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senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter

there is no shelf !

Sunday, 26JUN2005:

link of the day: Clay Shirky explains why organizational schemes that work for physical collections may not work as well for the web: 
The essence of a book isn't the ideas
it contains.  The essence of a book is
"book."  Thinking that library catalogs
exist to organize concepts confuses the
container for the thing contained. ...
In the digital world, there is no 
physical constraint that's forcing this
kind of organization on us any longer.
shirky also examines what kinds of information collections are amenable to standard controlled vocabulary classifications, and conversely, which ones aren't. his argument is that most web info is better classified by how end users tag the info, rather than what might be pre-defined by an categorizing expert.

One of the biggest problems with
categorizing things in advance is that
it forces the categorizers to take on
two jobs that have historically been
quite hard: mind reading, and fortune 
telling.  It forces categorizers to
guess what their users are thinking,
and to make predictions about the 
future. ...  The only group that can
categorize everything is everybody.
shirky closes his paper by highlighting why he thinks google, del.icio.us and flikr will succeed where structured hierarchical organizational schemes have failed on the web: 
... by letting users tag URLs and then
aggregating those tags, we're going to
be able to build alternate organizational
systems, systems that, like the Web 
itself, do a better job of letting
individuals create value for one another,
often without realizing it.
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recycling is dead ! long live recycling !

Monday, 27JUN2005:

well, the city of iqaluit announced that it is implementing a new recycling initiative to replace the one that was shut down with little notice back in december. a sealift can has been set up outside the northmart and outside d.j.'s where people can deposit 3 kinds of materials into individual slots:

  • plastic pop bottles
  • aluminum pop / beer cans
  • cardboard paper
supposedly the city has lined up a private entrepreneur who will sell the metal for scrap. the cardboard will be marketed to the airlines as ballast for their emptied cargo bays on their flights back south. i'm not sure what will happen to the plastic bottles. the fear, of course, is that even tho people are willing to separate and slot their materials into the seacan, the stuff might still end up in the landfill.

what i don't get is why the local bottler isn't required to collect and re-use the plastic bottles. i know there are some issues about ensuring their cleanliness before re-use, but they make enough money that they should be required to invest in equipment that will do the job. heck, the government could get involved and help defray some of the costs by charging a litter deposit on all of the pop sold in town, both bottles and cans. or is that too straightforward ?

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imagine how gilligan felt

Tuesday, 28JUN2005:

stepped outside the office this evening for a spot of fresh air and noticed that a ship has now docked in the inlet. it may have been there for a few days, but i've been in the office the last couple of evenings. really looking forward to the long weekend !

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good, bad, i'm the one with the gun

Wednesday, 29JUN2005:

finally chalked up my 2d win in 12 tries at chess against jordan. i started with some very unorthodox moves, and he followed suit, enough that i was eventually able to get both rooks down the middle ranks behind 2 pawns. even when i had him pinned down, i still took quite a few moves to finish him off - needlessly, as it turns out, as we did a quick replay and i was able to reach mate in half the moves.

found out thru the grapevine that rachel and fletcher were hosting a bbq out in apex at their current housesit. when i found out that they would be serving musk ox burgers, i knew i had to attend.

i dimly recall some book i encountered while i was in high school that gave me the impression that musk oxen were extinct. obviously, they aren't. living in the north allows me to sample cuisine that very few people have been able to experience. last year about this time, i went to the hospital cafeteria for their nunavut day special - polar bear meat. it tasted pretty much like seal, but i still felt a twitch of significance as i chewed ....

anyway, fletcher cooked the burgers to perfection and dessert was some of rachel's carrot cake, from an old family recipe. yumm. we then gathered around the big screen t.v. to watch 'army of darkness'. wow. it's neat that the director of this film ended up getting the 'spider-man' gig !

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this is for the night people

Thursday, 30JUN2005:

woke up with a headache this morning and it just wouldn't go away. and since i believe more in the power of sleep than in pain relievers, once i had taken care of leftover work from yesterday, i went home to bed to hopefully sleep it off. in so doing, i missed a picnic / fishing trip out at the park, but health comes first, right ?

anyway, after sleeping for another 6 or 7 hours, i felt better enough to take in the final showing of 'batman begins' at the astro theatre. i picked up a few more details this time around, and noted that the corrupt cop named 'flass' was lifted straight from miller and mazzuchelli's 'batman: year one'.

afterwards, we hit the storehouse for a couple of rounds and then swung by the legion to continue the evening, but it had already shut down early. we ended up heading to kevin's for an impromptu house party. highlight was when the neighbours hucked a few eggs thru kevin's open window and watching kevin go all territorial. when siobhan started throwing food back, the kids lit back into their shack and refused to come out to give kevin satisfaction.

oh, and that fuel ship that had pulled into the bay a couple days ago has already left. apparently, both types of fuel that they were carrying tested bad and the whole load is being sent back south at the suppliers' cost. sad but true. turns out the boat was the TUVAQ, a ship that i had spotted docked in st. john's harbour back in may, and i remember wondering at the time, given its name, whether it travelled the northern circuit.

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Happy Canada Day !!

Friday, 01JUL2005:

had stayed up overnight listening to music to try to work out which tracks to feature on my first solo radio show on saturday. thus, yet again, i slept thru iqaluit's annual canada day parade.

however, i did get up in time to head over to l'Association des francophones du Nunavut to take in a show of iqaluit bands to celebrate Canada Day.

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i'm in the money ...

Saturday, 02JUL2005:

today at 4, i sat in the booth as an official radio host at CFRT, and presented the inaugural episode of 'aur.oral exposures'. i started off with a technical glitch where i mismanaged the switchover from the previous show, but i was lucky that i only lost my first set. since i was able to record the show at home, i also noted that i'll have to turn down my mike for next week's run.

setlist to celebrate Canada Day - all Canadian content (first 3 didn't make it onto the air):
  1. Canada's Really Big (live) - the Arrogant Worms
  2. Nancy Whiskey - The Northern Ramblers
  3. Prairie Town - Randy Bachman


  4. frozen puck to the head - Captain Tractor
  5. Let Yourself Go - Alex Pangman
  6. A Real Canadian Girl - Stompin' Tom Connors


  7. Anatomy of Newfoundland - Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers
  8. big boned girl - k.d. lang and the Reclines
  9. Qamotiq - night sun


  10. The Gallop - Orchid Ensemble
  11. Mediterraneo - Oscar Lopez
  12. The Skater - Leahy


  13. Dogs of February (live) - Lowest of the Low
  14. Hola - Kathleen
  15. Fireworks - Danny Michel


  16. Peter's Donuts - Bob and Doug McKenzie
  17. The Legion Song - Jimmie Inch
since i had an appointment at the local poker palace this evening, i decided to take a nap after the show to make sure that i would have the stamina to survive into the money round. at 7:30, 11 people started, so we broke out into 2 tables.

i had quad 5's early, but with the 3 community 5's making up the flop, there was no one willing to bet (darnit !). i was chip leader for most of the night with only about a half hour breakdown after dumping all my green chips into the pot when someone was on the verge of going out. i recovered later on, with a hand where i sent 3 people off to the sidelines by winning the main pot plus multiple side pots that had also put some players all in.

with female players outnumbering male players around the table, there was some concern that there might be a bit too much 'girl talk' and not enough card playing. the event eventually drew to a close around 02:10, with john m., dusty and myself splitting the pool. keys for me were having had enough rest, staying hydrated, being patient enough to play only premium hands, and folding quickly to minimize bad beats.

afterwards, i hung around a bit to hear kevin's cautionary tale of woe of collectible memories that were shredded during his breakup. in consolation, i offerred up my collection for reading purposes. i closed off my day by calling up my sister in shanghai to chat until 06:30.

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