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Archive for April, 2009

North to Terrace

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, Terrace, tagged , , , , , , on April 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »

“Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!” Bilbo Baggins says about adventures in The Hobbit. “Make you late for dinner!” Working out of our townhouse, I sympathize with that view. But, as with Bilbo, there must be something Tookish in me lying in wait. When I was invited to go to Terrace for the end of the [...]

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Flying like a dog, with my head out the window

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, flying, travel on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

The prospect of flying reduces me to the state of a kid on Christmas Eve. And that’s not just a metaphor, either. The night before I fly, I’m lucky to get five hours asleep. By halfway through the night, I’m awake and almost twitching with excitement. Usually, I get up earlier than I planned, and [...]

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The Calgary Open Source Systems Festival (COSSFest 2009)

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Free Software, Personal, opensource, tagged , , , , , on April 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I am just back from COSSFest, a free software event held in Calgary, Canada. You can read about the conference on my Linux Pro Magazine blog at:
http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/online/blogs/off_the_beat_bruce_byfield_s_blog/the_calgary_open_source_symposium_festival_cossfest_2009

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First impressions of Calgary

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Canada, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

So what impressions does a life-long Vancouverite have of Calgary after a two day visit? Necessarily, a fragmented one. Two days is far too short a time to know any region well, and I spent much of my time in a conference hotel. I did venture out a few times, but karaoke bars and mid-level [...]

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The ambiguity of hotel rooms

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Personal, hotel rooms, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

t is 10:30PM, and I’m sitting in my hotel room in Calgary. Half an hour ago, I left Bootlegger’s in the north-east corner of the city, where I drank more cider than was good for me and where I watched Aaron Seigo of KDE doing karaoke with “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the [...]

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Stepping away from evangelism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, FOSS, Personal, freesoftware, open source, software development, tagged , , , , , , on April 11, 2009 | 7 Comments »

I am a firm supporter of free and open source software (FOSS). These days, though, I rarely evangelize about FOSS when face to face. While I will argue in favor of FOSS in articles, or in speeches, I hardly ever do so in casual conversation.
Part of the reason for this reticence is politeness, [...]

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Other languages and I

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, education, elementary school, high school, teaching, tagged , , , , , , , on April 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Like far too many North Americans, I remain unilingual. I understand French well enough that when I met the exiled King of Ruanda and his aide-de-camp (which is a long story in itself), I could understand about eighty percent of the conversation, but I couldn’t participate in it. Otherwise, I can read a reasonable amount [...]

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A beaver frontlet by Norman Tait

Posted in Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Inuit Gallery, Nisga'a, Norman Tait, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Ron Talek, art, art appreciation, art buying, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 4, 2009 | 5 Comments »

In January, we missed by hours buying a dragonfly frontlet that Nisga’a master carver Norman Tait sold through the Inuit Gallery. The gallery told us that its staff would ask Tait to do another frontlet, but we had heard nothing for a couple of months and were just concluding that a second one would [...]

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