Hot new vid

A few days ago I drove from Halifax to Wolfville and managed to capture the experience through the power of time-lapse video.  All things considered, I think it is one of my better time-lapse vids (but that isn't necessarily saying much).




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Typo or unfunny joke?

I can't tell if this is a typo or if it is a very unfunny joke.  I guess it seems like it might be the latter.

No such thing as a free donut

Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to create a free donut (actually up to three free donuts).
 
Much to my surprise no one took me up on my offer to have me mail them up to three free donut rims.   Apparently, at least this is how I am interpreting things, I am not the only one not to be a big donut eater.

Maybe this reminder will shake things up?

Not just watching on Twitter

So it seems that CBC's The House is providing westward rolling live coverage of the NDP convention (this means that you have to move one stream west each hour).  I have decided to supplement my Twitter consumption with this coverage.  The total package has been much more exciting than I expected.

Now that the first ballot results have come in I have no idea how the rest of the day will play out.  One of the first complicating factors is that turnout in the first round was about 50%, and most of these ballots were cast in advance with their preferences locked in.  Whether or not eligible members nationwide opt in or not may have serious consequences.  Secondly, that the first round results lead three candidates to drop out will add to the mix and allow for some movement in support in the second round  (subsequent preferences are in play for those who voted in advance and their live voters now have to figure out who they are going to support).

Does it get more exciting than a political convention where the leadership is actually on the line?

A Few Quick Notes 574

-While today was beautiful, it was nothing like yesterday's mid-twenties masterpiece when we reached something approaching weather perfection.  It was a pleasure to have the chance to live through such a beautiful day.

-I guess I'm now 8 for 24 in this year's RUTRTW contest.  Unfortunately at least three of these wins have been for 'donuts,' and I have no idea what to do with the winning rims.   If someone wants them maybe I could mail them out all at once or one at a time depending on demand.  Anyway, if you think you might be interested in up to three free donut rims leave me a comment and I think about how to proceed.

-At least my record isn't 0 for 68, which how bad the RCMP's was when it came to picking Canadian politicians with connections to the USSR.  You can find the CBC's story on the topic here.

-The NDP leadership convention has not started.  And while I didn't pay too much attention to the first few months of the race, over the past few days I have been enjoying watching the final manoeuvres.  I will also be curious to see who is eventually selected to be the leader and how the preferential voting system ends up working out.

Today while thinking about convention coverage I thought to myself that I would 'watch it on Twitter,' and then realized that that is likely how I will follow the convention.  It's kind of amazing that reading a series of short updates is sufficiently engaging and informative that I would consider doing this.

A Few Quick Notes 573

-Holy cow, apparently it's 25 and sunny here in Wolfville.  If I wasn't currently being blasted by sun bright sunlight I might be inclined to think that such temperatures would be impossible at this time of the year.

-I guess I must now be 7 for 23 in this year's RUTRTW contest.  I wish I hadn't started reporting my record as I now feel a strange obligation to continue even though I can't imagine anybody cares.

-A few months ago Jeannette and I purchased a 2 pound bag of discount dried soy beans.  Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I tried cooking with formerly dried soy beans.  While they were fine texture wise, they ended up being sweeter (or something like that) than I expected.  Also, I don't think that they were the best choice for a bean curry, but at least I now know that.  Maybe they'd be better in soup?

-This morning for breakfast I decided to bake myself some banana bread.  Turns out that stuff always takes longer to bake than I remember.  In the end this turned out to be a pretty bad plan for breakfast.

Because wasting even more time seemed like a good idea

On any given day I waste an embarrassingly large chunk of time on the internet.  While some of this time is spent doing semi-worthwhile things like checking my email or reading news, most of my internet time is spend mindlessly refreshing webpages hoping something will have changed in the past 30 seconds or making posts to an increasingly large gaggle of blogs.

And to top things off, I have recently added another new blog to the list.

This new one's called It's already vegan!

The idea for this blog came from my interactions with friends who are vegans.  Over the past few years I have been thinking about foods that could I could serve them in social settings.  The more I thought about which foods were vegan the more I realized that all kinds of things that we consume on a day-to-day basis are vegan, or can be with a little forethought.  Maybe most importantly, the apparent stigma associated with 'Vegan foods,' a stigma which at one point in my life I may have helped further, is completely ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm not sure that vegans need my help identifying vegan foods or if non-vegans care which foods are vegan or not, but if learning about which foods are vegan from a site that doesn't take things too seriously sounds like something you might be interested in feel free to check this one out.  Maybe from time to time I'll even post something that isn't a failed attempt at humour.

(Oh yeah, and because kids these days demand virality and all that stuff It's already vegan! is already on Twitter.)

A Few Quick Notes 572

-Much to my surprise we had a few hours of snow today.  Fortunately relatively warm temperatures meant that we didn't see much accumulation.

Fortunately for you, I was able to capture this non-accumulation through the power of time-lapse.




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-I must be 5 for 19, with a +/- of about three on the total number of cups, in this year's RUTRTW.  And to think that this represents only a fraction of my coffee consumption.

-I made a nice batch of breakfast Afghans today.  I am really quite fond of this recipe.

-This evening I started making some bread.  After about an hour of the bread not rising I realized that adding some yeast would probably help that out.  I think I fixed things, but they still aren't perfect.

-This whole Robocall things keeps on trucking along.  It seems that today's big news was that the CEO has now 'requested' to appear before a parliamentary committee and discuss the investigation.

A Few Quick Notes 571

-We had another beautiful day in Wolfville today.  I think the temperature even made it up into the low teens.

-The whole Robocall issue has really been heating up - or at least it has seemed that way to me.  My day's productivity has been somewhat undermined by the supposed impending unmasking of the infamous 'Pierre Poutine.'  And frustratingly, at least as far as I can tell, Mr. Poutine has not yet been unmasked.

And today's efforts weren't help by a paper from a SFU prof that suggests that negative robocalling may have had a meaningful impact hit it big on the internets this afternoon.  Interestingly, Kessler, the SFU prof, cites the paper on voter demobilization I linked to a few days ago.  It would seem that there isn't a large literature on the topic.

-I decided to use a bit of my freshly 'milled' 'flour' to make some bread today.

Hopefully this stuff won't taste as bad as the unbaked dough looks.

-Today I learned that a film created by father's former student, People of a Feather, will be screened at 7:00 PM on Wednesday night at the Al Whittle theatre in Wolfville.

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While I was tempted to go immediately, what sold me on attending is that they have managed to work time-lapse photography into their research program/film.  They even have special towers to get good shots - if you don't believe me check out the trailer embedded above.

New Twitter app idea

As some of you may recall, a few years ago I developed a free Twitter app (and provided an upgrade).  Unfortunately this product did not bring me the fame and fortune I was so desperately craving.  In a fit of frustration/apathy gave up on developing any additional Twitter apps.

It seems that enough time has passed that some of my old wounds have begun to heal and the creative juices have begun to flow through the long-dry creek beds of my mind. I guess this is a pretty convoluted way of saying I have been thinking about another idea for a Twitter app, though this one may require more technical know-how than I currently have.

Anyway the basic idea is that the app would allow me make inane/ill-advised replies to tweets but would then automatically discard these replies instead of actually posting them.  To the user it would look as though the tweet had been posted.

Such an app would allow me to get the satisfaction of making my unfunny/limited value comment but then not have to live with the shame of realizing that my comment wasn't really that funny or witty or remotely useful.  And as much as I would like to be a good Twitterer, I think at this point I would be willing to settle for just not posting too many bad responses.

Maybe I need the same kind of app for this blog?

The really good news for Dal Profs

Given the uncertainty around the legality of picket line burning barrels in Halifax it's probably a good thing that the Dal profs and the university just reached an agreement that will avoid a strike.

That being said, had there been a strike I do think it would have been pretty neat to see what the architecture profs could have come up with strike-shack-wise had their been a late winter strike.

Easier the second time

At about 7:40 AM on Friday morning I was started to think that my alarm clock was a reader of this blog, or at least my recent post about looking forward to the recent time change.  I was beginning to think this because, for no apparent reason, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday the alarm clock 'sprung forward' all on its own, and without any indication that it was about to do this.

Of course this meant that I ended up waking up an hour earlier than I had planned.  And because the alarm clock's time had changed I didn't immediately notice the change.  As far as I knew the tiredness I was feeling was nothing more than normal tiredness that is a result of staying up a little too late.

It wasn't until I was part way through breakfast that I looked at the microwave clock and started to sense that something was off.  Instead of saying 8:something AM, the microwave was indicating that it was still 7:something AM.  As the microwave has been at least a few minutes off for the past few months I assumed that it was wrong or partially wrong.

I was eventually able to figure things out by checking the clock on the coffee maker. By finding that this clock, which was not changed to reflect the Autumnal time change, agreed with the alarm clock I was able to finally confirm that the alarm clock was the problem.

The upshot of all of this is that it seemed a little easier to get up this morning at the new time.  Maybe that's because I slept in or maybe that's because my alarm clock prepped me for the change a few days early.

A Few Quick Notes 570

-We are coming to the end of another beautiful day in Wolfville.  While official reports put the temperature at just a few degrees above zero, I'm pretty sure that it felt much closer to 10 degrees.  The sun being out really helped.

-I am now 5 for 17 in my quest for RUTRTW glory.  Unfortunately I already have two donut rims weighing my quest down, so prospect of my snagging that camping get-up seem pretty slim.

-I haven't done any baking today.  Thought you'd not want to know.

You might be more interested to know that I did 'mill' some of my own whole wheat flour today.

This very roughly milled stuff was created with the assistance of a coffee grinder.  In addition to getting this batch of 'flour,' I may have also learned that coffee grinders are not flour mills as my sense is that the grinder may now be dead.

For the first time in my life

For the past few days I have been becoming increasingly excited about the upcoming timeshift that will see us have an extra hour of late-day sunlight.

While I am still not looking forward to losing an hour of my night, I am certain that within a day or two I will be so excited by the extra hour of sunlight that all of my recent sleep-loss hardships will soon be forgotten.

Why didn't I appreciate the good things in life, like extra sunlight or scenic look-offs, when I was younger?

A Few Quick Notes 569

-Somehow the temperature has managed to squirt up to 13, and may even be on it's way up to 14 or higher.  This temperature, along with the sun and blue skies, are contributing to a very spring-like feeling today in Wolfville.  I would fine if was like this for the next few days, but I think it might slip back below zero in a few days.

-I made some banana bread for breakfast/brunch this morning.

-I love reading bound theses.  Because they are typically double spaced and because the text is printed on only one side of each leaf one can really feel as though they are making quick work of the text.  Last night I had gone through 60 pages before I even realized what I was doing.

In the particular thesis I am reading I am surprised by the number of exclamation marks used by the author.  His subject seems to be constantly surprising or amazing him.  And before you start to think thoughts about "the youth of today" you should know that this thesis is from 1960 and was written by someone who received their BA in 1944.

Because I can I will include  a quote from this thesis (though this passage does not include an exclamation point).  This quote comes after his description of the committee structure of other provinces, provinces in which there were typically more committee memberships than members of the legislature.

At the other end of the committee spectrum is Newfoundland, which has fewer standing committee places than legislative members.  In a 36-member House there are only six standing committees with five members each.  These are internal economy; nominating; standing orders and library; miscellaneous private bills; municipal affairs; privileges and elections.

For those of you who are curious, I don't think any of these committees, with the possible exception of Nominating, exist in the same form today - though most Newfoundland committees are still relatively small.

 Oh, this passage reminded me that I think we forget about some of the practices from the not to distant past that were at one time common:

There are certain disqualifications to voting that are found in all provinces and which make certain persons ineligible for nomination to the assemblies.  Judges of the federal and provincial courts may not be entered on the electoral lists.  Persons wholly or partly of Indian blood and “ordinarily resident on an Indian reservation and entitled to receive any annuity or other benefit under any treaty with the Crown in the right of Canada” are disqualified to vote.  Some such phrasing is found in the election laws of every province, with the proviso that Indians who served in World War I or II, or were subsequently on active service with the Canadian forces, may vote.

And then there is also this one:

In British Columbia an adequate knowledge of either English or French is necessary to be a voter, and the registrar of voters may require the applicant for voting to appear before him to demonstrate his language ability.  This is, perhaps, a vestige of the provision which prevented voting by Orientals in British Columbia until World War II. 

-Back to work.

A Few Quick Notes 568

-We had a pretty standard grey winter's day today.  I guess this is fine following yesterday's snowfall as it meant that we didn't have as much melting as we have had recently, and that is always nice.  Sadly, this melting is supposed to come tomorrow.

-I guess I must now be something like 4 for 14 in this year's RUTRTW contest.  I really think at some point I lost track of how many of these beverages I've purchased.  I do feel relatively certain that I have just four wins (three coffees/lattes and a 'donut').

-I've been intermittently following some of the 'Super Tuesday' coverage online.  My sense of things is that the results we are seeing mean that the whole issue won't likely be unresolved when we wake up tomorrow morning - though US presidential politics really aren't my speciality and I could be way off.

-It's just about 11:00 PM so I threw my loaf and a half of bread in the oven.  I guess I'll have freshish bread in the morning.

On again, off again

Since last night we've had periods of snow followed by periods in which the freshly fallen snow quickly melts away to almost nothing.

So within a few hours of waking this morning, much of the wonderful winter scene had vanished and been replaced with bare trees and a grey sky.

Then, almost as soon as our driveway was completely clear it began to snow again.

It then cleared and once again started to snow.

Because the ground is not frozen and it just isn't that cold I am sure that the snow we are receiving presently will also not last, though it is at least pleasant to look at (and it isn't making the roads all that bad - though I am sure that there are at least a few slippery spots).

Something, something Robocalls

This morning I read a very underwhelming column on the developing robocall scandal by the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson.  Not only does the column include the questionable claim "As a general rule, politicians never openly lie, because the consequences of being caught in one just aren’t worth it," but it also seems to back much of the official Conservative position on the Robocall Scandal somewhat uncritically.


One of the claims of the Conservative party that seems to have been accepted whole-heartedly is that

people who have worked at senior levels on election campaigns, but who prefer not to be identified, say that voter suppression tactics are stupid because they’re inefficient. It is more profitable on election day to mobilize your vote than to try to discourage your opponent’s.

What evidence do these unnamed campaign workers or Mr. Ibbitson have to support this position?  My gut feeling was that it was at least plausible that voter suppression could be very effective in some circumstances - and particularly in circumstances that were not all that dissimilar from those associated with the current Robocall Scandal.

A little time online lead me to a few neat articles about robocalling and voter suppression.  One that dealt more with the regulation of robocalling in the US does detail a few of the ways in which robocalls have been used both legitimately and illegitimately.  I was particularly amused by the following quote, which is quite pertinent to the Super PAC-era politics currently ongoing in the US:

The NRCC spent almost $20,000 to pour hundreds of thousands of robocalls into the district in New Hampshire. Because the calls were independent expenditures, they could not be coordinated with nor ap- proved of by the incumbent Republican candidate. Even after Congressman Bass asked for the calls to stop, the party committee refused, saying that cessation would require illegal coordination.

Another article more explicitly on voter suppression through the distribution of misinformation found that such tactics could suppress voter participation, particularly among those segments of a population with limited political knowledge/education.  Though these findings are preliminary,  they do hint at the potential effectiveness of a widespread campaign of misinformation.

I am not trying to lay the blame for the Robocall Scandal at the feet of any particular entity or absolve other groups, but trying to suggest that when we hear claims about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of things like voter suppression campaigns that we try to assess the validity of these claims before accepting or rejecting them.  In some cases the validity or inaccuracy of such claims can change the way the whole situation is perceived.

Almost in the ballpark

A few hours ago I noticed that it had started to snow heavily.  Since I first noticed this snow the pace of snowfall has been maintained.  Given that we've now had a few hours of steady snowfall I was curious what the forecast for the region for the night is.  It is as follows:

Cloudy. Rain showers or flurries beginning early this evening then changing to flurries near midnight. Snowfall amount 2 cm. Low minus 2.

At this point 2 cm seems a little low.  I'm pretty sure we passed 2 cm hours ago.

Given the apparent inaccuracy of the forecast, at least it looks nice out there.

I'm sure there are at least a few people who go on trips to see this kind of thing.

A Few Quick Notes 567

-Well, we seem to be in the midst of a rather mediocre day in Wolfville.  While it isn't particularly cold, it isn't particularly pleasant either.  The skies are grey and things are generally wet (though it may be the case that some blue is starting to break through).

-I think I must be something like 3 for 12 in the annual RUTRTW contest.  I suspect this count isn't quite right (at least on the consumption side - I know the winning side is accurate).   I continue not to really be trying very hard, and I don't plan on changing my approach any time soon.

What I have been thinking about in relation to this contest is that if there are 47 000 000ish prizes to be won, and the chances of winning are about 1 in 6 does that mean that there are close to 282 000 000 cups printed for this annual event?  And does that mean that, on average, each Canadian is consuming close to 10 participating beverages?  And if the average price of a participating beverage is $1.50 does that mean that over the course of the promotion they are selling something close to $423 000 000 of beverages?  The scale of this whole thing is hard to conceive, particularly when you think that they aren't the only place selling coffee during the event.  I wonder how much land is needed to grow this much coffee?

-Well this year's blog-off seemed to end with a whimper rather than a bang.  For some reason Neil didn't even manage to make a single post, which was definitely a disappointment.  If he continues with this approach to the blog-off I'm going to keep winning in this entirely unsatisfactory manner.  Maybe we will manage to convince him to participate next year?

-Maybe I should get back to work?