Poll: Omnibus Bills

Welcome to the first poll on the blog. The topic for this one is Omnibus Bills, which are a type of bill that groups together a diverse number of subjects into a single legislative document. On one hand, they can speed up the passing of legislation tremendously and increase the chances of the measures contained being passed. On the other hand, the included measures could potentially be only loosely related, allow for controversial measures to be “bundled” into a take-it-or-leave-it package, and suppress discussion of individual parts of the bill.

The current debate in the House of Commons is over the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which groups together previous bills ranging from youth crime to sex offences to counter-terrorism and (until recently) police surveillance of internet activity. A precedent for this type of bill comes from the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, which covered issues such as divorce, birth control, homosexuality, gun control, gambling, and cruelty to animals.

So the question is…

I see Paris, I see France, I see Boris’ underpants

And now you've seen them too.

The long school year came to a close, lasting from September through convocation in early June. I’m happy to report that I am still, in fact, alive. I have not turned completely into a zombie as of this time. It’s also been a while since my last post, as I was hard at work through May on a research project which involved far too many all-nighters and waking up at weird hours.

How Google Profiles lost my seal of approval

There’s been a bit of news recently going around lately regarding attempts by Google to spruce up user profile pages through Picasa photos. This was rather expected, since social media is one of the areas that Google has struggled with (for example, see what a failure Buzz is). I use Picasa web albums right now as a small online storage space for my photos, but I’m very much on the fence about whether I’m willing to dump money for expanded storage or just get another HDD or two. Might honestly have to look into some kind of backup system that is a little more robust — who knows when my current drive is going to fail me and I’ll lose all my photos, and work… again.

Hell, I wonder that about this blog. At any time WordPress could undergo some massive failure and all of it – gone. Sometimes I wonder if that would be for the best.

But I digress. What caused me to go wide-eyed with surprise was something lurking under the surface of these profile changes. And it is certainly not typical for me to rant about Google.

What was hiding behind the curtains… can be found after the skip.

The Land of Fishmen and Lumber

Winter break has come to a close, and I currently am at about 11km altitude (I wonder what they mean when they say that… is that height above the ellipsoid, mean sea level, or the terrain?). Travelling back to Nova Scotia from Alberta means that I am flying forward three hours, which is always interesting. Essentially, I left Calgary at 10:40 this morning, and am expected to land in Halifax somewhere around 20:00 local time.

As far as winter breaks go, this one had only a couple of firsts for me. The 1^st is that this the first winter break where I have actually gone anywhere. The 2^nd is that this winter break was the first that I’ve lived away from home and had to travel to visit the family.

My schedule during the holidays was, accordingly, fairly conservative… spend the necessary amount of time appeasing the relatives, go to a few movies, meet up with one of my local (Calgary) friends, and going downtown to assess the growing urbanity of the core.

What is left of the “vacation” after this flight involves securing transportation from the airport (actually, the nearest hotel) back to my remote corner of Nova Scotia. It is also the portion of the trip giving me the most anxiety, due to uncertainties in the travel arrangements of classmates who might offer a ride.

Another gruelling semester awaits, and I’m leaning towards taking an additional day off before jumping back into that gaping maw. Before getting back into the swing of things, I need to replenish my stock of hot dogs, pop, and mac n’ cheese. And, you know, update the blog…

Note: This article was originally entitled “Back to the Future – Canuck Style,” but was changed after serious consideration of the possible number of travel articles using the “Back to the Future” tagline.

5 Years, 0 Cars

Two SD-160s along 7th Ave in Calgary

I’ve been living without a car for quite some time, making the most of me feet, public transit, and carpooling. This has been the case for five years. To me, that’s a surprising amount of time. Five years ago, I was a freshman at the University of Calgary, straight out of high school and only 17 years old. I couldn’t drink or vote, but I could drive.

On a particularly sunny afternoon during my first year of university, I came back to the area where my car was parked only to find it AWOL — police report filed and car sold off to my insurance company within the hour. I considered purchasing another vehicle, but ended up deciding against it, for financial reasons as much as out of personal preference.

So how did the past five years work out?

A year of blogging, a month in the valley

 

Cloudy Afternoon in Annapolis Valley

 

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all ye Canadians out there. And since I’m probably not going to be paying attention, and early Happy Thanksgiving for all you Americans who get yours late.

It’s time for a bit of a review, seeing as how things have changed around here a lot. The seasons have changed, the location has changed, and my finances have changed (notably, they are in continual decline). So what’s better than a new forum post on a sunny Fall afternoon? I’ll leave that one up to your imaginations (don’t try too hard!).

More after the jump.

SSP Forum Meet – July 9, 2010

Hop n' Brew Pub, on 12th Avenue just west of 1st Street SW

This year’s “SSP summer shitfaced funfest” hit off fairly well, although a lot of people could not attend as they were either out of town or too tied up with work/other stuff. Altogether, 11 of us pulled together a mega-table and put some drinks down as we discussed everything from the upcoming election to where some of us are going to/went to school, to public transit, to getting some inside tips on upcoming development issues, and even down to just chatting about how damn tasty that cheese pizza really was.

For those of you who could not make it, remember that SSP forumers are pretty receptive to meeting up given enough of a heads up on the forum (see the Calgary Forum Meets Thread for local hookups) and that there will likely also be winter funfest for you to attend as well.

You can find a few more images from this meetup at my Picasa Page.

A special note: Stampede is really bringing down the people to the bar strips this year, and it’s great to see the patios, balconies, and streets full of people well after midnight. Just be careful getting yourselves home! Especially you people from out of town, enjoying the hot weather here (or indeed, getting a brief reprieve from the hot weather out there).

Canada Day 2010: The morning after

So, Happy Canada Day, eh?

It was a fairly good day this year. I happened to have the day off even, which meant plenty of time to laze around prior to the evening’s festivities. In my absentmindedness, I forgot to capture much of it with pictures (or sound, that’s good too), but let’s be even a little optimistic and say that it’s the memory that counts.

Breathing a sigh of relief

It’s only been a few days since my post about my linked Picasa post, with all the photos I could recover from the forums they were posted on. I lost the rest, due to a human error followed by hard disc failures. Or at least, I thought I had lost all of them; I actually just recovered all the of the photos from that trip, in the very folders they were downloaded to from my camera.

All 2427 of them.

Urban Vacation

Boris didn't heed the advice, "Go West, Young Man"

I am in dire need of a getaway right about now. Save for a brief 2-day excursion to Montana last year, and a funeral in Edmonton, I haven’t had a true trip abroad since 2007. The familiarity of my surroundings is… suffocating.

So while I am in a bloggy sort of mood, I’ll go into detail on what I think makes a good urban vacation, and what my plans are this summer.