I was on my way to work, on a fine Tuesday morning. Heading South on Dufferin, at Davenport, I had the green. A white Volvo was headed North, but suddenly, without signaling or giving me my right of way, turned West, crossing into my lane. I swerved trying to avoid it, but no go. It plowed into my front left. Both air bags deployed. (more…)

Wherein our hero, seemingly on an R. Buckminster Fuller jag, sheds more than his vestments; and shares the secrets of his weight loss with his audience. (That’s right, you and the other guy.) (more…)

It’s been a dreadful few days.  So I thought I’d share.

Saturday night I was on my way to a party at Centro, to celebrate my friend Brian’s 50th birthday.  The radio station was cutting out.  I thought some poor bastard was probably scrambling in a control room somewhere; so I’ll give him a few minutes to get his act together.  When I got tired of the continuous cutting out, I decided it was time to change the station.  I looked at the radio and realized it wasn’t the station: it was the radio.

That’s when I noticed all the coloured lights on the dash were on.  And the dash itself was growing dim.  And the acceleration was sluggish.

Best turn around and go home, I thought.  On the way, even though I was moving at a reasonable clip, the speedometer was often at 0km/h.

I got the car into the driveway, turned off the ignition and drew a sigh of relief.  I tried starting it up again, but no go.  I called Mario, our mechanic, and described the symptoms.  It was the alternator.  Towing, parts and labour: $400.

Sunday night, while I was laughing my ass off at the Winter Garden Theater, watching Lewis Black’s Dual Citizenship Tour, a tree from my backyard fell into a neighbour’s yard.  Thankfully, it didn’t damage the house.  In fact, my neighbour, who seems to be quite ill, poor woman, hadn’t even noticed it.

Still and all, cleaning that up: $300.

But wait: I’ve saved the best for last.

This afternoon, while Yvonne and I were at work, earning our daily bread for an honest day’s work, some lowlife scum broke into the house and stole my MacBook Pro.

The car, the tree, I can take that.  But my computer?  Breaking into the house?  That’s nasty.  So in addition to the $2200 replacement cost (we’ve yet to see if the insurance will cover this), we’re going to have to install a monitoring system.  And you never stop paying for that.

My friend Morty observed that the real tragedy was that the kid who stole my machine was probably only going to get fifty bucks or so for it.  I could have bought a replacement MBP for about $100; so long as I didn’t mind buying a stolen machine.

FYI, the insurance company said there’d been a rash of break-in’s, all targetting notebooks.  They figure it’s kids going in and out within five minutes, grabbing the first thing they can easily carry.

Silver lining?  I had turned on Time Machine, the OS X backup system, so everything was backed up on a separate hard drive.  Of course, the backup was about two months old, but I hadn’t really done much other than surf and download videos in the past little while.  So when I turned on my new MacBook Pro it asked me if I wanted to initialize from another Mac or Time Machine, and it took care of everything.  It took about an hour and a half.  (And, oh yeah, it now has to go through USB, because Bender2 doesn’t have FireWire anymore.)  So, my users are now in place, my screen saver, my pictures, my iTunes, my VMWare with WinXP, the hookup to my desktop at work, the wireless connection to my router.  All done.

Backups are a miracle.  I’ve seen the light and been saved.  Hallelujah!

Now I need to go through all my websites and change passwords.  Blech.

Correction: The new MacBook Pro’s now have FireWire 800, while the old ones had FireWire 400.  Different connectors (though you can get an adapter).  So I’m still stuck with USB.  (Thanks to Michael Goldberg our intern here at butterscotch.)

And while we’re at it, I should mention how grateful I am that no one got hurt, and that Mr. Lowlife-Scum didn’t trash the place.

But I’m really disappointed in the cats.  All those barking lessons were for naught.

Last night my friends Kali and David invited me to a memorial for Lupe Rodrigues, the CBC’s artist-at-large.  I’d heard Lupe reviewing art exhibits on CBC radio’s Here and Now program, hosted by Matt Galloway.

As it turned out, I had intersected with her a couple of other times, but hadn’t connected.  A few years ago, on my way to a play at the Canadian Stage, I had dinner at Hernando’s, and had admired the colourful paintings.  It turned out they were all by Lupe Rodrigues.

Lupe, it turns out, was a regular at Kali’s very crowded parties. Not a surprise I hadn’t met her there: I’m usually happy to have met and chatted with 3 to 5 people in an evening. Kali’s friends are too interesting not to spend time with.

But Lupe was actually from David’s crowd. They’d both gone to Jarvis Collegiate; as had many of the musicians and artists who helped us celebrate her life and work.  Among them Victor Bateman, Jaron Freeman-Fox, Fergus Hambleton, Cindy Jones, Joanna Kidd, Kevin Laliberte, Amanda Martinez, Kathleen McDonnell, Don Rooke, Anjellica Scannura, Roger Scannura, Valeria Scannura, and John Sheard, the Music Director for the evening.

Our host was Matt Galloway, and speakers included Linda Rosendbaum, David Liss, Bianca Roberts, Lupe’s sons, Sebastian and Liam Cushing, and her husband, Danny Cushing.

Many of the people there had met in high school at Jarvis Collegiate, so it was a bit of a reunion for them.  I know that’s a powerful thing.  It both, reminds you of your youth, and the long road you’ve travelled.  There’s great joy in the thought that at least part of that road was travelled together.

I’ve been kept very busy over the past couple of months setting up butterscotch.com: Tucows’ new video network, brimming with terrific videos, short and long, providing tips, tricks and insights into technology for pros and tyros.  Our new team includes tech media veterans Andy Walker, as General Manager and Executive Producer; Amber MacArthur, Director of Content; Sean Carruthers and Matt Harris, Senior Producers; and Andrew Moore-Crispin, Web Editor.  In addition to our existing Tucows team, that’s a lot of talent coming together.

Our current line-up consists of regular shows, such as Andy and Sean’s Lab Rats, and Cheryl Poirier’s spin-off, Miss Download; as well as standard and special tutorials.  Tutorials are screen captured how-to’s with a voice over.  Special tutorials are a series of ten or so episodes on a particular topic.  For example, the two special tutes we have on offer right now are Facebook for Grownups and Gmail for Beginners.

We do have other shows already on the site, and many more are coming, so check back often at butterscotch.com, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed.

The challenges, for me, in putting the site together, were:

• slicing up the composite and creating the base page (HTML and CSS) (got a lot of Photoshop help from Joan, our graphic artist at Tucows)
• establishing single signon between butterscotch and Tucows.com
• creating the backend CMS (content management system), where Andrew maintains the content which appears on the site

Of course, we’re not done yet.  We’re still developing new and terrific functionality, and figuring ways to integrate the butterscotch and Tucows content.  It’s all about bringing more value to our visitors and authors.

Sure developing the site was a marathon of long days and late nights, and it kept me from family and blogging, but this is the sort of challenge which stretches your abilities and forces you to find new insights into your work.  I loved it.  I wouldn’t want to do it again real soon; but I loved it.

Another couple of tweaks to the blog.  The first one is transparent to users: I’ve added Google Analytics to the code, so I can tell how many people haven’t visited my pages.

The second is near and dear to my heart: I’ve added a favicon.  These appear on the address bar and tab of your browser, and allow you to easily find the page amongst all the other tabs.  (This is assuming, of course, that you’re not a drooling idiot, and are, in fact, using a browser with tabs.  If you’re using IE 6, wipe your chin.)

I’m enormously proud to be launching the first tweak to my WordPress theme.  Forget the blue.  We’re going black and white.

“What’s with the picture,” you ask?  Here’s a hint.  At one point I was thinking of naming this blog “Precious Bodily Fluids”.  Too cryptic?  Not to worry: I’ll be changing the header pic every week or so.  It’ll provide more hints.  In the meantime, expect further tweaks.

I’m having a terrific time learning how to bend WordPress to my will.  Still trying to wean myself from Windows, though: I have to break my addiction to Paint Shop Pro and get more familiar with The GIMP.  I’ll publish some tutes as I go along.  It would be good to have some screen capture software for the Mac.  Something like Camtasia.  Recommendations welcome.

Back in the old days, when I taught a community college course on programming, I learned the difference between data and information.  Data is all around you.  It doesn’t really help most of the time.  Information, on the other hand, is the data distilled into a form you can actually use. (more…)

Nobody’s ever accused me of being a shrinking violet.  If I’ve got something on my mind, I usually vent it, and damn the consequences.  Historically, it’s been a recipe for disaster.  I figure no one can look away from a car wreck, so welcome to my world. (more…)