Winter Fun Food and Adventure Victoria - know your pets · 22 February 2010 by colin newell
Fuji digital cameras have introduced the FinePix F80EXR 12 Megapixel camera…
With pet recognition…
Seriously.
For those times when you are sitting in the cabin with your loved one and your equivalent of mans best friend.
And you turn to your significant other and say…
“Honey, does that look like our dog snuffles to you?”
“Gee. Honey. I am not sure…”
“Lemme grab the Fuji FinePix F80EXR!”
The F80EXR features Pet Detection which detects the faces of up to 10 dogs or cats and automatically focuses on them.
Seeing that this process is notoriously difficult (to capture an expressive portrait of an active animal with a compact camera) why leave it up to your eyes!
Pet Detection allows the camera to shoot automatically as soon as it detects your pet’s face in the frame. The FinePix F80EXR also allows you to search for pictures of cats or dogs in playback mode.
Good thing.
Because I have never trusted my cat.
Winter all food, fun and drink marathon begins - Olympics full swing · 20 February 2010 by colin newell
Just in case someone thinks that I am rolled up in the corner like a cobra or glowering like a vulture as the Canadian sports Olympiad rolls out in all its glorious redness…
I can honestly say that I am enjoying the sports and athletes in colorful HD.
Nothing like the detail in pairs skating. Or the ‘nothing to the imagination’ of sliding events like luge , skeleton , and bobsled .
Don’t get me wrong. Like our participation in Afghanistan. I question the mission but I support the troops without a hiccup.
The Olympics is a 2 week plus party – and Vancouver – Whistler residents and visitors appear to be enjoying themselves. Awesome. Right there with you.
The protesters are well behaved, peaceful, getting their message across – and the lug nut Black Bloc are keeping out of the way, utterly discredited as the bone-headed thugs they are.
When it is all over, you will probably not hear another negative word about the subject – it’s done like dinner. Time to move on. Back to actual real life stuff.
So. Thanks for your patience loyal reader Jeanie. You have the patience of a…
well. You fill in the blanks.
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Two strikes into a red flag moment - troubles with twitter · 7 February 2010 by colin newell
The problem with words is… like baseballs and rocks, they almost always travel further than you expect.
One of the saddest moments of my life was when I was 4 or 5 and while playing in the front yard… I picked up a suitably sized pebble and hurled it…
…bouncing it off my mother’s forehead.
And protest in pain she did. I felt like a bag of crap.
That was in the sixties.
Now in her 80’s she seems fine. Fingers crossed.
She’s okay. But what about me?
I seem to be still throwing rocks. Which means I have a bit of a bullying streak.
Don’t like it much.
While mucking with Twitter the last few days, I made 2 discoveries.
1.) When you want to bug someone about something (particularly on Twitter – or any other media for that matter) – you can do it quite effectively when you know you have their attention… and
2.) No matter who is out there, great and small… everyone can be tuned into your comments… even if you are directing them to William Shatner or someone else.
And no, I did not bully Bill.
What I did do was make some comments, in a very weak form of jest, against one of my favorite radio personalities. And he called me on it. Sent me a message.
And that rock on my mom’s head came back in crystal clear memory.
My dear wife, whom I love more than life itself, advised…
“For the love of Pete, leave celebrity name deleted alone… what’s wrong with you?” “And you are on twitter probation…”
Two strikes.
She has me scrubbing Jeffries tubes and checking plasma conduit.
The next infraction: Her finger is on the warp core jettison switch.
I am a bully. Working on a cure.
Keeping my hands away from rocks.
2010 Olympic Rant #37 Vancouver to become Police state · 9 October 2009 by colin newell
Fast forward to the future: Night sticks rain down on Olympic protesters as steel toe booted security forces kick the crap out of the elderly, pregnant women and anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A sidewalk is drenched with blood. The air is filled with the cries of anguish and reeks with the smell of frightened humanity and tear gas.
Beijing? Tehran? Nope.
Vancouver during the first few days of the 2010 Olympics. Protesters wage a hide and seek battle of wits against largely out-numbered security forces – who are as ill equipped for this chaos as the mall cops they truly are…
Back to the present:
A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.
Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.
I could fill this page right now with bad things that I could do in society that would yield a lower fine and less jail time. Heck, I am sure I could accidentally harm or maim someone and get less jail time than that. Touch wood: Have never harmed anyone nor have I ever had any trouble with the law.
And yet here in 2009, protesters, culture jam experts, rabble, writers, conscience driven civilians and the like can be fined or jailed for speaking out against this rotten IOC establishment and their disgusting VANOC ilk.
Currently these same folks are being harassed and intimidated by the good folks at the Integrated Security Unit.
1 year ago when I started Anti-2010 blogging in earnest, I would have…
-Not taken myself very seriously
-Would not actually consider protesting the 2010 Olympics in person or in the street
-Was not really worried about my rights or the rights of others being trampled on
That has changed. And I think it has changed for a lot of folks. I think the average British Columbian is sick and tired of the concept of the Olympics. I truly believe we will never host another Olympics again (in B.C. and maybe in Canada in my life time.)
I am pretty darn sure that the 2010 Olympics are not going to come off without riots, without mass arrests, without loss of life.
And the blood with be on the hands of Gordon Campbell and his Liberals, as well as on Jacque Rogge and that doofus John Furlong of VANOC.
If you thought the Stanley Cup riots of 1994 were some kind of spectacle, you had better strap yourself in for the civil disruption of the Century.
My heart goes out to the residents of Vancouver – because within 5 months their city is never going to be the same again.
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2010 Olympic Rant #35 silver spoons for Jacque Rogge · 30 September 2009 by colin newell
When the top names on the International Olympic Committee visit Vancouver for the 2010 Games next February, not one of your taxpayer dollars will be spared to see that these pathetic blue-bloods are suitably comfortable and tuned in to virtually every athletic competition underway, silver spoons in virtually every orifice.
FOI requests indicate that IOC president Jacques Rogge will be housed in a five-star waterfront Vancouver hotel. Oh goodie.
Rogge’s room also must be rigged with floor-to-ceiling banks of television sets with video feeds “enabling simultaneous viewing of all events of the games.”
Well. At least we don’t have to address him as his excellency…
In terms of getting around sporting events and other locations in Vancouver and Whistler, Rogge and other IOC members will get their own SUV’s and drivers, as will members of all the international sports federation bodies. Right.
Families of IOC members, as well as their interpreters, advisers, and agents all will have their bills paid for by the local organizing committee (and by default, you!), and should they get sick, there must be free medical care for them, according to the documents.
F*ck me. British Columbia’s faltering economy is in the IOC and VANOC’s wrecking ball cross-hairs.
Listen up folks. I have been talking to hundreds of British Columbians… and they have all been saying the same thing. This is all an outrage. And we are all f*cked.
Oh. With one exception. On June 25 of this year I spoke to a member of VANOC who was getting sick and tired of all the whiners and naysayers.
Well guess what, maggot? We are getting sick of you!
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2010 Olympic Rant #34 Vanoc to screw local Bus companies · 29 September 2009 by colin newell
We all know that VANOC plans to run up a billion dollar tab on Olympic Security. I actually spoke with a fellow Amateur Radio Operator (I am VA7WWV) – who claims a friend of his is getting paid about $16,000 for his 16 day stint at the 2010 Jock Show.
Good work if you can get it. Where do I sign up?
B.C. bus companies say they’ve been shut out of the Olympic feeding frenzy, after failing to land transportation contracts for the 2010 Winter Games.
Try and imagine what that gold infused honey jar would be worth!
VANOC hired a Florida-based company called Gameday Management Group to take care of Olympic transportation, prompting some in the motor coach industry to criticize an apparent a pro-American bias.
No kidding sherlock.
“We’re hosting the games. It’s our taxpayer money being spent on this, so the local carriers should be given a fair shake,” said Brendan McCullough of McCullough Coach Lines in Victoria.
Wake up. The good folks of British Columbia are going to be screwed by this jock strap locust feast – and guess what, so are local and regional businesses.
Unless it has become patently obvious by now, the 2010 Olympic games is staged entirely at a cost to the regional taxpayers for the sole profit of foreigners – a private royal party of you would – paid for by you for the amusement of the blue blood few.
Personally, I plan to put as much distance between the Olympic shame and my person – but I do expect lots and lots of protest on the streets of Vancouver, tear gas, rubber bullets, arrests of locals, and more deep shame.
It is times like this that I am embarrassed to be a British Columbian – to be part of this hideous, shameful and corrupt mess, knowing full well that the financial hang over will be years long – and we will never atone for the vulnerable in this Province who will be victimized by all the cuts to fund this joke.
So angry. So done with this topic.
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Fall Fun Food and Drink Chapter Two - A week on Twitter · 8 September 2009 by colin newell
Twitter is like riding a bus. At rush hour.
And we all know how much fun that is.
People with opinions that you do not really want – and faces that you would rather not see. All at your fingertips.
In my one week experiment with this application… a week I will never get back…
I discovered the following:
Twitter eats time… faster than a hummingbird guzzles sugar-water.
Twitter can eat so much time, that is better spent working (or not) on something meaningful… or not.
Which is to say that Twitter equates to less than nothing – yes, such a thing is possible.
In the week that I have been messing with it, I have
-deleted about 100 unwelcome followers who are marketing gurus trying to convince me that I can make money on the internet…
Already figured how to do that thanks.
Blocked dozens of Britney Spears porn sites.
Blocked dozens of ego maniacs with 10,000 followers… whom are following 33 other ego maniacs.
Blocked people who really value their opinions on everything… very, very highly.
I one week I have fallen behind 2 to 3 weeks on projects I need to get done.
That’s 3 steps back folks.
The upside?
I did discover was that you can make friends really quickly if you want.
You can keep up on local events and trends way faster than conventional media.
You will meet folks who will readily meet up with you for a cup of coffee (a tweet up I think…) without any credibility checks, common sense or police background checks.
With folks who have really odd opinions on just about everything.
Kind of like a populist SCA (Society for creative anachronism) – good people actually.
Twitter breeds well dressed people with odd belief systems; “I think the poor need to be taxed on their bad eating habits… don’t you?”
“Nurse!”
Anyway. Experiment almost over and regular programming will soon continue.
Thankfully I escaped my first Twitter-fest or twit-sesh where people hang out (hoping to hook up I guess) with other folks talking in 140 character propositions…
About little of value.
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Fall Colors Canadian Style 2009 Biting the twitter bullet · 31 August 2009 by colin newell
Going to try twitter for a few weeks to see if there is any benefit. The above video demonstrates the actual spiritual depth of the app known as Twitter. And how challenging it is to be the Ryan Seacrest of the coffee World.
2 days. 24 followers.
No porn stars…
Update – September 22, 2009 – Twitter accounts deleted and the Planet Earth is still in orbit around the Sun. Upside: No further exposure to the World’s largest collection of needy folk, that I have ever seen, since the 80’s.
Fall Colors Canadian Style 2009 Back to school cry-babies! · 24 August 2009 by colin newell
The B.C. government says school closures are not part of its plan to deal with outbreaks of the swine flu when classes return in September.
The province, in its wisdom is instead preparing for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 flu virus with a pandemic plan that includes new information and materials for parents, students and schools, according to provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall.
Note sarcastic use of italics above.
Before Gordo and his band of car-dealing liberals (sorry car dealers!) do anything, they first consult their 2010 Ouija board.
Examples: Gordo Ouija Board-o says…
• 10 to 15 percent of scheduled surgeries from September 2009 to March 2010, on top of the 2,000 that are being cut during the five-week Olympic slowdown. In total, between 6,300 and 9,600 surgeries and a layoff of more than 110 surgical staff as a result.
• Freezing of MRIs at last year’s budgeted levels, meaning each hospital will do fewer MRIs than last year.
• Eleven contracts ended for mental health services, including programs to assist victims of abuse.
• Ending 12 seniors’ programs in Abbotsford, Burnaby, Chilliwack, Langley, Maple Ridge, Mission, New Westminster, White Rock, and the Tri-Cities.
Gordo’s band of death eaters have decided that Elementary school children (if they are to live to pay off the 2010 Olympics [by 2099 anyway…]) will need to…
- suck it up and get your asses back in the classes!
- only the worthy future taxpayers will survive – also know as Gordovian Selection
Dr. Perry Kendall also pontificates…
“Closures early last spring were initiated out of an abundance of caution because we had very little information on the novel flu virus at that time. It has since become apparent that the disease caused by this virus is generally mild and does not warrant such severe measures.”
Right. If this coming pandemic was thought to be a threat to Gord and his band of merry parasites in industry and at VANOC, I assure you… they would spend whatever it took to turn off the Sun, switch off gravity and turn Vancouver into Oz.
Wait. They are already doing that.
Peace in 2010, out.
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Fall Colors Canadian Style 2009 Papers please and oh yes · 23 August 2009 by colin newell
Coffee?
Check
Fudge?
Check
Ice Cream?
Check
Passport?
Check
Spotted in the window of a Duncan, British Columbia, Canada Chocolate shop window.
Good to have one stop shopping for all these common items.
Sugar free passports.
Sweet.
Summer Food Fun and Drink - Readers digest rants Canada · 18 August 2009 by colin newell
Seniors in Canada fear three things.
Alzheimers.
Dimentia.
and unwanted Readers Digest books and products, like overpriced CD’s and knick-knacks… many of which they insist they did not order.
A local Canadian post office claims that 15% of their daily work is returning unwanted and overpriced budget quality books sold by Readers Digest at an utterly outrageous price.
But there is comeuppance on the horizon folks. And the schadenfreude comes in the form of news that Reader’s Digest International is applying for bankruptcy protection.
What? Could not sell enough shit books to confused seniors?
Senior secured lenders will exchange a “substantial portion” of $1.6 billion in debt for equity, the publisher said today in a statement. Some of them will provide a $150 million bankruptcy loan, debtor-in-possession financing, to ensure the company has enough liquidity during its reorganization.
Gee. Does that mean that my dear old (now hospitalized) Aunt does not owe $800 Canadian for 12 of your shitty books and CD’s?
Here is hoping.
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Summer Fun Food and Drink Olympic Rant 32 Trouble making cops · 14 August 2009 by colin newell
A snippet from a recent copy of Georgia Strait magazine…
The RCMP-led security force for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games won’t rule out the use of agents provocateurs to incite protesters to commit illegal acts.
Speaking on behalf of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit, Cpl. Jen Allan said the ISU is charged with ensuring people’s safety. “We are not in a position to detail a specific operational plan as to how we are going to fulfill that obligation,” Allan explained to the Georgia Straight in a telephone interview.
She reiterated the ISU’s assurance that all Olympic security operations will be carried out “in line with Canadian laws and Canadian values”.
I do not believe for a second that our national police force, lacking as much credibility as they do, have a freaking clue what Canadian values are – much less the ability to actually put them in to practice.
For those who do not know who or what agents provocateurs are…
They are police who masquerade as trouble-makers in normally peaceful crowds to discredit legitimate protests – by instigating trouble.
The RCMP used agents provocateurs at a G8 event in Quebec recently – and guess what? The peaceful crowd was not fooled and the dirt-ball RCMP were exposed for the corrupt organization that they are.
Do not get me wrong: I am not advocating the elimination of the RCMP as we know it – not by a long shot… But more a step by step process to get the rot out.
Let’s start by stopping the RCMP from investigating themselves when they kill or injure someone in custody.
Yea. Good place to start.
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Summer Food Fun and Drink - Olympic Rant #31 Go Tiger Go · 13 August 2009 by colin newell
Satire – Picture if you would: Tiger Woods lining up a 20-foot putt on the final hole with an Olympic gold medal at stake.
The elderly wizards at the IOC decided Thursday that golf would be recommended for inclusion in the 2016 Summer Games.
Picture upper right – Cockroach or VANOC member? You judge.
Could any sport be further from the original Olympic spirit, more exclusive or more removed from the open-to-all ethos that use to empower the games?
It costs a small fortune to buy a bag of even the cheapest golf clubs and membership to clubs the world over could end hunger in any sub Saharan country. And gender equity? Augusta, the home of the Masters, still refuses female members.
As for baseball and softball, it was a case of “You’re out!” Voted out four years ago and denied reinstatement a year later, they were among the five sports failing to make the grade this time.
The International Olympic Committee executive board selected golf and rugby from a list of seven proposed sports, which also included squash, karate and roller sports.
The board also approved lady’s boxing for the 2012 London Games.
What ever happened to amateur sport in the Olympics? Oh. I know.
Pro hockey, pro basketball and so on happened to the Olympic spirit.
A local newspaper columnist wrote a few days ago: “Only the truly mean-spirited wouldn’t want the 2010 Olympics to succeed…”
Uhm. What is success where the 2010 Olympics is concerned?
Some of us would say Gold medals – but the reality of these worthless medallions on a strap is that the Olympic movement is little more than an organized band of locusts moving from community to community, sanctioned by morally bankrupt governments, guarded by emotionally vacant police and security forces – for the sole purpose or letting this corporation suck our futures dry to benefit the wealthy royal few.
Shame.
British Columbia mini-rant - Deer at the dinner table · 12 August 2009 by colin newell
A Ucluelet woman has been ordered by the Ministry of Environment to stop keeping a black-tailed deer as a house pet.
Janet Schwartz took in “Bimbo” as a fawn five years ago, after its mother was killed by a car, she told CBC News.
The doe sleeps in a bed in Schwartz’s home, dances to Elvis, hugs like an old man and eats at her table. Its diet includes fruit and junk food.
The blue meanies at the Ministry of the Environment say that the Doe has got to go.
Bimbo has been with Ms. Schwartz for almost 6 years now…
so, In B.C. this is a legally binding common law relationship.
I say leave the couple alone.
And isn’t it funny that a government that behaves like an obsequious old house-elf from Harry Potter towards every little ache and pain from the likes of VANOC – bares their teeth at a little old lady and her live in venison.
Shame. Shame I say, shame!
A government that is now less popular than swine flu and less credible than the RCMP can ill afford to be smacking around old hippies and their hoofers.
So back off already… before we call in the rest of the herd.
Summer Food Fun and Drink - why Ikea sucks · 11 August 2009 by colin newell
Ikea. Junk furniture made with unsustainable materials manufactured and collated by exploited workers so we can have dilapidated and readily disposable crap in our shrinking living space.
Ikea is in the hot seat this month after being caught vandalizing hundreds of pieces of public and private property. Picture at upper-right: Unreal.
Given that IKEA’s environmental stewardship is more global wrecking ball than actual contributor to real solutions, their recent botched ad campaign seems entirely apropos – Corporate guerrilla art it’s called. They spray-paint (vandalize) public space in the name of corporate kitsch and coolness – and it bites.
Ikea. You stink and it ain’t the reek of laminate.
IKEA—third largest global consumer of wood— gets many of its raw materials from regions where illegal logging is rampant and environmental stewardship is as absent as your parents on your first big night out. IKEA’s wares, and the industrial location of its big-box stores (consumers have to travel by car to make their purchases, or even exchange faulty small parts), speak to a unfailing disregard for environmental consideration.
The hoo-haw around Ikea’s use of “chalk spray” graffiti to complement a TV ad campaign aimed at driving viewers to a website where they could enter a contest to win $15,000 worth of furniture – has caused them to back peddle faster than a RCMP officer at a taser inquiry.
The ads featured a yellow dotted line framing the slogan “Any Place Can Be Beautiful,” a website of the same name and “Aug. 10,” the date Ikea plans to deliver 5.5 million flyers to Canadian homes.
Although I have never been a fan of the crap that they sell, I am now even more resolved to never set foot in one of their soul crushing retail outlets. Shame on Ikea for stealing our public space and branding it for commercial gain.
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