Running
Posted by rae in Reid
at 5:33 pm on Tuesday, 31 May 2005
This is more for myself keeping track of things than anything else..
So I ran quite a bit further than normal.
My odometer-accurate (i.e. not very) measurements are:at 5:33 pm on Tuesday, 31 May 2005
Normal run = 3.5 km
Today’s run = 5.3 km Total time was about 40:40, or just 40.66 minutes. This makes the average speed around 7.8 km/h. Ooooh, ahhh… I basically did my normal run up to the end of Catalina and back down Sylvan to Livingston. But instead of turning off Livingston at Catalina to go home, I kept going right up to the other end of Livingston and back. I honestly think I was at the point where I could keep going for a long time if I wanted to. Over paved, easy terrain though!
Photo “tags”
I really like flickr, but it has the flaw of being a paid service. Can’t fault them for it, but when it comes to long-term archival of photos, obviously Flickr is not a viable solution. However, I do so love those Flickr tags. Pre-Flickr they were usually referred to as “keywords”. PhotoSuite had them, and they were a really nice feature. However, in that app and others (e.g. iPhoto), the feature is locked up by a propreitary means of storing the tags. Thus my quest — to find an open way to save tags. Some sort of XML schema would be an obvious method. Of course, this need only be used for import/export/archival. But that’s what I’m all about here: archival. An app would likely keep this data ina a database for quick access and search. When you archive the photos to cassette/floppy/Magtape/CD/DVD/BD/HD-DVD/whatever, the tags would be saved with them. Otherwise, tags are a waste of previous time and energy. So, if you know of a standard, open means by which tags can be saved/restored, please let me know! My Googling revealed nothing.computer insurance?
Posted by rae in hardware
at 8:03 am on Tuesday, 31 May 2005
Someone may be graciously loaning me a laptop for my week away in California at WWDC next week,
and I would like to insure the laptop for that week.
Has anyone heard of someone doing this or done it themselves?
I’m thinking that since laptops are high-risk items, it may not be possible?
Firing up the Google engines…
at 8:03 am on Tuesday, 31 May 2005
iChat video chatting
Tonight Iain, jeff and I tried our first three-way video chat using iChat on Panther.
See the larger (1024 x 667) or largest (1495 x 974) version on Flickr
Anyone else want to experiment with this?
It’s pretty impressive, I must say.
See the largest (714 x 492) version on Flickr
Ronnie on the piano
Here is a 23 MB mp3 file of our living room this afternoon, while Ronnie was practicing his piano. It’s unedited, so you get to hear some conversation in the living room, too. I kinda recorded it for my Mom, and I’ll give her the link in email too (not sure how often she reads this blog), so there are a couple of “Hi Grandma Celie”s in there.
Charlie Jade - new SF show
Posted by rae in entertainment
at 12:52 pm on Wednesday, 25 May 2005
at 12:52 pm on Wednesday, 25 May 2005
I’ve gotten hooked recently on a new TV show on Space called
Charlie Jade.
It touts itself as “SF Noir”, a là Blade Runner.
In fact, it borrows more than just its sense of style from Blade Runner.
Chalie Jade is about a private detective who lives in a bleak, futurisitc world
where companies run the government, and the sky is filled with pollution, night and day.
Literally, a dark world.
An act of sabotage causes an industrial accident at the site of a super-scientific lab run by the world’s biggest corporation.
The accident throws Charlie Jade out of his world (the “Alphaverse”) and into ours (the “Betaverse”).
At the same time, one of the saboteurs is also thrown from their world (the “Gammaverse”) into ours.
Parallel universes, each very different and yet having certain basic things (and a few people) in common.
Although there is an official site, the
one hosted by Space
is much better.
Save Toby!
Oh, Luisa will LOVE this one.
Someone is stating simply that he is going to take his pet rabbit to the butchers, have him slaughtered and eat him unless “the net” pays him $50k.
At this point, he’s up to $28k!
Check out Savetoby.com (”Only YOU have the power to Save
Toby!”)
LOL. Mmm, I haven’t eaten rabbit for a few months now.
Too bad cows don’t wander freely..
P.S. Toby’s owner is interviewed in
this 13 MB mp3 of a Radio Go Daddy show, just over 10 minutes in.
Oh, and Toby’s owner also has a page of Rabbit recipes. 
flickr upload script
I’m very happy. Uploading to Flickr has been getting flakey, even via email, so when I ran across a mention of a Perl Flickr::Upload module, I installed it and whipped up a script to make uploading pics a snap! It doesn’t have any help or anything, but hopefull it will be useful to someone. It also hasn’t been tested a lot, except to upload my pictures with it. It also spits out this warning (which I’ve seen before) that has nothing to do with my code:
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.6/HTTP/Request/Common.pm line 128.
flup.
use LWP::UserAgent;
use Flickr::Upload qw(upload);
use Getopt::Long;
my $rcfile = "$ENV{HOME}/.fluprc";
if(-r $rcfile) {
if(!open(RC, $rcfile)) {
warn "Can't read $rcfile: $!\n";
} else {
while(<RC>) {
chop;
if(/(email|password)=(.*)/) {
$options{$1} = $2;
} else {
if(/(.*)=(.*)/) {
warn "Unrecognized option "$1" on line $. of $rcfile\n";
} else {
warn "Unrecognized command "$_" on line $. of $rcfile\n";
}
}
}
close RC;
}
}
&GetOptions(
"--tag=s" => \$options{tags},
"--email=s" => \$options{email},
"--password=s" => \$options{password},
"--public" => \$options{public},
"--friends" => \$options{friends},
"--family" => \$options{family},
"--save" => \$options{shouldSave}
);
@ARGV = (<*.jpg>) unless @ARGV;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
foreach $file (@ARGV) {
if(! -r $file) {
warn "Can't read "$file". Skipping.\n";
next;
}
$id = upload(
$ua,
'photo' => $file,
'email' => $options{email},
'password' => $options{password},
'tags' => $options{tags},
'is_public' => $options{public},
'is_friend' => $options{friends},
'is_family' => $options{family},
'async' => 0
);
if($id) {
print "Uploaded "$file" as ",
"http://www.flickr.com/tools/uploader_edit.gne?ids=${id}\n";
} else {
warn "Failed to upload "$file"\n";
}
}
if($options{shouldSave}) {
open(RC, ">$rcfile") || die "Can't write to $rcfile: $!\n";
print RC "email=$options{email}\n",
"password=$options{password}\n";
close RC;
# only readeable by user please!
chmod 0600, $rcfile;
}
And now Ronnie’s PC is dead..
Another Windows box bites it. This one looks like a virus or something. Just before it happened, a Windows Update ran and shut down the machine, which maybe was a little odd. Usually they reboot the machine, not shut it down. I wasn’t there when the Windows Update started, so maybe it wasn’t actually Windows Update. Ronnie was complaining that his PC just suddenly started to shut down. I’m not sure, but I thought I had set Windows Update to download but not install. Hrm. So, with three Windows boxes dead in the house, only Luisa’s PC is still functioning. We don’t let the kids use it except for running Word or something, so we’ll see if it lasts. Meanwhile, I bought a new case for myself, so I can give Michael my old PC case to get him back up and running. Of course, I don’t really have time for any of this, so the kids will be sans Windows for a while. They’re stuck with the iMac, I guess.
Ronnie’s ankle
Posted by rae in family
at 8:08 am on Wednesday, 18 May 2005
I’m taking Ronnie to see someone about his ankle today.
He’s not going to school because of it, and this is the third time it’s acted up over the last couple of weeks.
at 8:08 am on Wednesday, 18 May 2005