You can really say that good news on the Miramichi happens once in a blue moon. Union members voted in favour of the new five-year contract at the mill. Looks like they will be back to work starting next month.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
The potential end to the mill strike is the news of the day today. The union is now voting on a deal struck last weekend between union leaders and management, who are both encouraging the voting members to pass it. The problem is that a third of the millworkers who are voting today will not have jobs to go back to. The fear of many is that they will purposefully vote against the deal, since strike pay is better than no pay. Although, I heard this morning that the national office of the CEP union is set to cut off their contribution should the deal fall through.
I'll keep my ear to the ground as best I can. Provincial news is hard to come by these days as the CBC is on strike and they have been the only source of free information here. Just about all the other media is controlled by the Irvings who require you to either shell out the cash for one of their papers or pay for an online subscription to read just about anything on their site.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
So I'm having fun with Photoshop again. The above picture was actually a shot of one of the churches at Kings Landing. Much the same as the picture of Jungno atop the Aug. 3 post, it started as a daylight shot. I cropped them both to add a purple/blue fade to the sky, used the lens filter for the bluish tinge and added the odd stars and lens flares. The moon is fake too.
I'm also having more fun now that I've broken down and started using the automatic function for adding pictures with Blogger. It saves me resizing, ftp'ing, typing in the html myself... I should have been using it from the get go.
In other news, especially of interest to the nocturnal crowd that this site was originally to address, Premier Bernard Lord is leading the charge at this week's premiers' conference in Banff to follow suit with the US and look at changing Daylight Savings Time. Now call me crazy, but of all the premiers who would want to change it, why him? Think of it: if NB kept to schedule, then for a few months each year, we would be in the same time zone (Eastern) as our major markets in New England. Atlantic time could actually disappear for a couple of months each year and we'd pick up a couple of extra workable hours. On the flip side, it'd be good for provinces like Quebec too, since they export power and, by being an hour behind the norm, this timeshift might reduce some of the strain on their power grid during the lead up to winter months. Sure the math is harder, but I suspect there could be some economic benefits to a change in standard North American times.
Well, we made Jay Leno's Headlines segment, in regards to the Chatham Rotary Club auctioning off a Hummer in support of the ecocentre. (You can click the link but last night's headlines aren't up on the site yet.) Kudos to whoever sent in the clipping. Jay opted to make fun of the double play on "hummer" rather than the oddity of using a gas guzzler to support the environment. There must have been mostly Republicans in the audience. You could almost hear 'em say, "Environmental jokes out-- cigars and interns are back in."
Of course, what's really going to get people's goat is that he actually said it was from Chatham, New Brunswick, and not Miramichi. NBC had better expect thousands of nasty emails from dutiful Miramichiers to come flooding in over this!
It's spread beyond Leno too. Here's a few more links to stories on the raffle:
News That Sounds Like a Joke, in News of the Wierd, The Anchorage Press.
Tree Hugging Hummer, in the Providence Journal (free registration. req'd)
"Huh?", in the Akron Beacon Journal (republished from Universal Press Wire Service).
"Unclear on the Concept", the Mercury News.
Chuck Shepherd's Column is also referencing this in the Gainesville Sun, BrocktonMass.com, The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Duluth News Tribune... I could Google this all day.
As far as international coverage goes, it still beats the serial killers and crab riots Miramichi is usually famous for.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
I'm doing a web-presence evaluation these days. I'm trying to update sites and rework things to consider recent changes in activities, mood, interest-- whatever.
I updated the Fareasterner site to reflect a few more ventures the company has been doing of late. On a related note, I also worked on backing up the previous incarnation of Fareasterner: the Kyungnam to Kyunggi Journal which was my weblog in Korea, and is no longer the destination to the domain name. (Expect the link button in the bottom to disappear eventually as I don't feel like doing any more moving gifs than I have to, especially for a dormant site.)
I also switched around my personal page (www.ianross.ca) and removed the last of my cartoons from the main page. They're all still there in the archives for now but at least when you log in, you aren't greeted by something that's six months old. I dont find I have much time for newer cartoons these days so I can't imagine that site becoming a regularily updated one, but who knows. Maybe it could take the place of this blog.
The magazine, Miramichi Monthly has it's site updated a bit more now too. I've switched registrars for that domain name so if the previous link doesn't work, go here. The new registrars haven't been updated with the proper URL forwarding info yet although I expect to do that this afternoon. Check out the forum there if you have time, and sign in to post a message. The site itself has little in the way of stories. I've yet to become motivated enough to tackle that task. What you'll find instead are the cover photos that I have been posting here.
And from now on... I think I might leave the covers on that site and do my best to revamp this site. I'd like to avoid shop talk. I also don't want this to become the proverbial haircut blog. Maybe a satirical news site? Photoshop lots of bigfoot or UFO pictures... I'm also thinking of changing hosts so that I have a bit more control over the functionality (I hate the bulletin board on this site and would much prefer a phpbboard like on Mysteries or Miramichi Monthly. I could even experiment with RSS feeds, create characters, design a virtual newsroom. I've been talking about myself online for over four years. I know Yeji got tired of it after much less time. Maybe I'm due for a break too. A creative project would be a good outlet.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Horsing Around in August
For all you folks keeping track, here's the August issue that started rolling out last Friday. Happy New Brunswick Day to you all... the long weekend's over and it's back to work. Hope you had a good time.
