MOVED!

Aptenobytes the blog has moved over to typepad... at least for now. I may move back, but I doubt it.

Dying for reelection

BANNED IN ONTARIO

So now they're banning pitbull in Ontario. What kind of fsscist state do we live in when the government has taken it upon itself to regulate what kind of pets we can keep? This is just getting out of hand. First they came for the guns, and told us that we can get alarm systems and dogs to protect ourselves. Now they're saying that we can't have dogs to protect ourselves if they're actually capable of doing the job!

There is also the fact that they are putting the onus on the owner to prove the dog is not a pit bull. They are also talking about putting the onus of all dog owners to prove their dog is not aggressive if so accused.

There is something seriously wrong with this country.

William Gibson is back blogging. Yay!

William Gibson is back blogging! And as good a writer as ever:
President Bush goes to an elementary school to talk about the war.

After his talk, he offers to answer questions. One little boy puts up his hand and the president asks him his name.

"I'm Billy, sir."

"And what's your question, Billy?"

"I have three questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? And whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?"

Just then the bell rings for recess. Bush announces that they'll continue after recess.

When they return, Bush asks, "OK, where were we? Question time! Who has a question?"

Another little boy raises his hand. The president asks his name.

"I'm Steve, sir."

"And what's your question, Steve?"

"I have five questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden? Why did the recess bell go off twenty minutes early? And what the heck happened to Billy?"

And an absolutely delicious line:
One actually has to be something of a specialist, today, to even begin to grasp quite how fantastically, how baroquely and at once brutally fucked the situation of the United States has since been made to be.

What a puffter

For pete's sake! I'm as politically sensitive as the next guy, and probably a lot more sensitive about gay rights, but suing somebody for calling you a Fifi is a bit of a stretch. Asking the government to regulate private speech is just wrong.

Can you say Banana Republic?

Banana Republic? You decide. Between stuff like this, suppressing the Detroit vote, and the latest hijinks in Florida, I don't think we're looking at a shining example of democracy anymore. That's not even taking into account the suppression of third parties, including the arrests of two presidential nominees at one of the debates.

Wake up America. You're giving away what your forefathers bled and died for in exchange for.... well I don't even know what you guys are getting in exchange for your freedom. Big Macs and WalMart?

Really, if your choice is between Kerry and Bush, you've already let the system fail you.

I think at this point you guys had better roll up your sleeves and take back the Republicans from the Religious loonies and Neo-Con nut jobs, and take back the Democratic Party from the Union Leaders and Career Party Apparatchiks.

Otherwise, you're going to end up getting alternating Democratic and Republican boots stomping on your faces forever.


p.s. I'd never heard the phrase, "When you think it's time to bury your guns, that's the time you should be digging them up" before this election. I've heard it a lot recently.

Bug 264413 Submitted

Bug 264413 Submitted. It's been a while since I've reported a bug.

Badnarik/Campagna '04 for President

Badnarik/Campagna '04 for President My ping in support

Oct 14th City Hall Agendas

The agenda for the Thursday evening city council meeting has been posted. Routine zoning adjustments for the most part;

The
Committee of the Whole agenda has also been posted. This has slightly more interesting stuff. There is going to be some information in camera about the arena. There is also a report from the 2020 committee, and another session about the proposed renewal of the BIA. Hmmmm. Might have to go.

Whee! It's my birthday!

Or at least it was yesterday. Made it through another year.

Indymedia's Independence: From Activist Media to Free Software is an interesting article. Good discussion of two movements I'm interested in. Worth the time to read it. We're getting a lot of convergence right now from the various movements that are emphasizing the local and the global.

Who Took Ahimsa?

Who Took Ahimsa? Ahimsa was the indymedia server that was taken down, and nobody is quite why or by whom. Something to keep an eye on.

Badnarik/Campagna '04 for President

Badnarik/Campagna '04 for President: "Two presidential candidates - Michael Badnarik and David Cobb - were arrested tonight. Papers were served to stop the third Bush - Kerry debate today. Neither of these stories (short of the aforementioned AP wire) were covered by the mainstream media.

We now know with whom the television networks went to bed tonight.
"

If this doesn't make the news, I worry for American democracy.

Big Brother slaps down IndyMedia

IndyMedia servers were seized by the FBI. In England. Why do I have a sinking feeling about this? Global police state anyone?

Blogging, Wiki's and Forums

I think the web is growing up. With the tools that are available now, people are really starting to create on the internet, and not just the geeks.

Wikis and Blogs are really tools for the masses. Wiki's are allowing people to collaborate on complex things, with wikipedia being the best example of this. Blogs are allowing people to broadcast their opinions, and their interests to the world, or as in my case, two really bored people who keep mistyping the name of a genus of penguin.

We're getting there.

From the makers of South Park

Boing Boing Boing's review of the Team America preview screening in Hollywood along with a similar review of it by FOX leave me wanting to see it so bad it makes my teeth ache. It also reminds me that Fahrenheit 9/11 is now out on DVD.

Time for me to make a little foray into US Politics. I beg any Americans out there. Waste your vote. Vote for Green, or Libertarian, vote anything but Republicrat.

George Bush is, in the words of somebody much funnier than me, too dangerous to leave in charge of anything more complicated than a box of lego. He has surrounded himself with the nastiest bunch of neo cons this side of 1946. He has blown the global sympathy for 9/11 by going into Iraq, which has promptly turned into the quagmire his father warned about.

Kerry is a career politician who managed to 'serve' in Vietnam for three months, and then build a career in it. The normal tour of duty was three years, but Kerry managed to accumulate medals faster than Audie Murphy, earning him a trip back stateside... kind of makes you wonder. This bozo is also a rabid protectionist, which isn't going to do anybody any good, especially in Canada.

The pair of them are the best that America can put forward? I don't think so, but unless something is done to break the duopoly, it will be the scum that rises to the top. A rich spectrum of choices would be healthy for the USA, and also by extension, for the world. 'Wasting' your vote may be the best choice in the upcoming election, because in a very real sense, there is no difference between the two; they are both the creatures of their respective parties, controlled by big money and special interests, and neither really speaks for the average American. They are both products of privilege. Neither has a terribly interesting vision of the future (terrible maybe, but not interesting).

I say a pox on both their houses.

Now that's a pickup!

Now that's a pickup!

Although I do consider myself an environmentalist, I really, really love big trucks like the Hummer/Humvee, the Unimog, and now this!

The Harvard Crimson Online :: News

“I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged,” Scalia said.That's Supreme Court of the USA Judge Scalia. The conservative one. Okee Dokee.

Who's who in Iraq

An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups is an interesting read to see who is actually fighting back there.

Why I didn't pay attention to the debates

I knew there was a reason that the American presidential debates had gotten boring! NPR's Connie Rice has a list of Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates. As a Badnarik supporter, I was shut out of seeing the candidate that appeals to me, and there are also Green supporters being shut out.

American 'Bi-Partisanship' is really beginning to piss me off. Don't vote Republicrat!

TiddlyWiki rocks!

TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebookis basically the only wiki I've found that you're able to use without having access to Server Side Includes. It's basically a very cool javascript.

MobileAtom J2ME

MobileAtom J2ME is something to keep an eye on. Looks like I'll be able to edit my blog while on the road pretty soon. Especially once I eventually get my new cell phone. It's been a week of waiting now, and I'm getting tired of waiting.

Bloglines | Most Popular Blogs

Bloglines Most Popular Blogs is something I'll have to go through and try and figure out what makes a blog popular. I know that there are very few viewers of this page. I'd like to change that.

Garden City Politics - Victoria, BC

Garden City Politics - Victoria, BCis my new project. Should be entertaining.

Claiming a feed...?

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Offensive? Yes

So there was recently a little brouhaha in eastern Canada about an offensive t-shirt in the window of a store. What I find particularly offensive is that only one of these shirts was considered controversial:




You only get one guess as to which one....

Looking at the rest of their selection, I think that their statement on the whole thing is pretty bang on:

Dear Canada...

To everyone who has been protesting and sending complaints regarding our hammer shirt, we'd like to say we don't condone violence toward women. That being said, our entire line is centered around poking fun at taboo subjects like violence, suicide, religion, and death. To take these images at face value, is reactionary at best. Our sense of humor and designs are not for everyone. NO ONE is forcing you to look at, buy or wear anything you don't want to, including Jinxed Clothing. Protesting a store that is owned and operated by women, for demaning women is extremely short-sighted. Cherry Bomb has our absolute support. Feel free to check our ladies section for the female version, a pair of scissors that reads 'he had it coming'. We are equal opportunity offenders.

That said, I wouldn't wear either one, as my taste in offensive t-shirts runs more toward the political than the social commentary.... Wearing a Che Guevara shirt to a conservative function, or a Pro-Bush shirt to an NDP one. ;)

Downtown 2020 residential housing report

The Downtown Victoria 2020 goup has released a report on their vision of living in Downtown. Took me long enough to realize it. I'll report shortly with my critique of it, but in the meantime, I recommend you read it yourself. The 2020 group seems to have some heavy hitters supporting it, so it will be a force in creating a vision for Victoria's future.

Spread Firefox - Igniting the web

Looks like the browser wars are back. Firefox is spreading fast, OSX users are using etiher Safari or Camino, and IE has seen it's market share getting smaller for the first time in a very long while. Kind of makes me smile.

Taste is a rare commodity

Now that's just goofy! Swarovski crystal covered mini iPods. Sometimes I think that taste is a very rare commodity.

Another case in point, the Oakley Thump. Like we need to combine 400$ sunglasses with a 100$ mp3 player.

View the world from your basement.

NASA World Wind looks pretty darn cool! I can't actually tell yet, as it hasn't been released for OSX or linux yet, but I suspect it's just a matter of time. Heck, I might even try my hand at a basic app for it....

What is it you ask? It's an interface to a NASA computer that is serving up a full satellite map of the globe that is zoomable from full globe right down to seeing individual buildings. Amazing to think of.

Went to the party in Brent Carmichael's honour last night. It was a weird evening. People came out of the woodwork that I hadn't seen in years. Nice to see a lot of those people together again for the first time in years.

Started to listen to his last CD, and it starts out with a very depressing spoken word piece about death. I guess he knew it was coming. Well, we knew he had seen it coming.

Seems that it made a lot of people stop and think about mortality, and also aging. The realization for a lot of us that it has been as much as fifteen years (for me) or more since we first started out as club kids and club staff is a bit of a shocker. You realize that Brent has been doing his thing since the early 80's! Time passes quickly...

peace out Brent

Silencing Dissent

Silencing dissent written by Christopher di Armani pointed something out to me that I hadn't picked up on at first. By charging Bruce's wife, they are actually threatening Bruce with losing his child. We really are in a police state. That's disgusting, and abusive.

The Political Compass

Interesting site that shows just where you stand on things. A bit more sophisticated than the world's shortest political quiz, but also has two axes, authoritarian to Libertarian on the political, and left to right on the economic scale.

Bruce Montague Defence Fund

Bruce Montague's defence fund is now accepting donations. Bruce is a longtime firearms activist in Canada, and has been asking to be charged under the Firearms Act for years now. The OPP arrested him in a dramatic 'takedown' in front of his

Please send your donation made out to the Bruce Montague Scrap C-68 Fund,
Address:
the Bruce Montague Scrap C-68 Fund
RR 2 Site 230, box 20
Dryden, Ontario
P8N 2Y5.

I am so sore!

Yesterday Lara, Lance and I painted our old bedroom, and moved our stuff over to the new bedroom, and then set Idar up in our old bedroom. The day before Lara and Lance had prepped everything, so we just had to sand and paint, and move everything around. The end result is that I am extremely sore right now. Everything hurts.

On the bright side, we now have everything all laid out in our room, and we're not having to cross the house to get to our closet. Yay

Victoria Election 2005

Well, it's nearing the end of September, and I just realized that the Victoria civic elections are happening this November. Lot's of time to prepare. Not. I guess that you really have to pay attention in order to get involved.

The question now is whether I want to run for Councillor. Hmmm.. I suspect that this is the term when the decision will be made as to whether or not there will be a safe injection site in Victoria. I may have to run. I just don't know if I have time to get together a decent election team.

Guess I'll have to make a few calls.

Decisions, decisions

I've been researching cellphones and figuring out which one to get. The reason? TELUS SUCKS DONKEY BALLS THROUGH A STRAW!!!. Our contract with them is up on October 5th. Let's just say I'm counting the days until We get a few less error ridden bills from those thieving bas**ds.

I think I'm going to get the Sony Ericcson T637, although I really, really want the P900. All that I really want though is for it to have bluetooth and a camera.

I need new Shoes

I really need to get new shoes. My shoes are getting a little ratty. It's kind of hard to find decent shoes in this city. British Importers had stopped carrying shoes, but I went in there on Sunday and noticed that they have shoes again! Yay!

What brought this to mind is that I was thinking about the state of retail in this city. It is an open secret that the American tourist dollar didn't appear this year. A lot of stores have closed, and I was thinking about where I liked to shop. I came to the conclusion that Victoria pretty much sucks in this city. There are maybe three decent stores for men's clothing, stores that are a step up from Moores. At Christmas time I looked everywhere for shoes, and realized that there weren't any decent shoes in the entire city. That was a bit of a shocker. Then I realized something. Other than our store, there aren't any real luxury stores in this city. No Holt Renfrew or equivalent, nothing at the really high end. Not really a good advertisement for the high end tourist.

Scooter project is alove

So I've decided it's time to attack my Lambretta Li150 again (OK, so it's a spanish built Serveta. Close enough). There's an active club here, so I'm going to get involved in it, but the first thing to do is to get my baby running again

First I'm going to have to sand blast it, and give it a nice paint job. That's going to be a hell of a project. I've been inspired by Biker Build-Off on the Discovery Channel.

Between that and setting up a little reloading room, I'm going to have my hands full.

Testing a new tool

Testing out a new blogging tool: ecto. Seems kind of neat. As you may have noticed, I've finally started working on this site again. There's lots going on in the Project section, and I've done some work on my Bio as well. There's a neat button that inserts the current iTunes song into my posts. Silly, but kind of cool.

Songs while writing this post:
Golden Brown by The StranglersWhite Coats from the album It Came From Hollywood by New Model Army
>

What fun!

Ding Dong the AWB is dead! Now if only we could get rid of similarly dumb restrictions here in Canada.

I was talking to my niece the other day. She lives in Ontario, and owns a pit bull. Ontario is making noises about banning pit bulls. We had a very pleasant conversation, as I have a pit bull as well. We ranted about the stupidity of it all, and it was a delightfule conversation until I mentioned something about how similar this was to the argument about guns. She immediately stated, "well I don't think guns should be anywhere!" I froze up. She just couldn't see it.

I read a really good post on slashdot the other day, and got permission to reprint it...

It is my pleasure to reply to a suitably armored poster.

...nobody has a legitimate reason for owning a 30 round clip.

I always get annoyed when discussions about the Second Amendment come up and everybody immediately starts thinking about gunpowder. That's not what it's about.

The Second Amendment (Right to Bear Arms) is not a result of the wildly successful 1776 Sportsman's PAC. It wasn't meant to authorize individuals or groups to assassinate government officials in case they went insane. And it wasn't an attempt to ensure people could keep trading old flintlocks like so many Disco albums from the '70's.

It was an acknowledgement of a problem which faced the fledgling Colonies at the time, and is still quite relevant today.
You can pass a law making it illegal for people to keep and bear arms, but the people most dangerous to the survival of the Nation aren't going to listen. Because of this, we need to be sure this nation can survive even if we face an enemy that doesn't play by our rules. In this respect, outlawing guns works against us, in that it allows us to implement policies that, if the subjects had guns, we could never get away with. So instead we outlaw the practice of disarming the populace.

It's a way of saying to prospective government organizers: "if you want to run this place, you have to figure out how to make it work without taking away people's weapons. If you can't, you're not worthy of running this place. Period. Just like if you can't figure out how to run this place without favoring one religion over another, or shutting down the free press, or silencing your critics, or preventing peaceful assembly, or violating peoples privacy, or searching their homes, documents, things, or imprisoning people without charges or due process, or holding onto a suspect indefinitely without letting him see a lawyer, or torturing prisoners, or trying to make a Federal Law to ban powers reserved to the States, then just go away, because you're not up to the job. Sure, running the country is easy if you can do that stuff; but we have higher standards."

The rise of gun violence should not be seen as being caused by the availability of guns as much as it should be viewed as a failure of our society to remain violence free in the face of weapons availability. Don't curse the NRA, they're just the weather vane.

Should we read the Second Amendment to say that we should all be packing porta-nukes? For the safety of the Nation, of course. No. What it means is that we should strive to build a country that can survive even if our next door neighbor decides to pack a porta-nuke. Because, the reality of the world is (and will always be) that our next door neighbor just might be packing a porta-nuke.

In a world like this, the only possible way to be safe is to first make sure that nobody in their right mind would have a reason to light-up their porta-nuke, and second to understand that occasionally we will encounter a person or two who isn't in their right mind, who's going to kill a lot of people and cause a lot of damage (kinda like one of those Hurricanes) and that we better just be prepared for it to happen, and be prepared to deal with it when it does. An approch which says "we'll prevent a hurricane from ever happening here" can only be followed by "we don't need FEMA anymore, now do we", which shows clearly how backward such an approach is.

On September 11th, 2001, the U.S. saw an example of an attack which some claim represents a new kind of threat to this nation. But was also saw a flawless demonstration of the kind of defense against that threat which our Founding Fathers hoped we would deploy, and knew even then would be effective. On Flight 93, the attack failed, not because of some smart weapon posessed by the U.S. army, or because some airport screener matched-up two names on a No Fly list, but because of the democratic defense; a group of very brave people took a stand for this nation and stopped the attack in it's tracks. If the highjackers thought they would encounter this kind of defense of every aircraft, they wouldn't have even attempted it armed with just a set of box cutters.

The democratic defense demands that each of us make a comittment to defend the nation, as opposed to counting on our soldiers and firemen to do all the dirty work for us. It demands we work together. It demands we reject fear.

It demands we respond to a terrorist event like 9/11 not with panic and draconian laws, but with an attatude of "shit, we shouldn't have let that happen", and "Damn, someone's trying to get our attention, I wonder what they're so pissed about? Maybe we're stepping on somebody's toes and this was the only way they could get our attention? Maybe we better listen a bit better?"

Our current foreign policy works against all those objectives.

The democratic defense was what our Founding Fathers had in mind. It doesn't ask that we tell the government about the suspicious activities of our neighbors (because that fails when the government itself is corrupt) but rather that we get to know our neighbors and make these judgements ourselves. It demands vigilance. It means some of us may have to charge a terrorist unarmed, it means some of us (and I don't just mean those of us in uniform) may die so that others won't have to. Some of us might even have to make the ultimate sacrifice and pay a few extra dollars in Capital Gains tax to fund relief aid in Sudan. Some of us might even have to get out an Vote.

Which is what the Founding Fathers had in mind all along.


Now that is the best defence of the right to keep and bear arms I've seen in a long time.

Bye Brent

Brent Carmichael passed away on Sept 2nd. I first met Brent in 1989. I had gone into Rumors as a customer, and that night I walked out drunk and employed. Over the next year, I got to know Brent fairly well, but we were both fairly independent people, so we weren't what I would call close. He taught me to beat mix over fifteen years ago. He helped me learn to appreciate electronic music.

Brent was always part of what I thought of, when I thought of Victoria nightlife. Brent you will be missed.

FeedBurner - Point your feed here. We'll do the rest.

FeedBurner seems to be yet another cool tool for the blogger that I just don't get.... ::Shrug::

Another thing to get done.

Pre Budget Consultations are a very good time to get involved and make sure that your priorities get paid attention to. I'll be asking to speak about the excise tax. What will you want to talk about?

I just liked this ad.

Well, ain'tthat a kick in the pants. I did my best, but to no avail. Anderson won. We'll be doing this again soon enough, so next time, I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing.

How revolting:Election Results:

Preliminary Results
National Last updated: 16:27 ET
Party Party standing % Popular vote %
Bloc Qu�b�cois 54 17.5 17.5% 1,670,703 12.4 12.4%
Canadian Action 0 0.0 0.0% 8,930 0.1 0.1%
Christian Heritage Party 0 0.0 0.0% 40,283 0.3 0.3%
Communist 0 0.0 0.0% 4,568 0.0 0.0%
Conservative 99 32.1 32.1% 3,994,489 29.6 29.6%
Green Party 0 0.0 0.0% 580,737 4.3 4.3%
Independent 0 0.0 0.0% 47,594 0.4 0.4%
Liberal 135 43.8 43.8% 4,950,103 36.7 36.7%
Libertarian 0 0.0 0.0% 1,964 0.0 0.0%
Marijuana Party 0 0.0 0.0% 33,554 0.3 0.3%
Marxist-Leninist 0 0.0 0.0% 9,060 0.1 0.1%
N.D.P. 19 6.2 6.2% 2,116,422 15.7 15.7%
No Affiliation 1 0.3 0.3% 17,465 0.1 0.1%
PC Party 0 0.0 0.0% 10,773 0.1 0.1%
Total number of valid votes: 13,486,645

XML syndication! Just noticed this new feature of blogger. Cool!

That is disgusting. The Liberals ought to be ashamed!

Well, my last two letters to the Times-Colonist weren't published, so I guess I'll have to self-publish -

Dear Editor,

Re: Safe site's benefits touted at drug forum (4/9/04). The article did a wonderful job of pointing out the many benefits of a safe injection site in Vancouver. What wasn't mentioned was the cost. The Vancouver safe injection site cost 1.2 Million dollars to set up, and has an annual budget of 2 Million dollars, with an additional scientific research component of 1.5 million dollars. First year costs of 4.7 Million dollars. Any site that the city of Victoria might set up will be scaled down from that, but no matter how you look at it, it's a lot of money. With most social service providers budgets frozen, or being reduced, one has to question if this is something we should really even consider before the research in Vancouver is completed. The sad fact is that the money for a safe injection site is coming out of the budget for women's shelters, transitional housing for people getting off drugs, mental health care, community policing, and the gardening for parks and boulevards in our community. There are hard choices to be made. Nobody wants the addicted to die on the streets, but we also want the streets to be safe to walk on, with hanging flower baskets to be admired. Something that has to be addressed is that the citizens who are addicted to drugs are finding the money to buy drugs somehow. Every citizen who has come home to find their home broken into, or their businesses broken into knows at least one way that drugs are paid for. The victims of these crimes are going to have to be acknowledged as stake-holders in any plan to address the problem of addiction in our community.

Dear Editor,
Re: For a cocaine addict, safe sites mean safer streets
When writer Jack Knox talking about addicts supporting themselves through "petty crime", I truly hope he is not referring to the kind of armed robbery that our business suffered at the hands of a pair of local heroin junkies. I hope he isn't being casual about break and entering crimes like the one our store suffered that caused several thousand dollars worth of damage, again by heroin addicts who were known to police. I hope that Alan Lowe and the rest of city council does not think that any of the other crimes that occur on an almost daily basis against the businesspeople of this community are 'petty'. I hope that he doesn't expect someone who comes home to find their home violated by a burglary to think that it's just a petty little thing. They are crimes, nothing petty about them.

Finally decided that there was just no way to integrate everything on the home page, So it's now there's a basic index page, with things a bit more organized. Looks more professional. It's going to take a while, but the new concept is all primary colours.

litigious bastards - SCO annoy me, so I figure I'll help make sure that link is at the top - For more information, on why SCO are litigious bastards, got to Groklaw and read away

Sonny Bono Is Dead

note to self: readSaul Newman | Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment | Theory & Event 4:3

Tell me now that it's not time for a revolution.

Must remember this site everytime Lara says, "I want that song" while watching TV.

Ok, here's a method for making links open In a new page. Might work.

I've got a couple of projects to work on now. Getting this page to not make me want to gouge my eyes out. Starting to revamp VLUG's site, and doing the edits to the work page.

Good thing Christmas isn't busy.

Enter THE MEATRIX. Good for a giggle.

BIG PROBLEM. The links on the left open in that tiny little frame. For now, pull up the contextual menu and manually open in new window or tab, and we'll fiddle some more to see if I can make it work as intended.

OK, it's a hack and it makes the site look very amateurish, but at least I've got the different parts together again... I'll fiddle with the design some more, but now at least I have a good idea on how to do it.

Bunch of good links on a kuro5hin.org story today. Listings of sites with legit free music for download. Expect to see a bunch of new links tonight.

The writeups about the Linux Lunacy stopover here in Victoriahave begun to be written. Very cool. I finally got to give Linus Torvalds the Tux pin that was made for him. I had wanted to give it to him personally for a very long time. Made me feel good to give something back.

I've found that the new BlogThis toolbar item absolutely rocks when you just want to make a quick comment or mindlessly post a link. In the spirit of that, I found a neat site on architecture:Glass Steel and Stone :: The Art of Architecture.

The police state culture of refusing to recognize dissent is beginning to be recognized by the media. The "No Protest" zone in front of the Toronto american consulate, and the matching one in front of the monstrosity in Ottawa.

Now that's what I call an image archive.

Hey... It's my BIRTHDAY! Yay me! Made it another year.

I've think I'll have to use frames to insert this into the original Aptenobytes.

Another note to self - that idea I had... I can now prototype it on my laptop

How sad. What was the best music site ever has commited corporate suicide.

I am really surprised they were able to do this to their label partners. It hoses the small labels that people were able to discover when their risk for trying them out was zero. Like many of the people on the site, I would go a few months downloading very little, then go on two or three day blitzes of exploring.

eMusic gave me a similar feeling to that given by old-school Napster�, insofar as it made music a more central part of my life again. I was able to hear new things, and on Napster, I'd quite often explore people's collections and see if there was something that I hadn't heard before.

Oh well, if the music industry doesn't want my money, so be it.

My very first web page.... McVEIGH-TABLE OF CONTENTS .

Memories :)

Damn, Id forgotten about this

Looked into the number of guns in Canada. Imagine that. The government is lying.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page about Blackstone's commentaries, and you'll see the origins of the second amendment. Something to think about.

For those of you who care, this is my Ipod playlist.

Mental note to subscribe to CMJ New Music Monthly when I get my card paid off.

If you would like to be my friendster, just got to the
Friendster Sign Up and fill out the form...

Once again hooked on something;Friendster.
Seems like a kind of neat way of meeting people. This kind of thing is really what the internet is supposed to be about.

Aptenobytes is my original site. I'll hook it up to this site somehow

Old Postings

August 25, 2003

Things on the site should look a little different today. I'm going to switch to a little more easy to look at style.

On a different note, I shot Trap over the weekend. A heck of a lot of fun. The recoil on the 12 guage I was shooting was nowhere near what I expected.

I did finish the government mandated course, and passed, so I am now awaiting the governments decision.

August 12, 2003

Definitely enjoying the shooting thing. I'll finish the government mandated gun safety course tomorrow night, which means that barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll be all licensed up in a couple of months. I'll be doing a PPC course over this weekend, learning a bit more about gun safety and use. Should be a lot of fun.

August 2, 2003

Man, it's been a while since I updated this page. I got motivated by the recent comments by the Shrub, and the Pope concerning the rights of gays to have their long term relationships legally equivalent to that of heteros. My first reaction to the Pope's dumbass comments was to realize that I could never again vote for a Catholic in good conscience. Either the person running for office follows their faith, in which case I can't vote for them, or they are selectively following bits of their faith, and I won't vote for somebody who won't is that indecisive about their faith and/or morality. The Shrub's comments were about to be expected. Idiotic, and most probably designed to sidetrack people from the fact that he lied to the people of the United States of America about the reasons for going to war, and the fact that the American economy has gone into a tailspin now that they have a president trying to run the country rather than trying to get a little nookie.

In other news, my coworker David took us out to the gun range recently which resparked my interest in target shooting. As a result, I arranged for a group of us to take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course to get all licensed up. It's a real fun activity, kind of like a loud version of darts.

Locally, on a more personal issue, we've been following Citizen Canine's efforts to ensure that more parks are designated as off leash areas. City Hall's report can be found on the citys website under Commitee of the Whole Minutes. Councillor Denise Savoie's take : Savoie says she likes the adopt-a-park idea because it's not just about sharing space, but also about the quality of that space. While children are not disease vectors for dogs, "dogs are disease vectors for children," according to Savoie.Best quote of the meeting again goes to Savoie : "I think dogs are good, but dog shit--not good,"

Other than that, my life has been the usual mix of crazy work hours, and more crazy work hours. We briefly hired a fellow to try and help me out, but he turned out to be an idiot, so we let him go. Hopefully we'll find somebody who customers actually like, and has enough brains to be able to help the customers figure out what they like.

February 28, 2003

god- damn

On the bright side, they probably won't deport me to Northern Ireland when I go to Austin. I'm white after all.

February 27, 2003

Tried to set things up to use Blogger, but apparently Shaw won't allow ftp connections from outside their network. Now that's just pooey!

One month until I head off to Austin, TX for the AGS Conclave. I'm getting pretty excited about it. There's a lot of good courses. I'm kind of dissapointed that Lara isn't joining me. Last year was fun, and I'm not sure it'll be as fun by myself.

On a more global topic, I'm betting money now. The American invasion of Iraq will have started by March 15th. It's a foregone conclusion at this point that the war will start. They need this war for too many reasons. I honestly don't think it can be stopped. It's tragic.

February 20, 2003

Started work on my GAGTL course again. I'm getting psyched because I'm off on my first solo holiday in years. I'm off to Austin, Texas for the annual American Gem Society conclave. I want to be a Registered Jeweller by the time I go to the one in 2004. Should be fun.

Things have actually been pretty quiet around here, relatively speaking, so we've been focussing on our personal lives to a certain extent. Starting at the beginning of the year, I've started to diet. I realized that I had reached 245 pounds. Lara has been following the Atkins diet. As a vegetarian, that diet is pretty much impossible, but I've modified it a little but for myself. I've discovered that by cutting out carbohydrates and substituting a lot more soy and other bean proteins. I've also been eating a lot of Tofu dogs and veggie mushroom burgers, but the really cool thing is that I've been eating a lot more vegetables instead of huge bowls of pasta. Other little things I've changed in my diet are changing from sugar in my coffee to honey, no more sugary snacks, and using this weird Atkins chocolate syrup for my Mochas. I've now dropped twenty pounds, and yesterday I did something even more radical; I've joined a gym! I'll keep you updated.

I won't bore you too much about my current projects, but let's just say that at the moment, I'm splitting my time with three major fights. The first is a copyright case with a local jeweller who stole one of our designs, and then had the temerity to advertise it in one of the magazines we advertise in. THe second is the ongoing battle with the federal government over the punitive excise tax on jewellery in Canada. And last, but certainly not least, A fight with Canada Post over their employees STEALING from not just us, but the jewellery industry generally. Yes, some Canada Post employees are THEIVES!!!! Am I pissed off? Yes!.

January 24, 2003

Finally have some time to put something up here. There should be some new bookmarks up, but I'm not sure how many I lost when my iBook died AGAIN!

So in the last month we've been subjected to some of the best warmongering I've seen in my life. Shrub et al have been banging the drum to thump Iraq, and I honestly don't see it being avoided. Kind of makes me sick.

Speaking of being sick, The Supremes ruled against Eldred in the case I ranted about last year. I can's say that I'm surprised, but I am dissapointed. The closing of the commons is now taking place in the intellectual sphere.

Continuing this stream of consciousness, we've been redecorating our home. We did the living room over christmas, and now we're most of the way through the kitchen. I want the next thing to be our bedroom, but Lara wants to do the bathroom first. We'll see who wins that bet.

I'm going to try and keep this up a bit better this year, as I've realized how useful it is for me to look back at the archives. Ta Ta for now.