That’s life I guess… No pain, no gain!

Southern Ontario Voting

Well, I’m amazed that almost all of Ontario, Southern Ontario in particular, has voted in the Conservative party. For as long as I can remember paying attention to politics Ontario has been a Liberal party stronghold. Something has changed this time, and whether for good or bad…. we’ll see down the road.

If you look at the picture on the right, you’ll see that it is dominated by conservative voted ridings. Up north we get into some NDP (orange), and Liberal (red) ridings, but the blue is overwhelming. If you go to the interactive map ( clicking on the image should get you there ) you can zoom in and see that Toronto is still a Liberal stronghold, but that seems like all of it.

I’m always a political swing vote. I refuse to give my vote to one party from now until eternity. I will give my vote to the party whom I believe will best suit us for the next four years. I’m not really sure if Stephen Harper is our man this time around, but he was a better choice than Stephane Dion… And sadly Jack Layton won’t hold a majority in my life time. I’ve stated my opinion elsewhere that I believe Jack Layton is a good leader. On the other hand, I am not certain that the NDP are a good solution for the country at the moment.

Lastly… there’s the “Green” party. While I’m all for helping the environment, I’m not dazzled by that being their strongest issue. I would rather have a party that was strong on all fronts, and didn’t base their platform on ONE significant issue. It’s sort of like the “Bloc” being a party just for Quebec. But, that’s just my personal opinion (And, we’ll conveniently ignore the fact that the current economy was the one ‘big issue’ for most this election.)

I guess we’ll see how things turn out in the months ahead, won’t we?

First and foremost, there is FireBug. I am so glad that Mozilla threw this in with Firefox version 2. I would have had no idea about it, at least not until someone else sang it’s praises, otherwise. This is the single most used tool that makes my job that much easier! Javascript debugging, Ajax callbacks, examining HTML, benchmarking network bottlenecks…. the list goes on! My only gripe thus far is that in Firefox version 3 there are certain HTML elements, such as buttons, which I can’t right click on and use the ‘Inspect Element’ tool. On the whole, it’s wonderful!

Next come the Firebug plugins… FirePHP is the first. This allows me to send debugging information in a HTTP header, and then view the result in the FireBug console. While I could just dump exceptions and errors straight to the screen this little gem allows me to show the same screen the user would experience in such a situation, but at the same time see detailed debugging information! It is great for use on my local development system, as well as our testing server!

After FirePHP, there is FireCookie! While, this extension isn’t as used as the above two it is still a wonderful addition to my toolset. With it I am able to see any changes to cookies in the FireBug console. Very useful while testing Ajax scripts which may or may not make changes.

Lastly… this isn’t a development tool, but interesting nonetheless. FireGPG is a tool which will encrypt/decrypt GPG blocks right in your browser window! Not highly useful, but it works and you can run into the odd encrypted block out there. It’s not a key store though, so you have to have GPG already installed and point FireGPG to it.

Hope someone finds these useful as well!

Bear Lake 2008

*** WARNING, FISH STORY BELOW ***

On the topic of Big Fish I should not that while I was bass fishing with Jackie’s Dad, I happened to land a muskie (muskellunge). Let’s just say that was an experience and a half!!! I was fishing with a buzz bait on the top, hoping to get some largemouths to strike, but what I happened to get was much mroe than I bargained for. A large fish, which I first assumed was a Pike, rolled out of the water and slammed the lure. I knew it was a big fish, but estimated only about 15-20lbs from what I saw of it originally.

I’ll skip the 15 minutes of battle with the fish, and just note that I was using 8lb test line with no steel leader. This fish could have escaped me with a wrong move! By the time I got the fish up the boat Jackie’s dad informs me that we have a muskie, not a pike, and that it’s almost four feet long ( about 35 – 40lbs of fish ). I threw him the tape that I keep in my tackle box, but it only measures 36 inches. We estimated the fish was about 45-48 inches long though.

Now that we have the fish, we need to figure out what to do with it. We only have a small bass net, no cradle, and our boat is only a 12 foot aluminum. Any attempt to grab this fish is probably going to end up with us in the water, or even worse it thrashing around in our little boat! We eventually decided to beach the fish, and try to release it there. It was easy enough to get it into the shallows and on the rocks, but that’s when it got really mad. I tried to pull the hook with some pliers, but had no luck. Eventually it rolled itself up in my line and it didn’t stand a chance vs 35+ lbs of fish and no water for buoyancy.

I left the lure and pushed the fish back into the water, where it sat in the shallows for a few minutes gathering its strength again. Soon enough it skulked back into the weeds to continue on its merry life. All in all the whole episode probably took us 20 minutes or so, but it’s an experience of a lifetime I have to tell you!

To top it all off, this was the only night I *didn’t* bring my camera fishing with us. That means there is no picture, just the word of myself and my father-in-law. I caught enough fish up there during the week I don’t need to exaggerate, but I know how some people feel about fish stories!!!

We finished our kitchen renovations (finally)… at least for the most part. There are little things to do still, like putting the caulking along the wall and touching up paint where we messed it up, but overall it’s finished. There are some photos up in the gallery. Some are before pictures, and the others are with us at about 75% done.

On the topic of renovation, I was helping Sean put new floor in his condo with my father on Saturday. Overall things went pretty smoothly, except that my legs are absolutely killing me from being hunched over all day. There was preexisting laminate in his place, but he wanted to cover two rooms in the same colour so I picked up the old floor. That’s a project for another month though.

To top off the muscle pain, I went fishing yesterday morning in the Grand River. I always fish off the banks, and they’re not exactly easy to traverse down by mom and dad’s place. On the plus side I managed to land quite a few smallmouth bass down there! I went angling the weekend before with Jackie’s dad, Uncle Ron, and their friend Roger down in Lake Erie for bass season opening and I caught less (and was in the water much much earlier).

Fishing has actually been quite productive so far this year. Up at the SC Johnson cottages I landed a lot of bass, even though I was fishing for pike – bass weren’t in season yet. At the ponds in Mt Pleasant the same thing, bass and more bass when attempting to lure in some trout – again, bass still not open. Although the Saturday that bass season opened I only managed to get one out of the ponds.

And next week we’re up to the cottage on Bear Lake again. I’m hoping my luck holds out in the fishing area since that is where I will be spending most of my time!

PiPic

Well, I took it one step further this week. I’ve heard of pages which will show you pictures of Pi before by mapping digits on to images, but they didn’t do so on demand. So I’ve taken it upon myself to help everyone out. Now you can view Pi at any resolution you would like, from 1×1 to 2048×2048. It could go larger as well, although my current script is limited in size because I have (wait for it) 4 million digits of Pi stored here (and what’s 2048×2048?).

So, if you’re nerdy enough you can check it out too:

Pi 300x300

This time it’s different, I can’t help but make note of how happy I am to see him playing in the Rugby Union World Cup. Canada may have dropped their first two games so far, but we, as a family, don’t care. Aaron has made his dream come true, he’s playing in the biggest sporting event there is for the sport of his choice. There has been ups and downs, just like any journey, but he has reached the goal.

I guess you can’t help but feel proud when you get quotes like the following from Rugby Canada News] (even though the try was called back… it’s still a good quote):

“At 68 minutes Aaron Carpenter entered the game at number eight and immediately began to demonstrate the meaning of the term impact sub.

As sooner as Carpenter arrived on the field, he picked up from the base of a scrum and tore 45-metres down the pitch. When he went to ground, Canada recycled the ball and spread it wide right where incoming fullback Mike Pyke took the ball and went over the line.”

My wife was telling me a story last night about her sister, who teaches a grade eight public school class. She has two students who love Rugby, and can’t wait to get into high school where they can begin to play on a team. She asked the two of them if they knew who Aaron was and, of course, was greeted with glowing eyes and a thorough description. Now that she had their attention she mentioned that Aaron was her brother-in-law and was rewarded with two gaping jaws.

This story made me realize how important Aaron really is. Not just to his family, but the entire community. We have a generation of young players who are looking up to him and watching his every move. I can’t even imagine the responsibility or the weight that must carry on a person, but I do believe that he does all of us, including the community, proud.

Aaron, keep up the good work!

The interesting thing here is that there were some links embedded in the text. Now if you pull up the picture there, you’ll see that the links don’t go to future shop. They actually look pretty fishy… dcm5.com???? I started wondering if this was a strange phishing scam trying to pass itself off as a warning about the very act of phishing!

So I took some action. I emailed futureshop and politely informed them that if this really was a warning about phishing, having shady emails and links wasn’t really the way to go about it. I also said that if this wasn’t a real email, I’d be concerned about the fact it seemed very targeted at a specific group. Anyway, to finish off the story I got a dumbass boiler-plate message stating this was an actual email from them. At this point I got snarky and told them to shape up their act when they send out warning emails (as if they’d listen to me anyway). Morons…

Inside
Back Deck (with Dancin’ Mike the Fool)

I definitely had a lot of fun. I got to go fishing every day we were there. The experience makes me want to get my own boat so I can go out on the lake any time I want! The first few days were a little frustrating while I was trying to fish, but I managed to find a few good spots for fishing. I didn’t catch a thing (besides Sunfish) for the first two days… I was beginning to reconsider my enjoyment of sport fishing. Finally on the third day Jackie and I caught a few Largemouth Bass. After that I had 3 days of angling fury, catching a ton of fish, including a 5+lb Largemouth! The luck dried up after that, but I was still satisfied.

Other activities included swimming (I cut my foot on a mussel shell, or a piece of glass), drinking, and napping. I was definitely into the drinking and napping. It made for a shorter lapse between the morning and evening fishing trips!

Our friends Kira and Mark came up on Wednesday. They added to the fun, since I was able to challenge someone other than Jackie to a game of Scrabble. We never really did get into the other board games or the deck of cards, but overall it was a fun time.

There were some car troubles on the way home. Kira and Mark’s truck broke down with a snapped belt. Unfortunately even after Mark and I changed the belt on the side of the highway, it turned out to be another problem. We had to wait a couple hours for CAA to show up. But everything did end up ok… eventually.

That’s really about it… if you want to take a look at the photos, they’re available online for your viewing.

The 2007 Gallery is now started. Only half-way into the year! And Jackie also has some new pictures in her Cakes/Flowers section. Including the wedding cake for my cousin Jill and her husband Nate. Another wedding cake she did for a class, and then just random flowers she’s done over the last while.

Check them out if you’re interested. I also took so photos of flowers, located in the 2007 area, but they’re just from our garden. I need to get some real wild flower pictures and that nice lens I was talking about a few weeks ago.

Monarch Butterfly

I was able to take this shot with Jackie’s Digital Rebel XT and her father’s 200mm lens. Without the zoom I doubt I would have been able to get anywhere close to the butterfly. I really need to get a good lens like that for ourselves so I can take some more macro shots. I really enjoy taking pictures of flowers and nature, so a big zoon lens would come in handy.

Anyway, if you’re interested in more shots from this particular album they can be had here. The album does contain a lot of nice nature shots. We were up in Elora at the time, so we have some very nice shots of the gorge and river. I personally enjoy the rocks the best (if you exclude the butterfly that is).

As far as Linux distributions go, Ubuntu is most definitely my favourite. I’ve tried my fair share, including Red Hat, SuSe and others, but nothing ever felt “right” until I got my hands on Ubuntu (I believe it was 5.10). Things were easy, things were simple, and things were familiar due to the FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) applications I was already using.

But, I digress! I actually installed Feisty Fawn a little while ago during Beta. I have been quite impressed since the moment I installed it. No crazy screen issues like I had in Edgy, although I did get those resolved… eventually. And everything seemed to move a little bit quicker, something which I will not argue about.

One of the neatest features in Feisty is the inclusion of Compiz by default. This is a GUI effects library which is on par with Microsoft’s “Aero Glass” look with Windows Vista. Unfortunately I’ve got some issues with the package since it isn’t really designed for dual monitors, but it definitely has potential. Even though I can’t run it properly, what I have seen looks very good!

Anyway… I encourage anyone still sitting on the fence about Linux to at least give it a shot. You never know, you may like it!

As you may notice, it’s been over a month since my last posting. There are reasons for this. Mostly it’s been school. My courses allow 6 months for completion, but I have been attempting to compress them into 4 in order to stay on a schedule where I can complete 6 courses a year. With assignments and reading, it gets a little hectic.

The biggest reason has been that Jackie and I have been house shopping. We probably started looking shortly after my last post. The hunt didn’t go so well for the first little while. We really saw nothing we liked in our price range.

Eventually we came upon one which… wasn’t bad. I didn’t mind it, and Jackie got attached ( this is not uncommon ). We went back for a second look with our parents and they didn’t like it. My feelings were mixed, and with the others opinion I voted it down, much to the chagrin of Jackie.

Luckily, a few more houses came up in our range within a few days. There were some that were pretty digusting, but we came across one house that really got us thinking. We both fell in love. I came back again a few days later with our parents again, and the same feelings were there. As a bonus, everyone else liked it too.

So, the point of all of this I guess… is that we bought it. Feel free to browse the (low quality) pictures my mother took on her cell phone:

Click for more Pictures

Hayden’s not exactly a popular artist. I don’t think there’s anything negative about him, but his following is just small. Finding this music was definitely a task, but I was eventually able to dig it up. Most of the music is just as I remember it, but this one song… it hit me like a brick wall.

Maybe I was just not paying attention back when I was 16, but the track instantly brought back memories of a tragedy from 1995. And, after some research, I have most definitely turned up that “When This is Over” is written about Susan Smith drowning her two sons in the back of a car. It’s possible I just have more time to think about these things nowadays. It’s also possible I’m just a sappy idiot too.

Amazing what music can resurrect from the past, isn’t it?

My current character is an outlaw. It is more of an adventuring career than most at the start, but he is about the only one. Other characters in our group include a pugilist, a tomb robber, an apprenctice priest of justic, a rune smith (dwarven magic enchanter) apprentice, and a fast talking thief (I am not certain on this character yet since he hasn’t joined yet). Everyone is in rather basic careers and are just normal people, if you can call warhammer people normal.

The idea that we start off as snotlings (a warhammer reference, but you should be able to pick it up in context) rather than in an archetype of Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, or Warrior in the D&D world adds an extra level of depth to the game. At least that is how most of us feel while we’re playing Warhammer. Many of us were previously avid D&D players, but have since dropped the habit. Don’t get me wrong, we all still enjoy AD&D (2nd Edition. Death to 3/3.5E) but the characteristics of the WFRP world and the gameplay make it so very interesting.

Anyway, while I’m talking about Warhammer I remembered this Penny-Arcade comic about Warhammer Online from last year:

Penny-Arcade Warhammer Comic

We’re glad that at least one other person enjoys Warhammer as much as we do!

Both scripts are released under the GNU GPL. I would have liked to release the decoder script under the LGPL, but the PEL library is GPL so there’s no choice in the matter. C’est la vie, so they say.

<WerkinSsa> disk space usage dropped by 10%
<WerkinSsa> good work

That’s, uh, significant.

Well, I finally got around to writing the script last night. Walking a directory tree and then resizing pictures isn’t a real big deal. I had that done in about an hour. The hard part was getting the meta data ( exifs ) from the old image to the new one. Most resizing functions don’t understand exif data and ignore it. I have an exif library already on the site, but it was only for reading the data!

So, browsing around the intarwab last night, I managed to find a library called PEL to help out with the dilemma. I struggled with version 0.9 of this library for a while, and then went to bed. This morning I fiddled with it a little more, and then upgraded to the “bleeding edge” SVN version. The SVN version has some handly little functions known as getExif and setExif, which allowed me to easily transfer the data from one photo to another.

And now, I’m uploading the new and improved gallery! (I’ll make a link to the gallery shrinker script later)