Inventions, Brilliant or Otherwise

by Steven Garrity

In addition to being an internet baron, I am also a brilliant inventor. I have deemed two of my recent inventions worthy of sharing with you, humble reader.

Invention the First

Low-fat toothpaste. The first reaction I usually get, after the brilliance of the idea washes over my confidant, is a simple question. Does toothpaste even have fat in it? I don’t know, who cares?

If you give me a Gillette-8-blade-shaving-experience sized advertising budget and something to deaden the pangs of my conscience, I could sell this.

Here’s how the TV-spot would go:

[Blond model with doctor-esque white lab coat (low-cut) and scientastic thick-rimmed glasses purses lips and asks:]

“Did you know that over 15 years, you can swallow as much as 200 calories from your toothpaste?”

[Pierce Brosnan look-a-like in similar doctor gear enters, notices how slim blond-doctor-girl is. They embrace.]

Run this tv-spot during the SuperBowl and I could sell enough low-fat toothpaste to wipe the artificially whitened smile off of the faces of any Proctor & Gamble executive.

Invention the Second

It is a line of clothing for pre-teen girls (tweens) from the design house, Hugo Boss. It is called:

Hugo Girl

Say it out loud and put the emphasis on the “go”.

 

by Steven Garrity

Political correctness meets search and replace

 

Networking by the Pool

by Steven Garrity

Sitting by the pool-side at a friends’ place while in Toronto last week, there were a load of wireless networks available:

NetworkManager screenshot

Of course, none of them worked.

Side-note: wireless used to suck on Linux. Not anymore.

 

Simply Sean

by Steven Garrity

Photo of Sean Cullen, not an attractive man

In the summer at CBC Radio One, it seems everyone leaves and they give Sean Cullen, goofy Canadian comic extraordinaire, run the studio on Saturday mornings with his show Simple Seán (note the accent on the ‘a’).

He rambles like an idiot for a few minutes. First you’ll think, How can they let this fool on the air? Next, you’ll be laughing out loud. This will repeat throughout the show.

Then, for some reason quite surprising, Sean plays fantastic music. Today he played Joel Plaskett, The Deers, the Mountain Goats, the New Pornographers, Sloan, Broken Social Scene, the Stills and a few other goodies.

A good listen – Saturday mornings on CBC Radio 1 through out the summer.

 

Acts of Volition Radio: Session 25

by Steven Garrity

Acts of Volition Radio: Session Twenty Five

The day after Canada Day, I put together a new session of Acts of Volition Radio.

Acts of Volition Radio: Session Twenty Five (46MB Ogg Vorbis) (or 62MB MP3)
Songs for Canada Day, 2006. Recorded Sunday, July 2, 2006 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 44min.

Session Twenty Five Playlist:

  1. Joel Plaskett – Absentminded Melody
  2. Joel Plaskett – Happen Now
  3. Pilate – Knife-Grey Sea
  4. Fountains of Wayne – All Kinds of Time
  5. Sarah Harmer with the Weakerthans – Gone for Good (The Shins)
  6. Joel Plaskett – Natural Disaster
  7. Pearl Jam – Marker in The Sand
  8. Pilate – Into The West

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions or subscribe to the Acts of Volition Radio RSS feed.

Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio
Acts of Volition Radio: Session 25
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by Steven Garrity

Cover of the new Keane album is very cool – has kind of a great wave thing going on.

 

by Steven Garrity

This is the first non-sarcastic reference to Web 3.0 I’ve seen in the wild

 

by Steven Garrity

My first article for Wikinews was published quickly. Cool! (oh, yeah, and there is bird flu on PEI)

 

Framing Terror

by Steven Garrity


CNN Screenshot from June 8, 2006

The media is a buzz today with the news of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. I have no doubt that he was a bad dude. However, it’s worth taking a look at how this is being presented and covered.

See this screenshot of the CNN.com US home page. Note that they went to the trouble of framing and matting photo. I can only assume that some framing shop in Washington D.C. got a call from a Whitehouse aide with the weirdest rush-job they’ve ever had.

For bonus points, you can click the photos of the dead man to watch video of the actual bombing that killed him.

We’re getting pretty used to this kind of media presentation by the US government. It’s worth stepping back and taking a look at how absurd things have become. They framed it. Are they going to hang it up in a dining room?

 

Selecting Columns and Rows in HTML Tables with Firefox

by Steven Garrity
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3 Col 4
Row A 1A 2A 3A 4A
Row B 1B 2B 3B 4B
Row C 1C 2C 3C 4C
Row D 1D 2D 3D 4D

A random tip, because I find it so handy on rare occasions:

You can select columns, rows, or blocks of cells in HTML tables in Firefox (or any Gecko-powered browser) by holding down “Control” and
selecting with the mouse. Handy for copy+pasting data from tables in websites.

Try it out in the table to the right.