Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

On the Hunt for a Used iMac
Am gearing up for doing a revised Core CSS. I've got the Win-32 platforms and Linux covered with the machines I have at home and use at work. But what I don't have access to is a machine running the latest Mac OS. So I am in the market for an iMac -- preferrably a used one I can get cheap, as all I ever intend to use it for is web surfing and checking against the test-suite of CSS code I intend to run against it. Anybody got a cheap iMac they don't want anymore? ;-)

Re-Reading: Wonderful Life
Thanks in part to having read A Fish Caught in Time, a book about the coelacanth, I re-discovered my copy of Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life, which looks at the "weird wonders" of animals that inhabited the waters of the Cambrian era a half-billion years ago. I dropped the book at about the 100-page mark, and have picked it up again from that point, and am currently at that point in the book that talks about the fascinating creature Anomalocaris. I find the book at the same time fascinating and annoying. The former because the book is deeply rooted in science, and the latter due to Gould's obtuse writing style (where he says things like "But look more closely at the 1973 paper." -- no thank you, that's why I'm reading your book, not the Nature monogram on a given creature; or where he thanks some researcher profusely in the middle of the book, which I find annoying). This is what made me drop the book the first time years back. I just have to ask "did this guy even have an editor?" Am going to try to stick it out this time though...

Which reminds me, gotta order a copy of Richard Fortey's Trilobite. Ugh, it's going to take 3-5 weeks to get it from Chapters.ca?!? There's gotta be a better way, like asking my local bookstore if they can get in a copy any sooner than that... Hmm, I wonder if it is possible to buy an autographed copy from the good professor himself?

"Jazz Festival Too Big?"
This headline caught my eye in today's FYI Toronto (one of the free newspapers available from the GO Station in the morning). In the short piece, a reporter talks to some local Beaches residents, one of whom dislikes the noise and the hangers-on at all of the local pubs, the other who likes the music and toughs it out. Not much info there really, though it is interesting to see that the issue of having a major festival in a largely residential neighbourhood seems to be addressed in the local media (nary a mention of this issue in The Toronto Star though, which had some coverage of the event in today's edition). The FYI Toronto web site also has an online survey which asks the same question, to which I have to answer Yes. However, I am also aware that what's likely to happen is that Jazz Festival is only likely to expand further over time: expanding eastward, towards the water filtration plant, or further westward to Kingston road, which would put it right in our lap. If the much talked-about bandshell ever gets built in the parkland immediately south of where we live, that will likely clinch the direction of the festival's expansion.

Am not really against it, and frankly the festival needs to expand its location quickly, as I keep hearing reports from people as to how crowded it is getting -- it's hard to imagine people getting claustrophobic on a wide, closed-off-to-traffic street like Queen Street, but a couple of people have mentioned that to me already. There just doesn't seem to be much of a benefit of the festival to local residents, other than putting "The Beach" on the map. Big honkin' deal.

For all my griping, the festival does seem to be getting better organized year after year. There's a very prominent police presence patrolling the streets, this year the streets were effectively blocked off and traffic better managed (one-way streets temporarily made to handle two-way traffic), on the whole, funkier-sounding bands, and a better assortment of jazz festival-related goods for sale. More power to better management of the festival I say!