Does anyone else out there have trouble estimating walking distances?

For those who know the area: take the walk from my house to Rasputin’s as an example. How long do you think it would take to walk from my house to Rasputin’s?

No, I mean actually. Form an opinion. Then click below.

Read the Complete Entry

    2006-01-29 22:29   ...3 comments

I’ve recently upgraded my speakers and things are sounding fantastic around here at the moment. (Although I am a bit disappointed to discover that I was sold “last year’s model” that in truth was discontinued in 1999, gonna talk to them about that.)

Yesterday my friend Bob came over with a stack of his CDs to check them out for himself. It’s likely to have been an expensive visit for him because he agreed with me about how enjoyable the speakers are.

We listened to probably 30 discs, with a wide range of production values. A handful of those discs were obviously poorly produced and their flaws were laid bare. What was interesting was that those crummy discs were pretty evenly distributed across the time period we listened to… from the old days to today.

Anyway, bad CDs isn’t the point of this blog entry. The point of this blog entry is to discuss the obsession that people seem to have with digital things. My new speakers, for example, have the words digital monitor on the box. These are speakers, folks, they accept an analog signal and produce analog soundwaves. What’s digital about them? Nothing. Why do they say digital on the box? Marketers have decided that its a desirable term.

Anyone who thinks that CD audio is equivalent to an analog recording has never listened to a variety of CD players side-by-side on the same equipment. CD players are an instrument (in the musical sense), and vary in their ability to perform (in the musical sense) the string of numbers on the disc. CDs have many advantages over traditional analog recordings in terms of longevity, and it is true that digital signals are largely due immune to noise (although this is not true in digital devices with poor power supplies, which is most of them). I am not a vinyl purist, I think the tradeoffs made by CDs are good. But I am not onboard with the digitization of broadcasting (e.g. digital radio) which requires ridiculous destruction (compression) of the audio data.

Today I’m listening to CKCU and the audio sounds just as good as if I were listening to those CDs right here in the house or in the studio. Yet, CKCU is broadcasting that signal over the air from 20 km away, and it can easily be received by everyone in a 100 km radius.

Radio signals broadcast in FM are analog signals, and can (in theory) reproduce signals exactly at huge distances. All the subtleties of the buzzing of the pipes, the breath sounds of the singer, the fret noises of the guitar are coming through in fantastic detail. Once decoded into analog by the CD player at the station, this 50 year old technology is beaming a perfect copy of that signal into my house and onto my speakers.

Many people these days are easily satisfied. They purchase 128 kilobit/s recordings from online stores and listen to crummy feeds from around the world. These feeds surely offer an inexpensive and plentiful source of music. From a cultural point of view they are great. But they don’t stand up to good old FM radio for reaching power and good listening.

 › technology     2006-01-29 14:05   ...0 comments

I’ve just now finished editing the Jiig/Nightingale concert which I field recorded for broadcast on my radio show.

Wow, I had no idea how long it was going to take to make that concert sound OK. The room was very echoey and boomy, and cancelling that out was extremely challenging, especially without making the vocalists sound gutless. The problem is that the room was over-reverberent in several narrow bands that unfortunately lay within Ian’s voice.

Listening to Jiig now and quite enjoying it, so I hope the band will like it.

I have one concert left in the can, my “experimental” concert that I recorded at Rasputin’s the night before the National Library gig. I think that one may have lower potential to be great, but will be easier to get into the “best I can do” state.

 › radio     2006-01-27 01:00   ...2 comments

Well, a very long election campaign has come to a close. And I think that it is in many ways a bittersweet ending.

In some ways I feel this is the best possible outcome. It was time for the Liberals to leave. They, like any other venerable organization (in all senses of venerable), can only carry forward so long without a break to regroup, re-equip and regain focus on the values that matter. They also needed to escape the albatross of Gomery.

The most important coverage on election nights is of the speeches. Only in the speeches do you get the true measure of the leaders.

I think that Paul Martin gave an extremely gracious speech. One that will be remembered. I think he’ll join Joe Clark in our hearts as a man who had a lot to give, but for whom the circumstances were not propitious. Not a smooth political operator, but one who was — like Joe, and perhaps unusually — genuine in office.

I was disappointed that the CBC did not play all of Duceppe’s speech. His 51 seats sound like a victory, but the popular vote tells a different story. With 42% of the popular vote in Quebec (only 6% more than Harper’s minority across the country) he did not gain the support of what many expected would be a majority of Quebeckers for his separatist agenda.

The greens, whom I dislike, did OK for themselves with a small increase in national support. Our local candidate, who is an honourable man, did extremely well for himself, doubling his support.

On to my party of choice: Jack Layton and his NDP are the second success story of the night. With 10 new members (as I write this) coming to Ottawa, and an increase of many votes across the country, the NDP is riding a wave of energy. Still, they again narrowly missed the balance of power. That’s a bit of a disappointment, but 10 more seats is great. What’s interesting, though, is that they garnered 10 more seats with only a small increase in the popular vote, suggesting that they edged into seats that they were edged out of last time. I hope the NDP is able to work hard and honourably in the next parliament to solidify those tenuous gains by continuing to set the example for the other parties; it will be tough work this time around.

The NDP under Jack Layton is finally more than the angel on Canada’s shoulder. It has proven to have fresh new ideas, a spirit of compromise and that it is worthy of trust. And millions of Canadians have shown their agreement and support.

And now to the victors. For the last time (well… except for special occasions) I’ll call them Reform Conservatives. The new Conservative party has re-established itself across the country in this election. It now can be called a national party, with seats from coast to coast. This is a good thing.

You may think the last paragraph strange for a socially liberal NDP supporter like myself. But that wouldn’t be considering the big picture.

We cannot continue to operate this country as a people who vote for the status quo to keep the lion at bay. We cannot have a one-party Liberal system that governs through fear and intimidation, belaboured under the weight of a stale vision and impractical, unconvincing and poorly orchestrated suggestions that languish from one prorogued parliament to the next. We cannot be Liberal forever. Kim Campbell appeared on CBC’s coverage and made this point forcefully, convincingly and in decidedly unpartisan tones. A national Conservative party has a chance, in future policy conventions, to broaden its narrow viewpoint. It is good for Canada to have a strong opposition, even if we have to take the bitter pill of enduring them in government to get it.

Harper’s speech was prime ministerial. Point final. It was worth waiting until 1:30am for. The exhilaration of victory even made him look human. For the first time, I saw a man who could be a leader.

You all know how much I disagree with Harper’s personal views and political positions. Many of you share my distaste at the prospect of a Conservative government running backwards in time with a regressive social conservatist, pro-war, pro-business, weak-Canada agenda; to say nothing of the separation of church and state. I fear all of those things. But I had started to fear the Liberal complacency too — it is impossible to overstate the danger of a stagnant political process for a country that wants to lead the world in innovation and peaceful influence. It’s a bittersweet election result, one that I view with great trepidation for the immediate future, but with great relief in the long term as we restore the vibrancy to our multi-party system.

We have unleashed Harper upon ourselves, but in a measured way with a minority mandate. (Thank God that the Liberals were not decimated like Kim Campbell’s Conservatives.) Minorities are good for Canada. They have brought us public health care, old age pensions and even a Canadian flag. I do not expect this parliament to achieve on this scale (but of course would be happy to be surprised). Harper’s government will have to keep its nose clean, and its social conservative elements in check if it hopes (as it must) to get a majority mandate the next time around. If it can do this, more power to it. I suspect that Canadians will see through Conservative vote buying and will be treated to some questionable foreign policy, I hope it will not be too painful.

We had to do this sometime; we had to give the Conservatives with their Reform foundation some rope; let’s watch to see what they do with it.

ETA: I cross-posted this to the LiveJournal political community I’ve been following. There’s more discussion over there.

 › political     2006-01-24 03:03   ...3 comments

Today in New Glasgow a guy tried to steal two ballot boxes. During the election. Then he ran over one of them with his car. Honestly, who thinks of that?

In 2000, a box was thrown into a lagoon not far away.

This is 5 km away from Jen’s grandparents’ place. What kind of place am I marrying into anyway?!

 › political     2006-01-23 15:37   ...2 comments

Last election, Moore got into trouble for “interfering” in the Canadian election.

Here’s this year’s edition.

 › political     2006-01-20 23:00   ...0 comments

Our climate is changing. For better or worse (definitely worse) we are changing it, and it is clear that we’re not going to like it, going forward.

The NCC has released a commissioned report about how climate change will affect the tourism sector in Ottawa. The results are shocking.

Models predict up to 20 days less skating within 15 years. The tulips will be blooming as early as mid-April (well before the May long weekend of the Tulip Festival).

Perhaps most shocking: the possibility of total loss of cross-country skiing in Gatineau Park by 2050. The “good” scenario is 50% fewer skiing days. By 2020 we will likely not be able to hold the Keskinada Loppet international ski event (requires 15 cm base).

Downhill seasons are significantly reduced too, and huge quantities of additional snowmaking would be needed to avoid total disaster. That snowmaking would likely not be economically viable.

I don’t know about you, but given the amount of snow we get in Gatineau Park, it’s quite horrifying to imagine no skiing…

 › normative     2006-01-17 23:45   ...2 comments

PhoneHerald Broadcast Dialer 1.0 ships today. It has been a very very long week, but I can now announce this publically.

PhoneHerald is designed to place calls automatically for things like appointment reminders, overdue notices, and attendance notifications. It calls folks up, delivers a personalized message and then can accept a response (or even transfer the person to an operator). It’s cool. And it’s a great complement to our existing PhoneValet product that answers calls. (Perhaps we should get the one product talking to the other or something.) This product is a bit more business-focussed than PhoneValet so that’s complementary too.

This has been our smoothest product release ever <touches wood> but even a smooth product release takes a lot out of you. I’m looking forward to some slowing down a bit now.

 › technology     2006-01-09 03:46   ...0 comments

It has been a very busy week, but I managed to squeeze an hour of time out tonight to inaugurate the Rideau Canal here in Ottawa.

For those not in the know, the canal is the world’s longest skating rink (confirmed by Guinness) at 7.8 km (4.8 miles). It’s quite a good skate to go from one end to the other and back. I did nowhere near the full canal tonight… just a quick skate around Dow’s lake.

The canal opened for skating today, and although it looks like it will be a good season, waiting until 8pm meant that I didn’t get optimal conditions as I’m sure it was very popular. There was a lot of scraped up snow and the ice surface needs to be flooded a few more times. Despite that, I got up to a good speed with only a few stumbles on hidden cracks in the ice.

I was particularly pleased that it only took a few minutes to get to the canal. According to the inestimable Google Earth (doesn’t seem to be released, yet I seem to have a copy… weird) I am 363 metres from the canal, 720 metres along the road. There’s something fun about living 363 metres from a major tourist attraction… that is actually worth going to.

So, who wants to go skating?

 › sports     2006-01-07 21:59   ...0 comments

There are in this [sic] country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two has the following record: The Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second is responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic “bubbles”, electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one is going to tell the other how to run the telephone business? I can hardly wait for the results.

Yeah.

 › normative     2006-01-05 21:32   ...0 comments

Unlike Jen’s first post of the new year, mine is basically content free.

But you really need to check out these hysterical sushi disks (click for more).

 › funny     2006-01-01 12:48   ...0 comments