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April, 2008

  1. What Do Raccoons And PHP Have In Common?

    April 24, 2008 by Gail

    Nothing, except this post. Unless raccoons in the new millennia have tired of raiding rubbish bins and moved on to coding websites.

    PHP: The wonkiness regarding password-protected posts has nothing to do with your machine and everything to do with Apache files and my website needing a full migration from PHP4 to PHP5. Apparently this started a while ago, even before the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, but I have to do a bit more research before I continue with the changes, otherwise I will break my site completely. I had to make some mods yesterday to make it possible to get into that last PWP-3 post at all.

    So, if you have the password for the category of posts labelled PWP-3, for now the only way to get in (unless you’re a hacker) is to enter the password into the field and click the POST TITLE, not the “submit” button. You may have to clear your cache and then make a couple of attempts, it seems to vary between machines. I’ve tried it on PC and Mac (not Linux, though), and Firefox, IE, and Safari. Once I get everything migrated, that submit button should be working again.

    Enough of that, on to the raccoons!

    At 6:00 yesterday morning there was some rustling around the skylight directly above my head. It was getting light, and I could just make out some ears…

    … then a tail… of a big raccoon — doing what, I do not know — and Beano FROZE. Xena was probably sleeping on the recliner, but Beano is always beside me. I didn’t want the raccoon hanging around and making the skylight filthy and freaking out the cats, so I had to get rid of it.

    How do you get rid of a raccoon?? First I got the flashlight and tried to blind him (her?), but that didn’t work (of course). The only other thing to do was bang on the skylight, but what if it just made the raccoon angry and bang back? Great, just what I need: wake up to a raccoon face directly above my head, staring at me angrily and shaking his fist. I already have two cats waking me up in the morning, crying for food.

    Thankfully, the raccoon decided it was more interested in possible food caches in the eaves of the house and moseyed away. And hopefully that will be my last raccoon-in-the-skylight post, otherwise I’ll have to wear one of those airplane eyemasks to bed.

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    Posted in Critters + Creatures, gailatlarge.com | No Comments

  2. I’m Filipino, But I Won’t Eat That

    April 23, 2008 by Gail

    * Vegetarians, look away. *

    Actually, if you’re a meat-eater, this may very well turn you into a vegetarian.

    It’s my younger brother’s birthday today, and I joked about him eating balut, which is common street vendor food in Asia, particularly in the Philippines. I post a lot of food pictures here, but you will NEVER catch me eating this, although I’m not above taking a photo of it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut

    Even when I was a kid, there were some foods my parents cooked that I wouldn’t touch and no one else had qualms about eating. I wasn’t a big fan of boiled intestines, tongue, or goat. (Although, the Caribbean style of goat I don’t mind, because they cook it longer.)

    If you have a somewhat fragile constitution but are interested in seeing what balut is, here is a very tame 45-second YouTube clip of an American (author and chef) trying it in Vietnam, where it is also popular street food.

    For those stomachs of the hardier variety, here is the 3-minute Filipino demonstration, which is much more… thorough, shall we say:

    (more…)

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    Posted in Food + Drink, Videoclips | 6 Comments

  3. Protected: Curiosity

    April 23, 2008 by Gail

    This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


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    Posted in PWP-3 | Enter your password to view comments.

  4. Taxi To The Dark Side

    April 23, 2008 by Gail

    When I finished work shortly after 8pm on Tuesday, I felt the urge to purge my brain for a while — or at least fill it with something else. The quickest way for me to do that is to see a film so I checked out what was playing at my local nonprofit movie house, the recently re-opened Revue Cinema, a short 10-minute walk from my place. I bought a 6-month membership to the Revue at the Polish Festival back in September, but I hadn’t used it yet. I looked at the card expecting it to be expired, but luckily it’s good ’til the end of the month!

    The Hot Docs Festival is on right now (April 17-27), which would normally draw me like a bee to a flower, but I didn’t feel like standing in a big queue tonight and I wanted to use my Revue card.

    I read the synopsis to “Taxi to the Dark Side” but hadn’t watched the trailer for the film. When it comes to documentaries, especially, I prefer to keep an element of surprise.

    (more…)

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    Posted in Culture + Society, Reel + Screen | 3 Comments

  5. Speaking of Odd Symbols

    April 22, 2008 by Gail

    I present to you Exhibit B, taken with my crappy cameraphone in the parking lot of Sobey’s (grocery store) — much to the puzzlement of other shoppers.

    a stork? come on

    A stork? Come on. Not only am I sceptical that this is a truly universal symbol of maternity (the stork reference is firmly rooted in Western popular culture; Toronto is more cosmopolitan than that), but this is a parking lot. The bird appears to be happily making off with my groceries!

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    Posted in cameraphone, Culture + Society | 2 Comments

  6. Royal Botanical Gardens, on film

    April 22, 2008 by Gail

    standout

    I picked up my roll of film tonight of the photos I shot with the Pentax K-1000 on Saturday. They turned out so-so, which means I should either switch the type of film I use, the lab, or both. I’m super-cheap so I buy cheap stock and get $2.99 processing (straight to CD, no prints) at Shoppers Drug Mart. There’s always lots of dust on the negatives when they scan them even when I tell the person working in the film lab to watch for dust. I spend time cloning out the dust in Photoshop later, but I don’t really complain because for $2.99 I must lower my expectations.

    I figure if I get a few decent shots per roll it’s worth it. I can pay more for better quality results, but imperfection in film is actually a pro rather than a con in many instances. Despite digital’s dominance in the field of photography, I hope analogue sticks around for a long, long time because it has a character that no amount of pixels and digital manipulation can match.

    If you like Polaroids, there’s an interesting site devoted to the instamatic: http://www.polanoid.net/

    Anyway, without further ado, some of those film shots I mentioned:

    22150011.JPG

    (more…)

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    Posted in film photography | No Comments

  7. Alley Walk: Part II

    April 21, 2008 by Gail

    alleywalkers

    (In case you can’t tell, I’m the one losing a battle with gravity.)

    What a difference seven weeks make! It’s taken us that long to finish the Alley Walk that was mapped out by Spacing.ca.

    http://spacing.ca/laneways.htm

    Postponing it for nearly two months had more to do with people’s schedules than the weather, but the warmer temperatures (at least 25 degrees C higher than last month’s outing!) was most welcome! Part I was in the snow, with gloves, scarves, and hats:

    Alley Walk: Part I – Sunday, March 2, 2008

    On Sunday’s continuation it was more like sandals, sunglasses, and hats. Which included bunny ears and all sorts found along the way:

    nothing says spring quite like a pair of fuzzy ears
    nothing says spring quite like a pair of fuzzy ears

    (more…)

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    Posted in House of Fielding, Out + About, Photography, Urban Life | 3 Comments

  8. Mystery Symbol

    April 21, 2008 by Gail

    mystery symbol

    Marin was recently in Paris and took this photo of a group of symbols meant to represent various disabilities, ostensibly for the purpose of giving some sort of discount to those people. The black/white face symbol at the far right is puzzling, though, and a bunch of us were trying to come up with theories on Saturday night to explain what it identified. There was some grasping at straws, however, e.g. “disabled mimes?”

    I posted it in the Paris group on Flickr to see if anyone would have an answer, and I’ll post the response here if I get one. [Update: see comments]

    If you know, do tell!

    [Update: click on the pic for clarification]

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    Posted in Europe, Other Photogs | 4 Comments

  9. Marin’s Birthday Bash

    April 20, 2008 by Gail

    winged imperative

    Traffic was pretty slow along the QEW heading back to Toronto after my inaugural trip yesterday to the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the smog alert was in full force (index of 6). Something tells me this summer’s going to be as brutal as the past winter…

    I made it to Sushi on Bloor and — incredibly — found a spot to park by the restaurant. We only had the room until 7pm, so I had just enough time to meet the crowd and take care of some leftovers. The restaurant was abuzz with sushi-lovers and our bunch alone took up about a third of the second floor space; ordering something from the menu seemed a little too optimistic for a deadline.

    Over sushi, I congratulated the participating CSers on their successful climb up the CN Tower last Thursday to raise money for WWF Canada. It’s been so long since I did the Grouse Grind that I wonder how I’d do climbing 1,776 steps (144 flights). But hey, I climbed The Chief in Squamish so maybe I’m underestimating myself. No mountains around here to climb, though.

    The weekend weather had all of Toronto out in droves and many of those people were on Bloor Street walking by as we tried to take a group photo. It’s been such a long time since it’s been this warm that the city-wide wardrobe change seemed to happen overnight.

    blow those candles out

    Back at the ranch, there was not one but TWO birthday cakes waiting for us.

    (more…)

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    Posted in Friends, Out + About | No Comments

  10. Royal Botanical Gardens

    April 20, 2008 by Gail

    the new 'do

    I was going to visit both the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum and the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton on Saturday, but once I saw the traffic along the QEW I gave the museum a miss and tried to leave enough time to return to Toronto for Marin’s birthday in the late afternoon/early evening.

    Plus I left my CWHM membership card at home. Oops.

    It’s a nutty time of the night and I have to wake up in a few hours, so I’ll post the 12 photos I’ve uploaded thus far of the gardens and leave the birthday photos for later.

    As usual, the photos can be viewed as thumbnails, a slideshow, or in the Pictobrowser:

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    Posted in Out + About | No Comments

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