Category: Random musings

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Encyclopaedia Britannica goes out of print

I was going to write a supportive blog about Quebec’s resistance against the crime bill that the government has tried to ram down the province’s gullets, but I’m afraid of being put on some terrorist watch list along with the environmentalists and being tracked down by Mr. Toews. Instead, I will write about an equally timely (if more mundane) topic…

Encyclopædia Britannica is going out of print and will soon be available only in its on-line version. I haven’t even seriously thought about print encylopædias since the late 1990s and the last time I used one was around 2002. While they may become collectible items a few years down the line from now, I certainly won’t miss them.
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Unreadable file formats and bit rot: Novel problems in the digital age… or not?

If you’ve been using computers for long enough, you’ve probably faced unreadable file formats or changes in distribution media: How do I open this old WordPerfect document? How am I going to read those files stored on a ZIP disk? Photographic prints and print editions of books have much less demanding requirements for seeing their contents. You found a box of slides from the 1960s? No problem; just hold them up to a light. In fact, if you have a good slide scanner or projector, despite their age, the pictures might still be of higher quality than images produced by your compact digital camera! The problems of unreadable file formats and changes in physical media are unique to the digital age. Or so some might have you believe (especially those pushing cloud services).
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Going west

Air travel is really quite astounding. In the wee hours of the morning of Friday, I hopped on a plane bound for Vancouver and arrived at my destination before the start of the business day. Some people have jitters about flying but not I. Get on ((No hop ons, though)) and, after zipping through the air in a flying Pringles can, step into an new airport that is at once familiar and foreign.
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It's not your limits that define you

“Peter Rabbit is this stupid book about this stupid rabbit who steals vegetables from other peoples’ gardens. 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82…” — Lucy, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown

It’s not your limits that define you but your attitudes towards them. While I could be writing about physical or mental limitations, my blog post this week is about one that almost everyone growing up in North America has faced: word limits.
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Who wants to buy tonight's test?

“Who wants to buy tonight’s test?” And what would you do if you heard someone say this? Oh, and if your answer is, “Raise my hand and say ‘I'”, please stop reading and go lick a lamppost. I was faced with precisely this dilemma three to four weeks ago. When I heard that uttered, I was at one of the University of Toronto’s suburban campuses that I shall not name, but only state that my high school, the University of Toronto Schools, is often mistaken for said campus.
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Schmidt's on in China (and Hollywood)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt opposes new US copyright laws that requires ISPs to remove offending URLs from the Internet on the grounds that this is censorship. Would he say the same thing if someone leaked Google’s search algorithm(s) onto the Internet? Maybe not, considering Google’s support of censorship in China — at least until they were the target of cyber attacks had a change of heart.

In an ironic twist, he also supports the rights of Hollywood to fight against pirates saying, “Their business models are threatened by theft”. Why ironic? Last time I checked, large swathes of Google are powered by copyright violations. Hello, YouTube! Or even some of its digitization projects.

Edit: This post is short, but tangentially related to a long paper I’m writing that I hope will be interesting. Fingers crossed!

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Life on a shoestring: Part III — Food

No, this is not a post about eating peanut butter and bread or becoming a vegan or freegan to save money. This was supposed to be a longer piece, but… well…

Canada, as a whole, is awash in food. Not only are we facing an obesity epidemic, but we have the luxury of eating more food just so that we can or ought to go burn it off at the gym. Yes, many of us are quite sedentary, but for those of us that aren’t, if you had to limit your daily physical energy expenditure to 500 “leisure” calories, what would you use them for? Taking a walk? Playing an instrument?

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Trick or Treat, Mayor Ford!

I wish a large number of people would dress up as Marg Delahunty ((Would that make her Marg Delahaunty?)), Princess Warrior, and go trick or treating at the Mayor’s house. Those not wanting to go the whole nine yards could grab a video camera and film the ordeal or drive a black SUV carrying the faux camera crews and Princess Warriors.

I love pranks.

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Life on a shoestring: Part II — Pedal for your Power

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles. — Thomas Edison

I recall going to a science centre as a child and seeing a stationary bike hooked up to a generator and lightbulb. Museum patrons could do a bit of cycling and watch as the light burned brightly. Nowadays, cycling powers exercise bikes’ onboard computers and “regular” bikes can be hooked up to generators at the cost of a few hundred dollars. Now, before I continue, I must stress that the thought experiment proposed should remain as such — a thought experiment — and no more. It would likely fail on both an economic and environmental basis in the context discussed.

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