Category Archives: On the Net

| Blogosphere, On the Net

Will creativity never cease?

The easy-to-update nature of blogging software has allowed a lot of interesting websites to spring up. Most are the usual personal blogs, photo blogs, webcomics, but some are beyond explanation.

Among those on my bookmark list are Indexed, which features nothing but Venn diagrams on index cards, there’s the made-in-Montreal Regret the Error, which follows newspaper corrections, there’s Worst Than Failure (formerly The Daily WTF), which has snippets of horrible computer code, and Overheard in New York, a collection of weird and funny quotes anonymously overheard which has spawned countless copycat websites around the world.

Now Hippopocampe points us to WTFCNN?, which highlights the more eyebrow-raising headlines on CNN’s website, usually about oddball stories.

As if enough of my day isn’t filled with reading silly things online.

P.S. Now’s about the time to give a shout out to my new favourite web comic: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

| Blogosphere, Humour, Video

Simple is effective

Andy Riga has some picks for favourite Quebec election videos, but this one (via 321Blogue) takes the cake by simply choosing some good video and creatively slowing it down to make Jean Charest and Mario Dumont appear completely wasted.

Meanwhile, at least one independent candidate (in Outremont) has a website up that puts some of the major party ones to shame. He’s financing his campaign through his videos (the sites are starting to pay contributors whose videos generate lots of traffic), but at about 150 views so far he has quite a ways to go.

UPDATE: For those worried he was left out, Drunk Boisclair is here.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, On the Net

Xolo

Xolo.tv (yeah, I never heard of them either — I guess I’m not cool — Martin Lessard is though) recently came to Montreal and have a video podcast up. It features video of the Biodome (it goes on for a while, so you’ll find yourself skipping ahead a bit) and an interview with Casey and Rudy from Galacticast, who are fast becominng the go-to people for vlogging in Montreal (all because of me, I think). The Galacticast interview might have been better with less noise in their apartment/studio, but at least there’s footage of Casey McKinnon’s infectuous laugh.

| TV, Video

Is bad math something to celebrate?

Those who still care about Jeopardy! are all atwitter about its first ever three-way tie. It sounds amazing, that three people could have exactly the same score.

But it’s not. Two players were tied and both doubled-up. The third, who was leading by a large margin, bet the difference between his score and their theoretical doubled-up scores. Except, as commenters on the YouTube video point out, he forgot to add an extra dollar so he’d come out on top. It wasn’t a fluke. Someone just forgot his basic Jeopardy strategy.

YouTube visitors also note that Trebek was rushing through the answers and seemed a bit scripted through all this.

| Blogosphere, Video

Those lefties know their online video

Vanou points me to this video from Quebec Solidaire’s candidate in Terrebonne Jean Baril, who is frustrated that our public institutions are serving crappy cafeteria food and letting people go to McDonald’s instead of buying locally-produced (and he argues healthier) food. Le Devoir has a short story.

Meanwhile, the Bloc Pot’s Richard Lemagnifique (yes, that’s his real name) has a slightly less serious video about the benefits of hemp.

| Media, Video

Speaking of biased reporting

This again?

For the unfamiliar, “Confrontation at Concordia” was a “documentary” created by “journalist” Martin Himel after the Sept. 9, 2002 riot at Concordia University which stopped a planned speech there by former Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu.

I put words in quotes because the Global TV special was insanely biased in favour of one side of the conflict (namely, the right-wing, pro-Netanyahu, anti-Palestinian side). It was so bad the matter was taken up with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Its decision (which I reported on) said in part:

The Panel recognizes that the documentary film at issue was not detached and objective in a journalistic sense; however, the Panel is not of the view that its broadcast was in breach of any of the foregoing provisions of the either the CAB Code of Ethics or the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics. That being said, the Panel considers that it would have been helpful to the audience to inform viewers that the broadcast was a point-of-view documentary.

The council made the point that since it was a documentary, not a news piece, it didn’t have to be objective. I disagree, but c’est la vie. Now because of this, people think Concordia’s Muslim groups are funded by the Saudi government.

As far as documentary coverage of that era of Concordia history, I recommend the far more balanced documentary Discordia.

| Media, Montreal, Video

YouTube, the neverending pit of content

I stopped by YouTube today and did my usual search for things Montreal-related:

  • Concordia’s TV journalism students have this week’s Concordia Reports focusing on the Quebec election, talking to some angryphones in the West Island including Ste. Anne mayor Bill Tierney and political columnist (i.e. failed politician) Ricky Blue. I’m actually pretty impressed with what has been coming out of Concordia’s budding journalists lately in terms of quality. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re getting better, because real TV journalism requires so little real effort, or because even half-assed videography is light-years beyond most of what YouTube has right now.
  • Two Marianopolis kids started a Rock-Paper-Scissors league.
  • Even street kids are videoblogging.
| Blogosphere, Media, Montreal, On the Net

For those of us who need help with stripper-dating

We have “Dating tips for Montreal strippers“:

5-This is the big one! Listen to anything and everything she says. Make her feel she’s smart. I knew one that graduated med school and continued dancing because of the money, so you should not underestimate how smart some of these girls are.

This is just the kind of quality editorial material I expect from a website like swampfoxz.com. The sheer brilliance of the hard-hitting journalism clearly overshadows the minor grammatical problem with the title, namely that these are tips for dating strippers, not dating tips for strippers (who, presumably, have no problems dating because they’re so hot and all).

But remember kids, these are Montreal strippers. None of these tips will be helpful for dating strippers from Toronto or Vancouver.