the blog quebecois

I'm Pjotro. I love music, I love dancing and I love engineering. Combining my passions I have created a suit that allows me to become music. On this site you can simulate this process to make your own song.

Enjoy!

I don't know how much enjoyment you'll get out of it, but Pjotro no doubt worked very very hard on this (and he loves music, dancing and engineering), so you are under some sort of karmic obligation, I think, to check it out.

The, uh, music doesn't seem to change very much no matter what you do, but you will marvel at Pjotro's massive command of dorky dance moves.

National Post:

OTTAWA -- An elusive, one-legged Taliban commander has threatened to "wreak vengeance" upon Canadian troops in Afghanistan if they don't withdraw, according to a new translation of a recent interview with the commander by an Arab satellite network.

"America now wants to avoid the heat of battle, so it pushes other countries towards it," Mullah Dadullah is reported to have said in a translation released Thursday by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute.

"Our advice to Canada and Britain is to refrain from defending the American propaganda and from standing by this historic American crime ... Our advice to these countries is to avoid the heat of battle, because we will wreak vengeance upon them, one by one, like we are doing with the Americans."

Dear Mullah Dad-ully-O,

I can understand why you're so twisted and bitter. It's your name, isn't it? I can only imagine the torments you had to endure at recess. "Mullah Da-DULL-ah, MULE-ah Da-DOLL-ah!" Kids can be cruel like that.

Now, those guys you're complaining about? They're called the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. You can read about them here.

They've been to many exotic places like Passchendaele, the Somme, Normandy, Kapyong and Ortona; met many exotic people; and killed them. You could ask the German 3rd Parachute Regiment about it.

See, when you're called the Princess Patricias, you learn how to fight early, and well (ref. above: kids, cruelty).

And since you've got to go through them to get at me, let me just say in conclusion,

NANNY NANNY BOO BOO!

Sincerely,

A LITTLE MUSLIM FROM PALESTINE

I'll always be a contender
Yes, I know my bones are very tender
And by Allah you won't see me surrender
Look at my eyes? You'll see no butterflies
My home is filled with cries... due to all the lost lives
But I swear by Allah I'll never compromise
I'll still throw the stones even with my broken bones
Why can't I hear from you, don't you have any phones?
Ya I forgot, your not on the chase, try it out and put your self in my place
Soon I'll return to my lord , the one that deserves every grace
Oh you don't have to worry cause of me you'll find no trace
It really is to late, why did you wait?
You could have sent me at least one dinner plate
I guess it is my fate
And La Ilaha Illa Allah is my mate.

Stephen Taylor did a bit of Googling on the names of those arrested last week in the alleged plot to bomb targets in and around Toronto and turned up the above wretched piece of poesy, written by one Zakaria Amara. Other contributions to his oeuvre here and here.

For extra fun, you can try to hack his email address, zack_amara@hotmail.com . I tried a few obvious passwords -- islam, jihad, allah -- with no luck. Odd. That's not how it works in the movies.

I would imagine that the cops already know what's in it, but maybe not. So here's your chance to become a counter-terrorism hero.

My talents lie elsewhere, such as promoting the careers of imprisoned "artists." To that end, I submitted young Zak's ode to suicide bombing to Poetry.com.

Poetry.com is, if not a scam, about as close to one as you can get. Would-be poets submit their would-be poetry to contests the site runs. No matter how awful it is, the sender gets an email claiming that his entry has qualified as a semi-finalist and it can be seen in printed form (with a couple thousand other semi-finalists) for the bargain price of $50.

If you want to see just how bad some of these are, here's a page where you can read them as they stream in.

Here's an explanation of how these vampires operate. And here's Dave Barry, writing about the same company in the pre-Internet days.

There's at least one (very entertaining) blog called the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal that grabs some of the worst and makes fun of them. Maybe Zakaria's about to get doubly famous.

A very good and comprehensive Photoshop tutorial
on beautifying faces. Not by overdoing it, but by using retouching techniques that would be familiar to any magazine photo editor.

The picture on the right is the original. Check here to see the improvements.

Via kottke.org

Big hockey game tonight, and I've barely got the time to post this -- but post I shall!

Jungle Adventure

Yer generic horizontal-scrolling game. An advertisement, I think, for some kind of waffle snack. What this has to do with "Jungle Adventure" is anybody's guess.

There's music and an intro, which you can turn off; some sound effects, which you can't.

Undoubtably Photoshopped, but it'd certainly be ideal for tootling around the darker precincts of Hell. Maybe if you ask nice, you can get some of those streamers for the handlebars.

Enjoy your stay, bacon boy.

Via Attu sees all

Update: Iowahawk scores an exclusive with the (potty-mouthed) dearly departed himself!

I thought I should commemorate the start of the World Cup by looking for some soccer (or football, if you must) games.

Turns out there aren't a lot of them -- most are either shootout simulations or using headers or kicks to keep the ball in the air.

I suppose Flash or Java programming for a website has some speed limitations, because the great majority of "realistic" games have only 3-6 players per side, often nothing more than colored dots.

However, I persevered, and eventually found this. It's got complete teams, instant replays, joystick control (if you have one), and a full World Cup schedule.

Of course, I won't be playing it. If I get the urge, I'll pop my FIFA Soccer '04 (I really should update it one of these days) in the Xbox. So, nyah.

Or maybe I'll start practicing this.

Warning: All links have music and sounds.

A CG simulation of a large asteroid or meteor hitting the Earth. On the bright side, it probably means you can forget about scraping up your next mortgage payment.

There's music and sfx. Also narration by a Japanese woman. I don't understand Japanese, but she seems remarkably chipper about it, all things considered.

Possibly the strangest workout video ever, not least for the weird Japlish exhortations, which seem to cover proper robbery etiquette and/or typical secretarial pool chatter.

The music is a good fit, though.

Uh-oh.

Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned of eight "critical" security flaws in its Windows operating system and Office software that could allow attackers to take control of a computer.

Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs on 90 percent of the world's computers, issued patches to fix the problems as part of its monthly security bulletin. It was the biggest such update since February 2005.

The world's biggest software maker defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.

Six of the critical flaws related to Windows and two affected Office. Microsoft also issued another two security warnings it rated at its second-highest level of "important" for Windows as well as one it gave a severity rating of "moderate."

The quickest way to get the patches is to click Start --> All Programs --> Windows Update. Microsoft has recently upgraded its installer, so you might have to download that first.

Easier still is to set your computer up for automatic updates. Here's how:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Depending on which Control Panel view you use, Classic or Category, do one of the following:

* Click System, and then click the Automatic Updates tab.

* Click Performance and Maintenance, click System, and then click the Automatic Updates tab.

3. Click the option that you want. Make sure Automatic Updates is not turned off.

the voices in your head are calling
stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
only a fool would think someone could save you

the clash

Bassist Paul Simonon demonstrates why he wasn't The Clash's frontman with a rather uninspired rendition of "The Guns of Brixton," not to mention his, uh, dental work; musical (and dental, sort of) equilibrium is restored when he and Joe Strummer swap instruments and launch into "Clampdown."

This was from an 80s TV show called Fridays, a comedy-sketch/musical guest sort of thing, with a cast including Larry David and Michael Richards, later of Seinfeld fame.

I saw The Clash in the summer of '82, on their North American "Combat Rock" tour, shortly before the band broke up.

An amazing show, probably the best I've ever seen. They tore the joint up for 90 minutes, and then returned for a 3-hour encore that was still blazing along past midnight, when I had to leave due to work in the morning.

Also the LOUDEST thing I've ever heard, though that might have been due to the brutal acoustics of the site, a hot cement box of a convention centre filled with 5,000 sweaty people. I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure that most of the paint was peeled off the walls that were still standing.

I still have the ticket stub. $11.50 for general admission (you could get as close to the stage as your elbows would carry you).

Now that's what I call value for money.

Because I got nothin' tonight, you get this. If the music doesn't drive you mad, the third level surely will.

Acid Labyrinth

I posted about this a couple of days ago and couldn't resist putting up another clip.

I've since found out that these come from a Fuji TV program called Zuiikin English. To quote from its webpage:

Program just according to title, those which adjust gymnastics to the English conversation. Each time with beginning, this English conversation will be made to remember to explanation and that muscle of the muscle which is forged in the time! With program keeps advancing under the concept which is said. First, there is a dramatic sketch of the kind of situation which uses the English conversation, image stops at the place where that conversation is made. Suddenly, ZUIIKIN GALS 3 of the leotard form appearing the oral [zu] while seeing, in the set like certain bureau gymnastics program, the English conversation vigor it repeats the gymnastics which it adjusts to tempo well. Just, you say that the nature and the English conversation are attached to the body in the movement and simultaneous, it is the program which should curve. As for the muscle which 1st is forged by the way with time thigh direct muscle.

Er, rather, to quote from the Google translation of the webpage. In any event it was (the program doesn't seem to be broadcast anymore) a whimisical way of teaching English. Here's a more contextual view of how it worked. (The ridiculous guy with the handkerchief on his head is apparently a "dorobo," a subspecies of Japanese criminal. Probably a very unsuccessful breed, at least as far as disguises go.)

Who knows? Maybe this fusion of kinesis and language serves as a useful aide-mémoire.

Though I would find it disconcerting to talk to an attractive Japanese woman and have her break out in a display of calisthenics.

Mind you, I would find it disconcerting to talk to an attractive Japanese woman, period. But that's just me.

If you've ever wanted to play a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) like Everquest or World of Warcraft but balked at the cost/subscription fees -- well, have I got a deal for you.

Deicide is a free, open source MMORPG currently in beta release. The home page is here. (It returns some scripting errors -- just ignore them, as you can otherwise navigate the site with no problems [Except for the dark grey text, which is almost unreadable on my gamma-challenged monitor.].)

You can download the setup program here. (Note: It's a very large file, about 570 Megs.)

Specs:

Minimum
CPU : Intel Pentium III - 600MHz
Memory : 128M

Recommended
CPU : Intel Pentium III - 1GHz
Memory : 512M

I won't be joining your Clan, Guild or whatever. My computer time is exclusively devoted to researching and writing material for this fine blog.

No, really.

It's the seventh game of the Stanley Cup, and I don't have a lot of time for this blogging stuff. So go fly a kite. Warning: Music, but of the mild, kite-flying variety.

Vodafone caters to violent office fantasies by feeding various desks into an industrial crusher. May not be safe for work, depending on how your boss feels about furniture. There's sound, but you can turn it off with a button at the top right of the page.

Via J-Walk Blog

no reindeers playing in the snow
no chimpanzees puttin' on a good show, a whoa whoa
no trees just wanting to grow and to grow and to grow and to grow and grow

sandgeese

The (U.S.) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a webcam of sorts at the North Pole. I say "of sorts" because it isn't a streaming or snapshot type that updates every minute or so. NOAA instead publishes a selection of pictures from April to October (there's little sunlight during the other months).

As you can see from the above image, taken yesterday, the scene lacks a certain something, like features. (To be fair, other shots have a bit more visual flair.)

Via Cynical-C Blog

I remember reading some years ago that, besides institutional consumers like the police and military, the biggest private buyers of body armor in the U.S. were divorce lawyers and family-court judges. I've no idea where to look to check out that factoid, but it makes sense to me.

There was an odd coincidence of links that I ran across yesterday; though I suspect it is no mere synchronicity, but reflective of a deeper pattern.

The first was the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Leskun v. Leskun:

The emotional consequences of a spouse's misconduct can be weighed by the courts when judging spousal support payments despite Canada's system of no-fault divorce, the nation's top court has ruled.

But the landmark decision from the Supreme Court of Canada on Wednesday stresses that misconduct alone is not a reason to financially support a wronged spouse.

"Misconduct, as such, is off the table as a relevant consideration,'' wrote Justice Ian Binnie. "Consequences (however) are not rendered irrelevant because of their genesis in the other spouse's misconduct."

Sheer sophistry. It's not an issue unless we can make it an issue, legislative word and intent be damned. The awestruck reporter went on to describe the decision as "highly nuanced," which well might be the case, to a J-school grad.

Here's how the courts decide such things: Court hears woman's side; court hears man's side. Court sides with woman. Nuanced enough for you? Try imagining the same verdict with the roles reversed. That doesn't take nuance. It takes powerful psychotropic drugs.

Barbara Kay wrote an excellent column -- not specifically about the Leskun case, but touching on the legal climate surrounding it -- in the National Post (I'm not sure how long the link will last, so I've taken the liberty of reprinting it in full in the extended post section):

The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the complete autonomy of women (except for financial support), via the incremental legal eclipse of men's influence over women's spheres of "identity" interests, which includes children. Thus the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars.

By no means an exhaustive list, radical feminism is supported by collective rights-dominated law school curricula; feminism-riddled "cultural studies" and the humanities in general; women's studies departments, in reality feminist recruitment and networking centres/ideological boot camps; politically powerful, tax-funded feminist groups who extend strategic mentorship to a wide substratum of women's causes; supine prime ministers and go-with-the-zeitgeist justice ministers; and a critical mass of ideologically aggressive judges, whose juridical archives, bristling with subjective, gender-biased judgments, discredit their vocation and call into question the whole notion of equality under the law.

A few minutes later I ran across a link at A Welsh View titled something like "Wild Courthouse Shootout." I seldom click on items like that, but I had a hunch about it, and I was right. It stemmed from a family court dispute last year in Texas:

Tyler Police have confirmed two people outside the Smith County Courthouse have been killed after dozens of shots were fired starting just before 1:30 PM Thursday.

The two killed at the courthouse have now been identified: Maribel Estrada, the estranged wife of the alleged shooter, David Hernandez Arroyo, and citizen Mark Wilson. Wilson is licensed to carry a concealed weapon and fired several shots at Arroyo. Arroyo, however, was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Four other people were injured in the shooting. Those have been identified as a Tyler Police Detective, Two Smith County Sheriff's Deputies and Arroyo's son.

The Arroyos were at the courthouse for a child support hearing said Tyler Police Chief Gary Swindle.

Video here. Warning: Sounds and violence. There's no obvious gore, but there are scenes showing the dead and wounded and the gunman is killed by a police sniper as he attempts to escape.

Now, I don't know anything about this story beyond the news report and particularly can't say what was in the mind of the killer. It could have been that he was a timebomb set to go off at the slightest provocation.

It also could have been that he was driven over the edge by a relentless, corrupt machine dedicated to crushing him. (Family law in both Canada and the States is very similar.) I've read enough horror stories about men caught up in this Kafkaesque system to believe it could happen. Certainly someone who plans an armed attack in front of a courthouse isn't expressing great faith in the future.

Me, I've got no plans to test the hypothesis. I'm not married, have no children, and no desire to change in either regard.

Others might see things differently. So you stalwart Officers of the court might want to start checking out the price of Kevlar underwear.

Oops, I forgot: Private citizens in Canada are not allowed to possess body armor.

Pity, that.

Chuck-B 3000 and his homies shake it like a Polaroid.

The goal is to swat the cockroaches before they crawl all over the sleeping guy and cause him stress, waking him up. I would think that having someone swat cockroaches while I was trying to sleep would be stressful all by itself. It certainly would be an incentive to find another place to sleep. Warning: Sounds.

I've been spending the day repairing my archives. Before I found Flickr, I was using some other site to store images. It unfortunately wasn't very reliable and in time all the links were broken. (Come to think of it, that's why I started using Flickr.)

So I had to go back and fix a number of posts. No time to find anything else, so I might as well rerun this one from last year. Some new pieces have been added to the catalogue in the meantime.

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These sort of look like my woodworking projects, except that I don't start out intending them to look like that.

They're the work of Judson Beaumont -- the gentleman pictured here, I'm guessing -- and his Vancouver-based company, named (probably ironically) Straight Line Designs, which creates children's furniture (and custom one-of-a-kind pieces and projects for children's hospitals, etc.).

Ominously, there's no mention of prices on the site. If you have to ask, you probably can't afford it.

Bad table! (Hey, that's what it's called.)

The Sun:

BRIDE Carly O'Brien wanted a big wedding --so she wore a dress weighing 25 STONE.

But the �25,000 creation, to outdo model Jordan's, was 8ft WIDE and got STUCK in the church door.

It took TWENTY people an hour and a half to heave 16-year-old Carly through and up the aisle followed by her 60FT LONG train.

The 30-layer tulle dress, covered with 3,000 Swarovski crystals, diamond head-dress and train meant dad Frank, 40, had to walk in front as there was no room alongside.

Carly, who spent NINE AND A HALF HOURS getting into it, was exhausted when she got to the altar in Gloucester.

After the ceremony groom Michael Coffey, 17, and 14 relatives carried her out.

For non-UK readers, 1 stone = 14 pounds or about 6.4 Kg. So the dress clocks in at 350 pounds.

Other interesting numbers: Ages of bride and groom. The odds you could get at Ladbrokes on this thing lasting more than a year.

Via A Welsh View

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a big selection of historic city maps and contemporaneous artwork, in high-resolution and low, from the 1500s to the mid-19th century. Most are in Europe and the Middle East; there's a smattering of sites in Africa and the Americas.

They've also created a very attractive, free screensaver for Windows using many of the pictures. Download it here.

The image above is a detail from an engraving of Rome by Pirro Ligorio, first published in 1575.

Ken Jennings, primarily known for his 74-game, $2.5 million run on Jeopardy, has now embarked on the road to certain stardom: Yes, he's started a blog.

It's actually a pretty good one; witness this post about an all-too-common problem.

Iraq The Model is reporting that Iraqi security forces have killed a number of terrorists and captured the bombers of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra. You recall that, back in February of this year? The act that was guaranteed to spark an all-out civil war? At least according to the CBC. What do you want to bet that there's absolutely no mention of this development on the CBC tomorrow?

I'll see your Mansbridge and raise you three Neil MacDonalds.

Via The Truth Laid Bear

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce .

Karl Marx

Hand-carving a replica of a Commodore-64 computer seems a rather impractical, if lovely, gesture. But it was done for an eminently practical purpose.