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Holy Existentialism, Batman!

The question of what to do with this blog has come up before.  A few months ago, an old friend and I were in the middle of our typical banter when the conversation turned to nameplate websites and privacy and Google.  My friend is a private guy, and like me, he’s put careful effort into staying off the Google radar and is pleased by his success.  Me, my view changed a few years back.  And to spare you my attempt on a lecture about the evolution of human society in the next century, instead I’ll tell you about a Batman comic.

Plastic 4: The Streets

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Posted in me.

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Well of course it’s about me

We lost a family friend a few weeks ago.  My mother and him were neighbors as kids, and then they grew up and started lives in Canada.  For me, he was an uncle; I didn’t know we weren’t related till much later.  He was family, and his two sons were fondly welcome playmates growing up.  We were children together and grew into teenaged geeks together.

But life happens, of course, and university and careers swept us across the world on the wind.  At this point we’ve mostly been out of touch for years.  And it took this loss to draw our threads once again briefly together.

I don’t like funerals.  Not that anybody does, but I still feel the need to say so.  On the other hand, I think those are important.  Of all the major moments that we mark with ceremony, they’re the only one that is based in loss and not celebration.  And they’re the only one where the featured guest at best only half the point.  But you go because the person who passed away was important.  And you go because the people left behind are important.   Either way, I had to be there. 

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Posted in life, me.

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Boxing Loves

That’s right.   I love boxes.  You have a problem with that?

Altoid InukshukIn fact, it’s not just boxes that I like, but tins (*LOVE*), pouches, bags, blister packs (Most of them are outright evil, I usually hit a well-designed one just before I reach the homicidal stage of accumulated frustration).

It’s gone beyond the childhood magic of being able to play inside them.  Which is good since I don’t fit inside the box for my bluetooth headset.  But even if they aren’t viable as fortresses or spaceships any more, they are still magnificent articles of function and design.

For functional value, you can’t beat a box.  It packages whatever original item you got that the box contains.  Small ones can help to organize the litle doodads that seem to magically breed on my desk.  Larger ones become storage for cables, or pencils.  Shoeboxes store photos or cards or pens.

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Posted in life, productivity.

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Asked: Can I use 2 USB disk drives at the same time?

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Yes. But, Be Careful.

I killed a computer that way.

Yes

USB is designed to let you use 127 devices per controller, and most computers have one controller per port.  Which means that hooking up 2 drives (or more)  isn’t going to be a problem for your operating system.  Most of the time.

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Posted in asked, tips.

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Goofball to Enterprise

khan

So faced with a need to rent a car, I thought I’d price a few options, and one of the places I checked out was Enterprise Rent-A-Car, who presented me with one of the better prices I saw in my traverse.  But then I started clicking around and caught a little bit of fine print that prompted a spit-take:

KILOMETRES ARE UNLIMITED AS LONG AS THE VEHICLE REMAINS INSIDE THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, WITH A MAXIMUM OF 4000 KILOMETRES.

My immediate reaction was laughter. But I’m using the internet, which gives me the power to expose my brand of lunacy to an audience of millions tens a friend, maybe two.  Thus was I unleashed.

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Posted in life.

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Why the book had to die

It occurred to me that I have a blog.  Go figure.  And when I came to look at it, it was in the middle of something.  How embarrassing.  But I’m here.  A little.

First, the thing that wasn’t ready, previously, well, it’s done, public, old news.  But I went back and looked, and it may suck that I killed a book, but the result is still cool.  Go visit the callboard at the Théâtre Illuminata, and check out Chapter 1.

I barely had to do anything, but the flash widget is just fun.  For some reason, just clicking on the pages and waving them around is strangely thrilling.

Other than that, life kinda goes.  I’ve just started a children’s guitar lesson podcast.  I wonder if children’s guitars hurt less, because my fingers were raw, the day after.

DSC_3489Another creative project I’m trying to start working on suffers from a serious predation problem.  But still, I’ve been trying to sort gummy bears.  I finally had to tie the bags and move them to make me stop snacking.

MMm…  gummys.

We’ll see just where it goes.  And how much survives my snacking to become art.  And if my dignity can stand deliberately doing art.  I’m a little traumatized there.  Fortunately gummy bears taste very therapeutic.  Want one?

Anyway…  I’ve remembered that I have this thing.  I guess that means I have to try to use it.  And yet I’m still not sure of my voice here.  So here’s a placeholder.

Oh!  Yeah!  My dear friend Pam, from Facing East Again, came by to visit.  She and her kids and I traipsed till our little feeties were sore.  But I’ve got some good pictures.  Eventually.

Gotta work. Ciao!

Posted in life, me, Sunil.

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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

I know everybody is really excited about the debut of Lisa Mantchev’s “Eyes Like Stars,” but there’s been something weighing heavily on my conscience and I can no longer stay silent.

I’m amazed how easily a pure heart and good intentions can be lead astray. I hope that fragility will be taken into account as I lay my own heart out for judgment, and, Gentle Reader, I beg forgiveness for the darkness of the deeds done. But though I have many ways to rationalize what happened, in the end, there can be no question of my hands have wrought, and if I must bear this blight upon my soul… Continued…

Posted in books, life.

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i can haz BOOK!!

I don’t actually know how this happened, but I appear to be the first person checking in with Lisa having gotten a bit of mail today.

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Posted in books, cool, life, me, rants.

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Slaying the Creativity Dragon

Creativity is a skill.  And skills can be learned, it’s always a matter of learning a few techniques and getting practice so you’re comfortable using them.  But there isn’t a lot of room for creativity in the education system, and because we don’t value it as much as a culture, I think it’s left underdeveloped in most of us.

Instead, people say, “I’m not creative.”  Or they just stay quiet and admire (or envy) the artist types who are bizarre, incomprehensible animals capable of tricks as strange and remote as a gecko running up a wall or a hummingbird hovering in air.

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Posted in productivity.

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Asked: Why is it called D-Day?

Normandy On June 6th, 1944, approximately a 150,000 soldiers poured out of boats and through the meat-grinder of German defenses on the beaches of France in a somewhat desperate attempt to turn back the tide of oppression, fascism and all those other things that some truly bad people were trying to push on the rest of the world.

That operation was called D-Day, and since then the name has lived on as a moniker for a day of decisive action. But other than that I had no idea what it was called D-Day, so I started looking things up.  Here’s what I learned:

  1. There’s a startling consensus of online references that there’s no conclusive explanation of why they referred to the invasion date as “D-Day.”
  2. Second, this hasn’t seemed to stop anybody from making guesses.

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