moving notice

Visit my new blog: Metropolitan News.

goodbye (again) facebook

Steve Faguy has a story in today’s Gazette (and more on his blog) about how difficult Facebook makes it for users to extricate themselves from the “social-networking” site. It’s about Montrealer Steven Mansour, who has documented his efforts to delete his personal information from Facebook’s database. Why anybody would put all that personal information on [...]

elf yourself a merry christmas

I know what you’re thinking: after almost two months of silence, this posting had better be good. I’ll try.
Many websites are trying to cash in on the holidays, some with appalling results.
Here are a couple of holiday-themed sites actually worth a visit:

The Gazette just launched a nifty holiday e-card site that lets you send out [...]

spacing montreal on the seville

Chris DeWolf, on the excellent Spacing Montreal blog, mentions my Seville story in this post. An excerpt:
One thing that seems clear from the Gazette story is that the Seville block’s ownership is as much a problem as it is a solution. For years, ownership of the block has been centralized under Claridge, which has done [...]

blogging about not blogging at la presse

A labour dispute has caused a couple of La Presse bloggers – columnists Sophie Cousineau and Marie-Claude Lortie – to temporarily (?) suspend their blogging activities today.
Cousineau explains here and Lortie here. Both say they were asked to stop blogging by their union.
“La rémunération des collaborateurs de cyberpresse.ca se trouve au cœur du litige entre [...]

copyright issue or political tussle?

Le Québécois, a hard-line sovereignist website, says it will no longer allow visitors to post articles from La Presse, a federalist newspaper, in its forums. 
No, it’s not because its editors find articles by La Presse writers such as André Pratte, Alain Dubuc et Vincent Marissal ”insipides et propagandistes.”
The tussle is over copyright issues, or so La Presse warned Le Québécois in [...]

montreal.dumb

The city’s website has long been an impenetrable mess, despite the striking, colourful cityscapes that recently started gracing its front page. I just stumbled upon more evidence the city doesn’t get the Internet.
I thought I’d save some time by paying a parking ticket online only to learn the city charges a $1.50 “administrative fee” for [...]

toronto vs. montreal: a youtube attack ad

talking to myself in two places at once

 
I just set up a second blog. This one is about the falaise St. Jacques. Take a look here.

an urban explorer

 
I have no idea who controleman is. All I know is he or she is a Montreal urban explorer who takes some cool photos. Take a look. 

quebec election 2007: (another) blog

Just to confuse things, I’ve started a new blog about the 2007 Quebec election on The Gazette’s website.  Click here to visit.

campaign buses named; “reeferendum” called

The E-File, my Quebec election notebook started in today’s Gazette. Have an interesting tidbit or comment? Send them to me at ariga@thegazette.canwest.com.
A couple of items from today’s E-File:
Reporters are mulling campaign bus monikers. PQ: Brokeback Express. Liberal: Federal Express/JC Resurrection Tour. ADQ: Hérouxville Express.
* * *
Hugô St-Onge is convinced he has the [...]

blogging billy mavreas

Reminiscence Week continues at DMM,JTTM… When I’m procrastinating online, I sometimes Google old friends, people I haven’t spoken to in years, decades even.
Last week, I Googled Billy Mavreas, a guy I met in the early 1980s when we both worked at The End, a long-dead Vanier College student newspaper. An artist, Billy would illustrate stories [...]

new shovel from nasa/canadian tire scientists

A snowstorm is walloping Montreal today. The snow blowing around outside my window reminded me about my favourite recent episode of Têtes à claques.
It’s called Le LCD Shovel. Click here to see it.

apology

I hereby apologize to my three readers, two of whom publicly complained about today’s redesign in comments (here and here) and the other of whom posted a comment on the wrong posting (here) because of the ill-considered above-mentioned redesign. We’re back to the boring old design.
Comments? Click BELOW.

don’t-mind-me reader revolting

I’m getting some flack for the blog’s redesign, specifically the fact that the Comment link (to read and post) is now at the top of every item rather than at the bottom, where it used to be. Apparently my rash decision to move it up is causing havoc in the blogosphere.
Here is an intriguing and [...]

best use of animation in a sports avatar

 
Serge, of Mirabel, is using it on the SkyscraperPage forum. More Habs avatars here.

Writing Turcot Yards

I wandered around part of the Turcot Yards last week with Ken McLaughlin, a photographer who has a passion for the abandoned rail yard and the interchange that runs over it. I had heard about his blog – Walking Turcot Yards – on Montreal City Weblog.
I eventually discovered a bunch of other Montrealers who also [...]

should police force accommodate cop’s anti-immigrant tune?

A Montreal police officer is being investigated after his anti-immigrant song ended up on the Internet. In it, he complains Quebec is doing too much to “accommodate” immigrants who “spit on our culture.” He invites those who aren’t happy to “go home

Listen to the catchy tune at Humour Québec. Beware: the site is very slow [...]

montreal oscar contender, a clip

Norwegian-born Montrealer Torill Kove is up for an Academy Award for her animated short film, The Danish Poet. The NFB, which co-produced the film, has some cool stuff on its website, including clips and a guide to how cell animation works,
The Gazette has a story about the filmmaker.
The idea for this post was shamelessly [...]

concordia = ninja u?

Concordia University’s new logo is getting a rough reception online, with people who blog about fonts (I read ‘em all) and design panning the new look. (See my original posting about the logo; more from the university here).

My favourite reaction is from blogger Iouri Goussev, a Concordia student. In this posting, he notes the coat-of-arms [...]

montreal: bootlegs ‘r us

In a story this week, the Hollywood Reporter reports that at least one big studio is threatening to delay releases of movies in Montreal because the city is a haven for “cammers” – people who sneak digital movie cameras into theatres to record the flicks. The pirated copies end up sold around the world.
“Montreal is [...]

montreal libraries disintegrating, closing

Compared to many other cities, Montreal has a rather sorry library network.
There are some rare jewels, however. Two of them are making headlines.

The $100-million Grande Bibliothèque (above) has been a runaway sucess. A Globe and Mail story last week said the library, opened in downtown Montreal in April 2005, “is attracting more patrons than officials [...]

you’ll have a gay old sign…

 
I received quite a few emails a few weeks ago after I wrote about Esso considering changing the name of its Quebec dépanneurs from Marché Express to On the Run. It caused a storm of controversy (though it would not have contravened Quebec’s language laws).
I used one of them for an item that appeared in today’s Gazette. [...]

goofy quebec site hits tv big time

Quebec’s Têtes à claque site, already a global Internet phenomenon, has hit the big time. The guy who founded the site in his basement just six months ago has signed an international TV deal. Couldn’t have happened to a funnier guy.
Maybe he was distracted by all the TV wheeling and dealing when he put together [...]

a fresh new image or a security guard patch?

I wrote a story in today’s paper about Concordia University’s new logo (above).
Officials at the school say it’s a “bold, contemporary design” that better reflects the university image. One alumnus tells me it looks more like the logo for a security guard company.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned but I kind of like Concordia’s original logo [...]

lagacé vs. falardeau: an online feud

vs.
There’s an amusing online feud going on between La Presse blogger Patrick Lagacé and colourful local filmmaker Pierre Falardeau. It seems they met on the street on the Plateau a few weeks ago and exchanged words. Lagacé blogged about it; Falardeau blew his top and used all kinds of language your high school [...]

a local daily must-read

I was going to just slap this on the Blogroll to the right but it’s worth mentioning it in a posting, as well.
Check out montreal city weblog, a daily compendium of links to news stories from the city’s news media.

er, we’ll get back to you on that

Quebec’s Commission de toponymie this morning announced that it has unanimously decided to … put off its much-anticipated decision on the conversial Park Ave.-Robert Bourassa Ave. question. They say they’ll get back to us. It’s in a press release on commission’s front page.
While you’re there, check out the procrastination-inducing search engine that will tell you [...]