I'd try Craigslist and the Toronto Livejournal group, too. I highly highly doubt you're going to be able to get security cam footage from the streetcar (and also: creepy) and I'm also somewhat inclined to believe BeaverTerror about it being a lost cause if the TTC doesn't have it. I don't think very many people think, "oh, someone forgot their bag! I'll not turn it in to the one place he or she would know to look for it, and instead hope magic faeries inspire this person to contact me... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 9:12 AM on September 28, 2008

If I have ever sniffed at someone while passing them, it's probably because I had a runny nose and didn't want you to think I couldn't control my own mucous. My apologies for the crossed wires, strangers who may have taken offense!
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 4:16 PM on September 20, 2008

You know there is a sequel to No One Lives Forever? I liked it far more than the original, and it should run on pretty much any computer nowadays.

One recent lightweight game I highly enjoyed was Armadillo Run. Only played the demo, and it's $20 so it's at the far end of your price range, so I can't vouch for its longevity. Good if you like Incredible Machine-type escapades, though.

You could also try the Penny Arcade game and Telltale's various... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 10:16 AM on September 13, 2008

The big thing about the new Zunes, aside from the capacity increase, is that you can now buy songs via wifi and the Zune marketplace. I'm not interested in that personally for the same reason I'm not interested in buying stuff from the iTunes Store, but there you go.

The downside to a Zune is that the ecosystem lock-in with the Zune software is even more aggressive than the iPod+iTunes lock-in, though that may only be because there's a much larger community working on... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 6:59 PM on September 8, 2008

I have not played a single game of Sins of a Solar Empire online, and I love it. The single-player experience could only be better if it had a campaign, but then with RTSes I always got more play time out of fighting skirmishes with seven AIs than I ever did out of the campaigns.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 6:44 PM on September 8, 2008

the condensed version of his (then half-) year in dancing. Also, thanks to that guy, I found this, my introduction to the Remains. Fun times!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 7:20 AM on September 6, 2008

Blue Impressions is what I think of when I think moody late-night jazz. Since it's a Japanese import and probably difficult to track down, I'll list some of the artists on the compilation instead: Donald Byrd, Bobby Hutcherson, Ronnie Laws and Bobbi Humphrey. Some of these are more likely to violate the "no cheese" rule than others, as they're all fusion-y jazz artists from the 70s and I tend to think of that stuff as bordering on cheese. I have since heard Byrd's Ethopian... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 7:59 PM on August 30, 2008

Word of mouth is fine, but I think you've missed the point of JHarris's comment. If everyone had decided they were going to "pay" for Dr. Horrible by passing it on to a bunch of their friends, Joss Whedon would have exactly zero dozens of dollars from that project. There needs to be a balance between supporting creators and allowing the free flow of information.

All JHarris said was it would be nice if people didn't trade the episodes you could get on DVD,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:07 PM on August 13, 2008

The Lenovo X61s or X200? If you don't mind the lack of a trackpad, that is. The X200 has better specs, a bigger keyboard (though I guess this doesn't matter so much), and very good reviews; the x61 is the older model (and rumour suggests the x200/x200s will replace the x61 line eventually). Either one meets your basic specs, but I'm guessing the x200 will be more viable a few years down the road. The x61 is slightly smaller, though, and of course a few hundred cheaper.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 2:54 PM on August 10, 2008

Oh, except the x61 doesn't come with an optical drive and the x200 seems to only have one if you get the docking station (though the Lenovo site is somewhat unclear on this). If you only need the DVD-ROM drive for installing Naturally Speaking, you can always pick up an external USB optical drive or somesuch, but otherwise you may want to consider something like this Asus 12" laptop. Asus isn't quite as good a brand as the Lenovo Thinkpads, but they're pretty solid machines, and $1000 is a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 3:07 PM on August 10, 2008 marked best answer

Oh, and if all else fails, Notebookreview.com's "what laptop should I buy" forum should get you set up.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 3:11 PM on August 10, 2008

I think the real question is why you thought it should have a specific release date. The norm is for consumer electronics to have a vague window of release like "late August." It's probably not worth the cost and effort to arrange a proper simultaneous release across a territory—it's not like a whole lot of people are going to line up for a midnight release or anything like that.

unless you're Apple, in which case any product you release has... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 1:46 PM on August 9, 2008

I'm glad to see this ruling as I am a Canadian citizen

If you read the "throttling practices" link leading to the CRTC filing, you'll see that no ruling has been made yet. In fact, the CRTC denied a motion to force Bell to immediately lift the bandwidth throttling, as an interim action before final ruling. There's still plenty of time for the CRTC to screw this one up, so don't start partying just yet.

Also, yes,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 2:26 PM on August 8, 2008

Best karaoke surprise I've ever seen was two guys who nonchalantly walked on stage when it was their turn, then announced they were doing a duet, then pulled the girl they had planned to serenade on stage. It turned out they had been practicing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers all week in preparation. I think what really got her was that the guys had obviously put way more thought and effort into the surprise than anyone else singing karaoke that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 10:48 AM on August 8, 2008

No entry on pessimistic speculative fiction is complete without a link to EmptyWorld, I think.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:13 AM on August 7, 2008

Another problem, besides the bad acting and the overdone video effects, is that for a post-apocalyptic story, it's not very post-apocalyptic. 24's last season had the same problem—omg, a nuclear bomb went off in L.A.! But two episodes later some guy drives through downtown L.A. in a Maserati all calm and composed, and there isn't even TRAFFIC. No sign of panic, no hordes of people fleeing the city, not even a little kid whose ice cream fell on the ground.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:56 AM on August 4, 2008

The article namechecks Vancouver on the first page, but the phenomenon has also been prevalent enough in Toronto that I've read (somewhat alarmist, to be fair) articles about the possibility of downtown turning into a bedroom community for rich folks. Certainly the trend of immigrant communities now settling largely outside the city has been around for years, if not decades, though I guess that's not exactly demographic inversion—there are still plenty of low-income areas around that have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:55 PM on August 2, 2008

Related to the last.fm graph: make your own.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:45 PM on July 31, 2008

WHAT. This is awesome. Add this to the list of community sharing deals I would like to one day take advantage of (also see: tool libraries, community screenprinting studios).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:25 PM on July 30, 2008

abdulf's solution looks to be a recipe for taking one blog and splitting it into two columns; it's a purely visual treatment, and doesn't actually involve two separate blogs or a blog with two authors.

If you were to use something like Wordpress for your dueling blogs, what you would do is create a theme that had two "loops" (this is Wordpress parlance for the code block that decides what posts to display on a page), each set to spit out content from a single... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 9:57 PM on July 29, 2008 marked best answer

Looking at the theme some more, it's a bit clunky in that you need to specify the proper author by filing your posts in a category devoted to that author—a bit silly when Wordpress already has the concept of authors built into the system. Keep that in mind when testing the theme out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 10:01 PM on July 29, 2008

I'm confused—the article says he is NOT the first transgendered male to give birth. I assume that's why the original post says "first legally transgendered man," but what does that mean? Did the ones before him not legally register their gender change? And actually, what's the paperwork for that sort of thing, I wonder?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:19 PM on July 25, 2008

Ah yes, yet another in a long line of attempts by city governments to raise funds and profile by selling the rights to cover large statues of animals in company livery, only to be semi-abandoned months afterwards when drunken louts start vandalizing them in earnest. The idea of basing these statues on a fake animal is neat, though. Even better if they were covered in some sort of rubber that felt exactly like a banana peel.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:59 AM on July 25, 2008

Yes, we're planning to continue the traditional format in a new venue, and taking the thumbs along with us. I'm involved in that, and it will be a great consolation.

So "taking the thumbs with them" actually means something different from what I thought it meant when I first read the post (which was that they'd be gone for good too).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:20 AM on July 24, 2008

Ebert almost certainly is never returning to the air; his recovery from cancer has been valiant but has left him in a condition in which I'm fairly sure he can't co-host a television show. And Siskel, of course, has passed. So I can't really see that it's Siskel & Ebert anymore...

Oh, yeah, I assumed Ebert was never going to have a TV show again; my reference to the thumbs was specifically to the thumbs system Siskel and Ebert came up with, which... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:04 PM on July 24, 2008

Number 16 Bus Shelter

If you're going to name the kid after the place they were conceived, try something slightly less specific?

Or you could take the opposite, add more detail in the middle name so we know what bench not to sit on.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:27 AM on July 24, 2008

Am I the only one who thought the plastic slides were MORE dangerous? I mean, sure, metal gets hot, but any idiot knows that's easy to check for and avoid. Plastic, on the other hand, would SHOCK you. That is, when it wasn't busy skinning your knees or gouging your skin off from rough edges or something. I don't know if the plastics have gotten a lot better now or something, but those things seemed designed to double as kiddie torture chambers.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:09 PM on July 21, 2008

I don't know if this fits your template, but the most mindboggling one I've heard is in "The End is the Beginning is the End" by the Smashing Pumpkins, now stuck in my head thanks to that blasted Watchmen trailer:

"and now I'm with you now"

Same-word rhyme in the same line. I guess this isn't entirely unexpected, considering the song also contains the tragically unfortunate phrase "the guns of love disastrous."
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 1:15 AM on July 21, 2008

Dreamhost won't let you have files outside the document root

Unless something has changed really recently, that's not true. The document root for each domain on your account is the directory with the domain as its name (ex. ~/sub.yourdomain.com/). You can put anything you like in your home directory, which is not the document root for websites served off your domain(s). I have Trac and Django installs running in separate directories off my home directory that work just fine.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 11:09 AM on July 19, 2008

Since the answer's basically been covered, some trivia: during U2's Pop Mart tour, they would play M's "Pop Musik" right before the band came on stage. So it does seem like the bigger bands (or at least U2) determine what plays before their set.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 9:41 AM on July 18, 2008

I had to turn off type-ahead find in Firefox 3 before it would work at all, and then it was really jerky. Hopefully this works a lot better for everyone else!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:38 PM on July 15, 2008

Having played Travian before, I can attest that the 13-year-olds in giant alliances will pwn you regardless of whether or not they have access to daddy's credit card.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:28 PM on July 14, 2008

Lush, 500. I remember a Pitchfork or sumother review moaning about how odd the lyric "they call you little mouse by name in Rome and Turin" was, and wondering if they ever figured out "500" was all about a tiny Fiat whose name actually did translate to "little mouse" (Topolino).

I guess that doesn't change the fact that it's an awkward lyric. Still, lovely song.

Also, not only do we a) have... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 4:28 PM on July 12, 2008

One maybe-important note: you can mod a PS2 (either with a modchip or using a softmod, though I don't know how well the latter works for slim PS2s). You can't mod a PS3 yet. So playing PS2 games from other regions is out of the question for the PS3. This may or may not affect your decision.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 9:37 PM on July 11, 2008

I can't decide if the big sack of money in the closet from the 30s makes it more or less likely that this was a really badly maintained criminal front. Reminds me of the smart house that continues to tend to its owners long after they have died—like the woman was tending to a tiny part of a criminal empire that had long since vanished.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:32 PM on July 11, 2008

From a financial perspective, the Wii was about $350 (Canadian).

I think you got ripped off, friend. The Wii is supposed to retail for about $270, and that's how much I paid when I bought mine last February. (Of course, I did line up in the freezing cold for it. Possibly the worst game-related mistake of my life, now that I own a PS3.)

The 360 Pro/Premium/whatever it's called nowadays will drop in price to $299, so now's a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 9:43 PM on July 10, 2008

I can't decide if this is a strangely illuminating article about 4chan (they tracked down some of the people running the site!), one giant whitewash (shock posts "occasionally" mar 4chan?) or a bizarre bid to somehow take 4chan public (boy there's a lot of talk about how profitable 4chan could be!).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:19 PM on July 10, 2008

Anyone who can't appreciate something like this needs to be hit in the balls and shipped up to Canada, because they're certainly not Americans.

Funny, I was just thinking that if someone in Canada tried to shut down a bunch of kids playing road hockey, that person would've just signed their own death warrant. Send the party poopers elsewhere!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:59 AM on July 10, 2008

Toronto streetcars have a similar box. Apparently it's specifically used to help with braking.
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 4:17 PM on July 9, 2008

should've posted this with the last comment!
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 4:18 PM on July 9, 2008

The likely reason why your purchase failed is because though you were buying from the European Playstation store, your copy of Singstar was purchased in the States. In order to use European downloadable content, you'll have to purchase the European version of Singstar. The PS3 has no region lockouts for games, so at least you won't have to modify or hack your console.

Make sure, though, that the Belgium scheme will actually work; I don't know for sure but based on the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 10:33 PM on July 6, 2008

About the jezebel.com thing: until 2006, jezebel.com was one of Heather Champ's sites. Around that time, Gawker came knocking, and because jezebel had sort of fallen by the wayside, Champ felt it was time to let the domain go. Now you know!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:00 PM on July 6, 2008

(also, this thread is up for three hours and I get beaten to the punch by two minutes! double-doh!)
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:01 PM on July 6, 2008

You didn't specifically mention Beijing, so I'll toss out an old favourite I originally found on the blue: the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics through the eyes of a volunteer at the speed skating oval. I wish I could tell you it inspired me so much that I scored a volunteer gig at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, but instead you'll have to settle for "so good it made me wish I was a volunteer at the 2010 Olympics.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 11:03 AM on July 4, 2008 marked best answer

For your hopelessly vague details, a perhaps hopelessly vague suggestion: if you don't already, get clothes that fit better. You don't even necessarily have to change up the style. To illustrate, take the fairly standard t-shirt/jeans/sneakers look. Three basic items that can either make you look like a handyman, a geek, or ready for a casual night out. One thing that the hacker look seems to rely on is baggy clothes; wear slimmer shirts and jeans, while keeping in mind your body style (i.e.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by chrominance at 7:09 PM on July 2, 2008

Strikes me as a British version of the kerfuffle in Quebec about Muslim women having to unveil their faces in public in order to vote in elections. Every single story I read had Muslim women who wore full head coverings saying they thought having to unveil their face for identification purposes was perfectly fine and reasonable, and even Canadian Muslim groups saying there was nothing wrong with such a rule as far as they were concerned.

And then there were a bunch of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:14 PM on July 1, 2008

Speaking of those VW bugs, in octothorpe's link, did I miss the part where we all decided "red" was the new word for the colour green?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:17 PM on June 30, 2008

hmm, liaison: "communication for establishing and maintaining mutual understanding and cooperation (as between parts of an armed force)." This is a significant change in our terrorism policy—apparently we're supposed to cooperate with the terrorists now!

either that or we're supposed to use the terrorists to thicken stews.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:21 PM on June 29, 2008

Why are there no "cover" standup comics? Who can reinterpret previous material?

You mean Carlos Mencia?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:17 PM on June 29, 2008

Someone has already bought out an entire movie theatre's worth of tickets in the hope that Joss Whedon will one day make a movie adaptation of Dr. Horrible that will tank at the box office but raise unrealistic hopes for a sequel.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:04 PM on June 29, 2008