February 16, 2012

Mess with our Internet, and we will tweet you to death

Posted by cultureguru under Politics | Tags: , , , |
1 Comment 

Yesterday was typical in that, in scanning my Twitter feed, I was becoming incredibly irritated with Conservative Party of Canada. The source this time was Vic Toews’ tabling a bill to allow police, spies, and federal bureaucrats to collect information about the digital services Canadians use—without a warrant.

So the same party who insisted that the long-form census and the long-gun registry, despite their incredible value, had to be done away with to protect Canadians’ privacy—think having access to everything we all do online is just fine.

Ontario’s privacy commissioner also pointed out that pooling all this data was very dangerous, as it would be a “gold mine” for the hackers that you know would get at it.

In response to complaints, Vic Toews said that people were either with him or with child pornographers! He even gave the Bill the 1984-esque monikor of The Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, even though it covers far more than pornographic activity online.

Criticism was widespread, and not only from the usual suspects. The Sun, the Post, blogging Tories, even Margaret Wente wrote a very thoughtful article on why she was “with the child pornographers” on this one.

But the funniest stuff was online, particularly on Twitter.

The first salvo was from new account @Vikileaks30, which just pumps out facts about Mr. Toews, starting with ugly divorce from his wife, precipitated by his having an affair with impregnating a much younger woman. Though some called it an invasion of privacy, it’s actually all part of the public record. Unlike the information the government wants to store about us.

But today took the cake. Today #TellVicEverything was trending. These were a series of tweets, with that hash tag, often also directed to Mr. Toews real Twitter account, sparing Toews the bother of spying on us by just telling him everything we’re doing.

And it was hilarious. Oh, my God, Canadians are funny. (Not me. Mine was lame.) And busy! There was no keeping with it. But I’d just check in every couple hours or so for latest, and laugh…

A tiny sample…

Justin Trudeau, MP @justinpjtrudeau

During QP @johnbairdown dropped by and I asked him to tell @ToewsVic that I had to pee. He didn’t know we #TellVicEverything. Awkward.

ThisHourHas22Minutes @22_Minutes

Dear @ToewsVic: Just yawned. Now the guy beside me is yawning. Feeling guilty about it. #TellVicEverything

Dan Gardner @dgardner

Hey, everybody! You either #TellVicEverything or you side with the child pornographers.

And by the way…

This bill is actually going to committee now instead of to second reading, as would normally be the case.  You may think that’s nothing, but with this band of time allocation junkies (they already have limited debate on more bills than any other government in Canadian history), it is waving a white flag. Unlike the many other bad bills recently, they will actually entertain amendments to this one.

Never underestimate the power of the Twitterverse.

 

January 15, 2012

This video not available on mobile

Posted by cultureguru under Music, Politics | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

This week, on Wednesday, some major websites plan to go “on strike” for a day to protest SOPA / PIPA, US bills representing content provider’s latest and possibly most nefarious attempts at ineffectively combating web piracy by, basically, ruining the Internet. As a Canadian, there isn’t much I can do about this except sit back and watch, hoping that President Obama’s somewhat critical statement about this Bill will stop it from passing in its current form.

In the meantime, I’ve been puzzling over the fact that YouTube lets me watch some videos on a my computer, but not on my Android tablet. “Content provider has not made this video not available on mobile” it will say.

So it’s something about copyright protection, but what, exactly? While I think regional bans are fairly stupid, I at least somewhat understand “the logic” of them. That the copyright may only be valid in a certain area, not globally. Someone else might own it somewhere else. So only people in your area can watch certain.

But that I can watch a video on my computer, but not on my tablet three feet away? Huh? What are thinking I’m going to do with it on my tablet that’s so terrible? (Because honestly, there seems lots more PC than Android software for downloading and manipulating YouTube videos, if that’s where we’re going with this.) And if that’s I can travel around with my tablet… Well, news flash, I can also do that with a laptop.

But with a little Googling, I found out the why. This happens a lot on music videos, which happens to be the main type of video I watch, so I see that message a lot.

It’s because they don’t want me using YouTube as a music player on my tablet (or on a phone, of course–the main target of this particular restriction).

So as is often the case with these copyright things, it’s a stupid reason. And also as usual, pretty easy to work around.

  1. Use the Opera browser.
  2. Set the Opera user agent setting to desktop instead of tablet mode.
  3. Go to YouTube and watch video.

Works a treat. Thank you and good night and stop SOPA.

 

November 16, 2011

These are a few of my favorite tweets

Posted by cultureguru under Music, Personal, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , |
1 Comment 

I didn’t get Twitter for a long time. I’d go there and not really see the point. In practical terms, I didn’t really understand how anything of value could be provided in 140 characters. And there was all that talk of people just tweeting about what they had for breakfast.

Now, though, I’m addicted.

I initially signed on based on a friend’s advice to do so just to get a good Twitter-name, even if I didn’t do much with it right away. Turned out she had a point; most variations of my name and my most commonly used web pseudonyms were already in use by others. But I did find an available combination.

Twitter has a bit of learning curve to it. I started by just following a small number of people and trying to figure it out from there. I soon learned that a lot of power is in the link; sure, you can’t say that much in 140 characters, but you can link to those details. (And to photos. And to videos.)

But when I’m say addicted, it’s not to tweeting itself, which I remain a little gun-shy about. (Apparently I have tweeted 28 times in total.) In fact, I’m still not completely clear on who sees what when it comes replies, direct replies, direct messages, retweets, private message… ? All in all, it’s easier to just listen, most of the time.

Currently I follow 59 accounts, some of whom haven’t tweeted in two years, some of whom tweet so frequently, I don’t know how they stay employed.

Among my favorites are the following.

@Elizabeth May:  A lot of the politicians I follow tweet mostly dull platitudes, toeing the party line. Elizabeth May (federal leader of the Green Party, but you knew that) tweets more like a real person would. I particularly enjoy her tweets from Parliament Hill, which give insight into things that wouldn’t necessarily make the media:

I had planned to make a statement marking Remembrance Day. I am shocked the CPC has blocked my chance to speak.

They didn’t like the point I was making. 40 years 1913-1956 closure used 10x; in last 40 days, 7x

Conservatives keep limiting debate. They have the votes. Not sure why everything has to be forced thru.

Ban asbestos motion. First vote to keep asbestos trade, our PM.

John McCallum asked Tony Clement about an answer by tweet! Twitter seems to be Clement’s only forum 4 G8 $ Q’s. Baird takes all Qs in QP.

Though must say it’s not exactly improving my opinion of the Conservative Party of Canada.

@simont400000: He being Simon Townshend, the much younger brother of one Pete Townshend, and who also tours with Roger Daltrey. Been kind of fun “following” him on tour:

Great show in Vancouver. Smokin’ crowd! Two shows left on tour and the TCT charity gig in LA. Come along… 2.5k a ticket. Rock n’ Roll!

And his random tweets are also kind of funny:

@Kimmittable: I’m a real fan of your earlier work.” I said that to Joni Mitchell once and she told me to Fuck off. True!

And if you’re wondering what it’s like to not be famous yourself (though he is himself quite a talented composer and musician), but hanging with the very famous:

Getting home from tour is strange… no daily sheet, no room service, no living from suitcase or doing laundry – no gigs. Not being a pop star

@dizzyfeet: This being the moniker of Nigel Lithgow, producer of American Idol and judge on So You Think You Can Dance. It’s in the latter capacity that I’m interested, but I don’t follow anyone else connected with that show. Nigel’s feed is just hilarious as he so frequently engages in public battles with those who reply to this tweets. There’s a whole “Moron” meme running through his feed that you’d have to read back on to completely understand.

RT @Clamanity: @izzyfeet Emmy voters are morons. [I KNOW. I'VE BEEN HANDING OUT #MORON NUMBERS ALL NIGHT. HA, HA!]

He’s also satisfyingly blunt (not mean) in posting his opinion. He’s recently been listed on “Recommend people to follow on Twitter”, so I’m not the only one to notice the fun to be had here. His response:

Welcome to all my new followers. Thank you#NewYorkPost I felt truly proud. Bring on the#Morons.

Of course!

@karenscian: Who? Right! She makes Simon Townshend seem famous. She’s my city councillor. Who has actually gotten in trouble for tweeting during council meetings.

But her feed covers a great deal more than the goings-on at Waterloo City Hall. She comments on Waterloo news in general, federal and provincial politics, food, family… An eclectic mix that very often seems to jibe with my own interests.

And I’ll leave the last tweet to her.

Oh Twitter, you are such a procrastination-enabler.

 

July 4, 2011

Xoom, xoom, xoom

Posted by cultureguru under Personal | Tags: , |
[2] Comments 

I’ve been kind of wanting a tablet since, well, how long has the iPad been out now? Because it’s been about that long. Phones are too small and come with expensive data plans; laptops are too big and have pathetic battery life. Tablets seemed just right.

But, I hate to be an early adopter—otherwise known as suckers. Those tech-hungry folks who pay too much to essentially do beta-testing on versions 1.0 of whatever, thus paving the way for the rest of us to get the better, cheaper 2.0 version.

So when iPad 2 came out to mostly rave reviews, it seemed no longer necessary to wait. Except… Now there were all these competitors as well. And, I didn’t really like what I was hearing about how Apple was treating some of the apps providers. And, I wasn’t really that crazy about having to do everything through iTunes. And not having USB. Or Flash.

But many competitors seemed to have serious failings. Very short battery life. High price. Small screen size. Finally, the Motorola Xoom was released. On size, price, storage, battery life, it was about the same as Apple. Considered more clunky and harder to use, it wasn’t exactly getting rave reviews. But it didn’t tie you to a particular application to load files. And it had Google behind it, and I do use many things Google. So it seemed worth consideration.

Motorola XoomHowever, the Xoom is very, very much at version 1.0. The list of features it supposedly has but that don’t quite work yet (updates someday, we promise) is almost comical: SD card, full USB support, full Flash support, Android 3.1 (created but not yet available in Canada). And the number of apps, particularly those designed for tablets in particular, is way behind what is available in the iTunes.

So that was the dilemma. Get the mature product that would leave me tied to the whims of Steve Jobs, or pay the same amount for a product with the potential—but not the actuality, yet—of being better.

Uncharacteristically, I voted Xoom.

For the record, it does have flaws. Most of which I was aware of before purchase:

  • The screen is an unbelievable fingerprint magnet. You’d think someone would have realized that was a bad idea for a touch device. I’ve never Windex-ed anything so much.
  • The screen is also overly reflective. When viewing darker videos, you get a great reflection of your face back. I’m not narcissistic enough to really enjoy that.
  • It can’t handle that many video formats. Actually, I haven’t been able to load any formats it will view. Though maybe some app would help with that–haven’t checked.
  • It’s not as handy with PDFs as I’d like (though again, there may be an app for that). I can always view them; I can’t always seems to load or download them, and I’m not sure why.
  • Google Books doesn’t work in Canada.
  • The wild and crazy world of apps does take some getting used to.

On the other hand…

It really is great with most things Google. Unknowingly, I’ve been preparing for this tablet by using so many Google features on the computer. After the wireless connection (quick and easy), it asks you to log into Google. And based on that, it sets everything up: Your email, your calendar, your Picassa photos, your YouTube account, your Google docs. And they all work beautifully, with a great tablet interface. The Google maps are also nice. (And I hear Google Chat is very good, but I don’t use that one.) Google Reader is just OK–but I have found an app that improves that.

And the browser experience has been pretty decent so far as well. It’s just so much better, in fact, to view long web pages with embedded video and links and images on the tablet vs. on my desktop. And like on an iPad, you can zoom the font size, change orientation, smoothly scroll around.

It’s also very customizable, which, I’m told, the iPad is not. It comes with five different home pages you can set up how you want. I’m only using two so far, but I like the possibilities.

The on-screen keyboard has also been surprisingly easy to get used to, and much better than trying to type with your thumbs. Mind, functionality that is way basic on a computer takes a little work here—does this auto-save? (Nope. Save command in menu on the bottom bar.) How do I close this? (Can’t. Unless you get an app for that.) How do I copy and paste? (Select, hold, menu will pop up with these options.) But I suppose figuring all that out is good for my brain. (Though it’s actually making me wish for more online help as well.)

Anyway. It’s only day 3, so I still have 11 days to change my mind and return it. But so far, it definitely has more items in the Keep than Return column. Pass the Windex!

 

June 3, 2011

If Canada Post strikes, will you notice?

Posted by cultureguru under Economy, Personal | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

It may seem strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive.
But what’s stranger still
Is how something so small could keep you alive.

“We Used to Wait” by Arcade Fire

Canada Post delivered my Victoria Secret order today, just ahead of their strike deadline. I thought that was great of them, considering I’d placed the order just on Saturday, and didn’t select the fast shipping options.

I get abnormally delight about having things delivered to my house. As a result, I have a bunch of stuff showing up here on a regular basis. A daily newspaper. A biweekly basket of local organic produce. A bimonthly order of organic fair-trade coffee. Several monthly or bimonthly magazine subscriptions. Music and movies on plastic discs, not just in digital bits! Books on dead trees! And the percentage of my wardrobe deriving from Victoria’s Secret is probably unusually high.

Of course, that doesn’t all get here by Canada Post. Having heard about the strike threat on Monday, I got to wondering what I’d actually miss.

The bulk of the mail I get, of course, is just advertising and requests for donations (with “free gifts”). That stuff just tends to sit around unopened for quite a while. So, I dare say I’m not going to miss that too much.

I used to get mountains of catalogs; the number is way down now. I’ll usually flip through the ones that still arrive: Vintages magazine, the discount books, exercises videos, Lee Valley. And naturally, Victoria’s Secret (once Jean’s done with it). But still, I don’t see missing that stuff too desperately, either.

Now, the disruption to my Rogers Video Direct DVD rentals will be a little annoying. Hey, I’ve just realized that the copy of Central Station that has apparently been shipped to me hasn’t arrived yet! OK, see, I am definitely somewhat annoyed about that. Especially since they’ve already received the copy of Good Hair that I returned. Plus, TV is mostly reruns now.

But, what else. I can still order from Amazon.ca, because they use UPS. Ditto Lee Valley. Ebay, Chapters, VSC are out but, hey, I think I can do without those for a bit. Magazine subscriptions will be disrupted, but I’m always behind on reading those anyway. A chance to catch up.

As for me actually mailing things, well, it has become a pretty rare event to mail personal letters and cards. I do have to send in a cheque for my high school reunion thingie by the end of the month, so if this drags on, I’ll have to use UPS or something for that. But my biggest use of stamps is for insurance companies. Because Jean and I are with different companies, we can’t submit everything electronically. To get the full refund, we have to send in paper forms and paper receipts.

It’s a huge pain that I won’t miss at all, but I do like getting the actual money back. Of course, the Sun Life office is local. I could probably just drop off the paperwork in person.

So wow. A postal strike is hardly the big deal it used to be, eh? Even for those of us still nostalgically tied to old media forms and the thrill of getting a package.

I’m not going to join in on the union bashing here (although, bankable sick days? Probably I’m just jealous, though, since I’d likely have accumulated a year or two off by now if I could do that…), but this could certainly be a tough fight for them. If due to strike, people keep finding other ways around Canada Post, that’s not good for either side.

Maybe I’ll just have to try them new-fangled online movies…

We used to wait for it. We used to wait for it.
Sometimes it never came.
Sometimes it never came.

 

April 2, 2011

Surrounded by sound

Posted by cultureguru under Personal, Television | Tags: , |
[3] Comments 

I tried to watch TV just now and found myself listening to Richard Gere’s Robin Hood while watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live, featuring a faux Kim Jong-il. It was interesting juxtaposition, but not what I was after.

Yesterday we’d been happily watching Moulin Rouge on DVD on this same TV when the picture simply disappeared.

It shouldn’t be so hard to do something as lazy as watching television.

It seems especially wrong to be churlish, though, when these troubles are all the result of really nice work anniversary gift Jean got, of a BluRay DVD player and surround sound system. Since the only place we currently have an LCD television is in the living room, it made sense to set up the BluRay there. This is also provided surround in that room, where previous we merely had stereo sound.

Plus, then we were able to move our older sound system into the kitchen, which we will also, eventually, have surround sound. In the meantime, I have better stereo sound, and can now hook up the iPod in that room, rather then from the bedroom.  Particularly handy when it decides to randomly play a song that is a complete mystery to me (I have a lot of songs), compelling me to look at the iPod screen to see what it is. That task no longer involves stairs.

All nice things. Except that it really is bloody complicated watching television now. You have to turn on the three devices: PVR, TV, sound system. No big deal, right? Except that every one of three remotes tries to control all the devices—sort of. So you turn on one, and then you grab a second remote to turn on the next, and that one turns off the first while turning on the second, and so on… Then they’re finally all on and you accidentally press some Power button again, and oops! They all go off again.

It’s enough to make you think maybe you should just read a book.

Then, the settings. Of course, the sound system needs to be set to right option–Sat / Cable,  not TV, and of course not DVD, FM, Audio, or any otheir subsettings… One day, the only way I could find to get sound from my record player was to turn the TV on and change its source input. What?

Yes, the TV also needs to be set to be on the right source. Now is it HDMI1 or HDMI3? Or maybe BD (BluRay disc) system?

If things still are synching up correctly at this point, it may be because of the switches. We do still have a TV downstairs, but only one PVR now (the older having collapsed and died a few weeks ago). We’re kind of proud we figured out how to hook up two TVs to one PVR, but it does mean setting various switches to the right position depending on what you want to do (watch upstairs or downstairs, watch live or recorded). Not to mention the strange kind of voodoo dance you have to do downstairs in front the remote control signal, trying to successfully get the signal wirelessly upstairs. But when you finally hit that sweet spot, it’s exciting!

Sigh. But I will say that high-definition picture really is very pretty. And, it really is great to have both the pretty picture and surround sound available in one room, instead of having to choose one or the other.

What we still haven’t achieved? Hooking up the computer to make it easier to watching streaming video. We tried with our really old computer (which had been in the kitchen), but it frankly could not handle being projected onto such a big screen. So despite Toronto Life’s interesting article called “Honour among thieves”, which made it sound like practically a patriotic duty to steal your content from the Internet, we can still only do that by downloading, putting that content on a USB, and popping that into one of the DVD players or the TV.

Which remains slightly more onerous task than turning on and watching the TV. But only a just.

 

November 28, 2010

High Tech / Low Tech: A joint project

Posted by cultureguru under Music | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

I have friends who are really interested in photography, and one of the challenges some of them follow is this Sunday Stills idea, a weekly blogged photo challenge. A week or two ago the theme was High Tech / Low Tech, which resulted in two contrasting photos of eReader vs books: Robin’s | January’s.

That led me to thinking it would be interesting to do that with music: LP > CD > iPod. Main problem was, I’m really not interested in staging or taking photographs. Fortunately, though, I live with someone who is. So the following is a joint effort. I picked out the items. Jean staged them, took several photos from many angles, selected the best ones, edited those to be better, and here we are:

The iPod is just so little, isn’t it? Dwarfed by the five albums it contains, not at all obvious that it contains thousands more.

Yet, the LP lives on as well, and I think this also shows why. So big. So tangible. So warm, as they say. With every new LP you buy today, you also get a code to download a digital copy. The best of both worlds.

 

September 2, 2010

The Wilderness Downtown

Posted by cultureguru under Arts, Music | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

OK, this was cool.

My current favorite band (at least in subcategory: Best years are not decades behind them), Arcade Fire, has this interactive video on their website for the great song, “We Used to Wait”.

You enter the street address of one of your childhood homes and images from that place get integrated into the video. I was skeptical that the fairly obscure Timmins street where my parents live would be included, but about four characters in, it came up as an option.

The multi-window resulting video was really neat, especially on the big monitor I have at home.

Requires the Google Chrome browser.

Then you can try out your the address of your choice at http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

 

July 10, 2010

The story of my stuff

Posted by cultureguru under Environment, Television | Tags: , , , |
1 Comment 

You’ve seen The Story of Stuff, yes? The fairly enlightening, partly animated video about how we North Americans all have too much stuff, and why that’s a problem? It has made me think. (99% of what I acquire is discarded within 6 months? Really?) But so far, I don’t think it’s really made me change my behavior.

It’s just so ingrained. Just watch this beautiful justification for why two people having three television sets just isn’t enough….

********

Many television series ran their course for the season back in May or so, but we’ve been getting by with season 1 of True Blood (never did develop the love, though), season 1 of Californication (whereas I really did get caught up with all these flawed people), and even finally finishing all my PVR’ed episodes of Flashforward. (And the TV critic who claimed the last episode was confusing and open-ended was an idiot. The last episode wasn’t in the least hard to follow, and the series tied itself up very nicely, leaving some areas open for the future, yes, but hardly to a frustrating extent. The whole thing is recommended for all who like sci-fi, physics, and philosophical questions of will vs. fate, as presented by pretty people.)

But now all those are done, too, so Jean and I have near run out of shows we both like to watch. This is a problem, because we both tend to like to settle down around 9:00 for a bit of TV. What to watch, what to watch, when all I want to do is catch up with So You Think You Can Dance (nestled there on the PVR) but he’s already engrossed in an action thriller on AMC?

What, you only have TV, you ask? Well, no. But the thing, we only have one TV in a location where it’s actually comfortable to sit down and watch it. The second one is in the kitchen, where your only seating option are the high stools at the breakfast bar. Fine for catching the news while preparing and eating dinner, but not so great for settling in for a long watch. (Plus, being that close to the food also leads to way too much snacking.)

And the third? If you can even call that a TV, given that it’s–and I’m serious–a Commodore 64 monitor. So it’s very old and therefore prone to some flickering, and also very small. And, it’s in the exercise room. Being an exercise room, there are no seats in there, unless you count the big weight machine chair. So it’s a great place to play exercise or other videos while exercising. But if you just want to watch TV, you’re kind of stuck with a yoga mat on the floor as “seating”.

This, combined with the grumpiness that comes with the heat and humidity of late, that has led to us arguing over our respective television preferences, and who is to be banished to the uncomfortable upstairs. Adding insult to injury, upstairs person also loses PVR access. Stuck with live TV, with its many, many long commercial breaks (all telling you that you suck and need to buy more stuff)…

So, clearly, we need to put a TV in the living room.

Much like TV in the bedroom, this is something I’ve always resisted, with some idea that the living room should be about “higher” culture like books and music and paintings and conversation.

But one has to be practical. Fact is, it is the only other room in the house with couches and chairs.

But we ain’t putting a TV cabinet in there. So, the thing will have to wall-mounted. And, it’s the living room; it’s going to have to look good. So there’s no question of moving one of the existing extra TVs into that room (and besides, we need them where they are!). Clearly, we need a new TV.

A lovely, sleek, new flatscreen television.

************

See how that works? And the lovely new television will, in turn, lead to justifications for high-definition TV receivers and service and PVRs, not to mention BlueRay DVD players and discs. And won’t that mean some sort of sound system upgrade? …

And hence we demonstrate our value in this culture of consumerism.

 

July 5, 2010

Odds and sods

Posted by cultureguru under Music, Personal, Travel | Tags: , , |
Leave a Comment 

I’d mentioned to some that the SD card from our trip had cracked right in half when inserted into the computer. Well, it turns out that Windows 7 has a feature to help you recover from such a thing. To access it, simply remove the card, reinsert it, and accept the repair option. In the end, we lost very few photos. (And I’ve finally managed the finish the web pages about the trip.)

Too bad it took us a few weeks to figure that out.

*****

Have a new iPod classic. Well, new to me. I bought it used on Ebay. It’s in excellent shape, though; looks brand new. I was mainly after greater storage capacity, and boy do I have that now: 120 GB. Given that it’s taken me 5 years to get to 30 GB, that should be enough for some time. It’s also black, which is somewhat cooler-looking than the white. And it has a better screen, a “cover flow” feature (which I’m not entirely sure of the point of, but is weirdly compelling to look at), more information displayed about each song and playlist, and the ability to create Genius playlists on-the-fly.

The Ebay experience was a little stressful due to uncommunicative seller, but to his credit, he was very fast in shipping it out. So fast, in fact, that he didn’t even bother to remove his 60 GB of music first. So much music, so little I have any interest in. To start fresh? Click that scary, never-before-used “Restore Factory Settings” button.

*****

More nice tributes have come in for Pete Quaife of The Kinks, including an obituary in the Globe and Mail on July 1, by one his former—but post-Kinks—bandmates. Also very beautiful was Ray Davies’ dedicated rendition of “Days”, the most perfect song to sing to a departed friend (and a song he’s often associated with Pete in the past). Ray almost loses it on the opening lines.

 

Next Page »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.