We’re in Halifax! Based on past history that typically means that posting frequency here drops, sorry.

We flew out of Vancouver last Saturday just before the deep freeze took hold. It was set to be quite the trip: Vancouver to Calgary, Calgary to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax. Some 12 hours plus of travelling with both kids.  There was snow forecast for the previous Friday which made us concerned about how we were going to get to the airport, but the amount of snow was negligible and making it to YVR wasn’t an issue.

Despite pushing our bags and both carseats through the airport, checking-in was a pretty smooth experience. Getting through security was a bit trickier — perhaps unsurprisingly to readers of this blog, we travel with a lot of carry-on electronics: 3x MP3 players, camera, video camera, PDA, 2x cell phones, 2x laptops, GPS, plus all the associated wall warts. Plus we had LIQUIDS: boiled water for making formula for Quinlan and we ‘accidentally’ smuggled a juice-box full of OJ for Aidan.  A couple of the guards noticed, but each time I noticed them noticing, one would point to Quinlan and that seemed to make it ok. Um hello? A 6 week old drinking OJ from a juice box? Yeah … sure …

The flights were great. Once again, we travelled WestJet. We double-dosed Aidan with Gravol (with our doctor’s permission) which supressed the air sickness that usually affects him but it didn’t knock him out at all. It barely affected his energy level. However, those individual seat-back TV screens were a Godsend once again as he watched TreehouseTV right across the country. He didn’t touch the bag of books and toys that we brought at all.  And Quilan made no fuss whatsoever.

The only hiccup was on the tarmac in Calgary. Calgary was a balmy -25C and according to the cabin announcement the fuel trucks were all frozen and we had a delay for a good 45 minutes.  And then de-icing.  This meant that our tightly-scheduled stopover in Toronto was going to result in a missed flight.   However, it turns out that Halifax was the home-base of the flight crew for the T.O-Halifax leg, and it was the last leg for the plane so they held the flight for the dozen or so of us that were connecting through.

And at the airport, much to our surprise, we were met by my parents and an aunt and uncle of mine (Uncle Roger & Aunt ‘Berta) who had flown in from the frozen depths of Northern Ontario just to see us.  Well, maybe not, but it was nice to visit with them for a couple of days too!

Now, we’ve been here for a few days. I’ll post a bit later about all the things going on.

But bajeezus it’s cold!

Local media guy Buzz Bishop had some questions about the netbook, so rather than miss the opportunity to write a few hundred words that no one will read, I thought I’d post it here. :)

We’ve had the Eee 901 for 5 months now.  The original intention with the netbook was for it to be a second laptop since our main laptop had been completely taken over by Gwen. There was also the thought to use it for geocaching too, but our geocaching activities have tapered off significantly due to the pending and subsequent arrival of Quinlan. Further, we’ve discovered that it’s still a bit too awkward to have in the car in the heat of the hunt.  However, we have used it on a couple road trips where we’ve had MS Streets & Trips and the USB GPS and used it to find our way around the back country of Washington State as well as Vancouver Island.

It’s turned out to be great to pick up and and take places. It is definitely the best thing to take on business trips. It’s small, light, and runs forever on the battery.  With WiFi on the whole time, I get about 5-5 1/2  hours without plugging in.  That’s long enough to get through even the longest of meetings. 5 1/2 hours almost gets me coast-to-coast on a plane (I’ll let you know how that goes on Saturday, but with the 2 kids it’s pretty unlikely I’ll get much opportunity to use it). It’s light and small enough that it tucks into my day bag without displacing anything.  It’s powerful enough for note-taking, and for running Powerpoint. Even reading PDFs and eBooks is convenient. If I were the sort (and had the time) it’d be ideal for taking to coffee shops too.

Day-to-day use is mostly what it was designed for: travelling the tubes. In the morning I check my various email accounts, blogs and Twitter before scanning the paper and eating breakfast. At night, since we’re pretty much housebound with the two kids, it serves the same purposes: blogs, email and Twitter. But, because it’s so small and light, I can use it in front of the TV, in the kitchen, or in bed as easily as not. There’s no way I’d lug the big 17″ laptop around like this.

I was a little worried about daily use and both the size of the screen and the keyboard, but neither has turned out to be an issue.  The screen is bright, crisp, and easy on the eyes. I can touch-type on the keyboard with only a slightly higher error rate than normal. The screen is a little small, but the application I have the biggest issue with — Google Reader — can be customized so that it fills the screen and it actually ends up being quite comfortable to use.  I still have problems with inadvertent brushes of the touchpad, though.

So, for its purpose, it’s been great. However, it is definitely a second (or third, fourth, etc) computer. It’s awful for photo manipulation due to the small screen and small (and slow) SSD. There’s no DVD drive, so there’s no watching (or ripping) of DVDs. It’s definitely not a machine to do development on either. But for surfing the tubes, writing short documents, blogging and Tweeting, I’m in love.

Twitter has been bad for me. It’s been an ‘enabler’, letting me get my fix of breaking news and political discussion. You can see a bit of my Twitter stream in the right hand side there. If you don’t know what Twitter is, it’s a place where people exchange 140 character messages.  They’re like Facebook or MSN status messages.  In fact, I send my Twitter updates to Facebook as status messages. I tweet a fair bit so it might be pretty annoying to see it all in FB, but no one’s complained yet!

Of course, today was pretty historic in terms of Canadian politics.  Here’s excerpts from my Twitter stream today:

Will she or won’t she? @pmharper visits the Governor-General tomorrow morning to ask for stay of execution.

The suspense is killing me. I’m glad this is happening before work.

How concerned about the environment is @pmharper? He took a motorcade from Rideau Hall to Government House, which are across the street!

I hope there’s somebody recording the conversation between the GG and @pmharper this morning. If nothing than for the history books!

Heh, the PM’s staffers are taunting the reporters by repeatedly opening and closing the doors to Government House.

Coming up on 2 hrs meeting w/ PM & GG. What on earth is taking so long? Him: “Prorogue!” Her: “No” or “Yes”. What else is there?

Today, control of Canada’s government has been seized by a true tyrant. I fail to understand how this helps our country.

Parliamentary democracy has been reduced to tyranny. How can any politician be proud of this moment?

How can any citizen support tyranny over democracy? How can anyone think that today’s political climate benefits our country?

The only way out of this quagmire is for Harper and Dion to both resign and for cooler heads and better leaders to step forward.

Further, it is has never been more clear that parliamentary reform is required.

We cannot allow an unelected leader (in the sense of not elected as leader) so much power as to plunge the country into crisis.

This is a pivotal time in the growth of our country. Do not let the childishness of politicians disenfranchise you.

I truly don’t understand how people can support bullying, fear-mongering, and abuse of power. http://is.gd/agHb

So, that’s a sampling of my thoughts through the day. What you’re not seeing are the responses to these tweets and the tweets of other people.  It passes a lot of people by, but these new technologies are changing how people interact with the world.

So as you can see in the previous post, we bought prints of the pictures taken of Aidan at his preschool.

I’m of two minds about this, but mostly I’m not happy about it.

First, pricing of the prints is a scam. Let me back up a bit. *First* you get to see the final product. No proof, no selection of poses, they just hand you the whole package of prints, fully printed, full package (8×10, some 5x7s, multiple 4x6s, many wallets + full class shot). At the classroom. You cannot take them home, you cannot show them to a spouse. Instead, you get a peek at the whole package and they hand you an order form.

The form shows that for a single sheet of prints, the cost was $20. For two sheets, the cost was $32. For 3 sheets, $48. The whole package (already printed mind you) was $50 and contained 5 sheets + the class photo. So, they pretty much guarantee that everyone will go for the $50 package, since at a minimum you want the class photo plus two sheets, and if you’re doling out $48, why not $50.

Hello, what? These prices are crazy. To not be able to consider a proof is unconsciencable. To preprint a full package and dangle it in front of you is high-pressure sales.

And then there’s the copyright issue.

We did not sign a contract. We did not sign a photo release. The school invited this photographer into the class to take pictures of the children.

Who has the copyright?

The photographer claims that he does, and has stamped everything with copyright notices. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a commissioned photography of my child and nobody has the right to use the image of my child except me (unless I explicitly grant permission). Further, I have the right to do with what I will with the image, although I will grant that I probably should attribute the photograph (but of course I have no idea who the actual photographer is).  As such, I have no problem scanning the print and posting it to this blog. As such, I do have a problem with the idea that the photographer can do whatever they like with this image. Fortunately the photography company recognizes some of these issues and included a notice with the prints that if you did not want images of your child to be used elsewhere you could call the company and specifically direct them not to. Which Gwen promptly did at my request. It turned out that it meant they would use none of the photos from the entire class as a result. I expect fan mail.

Copyright assignment for commissioned photography is a contentious subject.  See http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/4229 for example.

And you know what else? It’s not even a good picture! I mean, the pose is great but the processing of the photo is awful! His hair colour is actually might lighter than the picture shows, and the colour range is awful. It should be properly balanced, sharpened, and the saturation punched up a bit.

I only seem to remember school pictures in elementary school. Great, only another 7 years of this to grumble about for Aidan. Oh yeah, Quinlan’s 3 years behind. 10 years I guess.

What do you think? Is it all just a racket?