life's propagation

Change has come to America

2009-04-12T20:07:00.001-07:00

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake." – Obama Inauguration Speech

Change has indeed come to America: Republicans are now suddenly fiscally conservative, and Barack Obama no longer cares about the due process of law and civil liberties.

"Sad as that is, it's the Department Of Justice's second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes."

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush

“Obama files a brief saying he agrees in full with the Bush/Cheney position. He's arguing that the President has the power to abduct, transport and imprison people in Bagram indefinitely with no charges of any kind. He's telling courts that they have no authority to "second-guess" his decisions when it comes to war powers. But this is all totally different than what Bush did, and anyone who says otherwise is a reckless, ill-motivated hysteric who just wants to sell books and get on TV.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/index.html

Meta-dominoes demonstrate Thermodynamics

2008-09-23T10:14:00.001-07:00

During my daily ingestion of web-related news I ran across this gem; a dominoes video to end all dominoes videos.

Finally published

2008-06-25T14:03:00.001-07:00

A Mach–Zehnder interferometer for the detection and noninvasive optical amplification of polarization rotation
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79, 063106 (7 pages) (2008)
http://link.aip.org/link/?RSINAK/79/063106/1

After almost an entire year since I first began to write it the last manuscript from my Master’s thesis has been published by “Review of Scientific Instruments”. Hopefully, and I am not too optimistic about this, there are no instances where I have glaring misused the English language contained within. It seemed that every single time I reread it I would find a horrendous grammatical error, or ridiculous spelling mistake.

If you’re particularly interested in interferometric detection of polarization dynamics definitely give it a read. :-)

Halo 2 (PC) Vista: Performance problems resolved

2008-06-11T12:45:00.001-07:00

Previously I mentioned the abysmal performance of Halo 2 on my Dell XPS m1330 laptop. Serendipity has fixed those performance woes. The other day I was cruising around Microsoft.com and noticed that there was a DirectX June 2008 download available.

Naively, I thought that DirectX updates would be part of the regular software updates delivered through Windows Update. Apparently I was incorrect. After installing the June 2008 update performance on Halo 2 has been nothing but silky smooth on the lowest settings, which were previously produced a frame-rate that made the game barely playable.

For other m1330 owners out there, I highly recommend you keep up with the DirectX update freely available on Microsoft’s site to ensure the best performance possible in 3D games.

Apple Makes Microsloth Look Slow at WWDC

2008-06-09T22:59:00.001-07:00

One year and a whole lot of progress later Apple has made Microsoft look like they're standing still and the mobile space. While I generally agree that there was nothing exciting, nothing super exciting anyway, announced at today's WWDC keynote it was pretty impressive to see how far Apple has come after one year of launching the iPhone.

In just a single year of development time Apple has managed to develop a major software update to the iPhone and iPod touch, built an application store for delivering applications to the iPhone over the cellular network, and worked out details for major multinational launch on July 11. More than anything, Apple has shown that it is serious about the mobile space and willing to listen to both consumers and enterprise customers.

To contrast, Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6 on February 17 2007 and it took them until April 1 2008 to release a minor update Windows Mobile 6.1. One really has to wonder what is going on in Redmond these days. If, Microsoft could compete with vaporware, otherwise known as the much touted, by Microsoft at least, Windows Mobile 7, the next major release of Windows Mobile not due until the second quarter of 2009 Microsoft would be in a great position. In the meantime they seem content to hand over an ever increasing segment of the mobile market to Apple. After the amount of work and tenacity Apple demonstrated today they deserve all the success they get.

One thing does worry me though, when is Apple going to realize that iTunes is bloated? Seriously, they need more than one application to manage the interactions between the iPhone and a Windows Vista PC. What does calendar syncing have to do with music anyway?

Windows Vista Speech Recognition: Keyboard versus Voice

2008-06-01T13:17:00.001-07:00

Instead of continuing to talk about my impressions of speech recognition in Windows Vista I thought I would do a test to see how speech recognition performed against my typing abilities. For this test, I use the following passage from Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”:

How will the struggle for existence, discussed too briefly in the last chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection, which we have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply in nature? I think we shall see that it can act most effectually. Let it be born in mind in what an endless number of strange peculiarities our domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, those under nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary tendency is. Under domestication, it may be truly said that the, whole organization becomes in some degree plastic. Let it be born in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic.

First, I dictated this passage using speech recognition then I typed the passage using a keyboard. The results, using speech it took me 150 seconds (109 wpm) while typing the passage took me 253 seconds (65 wpm). In other words, speech recognition was 40% faster than typing. That is not the whole story though; speech recognition was also more accurate with 30 errors, 18 insertions and 12 deletions, whereas the typed passage contained 37 errors, 22 insertions and 15 deletions. Thus, speech recognition was also 19% more accurate than typing.

While I suspected that speech recognition would be faster than typing I was surprised to learn that it was also more accurate by significant margin. These numbers indicate that a person who does a significant amount of typing could see drastic improvements in their overall productivity by using voice dictation.

Windows Vista Speech Recognition: Profile Reset

2008-05-30T09:57:00.001-07:00

As my friend Ty previously mentioned, sometimes the "training" that the speech recognition engine can become inappropriate and lead to poor results. Anything that produces a permanent change in your voice (puberty, a cold, maybe even moving to a different microphone), or perhaps the background ambient noise, will require a separate voice profile. There is a quick and simple method for managing these profiles.

First go to Speech Recognition in Control Panel

Click on "Advanced speech options"

From here you are presented with a dialogue that will allow you to create new speech profiles for the speech recognition engine and manage existing profiles, as well as several other options.

Windows Vista: Speech Recognition Revisited

2008-05-29T21:06:00.002-07:00

In my previous blog post about speech recognition in Windows Vista I said,

“In my relatively brief experience with Vista's speech recognition features I've found them to the powerful but not flawless.”

While it is still true that speech recognition can be a powerful feature, continued use has revealed that it can also be a frustrating one to use. Although Windows Vista typically interprets what you say correctly, the times when it does not can make it irritating to use. Transcription errors are also typical of keyboard use, but not nearly as annoying. Why is speech recognition more annoying than keyboard typos?

When I make a typo transcribing text using the keyboard I know it was my fault, whereas with a speech recognition transcription errors are often due to a misinterpretation of what I said by Windows Vista. For speech recognition to gain true mainstream acceptance it has to be on lot more accurate than the speech recognition engine in Windows Vista. Thus far, I have found the frequency of transcription errors made by Windows Vista to mitigate any gains in transcription speed using speech recognition over old-fashioned typing.

The interpretation errors that Windows Vista makes can range from obvious mistakes that are easy to spot to more difficult to catch errors such as substituting the word “two” for “to”. Windows Vista is also supposed to learn when you correct a transcription error that it made. In practice, Windows Vista is a slow learner. For instance, no matter how many times I correct the transcription error that types “cheap and” when I clearly said “cheapened” Windows Vista refuses to transcribe the correct version.

Warts aside I still think speech recognition in Windows Vista is it valuable addition to the operating system especially for individuals unable to use a keyboard and mouse. The inclusion of speech recognition in Windows Vista also indicates a commitment by Microsoft to evolve human computer interaction via speech, which I believe is in all of our best interests. Anybody that has watched sci-fi shows such a Star Trek recognizes the powerful interactions that could be made possible by a sufficiently sophisticated speech recognition engine.

I plan to continue to use voice dictation and speech recognition in Windows Vista where it makes sense to do so to determine if its accuracy actually improves over time. Ideally, I would like to be able to use voice dictation for transcribing notes from documents that I am reading either online or in paper form. For most computing tasks however the keyboard and mouse is still the most efficient way of interacting with a computer, even in Windows Vista.

To look for it to see what improvements Microsoft makes to speech recognition in the next iteration of windows, Windows 7.

PS - I transcribed this using voice dictation.

The grass is the same dull yellow over here ...

2008-05-26T22:10:00.001-07:00

As a long-time Mac user most of my exposure to Microsoft software was through their Mac-ports. While Mac Office versions beyond v.X were more or less Mac-like, there were still glaring blemishes in Office that prevented it from feeling like a grassroots Mac app instead of a Windows/Mac OS Classic port. However, Office looked like the perfect child next to the software abortion that was Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. The Mac Business Unit at Microsoft was not responsible for WMP OSX and it showed. Everything about WMP on Mac OS X was horrible: performance was poor, the UI was clunky and Windows-esque, and browser plug-in support was all but non-existent.

Surprisingly, now that I have been using to Windows for a pro-longed period, I have found that Apple's ports to Windows suffer from many of the same blemishes that Microsoft's attempts at porting to Mac had in the past. There are the same frustrations with non-native UI elements forced onto the applications from their first-party OS, the same performance problems, and the same frustrations with integration with other OS components. For example, iTunes, Quicktime, and Safari boast UI's that seem out of place on Windows. Both iTunes and Quicktime suffer from performance problems in the UI, and in Quicktime's case with video playback. Quicktime's support for both Window's Explorer and Internet Explorer works most of the time but performance and reliability can be eradicate. Windows Explorer can be brought to its knees, for example, when several multi-gigabyte video files are in a folder and Quicktime thinks it should be the default for their playback.

On both Mac and Windows I appreciate well-written software that integrates well and feels consistent with the OS I am currently using. Like many of Microsoft's attempts to make Mac software in the past, Apple is falling short of the benchmark for first-tier windows software with iTunes, Safari and Quicktime. For the time being I have chosen to avoid using this applications in favour of software that feels elegant, integrates with the OS (Windows in this case), and performs well, namely Zune, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player or Zune.

If Apple's makes better versions in the future I will be more than happy to reinstall their software, but until then it is more pain than pleasure to have Apple's Windows port installed and active on my Vista laptop.

Windows Vista: Speech Recognition

2008-05-15T20:36:00.001-07:00

One of the hidden gems in Windows Vista is it speech recognition and voice dictation abilities. These features are hidden in the control panel under the accessibility options.

In my relatively brief experience with Vista's speech recognition features I've found them to the powerful but not flawless. However, an increase in accuracy of the speech recognition algorithm is readily apparent with continued use. In fact, I have written this entire post without touching the keyboard.

Likely the biggest hurdle in learning to use the speech recognition feature built-in to Vista is learning the proper commands. While some of the commands are intuitive many of the commands for navigating the user interface are not.

If you have the USB or Bluetooth microphone I would recommend trying out the speech recognition feature, but be prepared for some initial frustration while you learn the commands for navigating the UI and the computer adapts to your voice. One thing is for certain, it will give you practice pronouncing your words properly.

Freedom from Fairplay

2008-05-13T00:31:00.001-07:00

After several years of frustration with Apple's iTunes Fairplay DRM I have begun burning and re-ripping all of my purchased music using a CD-RW to save on plastic.

My main complaint with DRM, of any kind, if that it locks you into a controlled ecosystem of products. As a Mac user, as well as a Windows and Xbox 360 user I have found Apple's Fairplay DRM to be particularly frustrating since it prevents my music from being played on the Xbox 360 entirely and limits me to the use of iTunes music player on Windows. Despite what Steve Jobs may say, iTunes is one of the worst programs a Windows user will frequently run into on that platform. iTunes particularly suffers from a series of weird UI bugs, and poor performance.

For example, this is what I am sometimes greeted to when I switch to iTunes while using Windows Vista.

To get around this black-screen I have to either close and reopen iTunes, or minimize it and then access it again. Bizarre.

These annoyances have finally become bothersome enough for me to go through the effort of 'stripping' the DRM from my iTunes tracks so I can listen to my music with any software or device that will playback ACC files. To minimize any loss in quality during this process I have been re-encoding the tracks using iTunes ACC encoder at the same bit-rate as the original files. My thinking is that, for example, a 128 kps decode to a full quality audio CD track, back to a 128 encode of an ACC file should produce 1:1 results, or nearly so, between the protected ACC and liberated ACC file. Thus far in my own listening tests I have been unable to distinguish any difference between the original and re-encoded tracks.

What will I be using instead of iTunes? Right now my media player of choice is Zune 2.5. The best part is, if I find a software package I prefer I can switch to it relatively easily.

Ah finally ... freedom from Fairplay.

Happy Birthday wishes from ... Steve Ballmer?

2008-05-07T09:02:00.001-07:00

Racetrack: Around the Sun

2008-05-01T15:44:00.001-07:00

This is ... amazing. I had no idea stuff like this was even possible in Forge with Halo 3.

Link

Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed

2008-05-01T14:05:00.001-07:00

The premise of the article is that most people cannot tell the difference between Blu-ray (1080p) and standard DVD (480p up-converted to 1080p). This 'fact' combined with expensive standalone players and limited functionality, especially with BD 2.0 on the horizon, has led to incredibly poor sales numbers for Blu-ray.

Is this really a surprise?

While I can tell the difference between 1080p and 480p on a good 1080p television the difference ranges from slightly better to "that guy has a lot of pock marks on his face". Really from 10 feet away it is quite difficult to notice the resolution increase on a 42" television set; at least with my eyes.

Personally I would rather have DRM-free digital movies to purchase from something like the iTunes Store than yet another physical media standard.

Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Back to glass

2008-04-10T13:16:00.002-07:00

It appears that the plastic water bottles we all use contain a chemical that mimics hormones in our bodies. Currently the studies on the affects of ingestion of this chemical suggest that it leads to development abnormalities.

Al Gore: New Lecture on Climate Change

2008-04-09T12:22:00.001-07:00

I feel that climate change and the broader issue of societal sustainability will be the defining issue of the 21st century. We live at an inflection point in the history of humanity.

Dell m1330: Halo 2 (PC) Vista

2008-04-08T12:14:00.001-07:00

With an Intel Core 2 T7500 2.2 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 MB of video memory on a GeForce 8400 GS M card one would think that Halo 2 would run beautifully. Halo 2 is a game that was originally designed to run on an Xbox, a collection of hardware that is meagre in comparison to the specs of the Dell m1330. To be specific the Xbox had a 32-bit single core 0.733 GHz Mobile Celeron processor, 64 MB of RAM that was shared between the CPU and GPU, and a graphics card that was somewhere between a GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 PC GPU.

Somehow the people responsible for the port of Halo 2 botched it so immensely that the Dell m1330 provides what I would describe as a barely playable experience (read < 30 fps) at the lowest quality settings (original Xbox textures), lowest resolution (800x600), and no anti-aliasing. (Note: Other people appear to have had a better gaming experience.)

Why? I have searched for an answer but none is forthcoming.

For those interested parties I have tried several different drivers to improve performance to no avail including nVidia driver versions 7.15.11.143, 7.15.11.5663, 7.15.11.5655, 7.15.11.5669, and currently 7.15.11.7431.

What really irks me about this situation is that Halo 2 for Vista is listed as requiring a 3.0 Windows Experience Index (WEI) score.

As you can see in the screenshot above the m1330 has a WEI of 4.1, which is closer to the recommended performance than the required performance score. If you break down the WEI scores for the m1330 they look like this

Processor:	5.1
Memory (RAM):	4.8
Graphics:	4.1
Gaming graphics:	4.7
Primary hard disk:	5.4

So as far as a 3D game like Halo 2 is concerned my system is essentially a 4.7. This should be enough to play Halo 2 smooth like butter, but it isn't.

After leaving PC gaming for consoles a few years ago it is sad to see that nothing has changed in the PC space. Developers/publishers still lie about the system requirements necessary to get a good experience with their games, and the system requirements are still incredibly ridiculous when compared to the console space.

Microsoft stated that they wanted to reinvigorate PC gaming with Windows Vista. They've missed the mark big-time. Valve seems to be doing a much better job in that regard.

Bad Apple

2008-03-22T14:58:00.001-07:00

iTunes is installed on my Vista PC, as I am sure it is on many millions of Windows computers. Apple bundles a version of Apple Software Update with iTunes, apparently to push updates of iTunes/Quicktime down to iTunes users. Imagine my suprise when Apple Software Update popped up with an 'update' that it wanted me to install: Safari 3.1 for Windows.

The thing is though, I do not have Safari installed on my machine. Which means Apple is using Software Update not to push new versions of iTunes down to users, but to push Safari for Windows to their massive iTunes installed base. Apparently Apple thinks this is acceptable. For the record it is not.

It appears that quite a few people, and Mozilla, would agree that this is a bad move by Apple.

Link

Vista SP1 Successfully Installed

2008-03-18T12:53:00.001-07:00

It may just be the placebo effect but my system does feel a bit more responsive after updating.

How Google Earth Ate Our Town - TIME

2008-03-11T10:04:00.001-07:00

Looks like Nanaimo is going high-tech. I wish more municipalities did this sort of thing.

How Google Earth Ate Our Town - TIME

procrastinating material: NBA dance-off

2008-03-01T19:59:00.001-08:00

Windows Vista: The bad #1

2008-02-28T10:21:00.001-08:00

Where is the built-in dictionary in Vista? There is not even a Vista side-bar dictionary gadget.

Surprisingly the lack of an OS-wide English dictionary is one of the features I miss most about Mac OS X when using Vista. Microsoft has a dictionary service built-in to Microsoft Word, but I rarely use Word. Most of my documents are written in a text-editor using LaTeX. The lack of a built-in dictionary service weakens Windows text-editors overall since most of them do not have this feature, which is nearly universal amongst first and third party text-editors or word processors in Mac OS X due to the fact that Apple has made dictionary and spell checking a system wide service.

This is one of the many small, but appreciated, features of Mac OS X that helps to improve the user experience and productivity and is sorely absent in Vista.

Windows Vista: The good #1

2008-02-28T10:14:00.001-08:00

Rather than try to put together a monolithic post about the things I enjoy about Windows Vista I thought it would be easier, and less daunting to break those things into smaller separate posts.

One of the things that used to bug me a lot about Windows was the disorganized folder structure, especially in user space. In Vista Microsoft has fixed this by ditching the redundantly named 'My Documents', 'My Pictures', etc. with a better organized home folder structure including Contacts, Documents, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favourites, Links, Music, Searches, and Video. There is even a hidden AppData folder that stores user specific application preferences.

User home directories are also placed under the more appropriately named C:\Users\josh for example instead of a confusing "Documents and Settings" folder like it was in XP.

For anyone that has used Mac OS X this folder structure will be familiar, since essentially it is set up exactly the same way. Unlike Mac OS X which uses a fairly transparent folder hierarchy for system files, 'System' and 'Library', Vista still uses a confusing hierarchy for the Windows directory where system files are stored. This is not a source of aggravation for me since I rarely need to look through the system files in Vista or in Mac OS X for that matter.

The stove just arced and put a hole through a pot

2008-02-22T20:43:00.001-08:00

Ashley was boiling some water on the old electric stove here at her cabin. Suddenly the element starting sparking, and a bright orange section of one of the outer rings on the electric element about 2-3 cm in length appeared. After removing the pot we realized that a hole had developed in the pot right over the 'hot' spot on the element. Apparently when she first turned the element it smoked for a while.

Has anyone ever heard of something like this?

Dell XPS M1330: From a Mac users point of view

2008-02-22T18:51:00.001-08:00

Apple users are typically obsessive about the details, the small things that make Apple's products different from the rest of the electronic devices on the market. The reasons for choosing a Mac over a PC, typically, at least for power-users, is a list of a bunch of small, attention-to-detail, features Apple's OS and hardware has over the competition.

These choices add up to make Apple's products better, although in a lot of ways marginally so (I know this is subjective), over the Microsoft powered products. You have to be a bit of an idealist to be an Apple user. I certainly am. Despite the long list of logical reasons I gave for owning a Dell earlier, that choice has been enabled by pragmatism winning out over idealism. Windows users are rarely passionate about their platform since it is a choice made for pragmatic reasons rather than idealistic motivations. The opposite is true for Mac users, which leads us to a certain level of zeal and love for Apple products.

As a computing tool, used for accomplishing the tasks needed to be productive and efficient, the M1330 excels, but it is not as elegant a piece of hardware as an Apple laptop. Despite the resurgence of a 'design' philosophy at Dell that has led to the XPS laptop line, the M1330 is not a Macbook. Initial inspection of the Dell reveals that this machine was built for manufacturing efficiency not for aesthetic design choices as demonstrated by the many seems along the body of the M1330's case. This is in stark contrast to Apple's Macbook lineup where seems are minimized and hidden.

For a PC laptop though, and I looked at many, the M1330 excels in form, a slot-loading DVD-RW drive helps a lot, and when it comes to built-in functionality I could not be more pleased with the choice I made. The glossy LED-backlit display is gorgeous to look at. The full-size keyboard has an excellent feel to it, and the inclusion of a Delete, Home, End, PageUp and PageDn keys is an added bonus; no more Function-Backspace to get Delete that I am used to on Mac laptops. The capacitive media controls, and volume level keys at the top of the laptop are also a welcome addition, although the lack of a visual response in Vista for the volume controls that have been included in Mac OS X since forever is a sore loss. I expect that the media-remote that slides conveniently into the Express-Card slot will be sparsely used but that I will appreciate it when I am conducting a presentation. One thoughtful touch, is the inclusion of two head-phone jacks on the front of the M1330 for sharing media with another person while on a plane for instance. Finally, while the touch-pad is usable it is a lot smaller than what I am used to from using a Mac laptop and I miss the large trackpads on Apple's laptops. The trackpad has horizontal and vertical scroll areas, but I prefer Apple's gesture approach for implementing these features by using two fingers on the trackpad at once. Wireless range on the M1330 is exceptional. Right now I am connected to a nearby open-wireless network. Nearby here means that the next-nearest home where the wireless access point could be located is at least 100 feet away. From my experience, this would not be possible with one of Apple's metal-cased laptops, either the Powerbook or Macbook Pro.

Hardware counts for nothing if the software backing it is obfuscated and difficult to use. While not as elegant and usable as Mac OS X, I have found Windows Vista (Business) to be easy to use, fully-functional, and a pleasant experience overall. More on that later.

Dell XPS M1330 Unboxing

2008-02-20T01:05:00.001-08:00

After too long of a wait the M1330 finally arrived. Here are the unboxing photos.

Overall I was impressed with the packaging. The laptop case, with magnetic latch, is a nice touch, as well as the nice suede manual/disc case Dell provides. Still there is a lot of bulk to this packaging, and I would rather they not send out all these nice freebies and reduce the price of the machine and save on packaging, and the environment.

Dell XPS M1330: To Dell or not Dell?

2008-02-20T00:49:00.001-08:00

The Dell XPS M1330 that I ordered for work (graduate research) has finally arrived.

For several months I debated on which machine I should get for work. Should I get a Mac or should I get a PC, and if I were to get a PC, which PC should I get?

The only obvious decision to make was that my new computer would be a laptop. The portability makes a lot of sense for a work machine. A laptop can be taken to conferences, to focus group meetings to give presentations, and it can also be brought home so that I can work there without having to be tied to my desk at school.

In the past I would have never questioned buying a Mac, but over the last few months I have come to appreciate, and yes even enjoy, using Windows Vista. My preference for Vista especially over XP, which I find barely tolerable, seems to put me in a small minority of computer users which mostly consist of Microsoft employees, or pundits. Why I like Vista is material for another post, but in brief I find Vista to do away with much of what I disliked about XP and move the user experience to something that feels a lot more like Mac OS X, which is (still) the OS to beat on the desktop. That said Vista is 'good enough'.

Before deciding on which machine to buy I decided that I would be running Vista, either on a Mac or on a PC. There were several reasons why I decided to run Vista on my new machine:

All of the software in our research group is Windows software and I did not want to start requesting software be purchased just for myself since that does not seem fair.
We have a Windows 2003 Server Domain in our group that I wanted to connect to. I briefly attempted doing this in Mac OS X Tiger one day when I brought a Powerbook to work, but after fiddling around for a bit and some Googling provided little to no aid I abandoned trying to get the Mac to connect to the domain. In fact, I could not even connect to the network shares because packet encryption was enabled. Mac OS X Leopard apparently fixes this problem by adding support for SMB packet encryption but I have not tested it.
Being part of a group matters. If I were to buy a Mac I would be the only Mac user in the group. All of the little optimizations, tools, or procedures I found and developed for improving my workflow would only be relevant for myself. By getting a Vista machine my experiences and the things I learn about using my computer as a tool can help the other members of my group. This was my main reason for choosing Vista.
It is likely that I will be using a Windows PC at my future place of employment and I should learn how to use Windows efficiently.

Apple makes some sturdy, well-performing, well-design laptops that in a lot of ways set the bar in the mobile space. Equally configured PC laptops tend to be priced within $50 of Apple's offering, sometimes Apple being the more economical choice, so price was not really a factor in my decision, especially since I wanted a laptop at least as capable as a Macbook. A Mac would also offer me the flexibility of being able to get back to 'home' to Mac OS X if/when I wanted to.

After looking at laptops from Sony, HP, Alienware and Dell to find a laptop that would meet my demands for design, form factor, features and performance I decided on the Dell XPS M1330. The M1330 has a couple of advantages feature wise over the Macbook.

The M1330 can be configured with a dedicated graphics card, a Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS 128 MB, whereas the Macbook is stuck in Intel-integrated graphics land with a measly X3100.
The M1330 can also be configured with a LED backlit LCD display that avoids the brightness degradation that is typical of cathode lit displays.
The M1330 also has a full-sized VGA and HDMI port whereas the Macbook would require me to carry around a mini-DV adapter to connect to external displays.
The M1330 has a two-button track-pad, nearly a necessity if you're always using Windows.

The features combined with some negative reports about the performance/reliability of Boot Camp eventually led me to choose the Dell over the Apple Macbook. It makes sense, if you're going to be running Vista nearly full-time, it's probably best to buy a machine OEMed with Vista.

Despite what I consider to be a fairly rational argument for purchasing the M1330, it was still difficult for me to leave Mac-land. Using a Mac is comfortable and familiar. I have never owned a Windows-based PC, so although I have had plenty of exposure and time using Windows, I would more or less be starting off as a novice user. Years of tricks and tips I had learned on the Mac would count for nothing on a PC.

How has my decision panned out thus far? I'll save that for another post.

When did you start fasting?

2008-02-12T07:00:00.001-08:00

You know when is a good time to discover that you have to fast 12 hours before a blood test? Not at 7:30 AM at the clinic, ten minutes before your blood test that's for sure.

So instead of getting up at 5:30 AM to get on campus early and take a routine blood test, the reason I got up so early has become a 30 minute walk around campus. Invigorating but not exactly what I usually have in mind at 7 AM in the morning.

A 12 hour fast is the type of information that I would have hoped my doctor reminded (synonymous with 'told' in this case) me of. Albeit, on the bottom of the back page of the form I had to take to the clinic, under a list of contact information, in faded grey font it does mention this important prerequisite. They should really put that information somewhere noticeable, like on the top of the first page in bold font, it's kind of an important thing to know.

Time to find a source of caffeine.

Barak Obama on the role of religion in America

2008-02-11T11:42:00.001-08:00

flash mob

2008-02-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

My friend Ian passed this on to me, and now I pass it on to you.

Reagan Library Republican Debate

2008-02-01T11:54:00.001-08:00

Why do Senator McCain and Romney look so smug all the time when Ron Paul talks about the economy and foreign policy?

Killonaire!

2008-02-01T09:11:00.001-08:00

Strictly speaking this does not count, because it was a Custom game of Halo 3, but last night marked the first time I have ever gotten a Killonaire: 10 kills in a row all within four seconds of each other.

Check out the game stats here.

The issue of 'time': optimization

2008-01-31T12:10:00.001-08:00

Over the last several months I have spent a lot of time contemplating how to best utilize my time. What habits or activity choices will maximize my effectiveness at accomplishing my goals, and becoming the person I want to be.

The Internet is a wonderful tool, and the amount of information available on here is outstanding. With sites like Digg.com and Google Reader you can spend an obscene amount of time reading headlines, browsing info-tainment articles, watching brainless YouTube video, etc. To help curve the amount of time I spend on these activities I have reduced the number of must-check bookmarks in my browser's bookmarks bar, and gotten rid of a lot of fluff in my RSS reader, most of which was video gaming news sites. These changes have easily brought me an hour of extra time during the day.

I have also taken up reading again. Instead of playing video games for an hour or so before bed I have been reading both fiction and non-fiction. I feel like this is a better use of my time, since it helps to improve my vocabulary, educates me on issues that I am interested in. There is also the added benefit of being able to read over the phone to my girlfriend and vice versa. In a long distance relationship it is hard to find activities that you can enjoy together, but reading to each other over the phone for an hour or so before bed has been wonderful.

Another area that I have been trying to improve is my efficiency and focus at work. Instead of working longer hours, I would much rather work smarter. Coffee certainly helps there, but it is also an attitude shift. I do not want to be at work past 5 PM, but I want to get the things I need to finish completed, so in order to do that I need to be more efficient.

These changes have been fairly minor, but I have already noticed them having dramatic and positive affects.

Time to get back to work.

Anyone that knows ...

2008-01-19T00:31:00.001-08:00

Anyone that has played any sort of competitive game with my friend Ian knows how absolutely realistic this photo is.

Courtesy of the fine folks at Bungie who showed off some of their new toys today.

Ants: This is amazing

2008-01-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

I hope they did not have to kill the colony to do that, but wow!

Graduate student research

2008-01-10T15:59:00.001-08:00

One of the key pieces of equipment for my research is a pulsed DC power supply. Without it progress comes to a grinding stop.

As a research assistant I have been using our power supply for several months without a hitch. It's record of solid, unfaltering performance was soiled last night when I went to turn it on for the first time as a graduate student; the lights came on but no one was home. No power output, no display, nothing.

We're still not sure what is wrong with the supply, only that it will not turn on and that it will cost four figures and a month of down time to fix it.

So typical.

I should have stayed as a RA.

CES 2008: The differences between Apple and Microsoft

2008-01-08T11:21:00.001-08:00

Perhaps claiming that Microsoft has no taste is a bit harsh, but there is a tangible difference between their products in areas where the two companies overlap. Bill Gates in this interview explains it as a difference in polish; Apple having a more narrow focus can spend the time refining their products to a degree that takes Microsoft a few more versions to achieve.

A perfect example of this is the difference between Apple's Time Machine backup system and Microsoft's Shadow Copy. Shadow Copy is technically superior to Time Machine in that it does bit-level backups and can be used with only a single drive, whereas Time Machine can only do file-level backups and requires a separate drive. However Time Machine's interface, while a bit over the top, is more polished than Shadow Copy's. Apple also went to the trouble of insuring that Time Machine works universally throughout several key components of Mac OS X, such as Address Book, iPhoto, etc.

Most people I talk to about this, including Windows users, have never heard of Shadow Copy. There lies Microsoft's problem. They innovate in a lot of areas, but have difficulty presenting that innovation to users in a way that excites them.

Case in point, the first paragraph on each company's feature description page.

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

Shadow Copy helps you recover a file if you accidentally delete it.

CES 2008: Microsoft Keynote

2008-01-07T12:58:00.001-08:00

Last night my father and I settled down to watch Bill Gates deliver his last CES keynote, at least as the chairman of Microsoft. Being rabid Mac fans since the dawn of time this is the first occasion either of us has sat down to watch Bill Gates give a speech. Within minutes it became clear that Bill was no Steve Jobs.

By the end of the keynote Bill and crew had talked about Windows Live, essentially a free version of .Mac, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Mediaroom, Windows Mobile and SYNC so that Ford cars could sync and interact with a Zune and Smartphone, some talk-to-search technologies they'll be deliver on the phone soon, and visual recognition software for navigating urban environments that is still being developed at Microsoft Research. Overall a stunning display of innovative technologies and vision.

If Jobs had delivered a keynote about those technologies I know we would have turned off the TV with a sense that he was creating a Star Trek like computing experience, instead it just seemed neat. Whereas Jobs can make email stationary seem revolutionary Gates makes a cell-phone that recognizes what street corner you're on seem mundane. Part of that is charisma, but the other part of it is how Microsoft puts together the whole package: their products lack a lot of the elegance and design focus of Apple's. Jobs was right when he said, "The problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have no taste and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way."

That said the technologies they talked about are exciting enough on there own they did not really need any extra flare. Perhaps the most exciting was Microsoft Mediaroom. Imagine being able to control live sports broadcasts interactively to create your own view of the action. The example Microsoft gave was being able to watch and track any car, say car 22, in a Nascar event. Extend that to the NFL where fans can select from various camera angles, re-watch replays at their choosing, overlay stats, etc, and you have a killer app for TV.

Apparently Microsoft Mediaroom is coming to the Xbox 360 this year, and Bell Canada should be supporting it. If this technology actually delivers on its promises the Xbox 360's market penetration in North America is going to be huge, because every sports fan is going to "need" one.

Winter LAN 2007: Post-mortem.

2007-12-29T23:06:00.000-08:00

Another year, another LAN party.

Thanks to everyone that came out and played for more hours than is likely healthy. This year was especially fun, and there are a few gaming moments that will be remembered for quite a while.

There was the infamous hour long stand off on ... Stand Off

Bungie.net game summary

and the 33 minute slaughter-fest that was Shotgun CTF on Two Towers.

Bungie.net game summary

Looking at the game viewer for that last game reveals where the bulk of the action took place: shield-door hall.

Jason was kind enough, or addicted enough, I am not quite sure which, to bring over Rock Band. Jeff was particularly excited at the prospect of putting his vocal talents to the test.

And of course there was the normal post-game banter.

Overall a huge success. Thanks again to everyone that came out to play.

See you all next year.

Winter LAN 2007

a return?

2007-11-07T22:23:00.001-08:00

Between finishing up my thesis, writing papers, traveling, and moving there was not a lot of time this summer for writing much of anything. The last few months have been jam packed with interesting events, thoughts, and news but I have been too busy and unmotivated to write anything about it.

It's all about the quality of the content. A lot of the things I have thought to write about in the past few months have been too large to just splatter a blog-post with, and I have not really felt the need to sit down and develop something worthwhile.

Maybe I will get back into it, but for now I just cannot seem to find the time.

laser spectroscopy

2007-11-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

Lasers in the lab were never this fun.

Followed by,

Moving my monitor

2007-06-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

I just disconnected my 17" LCD from my Powerbook and hooked it up to my Xbox 360. Why is this significant? It signals the completion of the major revisions to my thesis. All that remains is one or two passes for any residual grammatical errors and I can submit it. So I will not be needing the monitor for productive work, but for play. Finally!

Pirates did what?

2007-06-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

You have to wonder if someone did this on purpose or not.

The Knack

2007-06-15T09:54:00.001-07:00

Regardless of what game I am playing online inevitably I will find a strategy or style of play that manages to severely frustrate my opponents. I was therefore not surprised when after a successful game of Shadowrun the other night that one of the members of the other team began the post-game chat by declaring that "my homosexuality was more potent than any other member on Xbox Live". Some liberal editing has been done to the quote but you get the gist.

Shadowrun is very much a game of team-cooperation. And the winning team is always the one that has a diverse group of races, supporting magical abilities and tech. That particular round I was the only elf on our four person team. Elves are fast, agile, and play well as guerrilla units, quickly attacking and then retreating, since they are also incredibly weak. To play to my strengths, and since the remember of my team was doing a good job directly confronting our opponents, I concentrated by on my strike and retreat role by buying enhanced vision so I could see through walls, teleport so I could beam through walls, ceilings or floors, and a katana so that once I got behind my enemies I could finish them off with a quick slash to the back of the neck.

My strategy after that revolved around identifying unsuspecting targets, teleporting through the floor or wall behind them, killing them, and teleporting away before anyone was the wiser.

It was overall an extremely effective strategy.

Mac OS X Leopard: Cover Flow in the Finder

2007-06-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

There was one feature that made me groan with agony when it was announced at WWDC on Monday: Coverflow in the Finder. The audience did not seem all that impressed either. Steve moved onto the next feature by reassuring the us that Coverflow in the Finder was somehow useful.

Personally I do not see how a big side-scrolling list with slowly rendered previews of 100s of text-documents is going to be useful. It's barely even useful in iTunes, an environment that is much more conducive to the way Coverflow presents data. Album art is unique, and therefore easier to identify. A lot of the documents I have are fairly similar looking, which makes me skeptical of Coverflow's utility, but excited for Quicklook.

Mac OS X Leopard

2007-06-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

Now Apple has me excited for the next version of Mac OS X Leopard.

However I was expecting at least one more whiz-bang feature to be revealed after the tease last fall about them holding stuff back until after Vista was released. Speaking of Vista I do like the Vista-esque menu-bar in Leopard.

The new desktop look is very clean, and it appears that new innovations with the Finder and Dock should keep it that way. It appears that Microsoft still lags behind Apple when it comes to interface innovations that assist users in managing their data.

Now if only Apple could make a decent browser. The Safari 3 beta continues Safari's long standing tradition of brokenness when interacting with post-creators that have HTML editing tools like Blogger. Disappointing. Who in their right mind would run Safari on Windows?

Climate Change: Column A or B?

2007-06-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Tip of the Day

2007-05-22T12:57:00.001-07:00

Best TextMate Tip of the Day yet.

Halo 3: In Beta Form

2007-05-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

After months of waiting, amusing myself with Crackdown, the Halo 3 Public Multiplayer Beta has been released. Overall my impressions are good thus far. The game seems to be a sturdy mix of what made Halo: CE and Halo 2 great multipalyer games with a bit of extra pizazz that is just Halo 3.

The most exciting game yet happened only about an hour ago: 1 Flag CTF on Highground. With a dazzling display of teamwork we managed to get the first capture. The following round on defense we were controlling the base and keeping our flag locked down. That is until their final push in the last minute of the game when they came in and killed everyone and everything, took the flag and headed for the beach. Frantically I jumped in the Mongoose and booted it to the beach solo. The last member of their team dropped the flag from their dead hands only inches from the capture point, and it was round over. That was an exhilarating four kills and end to the round.

How does Bungie make such fun games?

Sailing

2007-05-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

Through various social connections I had a chance to go sailing with a friend yesterday. This was my introductory experience to sailing the high-seas; before yesterday I had never even been on a sail-boat.

After cycling from my apartment to the Sidney, about a 30 km ride, completed in abour 50-60 minutes I might add, we stowed of bikes in the cabin and departed after a bit of a delay. The trip was completely awesome until the sun-set and it got really cold. Instead of getting home around sunset like I thought we would, we did not make port until after mid-night. Ambient temperature decreases significantly after sunset, and not anticipating that I would be out on the water at that time, I was ill-equipped for such conditions.

Regardless of the bitter cold it was an excellent experience. Near the end of the trip we experienced quite a bit of chop. I would have liked that part of the trip quite a bit if it were not for the darkness, which eliminates the horizon and creates an opportunity for land-lovers, like myself, to become a bit nauseated in the rocking waves. It was with some relief that I set my feet on solid ground at the end of the trip. Even hours later there were moments when I would feel like I was being rocked around on the boat again.

I can definitely see the appeal of sailing. The experience is much more pure than cruising in a motorboat. With a large enough boat, of similar size to the one I road, one could travel pretty much anywhere they wanted if they were willing to take the time and had the necessary experience. I wonder what life would be like just sailing from port-to-port and living out of a boat.

Another gentlemen at the harbor mentioned that he was sailing across the Atlantic ocean soon. That seems like such a novel and foreign idea to me. Sail across the ocean to Europe. Wow. I bet the skies in the mid-Atlantic are absolutely stunning at night. I wonder what it would be like to take such a journey. What would it be like to be all alone, floating at the mercy of the wind, with nothing but waves at every horizon?

A Week of Surprises

2007-05-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

A series of tremendous, completely unexpected surprises, have created an unforgettable story arch this week in celebration of my 25th birthday. Thank you so much to everyone who participated (you know who you are).

It all started on Saturday night when Ashley arranged a surprise dinner party for me downtown. Both my parents and hers where there, and met for th first time, and a group of friends. I was caught totally off-guard, a theme for the last week, when I came around the corner to find a group of people there waiting for me and a seat obviously reserved for me by a birthday helium balloon hanging overhead.

Then came Monday where my super-awesome, spectacular girlfriend went all out to craft an unforgettable day for me. In the morning I went over to her house where she had prepared French Toast for me for breakfast, which is a personal favorite. She then presented me with a framed sketch of us that she drew herself. It turned out really well; she has quite a talent. Later on that day she took me to Vista 18, a restaurant downtown located on the 18th floor of a hotel. The view from our corner table was nothing short of breathtakingly remarkable as the sun slowly lowered into the harbor. The crab stuffed trout from Sooke that I had for dinner was amazing (I can tell I am going to run out of unique superlatives to describe this week). After our meal we headed downstairs to find a horse drawn carriage waiting to take us on a tour of Beacon Hill park. Ashley had timed the carriage ride so that the sun was setting over the Olympic mountains in Washington as we went down Dallas road. A spectacular vista. At this point I was already completely overwhelmed. She then plopped another gift in my lap! After shaking it briefly I guessed correctly that it was a flask, what I did not know is that she had it engraved with my initials and had filled it with spiced sipping Tequila from Mexico. Boy howdy! The bar has definitely been raised for her next birthday, and I am looking forward to finding ways to make her feel just as special as she has made me feel.

Fast-forward to Friday evening, where I had anticipated going out for dinner with my parents and Ashley to celebrate my birthday (again). What I did not know is that they had flown both my sister and brother-in-law into town for the weekend to celebrate both my birthday and Mother's Day together. When I exited the lobby of my apartment on Friday evening to get in the car with my father and my sister grabbed me from behind and wished me "Happy Birthday" it took me a good several minutes to comprehend what was actually going on. My sister was actually there, right in front of me. How could this be? My mind eventually came to grips with current events and we went to Camile's to enjoy an excellent meal together along with my cousin who surprised me again by already being our table when we arrived at the restaurant.

What a week. Best birthday ever? I definitely think so.

Thanks again to everyone that was there. Words defy expression of how much it meant to me to have you all there and how thankful I am for what you have all done for me.

where does that plastic come from?

2007-04-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

70% Of Americans Don't Know Plastic Is Made With Oil

Are you serious! It baffles me how a statistic like that can originate from a western country. In other startling news wool comes from sheep, and cotton is grown.

nocturnal work habits

2007-04-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight is another night filled with writing about a project that I have been immersed in for the last three years. Chronicling my efforts, and solutions in my thesis is not the most stimulating literature to author. It reminds me a lot of the agony of writing out an assignment that I knew all the answers for; it's just tedious and laborious to have to go through all the busy work of explaining it.

At 150 pages long the end is nearly in-sight. I plan to finish the analysis section before the day-night barrier reaches the longitude of my current position.

Thankfully I am well stocked with caffeinated, carbonated, beverages to keep me awake.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

There is no ven diagram

2007-04-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

Posts have been unusually sparse lately.

When I have the time, I lack the motivation to write a post, and when I have the motivation I lack the time. There is little to no overlap between the two ingredients necessary for posts to be made.

Most of my days are filled with thesis writing. After writing all day it is hard to motivate myself to write even more, which is unfortunate because there has been a lot to write about lately. Fortunately I am looking down the slope towards the end of my thesis at which time there will be much merriment and blog writing ... I promise.

Shivering Isle

2007-03-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

Shivering Isle the expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is now on Xbox Live!

Grab it and the 1.2 version update before Xbox Live goes down tonight for maintenance. The patch notes seem to indicate that the advancements to the pixel shaders made in the PS3 version are being incorporated into both the PC and 360 version of the game. Way to go Bethesda. Time to play some more Oblivion.

Folding@Home

2007-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

With the recent news about the PS3 and its Folding@Home success (Joystiq is even encouraging a Sunday night Foldathon) I thought perhaps it was time for me to reinstall some distributed computing applications on my Macs and contribute to curing diseases that ail the human race.

It really is amazing some of the problems you can solve with a big enough calculator.

Kudos to Stanford for making the client software for Folding@Home so easy to use. Now if only the Mac client was as sexy looking as the client they have released for PS3. Why is Microsoft not encouraging this sort of stuff on Xbox 360?

Part of the reason is undoubtedly PR related. It would be surprising to me if the Xenon CPU in the 360 could match the processing power of the PS3's Cell for this particular application. How much that translates into gaming performance is not clear, but in a console race where points are given to the console with the most horsepower Microsoft wants to avoid losing any face to the PS3.

Why so much sugar?

2007-03-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was at the cafeteria looking for something to drink when I noticed Lipton had bottled green tea on display in the beverage cooler. I quite enjoy a cup of green tea and I thought that this might just be a drink I wanted. Moments later I was perplexed as to why there was both diet and regular green tea. Well it turns out that Lipton puts sugar in their green tea, whereas the diet version has aspartame. Who in their right mind wants to sweeten green tea!?

Beverage companies simply put too much sugar into everything. Personally I do not want a cup of sugar in my drink, and I do not care to have it sweetened either.

all I want

2007-03-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

At this moment all I want to do is play video games. Street Fighter 2, Crackdown, Gears of War, DDR Universe ... anything but writing my thesis and marking second year physics assignments. Good thing I am working on campus right now because the Xbox 360 would be FAR too much of a temptation for me to resist right now.

SketchUp

2007-03-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

This week I found another one of Google's hidden jewels, SketckUp. This 3D drafting program is available free online, and is geared towards the non-professional user. Overall I have found it easy to learn and fairly simple to use. However, going through the 5 minutes intro tutorial is invaluable.

Even as a completely novice user I have been able to draft some parts for that will be put into my Master's thesis.

Check out the hotness.

Best Friday night evar!

Microsoft, that better be your thumb

2007-03-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

After months of estimates the price of the Halo 3 Legendary Edition has finally been made official ... $129.99 USD. I count myself a pretty hardcore Halo fan, but this is beyond even what I am willing to pay. All that cash so I can get a couple of bonus DVDs, and a case shaped like Master Chief's helmet. Really I just want to play the game.
Perhaps my zeal for mass consumption of useless plastic trinkets has decreased with age or perhaps the incredulous high price has soured my fanboyism, but I look at that offering and think OK, stuff I will watch once, and a big piece of plastic I have to find a place to put. Not exactly a compelling offer. I would rather save my money and spend it on the downloadable content in the form of new maps that they are guaranteed to release, or pick up one of the other blockbuster games being released this fall for the Xbox 360.

So who is actually going to bring their barrel of cash to Halo 3's midnight launch party to pick up a Legendary Edition?

Link

sick ...

2007-03-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

It would of course be an exaggeration to say that everyone is sick right now, but a lot of people are or have been in the last week. Unfortunately I have increased that heaping mucus filled group of head-throbbing primates by one.

For me suffering from a head-cold means that I sleep a lot. I tell people that, but bearing witness to the shear amount of hours I can lay unconscious recuperating from my illness can be startling. Ashley has recently born witness to my body's reaction to a germ infestation, and she has come away with a quiet admiration.

When I am awake she has been nursing me back to health with hot oatmeal in the mornings, and soup in the evenings. Tea of course is sprinkled around the day where it is needed. Over the last three years away from home I have grown accustomed to nursing myself back to health, which makes me appreciate her efforts even more.

And boy howdy can this girl cook. Without a doubt she has established herself as the master in the culinary arts in our relationship. The other night she claimed that she did not have any ingredients with which to make pasta and cream sauce. About an hour later a delicious, heaping bowl full of pasta with chicken and asparagus cream sauce that would have impressed an Italian ava was presented to me. Mmm ...

I told her that she is the best girlfriend I have ever had.

She laughed and said, "I know."

Life Lesson: That bald dude in the line does not know where he is.

2007-03-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

Ashley prefers to title this lesson as, "Always listen to your woman," but ...

We spent the weekend being tourist in our home town, a city wide event that Tourism Victoria puts on each year to encourage Victorians to leave their homes and explore all the tourist spots in town. Fun stuff, I had no idea there were so many tourist attractions in town.

On Sunday morning we had planned to use our ticket for a free 20 minute harbor cruise at 10:00 AM, which would give us enough time to make it back to the Anglican cathedral downtown to see a traditional Anglican service, 2.2 million dollar mahogany organ and all at 11 AM. We arrived at the harbor to see a sizable lineup already formed at the harbors edge. Ashley told me to wait in line while she went to find out if that was the correct line.

When she left it occurred to me that I could save some time by simply asking the bald fellow in front of me.

Me: "Is this the line for the harbor tour or whale watching?"

Baldy: "Whale watching, the harbor tour is over there."

"Perfect," I thought and left the line to go tell Ashley. I found her moments before she confirmed with the company offering the harbor tours that the line I had just been in was indeed the correct line. Doh! Back outside we go, now ten people further down the line. When the boat arrives the last two people to get on were the two people right behind baldy; Ashley and I would have been the last two on.

So instead of catching the early tour we had the pleasure of waiting in line for another 30 minutes and missed the sound of the organ at the church.

Thanks baldy.

The New York Nerd » Dog Hugs Baby - Photos

2007-02-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

Now this is "brighten my week" cute.

The New York Nerd » Dog Hugs Baby - Photos

Enzo Ferrari hits 339 Kmh on Alberta Highway

2007-02-01T18:25:00.000-08:00

To my brother-in-law,

I expect to see you in a similar video some day. Let me know, I want to be there to watch.

A disturbing graph

2007-01-23T15:07:00.000-08:00

Few people bring more laughter into my life than my friend Ian. Today I received an email from him with the subject, "A disturbing graph", which contained only the following picture.

I have noticed the lack of my online presence as of late as well. In my defense that is not entirely due to having a relationship now, but also in large part due to being in the final leg of my Master's thesis. Case in point, I left the lab at 5 AM last night. When I awoke this morning I returned. After a game of ultimate tonight I am going home to work until some unholy hour of twilight.

There just has not been enough "free time" for the luxury of being online in some form these days. Soon this will all be over though and life can return to a more normal pace.

Comet McNaught

2007-01-18T00:31:00.000-08:00

Hopefully you took sometime to go gaze upon Comet McNaught last week while it was visible. Whenever I see sights like this in the sky I cannot help but wonder how such celestial signs were interpreted in ancient civilizations. What sort of mystical significance would be attribute to such an event?

Mystical significance or not the comet was certainly a beautiful sight to behold.

talks, food, and school

2007-01-17T23:23:00.000-08:00

There have been some excellent speakers here at UVic in the past two days. This afternoon we had a talk titled "Neurophysics: Unraveling your brain's dynamics" given by Dr. Andre Longtin. While the field of neurophysics is certainly in its infancy, and it is not clear how much we will ever understand about such a complicated system as the human brain, the talk was quite interesting and they are starting to make some slow progress on the small problems.

One you think about it, neurophysics is really a field were a biological system is attempting to study itself. Quite the feedback loop. More than anything the talk gave me an appreciation for the insane complexity of neurological systems. It is an incredibly daunting problem to tackle, and it's questionable how much success we'll have over the next several decades.

There was also a talk titled "The Science (and Politics) of Climate Change" given by Dr. Andrew Weaver. The climate of the Earth is changing and it is attributable to human activity. The "debate" on the issue that is portrayed in the media is non-existent in the scientific community and exist due to the manipulation of the media and their lack of scientific training. It is clear that we (as in humanity) need to stop pumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere NOW or we are going to cause huge problem for the planet and ourselves; think increasing desertification, rising sea levels, and poisoning the ocean with carbonic acid.

Dr. Weaver also commented on the validity of the science presented in Al Gore's "The Inconvenient Truth". To his judgment the science was solid and presented well, except for one or two minor exaggeration's that did not substantially detract from the authenticity of the message of the film.

Before going to the lecture last night I went with a friend to a church just off campus for a free dinner. Every Tuesday the church offers students a free meal no strings attached. The food there was excellent, and when I have the chance I think I will take the opportunity to enjoy a meal there.

It was nice not to have to cook for myself especially after Ashley spoiled me last week with several spectacular dinners. The tortellini and home-made sauce she prepared one night was incredible. When she handed me a gargantuan plate full of food the possibility of eating it all seemed remote. The unexpected does occur from time to time, and soon my plate was empty and I had lost the ability to move myself under my own power.

This week's cuisine has been much more mundane. Mostly bagged lunches and cafeteria food as I finish up the last few experiments for my MSc. thesis. I am so ready for something new. Tweaking optics, scanning, tweaking, scanning, tweaking, scanning, and so one and so forth is not as intellectually stimulating as it might sound.

Tweak, tweak, scan, scan.

the first step to fixing my latency problem

2007-01-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

Shaw got back to me after emailing them about the latency issues I have been experiencing on my connection.

Hello Joshua,

Thank you for taking the time to email us.

I appologize for all the trouble you have gone through attempting to get this issue investigated and resolved. We strive to provide excellent customer service to all our customers but seem to have missed the mark this time.

We appreciate you collecting the information you enclosed. We have checked the notes on your account, the signal to your Shaw Modem and the area you are in for possible issues. We have not found anything unusual. To investigate this issue further, our technicians have requested you try running a traceroute from your Mac (direct to the Shaw Modem) to a few of the sites you are using for gaming. Please try running them to 64.59.160.13 (one of the DNS servers) as well as the 2nd IP address that shows up in your results. The first should be your Mac’s IP address and the 2nd should be the IP address of the gateway. Please try running this batch a few times a day for a few days.

When replying, please include the following reference number in all your replies: ###

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you for choosing Shaw!

At least they seem interested in gathering some more data to troubleshoot the problem. It's a far more promising response than the previous replies I have received about my problem.

I modified my traceroute script to include a couple of other internet servers. After a few days of data gathering I send it back to Shaw for analysis and see what they say. Hopefully they can get to the bottom of this, but I am reserving my optimism due to past experiences.

Latency test of my Shaw Xtreme-I internet connection

2007-01-15T01:45:00.000-08:00

I have complained about the quality of my internet connection before. Since that time I have been collecting latency statistics on my connection by sending 50 ICMP packets to 64.59.166.83, a Shaw gateway two hops from my computer, every hour. That collection of data has gone on since March 23, 2006 and I have been tracking the results.

Like I suspected the latency of my internet connection has steadily increased, degrading my online gaming experience and introducing all sorts of horrible lag. I have contact Shaw again about the quality of my connection. It will be interesting to see how they respond. The current situation is simply unacceptable.

Figure 1: This graph shows the minimum, average and maximum of transit times for fifty 64 byte ICMP packets to 64.59.166.83 taken from March 23, 2006 to January 12, 2006.

Figure 2: This graph shows the standard deviation of the date shown in Figure 1, which was taken from March 23, 2006 to January 12, 2006.

Email SPAM

2007-01-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

How much SPAM to do you regularly get in your inbox? I've left my pilling up to see how many SPAM messages I accumulate in a 30 days. Right now the current tally is at 478 messages, which translates to roughly 16 messages a day. Not too shabby, but I am sure some of you get way more than that.

Fortunately Gmail has an excellent SPAM filter, so I only have to manually deal with a handful of those messages each month. That is quite an improvement over the Junk Mail filter in Mail.app for Mac OS X that was my previous email client. How's your SPAM filtering working?

Holidays in Edmonton

2007-01-03T23:33:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, just before New Years, I arrived back in Victoria after spending close to ten days in Edmonton with family and friends for the holidays. It was a fabulous time. The weather was fairly mild by Edmontonian standards, it may have reached around -10 ˚C a couple times, but mostly it was warmer than that. In fact it was warm enough that the snow or the cold did not even bother me, the dry air is still irritating though.

There is always a rush of activity whenever I visit Edmonton. So many people to see and I am always short on time. I would need at least three weeks to properly visit all the people I would like to see there.

Whenever I visit though I am always reminded of the depth of the relationships that I have with my friends in Edmonton. Even after being away for nearly three years there is such a depth there. It feels like no time has passed at all.

This year I had some splendid conversations with a couple of people on topics ranging from religion to politics. It's always interesting to go back and see how everyone's views have matured over the last year. The conversations are always edifying and they are one of the things I most look forward to each year.

Of course it would not have been the holiday break without the annual LAN party in my basement. Once again a group of twelve of my friends and I got together in my parent's basement and played video games (and foosball) to the wee hours of the morning. It's worth all the hassle every time we do it, and this year was no different.

It was also nice to spend some time with my favorite brother-in-law and my sister. I do not see nearly enough of them. My sister and I did or annual movie-a-thon after they treated me to dinner at a restaurant downtown.

To my mother's dismay I opted to leave Edmonton before New Years this year so I could spend it with friends here in town. I had a spectacular time enjoying New Years Eve over at a friend's place until about 1 AM and then with my girlfriend's parents and relatives. A highly enjoyable experience at both venues.

This year was one of my favorite Christmas seasons; good friends, good food, good family, good food, good times all around. Now after an approximately two week break it's time to put my nose back to the grindstone and finish up my degree at UVic. Boy howdy will that be nice.

Burnout 5

2007-01-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

Now here is a real next-gen version of Burnout that I would be willing to spend $60 USD on, instead of the Xbox / PS2 that Burnout Revenge for the 360 was. The screen renders look impressive, and if the game actually looks anything close to them it looks like Burnout 5 will be a huge leap forward.

From the article it also seems that they are advancing the physics a lot in the next version; there will be 80 separate destructible vehicle parts as opposed to 12 in Burnout 4. Criterion also seems to be focusing on online play, with a goal of making Burnout fun to play with people of differing skill levels online. It'll be interesting to see how they manage that. Game-balance and player-skill balance are tough problems to solve in online game-play. I look forward to seeing what solutions they develop.

Link

Finished ... for now

2006-12-22T02:27:00.000-08:00

After cramming a week's worth of work into three days I am finally on holidays.

It feels nice to be back in Edmonton surrounded by my family and staying with my parents. My father's cooking has only improved since I left two years ago. Soon after walking in the door I was greeted by a plateful of hot-wings, greek salad, garlic toast, Gouda cheese, and pumpkin pie. Mmm ... it is good to be home.

I brought my running shoes with the intent of not being a lazy turd for the entire course of my stay. We'll see how that goes.

The Holiday Crunch

2006-12-20T08:18:00.000-08:00

Over the past two days, literally the last 48 hours, I have spent all but ten of them at UVic in a bid to meet a self-appointed goal before the holidays begin. It always seems that progress on an experiment happens after the regular eight hours of a work day are completed, and this latest push has not been an exception to the rule. Hopefully after this morning I will have the data I need and will feel satisfied leaving for what I consider to be a well earned rest with family and friends in Edmonton.

This year I am looking forward to going 'home' for Christmas more than the previous two years I have been in Victoria. I am not entirely sure why that is the case, but I am upbeat about what has happened over the last year in my life and am anxious to see and rejoin, if only briefly, my friends back in Edmonton to share time with them once again.

Chax: iChat Enhancer

2006-12-20T00:39:00.000-08:00

If you use iChat on a regular basis you need to go download and install Chax right now. Chax adds all of those features to iChat that should have been there in the first place: tabbed windows, chat log viewer, auto-reply, etc.

Being a bit of an Apple purist I was hesitant to install Chax and 'corrupt' my copy of iChat. Now after using iChat with Chax for the last week or so I cannot imagine going back; iChat would feel broken without Chax. The implementation of the new features blends in seamlessly with iChat UI's so it does not feel tacked on at all. It simply feels like iChat done right.

Messenger versus iChat: UI Design

2006-12-19T23:48:00.000-08:00

One of the thing that constantly annoys me about a lot of Microsoft products is that the company does not seem to spend anytime optimizing their application's user interfaces. MSN Messenger for Mac is a perfect example where the user interface is over-bloated and over-done. Simply put it takes up way to much room on the screen. The wasted screen real estate becomes especially transparent when Messenger is running next to iChat. Compare the two for yourself the size of the two default windows for iChat and Messenger.

Notice how large the text input field is compared to iChat's. Messenger also spaces out lines of text so much that it can barely contain a few responses of an IM conversation before overfilling its huge window. And check out the super-sized SEND button. Did they think we would forget about sending our message if the button was not so overbearing? Why do they even need a send button there to begin with?

The Windows version of Messenger is even more obnoxious with built in advertisements, internet search, and third-party tie in left and right. It is so hideous to look at that I can barely bring myself to use it.

The new Internet Explorer 7 is a sign that Microsoft is capable of delivering a pleasant, minimalistic user interface when it wants to. In fact they did such a good job of IE 7 that I actually prefer it to Firefox on aesthetic grounds. Here is hoping that Microsoft delivers more products with IE7's elegance and less of the bloated eye-soars like Messenger.

Rant over.

Indie Mac Apps for 85% Off

2006-12-15T21:00:00.000-08:00

MacHeist is running a promotion for the next two days where they are selling $350 worth of Indie developed Mac apps for $49, and some of the proceeds also goto a charity of your choice.

With TextMate, Disco, and Rapid Weaver in the mix it is certainly tempting, but I have not decided to take the plunge yet.

Check it out for yourself. They have already raised over $100, 000 for charity.

A sad reality

2006-12-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

This photo made me sad.

Ducks never had to worry about sewer grates out in the wild.

Zudeo Beta and more Richard Dawkins

2006-12-10T04:03:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you heard of the new media sharing service called Zudeo. Essentially Zudeo is a graphical front-end for Azureus, the popular multi-platform BitTorrent client. It works well but ISPs are probably in tears over its launch. A legal video sharing service based on BitTorrent that hosts HD video means users are going to be using a lot more bandwidth, both upstream and downstream, than the requirements of YouTube demand.

Since the service is new there is not a lot of compelling content on there at the moment. How ever there are two gems available. A two part TV series by Richard Dawkins called "The Root of All Evil" in which he examines the parasitic effect religion has on society and an individual's ability to think for themselves.

UPDATE: These videos are also available on Google Video here. The first two results are the ones you are looking for.

Quarem the Invigilator

2006-12-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Now I can add 'Invigilator' to the long list of titles I have accumulated (most of the others Ian has given me before, during, or after a heated bout of multiplayer gaming).

While writing exams for my engineering degree I always wondered what it was like for the invigilator of the exam. What were those two to three hours like for him or her while I, along with my colleagues, performed intense mental gymnastics; demonstrating our knowledge with pencil and paper?

Now I know.

It's an interesting experience watching the students write the exam. Passing through the rows you shortly gather enough statistics to differentiate the ones that are prepared, the ones that are not prepared, and the boring masses who form the backdrop that makes the other two groups stand out. How serious this moment feels to them. You can see the weight of the experience on their faces, and I can remember the feelings that produced that burden.

A four month marathon of study has reached climax in a crowded gymnasium. In these few hours a large portion of their success over the previous months will be determined; measured against the benchmark their professor has set for them. For some the bar will be too high, for others it will have been too low.

As the invigilator I watch, wait, and reminisce about the time that I sat in desk similar to theirs. Today though I experience something new.

Political (and Economic) Compass

2006-11-29T02:30:00.000-08:00

My friend Alastair and I were discussing political/economic view points the other day and wound up taking a short quiz online that attempts to measure where you stand on the political / economic grid. Of course the accuracy of these internet quizzes is always questionable, but they are amusing.

My score:
Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.08

That is a significant departure from where I would have scored but only five years ago. :-)

Where do you stand?

Richard Dawkins at Randolph-Macon Woman's College

2006-11-29T01:44:00.000-08:00

Recently Richard Dawkins was at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia reading and answering questions about his latest book "The God Delusion". I have not read the book myself but I found the videos of his reading and question period about the book interesting. The videos are hosted in two parts on YouTube or altogether on Google Video.

Dawkins' answers for the most part were interesting and well spoken. Unfortunately he only skimmed the surface of some of the questions or did not answer them fully. That is of course understandable given the depth that some of the questions would take to answer properly. It would have been interesting to hear some of his responses in more detail though.

Snowstorm in Victoria

2006-11-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

There was quite a snowstorm here yesterday. Arguably it is not over yet, at least the aftermath of the storm is not quite finished yet. The city is more or less shutdown. Schools are all closed, UVic is closed, some of the banks are closed, trees have fallen over, transit is sporadic, and so is the power in some areas of the city.

Unlike Edmonton where the snow is crisp from arctic temperatures and people know how to deal with it, in Victoria the snow turns into a sleety ice like sheet on the roads and the hills and inexperienced drivers make for dangerous road conditions. So people cannot even get to where they would need to be, hence bringing the city to a halt.

I took some pictures of the what Mother Nature left us as a pre-holiday gift this morning.

Victoria Snowstorm

Andromeda on APOD

2006-11-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Now this is beautiful!

Thank you Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Sundance Winner ‘The Corporation’ Released for Free on BitTorrent

2006-11-25T18:50:00.000-08:00

I thought "The Corporation" a

Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.

was an excellent, provocative film that made me think about corporates entities in a new way. I think everybody should see regardless of political persuasion because the questions that are brought up in the film are worth addressing explicitly.

Now you can see it for free since it was just made available for distribution via BitTorrent without charge by the film's creators.

Link

New Halo 3 Multiplayer Shots

2006-11-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

*drool*

More hotness can be found here.

random thought

2006-11-15T22:07:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me on the bike ride home tonight that there are no guarantees when it comes to matter of love, there are only statements of intention.

The format war nobody is talking about

2006-11-09T12:28:00.001-08:00

There is constantly talk about Blu-ray versus HD-DVD in the news these days. Which format will eventually become the next optical disc format of choice is anyone's guess. Speculation has run rampant. Despite all the discussion no clear victor has emerged and it will likely be several years yet before industry momentum behind either format evolves into industry consensus and one format or the other is declared the victor. Nobody is speaking about the other format war that is going on behind the scenes. Instead of physical media this is a war between audio/video codecs and DRM as the market for digitally distributed video and audio has begun to grow.

In this war there are really only two key players, Apple with their iTunes Store and Microsoft with their miss-mash of services and partners. Apple offers music in AAC format and has just begun to sell TV and movies encoded in the H.264 video codec, both are protected with Apple's Fairplay DRM. Microsoft on the other hand has used it's partners to sell Windows Media Audio and Video encoded with their own DRM scheme. In general, devices are only compatible with one form of DRM. The iPod is compatible with Apple's DRM, and everything else uses Microsoft's DRM.

It's pretty clear who is winning in the audio space right now. It is hard to say though if Apple's dominance as an online distributor of music is propped up by the success of the iPod or if the success of the iPod is due in part to the strength of the iTunes Store. Certainly customers of the iTunes Store are not likely to stray from Apple's camp after investing heavily in music purchased from iTunes for the simple fact that the music is not compatible with any other music player. Similarly customers who have heavily invested in WMA based music are not likely to buy an iPod, but rather stick with players that are compatible with the music they own. It's a weird world we live in these days were the music we buy online comes in two separate, incompatible versions.

What about video? This is a new space, and Apple now has to compete based on the quality of their content rather than enjoying the synergies between hardware and services that they have enjoyed with the iTunes/iPod. Another issue with selling video online is getting that content to the TV. Apple's answer to that has been to develop iTV, a thin-client that connects to a Mac and streams video to be displayed on a TV. Expect the iTV early in 2007 at a price tag of $299.

Microsoft on the other hand has the hardware advantage in this space. They have a next-generation game console, the Xbox 360, that can also act as a media-hub. This week Microsoft announced that they will be offering SD and HD (720p) versions of TV for sale, and movies for rental over Xbox Live. Now if you are a customer interested in purchasing video online what are you going to buy an iTV for $299 or an Xbox 360 for $399? One can stream video, the other can stream video, act as a Windows Media Center Extender, and it plays next-generation games. Certainly for the 10 million Xbox 360 owners that will exist by years end the choice is clear. They already have the hardware to display video on their TVs, just go with the Xbox Live Marketplace with HD videos and forget iTunes and it's SD videos and $299 iTV.

Ideally Apple and Microsoft would play nicely together, but the same could be said for Sony and Toshiba as they battle over the next-gen optical disk format. Nobody wants to have music that is incompatible with different hardware vendors. We want to be able to stream our media to our Xbox 360, PS3, iTV, watch the content on our Mac or Vista box, and take it with us on our iPod, Zune of whatever mobile device we have. Instead we are caught in the middle of a format war over digitally distributed media. Just like the incompatibility between HD-DVD and Blu-ray will slow their adoption the incompatibilities between the hardware and software of digital distributed media is going to slow their adoption as well. The incompatibilities between iTunes and my Xbox 360 has slowed my online music purchases, and instead of buying TV/movies online I think I'll stick with DVDs. If someone like myself who exists in the target market for these services is dissuaded from using them, then how can Apple or Microsoft ever expect digital distribution to take off in the rest of the market?

Gears of War and Call of Duty 3

2006-11-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Gears of War and Call of Duty 3. Both games have spectacular online components.

GoW is simply jaw dropping gorgeous and has a really nice tactical feel to it. When played right you get end up in these prolonged firefights with the other team as you both vie for control and positioning of a certain area of the map. Both teams popping in and out of cover as they try to out-flank the other. It just feels right.

CoD3 is CoD2 times a factor of three. The graphics are better, the new gametypes are better, character classes are great, vehicles are fun, having 24 players online works lag-free and is super fun the play. My favorite new gametype is War. In War there are five sequential control points and either team is fighting to push back the other and eventually control all five. It makes for some intense battles as 24 players rush to one location of the map. That is when it's time to whip out my sniper rifle mow down the n00bs, and then call in an artillery strike to take out any enemy tanks. Fun squared people.

It is a good autumn for 360 owners that is for sure.

Rumsfeld resignation summarized in Mac OSX screenshot

2006-11-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

Taken from Boing Boing.

it's always a stupid bug

2006-11-06T22:45:00.000-08:00

I just spent the last 30 minutes starring at a piece of code not understanding why an array I was working with was not updating after initialization. After several attempts to fix the problem it suddenly dawned on me that I was initializing the array INSIDE the loop that was updating its value. Doh!

Without fail the annoying bugs in code are always caused by some incredibly dumb mistake. Where did the semicolon go? Missed adding or subtracting one from the array index variable. It's always something trivial yet vitally important.

Well onto what I was actually trying to do.

Re: A box with padded walls

2006-11-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

Maura is certainly right, it is unfair to conflate the wide spectrum of religious, political, and moral beliefs of people who identify themselves as Christians with the radical, right-wing fanatics that make the news.

As a person that grew up in the Christian church I can attest to the heterogeneity of beliefs inside even the Evangelical community. My experiences with people outside of Canada has introduced me to even different types of Christians, some that do not even believe in a divine creator, but still cherish the values of Christian teaching. There is such diversity of belief that the label 'Christian' conveys little meaning actually. In fact, I know 'Christians' that do not even like to be called such because they do not feel it properly identifies their beliefs, and they prefer not to be put into a box.

Many of my friends are Christians and all of them are outstanding people, whom I dearly cherish.

curious world: A box with padded walls

Much to do, not much time

2006-11-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

Like Cody, I have also been busier than normal. That has of course meant less time for blogging, which is unfortunate because I have a lot I would like to talk about more, but simply do not have the time to write about it right now. I should only be busy for a couple more weeks as I reach an effective working state for the interferometer that I built for my Master's project.

Right now I have to go play a game of volleyball.

Battlestar Galactica

2006-11-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

Tonight I finally caught up on Battlestar Galactica, and wow is season three ever good. To avoid spoiling it for anyone else I will not mention any specifics, but for those that have been watching the show you know what a ride the season has been thus far.

After the first five episodes it really looks like season three may be the best one yet. That is saying a lot considering the caliber of the first two seasons, but the team that is making BSG seems to be in their stride thus far. It's simply a master piece.

Security certificates and secret evidence

2006-10-29T23:05:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I was talking to a friend about the Military Commission Act that was recently signed into law in the USA. Of course we both thought it was horrific that the American government would allow a bill to be passed that allowed the executive branch to detain citizen's or otherwise indefinitely without due judicial process.

However what I did not know, and what he pointed out to me, was that here in Canada we are dealing with similar issues.

Link

clocked to the dome

2006-10-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

The running theme for the last few months of sports seems to be that people cannot resist hitting me. If it is not Jeff clubbing me in the neck or head with a squash racquet, Kyle throwing discs of terror into my soft nether regions, it is complete strangers elbowing me in the face.

So now I have a nice sore nose with a swollen bruise, as well as a pair of balls that twitch with fear every time I see an ultimate disc, and I get anxious when I see Jeff, especially if he's swinging a racquet around me. At least the first part is true.

Hopefully I have taken my share of spills this semester and this string of injuries is not going to escalate into a broken bone or bones.

MSNBC on Military Commision Act

2006-10-23T21:17:00.001-07:00

club soda and lime

2006-10-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

When my parents were out here in September my Dad hooked me on club soda's with a squirt of lime. It's better than straight water, but it's not pumped full of corn syrup like regular pop. Regardless of the lack of sweetening in the drink the band of empty club soda cans sitting atop my fridge testifies to the tastiness of the drink.

While my mouth has been entertained with bubbly water all weekend, I have kept the remaining parts of myself engaged with Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the latest game in the Splinter Cell franchise.

This is the first game in an amazing gauntlet of block-busters that are being released this fall for Xbox 360.

Gears of War
Rainbow Six Vegas
Call of Duty 3
Tony Hawk Project 8
F.E.A.R.

This collection of games alone represents more than the cost of a Nintendo Wii, which is largely why I will be abstaining from additional next-generation console purchases this fall. That list does not even include Xbox Live Arcade games, or social games, like Fuzion Frenzy 2, which also show promise.

What is a gamer to do?

engineering alumni

2006-10-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I went to the Victoria Engineering Alumni Reunion at the Delta Resort that sits on the harbor in downtown Victoria. I had expected to network with some engineers from the Victoria area in the hope of finding an in at a local engineering company. As soon as I entered the room though I realized that the youngest engineer next to me in the room graduated in the early sixties.

Regardless it was a fun event and meeting and conversing with a room full of pleasant, retired engineers from a totally different era was quite a bit of fun. They talked of a time when calculations for undergraduate physics experiments were all done on a slide-rule, since no electronics existed. A time when the U of A had only a little over 7,000 students across the entire campus. Now there are 3,500 students in the Faculty of Engineering alone. They told stories of growing up during the war, and the German POWs kept at Lethbridge. Overall it was quite a pleasant glimpse into a past that I could not really comprehend. It made me wonder how much is going to change in the next 60 years or so.

I got the impression that the others enjoyed having such a young alumni there with them as well. Certainly I felt very welcomed, regardless of the multi-decade age gap.

more Google goodness

2006-10-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

Just when dot mac experiences Google comes through with Picassa integration into iPhoto. Thus I have 250 MB of free online storage for my photos. Seriously, how does dot mac stay in business?

Speaking of Google, did you notice they integrated their free online word processor and spreadsheet program today? The functionality that is there is enough for most basic word-processing and spreadsheet tasks. For those of us that do not wish to spend several hundred dollars on MS Office for home machines there are plenty of free alternatives either offline (OpenOffice) or online.

Of course these applications are not perfect, but I am sure Google will continue to mature them over time. One thing is certain, when I am online, a lot of the time I'm in a google.com domain now.