Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Pathos of Superheroes

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I’ve always been more of a fan of the Batman, than of Superman. Even the angst teenaged Spider-man seems more engaging than Supes.

I’m by no means a comic geek. Most of my exposure to these franchises has been through film and television. Admittedly, it’s been many years since I actually watched one of the Superman films, and I don’t think that I’ve made much effort to watch Superman Returns.

As a kid, I think the only Superman comics I read were the Death of Superman series, back in 1993. The fall of Superman made him more than just vulnerable. At the time, this seemed shocking, that the impervious hero could be brought down.

The Death of Superman. Superman Vol 2 Issue 75 cover

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Ad Astra 2013

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Ad Astra is a speculative fiction convention in the outskirts of Toronto (specifically Markham) that I’ve attended now for several years. (2012 and 2009 recaps). Last year they moved to a new hotel for the convention, and it looks like they’ve started to fix some of the problems with last year’s event.

There were fewer tracks of programming this year, which was helpful. This reduced the heavy load on the elevators from last year, and made panel decisions easier.

Panels scheduled in the smaller rooms on the lower level were a real problem for me, as the rooms seem designed to devour sound. There are no microphones or speakers, and the panelists tend to be soft spoken. I had to bail on one panel because the sounds of people in the hall were far louder than the people at the front of the room.

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Doctor Who: A Postscript from Rory

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Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Doctor Who Series 7 episode The Angels Take Manhattan.

River Song always has spoilers

Spoilers, sweetie!

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Trudeau and the need for leadership

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With news of Justin Trudeau’s candidacy for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, some polls are suggesting that Trudeaumania is about to descend on the country, enabling the Liberals to regain control of the government, draining support from the NDP.

Justin Trudeau in 2010

Photo copyright Adam Scotti http://flic.kr/p/7z9YZt
Licensed under Creative Commons

How likely is a Liberal government now? Do they really stand a chance of winning back the support of voters who chose orange instead of red? The NDP had a strong showing in the last election, in no small part due to the efforts of the late Jack Layton. While Layton was clearly the catalyst for the so-called Orange Crush, I suspect the move towards the NDP was also due to a long-term frustration with the lack of credible Liberal policies. I’m not convinced that Trudeau can swing support back from orange to red.

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The Perils of Selling Stuff Online

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There’s a strange mentality at play when trying to sell items online. Several sites on the Internet have become a virtual garage sale. While eBay is the most successful, it’s often easier to use sites which focus on local sales, such as Craigslist or Kijiji. Shipping items is a hassle, and it’s often easier to receive payment when meeting around town.

There may be fewer people interested in your product though, and there are also very obviously those who will try to lowball your asking price.

I recently sold a Nikon SB-400 flash online. Ken Rockwell may love this flash, but it’s not flexible enough for my use. I listed it for just over a hundred dollars, which is what a rough look at successfully completed eBay auctions closed for. Within a day, I had two offers for my asking price, as well as this gem:

Hi si i offer 50 dolar cash, if you think let me come and get it

Brilliant! I’ll sell it to you immediately… Wait, no I won’t. Your offer is ridiculous. If you’re trying to get a deal, here’s a few tips:

  1. Look for items more than a few days old.
  2. Use relatively correct language. Try using a spellchecker.
  3. Try to explain why you should get a deal.

Try actually being persuasive. If you’re lucky, it will work. If not, at least you’re not like to be fodder for blog posts.

Nonfiction Book Review: Getting Started with D3 by Mike Dewar; O’Reilly Media

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For the past several weeks, I’ve been working with some visualization libraries in JavaScript. There are a number of different options available, from using the bitmap graphics in the HTML 5 canvas, to writing vector graphics with SVG output.

One of the more popular libraries at the moment is D3, which provides a flexible framework for visualizing large datasets in SVG. While the examples and API documentation available on the D3 website are helpful,  I have also found Mike Dewar’s book, “Getting Started with D3” to be a helpful resource.

Cover for "Getting Started with D3"

Dewar uses a publicly available resource, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority Data Set, to demonstrate how the library can be used to present data in a number of ways. The book covers all the basics with D3, from the selection model, to interactive graphs, and specialized layouts, such as force-directed graphs. While it covers some of these concepts, it never goes into great detail about anything in particular. While this is a “getting started” book, it’s very much an introductory title.

Still, this is a relatively short book. It’s a good introduction to D3, but leaves a great deal about the library to be explored. In chapter 3, the author notes that the standard D3 visualizations are rendered in SVG, which limits the usage to modern browsers. While it is noted that Internet Explorer 9 (March 2011) provides SVG support, the book fails to explain exactly what that means today. As I’ve mentioned before, IE 8 is the most recent version of Internet Explorer that can run on Windows XP, which still has a sizeable market share. While there are workarounds, such as using d34raphael to render VML output in earlier versions of IE, or using svgweb to render the SVG output in Flash, these problems are glossed over with a simple aside.

In the end, D3 is a very useful tool, and Mike Dewar’s book does a decent job of explaining how to go about using it. It’s unfortunate that the book doesn’t go into greater detail, especially since the book is so short to begin with.

This book was reviewed as part of O’Reilly’s Blogger Review program. The book itself can be found on the O’Reilly website here. 

Ad Astra 2012

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I’ve attended Ad Astra, a Toronto science fiction convention, for several years now. As the Don Valley Parkway was closed for maintenance this weekend, the change of venue from the hotel used over the last few years was welcome.
The convention floor was much more accessible, without the insane number of stairs everywhere, like at the previous convention centre. However, the venue space for vendors was insufficient. The main vendors room had four or five booksellers, including Bakka Phoenix and Chizine Publications. Other vendors had tables lining the hallways. When customers stood outside their tables, walking down the halls became difficult.

Steampunk cosplayers at Ad Astra

In addition to the Steampunk cosplayers, this year a number of vendors were selling Steampunk accessories.

The convention seemed a little emptier this year. Toronto Comicon was this weekend as well, which certainly didn’t help. The programming on Saturday appeared to be hit or miss. At some times, three panels of interest were scheduled at the same time, while at others, nothing of interest was going on. Those were the times where I like to circle the vendors room, but it didn’t take nearly as long this year.

Perhaps the most engaging panel was one on criticism, moderated by Adam Shaftoe. It was nice to meet him in person for the first time. It’s always interesting to see who has twitter notifications enabled in a panel. After I mentioned him in a tweet, I could see him scanning the room to find me. The panelists had a good discussion, about the advantages and disadvantages of ARCs and blog monetization. The best advice was from Ryan Oakley. No, not this, but rather that reviewers shouldn’t worry about the feelings of the author. Consider the work alone. Assume a certain level of professionalism on the part of all parties, and follow Wheaton’s Rule: Don’t be a dick.

I really enjoyed attending a few readings. Suzanne Church read from her Aurora nominated story The Needle’s Eye, which was really moving. Marcy Italiano read her short story Dance at my Funeral, a great story about a final farewell. Where S

Later I attended a reading by Matt Moore, Derek Kunsken, and Marie Bilodeau, who read to an engaged audience. Matt had the other authors help read parts of his story Ascension, a story about telepathic zombies. Marie read her Aurora nominated short story The Legend of Gluck, in which a rotten skull is dragged around. Not to be outdone, Derek read from his Aurora nominated story To Live and Die in Gibbontown, which was published in Asimov’s. Matt then finished off with a Lovecraft inspired story Delta Pi. The East Block Irregulars writing group is well represented by these authors.

I’m not sure which story I enjoyed best. The reading of Ascension was spectacular, and any story where the characters are monkeys will have my attention. Despite his disclaimer that this was his first public reading, Derek was funny and engaging. Finally, of you’ve not attended a reading by Marie, you’re really missing out. A French accent and rotting sorcerer brains? A winning combination!

To wrap up the night, I attended the start of the Chizine party, where Michael Rowe graciously signed the copy of Enter, Night I picked up in the dealer’s room. Chizine made out like the piratical bandits they are in the Aurora nominations, and this modern vampire novel, set in northern Ontario in the 1970s, was one of them. All too soon, I had to depart. It was a good day, and it was nice to see everyone again.