tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60126702007-09-15T19:35:40.996-04:00scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comBlogger967125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-76210976025103715812007-09-11T21:17:00.000-04:002007-09-11T21:18:45.199-04:00

Lately, I've been getting rid of a lot of things that have been taking up space around the house. Little things and big things, like old boxes, a desk and a TV cabinet, old monitors. And even some books. Well, not some. About 300. I was sad to see them go; it was like losing 300 old friends.It's not like I had a lot of stuff to begin with. My life is fairly minimalistic. But there were a lot of

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-84508196306416894982007-09-05T19:24:00.000-04:002007-09-05T19:30:42.473-04:00

I've been a member of the Toronto Freecycle network for several years now. It's been a great way to pass on stuff I no longer need, and get some things that I've found interesting and useful (such as my Gmail address, back when the service was invitation only). But over the last six to eight months, I've been really turned off. Why? A variety of reasons. A bunch of no-shows, mostly -- people who

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-16286102974848996412007-09-05T19:20:00.000-04:002007-09-05T19:21:18.498-04:00

Man spends the first half of his life trying to find himself, and the other half trying to lose himself. -- Gerald Kersh

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-58305207621152152612007-09-04T19:15:00.000-04:002007-09-04T19:21:55.281-04:00

Remember back in school, when someone was so desperate to get elected to school council that they'd make one or more outlandish campaign pledges? Well, that's what's happening with Dalton McGuinty. He's promised a long weekend in February if he gets re-elected. According to McGuinty's campaign chair: Ontario winters are very, very long and Ontarians deserve a statutory holiday in FebruaryIs this

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-54888059901951501842007-08-19T12:17:00.000-04:002007-08-19T12:18:34.731-04:00

The market makes a good servant, a poor master and a worse religion -- Dan McDermott, Sierra Club of Canada

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-20185954472626004282007-08-19T10:38:00.000-04:002007-08-19T10:45:21.774-04:00

A while back, I blogged about provincial Conservative leader John Tory courting the religious vote by promising to fund (to the tune of $400 million) religious schools with public cash. A backlash against this has come from an unlikely source: the Green Party of Ontario. According to this article in The Toronto Star, the Ontario Green Party will be making a move to do away with tax payers

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-47546471102124510802007-08-19T10:26:00.000-04:002007-08-19T10:38:40.137-04:00

A month or so ago, my father found an old reel mower at the dump near his home. The mower was still in good shape, so he took it home, cleaned it up, and gave it to me. I've been using that instead of the ancient electric lawnmower I had. Earlier this morning, I was mowing my front lawn when someone passing by stopped and asked me "Why are you using that instead of an electric or gas mower?"

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-42588927805889488352007-08-18T09:12:00.001-04:002007-08-18T09:16:19.855-04:00

I should be bouyed by this: the provincial government has suddenly found $12 million to allocate for the treatment of autistic children. But as with all of the past (broken) promises about autism treatment and funding I'm remaining more than just a bit cynical. A parent interviewed in the article that I linked to made a good point: the government hasn't addressed the issue of allowing therapists

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-26618777715326872702007-08-06T08:06:00.000-04:002007-08-06T08:15:20.297-04:00

There are a number of people in the traditional media who view blogging, an anonymous or pseudonymous blogging, to be a platform for an online lynch mob. Or worse. One of those people is Forbes magazine writer Daniel Lyons. In an interesting case of the pot calling the kettle black, it turns out that Lyons is actually the person behind The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. In case you're wondering,

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-32262257589121532342007-08-01T20:26:00.000-04:002007-08-01T20:32:02.092-04:00

Watch this video of a 14-year-old from Malawi discussing how he built a windmill for his family using cast-off parts and plans that he found in a library. Malawi, if you didn't know, is a poor country that's pretty much dependent on agriculture. This is a very inspiring story, one of not just ingenuity but of someone taking what he has (or can find) and creating something that not only benefits

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-2385955979214076472007-07-29T21:19:00.001-04:002007-07-30T20:31:30.452-04:00

In my youth, I was the atypical angry young man. A lot of what I saw and hear really set me off. I railed and ranted against ... well, a lot of things both big and small. As I grew older, I mellowed somewhat. Since turning 40 earlier this year, I thought that maybe I'd calmed down and had learned to let the small stuff slide. Turns out that isn't quite the case. I tend to offer a lot of things

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-17549896942422662132007-07-26T20:42:00.001-04:002007-07-26T20:42:38.669-04:00

Be serious without a suit -- Unofficial motto of Google

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-55086254004928527682007-07-24T20:18:00.000-04:002007-07-24T20:21:35.300-04:00

Chances are you write and post most (if not all) of your blog post using the interface that is provided by your blogging software or service. But you really don't have to. Instead, you can use a word processor-like blogging client which can make writing to your blog a lot easier. This article looks at a few blogging clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-85790901929418321862007-07-23T21:10:00.000-04:002007-07-23T21:14:44.885-04:00

Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking or paying attention to. Take, for example, this opinion piece from The New York Times. In the article, the writer bemoans the fact the George W. Bush is over-stepping his bounds as president and is going to war without the sanction of Congress. I'm not a highly-paid political analyst but I noticed this imperial tendency on the part of Bush the Younger

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-8430090574473225552007-07-19T18:21:00.000-04:002007-07-19T18:22:23.763-04:00

Microsoft is notorious for wanting everyone to use its software and, more to the point, its formats. But when faced with competition from the XML-based Open Document Format (ODF), the folks in Redmond scrambled and came up with their own format: Office Open XML (OOXML) which they're pushing as a viable alternative to ODF. You can be sure that OOXML won't be as open as Microsoft claims it will be

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-18803108813927886562007-07-18T06:21:00.000-04:002007-07-18T13:22:40.577-04:00

After much haranguing and a Freedom of Information request that was stonewalled for three years, the Ontario government has finally made public the amount of money that it has spent fighting lawsuits put forward by parents of autistic children. It turns out that $2,414,431 was spent on the action. $2.4 million dollars that could have been put to productive use, rather than squandered on legal

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-46364009190643227882007-07-14T21:33:00.000-04:002007-07-14T21:43:49.582-04:00

Back in the 1980s, I was part of the nuclear disarmament movement. During the wacky years of the Reagan presidency, I was certain that there would be a nuclear war. Hence, my involvement with the anti-nuke brigade. During the 80s, there were a number of TV movies and specials made about the effects of a nuclear war on ordinary people. The one that affected me the most was a BBC production called

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-27050336786051803132007-07-12T22:08:00.001-04:002007-07-12T22:09:27.721-04:00

The Minister for Children and Youth Services in Ontario announced that the government will be doling out $320,000 so that 800 autistic kids can attend camp this summer. And another $210,00 to keep several camps running.I'm grateful that the money will enable autistic children to take part in the kinds of activities that many kid take for granted. Maybe I'm being more than just a tad cynical, but

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-88886318989890223432007-07-11T17:53:00.001-04:002007-07-11T17:54:50.396-04:00

You should work at the level of technology that best does the job. Anything beyond that is nothing but toots and whistles guaranteed to do nothing more than put money in Bill Gates's pocket.    -- Harlan Ellison

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-74351993101559041542007-07-02T16:27:00.000-04:002007-07-02T16:30:12.604-04:00

While I often show dismay at the behaviour of many of my fellow humans, I have to admit that I find human nature to be very interesting. Take, for example, this blog entry. In it, the author discusses how and (more importantly why) a friend of his chose to buy a small soft drink from a vending machine, even though the larger sized were the same price. I have to admit I've done something like this

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-73818441550777637742007-07-01T17:33:00.000-04:002007-07-01T17:37:42.950-04:00

I use the Emacs text editor for a number of things -- writing, building Web pages, publishing, and more. But I stumbled across an interesting blog post that outlines how to read Microsoft Word files using Emacs. You need to install an Emacs extension and a little app called antiword. But once they're in place, you can view Word files without the overhead of a word processor.

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-65210138633037854812007-06-27T20:40:00.000-04:002007-06-27T20:45:43.683-04:00

I've been writing quite a bit about blogging lately (here, with more to come elsewhere). But what I've been writing about have been large, graphical blogging applications. If you want simplicity, you need to hit the command line. That's where Bash Blogger comes in. It's a shell script that enables you to create and post blog entries without a lot of overhead. Read more about it here.

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-89832892747026512002007-06-25T18:09:00.001-04:002007-06-25T18:09:11.148-04:00

For years, I've said that America is a country of litigation. And a lot of that litigation is a waste of time, money, and effort. But the latest case, of a man suing a dry cleaners for $54 million for losing a pair of pants, really takes the cake.The good news? A judge ruled in favour of the defendant. Beyond stupid, this suit was abusive. Luckily, the presiding judge saw that. In his ruling the

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-57224563966940513342007-06-24T16:09:00.000-04:002007-06-24T16:19:18.657-04:00

The other day, my wife read an interesting post in an autism group on Yahoo! The post was from a pair of parents who have an older autistic child. They can't care for their anymore, so he's in a group home. He also goes to a special school and has a support worker. The cost: well over $200,000 per year. Paid for by the provincial government. Interesting, isn't it, how the McGuinty government

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6012670.post-61210021206452135592007-06-24T09:08:00.001-04:002007-06-24T09:09:41.600-04:00

Expect nothing -- Robert Fripp

scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04961793073436832424noreply@blogger.com