Up in Ontario

Why can't I own a Canadian?

Oh, and just in case that last post was too geeky / nerdy / technical for you, how about this one that proves that all truths are held in the bible:

Why can't I own a Canadian?

We're all about pleasing the people.

Some current Intellectual Property touchpoints

Lately within my earshot there's been a bevy of conversations about intellectual property. Sorting out some guidelines for the AdHack project. A great pointer from the Duck on SoMisguided to an article on The Tyee on Net Neutrality in Canada. Providing a Work Industries client with information on registering with the U.S. DMCA for copyright infringements.

Then today I came across some good writing from Rob Hyndman and Michael Geist on royalties for intellectual property and the disproportionate amount of those worldwide royalties that flow to the developed world, and within the developed world, to the U.S. Here's a distorted map to illustrate to disparity.

Last night we had a discussion about the sleepwalking debate here in Canada on net neutrality - what it means, how it works and why preserving equal access and priority for all across the Internet is good for everyone - and it was hard to explain. The Tyee article above does a decent job of deciphering the argument, but it still needs to get simpler for anyone to understand it.

Any pointers to good explanations or illustrations to help out?

As a final point, the telephone companies pushing tiered Internet service - pay for delivery - are the same organizations you and I used to own 20 years ago. They're now using the infrastructure we built and owned to discriminate on what information reaches us. And that doesn't seem right to me.

The New Yorker of the business of the movies

Every now and then I read a magazine article that reminds me of why I can love magazine articles. I've gone on a little about this her before, so I won't belabour the point. (If you'd like to see the point, check out Status Anxiety Interviewed for illustration.)

Rather, I'll just point to the article, from the New Yorker, by David Denby, entitled Big Pictures: Hollywood looks for a future, and I'll say that it's one of the best articles about the business of the pictures that I've read. Over lunch today I enjoyed it on the screen of my laptop at the counter of a delightful and grubby little spot called The Argo, where they bring you a cup of the soup of the day no matter what you order. Today's soup: leek potato and pork and beans.

Yes you can write a love song

From somewhere on the border of shmaltz and earnestness, shaken with some accent of I-can't-believe-this-exists seasoning, I present Tailored Music: love songs by you.

TailoredMusic.com is a group of professional musicians dedicated to helping you to create the ultimate romantic gift: the gift of custom-tailored music.

Have you ever wished that you could write your own love song for that special someone in your life? TailoredMusic.com enables everyone to create their own personalized love song with the confidence and finesse of an experienced songwriter.

Please go and explore their website. It's a deelight. I can see this being huge in Calgary.

Yet somehow I can also see the absurd pleasure of this, especially within the overall absurdity of the romance and wedding industry.

To extend the idea, I'd really like to see more diversity of messages that we can put into the songs. For instance, I'd consider customizing and sending a song to a client in lieu of a thank you note. Or creating a song for the birth of a friend's child.

Really, the song acts as an alternative to the Hallmark card.

Official 500th Up in Ontario post

Nothing worth noting here, except that this is the official 500th post of Up in Ontario, the blog.

What started as a way to extend the life of a novel beyond its covers and pages has turned into a full-time vanity project exploration of the human condition.

As they used to say in those Bartles and James adverts: Thank you for your support.

Move along now.

I'm considering adopting an olive tree

Seriously. I'm the pretentious sort who would do this. I love the food elitism and use olive oil all the time.

How would I do it? Visit this website and you too can adopt an olive tree in Italy from Nudo.

What is Nudo?

Nudo is an olive grove. And part of it can be yours.

Adopt one of its trees for a year and you'll receive all the produce from your tree. Imagine dunking your bread in your own oil from your own tree 1,500 miles away on a hillside in Italy.

It's delicious, it's good for the world and you get to show off to your friends.
Hang the consequences. Adopt an olive tree.

Search the olive grove, find a tree you like and adopt it. Twice a year you'll receive a package in the mail with olive oil from your adopted tree. If you happen to be in Italy at the olive grove one day, you're welcome to go in and have a pastoral picnic under your tree.

What more could you want in a post-industrial, global, consumerist society?

Thanks to Spring Wise for the link.

Searching for Rona Ambrose Nudes?

Pardon the interruption...

...but there are no Rona Ambrose nude photos here. There are also no Rona Ambrose pictures, just in case anyone was seeking them.

And I know that some of you out there are seeking them, because it's the second most-popular search phrase coming to this website this week. Specifically, to this page - Breaking News: Sleep-Retardent Ex-Girlfriends, Nerds, Nude Stamps and the Environment - that mentions Ms. Ambrose and nudes, but nowhere near each other. She's more popular this week than your all-time favourite Canadian celebrity search term, Leah McLaren.

And I'm not the only website receiving this search traffic. See Grandinite for the slim pickings.

People are also finding this site when they search for 'waxing a toboggan,' which I assume is not a euphemism.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

AdHack: How advertising can come to life

Tangentially related to my writing life, over on AdHack, a harebrained idea I'm pursuing, I've written a post called How advertising can come to life.

As I started to rewrite my book (as I learned, most of writing is rewriting) my editor and I had some great conversations about how much information to include in the book; how much to tell the reader about the story and how much of the story had to be created by the reader.

And just in case you want to learn more about that harebrained idea, here are some words about AdHack.

Bill Clinton and Jessica Simpson: the missing link

Over on the Freakonomics blog Stephen Dubner asks what do Bill Clinton and Jessica Simpson have in common?

The answer provides Dubner with the chance to tell a great story about being the opening speakers when Bill Clinton spoke here in Vancouver a few months ago.

Several months ago, I was one of the speakers at a day-long lecture event in Vancouver. It was held at the Canucks’ hockey rink, and there were about 7,000 people in attendance. I had the good fortune of speaking immediately before Clinton, who was the headline act. It was a bit unnerving but mostly fun to speak before so many people who were so eager to get to the next guy. When I finished my talk, I went backstage and there was Clinton. We shook hands and chatted for a minute — I’d never met him before — and then he stiffened up, mentally preparing to go on stage. I sat down to watch his speech on a big TV monitor backstage.

The story itself makes the article worth reading, and the article itself provides an example of the rhetorical trick it describes.

It also reinforces my belief that if the U.S. didn't have a two-term restriction on its presidency Clinton would still be president. He's simply the maestro of the political. If I could, I'd vote for him now just to hear him talk again regularly.

Photos from New Year's Eve

Just in case you wanted to know what we got up to on New Year's Eve, here are some excellent photos from Kate to illustrate that there's nothing that beats a good house party.

Update 1: Travis also has photos.

Update 2: Monique also also has photos, so very close up.

Writing a book one day at a time

Courtesy of Tod's Inside the CBC blog I'm pointed in the direction of the Word Count Journal, a public place to write your book at an increasing per-word pace per day.

By simply writing a set number of words each day, every day, you will write a whopping 66,795 words at the end of one calendar year. Little by little, through the power of series, the total of your written words will add up to more words than contained in the average novel.

It is hard to believe but 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ... + 364 + 365 = 66,795. Just like the Confucian saying that the longest trip begins with the first step, your journal journey begins with the first word.

Word Count Journal is nifty, but it's not the way I'd choose to write another book. Then again, I don't suppose I'm really their target. Tod, for instance, has chosen to just write how ever many words he wants.

I don't mean to poo-poo the idea of writing every day. If you're serious about writing a book, which actually means finishing writing a book, then you have to write often. Many times you have to write when you don't feel like writing, when the right words to lay out on the page feel elusive.

So while tools can be great helpers in endeavors - the word processing programs makes writing vastly easier than pen and paper because most writing is revising - tools remain tools: instruments that need a force applied to them. And if you want to write a book, you'll write a book. If you don't want it enough, then you won't. Which is an elitist way of saying that you have to work bloody hard for a long time with little external reward.

And that's just to write the first draft in the darwinian process. And that may also explain why it's hard to be a writer and a creationist, because as a writer you can see the survival of the fittest at your fingertips.