duncanmac

On Saturday, 28 March, I went to the Ottawa GeekMarket at the Nepean Sportsplex. That was a disappointment for me, as I had intended to meet someone there, perhaps to play board games. But the person had left by the time I had arrived, and other friends were too busy to come meet me on that day. I did enjoy visiting a few booths provided by boardgame companies located here in Ottawa, including one which is organizing meet-ups in the down-town area for people interested in playing boardgames. The costumes were fairly good, including a group dressed up as Star Wars characters such as Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, Boba Fett, and a few Jawas (complete with glowing eyes). Also present was a Tardis booth from the Doctor Who show.

A more enjoyable, but more expensive, trip occurred on Friday, 10th April, when I went with another friend of mine for the weekend to enjoy the Ad Astra SF convention in the GTA (Toronto). This was the first such convention I had been to in four years, though I had been to the local Can-Con convention more recently. We took the Via Rail train to and from Toronto, having been able to get relatively cheap train tickets. (No doubt about it, travelling by train is much smoother than by bus.) It was a rainy and very windy day on the trip out; this didn’t affect the train journey itself, but the situation in Toronto was another story. My friend had never been to Union Station in downtown Toronto before, so she had to rely on me for navigation. I had been through there fourteen months earlier, to visit another friend, so I knew what to expect generally. But the Union subway stop had been completely rebuilt and was totally changed – even the entrance was now 6-8 feet lower than the train station exit (and down a flight of steps), though it had been level with it when I last passed through there. A breakdown in Toronto Hydro caused Finch Station in the north of the city to be blacked out, so we had to get off the subway train at Sheppard Station and take a “shuttle bus” to get to the other station. Worse, the winds were blowing at close to gale force with occasional rain squalls and came close to knocking us over and taking off our hats. We eventually managed to catch a bus of the “York Region Transit” and reached the convention site only slightly the worse for wear.

There were several highlights of the convention. I enjoyed Heather Dale’s concert, where she sang a number of songs; for once, she wasn’t singing about Arthurian legend, but included covers of two songs from the original Muppet Movie, “Rainbow Connection” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, along with a cover of the song “Is Somebody Singing” composed by astronaut Chris Hadfield in collaboration with Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies. [Apparently, some new CDs by her are due to be published in the next few months.] Various panels discussing both fantasy and SF were enjoyed, including a rather sad one describing the mess our world will be in due to Climate Change if we continue with “business as usual”, abetted by the negative reaction of most politicians to proposed corrective action in the form of NIMBY [Not in My Back Yard], NIMTOO [Not in My Term Of Office] and NAME [Not At My Expense]. Aside from the main hotel and a Tim Hortons shop nearby, the only food sources were contained in a disappointing “food court”, which supplied only Chinese food – even the restaurant menus were almost entirely in Chinese – in a mall next to it, with the next nearest food source a mile or more away; sadly, that’s one of the prices one pays when a con is in the ’burbs. There also was a pretty good Dealer’s Room and a rather small Art Show, though an exhibit of Lego-built spaceships and stuff occupied a separate room. Another pleasant surprise was meeting at least four people with whom I had lost contact fifteen years or more earlier. While at least one of them used to live in Ottawa, she and her husband had moved to Toronto over two decades ago, which largely explained why I had lost contact.

The return trip – on a warm, sunny and quiet Sunday – was much smoother and easier. I contributed a large bag of snacks to the Can-Con party at the convention, so the return trip had much lighter luggage, even though I had purchased a few books in the Dealer’s Room. If I do go travelling again to Toronto, I definitely would prefer going by train if I can obtain inexpensive tickets. I had been reluctant to do that, as I was concerned about getting from the Metro area (and the services of the TTC) into the suburbs, where mass transit is known to be poor and unreliable. It seems that at least some of the GTA’s outer suburbs do have decent service, though I suspect that the outer areas such as Oakville and Aurora still are rather car-dependent.

... to fajrdrako, who has just moved into new quarters recently.

I hope you've been having a marvelous and joyful day.

... to shaddyr, who has been a filker, musician, single mother and hard worker.

The day was actually yesterday; I hope you had a wonderful and celebratory day.

... to amazon_syren, who marked her birthday this past Thursday.

I hope she had a enjoyable day.

... to auriaephiala, who I have not been keeping up with for a while. [Life does that when one is both tired and mildly sick, unfortunately.] I gather you celebrated same on Friday; I hope it was a happy and joyful day.

Good (though tired) thoughts your way.

... to pondside, who actually marked it this past Friday (30 August).

I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing day on Friday.

... to lemmozine, who actually marked it last Saturday (the 17th).

I hope you had a wonderful day.

... to dimakoi, who is currently settling into a recently-acquired house. I hope you have a *long* and happy time living there.

I am a tad unhappy with my current job ... and I have some friends, notably fajrdrako, who are seriously thinking of retraining. This would be straightforward if we can afford the tuition fees and all the other costs. Alas, those costs are not trivial.

At least one major community college here in the city, Algonquin College, has been trying a new approach to bring would-be students who plan to take courses there up-to-date with modern employers' expectations of job applicants. That program is the "Mobile Learning Initiative", which (among other things) mandates that a prospective student shall acquire and use a laptop computer with certain minimal specifications. In the end, the college divided most of these specifications into three "grades" of computer requirements for a laptop PC running Windows, related as C [Good or "i3"], B [Better or "i5"] and A [Best or "i7"]. Some courses expect you to acquire either a Windows or a good (D) Mac laptop instead. Some other courses mandated alternate requirements (an iPad [E] or Tablet [F]), but they are the exception rather than the rule; a few -- mostly courses on computer hardware -- added extra hardware requirements, but these courses are a small minority.

1. A top-of-the-line Windows laptop, as described on this page.
2. A better Windows laptop, as described on this page.
3. A good-enough Windows laptop, as described on this page.
4. A good-enough Mac laptop, as described on this page.
5. An iPad, as described on this page.
6. A Windows "tablet" device, as described on this page.

The college also supplied a web page listing which courses require which kind or grade of computer, as of this coming fall.

With hope that this helps people ...

What would you see if you were able to read excerpts from an encyclopedia written in another "world-line"? No doubt, there would be some details that one might recognize; but much of it might seem rather strange.

As an illustration of sorts, I am including a few excerpts from an encyclopedia found in a "world-line" where two or three extra British soldiers from the Crimean War survived and went on to have normal life-spans. [Yes, Florence Nightingale may have had some impact on soldier survival rates, but many modern commentators have questioned how much that impact was.] I have also included links (to our version of Wikipedia) to help illustrate some of the differences that resulted.

This particular set of extracts was inspired by a post done by dalecoz many moons ago, which talked about what it would be like if electricity were exploited earlier. Since I disagreed with some of the details, I decided to see if I could re-do parts of it. Having a copy of Charles Dunbar's book Buses, Trolleys and Trams from 1967 also helped to some degree.

UPDATE (9th June): I have added a few entries (for Alfred R Osbourne, Albert Dudley and Oliver Heaviside), as well as corrected some phrases elsewhere. [As to what may have happened to Alfred Osbourne, consider the first syllable of his surname. :-) ]

( Extracts from Encyclopedia Americana (1955)Collapse )

As well as accelerating the development of electrical appliances and equipment by a decade or more, this probably would draw interest and innovators from other lines of work, including the development of petroleum refining and the exploitation of internal combustion engines. While such items probably would have been invented shortly after 1900, their role would have been considerably reduced, especially if someone had figured out how to power an electric tractor or combine. [Note: as diesel-electric locomotives demonstrate, the catch is *not* how strong the motor can be; the catch is that batteries will not provide enough power and supplying power with sufficient voltage to the machine, especially as the machine will be traveling over rough and unprepared ground, is therefore rather awkward.] Other experimental methods of transport, such as cable cars, would be far less prominent in this time-line, as economic concerns probably discouraged their development until after 1880, by which time electrified service was reliably available and rather cheaper.

What do others think? As always, this inquiring mind would like to know.