Hello, friends. We’ve crawled out of post-budget recuperation to bring you this guide to the next City Council meeting. On this month’s agenda: SmartTrack, the East Gardiner, bees, tennis, ca$h for gold, Black Lives Matter, and more.
The GTK+ Compose Key…for Windows
So last year I got a netbook with rather poor Linux support. I finally got elementary OS working on it (a blog post in itself), but for the past several months I was using Windows alone. And it was terrible, for many reasons.
- It looks like ass.
- Mobile and desktop elements are mashed together awkwardly and it just doesn’t work. A desktop user should never see a message telling them to “swipe down” to continue shutdown. Jesus.
- Literally every software download site is super dodgy.
- The default user is administrator by default??? No wonder people get viruses!
- No fucking compose key! Continue reading The GTK+ Compose Key…for Windows
Linkdump: All My 2016 Municipal Budget Writing
I’ve been writing about the budget so long. Please help. I want to go home ;_; Continue reading Linkdump: All My 2016 Municipal Budget Writing
Torontoist Explains: City Council Revenue Tools
This post first appeared on Torontoist.com in February 2016. It is very out of date and is republished here for historical purposes.
Featured photo by edk7 from the Torontoist Flickr pool.
I won’t call them revenue tools. I think that’s a misnomer. We have to have more taxes or fees to offset the cost of government.
—John Campbell (Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre)
John Campbell is right. A “revenue tool” is just any way the City can bring in more money. Using “revenue tool” may circumvent that knee-jerk response people get when you say “taxes”. The difference is that John Campbell thinks taxes and fees are inherently a bad thing, and others don’t. Welcome to the plight of the Toronto Revenue Tools Debate.
Continue reading Torontoist Explains: City Council Revenue Tools
City Council Recap: February 2016
You read the preview, now here’s the recap. Here’s key happenings from this month’s City Council meeting.
City Council Preview: February 2016
Friends, we can all agree that the municipal budget is the most exciting part of the year. But don’t get distracted—there’s a regular City Council meeting this month, too. On the agenda: Uber, fireworks, Toronto Hydro, subways, animal control, and even some good old-fashioned Rob Ford drama.
Let’s check it out, and understand the agenda better than those 15 councillors who never raise their hand in class.
Torontoist Explains: The Social Housing Waitlist
You’ve probably heard it’s over 95,000 households long—and growing. But there’s a lot more to know about the social housing waitlist, and we’ll explain.
Prepare to be depressed.
Theme: Markdown for Notepad++
A few months ago I got a new computer that has hardware with little Linux support, and so while waiting for someone to make a sound driver, I’ve been using Windows 10. I tried a lot of text editors, even building Gedit from source, before settling on Notepad++.
Notepad++ has built-in syntax highlighting for a lot of languages, but not Markdown. You can make your own “user-defined language”, and several people have created ones for Markdown, but I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. So I made my own, which you can check out on Github. Due to the limitations of user-defined languages, some Markdown features can’t be implemented (e. g., asterisks as bullets, three spaces to create code blocks, etc.), but it should be good enough for everyday use. Please try it out, and adapt it for your own use!
Userscript: Ferengizer
This userscript is a replacement for my Firefox port of Zoe Quinn’s Ferengizer extension; too lazy to redo the extension so here you go.
City Council Preview: December 2015
Hello again, everyone! It’s the most wonderful time of the year—that’s right, municipal budget time. But amid our festivities, the everyday business of City Council must go on. Here’s a peek at what’s on this month’s City Council agenda.