Acts of Volition

If you’ve noticed some odd reader comments here on Acts of Volition in the last little while, rest assured that we’re as confused as you are.  •  Starting about a month ago, comments started showing up here on Acts of Volition on old posts, where the were no other comments, or the conversations …

Paul Martin (quite possibly Canada’s next prime minister) has a weblog. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me thinks it’s great that weblogs can be used in mainstream politics. Another part of me is finds it creepy and suspicious.  •  To their credit, the writing is good. It appears to …

Last year when I posted asking for people to sign a petition asking for the release of the Northern Exposure TV series on DVD, over 1000 people came out of the woodwork before I turned it off. Despite my reluctance to fan the flames again (I was interviewed about it on a local radio show and my …

Since I started using the excellent SpamBayes Outlook Addin spam filter three-and-a-half months ago, I’ve gotten an average of 64 junk email per day. That’s a total of 4993 junk email (I’m sure I’ll have gotten #5000 by the time you’ve read this). In the last week I’ve gotten an average of 150 …

Speaking of killing independent george, inspired by our weblog seminar last month, my father now has a weblog: BruceGarrity.com. He’s new to the medium, and it may take him a while to get the feel for it, but I think it’s a safe bet that he’s the only Charlottetown city councillor with a weblog …

Killing independent George  •  To have disparate and independent areas of your life meet, usually in an undesirable fashion.  •  The term is based on an episode of Seinfeld where, to his great dismay, George’s fiancé starts to socialize with his other friends. Hilarity ensues.

Driving into the office today, CBC Radio played Adam Sandler’s Lunchlady Land (live) followed by Leonard Nimoy’s Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. This truly is a great country.

Imagine we eventually have sufficient wireless bandwidth everywhere. What do we do with it?  •  I heard the idea that everyone’s palm-pilot/pocket-pc would be a web server. This is not unreasonable. Some current handheld PCs are running at 400MHz with 128 MB of RAM or more. I’ve seen PCs with less …

Tip: When called for a phone survey, tell them that you work for a marketing or advertising firm. This usually renders you an ineligible subject. Often, they’ll explicitly ask you if this is the case, precluding the need to say “no” and hang up.

I was invited to read a piece of fiction on a segment called “The Write Lane” on the CBC Radio PEI show, Mainstreet with host Mitch Courmier.  •  We spoke a bit about how writing for a weblog differs from tradition creative writing. I chose to read from a work-in-progress short-story (that I …

I’ll be reading from a short-story on CBC Radio PEI tomorrow. The reading is part of “The Write Lane”, a weekly piece featuring local writers. I should be on around 5:30PM Thursday, July 10.  •  If I can get my act together, I hope to post both the audio from the interview/reading and the text of …

A friend of mine has put a new spin on the word “WiFi”. From this day forth, wifi shall be known as “wuffie” (hear it pronounced – WAV). It can rhyme with party, which is convenient.  •  Also, harkening back to the old classic “gif” vs. “jif” debate, this same friend has started pronouncing the “g …

CityFilter Charlottetown is a new site for our city in the style of MetaFilter. It’s a community weblog where anyone can post on the front page, and anyone can reply to the posts.  •  Thanks to Jevon MacDonald for setting this up. Jevon has been clear that this is not his own project. Rather, it’s …

While I don’t have the talent or motivation to follow through on this idea, I thought it was worth sharing. Would it make sense to have an album file format that served as a container for individual songs?  •  I imagine some of the following features:  •  A container file, similar to ZIP or TAR …