Month: August 2014

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We agreed that it was more fun last year, because we had Dryden and Dave and Nicole along with us, but it was still a great day. The forecast was for hot and humid. WRONG! The skies were mercifully overcast and Danica was actually chilly. Perfect day for me.
I was trying out a new compact camera and I’m pleased with what is does … and especially for its tiny size. Thanks for the tip, Bill and Becky. Sony DSC-WX350.
Yonge is closed between Richmond and Gerrard again on Sunday.

Photos: Danica Andersen
Artists Andrew Horne and Rob Elliott teamed up and got into the spirit … in a BIG way … for this weekend’s South Asia Festival on Gerrard East. There are more shots in the slide show to come, but I thought I’d start things off with these shots that Danica took.
In addition to being an imaginative and skilled artist himself, Andrew is the gallery/café proprietor of the Flying Pony and Rob Elliott is one of the artists Andrew has given a one-man show in the past year.
The shot at the bottom includes Melanie MacDonald, the artist whose show opened at the Flying Pony last night. She was chatting with Rob Elliott. I didn’t even know they were behind me. Typical.
Please note that I now refer to the Flying Pony as a gallery first, café second. Although I first appreciated the place for its coffee and bakery enticements, I have learned that they are secondary to what the operation is about.

Gord Sawyer’s bird photography is outstanding and his site puts an avian spin onToronto’s amazing diversity. Enjoy!

Yonge Street was already pedestrianized this morning, as set-up for the weekend long Buskerfest began. Saturday evening is Melanie MacDonald’s art show opening (7:00 p.m.) and if you go, you’ll be right in the middle of the Festival of South Asia. Spicy street food, music, dancers, bargains and ATMOSPHERE … Gerrard street, Saturday and Sunday, between Greenwood and Coxwell.

Bill Plaskett sent Joni this find, recently scanned from a Polaroid shot taken on South Pender Island in the 1960s. From the left, Eve Smith, my brother Jack, sister Joni and John Smith.
The Smith’s were family friends who lived on the island where Helen had a studio that Raabye built for her. Bill Plaskett is friend of Joni’s who has made his mark in Canadian music. Here he is, performing with his son Joel …

I wonder if I still have a tape somewhere of Joni and Bill performing their original tune “Wally the Whale”…. or was Wally a Walrus? Joni?

Two days ago, we rode past a newly poured concrete pad. Danica guessed its purpose and today the nifty new ping pong table was in place. BYOB&P. The net’s already there.

Our bike ride today was exploratory, taking us up the Lower Don Trail, past the Bloor Viaduct seen above, as far as Todmorden Mills. The sky started to look iffy, so we left our attempt to find a route across the river for another day.
The sun came back out on the way home, except for one little sprinkly cloud that did no harm.

A Virtual Private Network is a kind of encrypted “tunnel” through which data (encrypted again) passes. Why?
Say you’re surfing on a public wi-fi signal in a coffee shop. You are on the same network as everybody else in the shop. Others can easily watch and log what sites you are visiting, what passwords you may pass, and so on. So, you turn on your virtual PRIVATE network.

I set mine up and tried it today, comparing speeds of wi-fi access. Obviously, I took a big hit in surfing speed, but pages and email still came in at an acceptably fast rate.
Having a VPN is a good idea if you use public wi-fi.

I don’t think I know anyone who would watch all the way through this talk, but I would be delighted to be wrong.

If you did watch, let me know. If you didn’t, it was just about the future, whether or not we’ll survive as a species here in meatspace and how there are no good solutions to the problems we’ve created, only less bad ones.
Sounds like sci-fi but it’s real and it’s now.

Look where the magazines in the post below were housed. Smart, moving shelves radically reduce aisle space. Only one aisle exists at any one time. Push buttons shift the shelves along silently on tracks, opening up an aisle where needed. Seldom-used periodicals remain fully accessible in a very compact space.
Equally cool are assorted digital equipment offerings. Need a hi-res transparency scanner or want to digitize VHS tapes? Show your library card and sit down to a computer.

When I read that a long-published literary magazine was losing its Canada Council funding, I was curious enough to head to the reference library. What was On Spec? What had it done to deserve funding for over 25 years? What did it do to get cut off?
I got 3 non-circulating issues to read through. It’s a little, digest-size magazine, well enough made, that reminded me of a good high school yearbook. Heavy on sci-fi stories. Speculative fiction is seldom my cup of tea.