I'm am presently a member of the Conservative Party of Canada though my membership will soon expire and not be renewed. I've been a supporter of the Party since I voted for Brian Mulroney during the Free Trade election. I was a member of the Liberal Party when I voted for Brian Mulroney. However, I could not vote for the Liberal Party that year. They were against Free Trade and I was for Free Trade. Despite the scare tactics of the Liberal Party campaign, I had no fear that Canada was about to be absorbed by the US, either culturally or economically. I believed that Canadians knew who we were as a people, and that we could compete in the market place. I believed that competition spurs innovation. I believed Canadians should have access to the best products and services wether they are sourced in Canada or the US, or the World for that matter. The Liberal Party under John Turner did not believe Canadians were confident in their identity or that Canadian companies could adapt to market forces and compete. We needed to be protected from 'the world' out there.

Although there were other issues and policies offered by both parties, I felt each party's position on the Free Trade Agreement reflected their macro-view on how they would govern on other issues. Would they govern from a fearful and protectionist position, keeping Canadians from competition or would they govern with strength, confident in our ability to adapt, compete, and excel. I voted for Free Trade and let my Liberal Party membership expire and eventually became a member of the Conservative Party.

Now with the pending introduction of Bill C-61 (or Canada's Digital Millennium Copyright Act), I will be letting my membership to the Conservative Party of Canada expire. I'm not likely to re-join the Liberal Party (I'm more than a little fed up with both these parties), but I will do my part to help defeat any party that wants to introduce a bill like this to the Canadian people.

Like Free Trade, BC-61 is a Bellwether issue for me. The Conservative Party's support for this bill goes completely counter to why I supported them 20 years ago. The bill is supposed to protect copyright holders, but in reality its purpose is to protect the 20th Century business models of traditional media. They need to be protected from the "world out there". It's a fearful bill. It does not show confidence in Canadian companies to adapt to new realities of the digital world. It puts us at a long term competitive disadvantage vis a vis the rest of the world. Most importantly, it will make criminals out of regular Canadians who copy and reuse content ethically.

Sources:
Business faces challenges under copyright legislation
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 39: TPMs - No DRM Labelling Requirement
Legislation is severely flawed Bill C-61 has some unforeseen implications
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 40: TPMs - No Regular Review Process
Bill C-61 Flawed
Fair dealing missing under rules of new copyright law
Copyright shifts format
Copyright Lobbying Behind Closed Doors

Woke up at 4:30 this morning.

Son number 2, was crying.

Son number 1 had crawled into bed at some time around 3:30am and is giving me karate kicks to the ribcage.

By 5:30 decided to heat milk for bottle.

Fill glass with formula.

Put glass in microwave. That has idiotically designed "cooking rack" inside.

Watch glass tip on idiotically designed cooking rack and spill milk:
throughout microwave,
all over espresso machine,
over counter,
onto clean dishes,
into cupboards,
onto floor, and finally
soaked up by floor mat.

Swear!

Cause more crying.

Clean-up.

Take shower.

Make coffee.

Notice interesting smell of warm milk rising from espresso machine.

Wife wakes up (gets up - she HAD TO BE AWAKE already) and says "You are making too much noise stomping around the house."

grumble. grumble...

"I'm moving to Australia. It's been a terrible, horrible no good, very bad day." I say.

No one even answered.

Then...

"I love you, Daddy," says son number 1.

:)

Yeah. I suppose I will live.

Son #1:

Son #2:

I'm guilty.

If you look throughout this blog, you will find many images and quotes without proper attribution. I know I am not alone in my guilt.

Yeah we link to the original blog (most of the time), but the content that we quote/use is often not clearly associated with the attribution. It should to some extent be machine readable: THIS quote/image came from XYZ site. At our company we are building some web services that need to understand/read/display both license and attribution. So we looked at Microformats.org, for some guidance, but the attribution microformat is not complete, it is going to be part of the next version of Rel-License. However, considering most content being quoted in blogs is often being used within 'fair use' commentary regardless of license, a simple academic-like attribution would be very useful sooner rather than later.

So, if I wanted to comment on a picture from wife Mandy's blog post about the family playing Rock Band and my son's fascination with R.E.M.'s Orange Crush, I could post the image below and hyper link it to her blog post blog post where the image came from.


I could also put an anchor on the image to link back to her. However, it would be preferable for "machines" if the attribution maintained tighter context with the image as I have done below:



Using the mark-up:

<div class="hsnip">
  <h4 class="entry-title">Orange Crush</h4>
  <span class="entry-content">
     <img
src="http://bp3.blogger.com/
_dPEXnRmZGH0/SBVGeSCvf0I/AAAAAAAAA84/qUL_jTm5bQ4/s400/DSC_3076.jpg" />
   </span>
<br />
<br />
   <a rel="attribution" href="http://mandygratton.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange-crush.html"
title="http://mandygratton.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange
-crush.html"target="_blank">mandygratton.blogspot.com</a>
</div>

Now if we wanted to add an author, we could include hcard within the div.

What I like about this attribution solution is that it works nicely for text blockquotes. Where it can be argued that by embedding an image using the source URL gives the best attribution (bandwidth issues aside), this cannot be done for text quotes. So I can quote from Mandy's blog and include the attribution as part of the div.


The blockquote is an identifiable piece of content by both humans and machines and it is clearly attributed to the source blog post.

When I was at the founders and funders dinner in Toronto, I invited myself into a conversation on Holiday Cruises. I, as a Gen-Xer, was decidedly anti-cruise. "Never been on one," I said. "Can't stand the thought of being stuck on a floating hotel."

I was immediately corrected by a gentleman named, Stuart MacDonald, who I learned later is very well known in the travel circles having started Expedia.ca. He waxed on about how it's not a floating hotel, you can go on personal expeditions at numerous ports during a cruise (rent cars, site see off the beaten path, go hiking, fishing, rock climbing etc), you can also sit back and relax anytime you like, and how you can party all night if that's your thing. That's what a cruise offers and it is all at your finger tips. He was pretty convincing as were others in that conversation. All of whom had taken numerous cruises.

Stuart asked, "Do you have young kids?"

I said, "Yes, 3 years and 3 months."

"Ever go on a week long trip with them in a car?"

No. And I immediately got his point.

Talked to my wife, Mandy when I got back to Vancouver about the possibility of a cruise, who like me was immediately "no way!" I couldn't explain it as well as Stuart (He's REALLY passionate about cruises. Seriously passionate.), but she kind of got that it was a bit more than we had both thought about it.

However, literally this past week Mandy and I have been feeling a little overwhelmed with kids and family life and we really want to take a relaxing and fun vacation this year to recharge our batteries and renew our natural Joie de Vive.

"Maybe a cruise is not a bad idea," Mandy said.

Well I've been meaning to contact Stuart about it later this year, but today he launched Trip Harbour. He had mentioned the idea to me in Toronto, but it sounded like it was still in idea state. I didn't realize it was well into development and ready for imminent release.

It's a pretty impressive travel site. I'll dig into it later this summer, but if anyone has cruise suggestions let me know. Or I guess write a review on Trip Harbour.

Congratulations to you and your team, Stuart.

OK, I'm excited to hear that Mike Gillis is the new GM for the Vancouver Canucks. Mike was my hockey coach for one season at Queen's University. Mike actually helped me love the game again.

The quality of coaching was horrible for the majority of my hockey career. At the top level in minor hockey, coaches are just as keen or more so to climb the hockey ladder as the players. Unfortunately, in my experience that lead to damaging manipulation and mind games by wanna be coaches on wanna be teenagers. After years of bullshit, I was burned out from minor hockey when I got to Queen's. I had I sat out Junior and hadn't played in 18 months and was certain I would never play again. However, a dorm mate who knew I played AAA encouraged me to try out, I thought it might be a way to make some friends. Plus my father knew how badly my last year of hockey went and really wanted me to play again.

When I showed up at Queen's training camp, I was horribly out of shape, and was certain to be cut. Every day passed with me close to puking my guts, but my name was never called. On the last day of tryouts, Mike skated beside me, and asked me my story. That was weird, he just wanted to know who I was and about my playing career in minor hockey. I told him the truth as I saw it. It probably sounded a bit bitter. I was bitter. I half expected him to cut me right then and there. He just smiled and said, "Grats, we'll have some beers, and I will tell you some stories." Then he said, "you're out of shape. You need to build your strength. You're on the team but you are in the press box." Meaning, I went to every practice, but I was not likely to dress for many games.

We Queen's Golden Gaels were not a great team that year. We had some decent players and we were competitive, but we struggled. I played a few games here or there and saw limited ice time. Then we had a home and home series against Laurentian. In Game 1, I was watching the game from the stands. It turned into a brawl. There were suspensions. Short of players, I was going to dress for the next game.

After word got out across campus about the previous week's brawl, we actually had fans in the stand for Game number 2. Fortunately or unfortunately - whatever your point of view, the game did not have any major brawls. But I got into a fight with their biggest guy.

I lost.

Badly.

Mike said I played a gutsy game. I knew I did, and I appreciated him saying so. My previous hockey life would have resulted in me getting benched for the beating I received on the ice. Mike recognized my efforts for the entirety of the game, and ignored the "fight" (though there were a few playful jabs and lots of laughs in the dressing room). The next practice, Mike grabbed me as I was skating off and proceeded to "demonstrate" on how a hockey fight should be waged so that I don't get the crap beaten out of me in the future. Mike would do that type of thing. He'd get dirty with the players. He would help guys work on their shot, help them with a check, how to win a face off or tie up an opponent.

Mike knew when to be chummy with the players and he knew when to kick our asses, but most of all he was straight-up-no-nonsense honest. If you played well he said so. If you played poorly he said so. If you made a mistake, he would simply point it out. He wouldn't berate you (Don't do it twice though). At the end of the season we failed to make the playoffs by a game or two. As we were packing up after our last game, Mike paid me the highest compliment I had ever received from a hockey coach. It was a simple compliment about heart and the desire to compete. It is a comment that I appreciate to this day.

The next season, I stayed in shape over the summer, but Mike got accepted to the full time law program at Queen's and we had a new coach. The new coach seemed cool enough, but I loved hockey again and didn't want to risk that feeling on a new coach, plus University hockey is difficult to balance with school as it runs over two semesters. So, I chose not to play competitively again. (I play duffers and pick-up) My father understood, and wished he could have met Mike.

Now... as for Mike's 'stories', we did get drunk at his birthday. I will not go into details, but his wife threw a party, and she presented him with a dart gun and a life size cardboard picture of a former coach and present HNIC commentator with his dog promoting Canadian Tire. There was a target on the guy's head. Mike was all too happy to unload multiple times on that cut-out.

Mike understands players, and he knows what makes a good coach. Plus as THE player agent, he knows who's who. That sounds like good GM material to me.