Google maps has recently added public transit routes for select cities. Instead of driving directions you can switch to directions including walking and public transit! This news is very exciting to me for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Toronto is a nightmare to try and navigate if you need anything more than a simple subway trip or single bus route. Have you ever pulled up the PDF bus routes map from the TTC website? It is a rats nest. Additionally the TTC has one of the worst transit websites that I have ever seen and I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw a trolley car to improve it. If Google is able to integrate TTC and GO Train data it would make navigation in Toronto as easy as breathing. Perhaps that is slightly exaggerated but you get the point.

Secondly, students who are looking for Off-Campus housing here in Kitchener/Waterloo would have a much easier time of learning the route they would need to take everyday instead of trusting landlords to tell them or having to figure it out from the GRT website. I would certainly be integrating walking directions into our Off-Campus housing and Sublet systems.

I wonder who I have to pester to get GRT, GO Transit and the TTC to open up their routes to Google.

Tags: Google, Life, Work

I want to watch episodes of My Name is Earl, clips from Saturday Night Live, and other programming. I’m even willing to watch the advertisements! Just because I live in Canada doesn’t mean your advertisers products aren’t available to me, we have most of the same stuff! Are you seriously forcing us to resort to other means? I guess I’ll have to torrent until you get your act together.

F*ck you NBC!

Tags: Rant, TV

Update: I’ve gone back to using Reddit a fair bit now. As a subscribed user you can filter out the political subreddit and add a bunch of other fun ones (like comics). So as a reader you must take this post with a grain of salt. In other words I would delete it but I don’t do that sort of thing.

In the last two months I have become increasingly unhappy about the hot page contents of Reddit. Since I discovered Reddit after coming over from Digg I have enjoyed the variety of stories in a host of different areas about a ton of different events all over the world. I felt like I was getting a good glimpse of relevant and interesting information. Now, however, things have changed. Continue reading…

Tags: Rant

A solitary trumpet rings out the first notes of the Last Post…

Involuntarily I rise to my feet, heart swelling with pride and thoughts quiet.

We are proud and free. O Canada we stand on guard for thee.

Lest we forget.

Tags: Life

Anybody who buys books from Chapters, Amazon, etc. knows that here in Canada the cost of a book is a fixed amount more than the US price. A quick check of the last paperback I purchased shows a disparity of 50%! That means an exchange rate of 50% from US to CDN where the actual rate is sitting around 0%. Talk about being ripped off!

All of those paperbacks were purchased from the US publishers before the US/CDN dollar parity and are currently sitting in huge warehouses or on store shelves collecting dust. I can certainly understand why book sellers are still charging the book price since their inventory lost around 30% of its market value in the last year. 30% of the billions of dollars worth of unsold books is an insane amount of money! A lot of smaller book stores would go out of business if they had to sell their books at the US listed price.

Most likely you recently bought Book 7 in the the Harry Potter series. I paid around $22 at Walmart where the actual price on the book jacket is $45. Wow, what a savings! How can they afford to give me 50% off? Oh wait. Between volume discount and the higher CDN dollar it makes perfect sense.

I really feel for the book selling industry but I am boycotting physical books until price comes back to reality. The book sellers are just going to have to take the hit. They should lower the price to sell off current inventory to provide capital to buy new books at the parity price. Of course that is assuming that the population of Canada has slowed their book buying and that US publishers have lowered their price to Canadian book sellers.

Bring on the e-books! Cory Doctorow offers all of his books as free e-book downloads.

Tags: Books, Economics, Life

So my last few posts have been ultra serious and fairly long so I thought I would take this opportunity to go the other way.

The other day I caught myself frozen on the Google home page with my hands poised on the home row and a blank expression on my face. It certainly wasn’t the first time this has happened so now I am looking to find something to blame, after all it can’t be my fault. I certainly can’t have forgotten what I was going to search for that is just crazy talk.

Let’s see here… Hmm. Ok got one.

I blame the austere whiteness of the standard Google search page! I hit the page and get lost in its snowy emptiness. Why can’t they fill it up with lots of Ads, links, tools and other stuff. The distracting page would then make me focus on the search box and I would be more productive. Alright, I admit this is BS. Firstly, I use iGoogle which has lots of boxes with RSS feeds, dictionary words and famous sayings. Secondly, my iGoogle page is pimped out with the Tea House theme. Hmm. Something else must be at fault. Ah ha!

My focus is drawn in by the most beautiful small “g” in existence. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but flanking the “g” are the most boring “o”s and the ugliest “G” and “e” I’ve ever seen. The dichotomy is the distraction. Google, please get the artist who does the holiday logos to add an artists touch to the crappy normal logo. My productivity needs a boost! (Note, I don’t even consider switching search engines).

Tags: Google, Typography

The clearing was still, only a light wind darted through the leaves and branches on its way to no where in particular. The quiet rustle rose and fell as the swirls and eddies passed. The noise seemed to resonate, drowning out any other that might try to intrude. In the moonlight the worn grass, disturbed by the same wind, moved as in a silent macabre dance. Focus is the key. The reality of the world melts away before it — focus is the key. Every branch now moves predictably as if the wind was a ghostly hand now visible going about its business.

A slash of wind cut down into the clearing and it was as if it was anticipated. Focus. The surrounding trees quieted but suddenly from the undergrowth sprang a squirrel. Across the clearing it scampered disappearing out of sight on the other side. Instantly the clearing came alive, first with the sound of the grass, second the resounding choir of crickets and grasshoppers, and finally with a deafening roar the rest of the forest ambiance. Focus was lost.

A sword hung as his side looking almost awkward but somehow at home. The hilt and sheath were made of a light bamboo and looked to be of low skilled construction. As the sword drew slowly forth the age of it was evident as it was covered with nicks and scratches from long use. The blade was well cared for, it was clear that a season had never passes without a polish. Rich swordsman of the cities would certainly jeer and call it a farmers tool but those in the country saw the truth, it is a farmers weapon.

Every night he came to this clearing, standing at the epicenter and focusing his mind. Never had he made such progress as tonight. Focus is the key.

He began the forms attempting to focus on his movements. The sword moved through the air as he worked it from position to position. The fact that he was untrained was clearly evident as the strokes did not flow like water rather like rocks in a landslide. He put in his all, using his power as he thought he must but control would not fully come. Focus seemed to help a bit but it appeared not to be the solution. Eventually he would come to understand but that is the nature of training. We train today to allow for learning tomorrow.

Tags: Fiction, Writing

The Internet abounds with information about the United States of America since the US contains the largest portion of its population. Most of the news sites that I read (primarily Reddit and Digg) talk of American politics and not much else.

Over the last year or so focus has turned to the coming election and the failures of the Bush administration. Every other story is about a new Bush policy or the Iraq war or political candidates for the next term, etc. It is very frustrating to read since as a Canadian it affects me indirectly but I have no voice. We Canadians don’t have the same mind set as sub-border-eans so it is obvious how I feel about the US currently. “Stop the War”, “Impeach Bush”, “Stop the corporate bailouts”, “Separate religion and State”, etc. These issues are all easy to pick a side and yell about. The big problem is that it doesn’t really matter since their economy is about to collapse and take many countries, including our own, down with it.

I don’t want to live through a recession as bad as the Great Depression but inevitably we are heading in that direction. Our economy is so tied to that of the US that a blip across the border ripples out and affects us quite strongly. I don’t know very much about why this is but I assume it has to do with trade and our fiscal policies. We sell a lot of wood and uranium to the US and import a lot of corn based products and manufactured goods. Our banks follow the lead of those in the US pretty closely since it is practically required of us.

2008 will be a telling year in terms of our fate. The housing bubble in the US has recently popped so the markets and the government are scrambling to figure out what to do. The issue is that people who shouldn’t have been able to buy homes were given sub-prime mortgages for huge amounts of money that their income could never support. The trick was to give them low payments for the first couple years and tell them not to worry until it goes up in the future. I can imagine most people expected the American dream to kick in for them, at least doubling their income. Of course the lenders who sell these mortgages then turn around and sell the debt to the banks with the backing being the house. Banks in turn flood the markets with securities backed by sub-prime mortgages which are bought up by other banks and investment firms. All seems well until somebody realizes that the house backing the mortgage really isn’t worth $400,000 and is only priced that high because of the housing bubble. Suddenly the developers and the current “owners” who are trying to sell are stuck with houses that will never sell for the price they are asking. Housing prices, as a result, start to come back down to reality which in some markets is about 33% of their price. What usually happens now is people start defaulting on their mortgages since they can’t sell the places or afford to pay for them. Quickly the market would come back to the correct housing value and lots of people would be out lots of money especially the sub-prime lenders and the banks who bought their debt. [The Dangerous Disconnect Between Home Prices and Fundamentals]

At the moment the Bush administration is about to enact a policy that would help people who can’t afford their house to not default on their mortgage. This is not technically a corporate bailout of the lenders but is only one step removed. If money is injected so that people can pay the lenders then the lenders will not go bankrupt and are bailed out. This very policy sent Japan into a recession that has taken around ten years to recover from. [Bush Moves to Aid Lenders] On a second front the Federal Reserve bank is injecting mountains of cash into the economy to keep it liquid so it will keep on working. With all the sub-prime mortgage debt floating around the market, banks and other investors are slowing down and being very careful which in turn shrinks the economy. [Fed Injects Reserves Into System] However, injecting money isn’t the miracle that it seems to be since essentially the government is reaching into everyones pocket collectively and taking out a portion of their cash. Injecting money makes the US dollar worth less and so each dollar in your pocket can buy less goods. This is called an invisible tax since you pay it but don’t realize it and is present in all economies the world over. [Why does fiat money seemingly work ?]

All in all it is shaping up to be scary times ahead. The US dollar has already dropped to almost par with the Canadian dollar (1USD = 0.95CDN, Sept 06, 2007). Foreign countries are dropping use of the US dollar as payment (can’t find the articles for this). China is rattling the American cage with its substantial supply of US dollars; they threaten to collapse the value of the dollar. The wars continue. Domestic terror is being perpetrated on the people by their own government (too many links to choose from).

An election is on the horizon and the only candidate that I seem to hear about is Ron Paul. He seems to have the backing of the Internet and it isn’t surprising why. Check out this video of him answering questions at Google (long). It gives me hope since he addresses the issue I talk about here at around 23 minutes in. Ron Paul would have my vote and I hope who ever actually wins will hold some of the same values and can rescue the American economy from collapse.

Tags: Economics, Life, Politics

All joking aside what good are pennies!? Very few people use them these days and I have it on good authority that only old people dig through their change purse for them. The rest of us pay with a sufficient bill and dump the resulting metal into a bin at home. I, personally, don’t even bother carrying cash anymore, Interact all the way.

Recently an advisory group suggested to the Canadian government to demonetize the penny and then shortly after the nickel. Immediately you wonder how a transaction would be completed that came to an unpayable amount. Other countries use a system called Swedish rounding which is a symmetrical system of rounding to the nearest available currency amount. It would be hard for merchants to fix the system always in their favor because the purchase of multiple items would come to an unpredictable value. I think it is a very good idea and would save the country millions of dollars in minting.

Take a look at the article yourself and let me know if you agree it is a good idea.

Save the penny or leave the penny?

Tags: Economics, Life

Futurama is coming back in 2008 on Comedy Central!!

I’m among many fans who couldn’t believe it was canceled in the first place. I just hope it doesn’t go the way of The Simpsons or the new Family Guy episodes.

Tags: TV