schoolhouse rock

Hey, Jodi's Muse's Muse site was chosen as Cosmic Site of the Night today! Congrats, Jodi!
I've started a sort of daily blathering on the main page of Inkspot, mostly publishing news. Jodi, Allison and I are going to a Schoolhouse Rock concert/musical at the Annex Theatre tonight...apparently a bunch of rock bands are performing songs from that fun series of educational cartoons. Should be fun!
I'm going to the cottage for five days starting tomorrow, and I'll be without a computer (oh the horror! the horror!), so expect no Blatherings during that time. It's sort of strange, comparing the state of technology now to back when computers were a rare and precious thing, and we had to line up in high school to use a single battered-looking keypunch in computer science class (now this really dates me, doesn't it?), clutching our sweaty pile of cards and praying that the ol' Wang would hold out at least until we got our assignment finished. What was everyone's first home computer? Mine was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, sneeringly nicknamed the Trash-80. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to see that first "READY>" prompt appear on the screen for the first time. Spent hours laboriously typing in BASIC programs (a single typo would prevent the program from working correctly, and my brother and I would spend even more hours reading the code aloud to each other while checking it against the screen to debug it), saved them on a regular cassette recorder connected to the computer. Now I get impatient if a webpage takes a few seconds too long to download. Once I got to university I bought a Mac (The First Mac, pre-Classic) and have been with Mac ever since (now have a Power Mac 7500/100). We're thinking of turning one of our old Macs into a fish tank. Site of the day: Britannica's Birthday Calendar (who was born on YOUR birthday?)

topics

Q`?J??te before we take off for the cottage...blatherings topics! I am actually compiling a list to use on those mornings when my mind is completely tabula rasa and I am uninspired. I accept ALL topics, no matter how banal. I may not USE all topics, but feel free to suggest them in the blatherchat or send them to me with "blathertopics" in the subject header. Our neighbour across the hallway is moving out...I wonder if it was something I said? :-) Have a great long weekend, everyone! p.s. The Schoolhouse Rock show last night was cancelled!!! :-( One of the actors was sick. So Allison, Jodi and I decided to go window-shopping along Bathurst St. instead. Lots of "natural earthy" stores with homemade soaps, recycled products, that sort of thing. Expensive!!!

sea monkeys

Only five Sea Monkeys (tm) left! They look a bit nervous, as if they've suddenly become aware of the Sea Monkey graveyard lining the bottom of the container (sorry for being so morbid, but that's certainly what it looks like at this point). Going to a Marillion concert with Rand and his friend John Kalisz tonight at The Guvernment. Like The Who concert, I'm going more for the experience than because of being a longtime fan. :-)
Site of the day: The Advertising Graveyard - ads that didn't make it, ranging from hilarious to utterly tasteless (you have been warned).

marillion

Concert last night was lots of fun, and I would definitely go to another Marillion concert if given the opportunity. I found it odd that I seemed to be the only non-Caucasian person in the crowd (which consisted predominantly of white males). Mark Kelly (the keyboardist), by the way, was very easy on the eyes. ;-) Afterwards we went for sushi at Fune (the restaurant with the floating boats I've mentioned before). My Sea Monkeys (tm) nearly died last night when John inadvertently spilled some of the water, not realizing that the top was loose when he picked up the container. All Sea Monkeys survived the harrowing experience, and in fact seemed invigorated by their brush with mortality. Site of the day: Rhyming dictionary.

compuserve

AOL is acquiring Compuserve's subscribers, as many of you probably already know. Now I'm wondering whether or not to drop my Compuserve account...I have both AOL and CIS accts for work-related stuff but tend to use CIS as little as possible because of the painfully slow response time. I am currently seeking a good personalized news service on the net; I'm willing to pay a service fee as long as it's not exorbitant - any suggestions welcome. So far the best I've found is Excite's "News Tracker" service, which is free. FILMFEST: Went to see "The Kitchen Party" last night, which was premiered at the Uptown as part of the Toronto Film Festival. Entertaining flick; you should all go see it if you get a chance. It was also fun seeing this film two rows behind the cast with the director sitting a row behind us (he gave a brief speech before the film started and there was a Q&A with cast afterwards). Tomorrow I'm seeing "Esmerelda Comes By Night" with my friend Craig.
Sorry for not updating the UT cartoon and adding some new links...I've been really swamped with work lately because of being away (and OFFLINE) on weekends. As much as I love working on the UT site, work-related webstuff (i.e. income!) has to come first. Things should calm down in a few weeks, I hope. NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: In an effort to help organize my incoming mail better, I've created a new email address to separate filk-related mail from work mail. If you're writing to me about UT or filkstuff, please use wow@inkspot.com instead of ohi@inkspot.com (the latter is my general IN box and is generally hundreds of messages deep at any particular time). Thanks.