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I keep wondering what to do with this space.  This blog as a whole suffers from an extreme lack of posts over the past few years.  More than once, I’ve tried to come up with a reason to do “a post a day”, but really, that’s a lot of work.  And I have a day job.  Well, sorta a day job.  I mostly work overnight, so it’s not exactly a 9 to 5 affair.  But it easily takes up the same amount of time, (more, actually). Also, with a wife and a two year old daughter, and the occasional attempt at maintaining a social life, I just don’t have a lot in the way of spare time or creative energy leftover. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Fractals, One Post a Day | No Comments »

Subtitle:  Why making simple things hard is a bad idea.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made my choices and I’m sticking with it.  Day to day, I work in Linux and that isn’t going to change.  But there’s a good reason why Linux is a “Fringe” OS on the desktop, and why it will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Mostly, it comes down to making simple things hard, and for no good reason.  Quite often, in the Linux community, simple things are made hard for purely political reasons.  Little pissing matches in the open source community with the end result that things that the average “Joe User” just needs to work, will work, but only once you make the poor schmuck jump through too many hoops. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Linux, Rants | 1 Comment »

So, tomorrow is election day here in Cowtown.  And while I’m more interested in this election than I have been in a civic election for, oh, pretty much forever, I still have some pretty mixed feelings about our civic government and our civic electoral process in general.

First let’s cover the upbeat part of the program.  Namely, why I’m more interested in this civic election than any prior election.  Really, it can be summed up by one candidate, and what he has managed to achieve in a relatively short period of time.  Naheed Nenshi. Read the rest of this entry »

Politics | No Comments »

Dear Mr. Harper:

If I buy something, I own it.  It is mine.  That is the nature of property law.  If I want to pry it apart with pliers, that’s my right.  If I want to hook it up to a Tesla coil to see it glow, that is my right.  If I want to take a piece of media that I bought and have the receipt for, and crack some silly encryption scheme that prevents me from enjoying it on the device of my choice, that is my right.

That is not piracy.  That is making personal use of something I bought and paid for in a way that suits me. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Online Culture, Rants, The Road to Armageddon | 1 Comment »

Ok, so there might be one or two people out there who may not realize that possibly the greatest show of this millennium, Breaking Bad, has entered it’s 3rd season.

Now Walt and Jesse are really the leads.  But one of the characters you gotta love is Saul Goodman, the world’s greatest lawyer (warning – the preceding link leads to an intentionally bad website).  As Jesse explained to Walt: “When it gets really bad, what you want is a criminal lawyer, and that’s this guy.”

Humour, Video | 2 Comments »

Ok, sometimes there’s a downside to being a nerd.

Yah, I can hear the gasps in the audience now.  But it does happen.

My most recent nerdburn moment came a few minutes ago, when I finally got around to updating to the latest version of Thunderbird, bar none the best email client available, from the people who bring you Firefox, the best web browser on the planet (suck it up ChromeBoys, Firefox still rocks, and will continue to  blow Chrome out of the water until they get their extension framework worked out.  Not to mention using WebKit as the base rendering engine.  Webkit?  I mean, what were they thinking?)

Ummm…  where was I? Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Humour, Online Culture | No Comments »

What do you get when you unleash Open source types on hardware design?  Sometimes, you get beautiful, quirky, devices.  Sometimes you get “design by committee” monstrosities that would have been better off never leaving the drawing board.

The WarMouse, also called the OpenOffice Mouse (which seems to be how they’re branding it), falls into the monstrosity category.

No, this isn’t some joke mock up.  At least, as far as I can tell it isn’t a joke.  If it is, then even Wired got fooled.

Can you imagine trying to work with that thing?  How many times a day do you think you’d hit the wrong button?  And that joystick on the side – exactly how many hours of practice would it take to become proficient with that?

Computer Stuff, Humour, One Post a Day | No Comments »

This might seem a little odd, but I have a habit of reading the code of web pages.  It might seem less odd when you realize I still do a bit of WebDev now and then, and it can be a useful way of figuring out the tricks people use to accomplish different things.

Sometimes, I come across a page with interesting ‘comments.’  For those who might not know, most languages have a function where you can enter snippets of information that won’t be executed – they’re basically cheat sheet notes for the coder, or also used to help other people who might need to work on the code later on.  You’ll find all kinds of gems in code comments.  I’ve seen code with Haikus inserted, bits of poetry, rants against ex wives…  I even know a website where the author maintains his personal Blog within the comments of the website.  It’s un-viewable to anyone who doesn’t read the code of the site.  However, that site is a well known, widely used forum for web developers, so there’s probably a lot of people who read it. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Humour, One Post a Day, Online Culture, Thinking About My Work | No Comments »

It’s funny.  On the surface, most people would think I’m a phone nut.  I’m on it a lot, and I tend to have phones right near the edge of the envelope, technology-wise.

Right now, I have both an iPhone (personal) and a BlackBerry (business – paid for by my company).  I have them set up to manage email and my appointment calendar.  I even have RDP and VNC installed on my iPhone, so I can remote manage several computers from anywhere I can get a cel signal.

I have big data packages for both, and they get used.

And I  hate both of them with a rare passion. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, One Post a Day, Rants, Thinking About My Work | No Comments »

Halloween has always been one of my favourite days of the year.  As a kid, I can distinctly remember trick or treating.  The costumes, the gleeful chaos of going door to door with my sister’s, and seeing all the children running up and down the street on a sugar buzz that would extend late into the night (around 9 p.m. or so).  I can remember getting home and sitting down in front of the TV with my sisters, and sorting out the loot, trading back and forth for our individual favourites, while my dad casually plucked out the mini bags of roasted nuts for himself “Because you kids don’t like them anyway.”

As a teenager, it became a time for late night horror film sleepovers.  Later, it was costume parties, and then as a young adult, all night costumed dance-a-thons at the “in” club of the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

One Post a Day, Rants | No Comments »