Sandbox

A different former Sandbox blogger wins a different award

Colin Hunter notified me that he won an award of some sort. Given that this is a national award, perhaps it deserves more than a blog post that Ben got after his provincial award. But, that is all Sandbox can give, a mention on the blog.

Record reporter wins national award 10 May 2008

Hunter, 31, took home the award for sports reporting, beating out journalists from the Toronto Star, a sister paper of the Record, and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Hunter won for a series of stories on unusual sports.

You can regularly read his entertaining writing on his entertainment blog Within Earshot.

Strangely when I searched "wihtin earshot" (mistyped), Colin's blog comse up first. When I search it spelled correctly "within earshot," he drops in the ranking to third.

• Former writer of Sandbox blog wins newspaper award 3 May 2004

Herd of 3-ft tall horses run amok in Ontario town

Police in Chatsworth near the Styx River got calls about mini horses running around the town.

Someone with a small yard was able to corral them until help arrived.

 

Who Let the Mini Horses Out?

(Chatsworth, ON.) Like the common stadium song, “who let the dogs out” reports of mini horses running on Highway 6 last week had Grey County O.P.P. wondering who let the mini-horses out.

The first call came in on Thursday (08-May-08) during the noon hour when a concerned motorist stopped at a home on Highway 6 to report he had just seen a small herd of mini horses running on the highway in the area of Side Road 5 in Chatsworth Township. The police received other reports around the same time. An officer attended and patrolled, however no mini horses were found.

About 3 hours later a second call was received about 4 mini horses, three or four feet tall, running on the highway. Fortunately, this time a person in the neighbourhood with a fenced in area was able to coral them and keep them secure.

The owner was contacted and arrangements have been made for their retrieval, probably today (12-May-08 ).

TheRecord.com gets more RSS feeds

We recently got RSS feeds set up on TheRecord.com so people can subscribe to them. Prior to that we only had one that had pretty much every single story, which wasn't very useful.

On Google Reader I tried subscribing by typing in therecord.com or news.therecord.com, but got no results. I think it may be because the hyperlinks on the RSS page don't direct to the feed, but activate directions for you to cut and paste the feed address into your aggregator.

I tried setting up a page of RSS feeds at TheRecord.com. Hopefully this page will allow me and others to subscribe dto various Record feeds with one url.

We'll see whether it works.

Media gets Timbit woman her job back

This week a women in London was fired from Tim Hortons for giving a Timbit doughnut-hole to the child of a regular customer.

Lilliman, who has worked at the store for three years, said she thought little of the incident since Timbits are often doled out to dogs and children.

[...]

The Timbits given to pets, Mitchell added, are usually "day-old and recycled.''

So, district manager Mitchell is saying it is okay to give stale doughnuts to children?

It doesn't matter so much because the woman was rehired to a different Tim Hortons location.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened.

A friend from LondonOn told me that she knew a girl who got fired from a London Tim Hortons for having pink hair. She was subsequently rehired after the story got out.

So, if you get fired from a Tim Hortons for a bad reason, going to the newspapers might help.

Cambridge table hockey tourney crowns planet's top player

Sid Kloosterman won the Cambridge Table Hockey Classic last Saturday elevating him to the top ranking in the world.

The organizer of the tournament, Guy Mason called me this week to let me know how the tournament worked out.

"In Cambridge Table Hockey Classic terms, the tournament was a smashing success, especially considering it was the first ever in the Cambridge Kitchener Waterloo history," he told me in a message later.

"Sid Kloosterman just became — at the Cambridge table hockey tournament — number one in Ontario, which, in that game, Power Play 2, means number one in the world," Guy also said.

So this is Sid Kloosterman, new number one ranked Power Play 2 table hockey player.

Here's the video of the Cambridge Table Hockey Classic sponsored by Castrol which crowned Sid top player in the world for Power Play 2.

The Canadian Classic Table Hockey Federation maintains the rankings.

• Table hockey: Anyone's game 28 April 2008
• Tournament turns table hockey into fierce competition 4 May 2008

Canada's Olympic pyjamas

I always thought it was a good idea to get apparel retailers to design Olympic athletes' uniforms. I remember watching the opening ceremonies for the Barcelona 92 summer games and the Canadian athletes came out in white and purple firemen's coats.

They had been designed by some fashion designer, the commentators said, and he was "inspired" by — what else — a fire truck driving by.

Later Roots got involved and made better-looking clothing. The contract probably got more lucrative because they could sell load of replica clothing.

I was unsure when HBC took over making Canada's Olympic wear. It was pretty good, but using the HBC colours wasn't. It kind of looked like Zeller's merchandise.

This past week HBC unveiled the Olympic clothing for the coming games.

They look like pyjamas.

It looks like all these "athletes and models" are going to a red and white themed slumber party.

The t-shirts with zhongwen ideograms on them need a translation.

Former writer of Sandbox blog wins newspaper award

By Ryan Chen-Wing

Ben Gelinas the founder of this Sandbox blog won a newspaper award last night.

Ben was recognized for his novice reporting done at the Guelph Mercury where he was working before he came to the Record last fall.

Greg Mercer also won an award for sports writing while he was at the Mercury. He now works at the Record.

In other categories Record staff won five awards yesterday.

• K.J. Strachan Award for editorial writing: John Roe, Waterloo Region Record
• C.B. Schmidt Award for novice reporting: Melinda Dalton, the Waterloo Region Record
• London Free Press Award for excellence in news feature writing: Dianne Wood, Waterloo Region Record
• Bill McGrath Award for design and graphics: Diane Shantz and Brenda Hoerle, Waterloo Region Record
• Spot News Photography: Peter Lee, Waterloo Region Record

These are Ben and Greg's awards:

• Larry N. Smith Award for novice reporting (under 25,000 circulation): Ben Gelinas, Guelph Mercury
• Robert J. Hanley Award for sports writing (under 25,000 circulation): Greg Mercer, Guelph Mercury

Read the full story at TheRecord.com:

Record wins five Ontario Newspaper Awards 3 May 2008

Names in different cultures

Raveena wrote a story about a family who have XXX as a "placeholder name" because each have only one name.

A family called XXX

They come from northern China and a community where one name is the norm. One name wasn't enough, however, when the family applied for Chinese passports so they could emigrate. With nothing to put in the spot where the application forms asked for first names, a bureaucrat supplied XXX for parents and son.

It is an interesting story because it is a very real example of how we can easily assume something of other cultures — like having more than one name — which isn't really the case.

It reminded me of a blog post I read about i18n, which is an abbreviation of internationalization (there are 18 letters between i and n in the word).

James wrote about Thai personal names at his blog James Clark's Random Thoughts.

He gives some examples of the structure of Thai names. COmmenters also give examples from other cultures:

• Because names have to be considered appropriate by an government ministry Thais also have an informal given name. An example who was named "Mote" after a TV remote control.
• "I guess that historically the main reason for the dominance of given names in Thai culture is because family names are a relatively recent innovation: they were introduced by King Rama VI towards the beginning of the 20th century."
• Comment: "I have Thai friends at my school named Top, Benz, and Boom."

Making more interesting buttons

I posted a slideshow from game 2 of the Rangers series with the Soo. For Rangers slideshows we have been using the same boring button.

It is the same for each slideshow, so the buttons don't differentiate the content. It is the the visual equivalent of linking the word "here" (not a good thing).

I tried making a button unique to this slideshow using on of the photos in the show.

It still could be improved, but now you'll be able to tell the media apart by the picture. THis one is the one with Spaling attempting a wraparound.

Regional spelling bee victory like sweet clover — melilot, that is

wickerwork, lotion, zebra, gemology, ellipse, helix, melilot, rorqual, clavate

Those were the words students needed to know to place in the Waterloo Regional Spelling Bee last Saturday.

Raveena wrote a story:

Language skills help build strong spellers 14 Apr 2008

Learning a second language was common among spelling bee participants. And for many, English is not the only language spoken in their homes.

That doesn't surprise Madhu Kathuria.

A spelling bee judge and mother of two boys who competed in the spelling bee, she says most immigrants push their children to perfect English.

"I've seen that if English is not the parents' first language, they want their kids to absolutely master it," said Kathuria. "They are more serious about it and put in more effort."

I made a video:

Spelling Bee video

Peter was there and took photos. The kids had a lot of weird expressions. Here is one of them:

There was also a little girl who spun around when she was ready to spell (you can see it in the video). There was also a kids doing a crazy dance when I was interviewing Oliver, but I ended up cutting that part for time.

And in case you don't want to search for them here are what the interweb has to say about some of those words.

Melilot is sweet clover. Rorqual is a class of balleen whales. Clavate is a club-like shape.