So former "space tourist" Dennis Tito wants to launch a privately-funded trip to Mars. It's not as crazy as it sounds: because the plan doesn't involve landing there - or even slowing down - you could make the whole trip without much more technology or fuel than a simple launch into orbit. Of course, there's never been a private manned trip into orbit either, so it is still hardly easy.
The news coverage of this proposal has had some fun with the concept that it should be a middle-aged married couple, since they'll have to live for a year-and-a-half in a capsule the size of a bathroom (but note: no shower.) That's just wonderful. Out of nowhere, an opportunity comes along that fits with my advancing age, and I'm ruled out for being single.
I have to wonder if this Mars project is really worth it though. Yes, I realize that this is pretty obviously a symbolic thing, convincing ourselves that we can still do the unprecedented. But I'm not sure that a fly-by will do the trick. As an example, they've pointed out that the prospective Mars mission will be on the anniversary of Apollo 8, the first mission to flyby the moon. Quick, name anybody on that mission. Did you even know there were non-landing moon missions before Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11?
But whether it's crazy or not, the proposal is a welcome comeuppance for the Australian billionaire who plans to rebuild the Titanic. He announced his plans yesterday, but now he looks like a backwards opportunist next to Tito. If only he'd been juxtaposed against one of those guys trying to set a ballooning record.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
My Technology Agrivatiosfjvrl
Have you ever had one of those incidents at the computer where you activated something and have no idea what it is or even how you did it? It happens a lot to people who don't have much experience with computers. I guess that's understandable: if you don't know your way around the computer, it's easier to get lost.
Well I hope you feel better to know it happens to anyone. Tonight while typing, I mistakenly hit some combination of keys - I didn't really notice what - and next thing I know I'm signing into my neighbour's wi-fi. Never mind trying to figure out which keys I hit, I'm just wondering how a small combination of key strokes could possibly give the computer an instruction to switch from the current network to a random new one. What user interface designer figured that a person would want to quickly and conveniently switch to a random wi-fi connection?
Well I hope you feel better to know it happens to anyone. Tonight while typing, I mistakenly hit some combination of keys - I didn't really notice what - and next thing I know I'm signing into my neighbour's wi-fi. Never mind trying to figure out which keys I hit, I'm just wondering how a small combination of key strokes could possibly give the computer an instruction to switch from the current network to a random new one. What user interface designer figured that a person would want to quickly and conveniently switch to a random wi-fi connection?
Sunday, February 24, 2013
A Really Boring Post
There were a couple of big televised events in the U.S. today: the Daytona 500, and The Oscars. Here in Canada, you can add the final of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (championship of women's curling.) What links these three events? All three are widely criticized for being boring.
As you might see from my Twitter feed, I got kind of tired by how many people were making sarcastic remarks about the race. I don't really understand why you would say such a thing. Sure, not everyone is going to enjoy stock car racing. But as big media events go, Nascar races are pretty easy to ignore. If you find football boring, then I could understand if you go a little crazy on Superbowl weekend. But Daytona? Just don't watch that channel on that Sunday afternoon, skip over that one page of the sports section with a preview the day before, and don't watch the Speed channel for the month before, which you probably avoid anyway.
Because curling and stock car racing are so easy to get away from, expressing your boredom with them reflects badly on yourself. The fact that you seem to feel the need to tell everyone you're bored - and the fact that you're spending several hours watching a TV event you have no interest in - indicates that you are quite boring. After all, you are the only common bond in all these boring situations.
The Oscar telecast, okay, I can understand if you're finding it dull. And I can understand if you're feeling like you can't escape it: so many people insist on talking about it before and after the ceremony. But it is on only one channel. You don't have to watch it. And making jokes about how long and boring the ceremony is are becoming as repetitive as the presentation itself. It seemed like half of Seth MacFarlane's jokes in this year's show were about how long the show is. So please don't make the ceremony seem even longer by talking about how long it is.
As you might see from my Twitter feed, I got kind of tired by how many people were making sarcastic remarks about the race. I don't really understand why you would say such a thing. Sure, not everyone is going to enjoy stock car racing. But as big media events go, Nascar races are pretty easy to ignore. If you find football boring, then I could understand if you go a little crazy on Superbowl weekend. But Daytona? Just don't watch that channel on that Sunday afternoon, skip over that one page of the sports section with a preview the day before, and don't watch the Speed channel for the month before, which you probably avoid anyway.
Because curling and stock car racing are so easy to get away from, expressing your boredom with them reflects badly on yourself. The fact that you seem to feel the need to tell everyone you're bored - and the fact that you're spending several hours watching a TV event you have no interest in - indicates that you are quite boring. After all, you are the only common bond in all these boring situations.
The Oscar telecast, okay, I can understand if you're finding it dull. And I can understand if you're feeling like you can't escape it: so many people insist on talking about it before and after the ceremony. But it is on only one channel. You don't have to watch it. And making jokes about how long and boring the ceremony is are becoming as repetitive as the presentation itself. It seemed like half of Seth MacFarlane's jokes in this year's show were about how long the show is. So please don't make the ceremony seem even longer by talking about how long it is.
Friday, February 22, 2013
He's Most Visible
Yesterday I went into an HMV. While the main HMV in Britain has gone under, Canada's branch of the company is separate, and still afloat, since it's apparently made many better decisions about what sorts of things to sell to make up for its falling CD sales.
And yesterday's visit showed just how much it's changed. I actually had trouble finding the CDs. Okay, they did have the new releases at the front of the store, but beyond that, I could only find books, DVDs and t-shirts. The main racks of CDs have been pushed to the back of the store.
I felt really conspicuous back there. I think that's partly because of the natural guilt one feels when looking for any product that can only be found at the back of a store. But there's also the fact that everyone else in the store is at the front. It's just me and the occasional salesperson on the way to the storeroom.
It's bad enough that I'm the oldest guy there. There was a brief interlude a few years ago where all the young folks had abandoned music stores, so even someone in their late thirties could feel at home there. But now it's worse: the young people are at the front of the store buying ironic Green Lantern t-shirts, while the strange old guy is browsing obscure CDs at the back. I never thought I'd see the day when it's easier to buy condoms than CDs.
And yesterday's visit showed just how much it's changed. I actually had trouble finding the CDs. Okay, they did have the new releases at the front of the store, but beyond that, I could only find books, DVDs and t-shirts. The main racks of CDs have been pushed to the back of the store.
I felt really conspicuous back there. I think that's partly because of the natural guilt one feels when looking for any product that can only be found at the back of a store. But there's also the fact that everyone else in the store is at the front. It's just me and the occasional salesperson on the way to the storeroom.
It's bad enough that I'm the oldest guy there. There was a brief interlude a few years ago where all the young folks had abandoned music stores, so even someone in their late thirties could feel at home there. But now it's worse: the young people are at the front of the store buying ironic Green Lantern t-shirts, while the strange old guy is browsing obscure CDs at the back. I never thought I'd see the day when it's easier to buy condoms than CDs.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Pope Culture
Last week the Pope resigned. Yes, it's been a while, and I'm only now writing about it, but it's not laziness. I'm commenting now because I'm really discussing the reaction to it. Yeah, that's it. It was one of those awkward news stories that was so big, every news service had to report on it, but so straightforward that it didn't give them anything to talk about. The whole story came down to, "Old, Ill Man Retires From Tough Job."
As for people's reactions, they came down to one of three possibilities: committed Catholics praised him for maintaining traditional values, atheists and liberal Christians saw him as just part of the decline of organized religion, and everyone else gave him glowing but extremely vague praise. I'd point that out to those predicting the imminent end of religion: I'll find that easier to believe when people start saying what they really feel about the Pope.
The outcome is that no one has really assessed his papacy. Instead, people looked for any reason they could find to give him a positive review, often resorting to complementing the man himself. He does seem like a pleasant person, but that’s not usually how we judge world leaders. Certainly George W. Bush would have seemed better judged by his personality rather than his decisions.
As for people's reactions, they came down to one of three possibilities: committed Catholics praised him for maintaining traditional values, atheists and liberal Christians saw him as just part of the decline of organized religion, and everyone else gave him glowing but extremely vague praise. I'd point that out to those predicting the imminent end of religion: I'll find that easier to believe when people start saying what they really feel about the Pope.
The outcome is that no one has really assessed his papacy. Instead, people looked for any reason they could find to give him a positive review, often resorting to complementing the man himself. He does seem like a pleasant person, but that’s not usually how we judge world leaders. Certainly George W. Bush would have seemed better judged by his personality rather than his decisions.
Monday, February 18, 2013
It's The One-Eight Weekend!
Family Day? That's the best we could come up with? The most history-ignorant country on Earth, and we couldn't come up with an under-appreciated dead guy to honour with a day?
What makes it particularly galling is that this is really just our counterpart to Presidents' Day in the U.S. (Or as it's officially known, Washington's Birthday.) That's right, the people who know the most about celebrating themselves and their history have a day dedicated to their great leaders. But do we take the hint? No, we name our holiday after the blandest, most agreeable thing we could think of. What's our counterpart to Martin Luther King Day going to be called? I predict, "Community Day."
Why not just have a Puppies And Ice Cream Day? At least that wouldn't be as dull. Even making Groundhog Day into an official holiday would have at least shown some inspiration. Sometimes I think we deserve our reputation for being boring.
What makes it particularly galling is that this is really just our counterpart to Presidents' Day in the U.S. (Or as it's officially known, Washington's Birthday.) That's right, the people who know the most about celebrating themselves and their history have a day dedicated to their great leaders. But do we take the hint? No, we name our holiday after the blandest, most agreeable thing we could think of. What's our counterpart to Martin Luther King Day going to be called? I predict, "Community Day."
Why not just have a Puppies And Ice Cream Day? At least that wouldn't be as dull. Even making Groundhog Day into an official holiday would have at least shown some inspiration. Sometimes I think we deserve our reputation for being boring.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
A Horse Is A Horse And Main Course Of Course
Europeans are freaked out by the fact that a bunch of them have been unwittingly eating horsemeat as part of their frozen lasagne. I say it's time for them to take a (meat-free) chill pill.
Food scandals are always big in Europe. The premium many cultures place on food is a big factor in that, but there's another reason: European countries are very protective of their farmers, but because of European Union regulations, they can't block other countries' food imports. So any hint of dangerous food gives a government an excuse to keep their neighbour's food out and win a few votes in the rural areas. It shows that Europeans are yet to embrace free trade as a core value, and that they don't realize just how pathetic their agriculture sector is on the world scale. It would be like us in Canada setting up regulations to protect our culture. Oh, right. Nevermind.
But is horse meat really such a gross thing? Are they really so much more loveable than cows? Okay, I perhaps have a unique perspective: I grew up in a city that has a statue of a cow, and as an adult I've lived in a city where all the parks are full of ducks. It's left me unable to stomach the idea of eating duck. But I still eat beef - read into that what you will.
The other strangeness about the scandal is perhaps most obvious: How much quality can you really expect from cheap frozen food? Americans didn't worry nearly as much when they heard claims that Taco Bell put sawdust in the beef. Horsemeat would be a step up from that. Or, how much can we expect to know about food that gets whipped around from country to country and company to company and sold at rock-bottom prices? If we want quality, inspected, documented food, we'll have to realize that we're going to have to pay for it.
Food scandals are always big in Europe. The premium many cultures place on food is a big factor in that, but there's another reason: European countries are very protective of their farmers, but because of European Union regulations, they can't block other countries' food imports. So any hint of dangerous food gives a government an excuse to keep their neighbour's food out and win a few votes in the rural areas. It shows that Europeans are yet to embrace free trade as a core value, and that they don't realize just how pathetic their agriculture sector is on the world scale. It would be like us in Canada setting up regulations to protect our culture. Oh, right. Nevermind.
But is horse meat really such a gross thing? Are they really so much more loveable than cows? Okay, I perhaps have a unique perspective: I grew up in a city that has a statue of a cow, and as an adult I've lived in a city where all the parks are full of ducks. It's left me unable to stomach the idea of eating duck. But I still eat beef - read into that what you will.
The other strangeness about the scandal is perhaps most obvious: How much quality can you really expect from cheap frozen food? Americans didn't worry nearly as much when they heard claims that Taco Bell put sawdust in the beef. Horsemeat would be a step up from that. Or, how much can we expect to know about food that gets whipped around from country to country and company to company and sold at rock-bottom prices? If we want quality, inspected, documented food, we'll have to realize that we're going to have to pay for it.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Cruisin' For Confusion
We've just had the latest cruise mishap. The Carnival Triumph was disabled by an engine room fire, which led to lots of unplesentness. This brings up a lot of questions:
- Repeat after me, cruise ship designers: "single point of failure" This is the fourth time a technical problem has transformed a Carnival cruise ship into a big floating piece or metal. It's hard to believe that the designers would allow a problem in one component to disable the entire ship. Apparently they had generators to power manoeuvring systems, so it did occur to them to prepare for failure, but was it really that hard to supply back-up power to the toilets too? Or to put it another way, which is more important, four restaurants or two electrical systems?
- Anyone else find it ironic how a cruise ship goes from the height of human standard of living right down to the bottom that fast. One hour you're living a life of gluttony that even we in the developed world find a little over the top. The next, you have no heat or clean water, limited food, and sewage right outside your door.
- Speaking of the world's poorer nations, I wonder how ticked-off they are about this: In their part of the world, it takes hundreds of deaths in a ferry sinking to get onto the global newscasts. But an American ship gets on the news just because the people had to survive a few days in conditions that the citizens of developing countries experience every day.
- I've always been bugged by how movies and TV tend to gloss over some of the practical difficulties of having people stuck in a confined area. Sitcom characters get trapped in a storeroom overnight, a kidnap victim is locked in an attic. They never cover where the person goes to the bathroom. These disabled cruise ships offer a reminder of just how, um, "messy" human beings become when forced to live in a limited area for more than a few hours. Hopefully we'll have some more realism now if nothing else.
- The Titanic is often seen as a symbol of humanity's hubris. Arrogantly claiming its infallibility, only to see it destroyed at the hands of nature. But at least that was a dramatic failure. Now our arrogance is embodied in a modestly advertised cruise ship, nature's revenge is an easily contained fire, our dramatic downfall is a hundred backed-up toilets. We won't even be able to get a blockbuster movie out of this one.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
...And Don't Even Get Me Started On Scalable Vector Graphics
GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a format for graphic computer files. It was quite popular in the early days of the Internet, because it produced small files, and it had the ability to show small animated sequences. It fell from favour because:
With the spread of digital cameras, JPEG became the standard file format for photos, and the new PNG (portable Network Graphic) gained wide acceptance. GIF disappeared into the big hard drive in the sky, along side Netscape, WinAmp and PKZip.
So for myself and other Web we were shocked last year when Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - named "GIF" as the word of the year, lauding it as a new and growing trend. They also claimed it had reached the gold-standard of Internet slang: it had become a verb.
Dictionaries don't have the greatest record when it comes to picking up Net-related words and phrases. It seems that whenever you see one of these articles about a dictionary adding new words, naming the word of the year, or predicting the big breakthrough slang for next year, it always turns out to be either a word that no one is really using, or a word that's already come and gone.
But GIF was so far gone that it made us all wonder: surely even the squares who write dictionaries couldn't be that far behind the times. Was there some new trend, some groundswell of GIF usage that I've been oblivious to? Did the kids stumble on GIFs as a way of getting ironic hipster-cred?
It didn't help when I see Jon Stewart drop a mention of GIFs on The Daily Show. He's precisely the sort of person who might be ahead of the times or behind it. If Letterman mentioned it, I'd assume it was out of date. On the other hand, if Fallon mentions it, you can assume it's an actual trend (albeit one that's just about run its course).
Also, we always used to pronounce it with a hard "G," but Stewart's mention was the second time in recent days I'd heard it pronouced with a "J" sound, like Jif peanut butter. So now I don't even know how to talk about it.
Now you could ask why I care about this. If I used GIFs back in the day, then left them behind when they were no longer useful, why should I be worried that young people who don't know any better are making them cool again? I'm sure lots of people have this kind of situation, but with mini-skirts or punk or something else infinitely cooler than graphic file formats. So choose your moral to this story:
- The pictures are limited to 256 colours
- Unisys owned a patent on the mathematical processes behind it, and tried to get licensing fees from companies that used it
- Little animations got really annoying really quickly.
With the spread of digital cameras, JPEG became the standard file format for photos, and the new PNG (portable Network Graphic) gained wide acceptance. GIF disappeared into the big hard drive in the sky, along side Netscape, WinAmp and PKZip.
So for myself and other Web we were shocked last year when Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - named "GIF" as the word of the year, lauding it as a new and growing trend. They also claimed it had reached the gold-standard of Internet slang: it had become a verb.
Dictionaries don't have the greatest record when it comes to picking up Net-related words and phrases. It seems that whenever you see one of these articles about a dictionary adding new words, naming the word of the year, or predicting the big breakthrough slang for next year, it always turns out to be either a word that no one is really using, or a word that's already come and gone.
But GIF was so far gone that it made us all wonder: surely even the squares who write dictionaries couldn't be that far behind the times. Was there some new trend, some groundswell of GIF usage that I've been oblivious to? Did the kids stumble on GIFs as a way of getting ironic hipster-cred?
It didn't help when I see Jon Stewart drop a mention of GIFs on The Daily Show. He's precisely the sort of person who might be ahead of the times or behind it. If Letterman mentioned it, I'd assume it was out of date. On the other hand, if Fallon mentions it, you can assume it's an actual trend (albeit one that's just about run its course).
Also, we always used to pronounce it with a hard "G," but Stewart's mention was the second time in recent days I'd heard it pronouced with a "J" sound, like Jif peanut butter. So now I don't even know how to talk about it.
Now you could ask why I care about this. If I used GIFs back in the day, then left them behind when they were no longer useful, why should I be worried that young people who don't know any better are making them cool again? I'm sure lots of people have this kind of situation, but with mini-skirts or punk or something else infinitely cooler than graphic file formats. So choose your moral to this story:
- cyclic trends are ultimately pointless
- culture now moves so quickly that dying trends are almost butting up against the revival of the trend
- Talk show hosts and thousand-year-old universities should not be used as bellwethers of fashion.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
I'm Speechless
Unlike a lot of people, I'm reluctant to spout off every opinion I have on the Internet. Yes, I know, I'm writing this in a blog; but other than the odd opinion here in my little corner of the Web, I don't go telling everyone what I think about everything. I've never left a comment on YouTube, for instance. I guess it's a form of shyness: I'm just not confident that anyone else out there is going to care what I think.
However, others are different. Take this commenter I recently found on Google+ (Not the Spanish one, the next one):
So let that be a lesson for myself, and anyone else out there. Your opinion is worth writing about, because apparently even no opinion at all is worth writing about.
However, others are different. Take this commenter I recently found on Google+ (Not the Spanish one, the next one):
So let that be a lesson for myself, and anyone else out there. Your opinion is worth writing about, because apparently even no opinion at all is worth writing about.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Slip-Sliding Away
For a long time, the "drag" concept has been abused by software developers. If you don't like the tool bar at the top of the window, you can drag it to the bottom. If you don't like the order the buttons are in, you can drag them into another order. It's easier for the designers than having some super-complicated "preferences" dialog box that the user has to hunt through the menus to find.
The problem with dragging is that on modern software, everything is draggable, so there's a good chance of mistakenly using the feature. You go to press a button on the toolbar, but your hand slips at the wrong time, and you end up dragging the button off the toolbar, and you have no idea how to get it back. Sure, it's not often that you make that mistake, but it's probably more common than deciding you want to rearrange the buttons.
It seems that for mobile devices, "sliding" is going to be the technique that developers over-use. The big user-experience challenge on phones and tablets is coping with the small screens, and an easy solution is allowing the user to switch between different displays by swiping the screen as if pushing the screen to the side.
But using the Toronto Star mobile web page today, I realized the problems with that. They currently have it set up so that you can pan down the screen to scroll through the article (as with any web page) or you can swipe horizontally to get to the next article. It sounds like a good arrangement, but it's not implemented very well, for the simple reason that it can't seem to figure out which way you're swiping. If your finger isn't moving directly up or down right from the start of the swipe, it starts the screen moving to the side, and doesn't seem to notice that the rest of your movement is vertical. So instead of reading the second paragraph of the article about new money designs, I'm reading about how the TTC is struggling to keep pigeons out of the subway.
So developers, please don't abuse this concept any further. Restrict yourself to only one dimension of movement, say.
The problem with dragging is that on modern software, everything is draggable, so there's a good chance of mistakenly using the feature. You go to press a button on the toolbar, but your hand slips at the wrong time, and you end up dragging the button off the toolbar, and you have no idea how to get it back. Sure, it's not often that you make that mistake, but it's probably more common than deciding you want to rearrange the buttons.
It seems that for mobile devices, "sliding" is going to be the technique that developers over-use. The big user-experience challenge on phones and tablets is coping with the small screens, and an easy solution is allowing the user to switch between different displays by swiping the screen as if pushing the screen to the side.
But using the Toronto Star mobile web page today, I realized the problems with that. They currently have it set up so that you can pan down the screen to scroll through the article (as with any web page) or you can swipe horizontally to get to the next article. It sounds like a good arrangement, but it's not implemented very well, for the simple reason that it can't seem to figure out which way you're swiping. If your finger isn't moving directly up or down right from the start of the swipe, it starts the screen moving to the side, and doesn't seem to notice that the rest of your movement is vertical. So instead of reading the second paragraph of the article about new money designs, I'm reading about how the TTC is struggling to keep pigeons out of the subway.
So developers, please don't abuse this concept any further. Restrict yourself to only one dimension of movement, say.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Forgive The Umpire!
Here's a question to start arguments among sports fans: Which sport has the worst officials?
In terms of sheer number of mistakes, it would have to be baseball, but that's hardly fair since the umpires have to make far more calls than the officials of any other sport.
It's easy to criticize hockey refs, but the fact is everyone in the sport wants the rules to be only sort-of enforced. The officials (at least in the NHL) call the game the way people want it called, so branding them ineffectual is like criticizing pro wrestling referees.
Soccer is something similar. It's a terribly officiated game; between missing fouls and fall for dives, the referee might as well be a magic eight-ball. But we are talking about one guy looking for illegal activity amongst 22 people spread over nearly two acres. It's an unreasonable task, but the world's religious affection for the sport prevents anyone from acknowledging it.
Football officials make mistakes, as San Francisco fans have been claiming since that fouth-and-goal play at the end of the Superbowl. But after seeing the fill-in refs at the start of this season, no one else will be joining Niners fans in their complaints.
What I'm getting at is this: basketball has the worst officials of any sport. And if you knew me to be a fan of the Toronto Raptors, you had probably long since guessed that as the purpose for this discussion. This year the Raps have been on the short end of several bad calls by the officials, several costing them games, and a couple even resulting in apologies from the league.
I don't want to turn this into a rant that the league is against Canadians. Well, to be honest, I'd love to turn it into a rant that the league is against Canadians; I just don't think it would be credible. What I think is really happening here is an extreme demonstration of the NBA officials' well-known bias to better teams and players. This year's Raptors are in an unusual position: after a terrible 4-19 start, they've been 14-13 since then, for an overall record of 18-32. In other words, they're playing reasonably well, but have the record of a bottom-dweller. That's my theory, that a team that looks to most of the world like a league doormat - but is actually competitive in most of the games they play - is exactly what will best expose the official's favouritism of the league's elite.
In terms of sheer number of mistakes, it would have to be baseball, but that's hardly fair since the umpires have to make far more calls than the officials of any other sport.
It's easy to criticize hockey refs, but the fact is everyone in the sport wants the rules to be only sort-of enforced. The officials (at least in the NHL) call the game the way people want it called, so branding them ineffectual is like criticizing pro wrestling referees.
Soccer is something similar. It's a terribly officiated game; between missing fouls and fall for dives, the referee might as well be a magic eight-ball. But we are talking about one guy looking for illegal activity amongst 22 people spread over nearly two acres. It's an unreasonable task, but the world's religious affection for the sport prevents anyone from acknowledging it.
Football officials make mistakes, as San Francisco fans have been claiming since that fouth-and-goal play at the end of the Superbowl. But after seeing the fill-in refs at the start of this season, no one else will be joining Niners fans in their complaints.
What I'm getting at is this: basketball has the worst officials of any sport. And if you knew me to be a fan of the Toronto Raptors, you had probably long since guessed that as the purpose for this discussion. This year the Raps have been on the short end of several bad calls by the officials, several costing them games, and a couple even resulting in apologies from the league.
I don't want to turn this into a rant that the league is against Canadians. Well, to be honest, I'd love to turn it into a rant that the league is against Canadians; I just don't think it would be credible. What I think is really happening here is an extreme demonstration of the NBA officials' well-known bias to better teams and players. This year's Raptors are in an unusual position: after a terrible 4-19 start, they've been 14-13 since then, for an overall record of 18-32. In other words, they're playing reasonably well, but have the record of a bottom-dweller. That's my theory, that a team that looks to most of the world like a league doormat - but is actually competitive in most of the games they play - is exactly what will best expose the official's favouritism of the league's elite.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Help Me, John McClane, You're My Only Hope
Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time. Or, if you take inflation into account, Gone With The Wind is highest. But I've often wondered what the most seen movie is. That is, the movie that the highest percentage of people have seen at least once. For a long time, I would have said it was Star Wars, but I suppose there's now a lot of young people who have never seen it. Perhaps it's one of those much-celebrated feel-good movies like The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, or It's a Wonderful Life.
Even if Star Wars isn't the most seen movie, it is surely the most discussed and referenced movie. What I'm getting at here is: If you are one of the few people who has never seen Star Wars, should you bother? I mean, add up all the spoofs, jokes, friends talking about it, the toys and trinkets. Even if you haven't seen it, you probably know most of the story, a lot of the memorable lines, all the major characters, and what most of the sets and props look like.
I say this because there are a fair number of pop-culturally big movies that I haven't seen. Take Die Hard, since it has its umpteenth sequel coming out soon. I know the basic premise, who the protagonist and antagonist are. I even get the "yippee ki-yay" references, and why they're not using the complete quote. It's almost enough that I could believe I actually saw it and forgot about it. For instance, I saw Howard the Duck (What? I was young and foolish) and I remember less about it than I do of Die Hard, even though I haven't seen it.
I understand that Die Hard was a very good action movie, and while I do enjoy action, it's not my biggest passion when it comes to movies. So I have the same dilemma as people who haven't seen Star Wars: I'd probably enjoy it, but there's also better ways I could enjoy two-hours of time.
Even if Star Wars isn't the most seen movie, it is surely the most discussed and referenced movie. What I'm getting at here is: If you are one of the few people who has never seen Star Wars, should you bother? I mean, add up all the spoofs, jokes, friends talking about it, the toys and trinkets. Even if you haven't seen it, you probably know most of the story, a lot of the memorable lines, all the major characters, and what most of the sets and props look like.
I say this because there are a fair number of pop-culturally big movies that I haven't seen. Take Die Hard, since it has its umpteenth sequel coming out soon. I know the basic premise, who the protagonist and antagonist are. I even get the "yippee ki-yay" references, and why they're not using the complete quote. It's almost enough that I could believe I actually saw it and forgot about it. For instance, I saw Howard the Duck (What? I was young and foolish) and I remember less about it than I do of Die Hard, even though I haven't seen it.
I understand that Die Hard was a very good action movie, and while I do enjoy action, it's not my biggest passion when it comes to movies. So I have the same dilemma as people who haven't seen Star Wars: I'd probably enjoy it, but there's also better ways I could enjoy two-hours of time.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
No Sir, I Don't Like It
Here's a local business with a curious choice of name:
Seems nice enough, but I'll comparison shop at over Stimpy's Pet World.
Seems nice enough, but I'll comparison shop at over Stimpy's Pet World.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Axial-Tilt Blues
We're slowly building our way from one solstice to the next, and the days are getting a bit longer. It's about time. The short days and long nights have been getting to me.
Reduced winter daylight never used to bother me. As a child I would be parked in front of the TV before six anyway, so I hardly noticed the shifting of day lengths. They say lack of exposure to sunlight can contribute to depression, but it never seemed to have any effect on me. The winter semester in university where I had no classes before 2:00, so I never got up before noon. The February I worked in a cubicle facing away from the windows, so I only saw the sun on lunch break and weekends. None of it seemed to get me down (at least no more than the rest of my life.)
But this year it has bothered me. It'll be, say, 4:00pm and it hits me that we've got only about an hour of day left. That'll seem kind of depressing, in spite of the fact that: a) I've always been a night owl, and b) artificial lighting is readily available throughout the developed world. So maybe this is a sign that I'm becoming more in tune with nature. We'll see if I start getting the urge to get up with the sun too.
Reduced winter daylight never used to bother me. As a child I would be parked in front of the TV before six anyway, so I hardly noticed the shifting of day lengths. They say lack of exposure to sunlight can contribute to depression, but it never seemed to have any effect on me. The winter semester in university where I had no classes before 2:00, so I never got up before noon. The February I worked in a cubicle facing away from the windows, so I only saw the sun on lunch break and weekends. None of it seemed to get me down (at least no more than the rest of my life.)
But this year it has bothered me. It'll be, say, 4:00pm and it hits me that we've got only about an hour of day left. That'll seem kind of depressing, in spite of the fact that: a) I've always been a night owl, and b) artificial lighting is readily available throughout the developed world. So maybe this is a sign that I'm becoming more in tune with nature. We'll see if I start getting the urge to get up with the sun too.
Monday, February 4, 2013
I Am Not Amused
I previously mentioned that I've been using Google Now on my phone. That's Google's artificially-somewhat-intelligent personal assistant app. For the most part, it just sits in wait and occasionally offers a helpful hint, such as the time it will take to drive home under current traffic and weather conditions. But there have been some strange moments. For instance, on February 1st, it told me I'd walked 16 miles during the month of January, up six miles from December.
But the real head-scratcher came with the traffic predictions. Generally it's been pretty good at understanding which places I drive to on a regular basis. But recently I got a warning that it was time to leave for an event listed in my calendar. This was an hour and twenty minutes to go, which seemed odd since I had set the event's location as "Victoria Park", which I live within sight of. I had been planning on leaving ten minutes early. The warning came with a place on the screen to press for driving directions, so I tapped it just to see what kind of circuitous directions it would give me.
It turned out that it had ignored the Victoria Park I live next to. Instead it had assumed I meant Victoria Park in London, Ontario - a city I don't often get to, and I don't think I've ever been to its Victoria Park. All this in spite of the fact that I did a fair amount of those 16 miles of walking in this Victoria Park.
But the real head-scratcher came with the traffic predictions. Generally it's been pretty good at understanding which places I drive to on a regular basis. But recently I got a warning that it was time to leave for an event listed in my calendar. This was an hour and twenty minutes to go, which seemed odd since I had set the event's location as "Victoria Park", which I live within sight of. I had been planning on leaving ten minutes early. The warning came with a place on the screen to press for driving directions, so I tapped it just to see what kind of circuitous directions it would give me.
It turned out that it had ignored the Victoria Park I live next to. Instead it had assumed I meant Victoria Park in London, Ontario - a city I don't often get to, and I don't think I've ever been to its Victoria Park. All this in spite of the fact that I did a fair amount of those 16 miles of walking in this Victoria Park.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
The Latest Super Bowl Preview You'll Ever See
The Super Bowl is coming up tomorrow. We've been through the usual progression of non-football hype:
Like most people, I don't have any rooting interest in either team, so I have to make an arbitrary decision on the team I'm going to rest my emotions on. I've decided to go with the Ravens. Why? Well...
So that's good enough for me. The team I have arbitrarily chosen to be associated with for the next twenty-four hours will kick ass against the team I narrowly chose them over!
- talking about the ads without actually telling us anything about the ads
- how much the ads cost
- the effect on the host city
- the effect on bars in your city
- how much media hype there is
- how much food you're going to eat
- what it means to the two cities whose teams will meet in the game
- even more about how much hype there is
Like most people, I don't have any rooting interest in either team, so I have to make an arbitrary decision on the team I'm going to rest my emotions on. I've decided to go with the Ravens. Why? Well...
- As a Rams fan who came of age in the 80's, I still find it hard to cheer for the 49'ers.
- I've always felt sorry for any player who gets blamed for not personally carrying his team to a championship, such as quarterback Joe Flacco
- Their team colours of black, purple, gold and white are a combination my high school and university's colours
- I like the idea of a football team named after a poem.
So that's good enough for me. The team I have arbitrarily chosen to be associated with for the next twenty-four hours will kick ass against the team I narrowly chose them over!
Friday, February 1, 2013
Digital Utilization
Definition: the portion of your technology's usefulness that you actually use.
I've just used this MacBook Pro for playing Bejewelled, so my digital utilization must be pretty embarrassing.
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