Sincerely, your something or other.

Husbandry

2008-06-07T12:52:51Z

Who knows just how well this translates into modern terms:

101

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior

Take the test!

Due to the advent of modern role flexibility, I bring you this, too:

As a 1930s wife, I am
Superior

Take the test!

It seems a lot pickier. I bet I lost points for walking around the house in sock feet.

Wedding photos

2008-06-05T02:51:44Z

On Saturday, Elizabeth and I got married out in Ormstown, and celebrated with a bunch of family and friends.

Elizabeth has already posted some of her thoughts here, I'll add a few things for now, starting with pictures.


Getting ready at my parents' house	The view from our hiding spot before the ceremony

Our expectant friends and family (photo: Adam Hortop)	Sometime around the signing of the registry, our newly-married selves (photo: Adam Hortop)

Some of Elizabeth's younger relatives with us (photo: Adam Hortop)	Some of my younger relatives with us (photo: Adam Hortop)

We eventually got our rainbow, a couple days after our rainy wedding day, in Wakefield	Elizabeth getting a better look

A better look at Elizabeth	Below the covered bridge at Wakefield

In front of the covered bridge in Wakefield	The covered bridge in Wakefield

The ceremony was intimate and intense: Elizabeth and I both were on the verge of tears while we made our vows. We'd both known Ellie Hummel before we asked her to officiate, and it showed in how she did things. We'd planned on getting married outside under the apple tree, but it was threatening to rain, so we packed everyone into the basement of André's farmhouse, which felt like a tiny church, crypt or castle, with stone walls and metal and painted decorations. It was pretty hot, and very crowded, but it felt right. We did burst out to the yard with the tree for a toast and pictures afterward.

Later on, Owen had picked out a poem involving love and Scrabble for us at the cake-cutting, which was quite appropriate. I'll try and get the author and title. The folks at StatCan Scrabble Club will be impressed.

The day as a whole went really, really fast, and sort of unfolded before us due to all the help and merriness from everyone.

Daily Living in Hull

2008-04-09T00:27:17Z

Today I saw a pick-up truck with a rear spoiler almost as high as the cab.

I also ate some poutine at La Pataterie Hulloise. When I told my supervisor Elizabeth and I were going to look at houses in Wrightville, he exclaimed that it meant we would be close to there. The fries were excellent, but the gravy wasn't really my thing, being a little too like hot turkey sandwich gravy and not nearly blisteringly salty enough — they also have a secret vegetarian menu and fry their fries in vegetable oil, for any vegetarian Hullians out there (of which there may have been, as a pretty bohemian-looking car-load in a rusty little Honda came by for take-out, seemed to realize they'd forgotten one of their number, went away, came back and got their brown paper bags of casse-croûte goodness).

We also found some kitty litter made out of corn cobs at Maxi — Noisette has been using wheat-based stuff but it seems like a good idea to leave the wheat for folks to eat now (and the wheat stuff is hard to come by).

good/blah and other stuff

2008-04-04T00:43:48Z

Elizabeth and I read really differently. Whether it's a book or a magazine, I tend to read stuff straight through; I at least have to take a crack at a chapter or article and give up on it before moving on to the next one. She moves around the volume and picks out what appeals to her. With good books, we both read the same amount of stuff.

good	blah
I'm presenting my thesis next month at work. Yay for getting more mileage out of it! Work is good, I'm participating in a bunch of projects and committees, and people are coming to me for help with stuff. Work is making sure I don't get university withdrawal symptoms: I start a ten-week university-style course in sampling theory tomorrow. In French. Yay for bilingualism making twice as many courses available (plus not having to dedicate learning time to second language instruction). There are enough interesting people at work to keep me busy. Third place in my (admittedly low-calibre) division at the Ottawa Diabetes Fundraiser Scrabble Tournament. D&D game still running: my Mr.-Burns-inspired wizard is growing nicely in power and contemplating ways to exploit pixies for fun and profit. Looking forward to the wedding, and thinking, "wow: it's getting close, and almost all the reply cards we've got so far are yesses". Cat, laundry, worms and dishes are all doing fine. I am driving, and had fun doing so in Nova Scotia, and will sign up with CommunAuto as soon as my driving records arrive in the mail.	Hydro bills are expensive... but at least they're coming at regular intervals this year. My bike seems to have deep-seated rear wheel problems. Lots of my friends are still in Montreal. So is Metro Joannette. Our whole block is for sale: that puts a little pressure on us to become homeowners (as the prospect of moving from rented place to rented place with appliances is depressing, and it's about time anyway). There's going to be a bunch of personnel shuffling in my vicinity at work soon.

good

blah

I'm presenting my thesis next month at work. Yay for getting more mileage out of it!
Work is good, I'm participating in a bunch of projects and committees, and people are coming to me for help with stuff.
Work is making sure I don't get university withdrawal symptoms: I start a ten-week university-style course in sampling theory tomorrow. In French. Yay for bilingualism making twice as many courses available (plus not having to dedicate learning time to second language instruction).
There are enough interesting people at work to keep me busy.
Third place in my (admittedly low-calibre) division at the Ottawa Diabetes Fundraiser Scrabble Tournament.
D&D game still running: my Mr.-Burns-inspired wizard is growing nicely in power and contemplating ways to exploit pixies for fun and profit.
Looking forward to the wedding, and thinking, "wow: it's getting close, and almost all the reply cards we've got so far are yesses".
Cat, laundry, worms and dishes are all doing fine.
I am driving, and had fun doing so in Nova Scotia, and will sign up with CommunAuto as soon as my driving records arrive in the mail.

Hydro bills are expensive... but at least they're coming at regular intervals this year.
My bike seems to have deep-seated rear wheel problems.
Lots of my friends are still in Montreal. So is Metro Joannette.
Our whole block is for sale: that puts a little pressure on us to become homeowners (as the prospect of moving from rented place to rented place with appliances is depressing, and it's about time anyway).
There's going to be a bunch of personnel shuffling in my vicinity at work soon.

Something to think about as we sniff around the real-estate listings...

2008-04-02T22:29:58Z

Please, let Rockcliffe remain the aristocratic area for a bit longer:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/report_nations_gentrified

Roadie conclusion and back at home

2008-03-25T01:33:51Z

The final show in Elizabeth's tour was a house show in Bedford. The place was cozy and bright, and our hosts were very welcoming. Their kids were around for the show and wandered in and out, their elder son concluded the concert with a piano rendition of a Green Day song. Monique and George sent us (including Dusty Keeler, the other performer) home with a bottle of wine and smiles all 'round. I also found out that George uses some survey data that my unit at work deals with from time to time, and that he's looking forward to the results of some of my record linkage projects.

We had a relaxed evening at Dusty's place, crashed there, and then returned the car and caught our flight back the next morning. Returning on Monday, Elizabeth taught in the evening and I celebrated the 29th birthdays of two of my co-workers (the first 29th for one, the second 29th for the other).

Consequently, I had a short week at work this week: two days as I took a vacation day on Tuesday in case of exhaustion or delay — it was a good idea, I think. It looks like I'll be sharing my thesis with my division sometime soon, and I had a manageable pile of interesting work (and 84 unread e-mails) waiting for me upon my return. Next month, I'll help supervise some visiting interns from France.

Now, I'm in Ormstown at my parents' place, with cooking smells in the air and the woodstove popping and breathing nearby. Back to another short week on Tuesday, and then my first Scrabble tournament next Saturday.

Roadie Day 4

2008-03-16T14:28:13Z

It snowed again in Halifax, driving in was pretty slushy but uneventful. Elizabeth and I wandered around downtown for a bit, picking up some plane food at Freak Lunchbox (to balance out the stuff we got at the health food store in Truro) and browsing through the books and goodies along Barrington street.

We ate at a pub where the table next to us had an ever-increasing gaggle of young Tories in blue everything. The beer there was mercifully very good, and the food was satisfying.

Ginger's was pretty quiet, probably due to the weather, but one of the artists, who goes by Le Skiv, had a dedicated local fanbase who braved the "snow and shit" (which became a running stage-banter theme). Elizabeth had a real piano (I guess apartment-sized) to play, so the set included piano-molesting songs. She played under a couple of spots with a little shaded table lamp for extra light and atmosphere (unfortunately my camera is borked, so no photos unless someone else took some). After a goofy set by Richard/Thomas, we then made our way to Ryan the promoter's place, where we were loaned a big mattress behind a closed door: couch surfing gold.

This afternoon: the last show of the tour — house show in Bedford, with bonus homemade soup!

Roadie Day 3

2008-03-15T16:21:35Z

We drove from Liverpool to Truro today, for Elizabeth to be a featured guest at the Truro Fair Trade Community Café open mic night. It turns out there are two FTCCs in Truro. We hit the original one on Prince Street.

We explored a bit, and Truro has a maybe-surprising number of health food, yoga, organic stuff and other hippie-ish shops. Later, our host Ray explained that the agricultural college here (one of the biggest in Canada) has a major organic food institute. Truro also has lots of nice red brick buildings and a really pretty park an easy walk from downtown.

The open mic night was a bit disparate: everyone else was singing mostly country, spirituals and hymns, and then late in the evening, a Cape Breton fiddler came in and wowed everyone. Folk-pop piano stuff was a bit out of the envelope, but it was still a really fun evening hosted by really welcoming people. Ray reminds me a bit of ramou in many ways (even his haircut is sort of similar), and he runs a really nice café. During the open mic, an older couple, maybe in their seventies, got up and danced every once in a while. Eventually, Elizabeth took me by the hand and we followed in their footsteps.

Today, bolstered by excellent coffee and blueberry-flax-apple pancakes, we will journey back to Halifax for a 10 PM show at Ginger's Tavern on Barrington Street.

Roadie Day 2

2008-03-14T14:38:21Z

The show at Mersey House was a success musically. We had a moderately full room of people who were really attentive, participated (thank you, volunteer last-minute Soundman Stu) and generally warm. The two openers, Kristen Murray and Krystele Leveque Liverpool is really pretty, as was the drive up: it looked like autumn, and once we were out of Halifax, it was dead simple (actually, Halifax wasn't too bad either, although Saint Margaret's Bay Road is a bit twisty).

Next stop: Truro and the Fair Trade Café (I think it has more adjectives in there, but how many fair trade cafés with Friday night music can there be in a small town?).

Roadie day 1

2008-03-13T14:28:48Z

Elizabeth and I got to Halifax yesterday in a little 50-seat plane, it was sunny and a little chilly with no snow on the ground.

Every transportation person we met was nice, from the flight attendant to the bus driver to Young Alex the rental car guy. The agency was out of compact cars, though, so they gave us a big black Magnum station wagon. The keyboard fits really well in the back but it does feel like driving a bunker.

We wandered around downtown Halifax a bit after arriving, picked up the keyboard from the rental place, climbed up to the Citadel gate, looked in a couple of shops, had a supper of nice fresh sushi and then proceeded to Gus' Pub. Somewhere in there it started to snow. Starting from dry pavement it didn't pile up too high, but it seemed to put a damper on Haligonians coming out on a Wednesday night to the North End. The music, courtesy of The Fool, Oh Dinah and Elizabeth, was fun despite the small turnout. I took some pictures but left my camera cable at home, so there'll be a big photo post in a few days.

We're crashing at one of the musicians' place, breakfast should be soonish and then we're off to Liverpool~~Truro~~ and Mersey House for show #2.

metawidget @ 2008-03-02T22:58:00

2008-03-03T03:58:48Z

In a little over a week, I will be off with rottenfruit to Halifax, being a general-purpose roadie, merch salesman, companion and driver on the Nova Scotia bit of the Eastern Tour (I'll probably be at the Cagibi show in Montreal, too). I'm still a bit worried that the rental agency will look at the vintage of my license and tell me "no car for you," but I've got the age, usually calm demeanour and untarnished-if-short driving record going for me.

Wedding planning is going well: I think we have most of the details at least sketched out, even if we still have to set one of the readings, post banns, and attend to many details. We finished a marriage prep course last week. It was fun at times and kind of intense at others. Our instructor seemed pretty positive about us, and we're still positive about us too! Coming home from one of our sessions, we took the bus in the wrong direction and the driver was new and got a little lost. Neither of us, nor the only other passenger, had any idea where to go. After a plea for help, the driver just stopped at a corner for a while and collected his thoughts — we got to South Keys eventually. We were hungry enough to decide to eat at Denny's in the parking lot, served beer, lumberjack breakfast and a veggie burger and beer by a chipper doctoral student before heading home.

At work, things are going well... last month I participated in the employee choir singing a Beatles medley, and I'm feeling pretty happy with my co-workers and my work. My unit is going to lose its supervisor (he got promoted), and I haven't found out who will replace him, but we've still got some time before he disappears (he clears out completely for July 1st). In any case, I'm getting to teach, write, tinker and snuffle through the library, and they're paying me for it. This week I'll be taking a couple of days for the public-service-wide orientation course (how we relate to the government, accountability, etc.) — it'll start early, but they're feeding us breakfast. I'm not sure how much will be new to me, but it'll be a different perspective from my rather specialized day-to-day context.

Non-Mac FTP advice

2008-01-20T02:21:58Z

I'm looking for recommendations for a Windows FTP program, preferably a simple, Free Software or freeware utility that lets users drag and drop from their usual explorer windows and won't be too scary for people who might be new to FTP: I'm going to teach a workshop soon and I want people on each platform to be running the same software (I'm a Mac person, but it's a big tent). Any suggestions are appreciated!

Also, on the off chance that there exists such a thing as a Linux user who wants to learn very basic HTML, what are the (again, free in one way or another) text editor and FTP client that Just Work and are good for beginners on there?

Driving news

2008-01-11T01:14:28Z

Despite heavy fog (about half a block's visibility at times), rush hour and kids crossing the street everywhere (my test started at 3:20), I passed my road test Tuesday. Plastified ID with goofy photo to follow. It took three tries to get a good one.

Ceci n'est pas un post

2007-12-14T00:39:58Z

Two tests this afternoon... but I’m slow to tie up the loose ends are still out there. Well, here's my surrender to not getting a grammar written today.

Very much looking forward to it.

Celebrated Mother’s Day last weekend with as many mothers from my mom's side of the family in one place as possible. There was lots of food, and us older kids kept tabs on the younger kids as we took a constitutional walk around a farm my cousin has put an offer on.

This week so far, I've debriefed with Matt on this year's run of 256, programmed, met with Emily about Lies revisited (watching the other programmer work is like having an out-of-body experience: we have the same cycle and rhythm, narrate debugging the same way, gesture the same... all he needs is more hair and no glasses... that's ME you're being there, except in PHP instead of ActionScript! Stop it!), practiced yoga, tried to straighten out a two month overlap between leases, and talked and kissed and stuff.

I also did the traditional failing of the first road test last Wednesday (on the first snowy day of the season!). The roads are safe from me for another month or so.

Year in review, early this year

2007-12-07T01:20:23Z

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Moved to Hull, had a back yard, owned a washing machine, found indefinite employment

2. Did you keep your New Year's Resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Not applicable, and nope.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not close-close.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My grandfather died in January.

5. What countries did you visit?
I stayed domestic. Three years running of not visiting the US.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A wedding :)

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
February 1st: Ellie said yes :)
August 27th: Thesis defense.
September 10th: First day at StatCan.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Finishing my M.Sc.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting a bulletproof lease on Hull Apartment the First.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing new, luckily.

11. What was the best thing someone bought you?
I can't really point to any bought stuff.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
rottenfruit, my sister and a certain judge in Montreal.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Nobody new.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, savings, appliances and a replacement laptop.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Starting my post-university career.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
I think all of Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom, particularly "Bus to Beelzebub."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? About the same.
c) richer or poorer? Richer. Yay full-time work!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Relaxing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Fretting.

20. How do you plan to spend Christmas?
Eve in Ottawa-Gatineau and Day in Ormstown.

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Stayed in love!

22. How many one night stands?
Zero again.

23. What was your favourite TV program?
The Office (US). Has pretty much replaced Six Feet Under as bulk DVD rental.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nobody new. The contempt is wearing off a little on the existing bunch.

25. What was the best book you read?
I really haven't read any book-length book that really did it for me this year. Lots of magazines and a few journal articles. May I read more books in 2008. I've kind of promised to work through a book of Butler when Ellie works through Foucault.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Turing Machine.

27. What did you want and get?
An engagement, a job, a place to live.

28. What did you want and not get?
A driver's license (almost, but next try is in January).

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Pan's Labyrinth was really moving, and watched recently, so it comes to mind. Skip Little Shots of Happiness. It was almost unwatchable.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I worked on my thesis, and finished the day with pizza and wine with Ellie. I was 27.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Immeasurably? I don't know.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Repaired, comfortable and shirt tucked in.

33. What kept you sane?
Love and coffee.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
None in particular.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
John Tory's hare-brained religious schools for all plan. And the aftermath.

36. Who do you miss?
One guy in Australia, even though I'm terrible at keeping up.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
I've met a whole lot of people, it's hard to pick a best person. Many of them were very cool.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007?
Get stuff in writing.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"Get onto the bus!"

stuff

2007-11-27T01:30:02Z

I had a reasonable accommodation post all written up, but I hadn't updated XJournal for Jaguar. If you're a user, go download 1.06b2 before you write anything you want to keep. Aside from that, my Leopardfication has been pretty smooth, and I think that Spaces and some of the little interface enhancements and increased tweakability will be good things. The one bothersome thing is that the new window chrome is so bland that foreground windows look like a background windows (and the background windows look ghostly). It also feels a bit more responsive and zippy, which is always nice. When I have a bit more cash, I'll probably still bump the RAM up, though.

Three years ago last Sunday, Elizabeth and I took a walk to the park on Greene below the highway, and talked and kissed and started making a go of stuff. Pretty soon, we'll have two anniversaries to keep track of. On Sunday we had a nice supper at the Black Tomato and... talked and kissed and stuff.

I also did the traditional failing of the first road test last Wednesday (on the first snowy day of the season!). The roads are safe from me for another month or so.

miscellany

2007-11-12T19:51:56Z

Had breakbeat-piano-and-harpsichord musician John Kameel Farrah crashing on our couch last week, and went to his show at Avant-Garde Bar. It was a good show, if he wanders through where you are and you like energetic electronic avant-garde stuff or renaissance harpsichord, he did both on Thursday. He exudes enthusiasm about it, too.

This weekend Ellie and I zipped through Montréal and Ormstown, meeting up with a few people, celebrating loupdebois' birthday eating lots of good food and attending my second convocation.

In the week to come, I'll attempt to prove to StatCan that I'm reasonably bilingual.

I've been thinking of writing a reasonable-accommodation post at some point.

femmusic wants to know…

1. What can you cook? Lots of stuff, but generally steamed, stir-fried, broiled, baked, saucy or sushi. And coffee, if that counts.

2. What was your dream growing up? Has it changed? It changed about once every two or three years: astronaut, engineer, propagandist, web designer, artist, architect...

3. What talent do you wish you had? I sort of wish I was better at music. But I think that's just a matter of dedicating 1 000 hours to getting better at music. And maybe dancing, too.

4. If I bought you a drink what would you like it to be? Récompense English bitter.

5. How did we meet? I'm not sure if we'd crossed paths before, but Peers was when we got to know each other some.

6. What was your first impression of me? Has it changed? Your mental tags were lefty Christian, pretty laid-back and senior Peer.

7. What zodiac sign are you? Leo

8. Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Nope

9. Best and Worst Habits? Proofreading, rambling.

10. If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride? If I had an extra seat, sure (I'm often walking or biking, with no extra seats)

11. Favorite sport? Bicycle touring

12. Is your attitude pessimistic, optimistic, or otherwise? Optimistic, on balance

13. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me? Help get out of the elevator safely, or chat to pass the time

14. Best thing to ever happen to you (that you can post in public)? It's hard to rank good things, and they all play into each other.

15. Tell me one weird fact about you: My first regular job was making web pages.

16. Do you have any pets? I live with a cat and a rat.

17. What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly? I'd put water on for tea.

18. What was the last book you read? It was at work, an introduction to epidemiology and associated statistics.

19. Children: cute or scary? Both!

20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be? I would remake my teeth.

21. Would you be my crime partner or my conscience? Depends what crime you had in mind.

22. What color eyes do you have? Brown

23. Been arrested? Nope

24. Favorite thing to drink? good beer

25. If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it? Stick it in savings for wedding and/or down-payment on a house

26. Where's your favorite place to hang out? Kitchens

27. Do you believe in ghosts? Nope

28. What do you do in your spare time, if any? Bicycle, compute, play games

29. What's your swearing style? Infrequent, in sentences, and heartfelt

30. Biggest pet peeve? Peeves of mine often seem to have to do with transport, particularly folks making things hard for cyclists

31. In one word, how would you describe yourself? Geeky

32. Do you believe in/appreciate romance? Yes on both counts.

33. If you could spend 12 hours with me and ask/do anything you like, what would it be? I don't know... show you around my neighbourhood, make and eat some good food, and be open to ideas?

34. Do you have an ethical code of conduct for yourself? I guess I kind of mix ad-hoc with trying to build good habits. I couldn't write out a list of principles.

35. What is your favorite aspect of yourself, mentally or physically? I think it'd be my relatively broad base of knowledge, and my ability to soak up new, cool stuff.

Photos

2007-11-01T01:26:40Z

Some Hallowe'en costumed photos — alas, no kids to scare :(

bring me tasty children...

2007-10-31T23:31:17Z

Here I was thinking that us being at ground-level would bring us trick-or-treaters. We have all this candy, and no kids trick-or-treating on our street.

Boo.

Must resist the urge to nibble too much.

metawidget @ 2007-10-20T11:35:00

2007-10-20T15:36:19Z

People notice what pen they're using, and the pen supply at work is made up mostly of good pens (not Rands' favourites, but I like them).

good	blah
The new place is not really so new, anymore, and it feels nice. The thesis is marked as accepted on my transcript. Convocation next month!. Work is good, I'm producing stuff and soaking up how stuff works. Work is paying me regularly. I splurged a little this week and got a little red iPod so I can bring my music and podcasts to work. There are enough interesting people at work to keep me busy. One of Ellie's colleagues and and her husband came over last night for supper, chatting and Catan, which was really nice. New D&D game up and running! Pumpkin carving party next Friday (details to come). Looking forward to the wedding, and thinking, "we can pull this off". Cat, laundry, worms and dishes are all doing fine. Laundry's being done in a machine we own, even, and Noisette is enjoying being alpha cat in the apartment.	Last little bits of freelance just don't seem to end. We're bracing for an expensive Hydro bill as things get colder. The GSA is apparently now run by the same idiots who gutted the teaching and research assistants' union, and the first thing they did was purge the competent committee appointments. At least I did my best over my term. Lots of my friends are still in Montreal. So is Metro Joannette. Push buttons at intersections still suck. Had to replace my back wheel due to a broken spoke that went unnoticed for too long. Boo. Spent the last week kind of sick.

good

blah

The new place is not really so new, anymore, and it feels nice.
The thesis is marked as accepted on my transcript. Convocation next month!.
Work is good, I'm producing stuff and soaking up how stuff works.
Work is paying me regularly. I splurged a little this week and got a little red iPod so I can bring my music and podcasts to work.
There are enough interesting people at work to keep me busy.
One of Ellie's colleagues and and her husband came over last night for supper, chatting and Catan, which was really nice.
New D&D game up and running!
Pumpkin carving party next Friday (details to come).
Looking forward to the wedding, and thinking, "we can pull this off".
Cat, laundry, worms and dishes are all doing fine. Laundry's being done in a machine we own, even, and Noisette is enjoying being alpha cat in the apartment.

Last little bits of freelance just don't seem to end.
We're bracing for an expensive Hydro bill as things get colder.
The GSA is apparently now run by the same idiots who gutted the teaching and research assistants' union, and the first thing they did was purge the competent committee appointments. At least I did my best over my term.
Lots of my friends are still in Montreal. So is Metro Joannette.
Push buttons at intersections still suck.
Had to replace my back wheel due to a broken spoke that went unnoticed for too long. Boo.
Spent the last week kind of sick.

metawidget @ 2007-10-10T19:51:00

2007-10-10T23:51:26Z

Update on Snap on LJ: it was getting a bit tired, inserting ugly icons, and not proving all that useful. Maybe if LJ auto-titled untitled links, or snapped stuff behind the cut, that would be better. Meanwhile, I guess I'll just try and be all XKCD and give useful (or at least non-empty) link titles.

Also, I saw a poster at a health-stuff store that was kind of amusing: "70% of most people don't eat enough vegetables." I wonder what percentage of the rest of people don't eat enough vegetables. Am I part of most people? I almost wrote a rambling methodological description of what it might mean if it wasn't just carelessly-written ad copy, but I'll spare you all and save it for my documentation-writing tomorrow.

Show reminder

2007-10-08T02:16:02Z

Ottawa-and-area folks:

If you're wondering what to do with your holiday Monday evening, Elizabeth is playing Irene's Pub, 885 Bank Street, tomorrow at 8 PM, with Ottawan Glenn Nuotio and Vancouver's Better Friends than Lovers. Admission is $5 at the door, and there will be free cake (it being her birthday and shows with cake starting to be a tradition), which reliable sources tell me will be vegan-friendly and chocolate.

If you're on the fence, sample all the music:

http://myspace.com/elizabethbruce
http://myspace.com/glennnuotio
http://myspace.com/betterfriendsthanlovers

Show news!

2007-09-30T22:12:17Z

Elizabeth is performing at the end of the Thanksgiving long weekend in Ottawa. It's her birthday, too, so there'll be cake!

usability post: ETA and snap

2007-09-30T17:27:36Z

I don't know if it's contagious from diatribein here (friends-only, alas), but I've been thinking abbreviations for a little while.

It took me quite a while to figure out what ETA stood for in a forum/blog/journal context: it was always clear from context that it meant "updated content," but the interference with "estimated time of arrival" in my head made it hard to come up with "edited to add." This kind of bothers me: unless it's ironic, or a statement of some sort, using an already firmly occupied bit of namespace to mean something very different seems like a Bad Idea. As far as I can tell, ETA fails that test.

The other thing about ETA is that there is perfectly good markup to represent the idea: XHTML has a pair of tags, <ins> and <del> that work fine in LiveJournal and are way less confusing. Added and ~~deleted~~ stuff can even be ~~annotated~~ given a title attribute, if you have a relatively compliant browser it'll appear as a tool tip or in some other useful way.

If markup isn't available where you write or if you're not a markup geek, you may as well just put EDIT: or UPDATE:, more readers will decipher your post faster and it's only an extra keystroke or three.

In other Internetty thoughts, LiveJournal has let folks enable little hover previews like I've seen on some other blog services (WordPress, I think?) for some of their links, like truth, over there (the rule seems to be inside *.livejournal.com, the previews don't happen, which I think is a bit of a shame as it'd be nice to see a little flash of someone's journal layout in a link to it). So far, I find the icons a little bothersome but the previews themselves I can see myself using. I'll see if I'm using them in a week and decide whether I like them. Anyone else have any thoughts on that feature?

good things

2007-09-26T22:27:13Z

Today is September 26th, Petrov Day, celebrated to honor the deed of Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov on September 26th, 1983. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, take a minute to not destroy the world.

In other good news, I'm starting to get the administrative details (like getting paid) of work worked out, and understand at least the little delta-neighbourhood around my readings and the people I work with (all the cool kids are using either Bootstrap of Jackknife variance estimation, for instance, and I kind of get the gist of how they work now). Also, the hippie-looking café-to-be nearby has changed its sign from "ouverture bientôt" to "overture 1er octobre."

Things are a bit of a blur, still. Lots of loose ends flying around and lots of things happening every weekend for a couple weekends yet. Most of the loose ends are fun, though.

Ellie is playing at Irene's on Bank, on the night of the 8th of October. There will be cake :)

I'm convocating on the 11th of November. I think I'll go to the ceremony and get my diploma in hand.