Halifax officials ordered a 78 year old woman to paint her home, or face a fine.

Someone complained that Jacqueline Porter's house is "unsightly". The bylaws officers told her that the municipality will paint the house, send her the bill as well as a $250 fine. She was left in tears after repeated visits from the bylaws officers. Porter said that given her limited finances, painting the house will force her to not heat her house in the winter!

Last month at the Waterloo Region Drupal Users Group, we had a talk on using CCK, Views and Panels for building sites without (almost) anyprogramming.

If you live west of Toronto somewhere, then mark your calendar: October 3rd, 19:00 to 21:00 at Queen Street Commons.

Over the years, I have written a lot about internet scams and pseudoscience. This happens mainly because of the frustration I experience seeing gullible people being taken advantage of by criminals who work across international borders to avoid the long arm of the law.

An article about a Manitoba man who died after being attacked by a swarm made it to the CBC today.

The image attached to the article was not that of a wasp though, but rather, a hoverfly. These are dipteras, meaning "two wings", as all other true flies. Also the bulging eyes and very short antennae are very characteristic of all flies.

Yesterady, I noticed that Drupal is about to cross the 1,000,000 comment mark.

Somewhere overnight, it happened. When posting a comment today, I noticed that it was 1001010.

Note that issue followups were not comments, and were converted to comments en masse recently.

In other news, we passed the 300,000 node mark a few days ago.

We have two great presentations at the Waterloo Region Drupal Users Group coming up for September and October.

Both are oriented towards site builders, with a varying level of sophistication.

On September 5, we have a presentation on how to use CCK, Views and Panels to build sites without any coding.

Anyone who has been on the internet for a while must have seen ASCII art in one form or another, for example in email signatures, Usenet posts, and the like. Before that, it was in BBS banners, and even before that, it was in UNIX systems as the banner program.

Today was the first time I have seen it in spam emails though. Here is an image of it:

It reads:

Viagra $1.15

Cialis $1.99

For the longest of time, I have had this aversion to incense. It is occasionally used in the Middle East, in homes, mosques, wedding halls, guest reception areas in homes, and the like. My chest and my tummy do not like the smell of incense, and the smoke it produces.

I have long thought of incense as being identical to second hand tobacco smoke, minus the foul smell.

Now a study published in the journal: Cancer, confirms that incense is indeed a cause for cancer, after prolonged exposure. 

Renowned Canadian activist and author Naomi Klein's web site runs Drupal 5.x.

Klein's fame started with her book: No Logo, and she continues her activism with The Shock Doctrine.

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