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musings of mark since 2001

A little cooler today, good for me as I spent three hours after lunch getting a yard mowed down that had not seen a blade in about a year. The grass was hay, in places over my knees and all of it was too long for anything more than a preliminary cut to about 4 inches high. After the first cut has had a couple days to rest it will be time for another, not sure if it will be me then though as ostensibly this task is was to be a one time gig.

Showcase is doing re-runs of Trailer Park Boys and one of the best episodes was tonight, the one where Bubbles gets to be the tech for RUSH guitarist Alex Lifeson and also receives a strumming lesson for Closer to the Heart

Lyrics to the lament:

And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart

It’s just too sad that we see so little of this happening, thanks to the increased communication available with the internet though, some of those that are drawing a new chart closer to the heart know they aren’t alone.

Summer is in full swing on Bowen Island and I took advantage of the nice weather to have a hike up Mt. Gardner to see what had changed since last year. The access road beyond where one parks has been improved, not sure if that’s for the hydro and cable to get in easier or if there is going to be someone living further up the road than there is now.

The ground is dry already even high up, fire restrictions aren’t in effect yet here but probably on the way soon. It’s a real nice little hike, starting from home it’s a few hundred meters to the first trail head and only a couple spots where the asphalt road comes into use. First crossing is where the fish hatchery creek runs under the road, then there’s a nice stretch up to Killarney Lake before the road that needs to be taken to the trail head for the mountain itself.

Not many mosquitoes to deal with, just a warm day in the 20’s and a couple hours later it’s nice views of the ocean on the other side of the island, and to the southeast Mt. Baker glows with snow. The helicopter pad at the top wasn’t as crowded with other hikers as I’ve seen in the past, everyone including myself enjoying a nice snack and long drinks of water, it’s a steep, sweaty hike no matter what kind of shape you’re in. Not too stiff this morning either, today’s warmer than yesterday yet and only took the regular walk about the Cove and stayed out of the sun mostly.

At least a little media attention is given to the story of three youths dragged from the World Urban Forum a couple nights ago, but Canadians for the most part seem to be resigned to the fact that we’re going to give up our rights to have the attention and dollars come in, that conventions like this generate.

The TV news had a short interview with the girl shown in the linked CBC story, the handful of hair pulled out as they were dragged was a good size chunk. Things must be really, really bad when something as innocuous as a simple t-shirt, no matter what slogan is written on it, is enough to cause the powers that be to take such a violent measure to crush dissent among the populace.

Lots of people around The Pier this afternoon out for a sunny Father’s Day afternoon listening to Corbin Keep and The Lawndogs and tapping their toes. I spent a few hours getting complete transparencies with the XOrg windowing system working, the image is a thumbnail to the full size screen showing the desktop icons showing through the Google home page for the day, and a command line interface on top of that, cool. Once that was working all sorts of transitions are available as well, some of them are a bit too “cute” for the amount of resources they use and will get turned off. Impressive that this sort of thing can be done using a PC that isn’t a powerhouse at all, with a very basic unichrome video card to boot. Update: kept the transparency, drop shdows etc. everywhere and turned off only the animations and the windows draw as fast as ever - methinks Windows Vista is going to wow a lot of people, for those that have multiple desktops and windows open, being able to see what is behind easier simply makes things, well, simpler.

Opened up the History sidebar to see where I wandered around the internet this week…The UK Guardian is always a good stop, especially if you’re a Kurt Vonnegut fan and want to read an excerpt from his forthcoming memoirs.

That led me over to a web site with a title I had not heard in a long time: “In These Times” follows the lead of James Weinstein, Daniel Ellsberg, E.P. Thompson, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Julian Bond and Herbert Marcuse by taking on the controversial issues for discussion.

In the IT world, Bill G. taking a further step back from M$ reminds Joel of his first interview with him back in the days when I was also learning about GOTO and using dBase to build a tool warehouse inventory system, and the hard drive was a magnetic tape.

The Scotsman is always a good place to stop by and find out what they aren’t telling us in the MSM. Harper is not so quietly trying to turn Canada from a peace making nation into one at war with the terrorist boogy man, and there is a new superhighway planned for us that doesn’t seem to get much mention right along side the little mention of all the people that have wiped off the earth in the name of freedom.

Meanwhile back on Bowen Island, we’re still wondering how many people are going to fit on the rock and there was a good attendance to hear Senator/Mayor/Coroner/Officer Larry Campbell remind the Municipal Councilors and Mayor listening, that everything was in place for affordable housing while echoing the Mayor’s comment of “fear of moving forward” being the greatest impediment.

Thankfully the water supply here is limited, and the network of well maintained trails that will literally take you everywhere under a canopy of green will be around for a while yet.