Shame On You!

A majority of my time over the last 12 years, say, has been spent “working” away, poking the various keys on a computer keyboard. Doing everything from fooling around to perfecting a craft. That craft has been, more or less, building websites.

Now, granted, it hasn’t been a primary focus of mine, that is, up until very recently. That’s largely why I haven’t been blogging with a familiar frequency as of late. And last month, especially. However, the need to have the web I use be accessible to the widest possible audiences imaginable, has constantly been an interest of mine, throughout my computing career.

After all my “career,” if you will, started with a giant computer screen and a single head switch, which I used for access, in a lonely hospital room a long 13 years ago. So, at the very least, not being interested in the subject would be mighty irresponsible of me, but not learning and implementing everything I could, toward such an involved practice such as web accessibility, would be even worse…

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The Inevitable First Impressions

Religulous...

Unlike the second coming of Christ, you should have known this was coming (too funny, I know), sooner rather than later. I just returned home from seeing the film Religulous. And just as sure you should have been that this was coming you should have been sure I’d have enjoyed myself.

Now the first thing that tested my patience isn’t so much a gripe with the film, per se. I was more an issue with venue itself. Why is the wheelchair “seating” at these obnoxious multi-plex “stadium seating” theatres right up front? I have a screaming headache from my eyes being bombarded with having to look, nearly, straight up at the screen! And it didn’t help that this movie was shown in one of the smaller, back hallway, theatres in the joint. Which, unfortunately, shortens the proximity of the screen to me.

Dig these fucking theatres into the ground some, so those of us who don’t or refuse to use stairs, come into these theatres at the mid-way point. Rather than right up front. I can’t and won’t speak for other blokes who find sitting so close to the screen, while the rest of the theatre is virtually empty, so objectionable. But my ability to see isn’t impaired! At least it wasn’t before the movie. Shit…

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Je M’Appelle Jean

So I was stewing away in my own broth, not an hour ago, when I got to thinking. Why do movies released on DVD, manufactured here in Canada, dawn the film’s name in both English and French? I’ve never really understood that.

Yes I, of all people, am aware of what it’s like to be excluded. Not matter how unintentional or deliberate it might seem or is. But, better still, I fully appreciate providing both versions of the title is the law of an officially bilingual land. 

But isn’t something as recognizable as a film’s title, on many more levels than how it’s written, its “brand?”

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Conversations

I had, not one, but two completely different, yet strangely compelling email conversations with a couple of long time friends yesterday. Both about politics. One was a general chat regarding generic foreign policy issues and the other about a more specific state of Canadian politics.

The subject of both really was inconsequential. I wasn’t that comfortable adding anything, of relevance, to either. Which kind of bothered me. It seemed I was a little “timid” about not knowing more about either subject.

Which inspired me, at least on the side of Canadian politics, to find out more. Continue reading Conversations