two interesting podcasts
I started listening to the Ideas podcasts put out by CBC Radio and found a couple I think are worth a listen. The first one is a broadcast of the Economics and Social Justice forum with Pier Luigi Sacco & Avi Lewis recorded in Vancouver in July 2006. I think that Sacco’s peice is more interesting than Lewis’ peice, but they’re both worth at least one listen. I’ll probably listen to the Sacco peice again. Here’s a transcript of the podcast if reading is more your thing.
In the second podcast, Michael Enright deals with the topic of Muslim integration into Western societies. The show starts with an interveiw of Tariq Ramadan. I found the interview more interesting than the panel disscussion in the second half of the show.
libusb input support hits gok
I finally committed my libusb patch to gok. Horay! (Well, I shouldn’t celbrate too much, it did take a while 
)
Ok, so here are the nitty gritty details: GOK now has a command line option, ‘–with-libusb-input=VID:PID’, which allows you to specify an input device VID/PID pair you would like to use with GOK. This device will be detached from the kernel input driver when GOK starts and will be used exclusively for the GOK pointer. This feature needs a bit of love to make things work more automatically but in the mean time you can find device configuration infromation in README.libusb. This feature currently only works with GNU/Linux. Also, to use the patch, you’ll need to compile GOK with ‘–enable-libusb-input’. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line.
biking from Toronto to Kitchener
I biked from Toronto to Kitchener on Friday. It was a really nice day to bike and going through the all the back roads at this time of year is always nice - lots of vibrant autumn colours. I ended taking the GO train out to Bramalea station and setting off from there. From Bramalea station, it took me 5 hours and 45 minutes. I charted my route with the google maps pedometer and I ended up biking around 96 kilometres. That makes my average speed a little under 17 km/h … not bad for a rookie 
independista, a wedding and Panamá
I just got back from a crazy trip - I went on a cruise for my sister’s wedding and then hung out with Allison for a week in Panamá. The cruise started and ended in Puerto Rico and because I didn’t buy my plane ticket through the travel agent that sold me the cruise, I had to show up in San Juan a day before the cruise departed to ensure that it wouldn’t leave without me.
San Juan
In San Juan I arranged to stay on someone’s couch through couchsurfing.com. To get to this person’s house, I had to hop on a bus to Río Piedras. Due to my lack of Spanish, I kinda got lost but thankfully I was rescued by a couple of American univerisity students. They were going very close to where I was headed so I tagged along with them. When it came time to part ways, I was informed that I was in one of the most dangerous parts of San Juan - the centre of the Puerto Rican independance movement. Since I couldn’t get a hold of the person I was staying with or find their place, the uni students put me up for the night in their dorm. I was informed later that night that the FBI had just raided some houses of members of the independance movement. I’m glad they helped me out as I probably looked like a dumb American tourist with my big red MEC backpack.
The next day I wondered around Río Piedras and old San Juan taking pictures of things. It was neat to see some of the anti-FBI graphiti.
Anti-FBI grafitti in Old San Juan
At one point I sat down for a coffee and I was shocked to read about the media being pepper sprayed in a local paper.
The Wedding
The wedding itself was in Aruba. The civil ceremony happened in the morning in Oranjestad’s town hall and the actual wedding ceremony was later that afternoon at a local resort.
Vera and Graham at the resort
The minister at the afternoon ceremony was really over the top with his hippy vows - I had to bite my lip to stop laughing. All in all, the wedding was pretty fun and I’m glad I could be there.
The Cruise
I don’t think that cruising is my thing, so I don’t think it’s fair for me trash it too much. All I’m going to say is that I felt like I was in prison near the end - a very nice prison, but still prison. That said, it was nice to get to spend the time with my mom.
My mom in front of the cruise ship
At least Graham and I were able to fire a few golf balls off the back of the boat on the last night.
Panamá
Panama was amazing. It was really nice to hang out with Allison for a week - I hadn’t seen her in about nine months. We ended up hanging out in Panama city for a few days then went to her site in the Darién province. She’s staying at an Embera and Wounan indigenous village near Sante Fe - I totally forget the name right now. Anyway, that’s kinda where disaster struck. It started when Allison lost the key to the other volunteer’s room which left us without a stove so our food options were limited.
The next day I decided it would be a good idea to play basketball with some of the kids at 1pm. When I was finished playing I started feeling crappy. I figured that I was dehydrated becuase I hadn’t been eating much and becuase I was being a stupid gringo by over-exerting myself 30 degree weather. I started by drinking water, but that just made me want to vomit. By the time Allison and I had made it to Sante Fe for food, I felt like total ass. This is where things get a little fuzzy. I know I had dinner and that I felt like I had a fever, but I don’t really remember the details of Sante Fe. When we got back to Allsion’s room, I just crashed out with a fever. I remember waking up at one point to through up the food I had eaten and then I went back to bed.
I brought ciprofloxacin (a powerful antibiotic) from Canada in case I ate or drank something nasty, but I was supposed to use it only if I had a fever and diarrhea. A that point the diarrhea hadn’t come so I didn’t take the cipro. Well, the next day it came … in torrents and I started the cipro. Within 24 hours I was almost 100% better. I’d have to say that was just about the best $24 I have ever spent.
After the breif stint in the Darién we returned to Panamá City for the last couple of days. We ended spending the last night at the intercontinental and it was A-Mazing! Nice view of the ocean, nice comfy bed, nice ocean side pool … and the list goes on.
View from the intercontinental
So I guess that’s it for my adventures. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back and visit Allison again. I’d like to spend more time in the Darién - hopefully I won’t get sick next time.
a beautiful day in toronto
Yesterday was an amazing day in Toronto. It was a sunny 8 degrees. I ended up going for a walk to Kensington Market to pick up some suppiles in the afternoon.
I had Duff’s camera and I took this picture on the corner of Spadina and College. I’m not exactly sure why I took the picture, I just thought it was a nice view with the sun setting to the west.