Brain –> page

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The Onion’s A.V. Blog reports that two of the TIFF films that I’m most anticipating might have trouble getting on screens south of the border. I suspect no such issues here in Canada, but it’s a sad state of affairs. As the article states,

“In both cases, films are being shut out of theaters for their ideas, not for any explicit or offensive content on the surface. These gatekeepers have basically decided that adults need to be shielded from ideas that they deem inappropriate. They’ve creating a special rating and it’s called GFY (Go Fuck Yourself).”

.:.

I might be in the minority, but I’m all for Hockey Night In Canada moving from CBC to TSN/CTV. Why? Because I, like most of the rest of the country, can’t stand watching the prime time game being called by a pair of Leafs homers who’re on the down slope of their careers. Bob Cole and Harry Neale may be nice guys, but you may as well go watch the game in your Toronto-fan grandpa’s rec room. Gord Miller’s a better play-by-play man, Pierre Maguire’s better at colour (and actually knows the names of some non-Leaf NHLers), and they have guys like Bob McKenzie, Glenn Healy, James Duthie and Chris Cuthbert to boot.

The best part: no more Don Cherry. I’d like it if they could salvage MacLean somehow, but if he has to be sacrificed in order to distract Cherry while they pack up the HNIC set, then so be it.

.:.

Because all my music is encoded at 128kbps (it’s the only way it’ll all fit on my Nomad) I’m thinking this would be a good investment.

.:.

Hey, WOXY’s back.

.:.

Slides in a museum; bitchin’. My brother’s already mentioned it, but this exhibit at London’s Tate Modern looks very cool. When I was there that hall was filled with a giant (and I do mean giant; it was about a hundred feet tall) double-ended red horn.

.:.

If I have time tonight I’ll try to post more pictures from our trip. Day 3 was the motherload (400+ pics) so it could take me a while to slog through them.

.:.

I’ve finally had to pick up my next textbook. However, it’s a statistics course, and I find stats kind of interesting. Sick puppy, I know.

.:.

New TV: Heroes has me hooked. Studio 60 is, apparently, in trouble, proving once again that Aaron Sorkin is too smart to write for television. I haven’t watched Friday Night Lights yet, but if it’s as good as the movie I’ll stick around for the ride.
[tags]d.o.a.p., deliver us from evil, hockey night in canada, creative xmod, woxy, tate modern, statistics, heroes, studio 60, friday night lights[/tags]

The twain just met

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Here’s an interesting confluence of personal interest and scholarly pursuit: the Russian music downloading site AllOfMP3.com, which provides extremely cheap downloads with no copyright protection, is apparently one of the — perhaps the only — major barrier to Russia joining the World Trade Organization. A site like AllOfMP3 would surely violate the TRIPs agreement on international recognition of intellectual property rules, and TRIPs is what I just wrote a whole paper on (though I focused on generic medication for poor countries, not music copyright).

This book learnin’ might come in handy after all…

[tags]allofmp3, wto, trips agreement, russia[/tags]

Pictures: day 1

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve upgraded to a Flickr Pro account so that I could upload all the pictures from the trip. Obviously I won’t bother posting some of them (some turned out blurry, and Nellie likes to take pictures of our hotel rooms that I’m sure aren’t interesting to anyone else). The sets are broken up into days: you can see pictures from day 1 here. My description of the day is here; the pictures pretty much follow along in sequence.
Kicking Horse River, Yoho National Park

I had to scale them all down so that uploading wouldn’t take all night. If anyone wants an original version (most were in the 2800 x 1600 range) email me.

[tags]rockies, lake louise, kicking horse river, emerald lake, moraine lake[/tags]

Workhorse

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Our Canon S3 (and the 2GB memory card inside) did yeoman’s work on our trip. We’ve finally moved all the files into one place for a grand total of 1,302 pictures and 30 videos weighing in at 1.63GB and 1.64GB respectively. Here’s how it broke down by day:

  • Day 1 (Calgary-Canmore-Moraine Lake-Emerald Lake): 93 pictures, 0 videos*
  • Day 2 (Lake O’Hara-Lake Oesa-Lake Louise-Moraine Lake): 210 pictures, 0 videos*
  • Day 3 (Lake Louise-Athabasca Glacier-Jasper): 398 pictures, 7 videos
  • Day 4 (Jasper-Mount Robson-Maligne Canyon-Maligne Lake-Tramway): 223 pictures, 8 videos
  • Day 5 (Jasper-Beauty Creek-Banff): 296 pictures, 12 videos
  • Day 6 (Banff): 58 pictures, 3 videos
  • Day 7 (Banff-Canmore-Calgary): 24 pictures, 0 videos

* there were some technical difficulties with getting the video to work, so we have no videos of Emerald Lake or the Lake O’Hara/Lake Oesa region.

[tags]canon s3, rockies[/tags]

A non-Rockies post

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Let’s see, what happened while we were gone and ignoring the news (apart from the obvious like the whole Foley-page thing and the continuing deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan)?

  • Nova Scotia seems to have quietly taken the Sunday shopping ban out behind the barn and shot it. Good for them; they can sit at the grown-up table with the rest of us now. Seriously, though, I’m glad; one day we’d like to move back there and we couldn’t do it while that ridiculous ban was in place. I couldn’t abide the idea of a selectively-applied religious Christian tradition telling me when and how I could spend money. When I lost some luggage before a friend’s wedding I couldn’t buy a replacement shirt and tie, but I could’ve gone to the casino or bought some tacky tourist kitsch on the waterfront. Foolish. Anyway, congratulations to NS for embracing change. Love the windmills, kids. Don’t throw your shoes at them.
  • If you need further proof that the Bush administration is batshit insane, look no further than the fact that Stephen Baldwin is a cultural advisor to the president.
  • The sting of the Canadiens blowing a 2-goal lead to the Sabres on Friday night, including allowing the tying goal with 15 seconds left, was soothed with a shootout win over the Leafs on Saturday.
  • Vinnie Vincent, brief guitarist for Kiss (just at the end of the makeup era) has been denied royalties to the one album he (officially) played on: Lick It Up. You know you’re in bad shape when you’re asking for royalties from a 25-year-old album that’s considered poor even by Kiss’ standards…

[tags]sunday shopping, stephen baldwin, canadiens, sabres, leafs, vinnie vincent, kiss[/tags]

In the home stretch

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About twelve hours from now we’ll be home. Or close to it; probably cruising somewhere over the midwest. Our flight is early tomorrow morning so we took it fairly easy tonight: we found some afternoon snacks, relaxed in the room (I watched the Habs beat the Leafs in a shootout while Nellie watched her new addiction: Battlestar Galactica) and went out for some microbrews and excellent pizzas at Hop In Brew. We’re now just packing up and and showering, trying to salvage all the sleep we can before the 5:00 alarm. It’s been a great vacation — probably our best ever — but we’re ready to go home now.

Next broadcast will either be a complaint from the airport or a sigh of relief as we get home.

[tags]calgary, hop in brew, canadiens, leafs[/tags]

Rockies, day 7

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We took our time getting out of the Banff Springs this morning, and stopped in Canmore for lunch at a highly-recommended place called Crazyweed Kitchen. Our bellies full of good food we drove east and left the mountains (and one last herd of bighorned sheep) behind. We’ve just now arrived in Calgary and have checked into our sweet-ass room at the Westin. The new tower has nicer rooms, plasma TVs, and so on…we’re considering not leaving between now and tomorrow morning.

[tags]calgary, rockies, canmore, crazyweed[/tags]