Author: Mr. McLaren

Aside

Generally speaking one should not mess around with any kind of major upgrade (operating system, router firmware, web service, etc) while drinking–this was lies madness. WordPress upgrades are so painless though, that I can run one from a hotel room while sustaining a mild buzz.

Julio and religion

A very full day of meetings today, ending with a relatively late working dinner, cut short my beer exploration time tonight. So I only had time to explore one small beer: Saint Bridget’s Porter from the Great Divide Brewing Company. While the bottle describes this as a “Robust Porter” I didn’t find it particularly overwhelming in terms of robustness. That… Read more →

…down by the schoolyard

As is my wont when attending days of endless meetings in the “Boston” office, I’ve made a trip to see Julio and stock up the fridge for an exploration of some interesting looking beers that I haven’t tried before. After today’s marathon meeting session I retired to the hotel and sampled my first selection: Mayflower Porter, from right here in… Read more →

Aside

I have a tab open to the site where you can stream the Angora Napkin cartoon. I was keeping it around to point you guys at it, and explain why you should take a look. But my soon-to-be-comics-pusher Christopher Butcher beat me to the punch, so it’s a lot easier to just point you to his post. (As an aside, in an aside, I met Troy Little when he stopped in to do a signing at Strange Adventures–he did a sketch for me in my Chiaroscuro collection, which book I think I prefer to the Angora Napkin one, not least because it has a decidedly less Ren & Stimpy art style–and he seemed like a totally nice, straight up guy.)

Exceptional In Many Ways

What you’re looking at there are the results of the 2009 Global Peace Index. (The full ranking is available online, as are details of the methodology used.) Canada is #8, and for the third year running is “the most peaceful country in the North and Central America and Caribbean region”. That’s a kind of exceptional result, especially considering our neighbour,… Read more →

Aside

One month from now I will be moving into the new house in Cambridge. The Halifax 31 day countdown is on.

A Little Too On Point

I’m sure that there has been a time in my life, and will again be a time in my life, when the skewering of tech industry management jargon done at Rands In Repose was/will be hilarious. But I’ve got to tell you, right at the moment, some of those things are just a little too on target for me to… Read more →

Aside

I’m doing a little better with Jeff Ford’s current recommended reading list than I did with the last one–this time I’ve actually read some of the books (four of them, to be precise). Given that the theme this time seems to be “detective fiction at the boundaries of, or crossing into, other modes” it’s perhaps no surprise–I enjoy a little genre stretching and deconstruction. Of course the net result is five more books to put on the wishlist.

Aside

I have two immediate reactions to a story about someone constructing a box that will only open at specific coordinates as a wedding gift. First, I am forced to wonder why I have never been given such a thing–my friends are creative, fabulous, and on average pretty tech savvy. After I get over my jealousy though, it does make me think about those fantasy stories where the Maguffin had to be taken to a particular place, or the “lost technology of the Ancients” stories where it’s lost tech instead of magic that serves the same role, and how those are realizable now. Any sufficiently advanced technology, etc. Maybe we’re “the Ancients”, now.

CD Ripping: Done

I have finishedI in no way claim to have done this alone–Dr. Wife did a lot of the ripping on her machine, while I kept one of my work machines more or less in continuous ripping mode in my office. the ridiculous project of ripping all my previously unripped CDs before the move. This has resulted in the addition of… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.