“British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.
““There’s a little too much hating,” [Kirk] Baxter explained. “The guys from Apple came out and showed Angus Wall and myself [the program], and a lot of it I thought was absolutely amazing. It really, really was smart. It just seems they’ve basically put the software together for laptop users, which I understand — I’m sure every student in America is going to have one, just not the industrialzied world. It seems to be very clever and user friendly; it’s just not set up to be used professionally.”
Baxter was also clear about the problems with the editing platform: “It needs a few key things. In order for us to do a [David] Fincher film on it, you’ve got to be able to switch between multiple cameras, so with that right there, we can’t use it. Secondly, it only has one viewer monitor, and we use source material, select material, and then our edit material, so we use three monitors. You can kind of force yourself to change, but why?Read the rest of this entry »
For the record, yes, I am in the article, I watch Will & Kate (not sure about “royal watcher”), I am young at heart but not sure about the “celebrity-obsessed” bit. LOL. :)
On a personal level, I am biased (in a good way) as I think he picks great films to screen. Seriously, I will always treasure he and his programming team’s decision in picking my documentary “Long Hair Revolution” to be screened in the 2005 Calgary International Film Festival. The 2005 CIFF screening lead to the film’s later discovery and being added to the federal government permanent “Library and Archives Canada” collection in Ottawa in 2009.
Thanks Pete, all the best! Have a great time in Edmonton!
“For five years he has been the city’s most recognizable advocate for left-of-the-dial cinema and a booster of local filmmakers and festivals.
But Pete Harris, the manager and programmer of the Plaza, is leaving Calgary’s oldest theatre to take on a new job in Edmonton.
The 51-year-old has accepted a position with Metro Cinema, Edmonton’s non-profit repertory film society. Metro will be moving into that city’s historic Garneau Theatre and be open for business in early August. “They headhunted me and it was truly one of those jobs you can’t turn down — a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Harris. “They came knocking and it was an interesting proposal.”
For the past five years, the burly and bearded Harris has been the face and spokesman of the Plaza with a decidedly hands-on approach to running the theatre. He could often be seen scurrying up and down the aisles in between screenings or introducing guests and filmmakers. Read the rest of this entry »
As I get older, I realize and understand what is important is not just the honour itself but the great work these Canadians have done in service to their communities/groups/fields, to Canada, or to humanity at large. Congrats everyone!
What a great Canada Day gift for them. Happy Canada Day!
While I am very disappointed of Apple’s handling of Final Cut Pro X (the way it was launched, the implicit FU signal its sending to the pro editors (note to Apple: Some editors do make a living editing using FCP, you know?)), Izzy’s helpful & insightful Final Cut Pro X free tutorial (“2 hours and 39 minutes”) is highly recommended!
I watched part of the tutorial last night and today and I think I’ve got a better idea of the software already. Thanks Izzy.
His new company began with similarly modest aims: give anyone the ability to accept credit card payments through a tiny reader that plugs into their iPads and smartphones. Called Square, it has signed up hundreds of thousands of merchants and processed $66 million in transactions in the first quarter of 2011 alone. The startup is also building a vast database of financial information that its customers can tap into. [Kempton's note: The transaction processed is one thing ($66 million for a new gadget). What is as interesting is the financial information Square tracks.] It tracks each sale conducted through its credit card readers, allowing the company to calculate everything from the busiest sales day of the week (Saturday) to the average price of a cappuccino ($3.09 as of April 18).
The power of that kind of data analysis helps explain why Square was able to close a second round of funding in January: $27.5 million fromSequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and others, which valued the young company at $240 million. Then Visa invested an undisclosed sum in April. [Kempton: I like the Visa investment. Interesting to know: "how much" & "under what terms"?] .Wired sat down with Dorsey at Square’s offices in downtown San Francisco.
Wired: You got the idea for Square after an artist friend lost a $2,000 sale because he couldn’t process credit cards.
Jack Dorsey: Right now there are about 8 million merchants in the US that accept credit cards. That doesn’t include people who do transactions over craigslist or dog walkers or people fund-raising for the PTA. There is such untapped demand. Like, we had a couch in the office that was really ugly, and we sold it for $5,000, and we accepted a credit card. There are moments in life when that’s necessary. And that’s what we’re focused on.
I don’t praise people easily but I just want to say if you have’t seen Jian Ghomeshi, QTV host, interview people, you are missing a lot. Jian is amongst the best interviewers I know (Charlie Rose, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, 嚴浩 (he is a film director but his TV interviews on RTHK 品味人生 were a great joy to watch)).
“For the past several months, Quantum has not truly been a “solar car” – without photovoltaic cells on top, it’s just an electric vehicle. Picking out the right cells and getting them manufactured has been a delicate process that’s been going on within the Electrical Division and team leadership for the past several months – because the solar array is arguably the most important part of the car, we want to make sure that we get it right. The cells arrived a few weeks ago, and were immediately whisked away to a very clean room with a very short guest list for some final trimming and sorting. That process is now complete, and the team turned out en masse this past Saturday to help with testing, and to prepare the race upper surface for final cell application.“
If shows again even Apple (a Lovemark to many people, not to me anymore since July 2010) isn’t immune to complains from seriously unhappy customers if it doesn’t deliver the goods as expected.
“To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question law firms across the country are asking themselves as they grapple with how to incorporate the social media craze, which has already been generally accepted within the larger business community, into their own daily operations.
Add to that the question of whether or not to launch a Facebook page and lawyer blogs and suddenly firm executives have cause to add social media staff to their often already voluminous staff rosters.
“Social media is really an emerging area for law firms – some have already embraced it, through blogs and Twitter, and others are trying to determine how much they want to embrace it,” says Bill Hopkins, chief administrative officer for Calgary’s Macleod Dixon, one of the oldest and largest law firms in the city. Read the rest of this entry »
“In a phone call to CNN affiliate iCable News in Hong Kong on Sunday, Hu [Jia] said his parents had asked him to not clash with the system.
“Once I saw my family, I understood how much I owe them, especially my parents, my wife and my kid. I realize I’ve done nothing for them. There is a Chinese saying that ‘patriotism and filial piety don’t go hand in hand,’” he said in the phone call.
“They told me to be a good citizen and don’t clash with the system. This system is very brutal. It uses government’s power to violate people’s dignity. I can only tell my parents, I will be careful.”
[...] “Hu Jia told me that he won’t change, and police told him they may put him under house arrest in that case,” she said. “I’m prepared for it.”
“As long as there’s no democracy or the rule of law in China, our situation won’t change at all.”
Last year’s Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, also a rights activist, was convicted of the same crime as Hu. Liu is still serving an 11-year jail term.”
This is some funny stuff from Ricky Gervais. Cool to see Conan and Ricky pushing the boundary of comedy, funny stuff. [HT HuffPost]
P.S. If you don’t “get” the following is comedy, then this type of comedy is not really for you. With no disrespect, some people don’t like abstract art, so no one forces them to go see Voice of Fire.
“Professor Borodin has a long and distinguished research career in theoretical computer science. His central area of interest, computational complexity and algorithm design, addresses the basic issue of determining the minimum resources required to solve computational problems. A common theme in Borodin’s research is that he explores fundamental questions that seemingly should be well understood but often defy answers to even the most basic aspects of these questions. Hence, he has often been at the forefront of developing new models and problem formulations that have become standard frameworks for computer science studies.”
I haven’t been back at DCS for many years now, but I think it will be a bit strange, for future students, to study at DCS without being taught or exposed to NP-complete problem by the man who first described the problem in 1971 or simply attending seminars or colloquium with Prof. Cook in the audience, which I had the pleasure doing when I was doing my B.Sc. at DCS.
In Memoriam – Professor Kenneth C. Sevcik
While I was student of Professor Sevcik for a brief time (part of CSC158 and for CSC354(?)), I remember Prof. Sevcik as a very warm and helpful teacher. So it saddens me to read that Prof. Sevcik passed away on October 4, 2005. But reading the “Ken Sevcik Memorial Blog“, especially Prof. Sevcik’s wife Carmen’s October 1, 2010 entry touched me very much as it reminds me that when we pass on, we will live in the hearts and minds of others who stay behind. When we have lived a good life, we stay on thorough the memories of others.
It was my pleasure to meet and interview the world famous funny comedian Ricky Gervais and his girl friend Jane last year at Banff. Of course, to us Canadians, he is Ricky Dene Gervais!
Posted by kempton 
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