This server will be going down for about an hour today as I need to replace my cable modem. I’m thinking of going with the new Rogers Extreme modem but we’ll see when I go to the store. It requires a $99.95 purchase but offers far higher speeds. Have patience. We’ll be back before you know it.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2004.
I just had a bot crawl this blog with an IP address that resolves to a subdomain.hyperspace. Dot-hyperspace? That seems a little strange. I’m pretty sure it might be related to this site’s crawler but I can’t be certain.
I just received confirmation that my copy of Outfoxed has shipped. It should be here in 7-10 business days. I mentioned this documentary previously on my other blog and although I technically didn’t follow the subject (”When I have some more cash”), I still felt that it was important for me to watch this film. For $9.95 I’m hoping that it will be worth it. It has received a lot of attention on blogs recently and though it’s hard to tell if people have actually seen the film or are just jumping on the critical bandwagon, there’s no denying that the public (at least the blog-reading portion) is aware of this film.
I watched Robert Greenwald’s previous film, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War and was impressed with the critical slant of the movie. It’s much less heavy-handed as Fahrenheit 9/11 though certainly not as visually appealing as that film. Salon called (mentioned in my post here) Uncovered “more intelligent if less entertaining” and I’d agree with that assessment. I’m not aware of many other people who have seen the film though in the same article Salon calls it a “cult success”.
Robert Greenwald is definitely a fan of the Shocking-word: explanation template for his film titles. The full title for Outfoxed is Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism. In addition to this and Uncovered we have:
Both of these would be interesting to watch I’m sure but I don’t know how easy it would be to obtain a copy of either film.
Watch for a review of Outfoxed as soon as I receive my copy.
I was just looking at Liam O’Donnell’s website and noticed that he has done some work for Owl magazine. Man what a nostalgic trip looking at that magazine’s site was. When I was growing up, I lived off of Owl magazine and my sister read a lot of Chickadee. I’d forgotten all about these magazines until now but I realize (again) that they contributed to my love of reading and of magazines. The magazine describes itself as:
OWL is loaded with fascinating articles and amazing facts for 9 to 13 year olds. Each issue includes the science behind how things work, quizzes, contests, and topics that affect readers’ everyday lives. With breaking news stories and mind-boggling puzzles, it’s a thought-provoking, entertaining place for kids to grow.
I’m not sure how or why my parents decided to get a subscription for me but I’m glad they did. It probably made a not-insignificant impact on my love for technology, learning and science. I’m happy to see that something that I enjoyed as a kid is still around.
My musical listening habits are extremely cyclical. You might think that as odd considering the vast quantities of music that I have. Actually I’m not sure that I’ve ever mentioned (in this space) just how much music I own. Let’s just say that I could go many months listening to music 24 hours a day and not hear a repeated song. Yeah, that much.
Anyway, every so often I have a strong desire to listen to a lot of Naked Music’s compilations. It’s pretty smooth deep house (I think) and is very easy to listen to and be productive to. Perhaps this sudden urge to listen to their output is due to the fact that I’ve been reading the House Industries book (more when I finish the book) and I’ve seen a lot of their fonts used on various compilations over the years. Those are some very talented folks (at Naked Music and at House). I’m in awe of their creativity.
All week it has felt like day+1. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not because most weeks are long enough as it is. This weekend is a long one too as Monday is our Civic Holiday (only in Ontario). The goal? Pure relaxation. We’ll probably see a couple of movies at least (there are some good ones playing at The Princess this weekend). Also, Marcy wants to see The Village and despite Al’s fervent attempts (see Stephen I do read who writes the articles!) to dissuade any and all moviegoers, we’ll probably end up seeing it too. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t seen Signs that I’m not so anti-M as Al is.
Uh oh, I’m listening to “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson. I always go into a crazy mood when I hear this song.
Edit: It’s going to be even harder to keep straight what day it is. Both of my bosses have left for the week. Hopefully it isn’t too difficult to work tomorrow (assuming tomorrow is still Friday).
I’m not sure why but I feel like someone who pries when I look at my webserver stats in real-time. I find it fascinating how people browse around the material on this server. I also like analyzing the day’s stats (prepared by awstats) when I wake up. It’s interesting to me how the stats change day-to-day. There aren’t many people who reach this site via a search engine but that’s primarily because I’m constructed my robots.txt file to restrict most of the content (except for this blog). It’s mostly direct links from my other blog or via trackbacks that I’ve put on other blogs around the Internet.
I know I’m not the only one who does this either. Mel wrote a fine piece about web stats yesterday. It seems that Typepad provides a much more thorough analysis of visitors than awstats does however so she can get a much better view into the people reading her material.
I just checked CBC News (as I do often) and noticed that there was a lead story about the quality of life in Vancouver. Apparently those who live in Vancouver (and I know a few) live longer than the rest of Canada. The story links to a 38-page PDF file (redundant warning: PDF file) which I just finished going through. It turns out that living in Kitchener isn’t all that bad for your health. We have the seventh-highest life expenctancy (ahead of Montreal and Ottawa), a high median income, a lower-than-average rate of depression and “life stress” and a high percentage of people saying that we have a “good or better” health system in the city. The down sides about living in Kitchener? Well we have a high rate of inactivity of those over 12, a higher rate of smoking and heavy drinking and a rather high level of obesity. All in all I was pretty impressed how well Kitchener did against the other larger CMAs (Census Metropolitan Area) across the country.
There was a mix up with the cleaning staff over the weekend and they couldn’t come in to clean out the garbage (of which there was a copious amount). This led to an interesting problem involving the fruit flies. There are quite a few of them and even now that the garbage has been taken away, the flies are still hovering around the office. It makes for a not-so-sanitary eating and work environment. I can only hope that they perish soon.
Last week I posted about Ken Jennings, Jeopardy player extraordinaire. In that post I linked to this amusing post on Jason Kottke’s site. I also did a trackback on the post and thus was listed at the side under the other trackbacks. I received a lot of referral traffic from Jason which is not surprising since he is one of the more widely-read blogs on the Internet. Also, as Hello, Typepad says, he is Mr. Google since his post about Ken Jennings is the #1 hit when you search for him on Google.
The traffic did level off somewhat until Jason posted an update on his last 100 posts. More referral traffic was directed my way as a result of people reading Jason’s original post about Ken Jennings. To get a sense of the popularity of his blog, I’ve received over 550 hits from people clicking directly from his post. Since I’m just an obscure blogger, I can imagine that the actual number of people reading that post (and not clicking on my link) is far higher.
I would imagine that the traffic will die down as Ken Jennings is forgotten until the show starts up again in September. For me, I’m just happy that my server has withstodd the traffic, as it’s not exactly the most reliable of machines.
Edit: Augie has a nice summary of why Ken Jennings is such a strong contestant.
Well Marcy and I went to dinner with the Simonetto’s last night (discussed here) and we had a good time. Much discussion was had. In some ways it’s strange having dinner with your parents old friends, especially when they haven’t really spent much time with you in at least 15 years. I suppose this was the first dinner that we’ve had with another older couple since we’ve been married. I doubt that it’ll be the last. I wonder if Marcy and I will gradually start to spend more time with other married couples or whether we can find a balance between the married and single/non-married people in our lives. I’m hoping for the latter.
Marcy amazes me with her ability to carry on conversations about anything with anyone. The Simonetto’s gave us a wonderful gift certificate to Sears which I’m sure we will promptly use to buy new pillows and other things that we need. Tonight I’m going to vacuum the apartment again because the cats seem to think that it’s “fun” to throw litter around everywhere, particularly on the couch.
I’m in a great mood today! Things are definitely looking brighter. More details tomorrow.
Bonus points for identifying the source of my post’s title.
It seems that I’ve forgotten how to properly create Roman Numerals. My photo album for Elle has almost 50 sub-albums now and I was looking at albums 40-49 and noticed that the number didn’t look quite right. I did a quick search online and found the above linked page. I then had to go back and correct the Roman Numerals from XXXX to XL which is the proper way to represent 40 and above.
Yesterday Marcy was on the computer when something really strange happened. All of a sudden there was a sound of gas escaping or something similar to that at any rate. It was kind of frightening so I tried to find the source of the noise and it turned out that the power cord from my Cambridge Soundworks speakers was emitting some kind of strange vapour. It was white in colour and potentially dangerous (melting plastic is never a good thing). I quickly turned off the computer and then isolated the area. At first it was difficult to confirm that the power cord was in fact the source of the problems but when I sniffed it I could smell the odour that hung around the area far more strongly so it must have been that. I really can’t think of a reason why the power cord would suddenly start emitting smoke like that but for the time being I have the speakers unplugged and turned off because I don’t want anything to happen when we’re out of the house. I am going to have to do some more investigations at some point this week to determine exactly what went wrong yesterday.
Perhaps as a punishment for criticizing an ad campaign by a popular pain reliever, I’ve been struck with some serious pain in my forearms and right elbow today. Maybe it’s because my posture has not been that great or maybe I haven’t taken enough breaks but I’m definitely glad that I’m only working until 5 today. Marcy and I have been invited to the Simonetto’s house for a barbecue. They didn’t get to make it to our reception on the 17th and so they we were wondering if we might be interested in coming over to their place for dinner. It’s strange because in the 6 years that I’ve lived in Kitchener-Waterloo, I’ve only been inside their house twice. At any rate, I’m looking forward to dinner. I’m not looking forward to picking up my 407 (ETR) bill that they have at their house. It’s over a month late so now I’ll have to pay interest on the original amount.
Yesterday after work we had a really freak storm pass through extremely quickly here in Kitchener. This one came directly from the Northwest and the unusual thing about it was that the sun was still very bright and shining even though we had dark, menacing clouds. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
After that it was sunny and blue skies. Strange weather often passes through in the summer time.
There’s an apartment right at the end of my floor that features a strange pair. I think I’ve mentioned them before but in any case, I’ll summarize it here. Two women, in their late 30s to early 40s live together in a 2-bedroom apartment. One is in a wheelchair and they have two dogs.
Let’s start with the dogs. They’re annoying. Once you step out in the hall they bark up a storm. I can’t imagine how irritating that would be if you were living in their apartment and each time someone breathed out in the hall they would go at it. At times our cats seem to like to wander around the hall and I’m afraid of what would happen if one of the women in the apartment were to come out with the dogs. All I know is that it wouldn’t be pretty.
The women seem to fight a lot. And by “fight” I mean scream at each other. I remember that a couple of weeks after moving into the building last June, I was leaving for work and all I could hear was one woman yelling to the other “where are my cigarettes?” in a very harsh voice. This morning was another example. They yell pretty loudly so it’s not too difficult to hear what they’re saying without intending to do so. They were fighting this morning about personal space and how one of them couldn’t go into their bedroom without having their personal space compromised. Cuss words were bandied about and more screaming.
Other times I’ve gone out into the hall and smelled a whopping amount of marijuana. I don’t have a problem with this at all but when they’re smoking marijuana, there is no fighting.
Still other times I’ve heard really bad guitar playing. I’ve since learned that it’s another apartment dweller who is playing the guitar and I think the women invite him over to play for them. Unfortunately it’s mainly strumming on one chord and a lot of wailing. I wouldn’t expect to hear him on the folk-rock tour anytime soon.
Our direct neighbours are very reclusive. Two guys live in a two-bedroom apartment. The one guy that I’ve seen the most of is what Marcy thinks Robert Jordan looks like (though now that I look at actual pictures of the author I find that he looks nothing like him). He’s an aspiring author and even dropped off his manuscript through our mail slot. I’m not sure if Marcy read it or not. I know that I didn’t. There was a strange incident last summer involving their pet canary that died. That was how we first met them. The Robert Jordan man even invited us to dinner but I lost the invitation and besides we were far too busy at that time to have dinner out. The other guy who lives there is rather mousey, kind of like Mouse in The Matrix. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of them together but I often hear them discussing one thing or another when I’m waiting for the elevator.
I wonder what people on the floor think of Marcy and me.
This morning I was looking at the bottle of Tums on the bathroom counter and noticed that it expires in February, 2008. That got me to thinking – what happens if you take a Tums in March, 2008? Does it just lose its efficacy or does it really spoil like some other products (food in particular)? It’s thoughts like this that occupy my time.
Everyday I walk through the Kitchener Bus Station. I noticed something today though – the lane that holds the out-of-town buses (Greyhound for example) has a very thick layer of oil on the ground whereas the other lanes do not (or at least it’s not so apparent). I suppose it’s because the longer-haul buses are very different from the ones you see in-town but I was still surprised at the dirtiness of the ground.
It’s interesting that I just read Darren Barefoot’s post about the Escape Hybrid because I was just about to discuss the most recent book that I finished, High And Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV by Kenneth Bradsher.
This book was very well written and helped solidify a lot of ideas that I’ve developed over the years about sport utility vehicles. It’s pretty disconcerting that SUVs are so popular in the United States, particularly in the areas that are the most affluent. I remember when we used to live in Michigan that by far the most predominant vehicle on the road was an SUV. Naturally since we lived near the Big Three headquarters, employees and their families had deep discounts on these vehicles but I would ask these drivers the main question raised in the book – is it worth the risk to drive one of these vehicles, both to yourself and more importantly to other people on the road? What are the long-term consequences of driving these big vehicles – how many people will needlessly die over the next 20 years because of the poor design characteristics of SUVs? What are the environmental impacts of driving cars with such poor fuel economy?
It’s strange because here in Canada SUVs are far less common though they’re certainly a force on the highways and streets. Canada tends to be more focused on buying used cars and many of the vehicles on the road are smaller, fuel-efficient cars like the Honda Civic. It’s not really surprising considering the fact that fuel is at least 30% more expensive here than in the U.S. and the cost of living in general is more elevated.
Even when I lived in Washington state in the fall of 2002, the rate of SUVs on the road was much (much) lower than I found in Michigan which is surprising if you think that people buy SUVs because of their four-wheel drive capabilities but not so surprising when you consider that people buy SUVs because they’re a) popular b) high up off the road c) perceived as safer than cars and d) look fashionable.
As a small car driver, I’m terrified of the damage that can be inflicted on me, my car and its occupants if I were to be hit by an SUV. I can’t possibly see myself purchasing one and I know that Marcy feels the same way. Even though my parents now own an SUV (a Toyota Highlander) it’s at least on the safer side of SUVs, not that that is much comfort. SUVs are very dangerous vehicles and the idea that the number of used vehicles on the road driven by mediocre drivers (like teenagers and drunks for example) is only going to increase is really scary.
I’d like to think that legislators and government agencies can help the situation but after reading about the power of the UAW and Midwestern members of government I’m not so sure. I’d like to know more about the Canadian auto regulatory market but I haven’t yet begun to seek out that information.
One thing is for sure, the SUV controversy is not one that will be disappearing anytime soon so long as they’re popular at the dealers and poor in terms of safety and environmental footprint.
One final thought – it says on the back of my paperback edition that the author is now the Hong Kong bureau chief for the New York Times. I wonder if he sees that change as a promotion or a demotion because from what I read, he got a lot of publicity (positive and negative) because of this book.
Marcy and I went to see I, Robot last night. I really wasn’t expecting much and although the movie presented some interesting thoughts, it just didn’t do much for me in terms of filmmaking. I read I, Robot way back in Grade 5 so I can’t comment in any great detail on how faithful the movie is to the book (this article does a better job of that). I suppose you can only go so far in comparing two works when one is merely “suggested” by the other. As Mr. Cranky humourously points out in his review of the movie,
At the end of “I, Robot,” the credits note that the film was “suggested by” the book by Isaac Asimov. That’s about as warm of an embrace of your source material as one might expect to see between George Bush and Michael Moore. Here’s a more appropriate credit: “opportunistically named after” or better yet, “an affront to.”
If anything, the movie has made me desire to re-read the Asimov books that I grew up with in my “formative” years. I used to read a lot of them (though nowhere near his total output during his life) partly because my dad had a lot of science fiction novels and partly because I loved going to the public library (go Sherwood branch!).
Even in terms of a “summer action blockbuster”, I felt very disappointed with the film. It was like a cross between Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Short Circuit and AI: Artificial Intelligence without any of the good qualities of any of these films. Returning to Mr. Cranky:
The most interesting aspect of the film is the intriguing possibility that it was written and directed by a robot. The story is so formulaic that it’s practically an algorithm (rogue cop + dystopian futurescape + promising technology gone horribly awry = lots of shootin’). Will Smith plays his character with such precisely calibrated insouciance that it’s uncomfortable to watch. He delivers wisecrack after wisecrack, but the film’s humor subroutine apparently still needs work, because the jokes fall flat.
There were definitely no surprises during the movie for me and the interesting points raised by the underlying themes did little to redeem the weak plot. I think I’ll resolve to re-read the book and imagine what could have been an interesting tale captured on film.
For the last little while I’ve been bringing a lunch to work. It’s cheaper for one and also provides me with a better opportunity to eat healthy. Eating healthy you might recall is one of my goals mentioned way back at the Dawn of Time for this blog (as well as here on the Life Assessment quiz discussion). Well it seems that I can’t help but become too absorbed in my work and then suddenly it’s 2 o’clock and I haven’t eaten anything in hours. I should set a reminder for myself to eat at noon or close to it because when I eat later in the afternoon I’m not as hungry for the wonderful dinner that we have each night. I suppose it’s more difficult to take a break when you don’t actually leave your desk for lunch. Perhaps that is something that needs to be remedied.
I’ve mentioned previously the fantastic exploits of one Ken Jennings in this space. As he continues his streak (surpassing now the highest lifetime winnings on the show), he’s getting more and more attention in the media. This morning there was a Bill Simmons article on him, last week Heather Havrilesky wrote about him and there’s even a Wikipedia entry on Ken Jennings now (updated regularly I assume).
Interestingly, from the Wikipedia entry comes this page which is Ken’s own page listing the top 10 movies from 1921-2003. This guy has seen a lot of movies which shouldn’t be very surprising based on his breadth of knowledge.
One of the most amusing posts that I’ve read is The Cult of Ken Jennings on Jason Kottke’s site. He muses on the future implications for Ken’s continual success.
I’m pretty sure that this (or next) week is the last for the 2003-2004 season so we’ll see if he makes it past that roadmark with his streak intact or not.
Edit: I forgot to mention that a lot of the links above I received from this informative post on “hello, typepad“.
Well the first alpha release of Gallery, Version 2 has been released. Its codename is Cowbell for some inside-joke reason. I’ve been running nightly “builds” of the software (quotation marks because it’s just a slew of PHP scripts) for the last couple of months and I’ve been very impressed by the progress and sheer flexibility of the application now. It’s miles ahead of the previous release, which was only really useful for small-ish installations with a few pictures. Since I’m on the verge of eclipsing the 11,000 picture mark, the database-driven design of Gallery 2 definitely meets my needs and I can’t wait to see the upcoming fixes and optimizations that will occur as the developers march towards Gold.
That said, when I updated my CVS code this morning, I noticed that certain things were broken, notably the cache. The install keeps a cache of each “entity” in a directory format depending on the database id of each derivative image. Well it seems like they’ve changed the format, using 2 directories per id instead of just 1 as before. This meant that my gallery didn’t work properly and this exposed a couple of other smaller problems that I had not noticed until now. Since I had so much fun building the derivatives in the first place (this continues to be the weak point of the whole “adding pictures” process), I didn’t really feel like rebuilding them a second time so I had to manually create the second directory in each separate cache directory and then move the derivatives into the proper location. I’m pretty sure I have everything in the right location now but it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed something. If I were following the proper upgrade path then I would not have all of my pictures in the database and it would be a trivial task to reinitialize the gallery everyday. Since I don’t feel like doing that (it’s taken a good two months to get the structure set up to where I like it), I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled on the commit logs and discussion forums for any significant changes that could affect my installation.
Mel writes an interesting post about a commercial for a pain relieving medication that I saw for the first time last night. It appears to take the serious condition of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and/or Repetitive Stress Injuries far too lightly. The idea that you can take a simple pill and relieve the pain, often chronic, is a ridiculous one. There is no reason why pharmaceutical companies should be able to make claims like these without stern warnings about the underlying conditions they’re supposed to be helping.
I’ve been very careful about my posture while I’m at work or at home on the computer because when I got my first computer (1998), I had it installed on a very poor desk ergonomically-speaking. I used it so much that summer that I was feeling near-constant pain in my forearms and so I learned the hard way, early on, that it’s critical to have a good work environment for your computer. I encourage you to follow Mel’s tips at the bottom of her post because it’s a very preventable condition. I know for one that having an ergonomic keyboard (the split variety) has helped immensely and it feels so much more natural than the rectangular variety.
Back to the drugs though, one thing that fascinates me is the difference in over-the-counter drug prices between Canada and the United States. You’ve all probably heard about the prescription drug furor (which seems to have died down considerably over the last few months). But certain items at the pharmacy are ridiculously inbalanced. My theory is that if it involves the libido, gastro-intestinal system, temporary pain relief, or weight loss then it’s cheaper (far cheaper) in the United States. It’s no surprise that these are the most heavily marketed segments of the drug sector. I think it’s a sad state of affairs that drugs that could treat more crippling diseases and illnesses are so prohibitively expensive that it’s cheaper to suffer than to go through the hassle of obtaining the drugs.
Well we survived the weekend. It was extremely tiring, frustrating, joyous and wonderful all at the same time but it’s over now and that’s a good thing. The reception itself was over before we knew it and fortunately we were able to get through our list of pictures before it really started to rain. I felt sorry for the wedding that was scheduled to be outside starting at 6 because by that point it was really looking ominous. We didn’t have as much food left over as we had originally thought and that’s even better because a lot of people didn’t show up who were supposed to. That was more than a little disappointing because Marcy and I (as well as a number of other people) spent all of Thursday, Friday and Saturday getting ready for this reception and the people who were supposed to come but didn’t represent at the very least a wasted expense on our part. This is definitely one of the major downsides to organizing a big party like this. Apart from this issue though it was really great to see the people who did come and we got some really outstanding gifts. It’s kind of sad in a way too because this will be the last time that we’re all together in quite a while (as far as I can see).
Look for pictures of Saturday’s gala reception soon!
Today seems like Friday. I know it’s not (checks the calendar). It’s Wednesday. However my work week ends today as I’m taking two days off work to get ready for our big wedding reception on Saturday. I’ll admit that it’s been stressful getting to this point but after Saturday we should be able to relax a little.
Over the next two days though, boy, we’ll be busy. Tonight we’re going to Belleville. Tomorrow morning I get up early and drive to Mississauga pick up the flowers we’ve ordered and on the way back I have to pick up Marcy’s wedding dress in Peterborough. Marcy meanwhile will be doing the bulk of the grocery shopping tomorrow and working on the desserts. Friday is going to be an insane day where we need to decorate the gym and finish off the cooking for Saturday. I have a feeling it’ll be a late night. Saturday morning we need to put the finishing touches in place and get ready ourselves by 1 o’clock (earlier in fact). At some point I also need to practice the two pieces that I’ll be playing on Saturday (Adagio Cantabile from Beethoven’s “Pathetique” and “Wedding Day in Troldhagen” by Edvard Grieg).
Hopefully everything goes well (I’m sure it will). It’ll be nice to catch up with some of the people coming. I haven’t seen them in too long.
Well the server crashed once again this morning and was inaccessible all day. Fortunately there’s a chance that I might be able to get a new machine for free soon and that will be the answer to my prayers.
It’s been said that complaining about weather is a Canadian National Pastime. In the winter we complain that it’s too cold or not cold enough. In the summer we complain the same way, replacing “cold” with “hot”.
I routinely check out the front page of The Record (local newspaper) when I buy my coffee in the morning. This morning on the front page was a big story on how the summer hasn’t been hot enough (no link due to the inane online policy of this newspaper). This opinion was echoed on the local radio station, 570 News:
Summertime blues Where’s summer? For most of the country, the usual summer weather has been upside-down and backwards. It has been hot and dry in British Columbia, while much of the country has been cool and wet, with only the occasional nice day to tease us. Environment Canada senior meteorologist David Phillips says weather patterns have been pushing cooler “Canadian” air to the south, rather than allowing warmer “American” air to migrate north. He says in some cases the weather has been upside-down, with locations north of the Arctic Circle enjoying temperatures warmer than Toronto. Phillips says summer hasn’t missed us, it has just arrived a bit late. Environment Canada is forecasting warmer than normal temperatures for most of the country from now until the end of September, while much of Atlantic Canada will remain cool.
So since we’ve had a few days of cooler weather, it’s time for the media to complain about it apparently. In a couple of weeks I’ll watch for new articles complaining about how hot it has been and how we’re all longing for the cooler days.
So what do you when you have very unstable hardware controlling your main server and it crashes while creating thumbnails and resized images for your latest pictures?
Well you wake up the next morning to find that some of the records in your database (which contains a not-insignificant amount of data) have been corrupted. Your gallery software spits out an error and you go off to investigate. You figure out which table is giving the error and then run a database integrity checker (myisamchk) on the suspect table and hopefully that fixes it. Thank goodness for tools like this because losing all of your data and being forced to start again is not something you’d like to face. You’re happy with the way your gallery is laid out and you think about the countless hours spent getting it set up and running smoothly. You forget that you’re running a pre-alpha build of a complicated software package on relatively unstable hardware that is used for a variety of other purposes. You long for the day that you can afford a new computer for this purpose and how wonderful it will be. Then you can throw the existing machine off of a steep cliff. It has given you countless problems since you took it last June. What a cursed machine.
Edit: Equally fun is going through about 30 images and creating thumbnail and resized versions of them. Yet another reason why I love how frequently this machine crashes.
I’ve been a Jeopardy! fan for many years now; my parents used to watch it a lot while I was growing up and so I had a natural affinity towards the answer-question format of this popular gameshow. I’d watched it off and on over university (mostly off) and over the last year I’ve had periods where I watched it everyday and periods where I did not. Mainly it depended on what else was going on in my life.
I’d been reading “Various and Sundry” on a regular basis (since February I think) and noticed that he kept on mentioning this amazing streak of one contestant from Utah. I decided to start watching Jeopardy! again.
This guy, Ken Jennings, is quite gifted at the format of the gameshow and he has a firm grasp on many of the categories that they’ve used so far. Even when it seems like he’s in trouble, Ken can clean up on one category and be too far in the lead for any of the other contestants to catch him.
Augie mentioned today that there is the beginning of a backlash against the show for Ken being the champion for so long. I can understand the viewer anger but the man has to lose to get kicked off of the show.
And I’m sorry to hear that. I’d like to see him go 50 outings before he loses. I like the idea of rewarding achievement, and not punishing it “to be fair to others.” If only the rest of the world were like that…
I agree, the show isn’t meant to be some kind of “co-operation booster”, it’s a competitive show.
In reference to this quotation:
indicates that the streak is ended already, but that nobody’s talking as to how. The shows were filmed in February.
It has always amused me how Alex pretends to be living in the present day on the show when in fact the show is taped 4 months before airing. Yesterday on the show he said that when Ken was first champion it was still spring and today it’s “over 90 degrees”. Now yesterday in Los Angeles (where I presume the show is filmed), it was indeed over 90 degrees but I’m sure L.A. routinely has warm weather in July so it’s an educated guess by Alex. I often wonder if the contestants find it difficult to pretend that today is “New Year’s” or “Thanksgiving” because Alex says that’s what it is and there are categories reflecting that.
Ken Jennings is a gifted player for today’s Jeopardy!, there’s no question about that. He’s won over $800,000 thus far and it’ll be interesting if he cracks $1 million.
I’m not in the habit of watching CBC’s Witness though I have watched a few of their documentaries over the years.
Last night I decided to watch it and was pleased to watch a fabulous documentary on how Islam has been finding a lot of converts with the prison population in the United States, Canada and England. It’s called Islam Behind Bars.
There are apparently over 200,000 Muslims in the American prison system and most of these are African-Americans. This particular statistic is kind of frightening:
African-Americans comprise 13% of the U.S. population, 30% of people arrested, 49% of those in prison, according to a 2000 report by Human Rights Watch.
Frightening because it would tend to reinforce the idea that the “Black Man” is one to be feared.
I found it particularly interesting how the prisoners interviewed had such strong feelings against Christianity. They felt that it is a “slave-master’s faith” and didn’t really speak to them (these were the black prisoners saying this). When they discovered Islam, it threw the despair, poverty and hardships of people in other Muslim countries as well as their own into sharp focus.
The documentary tries to investigate whether this shift towards Islam is a positive development or “a breeding ground for terrorist organizations.” This latter view is held rather strongly by author Stephan Schwartz:
“They have turned Islam in prisons into little Saudi Arabias, in which they can exercise total ideological control, ostracize dissidents and threaten and intimidate people.”
Now I have little connection to the prison system so I really can’t say one way or another if this is true. I can understand how people might perceive this surge in Muslim adherence as a warning sign but I think that if these criminals can find a way to be peaceful, faithful and good citizens inside the prison (and later outside) then how can that be a bad thing?
I think people need to walk a fine line between labelling every Muslim as a terrorist and allowing people to speak their minds freely. Sure there are Muslims who want to destroy Western civilization but there are Christians, Jews and probably even Buddhists who think that way too. That determination extends across all faiths.
I read this article on Tagliners this morning and noticed this afternoon that Darren Barefoot had picked up on the same thing. The article in question, “On The Implausibility Of The Death Star’s Trash Compactor“, is pretty humourous but funnier than that for me is Stephen’s rewrite (the first link above) of one of the main points:
It’s funny, in a dry Martini kind of way, y’know – “And I was just saying to Reginald the other day, is it not odd that the trash compactor only compacts trash sideways? By my stars, it would only produce large, thin sheets of compacted trash as a result – surely an obstacle to the ships of the Imperial fleet!” Polite laughter ensues.
Now if only Stephen would rewrite the entire treatise in such a humourous, dry-wite kind of way, I’d be able to fill my laughter quota for the day.
I think I ignored the relevant links before, but Accordion Guy has definitely put things into focus for me (via Stereogum).
This is a recent picture of Britney:
Britney
Isn’t she classy looking?
How about a closer shot:
Britney – closer
Possibly even more enlightening than those two photos is this New York Post article.
Some choice quotations:
She happily explained why her recent weight gain is a sign of happiness (”Not that I’m going to become some lardass”) and what a great chef her fiance is (”He can cook anything – macaroni and cheese, fried chicken”).
and
She also dismissed her first marriage – which took place this January in Vegas and lasted all of 55 hours – as a “total ugh.”
So it’s a total “ugh” not an “ick” or a “blech”. I wonder at which point it crossed from being a good idea to a bad one?
These shots give a slightly different image than the Showtime special previews that I’ve seen (link only valid in the United States – seriously). I also read today that Britney has refused to get a prenuptial agreement with her fiance, much to the horror of her parents. She’s worth about $100 million and in case of divorce, her fiance would get half of that amount. She claims that she’s marrying for love, not money. Allegedly he gave her a $40,000, 5-carat engagement ring. But she had to pay for it.
This is pretty stunning: it’s a stop-motion-animated short version of Spiderman 2 done entirely in Lego.
You can find the film here (Quicktime 6 required). It’s a pretty amazing piece of work; better than the actual film in my opinion.
Reading the producer’s website, I find that the film was commissioned by Sony Pictures and Lego.
So I pointed out this photo a couple of days ago and said that I was excited to be surprised.
Bloglines birthday
Well this morning I was greeted with quite the surprise. Bloglines has completely reconfigured their interface. I’m really loving it. They’ve added the ability to automatically sort new feeds, the ability to publish your “clippings folder” (individual blog posts that you have saved) and also the ability to create your own blog right through Bloglines. I’ve created mine here but I’m not sure if it’s going to be used all that much. They’ve made it incredibly easy to post new feed items to your blog or “clippings folder”. Also the way they present the data has changed as well and it’s more intuitive and also has more information contained within each feeds. The number of subscribers is displayed right there in the title bar. Also they now have a directory of blogs to make it easier to find new feeds.
Overall I’m incredibly impressed by the new design. Bloglines is an amazing service and I’m amazed that they can provide it for free. If they did decide to charge for it though, I would definitely pay.
I spent a good portion of the afternoon’s break time trying to figure out why I can’t move pictures in my gallery. I traced through the code but couldn’t find anything obvious. Then I looked at the CVS commit logs for the appropriate classes and discovered that there was a limit set on a cache data structure and the number of albums in my gallery surpassed this limit, causing errors. So I increased the limit and was on my way. Sometimes it pays to understand what is happening under the hood.
As I mentioned previously, we went strawberry picking on Saturday. We picked 10 pounds worth of fresh, organic strawberries. They taste delicious.
We put the strawberries into three separate bowls when we got home but we noticed yesterday that the berries were becoming very fragile and the skins were bursting. The rush was on to finish the strawberries before they all became too ripe. We gave a lot to Stacey yesterday and I took in a bunch today for lunch. Marcy put two of the bowls of strawberries in the fridge and that seems to have hardened the flesh enough so that they weren’t becoming damaged just by sitting in the bowls. This means that the period of usefulness of these particular strawberries has dramatically been increased. This bodes very well for dessert and snacking expeditions.
Is there anything tastier than really fresh fruit? Perhaps but for me, today, these strawberries are amazing.
I always thought it was nonsense, but the adage “Don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want” has started to ring true for me. When I dress in business casual (or at least approaching that level), I can be far more productive at work. I don’t plan on coming into work in a shirt and tie anytime soon but I think I’m going to continue to dress nicer. We’ll see if my increased productivity can continue.
I took a break from posting for a few days. I hope that everyone had a great Canada Day and/or Independence Day.
My weekend was very relaxing and that was exactly what I needed. It felt like each day was its own weekend, that was how long everything seemed.
Friday Marcy and I went to Burford to visit with my Aunt Nellie and also to visit my grandmother and grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago last week she passed away. Seven years since my grandfather passed away. My aunt (actually my Great Aunt) showed me a book she had made for my grandfather (she made one for each of her siblings). It was pretty emotional seeing all of those early photos of them and my mom and her siblings, the photos of my family, the photos of my uncle’s family and finally at the end, the death notices of my grandparents and my other great aunts. It’s easy to see now that my grandmother’s passing was the catalyst (but definitely not the cause) of our falling-out with the rest of my family, on both sides.
Friday night we went to see Spider-Man 2 at Galaxy with John, Mark, Carolyn and Lamont. John was in from Vancouver to go to a wedding on Saturday and it was very nice to see him. The movie I did not like that much. It dragged in too many parts. I know I’ll probably be labelled as a blasphemer by some for saying this but it wasn’t that great a movie. After dinner we went to Molly Bloom’s in Waterloo for some food and drink and that was a lot of fun. Marcy has a way to capture a crowd that I’m very envious of but I know that I’ll never be able to do that. It’s just not in my nature.
Sidenote: I encourage you to go and see John’s film, Ewok in an Elevator playing over at Atom Films. Unfortunately it’s going to look like he copied the idea in the new Spider-Man movie but I assure you, he thought of the idea first.
Saturday Marcy and I slept in and then went berry picking up in St. Jacob’s. It was extremely hot and Marcy got a little dehydrated so we went back to the apartment to cool off. We watched Clueless at night. I like that movie, it’s pretty funny.
Yesterday we went to Chapters during the afternoon for a bit. I started reading a comic book biography of Louis Riel (man I hate Chapters‘ URLs). It was pretty interesting and I’ll have to go back and finish it (I was about halfway done). After that we went over to visit Marcy’s old roommate, Stacey. We showed her the wedding photos and ended up staying there for almost 5 hours. It was good though, we haven’t seen Stacey in a long time.
We got some New Orleans Pizza for dinner (which subsequently gave me heartburn) and watched most of Forrest Gump. Since it was July 4th, I suppose people thought it would be appropriate to show that movie since it’s a “feel-good” film and has a lot of “American values”.
I also finally finished a book that I started a while ago – Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. I love Eric’s writing (he also wrote Fast Food Nation). It was fascinating to read about the rise of the pornography industry in the United States and the ridiculousness of the marijuana punishments meted out by the US justice system. It’s remarkable how different the situation is here in Canada versus the United States and Eric remarks on this difference. I was a bit disappointed by the paltry amount of material about the illegal migrant worker situation but maybe Eric thought that subject has had more coverage than the other two issues discussed in the book. I look forward to Eric’s next book, reportedly on the prison system in the United States. I’d have to say that he’s one of my current favourite non-fiction writers.
So that, in essence, was my weekend. Hardly action-packed but considering how many of the weekends this year (extending even to last year) that we’ve had to run around the province, it was more than pleasant to stay in one place. This weekend is the bachelor party and the next weekend is our reception. After that we have little-to-no-plans which I’m definitely looking forward to.
I remember reading about this when it started:
In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world’s longest concert was coming two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go. […] The concert began Sept. 5, 2001 — the day Cage would have turned 89. The composition, originally written to last 20 minutes, starts with a silence, and the only sound for a first 1 1/2 years was air. The first notes were played in February 2003. After debates in Germany about what exactly “as slow as possible” could mean — anywhere from a day to stretching on infinitely — the group of German music experts and organ builder behind the project chose the concert’s 639-year running time to commemorate to the creation of the city’s historic Blockwerk organ in 1361.
It’s not immediately clear why they would choose 639 apart from the fact that 1361 + 639 = 2000 but then they started the concert in 2001 and when the concert is finished, in 2640 (if we’re still alive), that year is nothing special either.
I wonder if there will be a DVD-type of product available at the end of the concert and will the ClearChannel patent still apply? I wonder if this be a big deal in 2640 when the last note (or beat) is measured out? What measures are in place to ensure that everything progresses smoothly beyond our lifetime? If they miss a note, do they have to start over? If they’re late (but still get it), how does that effect the timing of the next measure/line/etc.? These are the questions that the musician in me has to ask.
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