RimCount.com collected tweets with the hastag #rolluptherim and extracted ratios and recorded them.

The site really took off when it started tweeting back with the Twitter account twitter.com/rimcountdotcom . The site automated the awarding and notification of “badges” for different items like drinking more than one “rim” a day, or tweeting about it more than once a day. Of course the best and worst record holders were notified. I was also contacted by the author of the Facebook App “My Rollups” apps.facebook.com/myrollups to compare notes – looks like Facebook users are a little luckier.

Here they are, as unscientifically tracked on Twitter, in 2011 there were:

• 21552 rims
• 4181 wins
• 17439 losses
• 13007 tweets
• 5853 Total tweet’ers

Here’s a Wordle of the top 150 words tweeted with the hastag #rolluptherim (without that tag)

Here’s looking forward to next year!

The Toronto Maple Leafs have won all three of their games so far this year. As of right now they are tied for first place over all with Washington.

I’ve started building my bandwagon so that it’s ready for the Stanley Cup parade.

Haven’t found any wheels yet, should I be worried that as soon as I find them they’ll fall off?

What a great story, and what great television. I started watching the first three miners rescued last night and watched a more of the rescues on-line at work.

The images were compelling; the large pulley wheel turning counter-clockwise as the rescue pod went down, clockwise as it hauled someone up. A variety of faces and emotions up top in HD contrasted against the minors below in grainy digital video.

Every 20 minutes the pod showed up at each end of the hole bored to rescue the miners. At the bottom an excited minor either welcomed a rescuer or jumped aboard the rescue pod. Then 20 minutes later there was an emotional reunion with loved ones at the surface – each with its own back story.

The miners have made a pact to share the profits of their story and not to only tell the story starting after the first 17 days – only building the integer. Here’s hoping they make the most of their ordeal and their able to tell their story and benefit from it. Here’s hoping that other miners benefit from a closer look at their safety after this.

For now it felt good to have a disaster end in great news that the whole world could be a part of.

My response was to make fun of this man who is national treasure:

1. Ron MacLean jumps into the Delaware river to save a man while Don Cherry stands on shore and signals rescue aircraft with his jacket.
2. Ron MacLean was able to rescue that guy because he is used to working with dead weight.
3. Ron MacLean was able to be cool under pressure because he’s used to working with the man beside him complaining that he’s running out of time.
4. Run MacLean asked the man he pulled out of the river in Philadelphia if he received a “brotherly shove”. The man asked to be thrown back.
5. Run MacLean saved this mans life, but he was trying to take his life. Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, has ruled “too bad” he still has to die.

Matt McKeon has created an excellent “Evolution of Privacy on Facebook” infographic. It’s a great demonstration of how what was a great private place to share information surreptitiously became a tool for selling your information to marketers and disclosing your private information to the entire Internet.

The Evolution of Facebook Privacy on MattMckeon.com

It is worth noting that Matt McKeon’s infographic assumes a user has left their privacy settings at the default.  If you go through the 50 settings with more than 170 options you can eventually configure your Facebook privacy to be more like 2006.  The New York Times has their own infographic to explain these settings:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html

If you haven’t been there yet I highly recommend MP Dan McTeague’s “Tomorrow’s Gas Prices Today” web site. It delivers what it promises based on a formula that factors in today’s closing price for bulk gas on the New York exchange and projects tomorrow’s price.

–Updated Friday; March 12, 2010
The site even provides an RSS feed of the prices (featured above)!

If you have a phone with a mobile browser I recommend bookmarking either the web site or one of the RSS feeds. You could even use that RSS feed and a service like RSSFWD to forward that information to your E-Mail (or Blackberry, etc.)

If Brock University’s back on the Internet it’s probably fixed, but if not then there’s probably still now power at Brock University.

It’s official, as of 12:48:

Due to a power outage affecting portions of the Niagara Region,
Brock University is closed and classes are cancelled for Wednesday,
January 21.

All other campus programs, events and activities are also cancelled.
It is expected that the university will reopen on Thursday, January 22
at 7am.

Listen to local radio stations or watch www.BrockU.CA for updates.

For those who would like to meet Sid Ryan, I know he will be at Brock University on Friday to talk about CUPE’s “Unbottle It! – Kick the bottle. Tap into public drinking water.” campaign and speaking with the local membership. I would encourage anyone who wants to speak with Sid Ryan and Maude Barlow about the commercialization and commoditification of a natural resource they are welcome to do so Friday evening. If you want to take issue with Mr. Ryan’s comments about Israel I suggest you contact CUPE 4207 about when that can be done (and not confuse the two events).

I have no issue with the commendation of Isreal’s disproportional reaction to Hamas rockets, and I have no problems with CUPE’s previous or future condemnations of Israel’s treatment of Palestine, but threats to make anyone denounce anything as a condition of employment is not something I want to be associated with. Gratefully, CUPE Ontario has clarified/stepped back from this position but it’s my hope this doesn’t even make it to the May 27-30^th CUPE Ontario convention — but if it does I know I’ll be interested in making sure it is not adopted.

With the Canadian GP now off the FIA calender for 2009 and Abu Dhabi, a race that is owned by Bernie Ecclestone, now joining the schedule have this comment to share:

Go to hell Bernie Ecclestone.

It took almost a full year to mount your challenge for the the number one spot, but you finally achieved it this week. Many asked if you were too young for this role, many asked if the world was not ready to give the number one spot to a black man, but you proved them wrong.

Your determination and willingness to fight right to the very end demonstrated your innate skill; skill that was evident from when you first appeared on the scene a few years ago. The only thing that is regrettable is that your victory means that your chief opponent, who was very deserving himself, is denied the victory that he too had worked so hard for.

This is why I send my most sincere congratulations to you, Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 Formula 1 Champion!

Thanks for the imagepaulwoolrich

Everyone at Brock University would love it if you could make a donation at: my.e2rm.com/TeamPage.aspx?EventID=15008&LangPref=en-CA&TeamID=84330

Its simple way to make a big impact and save lives.

Additionally, I will NOT be buying the Rogers iPhone on July 11th after previously calling it the best devices ever made. The only way to affect change in the Canadian cell phone market is to resist it. Sorry Rogers, you ruined the iPhone.

I’m often just as apt to do it, but it fascinates me how different people interpret the same vents differently. Remember your semiotics, all meaning is negotiated!

Your article doesn’t make clear how refusal to pay for something and then not using it (in this case the Hockey Song) is anti-copyright? I thought it had something to do with payment/permission for use and no use without it – the CBC’s not even trying to argue a fair use/fair dealing situation.

Unless the only thing copyright stands for is paying people, and if that’s the case then I submit that its in fact you who’ve fallen into the “kid downloading an MP3 mindset”.

In any case, thanks for contributing to the public dialogue.

I did forget to divulge my conflict of interest: mattclare.ca/wordpress/2008/05/31/i-won-tfc-tickets/

Ironically, the op-ed posting on the educational exceptions of Bill C-611, Straw in the wind: the mindset behind C-61, is bang on.

Thus concludes post 500.

Want to send Grandma a DVD (OK, maybe play for her a DVD) of the latest baby pictures with your favourite Beatles songs in the background? If Canada’s proposed update to copyright law makes it into law it will result in a $500 fine for Grandma and a $20,000 fine for Mom and Dad! The only saving grace is baby might be able to extract $20,000 from Grandma if she screened the DVD for her knitting circle.

This is one of the many individual uses that generally considered fair use (dealing) in Canada that is being attacked by bill C-61, the proposed amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act.

Canadians will have to consider every time they press play: “will this cost me $20,000?”

This bill is about protecting or creating failed business models and it is anti-consumer, anti-innovation, does little for actual artists (rarely the actual rights holder), circumvents the market and tramples on fair use/fair dealing while ensuring rights holders are entitled to extra revenue for content they’ve already sold to consumers transferring play-back devices.

The same government that refuses to change the rules to protect Canadians when circumstances change are apparently willing to protect largely American owned rights-holders when circumstances change for them. Canadian consumers worried about unfair prices when the Canadian dollar overtook the American dollar ignored, Canadian workers in the finance minister’s home riding can’t even get a visit from their MP when their contract was violated, but when technology makes it hard for companies to enforce unreasonable contract restrictions the Harper government offers up a federal law to remove rights from Canadians.

On the surface the bill’s set fines for private use infringement aren’t unreasonable, as theft should not be tolerated and Canada need not make itself a land where it is. What makes the fines etc. unreasonable is the amount of use restrictions and rights that are removed by this bill that make simple acts like watching a DVD from Europe or Japan illegal.

Restrictions on un-locking mobile phones (to be used on other carriers at home or abroad) , that consumers may own outright, are very anti-competitive and anti-consumer. Other provisions, like those for education, are laughable: Librarians can distribute electronic materials, but must ensure that the use of those materials not extend beyond five days — I know librarians who have trouble removing things from their own computers, let alone remote ones. In fact, the bill would likely be better without the education exemptions because it just makes the current confusing situation even more so; would this bill take supersede any distribution agreements? (Agreements that use a lot of words to answer the re-use question with no or, yes but you can’t afford it).

For these reasons and more I’ve already E-Mailed Minister Prentice and asked him to reconsider his proposals in the interest of fair use/fair dealing. I encourage you to do the same! I’m working on a collection of concerns using them to program a daily E-Mail to the minister and others.

Here are somethings you can do:

P.S:

1. That CBC screen-shot below: illegal. \/
2. My local MP Garth Turner made some speculation about what the C-61 press conference might have cost

Credit to Giulia for spotting it.

There were 10 total issues raised in the reexamination request covering all 44 of the claims in the Blackboard patent. The process isn’t over, and the patent is technically still valid, but it is very unlikely that it’ll cover much at all when it’s all over. As I’ve always said, Blackboard might have invented some things, but not everything to do with on-line learning.

My favourite quote (as it often does) come from Eben Moglen “… the education community should be pleased to hear that Blackboard has now been deprived of the opportunity to commit more ‘thuggery’”.