New glasses!

I got a new pair of glasses after determining that the current pair didn’t quite fit my more slender 2009 face. The frames are just a touch bigger than I would have liked but aren’t too bad. Thanks go to Nic for the picture, taken yesterday at Melriches. Getting a decent photo of me is something of a minor miracle.

me-10-17-09

And for a laugh, here’s a self-portrait I just took of me wearing my old glasses (not the ones I got in December 2008, the ones prior to that). True, I was 40 pounds heavier when I originally wore them, but still, it’s like any fashion sense I had was removed at some point by aliens as I slept blissfully unaware. The old glasses are, to use the technical term, “big ass”.

big-ass-glasses

User comments: Halfway from coal, halfway to diamond

I first got online back in the late 1980s. I remember trying to play Populous over modem with a friend (we both had Amigas). Later I took my first tentative steps into the realm of BBSes and message boards, connecting through local ISPs and taking part in discussions via Fidonet. Conversations online back then were radically different than now, of course. You subscribed to topics that interested you and every few days you’d receive a new packet of messages. Using a message reader you’d sift through them, find ones you wanted to reply to and then upload your responses, which would also take several days to arrive to others. In a way, it was just a semi-automated version of writing letters. As such, posts tended to be longer and more thoughtful. You didn’t waste a reply with something terse or forgetful because it could be upwards of a week before you got anything back (it was truly a delight when new packets of messages would sometimes arrive the very next day!)

By the mid-90s computer magazines were going on about the two hot topics of the day: Windows 95 and the Internet. I was cruising along with a 14.4 modem and split my time between browsing my ISP’s file database (text-based UI only) and taking my first tentative steps on the World Wide Web using early versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. I was absolutely dazzled that you could do more than one thing at a time on this fancy web thing. I could view a site and download a file. Amazing! Slow, too, but compared to 300 baud modems that downloaded text slowly enough to read it on-the-fly, it seemed like the future had arrived.

BBSes began to die out as message boards started appearing and I stopped using Fidonet (I remember being subscribed to the Music category and reading insightful posts from someone named Patrick Goodman back around 1990 or 1991. He was a huge fan of Queen and I vividly recall his devastation at the death of Freddie Mercury). Like everyone else, I jumped over to message boards which allowed for very nearly instant communication (that was also available via numerous instant messenger clients like AIM, ICQ and others, all of which were built more around one on one conversations).

As the Internet became a larger presence in our lives, it has continued to evolve. Nowadays it is more the exception than the rule that a company has a website. Magazines and newspapers (especially) have sometimes struggled to stay relevant when information can be disseminated quickly and “free”. Myspace and Facebook has ushered in an era of so-called social networking and as news organizations beef up their online components, we have seen many include the ability for the general public — really, anyone with a computer/device that connects to the Internet — to post comments on news stories, giving non-scientific and not necessarily representative but immediate feedback on stories of the day.

I have posted several times here lamenting the state of the commentary made by Joe Public on various news sites. Admittedly, these posters are a self-selecting group, so one should always take their comments with the appropriate grains of salt. But when I reflect on how the public has acted overall, I admit I start to wonder. How intelligent, rational and logical is the average person? Why do I never see evidence of this in the things they say online? 😛

All right, that’s unfair, there is obviously intelligent, rational and logical commentary out there but it amazes and depresses me how often it is drowned out by voices that demand they be heard, however irrelevant and stupid those voices might be. This long post is, I suppose, simply a further lamentation.

I read The Tyee, a website that describes itself in the masthead as “B.C.’s Home for Culture, News and Solutions”. It would be fair to describe its editorial slant as more left or center-left, which often puts it at odds with both the provincial and federal governments, not to mention the Canwest-dominated local media (in particular, the two Vancouver dailies). Yesterday they ran a piece by Geoff Meggs, a Vision Vancouver city councilor, calling for the dismantling of the Georgia viaduct, a legacy of the freeway that never was. A sidebar to another blog post goes into greater detail on how to remove and rebuild the area where the viaduct exists. It seems like a reasonable plan to me and one worthy of consideration and debate.

The comments on the story cover a range of quality but I’m going to highlight a few of the worst.

snert writes:

A silly idea.

Thought up by someone with not enough to do. Kinda like, Oh! Let’s change the corporate logo.

Well, why is it a silly idea? What is the purpose of posting such a comment? There is no insight here, nothing to be gleaned except “I don’t like it”. Well, hooray for you, snert, you’ve made your unsubstantiated opinion known. To what end?

Dr Alexander uses the common ploy of grinding his axe regardless of actual topic:

Instead of restricting access…..

to downtown Vancouver by tearing down viaducts (no thanks, I paid for them, keep them there)….

Perhaps we should restrict Gordo’s access to BC.

We would all be better off.

“I paid for them” is a rationale for keeping them? How about no, it isn’t? And then an unrelated swipe at Gordon Campbell just because. Brilliant.

To be fair, there are longer comments that address the pros and cons of the idea and I offer my thanks to those that contributed them. But it seems so often that people just post lazy, negative crap for its own sake. Am I some crazy intellectual elitist for wanting better? Hell, I wince at half of the posts I make on this site, so I’m hardly one to cast myself as a model to aspire to, but at least I try when I put it out there on a shared forum. I wish more people did.

UPDATE: Nic brought up a term that had eluded me until now that encapsulates this “cranky old guy” view of the Internet: Eternal September. Wikipedia describes it thusly:

The expression encapsulates the belief that an endless influx of new users (newbies) since that date has continuously degraded standards of discourse and behavior on Usenet and the wider Internet.

It is both comforting and disconcerting to see this idea codified in a formal way, such as it is.

October, the bloggiest month ever

I have at least one blog entry every day of the month for October, for a total of 22 entries thus far (including this one) , making October my bloggiest month ever.

I am uncertain as to whether or not this is a good thing.

In other news, I am to walk the dog today while Tim and Sue are off to Kelowna for the weekend. It looks to be a wet experience, if nothing else.

13 books read — scary!

I’ve just finished reading my 13th book this year (scary!), appropriately it was Stephen King’s latest short story collection Just After Sunset. I had read “Stationary Bike” in a previous compilation (and it remains a favorite) but the rest were new to me. As always, some stories resonated more than others, a few seemed more like scenes or mood pieces than stories proper but the highlight for me was the one previously unpublished entry, a story called “N.” that delves into madness (and monsters) in a way that would fit perfectly in the Cthulhu mythos. I’m recommending the collection on the strength of that one alone, though there are several others that are nicely done. If any complaint is to be made it’s that none of the stories are particularly creepy.

My childhood fear: everything!

A few weeks ago I was discussing phobias with a friend and realized that I have or had about a million of them. Most, I think, can be traced back to some kind of childhood trauma. Let’s have a look!

Acrophobia (fear of heights): I love rollercoasters. This actually doesn’t present much of a problem even for someone afraid of heights, though looking down while climbing the first hill tends to heighten (ho ho) the white knuckle aspect. I can possibly trace this fear back to my older half-brother who grew up with my father’s ex-wife. After a car accident, he was left partially brain-damaged and to most people would seem a little “off”. We were visiting him at the hospital, though this was long after the accident, so it may have been a hospital of the mind, not body. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. It was a sunny afternoon in Victoria and we were either on a balcony or standing on a stair landing. In either case, we were well above the ground below. My half-brother thought it would be a hoot to pick me up and dangle me upside down over the edge. I did not agree but was not in a position to argue, so dangle away I did. I believe my hollering resulted in one or both of my parents halting this activity. I can’t say I was afraid of heights before this but I’ve never been crazy about them since.

Claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces): This could stem from one or two incidents. The first was being at a hospital in Victoria (a recurring theme, it seems — oddly, I have no phobias of hospitals). I don’t recall the specifics of why we were there, I just remember the elevator failing somewhere between floors and being stuck for a good while.

The second incident happened when a cousin and I went into the second closet of my bedroom. We were too young for hanky-panky so this was just “exploring”. Two of the bedrooms in the old house on St. Julian Street featured walk-in closets that had small closets in back, nestled in the space under the eaves. We had a flashlight so to better create a spooky cave feel, my cousin shut the main closet door. That was when the door knob fell off, landing somewhere on the bedroom floor. We could not get the door to open without it. A parent finally freed us after some stereo screaming.

Hydrophobia (fear of water): I never learned to swim properly as a kid. I could dogpaddle, sort of, but mostly I floundered and kept to the shallows. When the Moose Lodge installed a swimming pool, it was an exciting event for the town of Duncan. They had a pumper truck filling it and everything. No sane kid could ignore this spectacular new form of recreation, so I gingerly made my way down the ladder and into the shallow end. Somehow I managed to intake enough water to simulate a kind of pseudo-drowning. My dad fished me out. I don’t recall swimming in that pool again.

The follow-up to this occurred in January of this year when I attempted swimming lessons and discovered that water kind of creeps me out once it gets above my waist. I’ll go back. Someday.

Agoraphobia (fear of open spaces): This fear is best illustrated by a nervousness I’d feel if walking through a large field. I can’t think of how this came to be a fear. Maybe by that point in my childhood my mind just found it easier to fear everything rather than to pick and choose from a list. I still feel a tinge of this sometimes but it’s mostly gone now, so hooray for the list shrinking slightly.

And I should point out that a lot of these fears could be pushed aside by necessity. For example, I once lived on the 15th floor of a tower downtown. I tried using the stairs. Once. After that, the fear of closed-in spaces like the elevator got promptly ignored. I’d just “la la la” while getting whisked up to that 15th floor. Still, there’s little denying I was quite the basketcase-in-waiting as a wee one. I’m much better-adjusted now. Really!

Of grass mowed and slow runs

Today I ran early due to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon (early in this case meaning noon). Despite general rain forecasts for the week, the sky cleared up and it was sunny for nearly the entire jog. Should have left the jacket at home.

My tender right calf proved most vexing and I slowed my pace to reduce the chance of aggravating it. I was certainly successful in slowing, posting my worst times for a 35-minute run. A wiener dog puppy out in the field was chasing a ball and his barks sounded like they were filled with helium. This very cute fellow added +1 to my spirit. There was also a riding mower out cutting the grass alongside the trail, creating noise and belching diesel as I ran by it. -1 to spirit. There was also a road crew just up the hill next to the park and they were drilling with water, resulting in a highly unpleasant hissing noise. -1 again. The pleasant aroma of fresh-cut grass barely offset this. Overall, a bit of a wash.

I passed one person who was jogging so slowly I could have passed her if I’d been walking. It was some weird anti-jog. Maybe she was trying to run in place and not getting it quite right.

There was no burst of speed for the last five minutes, just quietly bearing it until the Nike lady told me to stop. When she did I hit the wrong command to end the run and it continued for another five seconds as I stood there fumbling with the iPod controls. I’m beginning to hate that sleek, sexy but difficult-to-use thing.

Time to bash The Province (and general public) again, whee! Part 2

Today’s Province:

HORRORS!

Scary!

Perhaps they are priming their readership for Halloween and getting in the spirit of all things ghoulish by presenting three unrelated stories about various bad people who are ON TRAIL, ON TRIAL or ARRESTED as noted above. Why are these three individuals lumped together and slapped on the front page of one of the city’s daily newspapers?

I don’t know.

Maybe it is because fear sells. Or it could be more prurient than that — there is a fascination with bad people and The Province is simply tapping into that for the public’s benefit. Certainly, there could be no news actually worthy of the front page in an urban area of two million people and a province of over four million, so it’s understandable the paper would have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, as it were, to put this motley crew front and center.

Speaking of the public, it’s time to poke into the brackish depths of reader comments on cbc.ca’s website again to see what nuggets of wisdom are being passed along by the people who voted the BC Liberals into power three times in a row.

In a story titled Tory logos on federal cheques draw fire we learn that several disbursement cheques of the novelty oversized photo-op variety were presented with not the Government of Canada logo but the Conservative Party logo. This is a no-no as it’s not money provided by the Conservatives but the federal government. Now, the common sense take on this is the Conservatives have demonstrated a penchant for what might be called sleazy, American-style campaigning and tactics, with an emphasis on negativity and doing things like this in the hope that they won’t be caught outright so that little logo can do its subliminal thing of associating the Conservatives with “free” money. This is a cynical line of thought but not particularly conspiratorial. They’re basically seeing what they can get away with and willing to shrug off whatever fallout may occur. Heck, they’re leading the polls, after all.

Here is one of the cheques in question:

The story dutifully notes the expected outrage from the opposition parties and the Conservative pictured above is unrepentant. But lo, look at the first reader comment from “CAN_Becket”:

I am getting really sick of the childish behaviour from both the Liberal and Conservative Parties….in fact, ALL parties.

If you ever watch Parliament it’s like watching a bunch of 5 year olds fighting with each other.

There are more important things to worry about these days than whether a conservative logo is on a novelty cheque…..man….get back to work!!!

Sick of the childish behavior. Well, that seems reasonable enough. Politicians are never the most best-behaved people around, that’s for certain and Parliament does resemble a playground during Question Period (or circus, depending on how your preferred analogies skew). But then we get to the last part:

There are more important things to worry about these days than whether a conservative logo is on a novelty cheque…..man….get back to work!!!

And here we see the typical knee-jerk reaction, the abandonment of critical thinking. Yes, there are more important things to worry about. The beauty of a news website is that it can accommodate stories of varying importance rather than arbitrarily decide what is or isn’t worthy of public discussion. There is a disconcerting use of the ellipse here, as if it was having babies, and an all-too-predictable three exclamation points, all the better to convey the reader’s apparently agitated state. “get back to work!!!” implies that someone (the story writer? The novelty cheque maker? The Tory MP? The opposition MPs? The investigating ethics commissioner?) is doing “this” (whatever it is) instead of some kind of work. In other words, this story is a trifle and should be ignored, which is exactly what the Conservatives would have wanted. Instead, our estimation of elected officials has dropped yet another notch and I’ll tell you, there ain’t a lot of room left for more notches.

This is not a grand scandal but it is something the governing party should be held accountable for. It’s a legitimate news story and the fact that the first person (and second and others — have a read) to respond wants to dismiss it in favor of more “important” things demonstrates how far politicians have fallen from grace, that we apparently no longer need to bother with the little stuff. Boys will be boys or something. As noted above, I am prone to being a tad cynical myself but there are still lines that must be respected.

Mostly I just wish people would think more and care more. And that the people we elect wouldn’t be such self-serving, power-grabbing scumbags.

And that The Province would get drummed out of business.

And that the world would be filled with puppies and rainbows.

How to be popular with the public: Die

The American Music Awards has announced its nominees for 2009, with the winners to be determined by online vote, the show airing November 22nd. One of the Artist of the Year nominees is Michael Jackson, whose most notable achievement this year was to die.

Apparently death is now a kind of artistic achievement. In a way it makes sense, as Jackson’s death was an entertainment spectacle for a few weeks this past summer.

He will be competing against Lady Gaga, who is not currently deceased.

iCan’t change the volume on my iPod

Or Taking The Good With the Bad: The Apple Interface Story.

I’m using the 5th generation iPod nano for my running, using it in conjunction with the Nike+ sensor to track my time/distance. The setup is pretty slick and seems accurate enough. When I jog I set the iPod to shuffle so it does its random song thing and given that it’s choosing from over 2,000 songs, not all of which are suitable for running, I sometimes want to click the Next button to move on to something a little peppier than Roger Waters’ meditations on death or alienation.

When I was using the Sansa Clip it was simple. The Sansa was clipped onto my shorts, so I could just reach down and click the Next button. The “wheel” on the Sansa is not a true wheel and it isn’t flush with the face of the unit, so it’s simple enough to know where your finger is on it by touch alone.

The nano is undeniably sexy. If you hold it sideways the unit is completely flush — there is not a single bump to be seen on its sleek body. And that’s a problem. Since it has no clip, I run with it in the pocket of my shorts or jacket and it’s easy enough to reach in to access it. I can even tell bottom from top because of the wireless sensor that attaches to the unit. However, the wheel used to control volume and song selection lacks any kind of tactile feedback when you’re simply trying to figure out where your finger or thumb is on it. Menu is at the top, play/pause is at the bottom. Okay, but how do you know when your finger is in either position and not anywhere in-between? On top of this, the wheel is prone to accepting input for volume in a somewhat random manner. You have to slide your thumb along the wheel with enough force to get it to register but given how tiny the wheel is and adding in the movement when jogging, I find any adjustment to the volume is just as liable to go from too quiet to WAY TOO LOUD with one errant flick.

Long story short: I wish the Sansa Clip worked with the Nike+ sensor.

For the jog itself today, it was cool and cloudy and my right calf, having been tweaked a bit on the last run, felt a little tweaked again today, slowing my pace a tad. I managed to pass a guy who was jogging a good half-lap ahead of me (250 m or so) and the only way I can see that as being possible is that he must have stopped or switched to walking when I wasn’t watching because brother, I ain’t that fast. I picked up the pace as per usual for the last five minutes and at the three minute mark I knew i was off my best pace but I was determined to make the fountain. I did so just as the nice Nike lady announced the end of the run.

I tied my second best distance: 6.6 km.
I had my second best km: 4.51/km (only 0.01 seconds off my best)
I tied my second best average: 5.19/km

In short, I was the Avis of running today.

According to the Nike site, my best 5k is 26 min. 15 seconds. I’ll see if I can get that below 26 minutes.