Gobama

And it is pretty much settled.
The US of A has it's first black president. This is a hollywood movie in the making.
I am a little scared and nervous as to what it all means for Canada. I guess only time will tell.
I'm not going to outright say McCain would have been a better choice but I am going to insinuate it.
From the start Obama has scared me with his perfect rhetoric and well polished speeches. But his win was pretty much sealed once Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate. I could not believe that when it happened. The other thing is, whenever the CEEB interviewed americans on who they were voting for they would only spout off things they had heard in the media. Ridiculous one liners like 'Obama is promising jobs for everybody' or 'Obama sounds like a terrorist'. Americans are so ridiculous.
Here is an example:These are the people who ruined it for McCain. It reminded me of the people talked about on stuffchristianslike (a play off of the similarly toungue in cheek stuffwhitepeoplelike). One of the things Christians like is bumper stickers. This is so not the way to 'convert' people to vote for your party.

The Greatest USB Port ever!

OK wait! Stop before you go running for the hills all annoyed at me for writing about some boring new technology that no one but me cares about. This isn't about technology, rather it's about alcohol......aaaah you've stopped. Yes this blog post is about the type of wine called Port to be exact.

Now I like Port about as much as the next guy who also likes Port. These guys have really thought of an interesting marketing strategy to get people to buy their drink. Ever since a new law went into effect that says only Port made in Portugal can legally be called 'Port' all the other Port makers are stuck trying to think of new names for their products.

California-based Peltier Station came up with this inovative solution. Remove the word 'Port' but add the acronym that everybody knows ('USB') and put the universal symbol on the bottle (in binary code text no less).
Read the full story here.

On Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is one of my favourite authors. His most famous book 'Farenheit 451' is about a fireman whose job it is to start fires. He is assigned to burn books. The book is set in the future with a totalitarian government that is controlling what everybody does or sees. Anybody who harbours books basically is killed. The main character ends up getting interested in books and ends up getting chased.....and I won't tell you the end.
I love books that deal with a post-apocalyptic world or a world where society has changed dramatically. Anyways, the common thought was always that the book (which was fist published in 1953) was a book about the crushing of free speech and censorship. So when I stumbled across this BoingBoing article by Cory Doctorow (whose writings I have been stumbling across quite a bit lately) I was mildly surprised that it was really supposed to be about the evils of TV. I can see why he wrote it that way though. There were a lot of TV screens and emphasis on the 'I want it now' society that it breeds. There was no care for anybody else. Really truly sad. I think he took TV to its ultimate conclusion. So I am not sure if this makes the book better or worse. Either way I still think Bradbury is fantastic.

Here is a quote from Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (stolen from wikipedia) where Bradbury describes his book.

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

I think that proves his point.

Another reason I like him is he really does not like Micheal Moore for using a play on his book title for his movie Farenheit 9/11. In the documentary 'Manufacturing Dissent' Bradbury goes on a small tirade about how Moore doesn't understand what his book was about. That really raised my respect for the author because we all know how much I love Micheal Moore.

To Beard or Not to Beard

I am thinking of doing the beard thing again to keep myself warm while taking the bus.
Besides the obvious good reasons of making me more of a hipster and upping my indie cred these demonstrations are really helping me make up my mind.

Here are a few good reasons to have a beard:And of course.....

Songwriters Circle

On Monday night I took a group of friends downtown to the Library and Archives building for a neat little concert that was part of the Ottawa Writers Festival. Not being a writer, I had hardly taken notice of this festival. This sounded interesting enough though and having missed the Great Lake Swimmers show on Friday I sure felt like I needed a concert. Plus Justin Rutledge was there so that pretty much sealed the deal for me. The other two artists were Glenn Noutio and Kyrie Kristmanson.
I really had no idea what it was going to be like but it turned out to be quite an intimate and informal affair of wine sipping and trading song writing info between the artists. After waiting for Junot Díaz to finish a reading from his new book 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' we were let in to the auditorium and introduced to the artists. Glenn Noutio, since he is a super-gay guy, had to make that obvious every time he opened his mouth. I know not all gay guys are like that but really so many are. We know you are gay, now stop reminding us. Kyrie Kristmanson has this amazing voice and she sang a couple a capella and the rest with a guy on double bass. I bought her cd even though it did not have 'Blackwind' on it. Check her out here. Justin was, of course, amazing with his strong voice and sweet guitar. Check out some of his stuff here.They took turns performing and talking about the lyrics and how the songs came to be. I love hearing that kind of background. To me it makes the songs mean something more. I get a deeper satisfaction from them. It turns out that Kristmanson is studying music in Lyon, France. She is transposing some of the first real recorded non-religious music into a more modern playable style. It was written by wives of men who were off in the crusades and apparently it is often said that these 40 women invented love and courtship as we know it today. Rutledge is currently working on a play/reading of a new book by that famous Canadian author whose name is escaping me right now. Was it Ondatje? Anyway, he wrote some songs for one of the characters.

Overall it was a great night although a reaction from one of my friends was 'I liked my Backstreet Boys concert better'. Read into that however you want. It wasn't really a true concert though. But I did like it better than any Backstreet Boys music I have ever heard.

These pictures are courtesy of Lenny Wu (a fellow Radio3 listener and blogger)

How Facebook was Invented

This is how facebook was invented.
from ApeLad.

Pretty bird, yeah pretty bird

I ran across this article about a spider catching a bird in its web and eating it. This, of course, happened in Australia where it is normal to be attacked by insanely huge arachnids.
Now excuse me while I go and kill that spider in my kitchen.