inbetween

Fireworks: [daily dose of imagery]

As Canadians mark the country's 138th birthday Friday, a new survey shows we're failing in our knowledge of Canadian economic history.

The first Maple Leaf flag to fly atop the Peace Tower in 1965 has been flown back to Ottawa in time for Friday's Canada Day celebrations. It arrived from Belgium, where it has been stored in a box of memorabilia by the widow of a former speaker of the House of Commons.

Frank McKenna, Canada's ambassador to the United States, wants Canadians who live south of the border to help him counter the negative image of their country, perpetuated by the Fox News Channel.

Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy | CNET News.com

A Taiwan stock trader mistakenly bought $251 million worth of shares with a misstroke of her computer keyboard, meaning her company is looking at a paper loss of more than $12 million and she is looking for a new job.

Until now, scientists could not explain why ice cubes in your drink melt. They've known the basics, but the details remained elusive.

Contrary to a long-standing tradition, you don't need to wait for one full hour after eating before heading into the pool.

Millions of butterflies are showing up near Calgary, creating a rare treat for spectators. In fact, people in southern Alberta are seeing more of the colourful insects than they have in 20 years, said Ted Pyke, a lepidopterist, or butterfly expert.

Sorry it bleeds over. I'll fix that later.

How to make Marc Lyniage's PHP package work with the included Pear:

Edit /usr/local/lib/php.ini, and change the include_path to ".:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib";

Went to the Pride Parade this weekend, had a blast. It was shorter than expected, but the weather was nice. The after-party was actually fun this year, an unexpected treat.

Wake at ten. Sleep. Wake at ten-thirty, and sleep again. Wake and watch Teen Titans in underwear. Sleep.

Bathe, (don't shower), make coffee and oatmeal. Watch someone push your mother out the door, be glad it wasn't you this time.

Savour the silent house, remark on the rariety. Pack for the phony trip to the phony island with the real lover.

My Grandmother is dumb. She's gone over to the grocery store, without her walker. She's planning on bringing back groceries. Carrying them! She knows she can't do that.

Damn, I wish I could just lock her up sometimes.

update: she's home, and promised never to do it again. The bag boy that brought her stuff was kinda cute.

update: she got a neighbour to drive her to the store. from my house. to the store. the store that's across the street. a neighbour. because she thought we were out of food. she bought a cooked chicken, and left it on the counter for a couple hours. YUCK.

Got a lot of shots of the chains that day... got lots of photos in the queue. I need a automated queue management thingy. Hmm...

This week's challenge. Something about the texture really makes me happy, I think it convey's the tactile sense of the wood. I'm not happy about the framing though.

Walking, downtown Victoria. You can see the building reflected in the reflection.

Taken the same day as the other chain photos posted this month. Cropped, converted to BW, reduced the number of gray levels in Photoshop.

The big stone monolith thing at the university. Converted to BW, contrast poked and prodded to bring out the details in the stone.

Photostitching. Two images of the boat (damn thing didn't even fit in the view finder) then photostitched by the software that came with the camera.

Clearing out the queue...

The Victoria Pride Parade 2005 was a few weeks ago. This photo was taken just before the parade began. The flag is copied and pasted from a different image. This one had better framing, but the flag wasn't billowing.

Dear Telus:

You fucking suck. No really.

As reported on CBC and other news outlets, TELUS has been blocking its customers access to at least two websites. The company is, in effect, censoring its customers access to the Internet. Nothing in the Terms of Service agreement gives TELUS the right to censor my reading habbits.

The conflict of interest is clear. TELUS is blocking sites supporting the unionized workers in their job actions.

I spoke with a customer service agent with TELUS this morning. He claimed that the censorship was due to one of the websites posting photos of employees entering a TELUS building, and the other was displaying information regarding the companies assets. Neither of those acts is illegal. The customer service agent even said that no representative from TELUS spoke with an administrator of either site, requesting that the materials be removed.

What will happen if TELUS decides it doesn't like my website? Could TELUS block the CBC website, if the CBC posts a picture that it doesn't like? The chilling effect here is very clear: TELUS customers can only read what TELUS approves. Its disgusting. I pay for a service, not for censorship.

I've complained to the CRTC. I hope every TELUS customer does as well.

Still clearing the queue out: the Legislative Assembly on Pride Day. A very boring shot, but technically interesting considering the amount brightening in the lawn and building. The parade itself was fun, but quite short. It was very unusual to watch for me.

update: gah. Don't click the link. The website is terrible, filled with DHTML and Flash, where simple, factual HTML would have sufficed. I shouldn't need Flash just to find out the history of the building.

converted to B+W in photoshop, cropped, contrast adjusted.

This is likely one of the more interesting images in the queue right now. Cropped, and colour adjusted in Photoshop. The photo is of the building on Fisgard and Douglas (I think. There was beer tonight). I really enjoy the reflections.

Connect the printer to the Mac. Restart the mac. This seems stupid to me, but it really is the only way to get the Mac to reckognize the printer, even though it's a USB printer.

Install the Samsung-GDI-Foomatic driver. Did you know that Lexmark printer you've connected to your Mac is really a repackaged Samsung printer?

Install the ESPGS interpreter on the same page. ESPGS will act as some sort of postscript interpreter/filter thing. Even though the E210 is a postscript printer, there is no interpreter in the printer, so you have to install one.

Install the Gimp-Print Printer Drivers. Mac OS X doesn't come with support for the Lexmark E210. The printer isn't supported by Apple, or Lexmark. Gimp-print will manage it.

Open "System Preferences", and click on the Print & Fax icon. Click on the Set Up Printers... button. If you don't have another printer installed, the application will prompt you to install a printer. Hold down option when you click add. Really. Just do it, don't bother asking why: you'll get a headache if you try to think about what's going on. If you already had a printer installed, hold down option and click the Add icon. If all has gone well, you should be able to select "E210" from the device drop down menu. Select Lexmark from the Printer Model drop down, and then scroll down to "Lexmark E210, Foomatic+gdi".

Done. Really, you should be able to print.

posted here because I don't want to have to waste another saturday with google.