I’ll bet you didn’t know Guelph had a B.A.C. That’s a Big Ass Cathedral. It’s right downtown and its proper name is the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Or just the Basilica of Our Lady for short. If you want the brochure bit:

The Basilica of our Lady Immaculate has been a place of worship and reflection for over 125 years. The Basilica is constructed of local limestone in the Gothic Revival style. It towers over the Guelph community as a constant reminder of God’s love and a community’s resilience. Designated a National Historic Site, it is the most visited tourist destination in the city of Guelph.

After an intensive five phase restoration spanning many years, the restoration was completed in December 2014. There was a special dedication mass at the Church on December 8, 2014, and it was at this mass that Bishop Crosby announced that our Holy Father Pope Francis had elevated our church to the status of a Basilica in honour of its rich history and the importance of this parish in the Diocese of Hamilton and the City of Guelph.

In the fall of 2015, the Basilica of our Lady Immaculate was recognized for the restoration of the church. The Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals awarded their 2015 Award of Excellence to our Church. This is the largest respected collective of heritage professionals involved in the preservation of our national heritage properties. In November we received the Peter Stokes Award by the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.

You can read a lot more, and see professional pictures at their website.

I’ve been inside it exactly once, to listen to a chorus a friend was singing in.

This is a view from the parking lot.

And this is the view taken standing in the same spot as the first picture, but turned around and looking at beautiful downtown Guelph. Photos have a way of flattening hills. If you look over that hedge there are three steep flights of steps leading up to the cathedral. That street is a long way down.

Anyway, there’s your local tour. Drop by and visit anytime!

They have these banners up now all over downtown. Civic pride, I guess. Because this town isn’t a real tourist destination so most of the people seeing them are locals anyway. So isn’t that a little like loving yourself?

Not sure I love Guelph. But on balance it’s a nice place to live. Nicer than most other places I’ve been, or can think of.

The crowns, by the way, are a reference to our identity as “The Royal City.”

This is the main branch of my hometown’s public library. The building has been there a long time. I remember going there when I was eight years old.

They are currently building a new library just a block away. It’s coming along nicely and looks like it’s going to be really big. On this particular morning the police were driving around a lot because there’d been an accident just a road over. (You can click on the pics to make them bigger.)

Snow squalls. April 19. It’s been spring for almost a month!

OK, something is definitely going on here. I’ve previously posted on how long the ads are getting on YouTube, most recently just a couple of days ago in response to having a 28-minute ad dropped into an interview I was watching. Today I had a 31:15 ad in one podcast and then just a bit later on a different podcast getting a 40:37 bomb dropped.

What is the point of this? Nobody is going to watch a 30 or 40-minute ad or infomercial or entirely separate podcast inserted into the podcast they’re watching. Nobody. But given how frequently these things are popping up now it’s clearly part of a conscious decision YouTube is making. Meanwhile, why would somebody even be making these half-hour ads? They must know they just play as aggravating.

I guess somebody is looking at the data and figuring that somehow it works, but I can’t see it. The platform does seem to be transforming into something new though, even if I’m not sure what the endgame is.

This was definitely the end of the line, as we’ve had a lot of rain mixed with warm weather. It’s all that was left of snow mountain a couple of weeks ago.

For those of you interested in a recap, here are the mountain melt pictures in order.

And here is what it looked like yesterday.

This is a bonus pic, by request, of a different parking lot but with the clean-up crew getting rid of some of the dirt left behind by another snow pile.

That’s a wrap! It was a snow winter but it’s all gone now. The heat is on.

In January 2024 I wrote a post complaining about an ad that appeared on YouTube that was 8:30 long. Then, just a couple of weeks ago I had to give an update where I mentioned being bombed by an ad that was 17:21! Of course I didn’t watch it all, but it still shocked me.

Well, it didn’t take YouTube long to one-up itself. Last night I watched a short, 17-minute video of an interview with an economist and just a few minutes before the end the algorithm or whatever tagged me with an ad that . . . wait for it . . . clocked in at 28:46! Holy enshittification!

I take it this is all just YouTube saying you will subscribe to YouTube and pay to get the ad-free version or else! But the thing is, you can get ad blockers now that will, I’m told, stop most of this stuff from getting through. As I said in 2024 though, the effect of running these kinds of ads isn’t just an irritation, it’s just saying that this is what the platform is now. Can you imagine network or cable television trying to get away with this? But YouTube knows they can, and if they can get away with it they’re going to keep doing it. So I’ll keep letting you know about the new records they set. As if AI slop wasn’t bad enough!

Just an update on the construction project going on behind me. Digging out those foundations. (You can click on the pic to make it bigger.)

Saw this taped to the wall of the grocery store this week. Alas, post-its don’t work on brick. Anyway, I did go to YouTube as directed and found out that “That’s My King” is a Christian pop song performed by Cece Winans. It didn’t change my life, but I only gave it a couple of minutes. I thought I’d pass the message along though. Happy Easter!

A couple of years ago I wrote this:

What I’ve noticed happening just in the past month though is that not only do there seem to be more ads, but the ads themselves are getting longer. Much longer. Much, much longer. Ads that run for a minute and a half are now not uncommon. But I’ve also seen them run 4 and 5 minutes, and (this was the record) one a couple of days ago that was 8 minutes and 30 seconds! That’s not an ad, it’s a full infomercial. This goes beyond being annoying, to the point where it actually has had the effect of driving me away.

It’s no secret why they’re doing this. They want you to pay for a premium service where you don’t have to see ads. Or so they say. I don’t know how true that is (sponsored ads, I assume, are still included), or how long it’s likely to last. I can remember when cable TV became a big thing and it was known as Pay-TV and the deal was you paid a subscription and you got to watch everything with no ads. That’s not cable TV today.

Still, I’m scratching my head at advertising that’s so deliberately alienating. Who wants to watch an eight-and-a-half-minute ad? Absolutely no one. That isn’t an irritant, it’s a nuclear bomb being dropped on the platform. It’s a message to everyone that if you’re not paying for a subscription they don’t want you there at all. That seems self-defeating to me. But Amazon is still going strong despite its enshittification and I suspect YouTube will still be in business even after it’s become so overwhelmed with advertising it’s barely functional. There’s a lot of room for things to get shittier yet.

And boy did they! Given my shock and amazement at ads that were 8 minutes long I had to revisit this post today as I just watched a podcast where, right in the middle, they dropped an 18-minute advertisement! What gives?