Friday, December 21 2001

The Connection : Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

"[T]he New Yorker's arts editor, have been living for the past three months on the threshold of unfamiliar images. In September, downtown New York was eloquently captured by their collaboration, a black-on-black New Yorker cover, broken only by one, now-ghostly antenna. More images have followed, along with despair at their inadequacy, and triumph at their ability to communicate the deepest feelings in the simplest way." Apropos of nothing, and notwithstanding the Connection vs. Christopher Lydon curfluffle (sp?!), it was very nice to turn on the radio, while stuck in traffic on Storrow Drive over Thanksgiving, and hear Dick Gordon's voice again. I remember hearing the announcement that he was leaving the CBC for The Connection and thinking that it was "our" loss. And then I spaced it until last month, suffering in my own private agony listening to the touchy-feely, sickly-sweet, it's all about me drivel that Sheilagh Rogers has turned This Morning into. Thank you, Internet radio. Thank you. see also : christopherlydon.org

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N.Y. Times : Yes, It's Real: The Magic of Christmas in Montreal

I'm not even sure why I am giving this article the time of day. It contains almost every dumb-ass device used, commonly by Americans, to describe Montreal and Quebec. First of all, if you come to visit, I can assure you that you will not be deep in the France of Canada. You will be in Quebec. Yes, the province still shares strong ties with France but it's been 242 years since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. And frankly, if you ask some people here they'll tell you that Quebec is doing a better job safe-guarding the French language than their counterparts across the pond who are seen to be embracing every single americanisme they can get their hands on. It's not an argument I've been able to whole-heartedly embrace, yet, but there you go. Secondly, Montreal is not an Anglophone's paradise. That's called courtesy and you would do well not to abuse it. This is Quebec and people speak French, here. Just grow up and deal with it. Thirdly, I'm happy for the author that she had service is as upbeat as the room but it was an exception. Why do Americans like for their dining experiences to follow the same rules that govern industrial manufacturing? You can pretty much be guaranteed to get good, but relaxed, service here. Don't worry; you'll learn to appreciate it in time. Fourth, Toqué! sucks. Le Passe-Partout doesn't. L'Expresse has gerkins. Finally, I have no idea what Tourtières are not French by way of France, but they have just as powerful a pull on Montreal. is supposed to mean. See point number one, I guess.

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Jorge Godoy : CVS and DocBook Validation

"Writing a document and putting it under revision control is not an easy task. One might want to make that document into a printable format and face several markup errors. One way to prevent that is to ensure that only correct DocBook documents are available to everybody and authors don't put problematic or with an incomplete structure at the repository. ... CVS allows the use of triggers in some stages. By using commit triggers we can start a validation proccess (in our case using onsgmls, from [[WWW]] OpenJade) that will either accept the document as valid SGML or refuse it."

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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is bombinate

| source : web1913 | Bombinate \Bom"bi*nate\, v. i. To hum; to boom. | source : wn | bombinate v : make a buzzing sound [syn: {buzz}, {bombilate}]

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