ReidNews

TWiT HD harangue

rae — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:48:45 +0000

Getting tired of people screwing this up. Especially people who should know better.

On either “This Week in Tech” or “MacBreak Weekly” (I don’t remember which) the participants were constantly *incorrectly* saying “1080p” when describing all sorts of cameras. The cameras they were talking about are all unable to do 1080p, at least at 60 frames per second (fps).

All of the cameras, however, can do 1080i. That one letter makes all the difference. ‘i’ stands for “interlace”, which means it only records every other line. I like to call 1080i “squished 540p”, since that’s how many scan lines are recorded.

Some cameras can record at a slower number of frames per second. e.g. the Canon I want to get can record at 30 fps and 24 fps. At both of these speeds it may be able to record at 1080p. However, since 1080p implies 60 fps, it would be better to include the frame rate somehow, and call it something like 1080@30p (I think I’ve seen that notation somewhere).

The only video cameras that can do 1080@60p are very expensive. Over $5,000.

Well, not counting the new stuff from Red coming out tomorrow. That might be a game-changer. At least I hope so..

Imperial Asia

rae — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:24:34 +0000

The rondel I’ve done so far for our version
of “Imperial Asia”. Click for larger image.

We play a lot of Imperial on Friday nights at boardgaming, and recently we tried a new map someone came up with called “Imperial Asia”.

It’s nice, but the quality of the map left something to be desired, so I have embarked on the task of doing another one. Should be fun!

So to this point, I’ve got a general map of the area and an almost-finished rondel, which you see to the right. Below is a mockup of the map, which is still in the process of being traced out in Illustrator.

click for larger version

Testing, 1 2 3

rae — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 05:33:33 +0000

My site seems to be un-red-eyed.

Please leave a comment if you can see my blog. It would make me happy!

Google banned rae.tnir.org

rae — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:17:51 +0000

Well, I think it’s more of a combination of Google and Firefox.

My site was hacked via a Wordpress exploit. I’ve updated to the latest (I was at 2.5, now at 2.6.1), which should fix the issue.

I’ve applied to Google to get rae.tnir.org re-evaluated. But their form for re-evaluation says it will take “several weeks”! So until then, my site will be red-eye-banned by all Firefox users.

Ye gods.

2008-09-18 13:05 Update:
Found out that Google is in cahoots with stopbadware.org, and applied to them to get my blog reviewed. Their turnaround was significantly faster than that of Google (which hasn’t done anything yet). I got this email reply from them a day or two after I asked them for a review:

We have received and processed your request for review of your website, rae.tnir.org/. Google’s most recent test of your website found no badware behaviors on the site. As such, the Google warning page for your site has either already been removed or should be removed shortly. In addition, if your site has been listed in our Badware Website Clearinghouse, we will remove your site from the Clearinghouse list.
Sometimes website owners are confused about why Google placed a warning in the search results for their site. In many cases, a website run by an innocent site owner has been hacked by a malicious third party, causing the site to distribute badware without the site owner’s knowledge. If your site was distributing badware because it has been hacked, then simply removing the bad code from your site is not enough to keep your site clean in the future. You will also need to work with your hosting provider to fix all security vulnerabilities associated with your site.
Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.
Answers to commonly asked questions from site owners who are the subject of Google warnings can be found at: http://stopbadware.org/home/faq#partnerwarnings For tips on keeping your website clean and secure, please visit: http://stopbadware.org/home/security
The StopBadware Team

So with any luck, this blog will be out from under Googles Red Screen of Death sometime soon.

A Qik video from boardgaming last night

rae — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:50:19 +0000

I use the “Qik” iPhone application last night on my jailbroken iPhone to stream some live video to the ‘Net.

You can see all my awesome videos over at qik.com/rae.

Ow

rae — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:31:43 +0000

I did something to my leg. No idea how. Maybe the long-ish bike rider over the weekend?

Whatever the reason, it’s now hard to walk. I may have to take time off work to let it heal, or something.

Sat around all weekend at Tony’s cottage up near Minden feeling about as useful as a doorstop. Managed to get 2/3 of the way through “The Bourne Identity” though. The book is very different from the movie. And still good!

I was amazed that I actually managed to get an EDGE internet connection up there.

Ronnie starts D&D camp at the ROM today. He’s loaded to bear with his Warcraft III Monster Manual and bag o’ dice (my bag o’ dice, actually).

David at Bat in Wasaga

rae — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:24:21 +0000

iPhone Updates

rae — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:34:40 +0000

It seems that (a) Apple is pissed at Rogers data plans and is limiting its shipments of iPhones to Canada as a result, and (b) Rogers will let you buy an iPhone on your existing plan, without a data plan.

Now, *I* would think that you would have to pay a higher price for the iPhone, since Rogers is subsidizing them with their onerous data plans, but Sergey says that you will still be able to pay the $200/$300 prices. We will see, I suppose.

P.S. This is a “blog post” submitted via ping.fm , and I’m curious how it will look..

P.P.S. This is a second attempt. Hope I can delete the first one from LiveJournal..

Moments in Time

rae — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:39:31 +0000

This week marks Ronnie and Michael’s respective graduations. Ronnie from Grade 8, Michael from Grade 12.

Next year they both head out to new schools, and both of them will be taking the TTC instead of walking to school. They’ll both be in classes with completely new people, almost all of whom they don’t know.

This week was the last time both of them will be seeing many of their schoolmates. And yet, they’re both somewhat unaware of all this. Luisa mentioned Michael’s reaction, and Ronnie’s — although perhaps a bit more elequent — hasn’t been much different.

I suppose it’s often the case that you can be unaware of some large changes when they resemble other, smaller changes that have gone before. Ronnie and Michael are used to starting summer vacation. It’s the end of that vacation that will really be different.

“Southland Tales”

rae — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:19:10 +0000

I just saw “Southland Tales” which is a mind-warping SF movie. It reminded me of “Charlie Jade”, “Repo Man” and “Johnnie Darko” (the last makes sense since it’s the same director). But before you see it, be sure to read parts 1 to 3 in graphics novel format first. The movie starts with “Part IV”.

It has some surprising names, for such an unseen movie. Sarah Michelle Gellar (”Buffy”), Dwayne Johnson (”The Rock”), John Larroquette, Christopher Lambert, and Jon Lovitz. There is a bizarre musical in the middle starring Justin Timberlake, who plays a minor character.

My favorite comment on the new hi-res galactic snapshot

rae — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:30:34 +0000

NASA has released a HUGE image of the milky way galaxy (396,032 x 13,520 pixels!) (yes, I downloaded all 16 full-res pieces — new desktop pics abound!), and there was news that some of the spiral arms of the galaxy may be “demoted” from bring major spiral arms. Shades of Pluto!

There was a very pithy comment on slashdot:

“two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.”
I suspected something like this might happen, I just didn’t dream that they’d go so far.
I mean, you have to be just a little suspicious about whether all star-forming arms are on an equal footing when you look at the names. There’s Perseus and Sagittarius. Then we get to Scutum-Centaurus, and you have to wonder if the astronomers needed a leg up in the imagination department. And then all doubt vanishes when we get to the fourth arm…Norma. Yes, Norma. Like the girl who couldn’t wait to get old enough to disown her parents, legally change her name to Chantal and get a job at the brass-pole ballet.
You just had to know they were having their doubts about arm number 4.
On a more positive note, the same bunch of guys who just slammed Scutum-Centaurus and, um, “Norma”, are also telling us that they “obtained detailed information about our galaxy’s bar, and found that it extends farther out from the centre of the galaxy than previously thought”.
A bar that’s closer to the house than you thought can’t be a bad thing. Especially when you need to walk home.
– I’ve calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.

Firefox Download Day 2008

rae — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:24:56 +0000

The folks at Firefox are trying to set a new world’s record for the number of downloads in a single day. I dunno, what’s the current record?

Okay, I got sucked into it. I even created a Facebook event for it, and joined the Facebook group.

So sue me.

And download Firefox 3 on the day it comes out!

Trying out “Disqus” for comments

rae — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:51:01 +0000

Let me know what you think of the new comment system. I’ve installed if for all zero-comment posts (which includes all new posts), so old posts with comments still have the old WordPress commenting system.

This may involve you having to create a Disqus account, but the idea is that you can use that account across blogs. I am also setting up Disqus on Tech Tok so you only have to create your account once for both places.

Leo Laporte has also set up his blog to use it. Maybe it will spread everywhere.

The idea is that your comments belong to you, and Disqus makes it easier to follow people, as opposed to blogs.

gdb_stl_utils for Mac OS X

rae — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:31:33 +0000

Oh ya, this will have a wide audience..

There’s a very useful little utility for debugging STL under gdb, and it’s called gdb_stl_utils.

However, the Makefile that comes with it doesn’t account for multiple architectures like Intel/PPC on the Mac. So I updated the Makefile and posted the whole thing on clith.com/gdb_stl_utils. I’ve mailed the new Makefile to the person who most recently updated it in hopes of helping others use this very useful tool.

GeForce 8800 GT in my Mac Pro lets me run Windows games again!

rae — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:42:35 +0000

With my new GeForce 8800 GT installed in my Mac, all my 2D window-drawing artifacts are gone, and I am once again able to play 3D Windows games (via BootCamp) without having the machine crash from overheating after 10 minutes.

So Walter, Iain and John should watch out for a new Team Fortress 2 user by the name of Clith de T’nir!

Most Romantic Books

rae — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:46:48 +0000

Not sure how I got there, but this page has a list of people saying what their favorite romantic books are.

A quick Perl script later, and here are the top books with the number of people on that page that mentioned them:

15 Gone With the Wind

15 The Bridges of Madison County

12 The Thorn Birds

11 The Notebook

8 Outlander

5 Wuthering Heights

3 A Knight in Shining Armor

3 Jane Eyre

3 Pride and Prejudice

3 Whitney, My Love

2 A Farewell to Arms

2 A Town Like Alice

2 Cyrano de Bergerac

2 Five Smooth Stones

2 Green Mansions

2 Joy in the Morning

2 Katherine

2 Love Story

2 Rebecca

2 The Flame and the Flower

So there you go.

Iron Man

rae — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:52:04 +0000

I went to see Iron Man on Thursday, the day before the erstwhile opening day.

With me were Andy, Jeff K and Craig. Overall, it was quite a fun movie, which required the usual comic-book suspension of disbelief. A quick explanation of why Tony Stark was able to ignore inertia would have been nice. “Engage inertial dampeners” would have sufficed.

Definitely recommended. I certainly enjoyed it enough to go see it again on Saturday with Luisa and Ronnie. (Ronnie had piano practice on Thursday night)

This year’s April Fools

rae — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:43:46 +0000

Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars
YouTube changes all “Featured Videos” into RickRolls
xkcd goes to the wrong comic
GMail Custom Time

More as they appear..

CBC distributes “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” via torrent

rae — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:52:29 +0000

Wow, not only did the CBC use BitTorrent to distribute the show, they also encoded it as a 545 MB, 720×486 Xvid AVI (as well as a smaller, 320×240 MPEG4 version for iPods). I was half-expecting wmv or QuickTime…

And to top it all off, they put the torrent file up on Mininova! How cool is that?

Apple TV Hacking: success!

rae — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:11:06 +0000

I managed to get ssh working at last. And then I tried to enable USB storage, but that was a mistake. I thought it meant I could plug in a USB drive and the Apple TV would play content off of it. But no, it meant rebuilding the kernel so that any USB drive plugged in to the Apple TV would have its main disk copied to it.

The idea is that this external, much larger disk will be the new boot volume. But that’s not what I wanted at all. So the Apple TV got stuck, so .. I reset to factory settings (that’s a brilliant option, btw).

So, I know I can do it now. The scripts “out there” are pretty rough and tumble. I’m thinking I may create a Mac OS X 10.4.9 partition on my Mac Pro, just so that I can copy over all the missing frameworks and libraries so that I can get things like wget to work..

Apple TV

rae — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:44:59 +0000

I just popped out to the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre and bought myself an Apple TV (take two).

I got the smaller model since Apple charges over $100 for 120 GB more storage. For $143 I can get a 210 GB more storage from Canada Computers.

Many thanks to Iain, who pointed me at appletvhacks.net. It needs to be hacked, to add support for other codecs like DivX, XviD, and mkv (Merikovian? Merovincian?)

Toronto Fire

rae — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:40:25 +0000

Queen Street fire, courtesy drpitch

There is a 6-alarm fire on the south side of Queen Street, east of Bathurst. Lots of coverage, with crap from mainstream news sources:

www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2008/02/20/toronto-fire.html
www.citynews.ca/news/news_19772.aspx
680news.com/news/topstory/article.jsp?content=20080220_054636_4388

Excellent stuff from local Toronto blogs:

torontoist.com/2008/02/massive_fire_hi.php
torontoist.com/2008/02/phototo_queen_s.php
www.blogto.com/city/2008/02/6alarm_fire_at_queen_bathurst
blog.davemadethat.com/2008/02/20/a-piece-of-my-history-is-destroyed

Spooky Google Ad words on these sites include:

Fire Fighter Training
3 month NFPA Accredited
Program Emergency
Services Academy Ltd.
www.esacanada.com

I’m trying to elucidate exactly what it is that makes the blogs better than the news sites. I think it’s mostly presentation and the much larger, clearer photos. Also the language is more down-to-earth and less “newsy”.

Also the use of:

updates with new info
community photos from Flickr
community comments on the article page

really make a huge difference. Also the use of actually useful links like the Toronto Fire Services’ Active Incidents page stands out.

Using Jaiku now more than Twitter

rae — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:20:10 +0000

I noticed this last week that Jaiku has an IM interface now, and I find my self using it more than Twitter. In many ways, Jaiku is like Twitter 2.0. Each status update can have comments appended to it, and an icon attached to it.

There’s also the usual cell-phone integration too.

Like the Google Ads?

rae — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:39:58 +0000

I found out that I managed to earn $17 over the last 2 years via Google ads. Then I noticed that I had removed them a while back. So I just plopped one up to see how it looks.

Right now it’s pretty ugly and in the wrong place, but hey, at least it’s using relevant terms! I love that it advertises Rogers if you read the article about Rogers “unlimited” data plan.

Rogers ‘unlimited’ cellphone plans rake in the dough

rae — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:53:39 +0000

(with apologies to CBC News )

Toronto-based Rogers, Canada’s largest cellphone provider, quietly announced a plan last week that would allow “unlimited” internet browsing on certain cellphones for $7 a month. The company also introduced a “Communicate Suckage” pack for $20 that bundles the browsing with text messaging, voice mail and call display features.
Rogers spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton said the prices reflect the changing state of the gullability of cellphone users.
“We’re in the business of financially raping customers for trivial functionality. As subscribers grow, as applications actually do something, we can really rip customers a new one,” she said. “We’re finding new ways of gouging them all the time.”
Both plans allow customers to browse whatever websites they want on their mobile phones, .. except for really good ones, which aren’t approved by Rogers, like Google Maps. The plans also do not apply to anything with a CPU in it, and do not cover e-mail, since Rogers wants to introduce another $20 “E-mail Suckage” plan for that. Rogers really, really hopes that customers don’t read the fine print and try using their cell phone as a modem, so they get raked over the coals with per-kilobyte charges.
Critics said the plans were Rogers’ latest attempt to confuse customers, this time by misrepresenting the word “unlimited.”
“What appears to be a good deal on the surface is actually complete shit,” wrote Marc Lostracco, assistant editor of the Torontoist website. “Customers need to remember that a company calling something ‘unlimited’ is obviously out to get you.”
Hamilton disputed the criticism and said the plans fit the uses that Rogers allows.
“It’s actually an excellent cash cow,” she said.

New Trek Movie pics

rae — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:40:20 +0000

Spock and Kirk

Pictures are starting to show up on the ‘Net of the new Trek crew and the “new” ship.

Plot details have emerged as well, so beware of spoilers online. I won’t put any here.

I’m really looking forward to this.

click for a *much* larger image

Chandler Goodbyes

rae — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:29:36 +0000

A lot of people are saying their good-byes in email to everyone. An “alumni” mailing list has been set up to keep in touch. This seems like the civilized way things end.

I feel a bit guilty (but not much) because my last day is Jan 31, not today like many others. But I, too, will be moving on.

Given the small world that is software development, I expect I will run across many people over the years. That’s one thing that Facebook and LinkedIn are good for — keeping in contact.

Macworld 2008: MacBook Air and iTunes rentals; that’s it!

rae — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:41:43 +0000

This year’s Macworld keynote was more if a key-not. iTunes rentals were a non-story, having been expected for months. The MacBook Air, while sleek and sexy, isn’t really for the broader market.

Like Jeff, I was hoping for the iPhone in Canada. But now I fear that Rogers has killed it, at least until the 3G iPhone comes out.

MacHeist

rae — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:53:42 +0000

Well, with Macworld looming this week, there are lots of promotions out there. I just bought a MacHeist bundle of several small apps.

I bought it for a few reasons:

There are at least two really good apps, and one (Pixelmator) I’ve been curious about)
A percentage of the price goes to a charity of my choice
It’s pretty cheap for all those apps ($50)

Update (2008-01-16): the last app, Pixelmator, was unlocked only a day after I got the bundle, so now I am a completely happy camper..

Chandler layoffs

rae — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:49:48 +0000

OSAF announced that they’re cutting almost â…” of their staff (from 28 to 10), and I’m one of those cuts. We were told in a meeting on Monday, and the blog post went up Tuesday.

I was surprised by the abruptness of the move, and its timing. Previous guidance had been given that funding would go to the end of the year. But now it sounds like the funds for 2008 will be drastically less than those for 2007.

Alas.

So now Chandler has to get itself set up to make some money. I’m guessing by incorporating some sort of Google technology into the product. Or perhaps on the server side. But these are just guesses on my part. Finding grants and similar endowments might be another strategy.

For me, personally, it means returning to looking for contract work. I’ve already had a few nibbles, so it looks like all will be well. I may be doing some work with Qt.

Alias get-together, and music

rae — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:35:41 +0000

Lisa, me, Bob, Tom and Moira

I went downtown to Â¿C’est What? last night to meet up with Maria and several other Alias folk. Since Alias was swallowed whole by Autodesk a while back, I guess we were all ex-Alians..

While talking about what people are doing, someone mentioned Chris and Anita’s catamaran, which led to finding their web page about their year-long journey: www.summatrix.com/padma.

It would be cool to do an video iChat with Chris and Anita from Â¿C’est What? some time..

Then today I ran across a haunting song that I’m sure I’ve heard before and like very, very much:

It’s CC licensed, which is cool, and probably why I’ve heard it before. I think it was used as the soundtrack to a YouTube video or something similar that I saw.

New DVD drive: combo HD-DVD/Blu-ray?

rae — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:08:32 +0000

So I’ve been burning DVDs on my Mac Pro to free up disk space. Leopard requires I wipe my hard drive (more on why later perhaps), so I need to vacate my main partition. This means I often leave discs burning late at night when I go to bed. When Toast finished burning a DVD, it opens the DVD tray with your shiny, newly-burned DVD.

Luisa is up early in the morning, and now that I’ve taken over her office, she likes to use my Mac. It has Firefox, so she’s at home browsing the web, reading gmail, etc. But yesterday morning, when she got up to leave, her knee smashed into the open DVD tray.

So, I’m down one DVD burner. Not too bad, since my Mac has two (it’s a Mac Pro). So, it’s time to shop for a new one.

Canada Computers has the LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray HD DVD Combo Drive for sale at $294. Hmmmm! But I would only be able to watch Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies in Windows, since I don’t think Mac OS X supports it yet. It also doesn’t *burn* either Blu-ray or HD-DVD. So, .. is it worth it?

Crayon Physics

rae — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 17:53:34 +0000

Just a YouTube post. How cool is this?

Unreal Tournament 3 Demo

rae — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:23:02 +0000

the demo is out!

I’m grabbing it from the “Yahoo Games” link on File Radar, and it’s a blazing fast download (~400k/s).

Anyone up for trying it out online?

Some gaming folk wanted to have an old-school “Unreal Tournament” game (the original) this holiday. Maybe we can play this too/instead.

Quake Wars seemed to come and go without much comment. We bought Michael a copy at the same time as picking up 3 copies of Orange Box for Michael, Ronnie and myself. Michael played it for a little while but much prefers Orange Box.

Of course, now that we picked up the Xbox360 game Assassin’s Creed over the weekend, Quake Wars is relegated to dust-gathering.

Ronnie is still looking forward to Spore, but has learned that release dates are fraught with peril.

BGG Con

rae — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:08:49 +0000

BoardGameGeek Con!

Michael and I are headed down to Fort Worth, Texas for the 2007 BGG Con!

We leave on a 1:45pm flight tomorrow and return Sunday night. Jeff and Scott left this morning, and we’ll meet up with them there.

Last year Jeff and John went and came back with some excellent games. Hopefully something similar will happen this year.

Also, with the 91Â¢ US dollar, we can go shopping at Fry’s Electronics!

Running Orange Box on my Mac using CrossOver

rae — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:07:37 +0000

I managed to get Team Fortress 2 to run under CrossOver, but only in a 1920×1799 window (which was basically full-screen, so not too bad, actually).

I was less successful with Portal. It always seemed to start in the bottom-right corner of the monitor. I could see the starting menu, but the last item (quit) was always offscreen. I did manage to click on “Options” and then cursor-down to get to “quit” though.

Way Cool Chandler T-Shirts

rae — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:17:27 +0000

The Chandler team got cool new T-shirts to celebrate the 0.7 release of Chandler:


Enter the Reid school of design, where T-Shirts are Meant To Be Seen! Or, “how I would have designed the T-shirts”

Countdown to Ubuntu 7.10

rae — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:50:40 +0000

Airport Fun

rae — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:58:18 +0000

Waiting at Gate 134

“Boingo”? Did Cory start up an ISP?

I’m sitting here at gate 134, with no WiFi because it’s provied by “Boingo Wireless”, and the minimum you can buy is 24 hours for $10. If they sold 1- or 2-hour chunks for $5 they would be rolling in it, the idiots.

Wow $10 for 24 hours!
But I only want 1 hour

For the first time, I got pulled aside at US Customs. I think my guy was alarmed when I said I was going on business and I would be attending a week of meetings. He gave me an orange clipboard, and I went into the people-we-think-are-working-illegally waiting room. Well, it wasn’t called that, but that’s what it felt like.

The lady at the front asked me to put my two index fingers against a biometric fingerprint scanner, took my passport and boarding pass and asked me to sit down and wait for my name to be called. She kept the documents, which alarmed me almost as much as taking my fingerprints. I wonder if there is a mechanism by which I can get my fingerprints expunged. I doubt it. “Foreigners” have pretty much zero rights in the U.S.

When my name was called I talked to a guy who was clearly zeroing in on my being a salaried employee. But when I told him that (a) I worked in Toronto, and (b) was incorporated, he calmed way the fuck down. He said it would be easier if I got a typewritten letter next time clearly delineating the relationship between myself and OSAF. I dunno, this is the first time it was a hassle of any kind.

So now I am waiting at gate 134 for my flight to San Fran, after having a modest lunch of tuna sushi and a diet coke. I have a couple of bags of Skittles for the plane, and I found an outlet into which I’ve plugged my laptop, so I’m good to go.

Or sit and wait until 1pm, as it were.

Visiting Fry’s next week

rae — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:18:33 +0000

So while I’m in San Francisco next week, I want to go visit a Fry’s Electronics to both pick up a new phone for home (the Panasonic KX-TG1034s with an extra handset), and to just browse. There is no store near Toronto like Fry’s. It’s like Canada Computers on steroids.

On the other hand, maybe there is an electronics place in San Francisco that sells the handsets at the same price and would be much easier to get to. In order to go to Fry’s I’ll have to take the CalTrain (very similar to Toronto’s GO Trains) to Palo Alto and then either walk or take a cab for two miles.

If anyone has advice about electronics stores in San Francisco, I would gladly appreciate it!

Norman Jewison and my Grandma

rae — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:29:28 +0000

I found out last night that my Grandmother, Evelyn Ellis, knew Norman Jewison’s family and used to visit. Apparently she would stay over sometimes; and when she did, Norman would have to give up his bed (in the living room) so she could sleep there.

Hah! Poor little Normie. Hope she didn’t put him out too much.

Missing my mini-FireWire cable!

rae — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:46:20 +0000

stack o’ videos - click for readable text!

So the deal is, if I transfer all our old 8mm videos to DVD/DivX, then we can buy a new HD video camera.

Cool, thinks I, all I need to do is borrow Vartan’s 8mm videocamera, which has FireWire out, making digitization a snap!

Vartans videocamera

So I pick up the camera from Vartan Friday night, and tonight I try to set it up, only to discover that.. I can’t find my mini-FireWire cable! You see, the videocamera has this teeny-tiny FireWire jack.

mini-FireWire jack

I have lots of full FireWire cables, but I think I may have lent out my mini-FireWire cable.

If you have such a cable I could borrow, or you have one of mine, let me know! I’ll try asking at Friday night gaming, if I remember. I guess I could always buy one while I’m in San Francisco next week..

Birch Tree video

rae — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:47:26 +0000

I’m trying out an EyeSpot video. It’s of the birch tree the Friday it came down.

Our birch tree fell down

Bad Movie Trailer Unicode

rae — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:45:04 +0000

I was watching some movie trailers: Iron Man, War, The Last Legion, Exiled, Lions For Lambs, Right at Your Door, and The Signal.

At the end of “Exiled”, I noticed something funny in the end credits, as you can see to the right.

Heh.

Btw, I heartily recommend the “Iron Man” trailer. Yes, they used the Black Sabbath song.

“The Last Legion” looks really good, and I was susprised to see Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley were in it.

“War” and “Exiled” look to be two good martial arts action movies. I suspect the former will be more in the impossibly-good category, while the latter has more of a “Reservoir Dogs” feel to it.

Tree down

rae — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:58:04 +0000

Tree down!

So we’re a bit tight for time today, what with Ronnie’s Mirror flyers not showing up until 11pm last night, and neeeding to shower and pack to leave for Tony’s cottage by 7pm or so..

So what happens?

One of our Birch trees in the front yard decides to come down!

Argh.

Old Family Video

rae — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:03:59 +0000

I did this video in 2001 using a still-in-development version of VideoWave. It automatically sensed the timing of the music and selected clips to play in time with it. Notice how it changes as the music gets faster and slower.

Oh, and that was the year we had a ladybug infestation, thus the film of ladybugs..

OpenProj

rae — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:04:53 +0000

Today’s SourceForge newsletter mentioned a project I hadn’t heard of before, OpenProj.

A quick trip to the OpenProj SourceForge page later, and I realized another big Microsoft app had an open source replacement: MS Project.

it’s written in Java, and there is no Mac-specific distribution, so I grabbed the OS-independent zip and just double-clicked the .jar file, which worked fine. Apparently it can read and write MS Project files too.

I didn’t do much more than create a document and save it, but I’m hoping this will be a useful tool for free software projects all over.

Power Saving Trick for Mac Pro

rae — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:04:40 +0000

I put this in my crontab:

# save energy by disabling unused CPUs 0 0 * * * /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_disable 2; /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_disable 3; /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_disable 4 30 8 * * * /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_enable 2; /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_enable 3; /usr/bin/hwprefs cpu_enable 4

This turns three of my four CPUs off between midnight and 8:30am every day. Since each CPU burns a fair number of watts, I’m hoping this will save me some power costs. I looked for a way to set the CPUs to “power conserve” mode or something in the energy/sleep settings, but no luck.

It’s time for the annual changing of the internet provider

rae — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:27:27 +0000

Well, it’s that time of year again.

Last year at this time, our then-internet-provider, istop.com, dumped all of its DSL customers into the lap of another provider, known variously as cia.com, 3web.com, igs.net and other names. I just call them 3Web. It seemed okay for a while, but then we started getting outages, and then they became more frequent.

I checked my logs for last night and we had a one-minute outage about once every 45 minutes. Needless to say, when Michael and Ronnie are plying WoW, a one minute outage is a major pain. Especially when they have to spend 45 minutes waiting to do something in the game.

Michael did some research Ã la Google and found a place called TekSavvy. They offer 5 Mbps DSL, have a no-throttling policy, and also offer static IPs. Sounds good to me!

So today I ordered our DSL from them to be activated on Mon Jul 16, 2007. Which DSL provider you use is selected solely by the login id you use, so for a couple of weeks I can go back and forth between them.

Hope it works out!

Sick again, sick again, jigeddy-jig

rae — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:15:58 +0000

What a great Fathers Day present, eh? Bleaugh

To offset this, my new 17″ Hi-res MacBook Pro arrived today (Monday). Love the bright, bright screen. Much brighter than my old 17″ 1.6GHz PowerBook, which will now be taken to Europe by Michael for four weeks.

The built-in iSight camera is surprisingly good! It seems to handle the low light conditions of m basement much, much better than either of my standalone iSight cameras do.

Priss is in Toronto this week and I’m hoping to get together. Until recently, she was my fellow Toronto-ite at OSAF.

Iain’s photos continue to amaze me. He has an excellent eye for angles and lighting that capture the imagination.

Ok, time to have some chicken noodle soup. Too bad all I have is Campbell’s, and not Lipton.

15	Gone With the Wind
15	The Bridges of Madison County
12	The Thorn Birds
11	The Notebook
8	Outlander
5	Wuthering Heights
3	A Knight in Shining Armor
3	Jane Eyre
3	Pride and Prejudice
3	Whitney, My Love
2	A Farewell to Arms
2	A Town Like Alice
2	Cyrano de Bergerac
2	Five Smooth Stones
2	Green Mansions
2	Joy in the Morning
2	Katherine
2	Love Story
2	Rebecca
2	The Flame and the Flower