eightface

Debate this

I watched some of the presidential debate tonight, after discovering the live feed on bbc. Nothing spectacular, although Kerry seemed strong and composed, Bush seemed a little on the bewildered side.

My favourite Bush moment was him flubbing an accusation against Kerry, “He needs to speak clearly, he’s sending mexed-missa… mixed-messages, he’s sending mixed messages…”. It probably won’t show up on a transcript. This picture is gold too, the first ladies look exactly the same.

Transcript: part 1 / part 2

A living goddess emerges

A seven-year old girl is revered as a living goddess amongst hindus and buddhists. She only comes out a few times a year to celebrate festive occasions. It’s not easy to become Kumari:

Each Kumari is chosen aged only three or four, always from the same Buddhist clan, and has to have 32 attributes, including thighs like those of a deer and a neck like a conch shell.

My favourite quote would have to be this one:

Under quite new arrangements, living goddesses nowadays are all entitled to a formal education with a tutor of their choice.

I’m glad living goddesses are entitled to a formal education.

Left-wing media conspiracy

I’m convinced that the major media outlets have all declared Bush way ahead in the polls to encourage voting. Democrats are more likely to come out and if they fear losing. Either that or they want to create a bunch of work and news for themselves by analyzing where polls went wrong and creating snazzy special report graphics. Vote for Pedro.

Man RSS can suck

I was checking out the new RSS/Atom/Whatever capabilities of the Firefox 1.0PR build and realizing that I haven’t been posting to the main log all that often. I seem to do a lot better with the quicklinks, but I’d been neglecting their feeds. So, I have created both atom and rss versions of the quicklinks. In other exciting website news, I registered davekellam.com but it’s just mirroring eightface, nothing special.

I’m starting to use Firefox a lot more instead of Safari, it seems to be slicker these days. I’m using the Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) theme and a bunch of plugins. I’ve been noticing a few of their new features, like an RSS link in the corner and the ability to bookmark feeds. The find feature has been revamped too, it’s now a search bar at the bottom instead of a popup window and it does live searches (you don’t have to hit enter).

The Return

The internet returned to our humble apartment during the afternoon today. Sure enough, the guy just climbed up a ladder and screwed the cable back in. I love our detached consumer culture that lets you wait five days for a central dispatcher to send a guy over to walk up a ladder when you’re less than a kilometer from the local facility.

Anyway, internet is back and I can download more things. Things! It was kind of frustrating having no access, when my schooling seems to center around internet based research.

Bloody technology

Last night was not a good night for me and technology. Our cable internet isn’t working because the cable is unplugged at the hub on the side of our building (i’m assuming that a squirrel ripped it out by sitting on it), you need a ladder to get to it.

Next up, a Bell technician was supposed to come over in the evening yesterday, but never showed. We’ve been paying Bell for a week or two, but they’ve yet to get the phone actually working in our apartment. Last up, i was plugging the ethernet cable into my xbox and clipped one of the wires attaching the power switch to the modchip. So, I have a normal xbox right now instead of a nice modded one.

Update: I called Cogeco today, the tech support lady was ready to put me through the wringer with the call-script and what not; she got the idea when I said i had physically traced the cable out of the apartment and it wasn’t attached to the wall. Anyway, they can’t send someone to climb up a ladder and plug it back in until Monday. Yea big faceless corporations.

Hello World

Time for a small recap of the last week or so, just to get me started. I need to post a bit more, it’s become the weekly update. The quicklinks section seems to be getting the majority of my effort.

First off, Canada wins the World Cup of Hockey. It used to be the Canada Cup, but I guess that was a bit too exlusive or something. Regardless, Canada can rest easy for awhile, it has the Olympic gold, the last two World Championships and this Cup. As Canadians, we probably wouldn’t have cared as much about the World Cup if the NHL wasn’t planning on locking out the players. We’re likely to get some hockey in the form of the Original Stars Hockey League.

Next up, my story. I’m doing teacher’s college this year, so I had a bit of an earlier start than most of the other students at the university. The first week was a lot of giant classes in the auditorium, but not a whole lot happened. Class is in full swing now — I’m not really used to having a whole day full of them. Overall they don’t seem too difficult to wrap your head around, it just seems like a good chunk of work. More of a time commitment than anything. Just like teaching I guess, a lot of time spent compiling resources and planning how you’re going to approach class.

Last up, i’ll give you a few more links to make the non-personal visit worthwhile. Wes has an mp3 weblog called Angels Twenty, it makes me want to start offering weekly mp3s again. An NYT review of the new G5 iMac. Marc has a domain now, dunno if I posted that or not, it’s been in my links for awhile. Capsula Mundi, Italian bio-degradable coffins. That’s it for now.

Viva Septembre!

Hola chicos. The summer seems to have gone by too fast. I’ve had a week off from work, but could use another. A good chunk of this week has been spent gathering my shit up and preparing to move apartments. I was woken up this morning by a friendly Cogeco representative who told me that there was a tech waiting at the other apartment to install my internet. It’s a fun way to start the day.

School for me starts on Tuesday, so I don’t get to party it up during Frosh Week like the rest of the goons. It’s alright though, I don’t think my first week’s going to be all that hard. I need to find out when I’m supposed to be there on the first day though.

So, internet is up in the new place now. Phone sometime tomorrow I think, although that could end up being delayed. If you want the new location and contact info, let me know. Time for some bed.