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senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
a sushi potluck
Tuesday, 16AUG2005:
attended maxine's birthday potluck tonight
at bella's with greg, michel, auralee,
daniel, john, robert, mary and naomi.
a pile of sushi, salads, cantonese chow
mein and two birthday cakes later, john
and i stumbled cross-country down the
now-dark hillsides, pausing every few
steps to take in the magnificent majesty
of the northern lights and to direct
my flashlight to find an appropriate
path over the forboding rocks below us.
movie nite in iqaluit
Wednesday, 17AUG2005:
watched a movie double-header of 'sky
high' and 'wedding crashers' with daniel,
who survived his astro theatre initiation
in good cheer. both movies were suprisingly
enjoyable.
sky high featured notable appearances by
lynda carter (still a wonder woman and still
HOT !!), bruce campbell (of 'army of darkness'
fame - as a gym coach), dave foley and kevin
macdonald (both of whom were members of 'the
kids in the hall' troupe), kelly preston
(escaping from scientology in a disney flick)
and kurt russell. the evil 'pacifier' weapon
was a hoot.
wedding crashers also larded on the stars with
christopher walken (using his spooky looks to
play straight this time as a concerned papa),
jane seymour (with a freaky seduction of owen
wilson's character), dwight yoakam as a party
in a divorce dispute and will ferrell as a
funeral crasher. the humour was as broad as
expected, leavened with huge dollops of
romanticism. oh, and the movie closed with
a weakerthans track that fit perfectly.
afterwards, we lined up to get into the
storehouse for greg's farewell wing night.
also around the table were bella, maxine,
michel, robert, kevin and gavin.
the producers are the audience
Thursday, 18AUG2005:
i snuck away for an extended coffee
break in the afternoon to the afn to go
over a few things with ghislain. he
showed me how to pre-program a recorded
show so that it would automatically play
and we set up this saturday's show to be
a repeat of my previous
soundtrack show.
went to the parish hall tonight to check
out the talent show hosted by the inuit
circumpolar youth council. they had
artists from greenland, alaska and russia
as well as locals. we were treated to
throat singing, drum dancing, alaskan
dancing, poetry, a mask dance and a few
folk songs.
afterwards, malcolm and willy gave me a
lift to the storehouse and we bopped
around there for a bit, playing a round
of pool and waiting to see if one of the
performers from the talent show would
show up (codenamed 'alaska').
- link of the day:
we
are the web
What happens when everyone is uploading
far more than they download? If
everyone is busy making, altering,
mixing, and mashing, who will have time
to sit back and veg out? Who will be a
consumer?
No one. And that's just fine. A world
where production outpaces consumption
should not be sustainable; that's a
lesson from Economics 101. But online,
where many ideas that don't work in
theory succeed in practice, the audience
increasingly doesn't matter. What
matters is the network of social creation,
the community of collaborative interaction
that futurist Alvin Toffler called
prosumption. As with blogging and
BitTorrent, prosumers produce and consume
at once. The producers are the audience,
the act of making is the act of watching,
and every link is both a point of departure
and a destination.
finishing off the week
Friday, 19AUG2005:
went for a morning coffee at fantasy
palace to join bella, robert, john and
tony in saying a final farewell to greg
as he prepared to fly off.
in the afternoon, i hitched a ride with
lucy out to the sylvia grinnell pavilion
for a departmental welcoming gathering.
kakki demonstrated his drum dancing skills
and after watching a couple of other people
try, i stepped in to give it a go myself.
in the evening, i finished my comic order
for the month, with the priciest item (at
$50 u.s. !!), being a hardcover collection
of the earliest
'nexus'
issues by mike baron and steve rude. i
also ordered a couple of books by minicomic
upstart rob osborne.
'1000
steps to world domination' is about a
cartoonist with delusions of grandeur and
'sunset city' is about a retiree who doesn't
quite gel with his retirement home community.
'nat turner' #2, a historical book about
slavery by kyle baker, was also added to my
pull - i must've been sleeping when the
first issue was solicited.
- ip idiocy link of the day:
why patent
reform only helps the big boys
If patent reform will hurt most
of the people who receive patents,
why are we doing it?
Good question.
Patent reform appears to be based
primarily on the idea that big
companies invent useful stuff that
needs protection while smaller
companies and individual inventors
use the patent system to suck revenue
out of big companies through
frivolous patents and frivolous
lawsuits. Of course, it isn't at
all clear that this assumption is
correct. The primary principles of
patent reform are switching the U.S.
system from 'first to invent' to
'first to file' by replacing legal
challenges to patents with a more
administrative challenge process,
and by practically eliminating
injunctions through which a patent
holder forces an infringer to stop
using his intellectual property.
social butterflies
Saturday, 20AUG2005:
the freezers at northmart have been busted
for the last few days so i couldn't pick up
sausages for bbq'ing as i had planned for
today's gatherings. instead, i went for
some smoked salmon, a bit pricey as 4
packages set me back $70.
first stop was at bill's place in apex for
a corn roast. there we enjoyed over 3
hours of political discussion, delving
into information management, the perils
and stability of bureaucracy, stock
picking and program evaluations. when
the talk turned towards gardening, tho,
i turned my attention to the well-stocked
tableau of food, including fresh western
corn, spiked watermelon balls, smoked char
and caribou salami. yummy.
well-stuffed, i hiked overland to my next
event at angie's for madeleine and romyne's
fairwell potlatch. on the way, i paused
to snap a photo of the apex creek as it
cascaded on its way to the ocean. at the
potlatch, food was again the center of
attraction, with chili, fresh char caught
today, fresh clams and muktuk serving to
satiate all in attendance.
i then accompanied malcolm, sara and stef
back into town to attend the music camp
coffee house at the parish hall. as
we crested the hill, i got some great
photos of the sunset. we watched 'ivory
hail' play a series of mellow covers, some
drum dancing, fiddlers, and a metallica-ish
band, with rannva closing out the show with
one of her original songs.
monte and i then strolled towards the legion,
where malcolm, sara and stef had preceeded
us. stopping in to check my messages, i
found that willy had called to see what
was up. i rang him back to tell him and
the rest of his hearts-playing non-members
to promptly attend the legion lineup where
i would deign to offer them the privilege
of being signed in by me.
once willy, curtis, michelle and john had
all been taken care of, i hit the pool
tables and managed to play 4 games in a
row for only a buck, after winning the table
from epeebee. quitting while i was ahead
for the night at 3-1, i was content to sit
along the rail and soak in the energy of
the crowd.
when the lights came back on, willy and i
grabbed a cab back to angie's in apex to
check out their after party. however, we
found a glum atmosphere as 2 wallets and
a purse had been stolen from their
entryway in the hour that they had been at
the legion. we kept them company for a
single round and then headed back to town.
First Post (27FEB2005)
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