Pie Palace

This is a canned post. It was written on 2006/08/24.

The Green Party has an odd little logo. It’s sort of a yellow pixilated spiral blob, on a green background. As such, it looks pretty weird, a little futuristic, and very abstract.

So where did it come from? Well, the Green Party has long used the the sunflower as its symbol. I’m not entirely sure why. It was apparently used by the German anti-war movement in the 80s, but the connection to the Green Party in general? Who knows.

What I do know is that the current logo is the work of Lory Kaufman, the founder of Goods for Greens. He designed it for the Green Party of Ontario in 1998, as can be seen by the GPO newsletter from the day.

The logo itself is based on the spiral at the heart of a sunflower. I quite like it. It’s recognizable, scales well, and looks good in two colours. A few people have complained that it looks too mechanical. Given my profession, it might not be surprising that “too mechanical” doesn’t bother me.

When I was volunteering for the Carleton University Green Party club, I designed a bilingual one inch pin that uses the logo. If you’d like to have pins made using the template, please feel free, just let me know that you’re doing it with a brief note in the comment section (or in the contact form). We had our pin printed by Crucial Pins in Toronto, at a very reasonable price.

This is a canned post, written on 2006/08/24.

So, by now, the Green Party should have announced who its new leader is. Since I’m writing this two days before the ballot count, I have absolutely no idea who has won [Editor's note: Elizabeth May won]. But that won’t stop me from offering an opinion.

Any regular readers of this blog will know that I’m rooting for David. If he has won, I would say something like:

I’m very, very happy that the Green Party membership has chosen David Chernushenko to be our new leader. He has done great work for the party in the past, and has done a lot to attract new members to the party. Much of our support in Ottawa-Centre is due to his work as candidate. This win shows that the Green Party is about more than “just” the environment, and our membership wants to broaden our base of support. With David at the head, I think we’re getting closer to winning seats.

Elizabeth May and Jim Fannon have both done a great job as candidates. I hope they continue their commitment to the party, and that Elizabeth is offered (and accepts) a Deputy Leadership position. I believe she holds great promise

Of course, I can’t predict the future, so who knows, maybe Elizabeth will win. If she does, I would say something like:

Congratulations to Elizabeth on her victory. She has shown a strong commitment to the environmental movement in the past, and has been involved in various social justice agencies. I am sure that she will be able to translate her success in those venues into a broader success, attracting the support of Canadians who don’t think of themselves as environmentalists. I hope that her network of supporters in the Sierra Club decide to get involved in the Green Party, and are able to open their vision to sustainability in all aspects of society.

David ran an excellent campaign. He was an underdog as soon as Elizabeth decided that she would enter; but his vision has value. I don’t think that a vote for Elizabeth equalled a vote against a Green Party with broader policies, that is able to attract a majority of Canadians to our fold. I hope that David stays in the public eye, and is offered a Deputy Leadership position

I do think that Elizabeth can make a good leader. I think that she sees that we need to move beyond “I’m right, and we have to do what’s right” justifications for our policy into a more open, yet still principled mindset.

I haven’t given Jim Fannon a lot of attention during this race, because I’m biased against his unilingualism. But I only have one vote, so it’s quite possible that he could have won. In which case, my response will be:

Congratulations to Jim Fannon on his victory. He speaks very well, and is entertaining in his delivery. With the appropriate language training, I’m sure he will be able to show that the Green Party has strong ideas.

Regardless of who our new leader is, I think the Green Party will come out ahead. Jim Harris, the Party leader between 2000 and 2006, did a good job at building the party. Now that we have the support that we need, it’s time for a new. One who can attract new votes; show that we’re a party with a broad vision; and let Canadians know that sustainability doesn’t have to hurt.

I’m away at Burning Man for the next two weeks. I have a few canned posts for your reading pleasure.

On the day after I bought a shiney new Canon XT from Ginn, having had the sales guy assure me that Canon wasn’t bringing out a new DSLR anytime soon, Canon releases the Rebel XTi.

And I get an email with a fortune cookie saying: “The greatest danger could be your stupidity.” Yes, oh wise fortune cookie. You know me well.

I just saw Bon Cop, Bad Cop. The plot is a standard cop buddy movie, but it was filmed in Canada, so, of course, the cops have to be Quebecois et non-Quebecois. I’m not usually a fan of posting reviews, but this movie was good: it was funny, well written, well acted, and Canadian.

I’m not sure how to describe the movie’s “Canadian-ness”, but I think it boils down to a few things:

• It didn’t take itself too seriously. The entire thing was tongue-in-cheek. Not so much so that it distracted from the plot, or lessened my enjoyment, but the plot unfolded in such a way that it felt like fun, rather than something serious or real (as opposed to the Die Hard or Lethal Weapon series).
  
• The characters seemed to have a little more depth than was necessary. The backgrounds weren’t explored deeply, but the editor could have chosen to cut out the scenes showing us the police officer’s family without disturbing the flow of the movie. I’m glad that those scenes were left in. They made the flick more interesting, and gave more opportunities for fun.
  
• There were plenty of Canadian stereotypes and situations embedded in the movie.

I enjoyed it. It’s a fun movie. Perhaps most importantly, it’s one of the few instances of Quebec’s cultural reservoir spilling out into English and providing something the rest of the country can enjoy.¹

1. I don’t think that Quebec is as different from the rest of Canada as it likes to beleive. There is certainly some difference, but I don’t think it’s so great that the province deserves special treatment. (back)

I’m going to be away for September’s Beats and Sweets. I’ve been once before, and I’m really impressed with the food, and the quality of the DJ. It’s at the Mercury Lounge.

Huzzah! I’ve defended, and I’ve been given a fairly minor set of revisions to make before the thesis can be accepted. Which is fantastic. I was worried that the defense committee would want to see much more explanation of parsing algorithms, complexity, or some other area that I hadn’t written about in great depth.

All that remains to be done is minor edits on the document, some code cleanup, and then prep for the OCLUG presentation. It sounds like there is some interest from my external on the defense committe in using qcap, which may also result in some nifty work. w00t!

Alas, gentle reader, I will not be able to join you at the Green Party National Convention at the end of this week. As Greens converge on Ottawa from sea, to sea, to sea, to imaginary line, I shall be flying away, to a magical city in the desert. For those of you who can’t make it to Ottawa, you’ll be able to catch all of the convention excitement on CPAC. According to the GP Hub, the schedule is:

August 24: 7:30pm-9:00pm (live)
August 25: 9:00am-5:30pm (one-hour delay)
August 25: 7:30pm-9:00pm (live)
August 26: 9:00am-9:30pm (live)
August 27: 12:00pm-4:30pm (live)

Won’t that make for scintilating viewing?

In 19 hours time, I’ll be in my thesis defense. Close to a year’s worth of work on qcap will be on the line, as well as the 122 pages of thesis-y goodness. I’m currently cleaning up my results, trying to get a concise idea of what I can parse, and what I can’t, and how long it takes. Digging back through the data (and having fixed an itty bitty bug), I can safely say that I’m feeling confident. qcap may not be the fastest or most error-free software gracing magnetic media, but it works, and it does pretty much as it’s told.

Of course, the thing I’m having a hard time remembering is that it isn’t about the software: it’s about what I’ve learned, and the itty bitty little addition I’m making to the body of knowledge.

I’d always thought of geothermal as an option for more volcanically active parts of the world. It turns out that it’s a viable possibility in Ontario as well. Gladwell’s post is about his father’s experience installing a geothermal heating system (at a cost of $25,000), for an ongoing saving of $1,800+ annually.