iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

It’s the end of the second period of the Toronto v. Montreal game and Toronto is winning 3-2. Isn’t it great that we can play horribly and still win? Don’t get me wrong, it’d be better if we had a better team, but I just like how The Maple Leafs can look like total goons for 30 minutes and be totally outclassed by the other team and still win.

It’s one of the main reasons the rest of Canada hates Toronto.

It has a lot to do with Toronto’s star goalies over the last two decades – but it also has a lot to do with Toronto always getting what they didn’t earn.

A little luck will go a long way, maybe not all the way to the cup, but Ottawa knows how much further it will get you than talent.

You may have heard about the article on beer I got submitted to Slashdot – that was a good story about health research at Western, and I’m glad I was able to share it. Today I submitted a story to digg.com, with a less noble motive.

digg.com is one of those new Web 2.0 sites (if you don’t know < < that's a big buzz word right now). For at least the last six months I've found digg to be a better geek news source than slashdot because it's the users who submit stories and the users who dig(g) the stories to promote them to the main page. This is a very quick and effcient system, but it's not perfect.
Today I submitted the story Hawaiians considering independence (digg.com/science/Hawaiians_considering_independence.).

Today while talking online with my brother who’s in NYC right now and he mentioned that his current residence is beside the Chinese consulate. I made a joke that he might soon lose his sovereignty and find himself living in exile in a small corner of the Indian consulate. I wasn’t sure how to spell sovereignty
at the moment so I gave it a quick Google. Hit three was a web page about Hawaiian sovereignty. I shared this with my brother and mentioned that it was the kind of link that gets 200 diggs on digg.com. His response: prove it.

Almost six hours later and the story has 11 diggs. So I was wrong, but the good news is the concept of user-edited content (like a Wiki) is proven viable again.

Incidentally, digg is a one of those Web 2.0 sites that use that other new buzz word: AJAX. I plan to announce my AJAX based project in the next week or so

My brother and I are planning to make another trip to the Bancroft Rally of the Tall Pines. This is one of the best stops on the Canadian rally series and is always a good time. This year’s rally is November 25^th and 26^th with all the action on Saturday the 26^th.

We’re not sure where we’re going to stay up north, or who’ll be in the car, but that’s what this post is all about. If you want to go or even have a place up north to crash (as in to sleep – neither the Saturn nor the Acura are actually entering the rally) please let me know.

If you’d like to know more about the event you can check Adam and my pictures from two of the recent events on Flickr:

• 2002 Rally of the Tall Pines
• 2003 Rally of the Tall Pines