Archives for 2013 (Lifestream)

• Nov 20, 2013, 3:53 AM -05:00

  Charter Ramblings

  Many years ago I read a book called The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. The backdrop against which the story occurs is a relatively near future society where traditional notions of country and state have been largely supplanted by notions of "phyles" - tribes or groups having similar ethnic or cultural characteristics. One of the main characters, a Mr. John Hackworth, belongs to the Neo-Victorian phyle who, like their namesake, are a somewhat prudish lot who follow a rigid and absolute moral code.

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• Oct 30, 2013, 1:50 AM -04:00

  Being an Emacs User in the Cloud Age

  I'm a long time (15 years) Emacs user. Please don't draw too many conclusions from this fact. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, an Emacs "wizard". I don't know how to make my Emacs buffer do amazing things with a single key stroke. I'm embarrassed to say, for example, that I've only recently learned the keystroke for deleting am entire line.

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• Jul 31, 2013, 12:51 AM -04:00

  Oatmeal Stout Under the Watchful Eye of Abandoned Silos

  For a long time I've been trying to gauge my personal feelings about this building:

  

  This is the old Canada Malting factory. It's in the heart of Saint Henri, in Montreal, next to the McAuslan brewery on Notre Dame, right on the Lachine canal. I live about a 20 minute walk away. It's huge, intimidating, in extreme disrepair and very well-graffitied. It's been abandoned for decades.

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• Jul 30, 2013, 3:08 AM -04:00

  Jaffa Cakes for North Americans: an Odyssey

  Evelyn and I found a polish bakery in Point St Charles. One of the things we saw (aside from the actual pastries) were packages of Jaffa cakes for sale. I'd never had one before, but they looked good, so I bought one. Indeed, they're pretty awesome. They consist of a sponge-like base, with orange jelly and chocolate on top.

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• Jun 5, 2013, 12:25 AM -04:00

  Another Batch of Tonic Water

  I made a batch of tonic water syrup a couple of years ago and, though it was a success, there were a couple of things I found slightly off-putting in the result. Specifically:

  • I didn't really like the all-spice.
  • I didn't really like the lemongrass
  • I thought there was too much citric acid.

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• Apr 5, 2013, 12:50 AM -04:00

  In Defence of the Dark

  I'm addicted to a site called tvtropes.org. It's basically a catalogue of various literary and artistic devices used in various forms of media (books, movies, TV). It's fun because the site gives names to practices that you already recognize but haven't bothered to identify in any specific way. Examples include Genre Blindness, which explains the tendency of Bond villains to reveal their entire master plan to the spy rather than just shooting him, and Lampshading, which is an attempt to diffuse an obvious plot hole by having a character draw attention to it.

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• Jan 23, 2013, 3:14 AM -05:00

  Guilt by Association

  How exactly am I supposed to react when I hear about the particularly brutal gang rape and murder of a 23 year old medical student in India?

  There is, of course, the obvious stuff. There's horror, sadness, and anger mixed together. There's also a certain amount of incredulity. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I have a hard time imagining that anyone is capable of this kind of thing.

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