Category: Computers & Programming

Comments and thoughts on computing and programming, on technological trends and new hardware and software, based on my 37 years of active computer use, including reviewing and writing about it for national and international media.

Crossing the line

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / PoliticsLeave a comment

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There’s a story on ipolitics that in part echoes my own thoughts about media and responsibility. Yet the author draws different conclusions than I believe I would have, were I still in the media. It’s called “Paul Calandra and the tale of the naked senator” and it’s written by Paul Adams. Worth reading regardless of whether you agree or not. Adams writes about the quandary many reporters and editors find themselves in: trying to define the boundary between public interest and privacy. It’s an issue that has raised its head many times in the past, but moreso this past year. ……… click below for more ↓

Archiving past posts

Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Theme & CodingLeave a comment

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I spent a busy weekend copying posts from my previous blog (hundreds of posts, currently archived on another server awaiting my resolution) onto my hard drive. I plan to resurrect some of these posts – maybe with a bit of updating or editing – in a WordPress archive site here so I can keep them alive in that digital manner the Net provides. But first I have to sort through a lot of old material. A lot. And the corruption of the old database in the move to that server has created some technical issues I need to resolve, too. ……… click below for more ↓

Looking back on 2013

Blog & Blogging / Bread & Baking / Games & Gaming / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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It’s been quite a year, both personally and politically. The best of times, the worst of times, to paraphrase Dickens. Looking back on 2103, it was a busy, eventful, successful, and yet often challenging year. I accomplished many things on different levels – personal and professional – and, I believe, overcame some of the challenges I faced. A lot happened locally, too, much of which development I take pride in having been a party to. Collingwood Council has been very productive, pro-active and progressive this term; more so than any council I’ve ever participated in or reported on when in the ……… click below for more ↓

Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013.   I use social media regularly and frequently. As a politician, that makes me either very brave or very stupid. But I’ve been doing this for the last 30 years, long before I ever got elected. Social media isn’t new to me.* It may be slicker than it was in 1983, but it’s essentially the same text-based, monologue, just with chrome added. In fact, the tone of the conversation seems to have gone downhill since the 80s. Back then ……… click below for more ↓

We have heading up for your net

Blog & Blogging / Internet & Social Media / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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I have to admit that I frequently read the spam comments WordPress traps for my moderation, and I often do so with a smile. The clumsy, crazy constructs, the awkward English, butchered punctuation and the twisted word use just make me laugh. Yes, like everyone else, I detest spam, and I quickly delete the comments into whatever digital wastebin they descend to. But I often chuckle to read them first. They make me wonder: are they deliberately written poorly, are they the sincere efforts of someone struggling to learn English, words strung together in random order by a bot, or ……… click below for more ↓

Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Science & Technology11 Comments

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There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their replacement by entertainment, spectacle, self-righteous self ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. These are usually followed by vituperative ridicule and angry caterwauling when anyone challenges the populist ideals or ideologies. As if having a brain, as if having any aspirations to culture, to art, to learning – or worse, to science – was an evil, malicious thing that must be stomped upon. As if the literati were plotting world domination by quoting ……… click below for more ↓

Words, words, words

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about the internet: “…the BBS medium reveals not only a widespread inability to use English as a means of communication but also a widespread ignorance of that inability, and, in consequence, a lack of interest in doing anything about it.” Words that were prescient. As if he could foresee Facebook. Blackburn also wrote that most people thought they spoke and wrote well… “The majority of English-speaking people I’ve come across…think they ……… click below for more ↓

Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Internet & Social Media / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in 2000. The 2013-14 vaccine is on its way to doctors’ offices now. It’s also available at pharmacists’ offices. It’s free, easily accessible, it prevents and helps stop the spread of many kinds of influenza, it can save the life of anyone at risk – so why don’t people get one? ……… click below for more ↓

Digital Attachments

Games & Gaming / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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It’s tough to lose a solider. Especially one like Dimitri. A fine sniper, with a good kill record. I had trained him for so long, raised him from a lowly private to sergeant, then to lieutenant. He was equipped with the best gear. His accuracy had improved to a deadly asset. He was a cornerstone to my tactical approach. He was also an investment in time and materiel. And as such, he was headed for greatness. Captain, maybe major. Until the aliens got him. That was nasty. Three of them swarmed his position, flanking his protection and taking him down ……… click below for more ↓

The (sometimes violent) urge to write

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Literary pretensions / My Writing4 Comments

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As of this writing, I will have published 253 posts since I began this blog at the ending week of December, 2011. Two hundred and fifty three posts in 21 months. Just over one post every two-and-a-half days, on average. Plus 30 or so still in draft mode. Another half-dozen scribbled in word processing notes or notebooks. And that doesn’t include the six years of blog posts – a list of 91 pages – on my previous blog site (still available in archive format, although some formatting issues have developed after some code updates). “Scribble, scribble, scribble,” as Prince William ……… click below for more ↓

WP theme experiments ongoing

Blog & Blogging / Internet & Social MediaOne Comment

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With the latest update to WordPress (3.6) comes a new theme, Twenty Thirteen. I’ve activated it with the upgrade, and I like it so far, but I’m not 100% satisfied. I preferred the dimensions of the header image on the Twenty Eleven and Twenty Twelve themes. Proportionately they were more humanistic. The new header is 1600 x 230, which is rather thin and proportionately difficult. Using it means redoing a lot of photos and trying to find a slice that works as well as with the older themes, if I want my own headers. The abstract headers are the default ……… click below for more ↓

Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!

Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / My WritingLeave a comment

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A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I thought it was a joke, a spoof. After all, how can one realistically get rid of perhaps the most significant element of punctuation based on the rantings of a website lunatic? And some of the counterpoint sites like Humbleapostrophe seemed created in a sense of camaraderie humour. But no, on further reading, it’s as real as any of the other wingnut sites, from chemtrails to “psychic” readings to UFOs. Most ……… click below for more ↓

Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it

Games & Gaming / History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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  Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods & Kings, released in 2012. BNW was released last Tuesday, and I was at the local EB Games store to get one on launch day. Over the weekend, I took a look at it, playing for several hours in learning mode. Civilization, if you don’t already know, is a turn-based 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) computer game/simulation created by Sid Meier, originally in 1991. It has gone through numerous releases ……… click below for more ↓

Small glitch, please stay tuned

Theme & Coding / UncategorizedOne Comment

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Oops. Seems there’s a coding glitch in the latest WordPress update. Comments are getting attached to a header image rather than to the post they’re supposed to be associated with. And it’s not a new glitch – the WP support forums have discussions on this that go back at least a year, albeit an earlier version of the software. So I suspect there will be a solution that involves changing one of the PHP modules. Just not sure which one yet. I’ve posted a request on the WP support forum for some help and will try to get things fixed ……… click below for more ↓

The Decline in Media Credibility and Profitability

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / My Writing / Social Order & Disorder6 Comments

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Last August the Pew research Center released the results of its latest study on how much the American public trusts the media. This has been part of an ongoing study since at least 2002, and ever since the first report, the amount of trust in media has fallen. This has been a hot topic of discussion online ever since, and the source of much hand-wringing at each new release. Perhaps the mounting number of scandals in journalism has soured an audience accustomed to believing the media is honorable, trustworthy and upright. Perhaps it’s the growing politicization of (some) media that ……… click below for more ↓

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