istop.com

Posted by rae in web site
at 10:52 pm on Friday, 31 October 2003

Well, we’ve moved our internet connection over to istop now. Instead of paying Luisa’s employee-discounted rate for Ultra-speed Sympatico, complete with ever-changing IP address and blocked SMTP port, we are now paying a few dollars more a month for non-discounted service of the same (well, advertised as slightly higher) speed service, a static IP and no blocked ports.

There are some one-time charges starting up. We chose to buy the DSL modem ($80) and pay a one-time fee for the static IP ($50). We could have paid a few dollars a month extra for each, but they pay for themselves if we stick with istop for a year, so hey. See istop’s residential price grid for more details in what you can get for how much. To see how istop’s network is going, see their status page. To see if you can get DSL for your phone number, try out their elegibility test

As an extra bonus, they have add a DNS entry so that my static IP address now maps to tnir.org. i.e. a reverse-dns-lookup on tnir.org points back to tnir.org. I think that’s cool, but it’s hard to come up with any concrete benefits of this. If anyone knows of any, post a comment!

Btw, I made up the logo because, well, they’re a bit short on graphic design on their web site. :-)

2 Comments

programming: main() isn’t so main() these days

Posted by rae in development
at 10:29 am on Wednesday, 29 October 2003

In the C language, main() is the name of the function that gets called first when your program starts. Well, actually your global variables get initialized first, so if you say things like: 

int fred = 43;

main()
{
	printf("fred is %d\n", fred);
}

You would get “43″ printed out.

Now in C++, you can get objects declared before main(), as in: 

BigObj jumbo;

main()
{
	printf("jumbo.foo() is %d\n", jumbo.foo());
}

So now the BigObj object “jumbo” has to be constructed before main() is entered, which means the method BigObj::BigObj() gets called and code gets run before main(). This has gotten to the point where you get hundreds or thousands of lines of code run before main() is called.

Today I discovered that Objective C has a similar setup. The class method +load gets called before main(). I mentioned this to Mark, and complained that maybe main() should be renamed to mostly_main() or perhaps main_except_for_a_few_fiddley_bits(). He came back and said: how about “Victoria Park” as it is right after Main.

I nearly fell off my chair laughing. Okay, not really, but I got a big stupid smile.

Yes this is a big long post explaining about code just so you could get a joke. Thlppppt.

4 Comments

Where to get cheap books

Posted by rae in the Net
at 12:01 pm on Wednesday, 22 October 2003

There is an excellent thread on slashdot today about the “textbook racket”. Apparently textbooks cost a lot more in the US than they do elsewhere.. including Canada. I checked some textbook prices on amazon.ca and they were quite a bit lower than amazon.com. Actually, they quoted the price as converted from UK pounds (why not Euros?).

Interesting.

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Hope for genetic disease cure

Posted by rae in science
at 4:55 pm on Tuesday, 21 October 2003

This article brings amazing news. I didn’t realize that the mechanism of these diseases was so well-understood, let alone that a treatment is in the offing.

Wow.

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Tree fell on our car

Posted by rae in Reid
at 2:40 pm on Friday, 17 October 2003

Wednesday night it was really windy in Toronto. Luisa says she woke up in the middle of the night and could hear the wind howling. I slept like a log myself.

When Luisa went downstairs for breakfast at 3:30am (or whenever ungodly hour it is that she gets up), se saw more light than usual outside. Upon further investigation, she discovered that one-third of the birch tree in front of our dining room window was lying horizontally across the roof of our minivan.

Fortunately, there were two branches pointing down, supporting some of the weight of the tree, so the minivan wasn’t damaged at all really. It did mean that we had to do something, though, because the minivan was pinned down by the tree. Well, it probably could have brute-forced it out of there, but the rickety fence next to it, on which the tree was also resting, would likely have been damaged.

So we got out our circular saw (we don’t have a chainsaw) and cut off the top of the tree, close to the minivan. After a quick chop though a couple more branches, we were able to clear the driveway and head to work. I would like to mention that a complete stranger (to me anyway — maybe Luisa knows who it was) stopped his car and got out and helped us move the tree pieces off the minivan. Quite the helpful neighbour! I think he was on his way to work.

When Luisa got home that night she started cutting up the remains of the tree, and when I got home about an hour later I pitched in too. It was all cleared away by around 7:45pm. I remember because Iain was supposed to drop by at 8:00pm and I was glad we were done in plenty of time.

We took pictures with the analog camera, so I will eventually have pictures to add to this story.

2 Comments

Basic Rules for Driving in Toronto

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 2:26 pm on Friday, 17 October 2003

Making the rounds..

  1. Turn signals will give away your next move. A real Toronto driver never uses them.
  2. Under no circumstance should you leave a safe distance between you and the car in front of you, or the space will be filled in by somebody else, putting you in an even more dangerous situation.
  3. The faster you drive through a red light, the smaller the chance you have of getting hit.
  4. Never, ever come to a complete stop at a stop sign. No one expects it and it will result in you being rear-ended.
  5. Never get in the way of an older car that needs extensive bodywork. Ontario is a no-fault insurance province and the other guy doesn’t have anything to lose.
  6. Braking is to be done as hard and late as possible to ensure that your ABS kicks in, giving a nice, relaxing foot massage as the brake pedal pulsates. For those of you without ABS, it’s a chance to stretch your legs.
  7. Never pass on the left when you can pass on the right. It’s a good way to scare people entering the highway.
  8. Speed limits are arbitrary figures, given only as a suggestion and are apparently not enforceable in Toronto during rush hour.
  9. Just because you’re in the left lane and have no room to speed up or move over doesn’t mean that a Toronto driver flashing his high beams behind you doesn’t think he can go faster in your spot.
  10. Always slow down and rubberneck when you see an accident or even someone changing a tire.
  11. Learn to swerve abruptly. Toronto is the home of the high-speed slalom driving thanks to the Provincial Highway Department, which puts pot-holes in key locations to test drivers’ reflexes and keep them on their toes.
  12. It is traditional in Toronto to honk your horn at cars that don’t move the instant the light turns green.
  13. Remember that the goal of every Toronto driver is to get there first by whatever means necessary.
  14. In the Toronto area, ‘flipping someone the bird’ is considered a polite Toronto salute. This gesture should always be returned.
  15. At least four more cars should proceed on a left after the light turns red. If you fail to do so, you will be rear-ended.
  16. The highways can also be used to dispose of any messy garbage that may be lying around. These items are better off cluttering the side of the road then cluttering your car’s interior where they may distract you and cause an accident.
  17. If someone cuts you off you should return the gesture by speeding around them on the right, pulling in front of them and slamming on the brakes. This works even better when your car is of lesser value.
  18. Never make eye contact with another driver when passing through Scarborough. Nuff said!

10 Comments

iTunes for Windows

Posted by rae in software
at 2:54 pm on Thursday, 16 October 2003

Here’s MacNN’s version of events:

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10th Anniversary!

Posted by rae in Reid
at 11:46 am on Thursday, 16 October 2003

Today is the tenth anniversary of Luisa and I getting married. W00t!

Last night we celebrated by using a chainsaw to cut up a birch tree blown over onto the minivan the previous night. Isn’t that romantic? :-)

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From ipfw to ipchains to iptables .. to pf?

Posted by rae in software
at 10:56 am on Thursday, 16 October 2003

I ran across a reference to pf today while reading a MacSlash article. Here iwas thinking that iptables was the latest-and-greatest firewall tool, replacing ipchains. Now I have to take a look at pf!

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Canadian music download site

Posted by rae in the Net
at 9:49 am on Thursday, 16 October 2003

Lusia mentioned to me last night that music downloads were available in Canada now. I immediately assumed that she meant that the iTunes Music Store was now available in Canada. It turned out she was talking about another service, PureTracks.

There is a story in the Star about how the company’s website was completely overwhelmed and is now almost impossible to get onto. Users are also complaining about incomplete album downloads, etc.

I hope they get it working properly. I’m guessing that whoever set up the site wasn’t experienced in dealing with high-traffic websites with large bandwidth downloads. I don’t know anything else just now (since their website is unavailable). Are they using mp3s? wma? Can you burn to CD? In audio (AIFF) format? Inquiring minds want to know! So feel free to post a comment with any info you have. :-)

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