Last Blogger

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised“, is a phrase that anyone with any amount of subversive spirit will be familiar with. I always knew what the phrase was alluding to, but it has been repeating in my head over and over as I watch clips and read accounts of what’s happening in Iran.

It’s so striking to see such a significant event unfold, only through the tiny keyholes provided by grainy videos and anonymous accounts. Watching Desert Storm each evening was a formative event when I grew up. I grew up in a world where there is 24/7 information. Whether it’s accurate or not is a whole other issue.

The lack of information is very odd to someone of my generation. I’m sure that the more mature out there probably find it a little different, but since they lived through a youth where information was delivered on the news at suppertime for an hour, it’s not likely to be as alien to them as it is to me.

This event comes not only as a tremendous event of change for the Iranians, we all need to look around at our own situation. If there was need for revolution within our own country, could we tell the world our story? China has an Internet firewall like no other, Australia is enforcing country-wide censorship of its Internet users. Germany is now headed down a similar path while Canada, the US and Britain are simply content to monitor every phone call, text message, digital connection, etc… their own citizens initiate. It’s time for the rest of us to push back. If we don’t, not only will the revolution not be televised, the revolution won’t even make it to twitter and youtube.

I’ve started trying to grow stuff. I started with a rosemary plant I picked up at the grocery store, then a kit for a garlic bulb. I’ve now expanded into flowers, accent grasses and now, even strawberries. So far it’s all pretty tenuous. I have no idea what’s going to make it and what isn’t. I think the rosemary will be fine, it’s getting pretty big and looks healthy. The garlic’s looking ok, but I think I’m getting close to that time when I might need to stop watering so much and let it dry out a little.

The flowers aren’t doing too bad, but certainly aren’t thriving. Same with the grasses. I’m taking a Darwinian approach with most of this stuff. If it survives, great, if not, time to move on. The strawberries are looking strong right now, but I don’t think I have enough real space for them. I’ll wait and see.

Being the kind of guy who can’t leave well enough alone though, I have to say that the Garduino setup looks pretty awesome and I think I’m going to have to at least give it some consideration.

Aaron Greenspan of Think Computer Corporation has generated quite a stir in the Google Adsense world over the last few months. Everyone knows of or at least has heard of the various Adsense accounts that are sporadically banned on a seemingly hourly basis. Most of those are well founded and the people being banned know exactly why they’ve been banned. As such, to avoid wasting time and resources on fielding complaints from known offenders, Google has chosen to go with no service model for banned accounts. As soon as you’re banned, you’re banned. They don’t tell you why, not if you call, not if you e-mail. That’s fine and dandy for the gross offenders, but as always, many innocents are caught in the crossfire and are left with no recourse. Or so we thought.

That’s where Aaron enters the picture. Back in March, he wrote a piece for the Huffington post about how he sued Google and won. he went to small claims court to try and get the amount owed to him by Google when his account was closed. He was arguing that since Google would not tell him if he had even violated any ToS, they had unlawfully canceled the contract. The judge found in his favour.

Then it gets a little ugly. All seemed fine and dandy, and Google looked set to pay him until his original article hit the web in a big way. The bad PR fallout pushed Google to appeal the ruling and rather than cough up the cash, they sent in papers to notify him of the appeal. The judge ended up finding in Google’s favour, though it’s not clear as to why. The one bright side was that Aaron got to finally find out why they had banned his account in the first place. One problem was a sketchy detail that was right on the line of the ToS and the other was technically a breach of the ToS but was done so much that Google ended up offering the service as a separate offering two days after his account was canceled.

So what’s the moral of the story?

1. As Aaron points out, “don’t be evil” (Google’s standing directive) does not equate to “don’t be a jerkhole”.
2. If you want to find out why Google banned your Adsense account, take the to small claims court and then wait for them to appeal. This trick may not work for long so use it while you can.

This kind of situation is inevitable when your favourite garage startup turns into a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. It’s the circle of life. Start out as a rebel, become “the man” so that someone new can rebel against you.

We went to a Joel Plaskett concert at the Rebecca Cohn auditorium this past weekend and it was awesome!

It was his last date on his tour supporting the new album, three. It’s way mellower than the songs of his that I normally like, but it’s still pretty cool. We actually bought the album at the concert and were surprised/disappointed as to how much better he sounded live than on the album. Surprised because it either takes a terrible recording (which this isn’t) or a very talented individual to put on a better sounding live show than the studio album. Disappointing because in contrast, the concert makes the album sound a little crappy. Rose Cousins and Ana Egge in particular were always in perfect harmony and had great presence at the show. On the album… eh…

He did a great acoustic version of True Patriot Love which is my wife’s favourite song.

Unfortunately my favourite wasn’t on the list:

But that’s ok because there were so many great songs, new and old.

Finally, to top this post off, I thought I’d post a new find for Canadian music fans. Gord Downie with Joel Plaskett and The Emergency singing one of Joel’s most popular songs:

We dropped into Steamy’s yesterday to give it a shot. Steamy’s is a new-ish restaurant on Quinpool road in Halifax. There’s been a bit of an influx of new restaurants there so my wife wants to check them out to see what their deal is.

So the food at Steamy’s is meant to give you that authentic Montreal fast food feel. They do burgers, hot dogs, fries, poutine, battered fish, etc… How was it? Well it depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for something that has that definite Montreal flavour to it, you’re in luck. This is the closest you’ll get to it in Halifax. Have cabbage on your hot-dog, that ever-so-slightly spiced gravy on the poutine, it’s all there. If you’re not used to this kind of stuff, then it’ll be up to you as to how amazing their food is. It’s all good food so you don’t have be concerned about that, it’s just that you’ll likely hear things like, “the best poutine in Halifax!” Well I’ve come to find out that poutine is like wine, Everyone has a favourite and if you ask 10 people in a room, you’ll likely get at least 4 or 5 different answers.

The service was pretty terrible, mostly due to one employee who quite clearly did not want to be there and didn’t really seem to know much about what was going on. The owner(s)? were there and they seemed full of energy and very happy, but the front-line was about as upbeat as a goth funeral. My order only was put into a money saving combo after we asked for that. We also were over-charged for “upsizing” the combo from fries to a poutine according to their printed menu ($1.50 vs $1.00). Finally my apple juice transmuted itself into an orange juice somehow. Then again, I suppose if you’re used to Montreal, then this kind of service is about par for the course.

All-in-all, the food was a notch above average, service looks like a complete crap shoot, either great or terrible. Overall value wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad either. We both ate for a bit above $20 and got some better than average fast food.

If you want authentic Montreal junk food, this is the only place in the city to go. If not, this is just another place to get a hot-dog and hamburger.

Often times, I read or hear about studies that are misleading, especially when related to drugs. Take for example the piece that I wrote about last year which suggested that you can die (actually it’s just increasing your potential rate of heart attack or stroke by 30%) from smoking marijuana (to the tune of 78 - 350 joints per week).

Ecstasy had been shown to have a very high instance of brain damage, often referred to as the ability to melt your brain after just a single tablet. Turns out that’s not true either. The fact that raves weren’t littered with corpses in the morning could have been another piece of evidence to factor into the original study, but hey, it’s just science. Turns out the scientists completely botched the experiment and didn’t use MDMA (Ecstasy), but rather methamphetamine.

Now I’m not suggesting that drugs are fine and you should go do as much as you want to. I’m just pointing out that there’s a lot of science out there that’s funded from places that might have a conflict of interest. Within this environment, some of these studies emerge which are either grossly misleading or completely fraudulent. Shocked? Don’t be. Turns out Merck and Elsevier have been in bed together publishing a handful of fake journals to make Merk’s more dangerous offerings look safer and more effective.

Keep in mind these are just the incidents we actually know about.

So remember kids, you never really can believe anything you read. Especially if it’s published in an alleged “peer reviewed” journal.