February 2003
When is enough quality, enough quality?
Posted by on Friday, February 28, 2003 in - 12 comments
When the MP3 format first appeared there were some who dismissed it because it was a step backwards in quality. This is true. Many MP3s are encoded at 128Kb/s at which certain slight differences can be discerned on a good pair of headphones. • Obviously, these people were wrong. The slight loss …
Wacky Videogame Crossover
Posted by on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 3 comments
An article from Salon has a the headline: "Man steals six cars during chase". • Now, I haven't played Grand Theft Auto since the original, years ago. But anybody who's had a taste of that game must have thought for a second, "Man, that guy's living the dream". • Except for the prison-part.
Counting the dead in real time
Posted by on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 11 comments
In a world with over 6 billion people, there is bound to be a few thousand in the throes of some disaster (natural or otherwise) at any given time. Since news agencies thrive on breaking disaster news, it's not uncommon to hear and see numbers of dead flying around like a stock ticker. • This …
AoV's Roving Reporter on Google/Blogger
Posted by on Monday, February 17, 2003 - 3 comments
Not wanting to be left out when something interesting happens, I emailed Google's Press Center about their acquisition of Pyra (the company behind Blogger). I received a sparse, but prompt and polite reply from the Director of Corporate Communications including this statement: • “"Google … read more »
Best Webcam Shot of the Year
Posted by on Friday, February 14, 2003 - 13 comments
When it gets this cold (-40 with the windchill in Charlottetown today), you have to talk about the weather. • From the IslandCam in downtown Charlottetown today:
Universal Access to All Human Knowledge
Posted by on Sunday, February 9, 2003 in - 5 comments
A link found from Matt Haughey's a.wholelottanothing.org lead me to a talk by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive. His organization is working a variety of projects to make public domain content available in an "internet library". Among these projects is the WayBack Machine, which archives the …
JetsGo Frustration
Posted by on Friday, February 7, 2003 - 45 comments
Canadians, especially those of us who live in Charlottetown, have been excited about JetsGo lately. It's a new airline which will hopefully provide less expensive airfare intra-Canadian (and a few US) locations. • Their website, lets you shop around for flights by feeding it an origin …
Cereal Impostors
Posted by on Sunday, February 2, 2003 - 19 comments
Generic-brand cereal names observed at the grocery store: • Oatie-O's • Frosted Oatie-O's • Neon Crunch (or in French, Croquant Fluon) • Fruity Hoops (right next to the Fruit Loops) • Lickety Split-O's