Archive for December, 2009

« Previous page Next page »
29
DEC
2009

Review: The Polar Express

No comments
The Polar Express
This is a terrible movie.

Let me save two hours of your life: some anonymous kid hops on a train and goes to the North Pole. The kid is bland and boring. You won’t care what happens to him. When the kid gets there, there are some elves, but they don’t do very much. Santa Claus shows up, and doesn’t do much. The kid goes home. The end.

None of the characters are interesting. There are no challenges. There is no story line.

You could find similar excitement by getting on the O-Train and riding from South Keys to Bayview and back again for two hours.

Avoid this movie.

29
DEC
2009

My blog likes your library

One comment , , , , ...

BiblioPress are go!

BiblioPress publishes reviews from a Bibliocommons-based library catalogue to a WordPress-based blog. In other words: all the time I wasted reviewing stuff on Ottawa’s library website is now made useful because my blog will automatically republish my reviews.

The plugin is something verging on beta software. It works, but its only had limited testing.

28
DEC
2009

Review: Thank You for Smoking

No comments
Thank You for Smoking
I was expecting the comedy to be darker. As it was, it’s just a feel-good movie that does everything you’d expect.

Meh-worthy.

19
DEC
2009

Chernushenko returns?

2 comments , ,

David Chernushenko. The best MP Ottawa-Centre never had.

David Chernushenko. The best MP Ottawa-Centre never had.

The Centretown News is running a story about a municipal party being assembled here in O-town. David Chernushenko is the only member of the coalition who is speaking publicly.

I’m glad to see that David is getting back into politics. Longtime PiePalace readers will remember that I volunteered with his various election campaigns when he was running for the Green Party in Ottawa-Centre. He reeks of credibility and honesty. He’s one of the few people I’ve met who should be in politics.

Having said that, I don’t want to see parties pushing into City Hall. Party politics acts to homogenize elected representatives. Party members must vote according to the party line, and private members’ bills rarely pass. At best, politicians must work within their parties to push ideas forward. At worst, parties are petty fiefdoms that only represent the views and priorities of a small elite.

I wish David the best of luck. He would be a welcome addition to City Council.

06
DEC
2009

Hello Ottawa Public Library

2 comments , , , , ...

And no, that isn’t a membership card in my pocket. I’m just happy to see your new catalog. Your FANTASTIC new catalog.

The crunky old catalog has been replaced with a shiny new BiblioCommons website. With a bit of searching, I managed to track down some info on BiblioCommons:

  1. They have a terrible website.
  2. Their founder, Beth Jefferson, appears to be a mix of volunteer-ist and entrepreneur (imagine that!).
  3. Beth talks about BiblioCommons in a podcast I haven’t listened to yet.
  4. They seem to snarf information from Amazon. (Their images come directly from Amazon)
  5. I am addicted to annotating books.

As far as I can tell, they don’t have an official API. I managed to find a Drupal module that professes to do BiblioCommons stuff, but I don’t know enough about Drupal to tell what it’s up to.

And their login pages confuse cURL. Boo!