Hurrah to Bill Doskoch for spreading this joyous news! CBC’s Freestyle is about to be cancelled!

Even though they are being replaced by flavour of the decade Jian Ghomeshi, hope is that there will finally be something on in the afternoon on CBC that doesn’t make me go “ick!”

Quote: “CBC executives said this does not mean an increased emphasis on pop culture.”

Then again, where can the die-hard CBC fan expect to get their fix of the Doobie Brothers?

One the many projects of guru Seth Godin is Squidoo. As he describes it “Squidoo’s goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search. Squidoo’s goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity. And Squidoo’s goal as a community is to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them.”

In a nutshell, people create “lenses” about specific topics. In theory they rise and fall based on quality and eventually the better ones make some money.

Anyhow, I like Seth’s ideas generally, so I have given Squidoo a whirl and created a lens about Hamilton. Check it out. A work in progress at this point.

Seriously, I can think of a few bars in Kentucky that could have benefited from this policy. Unless, like “Under New Management” this sign sends an entirely too mixed message.

Every time that I visit Montréal I find myself wondering why people choose to live in Toronto or Saskatoon.

I’m staying at a superb little B&B just off of Avenue du Mont Royal. While walking here from the Metro I passed no less than seven bookstores, a dozen shops that I really want to visit, more restaurants than in all of Hamilton, and, above, the most fantastic looking fruit store I have ever seen, right beside a laundromat with high speed Internet.

What I love most about Montréal is the people. They have a style that Toronto would die for – yes, Montréal women can pull off a miniskirt at ten below – and more importantly, everywhere I look I see people smiling and laughing.

The streets are full of people enjoying themselves, going to bars and restaurants, window shopping at 11 PM, holding hands, and just loving their lives. Toronto by comparison seems to be full of bland and dour faces, so embroiled in work that they lose sight of why they trying so hard to make money.

Right now in Hamilton a lot of very serious people are trying to figure out how to reinvent street culture in our town so that Downtown can once again come alive. Mostly it revolves around eliminating one way streets and trying to get rid of all of the automobiles.

Downtown Montreal is full of cars, and has what are considered to be some of the most aggressive drivers anywhere, yet the streets are full of people walking and talking and thriving.

It’s time that the anti-car crusaders looked at Montréal. What they’ll learn is that a vibrant city, a vibrant downtown, has less to do with cars and one way streets than it has to do with an attitude, an approach to life that embraces the city landscape instead of trying to reduce to some narrow definition of a controlled environment.

As I write I am sitting in Union Station in Toronto waiting for Via Rail train to Montreal. What intrigued me on this trip was their offer of on-train WiFi service.

I’ll admit that I have my doubts about how Via, a company that can usually just manage to keep 19th century technology running on time, will handle this high tech addition to its services.

Since I had an hour and a half layover in Toronto, I signed on here first, figuring that the fixed service in Union Station would be more reliable than that on the train.

It cost me $8.95 for the day (vs. $3.95 for an hour or $46.00 for the month).

I found the Wifi Connection fast with the Powerbook, and completed the sign up form and entered my credit card number. I hit “Send” and it processed the request very quickly.

It took a couple of minutes though for the log in screen to appear, and to get logged in. This seems to be the weak link. Even when logging in on the train it seemed to take a long time to get going.

The service is provided by a company called NetNearU.

On the train there seems to be a lot of latency. Some things go fine, roughly DSL speed. Others seem to hang for a longer time than expected. We’ll see how all of this progresses, but thus far it seems to work.

Well except for the person in front, who slams their seatback into the screen on the laptop…

Later…

All went fairly well until about 4:30 PM , just before Belleville Ontario, when I lost the ‘net.

It took two tries to get logged back in. I thought. Logged in, but no connectivity. Can’t browse, Can’t e-mail.

Actually I was unable to get connected after Belleville. At Kingston I
restarted the computer and it took several minutes to get back on
line.  Wrong – it insisted I login yet again – the third or fourth time.

Finally at 5:49 it’s working again.

I have noted that logins seem to be VERY slow – two three minutes from
submitting the login ID and password until things are on-line.

Via Wonkette we learn that “Western energy giants such as Exxon and Shell will control Iraqi oil exploration for the next 30 years while keeping 75% of the profits.”

The Independent, which features the original story, tells us:

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972. …

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq’s oil industry back on its feet …

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Oh yeah… Osama bin Laden is still not dead or captured…

The record of the month is a collection of tunes sung by the late Kirsty MacColl. Since downloading it from the always excellent e-music.com, I’ve been listening more less constantly to The Stiff Years, a collection of her recordings for that iconic record label.

I first heard MacColl’s voice on her duets with legendary Pogue Shane MacGowan. This though has been the first time that I’ve listened to a lot of her singing.

MacColl is a flat out superb pop singer, with great fun performances of great songs. Arguably she follows in the footsteps of Petula Clark. I would love to hear MacColl take on “Downtown.”

Sadly MacColl was killed in 2000 in a boating accident. Work continues to force the Mexican authorities to properly investigate her death.

“I” “give” up”. “From” “this” “day” “forward” “every” “word” “on” “every” “sign” “will” “be” “surrounded” “by” “quotation” “marks”.

Really, it just seems like the simplest solution… at least until we figure out the difference between “Unsupervised” and “Unattended.”

HT to David Akin who pointed me to the Super Hero Quiz and helped discover that I am most akin to Superman! Far better than this comparison from last year.

You are Superman

Superman 85% Spider-Man 70% Iron Man 60% Supergirl 60% Hulk 60% The Flash 60% Robin 50% Batman 50% Catwoman 45% Green Lantern 45% Wonder Woman 40%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test