Blue Sparks

As some of you already know I host a page on my site here which will show you 4 million digits of Pi. You may ask why, and I really couldn’t tell you. It’s just something I thought was neat, and so I did it. The calling of a true blooded nerd I guess…

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

I try to keep my praise for my brother at a minimum, for obvious reasons. It’s not that I don’t appreciate where he is now, I’m actually quite proud of him. Really it’s that I don’t want to feel like I’m pushing him on anyone, or trying to make myself look better by having a brother who plays Rugby for Canada. For the most part I let Aaron speak for himself, he’s used to it now after all of the interviews. I tend to make my tributes in different ways, such as starting a wikipedia page for him, the Brantford Harlequins, and other Rugby Union pages.

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!

Le sigh…. I received an email today with the subject “Important information about fraudulent email”. The fact that it made it through my spam filter without a valid sender, was actually interesting. So I decided to read it. It purported to be a notification about phishing and have some detail about a scam pretending to be from futureshop and requiring your credit card number.

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…

It’s long overdue, but we finally have some decent pictures of the house online. No outside shots, but who really wants to look at my brown lawn and wilted flowers anyway??

Inside
Back Deck (with Dancin’ Mike the Fool)

It’s been a week since we got back from the cottage. I’ve been right back into the grind, so it’s been tough to find the time to write about the experience. I’m sneaking this in at work (I was supposed to be in a meeting, but the other people didn’t show), so I’ll try to keep it short.

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.

So, I finally got off my arse and downloaded some photos from the camera. Haven’t taken that many pictures this year.

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.

I was just looking through my digital photos to find a decent shot of myself when I ran across this photo which I have always loved. I actually use it as one half of my desktop (my other monitor has a picture of Jackie on it, even if she hates the photo).

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).

I’ve classified this post as “Nerd Stuff” and there really is no other category it could fit in. Today, April 19th, is the official release day for Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

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!

No… I am not writing an entry about the television show. Although I do enjoy the show, it is definitely not something that is necessary to write about. At least by me.

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

I have recently been able to get a hold of some music from around 1996. This is music I haven’t listened to in many years, and even then I most likely didn’t have as much of an appreciation for it as I should have. Of note right now is the track “When This Is Over” by Canadian (woo, local!) artist Hayden (and his official site.)

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?