We’ve just posted the latest Raincoast Books podcast with author Katy Hutchinson.
Katy’s book is called Walking After Midnight: One Woman’s Journey through Murder, Justice and Forgiveness.
This is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve read in a long time, and getting to meet and talk with Katy has been a highlight of the season.
You can get the podcast from the Raincoast Books RSS feed. Or if you prefer, here’s the direct iTunes link.
For more information on Katy visit her web site.
My two kids have been going nuts creating Lego sets for themselves with the Lego Digital Designer.
It’s a great idea. They use the software to design their dream Lego creation, just be clicking and dragging pieces onto the stage. They can even rotate around like any good design software.
Then when they’re done, Lego calculates a price, boxes it, and sends it out complete with assembly instructions.
Totally user-generated made-to-order, and great use of the web.
Further to my post about CBC.CA, if you know anything about why the site’s broken, let me know.
All good stories accepted, no questions asked. Who Where When Why What and any other W’s you care to include.
Email whobrokecbc@bigsnit.com with your good story.
I’ll randomly select one person’s story and send them a copy of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, a fitting prize, yes?
Ok. Fess up. Who broke CBC.CA ? Huh ? Huh ?
NOTE: CBC.ca is experiencing technical difficulties, and we’re currently working to restore the site to normal. Until that happens, in an effort to offer a basic level of service, we are providing this scaled-back version of the site, featuring today’s top news stories. We’re sorry for any inconvenience, and we hope to have the site back to normal soon.
Actually, the ‘scaled back’ version of CBC.CA is delightfully easier to use than the real thing.
I say if this is broken, don’t fix it !
If you’re a fan, like me, of the original UK show The Office, and you loyally listened to the Ricky Gervais podcasts, you know who Stephen Merchant is. You’ll love this article in the Observer.
Obsessed with comedy from a young age, one person Merchant admired was John Cleese, also tall, and from nearby Weston-Super-Mare. It was because of Cleese that Merchant wanted to go to Cambridge and join Footlights. However, in retrospect, he feels ‘lucky’ that Footlights didn’t work out. ‘I would probably have tried to be something I wasn’t – arch, erudite, wordy, pretentious, in a way I’m not.’
Standing at the pot-luck-food-table at a house party last night, the guy next to me pointed to a tuna dish and said “better get it now before it all disappears”.
He was more right than he knew…
In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity — the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms — has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse.
Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch.
The British Broadcasting Corporation figures there’s some serious money to be made adding adverts to their web site.
The corporation estimates that it could earn between £48m and £105m annually in advertising revenues, depending on how aggressively the advertising were to be placed.
BBC executives must be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of so much extra income. However, they will have to balance the advertising revenue against the huge protests its UK rivals will undoubtedly make, and against internal opposition.
Here in Canada, CBC.CA had gone for years with no advertising on it’s news pages. That all changed 2 years ago with an aggressive sell of banners above the title and on the right side bar.
Lately those ‘above title’ banners have only occasionally been sold, mostly the inventory is promotional for the fall TV season or CBC’s uninspired 1995-era kids web site.
Another HDR. The flare on the sun is from the aperture, no cheezy filter applied.
Messing around with HDR images.
This reminds me of those hand-painted prints from the 50’s. I shot this one this afternoon.
I was taking some pics in English Bay today when I caught these two in for a dip.
Maybe they’re locals, but in any event, odds are at least one of them is originally from Manitoba. Given that it was cold and windy today (despite the sunshine) I figured they deserved the paparazzi treatment.
They had a photographer with them (on shore) but I couldn’t read the sign from my angle.
The nights are colder, we’ve bought our Cypress Mountain season passes, and I’ve been into Second Wave three times in four days. Must be fall!
Now this is my idea of a perfectly acceptable way to waste some time. Excerpt from the University of Westminster web site.
The exhibition LEARN TO FLY, by Mark Clews, featured a precise full-scale version of the balsa wood rubber band powered airplane of his childhood.
Fifty metres of rubber was wound up and let go at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey on a runway over 6,000 feet long. Like model planes, this art work can be flat-packed and reassembled anywhere in under an hour, ready for flight.
Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog has a great list of ways to consume RSS.
I wrote last December about about getting RSS feeds on my PSP, but Rubel’s got the waterfront, and the water closet, covered.
A definate must-read if only for the TP powered RSS reader. Hilarious.
After over a year with a Vonage line for business, I’ve given up putting up with the unpredictable service.
After fixing the mess Shaw Digital Phones made of my professionally installed phone jacks, I’ve gone back to a Telus line.
My clients are happier with the phone quality (“hey, you aren’t calling from the other side of the country”) and I’m not frustrated at the seemingly random quality of the connections.
When posted about Neal Mueller’s article slamming the iPod, I meantioned it read like a commercial for Creative Labs. Turns out I wasn’t far off according to Mac Daily News…
It seems that under the list of sponsor companies that have provided him with gear on his climbs, you’ll find Creative Labs… If you click on the link to Creative on Mueller’s sponsor page, it take you to the product page for the MuVo, meaning, I presume, that the player was given to him by Creative.
An article in New Scientist suggests that our search for life on Mars may have missed something…
A paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the GCMS (gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer) instrument was incapable of detecting organic compounds even in Mars-like soils from various locations on Earth. This includes Chile’s Atacama desert, where other tests prove that living microbes are indeed present.
In some soils – including samples taken from Rio Tinto in Spain, which contain iron compounds similar to those detected in Mars soils by NASA’s rover Opportunity, the sensitivity of the GCMS was actually a million times lower than its claimed threshold for detection.
So, basically what this means is that if some alien race used NASA-like technology to probe parts of Earth, they too would have gone home empty handed. Hmmmmm. Maybe that’s just as well.
I’m in Burnaby today, the sky is grey but it is wonderful here otherwise.
LONDON: British Broadcasting Corporation is outsourcing some of its accounting and financing services to India in a move aimed at saving 20 million pounds a year for the next decade. “The BBC is taking advantage of the significant savings of globalisation while maintaining the benefits of more local customer support,” the corporation said on Sunday.
Last week at a business meeting I suggested to someone that they should quit smoking. Its not like they WERE smoking at the time, it was a general ‘poke my nose where it doesn’t belong’ comment.
I’m a reformed smoker, and I don’t much like being around it, but I don’t lecture people and I don’t tell them what to do with their life. And I certainly don’t do it in a business environment. I crossed a line.
But there’s a back story.
One of my best friends and mentors died last week. She had lung cancer that had spread rapidly.
She, like me, was a smoker back in the day. She quit about 15 years ago, but still, she probably smoked for 25 years. We had lunch together a few weeks ago, now she’s dead.
My only sister also died exactly the same way, she was 46.
My sister loved to smoke. She was good at it. She looked good doing it. She lived a full and rich life, but death by lung cancer at 46 is horrible, no matter how big a life you’ve had.
When I was a smoker I understood the risks. Intellectually at least.
But I had never watched someone I love die in front of me. I don’t ever want to spend time on a cancer ward with someone I care about, EVER AGAIN. But I know I will.
And to be honest, I even fear it will happen to me.
If the person you share your bed with snores, Ipsos Reid says you aren’t alone.
most married people in Canada (54%) admit that their partner snores when sleeping. Regionally, the biggest married snorers are residents of British Columbia (60%), followed by Ontarians (58%) while married residents of Quebec are the least likely to snore
