Gas prices top $1.20/litre this morning.
Monday will see a TTC strike.
Could Tuesday erupt in city wide riots and revolts?
Could the people take to the streets en mass, in a wave of frustration and anger towards both government and the oil industry?
Are we too polite as Canadians, and will we just remain behind closed doors, writing insipid blog posts pontificating on the options.
Why are Canadian's paying $1.20 when there are LOADS of oil reserves in Alberta. Why are we paying $1.20 with the plethora of oil sitting in Newfoundland? Why is gas cheaper in Buffalo right now than it is in Toronto? Why is Canada being handcuffed by foreign multinational oil companies?
Pfft.
Forget about it. What do I know?
I'm going to work from home on Monday.
Technorati Tags:
Toronto,
Gas prices,
TTC Strike,
Canadian Riots
Through a neat twitter
tweet by Mark Evans, I discovered this morning that ITWorld Canada has recently published a list of the
Top 10 Canadian Technology Bloggers.I was hoping to come across new voices. Alas, it's 10 folks I am already reading regularly (congrats Alec!!). Either I am a full-on nerd, or there isn't really a large field of Canadian Tech bloggers to choose from? :-)
This list is missing:
Jon Arnold - how is this possible!?!?!??!
Kevin RestivoHow about
David CrowDarren BarefootBuzz CanuckProfectioSo - if I can't find neat content via ITWorld Canada - where to look?
Who are *your* fave Canadian Tech Writers?
It's been a month now, give or take a few days, and I'm ready to get yummy Apple accessories for the Mac.
Last week it was the Mighty Mouse.
This week... an AppleSac. For safety and security. I've been shuffling the Mac from one location to another in the house, and it's yet to go on a trip. But soon summer will arrive, and at some point, the Mac is going to have to go on vacation. With me, of course. It deserves safety. Plus, who can say no to Sherpa fleece linings? No one can say no to a Sherpa. period.
Red Delicious. Red Burlap and Fleece MacBook Sleeve by AppleSac
I've been following the brave adventures of the
Sea Shepherd, ever since the Canadian seal massacres started this spring out east. The coverage in Canadian media has been spotty at best, and more often than not, simply one sided. The surprising long arms of the Canadian government have seeming silenced objective journalism when it comes to the Canadian Seal Hunts.
Last week, the Canadian Coast Guard attacked and boarded the Farley Mowat, the Sea Shepherd's vessel, resulting in arrests all around. The folks aboard the Sea Shepherd aren't your average conservation folks. They are some pretty bright, respected individuals who volunteer from around the world, spotlighting the utter ridiculousness of the Canadian Seal hunt.
There's lots of global attention, and yet very little is being said within the Canadian media industry, until today. Yesterday, Farley Mowat joined the volunteers from Sea Shepherd in the media spotlight.
The Sidney Herald has one doctor's account of the
terrors of the Canadian Coast Guard Attack.CTV covers Farley Mowat donating half the bail needed for the crew of the ship that bears his name.
Atleast the
Ottawa Citizen has a bit of decent coverage.
At some point, the government and folks in the east will realize that times have changed, that *ways of life* do NOT necessarily need to be preserved (at some point, people thought slavery was an acceptable way of life). The seal hunt is an antiquated, inhumane practice. Had the Canadian government spent as much on the hunters in re-training, relocation or creating a new industry as they did this year on *marketing* and coast guard operating expenses, the Canadian Seal hunt would cease to be a big deal.
Technorati Tags:
Sea Shepherd,
Farley Mowat,
Canada,
Seal Hunt
There's been a rash of livestock incidents in the GTA this spring.
A few weeks ago,
cattle were loose on the 427.
Yesterday,
pigs escaped on the 401.
I'm fully prepared for a chicken rig to flip on the 400 before we hit the Canada Day Weekend.
And why? It's not *all* driver error. Considering the laws of probability, and the number of livestock trucks traveling through the city, it's just a question of time before the chicken scenario occurs.
In January 2008, a chicken truck in Oregon spilled chickens all over the roadway.I say again. Simply a matter of time. Imagine 200 chickens on the 400. Like a massive pillow fight. But much worse.
Technorati Tags:
cattle,
chickens,
pigs,
GTA highways,
401,
427,
400
2 weeks ago, the Wiz set sail for america, and returned with gold in the form of an additional Guitar Hero guitar for our Wii. The game has never been better. The competition, the collaboration... the battles! Instead of having to just watch each other, the players in this house are now PLAYING each other. The chickadees are so much better at the game. No more need for a grownup to do the strumming, they are battling each other in duels all over the place.
The only downside of having Guitar Hero for the Wii is the inability to buy and download more songs. We actually considered getting Rock Band, if only to draw from a new pool of music. Now that's just insane.
:-)
Technorati Tags:
Guitar Hero,
Wii
Over the weekend I ran across a nifty new facebook feature:
People You May Know.
It presents friend recommendations to you, based on the number of friends you and the recommendation have in common. Now there's no more need to troll through all your friends' friends lists ;-)
This could have been handy about 11 months ago ;-)
Although - there is a flip side to this - if, perchance, you are picky with who you are accepting as friends (and I say this only because friend filtering is starting to set in....)it's oddly creepy that folks can see who you are friends with.
That being said - I'm there is also a setting that you can tweak in the privcay settings that will keep you out of those friend referral recommendations. It's the ability for friends of friends to be able to see you.... ;-) If you set it to Only Friends, you will be placed in stealth mode.
Technorati Tags:
facebook
An interesting piece of fluff floated into my inbox this afternoon -
eBay.ca Motors --- selling your car using eBay.
And from April 13 - 19th, there's no c
ommission fees! ;-) That being said, when you check out the fees, they are fairly small potatoes. Now you can easily *buy* cars on
eBay.
This could be the big competitor to the AutoTrader.ca
It will only be a matter of moments before there's also an eBay leasebuster option that rivals
leasebusters.caGulp. What's next,
selling your house on eBay? Wait - I think I might have already written about that ;-)
Technorati Tags:
eBay Motors,
Leasebusters,
Autrotrader
This is always something I’ve questioned: why do GSM Blackberries cause radio/speaker interference? You know what I mean, you’ve got your berry too close to the radio, or to any speaker, and every once in a while (likely when the Berry is checking with the cell tower) you get the worst feedback/clicking/irritation. It can happen at home, in the car, on a conference call. Once it even happened to me when I was in a hockey arena, and sitting too close to the timekeeper box.
Wow - did I get the big heck that time ;-) Still, what to GSM berries do that CDMA berries don’t?My TELUS Berry Pearl is polite and quiet. It’s the Rogers Berry Pearl (belonging to The Wiz) who’s troublesome and chatty.I’m forever locking it in the bathroom to keep it from interfering with every other sound device in the house.:-)
According to this smart fellow, Al Sacco, it’s because CDMA phones are using less RF frequencies than the GSM phones.
….some phones cause more buzzing than others is related to the specific frequencies they emit and at what power levels. (Specific absorption rate [SAR] regulations in the United States limit the amount of power cell phones can emit to roughly two watts, according to Bradley. The SAR is a measure of how much RF energy humans can safely be exposed to.)
This leads me to believe that CDMA phones, in theory, at least, are less harmful to humans.
Hmm, CDMA carriers should use this in the marketing!! :-)
If you’ve been following my adventures this week, you know I’ve become bonded with my new blackberry pearl. Yes, it’s a work phone (thank you, work!!)
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There’s often a time when I’m wishing I had a decent image or photo to add to something I’ve written. Somehow I stumbled across a thread last night that led me to Picapp. (Thanks Leigh!!!)
As I was busy plugging in a new air freshener this morning, I noticed a little power usage annotation on the back… ~ 2.1WAnd I thought - what the heck - these things *draw* that much power? They don’t do anything!!!!And then I started looking around to see if anyone else had noticed this - and what the power consumption actually is for these plug-in air fresheners.
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I’ve been pondering this question for almost a year now. Since moving out the GTA a few years ago, and switching to a more friendly organization, I’m a fairly hard core teleworker these days. It helps that 90% of the work I do involves people outside of the province, out of the country and out of the continent, and the support of the organization has been outstanding. I suppose it also helps that there are no wee monsters running around the home office. It’s peaceful and productive.
That being said - every time I drive into the analog workplace, I’m consumed by the question of how folks can afford to commute full time. I see the 404. How many of those people are going to be able to afford to drive downtown every day when gas prices hit $1.20/litre?
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I'm oddly amused and slightly interested in this.
Kleenex takes a *page* from
Jones Soda and creates an environment where end users can customize the product.
My first thought - if this doesn't get get kids blowing their nose on their own, nothing will.
Tags: kleenex, jones soda
I’ve just become the proud parent to a Pearl. Finally. :-)
After making the decision, and second guessing myself for the past few days, I think I’m glad. I like the size, and the weight; last night we bonded a little. It’s so very different from all the other Blackberry phones that I’ve had over the past [10] years, that it’s hard to make comparisons.
I’m getting used to the *nipple*. If you’ve got one, you know what I mean. If you don’t - it’s the little nubbin that has replaced the track wheel of the olden days.
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“I Help You Blog” has an interesting conversation regarding frequency vs topic, for blog publishing.
Here at jules.ca, I try to stay focused on telecom bits and technology pieces. That being said, there is likely a plethora of commentary that could be related to neither. Be it photography or little personal anecdotes. Why? Well, it’s illustrating a side of me that’s beyond bits an bites, I suppose.
Well, here’s my arguement, and it’s completely a personal one - there are about two dozen blogs i read religiously and they’re very focused, but the posts that seem to resonate the most are the ones that show a glimpse into their real lives. Darren Barefoot does this really well. Alec Saunders has it figured out…So does Liz Strauss. And Seth Godin.
So - i guess the question is - do you post on topic to attract an audience, and keep them by creating personal interest?
Maybe this blog is more like a mullet: Business in the front, party in the back?
That’s a shameful comparison ;-)
Technorati Tags: blogging, Alec Saunders, Darren Barefoot, Liz Strauss, Seth Godin
Yesterday’s big hubbaloo was the announcement of Adobe’s new web based, low cal version of Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express.
Of course, being the gurl I am, I set up an account, uploaded a few photos and gave it a whirl.
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The internets are abuzz.
Disgruntled consumer and wholesale customers alike are beating the drums of revolution.
Michael Geist has lively discussion.Mark Goldberg has lively discussion.Ahem.
Free markets dictate that if the service you are paying for is left wanting, you have the ability to take your dollars elsewhere. (once your contract is up, of course)
Free markets also dictate that a new provider will jump into the ring and take over where the incumbents have left off.
Folks who want unfettered internet access, lumping the good the bad and the ugly all-to-gether will likely be able to buy that type of service from specialized providers. There will likely soon be ISPs who are willing to take the risk, take the initiative and and jump into the swelling sea of net neutrality. But it's just not net neutrality, it's naked internet, if you will. Wild west internet. It's not a bad place, it's just a hard place to put any guarantees to. And I think that's where folks like Bell are trying to get to. More people want guaranteed internet than unfettered internet. To get to a place where you can have guarantees, you've got to be able to control some of the nuttiness that's going on inside your walls.
That being said - it's sort of odd that they are also throttling/shaping their wholesale service - but from what I'm reading, they are shaping the last mile, as opposed to the traffic heading out-to and back in from the internet. That's a bit of a dog's breakfast - traffic shaping at the DLS level. In theory, that's private network. Shared network, but private none-the-less. ISP resellers are going to have to figure out what they want to do to get out of that storm. They need to figure out their own guarantees and dedicated infrastructure from the BELL central offices back to their own networks. Maybe they have to shift away from buying shared network services, to buying dedicated network services. If the end user wants, nay, demands unfettered internet, I think there's got to be a premium for that as well.
Maybe
Barrett Xplore has the right idea by building their own last mile?
I'm going to track down ISPs in Ontario who aren't affected by traffic shaping from their upstream providers, and list them here. :-)
Technorati Tags:
Bell Canada,
traffic shaping,
throttling,
Michael Geist,
Mark Goldberg
It's a brave new world, world.Imagine having a wifi enabled digital picture frame. Anything you shot, or had shared on the internet, or had stored on your hard drive could automatically be sent to the frame. Now imagine your grandmother having this frame on her desk in Florida. Imagine your parents with a frame in their kitchen. Sharing photos has never been easier. No more memory cards to load and replace. You could be anywhere, and could email new pictures to the frame with a few clicks of your camera-phone keypad. I just need one of these. In fact, I think I need 3-4 of these!
WiFi Photo Frame - WiFi Digital Picture Frames - WiFi Wireless Digital Photo Frame - eStarling
Tags: wifidigital picture frame, eStarling
