the daily snivel

The CBC has unfurled The Great Canadian Wish List contest, which is an attempt to have the Canadian public speak up on the issues that are most important to them. The "wishes" are set up as pseudo-groups on Facebook, and Facebook users can add their support to the wishes that resonate with them. The list of the most popular wishes will be nationally profiled on July 1, 2007.

One wish that quickly gained momentum was "Abolish Abortion in Canada" and it has since moved to the number one ranking. In response, the group "I wish Canada would remain pro-choice" was created, and it is closing the gap now in a close second place. At present, there are 4983 anti-choice supporters to 4633 pro-choice supporters.

I was alerted to this group by a good friend, and it strikes a powerful chord in me. While the debate over abortion's legality in Canada may (or may not be) largely behind us, there is never room for complacency. When the majority are silent about their rights and ideals, the squeaky minority may take the opportunity to project itself out over that silence.

Accordingly, I would invite all Canadians with Facebook accounts (and those who have been putting off signing up) to consider adding their support for this group, so as to let it be known that choice is a fundamental value of the majority. 

In case you were feeling just too darn productive today, I thought I would share with you a fine time-wasting tradition guaranteed to wipe the glaze from your eyes during the 3:00 pm workaday doldrums. Me, I'm still "between gigs" (as we say in the legal profession), so although I force a regimen of normality upon myself to stay sane and optimistic (just because no one is expecting you at nine am doesn't mean you shouldn't bathe and shower and leave the house), I also keep myself in training by playing the odd puzzle game.

My preferred dealer of electro-smack is Popcap Games. You can play them for free on-line, download demos, and purchase for peanuts. Most of their games are available for the Mac and the PC platforms, and I highly recommend Bejeweled, Bookworm, and Zuma. Take it from me: Sudoko is just trendy math, so stop wasting your time there. Waste your time here instead. Once the coloured jewels and balls and letters start flowing on the screen, your brain's addiction-prone pleasure centres will light up like a pinball game.

And, hey, Stephen Notley, creator of "Bob the Angry Flower" works for Popcap, so in a way you're supporting his cartoon too. Bonus. 

This past weekend at the Jack Purcell Community Centre in downtown Ottawa, a group of artists, poets, and small press publishers got together to share their works with the public and with one another. While it has been some time since I have been able to write in a non-legal fashion, I try to attend and support the Small Press Fair each time it comes to town. I like buying interesting new zines and chapbooks, discovering different writers and giving back in some small way to the literary community in Ottawa (small and woefully incestuous though it can be). If it can be said that I have "court legs" at all, in the sense that I can think on my feet and argue a case with passion and clarity, I owe its inception to the poetry readings and slams that I started attending 13 years ago. As part of the fun of the Press Fair, I wandered around with my camera and snapped some photographs of the exhibitors. Many of the people you see here were part of that scene and made a tremendous impression on me as I started to write and perform.



Rob McLennan, organizer of the Ottawa Small Press Fair and editor of above/ground press.



Rob again, showing off a mysterious bruise he suffered during our boozing and merry-making the night before.



Grant F. Wilkins, editor of The Grunge Papers.



Warren D. Fulton. Warren and I met in 1994 when he worked at the Lois 'n' Frima's ice cream stand in the Byward Market here in Ottawa. He ran the Vanilla Reading Series there, which is where I first performed back when I was a wee lad. The ice cream stand was a favourite hangout of mine back then, and it is where I met my wonderful (and patient) friend Celeste. Warren is the editor of Pooka Press, and though he has since moved out west (where he is a big, fancy assistant director / production assistant, working on films like X-Men 3 and the Fantastic Four), I think of him fondly to this day.



Jeffrey Mackie. In 1994 he and James Spyker were among the set lovingly known as "the bearded poets." I didn't even recognize Jeffrey at the fair after so many years and such a good shave.



Some of the goings-on



Omid Amidi, Tyler Willis, and Spencer Gordon, the editors of The Puritan: Ottawa's Literary Press Journal.



jw curry 

Proof that I am alive and well, contrary to certain rumours (click on image for larger view). 

With the destruction of the frame in which my degree from Carleton University was displayed during my last move, it was a sad fact that none of my degrees were framed or even displayed in any way. Given that I am, as we say in the legal profession, "between gigs" at the moment, I have been feeling a little depressed and pessimistic about my prospects of late. As a result, I decided that a good present to myself would be proper frames for all of my degrees. I've ordered a new frame from Carleton University for my undergraduate degree, and I picked up a frame for my LL.B. from the University of Ottawa yesterday. My degree of barrister at law and my certificate from the Court of Appeal will probably need custom frames, but having them all up on the wall will do my spirit some good.

As will showing them off here. 

Continued from Rob's adventures in high speed internet at "What Ho From the Intertubes - Part I."

Now that we actually had some decent internet throughput, the next obstacle involved answering the question of how the internet connection was to be shared. Establishing a wireless network seemed to be the easiest solution, since it required no mess of network cable (and in this huge apartment, I would have needed a lot of cable to get the internet from one end of the house to another), and to that end I purchased the simpler modem/router from FreeNet, with the intention of using it as a bridge to a Wireless N router later on.

For some time, of course, the networking issue was moot, as my iBook passed away early this Spring at a grand old age after a long battle against a bum logic board, meaning there was only one computer in the house anyway (aside from my 1986 Macintosh SE, which still works but isn't really the robust multitasking multimedia machine I was used to). Mel has a new Windows XP machine in the office/guest room of the house, and she has been nothing but a gracious housemate in allowing me to mooch off of her computer and her connection even before we signed up with the National Capital Freenet. Although I now have the means to buy a new computer (with the easing of some expenses and a modest inheritance), I am biding my time before I lay down the dollars for the iMac I've had my eye on. We are mighty close to Apple's June 11 World Wide Developer's Conference, and with the recent updates to the Mac Pro, the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, Apple TV, and the June 29 release date of the iPhone, it's more than likely that a revised iMac (which has not been updated for an uncharacteristically long 273 days since September 2006) will be announced then or shortly afterwards.

Instead of buying new right away, then, I opted to send my iBook to DT&T Computer Services in Fremont California. Many helpful posters on the Apple website's discussion forums recommended them as a shop with a lot of experience in repairing and replacing iBook logic boards, and I've yet to find a better price for the service ($195 US to repair or replace your iBook G3 logic board). At the same time, I finally decided to enhance my computer's abilities by adding as much RAM as it could handle as well as an Airport wireless adapter card, and I found a great deal on eBay for both. When my iBook returned, it not only worked as well as it ever did, it in fact became much more functional with the added memory and wireless capacity. It is now really very responsive and snappy.

Next came the wireless station. I purchased the new Airport Extreme Base Station from Apple to add wireless networking to the house, and although I had read great things about its 802.11n functionality and ease of setup, I still made lots of little impressed noises all day when I set it up. I connected it the modem, and then to my roommate's computer via one of the ethernet ports, and ran the installation CD provided. Then I entered the DSL connection information and set up some passwords for the WPA encryption scheme. Behold -- a solid, bright green indicator on the otherwise featureless white, glossy Apple hardware. We had internet, and it was playing nicely with a Windows computer over ethernet and an iBook over WiFi. The only complicated part was figuring out which wireless encryption played best with my antiquated iBook and Airport card (it felt like a larger problem at the time).

Intrigued by the freedom of having a laptop and a wireless internet connection, I decided to take my iBook for a stroll late that evening to test out the strength of the signal. First, I took it to the deck in the back yard. I could see several other wireless networks were also in range, but there was no interference or decrease in signal strength for our network. Neat. Then I took the iBook to the front porch and logged onto eBay. Still other networks were coming into range, still no degradation of our signal. So I kept on walking. I moseyed down the street a house or two, and then crossed to the other side of the street, and there was still no loss of signal. By the time I made it to the end of the block -- well over 100 feet from the house -- I still had several signal bars and I was still able to surf the web at a decent speed. I hadn't expected to make it that far, so I wasn't wearing shoes, and this (along with the vague feeling of looking like a dork or burglar carrying a laptop around in the middle of the night) cut my investigation short, but one of these days I will venture out in shoes and see how far I get before the signal vanishes.

We've had no problems since day 1, and after having only dial-up internet at my desk for the past 13 years, it is such a treat to be able to use the internet at its intended speed at long last. Given that only a few months ago, my roommate and I were rolling pennies just to buy basic groceries, the fact that I now wonder what I did without wireless high speed internet is a strange thing indeed. I am very, very spoiled. 

One of the nicest changes I've made in recent months was the final move away from relying on dial-up internet access (a legacy that began with a 2400 baud modem in March 1994 and ended with my 56k Apple modem in March 2007) to connect me to the world. As a poor university student, I always found it hard to justify the cost of a high speed internet connection, even though it made working and researching from home a painful ordeal in the age of steaming media, monstrous PDFs, and other unweildy file sizes. This was particularly poignant given that dial-up internet access was dirt cheap (literally cheaper than what you would pay for dirt at a hardware store), and often freely provided by the university or the National Capital FreeNet, the local community-based ISP I've been a member of for thirteen years (and which has, sadly outlived many of its cousins around North America). I don't mind saying, though, that many of my friends and colleagues could barely conceal their amusement (and even shock) at the notion that I neither had high speed internet at home (not even the cheap "lite" version) nor even a wireless network. How, they wondered, could someone invest money into a Mac laptop for law school and then tether it to a measly phone line?

When my dear friend Mel moved into this big apartment with me, she brought her own internet access with her. It was the "Basic Lite" DSL connection from a certain national phone, wirless, TV and internet service provider. Her computer, set up in our swanky home office, was connected at approximately twice the speed of a dial-up connection for around $26 a month. She could only download a gigabyte of bandwidth each month -- anything more than that required her to pay a premium of $10 per extra gigabyte consumed. Between two people checking their e-mail and doing fairly modest surfing (certainly no file sharing or movie downloads), this kind of bandwidth gets eaten up quickly, even though the usage was limited to one computer shared in our office. The real kicker was that people who spent more on the higher speed packages not only got much more bandwidth, but paid much less per extra gigabyte of usage. Accordingly, as time went on and finances improved (I may not be earning the big bucks yet, but I do qualify for interest relief on my student loans!), we began seriously considering an upgrade in service for the household.

One of the main considerations in choosing an ISP was the fact that Mel did not feel she had been treated well by her current ISP. Additionally, we didn't feel it was a good idea to be dependent upon one company for multiple services, and this company already provided the home phone line. Despite the financial incentives that are sometimes offered to bundle services, we felt that our patronage should be earned. Whoever provided the most value for the least money would be a sensible if obvious choice.

The provider we settled upon was, in fact, the National Capital Freenet (NCF). I'll tell you why. First of all, it provides members with the option to subscribe to high speed DSL internet (5mbps downloads and 800kbps uploads, just like other DSL and cable internet service providers) for just $30 a month, whether you have a working phone line or a "dry" line. Secondly, it offered a handsome 40 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. Thirdly, it encourages people to network wirelessly and share their connection with housemates or neighbours. Additionally, members receive a modest 20 megabyte mailbox that can be accessed from any standard e-mail client program (like Oulook for Windows or Apple's Mail for OS X) and via webmail if you are at work or on the go. Finally, it makes the internet affordable and accessible for a lot of people in the region. As a non-profit, it provides a tremendous service, and all revenues from high speed internet simply go towards keeping the overall FreeNet active, functional, and capable of even further expansion.

The only significant downside to subscribing to DSL through the NCF is that you must provide your own DSL modem. These can be bought along with your subscription, and the modems include a router and hardware firewall so that you can set up a network easily. The simple version of the modem (the SpeedTouch 516) has one ethernet port, and can act as a router or a bridge to a wireless adapter (which we are presently doing with our new Airport Extreme Base Station). The more advanced Speedtouch 585 has four network ports as well as a wireless transmitter, meaning that you can essentially plug it in and start working wirelessly right away. Both modems come pre-configured to work with the DSL connection out of the box.

We've had the service since March 2007, and I can tell you that we are finding it both enjoyable and reliable. We have service with the highest speed available (DSL line speeds depend on your home's distance from a central phone station) and have had almost no downtime since the modem arrived. Although NCF is staffed by volunteers, they do have a dedicated DSL support manager who has been both quick, informative, and helpful (as well as tireless) in resolving any problems that occur.

Anyway, let me conclude by saying that if you live in the Ottawa area and you want high speed internet access (or are considering a switch from your current provider), give the National Capital Freenet serious consideration. There simply is no greater value for the money you will pay in Ottawa, and you will be supporting a rare and outstanding community-based network with your business. 

Among the many adventures I enjoyed over the past few months was the process of undergoing a security screening with the government. It involved a thorough examination of the past fifteen years of my life, including all residences, employers, and travel destinations, as well as an exhaustive list of the birthplace, occupation, and address of my family members (living and dead) and a long list of friends, neighbours and references. I won't divulge the nature of the investigation beyond the fact that it would allow me to work for a major commission.

I have my clearance now, after an honest-to-goodness intelligence agent interviewed my employers and friends about my character and the potential of me being a risk to national security. Sadly, I do not have a job to go with it (having wrapped up my employment at my beloved legal clinic in May), but I hope this will change.

Meanwhile, my beloved iBook has been resurrected from the dead, after I sent it away for a new logic board. Its absence has played a large part in my posting hiatus, because I was essentially cut off from the internet unless I used my dear housemate's computer (and I certainly did not wish to hog it up). Ultimately, however, I was able to cobble the funds together to ship it off to a repair shop specializing in Mac ailments. While I was at it, I stuffed it full of new RAM and an Airport card, meaning that it is much zippier and more handier than it ever was before. The only quibble I have is that the technician who replaced my logic board somehow broke my modem in the process (which is why I will have nothing to do with the smartier-than-thou attitude computer tech people lord over the unwashed user masses beyond wishing to punch those who hold themselves in such high tech-y esteem), so I have to send it back to be repaired all over again.

Over the next little while, you can expect new content and a new site design. I have lots of time on my hands these days, and one can only read so many novels (though I did just pick up a new translation of Don Quixote, which could conceivably occupy me for some time), and anyway there is a lot going on in this world worthy of commentary and outrage.