On October 4, 1957, the first manmade satellite Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union. According to Trekkie lore, the USS Enterprise D of Star Trek: The Next Generation was launched on October 4th, 2363.
Today, October 4, 2004, another space milestone is achieved: SpaceShipOne completes its second voyage into space, winning the Ansari X Prize.
If you had to drive around hundreds of people a day, all with vary degrees of hygiene and politeness, you would be grouchy too.
Nevertheless, there are, in fact, nice public transit workers. Here’s a few bon mots I’ve heard TTC drivers say and who put a smile on my face:
* “I hate to sound like your nanny, but please look both ways before exiting the car. Cars today will just smash right into you. If you do plan to kill yourself today, please give me your money first.”
* “Attention: to your right we are passing a one horsepower vehicle.”
* “Next stop Niagara [Avenue], hang on to your raincoats.”
* “If you’ll be so kind, please move to the back. We are serving cocktails in the rear of the streetcar. [pause] And it’s on me.”
Andrew Grieg, employee at the open source consultancy Starnix in Toronto, has made the World of IP a reality for himself and his neighbours. He offers TV, telephone and Internet services to himself and his neighbourhood; his neighbours do not pay phone bills or digital cable bills.
His setup, which he calls a “wireless sweetspot”, includes:
*Access*: 802.11a Wi-Fi access points with inline amplifiers and boosted antennae
*VoIP*
* Host: open source “Asterisk IP PBX”:http://www.asterisk.org/ running on Linux
* Clients: Tri-mode VoIP softphone running on Linux PDA
* Network: Vonage.ca
*Video over IP*
* Host: open source “MythTV PVR”:http://www.mythtv.org/ running on Linux with MPEG-4 recording and playback
* Clients: WiFi enabled PDAs and PCs
* Network: Wholesale C-band satellite dish
The moral of the story? Obviously the voice, video and even Internet carriers are in for a tough ride. However, “whole new business models will appear to take advantage of the fact that all types of communications and all types of content will be able to reach all parts of the market with almost no friction.”
This article in the Toronto Star made me sad – in 90 days all Toronto restaurants cannot serve raw fish. It must come frozen.
As you all know, sushi, sashimi and Scandinavian cuisine often demands completely fresh, raw fish. Sushi chefs are saying freezing the fish will ruin their taste and turn their textures from buttery and firm to chewy and mushy.
Personally, I think that if raw fish is shipped and handled quickly and cleanly, there should be zero problems. One chef suspects that most food poisoning comes from bad hygiene by the cooks, not because of the general state of the goods.
First they came for the sunny-side eggs. Now it’s our sushi. What’s next, a law requiring bars to boil all their beer?
Update: My fellow members of the bourgeoisie have succeeded in getting health officials to reconsider, with some mulling a fish grading system, like what they have for meat. Let them eat maki!
“I remember saying things like, ‘Well, wait a minute. I just got out of the trash compactor. How come my hair’s all perfect?’ And Harrison (Ford) would go, ‘Hey kid … it ain’t that kind of movie.’ “
– Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, telling fans how he realized that scrutinizing Star Wars would be a futile gesture.
Engadget reports on the new Samsung Experience electronics boutique that just opened in New York City. The peculiar thing is, you can’t buy anything on display there. They figure that any true hardware enthusiast would browse the store and head back home and buy the product online anyway.
They are even showcasing items that aren’t even available in North America, such as the miniscule MP3 players and cellphones with TV tuners that are commonplace in Korea and Japan.
The purpose of the “store” is to whet your appetite, to sell the Samsung brand. They want to show they’re as badass as Sony.
Silverlotus has been trying to offload a bunch of doodads and gear we have lying around on eBay recently, so I’ve begun to understand the thrill of wheeling and dealing there.. I still don’t understand why people snipe; there isn’t any real reason to since it’s a proxy bid system.
Weird Al Yankovic, in his hilarious song “eBay“, describes its thrift culture phenomenon perfectly as a “worldwide garage sale”. The song is sung to the melody of “I Want It That Way” by the thankfully defunct Backstreet Boys. Speaking of which, I got that single somewhere. Any bidders? 😉
I always get a kick out of seeing shots of Toronto in popular media. From Short Circuit 2 to Good Will Hunting, films have used Toronto as a kind of body double for grander places. For example, the historical landmark of Casa Loma sat in as the X-Men‘s school for mutants.
My latest sighting is from the recent Toyota Matrix movie trailer (Quicktime movie is here).
In the beginning the cars race under the Gardiner Expressway and then head north through the Bay St. underpass toward Union Station. The “anime” is being shown on multimedia billboards at Yonge and Dundas, across from the Eaton Centre. Another shot shows one of the spinning neon records from the “Sam the Record Man” on Yonge Street. At the very end you see the BCE Place in the skyline.
It’s very surreal because the streets are deserted and all the store signage has been edited out, but it’s TO alright.
Only months before, moviegoers saw Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Apocalypse run down the Toronto City Hall before it was blown up with (computer generated) bombs. The movie poster also features the uniquely steepled roof of the BCE Place tower on the righthand side.
I’m not sure if it’s that comforting flash of recognition, or pride that my hometown is being seen to millions of people and they won’t even realize it. Or the silent satisfaction of being able to see through the disguise of an American city, a disguise spawned from the curious Hollywood belief that Americans won’t go watch anything that indicates there is civilized life outside the USA.
I’m surprised John Battelle hasn’t mentioned Google’s latest endeavour, Google Local geographically-based search. It’s in beta and not perfected enough to pry me away from specialized info sites like Toronto.com, but I did search for “dog bakeries” in “toronto” and found a Three Dog Bakery in town I didn’t know existed.
AskTog has possibly found the Worst Interface Ever. It’s a particular aftermarket pump you turn on that circulates fluid through the transmission of a Lexus SUV so that the gears stay lubricated if you are moving the car while the engine is off, i.e., while it is being towed. This is because if the transmission doesn’t stay wet, it can be destroyed.
Inversely, the pump must be turned off before the Lexus is to be driven, or the fluid won’t get to the the operating transmission and the transmission will go bye-bye.
So here’s the kicker – the only thing between you, a dead tranny and a $5,000 repair bill is a small switch that turns the pump on and off.
This Switch of Good and Evil, Life or Death, is hidden under the hood of the car. The switch can only be professionally installed and therefore can be in any location on the engine or in any orientation.
Ooo, but it gets even better: the switch is not labelled. You can’t tell whether it is ON or OFF just by looking at it.
AskTog has mitigated the problem by labelling the switch himself and running rigorous pre-tow and post-tow checklists, something that any normal person would naturally do if he were… say, a frickin’ astronaut flying to the frickin’ moon.
The moral of the story is as follows: “Never, ever, ever let systems-level engineers do human interaction design unless they have displayed a proven secondary talent in that area.”