Posted on 9 Comments on Canadian Blog Awards

Canadian Blog Awards

Voting for “round one” is on at the Canadian Blog Awards. A few things have changed at the CBA since last year, the most notable being the voting mechanism. It’s now done through Polldaddy, which probably makes it a lot less complicated for the person who’s running the awards but unfortunately makes it far more tedious for we, the voters.

In previous years, all voting took place on a single page. There was a list of nominated blogs, divided by category, each with a radio button that you ticked to register your vote. The nominee list were linked back to the source blog, so you could easily check them out before voting.

This year, each category is on a separate page in the CBA blog, so you have to do a lot of bouncing back and forth in order to see all the nominees. When it comes to voting, each category is on a separate Polldaddy voting page, and none are linked to the blogs. Unless you know in advance who you want to vote for, all you have is a list of blog names, not even in alphabetical order.

If you have some spare time, I encourage you to sift through the nominations pages, as there are some interesting Canadian blogs to be found there. (I should also note that there are tons of interesting Canadian blogs that are not found there. Montrealers, in particular, seem to be woefully underrepresented.)

Despite the shortcomings, I encourage you, if you are so inclined, to actually go to the Polldaddy pages and do some voting.

Oh, and if you’re feeling particularly blorky today, you might consider voting for yours truly. (You saw that coming, didn’t you?) I am nominated in the following categories:

While you’re at it, why not vote for some of our other friends:

Voting closes January 21, 2008! Note that you can only vote once per round.

Posted on 7 Comments on What a Difference a Week Makes

What a Difference a Week Makes

(Updated! See below…)

According to Pascal Yiacouvakis, the morning weather guy on CBC Radio’s Montreal morning show, we’ve broken two seemingly opposing weather records so far this winter. Since December 21, we’ve broken the records for snow fall, and for warm temperatures!

We saw that writ large over the few days as the previous week’s big snowfall vanished in what seemed like a matter of hours. I have never seen so much snow melt so fast.

Below are two photos I took recently while waiting for the bus in the morning. The first was taken on January 3, and the second was taken a week later (yesterday).

January 3, 2008

Above: cold (-15°C), bright, clean, and wintery. Below: mild (4°C), grey, windy, and getting ready to start raining again. Which do you prefer?

January 10, 2008

I wish I had also taken some photos downtown, as the change there is even more dramatic. I couldn’t believe it when I stepped outside Wednesday evening; there wasn’t a single scrap of snow or ice anywhere to be seen. Not even a cold grey clump tucked away in a dark corner. Downtown was as snow-free as a day in July.

Update!

Five days later and we’ve come (almost) full circle:

Five days later: January 15, 2008.
Posted on 20 Comments on A Tale of Two Mice

A Tale of Two Mice

People sometimes wonder why I’m always slagging Microsoft. No, really. Apparently it’s not obvious to some people.

So here’s an example. I recently changed my computer setups, both at the office and at home, from using wired trackballs to wireless mice. The mouse I installed at the office was from Microsoft. The mouse I installed at home was from Logitech. Both items cost about the same amount of money, and have essentially the same features.

Installing the Microsoft Mouse

  • The packaging on the Microsoft mouse urged me to install the software first. Its dire warnings implied that the fate of the world depended on it. So I installed the software. During the installation, it detected my Logitech trackball software, and refused to proceed unless I uninstalled it. So I uninstalled the trackball (which also uninstalled my Logitech keyboard software), and installed the Microsoft mouse software.
  • I was then prompted to reboot the computer. (Huh? When’s the last time you had to reboot just because you installed a piece of software? What is this, 1996?).
  • After rebooting, I plugged in the mouse and was prompted to configure it, which I did. Then I had to reboot, again. (I don’t think this second reboot is a normal part of the installation, but it simply wouldn’t work until I rebooted again.)
  • Then I had to reinstall the Logitech software in order to get the special features of my keyboard back. I also had to go through it and re-set my keyboard preferences, since they had been lost when I was forced to uninstall it.

Installing the Logitech Mouse

  • I plugged it in, and it worked.
  • I had the option (option) of installing software to enable the special features, which I did. It required no reboot.

There is no rational explanation for this. However, it is entirely consistent with other Microsoft experiences I’ve had, plus things I’ve read about, in which Microsoft doesn’t just want you to have a computer with an operating system and applications; they want everything to be fully integrated and dependent upon each other.

They call this progress. They think that a mouse is only fully a mouse if it is entwined right into the kernel of the operating system. They think your Web browser needs to be woven into your word processor, which needs to be meshed with your email program. They think the average person gets out of bed thanking the Microsoft gods for their ability to embed an Excel spreadsheet into a Word document and to email it without having to open Outlook.

Bull.

Nobody cares about that crap. Sure, people want their applications to be able to talk to each other, but they don’t need them to be interwoven to the point of having to reboot the system every time you add or remove something.

The worse part, and the part that Microsoft seems to have the greatest difficultly understanding (or at least caring about) is that the more interwoven those applications are with the operating system, the more vulnerable the entire system becomes. That’s a big part of why a Windows virus can hide in a Word document or a hidden script can run in an Outlook email that burrows right in and wrecks everything.

No more Microsoft peripherals for me. No way.