-:: sometimes bored in ottawa ::-

Linux no more

2009-09-07T14:34:47-05:00

After being betrayed by Linux yet again regarding drivers, I've decided to call it a day. FreeNAS (FreeBSD) came through and saved the day, but not after having suffered a nasty bug that damaged hundreds of my files, and wasted weeks of my time. I would've kept FreeNAS going as I think it's more stable than Linux, but my server simply consumes too much electricity. Basically, I wasn't willing to abandon my hardware, and Linux *was* working, and then a bug was silently introduced. It's been months and the bug has not been fixed. FreeBSD did not contain this bug and my hardware worked flawlessly. I always tried to only upgrade to stable versions of Linux, and even then I suffered that unacceptable bug that caused me data loss. Release management failure is what I attribute that bug to. I'm sure I'll be running Linux in the future, but I'll be weary of upgrading if things are working. Also, I've been a long time user of OpenBSD and FreeBSD and really enjoy their level of quality. I think in some Distros of Linux, there are too many cooks in the kitchen and its getting hard to keep of everything they push out. I simply went out and bought an ASRock ION 330 and installed Windows 7 on it. In 6 months I'll upgrade the 2.5" HD from 320GB to 1TB, and I already have a USB 1TB HD mirroring my data. After using Windows 7 for a week, I really think Windows got it right. So for the desktop, Apple and Windows still have the edge. If you are interested in a file server, I highly recommend FreeNAS, which I had installed on a 128MB USB key.

Installing Drupal 6.9 on OS X (10.5)

2009-02-21T13:59:09-05:00

Just installed Drupal, MySQL on my Macbook (OS X 10.5). PHP was already there. Just had to enabled. It's progressed quite well since the last time I played with it ... version 3 or 4? I think. The site runs: PHP 5.2.6 Drupal 6.9 MySQL 5.0.77 Had to do some compiling to enable GD (2.0.34) support, but it worked on the first try. The overall installation is a lot smoother than I remember. Adding modules and configuring the layout is simple too. Just have to learn the terminology. It's nice to use things that *just* work. I used the following 2 excellent and well written guides: Install Drupal: http://www.sysarchitects.com/node/58 Install GD: http://www.kenior.com/macintosh/adding-gd-library-for-mac-os-x-leopard (remember, pick 64-bit) Note: If you are downloading the source code for PHP to compile GD, download the same version as the one installed on OS X. On Feb 21, 2009, the version of PHP on OS X (10.5) is 5.2.6.

OC Transpo Strike

2009-01-23T15:41:12-05:00

Day 45...or something. The thing about this strike is that human emotion is involved. The tax payers now want revenge on OC Transpo. It's very sad that it has come to this, but such is human nature. OC Transpo has really, really messed up on their timing. By picking a date that would produce the most damage to the tax payer, they turned it personal. And by turning it personal, they immediately brought out irrational, human behavior. If they had a chance to do it over, I think they shouldn't have striked during the holidays.

No to Auto bailout

2008-11-21T15:06:38-05:00

Just to make things clear on my stance. I've been off all day and watching these auto people beg for money. "If we don't act now, our *enitre* economy will fail" is what one exec on CBC said. False is my answer to that statement. Oh and I want these big 3 to declare bankruptcy as well if they really can't hack it. The auto industry does not deserve to be bailed out. If the industry is so bad, why is Honda doing so well? This is a business problem. Not a taxpayer-please-bail-me-out-problem.

Good job Americans

2008-11-04T23:44:36-05:00

No need to burn any buildings down. Well done.

The American Vote

2008-10-03T21:10:23-05:00

If John McCain and Scooby Doo Palin win, you Americans need to start a revolution and just burn the government buildings down and kill all the politicians and start over. I pity you guys. You keep getting screwed over and you do nothing to the people screwing you over. Your country was founded by people who *fought* people like Bush and McCain! P.S. YOU HAVE 300 MILLION PEOPLE AND YOU PICK PALIN!! You guys are so fucking unbelievable. Truly, Unbelievable.

Barrymore's 80's Night Is Dead

2008-09-22T01:14:41-05:00

1. It's $3 dollars cover now. 2. It's $5 a beer now. 3. It's not the same DJ. 4. It's not the same staff. 5. At 11pm, there was no line up. 6. THEY DON'T PLAY ALL 80s!!! I mean, how do you go from C'mon Eileen to a house song by Armand Van Helden. 7. It's just not the same anymore :( Barrymore's 80s night is dead. I won't be going there anymore. However, after that, I popped into Mod night at Babylon and it was great! Great atmosphere. People dancing carefree. I know where I'll be spending my Sunday nights. Oh, and no cover.

My hatred for the rogers.com website grows

2008-08-26T14:41:46-05:00

It's slower than before. I still can't access certain pages because they never load. Why do you suck so much?!?

An Engineering Discipline Long Overdue

2008-08-22T10:17:03-05:00

Carleton University has a few new programs, including this one: Sustainable and Renewable Energy (SuRE) Engineering http://www2.carleton.ca/engineering-design/new-programs/

China and the Olympics

2008-08-04T22:56:43-05:00

I'm tuned to The National on CBC and watching a story called "Road To Beijing" that looks about the preparation that has gone into these Olympics and the evictions that have been happening. Don't bother going to their blog, it hasn't been updated since September of 2007. It's pretty sad how they simply toss the people out of their homes just to save face so that tourists don't have to look at not so new looking buildings. These Olympics definitely have some mixed messages. Olympics is all about bringing the people of all the countries together...at the cost of the local people's lives and homes.

I want gas prices to rise

2008-06-05T10:27:30-05:00

I can already hear the keyboard's clickity-clacks of people writing me angry comments. Rest assured, we all suffer from this in one way or another. There are many resources that our planet needs to survive that nobody can argue against their importance. Air, water and vegetation are some simple examples. Another example is gasoline. The difference between them though is that gasoline has only been used extensively for a little over a hundred years, whereas the others have been around long before we ever came about. So let's see. 100 years versus millions of years. How in the world did we manage to put such a volatile resource that is controlled by a few individuals as a major dependency for our planet? We now have a single point of failure that was made by humans that affects every single person on our planet. When gasoline prices rise, we all hurt when we spend more money at the pump. That's obvious. This extra cost doesn't simply dissappear though - it has to be recovered somewhere. Food, Builders, Heating, Cooling, basically anything and everything will start increasing in cost. I find it hard to find examples of who isn't being affected by this. But what about the people making the oil? Aren't they getting rich? Yes they are, but it's not going to last at this rate. It's not in their best interests to keep the prices high because many then people will start putting more efforts into finding alternatives. We all tend to try to find the path of least resistance. So long as gasoline is affordable, we will always continue using it. If it ain't broken, why fix it? Right? That's what the oil companies want us to believe. Well it's not true. It's broken. Gasoline is a short term solution. We should not build future technologies on an infrastructure that has so many volatile components to it. If only we could have more people, scientists, engineers and governments focus more on finding energy sources that can help our junkie planet kick the nasty habit of gasoline. Do we really need cars that go 300 km/h? What if we can produce cars that reach a maximum of 120 km/h but not run on gasoline? I seriously doubt we thought this through. If we can get a new generation to start thinking about these problems, we would be so much better off. We teach kids many subjects in school, in order to make our world and society a better place. Why not start teaching them that it is in their best interest to start looking for better ways to produce energy? The most we teach kids is that alternative energy sources exist but that oil is what we use. And that's pretty much where we stop. We need to have our society take energy 101. We need to let people see that this is not a healthy solution for our planet and we need to change. It appears that the high prices that have caused people to suffer quite a bit lately, and that has in turn started having people think more about just how we power our planet. If higher prices mean that we start looking at quiting the habit, then let them rise.

20 Years ago, I played Super Mario Bros. on the NES

2008-05-28T15:20:23-05:00

I just remembered that in April of 1988, I played Super Mario Bros. at my cousin's house. Time flies. I also received a Wii as a gift and have Mario Galaxy. I think I'm gonna start it soon :) SSX Blur has been keeping me busy so far.

Snow - Aim for 15.1 cm

2008-04-04T15:14:41-05:00

Ok, so I found this site: http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html (change the interval to daily). According to that site, as of April 3, we have no snow accumulation in the month of April, 2008. Now, we got 116 cm of snow in March, which brings our total of snow for 2008 to 429.1 cm. The record is 444.1 cm. This means that we need it to snow 15 cm in all of April to tie the record, or 15.1 cm to break it (obviously). Historically, the months of April in previous years looked like this: 2007: 28.4 cm 2006: 3.0 cm 2005: T (Trace ... which means nothing substantial) 2004: 9.8 cm 2003: 28.2 cm 2002: 26.2 cm 2001: 3.4 cm 2000: 33.4 cm Which means there's a possibility that we can break the record. I don't know why I posted this :)

New CBC News look and feel

2008-03-06T10:02:09-05:00

I believe they're still using Arial, sans-serif but it looks like the line spacing has been tweaked just a bit. Looks a tiny bit larger allowing for easier reading. I also noted that they're now aiming for XHTML 1.0, however a quick glance at the markup of the story called It's officially Ottawa's 2nd heaviest snowfall on record shows that they forgot to add the tag! Oops. This didn't help the W3C Markup Validation Service.. My page checks out fine though. I'd comment on the CSS but I'm also sooo guilty of not using proper CSS as well. It doesn't help that you have write to nonsense in order to fix IE rendering bugs, so let's skip that part. My page presently fails because of the border-radius property which is part of the CSS3 specification. Firefox partially supports this feature, so I thought I'd use it. The CSS validation service appears to be geared towards the CSS2 specification and gives errors on CSS3 properties. Another big change was the ability to comment and to recommend this story. I really like how easy it is to use. Well done. I see they've taken a look on how the BBC was presenting some of their stories and managed to add the reader recommended feature as well. Overall, I really like what they've done.

I discovered a new feature in OS X - Solarize!

2008-02-22T00:09:39-05:00

UPDATE: Nevermind, it's actually just as I thought. For accessibility. For windows it's Left Alt-Left Shift-Print Screen. I had a gut feeling I discovered nothing LOL Ok, I have no idea if this is a standard feature that I'm too stupid to know about or an easter egg. I was watching Top Gear with Brennan and was mashing the keyboard on my Macbook. Suddenly, the entire screen became...inverted, negatived ... or as Brennan named it - Solarized. Click the following: CTRL + ALT + COMMAND + 8 So the bottom 3 keys and the number 8. To go back to normal, hit the same key combination. I'm on a Macbook 2.2GHz running OS X 1.5.2. Btw, this feature is great for people who have certain types of poor vision. It's like the low contrast (or was it called high contrast) theme in windows. It's basically great for people that love black themes and backgrounds. Enjoy and let me know if it works for you!