Well ladies and gentlemen… We have a home!

We won’t be moving in until the springtime, and the offer is still conditional on our home inspector giving the seal of approval, but we’re very happy to have found this cute little house!

Some more photos are under the cut. And yes, Stittsville folk, this house IS in the glebe!

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 › domicile     2005-01-31 23:43   ...11 comments

Prologue: Last week May calls us up to tell Jen of a very important development in the history of hot beverages: The release of Chantico Drinking Chocolate¹ by Starbucks. Advertised as a drinkable dessert and a return to the traditional manner of consuming chocolate… drinking it!

Now, usually Jen and I are Bridgehead type people but this development promised to lure us over to starbucks when the time was right…

May claimed to be torn about telling us over the phone because she might miss the experience of watching Jen try the chocolate for the first time.

Several Days Later…

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 › food     2005-01-29 11:46   ...5 comments

Well, something about this time of year makes me want to start taking a multi-vitamin. Last year, you may recall, I had trouble finding a good one, and the one I did buy upset my stomach.

This year, armed with the nutrition information magazine my mum passed along to me, I decided to try again. I had one all picked out… the Wampole Complete Multi Adult. (That is an amusing name… Multi-Pass… Multi-Adult… ha!)

So I went to the store with the magazine so I could compare the results of my websearch with any new brands, etc. I got there and was immediately accosted by some naturopath who is “on duty” there in the afternoons. That meant I could not do my own leisurely research in the damn store, because this irritating person was breathing down my neck every time I tried to turn a package over to see what was in it. (“If you have any questions, I am a naturopath!”)

Finally I just grabbed a box of Centrum Forte (I didn’t see the Wampole there and I remembered the Centrum Forte did ok in the magazine) and left. Frustrated. Perhaps in another year I will be able to do the in-store comparison I wanted to do.

Off to unplug the kitchen sink now…

 › health     2005-01-26 16:38   ...1 comment

Spurred on by the unprecedented interest in La Cave in recent comments I will reveal what we discovered during our recent trip. First, let me simply lay out the facts as we discovered them:

1. There now a restaurant called La Cave located on Spring Garden Rd. down near the public gardens. Jen informs me that it is in one of those ‘deadly’ locations that seem to have as much turnover as an apple fritter factory. The sign outside says ‘La Cave: Fine cheesecake blah blah blah since 19-eighty somethingororother’
2. When we walked up the half-flight of stairs from street level to look in we discovered that La Cave is now apparently a large room with tables and chairs in it and a cheesecake fridge at the back. No winecellars here.
3. We decide to look elsewhere for food, and walk down Spring Garden. We walk by the old Blowers St location. It is padlocked.
4. Outside the old location there is a sign reading at the top Re-Opening Soon… The Cavern Wine Bar and Bistro. And at the bottom All the great cheesecake and ambience you loved or some such.
5. In the middle of this sign there is a clipping posted from the Coast. (The text of the clipping is online — scroll down about 2/3 of the page to ‘Best Place for a First Date’ or search for ‘cave’). The clipping, physically located between the raves for the resurrection of the old location, advertises the move to the new location.

So those are all the facts. La Cave has moved to a soulless graveyard for restaurants. The old location says ‘re-opening soon’ with a new name, but a posted review for the moved old place. Very confusing.

My hypotheses:

• The owner of the restaurant wanted a second location. He ‘moves’ the restaurant to a location on Spring Garden in the main restaurant district. He ‘closes’ the old place for renovations, then ‘re-opens’ the old place under a new name but with all the same feel. Presto. Two locations.
• The owner stupidly slew the golden goose by moving his restaurant. A new entrepreneur realizing that La Cave was the location is trying to grab the market by re-opening an indistinguishable inheritor to La Cave on the orignal premise.

In any case, Jen now believes something is fishy and is refusing to consider going to either location until things are made clear.

 › NovaScotia     2005-01-23 13:03   ...0 comments

I have my mac set up to cycle to a new photo on my desktop every time I wake the iBook from sleep. There’s 6 or 7 photos in the list and I think a few of them haven’t really seen the light of day before. I thought that was too bad, so here’s a couple.

This first one is my brother at a Red Hemsley concert in September. (And yes Pat, I will make a CD of these photos for you someday. There are a few good ones.)

This cute one was taken by May or Dan around this time last year at La Cave in Halifax (which the owners have now — sadly — messed with).

 › photos     2005-01-21 21:59   ...3 comments

Well, Jian Ghomeshi is doing 50 Tracks again. They are shopping for the top 50 Canadian tracks of the last 100 years. (Again this time it is slanted to the last 50 years really.)

We listened to it (11:00 EST) on this page at work today. And perhaps we will do so again? It’s fun to hear the songs get pitched by the panel of experts.

You can bet that Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Band, Rush, et alia will appear. But what about those other important Canadian acts? You can email them to nominate them… 50tracks@cbc.ca.

Here’s my (somewhat terse) email:

 › music     2005-01-21 12:44   ...8 comments

Want to see how bad my new iBook’s video really is? I took some macro photos of the screen of the old iBook and the new iBook.

Check it out here

I have a call into Apple, and they are raising the issue with their engineers. That will take a few days (up to a week) so we’ll see what happens!

 › technology     2005-01-19 12:55   ...8 comments

Well, my new iBook has arrived. So far things have gone fairly smoothly in terms of moving my files across (go go target disk mode and ditto). Things seem to be fairly snappy although much of my telnetting and web surfing seems to be about the same speed as before. That pig that is Photoshop seems to be a bit snappier though!

I’m not sure how I feel about the display yet. It looks a bit out of focus (not possible on an LCD) and I believe that some fonts display a bit too fat. I will play with some of the display options tomorrow in hopes of improving things a bit.

Anyway, the switch has been made. It does look like the old machine will eventually be sold, not sure how that’s going to go yet. It will go out to get its monitor replaced first.

 › technology     2005-01-19 00:50   ...2 comments

Haha! I have found the way to foil you folks who watch the northern lights and never tell me about them. :P

The SpaceWatch site has mailing lists you can subscribe to. They send messages to the lists when solar activity makes auroras likely. (Click on the Email Distribution Lists link under the image of the day.)

There should be good aurora tonight, but of course it is supposed to snow here. Still, I’m hopeful for the future. Apparently we should be in a good period for auroras right now.

Here’s a sample from the AstroAlert list, and here’s one from the AuroraWarn list.

    2005-01-16 13:30   ...1 comment

Well folks it’s gonna be a bittersweet week next week.

Why? Well, a new small white computer is coming to town from Taoyuan City, Taiwan. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

It’s going to be a great machine. It’s a 14” iBook, armed with a 1.33 GHz G4 processor 768 megs of RAM and an 80 GB disk. Going to be quite the little speed demon. And I’m very excited about it. Planning to make use of the faster processor for better compiles of PhoneValet, faster runs of my model and much faster photo editing and processing. As well as video editing tools, etc. (Trevor your 8mm rips have inspired me to give it a shot myself if I can find a projector!)

So why a bittersweet week then? Well, I am the type to get attached to everything. I’m trying to break this habit a bit, and have accordingly decided to avoid making emotional bonds with socks. However, letting go of my previous baby is going to be very hard. Its 600 Mhz of G3 processing power have been put to good use though, and one commercial product was born within it, as was SlimBatteryMonitor and DateTree, as well as 3 or 4 unfinished projects that may see the light of day sometime. This blog too! I probably have spent an average of 8-10 hours per day, every day, working on the old box.

I’m not sure what will happen to the old iBook. It belongs to Parliant, so either it will be absorbed into the lab there, or it will be sold. Sigh.

Of course, right after I ordered the iBook the rumors have begun of an iBook G5 (suggested here) but what can you do? I need it now… the old machine has to spend a month in service to get a new screen… again!

 › domicile     2005-01-15 22:04   ...1 comment

Well, I have been debating about how to best sum up the holiday, and I have come up with the idea of a photoblog entry surrounding the wonderful food items we’ve been able to consume over the last few weeks. After all, how better to recount the holidays than by revisiting those great meals spent in good company.

And right here, above the cut, as a holiday food teaser, I present a lobster shot. Don’t miss the lobster portraits inside folks… I know you’re thinking now about how much you’ve always wondered what a lobster looks like right up close. Well you’re about to find out…

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 › photos     2005-01-14 00:57   ...0 comments

Well, I hope all you faithful blog readers have had a happy and relaxing holiday season. We had a great time, in two cities, and those of you who have not had the dubious pleasure of enjoying my lobster portraits will be able to do so whenever I get a few minutes to choose the best one. (… which I have not been able to do for a few weeks already… geez this time of year is so busy.)

Anyway, judging from my personality it will come as no surprise to many of you that the first entry of the year is a meddling busybody letter. I just sent it off by email to our city councillor Clive Doucet who is a decent guy.

 › letters     2005-01-11 09:21   ...0 comments