So, as I said, Isaac found the ruling and here are my notes:  •  The nature of the ruling is based on the form of the question before the Federal Court of Canada. The Canadian record industry sought an order under the Federal Rules of Court for the disclosure of 29 internet users they claim 29 IP …

Steve at AOV gave me the heads up to news of the ruling on file sharing in Canada's Federal Court today. Other than the grooviest name for a judge, Konrad von Finckenstein, the basis for the ruling is not available to me as I cannot find a copy of the ruling on either the Federal Court site or …

I found this funny:  •  “Bayer CropScience spokesman Dr Julian Little told BBC News Online that the government's decision giving a tentative go-ahead to GM commercialisation was "symbolic" and made "in the face of a lot of hostility". But he added the decision had put several new regulatory …

Smokes, money and guitars. This block between Clarence and Brock on Wellington holds a Cuban cigar shop, a currency exchange and, on the corner, the Kingston Guitar Shop which is a wonder to behold and the present home of my future axe to practice my Dick Dale licks on. Or perhaps a 3/4 double …

The BBC News website has an article on a nuclear aftermath / civil defence exhibit at the UK National Archives. Often at the end of these articles, there is an opportunity to post comment and one reminded me of being a nuclear fear kid:  •  “I lived most of my childhood in genuine fear of a …

Just to confirm and solely thanks to Adam's hard work over the weekend, the semi-perma-link to your upper right will now take you to the custom site he has prepared for the official Gen X at 40 unauthorized NHL hockey playoffs pool. Once the teams are set for the playoffs in a week and a bit, the …

Sad news for any radio fans with the passing of Alistair Cooke at 95 - just a month after announcing his retirement. Every week since 1946 he gave a 15 minutes essay on life and politics in the USA on BBC radio called Letter from America. He was also the host of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre for years …

I went hunting for the back of the Royal this lunchtime and came across this alley between Brock and Princess near Clergy. I don't know if it always open as there are gates on both ends but today they were wide open. The last shot is taken back into the alley from Princess.  •  Later: I think the …

The following updates to recent posts are available for your viewing pleasure:  •  From 18 March 2004, that smokestack or chimney is now contextualized in its alley. I am sure it is a holdover from some sort of earlier build.  •  From 25 March 2004, the carriage way arch at the Royal Tavern is …

It is funny how medical science moving to internalize and make a syndrome of more and more things in life:  •  “Researchers at NEC-Mitsubishi say the nation's office workers are being hit by "Irritable Desk Syndrome". They say long working hours, cluttered desks and poor posture are making many …

The greening up of things is starting, long before the leaves pop out, but just about the same time the last of the ice melts on the lake. Here is a short movie of the shoreline lolly from the foot of the hospital lawns[2.5 MB].

Walked over to the grounds of the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital this afternoon. Still operating in a 1960's facility up by King Street, the original Victoria facility - built in 1859 to 1870 and called the Rockwood Lunatic Asylum - is still there a few hundred yards nearer Lake Ontario. Some early …

Ice in Portsmouth Harbour starts to crack as the temperatures move into double digits this week.

My days of bar hopping are long past. The five and a half years of rural life which wrapped up a year ago did its best to kill the habit geographically as did the advent of kids. There are, however, things that are habits and things that are personality traits and I think that the architecture of …

Odd things noted:  •  More of you good readers looked at the movie of my feet leaving the Sarah Harmer concert than looked at the clips of the concert itself.  •  Sometimes I wake up and not sure whether I posted rude comments on the blogs of others the evening before or whether I dreamed I did …

The student interns here at Gen X 40 HQ are always looking for new ideas...so here is Fake is the New Real's new model USA. I like it because I think Watertown NY is now part of Maine which makes this Shipyard country.  •  Fake explains here.

We went see Sarah Harmer again. She has a new CD out and is early in the tour, playing two nights in Kingston. It was very good but the gods at the Grand are not built for the six foot four among us.  •  Kids at the folks. Sushi at Asha for dins. Nice night. Too tired to post so I'll do it …

The following passage is from today's The New York Times article  •  (perhaps needing password) summing up the  •  9/11 commission hearings of the last few days:  •  “Whatever the missteps of the government in the  •  months and years before the attacks, there was always a lonely chorus of …

Across from this view on Brock is this one - a men's shop in an asymmetrical high contrast 1885 brick building. I don't buy clothes at men's shops. They exude things I can't pull off - style, tailoring, funny swirly design sweaters for $165.00. I also have 37 inch arms that none of these shops can …

Here is another good secret places sort of blog, zine, personal web page: Infiltration from the city Canada loves to hate, Toronto. From the ethical statement:  •  “...I don't think there is anything wrong with urban exploration, at least not the type described here and on 95 percent of the other …

Just another reminder that, through the good graces of Adam, we are should have the hockey pool which I have run for the now eight years (first via email, then through Fritz's excel sheet wizardry and last year through friend Adam's site) available for logging into here. With all six Canadian …

Having little to really talk about lately, maybe you would like to check out some new sites I am enjoying:  •  Fake is the New Real can tell you where the Clarksvilles are, let you know when national holidays fall, shares low-resolution .jpg art,  •  Forgotten New York shares vestages of big city …

Does this uuuuugly site look like a bad  •  1977 Frampton guitar solo to you? Maybe it will be fixed by the time you see it.  •  It is strobing.  •  I love Flash so much. Not because of the same reasons Peter does - I don't care if  •  something doesn't get google indexed as by far the biggest …

I find this story as reported in today's Toronto Star interesting:  •  “In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Clark told CBS'  •  Lesley Stahl, "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other  •  people, shut the door, and said, `I want you to find whether Iraq did this.'  •  "Now he never …

Some very interesting observations about the web at the BBC's Bill Blog:  •  “The big difference between yesterday's debacle and that spring day in 1994 is that when we turned up at the ICA to plug in our equipment little really depended on it. We are increasingly dependent on computer networks …

The Luther Wright and the Wrongs set up before the show  •  So I went to the Luther Wright and the Wrongs on Friday at the Grad House. McAuslan's St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout on tap all evening. Dandy.  •  I guess you would call the band "alt country". Alt is a funny word as it it meant to mean" …

This movie was really just for Jon and Wally - a VIA intercity train leaving Kingston Station. A real hog of a file at 12.5 Mbs.  •  Then I realized I had hit upon something. I found the sponsorship money! At 50 million a "Canada" sign or Canadian flag - surely that is market value - it's all …

I suspect this is something of a classic street corner for Queens University students. This intersection sits in the heart of the campus and we passed it at 1:23 am last night after watching Luther Wright and the Wrongs at the Grad House with Nate and friends. I may post a review later. I need …

I swear it is the first thing I thought of when I saw the van - some faceless bureaucrat approving an application and issuing a cheque. I am sure there is an ACOA grant behind this somewhere. Perhaps even NRC funding.

I walked past this chimney the other day behind the Grand Theatre on Brock. It is odd because it is brick and fairly ornate but attached to a building which is neither. The little metal roof thingies to the side appear entirely non-functional.  •  I have had the occassion to look at a title search …

So it looks like the army of Pakistan has Al Qaeda on the run - and maybe Mr. #2 has been cornered. What took so long? I don't mean this as a snarky bastard but really...what took so long? About 200 billion dollars has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as untold more on security upgrades …

The father of my Owen Sound connection was a chaplain in the First World War, Rev. William James Whillans of Winnipeg. This evening, hunting through photos, I came across a post card sent from the front as well as a few others. He is the jaunty gent in the lower right of the first photo.  •  This …

My folks are from the Clyde in the west of Scotland and we figure this painting at Owen Sound is a view from a beach across the Clyde to Arran.  •  I don't know the artist's name but suspect it is a scene from the 30s when my parents would have the ages of these kids. I recall being dragged when I …

I have admitted that I watch TV. TV is good. If it were not for TV, as Sean Cullen has said, we would all be sitting around with the radio on shouting "WHERE ARE THOSE VOICES COMING FROM!!!"  •  Anyway, last night was not a night of trash TV - which I reserve for Monday nights. I actually learned …

This guy John keeps  •  stats on his beer consumption. His monthly consumption  •  chart is impressive. I recall my buddy Jon in undergrad calculating his  •  university years' consumption in terms of the imaginary filling the volume of  •  his room in the dorm. If we understand a six-pack to be …

Despite the hype the world wide web is a pretty crappy place for primary sources. Internet based private space may hold masses of libraries worth of material but the promise of a free and open digital library a click away is a very long click away. It is, then, small chirpy of noises of glee I …

Somewhere in those ducks there was a small pack of common mergansers. What's a gaggle of mergansers called? They used to be called sheldrakes. I guess they got all uppity for some reason. They still seem to hang out with mallards so I guess that's all in the past.

If you click here you will see and hear a most undynamic 6 Mb talkie movie of a red-wing blackbird I saw this afternoon next to the car park at work which is usually a sign of late April rather than mid-March.  [Expect some delay in downloading].  •  It is, however, the call that tells you winter …

I have been wondering what I am doing with all this writing and posting  •  photos and stuff. What I like about it is that I have, now in my 651st report  •  from me, taken on the habit of observing that I dropped when I dropped my  •  photography bug back in the mid-90's. If the Buddhists have …

<img src="local/genx40/images/2004/BBQ.JPG" align=left hspace="20" vspace="0" alt="....must grill...must...grill..."  •  On Saturday afternoon, the four year old cousin had her birthday. Lots of family photos. Many Canadian men begging for grilled meats causing much shovelling of snow from around …

Hannah Richmond, born Feb. 18 1837 (detail of left)  •  It is not good to make jokes about your mother-in-law. How much worse to make fun of your great-great-great-grandmother-in-law.  •  I think this is Hannah Richmond, great-grandmother of my wife's grandfather, who stiched this family register …

Houses hiding from the 407 north of the Big Smoke  •  The road. Kingston to Kitchener to Owen Sound to Kingston.  •  On the way home, we went into Belleville and went to a Ponderosa Steak House. Unbelievably, it was found to be exactly the same as the last one I went into in 1983 in Truro. Home of …

The Funky Monkey, empty space and Treasure Cove Antiques, Brock, half a block NW of King  •  A day off. I took a day off with the intention of going to the Toronto Zoo enroute to Owen Sound and great-granny's but we are having one of those days where a cold front passes through southern Ontario …

My new pal Lisa Williams is a double Dave3 link today. That is not the same as a double-double (Canadians only joke) but recognition of an interest in like Tims but, unlike Dave3, there is substantice in what she writes - no bald reputation. Dave3 is an afficianado - a prosletiser more than …

So I see these things and all I can think of is, in 2030, recreational versions on people at malls. Apparently, they are only for experimental use by infantrymen now. Very Inspector Gadget.

So if these five get immediately released after being returned to - and because they are from - the only major power involved in the Iraq War, how many more are poor schmucks rotting at Gitmo for nothing, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Via Craig, to your right, comes a link to a Salon article by a retired US lieutenant colonel entitled "The New Pentagon Papers" about the lead up within the US government to the Iraq War which includes this passage:  •  “War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons …

Any other day this would give rise to images of retirees in fezzes or blue aprons having one wee whisky too many. But it appears a group of farmers in Wheatly River (which I joined on my father's behest to engage in evil things like eating ham salad on white bread with tepid tea to the fragrance …

I found this  •  article via Blork (to your right). It is a first I have read in what ought  •  to be a flood of articles on the pattern of content - as opposed to the systems  •  - of blogs. I think this point is important:  •  “I suspect that the inclination to adopt the rigid  •  formal …

We rolled out of PEI one year ago in two mini-vans with no idea whether we really turned on the unsold house's security system properly - did I mention that to my insurance agent? The transmission in one van, my folk's, lasted all the way to Moncton, two hours west. $3,000 later on Dad's credit …

Small plastic things surround me at home  •  I suppose I should be grateful that when I trip on toys they crush rather than gouge with sharp folds of thin sheet metal.

The back is loosening. Even thought it is not a serious affliction, it is a debilitating one - the hinge of a door not working well.  •  It would be worse. I could be Mike who posted an X-ray yesterday of his broken collar bone. It looks like he has irregular lego in his shoulder. I think Canada …

I remember during the Bosnian war in the mid-90's being amazed at the small scale of the places involved in our news. I would listen at 7:00 pm to Hrvatska Radio from Croatia on the shortwave and try to follow where Canadian troops from my then neighbouring base CFB Petawawa, some my clients, were …

The Yachtsman's Week-end Book, by Irving et al., 1963 2nd edition  •  One of my favorite things to do when struck by a seized back is to lay still and discover innovations in over the counter back medicines. Next to that is to read a few stand-by books, an this one that always give delight and up …

To the west of City Hall on Ontario Street there are a row of watering holes including the nearest, the Old Speckled Hen, which is a bit of a faux pub but not a bad faux pub in an 1809 building discussed earlier.  •  Sadly it does not even sell Old Speckled Hen, a loverly hoppy ESB now made by …

I found this image of Collins Bay Pen oddly festive.

Jesus light at sunset over Dupont  •  I caught this shot the other week, before the thaw which turned much of Lake Ontario to that spongy grey ice one step away from lolly. The factory in the foreground are the Dupont nylon and research plants with their 1200 jobs. In the background farther west …

The Toronto Star has an unlinkable but  •  interesting article on the high-tech Echelon surveillance system operated by  •  five nations known as the UKUSA alliance: the United States, Britain, Canada,  •  Australia and New Zealand. Apparently Canada spied for Thatcher on two of her  •  cabinet …

Not so much by Martha but from her example, some helpful hints on how to to make your appearance as a defendant on criminal charges a good thing:  •  Do not try to neaten up the evidence.  •  Do not be helpful with the investigators by creating a tidy tale.  •  Do not hire the lawyers for your …

One of the postures left available to me with the utter rejection by my lower back of all responsibilities (including not feeling like a rugby team is jumping on it), is the sitting position in front of the interweb screen and the telecast screen. So I got a lot of news yesterday. And read a lot …

This has been clear since I began reading blogs around 2000 and weblogs since around 1994. Via Dave3, comes Wired's tale of popular sites not being the source of the ideas found there:  •  “The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at …

It is the season for injured bloggers but with the playoffs coming up that is to be expected. Think I will spend the day laying on the floor taking numbing drugs. It'll pretty be like my 1980s, I guess.  •  Speaking of playoffs, there is a move afoot to continue the grand tradition of my internet …

The Supreme Court of Canada has done us all a favour and defined the "research" exception under section 29 of our Copyright Act and, wudduyano, we are a great country to be a researcher in - as provided for by "a large and liberal interpretation" of the word. The ruling in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law …

I wrote the following over at Dean's World and thought so well of myself I suggested that I post it here...and you know what? I agreed to do it!  •  “I agree that the most interesting thing about the movie is that is it one person's witnessing of the passion, much in the same way that 1988's "The …

Lawrence Martin of The Globe and Mail says some  •  interesting things about Paul Martin and the unsheathing of the long knives:  •  “Canadians wanted Mr. Chrétien to leave, and Mr.  •  Martin to succeed him. It is a statistically incontrovertible fact that Mr.  •  Chrétien left office with his …

Surely this search proves how wacked Google is: "Kerry" and "Policies" has me at #1 for a click through post to an article at the Guardian Unlimited from yesterday morning. I have had under 600 total visits in the last 24 hours. Surely to God I am not the first person to put those two words …

From Jason, for a new way of looking at blogging, go to the site Radio Vox Populi and listen to the automated reading of randomly selected blog passages as submitted by their authors. At the end of each brief reading you will head a sign off like "continue reading my site" followed by the sound of …

The National Portrait Gallery in London, UK, has a display, which opened ysterday, as well as an on-line presence for the "We Are The People" collection of 1000 postcards from the first half of the 1900s. We have a number of these kind of postcards produced for individuals by photograpy studios …

Who knew this was an issue?

Just to prove my previous post, via the Flea, I would ask you to consider the following:  •  “  •  “  •  Alan  •  Weather Loach  •  Agility  •  7|Strength  •  3|Stamina  •  8  •  Battle Rating  •  18  •  Origins  •  Alan was created by a scientific experiment gone wrong  •  Can your fishy beat …

Via Michael - why do people get upset when they are told that blogging is fringe, that only maybe 50,000 to 100,000 are actually writing anything on the internet semi-regularly? Having a hobby is good. Not everyone is cut out for the rough and tumble of stamp collecting or toothpick bridge …

I think I ran out of coffee and forgot to pick any up. Too late now. What'll I do in 8 hours, bleary, facing nothing but tea? Will I go to work early to get an extra mug in? If you like your boss but you go in early only because you ran out of coffee at home and not to get a start on that …

My favourite Mancunian's tale today of outsourcing hell is quite good. I show up as shipping 40 or so readers a day to his site and its stories of ales and fitba so I should hope at least that many are interested in this news - unless its just that blogspot refer spam crowd for which I take no …

The Guardian Unlimited has a great, detailed essay on John Kerry's policies based on his track record. Just the kind of thing a thousand political blogs would never be able to put together.

I just came upon the Ecotone group blog / wiki and am looking forward to rooting through its corners. I along, with Craig and Rob1 and others, am starting to think that stand alone blogs are too isolating - witness Donna's good questions. Ecotone may have something to offer. There is something …

The Montreal Gazette puts an interesting spin on Don Cherry's right to go on about anything:  •  “Coach's Corner should be axed because of its pitiful content and Cherry's prison-stripe suits. (He plays at being just a plain guy, but his clothes scream exhibitionist.) For the sake of the national …

This New York Times article is interesting - apparently computer science students are losing interest:  •  “The Computing Research Association's annual survey of more than 200 universities in the United States and Canada found that undergraduate enrollments in computer science and computer …