Support blog post – hard drives and privacy

Posted on | June 21, 2011 | Comments Off

Just put up a new post at the Support Blog – Hard drives, privacy and what you can do with them. Looking at the problems of disposing of your old hard drive or USB drive but still protect yourself.

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More Pen and ink birds

Posted on | June 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

I’ve been playing with different nibs with my pen and ink birds. I’ve been switching between large nibs and ultra fine ones to get a nice shadowing and feathering effect. Today, I redid a little pencil sketch of a Beswick Wren I drew about 2 years ago. I used a couple of nibs, primarily a Hunt 22 and 66 for all the layered light feathers, and for the heavier shaded areas I used an interesting calligraphy nib. Unfortunately the writing is in Japanese so I haven’t a clue what the type is.

I used the same ink – Winsor & Newton Peat Brown ink. Love the colour. I did the same thing as last, scanned a light copy of a drawing I’d done previously and printed it on good paper.

Here’s the wren:

From Catpaw's Art work – birds

The ink blotted a bit around the wing where some of the ink blotted. I need to talk to someone who uses pen and nibs to draw with to get a few recommendations on nibs. I got a little enthusiastic with the markings on his head because I was enjoying using the ink so much. The stripes should be a lot lighter in spots, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The tail feathers came out beautifully.

Anyway, if things go right this week, I’ll start drawing some new pictures. And yes, all little song birds.

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Anarchists and Pinkos? Who are we trying to kid?

Posted on | June 18, 2011 | Comments Off

There has been much breast beating and blame laying in the aftermath of the Vancouver riots this week. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Roberston and the Vancouver police laid the blame on anarchists – a catch-all Canadian chimera, and of course the ubiquitous criminal element.

“There had been absolutely no signs of this coming,” … “Both during the G-20 [leaders’ summit in Toronto] and the 2010 Olympics these thugs were well known to be organizing and preparing to take action and criminal activities on the streets. There were no indications of that leading into last night,” he said.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com

I call bullshit on this. Just how many criminals and anarchists live in Vancouver? Or were they bused in for this special occassion?  Blaming the rioting on “left wing pinkos” (thank you Don Cherry for revisiting the Red Menace once again) or any variation there-off is a fools gambit. This was group dynamics in action. Anyone who has watched a large group of people morph into a rampaging mob can testify, this type of activity turns on a dime. Mobs “flash” and turn violent in seconds. A pack mentality takes hold and basic rules of society are thrown out the window. I watched this happen back in the 80s when Hamilton played in the Grey Cup. I lived downtown and watched as hordes of people turned from a jovial group to a booze fuelled nightmare.

Any sane person in this country could see potential problems on the horizon. In fact, people were discussing this very issue prior to the game (For example http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25980885-Win-or-lose-will-there-be-a-riot-after-the-final-game-They). By calling the rioters anarchists, the Mayor has evoked images of a political agenda. This may have been anarchy, but this was nothing more than alcohol fuelled mob in action. They were every day run of the mill people swept up in mob dynamics.

How many riots have occurred after sports games in the past? I can rattle off 15 since the 1980’s. A quick whack at google dug up an article outlining the worst ones: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=neumann-110617_vancouver_canucks_riot&sportCat=nhl  Papers have been written on this phenomena. This begs the question: does Mayor Robertson live in a cave? Using the G-20 fiasco as an example by the way, simply discredits his entire point of view – he needs to watch the Fifth Estate documentary “You should have stayed home” to get an inkling of how truly out of control the police were in this city. The two were not the same, by any stretch of the imagination.  Law abiding citizens are allowed to protest – the police are not allowed to beat on those citizens. While I’m on this tangent, why didn’t the police stop the “anarchist element” during the G-20 if it was “well-known” they were preparing to cause havock? Why did they want all that fancy crowd control equipment, if not to protect the city. No, the burning and vandalism was used as a pretext to halt any LEGAL protests. A mob fuelled on testosterone and booze is not the same as citizens exercising their right to protest. The police made no effort to halt the vandalism here in Toronto, indeed, they stood back and watched it happen, but eagerly detained, beat and threw into holding pens peaceful protesters. There were enough police in this city during the G-20 to halt any violence. They were wall to wall in some areas, but they took no action against the true perpetrators. They stood by as Toronto was held hostage by both the G-20 farce and those committing violence. “To Serve and Protect” who?

But back to the topic at hand – 100,000 people poured into the downtown area to watch the game, yet Robertson thinks “there were no signs” of potential trouble. So either Vancouver is home to 100,000 criminals and anarchists, or Mr. Robertson needs to get his head out of the proverbial sand. He’s advocating new methods of “intelligence gathering” to prevent such events. No… the government needs to acknowledge large crowds can become violent, very, very quickly. This has happened before and will happen again. Entire studies are done on controlling potentially volatile crowds – and on sports fans in particular. Instead of funding more “intelligence gathering” how about turning to the experts on how to defuse the situations. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you can’t gather intelligence in a situation like this. Groups like this are also opportunistic, as witnessed in Hamilton over 2 decades ago. The crowd broke into a construction site and used whatever they found – bricks, 2x4s, whatever they could loot. When no weapons could be found, the crowds used sheer mass of bodies to achieve their aim. I sat on a bus that was surrounded by a crowd of young men who shook the bus back and forth trying to turn it over. Booze addles brains. Mobs create packs. And all the intelligence gathering in the world is useless when you only look for anarchists.

Further reading: National Geographic article on why sports fans riot. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0620_050620_sportsriots.html)

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Now here’s an airplane I’d love to see

Posted on | June 9, 2011 | Comments Off

I was flipping through one of my old flight magazines from early 1918 the other day and spotted this: Patent filed 1917, multiplane type aeroplane:

This lovely 5 wing behemoth never saw the light of day. It’s a hybrid tractor/pusher type plane also called a push/pull machine. Tractor means propeller on the front of the plane pulling the plane forward, while a pusher is on the back pushing the plane forward. In the patent, the designer has 4 propellers and engines on the front, but also has 3 more on the back of the plane. The truly fascinating thing about this aircraft is the fact it was designed to land on water.

The monster would have rattled apart any pilot brave enough to climb into it. Can’t imagine trying to land it on water, but it would have been one hell of a show as is splashed down.

The designer of the unlikely water plane, Isaac Covino, went on to refine his design. In his Oct. 2 1929 patent he shows a more practical design, but still with a hint of the unorthodox. Can you spot what the unusual part of the design is?

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New support blog post

Posted on | June 7, 2011 | Comments Off

I’ve just updated the story on phony tech support calls I wrote last week. Check out my tech support blog for details on the scam.

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Promotion of illiteracy courtesy of the simplified spelling folk

Posted on | June 3, 2011 | 2 Comments

This article was first published as Simplified Spelling is Not So Simple on Technorati.

Every once in awhile, I stumble across an article by the Simplified Spelling people. The society believes phonetic spelling should rule the day and traditional spelling has created a legion of illiterates. A couple of problems arise with this – first and foremost, they don’t examine the underlying causes of illiteracy. Poverty and lack of adequate resources are the first areas that should be looked, along with how students are taught.

The second problem is a more practical one. Their policies would create an illiterate society. This snippet comes from one of their pamphlets:

“Dhe aer ov reverens, aulmoest amounting to sanktity, widh which meny invest our speling iz an evident obstakl in dhe paath ov reform.”

When I saw it, I wondered what language is it? Then it dawned on me, it was phonetically spelled out and as such, is unreadable to anyone who doesn’t share that particular regional accent. To be honest, I made it to the second sentence and then gave up. It took too much effort to decode.

Simplified spelling becomes shaky when you look at the mess in the above paragraph. Think of the complications it would bring to the world. Phonetic spelling doesn’t take into account regional accents and pronunciation oddities. The cost of working internationally would increase, as would accidents. There is a reason for standardized spelling – to cut down on miscommunication. Regardless of where you live, you can read this blog. We can read the words because of general rules that breaks down barriers.

This also has repercussions for the blogging world – I don’t relish the idea of having to hire a translator to read someone’s blog. It takes longer to read a phonetic paragraph than a standardized one because your brain doesn’t have to decipher the individual words.

Take this for example:

“Ar we riting the old spellings – & being considderd stupid wen we don’t – to liv up to an ideal of sum kind?”

It’s much more straightforward than the previous example, but how many stumbled because you spent too much time trying to figure out what words meant. Think of an entire blog like this? Or worse, a manual on how to safely use a new piece of equipment. Most of us wouldn’t even bother trying. I can’t even imagine reading a text book or novel written with simplified spelling. It would be a nightmare.

Instead of complaining about spelling conventions, the Standardized Spelling Society should use their energy exploring ways to help people who have difficulties learning, not make it impossible for all of us to communicate.

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