Archive for October, 2006
October 31, 2006 at 8:50 am · Filed under Games
Yes, it’s that time again. If you don’t know the rules by now: Identify the location of the photo below, go there, find the free book, rejoice, take a photo and post it on your blog for bonus brownie points, leave a comment here telling me where it is.
This is a very easy one, but finding the book might be a little trickier. Near where this photo was taken is a back alley. Down that alley is a small seating area. Furkle around in the undergrowth next to the first bench and you will find the book (unless someone got there before you).
Don’t forget to register the caught book at bookcrossing.com.
So, where is it?
October 27, 2006 at 12:05 pm · Filed under Canada
I was going to write a post complaining about all the fuss being made over the simple renaming of a street.
But I stopped and thought a bit.
How would I feel if the London Mayor suggested renaming Piccadilly Circus or Pall Mall? How would a New Yorker react to the suggestion of changing Madison Avenue? How many film stars would be adding their names to petitions if Hollywood Boulevard was about to be renamed?
The only reason the Park change is a non-issue for me is that I’m still a relative foreigner in this city. I don’t know the significance of Park Avenue so the name has no emotional attachment for me.
So I decided not to write the post after all. Wait. Damn.
October 26, 2006 at 7:49 am · Filed under Skepticism
When someone tells me they are agnostic, I’m never entirely sure what they mean. To say you are agnostic without qualification is almost meaningless. Without specificity you may as well say “I don’t believe in anything” or “I believe in everything”.
There are two things you need to specify to bring meaning to your agnosticism.
The first is what exactly it is you’re agnostic about. For example, I am agnostic about dark matter. It helps solve some discrepancies in physicists equations, but we don’t really know what it is or if it really exists. The probability seems to be that it does exist, but that probability isn’t high enough for me to accept it. Therefore I am dark matter agnostic. To steal an example from Richard Dawkin’s new book, I’m also agnostic about life on other planets. Once again there is a reasonable probability that it exists, but the numbers are too vague to be sure.
You may say that stating you are agnostic about god is specific enough, but it’s not really. God means many different things to many different people. Are you agnostic about the Christian god? The Muslim god? Thor? Zeus? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Are you agnostic about a god who created the universe then left it alone or about a god who created the universe and still oversees it?
I’ve also heard things like “I’m agnostic because I have a feeling there might be something else out there”, or “I’m agnostic because there must be more to the universe”. This to me is like saying I’m willing to believe in anything that doesn’t seem to exist because, well, it might. By this definition we were all agnostic about ipods until five years ago, we just didn’t know it then. I don’t know about things I don’t know about is a pointless statement.
The second thing needed to qualify agnosticism is the degree of your agnosticism. Absolute agnosticism about something means you think there is equal probability of it existing or not existing. If the probabilities are unequal, then you are partially agnostic one way or the other. I’m absolutely agnostic about dark matter (mostly because “dark matter” doesn’t really offer anything explanatory), but I’m only about 25% agnostic about life on other planets and I’m well over 90% agnostic about the possibility of alien visitation.
Because nothing can be disproved, strictly speaking we are agnostic about anything which may exist. We are agnostic about fairies, Santa Claus, the flying spaghetti monster and a Christian theist god. It is our degree of agnosticism which pushes us towards afairyism, asantaism, afsmism or atheism. As our degree of agnosticism approaches 100%, at some point we have to assume non-existance and abandon agnosticism for awhateverism. I am 99.9% agnostic about any supernatural entity therefore my agnosticism becomes atheism.
If you consider yourself agnostic, you must ask yourself what it is exactly you are agnostic about, and how agnostic you are about it.
October 25, 2006 at 9:47 am · Filed under General
Most weekday afternoons, free copies of the Montreal Gazette are given away on street corners around the city. The nice men who give me free papers are not always at the same intersections though, so I have to plan my route to the train station very carefully.
I walk down McGill College to St Catherine Street, where there is sometimes a free paper man. If he’s not there I walk along St Catherine Street to Peel, where there is sometimes a free paper man. If he’s not there I walk down Peel to Rene Levesque, where there is sometimes a free paper man. If he’s not there I walk down to the Bell centre where my last chance free paper man sometimes is. It’s a sad day when I reach the station without a paper.
Thank you to Empire Auctions for supplying me with comics, two crosswords and a sudoku for my journey home. Most days.
October 24, 2006 at 11:20 am · Filed under Games
Sorry, no scavenger hunt today, mostly because I forgot to bring a book in with me, but also because I need to take more photos.
The one photo I have left is of one of the new parking meter poles, and I decided it’s a little unfair to make people scour the city looking for a specific parking spot number.
October 23, 2006 at 12:21 pm · Filed under Rants
Since Aidan was born we’ve been using the FuturePhoto service provided by FutureShop to store our digital photos online. Not only can we share our photos with selected friends and family, we can also order prints, calendars, mugs etc. etc.
It’s been a great service and we’ve ordered prints from it quite regularly.
Unfortunately they’ve just updated their storage policy, effectively crippling the service. Each account now has a maximum 50Mb storage capacity. That’s a pitiful amount, enough for maybe 200 images if you’re lucky. I can store more images on my camera.
I can understand imposing some kind of limit, but 50Mb? It’s pathetic. I would expect an account which regularly orders prints to have a capacity of at least 1Gb. Storage is cheap, especially when you’re a storage retailer.
I emailed them asking if it was possible to increase the limit. Here’s the response:
Unfortunately, once this storage limitation is in place, you will be unable to upload more photos once you have reached your limit.
So that’s it. Futurephoto is dead. Can anyone recommend an alternative online photo sharing site which allows selective sharing and printing in Canada?
Update: I found ShutterFly. Unlimited storage, prints to Canada, selective sharing, and they support Linux. Website seems a bit sluggish but we’ll see how it goes.
October 20, 2006 at 9:39 am · Filed under Books
I finally finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It’s a huge book, and challenging to read because of its classical style but it was worth it in the end. Susanna Clarke has a vivid, warped and extraordinary imagination, filling the book with weird and wonderful stories within stories. It’s easy to get immersed in the world she creates because it’s written as if it is a factual record of events and ties in several actual historical events and personalities.
This book was hailed as “Harry Potter for adults” by publicists and the media, but I don’t think that description does it justice. The only thing this book has in common with the Harry Potter series is magic, and even then the magic is completely different. It’s like comparing Brave New World with Star Trek just because they’re both set in the future.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a remarkable achievement, exquisitely written. It takes a bit of dedication to get through it though.
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