Author: John

Greek Navy




IMG_0826

Originally uploaded by John Beales.

About a week and a half ago I was walking in the Old Port of Montréal and saw this sailing by the end of the quay. Fortunately I hadn’t forgotten my camera and took some pictures available in this flickr set.

On another note I am creating a new category here – The Camera – with a theme of “Don’t Forget the Camera.” I have had a couple of times recently, like this were I was glad I had my camera. Also, a couple where I wished I did, (The day before yesterday I went out without the camera only to find a full-scale bank holdup and bomb scare right across the street from my appartment).

Reboot!

Well, it’s been a little quiet here for the past week and here’s why – I’ve re-done it!

This is a temporary design for the rest of the summer but I like it a lot. I took the photo at the top myself at Oka beach in June. The headers use sIFR to look as beautiful as they do, and I’ve brought everything more to a blog format. The plan is to release this as a WordPress theme when I’m finished with it, (later in the fall).

For nostalgia’s sake – here’s a screenshot of the old home page:
A screenshot of the old home page.

The old design won’t be released for 2 reasons: It wasn’t made properly and I don’t like it.

So, for now that’s it. I still have some fine tuning to do and I have to add more structure to a couple of areas of the site but they’ll have to wait a few days.

Why I love National Banks

I usually deal with large, nation-wide banks as opposed to smaller local or regional credit unions and such. I like the fact that you can go into a branch anywhere and be treated like you’re a local customer. Here are a couple of my recent experiences doing so:

When I was in school I had student loans to pay for part of it. Now I have recently started paying back these loans. They are loans held by the Royal Bank of Canada and guaranteed by the Government of Canada or Government of British Columbia. I have had to make two payments so far on my B.C. loan at the Royal Bank. This most recent one I had spoken to a student loan representative on the phone and told her exactly where I would be making my payment. So, I went in and there was no lineup to get to a teller, excellent! I got to the teller and gave her my loan account number and said that I would like to make a payment and no, I didn’t have my client card with me. This led to a big problem, apparently here in Montreal they don’t know how do process a payment for a student loan held by the Western Canada Student Loan Service Center. Despite the fact that I had spoken to someone at that service center a few days before the branch staff had to call the center. To make a long story short I walked in with an account number and cash and it took them half an hour to take it. The time before wasn’t so bad – it only took about twenty minutes, but I am scared for this week when I have to go pay both my BC and Canada student loans there.

My second little anecdote deals with the Bank of Montreal, where I have been a customer for something like 12 years. I show ads on my website the Ballet. I use three ad networks: Google Adsense, Burst! Media, and Valueclick, (formerly Fastclick). Because I get paid in US dollars I have a US dollar bank account which has been open for something like 18 months or 2 years. So, I went in to deposit my cheque from BURST! – a whopping $51.44. Because this is a US dollar cheque I had to see a teller during teller hours, (10-3, except Thursday when it’s 10-6. These hours are not the same as the branch hours and are not posted anywhere incidentally). So, I gave the teller my card and the cheque and told her I’d like to deposit the cheque into the US dollar account, and she deposited it, and told me of course that there would be a hold on the cheque. Now, I know that it’s policy at the Bank of Montreal to hold all US dollar cheques, but I have been banking with them for 12 years, and receive cheques from BURST! on a regular basis. Also, this cheque was for $51.44. They trust me enough to let me deposit up to $1000 Canadian, and have instant access, with the rest being available after 24 hours, but for some reason $51.44 US is a stretch. When I asked if there was any way to not have the hold I was told that I’d have to go to my home branch – a 5 hour flight away. So now I have to wait 30 days before I can get my $51.44 US.

So, so much for national banks being able to handle transactions everywhere like local ones. I am going to take this into consideration when I actually settle down, or maybe I’ll just keep my savings in a jar.

Banning Online Interactivity

Last night the US House of Representatives passed Resolution 5319, or the Deleting Online Predators Act, (DOPA for short), by 410 to 15 votes. While intention behind this act is a good one, (protecting children from online predators), the implementation is horrendous.

The act proposes to “protect” children by cutting off federal funding for schools and libraries that do not block access of minors to a list of websites to be published by the FCC. The FCC is to come up with this list taking into consideration the extent to which each website:

`(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
`(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
`(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
`(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
`(v) enables communication among users.’.

In layman’s terms this means: Blogs, Wikis, Amazon, Yahoo!, Newsvine, Digg, the new Netscape.com, and many other valuable sites. Some sites may be spared because they’re not-for-profit, (Wikipedia perhaps), but you never know.

If this resolution is signed into law and withstands legal challenges, (I’m sure there will be some, and honestly I don’t know as it will stand up), it means that not only will children not be able to access useless time-wasting sites from school, but also an incredible number of very useful and valid resources.

For me it means that if I were to add interactivity to the Ballet it could be banned! Most of my users come from school. In fact the site is used as a reference for some courses.

Children do need some form of protection online the same as they do in the “real” world but this act is not the answer. What should be done is children need to be educated. After all, you don’t forbid your child from ever leaving the house, but you do teach him or her to never talk to strangers.

For an excellent resource, from a teacher who is very web-aware, check out Vicki A. Davis’ blog. She goes through the act and tears apart the good, bad, and the ugly of it.

If you want to do something act fast. This Resolution went from being introduced to passed in just over a month. There is an online petition at saveyourspace.org to try to stop this bill in the senate. If you feel, (as I do), that this bill is wrong, go and sign it and maybe something will happen.

For still more check out Techcrunch and CNN.