SteveCastellano.com

I’ve been known to get cranky about how Canadian news gets overtaken by US election coverage. I don’t mean to suggest that the subject is of absolutely no interest to me, but their election season lasts over two years (ours is about 37 days) and it’s pretty easy to reach saturation far in advance of the big day. This is Canada after all, not much happens here, and sometimes you need to insert American news into the newscast to fill up the awkward silences. And our poor journalists. There are only so many words in the English language. You run out after a while, and start saying things (as one CBC journalist did this morning) like “American voters stand at the brink of history”. In any case, if there’s one day out of the election season on which I can’t begrudge our neighbours a little attention it’s today. And so I’d like to wish all my American friends and relatives well, and express my hope that today’s outcome leads to a better day for you tomorrow.

…with yet another viewing of his classic threat to sock Gore Vidal in the face.

A co-worker felt what she thought was a tremor, which inspired me to go looking for Canadian seismology resources.

It’s not just me, right, thinking that’s really cool? You can even subscribe to the RSS feed.

Edit: And for those who were wondering, it wasn’t an earthquake. The building engineer claimed that the snow had caused some equipment on the roof to seize up, though I don’t believe that for a minute. I have always suspected that our CEO was planning to build an army of cyber-MBAs somewhere on the premesis, and it’s obvious that his plan is finally coming to fruition.

According to a new Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll, “More than half of all voters are paying little or no attention to the saturation coverage of the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.”

In addition, a full 37% of respondents consider the former PM to be a “deceitful, arrogant douchebag” whose voice and name they’d “really be much happier not hearing” when the radio comes on in the morning.

This week in national news, a remarkably decent Steven Harper meets officially with the Dalai Lama. China stamps feet, threatens sanctions, leaving hungry Canadian children wondering where their next meal of lead-based paint will come from. In related news, the Canadian government plans to respond to China’s well-documented record of human rights abuses by sending a delegation in 2008 to run around in striped shorts.

Google’s oft-quoted credo “don’t be evil” started looking rather quaint last week with the appearance of a gentle suggestion on the Google blog that we try to refrain from using “Google” as a verb, particularly to signify an action taken on a competitor’s search engine. Apparently it makes the trademark lawyers uncomfortable. And you can almost hear the unwritten line that follows, “and you wouldn’t like our lawyers when they’re uncomfortable.”

As defenses go, this one is a few paces shy of “vigourous.” So I wouldn’t start calling Google an “evil empire” quite yet, in spite of their recent Katamari-like consumption of the staggeringly popular video site YouTube. But this is certainly the dangerous end of the “vigourous defense” wedge, the same sledgehammer with which Intel crushed the fly-like non-profit San Francisco fitness-for-ex-cons (I’m not making this up) outfit Yoga Inside, and the same legal logic that led some poor schmuck of a copywriter to pen the line “stop sweeping and start swiffering,” when it’s obvious to anyone who claims a passing familiarity with the English language that what one does with a device called a swiffer is “swiff.”

The Toronto Port Authority made the news again this week with their $6.8 million attempt to gag the non-profit waterfront restoration advocacy group Community AIR.

Like many Toronto taxpayers, I have balked at the lawsuits emanating from, and being launched in the vicinity of, the Port Authority in the past – particularly those launched at public entities who then proceed to settle said lawsuits with my money. But while I am no less galled by a perennially money-losing federal authority suing a non-profit volunteer organization than I am by them suing a municipal government, I might stop short of calling for an injunction preventing them from suing anyone.

If we could legislate against federal agencies suing publicly-funded entities that would suit me fine. But as lawsuits appear to be the Port Authority’s primary source of income, I worry that if we bar them from filing any suits against anyone at all they’ll never be able to pay the $32 million that David Miller claims they owe the city in back taxes.

Photo courtesy James Scott.

If you’ll forgive a brief departure from the generally light-hearted tone of this site, I’d like to draw your attention to a deeply moving and troubling article by Linda Diebel on the Juarez murders. Due to the baffling indifference of both local and national authorities, the savage murders, rapes and unexplained disappearances of young women and girls from this Mexican border down remain largely uninvestigated, in spite of the fact that over 12 years the confirmed death toll has risen to nearly 400.

Also featured at the above link is a narrated iPoddable video presentation featuring images by Carlos Osorio and the music of Juarez musician Armando Santillanes.

Linda Diebel, who spent 7 years as the Latin American correspondent for the Toronto Star, is a three-time recipient of the Amnesty International Media Award and author of Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa.

I’m pleased to announce that when the new MSN search engine launches, SteveCastellano.com will still be the #1 Steve Castellano resource on the planet – the first place most folks here on God’s Green Earth go to fulfill all their digital Steve Castellano information requirements. And it’s all thanks to you, my faithful readers, because apparently most of you are msnbots.

Edit: And the 41st place ranking for “Roland S-50 Manual”, though merely by typing that I’m skewing the odds.

In spite of all the talk about web design, smoking, RSS, Unix, and CGI scripts, I’d like to point out that our main focus here at the headquarters of the vast Steve Castellano Internet Empire™ is and shall remain music, except when it’s advertising. Or web design.

Most of the action, if you don’t mind calling it that, has been taking place on the music links page of late. I’ve been doing some research on DIY synthesis, and that is evident from the addition of a DIY category. Some spillover into the Enthusiasts and Experts category is also in evidence.

These DIY folks do tend to blur the distinction between Manufacturers and Enthusiasts in some cases. So I think the distinction should therefore be cases. If you are printing schematics on your page and selling PCBs that you make in your basement, I consider you to be an Enthusiast, and there’s no shame in that. But if you are making complete kits that include cases, and especially if you are also offering completed projects for sale, I think you have joined the ranks of Manufacturers.

If you suspect that all this research will soon come to fruition in the museum, and if this prospect interests you, then you should consider subscribing to the RSS feed.