Well, it was a lot more like I ran into an SUV, but the driver didn't bother slowing down when coming out of an alley, and Jesse and I were on wheels coming down the sidewalk. Jesse was on a bike and I was on my rollerblades. We weren't going so fast, but you can't stop rollerblades so quickly as you can a bike, or a vehicle. So when the driver saw 2 people heading straight for him, he slammed on the brakes, while Jesse and I tried to stop. If he had just kept going, I think I would have just missed him, but because he stopped, the SUV was right in my way! And then I slammed into it. I'm sure he felt it inside, and it left a pretty nasty bruise on my hip.
My elbow dented the gas cap cover, but he was okay with that. Seeing that I was fine, we all just continued on our way. But I'm willing to bet he won't be speeding across sidewalks or out of alleys anymore.
Drivers: it's that time of year again. There are pedestrians, rollerbladers and cyclists out on the roads. Drive with care, please!
Since it's been a while, I'm going to comment on things in reverse chronological order.
First up: Hockey Good job, Calgary Flames. Good work, Vancouver Canucks, too. Both teams played some wicked hockey, the kind that I like to watch.
Next up: Spring Skiing Sunday was my first time to Marmot Basin in Jasper, for a day of spring skiing, which was another first. The bottom half of the hill was closed, but somehow I managed to enjoy myself between runs in the beer gardens in the chalet halfway up the hill. Good snow, a warm day (but not so warm the snow was melting!) and good company made for an incredible trip. The bus broke down in the parking lot at the hill, so we were stranded with friends and beer for a couple of hours. Oh no! It made for a late night return on a crappy little school bus, but it was a fun and worthwhile trip regardless
And last up (for now): Easter Weekend Thursday night, I attended 2 parties with sexy results: One of the last BBQs at illustrated (the name of the house many engineering buddies of mine live at) and then off to Suite 69 for Kirstie's going away party! I had a fun night at both places!
It was followed by a trip to Calgary the next day for the 7th annual Good Friday party, or as we like to call it G8 (Good Good Good Good Good Good Good Good Friday). There are pictures online on Marc's site and Jessamyn's. I had an incredibly awesome time! As we were leaving Calgary Saturday, we decided we needed to stop at the new Krispy Kreme to taste the donuts everyone has been raving about. That was quite the experience... free donut, they ushered you through, velvet rope waiting lines, security guards and traffic controllers... Overwhelming! :)
Back in Edmonton, a bunch of us did a Centurion - 100 shots (1 oz.) of beer in 100 minutes. No problem! :D
It was cold all last week, but the weather's getting warmer! Pretty soon I'll be able to rollerblade into work! I can't wait until all the snow is gone.... and doesn't come back!
I spend a significant part of almost every day staring at a dot.
It's one of the most interesting dots anyone has ever seen. The dot moves very quickly, but only over a small distance. It's small but it changes colour very often. My dot is less than 0.5 mm.
The dot tells me many things: the weather, the news, funny sayings or even an instrument name. The people at work around me do it to. I do it at home, or at work, at school, at the library... Because of the dot, I can play games and do my job; it entertains me; it distracts me; it informs me; it asks me questions. Chances are, you're staring at the dot right now too.
The dot is electrons firing toward me, producing a picture on my monitor that doesn't seem very dot-like at all. My eyes tell me it's a web page or a word document, but it's all just one very fast-moving, fast-changing dot.
I usually hate commercials. They annoy me. I don't watch TV because I cannot stand to have commercials blared at me. On the occasions when I do sit down to watch something, I can stand *maybe* a full minute and a half before grabbing the remote to save my sanity.
And yet, I paid money to see the 2003 Cannes Film Festival's World's Best Commercial. I must be crazy, you say. I agree. However, I had good reason to think these were good. I wasn't dissapointed when I saw them in 2000 (or was it 1999?). I'm willing to admit that some commercials are entertaining or poignant. But this year's selection lacked those gems that made my previous viewing enjoyable. In all, there were about two dozen really good ones (most of these came at the beginning, in the bronze category). Even if I were being negative in my esitmate, and there were 30-35 good commercials, assuming they last 30 seconds each (some were much shorter) that only gives me 15-20 minutes of good viewing (there was a 2-second intro with information about the commercial before each one).
In my opinion, this year's commercials were not worth the money of going to see them. Save yourself the trip to the theater: get some popcorn and watch a rental in the comfort of your own home.
So a Canadian judge has ruled that swapping music files isn't illegal. It's in all the headlines. But when you read a little closer, the details reveal that there was not enough evidence to allow the CRIA to obtain information about users suspected of violating the Canadian copyright laws because "the user isn't actively distributing music or advertising its availability." Good.
This ruling is not the be-all end-all in the ever-growing controversy over p2p networks and file sharing. In a Globe and Mail article, Scott Kaija, guitarist with controller.controller says, "I just don't see downloading music as the problem. It's a symptom of a larger issue." The record companies have found a scape-goat (people who share music online), and have "turned it into a kind of lynching."
Jesse agrees: "While it is illegal to violate copyright, I don't think the copyright laws are fair; they've been unduly influenced by the RIAA, and are still focused on old technologies."
I think the guys at Badmonkey put this in just the right words. "Remember kids, sharing is illegal, but taking without giving back isn't, because that is how Canadian copyright law works. Forget everything you learned in Kindergarten." Try explaining that one to your 5-year-old.
I've been doing a lot of reading, research and some writing of societal and cultural impacts of technology recently. It's mind-boggling. It's incredible! And I've discovered that Google is a big winner.
There are plenty of amazing things that people have been saying about the impact of technology on society, and they've been saying it for hundreds, thousands of years. I know people can be afraid of the way new tools change society, but it's going to happen regardless of these feelings.
This interest was piqued in a very peculiar way. Years ago, I had taken a course entitled Science, Technology and Society as a part of my Engineering degree. We read Technopoly by Neil Postman, in which the author obliges us to evaluate both positive and negative impacts of technology. He opens the book with an ancient Greek tale about a king who told the inventor of writing that technology is a "double-edged sword." That book - that tale - marks my first coherent thoughts on the impact of technology. Afterward, I had thought about it on and off again, but had never devoted much time to developing any ideas. Now, a new book has fallen into my lap: Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold, has fueled my desire to research and write about the changes that technology will impart on us in the years ahead.
This reading has been done mainly online; plenty of people are beginning to recognize that there will be a sort of social transformation, and that it has already begun. The realizations are available to the connected community in the form of weblogs, forum discussions, and online publications. They accept there will be winners and losers, improvements and drawbacks, but the shape of things to come is not yet clearly defined.
However, I'd like to acknowledge Google's greatness today. The familiar search engine is both popular and powerful, and not limited to being merely the best. It offers not only countless fabulous features, but also some remarkable technology, services and tools. The most revealing measure in its success stems from the company name, which can be morphed into a verb in everyday speech: when I say "Did you Google for that?" nobody looks at me questioningly. It has become a part of our pop-culture: try finding a Googlewhack or a Googlism about yourself. Google is a forward-thinking company and their success is a result of this vision.
