H a p p y B i r t h d a y L u i s a !
Posted by rae in family
at 2:34 pm on Tuesday, 30 November 2004
Today is Luisa’s 42nd birthday, woo hoo!
at 2:34 pm on Tuesday, 30 November 2004
The birthday girl
Look Ma, no braces!
Posted by rae in family
at 1:49 pm on Tuesday, 30 November 2004
at 1:49 pm on Tuesday, 30 November 2004
a braces-free Michael!
Ronnie’s cartooning class
Posted by rae in family
at 11:22 pm on Sunday, 28 November 2004
at 11:22 pm on Sunday, 28 November 2004
Ronnie has been taking a cartooning course at the community centre at Kennedy and McNicoll, and today was the last class.
His favorite piece is this picture he copied of
Wile E. Coyote.
He really enjoys the cartooning classes, and we’ll be enrolling him in the next one that starts in January.
Hm, at least I *think* today was the last one.
Downloading TV shows: how illegal is it?
Posted by rae in the Net
at 10:16 pm on Sunday, 28 November 2004
Does anyone *know* whether downloading a TV show is legal or not?
Does it fall under the same realm as borrowing a tape of a show from a friend?
It’s certainly *not* a perfect digital copy or anything, so that argument falls on its face.
Ads are usually edited out, but I do that with my VCR all the time.
at 10:16 pm on Sunday, 28 November 2004
A letter from Sheila
Posted by rae in friends
at 7:59 pm on Thursday, 25 November 2004
My Mom’s friend, Sheila, went on a nice cruise of the Mediterannean recently.
She has a wonderful gift for the descriptive, and I asked her if I could post her letter to my blog for everyone to enjoy.
Happily, she said yes.
So here is her email (to which I’ve added a few links).
I hope you enjoy it.
at 7:59 pm on Thursday, 25 November 2004
Ma chere, merci pour votre email, and I will continue in English! If you imagine a very large expanse of sea, with a range of mountains and hills alongside 500-2,000 ft high on your right hand (starboard) side — you are in a boat 56 ft long — steel hull painted dark green, with double white coach stripes, two masts, genoa sail, unfurled — white wheelhouse — I have just cleaned all the windows — called Calypso 1. We scramble up a short flight of steps from the saloon where we eat — into the wheelhouse — another table there if we need — up another 3 steps to the after deck — ah! Fresh air at last. We hang on to whatever handholds we can find — the adage One Hand for the Boat, One Hand for oneself — avoiding all the untidy ropes & lines, we make our way to the bows, where we lay down to sunbathe on the cushions — after creaming up of course. The weather is idyllic, for me, but a little quiet for the boys, Vic and his old friend Ian Noble, both true sailors, as they would like to sail at some point.So far not done. The boat is chug chug chugging along — making an enormous speed — all of 6 knots! we make ourselves coffee, or orange juice and light lunches of wonderful tomatoes cucumbers avocado — and look out at the glittering sea. This is the life… And what do we see all of a sudden? About half a mile away a huge black beast rears out of the water — it is a giant black submarine — what a sight! Off it goes quite quickly astern, while we train he binoculars on it. Probably the ONLY Turkish submarine. We are now heading for one of the smaller harbours, which Vic knows all about, with a small rural type of jetty and restaurant — we stop for refreshments now and again — there are so man places and names, Shirley, it is impossible to tell you everything just now — especially as I am NOT AT ALL familiar with this top of the range laptop computer that Vic has — it gets on my nerves as I am finding it hard to manipulate the mousepad. So you will have to be very forgiving. We began our voyage from close to ANTALYA, which is easy to find on a map of Turkey, around the southern coast, and have been gradually weaving our way around on the 400 mile trip around the coast — main stops UCAGZ — where Vic has a particular carpet merchant Mehmet — and I was seduced by Vic to buy one beautiful blue covered in flowers — Vic very generously is paying half — this carpet is wrapped up in a special bag for transport home, and when I am much cleverer with my Email, I will send you an picture of it as an attachment. At the top of one of the local islands, KALI, is a small decrepit castle — and Vic took me in his dinghy to climb the hill — well, it was a goat path, and I had to have the help of one of he local young girls who are always on the lookout for people like me — and with her helping hand, I climbed up this dreadful path to the top — beautiful view. Later we passed KAS, and on to MARMARIS. You will forgive me if I can’t remember all the places we visited, as the plans kept changing. So now we are in Marmaris which is an enormous tourist trap city — literally thousands of boats in several marinas — and I was pleased to get my first sight of one of these really humungous (made up word this, in the UK) Cruise Ships — there were two together, and we crept in — a fairly anxious few minutes for me! — right under the bow of the larger vessel — looked like a concrete hotel — a horrible sight in the day, but fantastic at night — we watched it going off in the dark — all lights ablaze — a film for real. It had to make a tight turn before heading off — scary but great. Ian Noble enjoyed our quayside stopover, as we sat in the cane armchairs watching the world go by. Vic has gone off somewhere — and here he comes, on his bicycle! Another sight for sore eyes! He has dealt with the maritime formalities. Our mobiles are often not working properly, so it has taken some time for him to find us! The marinas are absolutely crammed with craft of all kinds — probably because Turkish harbours are cheaper to berth in than Greek. And there very many German speaking tourists — and from those countries nearer to Turkey. Vic knows this coast like the back of his hand — one afternoon we berthed at one of these tiny bays, where there was a very small bar/restaurant known to Vic — the people are thorough seaman, and the young teenage girls go out in their dinghies with outboard engines, with an orange buoy with their right arm, and wave beckoning any passing boat with the left arm — sometimes all three youngsters — hoping to entice them in! That is a sight to behold — real fun — for half an hour at a time. Mustapha’s daughters are lithe Amazonians beauties — no wonder Vic is fond of this bay! We called in at KNIDOS, which was another small place, which has an ancient history — the boys sat at a bar with their beers — honestly, these English! while I climbed into this historic ancient town at the top there were 2 ruined temples — the topmost was particularly good — Round Temple to Aphrodite — with three marbled terraces to rest one’s weary self — and look out and all around at the bays with all the boats so far down in the distance — and the ancient broken slabs and broken columns and crafted urns — all sorts of beautifully carved things — pieces of olde houseware etc. The marble terrace was so comfortable — I asked the Californian tourists to take a photo of me reclining like one of the Godesses! In the end we settled for a more puritan picture — hope to send you one day. There was an amphitheatre, but I was tired by then. Victor was still reading his book with his drink beside him when I returned…. I have done some shopping — calf leather handbag, a small bracelet — had a manicure and pedicure, as this sort of thing is so cheap around here — and pair of good leather walking shoes — if possible we are all going to EPHESUS — as you may know one of the truly wonderful ruined temples of the ancients — much better preserved than most other temples, and of course much larger. That would be a special experience, and I do hope we can do it. Victor has given me a marvellous holiday — I am getting brown as a nut — he has spoiled me rotten — as we say. Even Ian Noble — that tall gentle courteous kind gentleman has been paying for some things for me — I am being completely looked after. I have almost nothing to do except enjoy myself in my new hat and shorts! Occasionally I pretend to do a few chores — like cleaning the windows, or polishing some chrome — and even picking up a rope now and again — but in general Vic does almost everything himself. Of course I have learned a lot. Today, we saw beautiful racing sailing ships — but there has been hardly any wind so no real sailing — the boys are sorry but I have no problem. We are moored to a buoy — place called GUMUSLUK — outside a restaurant favoured by Ian, who is treating us to a special meal this evening — the proprietor of this area — a large handsome Turk will come out and get us in his dinghy, as there is no jetty. I regret that Vic has often had occasion to be a bit testy with me and my ignorance — so I began calling him Mon Capitain Testy — don’t think that went down very well! Must close now — poor Vic’s computer bill must be humungous! Love sweetheart — your friend Sheila A. x x x
Date: 19 Oct 2004 15:31:00 -0000 From: 9z9999@sailmail.com To: xxx
Domain Management
Posted by rae in web site
at 10:40 am on Thursday, 25 November 2004
We have a number of domains pointing to tnir, our Linux box in the basement,
and it’s currently time for the big domain
(tnir.org
itself) to renew.
at 10:40 am on Thursday, 25 November 2004
I’ve been asking around about places with better prices than
Register.com,
which is what I’ve been using up until now.
A little while back I registered
LostHighwayArt.ca
for my Mom, and ended up using
LowCostDomains.ca,
because they were pretty inexpensive.
It worked well enough that we ended up transferring over another domain:
perrella.org.
However, I wasn’t very happy with their DNS management setup.
Although it wasn’t important for the domains I had transferred,
it’s quite important for
tnir.org, as there are several well-used subdomains:
rae.tnir.org,
dwjoyes.tnir.org,
pics.tnir.org,
and
news.tnir.org,
to name a few.
So, I decided that LowCostComains.ca wouldn’t do for tnir.org itself.
I heard about another place from
Harald
called
dotster.com.
After poking around to see what they offer,
I’ve now transferred tnir.org and
gmone.org
(which is also expiring) over to them.
They are much cheaper than register.com,
and they have an explicit “DNS Management” package
for handling the sub-domains that tnir.org needs.
I left it a little bit late for the transfer
(both tnir.org and gmone.org expire Dec 2nd),
so things might get a little dicey around Dec 2nd when trying to access tnir.org.
If so, please bear with us!
I think I will set up an alternate for the various subdomains,
perhaps under zorrodev.com,
which is another domain pointing at tnir.
So if you can’t get to my blog at
rae.tnir.org, please try
rae.zorrodev.com
(which should be working right now).
RSS feeds upgraded
Posted by rae in web site
at 10:02 am on Monday, 22 November 2004
at 10:02 am on Monday, 22 November 2004
I’ve upgraded the RSS feeds for
ReidNews and
Tech Tok
to include full articles with pictures and everything.
I’ve noticed some non-functioning images in the Tech Tok feed, but can’t figure out why they’re not working.
If someone can browse Tech Tok’s feed with something like
NewsFire
and let me know if they can see all the pics in (for example) the
Ogre 3D engine article,
I would appreciate it.
I’ll be upgrading
33 and a Third too, and
Barkerburgh (if David wants it).
Recording Internet Audio with Skype
Posted by rae in software
at 12:48 am on Monday, 22 November 2004
at 12:48 am on Monday, 22 November 2004
Skype
is something that looks like Yet Another Internet Chat program.
However, it has one feature that interests me: it can record a multi-way voice chat to disk.
I’ve always wanted to do some sort of tech talk show (thus my
Tech Tok
site) and thought that if I could record both ends of an iChat conversation, it would be great.
Well, this seems to do just that.
Does anyone want to try installing this and checking it out?
It’s cross-platform, being available for Windows, Mac, Linux and even Win CE (aka “Pocket Windows”).
Friday Night Gaming
Posted by rae in friends
at 1:37 pm on Friday, 19 November 2004
at 1:37 pm on Friday, 19 November 2004
Almost every Friday night I head over to Hrach’s place to meet friends and play games.
I guess it’s my version of the erstwhile “Friday night out with the boys” or something.
But girls aren’t excluded; they just don’t go!
I wish more would.
Is gaming too masculine or something?
I can’t believe that.
Right: Me at Vartan’s (pic by Walter - click for more of Walter’s shots)
Well, in any case, Michael and I drive out to what we call “Vartan’s place” most Friday nights.
It isn’t Vartan’s place really.
He hasn’t lived there for years.
It’s really Vartan’s parents’ place.
But Hrach, Vartan’s brother, still lives there, so maybe we should be calling it “Hrach’s place”.
But we still call it “Vartan’s place”.
Old habits die hard.
(more…)
T’nir is all better now..
Posted by rae in web site
at 10:16 am on Friday, 19 November 2004
Looks like mail is working both ways now.
If you sent email to me or anyone else on tnir between noon on Wed Nov 10th and 11:45pm on Tue Nov 16th, it might not have reached us.
Please re-send anything in that window.
at 10:16 am on Friday, 19 November 2004