Diner

Saw this movie for the first time tonight. I didn't realize how many familiar faces there are in the film!

It's true what they say about Kevin Bacon...he is somehow connected to everyone who has ever worked in Hollywood.

For instance, Don McKellar, who I saw at the Elbow Room this afternoon, has a Bacon Factor of 2. A fine actor/writer/director who made one of the best Canadian films ever: Highway 61^*.

^* - Please, if you have never seen this film, rent it today. If you don't like it, e-mail me and I'll send you a postcard from Vancouver with my apologies.

Cascading Style Sheet Hell

CSS is a really great addition to the insanity that is the World Wide Web, but it can be infuriating.

Why couldn't Netscape's development team decided on one standard to go by? Why did their CSS compliance have to suck so badly?

It's pretty clear that most people who were (and still are) adamant Netscape users did so because of their own anti-Microsoft sentiments. Let's face it, if MSIE were manufactured by anyone else, it would likely be universally accepted. Sad.

The loser in the 'browser wars' is every poor soul who has to design a web page to look near-similar for as many popular browsers as possible.

Like me.

Damn.

Kronos Quartet: Electric Counterpoint

I have always liked KQ, but this song in particular makes me realize how much music and emotion are tied together. Music is truly the expression of the soul, and this piece is a perfect example.

At once it has the complexity of emotion: never simple or singular, but a lifetime of memories, associations and perception that affect our every thought.

Less about actual music, Electric Counterpoint is more about a resonance of two or more feelings playing for the same attention.

Feriunt summis fulmina montes.

Palm m505 Handheld

Okay, I must have one of these! I still have my Palm IIIxe, which I quite like, but this would be the ultimate in love for me.

You can contribute if you like, just send me money. Lots of it...they're going to be expensive here in Canada.

Vancouver Blogger Call

Vancouver has a rich community of people who write logs, blogs, journals and crap on their site. I know about 5 or 6, but there must be many more than that.

So let me know who's writing here in Vancouver.

I need a digital camera

Anyone got a digital camera I can borrow? I want to redesign this sad excuse for a site, but I need a digital camera for some visual content.

I tried going out with my Canon 35mm, but I suck at light metering and aperature settings. All the pictures I took were horribly underexposed or just simply too blurry.

I thought about purchasing one myself, but I don't have a spare $1600. Sure, there are cameras out there for $400 - $750, but if I'm going to spend that kind of cash, I may as well get some quality.

So, if anyone has a digital camera I can have for a couple weeks while I click off a huge collection images, let me know.

www.calder.family

It works! You have to get a plug-in that allows your browser to find the appropriate DNS entry.

We laugh at two dimensions!

Just having too much fun reading about IA, UI, UX and lots of other stuff.

calder.family

Okay, this might be a waste of $25, but I think it's worth the gamble.

I just registered calder.family at New.net, a company that has started registering top level domain (TLD) names without ICANN approval.

After trying unsuccessfully to obtain calder.com from an accountant who lives in Aldernay (one of the Channel Islands) for the last 4 years, I jumped at the chance to prospect on this domain.

Why do I want calder.family? Well, when I started registering domains, I thought that having calder.com would be a great way for me and all my relatives to have a persoanl email address. Now that calder.family is being offered, I decided to take the chance.

Here are the 20 new TLDs New.net is offering:

• .shop
  
• .mp3
  
• .inc
  
• .kids
  
• .sport
  
• .family
  
• .chat
  
• .video
  
• .club
  
• .hola
  
• .soc
  
• .med
  
• .law
  
• .travel
  
• .game
  
• .free
  
• .ltd
  
• .gmbh
  
• .tech
  
• .xxx
  

Anxiety

The market for my services here in Vancouver has not been good these last three months. In fact, it's been pretty bad.

A collection of reasons why odds are stacking up against us:

• We're new.
  Sure, we've got experience working on big projects and completing good work, but once you start your own firm, it's a whole new ballgame.
  
  
• Layoffs = Competition.
  Last year was a bad year for the tech sector and a lot of people got laid off. They all went out and started their own thing just like I did.
  
  
• Everyone's holding back.
  Crazy logic, but we've seen it a few times now: Lots of potential clients are scared to get involved in anything even remotely related to high tech right now. Why? They see the nightly high tech sell-offs and immediately make a connection between the Internet and failure.
  
  
• Your neighbour's kid.
  I'm sure everyone who has created a web site professionally has heard shades of the same thing:"My neighbour's kid does that web stuff too. He said he could do that for $40".
  

Change required

Yep. Today I realized that my site sucks.

I guess I knew that for a while now, but after looking at other personal pages out there, it occured to me that mine should look better.

I mean, I do this for a living!

You'd expect a professional photographer to take good pictures at home, right? So why do I have this freaky mess?

After a long day of dealing with clients on their site designs, I'm not particularly inspired to work on mine.

Maybe I'll hire me.

Sex with Dolphins

Okay, I hope this is a joke.

Judging my the author's name: Dragon-wolfe Dolphinn, I'm guessing he is just a writer with a strange imagination, or a freak. You be the judge.

West Coast LEAF

My company was one of the sponsors of the Annual Equality Breakfast for West Coast Women's Legal Education and Action Fund.

The featured speaker was Dr. Dionne Brand, an accomplished author, poet and professor. She was intelligent, well spoken and casual. I was quite impressed with her views on the state of Equality in Canada and around the world.

Ujjal Dosanjh, the Premier of BC, was the other featured speaker. He was pretty much shameless in his quest for votes amongst the attendees. As he began speaking, he seemed very nervous, only settling down near the end of his 10 minutes. He's definately not the natural speaker that former Premier Bill VanderZalm was. He wasn't particularly good as the head of the province, but he certainly had a lot of showman's charm!

Over the years, BC has developed a reputation for being the three ring circus of Canadian politics. Ever since Amor De Cosmos (a major drunk from Nova Scotia, he changed his name from William Smith) became Premier in 1872, BC has been the stage for some outlandish characters, scandals and swindles.

Someone should really write a book about BC Politics. It's certainly stranger than fiction.

Vancouver Life Easier For Panhandlers

Clearly, Vancouver City Councillors are not reading Alistair.com.

Now, it is legal to ask for change anywhere except for within 10 metres of a bank machine.

Weird dreams

I have been having some strange, extremely vivid dreams lately. Most of them feature a rather evil protagonist that is trying to get me.

I start off in normal situations, which makes the dreams feel like I'm actually awake. Then all of a sudden, I'm being pursued by someone/something for a reason I don't understand.

All my dreams end at the instant I am caught or discovered, whereupon I wake up fully charged with adrenaline.

Now I just have to figure out what all this means.