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Canadian Thanksgiving

Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, so it was time to head for the country. We picked up Granny (she’s 96 you know) on Sunday morning and drove up to the Laurentians with Aidan chattering away the whole time. It was a perfect Autumn day: clear blue skies, crisp clean air, not too cold, not too [...]

WordCamp Toronto

Yes, I’m off to WordCamp Toronto tomorrow for two days of blogging and social media fun in-depth conferencing. Not only will I get to hear some great speakers and meet interesting people, but I get a t-shirt, baseball cap and free food!
The only speakers I’ve actually heard of before are Matt Mullenweg and Mark Jaquith, [...]

Le Fete Des Enfants

The sister, the movies and the country

RSS Feed Montreal

Snow and Fire

This is going to be a rambling mish-mash kind of post, but it’s my blog and I can do what I want.
After around thirty eight centimetres of snow in three days, Montreal is in recovery mode. The streets are still a mess but the snow clearers are out spending seventeen million dollars on the cleanup [...]

The Ups and Downs of a Winter Wonderland

We’re having our first serious snow of the year today. Now anyone who knows me knows I love a bit of snow, but it definitely has its downs as well as the ups.
Walking through Murray Hill Park was the best part of the walk today; the snow was lying thick on the grass, the workers [...]

I got Streetviewed

Car Free Day

RSS Feed Home

Biking again

After my bike was stolen at the start of the biking season, I decided the best thing to do would be to buy a cheap and crappy looking bike that nobody would want to steal. It’s sad that I have to choose that option but I didn’t see any other way.
So, while on vacation I [...]

The Table

While I was on vacation we went shopping for a dining room table, as our dining room has been empty since we moved in four months ago. We came back with two display cabinets and a buffet, but no table.
This weekend we drove out to Cornwall to visit an antiques place, determined to find ourselves [...]

The Weekend of Surprises

Flatpack Hell

RSS Feed Canada

The Park Controversy

I was going to write a post complaining about all the fuss being made over the simple renaming of a street.
But I stopped and thought a bit.
How would I feel if the London Mayor suggested renaming Piccadilly Circus or Pall Mall? How would a New Yorker react to the suggestion of changing Madison [...]

Montreal Scavenger Hunt 2

It’s time for the second Montreal Scavenger Hunt. You might actually have to go out and look around for this one, but it’s a nice day so go take a stroll.
The rules: Find the location of the picture below, and either leave a comment here telling me where it is or go take a picture [...]

Bests of Montreal

Study time

RSS Feed Travel

News from New Hampshire

The sandsculpting competition was won by an Ontario-ian, with a Quebecer taking the sculptor’s choice and people’s choice awards. Special mention goes to the Indian guy who flew all the way from India, spending his own money, to spend hours over a beautiful buddha sculpture only to have it washed away in a thunder storm.
The [...]

Back From Cali

I’m back from California, and it looks like I missed the last snowfall of the year. I enjoyed sun and warmth in Anaheim and came back to a warm night in Montreal.
While in Anaheim I walked a lot, went on five rollercoasters at Knotts Berry Farm, walked some more, ate at IHOP twice and at [...]

California Calling

My sister the travel writer

RSS Feed Formula One

F1 2009 Predictions

The new Formula One season is upon us, and it looks like it’ll be a good one. The new rules and new cars make it really difficult to predict anything, but I try to make a few predictions at the start of every season, so here goes:

Ferarri will win the Constructor’s championship.
Jenson will get some [...]

China 2008

B O R I N G

Japan 2008

Singapore 2008

RSS Feed Skepticism

Why Scientology Won’t Go Away

Most UFO cults don’t stay around for very long; they either self destruct, like Heaven’s Gate or fade away, like the Aetherius Society. Even the Raelians have slowly faded into obscurity.
Scientology though refuses to die. Despite being declared a criminal organisation in Canada and other countries. Despite the huge amount of negative press they’ve had [...]

Jean Tremblay doesn’t care about Human Rights

The Quebec Human Rights Commission has quite rightly ruled that city councils, including Saguenay, should stop praying before or during council meetings because it violates religious freedom.
Sadly, the mayor of Saguenay, Jean Tremblay, doesn’t care about human rights because apparently he’s a religious bigot:
“I know they prefer me to stop, but I won’t do that,” [...]

Mini-Science at McGill

Aleaping we will go

RSS Feed Work

The New Job

I have a new job!
No, I’m not leaving McGill… Today I accepted a new position at McGill as a web developer in the Web Services Group, the team who look after the content of mcgill.ca and are involved in other web initiatives around campus.
It’s a step in a new direction for me. The WSG use [...]

The Hordes Are Coming

For most schools around here, this is the last week of summer. For the past few weeks I’ve had peaceful journeys to work, sitting reading my book in a quiet carriage, sometimes with empty seats around me. All that is about to change.
It started today with the Dawson students who thankfully are old enough to [...]

Bored

What I do

RSS Feed Blogging

New look on Wordpress.org and a new release!

I was browsing plugins on wordpress.org when suddenly it all looked different. For a second I thought I’d ended up on a different site, but no, it looks like the new look and feel has been implemented to match the upcoming WordPress 2.5 release, which is now showing up on the download page.
It looks great, [...]

YULBlog Analysis

In moments of boredom over the past few days I’ve been going through all the blogs on yulblog.org to see what blogging platforms people are using. The result is the graph below.
Notes:
I didn’t visit every single site. For example most of the blogger/blogspot sites I determined just by looking at the URI, so some of [...]

The Habits Meme

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes

RSS Feed Conservation

Is An Inconvenient Truth biased?

Recently a UK court decided that Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, could be shown in British schools, despite an attempt by a school governor to suppress it on the grounds that it is biased. The movie now has to be preceded by a disclaimer, but I’m guessing the film itself will have [...]

An Inconvenient Truth

I’ve haven’t been a fan of Al Gore ever since he claimed to have invented the internet, but I have new-found respect for the man after watching An Inconvenient Truth at the weekend. He’s obviously passionate about the cause and he’s been trying to tackle it for a long time. He’s done his research and [...]

Let’s save water!

Nucular Energy

RSS Feed Geeky

Montreal Startups

Montreal has a vibrant tech community, most notably in the gaming and multimedia arenas, but also in the world of internet startups. There is also a heavy open-source influence, probably fuelled by the desire of many Montrealers for intellectual freedom and freedom of expression. I’d like to showcase a few of the Montreal based projects [...]

Me and Calendars

Over the years I’ve tried many different ways to remember stuff. I’ve tried paper calendars and diaries, which just got forgotten and gathered dust. I’ve tried post-it notes, which just get lost. I’ve tried keeping stuff in my head, which works some of the time, but the amount of time it works decreases with age.
Of [...]

Flawed Priorities

RIP Netscape, thanks for giving us Firefox.

RSS Feed Asides

♺ @shatnerian: RT @cbcconnect Tweeting from Haiti: @fredodupoux @RAMhaiti @carelpedre

quiz night tonight! 8pm! hurley’s irish pub! on crescent street! winning team wins prizes! I don’t usually exclaim this much! !yul

went to bathroom: cleaning lady was there, went for coffee: coffee lady was refilling the machine; should’ve stayed at my desk #breakfail

@evan I was overdue for a change anyway, and this makes life easier: http://www.angel.net/~nic/passwd.sha1.1a.html

bunch of passwords reset, thanks to an accidental ass kick from @evan ;)

@vrillusions http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Commenting_out_a_range_of_lines

TMBG’s Here Comes Science is awesome, but please get I Am A Paleontologist out of my head now

inbox seven, that’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to zero

thank you Mr Tennant, you were one of the best

someone hit me over the head with a bottle of champagne last night, where’s the Tylenol?