Mark and Andrew's World
Andrew Fergusson
Tall, energetic, loud, impulsive, and stubborn: I'll argue against you and everything you believe, but I'll secretly love you for it.
Homepage: http://www.personalreality.ca/
Posts by Andrew Fergusson
How to create a militant pedestrian
May 11th
Dear Taxi Drivers,
It has come to my attention you are not used to militant pedestrians; to replicate said militant pedestrianism on your own time please follow the following steps.
- Notice the pedestrian at a pedestrian crosswalk demarcated by signs, the hatched crosswalk, and its presence at an obvious intersection.
- Have said pedestrian possess ghetto pizza, and of the kind that is not of their typical choice.
- Continue at full speed, notably above the posted speed limit, and cut the pedestrian off, knowing full well said pedestrian has the right of way at any such crosswalk.
- Have the pedestrian throw their pizza onto the taxi’s windshield as the taxi speeds by.
It is understandable that vigilantism within certain circumstances is frowned upon, yet in this particular instance there was no other method of expressing displeasure at, or noting the infraction in any meaningful way, the taxi driver’s inability to heed to pedestrian right of way. The taxi’s number or company could not be descerned at 70 kilometres per hour; the police, if called, would place any such report on their nuisance call list; and regardless of the outcome of any complaint to be made, the taxi driver would miss the immediate consequence to their inability to heed traffic law.
Thus: pizza on windshield of taxi.
Apartment Hunting in Vancouver
May 10th
To all those trying to find an apartment in Vancouver: be prepared to be hunting for a while. I’ve been looking for an apartment in some capacity since January, and I’ve yet to find one. Seriously. And it’s not like I’ve got unreasonable demands such as granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, and a whirlpool tub with separate stand-up shower all for under $1000.
Nope, all I’m asking for is an apartment with a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, decent flooring, clean walls (I can paint out of my own pocket), natural lighting, unobstructed 7 foot minimum ceilings, and a landlord who understands the Residential Tenancy Act. (Though I’d like to point out that I had an apartment — yet I lost it because the person whom I was depending on to be my reference chose not to answer the phone because it was a “weird number” and thus made me lose the place of my dreams — remains to be another post regarding mobile etiquette.)
Ideally this place is close to transit, and within the Lower Lonsdale, Main Street, Commercial Drive, or Burnaby Heights neighbourhoods.
I think over the next few days I’ll post some ridiculous stories about the hell I’ve gone through to find an apartment in Vancouver, and some of the incredibly weird demands and requests I’ve received from landlords prior to renting/viewing.
Author protests ban over phrase ‘generous bazoongas’
Nov 19th
This article amuses the hell out of me. Apparently people believe that censorship is the method of curtailing offensive language in the class room, and we’re talking mundane offensive language. “Bazoongas” doesn’t really come across as crude enough to warrant censorship, let alone when you involve a cohort of grades four to six. I guarantee you, they already know words that would make the Pope blanche.
I would like to illuminate you to my first teacher at Sir Freddie B’s method of dealing with offensive language. Instead of making the vulgar anathema, the source and history of the statement is explained. Sometimes when people understand the reasons why the word is truly offensive, maybe they would remove the pejorative term from their vocabulary.
Over five years of blogging
Nov 9th
I’ve been blogging for over 5 years — my first post was on August 19th 2002 at 1 pm. It was a useless meme post. The meme result? I was an “Aragorn-wantin”-Legolas — no real surprise on that one back when, and no real surprise on that one even now.
I’ve a new project for my blog which I think would be interesting (having found a theme that I think I can live with for the next several months). Five years is a long time, and it would be neat to consolidate all my posts that I want to be public into this blog. This means two Livejournal blogs, two wordpress blogs, and a brief encounter with Blogger rolled into this single blog. With well over 500 posts this should be an interesting project of self-discovery. Or it could also be another attempted internet project of mine abandoned.
Abandonment confirmed.
Apple Tablet Incoming
Nov 6th
It’s true, the Apple iTablet is coming — so says the rumours. Having developed Multi-Touch for the iPhone, and Cover Flow, it’d make sense that Apple is going to attempt the tablet market. “Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is ‘yes’. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.’” Zing!
In ‘x’ days
Aug 30th
Soon I will be out of my sun room in downtown Vancouver, no longer only two blocks from Granville and Robson. I find it distressing that I will no longer be nearby everything, including a place that has become my local: Johnny Fox’s beside the Royale at Granville at Nelson.
“But the time as come,” the Turtle said,
“To move to better things;
To Rez, and class–to SFU–
Where Sunday means something–
And where Chartwells doth suck so much–
Thank god you’re not in Burr again.”
I get to move into Townhouses! Yay! Not only do I have control over a thermostat, I hear that there is sound insulation in townhouses. And a kitchen. And I’m also thankful I’m not a CA… but that has nothing to do with where they’re placed, it’s the “image” they have to maintain.
Lich Observatory and the subsequent fire
Aug 23rd
Nothing much was planned today: just a simple trip up to the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. A simple trip there, a relaxing tour, and a simple trip back, minus the switch-back road that climbs approximately 4000 feet. Nothing major planned, eh?
Well, plans are quite interesting. We get to the Lick Observatory, which happens to be the oldest observatory built on a mountain, and we missed the most recent tour. (Tours are informal, and frequent — they start whenever someone has the time and someone arrives. The observatory isn’t that frequented by visitors.) Because we missed the tour, we ate our lunch that we picked up at Trader Joe’s in an alcove inset with a statue of some Reverend who helped out the astronomy program.
We went on the tour, which was encredibly informal, and was more of a questions of curiosity thing for me. “Why isn’t the floor flush” and what not. Quite an awesome place to be, and if it wasn’t for the copious amounts of physics that are currently beyond my grasp — I could call the place home. The original telescope is the one we initially viewed, built in 1887.
My mother wasn’t up for the journey to the other side of the compound to see the reflecting one. My father and I journeyed and half way to our destination and alarms started to go off, then the “air raid” siren kicked in. Apparently there was a fire at the incinerator. Figuring it was going to be easily solved, my dad and I just continued to our destination.
After being somewhat disappointed with the view, we returned and only got half way seeing my mother somewhat alarmed. She saw the fire and it looked a little fierce for her comfort. None the less the moment we saw the blackened field it made perfect sense.
I’m not going to describe what exactly happened, but there were two CDF Fire Observation Planes, one CDF Helicopter, the Observatory’s fire-truck, and numerous other fire-trucks that showed up. We captured two water drop runs on video, and picked up two beautiful photographs of other water drops.
Leaning against the railing at the top of the Observatory I remarked to lady who gave us the tour, “hundreds of millions of dollars in lenses, and photographic equipment, but nobody here has a camera.” Everyone who was up at the Observatory and not fighting the fire asked me to send the pictures and the video. I’ll be doing that tomorrow sometime during the day. I have plenty of video to upload.
Finally, because of the height of the observatory, the sun’s rays were hotter, and I was baking. I thought it would be cooler than Sunnyvale. I was very wrong.
So, that was the beginning of my day. My mother thought that we wouldn’t be let down the mountain, and with my brother at school and no emergency contact to pick him up, we needed to be at the house for 16h40. We arrive home with 40 minutes to spare at 16h00, and the bus shows up. Christ! The bus was forty minutes early. That is horribly early. My mother was none too pleased, and will probably make a complaint to the school trustee, because when my bother isn’t early the bus ride to the school that is fifteen minutes away takes ten minutes shy of two hours. Egad, and I though the 680 was bad back in Ottawa.
Below is a link to the gallery with better, and more, images of the fire. Tomorrow I upload the video I shot on my trip to San Fran, and the video of the fire-fighting escapades. My San Francisco trip seems less of an extravaganza now.
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| Mount Hamilton Brush Fire |
Man throws up because of alcohol, blames Labbat
Aug 23rd
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/08/23/stella-ethanol.html
A man from British Columbia ingested a bottle of Setlla Artois with a higher concentration of ethanol, and is now seeing compensation with an
apology from Lebatt Brewing for the hardship of throwing up and “gasping for air.”
It’s called doing a shot of alcohol, dimwit. Let me get this straight, you got a highly concentrated bottle of liquor and you’re complaining? Also, please tell me you’ve never thrown up because of drinking booze — with a straight face — because, otherwise, you have no sympathy from me.
Compensation? If it was methyl alcohol, you’d get compensation, but we’re talking ingestable, yet still poisonous, ethyl alcohol. Also, you’d have to prove in court you wouldn’t have thrown up anyways. Lebatt should just ignore this special litigant because quite frankly no self-respecting Canadian court would ever award damages. “I’m hurt because I drank more alcohol than I planned (at one time)” really doesn’t ring to the tune of compensation.
Uploading photos, a taste of San Francisco
Aug 22nd
Here I am uploading all my old photos, and my new San Francisco photos to Picasa. The reason
why I’m not using Flickr is because they’ve mucked up my Yahoo! account, and thus I can not log in any longer. They know it’s their problem too, I don’t know when they’ll fix it though.
Ah well, in the mean time, I’ve always got Google. Well, not so much in the mean time, I’ve still got Google. I’m all caught up on uploading, so if you want to see my photos from my trip to San Francisco, Pier 39, and the Golden Gate Bridge, visit my Picasa gallery: San Francisco.