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My little sister went in for surgery a few weeks ago to find out what was going on with some random pain she was having. I am happy to say that the biopsy they took came back negative so she doesn’t have cancer.

I was saddened this morning when I saw the article on google news… The Death of Web Radio? – BusinessWeek. I listen to a lot of streaming radio, between my Sirius subscription and various free independent streams like somaFM’s Tag’s Trance Trip, and cliqhop and idobi radio. I was distressed a few years ago when the CRB imposed the first set of royalties on internet radio but was relieved when they decided to reconsider and created a structure that allowed most legitimate internet radio stations to survive. This time it seems like we may not be so lucky.

So, I’ve got letters to mail to my senators and I’ve signed the petition at savenetradio.org for better or for worse. I don’t know if it will help, but it sure cannot hurt.

At the same time I’m also going to be planning for the worst and will probably setup a private mp3 stream or will try and get daap to work over the vpn to work.

It’s nearly unnamed Saturday and like the good little Catholic that I most certainly am not I refrained from eating meat today. And to spite the title of this post that is the only Good Friday thing I’ll mention.

Last night my sister, Carla and I all went to dinner. Sarah (my sister) had just exploratory surgery and was on some good painkillers and what not, but wanted to get out of the house and Carla and I wanted to spend some time with her. It was nice, we went to the Red Robin here in town and ended up nearly closing the joint out. Carla is the only girlfriend, ex or otherwise that Sarah seems to have ever really gotten along with, so it was amusing to sit there and get to see the two of them chat away.

It’s amusing to me how much things have changed in the last few years. Being the eldest of three has always put me in the position where I have found myself irritated at the responsibility of being emulated by my younger siblings — often times to the eventual result of one of said siblings being locked in a confined space… as you do. These days as my siblings have largely begun to find their own ways in the world, paths completely different than my own I have become somewhat less likely to lock one of them in a closet. As different as we are becoming, the blatantly scathing sarcasm runs deep in the three of us, each of us adding our own cerebral flavour to the somewhat common sarcastic twist we each seem to put on everything. This was re-enforced last night as I got to witness my sister and Carla bantering back and forth much as I can recall her and I doing, trading sarcastic quips like volleys by opposing cannoneers.

For some reason today has been utterly draining and I feel like I could sleep forever. I wish I was the freaking Highlander so I could go and sleep for a few hundred years.

Anyway, Happy Easter everyone. Hope you feel better little sister, and you too Carla my sweet dears.

This is pretty cool stuff. Kudos to the people who figured they’d go take these expensive commercial media outlets and convert them to something really artistic and amusing.

(jwz > you)

I usually have a pretty short attention span when it comes to new gadgets, I tend to play with them in earnest for the first few days of ownership and then my normal usage pattern will emerge — wherein most times it collects dust on a shelf until I have a reason to remember or care that I own it. I keep thinking that is going to happen with the digital camera but thus far it hasn’t. As of today I have shot more than 200 pictures in the two weeks or so that I have owned it and while I’m sure that’s not a lot, almost 100 of them have been shot in two sittings. Anyone that reads this regularly would recall that on Sunday I went to Durand Eastman and took something like 51 pictures there, well today I went up to High Falls which is near where I work and took a bunch more pictures.

This lead to an amusing situation on the way home, where I got on i-490 east right behind my mother and sister who were driving home from Toronto. Since I had my camera with me I was able to catch this picture. (even though we were both doing like 65MPH) Since I was in the mood and had the camera on, I also put together a little photographic instruction manual on how to get to my house. It’s pretty simple, really. Step one, get off interstate 590 at Exit 1, this is Winton Road. Step Two turn onto French road from Winton. This is a left if you are coming from the expressway. Step three, turn left onto Chateau Square.

See, easy!

We’ll see if I ever get tired of playing with this damn thing. It looks like it’s going to serve me well when I goto Scotland.

I hung out with Carla a bit today but she didn’t have a whole lot of time between the movie she went to see and going to have dinner with her mom so I came over and chilled while she dyed her hair. I think it came out pretty nice and it was nice seeing her. Afterwards I was feeling kind of restless and didn’t really want to go home and sit around so I grabbed my new camera and ran up to Durand Eastman Park and Arboretum in Irondequoit to see if I could take some neat pictures and further stress the battery. When I bought the camera I charged both batteries and loaded up the stock one and started going nuts. I’ve taken nearly 160 pictures and the battery gauge only just went to 1 bar left. I’m pretty impressed with the camera, it remains super easy to use, fairly light and easy to carry around and I am amazed time and again what the image stabilization and the nice zoom lens can do. I’ve got a couple pictures of structures that were literally miles away.

It was also nice to just get out and drive a bit. I’ve been going just to and from work and around town so much lately that it was really relaxing to just hop on the expressway and blast somewhat aimlessly, music up loud and the windows down. Somehow it feels like some of the stress and worry from the last 6 months have started to finally melt away. Hooray for spring.
So far I have taken 159 pictures with the camera totaling somewhere just under 700MB. I am sure as time goes on I’ll take less and less pictures randomly but none the less the camera is a grand toy to have. The other bonus of having the camera is that I finally have more pictures of Carla and Carla and I together. I think I whined about that a few posts ago and I promptly did something about it. I will admit it makes the separation somewhat easier even if it is a poor substitute to actually spending time with her.

So pictures, all of them are in the gallery. The Durand Eastman pictures are in their own album. There also happen to be pictures of the current condition of my room since I cleaned the house yesterday and am somewhat proud of it.