I haven’t been writing much since 2006, with nothing to say for several months. When I tried to enter some posts and clean up some presentation issues, MT presented some odd behaviour. In fact I was unable to write or edit entries in Opera (which has become my browser of choice) which was probably related …
My mother died last Friday. She was 82 years old. She has had Alzeimer for several years and has been in a care home since June 2008. She had asthma for many years. She had been having increasing difficulty breathing and with that came a diagnosis of late stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. I visited …
Since my move to Victoria, I have tried out and adopted some appliances and discarded others. I started with a new set of Paderno stainless steel pots – purchased cheaply in 2006 when Canadian Tire dropped the Royale sets. I have added another sauce pan and the steamer and double boiler (not Royale but who …
This year I broke off with dragon-boating. It was initially a conflict with the manager of the Club program over a protocol and has become a longer break. Some paddlers paddle dragon boats every summer from May to August. I have enjoyed the evening practices and the frantic transformation of couch potatoes into weekend warriors, …
In December last year I agreed to travel to Winnipeg to accompany my dad to the hospital for his surgery for hernia. He had the operation in January. It disrupted his routine of visiting mother in the nursing home for a few days, but he was back at it. He realized that his needs to …
My story about my musical year starts with a short term obsession about a song. The CBC broadcast a story about the popularity of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah in Britain on the National (TV news) on the Friday night before Christmas. The CBC was interested because the writer was a Canadian. The story was that …
The milestones of life …
Over the last 6 weeks I spent more time than I want to think about trying to get a new Satellite (Model A200, or A200-03V, specifically PSAE3C-03V08C) to run an alternative OS to its pre-installed Windows Vista. The laptop was attractively priced, perhaps because it was pre-loaded with Vista, as much as the fact that …
Back in January, I ran the upgrade to Movable Type 4.1. The developers made a number of moves to make MT more attractive to personal users including changes to let personal users migrate from Word Press and to port Word Press Styles to MT. The management of pictures and content has become easier with the …
Jennie Bristow, reviewing Sarah Moore’s Ribbon Culture for Spiked, nails the self-obsessed culture of advertising one’s moral quality by fashion accessories. Her review is called Untying the ‘ribbon culture’. The moral virtue of wearing ribbons is to show awareness or solidarity with a group of victims. Being a victim has become a way of attracting …