Gas In Saskatoon, April 29, 2011.

Almost didn't get this one in today.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 131.9 cents a litre at most locations. 

Just In Case You Forgot.

Since we've got an election going on here in Canada you may have forgotten.  So here's a reminder.  Saturday, April 30th is the deadline to file your Canadian income tax return for 2010.  Yep, less than a week away.  Kind of appropriate that the election is May 2nd, since how you vote will decide who gets to spend your contribution to government revenue.

Heat Without Light.

If you're in Saskatoon and subscribe to Shaw digital cable you can see the new Sun News Network channel on channel 177, and apparently this applies in other markets as well.  A press release indicates the channel will be free for the first six months.  I won't be watching it given the stupid BS about "political correctness run amok" in one of their ads.  Funnily they played this promo right after a Liberal Party campaign ad, but presumably they have to play campaign ads no matter who offers them.  It will be interesting to see how well this channel actually does, as Conrad Black's attempt to create a right wing national newspaper, the National Post, has never made money.

Gas In Saskatoon, April 15, 2011.

Well, it didn't take long for another price increase.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 128.9 cents a litre at most locations.

As the price of gas goes up it will be interesting to see how much longer the companies keep selling it in cents a litre.  Although cents might sound cheaper than dollars 1.28 sounds cheaper than 128.9.  Not to mention that selling gas at a dollar twenty eight a litre will make it sound cheaper when compared to US prices in the four and five buck a gallon range.

A Whimper.

Manny Ramirez announced his retirement today after it was reported he had run afoul of Major League Baseball's drug policy again.  He apparently faced a 100 game suspension and decided to pack it in.  Pretty disappointing way for a career like his to end.  The Tampa Bay Rays will have a hole to fill, but better for it to happen a week into the season than for the saga to go on for weeks.

Gas In Saskatoon, April 8, 2011.

Once again it's time for the longest running feature on this blog.  Gas in Saskatoon is currently 123.9 cents a litre at most locations.  Barring other changes in the economy it will be interesting to see if the price increases towards the end of the month, when the Easter holiday rolls around and a bunch of people will be travelling.

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.