I haven’t posted in quite a while. Quite frankly there’s not been (in my opinion) a lot to write about in Canadian Television and the Internet. Yes, there’s been the hearings about some loony left wingers that want to regulate the internet, and I thought about doing something. Then I remembered, I don’t live in China, this country WILL NOT try to regulate the internet, so I can go on my merry way.

What brought me back strangely enough was me sitting in my hotel room up here in North Bay.  I got an email from wordpress with a very curious comment.

You wrote: “I want Quebec without Claude Dubois.”

Another retarded Ontario who thinks he can tell people from Québec how to think.

The day we separate from shitheads like you can’t come soon enough!

Peter

Well, I thought that sounded a bit harsh, and pointless, so my first instinct was to delete it. He was of course referring to my blog posting about Claude Dubois’ ignorant comments against the CBC last year in which he called them racists for editing down a 3 hour music awards show to 45 minutes of something people in Toronto (where it aired) might have wanted to see. And in doing, cut a lot of French acts that most Anglo Torontonians would not know anyway.

I approved that last comment after some thought. Its been almost a year since I wrote that and had to go back and read it again. Was I rude, or offensive in it? I read it, then I read it again. Then I pondered… I then went to reply to the comment with a simple clever jibe… but nothing came to mind. Then as I began to ramble I realised the need all of us people have these days to force our views on those around us through blogs… so, I wrote this.

You clearly didn’t READ the article. Which means, you are either not able to read English, which is possible. Your tone would suggest you are a separatist, and thats fine. But I would appreciate if you would attack people who are truly being agitators. Read the article again. What I said was that I want Quebec within a United Canada. And that I could do without people like Claude Dubois who seek out any opportunity they can to say ‘See, see, Canada hate’s Quebec so we should leave.’ Your statement is as ignorant as his. The day you separate from shitheads like me will be an interesting one, I’ll grant you that. I used to have strong Nationalist feelings that made me believe we need Canada to stay as one unit, and that Quebec is a vital part of that. I no longer think that. I think that if a large enough group of people in my country no longer want to be a part of it, well, they can go, hold themselves a referendum (With a CLEARLY defined question on the ballot) and if they win, Go. The country will be sad to see you go, I will too… but hey. I’ll take comfort in knowing Peter that you are happy to be separated from a shithead like me.

I wrote that, and smirked at my own clevernous. Of course, I am secure in the knowledge should I ever try and run for anything someone will dig up this blog posting and say “look… Howard HATES Quebec, he wants them to leave” I’ll sigh…. try and explain, but of course get shouted down by people who just want to have the Canada vs Quebec debate all over again.

Then, in an effort to divert attention from the story, I’ll post my sex tape with Paris Hilton on the internet.

Excuse me… I think I just threw up in my mouth…

CTV has added Two and a Half Men to its list of programs available on their ever growing website.    With the start of season six, you can catch the new episodes online here.  Sorry, Canadian’s only with this link.  If someone has the US link feel free to pass it along.

6×01- Taterhead is our Love

6×02 – Pie Hold, Herb

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For those of you still interested (and in Canada) you can still catch the full series of Jpod Episodes online.  Even though the CBC has canceled the series the website and episodes still remain online.  For how long… no one knows… except those involved… so I guess the point is someone knows, but not me.

The episodes can be seen by clicking HERE.

Enjoy!

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CTV is also the home for the ABC Family Drama ‘Greek’  They are a little behind the ABC Family airings, but as I write this the first four episodes are online and ready to be viewed…. sorry, Canadian’s only.

Episode 1×01 Pilot

Episode 1×02 Hazed and Confused

Episode 1×03 The Rusty Nail

Episode 1×04 Picking Teams

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What can only be heralded as great news for consumers, and not so great news for our friends at Bell Canada is a recent court ruling striking down Bell Express Vu’s so called ‘late’ fee.  Express Vu charged customers a penalty of $25.00 every time they paid a bill late,

If your account remains unpaid for a period of sixty (60) days, we may also charge you an administration fee, to offset the additional processing costs associated with delinquent accounts. The administration fee is currently twenty-five dollars
($25.00). Other fees and charges may also be assessed

Excerpt from: Bell Canada’s Express Vu Rental Agreement (1)

The Ruling which came down late in the day on September 16 effects all 1.7 Million Express Vu Customers. (2)

Bell Is Expected to appeal.  According to Paul Waldie’s article in the Globe & Mail about 33,000 Customers pay this fee every month.  That’s just under 10 million a year.  The ruling refers to Bell’s arguments in the case as “unsound” and “absurd” (2)

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(1) “Residential Customer Agreement Effective As Of And From September 1, 2006         (“Agreement”).” Bell. 1 Sept 2006. Bell Canada. 16 Sep 2008 <http://www.bell.ca/web/tv/en/all_regions/pdfs/rca_legal.pdf>.

(2) Waldie. Paul. “Court finds Bell Express Vu fee illegal,” Globe & Mail 16 September 2008. 16 Sep 2008 <http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080916.wbell0916/BNStory/Business/home>

A show that I heard about last year but haven’t had the opportunity to watch yet has been Mad Men, I just found it hidden over at the watch.ctv.ca site and have to say I am very much enjoying it.  The best part is that season one is still there and season two is there as well.

For the pilot click HERE, from there you can select any episode from season 1 or 2.  That link is for Canadian’s only.  American’s can click HERE to watch the Season 2 premiere.

Enjoy!
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It has been nearly 20 days since I’ve had the time and energy to post… but hey, the new fall shows have started so its time I got my butt moving again and did some writing.
JJ Abram’s new new sci-fi drama Fringe premiered last week the episode is now online for all to see… in Canada and of course our American cousins.   For those that missed the premiere, or for those that want to watch it again:

BTW, this show is on Fox… soo… you may wanna watch this quickly.  Fox isn’t known for their support of genre television.  *cough* firefly *cough*

**Update**
With the second episode out, I have decided to change this posting to have links to each episode as they become available.
**Update**

1×01 – Pilot  Americans Canadians

1×02 – The Same Old Story – Americans Canadians

1×03 -The Ghost Network – Americans Canadians

1×04 – The Arrival – Americans Canadians

Enjoy!

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I have been a Linux user now for over a year, and a MythTV user for almost as long.  This past month I welcomed a bouncing baby celeron into our new family to function as a Myth Box for the bedroom.  The Celeron, I found lying sadly on the side of the road during big garbage day… there she was, a perfectly good looking small form factor PC, a Celeron… .perfect to be a media player, a slave to my existing network.  All she would need was a wireless card, since running cable through the house would have earned me my very own brand new apartment.  (You see… my girlfriend would have thrown me out)  The little MythBox was a pain since day one… no doubt, it had been thrown in the trash so SOMETHING has to have been wrong with it.  The wireless was no small joy to get running, but once it was up, it was up (or so I thought.)

Upon completing the work, and figuring out how to point to the video files (and move them to another harddrive on the server as written HERE) I left the computer on a shelf for two weeks.  I had had enough of fighting with it for a while.  Today I grabbed it, and threw it into the bedroom, foolishly expecting to be enjoying the latest episode of Psych within 10 minutes of my triumphant setup.

What I had not realised, was that I had never test booted the machine without the ethernet cable plugged in.  What this meant, was that the mapped drives (on 192.168.1.101) would not be visable.  This caused a horrendous and completely unacceptable boot up period.  Basically, the mythbox was so slow to boot I actually gave up after twenty minutes.

I set out to find the answer before discovering it was clearly the NFS drives not being detected on bootup.

The way AROUND this problem was to disable network manager and write the info directly to the /etc/network/interfaces file.  If you find yourself in this predicement… try this.

sudo pico /etc/network/interfaces

Then add the line

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
#This next part is for WEP
wireless-essid YOUR SSID HERE
wireless-key YOUR WEP KEY HERE

Please note, that I use WEP.  If you are trying to do WPA or WPA2 (which you should cause its better) read up on it HERE I use WEP 128 because even after following all those great directions, I just couldn’t make it work.  That’s what happens when you buy a 12 dollar wireless card.

BTW, if you use WEP like I do, and you use SHARED key, you have to put the HEX value into wireless-key NOT the phrase (just FYI)
Next, you need to disable network manager from trying to run.

sudo apt-get remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

This will REMOVE Network Manager from your system.  So don’t do this if you don’t actually want to remove it.

This worked for me very well, and has improved my boot-up time like you wouldn’t believe.

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Fans of Coronation Street have probably been breaking out into cold sweats with the long hiatus during the Olympic Games but today, the 25th of August was to mark a big return to the small for one of Brittain’s favourite and longest running Soaps… The only problem, is that as of 8pm EST today the site still hasn’t added any new episodes, nor has it debued it’s shiny new website slated to launch at 7pm EST.

I’m just glad I don’t work in the CBC’s digital division, that many angry Corrie fans would scare the crap out of me…  I’ll keep you posted as soon as the new episodes, and website start to appear.

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According to the Neilson overnights Flashpoint enjoyed another respectable night pulling in 6.3 Million viewers during the Thursday airing.  Once again Flashpoint increased the CBS viewership numbers over the CSI rerun.

To watch the show online in its entirety American’s click HERE and Canucks click HERE.