A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

Earlier today, I was in the middle of creating a post entry and things went suddenly very quiet. For you see, the electricity went out. It went out at the PC, for every device in the apartment, all over my building, and as we later found out, the entire block. That occurred at close to 5:00 pm. By the time it got to be seven, we figured we should go out for dinner. It seemed too much of a hassle to locate the camping stove.

First, we walked around downtown and thought of reasons why we didn't want to eat at various places. Basically, we're cheap. Later, we jumped into the truck and went to our buffet place in Surrey. For the same price, we had so much more to choose from. Actually, due to how I'm feeling right now, I'm pretty sure I chose too much.

Major electrical connections from the province run through this area and we've never been without power. Today, most of the city wasn't without, but we were and life sucks without juice. I even saw kids playing in the street undoubtedly because their PlayStations weren't running. Imagine, that!

Labels: blogging, food

It's 9:30 am and the balcony door is wide open. It's going to be another hot one. June may have had a lot of awful weather, but July has been picture perfect so far. I have a good topic for today, but I fear I'm too lazy to do it justice.

This relates to my current, life-altering, new-found reliance on podcasts. I count myself now as one of those distracted drivers zooming around paying more attention to what's in my ears than what's on the road.

I was born at the tail end of the boomer generation, so some changes seem interesting, yet odd to me. I was a kid when we had something called mass media. In fact, I may have been among the first to really have really grown up with television. Whatever your thoughts about the quality of programming, TV did have a unifying force. If I ask a guy of my generation if his preference would run toward Ginger or Mary Ann, there's instant recognition of the reference. Isn't the whole concept of society simply access to shared experiences? Likewise, when we listened to the Top 40 on the radio, we knew that although not everybody's cup of tea, those same songs were being heard by just about everybody.

I was going through my podcasts yesterday and noticed how very focused my selection was. Most of my audio involved science and technology. I had spanned the globe in search of only the information I was interested in. I guess this sort of demonstrates the idea of narrowcasting rather than broadcasting.

I can't help but feel a little sad that in our future there'll be no common ground to which we're subjected. New media is giving us fewer and fewer points of shared reference as we each pursue our own little worlds of self interest.

Labels: Creative Zen, opinions, podcasts

I've enjoyed high-definition broadcasts since last fall. Most all prime-time programming is in HD. The TV pretty much stays in the 800 range of channels on Bell ExpressVu. The thought of picking up stations and time shifting from across Canada used to be thrilling; however, now I feel if it ain't in HD, it ain't worth watchin'. Newfoundland TV maintains a quirky schedule anyway.

The exception was The National on CBC. The evening news on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wasn't offered in HD. It annoyed me that even local news from small market segments in the US jumped right into HD, but our taxpayer-subsidized national broadcaster was being so slow to adopt.

Then, last evening for the first time, I noted the 16x9 format when playing back the news. The PVR catches the Toronto HD channel in order to record the show at 7:00 pm rather than the local ten o'clock feed.



I've seen no acknowledgement of this switchover. Their website is mum. For all I know, they could just be testing. Most outside reporting was standard TV with 'letterboxing' but I was impressed by the studio shots. I could see the individual hairs in Diana Swain's do. Then I was hit by a horrible realization. When Peter Mansbridge is back from his break, we'll have to watch him continue to age with increased definition.

Labels: Canada, HDTV, PVR, television

I'm very afraid. Although the blog entries here stretch back to September of 2003, I know that I must never skip a single day. If that were to happen the whole project might fall like a house of cards!

Rather than face that possibility, I have promised myself never to miss one. It doesn't matter that I could be tired. Having nothing to say is no excuse either. Even on those rare days in my life when I'm too busy, I must still take the time to add something.

Even though all three maladies are currently affecting me, here's a link. As I'm typing this in the computer lab at BCIT, I thought I should allow a visitor to stop for a virtual visit too. Just click on the image to go to www.bcit.ca.

Labels: BCIT, blogging, computer lab

Spring cleaning is probably good for the soul. Regardless of the season, it's liberating to get rid of extra junk. For example, I just threw a few bags of clothes into the back of the truck. The Salvation Army Thrift Shop wasn't open yesterday, so they're still sitting in the back. All those pants with a waste size of 42 are no longer in the closet. I need a reason to stick to dieting. As long as I was at it, I also decided to make a few formatting changes to this blog over the weekend. Some things were dropped while others just moved around.

I decided after years to finally embrace the tags. Actually, I guess blogger.com refers to them as labels. Although there's already specific ways to search this blog, labels do offer an additional way to view its data. Rather than a brute force search to turn up an appropriate page, identifiable labels pinpoint my own concepts on how to organize my eJournal and images, essentially a database of information.

The problem is, to be effective, labels need to be added to the older entries too. I shan't expect that is going to occur any time soon. Rather than focus on the previous 1,600 entries, I'll label all new ones. If you do want to see how tagging works with my Flickr picture collection, click the image below.

Labels: blogging, Flickr, labels, searching

People have a need to compartmentalize time. Making order of our lives through chronological markers, for some reason, makes us feel better. Each time Canada Day rolls around, we notice this phenomenon.

We initially arrived just a few days before one to start life in Canada. So, we count the passing of each national birthday party. Yesterday was the eleventh. It was interesting to visit a place so close to where we stayed during our first Canada Day but to where we'd never ventured.

This is CRAB Park at Portside. It's not far from downtown but we needed to walk all the way through Gastown to get to Main Street. The road passes over the train tracks there.



It was nice enough and just a stone's throw from Canada Place although the tracks keep it quite separated from the city. We don't mind slightly unsavory sorts so weren't bothered walking there near midday. We got the feeling it might not be the best family friendly place after dark though. The Vancouver Park Board website says it's called CRAB Park at Portside for a neighbourhood action committee, Create a Real Available Beach, and not for the shellfish.

Labels: Canada Day, Vancouver

If you're reading this from up here, then felicitations for the special day. Although this is the nation's 140th, it's only our 11th.

The weather outside seems perfect at this hour, so right now we are going to downtown Vancouver to see what's up at Canada Place.

I'll add a photo or two in the evening today to Flickr (and the daily photo under my own picture to the right). Today does mark something of a anniversary for this topic. I started my Daily Picture Parade exactly two years ago. I snapped a picture come hell or high water. So if you wish to view a personal image taken during every one of the last 730 days, please visit this Flickr page.

Labels: Canada Day, Daily Picture Parade, Flickr, Vancouver