John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Nervous in Newark

The airport in Newark, N.J., is an important connection from St. John's, as it's the major gateway to New York City from here. This CNN piece on potential risks at the intersecting runways at Newark is worth the read.

A T-shirt for pizza-loving Gothamites

My good friend Maggie directed me to this, knowing I have a thing for T-shirts. (Click on the tag below to see just how much.) As spotted on Glennz Tees.

A musical advent calendar: Ella Fitzgerald

Online advent calendars have been around for years, and I get a kick out of how the concept (each day, a new feature in a thread is unlocked, much like the doors in a real calendar) is applied. Some are sacred, some are secular (I like where this science-minded one is going, with the inaugural piece on caffeine), some are just for fun.

I decided to launch my own this year. Those who know me well know I collect Christmas music; sure, I get sick of hearing Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston being played endlessly at the malls, but that hasn't stopped me from being practically evangelical about music I like. Since Nicholas was born, I've made a CD for family and close friends; I'm floored this is the 10th year we've made one, with Nick himself now taking a role in picking the tunes. (Dad maintains a veto.)

So, from today until Christmas day, I'm going to post about a Christmas album I don't get tired of playing. Some are newer, some are classics. I hope you follow along.

Day One: Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas 

I like this record so much, I bought it twice. I bought the first version in the early 1990s, when Verve was introducing Ella Fitzgerald to a new audience with reissues of albums like the iconic and extensive Songbook series. The  1960 album, tunes of which have been anthologized countless times, is  not just a great Christmas record, but a fine jazz vocal record, too. The arrangements by Frank DeVol stick to you like glue, particularly with the horns (case in point: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas). It's timeless.

Verve remastered and repackaged the album a few years ago, reinstituting the original artwork and adding all of the main tracks, plus alternate versions. This is the verson to buy.

A thought on erosion, and persistence

"The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling."
- Lucretius

[The above image came from the Dynamosquito Flickr stream.]

Paws out: Gratuitious kitten cuteness

Kittens? Cuteness? Redundant? Yes, of course. But if you had a bad day, click this.

Get crafty with the kids this weekend

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

It’ll only be a few more weeks before strings of lights and pinecones and sugar cookies, and countless other elements of Christmas, find their way into our homes. 

In the weeks leading up to the season, parents of young children may want to stock up on a little extra construction paper, glue and string. Now that it’s dark in the evenings and often unpleasant to play outdoors, it’s a great time to keep the kids occupied with projects that can keep their fingers busy, and produce some holiday-ready treats, too.  

 

Kids Craft Weekly
From Australia comes this terrific site, loaded with ideas of things kids can and will want to take on. Earlier this week, my son agreed to an interesting challenge: he’ll make 10 Christmas cards, and will send them out to kids around the world. In return, he hopes to receive as many homemade cards from children living in other countries. 

While that particular project had a deadline that has just passed, there’s plenty else to do, for any day of the year. If you are looking for something holiday-related, check out the Christmas cards, which use household materials but elegant designs. That’s just the start; scratch the surface and you’ll find plenty of projects, often with printables that kids and parents can take to the living room floor or kitchen table. How easy are the projects? Put it this way: I could make most of this stuff, and without a kid to help me, too. 

The Crafty Crow
For additional ideas, try out this blog, which aims to find rewarding things for kids of all ages to do. The links come from sites all over the web, with ideas on drawing projects, printable crafts, felt, homemade lanterns … the list goes on and on. 

Toys of the year 
 The Canadian Toy Testing Council released its recommendations for the year earlie this week. The council has established a lot of credibility for more than 55 years for picking toys that avoid the flash and glamour, and go for steadier, sturdier qualities that appeal to kids and parents alike. This year’s recommendations underscore the comeback of that living room staple, the board game. You can find it all here on the council’s site, which incidentally is sore need of an upgrade. 

Aviva Community Fund 
 Insurance giant Aviva has tapped into social networking as a way to drum up interest in submissions for its $500,000 community fund. I became aware of it when an old friend sent out a note for support for her pet project, a bid to clean up the grounds at Frank Roberts Junior High and Queen Elizabeth Senior High, in Foxtrap. Its one of many projects across the country competing for a share of the fund. The competition is now in its third round, which winds up next week. Click on the map for a look at other close-to-home projects in contention. 

Travel With the Olympic Torch
Vancouver 2010 Torch Relay
 Plenty of people across the province had a chance to see the Olympic torch relay in action last week, including yours truly. Did you know there’s a YouTube channel of highlights of the cross-country journey? Log on to see reporter Chris Wheeler’s piece on St. John’s, among other selected stops. You can also see the videos at the 2010 Torch Relay site, not to mention other features, including photos from many of the legs. 

"Unfriend"
Oxford University Press picked "unfriend" as its word of 2009, with this definition: "To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook." OUP cited the word as being very contemporary (and it is that) as well displaying some potential for sticking around for years to come. Unfriending can be cold, but it can also practical, especially when you find someone you don’t know very well overposts or is just tedious. I wonder if the word, and the action, will extend to more direct human contacts. 

John Gushue is a writer in St. John's, and is currently on leave from his job with CBC News in St. John's. John is on Facebook right here. John is on Twitter right here.

When you absolutely, positively need to get obliterated

 

When I was a university student, Extra Old Stock was the beer of choice for a lot of us - perhaps for the flavour, but more likely for the stupor. Extra Old Stock had six per cent alcoholic content, which gave you more blotto for the buck, as it were. (Hey, when you're on a budget, a 20 per cent alcohol advantage is nothing to sniff at.) 

Admitting that, I was astonished to read of the launch in Scotland of a special edition beer called Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which is - seriously - 32 per cent proof. It gets bragging rights, if that's what they are, for the world's strongest beer. 

Britain has a notorious record with binge drinking (closing hours at the pubs don't help; neither do pubs offering dirt-cheap promotions to get people in and quickly tanked). A brewery going out of its way to be obnoxiously provocative - the managing director told the BBC, "This beer is about pushing the boundaries, it is about taking innovation in beer to a whole new level" - almost seems like satire from within. 

A thought on personal lives

"I don't like to share my personal life. It wouldn't be personal if I shared it."
- George Clooney

The unsinkable Heidi Bonnell

I and many other journalists in St. John's got to know Heidi Bonnell while she was communications director in the premier's office during the brief but hectic Brian Tobin era. Since then, Bonnell has become a lobbyist, and more recently has encountered not one but several serious health issues, including two cancer battles and a recent, unrelated cardiac issue. The Ottawa Citizen has a feature report today on how Bonnell, through it all, has been spearheading a charity to promote fertility preservation. It's a good read. 

Good luck, Heidi! 

A thought on failure

"Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others."
- Jules Renard

Hang On Sloopy

A favourite pop chestnut from the Sixties, via the McCoys. My son heard this song recently, and thought it was about Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. Not so, and here's proof. 

A merry, merry Hothmas for you

This T-shirt, a seasonal wink on The Empire Strikes Back battle on the ice planet Hoth, made me laugh. And I bought one (actually, more than one), too, because it's available today only. TeeFury sells its wares dirt cheap (US $9), but on a limited edition basis. 

A thought on reaching all audiences

 "I sing to the whole family. I'm anti-demographics."
- Tony Bennett, as said on Elvis Costello's Spectacle

Boy, they don't make ads like this very often

... and for a reason. I learned about this via the Age of Persuasion Facebook feed. 

Five-fact Friday

 
 

The first musical instrument played in space was a harmonica, which astronaut Wally Schirra smuggled aboard a Gemini space mission in 1965. The instrument (like some sleigh bells that Schirra and a collegague also took aboard) is held at the Air and Space Museum in Washington.

The Daily Show, which has made a stock in trade in lampooning TV news programs, keeps track of things with the help of no less than 13 Tivos.

In 1996, Rush became the first Canadian band to be named collectively to the Order of Canada.

Finland leads the world's wealthiest nations in terms of most paid days off, according to a 2007 survey. Finnish law sets aside 30 days of annual leave for workers, and the country has an additional 14 statutory holidays.

Bruce Swedien, the legendary sound mixer who has worked with many jazz luminaries and on numerous Quincy Jones productions, made 91 different mixes of Michael Jackon's Billie Jean before the final version was picked: the second one Swedien had done.

A grand day for a walk

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

The evenings are dark now, but that hasn’t stopped our family from trying to get out when we can for a healthy walk. The first site on this week’s web tour is all about the St. John’s-area network that has transformed how many of us spend our leisure time. 

Grand Concourse
The Grand Concourse is an ambitious project launched by philanthropist Paul Johnson and his family’s foundation, and now includes a network of trails and guided walks that crisscross the city and into neighbouring municipalities. Many of the trails are old and well-established, but have been upgraded to terrific shape because of the Grand Concourse’s work.
 
The website underwent a recent overhaul, and has plenty to offer, including suggestions on walks of varying skill levels and lengths, with complementing maps and photos. Among other things, it makes good use of mashups with Google Maps, so you can get a good idea of where a given route will take you.
 
While it’s nice to see a more robust web presence, I’d suggest a few things. For instance, it would be terrific to be able print simple, clean sheets on each hike. As well, the organization could develop a greater sense of community by inviting participants to get involved, and using user-generated tools for photo-sharing, hike descriptions, etc. After all, the Grand Concourse, which holds not just one local gem but many, is all about public participation.
 

Elsewhere this week

Scribd
Scribd is fast becoming a popular application all over the web, probably because it’s easy for users. It produces Flash-powered embeddable documents, which means that rather than linking to a PDF, you can put it right in your blog or website, and the reader can see scroll or tab through the whole thing. The document can be as a big as a book or as small as a brochure; that’s up to you. Better yet, it can be shared, which can help let your content move around the web, if you’re cool with that. It’s a handy way to bring something like a PowerPoint presentation to the individual level, as well. Heavy users range from major publishers, like technology gurus like O’Reilly Media, to small businesses. 

Photoshop Disasters
Photoshop Disasters made the news this fall when one of its routine posts – they all involve errors and distortions that somehow made their way to print – royally ticked off fashion company Ralph Lauren. The blog had merely pointed out that a particular model has sci-fi-style proportions, winding up with an impossibly skinny waist. When other sites, including the wonderful Boing Boing, raised hackles, Ralph Lauren went to its corner and had a boo-hoo. Fortunately, Photoshop Disasters is still plugging away, pointing out the sublime and ridiculous.

Swampland
Time magazine may never be able to shake its image as being stuffier than a starched shirt, but that hasn’t stopped it from running a political blog with plenty of bounce. Swampland is a collaborative project by the magazine’s writers, with frequently updated posts on each day’s political news, with an unsurprisingly hefty emphasis on Washington. (It’s not called Swampland for nothing.) I subscribe to the daily email alert, for reminders to check out new content.

Snapbird
Because Twitter’s in-house search system only allows seven days of access, along comes Snapbird, which lets you comb through many weeks of tweets – as long as they were made by friends or those you’ve marked as favourites. A handy tool for locating something you read weeks or months ago.

Little Wheel
Imagine a robot world where the machines have been sleeping, for lack of a better, word, for 10,000 years. A lightning strike reanimates one of them, and in this charming little game, your job is to get everything back on the go, one step at a time. If you’re confounded, you can take a little cheat and click on Walkthrough … but I bet you’ll love figuring out as much as you can on your own.
 

John Gushue is a writer in St. John's, and is currently on leave from his job with CBC News in St. John's. John is on Facebook right here. John is on Twitter right here.

The problem with you, you and you: Rick Mercer on the leaders

From this week's episode of the RIck Mercer Report. A minute long, and pretty much summing up the electorate mood of 2009.

A thought on what lies beneath

"Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character."
- Oscar Levant

What kills whom where

What kills Canadians most? Or residents of other nations? And what is the global picture? Check out WorldLifeExpectancy. It's revealing stuff, especially with the ability to compare, contrast and sort.

When stormtroopers kill teddy bears: Faux Facebook status updates

The image above is the start of the funniest thing I read today: a list of five Facebook conversations involving the characters of the Star Wars galaxy. Here's the rest. (A head's up: not for young kids.)

Bohemian Rhapsody, a la Muppets

Freshly released, with various Muppets taking the right roles (who else but Beaker could hit those very high notes) in Queen's evergreen song.

A thought on who needs advice

"A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby