What's new // Online resources
Recently I encountered an issue while trying to text a colleague who no longer uses Signal. This app is popular for its range of features including encryption, wifi-enabled texting and encrypted phone calls. So it didn’t surprise to me to learn that they were a user. But they were a lapsed user, and this was…
Once in a while I have to work with video or audio recordings. Or sometimes I need to convert file formats. And sometimes when I do media critique I have to do a little creative, fair use, editing. Here are three tools that I’ve found useful. VLC, Handbrake, Audacity Many years ago my good friend…
I like this handbook on ethics by NPR. I like the way it looks and the way it functions. I like the spirit of integrity that it…
Sometimes it’s nice to ramble all over the interflaz. Sometimes you discover cool stuff. And sometimes it’s fun to ramble on your blog. Like this…
Okay I get that some folks think that everything is connected to everything. Some moments I think that too. But that flattens the universe. And mostly hippies think that. Go deeper. Some connections matter than others. Even people that believe in astrology believe that our connection to stars is more important than our connection to…
My discourse analysis of the National Post has been momentarily postponed. Partly it’s postponed because I’ve lost the plotline. But I’ll be back. In the mean time you should know that I’m supporting Blog Action Day from Change.org again this year. Last year’s blog, by me, was about the uncertainty principle. This year, I’ll be…
CO2NOW.org is a neat resource specializing in helping humans simply know how much CO2 is currently in the Earth’s atmosphere. It kind of reminds me of a thermostat. We should all have a carbon-o-stat for our earth. And it should be set for 350 PPM or lower. :( Check out http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Widget/ to find an assortment…
I mentioned Ushahidi a little while ago in this post about Clay Shirky. And recently I’ve had the honour of speaking with friends about a lack of accountability, and a lack of responsibility, in various Canadian police forces.
I found this frickin awesome discussion policy and thought it was worth making note of. It covers a lot of stuff!
It’s mid evening of July 1st, 2010, and I’m just reflecting on my many ambivalent feelings about Canada day. Today, when I reflect on what Canada means, I can’t help but think of police, patriarchy, Harper, poverty, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, gendered violence, oppression and colonization. I think there are good things too. I do….
Since I seem to be on a kick posting videos, I thought I would post a recentish talk by Clay Shirky about collaboration and cognitive surplus. Clay Shirky is interesting and he wrote Here Comes Everybody, which was pretty good. He has two other TED talks and you can find links to them from his…
I upgraded my iPhone today to the latest operating system. It took an hour or maybe an hour and a half, and it prompted me for clicks several times. When it was done, I unhappily discovered that many of my photos were missing. Pictures of my friend Pippa’s 60th birthday, were gone. Pictures of me…
HTTP://DASHES.COM
Ever try to communicate your URL over the phone? On the radio? Sometimes this kind of translation can be very tricky. I’m not sure why exactly, but this sort of thing can make me think about faxing phone numbers or sending dates by morse code. We have codes for codes for codes. The codes below…
Math was probably the class that I most often got to use Greek letters in. Well, maybe physics. We used Delta as a symbol for change. We used pPi to express the relationship of the radius of a circle to it’s circumference (or area). And we used Sigma to express a sum. I think. And…
Someone recently pointed out to me that I sometimes exaggerate. But this is still the best recipe ever: http://www.timirvin.com/2010/04/how-to-get-a-picture-of-an-tundra-wolf-howling/
How cool is it to be using embedded fonts on the web! This paragraph, if the experiment goes well, is expressed with a font called Chunk. Very much fun! This paragraph is hopefully Chopin Script. (Update: no more embedded fonts here.) Two good online resources, for doing this sort of thing, include Font Squirrel and…
This is a pretty cool piece of flash… http://beck.cnnbcvideo.com/
It’s amazing how much you can express with stickman comics. So much so, I’ve been making a study of XKCD and even trying to make my own comics. I’m an illustrator. But I’m not yet the master of the stick figure. In the meantime, here’s an XKCD comic that makes me twitch with mirth.
These slideshows are from slideshare.net which seems like it might be a really handy service. Wow, there are a lot of slideshows on social media trends. Here’s just three: 16 Social Media Trends for 2010 by Agent Wildfire View more presentations from Sean Moffitt. 10 Trends For Social Media In 2010 Social Media Arizona 2010…
Jim Prentice and the Harper Government have earned Canada several Fossil Awards for the positions they have been putting forward in negotiations at Copenhagen. Actually, we’re currently leading the scoreboard for total points. Hell. We took first place and second on Friday, December 11. We took Second place for trying to argue that our target…
I’m an admirer of the minds behind GeoMemes, and I was visiting their site recently and noticed that they had embedded the advertisement below. It’s not something I would expect to find on the home page of their website. But as the tech nerds at GeoMemes point out, something important is happening this week.
And the best commenter award for October of 2009 goes to… Lisa B! Lisa is a kick ass poet and spoken word artist. I should disclose that beyond my appreciation for her insightful and supportive comments, I am also a regular and normal sort of fan of hers. She articulates herself online here – I…
After the last post I thought I better write something that clearly identifies me as anti-anti-queer.1 Found this cool campaign aimed at challenging the language people use, and the way they use it. I actually still hear it quite a lot. Someone says, “that’s so gay.” But they mean, “that’s not good”, or “that sucks”,…
