So, about 6 months ago I moved unknownroad.com to a new webhost, site5, because they had an awesome deal where I got 5 full sites (not just domain pointers) for $200 for 2 years. Which works out to about $5 a month, which I can cover with a bit of advertising. w00t. Anyway, one other bonus is that site5 has waaaaay better web statistics tracking. Which is awesome for me, because I’m a huge dork. Seriously, though, because I actually get a decent amount of traffic, it’s interesting to see the breakdown of some of the statistics (Well, “interesting” if you’re also a huge dork. If you’re a normal person, please be aware that you are now descending into hard-core nerdery. If that’s not your bag, lucky you. Just skip to the funny/horrific picture at the end of the post)

First, the OS wars. Linux on the desktop, eh? I’ll believe it when I see it. Even though 90% of my traffic is programmers looking for gdb tutorials (yes, gdb - as in, the linux debugger), most of them are using windows boxes. Ha! Also, AmigaOS and IRIX make strong showings, given that nobody has sold an Amiga or IRIX box for many, many years. Guess some people just can’t let go…

Next, the browser wars. I think Firefox has about 10% of the general “browser market”. Clearly, programmers are bigger fans. But I kind of thought Opera was more popular….

Finally, the search engines wars. Have been won. By Google. Thanks for coming out, Windows Live! MSN Live! Search Live!. But you lose.

I also discovered on my shapeshop3d.com logs that ShapeShop was downloaded over 4000 times this month. Last month? 300 times. So it was very exciting. Until I noticed that the average download size was 300 kb. ShapeShop 002 is about 5 megs. So, there were probably 300 actual downloads, and 4000 failed downloads (I just verified that this gives almost exactly the right average. Which only cements my “huge dork” assertion…). So, I have to wonder - who is this person that tried (and failed) to download ShapeShop 4000 times? Whoever it is - I like their persistence…

END NERDERY (for those skipping ahead)

Finally, something almost unbelievably fucked up. It used to be that only celebrities had their photos photochopped so that they looked thinner. But not anymore. Hewlett Packard has democratized vanity retouching, bringing it to the people. You too can now apply advanced “horizontal scaling” technology to “instantly appear more slender”. I am ashamed for the field of computer graphics…

According to my computer machine, there are over 3000 pictures in my My Pictures folder. And I’ve hardly shown you any of them. So, it’s your lucky day. Sort of. Today we explore Montreal.

If you ever move to Montreal, one of the things you will get used to is the bizarre, incomprehensible workings of the City Works department. There are projects all over downtown that the city seems to have just forgotten about. You never actually see anyone working at these sites. They’ve they just thrown down some boards and moved on to digging the next hole. One of the local newspapers even stealthily followed a City Works crew around for a day. The crew ran errands all morning and hit the strip joints in the afternoon. Oh, and they spent about an hour filling a pothole. This dedication to a job well-done explains why, when you look down most of the holes on St Laurent, you see something like this:

Yes, those are your phone, cable, and electricity lines, suspended from metal tubing with a random system of rope and tape. This is what holds Montreal together. It’s unclear if the city ever comes back to fill these holes, or if they just wait for Montrealers to fill them in with cigarette butts…

This is a tiny hamburger, from a tiny restaurant called Patati Patata. You might consider it a snack, but for fashionable Montrealers, it is dinner.

During the winter, we made the mistake of only closing the inner window in our bathroom. Humidity from the shower froze the window shut, and a huge ice block built up that lasted until spring. During this time, a squirrel built a winter nest in the gap between the inner and outer panes. Imagine waking up after a late night, groggily stumbling into the shower in the morning, turning on the water, and having your squirrel buddy freak out inside a window just inches from your head. Woke me up pretty quick, anyway…

Montreal has some really great billboard advertisements. Maybe it’s because the culture is a bit more liberal, and, well, cultural. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of any of those, so here is one that makes me wince, and one that AC thought was hilarious. She even found a postcard-sized version of the….um….”finger” puppet, which can be cut out and worn. (Thankfully, the card is still intact)

Finally, an action shot of the ballsiest (and/or batshit-craziest) motorized wheelchair guy I have ever seen. You can’t tell from the picture, but this is essentially a highway, with traffic moving at about 80 km/hr. I was walking towards the underpass one day and I heard honking, honking like it was going out of style. And then I sew the man in the chair. His little orange flag, waving proudly. And Montreal drivers careening around him, honking and screaming like the maniacs that they are. The man in the chair was unfazed by the situation. Perhaps even unaware. All I could do was stop and watch the spectacle. Crazy wheelchair man, I salute you…

Check back soon for more blurry, over-exposed pictures, brought to you by Motorola…