Categories: Top :: City

Rant: Radio -- wheres the music?
Wed, 06 May 2009

I know I know -- picking on radio is not a difficult task. Like kicking a tree (easy target, since we don't talk about kicking people when they're down anymore.) Radio has its faults but I still enjoy it, and its vague sense of community and spirit.

I imagine most (or a significant portion of) radio listening is during rush-hour .. the morning and evening commuter cycle. Further, I assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that most people tune into the radio for some music. It may be that people tune in for entertainment of any kind but at least for me - some days I might enjoy a good raunchy morning show, while others I just want some good music. And since I'm commuting while chauffeuring around my beautiful baby girl I'd like to be able to find fun simple family or rock, and have the option to fine The Heavy for my return trip from the sitters.

The trouble is -- during the morning commute, there is _only_ talk radio. Roll through a dozen stations and you get only talk or commercials, never music, for an hour or more there. I don't get it. So the radio is simply not an option .. my little one is not interested in listening to people gab, she wants some Rafi or some Reggae (no joke.)

Sillyness. So either everyone else really wants talk radio or..... wtf?

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Day by Day: Life Goals
Wed, 26 Nov 2008

I'm sure sometime in the past I started on a list of things I'd like to accomplish in life, and probably discarded it for foolishness. I know for sure I started a list of things I had done, major milestones, since I'm pretty forgetful and thought it might be nice. Then discarded that too, for foolishness :) But it occurred to me I could make a simple proposed life goals list now, akin to an Achievement in so many online game services ..

1. Work on bettering myself as a husband and father. (I don't say "be a good father" since that implies you can stop working at it once you 'get there.')
2. Work on bettering myself; my health (to live longer to be a better father, and to live better), to learn more, and to somehow someday .. learn how to relax and enjoy life, rather than forever trying to strive somewhere.
3. Listen to all the RUSH
4. Catch up on all the years of Dr. Who
5. Try not to laugh at Robert Jordan fans.
6 through 739. Complete a game of Sid Meier's Civilization.

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Cynicism: Psychic Nikki .. cheating!
Fri, 31 Oct 2008

I was listening to CFNY (a Toronto radio station) this morning and they had Psychic Nikki on; afterwards I thought to do a couple weeb searches on a lark and one of the links I stumbled across I found amusing:

Tinyfrog

In essence, a few people are tracking 'psychic's weebsite predictions, and noticed Psychic Nikki has actually retroactively added events to her posted prediction lists. As the events occur she watches the news and posts them to her old lists. As a regular to CFNY I'm tempted to call in and ask her about it -- really, with her forever bragging about accuracy and prediction hit-counts and so on, she shouldn't be 'cheating'. (Or go ahead and cheat, but then don't brag about accuracy.)

For shame Nikki, for shame!

*busted*

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Rants: Dating sites mummifying the social scene?
Thu, 16 Oct 2008

Busy times of late; I should be blogging about the Google Android based G1 phone and its ups and downs, and my thoughts on if developers will lead the pack, of if developers will follow the consumer, and fiddlings with the GPH GP2x Wiz and the upcoming OpenPandora machine. But things have been busy, so for now my little rant on dating websites.

Disclaimer -- I've been out of the dating scene a long time (thank Crom for that; hell, those in the scene should thank Crom for that!) so I'm really just arm waving here.

I'll dodge the intro -- humans are social creatures; people who hide in their caves are viewed with distrust; geeks were beat up for being merely socially awkward. Etc.Instead, let me cut right to my point of concern..

We've all been there - an elevator, a club, a party, a wedding (or funeral, perv) and seen someone that attracted us. Someone attractive could be hot, or cute, or quirky or any combination. Someone could also be hot and totally unattractive. Theres body language, theres details you don't just pick up from an image .. theres the swing of the hips, the walking gate, the mischief in the eye, that spark. When you talk to someone, theres the way they move, the way they talk, the accent. Most important of course is what they say, how they say it. How you interact.

With a social dating site, my worry is this -- you see a splash of images from a person, and some book-sleeve self promotion they've written up. Maybe even some extra info. To summarize -- you've got a shopping list, a tight little summary designed to sell a person, written by people who probably aren't good at writing such advertisements.

So instead of body language, you get a couple static pictures probably lacking personality. Most people are not photographers. And you get a resume. A fracking resume for Kobols sake!

You get 'advertised' verbiage; not interactive, not tailored for you as you've met someone and struck up a chat; they're words crafted, and told to you.

You've got a feature sheet.

In essence, social sites seem to me, on the surface, to be selling people like cars are sold. Set you up for a test drive date, I suppose. And thats fine, and maybe social dating sites also create something new.. thats fine too. But as they increase in popularity (which is good, don't get me wrong) I begin to worry.. are these sites making people too one dimensional?

I mean, theres a lot of really cute quirkly girls out there, who aren't on the hot scale; will that come through as someone browsers 30 other girls on the same site, giving each one 10 seconds of photo view?

I mean, my wife didn't give me a resume when we met. I suppose while I'm posting this to the 'net's long memory, le me add -- get off my lawn or I'll whack you with my cane!

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Rants: Email Law #47
Mon, 04 Dec 2006

I'm sure this piece of land has been claimed before, but in case not: "For each reply to an email (it will repeatedly be replied to), the replies CC list will grow a length equal to target emails CC list (or 1 if none.)" Perhaps this should be Fibonacci's Email Law.

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Rants: Whats hidden in the EULA?
Sat, 02 Dec 2006

Someone is installing the Microsoft 'Works Suite' package, and before doing so is reading the EULA so as to know what not to touch. A sad reality we live in. Some weird stuff in there, so be careful.. (we already know theres weird stuff in the OS EULA's, letting MS uninstall applications from your machine if they don't like them. Doubtful they'd ever do that, but nonetheless, the clause is in there.)

For instance, although MS Works includes an art editing package you're not allowed to make 'obscene' images. Who defines what that is, and what business has some software company in telling you what you can or can not draw? It certainly makes you wonder if they're laying claim to ownership and responsibilities for your work. Can you sue Adobe for permitting you to print copies of dollar bills? Scarier is Microsoft Money, in whose EULA notes that the application makes unannounced connections to the net to in order to send details of transactions and bank account names to Microsoft. Not sure what they're using that information for, but it certainly doesn't sound right.. especially squirreled away in the EULA that few read!

Apparently you're only allowed to make up to 1000 printouts or uploads of maps from Streets, but only 250 times to a PDA. Again - what does it benefit MS to make up arbitrary limits? Suspicious elements like these just serve to annoy anyone who stumbles across them.. as few as that might be. I wonder if kids can install this stuff, seeing as they're not able to 'sign' contracts? Oh, and curiously enough -- you can make one print of the documentation (and are not allowed to duplicate the paper documentation.)

They do have an interesting one; each part (text editor, drawing package, financial package, etc) has to be installed together, and not individually to different machines. You can install the whole lot on one other machine, but only for personal use. Careful though, you're only allowed one print of the documentation, not one at each station :P I'm sure those rules are common, but interesting nonetheless.

It goes on of course, but bleh.

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Rants: The city thinks we want toll roads?
Fri, 10 Nov 2006

On local radio and websites, the message is being passed that when polled the people don't mind being tolled. (I'm so clever with my rhymes.) Naturally I assume no citizenry were actually asked ;)

Let me put this into perspectice..

So, what is really being asked here is -- given the lackluster history of the existing money being spent, whethor we would fork over _more_ money (even from people commuting in from other towns) and trust city planners to actually do something useful with it.

Myself, I ask these questions..

So, anyone who is asked.. please let them know -- no, we do not want to give you more money, and no we do not trust you with that money. Toronto has been making a mess for a long time.. how about they put something foreward that earns some trust in this matter, first, before asking for more?

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Rants: Spammers took the blog out for a few days..
Tue, 07 Nov 2006

Alright, so not only in the past did various spammer-bastards wipe out the comment system and do other defacements, they now managed to hijack the blog to send out spam to innocent folks. These spammers really are total scum. I won't rant overly much about how illegal or sickly their villainous activities are as I'm sure you know already.. and it would just amuse them if they even read the many simple sites they destroy each day. But gorramn, if this sort of thing happens to my blog, my message board, my mailing lists, my inbox - every day - then it sure must happen to everyone. How many spammers are there? how automated are their attack tools? Certainly they're sophisticated enough to implant temporary webservers on peoples desktops and other trickery, but my little niche in the net is so insignificant and yet they hammer away all the time..

I should thank them of course; I could've used the time to play games or go out or something, so they saved me some money sitting around fiddling with security and auditing some CGIs and such; and they do help provide employment for so many ISPs and techies in the world. Oh yes, we all must thank them.. I've got my lepip ready for the day.

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Day by Day: Full Shell Peanut
Sun, 15 Oct 2006

Ahright, I bet about 3 people will catch the reference :P

This is my peanut butter.
There are many like it but this one is mine.
My peanut butter is my best friend.
It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my peanut butter is useless.
Without my peanut butter, I am useless.
I must eat my peanut butter quickly.
I must eat faster than my anti-peanut campaigner, who is trying to stop me.
I must eat him before he stops me.
I will.
Before Crom I swear this creed: my peanut butter and myself are defenders of my
breakfast, we are the masters of those campaigners, we are the saviors of
my waistline.
So be it, until there is no campaigner, but breakfast.
Amen.

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Rants: Freight, Or, How the Auto Dealers Trim the Marks
Mon, 02 Oct 2006

With a little one on the way, it is time to upgrade from my twelve year old beater of a car; while I love that old go-kart, we need more space and a little more safety, but after talking to a dealership I think I've narrowed in on at least one of the thirty-seven ways they attempt rip you off.

But first, a piece of wisdom that cannot be left unspoken: 

A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?

        And the Master answered:

        It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.

        It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City
to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns
have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.

        And that is Fate?  said the priest.

        Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.

        That's all right, said the priest.  I wanted to know
what Freight was too.

                -- Kehlog Albran

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Rants: Where to buy music where the buying doesn't suck?
Wed, 20 Sep 2006

Say you're in the market for some new music (or even old music) and are too lazy to support mom and pop or The Man to head out to the strip-mall to do the deed. I admit -- for books and music where the pricetag is small and the shipping is either free or non-existant, I'll buy online. I really like to support locals, support Canada, all that.. but when it comes down to it, I end up shopping online since its just so bloody convenient (and I'd be a hippocrit if I didn't, seeing as I sell stuff online.) So, if we take it as given you're going to purchase online - where can you do it that it doesn't just suck?

Edit: see below

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Rants: The gorramn spammers must be stopped!
Tue, 19 Sep 2006

Those bastards have done it again! Aaargh!

Six months or a year ago I was pretty annoyed when my blog here started to get over-run with spam -- automated faked replies to my entries; comments that were essentially adverts to some random site loaded with viruses and such. Certainly they offered nothing of value but more to point -- they occupied my resources for their purposes and violated my conditions of use... of common decency. Fine, sobeit -- the blog software I use is convenient for me but not so well protected against such attacks so as with all things done out of generousity, bastards-of-the-world would destroy it. Rather than invest time ot deal with it I just removed the comment system and put links to LJ .. sucks, but what can you do?

Well, the bastards have gone and done it again!

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Paranoia: Have they already won?
Thu, 04 May 2006

The following is for the paranoid post-modern who reads reactionairy web-news too much :)

Some folks I know have abandoned news websites and the daily paper altogether and they're probably happier for it. Myself, I love to sit back on the weekend and catch up with a good dead-tree newspaper. Heck, like everyone else I browse a few news websites every day or two - CBC, Slashdot, CNN etc - but usually come away with heightened blood pressure one way or another. Mostly I'm just relieved that in Canada our government is pretty lazy and so fewer problems erupt here - though I do fret knowing inevitably that any whacky Big Corporation Lobbied bills passing in US usually will gradully occur here. We must be vigilant to prevent the recording industry from making us pay to open our mouths, and to prevent the government from requiring cameras in our doormats. (Do I jest? Considering the FBI spies on vegetarians...)

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Rants: One mans comment in a Slashdot posting, re: Army
Wed, 15 Mar 2006

This lad Daniel Dvorkin replied in the Slashdot thread here. His reply hit me in the right place for today, so I thought I'd share.

These people you so casually dismiss as "robots" sign up, generally speaking, when they're eighteen or nineteen years old; they believe, almost without exception, that they are doing so to serve their country, to protect the Constitution and the flag and Mom and apple pie. And you know what? At most times throughout our country's history, they've been right.

Just a few years later, if they're unlucky enough to have enlisted at a time like the current one, they're old men, scarred by things no human being should ever have to see. That's what war (any war, including the "good" ones) does to people. That doesn't happen to robots.

I started out as one of those nineteen-year-old grunts; a couple of years later, dimly sensing what was coming down the pike, I cross-trained as a medic, in which capacity I served in Desert Storm. I had no desire whatsoever to "profit from the misery of others" -- I wanted to serve, and I was, relatively speaking, one of the lucky ones. I don't have anyone's death on my conscience. I do have memories of things that will give me nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of my life ... and mine was a very, very short war. What those kids over there are going through now is so much worse I can't quite get my mind around it.

They're not robots. They're your son, your niece, your little brother, caught up in a horrible situation not of their own making. Don't take your anger out on them. Save it for the evil old men who never exposed themselves to that kind of horror, who would never allow their own children to go through it, who casually, thoughtlessly, cheerfully send other people's kids off to hell.

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Rant: *grumble* Taxes *grumble*
Tue, 14 Mar 2006

So Revenue Canada gives me a call to ask for something; the person on the other side was a really nice gal, and I must admit than in all my dealings with the tax boys they've been friendly and courteous -- doubly so for the company taxes. But as any know - when the tax man calleth, no good can come of it.

In this case its a request for some information and clarification for my personal return a number of years ago; thats fine, but I'm sure it can lead to no good and more to point, it just brings up something that annoys me: Running a business really just means you work your tail off to feed a bunch of greedy folks from government to middlemen. The guy who works his tail off the most really doesn't get all that much out of it, in my humble opinion. All the hands are out, but all you want to do is keep keep them out of your pocket and make the end customer happy.

But anyway; its just one of those days, so I had to vent :)

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Rant: The Payback Blog (re: Sony Being Irresponsible and Probably Criminal)
Thu, 10 Nov 2005

(From the title you might suspect this to be about a Donald Westlake novel - it should be but alas it is not.)

Instead I continue my trend of posting far too many technology rants, but this time its joyous news - the lawsuits against Sony are mounting. God only knows how Sony decided it was a good idea to install rootkit spyware into a consumers PC when they buy music (even aside from ethics, of which Sony evidently has none), but they'll finally get hit in the wallet which might actually get their attention. Cutting to the chase, Sony has been making bizarro-world decisions for awhile now -- after having huge hits with the Playstation and Playstation 2 they apparently decided to use those victories for evil - like the proposed Blu-Ray DVD technology which requires a DVD player to phone home to Sony across the 'net before allowing the DVD to play. Or their newly announced one-player-only technology which prevents a DVD from being played on any player which wasn't the first one it was played on -- take that Blockbuster movie and game rentals! Take that, loaning your purchased media to a friend!

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Rant: Rogers - Payback's a Bitch; Sony.. You're Next; Firefly is good.
Wed, 02 Nov 2005

Obviously, I'd like to actually make a difference to Rogers but being an individual, I cannot; as a consumer, we can only speak with our hard earned cash and so I have.. while Rogers sees fit to charge a pile of cash each month for long distance (and surprise us all with it, no less), Bell was entirely happy to waive all monthly fees in order to make Rogers less happy. (I do not delude myself that Bell did it to make me any happier.) Switching long distance is easy, so why not? Its not like its a bank account.. thank god I keep my money in in buried toilets.

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Rants: I hate Rogers. And Lawyers. But mostly Rogers.
Fri, 28 Oct 2005

As everyone knows, I'm a chatty guy.. and I do like to write with a little wit and charm. But today I'm annoyed, and sleep deprived, so you get none of that ;) Its late, I hope I spell correctly.

OKay, I've been frothing at the mouth all day, but decided to wait until much later before blogging anything up. I've not even called up Rogers support phoneline yet, since all they'd get out of me would be a string of savage profanities.

But first a short story from my past: I remember as a kid my father telling me that we had to try and grow to be well rounded and know a lot of different things - that focusing too much on just one thing might lead you into hot-water. "We should all know how to build things, and take things apart, and fend for ourselves." he wisely dictated. Well, it strikes me now that we've all failed to do just that - we've all specialized so far that we each know some topic or two very deeply, and only know the briefest of tidbits about anything else. Please prove me wrong.. tell me you know how a cell phone works, how a SLR camera differs from a point-and-shoot, how to navigate through a forest at night, and how to make a really really good soup from scratch.

And let us remember - there used to be freedom until the lawyers took it all away.

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Rant: Sithlords are everywhere
Mon, 13 Jun 2005

(Sung to the tune of Elvis is everywhere by Mojo Nixon.) I realize I should change this blog's title to "Jeff's near-daily rant" but I'm hoping to not be so angry all the time, though it has been a winner of a month I tell ya. (And I was quite testy with my wife yesterday afternoon and I'm eternally grateful that she's such an understanding and wonderful woman :) The original post title before I realized the potential for a Mojo Nixon reference was "Sithrealtors", as I rip into realestate agents and bankers. Easy pickings for a Monday morning.

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