Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

November 03, 2010 20:03 +0000 | Moving Unemployment Work [at] Play 3

Nearly ten years ago, after a gruelling week of work and late nights trying to get a product out the door, my colleagues and I came into work, bleary eyed, but proud of the site we'd been able to finish on-time and to-spec. We were met with a group meeting, in which roughly two thirds of us were informed that we no longer had a job. It was devastating to most of us, but we all recovered, and learnt from all of this an important lesson: that the business world can be cold, and it's best to be prepared for the worst.

I've managed to benefit from that lesson a few times now. Working in IT, you get used to the often temporary nature of your work, and sometimes that of your employer. You make preparations for an abrupt exodus, establish connections within the community, and find ways to make the transition easier. It's never easy, but over the years it's become less-difficult.

Unfortunately, I've had to deal with such a situation today. My (now former) employer, Work at Play gave me the pink slip this morning, along with another coworker. They're restructuring, position is redundant, etc. etc. The end result is that I'm out of work, just two months before my planned exit and relocation to Somewhere in Europe. To their credit though, the process was respectful and not at all like my exit from Moshpit Entertainment so long ago.

I've already started branching out, looking for ways to cover bills and do some more saving before my exit, and I've been considering bumping up my timetable if that seems to work for everyone. Having never done a move of this magnitude, I'm unsure of which decisions to make on all of these new fronts. I do have some promising leads for some short-term contract work though, so money may not be a problem. We'll see.

November 01, 2010 10:30 +0000 | Canada Capitalism Corporations Democracy NDP Politics 0

I will post details about this year's Hallowe'en stuff soon, but I wanted to share this for now. Below is a video clip from 1978 of Tommy Douglas addressing the House of Commons. There's two things that I'd like to point out to you before you watch it:

This is a man talking about energy independence in 1978.
Note the remarkable lack of noise and heckling in the room. Thirty years has changed much.

October 26, 2010 08:31 +0000 | Activism Democracy Politics Toronto 3

I remember the day I heard that Rob Ford would be running for Mayor in Toronto. I figured this to be great news. Ford, a blustering idiot councillor from the suburbs needed a good smack down, and there was no way that a racist bigot like him could ever win in a city as beautifully diverse as Toronto. He would be ejected from politics, outed for who he was, an ignorant blowhard who couldn't possibly hope to represnet the most multicultural city in Canada.

Oh how it hurts to be so wrong.

Not only did Rob Ford win, he won with 47% of the vote. That means that 47% of Torontonians either voted for a bigot or didn't bother to do the research themselves to find out that that they were going to vote for a bigot. On top of that, 50% didn't even show up to vote at all. We're past a question of "who stole votes from whom" here, this is problem is systemic.

Dave Meslin had part of it right when he talked about Toronto's invisible primaries, an ugly byproduct of our antiquated first-past-the-post voting system is that we exclude voices from the debate because they aren't loud enough to win. Remember that 50% that didn't even show up to vote? Well knowing that your vote actually counts for something is a great way to energise interest in politics.

But there's a second element that we don't hear discussed enough and that's interest by virtue of time and energy. Ford won because he ran a great campaign. It painted him as a straight-talking, no-nonsense guy who's going to "clean up City Hall" while somehow obscuring the fact that he himself was a millionaire, bent on destroying everything most Torontonians hold in high regard. All anyone had to do was Google his name to find out who he really was, but too few people did -- 380,201 people actually, and now we have four years to find out just how much this man can do, both to the city itself, and to its reputation on the world stage.

For political devotees like myself, it's easy to dismiss 47% of the voting public as either ignorant or crazy, but it's just not true. I honestly believe that people want to understand the politics of their city, province and country, but they simply don't have time. For those of us for whom politics is a hobby or interest, it's hard to accept that someone wouldn't want to burn a few hours a day reading up on local events, or watching a news show, but for most of us, a few hours is all we have, and many of us would rather spend that time on something that makes us happy, whether that be painting, reading, hockey, or just socialising. Democracy is work for many of us, and it's a commitment that some of us can't make without sacrificing our sanity.

Now I'm not excusing political apathy, far from it. For the next four years, every one of the 380,201 people who voted for Ford and the million or so who didn't vote should be reminded that the state of things is in fact their fault. No, I'm trying to point out that any society that doesn't allow for enough time to both do what we personally need for our sanity as well as take part in our own governance isn't really a Democracy. In a real Democracy, a blustering fool like Ford couldn't hope to succeed because the public would actually know what kind of person he is. His comments about cyclists being at fault when they're hit by trucks and his tirades in council would be lunch counter conversation in every home in a real Democracy, his archaic views on homosexuality, a joke told over dinner.

We need to slow down, decompress and work less, engage more... with each other and with our community. Activist groups are great, but they're not much good if they only include people between the ages of 18 and 28, or those over 65. Too many people are just too busy paying rent and feeding their kids to worry about more than the 30second spot they saw on TV and that is the real problem here.

I've attached some Youtube videos to this post along the side to give you a taste for what kind of man is sitting in the Big Chair now. Know that Toronto is not unique in this, in fact I'd argue that such misfortune is just as likely to happen anywhere where the public is sufficiently overburdened and disenfranchised. I can only hope that he angers enough people in these next four years that it inspires others to re-engage with their Democracy.

October 04, 2010 01:41 +0000 | Blogger Django Python Software 8

I haz a new site! I've been hacking at this for a few months now in my free time and it's finally in a position where I can replace the old one. Some of the features of the old site aren't here though, in fact this one is rather limited by comparison (no search, no snapshots, etc.) but the underlying code is the usual cleaner, better, faster, more extendable etc. so the site will grow beyond the old one eventually.

So, fun facts about this new version:

Written in Python, based on Django.
317133 lines of code
Fun libraries used:
- Flot (for the résumé skillset charts)
Neat stuff I added:
- A new, hideous design!
- A hierarchical tagging system
- A custom image resizing library. I couldn't find a use for the other ones out there.
- The Konami Code. Try it, it's fun :-)
Stuff that's coming:
- Search
- Mobile image upload (snapshots)
- The image gallery will be up as soon as the shots are done uploading.

Anyway, if you feel so inclined, please poke around and look for problems. I'll fix them as soon as I can.

October 02, 2010 00:50 +0000 | Activism Anarchy Copyright Technology TED 4

Q: How long will this attack go on for?

A: There is no time frame. We will keep going until we stop being angry.

- An interview with Anonymous

Something really fascinating is happening right now. Thousands of people, pissed off at law firms and media conglomerates for persecuting individuals with multi-million dollar file sharing lawsuits are fighting back. They're using their combined efforts to attack and take down the websites of the media bullies and their proxies (their law firms) and they're succeeding at every turn.

The tactic being used is called DDoS, which in layman's terms is essentially hammering a website from multiple targets as to render it unable to communicate properly with legitimate visitors. The result is that the site will slow to a crawl, and in some cases go completely offline as the server buckles under the load. In one of the more advanced cases, the attackers grabbed 350MB of email from one unscrupulous law firm in the UK and published it on the Pirate Bay for all the world to see.

And who are the perpetrators of these attacks? Nobody knows. They are "Anonymous", the horde of pissed-off people, tired of being persecuted for participating in our Shared Culture. More importantly though, they've gone on the offencive against those who have gotten used to treating the public like an ATM.

This is just the beginning, but it's an exciting first step. The Internet has allowed groups to collectively organise, and to do things no individual or big city law firm could ever hope to accomplish on their own. Now that the tools are becoming more ubiquitous, it's inevitable that these sorts of actions will increase both in popularity and in scale.

Imagine being able to download a tiny program to anonymously contribute the computational power of your desktop, and the bandwidth of your internet connection to help destroy Royal Dutch Shell's communication network, or hack the RIAA's VPN. The possibilities are both awesome and terrifying, but I'm confident that the anarchy it produces will lead to a more egalitarian world.

It's interesting then, that on the evening I'd set aside to write about this phenomenon, I discovered this excellent TED talk about the differences between institutional organisations and collaborative ones. The talk is about five years old, but couldn't be more relevant:

September 09, 2010 03:58 +0000 | Self Reflection Solitude 3

I saw this the other day and wanted to share. I don't think I've ever heard this framed better.

August 26, 2010 20:03 +0000 | The United States Travel 4

Central Park is so pretty.

One of the more famous landmarks in Central Park: Bethesda Fountain.

The Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.

Times Square is huge and riddled with billboards. This is a tiny part of it.

The United Nations

"Peace"

The Empire State Building as seen from 51st street.

Congress

The inscription above reads: "In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.

The Vietnam Memorial

Congress peaking behind the Washington Monument

It does seem a shame that Lincoln's view of Congress is obscured by Washington's phallic monument.

I have committed the profoundly naÃ¯ve: I attempted to see two major American cities in four days. Let it be said that while it's definitely possible, I don't recommend it -- especially if your feet aren't very cooperative. Here, on day four in my Washington DC hotel room, my feet are dangling off of the bed and are in considerable pain. The tiny blisters on my toes are a testament to my daring, as well as my ignorance concerning the task.

Now with that out of the way, here's a quick run-down of my various sights and experiences :-)

NYC

New York is BIG. I know that it looks rather tiny on the map, but trust me, it's massive. With 8 million people in the city alone and 20million in the surrounding area, New York is too big to really experience in two months let alone two days. Like most places worth seeing, I think that someone has to live there to really understand it. For my part, I was just happy to have a few days to take it in. For the majority of my trip (save for a quick ride on the Staten Island Ferry) I was Manhattan Guy, so everything that follows can only apply to that tiny island.

I'll start with the simple: navigation. Manhattan is a narrow sliver island with only a few major avenues running North/South and more than one hundred streets running East/West. As a result of this sort of layout, walking 3blocks East is roughly equivalent to walking ten blocks North anywhere on the island. People jaywalk like crazy there, right in front of cops in fact. I can only assume that it's totally legal there. Traffic is always rough, regardless of the time of day, and is in fact just like you see in the movies: about 90% cabs... except that they're not yellow, but rather a kind of nasty orange colour.

As for sightseeing, I went a little crazy. In the space of two days, I managed to visit every landmark in the city and see/do exactly what I wanted to, which in most cases was just see that place and try to understand what it must be like to walk in its shadow every day. I went to Central Park, which again, is well reflected in the movies. It's a massive park nested in the midst of millions of people crammed onto an island. And it's not a park as you might have come to expect in your own town, no Central Park has a giant pond, a carousel, a baseball park and dozens of quiet trails, bridges, trees, and creeks. It's the result of more than one hundred years of curating and management... it's amazing.

I also found time to visit the United Nations, Ground Zero, The Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Gardens, Grand Central Station, and the studios for CBS & NBC as well as Ed McMahon's theater where David Letterman does his show now. As per Stephen's advice, I took the (free) Staten Island Ferry just long enough to get reasonably close to the Statue of Liberty, and I even found the LEGO store... how awesome is that?

Some interesting tidbits about New York:

The street food is amazing. There's nothing quite like lamb souvlaki on a pita at 11pm at the corner of Madison & 51st. I also tried both the bagels and the pretzels. Sadly, I was unimpressed on both fronts.
The city hums, but it doesn't seem to sit well with me. It could be the American flags everywhere, or the general lack-of-pleasantries common with Americans, but I didn't feel very comfortable there.
While cabbies are everywhere, they're not as crazy or chatty as the ones you see in movies. In my time there, I took 3 cabs: the first one was an old, Asian man, super-friendly, who'd been doing this for 23years. After all this time, his English was still pretty sketchy, but I appreciated his take on what it's like to do this kind of work for so long. The other two drivers however were like riding with a robot: little or no conversation, and very broken English when we did have to communicate.
Rockefeller Center has tables & chairs out front in the summer since it's obviously too cold for an ice rink.
The subway system isn't nearly as impressive as I was expecting. Obviously, I was only around for a couple days and only rode it twice, but I got the distinct impression that it was built for commuters rather than residents. Its cars are smaller than Toronto's, lacks helpful signage and doesn't service large portions of the island. Also, it smells like Toronto's subway system, which isn't a good or a bad thing, just an interesting curiosity.

Washington DC

After walking my feet off in NYC, I took a quick nap overnight and headed to Washington DC by train the next day. Let me just say that if the option is available, train is definitely the way to travel. Walk a few blocks to the station, wait less than a half hour to board, ride in comfort with free wifi and a power outlet for a few hours and then walk a few minutes to your hotel. It's cheaper, faster, cleaner, and far more comfortable. Also, the free wifi let me play Gowalla all the way from NYC to DC ;-)

Washington DC is a tiny town masquerading as a state within the larger state of Virginia. For the most part, the city appears to be a collection of government buildings peppered with statues and monuments all in the classical style. More than a few times I've found myself comparing DC to a modern Rome with all of the buildings still standing.

There's a pretty obvious racial divide here. While there's clearly a healthy mix of black & white in DC, a stroll through Union Station or down Pennsylvania Avenue will illustrate the imbalance. While I've seen a number of black people walking about with bluetooth headsets & blackberries, in two days here and I've not seen a single white person in a service-related job. It's as if the white population has "allowed" the blacks into the management sector, but somehow sees itself as "above" working at McDonald's or waiting tables. I've only been here two days though, so could be totally wrong on this one.

Like NYC, I went a bit crazy with the sightseeing here, and my feet may never forgive me. As soon as I arrived yesterday, I dumped my gear in my hotel room and started gallivanting. I visited the Library of Congress and did a quick tour through there, took some pictures at the Capitol, and then headed down to the National Archives, The Washington Monument, The Smithsonian, The WW2 Memorial, The Vietnam War Memorial, The Korean War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.

Yesterday's highlight though was without a doubt, the National Archives, where I actually saw the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The documents are ancient and faded, most of the text of which has been nearly erased with time. Regardless, it was rather inspiring to actually see it and read the words "We the People" knowing the reasoning behind those words. As Canadians, I think we often forget how different we are from the Americans: the Ideas that formed this country are very different from those that formed our own. Frankly, I think that even though we've been neighbours for all this time, there's still a lot we have to learn from each other on this front.

That night I gave my feet a nice hot bath and slept in today to recover before heading out to Arlington National Cemetery. Let me just tell you that no matter how big you think it is, no matter how strongly you might think it will affect you, you really can't prepare yourself for that place. There are over 350 000 people buried there, for each headstone, one life... and the stones go on, and on, and on, and on. Past presidents are buried here, including JFK, but I spent my time just trying to take in the acres of death. Over 200years have past since that place was founded, and nowadays they bury around 25 people as a daily average. It's a testament to patriotism and to the judgement of American leadership.

The last stop on my trip was to the White House, a palace surrounded by iron fences and concrete barricades. I took in the view from behind the distant gate, and didn't go for the tour (if there in fact was one). After Arlington, I wasn't really interested.

DC is an interesting town, with ancient classical buildings everywhere you look, and metal detectors in its food courts. It's the kind of place that everyone should visit at least once, but I don't think I'll be coming back.

So that's it for my trip. I had a really good time travelling, but will be glad to be back on Canadian soil tomorrow. America is scary, but that's a topic for another blog post some other time. I'll leave you with a link to my Gowallawalk map, a plotting of various places I've been, including all of the spots I visited on this trip.

August 22, 2010 13:31 +0000 | Democracy Green Party Why I'm Here 0

What originally started as an interesting addendum to my Toronto trip has turned into quite the experience for me. While the original reasoning for my trip back to Toronto was to attend Sheena's wedding, I decided to extend it by one week so that I might be able to attend the Green Party's Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

I know what you're thinking, and for the most part, it's totally true: these things are boring. There was no shortage of people asking to speak to amendments, amend amendments, or just completely go off on irrelevant tangents, but that's all sort of the point. This is democracy at work: an informed group of people coming together to talk about what we, as a party, want to do in the future.

The process (at least for the Greens, I can't speak for other parties) is twofold: policy and constitutional motions, or in other words, what we stand for, how we will govern ourselves. For my part, I spent my workshop time (the portion of the day in which we break into smaller groups to discuss one of the two aforementioned tracks) in the policy conversations because that's where hang my hat: in the heart of the process, rather than the method.

We talked about and changed party policy on everything from the authority and ownership of the Bank of Canada, to the decriminalisation of polyamory. Some of these motions passed, while others were met with rather strong opposition, but everyone was candid and civil, and in the end we learnt to speak with one voice.

On the issue of polyamoury, one of the most controversial motions, I personally spoke to the plenary session (where everyone, from all groups gather to approve/reject the findings of the workshops), a rather intimidating act I must say. I stood in support of the motion, calling for "moral courage" to stand on what's right, though politically inconvenient and was joined by a number of others who felt much the same.

In the end however, the majority voted it down, in large part due to a lack of understanding of what was being moved (the workshop worked very hard to adjust the motion but it still needs work), as well as a lack of knowledge about the very real fact that conjugal relationships in excess of two people are illegal in this country. Here's the law, in case you were curious:

Every one who

practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into

any form of polygamy, or
any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,

whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Section 293(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada

Translation: if you're in a conjugal poly relationship, or even attend a wedding-ish party in support of a poly relationship, you're a criminal, and could potentially be thrown in jail for up to five years.

I stood for this because it's the Right thing to do, and even though it didn't pass this time around, I'm confident that with a little work on the education front, we'll see it through in the near future.

So that's it for me right now. Short synopsis: democracy exciting, you should try it :-) My next post, if I can cobble the time together, will be from New York, and/or Washington DC.

August 18, 2010 03:26 +0000 | Friends Toronto Who Am I Why I'm Here 2

After more than two years, I've finally found my way back to what I've come to call my "spiritual home". Toronto hasn't changed much, the weather is still sticky, the politics is still chaotic, and the garbage is still left on the sidewalk to bake in the sun. Toronto is hot, crowded, and still just as amazing as I remember.

I've made a special effort to get out to see as many people as possible, as well as re-sample the various tasty food joints scattered around town. I've also been playing Gowalla like a madman. More than 1500 check-ins in only a few days, acquiring all but one of the items. Big thanks to Stephanie who emailed me the locations of a few she found with Gowallatools, that was really cool of her.

Outside of the fluffy Gowallaness, I've taken a lot of time to reacquaint myself with the city. I've been thinking about moving back here ever since I left, and I want to take this opportunity to try to re-imagine my life had I never left, or if I were to return some day soon. It's not something I can really have covered in the few short days I've been here, but I hope to have something worked out before I leave.

A lot of it has to do with my social network. In Vancouver, I feel as though my friends there see me as the person I was back in 2001 when I ran away from that place. Here, I see the person I want to be in the eyes of my Toronto friends.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be renting a bike and Stephen & I will go for a ride across town. I hope to visit High Park, and maybe even Robin (HEY ROBIN, TXT ME BACK ALREADY!) Then I'm hoping to see Tanya in the evening as well. Coming up this weekend is the Green Party National Convention, which so far doesn't look all that exciting but I'm hoping that looks are deceiving on this one. After that, I'm headed to NYC, then DC, then back here for Sheena's Wedding and then back to my other home in Vancouver. Keep your eyes on Twitter feed for more up-to-the-present detail and pictures, and I'll try to post again here soon.

August 10, 2010 12:16 +0000 | Blogger Django PHP Python 1

For those who have been demanding that I post something, anything, (*cough* Noreen *cough*) I apologise for the delay, but it won't be long now. I've been using all this time to write a new version of my site, done up in Python/Django. The next version will be a watered-down version of this one (on account of the complete rewrite) but will grow with time.

I may also decide to abandon all attempts at making it pretty... 'cause well... I suck at that :-)