Author: Bill

Even at 8 measly bucks a month, Netflix wasn’t worth having. I never watched it at all and Danica watched so few movies, it would be more economical to pick one from iTunes now and then.
Bonus. Netflix is in cahoots with Google and Microsoft, pressing DRM (digital locks) into the formerly free (as in freedom) HTML standards that web pages depend upon. Since I feel that digital locks are a bad idea, I’m happy to be withdrawing my tiny payments from the dark side.

First of all, I love my little Asus eee pc netbook, purchased recently on Craigslist for $100. A new $40 battery ($36.88 actually, including tax and delivery) and I’m good for up to 10 hours between charges. That’s amazingly good.

The machine is conveniently small with a 10 inch screen, built in wifi and web cam, speakers and microphone. Danica and I have had a Skype conversation, netbook to iPad, Works!

A frequent traveller around the globe, Lloyd also likes to spend chunks of wintertime in southern climes with his wife Cheryl. His Mexico and Havana pictures are new additions to his reorganized online gallery.
Havana 2  Watercolour, 17″ X 12″
I can’t resist the opportunity to display my favourite portrait by Lloyd… last year’s Anado, also watercolour, 11″ x 11″.

Well, this is a bit embarrassing for Apple. The latest operating system (Mavericks) was offered as a free upgrade but it turned my iMac into a sluggish pig. I hoped that the first version update would fix the problem, so I waited for Version 10.9.1. No better.
A Google search for “Mavericks is slow” revealed that thousands of people were looking for a way to revert to their earlier, better performing system (Lion, in my case).
Good idea, I thought. So I copied all of my files for the last couple of months, saved them onto a backup hard drive and reverted to a pre-Mavericks backup From Time Machine. To do that, you have to restart the computer while holding down the Command+Option+R keys. You are given the opportunity to restore to a previous date from your Time Machine backup.

I never did get past the annoying, persistent demand that I sign up for spam from !ndigo Books, just to use the wifi in the book store’s embedded Starbux. Strikes me as pretty pathetic, but I have never been a fan of the gift-shop-knick-knack-bookstore anyway. Just one more reason to avoid the place.
BTW, “bang” is what coders call an exclamation mark. !ndigo may spell its name with a bang but looks like it will end with a whimper. Bookstores are struggling to survive but bully marketing isn’t going to help.

Rob Ford’s fooliganism is a minor embarrassment compared with the nastiness that is Stephen Harper. Here’s a nice summary of last year’s behaviour, being shared around the world.
The sad thing is, it isn’t just a matter of turfing the Conservatives, although we have to do that ASAP. The damage takes a long time to undo. Ontarians are still suffering the effects of Mike Harris.

Our niece Nicole posed for her mother Kathy, introducing Canada’s southernmost park, Point Pelée. They were there yesterday.
Danica has fond memories of the park from her girlhood days as a Windsor resident, but she has yet to take me there. Perhaps this year. Perhaps when it’s a little warmer. But it is beautiful in the wintertime, too, as Kathy’s photos show. The big one at the top was one of my favourites.

New Year’s Eve dinner conversation touched upon various scandals and misdeeds of Canadian governments at all levels. Lloyd Cooke, one of the participants and a worldly traveller, offers the above map to help keep us in perspective.
Not to say that we don’t have to remain vigilant and demand better of our elected officials, but we do squeak into the Top Ten for cleanliness. This year, let’s try to move a little higher.

Frankly, Apple’s iOS 7 has many interface shortcomings of its own, but Windows 8 has generated a lot more pain and hair-pulling. If you are a sufferer, the video explains at length and in detail, why Windows 8 is bad. You are not the problem and you are not a klutz.

As of January 1st, manufacturers are no longer allowed to make 75 and 100 watt incandescent bulbs in Canada. Once the existing supply is gone, that’s it. 40 and 60 watters get the boot at the other end of this year.

I don’t really care, but it strikes me as odd that the federal Conservatives decided to ban an energy-inefficient product. If the policy was consistently applied, I can think of many, many products that would have to go.