Sorry, Jack.

I found your message on the answering machine this afternoon, but I'm afraid I can't come to Saturday monrning's NDP rally.  I like to sleep in on Saturdays, and I might not even be awake yet.  Good luck with the rally, as we certainly don't need Conservatiuve MPs being re-elected in Saskatchewan.

Sorry, Sportsnet.

You're up to your old tricks again, namely playing only some of the Toronto Blue Jays games on all Sportsnet feeds.  But I'm afraid it's not going to get me to subscribe to additional feeds or the Sportsnet One channel.  I'm sure it won't work on most other Jays fans either.

Disunite The Right?

This being April Fool's Day my thoughts drifted this morning to my former MP, Jim Pankiw.  He had said last year he'd run in the next election, and a March 26th Star Phoenix story indicates he's running here in Saskatoon-Humbolt.  Could he actually serve a useful purpose and pull votes from Brad Trost, and increase Trost's chances of losing?  One can only hope.  That's the only thing he actually can do in this election, drain off the idiot vote.  Trost isn't much better than Pankiw is.

It's The "In" Thing, Stephen.

What's wrong with our PM?  He keeps trying to convince people the other parties will form a coalition if he doesn't get a majority, and that this is bad, so they should vote for him.  Funny how his counterparts in the British Conservative Party don't seem to think coalitions are a bad thing.  They're even running around chopping things left and right like Harper would if he could get away with it.  Maybe he should reconsider the idea and think about forming one himself again if things don't go the way he wants.

Maybe You'll See Paul.

How's this for an interesting webcam?  It provides live coverage of the famous Abbey Road street crossing.  Pretty good quality and a smooth feed.  Of course it should be noted that Saskatoon is 6 hours behind UTC, so it's nighttime in London as I post this.

Pay The Girl.

I'm not going to post Rebecca Black's surprise pop hit "Friday."  It's been seen enough already.  All I'll say is that I hope Ark Music, the company behind the song, will pay her for its success.  At minimum they should pay back her family for the money they shelled out for its creation, no matter what the contract they signed says.  Black apparently had no involvement in writing the song, but she at least deserves a chunk of the mechanical royalties(royalties paid out for the sales of the actual recording) being the artist.

Somehow before all this is done I suspect we'll be hearing about a lawsuit involving at least some of the parties.

Not The Final Bow.

Although she had long been in poor health the announcement that Elizabeth Taylor has died still came as a surprise.  The tabloids had featured variations on "her brave last days" headlines so often over the years it seemed she would dodge death into her nineties, but it was not to be.  However this won't be the last we'll see of her in the celeb press.  Given a suitable mourning period(say a couple of weeks) the tabs will move on to the kind of stories they run post death about people like Taylor, such as lurid details of her life they held back out of fear of lawsuit or the fights amongst her heirs over her estate, whoever they may be.

Althnough in the later years of her life she was best known simply for her celebrity it is worth remembering that she came to fame as an actress, her career including 2 Oscars for Best Actress.  Compare this with someone like Kim Kardashian, whose primary claim to fame seems to be that she can dress herself.  I doubt we'll be talking about her or her contemporaries when they're in their seventies.

The Big Five.

Twitter turns five today.  It can now go to kindergarten in the Fall.

The obvious question is where Twitter will be in five years.  A lot of internet big names have risen and fallen.  A few years ago Myspace would have seemed like the place to invest in, but now the site is stagnant.  AOL seemed to be everywhere at one point, but now has a much smaller public footprint.  Remember Altavista?  Even if you do you likely haven't used it in years.  Being on Twitter may seem tired in a few years, replaced by some other concept.

On CBC Saskatchewan's The Morning Edition this morning host Sheila Coles commented on the banality of many Twitter messages, like people sayng they're eating breakfast.  Given that Twitter is an online equivalent of cell phone text messaging this is no surprise.  Lots of text messages are equally trivial.

This post is longer than 140 characters.  Hopefully it won't strain anyone's attention span.

Hey CFQC!

Tell your newscasters to stop pronouncing Iraq as "eye rack."  That is not how that country name is pronounced.  Doing so makes them sound like uneducated hicks, and I suspect a lot of uneducated hicks know better.

Defensive Action.

Talk continues that the lowly penny may soon be discontinued in Canada.  But today I did my part to keep it around.  I decided this morning I wanted a drink, but I was a little short on change.  Not wanting to be totally changeless I grabbed a couple of rolls of pennies I had planned to deposit in the bank eventually and set off for the local Safeway.  The one closest to me has a self checkout lane that accepts cash, so I knew I could use a bunch of pennies.  So I grabbed my pop and spent a couple of minutes shovelling a buck and a bit of pennies into the kiosk.  No doubt the guy who was overseeing the self checkout lane must have thought I was crazy, but the machines accept pennies so it was a legit way to pay.  Of course all this was done with the knowledge on my part that there aren't many customers there at 9:30 AM, so I wasn't likely to slow things up.  Doing quixotic things like this should be done in a way that won't cause problems for others. 

Google Disturbs.

I'm sitting here reading a discussion about how rape is presented in fanfiction.  It reminded me of a piece of Ranma 1/2 fanfiction where a drugged Ranma is raped by Kuno.  The title escapes me, so I typed "ranma kuno rape" into Google in an effort to find it.  After I hit enter it came back with "Did you mean: ranma akane rape."  It's a disturbing enough topic to be searching for as it is, and Google comes back with that, which would seem to indicate that's a far more common combination of words.  Thanks for upping the discomfort factor.

Woo Warning.

A post by Les over at Stupid Evil Bastard hipped me to this, a handy comic list of telltale words that indicate (in the proper context of course) you're dealing with a woo monger.  These will be familiar to anyone who pays attention to woo, but they're a good reminder of what to watch out for.

Would You Eat That?

It's amazing the weird stuff people will eat.  I've become a regular viewer of the show Chopped on the Food Network.  The premise is that 4 chefs compete to impress a panel of judges with dishes made from surprise ingredients.  In the basket for last night's opening appetizer course?  Goat brains!  Why would anyone want to eat goat brains?  Disgusting.  Of course that's not as weird as some foods and beverages you can find, like the pricey coffee that's made of beans collected after passing through a civet.  At least goat brain is just an unappealing chunk of flesh, versus coffee beans that have been pooped out of an Indonesian equivalent of a raccoon.

I hope this doesn't put you off your feed, as the saying goes.

Designs.

There are many considerations when selling a product.  One of the important ones is the design of the packaging.



In recent years soft drinks have been offered in Canada in cans like those above.  These squat little things contain 237 millilitres of product each.



When I went to buy some groceries yesterday I decided to buy some Coke Zero.  When I came to the pop isle I found that the small can format had changed to the one above, as it has for other Coke brand products.  It's taller than the previous format, which was the same 237 millilitre package as the Pepsi cans above.  But if you look at the picture carefully you'll see that the can actually contains less than the old version. It contains 222 millilitres of beverage, 15 less than the squatter format.

I doubt the new format was intended solely to reduce the amount of product.  Given that part of the reason for this size of pop is to appeal to those on diets it wouldn't surprise me if they hope to encourage purchases by making people subconciously associate drinking that size with getting slimmer.  They might also be hoping to attract customers who like energy drinks like Red Bull, which come in similar slim cans.  But whatever the other reasons they've also apparently decided to use the change to increase their profit margin.  I have no idea how much 15 millilitres of Coke Zero or any other soft drink costs to make.  But if you make a tenth of a cent or whatever per can versus the 237 ml size while selling it at the same price it will quickly add up.

Gas In Saskatoon, February 25, 2011.

If you thought the goings on in the Middle East wouldn't effect you directly you've probably changed your mind by now.  As a result of rising oil prices gas in Saskatoon is now 119.9 cents a litre at most locations.  Frankly I'm surprised the previous Saskatoon price, set on January 7th, lasted as long as it did.  The jump this week was 8 cents, and I won't be surprised if it goes up further in fairly short order.

CD Minus.

There has been much talk in recent years about the future of the recorded music business.  Downloads, both legal and illegal, have made a big dent in the sales of CDs.  Not only has it effected the record companies, as I still old-fashionedly tend to call them, but it's also hurt stores that sell CDs.  It would seem the decline has claimed another casuality.  While out and about today I found the CD Plus store in Confederation Mall had closed.  The fact the sign on the door announcing the closure didn't mention the other outlets in town made me suspect they were all going.  Sure enough the Midtown Plaza outlet is gone, and the sole remaning Saskatoon outlet, at the Centre at Circle and 8th, continues to have all merchandise at 30 percent off.  A quick search  online revealed that the chain's retail outlets across Canada seem to all be closing.  The company will continue online for the foreseeable future, but the obvious question is whether they can compete against Amazon.ca for the online shopping market.

So, what's left for buying CDs in Saskatoon?  The HMV chain still has two stores in Saskatoon, one in Midtown Plaza, the other at the Mall at Lawson Heights.  Walmart, Futureshop, and Best Buy carry CDs, but obviously don't have the variety more specialised retailers do.  The two London Drugs stores in Saskatoon carry CDs, and I've bought quite a bit of Blue Note stuff from them over the last couple of years.  Then there's the independently run Vinyl Exchange, Vinyl Diner, and Tramps.  I would imagine all these outlets will be glad to see a competitor gone as they jockey for shares of the remaining market.  Ironically the independents might hold up better than one thinks, as they all offer music on vinyl and deal in used recordings. 

The way things are going maybe it's time to stock up on CD players....

Not Really News.

The title of this post could apply to much of what comes out of the US tabloids, but today we're specifically looking at the latest issue of the National Examiner.  Amongst the headlines is one about how Pat Robertson is supposedly losing his mind.  I hate to break it to them, but lots of people have thought ole Pat was a loon a long time ago.  He likely doesn't have much mind to lose in the first place.  

I've Been Troped!

Looking at my blog hits I noticed that one of them came from a TV Tropes page.  I took a look, and much to my surprise found a part of my post on the final episode of 6teen quoted on that page.  Funny to find myself in the company of Ursala K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, and Bugs Bunny.

Top Ten.

Does your child have a popular name?  According to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix the ten most popular baby boy's names in 2010 in Saskatchewan, in order, where Liam, Ethan, Jacob, Carter, Noah, Alexander. Logan, Owen, Lucas, and Hayden.  For girls they were Emma, Ava, Olivia, Sophia, Brooklyn, Ella, Sophie, Abigail, Chloe, and Avery.  It would be interesting to know what drives name popularity.  For example you might think that Jacob is popular due to the character from the popular Twilight book and movie series, yet Edward and Bella, also characters in the series, aren't in the top ten.  We also see evidence of a continuing trend, the femalisation of male names, with Avery being one of the top ten names for girls, although traditionally it has been a male name.   It would also be interesting to know how many kids are being given these names but with altered spellings, as in past years discussion of baby name trends has indicated many people give their children names without checking out how they're actually spelled, or alter the spelling to make it more "special."(If you're thinking about the latter, don't.  Your child is special because of who they'll be, not because of their name.)

Today's Cassette, February 12, 2011.

It's been a while, hasn't it?  Today's cassette is Bill Frisell's, or if you want to be technically correct the Bill Frisell Band's, 1988 release Lookout For Hope.  This was his 3rd album under his own name for ECM, and his last before moving on to Elektra Nonesuch.  It features what was his working quartet at the time, which included Joey Barron on drums, Kermit Driscoll on bass, and Hank Roberts on cello.  Having a cellist reflects a love of unusual for jazz instrumentation that Frisell seems to have had from the start.  His previous album, Rambler, featured Bob Stewart on tuba, and in more recent years he has worked with musicians like steel guitarist Greg Leisz.