The story continues ..... but over here.

I'm currently reading Inspector Rebus novel 'Resurrection Men'.  I notice he uses the term high heid yins

This is a great phrase but very Scottish.  I was trying to think of an equivalent phrase that would be used in Canada but I couldn't.  My parents never used this phrase whilst I was growing up, they never said "Those high heid yins in Ottawa..."

High heid yins is defined as 'upper management' by The Scottish Vernacular dictionary.

Here is high heid yins used in context

"The experts are not the 'high heid yins' - the experts are the 'Teachers on the ground and in the classrooms'. They are the ones whose opinions should be sought in the debate about standards of education."

In 2006, I tried out more new applications and web 2.x services than I had in a while.  Recently I've had to get a new computer set up and I've noticed what are my can't live without applications:

FireFox - I cannot live without this Browser.  To go back to *non*-tabbed browsing is like going back to dial-up.  Also, I realize now that IE starts a new browser instance almost everytime you click on a link.  Firefox re-loads the active browser tab.  That has its advantages and disadvantages but over all its better than having 11 IE windows open.

Thunderbird Feedreader - I haven't found a better tool to read RSS feeds than Thunderbird.  I like that I can have a huge list of feeds in the left pane and scroll through them.  I also like that I can select a headline and read the article within Thunderbird.  I'm trying to get into Google Feed reader but I haven't really got into it yet.  Add feeds to my Google Homepage forces me to visit the web page if I want to read the full feed.

What's RSS you ask?  Really Simple Syndication.  Its the only way to monitor newspapers, industry journals, blogs etc.  I don't know what I did before RSS.

Apps I've stopped using

Riya.com - I tried it and it was interesting but here is another web 2.0 applications that the creators seemed to loose interest in.  It took me a while to get a hold of anyone in Support to delete my account.  In my mind Riya is a cautionary tale for Web 2.0.  There was much hype around this application from TechCrunch and others.  It really hasn't gone anywhere except into a new tool called Like.com that also doesn't seem to be overly developed.

Flickr - I wanted to try this to upload my Prague photos but its not that easy to upload a huge number of pictures for a trip.  This was a surprise for me.  Flickr is definitely meant for the take 2 or 3 pictures a day people.  I'm not like this (yet).

At Tucows, a few of us were discussing that this is the 'Year of the E-card'.  This year I got more e-cards than ever before for my birthday and they were great!  I actually really enjoyed watching them.  My sister said the same thing to me, that she really enjoyed picking out christmas e-cards for her friends. 

This Christmas Eve, the T. and I are spending a few hours on YouTube and so I bring you our christma - Tube holiday greeting.  Enjoy.

I just finished an excellent book by Wayson Choy called 'All that Matters'.  This is Choy's second novel, the first was 'The Jade Peony'.  The Jade Peony is the story of a Chinese family that has moved to Vancouver in the 1920's.  Each section of the book tells the story as children are born and the family grows.  All That Matters is about the same family but this time from the perspective of the oldest son.

What an excellent idea!  I loved this book because it is beautifully written but also because a great story is told from another angle.  As a reader I appreciated Choy's decision to write this novel.  It is as though we are standing in the family's house again, this time in a different spot in the room.

Choy is another example of the great new group of writers from Canada who are writing about the immigrant's experience.  I look forward to more and more of this literature.  I get a little tired of the 'Margaret Atwood is our best writer' school of thought.  I like Atwood but her experience growing up in 1950's Leaside to third generation Canadian parents and summers in the Canadian woods is not shared by all Canadians (including me).  I am more excited to read novel's like Choy's and also writers who chose Canada to be their home like Michale Ondaatje, M.G. Vassaniji and Rohinton Mistry.