Month: October 2012

During the final presidential debate, Sue-Ann Levy — columnist for Accordion City’s worst newspaper, Mayor Rob Ford’s loudest cheerleader (Toronto Life called her his “personal stenographer”), defender of the city against firefighters and all-round lowerer-of-the-bar — decided to make a tweet:

A tweet-storm ensued, during which Levy suggested that he’s secretly a Muslim (and you know, they can’t be up to any good) and that people “might want to check clips on YouTube from CNN that show otherwise. Sorry this might make the LibLeft cringe.”

It was the usual right-left crossfire until Jonathan Kay, columnist for the National Post — the paper that the Sun wants to be, if it ever grows up — stepped into the fray. If you’re not familiar with Mr. Kay or his writing, he’s generally considered conservative on a number of issues, in a sort of Barry Goldwater style. Here’s Wikipedia’s summary of his writings:

Kay often endorses views regarded as conservative, particularly on the subjects of Israel,^[16] political correctness^[17] and policy toward North American Aboriginals.^[18] However, he also has dissented from conservatives on a variety of issues. In recent years, for example, he has written articles raising awareness about income inequality,^[19] and questioning the conduct of the Iraq War.^[20] Kay has also been a strong supporter of gay rights. In 2010, Kay argued that conservatives are wrong to continue challenging the majority scientific view on global warming.^[21] In response, Financial Post columnist Terence Corcoran, a noted climate-change skeptic, argued that Kay’s support of the anthropogenic climate change theory was based on unproven environmentalist dogmas.^[22]

Kay’s writing is generally dismissive of the claims made by the 9/11 Truth Movement, and they have responded with criticism of him. He has been accused of attacking academic freedom because, in his writing, he criticizes the public funding of academic research that is based on 9/11 skepticism.^[23][24]

When he entered the debate, it turned into the “Leopold!” moment from this classic Bugs Bunny cartoon:

Here’s Jonathan Kay’s tweet:

@sueannlevy: Can we look fwd 2 a Sun column in which u expand on your thesis that Obama is “Muslim”/spouts “Muslim BS’? twitter.com/jonkay/status/…

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) October 23, 2012

Realizing that Kay had brought a gun to her knife fight, her reply was:

@jonkay I’ll wait for you to do it. Not my beat. Wouldn’t want to tread on your turf.

— Sue-Ann Levy (@SueAnnLevy) October 23, 2012

Kay’s response:

@sueannlevy Your walkback apology on Birther Tweet could be: “Im sorry. I was distressed by how much ass Obama was kicking. I wasnt myself!”

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) October 23, 2012

You can see the whole scuffle summarized on Torontoist, which closes with this tweet from Kay:

I dont think I have ever seen a person so determined to self-destruct in a single unrepentant hate-Twittering session as @sueannlevy tonight

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) October 23, 2012

Jonathan Kay should use this picture for his byline!

Click on the image to see it at full size.

The term for mecha that combine to form super-mecha — such as with both versions of Voltron or the Transformers’ Devastator and Superion — is “combiner”. Tamashii Nations (Tamashii means soul; it’s another way of writing Damacy, as in Katamari) a group of companies that make Japanese collectibles, has this stunning combiner in which mecha versions of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto, Pluto’s doghouse, and the steamboat from Steamboat Willie join to form something I’m going to call “Waltron”.

Its actual name is Chogokin King Robo Mickey and Friends, and the official names of the sentai members are:

• Ace Willy (head)
• Jet Mickey (torso)
• Sky Minnie (torso)
• Diver Donald (arms)
• Aqua Daisy (arms)
• Land Goofy (legs)
• Dash Pluto (legs)
• Doghouse (legs)

(Chogokin is Japanese for “super alloy”.)

According to the Japanese entertainment blog Jefusion, Chogokin King Robo Mickey and Friends will debut at a Tamashii Nations event from October 26th through 28th and will hit store shelves in March at the price of ¥13,440 (USD$169 / CAD$167 as of this writing).

Every time I tell myself “Okay, no more novelty USB keys,” someone comes out with one I absolutely must own. But how can I turn down a USB key modelled after the balisong (a.k.a. butterfly knife or Batangas knife), a creation from my dad’s home province of Batangas and the greatest Filipino contribution to bad-assery?

Where You Can Get One

The knife company Benchmade sells this USB key for US$30. Alas, its capacity is a mere 2 gigs.

If you’re tired of burning your fingers while trying to light a hard-to-reach candle, such as those in very deep jars or containers, here’s a little trick you’ll love:

Clothespins are the great underappreciated tool of do-it-yourself home decorating projects or organizing a home office. Here’s a way to make great-looking candle and plant holders using clothespins and tuna cans:

I live in a condo, so my washer and dryer are in a tiny space where I also keep the cleaning supplies. I’m going to have to try the trick below. Oddly enough, I do use a hanging shoe rack in the closet of the smaller bedroom which acts as my home office to keep all sorts of tech equipment:

Take some ramekins, coffee beans and that three-dollar bag of 100 Ikea tealight candles, and you can decorate a table in a way that’ll make Martha Stewart proud:

If you’ve got an empty picture frame and some superglue and drink as much wine as I do (or can get your paws on many wine corks), you can make a corkboard that works as well as and looks better than the ones you’ll find at your local Costco or office supply place:

Oh, the number of times this has come in handy:

If you want something a little different from the giant Ikea paper-covered floor lamp that everyone seems to have these days, gets some string lights and put them in a glass container, old pickle jar, vase or anything similar. It looks great, it’s cheap, and your house won’t look like everyone else’s:

And finally, a trick for those of you whose kids have outgrown the crib:

You can find these tricks and more here:

• 99 Hacks to Make Your Life Easier
• Creative DIY Stuff, Part 1
• Creative DIY Stuff, Part 2

Here’s a video promotion from 1993 by Boole and Babbage (supposedly “the first software company in Silicon Valley”, acquired by BMC Software in 1998) featuring Johnathan Frakes as Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Commander Riker. Boole and Babbage made “software to help corporations stitch together computer networks,” a rather messy prospect in those days before we standardized them around the internet protocols.

You don’t have to be a programmer or IT person to enjoy the nostalgic cheese on this video. It opens with a chaotic scene at an early ’90s airline logistics centre, where the reservations system has crashed.  Harold, the only employee “with vision”, is contacted by Commander Riker through the monitor on his 386-based PC. Riker tells Harold that Mainview, Boole and Babbage’s network monitoring software, can solve him problem. After some quick technobabble that’s as vague and hand-wavey as any you’ve seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Mainview gives Harold the solution he needs: “Reroute through Cleveland” (which isn’t all that different from the standard deus ex machina on the show: reroute some energy through the ship’s main deflector).

I’m pretty impressed that Boole and Babbage were able to get Paramount to go along with letting them use Star Trek and the bridge set of the Enterprise for this promo. I’m less surprised that Frakes would sign up for the gig: over the years, he’ll appear on anything, no matter how cheesy.

There is one line near the end of the promo that rings true for techie today, even with our pocket-sized devices that run circles around the best desktops of that era and far, far better networks: “Doing more with less will be your constant challenge in the coming years”.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

I meant to post this back when Sandy Crocker, the 34-year-old British Columbia-based dentist set off for Ireland to find a woman he met once, for a mere couple of minutes, in a café in Ennistymon last summer. He didn’t know her name or where she lived, and the only description he could provide of her was that she had reddish hair and freckles.

It would be easy to describe his as a fool’s errand. With the vague description that could easily describe a lot of the young women in Ireland; he’s facing much longer odds that the people trying to connect on Craigslist’s “Missed Connections”, such as this fella:

Asian girls going to a strip club – m4w – 33 (Queensway/Royal York)

Oct/19 Friday night about 9:45pm or so…It was fun talking to you girls as you were driving on Queensway from Sobey’s to your strip joint. All of you were really cute I thought. But you had a male driver and he seemed pissed that you girls were talking to me. Like I told you when you asked, I am a single dad. I saw which strip club you went to, but I’d feel really dumb dressing up right now and going to a strip club to talk to you. So if this works, the one who was interested and asking if I was single will get in touch. If not – at least I have a story to tell :).

(Do those ads ever work, other than as entertainment for us bystanders?).

He doesn’t know this woman at all. The woman in his head is an idealized, romanticized one that he’s been dreaming up over the past year, based on a brief chance encounter and short conversation.

Some people have said that his mission’s a bit creepy, even stalker-like. I’m not as cynical as they, but what he’s doing does remind me of an old Onion article: Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested.

One commenter in a National Post article suggested that there’s something wrong with him if he’s a dentist and still single at 34. I was under the impression that the “What’s wrong with him?” threshold age for never-married-before men was 40. Perhaps I missed the memo.

Sandy Crocker didn’t find her. After spending a month in Ireland searching for the girl he couldn’t forget, he’s back home. I’m certain that every day, he asks himself: “Okay, what now?”

My heart goes out to this guy; if I ever run across him, I’d be happy to buy him a beer. Most of us, myself included, have had one or two of those times where we wish we’d said “Call me maybe” and didn’t, and would love a chance to fix that mistake. In fact, my current relationship with The Lady Friend is the direct result of trying to fix one of those mistakes.

Sandy may have been on a fool’s errand in the short term, but it might have been a wise move in the long term. He took charge of his own fate, he’s now in a situation where he can move on, and he’s most likely spared himself a lifetime of Maud Muller-style lamenting: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: “It might have been!” It was most likely a valuable journey, even if he didn’t “get the girl”.

He said the same thing less poetically, but it’s still worth repeating:

“You know what? You have to hold out hope in life, and it is just a situation where if you didn’t come and do it and see if you could find the girl, fifty years down the road you’d regret it. This is making sure that this isn’t something you didn’t do nothing about.”

He’s a decent-looking guy with a good outlook on life, and now he’s got a story to tell and a bit of a reputation for being a romantic. I can only wish him well.

Good luck, dude.