Apple’s M2 Pro MacBookis a wicked fast production machine. The Spy’s reader will recall he got one to replace his 2019 MacBook Pro, which has never been very rugged, reliable or power smart, and has now been relegated to recording his lectures and uploading them to Streams. The new machine never gets warm even when […]
The April Fool, A.K.A. The Northern Spy took a break from April foolishness this year, except to wake up the sleeping-over grandchildren with a clarion call to go outside and play in the snow. Believe it or not, ye who be denizens of Terra Incognito to our South, but this part of Canada does have […]
This month, has some pretty important dates, and all in a row, starting with the fourteenth, fondly known by mathematicians as pi day. The Spy is unaware of a type of pie that would not be a favourite, unless someone makes it with kidney or liver. Moreover, pi philology has come a long way since […]
Last month, the Spy said of the botched Ecoline window installation: “Yes, if one can believe the scheduling department, the installers shall return(!) on January 4 (that’s 2023 BTW) to fix their errors and damage, install a long list of items missing from the first delivery, and make everything honkey-dory. But given the history of […]
To talk of many things but rather than ‘shoes and ships, and sealing-wax, Of cabbages and Kings, And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings,’ and also with apologies to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the Spy will instead speak of windows, wackiness, and the weather, Of controllers and cameras, Of furnaces and […]
Apologies to our impatient reader for the extreme lateness of this column. The Spy is attempting two full time jobs at once (his own and that of his boss, who has a concussion) plus handle the fiscal year end and budget for his church, and that of the Science faculty, all at once. Moreover, he […]
The Spy’s Reader who’s been lurking around here a while will be familiar with his many discourses on the mutual effects of society and technology upon each other (including the entire currently-being-revised textbook on that theme referenced below among his web sites). In order of technological sophistication, the three (kinds of) civilization to date are/were […]
Not “Supply and Demand?” The supply and demand equilibrium is elementary economics, and easy to explain to anyone who understands graphs. The demand curve has quantity intercept the number of units that could be given away, and price intercept the cost at which no sales will happen. The supply curve has both intercepts at the […]
It’s often been said that half of Physics can be summed up in the sentence “You can’t push on a rope.” The other half is: T M A U H S W T Well, the Spy has said both often enough, at least. It’s a common belief, reinforced by a boatload of Speculative Fiction led […]
Technologically speaking it has been the worst of months, it has been the best of months, or perhaps neither. On the low tech side of things, the Acme engine (never terrific) on his 40+ year old BCS Mainline walk behind tractor that he lately uses only as a tiller, choked out its last while preparing […]
The Spy has it on good authority that on Monday next week after the markets close, Apple will announce the takeover of one-time rival IBM for a cash and stock package valued at $162B, just under a 25% premium over where the latter’s stock was trading this week. Given that Apple’s own market cap at […]
Last Month’s chat ended with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are no doubt laughing at the North Americans who must seem to them bent on destroying the very democracy we once touted as superior to their brutal and genocidal dictatorships. Surely they can now go to war, annex their neighbours (and eventually us) into a […]
A couple of recent purchases are worth a mention here. First up is Apple’s second generation TV+ Siri remote –product A2540 with the aluminum case, now sold with the Apple TV. 4K, but also available for standalone purchase. This is the replacement for earlier iterations of the Siri remote in the black case–a rather poorly […]
On the world stage, 2021 started with the failed violent coup attempt against the government in Washington, proceeded through an assortment of bad to worse COVID-19 news, the Afghanistan fiasco, deepening hostile divisions in the formerly more temperate and tolerant United States, worsening political situations in many parts of the world, the first potential breezes […]
It used to be that the three most important things to business success were location, location, and location. Today they are the content of your inventory, the content of your web site that permits access to ordering said inventory, and how content you make your customers (you don’t want your reputation slagged on social media […]
Some four decades ago when many of us knew some form of net-based document linkage was coming, just not who would instantiate it and what form it would take, the Spy coined the term “metalibrary” to refer to the collection of all a society’s knowledge, in whatever medium, together with the means of accessing them. […]
To the thieves who stole jewelry from my Bradner home on September 16–two questions: 1. How much did your fence give you for 52 priceless years of memories? Enough for a couple of fixes each of your favourite narcotic? 2. Why didn’t you also take the flowers in the living room? You could have made […]
A hot summer gasps to an end in numerous western wildfires that spew smoke across the continent, the degree of Arctic ice melt is unprecedented, high temperatures and drought set records–all visual evidence that the climate is indeed changing, and more rapidly than even the worst pessimists once predicted. Meanwhile billionaires engage in a space […]
And the not entirely so grimas, once again, Canada persists in celebrating the Spy’s birthday a couple of daysearly and the Excited States a day late. ‘Course, both have been at it a tad longerthan he, so he extends best wishes that both will outlast him, despite at least someindicatiors to the contrary. Truth and […]
With apologies to “Our Anne” (with an “e”) the Spy this months takes note of some notable disappointments, failures, and wonders who or what is on the brink. We start with the technological realm itself of course, but this column has always been about much more than machinery. The industry giants have had their share […]