For those folks who read my blog as an RSS feed, or those who read it with an older browser (such as Internet Explorer 5.0 or less, Firefox 2.0, Safari 1.0, or others), you won’t notice much of a change, but if you are looking at this page or others with a newer browser, you should be seeing some interesting changes: mainly the fonts for the headlines and body type. How did I do this? I’ve been playing with the typekit service (www.typekit.com – if you don’t see anything yet, it’s because I got an early invitation. They’ll be going live for the general public soon, I think. ), which has started to post web fonts for those people designing and building web sites, as well as the browsers that can see them, and they’ll be offering a free account with 2 fonts on a single URL. I decided to use the font ”M+ 1c” for the headlines and “Droid Serif” (which is actually one of the fonts designed for onscreen reading on the Google Android OS) for the body copy. I probably will need to tweak some other settings and CSS (Comments and a few other items in the content areas are still showing up in Georgia), but overall, I’m intrigued with the prospect of web sites and blogs that use fonts other than the 6 or 7 that we’ve been seeing regularly for the past 10 years or so. I hope this does catch on, as I think it could spur a renaissance in web design. In the meantime, it’s always a thrill to be an early adopter and catch some of this at the beginning.
I admit it: I was taking the summer off from blogging. A combination of lots of change in work/life combined with some really great get-out-and-enjoy-the-outdoors weather pushed typing at the computer screen right off the schedule. Until now.
What pushed me back to the blog? Lots of changes in day-to-day life around here:
The new CanadaLine, which is essentially a subway (with a bit of it above ground once you get further out – just like the good old Boston T) started service this past Monday (the first day free from 1 till 9). That means, for all intents and purposes, that the city that I know of has instantly grown. Richmond, as well as parts of the city closer to the Fraser river are now just as convenient to get to as Burnaby, the city to the East. Pam and I rode it from the second stop (Granville/City Centre) to the last one (Richmond) – but did not take the spur to the airport. This new transit line also brings Vancouver the distinction of being the first city in Canada to have a transit line that links the downtown to the airport, just like London, Paris, Beijing and other cities not in North America.
The harbinger of the end of the summer is around the corner: The PNE. I look forward to this ‘County Fair’ just outside the city (although technically it’s still within the city limits) every year. This will be our (gasp!) fifth one.
A shocking and sad announcement that Workspace, one of the favourite gathering places for the tech community here in Vancouver, will be closing its doors at the end of the week. Workspace was an engaging combination of café, office space for creative technological entrepreneurs, incubator, clubhouse and even a little bit of a Soho gallery (lots of local art on the walls). The floor to ceiling views of Howe Sound and the mountains, the grittiness of the train tracks (and trains passing close by), along with the white paint over a former slaughterhouse all contributed to a unique space that I will miss terribly. Fortunately, as I write this, there is some heartening traffic on Twitter about something to fill this gaping void in the Vancouver technology and social scene. We’ll have to see what comes out of the ashes of that gem of a location that holds many fond memories for me (and I’m sure it does for many others as well).
I mentioned changes in work. I don’t usually blog about work on this blog. My philosophy has always been that there was plenty of other things to talk about, and there was always the potential of offending someone or making some other career-limiting move, so why chance it? That said, I’ve resigned from my position of VP of Creative Solutions at Business Logic (if you want to find out why, I can tell you over a couple of beers), and I’m once again looking for a permanent position, despite the fact that I have a contract at a local Financial Planning company. I know all too well, when contracts are done, there is often nothing else waiting in the wings, especially during certain months of the year (although I’m pleased that for once, I’m working in August, despite the fact that I’m not an employee anywhere – yet).
I’ve also got a backlog of some video and photos to show. The summer of events and people continued with the always entertaining and colourful Gay Pride Parade, Vinocamp (and Cheesecamp), a pleasant Wedding Anniversary picnic at Kits Beach (and thanks to Netchick for the idea). I’ll try and post some pics and video before it’s too ancient. If nothing else, the video of out first trip on the Canadline has some great vertigo-inducing footage looking backward down the tunnel (I couldn’t get anywhere near the front of the car, but the back end was more accessible, hence the backward-looking video).
So, as my father is fond of saying ‘The only thing you can be certain of is change’. He’s right, and I suppose it makes life more interesting. I have to admit that I’m never a huge fan of change, but I’m getting better at it, and some of these changes haven’t been bad. Just the Workspace loss. Yup, that one just plain sucks.
I’m a little bleary-eyed, but I am here, awake, and still able to blog. I believe that I’ve exorcized all of the demons (or daemons for the UNIX folks out there) that were putting in the SPAM in my posts and RSS feeds. I did locate code in my xmlrpc.php file that had a graphic of a spider (in ascii – how old school!) and then a bunch of what looked like Russian. It had everything but ‘From Russia with Love‘ in it. I didn’t keep it around long enough to figure exactly what it was doing, but after several tries at cleaning out, I inevitably had to blow away my WordPress install and reinstall from fresh files. After all of that, reinstalling and reconfiguring plugins, re-entering and updating passwords, and pinging servers, I finally appear to be back in business, and most of what I had is back (save a few plugins and other niceties).
So, by way of a test, here’s a video I took with the Flip Camera of our second visit to the Night Market in Richmond last night. This evening I had Bánh mì (the incomparable Vietnamese sandwiches of ham, paté and crisp vegetables on crunchy French style baguettes) and Taiwanese deep-fried squid which was absolutely fantastic. Pam had a Green Papaya Salad with shredded beef jerky and a piping hot waffle filled with red bean paste. Too bad the video can’t be smelled or tasted.
This is also a first attempt at using the quick and dirty FlipShare software to make a movie from my short clips, and despite the rather ugly opening titles, I think it actually does a pretty good job. It’s certainly faster than iMovie, but then again, I didn’t do much but trim a few of the clips. Let’s hear it for raw video, free of spam!
Unfortunately, yesterday my blog was hacked, and done in a way that I can’t (after a nearly sleepless night) extricate the poisonous code from it. After going round and round with no solution, I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m going to have to do a complete wipe of it and start from scratch. I’m hoping that I can retain my previous entries, but I can’t let this go on much longer, and have to find a way to get this garbage out. My sincere apologies, and I hope that I’ll be able to get this running again soon.
I’ve been tagged on Facebook with the 25 Things About You meme by my friend, Rebecca Saloustros. I guess there’s only one thing to do:
Here are the Rules from this blog meme: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. Then, at the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. I was tagged, I’ve been told, because they want to know more about me, and to those who I will tag, I’ll have tagged you because I want to know more about you.
As I said, this started on Facebook, but I am moving it to my blog, so I am doing a post instead of a Facebook note. Nothing in the rules said anything about it having to be on Facebook. So in a sense, this virus has ‘jumped’ species. Ooh, scary.
After I am done, I will probably not tag 25 people. I like to keep the number of people I annoy to a minimum, just like Rebecca.
Let’s start with the easy stuff first: My favourite colour is Beige. Yes, wheat, light brown, call it what you will. I like the feel of it on my eyes, and like to wear clothing that color, especially if it is soft, because it is soothing in both the visual and tactile sense. Besides, everybody‘s favourite colour is blue and they make fun of beige, or speak ill of it, as if it were bland or weak. (I even remember an Apple Ad that said that Beige wasn’t even a colour.) Nah, it’s just subtle.
My first memory was when my parents took me to the County Fair in West Virginia and we happened to be walking by the pen when they took out the piglet for the ‘greased pig’ contest (where contestants try to catch the quick, young pig covered with grease). The piglet let out a high-pitched squeal. I’m told that when I was startled by it, I cried for hours.
I have a scar on my left eyebrow, from stitches put in when I was 3 or 4 year’s old and attending the birthday party for a neighborhood boy named Frankie (I learned later that it was really Russell) Cyzick. The stitches were from watching a Marble race game, trying to follow the marbles too quickly, cutting a gash above my eye. Russell Cysick grew up to be one of the Marines who died when the barracks in Beirut, Lebanon were bombed on October 23, 1983. Sometimes I think of that scar when I hear about that incident in history.
I wrote 2 books about personal computer software. One was called ‘Cool Mac Stacks’, which was about Hypercard, a ‘software erector set’ from Apple in the late 80′s that perhaps anticipated Visual Basic (and, I suppose in turn, .Net scripting, the Web, Applescript and Javascript). It had (get this:) a floppy disk in the back of it. The other was co-written with Michael Murie, and is called ‘QuickTime Handbook’. I’ve contemplated writing a medical action thriller (Think 28 Days Later meets a hard-boiled Detective Drama) and a couple of recipe books, including one for Maple Syrup (with atmospheric photography) or more recently, an updated cookbook for the Granville Island Public Market.
I’m not a big fan of cars, but I’ve always liked Corvettes, especially the ones from the 70′s. It’s the design.
The only vegetable I don’t like is beets, and I prefer mushrooms cooked. The only fruits I’m not crazy about are Pineapple and raw apples (they are fine cooked, though). Mangos seem too much trouble, with that big pit.
My favourite painter is the surrealist Yves Tanguy, who painted meticulous but vast landscapes populated by strange, multi-coloured, vaguely biological shapes, casting long afternoon shadows on plains with the horizon far in the distance. Seriously, it’s amazingly trippy stuff.
I sometimes have a freakishly accurate memory, but at other times, seem to draw a blank. I fear that my accurate memories are beginning to wane with age.
I also have a freakishly good sense of smell. This is actually as good as is has ever been, and I now know that if I had known it was that much better than everybody elses, I could have gotten a job as a ‘Nose’ in a perfume factory, or perhaps a whiskey blender in a Scotch distillery.
There are several places in the world that I want to visit. Hopefully, in 2010, we will go to Vietnam, Thailand and Hong Kong. I’d also love to tour Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, as well as Prague, Budapest and Tallinn (Estonia). That last one because one of my favourite unknown composers, Eduard Tubin, is from there. (Tubin wrote 9 Symphonies and 2 Piano Sonatas, and much of his music is so good, I can’t believe it’s unknown. The Fourth Symphony should be a staple of the literature, and the Piano Concertino is really fine.)
Some day I’d like to be able to get really good at making short pastry crust from scratch. I always panic when a recipe calls for this (i.e., any pie, pasty or tart).
I like cats. I appreciate that they decide to like you on your merits, rather than start out helplessly dependent on you, just because you’re the person who shows up at the door. I think that cats can sense this about me, perhaps through my body language, or the way I approach them or smell; Frequently, cats that hiss and run away from others will cozy up to me. This is not to say that I dislike dogs, but I have to admit that I really do dislike that many dogs leave an odor on your hands after you pet them (or at least one that those with a freakishly good sense of smell — see above — can detect).
OK. About halfway there. Speaking of 13, unlike a lot of people from North America and Europe, I have no fear of the number 13. It’s a family thing; My brother and I were both born on the 13th of the month, exactly 3 years apart. My parents were married on the 26th of the month (twice 13). 13 keeps cropping up my life, but it never bothers me as it would some.
I’m a fan of single malts, Port and small-batch bourbon (Bookers, Maker’s Mark, and Knob Creek). I rarely if ever drink gin, vodka or rye whiskey and I’m not really fond of Martinis (Specialty or Classic). I do like a good Daiquiri, Dark and Stormy (Rum and Ginger Beer) or Mojito in the summer.
I’m an unrepentant Mac Fanboy. Probably not as vehement as some, but on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being a Microsoft Fanatic and 10 being a raving Apple acolyte, I’m probably a 8.75. Pam says it’s closer to 9.25. Let’s just say that having to use a PC running Vista halves my productivity and makes me grumpy. XP, not so much.
I’ve got a bit of fear of heights. For some strange reason, it appears to be getting worse as I get older, and I have no clue as to why.
I’m hoping that the next car we own will be one that runs entirely on electric power (or at the very least, is a plug-in hybrid).
I never wear the colour blue (except for blue denim jeans), and especially not Navy. I once had a Navy-blue blazer, and it made me look like a corpse. I’ve come to the conclusion that hazel eyes and grey/brown hair just don’t go with blue, especially with pasty-white skin. As I’ve often said: I don’t tan; I just try to get rid of the blue.
I only once voted for a Republican. It was for William Weld, the governor of Massachusetts (in 1990). He was running against a lunatic who never should have been the Democratic Nominee, John Silber. Weld was later blackballed and kept from being ambassador to Mexico by Jesse Helms (the racist and homophobic Senator of North Carolina who died last year), and went on to practice law in New York and write novels. He endorsed Obama over McCain after having backed and supported Mitt Romney, a later governor of Massachusetts. I stood next to Weld on the T (the Boston Subway) once. We didn’t speak.
Speaking of famous people I’ve met, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, that includes former Governor and Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, who I had a marvelous chat with while riding BART to the San Francisco Airport last year, former Governor and Presidential Candidate Michael Dukakis (also on the subway – nice to see politicians ridding mass transit, eh?) as well as composers Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen, Steve Reich, John Williams and a bunch of other less famous names (some of them teachers). I met conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, Andre Previn and Seiji Ozawa and had a friendship (through family) with Sergiu Commisiona, the Principal conductor of both the Baltimore and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras at one time or another (sadly, he died before I moved here). I have a ton of autographs, some of the people mentioned here.
I strongly dislike Southern American accents. Sorry, I know I shouldn’t prejudge, but a thick Carolinian or Alabaman drawl grates on my ears like fingers on a blackboard. If it’s any consolation, I also cringe when I hear the accent from Rochester, New York, with it’s flat vowels and tight-jawed pronunciation of the city’s name itself (which comes out sounding like ‘Rachster’)
The most unpleasant place I’ve ever lived was Rochester, New York, which arguably has the least amount of yearly sunshine of the lower forty-eight US states due to the ‘Lake Effect’, which is the huge, dark canopy of clouds formed for about 9 months out of the year by masses of colder Canadian air meeting masses of warmer American air over Lake Ontario. There were several weeks when I looked out the window, that I couldn’t tell whether it was 4 AM or 4 PM. Not that it mattered; there was about as much to do in that city at either hour.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but instead, often crave crunchy, salty things. Melted cheese on top of or inside a crunchy corn, rice or bread thing is my undoing.
I require a really odd shoe size: 11 1/2 triple-A. That’s the narrowest size there is. It means that I can never get cheap shoes that fit, and for a while when we lived in Boston, I took the plunge and had custom lasts (those are pieces of wood that are the same shape and size as your feet) made by Johnston Murphy so I could get shoes that fit without having to try on 10-15 pairs each time. They no longer do make custom shoes, so I’m out of luck when the shoes I got back then wear out. You’ll never see me in sandals because they simply can’t stay on a foot with a heel as narrow as mine.
If the rest of these minutiae don’t provide a good enough overall image of me, when I took the Myers Briggs personality test years ago, it pegged me as an ENTP, or Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving, or ‘The Visionary’ (I like the sound of that). According to one description of ENTPs:
“…the ENTP’s primary interest in life is understanding the world that they live in. They are constantly absorbing ideas and images about the situations they are presented in their lives. Using their intuition to process this information, they are usually extremely quick and accurate in their ability to size up a situation.
With the exception of their ENFP cousin, the ENTP has a deeper understanding of their environment than any of the other types. This ability to intuitively understand people and situations puts the ENTP at a distinct advantage in their lives. They generally understand things quickly and with great depth. Accordingly, they are quite flexible and adapt well to a wide range of tasks. They are good at most anything that interests them.
As they grow and further develop their intuitive abilities and insights, they become very aware of possibilities, and this makes them quite resourceful when solving problems.
ENTPs are idea people. Their perceptive abilities cause them to see possibilities everywhere. They get excited and enthusiastic about their ideas, and are able to spread their enthusiasm to others. In this way, they get the support that they need to fulfill their visions.”
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