Miscellaneous

Back That Up

August 2 Comments

As I write this, Apple’s supposedly wonderful Time Machine software is busy making its third attempt in twelve hours to backup my system. Those who follow me on Twitter (again with the Twitter—all the cool stuff happens there first these days) will know that I’ve been having issues with the hard drive in my iMac, and that I finally have the opportunity to get it fixed. What I didn’t have was an external hard drive large enough to do a full system backup onto before taking it into the shop. It would be an incredible shame to have my computer repaired only to lose all my data. Like curing a disease by killing the patient. Someone who relies on their computer as much as I do not having a backup drive is kind of like a lawyer who doesn’t have a will, and since I’m not all that eager to… Continue Reading →

The Train

August 2 Comments

This weekend I went to Waterloo to visit my mother. She and my stepfather were originally supposed to come and see me in Toronto so we could visit the King Tut exhibit at the AGO, and go to one of my favourite neighbourhood eateries, Caplansky’s. But my mother has been very ill these last few weeks (she’s on the mend, never fear), and it’s perfectly reasonable for me to be the one to travel instead. I love traveling by train, and it tends to be a tad cheaper than the bus, so I booked a ticket on Via Rail, and off I went. Those of you following me on Twitter know what happened. I sleep when I travel. I don’t know why this is so, but it’s been the way of things since I was too young to speak my own name. Put me in a car, a bus, a… Continue Reading →

Goodreads

August Leave a Comment

There is this thing out there called Goodreads, which appears to be a kind of Facebook for books and book people. I signed up today to see what it’s all about. I only have one friend so far, so it’s not very “social” for me yet. If you’re the sort of person who’s into that kind of thing, we should be friends. I’ve added a little under half of my books to the account already, and will be adding more as the week progresses.

Pictures of Books!

August 3 Comments

Apart from being dark, musty and having ceilings so low tall folks bump their heads, my apartment is notorious for two things: first, it’s quite messy, as I am an atrocious housekeeper, and second, it contains a lot of books. And by a lot, I mean a whole lot. Folks tend to not believe me when I tell them how many books I have, so I went around and took some photos tonight (don’t worry, the apartment is cleaner than it looks from the photos). Bear in mind that I left quite a few behind in Dryden, and still have some packed away in boxes and such here in the apartment that I wasn’t able to get photos of, nor did I make a survey of my various magazines. Behold: The homemade bookcase in my living room: The tall bookcase, also in my living room: Books on the desk: Books… Continue Reading →

Guilty Pleasures

August 5 Comments

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. Six years of studying literature at the university level taught me many things, and perhaps the most important thing it taught me is something that seems obvious in retrospect, but that most people have difficulty applying in their daily lives: not everything you like is good, and not everything you dislike is bad. We don’t need to feel guilty or ashamed because we like something we know is not necessarily of the highest quality. Still, most of us, myself included, fall into that trap from time to time. For literary folks, especially here in Canada, guilty pleasures often come in the form of genre fiction, like romance, science fiction, or fantasy (though, strangely, mysteries tend to be pretty accepted). When our writers produce works that would fall into those categories, our inner snobs emerge to label them “dystopias” or “magic realist” or some other… Continue Reading →

Canada Reads

August Leave a Comment

I’ve never participated in Canada Reads before. I’d like to say that sometimes my reading schedule doesn’t allow for it, or that I’m not interested in the books, but the truth is that, while I really believe in the value of my job and the project I work on (which I’d rather not discuss the specifics of), I don’t make very much money, and buying all those books at once is far and away beyond my means. Not unless I can find them used or remaindered, of course, and good luck with that. Toronto’s used bookstores are picked clean the day after the titles are announced. Usually. This year things are different. Kerry Clare is running a concurrent programme, called Canada Reads: Independently, in part as a response to the criticism that this year’s lineup for the CBC event only features books that have already received considerable attention here in… Continue Reading →

The National Post, Champions of Equality

August Leave a Comment

This is the one post I never wanted to write. People who know me, and regular readers of this site, will already know that I am not a feminist. I am, in fact, quite critical of feminist theory at times. I resist making this a big issue on this site for two reasons: first, emotions can often run high when it comes to identity politics (of which feminism and feminist theory can play a significant part), making it very easy for a poorly-worded sentence to cause a colossal misunderstanding, and second, feminism remains a useful movement, and feminist theory a useful set of tools for a variety of fields; I don’t like limiting my tools, and criticizing something too much on the Internet can do that. But this thing, this stupid, stupid, embarrassing disgrace brought to us by the Editorial Board at the National Post has left me no choice… Continue Reading →

Bits and Bobs

August Leave a Comment

I’ve been reading through the Caustic Cover Critic‘s archives at work (hey, I have that kind of job), and I just noticed this evening that David Drummond, the book designer I mentioned in a post this weekend, actually has a blog, where he looks at some of the approaches he takes to designing covers. His comments aren’t as in-depth as I would like (they tend to be limited to only a sentence or two), but it’s still a pretty cool “inside baseball” kind of thing for those of us, like myself, who geek out over both books and graphic design. I’ve mentioned this on Twitter, but since I know most of you aren’t following me there, I thought I’d mention it here. A.L. Kennedy on Writing is seriously the best writing column on the Web. I know you aren’t reading it (I know you aren’t, don’t give me that look),… Continue Reading →

Ghosts in a Burning City, by Red State Soundsystem

August Leave a Comment

The 1980s was not exactly my favourite decade, musically speaking. The disturbed geniuses who brought us the spartan soundscapes of post-punk had discovered island rhythms and African beats. Those influences softened their edges, muted their anger at the largely urban disenfranchisement that originally fueled the punk movement. The resulting mess of genres, usually lumped together as New Wave, became little more than a massive John Hughes soundtrack, eventually devolving into cheesy synth-pop before finally dying of auto-erotic asphyxiation, here in Canada at least, with World On Edge’s 1991 self-titled debut. And yet there was a Moment, ever so brief, just as New Wave was about to topple into the realm of AM radio self-parody, when bands like Talking Heads, the darker Depeche Mode, and a handful of others made some really great records. To me those albums seem to have a shorter half-life than those produced at other high points… Continue Reading →

Updates on the Updates

August 4 Comments

So ten hours later, I’m only half-way through the process of updating the software. I have successfully updated to from MovableType 3.34 to 4.33, but was unable to make 5.01 work, for reasons that are entirely unknown to me. According to their knowledge base, the errors I was having do not exist. After spending a couple hours bumping my head against that particular brick wall, I decided to give up on 5.01, and revert to the 4.33 upgrade I’d made earlier in the evening. The result was close to three hours of downtime as I tried to figure out why Firefox was giving me 404 errors for files that were clearly on the server. Because I’d been at it for far too long, I was too tired and burnt out to realize the obvious, that the permissions had gotten messed up. A four-second fix turned into a three-hour nightmare. This… Continue Reading →