The Hipster Travel Kit

A big thank you to Kathy A for my new t-shirt. I imagine I'll be wearing it a lot. But enough about me and my wardrobe. I'd like to introduce my latest invention.

I have been looking for the perfect gift for my friends who travel. My first thought was to give them ear plugs and eyeshades, items I've found useful for sleeping in noisy places like planes, buses and Italian hotel rooms. Then I went to the web for other useful travel items that people might not think of. First at the 43 Folders Wiki, I looked at Packing Hacks in the Travel Hacks section. The only advice: Duct Tape. When I found small rolls of duct tape, I thought, bingo! a case for other useful items!

Then I checked OneBag, where they also suggested duct tape, and many other things including bandannas and universal sink stoppers.

The eyeshade was my big problem. It's easy to find cheap polyester eyeshades, but you might as well cover your eyes with a plastic wrapper. Until Sarah E gave me the idea of using the bandanna as an eyeshade. The extra bonus is that you can do far more with a bandanna than you can with an eyeshade. Even a nice eyeshade from a fancy airline.

As for the binder clips, I plan to have a posting this week to illustrate some of the many uses for these versatile fasteners. Because their most famous use is the binding of the Hipster PDA, I am hoping that Merlin Mann will not mind my appropriation of the "Hipster" label for this travel kit.

The Hipster Travel Kit Contents:

• Universal sink stopper (or jar top gripper);
• Duct tape: the Handyman’s Secret Weapon;
• Bandana: dust-mask, eyeshade, hanky, flag
• Cord: clothesline, fastener;
• Binder Clips: emergency clothing repair, cufflinks, keyring;
• Ear plugs: for sleeping in noisy places and protecting your hearing in clubs and at concerts; and
• Bottle protector: for wrapping the contents of the travel kit.

Web Round-Up

Instructive Video for those of you in a relationship.

Graz has a blog about her new life in Scotland! (and she says I inspired her, shucks.)

Janet added a posting last weekend. She's working 3 jobs in 3 different Chilean towns. If you'd like to throw in your unsolicited advice, I created a poll in her comment thread.

Finally because it's clear that cute little animals are more popular with you people than my brilliant inventions and observations, here's Dennis the Overthinking Beaver.

Smiling because it's over

My Day of Celebrities

I'm trying to come up with an introductory sentence that will help link together a series of interactions I had yesterday, but I can't.

4:00PM Email to Favourite Writer: Procrastinating on my Evidence summary, I went to the Ottawa Public Library Website and began reserving science fiction novels for my upcoming week off. First, I reserved titles I knew about. Then I searched on favourite author's names. A few of them have books out since last summer when I last did this.

I looked up my favourite author. He had a setback a few years ago. Poor sales on the second novel in a trilogy and the publisher decided not to go with the third book. I decided to send him an email telling him how much I've enjoyed his work, and no pressure, but if he writes more sci-fi, I'll buy.

5:17PM Reply: I received an email with an attachment. My favourite science fiction writer thanked me for my kind words. The attachment is his latest unpublished 381-page novel. Still with his agent. He says, "You may not like it; it's a historical. Tell me any thoughts you have about it if you get a chance to read it."

If I read it? It's a historical -- it might have pirates! Of course I'll read it!

5:30PM Meet a Novelist: Met a gang at the Paradiso, among them is a woman I've never met. The subject of writing comes up. The woman I've never met is Uttara Chauhan, published novelist. [Check it out!] Fact you won't learn from her bio: she watches 4 movies a week.

7:00PM Colin Vincent and Jennifer Whiteford Reading at Octopus Books

I knew I'd like Colin when his first poem started with an admission that he tried to study information theory but couldn't understand the formulas. Just like me. He did something I've never seen a poet do before. He read his first and second drafts along with the final version of the poem he performed in the recent CBC Poetry Slam. Very cool to see how it evolved.

Jennifer Whiteford read a delightful series of entries from her diary-style novel Grrrl and then an entire story, Typical Girls, she had published in Razorcake. About two high school girls who switch from being death metal headbangers to being punk rockers. I jotted down two lines that got hearty laughs:

"We're not gay, we just dress funny."

"Punk girls don't go around giving blow jobs... It really is the more feminist option."

If you get a chance to see Jennifer read, take it. [The next such chance will be the launch for Grrrl at the Manx on June 3, probably at 5pm.]

10:00PM the Rapper and the Border Guard: I'm hanging at Patty Boland's, listening to Cherry Suede, two guys who make a lot of music with just two voices and two guitars and cover songs I know and like in a way that makes me smile. I'm writing anything that crosses my mind into my notebook while holding a table for four.

Example 1: "We can talk about physical disability as a social construct - no stairs, ramps everywhere, wide doorways - wheelchairs would rule; But how do you make a schizophrenic-friendly world."

Example 2: "I just got distracted by a very short skirt."

Example 3: "I should make a headboard this weekend... I can put lights on it. How else can I trick out a headboard?"

A young woman came along and asked if I'd mind sharing my table for four with a few of her friends. I said okay and slid over. The next thing I knew, I was at a table with a growing crowd of exuberant 20-somethings excited to have written their last exams.

I kept writing until the band took a break and the lights went out. The young woman next to me asked about my writing and I deflected by asking about her. Christy from Thunder Bay, just finished teacher's college and liked it okay, but has decided to take a permanent position as a Customs Officer. She's been working the Minnesota border for a while. I asked her about gun confiscations. "Oh yeah, we get a lot," she said. "Especially from Texas. Those Texans like their guns. A car with Texas plates, ninety per cent guns."

Then a friendly fellow in Boston Red Sox gear sat down across from me and asked about my writing. I deflected him in the same way. He told me he does rap music. One of his friends jumped in. "He won an East Coast Music Award!"

It's true: ECMA Urban Recording of the Year, 2005. I was sitting across from the artist formerly known as Pimp Tea, now known as Brockway Biggs, or Troy to his friends.

I didn't know whether to be more impressed that he's got a couple of albums, won that East Coast Music Award (which you have to admit is more hip than a Juno), or that he's partied with Ricky and Julian from the Trailer Park Boys. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm most impressed by the Trailer Park Boys claim to fame (even though he didn't meet Bubbles).

I introduced Troy to Christy and suggested they'd make a great couple. A customs officer and a rapper! What a great TV series! I think Troy was ready to go for it, but Christy seems to already have a love interest.

Tarot's New Card - The Ten of Pencils

I have friends who believe in various types of magic. I try to keep my lack of belief in irrational superstitions from interfering with these friendships¹. I figure if others will be nonjudgmental about my religious beliefs, I will do my best to be nonjudgmental about theirs.

My friend R is big on personality and life analysis through Astrology (both Zodiac and Chinese Year), Eneagrams, Meyers-Briggs and Tarot. She told me once that her totem card is the Ten of Swords. The Ten of Swords typically has a picture of a man on the ground with ten swords sticking out of his back.

You'd figure this is not a good card to have as your totem, but these magic systems always have a dark side and a bright side².

The dark side of the ten of cards is the fairly obvious: "Holy cow³, you've got ten swords in your back! You are seriously messed up!" and the somewhat less obvious: "But come on, ten swords? Isn't that over doing it? Wouldn't one sword have been enough to kill you? Nobody likes a martyr you know."

The bright side? "Hey, there's nowhere to go but up! Things are going to improve! "

I've been trying to come up with a way to give R something that would remind her that better days are on their way. My first brainstorm was a ten of swords knifeblock. But when I tested that idea with a focus group I was told it was too creepy.

Here you have my solution - the Ten of Swords pencil holder:

• Pencil Crayons from Big Buds: $1
• Little Doll from the Buck or Two: $2
• Piece of scrap wood
• Photoshopped background image colour printed and glued to wood
• 2 pushpins
• Some old linen scraps

Post Script: R received her pencil holder early this week. At first she thought it was a voodoo doll, but I'd included a handy card with photo describing its true function. She likes it:

Thank you for the lovely gift! And when I pull a card on my birthday this year, I'm willing to bet it won't be the 10 of swords but something happy like the 3 of cups.⁴

Links:

• A more "official" description of the ten of swords;
• the 3 of cups;
• image for base; and
• a word doc with card if you make one of these for someone.

----------------

¹ Phrases like "irrational superstition", "ludicrous nonsense", and "complete bullcrap" turn out to be counter-productive to this goal, but sometimes, you have to be honest about what you're thinking, right?

² Like if you were born in the Chinese Year of the Rat, you'd figure that would be all bad, but no: "Clever and quick-witted, the Rat of the Chinese Zodiac is utterly disarming to boot". Of course, it's not all good: "Behind that sweet smile, though, Rats are keen and unapologetic promoters of their own agendas" [cite]

³ My apologies to those of you whose religious superstitions make phrases like "holy cow" offensive.

⁴ "The Three of Cups can stand for a mood or experience that makes you feel like dancing and singing."

Fun Art at City Hall

Until April 30th, Ottawa's City Hall Art Gallery has a fun installation by René Price called Slice of Suburbia. You should stop in and have a look if you're anywhere around Elgin and Laurier. [More Info]

Windows Tips and Sweater Penguins

Techie Stuff:

I'm working on a new Dell computer running Windows XP, but until recently, I used a 7-year-old clone running Windows 98. A main factor in my keeping that machine going so long was following the advice in LangaList newsletters.

Even when all the technical stuff goes over my head, there's usually something fun at the end in the "just for grins" section.

This week we have:

• What's really happening in your computer; and
• The last page.

Meanwhile for those of you not ready for me to stop blogging critters, we have New Zealand Mormons knitting sweaters for penguins. [Link to story]

Educational Computing

In 1983, I graduated from university for the first time with a degree in cognitive science, major research focus: educational computing.

I landed my first real job managing a project for Dr. Seymour Papert. Coleco gave him half a million bucks and 50 Coleco Adams to see what would happen if we placed the computers in four elementary schools. Each classroom had a different ratio of students to computers. 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, and 10:1.

My job was to teach the teachers how to use the things, keep everything running, lead a team of student programmers developing software, supervise classroom observers and do whatever else came along.

Very cool job description for a guy fresh out of undergrad. Would have been more exciting if it hadn't been Coleco Adams. Have you heard of the Coleco Adam? It didn't work out too well. As Wikipedia says:

The problems with the Adam nearly drove Coleco to bankruptcy, and the Adam was discontinued in 1985, less than two years after its introduction.

I kept wishing I knew how to short sell stock and had some capital instead of debt. Because with the first set of Adams, I knew that Coleco at $90 a share was going to be going way, way, down.

Enough reminiscing. All I really wanted to say that I had no idea in 1983, that in 2006, I'd be in classrooms where almost everyone but me had their own portable computer and that they'd be using them to play spider solitaire, to instant message their friends in other classrooms, to watch world cup soccer games and to show me pictures of their children.

One More Exam

Here I am handing in my Equality Law paper at the Common Law secretariat. The last paper required for my LLB.

Yesterday I promised no more critters, so I thought I'd give you an excerpt from my insightful and seminal work:

Auton and Wynberg – Section 15 and Autism: No gains for substantive equality

But who would believe that the day after I promise no more critters there would be news stories about:

• Upcoming awards to four life-saving dogs, one of whom is a cancer-sniffin' doggy! [story]
• A kitty in Germany who saved a baby's life [illustrated story]; and
• A tailed frog and a two-tailed lizard in Malaysia? [story with genuine pix]

But seriously, this is no longer a blog about cute little animals. One exam between me and the completion of my studies.

Last Animal Post: Puppies

If you click on this photo you will go to a youtube page with a video of puppies meeting a cat.

I promise, my next post will have no mammals.

My Impatient Gardener and Another Critter

My gardener Pam is gifted. I would have to fire her if MPAC took her work into account because my property assessment would go through the roof.

While the daffodils I'm responsible for on the Lebreton Side of the house aren't even close to blooming, the ones she put on the front of the house are in full glory!

I asked her how she did it and she said, "I couldn't wait, I just had to make a trip to Home Despot!"

Meanwhile, now that I've got you depending on me for images of small mammals, I want you to take my word for it that this fuzzy brown thing photographed earlier today on top of a neighbours garbage can is a raccoon.

More Critters: The hogs are out

Because I followed a Lifehacker.com suggestion, I now see all the recent Flickr pictures tagged with "Ottawa" when I open my Yahoo Front Page.

Lots of tourist shots of the Parliament buildings, but also lots of pictures of people, graffiti, street scapes, and yesterday, a ground hog on the grounds at Carleton.

Image by LexnGer.

Links

• The Lifehacker Suggestion
• Flickr pix tagged "Ottawa" and the RSS feed
• Hinterland Who's Who on the Woodchuck also known as the Groundhog or fact sheet

Giant Bunnies: or when will the madness end?

That checkmark on the graph means my January paper is done. For now, anyway. I should be working on the Equality Law paper. Instead of giving you this link to pictures of giant bunnies.

It's Either Nothing or Ugly Dogs

My January paper is out of control. So there's nothing here today unless you want to view and vote for pictures of unimaginably ugly dogs. Don't thank me, thank Phil.

Blogs I Like: MatildaZine

Jennifer Whiteford's blog is a delight.

It's okay that she doesn't have an RSS feed, because she posts almost every day. She's funny and personal. I'm looking forward to reading her book even though it doesn't have space pirates. (I'm also not worried that her grandfather didn't like it and I'm probably not in her target demographic).

One of her readers ["bee"] left this comment for Jennifer recently and I concur:

i love the way you write, and always have. you're witty, and honest, and acerbic when it's right to be, and kind, and you love your friends a lot. i just appreciate what your blog adds to the blogosphere.

Blogs I Like: Pepys

Remember grade 9 history when we covered England in the 1600s? The great plague? The great fire? And how a lot of what we knew about daily life came from the diary of Samuel Pepys?

Remember how you've always thought you should read his diary to round out your knowledge of that time?

Sam is now blogging, every day, from 343 years in the past. You can add him to your RSS feed and absorb his diary in nice little annotated chunks. That's right, the postings are annotated. Names, places, events are hotlinked to pages with more details. For instance:

tonyt on Sat 25 Mar 2006, 9:38 am Link

“Up betimes”

It seems clear from the next diary entry (24 March 1662/3) that “up betimes” means well before 6.00 a.m. This suggests that it is more likely to mean ‘first light’ (about 30 minutes before dawn) rather than dawn itself.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

And if history is not your thing, you may want to check out Faith, the Biped Dog.

New Must-See TV - Junk Brothers

Since I started school I've been actively trying not to get hooked on new TV shows. My old shows all got cancelled (Buffy, Angel, Voyager, NYPD Blue) so you'd think I'd not be watching TV. But along came This is Wonderland, a fun show about Canadian criminal law. I had to watch it for my education. Then I had a four-day break and got hooked on CSI reruns. A week-long illness and Trading Spaces, Clean Sweep, While You're Out and the Debbie Travis shows stuck their tentacles into me.

And now there's a show that appears to have been designed specifically for me:

Junk Brothers

Two guys who live here in Ottawa drive around on garbage night. They find big items at the curbside, take them away, totally transform and trick them out and then return them to the original owners.

In the first episode they turned a dresser into a butcher block kitchen island and a stove into a monster barbecue.

My possibly premature comments based on only having seen one episode:

• Steve and Jim Kelley are the biggest hoser brothers to hit the screen since Bob and Doug. I mean this in the most affectionate way. They must have said "check it out" a dozen times each.
• They complimented each others work to a point that got irritating.
• Their aesthetic seems to differ from mine in that they appear to be free to purchase fairly pricey add-ons to their creations, e.g. monster wheels and decals for the barbecue.
• Their creations are things of beauty.
• They could go into more detail about some of the things they do, but they've only got a half-hour, so I won't take away points.
• I wonder if the peope who get these things returned to them appreciate them. Does anybody have a connection to these guys? Maybe I could leave one of the couches outside and they could turn it into something I could actually use. (Have I mentioned that there are now four couches at the ScrimChateau if you only count the sectional as one couch?)

Today they'll be turning an old bicycle into a ceiling fan. Clearly I have no choice but to watch and learn.

Junk Brothers HGTVC Apr 09 8:00pm, 11:00pm ch. 49 in Ottawa Series/Home/Garden, 30 Mins. "The Desk and the Bike" Episode #1002. An art deco desk is transformed into bedside tables; an old bike is transformed into a ceiling fan.

My next roommate

I've been thinking that living alone probably isn't good for my long-term mental and physical health. At the same time, if I have another person around I'll wind up having to watch TV shows about hurricanes, heart surgery or something just as bad. Since non-humans usually don't hog the remote, maybe it's time I got a dog.

The only thing is, I can't bear the idea of having to support some freeloader. That's why I've decided I want a dog with a day job who can their own way. That's right, if I'm going to open my house to a canine, it will have to be a working dog.

I understand there are a wide variety to choose from, but most would not be compatible with me for one reason or another. For instance, there are no greyhound tracks near Ottawa, and I am not about to move, so a racing dog is no good.

There may be dogfight pits nearby, but I'm opposed to violence in sports, so a fighting dog is out.

I have tremendous respect for sheep dogs, but I wouldn't want to have to drive out to the country every morning at dawn and then back into town at night (I'm serious about not moving, even to the country-side).

Sharing a house with a police dog would be glamourous. My dog's partner could probably even do the driving. My only concern is that it might involve shiftwork and we'd never get to see each other.

Seeing-Eye dogs and those dogs that help wheelchair people have to live with their clients, so they're out.

So... what dog would work days, and not need a drive to work? A cancer-sniffing dog! Apparently dogs have been trained to detect skin cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer. A skin cancer dog would make for fewer innuendoes, but in my experience dogs don't seem to mind people making jokes about them, so I could go with a breast or prostate dog.

Every morning we would walk to a downtown clinic, say our goodbyes and I'd go off to my job, (okay, I don't have a job now, but I will.) At the end of the work day, I'd swing by the clinic and we'd go home. Every two weeks, we cash our pay cheques and have a little blow-out!

Link: Diagnostic Accuracy of Canine Scent Detection of Lung and Breast Cancers in Exhaled Breath

Legal Illustrations 6: Police Trickery, Use of the Body, Re-enactments

These are the last illustrations I will draw in law school lectures. There were few illustrations from me this semester because:

1. I only took one lecture-format class based on case law; and
2. That class was The Law of Evidence and almost all the cases involved sex assaults and that's just not a direction I want to take with my art.

Confessions

The leading case on the admissibility of confessions is R. v. Oickle. Oickle confessed to setting a bunch of fires, so I used a clip-art picture of a lit match in my first-year Crim summary. But this year I decided to pick up on a quote about "police trickery" from Former Chief Justice Lamer that Justice Iaccobucci adopts.

In general, a voluntary confession obtained through police trickery is admissible unless the police engage in conduct "that shocks the community." What tricks would shock the community? Examples include: "a police officer pretending to be a chaplain or a legal aid lawyer, or injecting truth serum into a diabetic under the pretense that it was insulin."

Admissibility of Unconstitutional Evidence

Under paragraph 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms evidence that is obtained in violation of the Charter is not admissible in court if the admission "would bring the administration of justice into disrepute." The 3-part test for this is set out in R. v. Stillman ("You know it's a good test when it has three parts", Nicholas McHaffie). The first part of the test is "would the admission of the evidence make the trial unfair?" It will be unfair if the evidence was "conscriptive" and could not have been obtained without the Charter violation. Examples of conscriptive evidence are compelled statements, compelled body samples, evidence discovered through "use of the body", or evidence discovered through the use of one of those.

"Use of the body"? What does that mean? Suppose you're investigating a murder and you come to your suspect Michael Feeney in his trailer and you say, "hey, Feeney, step into the light." Then when he does, you see his shirt is covered in blood, you arrest him, the blood matches the victim, he's convicted. Does the fact that you told Feeney to step into the light count as "use of the body"? No. R. v. Feeney But if you made Feeney put a shirt on to see if it fit him and then had him re-enact the crime, that would be pushing it.

Prejudicial Evidence

Speaking of re-enactments, suppose you're prosecuting some guys for driving into some cops in a "drug bust gone bad" and you video-tape a re-enactment in which you use bigger cars than the guys drove, you have them move at faster speeds, and you take other liberties to make your video exciting. Will you be able to show it to a jury so they can better understand what you are saying the alleged bad guys did? Probably not. The cardinal rule of admissibility of evidence is that the probative value has to outweigh the potential for prejudice, or the chance that it will help find the truth is greater than the chance it will lead away from the truth or unnecessarily complicate the trial.

In R. v. MacDonald the Ontario Court of Appeal decided a videotape like the one I just described would be more prejudicial than probative.

In balancing the prejudicial and probative value of a video re-enactment, trial judges should at least consider the video’s relevance, its accuracy, its fairness, and whether what it portrays can be verified under oath.

Images

I am pleased to bring you some of the products of Sonja McKay's recent multi-media art class. Sonja tells me that she has a series of cartoons featuring these characters and another named Harey. "Moosey helps Harey the hare find a new place to live after Harey is evicted by a forest fire, and Lemmie and Rocky also figure in the adventure." I've asked for the whole series, but Sonja had some lame excuse about it being too long.

Update: Now available at Sonja's Highrise Blog Remember the red mitten on the hydrant marker at Louisa and Bell? It looks like the City staff who remove the hydrant markers in the spring have a practice of leaving lost mittens on the hydrants.

p.s. I have two big papers due very soon. This means you can expect lots of blogging from me.

A Confession

Okay, I admit it. I watch one of those reality shows where people get kicked out every week. Should I watch tonight? Instead of working on my paper? Here's the advice I get from the Yahoo! TV guide:

Project Runway LIFENET 45 Apr 03 10:00pm Series/Reality, 60 Mins. Episode #212. The contestants are narrowed down. Original Airdate: March 1, 2006.

Is it the one with the skating outfit? The dresses made from plants? The runway dress for Iman? Or is it an episode I didn't see?

Some Beginnings are Harder than Others

Snapped this shot on the Laurier Bridge last week. It sort of fits where I am with the papers I need to finish in the next two weeks.

Stickers on the Camera

There are several things I want to point out about this photo of me on my bicycle.

First, my clever sideview mirror is still attached and hasn't been knocked off any of the times my bike has fallen over.

Second, check it out! On Thursday, March 30, it was so warm, I had to put my jacket in my pannier and ride in shirtsleeves. The day after this photo was taken, I cycled to and from school in a short sleeve shirt and still arrived in a perspiring state!

Third, do you notice the stickers on my camera? One is a yellow sticker that Kodak put on the camera to advertise its features: 2.2 megapixels, etc. Normally, I'd remove this kind of thing. But it occurred to me that it makes my $150 digital camera look like a $7 disposable and I thought that might be useful. The other sticker is a return-address label that a charity sent me.

I don't know if having the camera look cheap has prevented someone from stealing it from me. It seems to make people lower their guard and thus allow me to get more natural pictures. But the address label has resulted in a quick return. When I went to Toronto a few weeks ago, the ticket agent called to me after I'd paid and walked to the waiting area, "Mr. Scrimshaw?" He waved the camera. I'd left it on his counter.

Tired of Checking for New Posts all the Time?

Maybe it's time you subscribed to this blog in one way or another. There are several options over in my sidebar under "Subscribe to this Blog". You might want to read:

• Jon Tan's RSS Feeds Explained;
• Steve Shaw's 15 Ways to Read an RSS Feed; or
• Eric Zorn's 23 Steps to use Bloglines.

I use the "add content" feature on my Yahoo FrontPage.