Time to Pony Up!

As a recent immigrant to Canada, I’m kind of trying to expose myself to a bunch of new noise that is inherently of and from Canada. Not Leonard Cohen but the new stuff.
So I found this Montreal-based girl band called Pony Up! and they have a few great songs. Very 1980s sounds, of course – a kind of mix of Siouxie and the Banchees, The Pixies, and Throwing Muses, mostly. They have a curvy sound and aren’t afraid of using their sexy voices in the name of sex. Kind of sweet, actually.
In other news, I’m massively (again, kind of) reorganizing and redesigning this website. It’s going to be a few more days but I promise, it will happen. Perhaps I’ll even like writing Deckchairs more. It’s become a bit of a drag for some reason, in part because I’ve been reading so many other, better, more timely or more coherent blogs lately. And perhaps I’m slightly blogged out, though it does appear that I’ve been doing it a lot longer than most. Perhaps the symptom is the cure.
Additionally, I just downloaded the new Safari browser, along with the recent OS X update, and it does indeed support the Web Standards project’s brilliant Acid Test 2. In a nutshell, it means that Safari beat Firefox and Internet Explorer to the punch by supporting many of the most advanced features of Web standards site development.
Meanwhile, Winnipeg is growing on me. It’s not without it small-town associations but I’m also realizing that what it lacks in breadth, it makes up for in depth. On Tuesday, the new Millenium (previously the Centennial) library will open after many millions of dollars of investment. A whole new, huge space and 30% more books (open stack) will be a site to see.
Finally, I organized my office, finally. It’s not quite perfect, the pictures aren’t on the walls yet, and the windows need blinds, but it’s the most organized (and largest) office space I’ve ever had. Jason K. has written one of the most interesting pieces on tidying up that I’ve seen in some time.