Gar. I had to go downtown today to sign some legal papers with our lawyer. He's taken a gig as the interim chief of staff for the president of Concordia University, but he's kept a few of his older clients, including us.

Maj and I stopped at the bank beforehand to sign some mortgage papers, and then we went to the SAQ across the street to buy some wine. We then piled back in the car, drove downtown, and with a little time to spare we stopped at Zyng for lunch, walked around St. Catherine a little bit, did some furniture shopping, and then met our lawyer near his office. We had a good coffee together and saw the new engineering building there -- it's quite nice.

When Maj and I got back to the car, I realized that I didn't have my remote starter for the car -- which also disables the car alarm. This little gadget has been a real pain for me since we got the car -- the thing that attaches it to the keychain almost instantly broke, so I've had to carry it around separate from my keys. And now it was gone, and I had no idea where it was.

So we retraced steps -- another 45 minutes walking around to the noodle joint, the furniture store, the Concordia café. Nothing. We looked around on the street for a while, then jumped in a cab and came home. Maj had her keys here, so I borrowed them, cabbed back to where the car was parked, and as I was getting into the car I saw this:

That's the clicker, right under that SAQ brochure about Italian wines. DOH! Moral of the story: attach your car-alarm clicker very carefully to your keychain. Sure, not much of a moral, but it's what I learned today.

tags: car alarm clicker montreal concordia zyng car

RSS validated

So, after starting an RSS 1.0 feed for my blog, I was having some problems using it in different readers. A few Google searches later landed me at the [$$vote for http://validator.w3.org/feed/, which is totally cool. Why didn't I know about this before?

It turned out that my Tag URI format was invalid. I was using tag URIs for RSS item identifiers, and I'd left off the all-important validity date. So I had to update those. It seems to be working pretty nice, now; the validator gives the all-good sign for both my RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0 feeds.

tags: rss validation w3c

Greek Wikitravel Expedition

So, I'm going to be interviewed this week for Hellas Spectrum, a Greek-language television show here in Montreal focusing on the local Greek community and culture. (I know - wow!) Apparently the interview will be "mostly" in English, with "a little bit" of Greek. Uh-oh.

I studied some Greek in college, and I spent a summer in Crete and made my way pretty nicely, but I definitely haven't used the language in years. So this should be fun. I'm pretty embarrassed that I'm so inept in my ancestral tongue, and I hope that Amita June learns more than I have.

The whole thing has reminded me that we don't have a Wikitravel language version for Greek -- yet. So I started a Greek Wikitravel Expedition to try to collect a group of users to make the wiki work.

I've asked already on Greek Wikipedia, and I hope to find some more centres of Greek Open Source/Open Content culture on the Web. Greek people are disproportionately represented in science, engineering, and technology, so I think there will be a lot of interest.

So, question for the LazyWeb: where are the good Greek Open Source/Open Content community Web sites? Influential Greek bloggers? What's the Greek Barrapunto? How can I get more interest in this project in the Greek Internet community? Contact me and let me know.

tags: greek wiki wikitravel

• original URL: http://evan.prodromou.name/Journal/13_Germinal_CCXV