While I was enjoying Winged Migration at City Cinema this evening (great film, worth seeing – here’s the trailer), a no-good-nik stole my portable CD player from my car.

While on the practical plane, stealing from an unlocked car is less of an ordeal than breaking into a locked car, I believe that on the moral plane it is a much worse transgression. For you, the thief, I hope the universe is more forgiving than I am (and I suspect it is). Also, I hope you enjoy my Pedro the Lion mix disc.

My friend Nick had an idea for a way of dealing with such injustices: the Punch-in-the-Face Tour 2003. The idea is simple, make a list of people who deserve it, and punch them in the face.

First on Nick’s list are the people in Markham, Ontario who made him send in a mail-in rebate to get the advertised price on a recent purchase of a wireless router (“Why don’t they just sell it for cheaper!?” exclaims an angry Nick as he brandishes his tour-namesake first in the air). For those interested, here is a PDF version of the tour logo (205 Kb PDF).

For the record, I have never (and hopefully will never), punched anyone in the face. I can’t speak to Nick’s entire history, but I don’t think he does it much either. Also, when we ask why companies that use mail-in rebates don’t just sell products for cheaper, it’s a rhetorical question – thank you.

If you hear someone humming along to Magazine by Pedro the Lion, punch them in the face.

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 actually be written by Paul Martin, and in a style suitable for a weblog. They also feature two smart links at the top of the page: What is a blog? And Why does Paul blog? Very good questions for many people visiting the site — and with good answers.

Unfortunately, they are missing permanent links to each individual post. These are critical to a weblog, I think — particularly for interaction with other sites.

Though he did get me talking about him, I’m not going to vote for him. What I would really like to see is a Paul Martin weblog after the election (regardless of the outcome).

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 co-workers have never let me forget about it), there is some news.

I emailed the petition to a few of the companies involved in the production/ownership of the Northern Exposure series, but didn’t receive any responses. I doubt our petition had much impact (I’m sceptical that any online petitions ever have any impact). Regardless, there is now a glimmer of hope. A diligent reader has alerted us to a USA Today story run on Yahoo News:

While many beloved series have found a new home on DVD and on viewers’ shelves, a few holdouts such as Seinfeld and Northern Exposure remain — but not for long. DVD releases are in the works for both series. They are among the most requested DVDs on Amazon.com. [Source]

It’s not much — no release date or other info, but I can now look forward to the release and to listening to Chris on KBHR at my leisure.

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.

Way to go Dad!

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.

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 power run popular websites (with Apache/Linux). By the time the bandwidth catches up, the hardware will be a non-issue (hopefully battery-life will be a non-issue by then as well).

Why would Johnny-business want a web server in his pocket? Well, for some of us, it would store all of our personal and work files and host our own weblogs and websites. Perhaps we will all be hosting our own IM and email servers.

Add web-services into the mix and things get interesting. Need my contact information or access to my calendar? Query my personal info web service. The amount of detail my web services sends back will depend on my relationship to you. If I know you well enough, and I’m in a good mood, I might even let you query my physical location via GPS (with a limited accuracy — so you can’t detect… gyrations).

Why bother carrying this around with you? Couldn’t this work just as well if everyone had equivalent hosted services? Maybe — especially with a lighter client in our pocket that handles anything that needs to be in our pocket (GPS, voice-com, IM, etc.). Still — I wonder if, when battery life and wireless bandwidth are sufficient, will the concept of a “lighter client” become obsolete (because your cellphone/handheld can do it all anyhow).

What other applications can you imagine for a web-service enabled web-server in your pocket?

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.