Month: October 2012

A 4 hour wait for a 10 minute eye doctor appointment was the bad part. Just routine, but oh, so wearisome. On to the good part.
The artist in his Dawes Road studio
I went over to Stefan Berg’s East End studio this morning, to buy two prints from linocuts he made for a book celebrating jazz artist, Buddy Bolden. Danica and I had seen some of Stefan’s paintings on the wall of the Main Street Grinders coffee bar, liked them and made note of his web address.
When I saw the prints, the hardest part was picking a couple to buy… every one of them appealed to me. But two nicely framed and matted prints fit my budget and I have the perfect place for them. Right by the microwave in the brightly lit kitchen. We stand there all the time and will get a lot of enjoyment from them. The prints are dark so they like good light.

We picked prints #24 and 29. You can see them better on Stefan’s site.

This is for a friend who is thinking about buying the new iPad Mini… the one without Retina Display. It’s both funny and accurate.

I knew the mature Ronald McDonald (Hi, John) when I worked on the advertising account in the 90s. He scared the account execs sometimes, but he was nowhere near as scary as the early Ronald, don’cha think?
The cup-nose and the bib-collar had to go. And what’s with the eyebrows? I’ve heard of unibrows, but quadrabrows?
The old Ronald turned up when I searched for a vintage ad for Danica. She saw an amusing one for lard at a presentation yesterday. This isn’t it, but we liked it, anyway.

Danica and I were back at Tea-N-Bannock today, seeking warmth and comfort food for lunch. The corn soup with vegetarian bannock (with raisins) and a mug of coffee was $5.50. Perfect. We both had the combo.
The soup tasted great. Nice stock with corn and black beans and chunks of potato, plus pieces of turkey. Danica said it was as good as her own homemade soups. I agree, and that’s a real compliment.

Here’s an update to the Apple logo story below… Apparently Apple, the computer company finally resolved the trademark squabble with Apple Corps, the Beatles music label, back in 2007. Apple Inc. bought the Apple Corps logo.

Please yourself, of course, but I wouldn’t buy another one. Mine was a 500GB unit that I used with Time Machine to back up my iMac’s drive. Luckily, the iMac drive has outlasted the 4-year old Elephant Storage Drive. Kinda not the way it’s supposed to go, though.
I believed the external drive was really built. Carbon Computing makes them exclusively and I’ve always had good service from the Queen East store.
Apparently, I need at least 2 backup drives… preferably ones with better than the Elephant Storage one year warrantee. Carbon Computing wants 65 diagnostic dollars to even look at their old hard drive and then who knows how much to retrieve whatever data might still be on it. Nope, I’m not throwing good money after bad.

Until today, I didn’t know that the original Apple logo’s “bite” was designed to accommodate a lowercase “a”. Thank goodness the redundant wordmark was quickly eliminated, leaving only the famous bite mark.
I found the story here, on Brainpickings.

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
–Howard Aiken, computer pioneer

A little over 5 months ago, Danica and I had the privilege of visiting Ray Souster (pronounced sou as in south) in his Bloor Street apartment. Friend and author John Robert Colombo had given me a book of Souster poems and I asked if he thought that I might get my copy autographed. John said we should check with Ray’s editor and ask.
Shortly thereafter, we were there chatting with the poet, learning a bit about his personal history, his current circumstances, his ongoing work and his love of jazz recordings. He was very easy to talk to. I got my autograph and more. We came away with more books of Ray’s vast output of poetry.
CBC has given a good account of Ray’s long and significant career. So has the Toronto Star.
The man we met was old, frail and blind. What a contrast with his work, which strikes me as strong, independent and sometimes radically opinionated. Definitely one of the good guys. I’m so glad we met him.

We always enjoy our visits to the Alumnae Theatre on Berkeley Street, home of the Toronto Irish Players. Our visit yesterday, to see Brian Friel’s play Translations, was no exception. And yet, this particular play was not as satisfying as some. Figuring out why isn’t exactly easy.