bookmark this and maybe join me in sending a thank you card.

I should also note that the always on top of it even though he's in Malta Darren Barefoot has a post about the smartly-simple common craft video that covers iMove.

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The Best Website Ever

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Without People

You are nothing.