Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

January 23, 2004 04:31 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 0

"the medium is the message -- i think that the internet makes you into a libertarian to a certain extent. because you can see non-hierarchical, non-centralized systems working, and it becomes hard to credibly claim that we need increased centralization in order to create order or equity or equitableness."
-- cory doctorow on the internet

www.shift.com/content/web/451/1.html

read the article, and if you have the time, you can download his book for free or buy it on hardcover.

January 22, 2004 20:37 +0000 | Miscellaneous Nifty Links 1

i found this a day or two ago, but haven't had time to post it. it's from a site called "diesel sweeties. check it out here.

Which Diesel Sweeties Character Are You?

January 22, 2004 05:43 +0000 | Geek Stuff Personal Life 0

pavel invited me out tonight to attend something called a "nerd rave". it was at a club we'd been to before where i'd had a nice time so figured: "why not?" here's why: it was rediculously lame. no offense to pavel who i'm sure enjoyed his time there, but it was a room full of irc geeks who all knew each other well enough to not need to communicate over the absolutely terrible music. i spent the whole hour and a half i was there getting my ear talked off by a drunken idiot named "mike" who just wouldn't stop talking. a really, really unhappy time was had.

however, when i finally escaped, i went for a walk on the frozen streets of toronto. at 11pm, the city is still somewhat alive, the occasional bar or cafe still open to passers by. i window shopped in at the long closed trendy stores on queen, passed city hall and wandered up yonge to the hard rock cafe where i stopped in for an $8 milkshake (last time i'll ever do that). it was cold out, but not brutal, and the wind was low. i chatted up a garbage man doing the recycling rounds, asking him questions about the amount of stuff that actually gets recycled and process of it all. you'd be surprised at how much people love to talk about their jobs -- and how much they know about something you might be interested in. next time, just ask... you might be pleasantly surprised.

January 20, 2004 01:54 +0000 | Society & Culture 1

so it turns out that the american moron has decided that he wants to go to mars. my first thought was: "it's about time". this was my only thought on the subject until i saw a prediction for the final landing date: 2030. it was then that i realised that i'd be 50 years old at that point.

whatever happened to us? we were supposed to be building a colony on the moon and taking regular missions to and from mars by now. 35years. that's how long it's been since the human race (granted, under an american banner) touched down on the moon. what the hell has been going on since then? what do we, as a people have to show for 35years of being on this planet? a couple wars, an internet and a whole bunch of fuct-up marketing selling the masses stuff we don't need. we could have gone to mars, but instead we bought washable cellphones. and now a war-mongering idiot is pretending that he has an honest desire to explore the galaxy just so he can get re-elected and make more money for the oil industry.

here's a thought: what if we could convince debeers to finance an expedition to neptune? apparently, scientists have theorised that it's raining diamonds there. they can harvest the rocks, and we can build starships. sounds like a plan to me.

January 17, 2004 23:59 +0000 | Personal Life 0

i recieved a package in the mail today from ruth (aka mom #2). she baked me some tasy chocolate chip cookies and they've been helping me put off lunch for about 3 hours now. thanks ruth! ;-) i'll have to call her later tonight with a real thank you.

i went out thursday night with a friend i met years ago back at moshpit. pavel called me when i was staying late at work and asked: "hey, you want to go out to night and drink cheap beer?". after explaining that i don't drink and getting over his surprise, i agreed to go out anyway -- if only to start havnig a social life in toronto. ...and i had a really great time! we went to a tiny little bar called "smokless joe's" where he bought their last bottle of $6 russian beer, dropped by an (overdone, and not very good) pizza place called "amato" and then went on to a techo/gothic night club that was pretty much empty (but what do you want for a thursday night?) truth be told though, it was a fantastic place. great music and amazing dancing.... each person on the floor was completely caught up in the collective groove of the room, some dancing as if they were the only person there. it was almost enough to make me get off my ass and get on the dance floor myself -- almost. we met some friends of pavel's, i drank copious amounts of coke (ew) and had a nice conversation with a guy named "mike" who seemed like he belonged in bc (laid back, hair in dredlocks, fascination with weed etc.) overall, really a great night.

oo, and interesting of note, wyrdsister's blog has had a face lift. check it out if you have time.

as a last bit of news, i have now compressed and resized all of the pictures i've taken since i left ottawa... to a total of about 155. i'll try to post them all up on the imager over the next few days.

January 15, 2004 03:56 +0000 | Geek Stuff Nifty Links 2

i've recently upgraded the blogger to handle something micros~1 calls "accessibility options". this a feature i plan to expand on later, but for now, certain people who have trouble with small, low contrast fonts will have an easier to read layout once they've logged in. it's based on a set of dynamically-called stylesheets, which are in turn based on the style engine. and the code is near ready to post. i just have to include a few docs with it first.

to add to the list of cool stuff online, i offer you grocerygateway.com. it's what i've always heard should be available, but until now, i've not seen anywhere. order all of your groceries online, at normal prices, in the sizes you like. i just placed an order and it'll be here on thursday (sadly, next week. i ordered too late to get it tomorrow morning). when it comes in, i'll post a review.

January 14, 2004 00:45 +0000 | Nifty Links 1

a couple interesting links today:

a dumb (but curious) kid was suspended for 3 days for sending a windows popup message to everyone at his school at once. the message? "hey". damn that kid! throw his ass in jail!. (yes i'm kidding). more upsetting, though admittedly, not surprising is the response from the kids computer teacher who (again, not surprisingly) is an idiot. check out the full story here.

there's a big amount of hype circulating the web about a new movie coming out called "the corporation". it focuses on important subjects like globalisation, and the roll of things like profit, consumerism and capitalism in general in society, culture and goverment. according to a lot of reviews (and the many requests i've had from various sources to publicise the flick), it's pretty damn cool and possibly "the next bowling for columbine". i don't know if i believe it. i have, after all, not seen it yet. but i will and when i do, i'll post what i thought.

for those interested, the movie will be playing in vancouver, toronto, and ottawa in the next couple weeks. i'd suggest that you go to the site to find out more, but it licks bigtime, so i'll send to you straight goods instead.

January 12, 2004 23:25 +0000 | Employment Geek Stuff 0

every once in a while you have one of those days where you fight and fight and fight with a stupid machine and in the end..... you actually win. today was such a day. but for the record: getting cvs to work from windows over ssh using key-based authentication is a rediculous bitch of a thing. ...you just have to remember to to think like a windows user, and not an intelligent person ;-).

and here's the howto that did it for me. there's a lot of them out there, but as crackt-out as this one may look, it really is the best.

January 11, 2004 08:32 +0000 | Miscellaneous 1

at about 2:30am the fire alarm went off in my building. a loud, blistering noise not fit for this earth. it would appear that my building was on fire and we had to vacate immediately... from my 21st floor apartment. bits of clothing were thrown about in an effort to secure a sustained level of acceptable warmth in the -20degree weather outside... and what about insurace??? i don't have any! we walked down all 21 flights of stairs to find only 5% of the building residents waiting downstairs... the rest apparently sleeping through the ungodly noise unfit for this earth.

it was then we decided to go for pizza. this would likely take a while.

after pizza @amato down the street, we returned and chatted with the building manager. apparently some pipes downstairs had frozen and burst, filling the corridor downstairs with 3 feet of water... hot water. water so hot that the steam set off the fire alarm and the chaos ensued.... i would imagine that the whole episode would have been upsetting had we actually been sleeping.

January 10, 2004 17:14 +0000 | Employment Personal Life 0

angela came out last night and we went out with some local friends of hers. i got to meet the infamous "jen" and have unfortunately yet to recieve the "jen test"... apparently it's something like the usual set of questions any concerned friend uses to grill a new significant other, but souped up like tim taylor's lawn mower. i met darren, a movie maker / geek for hire that maintains servers to help corporations launder their own money (he's still cool though) and a few other nice young men that didn't talk much.

i've also finished my first week at the new job. it's kinda frustrating right now, 'cause i've not yet nailed down the "command structure" i need to function properly. i've got one guy in vancouver giving me orders from his office, and another guy in my office issuing (often very different) orders. i'm not sure who takes precident yet, so things are confusing. i have a pretty smokin' machine though, and i actually get to do development work too (as oppsoed to my last job that just had me fixing crackt-out buggy code). i got cvs and my sound card working now, so i'm pretty happy where i am. sure, it's advertising, and sure i'm helping rich people get richer... but we all have to pick our battles, and my passion isn't for that fight. i wish the best of luck to those who do -- maybe one day, when i'm finished with my own fight, i'll join you.