Just Differently Intelligent...

coMOOnication theory

Aaron, on of my Ryerson students from last term, has a thing for Cowishness. He's got this list of MOOwords and is looking for additions. Contributions?

This is what the internet is all about. Putting people in touch with the collective nature of inner foolishness. And can that ever be a bad thing?

Rapp Optical Fubar

I love Rapp Optical, and have always bought glasses from them. No attitude, insane glasses, and great work. Not this time. My favorite frames. Old anodized aluminum frames that I've had forever. The rivets holding the arms on came off. So I spent got Ken to drill new threadding for screws. Took him a long time to get the threadding drill too.

So, I get my glasses back and they look like they've been gone over by a frigging hammer! Metal flattened. Threadding destroyed. And what looks like rivits. Some the hardware and hinges are crushed, and there's no way they'll ever get to be useable again.

Yes, they didn't charge me for the dammage, but geeze. All I wanted was for them to order the correct screws!

One more coffin nail on a shitty week. I'm going to make wine now.

FOLLOWUP
There was a message on the phone from Mel Rapp apologizing for the problem and offering me a substantial gift certificate for a future frame purchase. That's very nice. That's why I never suggested I was going to never go back. Mel's always been reasonable.

Microsoft Windows NT4, 2000, XP and Server 2003 critical vulnerability

Not again...

Microsoft released patches for a critical security vulnerability that affects Windows NT4, 2000, XP and 2003 and can allow remote code execution with System privileges.

If you don't use Automatic Updates to take care of critical patches, then look at the following Microsoft web site that has links to the patches for each affected operating system.

http://microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-007.asp

Chronic video conferencing...

Ken Emig and I doing video-conferencing in my apartment. We got some great audio distortion happening that ken recorded. Perhaps he'll send it along with me to post.

I'm off to set up ken's new domain (emigresearch.com).

Fixed my iPod

My iPod's been broken for months. Can't play music without holding the headphone jack at a funny angle. Tried to look at it 6 weeks ago and severed the harddrive cable while opening it. Spent $75 on a new cable and then got it back to its previously broken state. This morning, I figured I'd have another look at it. NO sharp knives. Opened it with two plastic toothpicks from my swiss army knives. Turns out that the cover to the headphone jack enclosure is soldered tight. Puzzled and proded inside with bits of plastic, and realized that all the solders are bad, but one specifically was a problem. Used a tiny screwdriver for fixing eyeglasses, and realized this connection is for the ground. Wheeeee... Went through a couple of boxes until I found some old wire, stripped it of it's plastic cover, and then poked it in and around bits of the iPod, and twisted it tight, and voila. Fixed. Nothing you can't do with a bit of wire and a couple of hours without distractions. Tune time!

Jeremy's Diversion

What Classic Movie Are You?

The Mota Insanity...

I took these pictures (click below) while KAT! was cooking dinner for the three of us over the weekend. The last one is my favourite.

Jason De Man

Jeremy IMed me to check out the link on his blog to the following Quizilla, and it was oh, so accurate for both of us:
This is the result it gave me. The wig and dress are optional I hope.

You are a Deconstructionist Weirdo. Although
ostensibly originating with Derrida, the
theories of your particular school have long
since passed beyond intellegibillity; half the
time you don't even understand what you're
saying anymore. That's okay, though. You're a
lot more fun to party with than a bunch of
stodgy new historicists.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

As ken says...

Go to google and type: miserable failure
Then click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

As see where it goes.

Thanks Wallah!

I just got my 2004 Crayon Shinchan calendar.

I've been collecting Shinchan 'stuff' for over a decade, and Wallah's been one of my best collection supporters.

Ohhh... noooooo....

I'm reading Jeremy's Blog and I see a somewhat less than royally stupid Quiz... at least HE got to be deleuze and guattari.

You are Jacques Lacan! Arguably the most important
psychoanalyst since Freud, you never wrote
anything down, and the only works of yours are
transcriptions of your lectures. You are
notoriously difficult to understand, but at
least you didn't talk about the penis as much
as other psychoanalysts. You died in 1981.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

And if you're Foucault... it must mean you clicked on that S&M option, right?

Whack the Mayor

Found this on the McLuhan blog: Whack the Mayor. Politics as it should be.

Death to Creative Expression: Girl expelled for journal entry changes school

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A 14-year-old student disciplined for writing a fictional account of a student who falls asleep in class and dreams of killing a teacher is moving to another school, her father told CNN Thursday. Rachel Boim was expelled from school after writing a fictional account of a student who falls asleep in class and dreams of killing a teacher.
Read the full text.

I don't know what to say about this except that KAT! should hide her flash vids when travelling. Seriously, what would happen if they saw the Project Achieve data files (luckily protected by ethical guidelines), or blog entries. Livejournal should, I guess be banned as dangerous by schools? That would go for instant messages too. School teachers should now have to teach "right-think" to everyone so that they will not have any bad thoughts about anyone any more, during school hours.

Julia says...

among other things, that I need one of these. Anyone buying?

Sympatico !help

What a waste of time. Most of you know that Sympatico's SMTP servers are a mess. And that many other ISPs block sympatico mail because Sympatico ends up on lists of ISPs who forward spam.

So, I want to use my own SMTP servers. And yes, I have a few up my sleeve. But Sympatico blocks me from talking to my own SMTP servers. My servers which are working, and which do not forward spam. First this wonderfully rude joker, the first wonderfully rude joker that I've communicated with at Sympatico, but no doubt not the last, tells me that I'm wrong, and that sympatico's not blocking port 25. Then after I tell him to check, he says that they are. When I ask for access to documentation describing what the problem is, he puts me on hold for almost 20 minutes, before giving me a web page, that doesn't exist, and forwards you to one of those moronic web sites "What is email? And how do I send it?"

I'm asking about why they're blocking port 25!

I finally, and you heard it first, yelled at him, called him rude and obfuscatory, and that he's wasting my time, and hung up. Now, when's the last time anyone saw me really angry? Probably never.

I'm not recommending Sympatico any more. They can kiss my SMTP.

History of Technology at Sheridan

I went out to the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning today. It's out in Oakville, west of Toronto. Commuting. Ugh. Got to the train station at 8:35 for a 9:43 train. But there was a 15 minute line up for train tickets. Missed it. However, after getting a ticket,and having an hour to wait, I went up to the great hall at Union Station. Kenny had sent me an IM last time he was there tosay that there was wireless access. And there is. And it is free. Or seems to be. The network is Bell based, so it maybe recognizing my sympatico account and letting me on. There was a Bell guy there watching me, he'd been installing an internet Kiosk thingy, and he asked me how I was connecting, and was a bit shocked that I could get on, but he too thought it might be because of my sympatico account.

Trains. I like trains. For all too many reasons. They are the great good form of transportation. Though, of course, in Canada, we are punished for taking the trains. Poor and irregular service. And when you do get to a station, it is in the middle of nowhere, and you really need a car to get anywhere from it. Or a bus in this case. I did catch the Oakville transit bus to Sheridan, and got there 15 minutes before I needed to. Sheridan looks very nice, though it seems to be modelled after a shopping centre rather than a university... that is you can't get near the campus unlesss you're willing to wade through a couple of thousand cars. Well modelled after York University. Obviously I have transportation issues on the brain. Don't mind me. I'm a broken record player when it comes to tranportation issues. Sheridan is definately a bright and shiny up and coming Institute. I thought it was more of a college, but obviously not. It's got 'institute of technology' written all over it.

I finally got to meet Dan Zen. I fit in with what appeared to be the manditory departmental dress code: black. I don'tthink that either of us were sure of what to expect from the other, or from the experience, but we both seemed to be willing to 'wing it'. Plugged in my laptop, only to find that I couldn't synch up with one of their two large screens, so we went back to using their system. They did have a bright and shiny touchscreen that allowed me to point and click right on the screen, but I didn't get to make too much use of that. Just a cool building, interesting educators, and an attentive group of students I would rather have spent the afternoon talking with than lecturing to...

Then my mind went blank. And I don't really remember what happened. I call this lecturing. I guess I don't really have room for meta-awareness when I'm trying to get all my synapses firing in syncrhonous orbit. But after an hour, everyone wanted to continue, so I spent another 30 minutes covering what seemed to be the right constellation...

About me:
- computer hostile
- programmer suspicious
- designer demanding
- conceptualizer and creator online learning environments
- http://jasonnolan.net
- Scholar in Res @ KMDI
- Senior Fellow McLuhan Program in culture and tech

New Media?
- Consider the book _New Media: 1740-1915_
Early web... an online community
- What is the net suposed to be?

Why Was the WWW created?
- Network for american military
- able to withstand nuclear attacks

Where to find the old net?

- Ed Krol
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet
- http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc1118.html
- The Whole Internet 1992
- OReilly
- Old Web
Browsers
- http://www.dejavu.org/
- Usenet archives et al.
- http://www.archive.org/ wayback machine

How did we communicate on the Internet before the WWW
- ASCII RULED
- talk/IRC - synchronous
- Usenet (uudecode) images
- gopher, FTP - static documents
- telnet
- MUD/MOO polysynchronous
- early chat spaces were MOO-based 'talkers'
- Lost Library of MOO
- Jason's MOO http://projectachieve.net
- development trajectory from MOO > Microsoft
- Pavel Curtis founds LambdaMOO at XeroxParc
- http://lambda.moo.mud.org
- Pavel starts Placeware
- Placeware bought out by Microsoft (summer 2003)
- Microsoft markets Placeware as LiveMeeting

Why are blogs the realization of the net?
- everyone can create
- Internet is still text

Cultural assumptions of the internet
- internet is for everyone
- the tools you are given limit what you can say.
- Hegemony of ASCII paper (http://jasonnolan.net/papers)
dead technologies
- ideas for the future
- medieval illuminated manuscripts > web pages
- public documents
- images and text
- marginalia and comments

Know where the future's coming from
- moos > placeware
- moos > video conferencing
- moos > Multi User online gaming
- moos > COLLIDE - hacking as community

The future of community
- Userdesigned design (UDD)
- flash > UDD
- VRML > UDD
- users > prosumers
- controlling the user to enabling the prosumer
- designers will be designing tools
- designers will design infrastructures
- designers will provide the language for design
- designers will not design passive toys

Hint: the triads of technology
- how can you have an opinion without experience?
- how can you have experience without diverse experience?
- the compleat user has experience on at least 3 platforms
- Unix, Windows, Macintosh
- Photoshop, Fireworks, GraphicConverter
- Dreamweaver, InDesign, raw html coding
- MSword, Wordperfect, AppleWorks
- IRC, ICQ, AIM
- enCoreMOO, MOOcanada, LambdaMOO

How Microsoft fuels Internet terrorism

From the ZCC collective blog: ZeroCostComputing: How Microsoft fuels Internet terrorism

The conclusion: "Either buy a Mac, or switch to Linux. "

Switch Linux - hacker humour

Check out this little bit of humour based on the Apple - Switch commercials, called: Switch Linux

PS: I scarfed this off Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane. But since I gave her a cool scsi zip drive way back, and she never did figure out how to install a proxy server for me...

Ugly building cam is back!

I have the camera turned back on the OCAD construction. It is only running for 30 minutes at a pop, because I'm waiting for the update on my driver.

CyberCream

MOOtrix: COWS Ice Cream - Prince Edward Island

I have a selection of COWS Icream Tshirts, but not this one, yet.

Blast from last October.

This post from last October is still the most commented post I've made. Even today it was updated... it's about Shii's Song:
Strange but it caught some fans. Strange. Eh?

OCAD: The Ugly Building Story

Yuka noticed some d00ds hanging outside our apartment...

on the 10th floor level. Ontario College of Art and Design hasn't been able to articulate any conceptual or theoretical rationale for this structure, aside from what I can only guess is the desire to be 'world crass' and to have uglier buildings than UofT. They win. I give it full marks for desire, but failing grades on ability to express design theory and the Jane Jacob's prize for the most community insensitive structure. But that's just me.

Jr Panic Time Today.

Rochelle dropped by today, and we (Yuka and I) accompanied her to the UofT bookstore to pick up her iPod and old laptop. Both weren't available, but there was an art opening going on in the computer department. Many of the staff were showing their work. Juice and cheese was served.

After that, we three wended our way through Kensington Market, doing some shopping, and stopping by the Moonbeam Cafe. Fun times.

While we relaxed back at our place, we were fiddling with computers, and I said, "Hey, lets pop my spare wireless networking card into your brand new iBook, so you can go online." And I did. And pop! Her trackpad was dead.

She laughed nerviously. That is Rochelle. I freaked quietly. Tried everything, and finally decided to lend her one of my old iBooks while her new one went back into the shop. Obviously some serious problem that wasn't my fault. Though I felt like it was my fault. Well, it was. So I tried one more thing... while everyone watched nerviously. I popped off the cover for the memory slot, and found that the trackpad fastener hadn't been closed properly. Probably when new ram was inserted when Rochelle bought the computer. It was installed at the store.

I quickly fastened it down, rebooted, and prayed. Bingo! All was fixed and running. And Rochelle ran off to catch her ride home to Guelph. And I collapsed in to a heap of pigeon droppings.

Panda Movies

Here are four short (15 second) panda movies that I took at the Vienna Zoo:1, 2, 3, 4. I took them with my digital camera, so that they're not that good. But that they exist is important enough. They're about 4 megs each, and they're in .mov format.

[The pandas are YangYang (Sunshine) and LongHui (DragonSign), though they have Viennese names as well , I think.]

Barry Wellman's Sars Report (UPDATED)

[Barry said that I could post this. If you don't know Barry Wellman, for shame. Barry's the ranking d00d on Internet sociology, publisher of the major studies, editor of the major works (like Internet in Everyday Life), consultant to the sultans, yada yada. And an all around learning experience all packed into a single office at the corner of Spadina and College streets. He originally wrote this for the AoIR exec, because we're holding the AoIR conference here in the fall. Thought you might like a sober view of the situation.]

The SARS Situation in Toronto [Updated and Edited]

Barry Wellman, Tuesday, April 29, 2003

PREFACE

In the past few days, Bev Wellman and I have dined out in some lovely
restaurants, walked the streets in a nice spring day, and went shopping in
some normally crowded areas. In short: life as usual. We would not know
that there is a SARS epidemic in Toronto except if

(a) we tune in to the news media,
(b) didn't get concerned messages from friends, or
(c) passed by hospitals whose employees are masked.

(a) and (b) are instances of poor news reporting -- what is often called a
"media panic" -- although (c) is a real, but marginal concern.

In the beginning, we too were concerned. Now, as the facts and experience
accumulate, we are confident that SARS is both limited and contained.
Right now, I take SARS seriously but as a watching brief, not as a panic
or action item.

I am more concerned about the concerns of my friends and colleagues
elsewhere than about getting SARS myself. They've listened to CNN and
heard about the World Health Organization advisory, and they have
questions. (I address the now-rescinded WHO advisory at the end.)

To address the concerns of friends and colleagues, I've put together what
is known about SARS in Toronto, based on my observations, responsible
reporting (the Toronto Globe and Mail is the best
[http://www.globeandmail.com/]), and discussions with a friend at the
(quite professional) City of Toronto Department of Health. I think I got
things right, but of course, our information is developing (right now, for
the better). I take responsibility for what I say, but do want to
acknowledge the advice of Helena Fil, Emmanuel Koku, Monica Prijatelj, and
Beverly Wellman.

THE DISEASE

SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The U.S. Center for
Disease Control calls it an "atypical pneumonia". It's a disease of the
breathing system, and not of the nose, stomach, etc. When coupled with
fever (38C; 100.4F), the key indicators are dry coughing and shortness of
breath. Sneezing, stomach aches, etc. are more symptomatic of routine
colds or allergies.

SARS is probably a coronavirus, similar to a cold virus, although
obviously more serious. There has been some debate about this, as not all
cases seem to have the coronavirus.

It starts in the upper respiratory tract and then migrates to the lungs.

SARS may weaken in its impact as it passes through a population. This is
what Hong Kong experts report, and what Toronto may be experiencing. Thus
the first-hit in Toronto were hit hard, and died. Moreover, these two
initial cases each infected about 30 others. In social network analysis
terms, they were "hubs".

Only a small minority of cases are fatal. For a while, it looked like 4%.
I am sad to say, it is a bit higher in Toronto, about 8%. I caution that
these numbers are changing daily and subject to definitional issues as to
what cases are SARS or other forms of influenza, pneumonia, etc.

I believe that the majority of those who have died are health care
workers, from physicians to room cleaners, or their family members.

Given their risk, long hours and difficult working conditions (masked,
gowned and goggled), health care workers in Toronto are heroes.

Although I grieve for the people who died (and am distressed that good
protective and quarantining measures were not used early enough), I want
to emphasize that for the great majority of people who actually have SARS,
they experience an unpleasant pneumonia, get better, and recover fully.

The majority of the Toronto cases who have had SARS have been discharged
from the hospital and gone home as cured.

TRANSMISSION

Transmission apparently needs intimate contact. My reading of the
incidence accounts suggests that this means that two persons have to
breathe together in close contact. In practice, family members have given
SARS to each other, patients have given it to health care workers and to
other patients, and members of a closely-knit religious sect have passed
it around (one of them was a health care worker). You don't get SARS from
walking the streets, shopping or eating in restaurants. However, I have
stopped riding one densely packed streetcar (tram) line for a while. Now
that the scare is subsiding, I may resume soon. Fortunately, it is nice
weather for walking and bicycling.

SARS is spread through droplets from coughing. It is not a fine aerosol,
and it is not "in the air". It is direct transmission only.

It does last for 24 hours on handles, banisters, etc., but reportedly is
not actively infectious in that state. Nevertheless, we try to use gloves
and paper towels in public places, and we wash our hands a lot.

It seems that you have to be visibly ill to transmit it. Although SARS can
have a prolonged incubation period of up to ten days, the only
transmissions have happened when someone who already was coughing, etc.
transmitted it. This means that potential cases (and transmissions) are
easily identifiable. There are no "sleepers" wandering around who are
spreading SARS inadvertently.

All Toronto cases are traceable to the original woman who came back from
Hong Kong with it. She gave it to family members; she and they gave it to
health care workers and fellow patients, who passed it on in some cases.
Mistakes were made at the beginning: not enough isolation of those already
sick; not enough quarantining of those potentially infected. These
mistakes are not being made now.

These transmission details are important because they mean that SARS has
not gotten out to the general public. There is no SARS "in the community"
(to use the term of quite reliable Dr. Sheela Basrur, Toronto's Medical
Officer of Health). No new ones are springing up from unknown sources.
Anyone who might have been infected from the traceable cases is now under
strict quarantine.

NUMBERS

The cumulative number of "probable and suspected cases" is 265 on Friday,
April 25 2003. Of course, this number almost has to be increasing because
it is cumulative. However, it did go down by 10 between Thursday and
Friday because some cases were found not to be SARS, but other forms of
pneumonia, etc.

It is important to note that the actual number of cases is undoubtedly
lower than 265 because the medical authorities are quite properly being
overly cautious in defining all suspected cases as SARS. On Friday, April
25, there were 107 active cases in the greater Toronto area.

Indeed, the number of active cases is now decreasing, as quarantining has
worked and the spread has stopped.

The rate of new active cases of SARS is zero, or close to it.

I understand that more than half of those hospitalized have been
discharged.

A few more deaths are anticipated than the current number of 20 (as of
Sunday, April 27). The total might hit 25. These are people who already
are known, critically-ill cases. They are not new cases.

As in many medical situations, all but one of those who have died are
frail, elderly, or have had serious pre-existing medical conditions. The
others got sick, and then got better.

The greater Toronto area has a population of about 5 million.
265/5Million = 0.0053% of the population
107/5Million = 0.0021% of the population
25/5 Million = 0.0005% of the population.
This is Not the Black Death or the Plague, despite the alarmist reporting
of CNN, etc.

Think of it this way:
About 3 people per Week have been dying from SARS in Toronto.
Another one person per Week is murdered in Toronto.
Contrast this with a large American city, such as New York, Los Angeles or
Chicago, where at least 3 people per Day are murdered. As of yet, these
have not had SARS deaths. Do the math:
In Toronto, the death rate from SARS and murder are 4/Week
In Chicago, the death rate from SARS and murder are 21/Week, more
than Five times greater.
Yet people travel to these American cities all of the time, even though
their lives are at greater risk.

Moreover, SARS is not randomly distributed in the Toronto population. It
originally was confined to people (and their families) who had been in
Hong Kong. As they lived in one suburb (Scarborough), they went to
hospitals there, and that's where patients and health care workers got the
disease.

This means that SARS is generated through social networks and not through
random contact among strangers.

We do not know about any cases in the centre of Toronto -- where we live
and work, and where all the tourist and convention activities are. Yet,
this is the most crowded area of the city.

No one we know has SARS. Nor have we hard of anyone who knows someone who
has SARS. This is very epidemiologically clustered.

QUARANTINING

The best form of prevention has been quarantining. As a precaution, entire
schools, offices have been told to stay home because one person is
suspected of having contact. We are taking this seriously, and our
municipal health departments are reporting straight news. (Fortunately,
the health departments, and not the politicians, have been in charge.)

As of Friday, April 25, there were 663 people quarantined in the province
of Ontario, almost all in the greater Toronto area.

There have been even larger numbers quarantined in the past few weeks, for
example an entire elementary school and an entire high school. However,
when no one at these places got SARS during the potential incubation
period, the quarantine was lifted. Thus the number of people quarantined
is much larger than the number of people who will get SARS.

Quarantining is hard, because there is a symptom-free incubation period of
up to 10 days. Hence, people wonder why they are being told to stay home.

As Canadians are more collectively minded and less individualistic than
Americans, quarantining has been largely effective. (Where the Preamble to
the American Constitution has "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
as the national goals, the Canadian constitutional equivalent is "peace,
order and good government.")

Because quarantining cuts off livelihood of some people, compliance is
difficult, especially for people at the economic margins. Even a few
normally obedient Torontonians have broken quarantine, gone to work or
school. The province has just announced financial aid for the quarantined
needy; this should alleviate the temptation to sneak out to earn some
money.

Quarantining is principally enforced by making random phone calls to
people's homes.

A few Torontonians have been charged with violating quarantine and are
under more coercive control.

Toronto may -- and I think should -- go to "house arrest" bracelets.
Singapore has put webcams in quarantined homes and may use bracelets.

I go about my life as normal, except for more frequent hand washing and
using a paper towel to grab handles in washrooms.

Outside of the hospitals, I see only one person a day wearing a mask (out
of the 1,000 or more I encounter on the street, on public transit, at
work, and in restaurants).

Hospitals are a different story. All workers in them are masked and
gowned, with those in SARS areas being doubly protected.

Contact between the hospitals and the outside world is minimized. Routine
visits to doctors, non-emergency surgery, and visiting hospitalized
friends have all been severely curtailed. My medical researcher friends
now have their meetings in Starbucks.

Indeed, for the general public, the most serious current impact is that it
is harder to get medical treatment for anything else, because of these
preventative measures and because the system is concentrating on SARS. For
example, transplant operations have been postponed, and I have a routine
medical checkup postponed because my doctor's office is in a hospital.
This is more of a concern for residents than for visitors. However, with
the improving situation, hospital access should go back to normal soon.

THE OUTSIDE WORLD

The World Health Organization travel advisory of April 22 understandably
caused widespread concern. Paradoxically, it came just as the situation in
Toronto was coming under control. Having just heard (April 27) WHO head
Gro Brundtland interviewed, I understand where the WHO came from.
They are mandated to be concerned about epidemiological spread. They are
not really worried about people from developing countries, but are
concerned about a spread from Toronto to developing countries that do not
have good treatment and quarantine facilities. (Toronto, as a highly
multicultural city, has many links with many countries.)

However, the spread of disease is a worldwide concern about all illnesses,
and I think Toronto was unfairly singled out. Some WHO statements suggest
that they may have acted on out-of-date information, but I understand why
they were overly cautious to contain the spread of SARS. The WHO's
advisory was originally announced for 3 weeks. The good news is that it
was cancelled much sooner (April 29) as Toronto's evidence of containing
SARS was digested.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control is not nearly as alarmed (see
http://www.cdc.gov/travel/other/sars_can.htm). My analysis and the CDC's
are quite similar. (I developed mine independently.) On April 23, after
the WHO alert, they pointed out that there are no cases in the general
population, and that people should avoid hospitals or contact with
quarantined individuals. "SARS transmission in Toronto has been limited to
a small number of hospitals, households, and specific community settings."
CDC also recommends washing your hands frequently, which is just plain
good advice. Most importantly, CDC DOES NOT recommend avoiding Toronto or
that travellers from Toronto be shunned.

And then there is CNN cable news network. They spread the alarm on April
24, just as things were getting under control in Toronto. They don't
report news in perspective; they report events. They have pocket
calculators, Google and brains. They just don't appear to have ever used
them.

Many friends have asked me about our mayor, Mel Lastman, who embarrassed
us during a CNN interview on April 24. Mel has been embarrassing before.
He formerly headed a chain of discount appliance stores. He is retiring
soon, has a chronic illness, has been spending most of his time in
Florida, and has been on the job too long. Fortunately, he doesn't have
anything to do with dealing with SARS.

To sum up, SARS is real. Yet, it is contained. Residents and visitors are
extremely unlikely to get it. If they do, almost all will recover fully.
There are many other, more likely ways to die in big cities around the
world. I do have continuing concerns that SARS may continue to travel from
developing countries, but that is a problem that all cities would have to
worry about. New York, L.A. and London are as likely to be hit as Toronto.
Thanks to the Toronto experience (and expertise from other countries such
as Singapore), we all have a better understanding about how to deal with
it quickly, firmly and competently.

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane

Some folks don't have enough sense to read Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane on a minute by minute basis, so I'm driven to remind people to read it. Particularly don't forget to watch her No Adsl flash video.

She's not inevitably insane, by the way, she took a course.

The UGLY OCAD

As part of the design process, OCAD has chosen to move the CN-Tower, the worlds largest free standing structure, into its new atrium. It will be directly across the road from me. The picture below shows a crane moving the CN-Tower to its new home.

More of the ugliest building in Toronto

My Dr. J Cam is set up on my balcony looking at OCAD while they put up the tower crane to build the most ugly chopstick and spaceship extenstion. Click on it for uptdating image.

How could a school of art and design be so tastelessly ugly? Well, it is Toronto.

Nice non-day

Was suposed to spend the day editing some text. But found out that that day was tomorrow. Today I was suposed to met Diana and Colin to talk about Colin's coming to UofT.

So, I ran and ran, first showering and running, and got up there moderately late. Colin seems like just one more thing to trouble ol conservative UofT. Hope he gets in. And hope he reads "Snowcrash" before he does. Pollen's only a distant hope.

Then met two of my students from KMD1000, going off with Stuart (one of them) for lunch at a Thai place off baldwin, and then to Moonbeam for strange tea and an interesting discussion regarding his paper... on privacy and some stranger notions of data.

Tonight, Yuka and I are planning the Vienna and Budapest sections of our trip. Elizabeth Miller's taken care of the other bits.

Tomorrow I edit.

Harvard Panics over SARS

In a Globe and Mail article on Sars there's the following line:

"News of the mass exposure emerged yesterday as Harvard University advised its faculty, staff and students not to travel to Toronto, or even Ontario, unless absolutely necessary."

Geee wizzzz. Does that mean I can't go outside because I live around Chinatown?

Sigh... how paranoid are people? It's not the bubonic plague!

Shinchan

Some of you. Alright. All of you, with few exceptions, have no idea who crayon shinchan is. Unless you've been stuck in a salt mine with me, for long periods of time. Anyway, aside from various and sundry degrees and awards and publications, I claim to have the first Shinchan website on the internet. Put it up back in 1995 or 1996.
The key is the music. And one of my faves is Damme (Damme = hush hush, no, no way, don't even think about it, stop it, stupid).

I have more shinchan 'goods' than anyone in their right mind can reasonably expect to have. Do you want some?

Two Towers... the flash movie(s)

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane is hosting her four part mini-flash-series: The Two Towers. If you have lots of time on your hands, don't miss it. The auteur has put her own particular touches on them, and they are true Catsy art.

Your morning smile...

Yes, yuka found a place selling nice lids for cats.

iClone!!!! This is the greatest!

Iclone

ENGLISH
iClone is able to brings a new Mac computer on your desktop.
When you use it, it analyzes your Mac and duplicates it in a few seconds !

It is an exclusive process and a new way of manufacturing computers.

If you do not have a rather powerful computer,
go in your neighbor or friend for cloner his more powerful computer.
iClone does not make a copy of the content of the hard disk.
It clone only the hardware of your computer.

Ideal for all Mac users, iClone will make it possible for Apple
to increase his market shares !

The retailers of hardware will be able to finally devote themselves
to sell service.

Just download the application and follow the indications !

War Satire Blogs.

Joi Ito's has a list of a couple more interesting Satire blogs related to current events. such as GWB, Saddam and Kim Jong Il.

And Joi's blogrolled me back, so he gets a gold star next to his name, and can sit inside during recess to check his email.

Canada: Axis of Evil?

Bush rebukes Canada for not supporing the war. And if we're not with him, we're against him.

Of course they don't care about the fact that they didn't support us when we said that he shouldn't go to war, but that's not important, it seems. Of course we opposed Vietnam too.

Accordingly, we're now one of 'them'. Luckily them includes most of europe, mexico, and others. Nice club to be in.

IAFA! in florida

I'm posting this after the fact, as there's no internet connection at this conference... unlike SXSW in Austin. I was spoiled there.

The drive from Dad and Cheryl's place was uneventful, but interesting. Driving across Alligator Alley was slightly more interesting than driving the 401 between Toronto and Kingston. The swamps aren't nearly as interesting from a highway at 120km/h. Unfortunately.

I had to stop at a grocery store and get a couple of yoghurt drinks, a tub of sliced fruit, and another of raw greens. Good driving munchies. Two days with Dad's cooking would play hell with anyone's system. Good food, but all meat. Though we did have a bucked of clams and a big slab of smoked salmon. I think he's the only person to deep fry eggs. And his toast can be wrung for the oil, and used to light a lamp.

What do you do when you're in florida? Well, you go to the airport hilton, saunter up to the bar for a beer after the 3.5 hour drive from where I've been staying with the family. And you're standing next to Brian Aldiss. You can figure out what a d00d he is. We chatted about living in Oxford (he does), visiting Iceland, and Judy Merril (The Judith Merrill collection is probably the top sifi lit collection in the world, and it resides below the Osborne Collection where yuka works), among other things. Brian took the trouble to point out some of the folks sitting around nearby tables... Charles De Lint, Peter Straub and others I should know but didn't.

After he was dragged off by old friends, I found a quiet table to write this... and peruse the index of participants: Stephen R. Donaldson, Radu Florescu, Joe Haldeman, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, piles of people I'm embarrassed not to know, and of course Elizabeth Miller (but she hasn't checked in yet).

I'm really not up on the writings of people here, aside from the ones mentioned, as they're big cheeses in their field, and you'll probably know most of them. I had thought that this would be mostly scholarly, rather than having this A list of science fiction writers.

But they're not the only ones here. Though we're surrounded by highways and the airport, this is a very pretty oasis of a hotel. A cat has been haunting about, and as I looked up I saw a raccoon scurry across a path. And it is only 7pm and very bright. The raccoon is rooting his way around a big palm tree at the moment, judging from the movement of the leaves at its base, and he doesn't seem to be worried by the airplanes flying over.

I now have to decide whether to find something to eat, or find a hotel to sleep in tonight, or a quiet place to read my paper over. But first, finish my beer and see if my conference badge is available yet. As ben would say, good clean times.

I miss being in Toronto and miss everyone there...

Bob the painter

Check out this video of Yuka and bob jordan at his show down at the Toronto Convention Centre. Bob has great stuff, and we hope the he'll someday paint a gummybear for yuka. Don't we all wish that?

Great pictures.

KAT! does another flash movie

Ryan did a great presentation in class yesterday about group work at the graduate level. I think the new KAT! flash movie (258.swf) would have set it off nicely. Groupwork is the bane of academic life.

And since she didn't add any music notes, that is "Hot Buttered" by the band Popcorn. I'm not joking. And if you don't watch KAT! flash movies, then shame on you.

Walking Iddybiddy Puppy

Went out for a walk with Caroline (not sure of the spelling), a part time instructor here, who's taking care of IddyBitty while Lehan (a prof here) is in germany.
The dog:

I made 4 short movies. Actually the same movies. The first two have a 2 second delay, and not too good music.

small (1.7 megs, 2 second delay)
large (2.1 megs, 2 second delay)

Better music, longer delay between pictures
small (3 megs, 3 second delay)
large (3.4 megs, 3 second delay)

Yuka knows the craziest things...

You must check out this story about the Lion Cut that someone... well, read it and tell me if I'm wrong.

Doggies

This is just for yuka... I had to hide my camera and set it to autoshoot to catch this miraculous shiba inu!

Japan has people!

Will it ever change? I'm at larry's office. It is sunny and snowing outside. Still playing with MySQL, MoveableType and now SlashCode. He wants it all... But I have revenge... first of all I put up a small web site: FUN (Future University) with Larry. And second, I'm making him download Linux 8.0 and install it on his dell server with only my words of encouragement, while I blog and eat green apple Mentos.

Cooked for myself last night. First time I've had the chance since I was here... so, it was yakisoba! (Fried soba) with green peppers, garlic chives and bokchoi. And larry lent me a Python DVD.

Oh, and someone, aka Yuka, said that I didn't have enough pictures of people on the site. So here's Larry and his daughter Ayaka, and Atsuko.

Oooops.

If any of you go to http://roomofbensown.net you will find it down. I didn't make the payment before I left, on ben's behalf. Luckily, jenny lister noticed and emailed me. Hopefully I can get it up in the next hour or two before my plane leaves. Otherwise I'll get to it tomorrow.

SORRY BEN!

Why Kat Should Be Institutionalized

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane presents Extreme Sledding. Of course this is something Julia's been whining about not doing. I think she and Kat should hang out.

Yuka says...

Play the tout est beau point com * monkey lander game.

Silliman's Blog

"and works as a market analyst in the computer industry." <-- why does this scare me so?

DrJ Cam

Dr J Cam is back up and running. I now have my old evocam software running, rather than a demo. Prefer to use what I pay for. I've still got to pay for the software to allow me to use a USB cam on OS X. Which is stinky, but such is life. And it is cheaper than buying a new camera.

Return of the WebCam

I borrowed back my kritterCam from Rochelle today. I was wondering if I could get it working with Mac OS X, which has been infamous in its lack of support for USB cameras. But I have succeded. And now I have Dr J Cam! Ya, it is ugly, but that's just me. It is the technology that's important.

Blake

I'm out rocking with cosmetic boy tonight. Hangover to follow.

STrange Mix

Yesterday was movie day, for some reason. Actually, I showed up at Kat's (for pancakes!) to talk to Lao about his Unicode moo implimentation. Very impressive, just figuring out ways to test it.

Then back to hook up with Yuka and off to the movie. Smuggled in some real coffee and saw James Bond. I wasn't a big fan of the post-Connery bonds, until I saw "Mars Attacks". When Pierce Bronslin (or however you spell his name) was a severed head, cracking bad jokes, everything changed. Now every Bond movie has an element of Mars Attacks for me, and it is all funny forever.

Then we come home, have dinner, very nice, and put on a DVD we got last week. "Reservoir Dogs". BLOODY MESS. But so beautiful. Much more horrific and much better cinematography. A joy to watch, and suffer through, but too much movification for one day.

Saw "The Hunger" on Saturday night, if anyone cares.

Clone of the Attack

This is a great GulfWars/Starwars spoof, compliments of Mad Magazine. I'd forgotten about MM. I can't believe that they're still doing current satire. And doing it well. Frank Magazine, eat my shorts.

The Funny Woj

Roger sent me this. And since I'm all over this English text and writing thing, I figured that we could include humour.

Subject: final word on nutrition and health

Here is the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all of those conflicting medical studies:
1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than do the British or Americans.
2. The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
3. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
4. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is what kills you.

What is it this time?

Julia sent me this interesting little flash movie that I thought you might enjoy: Why the US must Invade Iraq

Bamkero Halloween

Now, this is halloween... pumpkin cutting by Yuka Shimada and Bamkero:

Big Electric Cat

Yuka found this picture on some Japanese guest book

I think it is a fake cat picture. What do you think?

According to Guinness World Records

:  
NATURAL WORLD << FANTASTIC PETS << LONGEST CAT
Longest Cat
Snowbie, the world¹s longest cat, measures 103 cm (40.8 in) from nose to tip of tail, yet stands just 33 cm (12.9 in) tall. Snowbie was officially measured at this length on November 21, 1997, at four years of age. Lorna always had a feeling her feline was a record breaker. "Our local vet says he's the biggest cat he's ever seen." Most cats have to leap onto the kitchen tabletop to sneak a lick of the family leftovers. Not Snowbie, he simply stands on his back legs and grabs whatever he likes with his front paws.

Dog Shoots Man

Yuka's going to love this: The Globe and Mail: Dog Shoots Man

Pheasant season took an ugly turn for Michael Murray when he was shot by Sonny, his year-old English setter pup.The puppy knew something was very wrong when Murray dropped to the ground with blood spurting from his ankle. "Sonny just laid by my side," Mr. Murray said. "He knew something was bad."

Strange but it caught some fans.

Yuka, Kat and Muddy have all gone mushy over this flash movie that Yuka found called
Shii's Song. Trust me, the singing is English. Are you next?

And Yuka made me transcribe it. Just wish I could type fast like Rochelle. But don't read the transcript if you haven't watched the flash first. That's not fair.
Wind's Nocturne

Wishing on a dream that seems far off
hoping it will come today.
Into the starlit night
foolish dreamers turn their gaze
waiting on a shooting star
but
what if that star is not to come?
Will their dreams fade to nothing?
When the horizon darkens most
we all need to believe there is hope
is there an angle watching closely over me?
Can there be a guiding light I've yet to see?
I know my heart should guild me but
there's a whole within my soul.
What will fill this emptiness in side of me?
Am I to be satisfied without knowing?
I wish then for a chance to see.
Now all I need
Is my star to come...

A winner

This image should not be on the internet. But it still is. And that's not good. Where are parental controls when you need them.

Slavish Promotion

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane has gone over the top. She's split the whole program with her new flash movie. Of course she's getting intertextually self referential, and pandering to the EntertainmentTonight mentality by having guest shots of a bunch of B actors so that they'll slavishly promote her work. Like me!

New US mystery weapon?

Mystery carcass 'something new to science...

3 bruces

Met a guy named bruce today when getting a coffee from Nick's coffee truck in front of the Bahen centre. Not the Bruce with an umlaut, but another one. Friend of Fred. He worked with the bands Toronto and the Headpins, and toured with them twice, doing roadmanaging stuff... I wonder if Kenny's reading this, and gets what it is all about. We talked about those bands, downchild, Saga, MaxWebster. Blast from the early 80s.

hey

MOVABLE TYPE :: Personal Publishing System

Stella Awards

Roger Kuin tipped me off on this one:
Stella Award Nominations. Almost as fun as the Darwin Awards.

I'm back.

Ok. I've finally fixed MT, after I destroyed my OS X folder on edublog.com recently. I'll explain later. I'm off to salmooooon's to return some stuff.

Tired: Twlight of the Idylls

Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane really says it all when it comes to September. She always does.
It is september 2nd, 4:39am, and I'm up staring at the screen hoping that my allergies subside enough to get back to sleep. Yes, it is that time of the year. Fall asleep at 9 or 10 because you're exhausted, wake up between 1 and 3 because you start sneezing. Have a scotch... flip through the channels, and hope you go comatoast quickly. Since it has only taken 2 hours, it is not that bad. But tomorrow will be the same... for a couple of weeks.

This is a million times better than it was growing up, so I'm not complaining, just tired. Then I'd be stuffed 24x7, and never get any sleep. And the Kleenex people loved me. So this is a minor inconvenience,but it does play hell with my system.

And I'm behind in my work. NO shock, but I thought I didn't have any work to do. Almost a dozen poems to review for the Harrow, and then coordinate with the other reviewer, then decide if we should publish them, then do the html work... KMD1000s starting up, and there's work to do that I promised to do this weekend. I wonder what else there is too do.

I did get something accomplished this weekend. Setting up yuka's new iMac... the white one with the twisty screen. She didn't want it because it was ugly, but she loves it because it is fast, has a massive harddrive, burner, 384 megs of ram, and the screen tilts. So, something good was done.

I think I can sleep now...

[You may have noticed that I cut out the comments section on this site. It was too depressing to see all the zeros.]

the Web's Real Money Is in the Gutter

From Unseemly to Lowbrow, the Web's Real Money Is in the Gutter [NY Times, login required.]

I do want to rant long and deep on this issue. I got online in November 1987. I cried when the net opened to biz. I cried, though later cheered, when the WWW came along.

Now people (like bruce sterling) are complaining that the net is dying because of the dotBomb, and the post-apocalyptical porn and fraud biz, along with the snakeoil salespeople.

I didn't want biz, but they came, they failed, they complained. And they think that their revenant afterglow is some nasty plague.

The net will get back to people talking to people, and looking for the information that they want from public and personal caches of information.

The sooner that people give up on the net as a get rich quick scheme and go somewhere else, the more quickly we can go on living our lives. Hopefully some of us will make a living online, but I don't want to see anyone making a killing online.

Office Pictures!!!!

<-- click

Screw the rich.

The Globe and Mail: Stocks Collapse

"On Bay Street, stocks also lost serious ground. The S&P/TSX composite index lost 179.91 points or 2.68 per cent to close at 6,535.44, down 4.1 per cent on the week."

Isn't it great that I have no money for stocks. I've not lost a cent. I guess the marginally employed will win in the end, eh?

Of course I need one.

The very cool Geek Culture Caps!. How could I have survived so long without one. Screw the cost and the postage, and the border hastles. I'm ordering one now.

Not a drop to drink.

City of Toronto using 2100 megalitres of Water a day. That's 2.1 billion litres per day!!! Just think about it, ok?

Pizza and Tigers and Bears. Oh My!

I met EvaB lastnight!!!! She came over with Hildegarde for Saturday Night Za, and we had a wonderful time jawing of many and varied shiny things, including Hildegarde's upcoming transportation into literary stardom, as I see it.

Strange Za. New dough from the market, and one was fresh basil, 3 colours of peppers, cheese and wild boar. Nothing new. The second had cranberry smoked elk. That was great.

Made sangria too... which, as hildegarde described it, smelled a bit like balsamic vinegar. Then I added 3 tablespoons of maple syrup, and it was as it should be. I just forget to add sugar to anything.

AirCrash

AirVase is what happens to my dead AirPort basestation, if I can't figure out how to fix it. Pretty though.

My present

This is a nice beer mug. Notice that it is ice covered. Notice that it is full of a half litre of St Peter's Lemon and Ginger Spiced Ale.

Click on it to see it bigger.
Don't you want one?

Why didn't anyone tell me?

Why am I so stupid? And if you're not, why didn't you tell me?

I just picked up a book in Joel's office, where I'm hiding while teaching at OISE this summer... and as I open it, I see this footnote:
"One must bear in mind that gas derives from the Greek Khaos, a perfectly general term for chaos."

[Derek J. de Solla Price. (1962) little science: big science. NY: Columbia UP]

Then I go to Dictionary.com/gas and get this... [Dutch, an occult physical principle supposed to be present in all bodies, alteration of Greek khaos, chaos, empty space, coined by Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), Flemish chemist.]

Why didn't anyone tell me?

Proof of Summer

O' Canada!

The Globe and Mail have a quiz to test you on your canadian knowledge, called the Nation Builder Quiz. Not really, it is just a standard pedagogically suspect test of rote memorization of dates and facts, but Yuka and I took it anyway... with the following result: globeNationBuildersquiz.jpg.

Idiots shouldn't be allowed to play with technology.

Gee wizz, postmodernism IS right after all...

Listening to a forensic accountant on CBC this morning. And the word is "accounting is constructed fiction" that has no basis in truth whatsoever. And we don't have the checks and balances that the US have in their securities commission. Is this the final blow in the face of the enlightenment and truth, in numbers, capitalism and western culture?

Suggested rule: Do NOT use financial statements as a basis for information on a company.

The final rule: Do not invest in Canada, as we're at the bottom of the barrel.

Trapping Pictures

At salmon's house there is a cat that is the better mousetrap It ate a mouse, as she said. Yuka wanted to see what it looks like. Here it is.

Little Italy

Hanging in Salmon's part of town, but didn't bug her... had icecream, and went to a music store. There are only two on that street... one is Boom She Said, and the other one I went to. Found 2 CDs... vert n i n e t y p e s o f a m b i g u i t y
and vert t h e k – l n k o n z e r t

. Then on the way out, I ordered two Pollen CDs, and then on theWAY out saw Sparks "Profile: The Ultimate Sparks Collection".

Now I can continue work on Pollenation #3 and #5... tentatively entitled "RoboDogBoy" and "FlowerSmokeGirl".

Yuka touched many animals. And there was much rejoicing.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE #1: pimp it, daddy.

GTA's Rannie:

Is fighting to get into the socially problematic position of being a pimpdaddy in
blogwhore: the webgame.
It does make you wonder what goes on in our drive for self-advancement through the playful appropriation of the marginalized. Or just good clean fun.

What are the key activities? Bitchslapping your Ho with a Denial of Service Attack? So, and what are we immune to?

[BTW, Rannie sent an email request that we GTAers link to this site and to make it interesting. I figured that mild outrage would be intresting.]

hanging in Leaskdale.

Leaskdale Manse Visit June 2002

Lindsay Ontario with Ben and Hildegarde and Yuka...

Rented a car and went to the Victoria County Museum's Life and Work of LM Montgomery in Lindsay with Yuka, Hildegarde and Ben. These are our pictures of the Museum. I'll massage and upload the pictures that include Ben and Hilde as soon as I get a moment.

My home wireless network went awol today, and i spent most of the morning fixing it, while having an insane brunch with said Ben and Hildegarde... hildegarde sang for us, and ben made her laugh. A lot. Read more about it at a Room of Ben's Own