spin and twirl

New Location. Open Longer Hours!

2005-12-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm officially retiring Spin and Twirl. The new site is at http://blog.ipeter.ca/. It's fancy.

New Site

2005-12-10T20:47:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be moving my base of operations back onto my personal computer, running Typo. Check out the preliminary site.

Parkour

2005-12-09T20:58:00.000-05:00

Holy Shit. That guy is everything I want to be.

Huh

2005-11-16T21:34:00.000-05:00

Seems you can fold paper more than eight times. Assuming the website is true, of course. I always thought eight was pretty arbitrary; but I also believed the authorities. I'm a sucker like that.

The Beer Hunter

2005-11-15T23:18:00.000-05:00

The Beer Hunter is possibly the best thing about Toronto so far.

Remembrance Day

2005-11-10T21:50:00.000-05:00

Several things regarding Remembrance Day, of which none are particularly respectful.

For some reason, I've started calling it Novembrance Day. I really didn't mean to call it that, but it's what comes out.
Tomorrow will be the first (of many?) Remembrance Day in my life that is not a holiday. Ontario apparently doesn't care about such things.
I really like the practise of wearing poppies. It's this Canada-wide custom that makes me feel connected to people. Also, it took me 24 years (and a lot of lost poppies) to figure out that if you bend the end of the pin, the poppy won't fall out.
During the summer of 2003, I made arrangements with someone to meet them at a particular location in Markham, and we would become CSIS spies together. I have no reason to believe that this other person will meet there, or if they even remember our agreement. I was planning on being there, just to say I kept a two year old agreement made on a whim, but now that I found out I don't get the day off, I guess I won't be there.

Phoneswarm

2005-11-08T22:37:00.000-05:00

Phoneswarm seems like a fun idea. I should call once I get a telephone.

Also, I'm in Toronto now. I've had two days of training/orientation at IBM, and I have my first day at the lab tomorrow. My furniture and other stuff from Edmonton is arriving on the weekend.

Betty Goes Goth

2005-10-27T13:52:00.000-04:00

Here is a recent Archie comic where Betty becomes goth. I was going to make some snide comments, but the comic really speaks for itself.

My New Apartment

2005-10-26T13:07:00.000-04:00

I now have a new home; I'm moving in next week.

Caution Curves Ahead

2005-10-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

Quick life update:

I accepted the job offer at IBM and aborted the interview process with Google. I think at this stage in my life, I'd just be happier at IBM. The job starts on November 7th; sometime before then I need to find an apartment in Toronto and move.
I have no internet access at home. I'm getting strangely used to it.
My desktop computer just broke, for no reason. I think it's the motherboard. Those who worked with me at IBM two years ago will realize exactly how funny it is that my computer broke just before I'm going back to IBM. Carrots and hummus, anyone?
My interest in posting on my blog is directly proportional to the coolness of my blog. Right now, I hate this site, which is why I'm not doing much on it. Once I move and write my own blogging and photo software, expect more.

Google Feed Reader

2005-10-07T14:15:00.000-04:00

Google has a new Feed reader. I'm sure this'll be on Slashdot in a couple minutes.

After "upgrading" to Mac OS X Tiger and being disappointed by Safari RSS, I think I might give this a shot. I'm not sure how it's better than Technorati (which I haven't tried); maybe I'll use them both and see which is better.

Also, AJAX is so hot; web pages have never been sexier. I'm going to try to learn some for myself.

Ninternet

2005-10-01T16:35:00.000-04:00

Alas, my friend moved, and my days as an internet hobo have come to an end. Looks like I'll be without internet at home for the next month or so.

In terms of what's going on in my life:

The thesis defense that was really terrible a couple weeks ago now seems pretty good. The math and assumptions that we worked out in response to the issues brought up during my defense will translate into a pretty easy paper that I hope to write in the coming week. What's more, it'll become a seminal paper that everyone will need to cite for all future research in my (relatively tiny) area. Fame is assured.
I handed in the final copy of my thesis, and am now all but officially a Master of Science. Allow me right now to reflect on how awesome that title is. I mean, "Doctor of Philsophy" really isn't an upgrade, is it?
Job hunting, after a dry spell, is going well again. I have an offer from IBM, which might mean that I'll be working in Toronto (well, Markham) starting on November 7th. I've also had an interview with Google yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. I'm undecided at the moment about which place I'd rather work.
Saw Serenity last night. Excellent movie by all accounts.

Done?

2005-09-17T02:20:00.000-04:00

I defended my thesis today. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life.

On Tofu

2005-09-13T22:31:00.000-04:00

I've always been an extra-firm tofu kind of guy. But medium firm is my new favorite thing!

Take block of medium firm tofu. Cut into large cubes. Roll in flour. Fry in half centimeter of oil at medium high heat, rotating when necessary. Voila! Fresh crunchy deep fried tofu, as good as they use in restaurants.

Take block of medium firm tofu. Freeze. Thaw. Squeeze. Voila! It turns into the flaky, spongy tofu they use at Mongolian grill.

Why did it take me five years to learn these things?

Songs to which pants are worn

2005-09-09T20:57:00.000-04:00

So there I was, minding my own business, when a link from Metafilter took me to this site with a bunch of custom songs and suddenly I lost about two hours of my life. What the heck?

Shock, horror! The atmosphere is losing its oxygen!

2005-09-07T12:31:00.000-04:00

I saw this on Fark, but thought it was worth pointing out specifically.

First, read this article from NewScientist about the ridiculous claims of the skin cream, NeaClear.

Then, read NeaClear's "science" page.

My head is going to explode.

New Project

2005-09-05T17:22:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time making Prairie, a web-based photo gallery software that I've been planning on making for a while. I have a very basic (and very unsafe) version running now; I figure I'll have a good version ready to unveil when I start hosting my own site again. It's going kind of slowly, because I've never used PHP before. Eventually I'm going to integrate AJAX for the interface (like Flickr), which I've also never used before. And I need to relearn all of the database things that I've forgotten since third year undergrad.

The goal of Prairie is to be easy to use both for managing photos as well as sharing them on the web. My basic problem with existing solutions is that the management software (F-Spot, iPhoto, Picassa) exists as a separate entity from the gallery software that shares them. The gallery software is always static HTML pages without much search capability. Furthermore, most (all?) of the existing web solutions force the user to use an album-based hierarchy for photos. This is clunky, and doesn't co-exist well with the tag-based system that is popular with photo management software and other sites, like Flickr.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my prototype. If anyone has ideas of what they think would be really cool in a web-based photo management software, let me know.

Milestone

2005-09-02T15:11:00.000-04:00

I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow.
-- Jesse, from The Simpson's episode "Lisa the Treehugger"

This month marks the fifth anniversary of me becoming a vegetarian. It doesn't feel like that long, but I guess no one reading this knew me as a non-vegetarian. Not much has changed since I converted; I still think it was a great idea, I still find food more exciting than ever, and my Mom still thinks I'm killing myself.

I wonder if there's a calculator online to show how many animals I didn't eat in five years. There could be a cute cartoon graphic of me frolicking with 1.5 cows and a swarm of chickens.

Maybe for my tenth anniversary I'll turn vegan. It'll be like levelling-up.

When Did Mediocre Become Okay?

2005-08-31T15:19:00.000-04:00

You see them at almost every dinner table: a set of salt and pepper shakers. Pretty innocuous, and completely standard. You don't think twice about shaking pepper from a shaker. A pepper mill though -- that's the exception. That's when you need to think about it, when you take note. If you go to a medium fancy Italian restaurant, the server will even come around and mill pepper for you, asking you to "Say when", as if a mere mortal isn't capable of milling their own pepper. That's crazy talk. Milled pepper is much better than pre-ground pepper, and it's for special occassions only.

I didn't question this, until just recently. Whole pepper is no more expensive than ground pepper. It's no harder to twist the top on a mill than it is to shake a shaker. A mill is only a little more expensive than a shaker, and you only need to buy it once. So why is it that an inferior product makes its way into the homes and onto the tables of nearly every household in North America? It's because at some point, public conciousness decided that saving a few seconds is more important than quality.

It's not just pepper. It's true for any seed spice: cumin, cardamon, coriander, mustard seeds, cloves. These are the things that make food good. Spices are added for flavour; using bad spices is like saying that you don't want flavour. So why bother adding them in the first place? It's like the rush of convenience has forgotten the entire purpose of the things that it's made convienent. And the public has bought it. I bought it. We didn't, and don't, think.

It's true for coffee, too. Grinding coffee beans fresh, immediately before brewing, adds about two minutes to my morning routine. And it means that the coffee I make for myself is literally the best coffee I can get; it's better than a $2 cup coffee from a coffee shop. But somehow, pre-ground coffee is standard. Hell, instant coffee is standard. People want their satisfaction, and they want it now. It's not worth an extra two minutes for a treat; it's not worth two minutes to be reminded why you love coffee in the first place.

Why did this happen?

I know this isn't a novel opinion. Hell, everyone knows the saying "Stop and smell the roses", and I admit that's basically all I've said here. But think about it: Do you use pre-ground pepper? Why? Maybe it's time to re-evaluate.

A Satisfied Customer

2005-08-29T22:49:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, when I ran into a bit of mad money, I bought a Squeezebox2. It's a wireless music streamer that comes with a remote and open source server software. From the day I bought it, I've been very impressed with almost every aspect of it. Basically, it's a toy designed by geeks to make other geeks happy. I mean, it comes with an RSS reader programmed to Slashdot by default; how much more perfect can you get?

But it's just surpassed itself, in my opinion.

My roommate recently moved out, taking with him most of the (his) furniture, and also the phone and internet accounts (they were in his name). My plan was to see if any neighbours have unprotected wireless accounts, and hijack them for my internet fixes. Much to my chagrin, my neighbours all seem to be clever enough to password or otherwise protect their accounts. Imagine that.

Luckily, my friend John offered to let me use his wireless network, as long as I could connect to it. One hitch: I live on the 19th floor, and John lives on the 5th floor. Of another building. Granted, he has his router positioned next to the window, and I have my Squeezebox positioned next to the window, and there's nothing in between us but air (and my balcony). But it's still pretty far. Far enough that my laptop's wireless card has no hope of getting any signal.

And yet, here I sit posting to my blog using that very network. The reason is because the makers of my Squeezebox2 had the forsight to include functionality for wireless repeating, wireless bridging over ethernet, and a really, really good antenna. I didn't buy their device for any of these functions. I probably would have bought it if they didn't include any of them (well, it needs at least a decent antenna). But they decided to make a product that surpasses my expectations almost every time I look into seeing what its capabilities are. It's so nice to deal with a product that's made to please customers, not just appease them.

Soon to be relevant for me

2005-08-25T14:07:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed this article about office ettiquette for Generation Y (read: us). It's about how we're bringing ultra-casual culture to the office, in the form of iPods and sandals. The best part about the article is that it doesn't really look down on the practise, in an "Tsk tsk, oh those kids today" way; it actually states that people can wear these things and still be productive members of the office.

I also enjoy it because the first paragraph describes me directly. In both of my industry work terms, I waited until I saw other people at work wearing sandals, and from then on it was sandals all the time.

Webdesign Idea

2005-08-24T20:19:00.000-04:00

Enlightenment (a Linux window manager turned desktop manager) was mentioned on Slashdot today. Every now and then I go back and look at the Enlightment website, and think "Gosh Enlightenment is pretty. Too bad they'll never release it."

Anyway, I'm actually just posting this because I think their web design is so sexy. Scroll to the bottom. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Isn't it brilliant? I think I'm going to want to do something like that when I properly design ipeter.ca.

Google Talk

2005-08-24T02:50:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure it's relevant to most of you, but I'm on Google Talk, Google's new IM service. Feel free to add me to your list: peterjm@gmail.com.

Instructions on how to connect to Google talk are here.

Windows Vista: Now with more XP

2005-08-22T23:43:00.000-04:00

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a Windows-basher. Sure, I think it's a terrible operating system that doesn't meet any of my needs as an advanced user. And I honestly don't believe I'll ever own a computer with Windows on it for the rest of my life. But for most people out there, it's exactly what they need and want.

Nevertheless, I take great pleasure in presenting to you this preview of Windows Vista. It summarizes 14 of the "new" things about Windows Vista. I don't want to spoil the surprize, but I bet you'll be excited to know that... the control panel is still there! Or how about... default user won't be Administrator! Web browser now with tabs!

It's probably just a poorly written article. But there isn't a thing they list that isn't available in Mac OS X Tiger, and 90% of the things are in Linux, too (the only thing Linux is missing is the advanced rendering engine). At some point, Windows was actually ahead of its time, right?

A couple things

2005-08-19T18:54:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while. I dunno, I just haven't felt like it. Here are three links to stuff:

A cool music video one of Jon's friends posted about. It's just pretty cool. Warning: embedded video.

A cool talk show done in the world of Halo from Boing Boing. I love creative use of technology.

A chauvinistic and stupid Flash game that Biggs sent me. But the guy's expressions are pretty funny.

Also, thesis is due in one week. I defend in four weeks. I will have accomplished all that I need to accomplish to graduate in six weeks. Oh, and my NIPS paper got accepted.

Current Mood: Hip

2005-08-13T21:48:00.000-04:00

My two favourite pairs of footwear are my Birkenstock sandals and my Blundstone boots. Both are leather. In order to assuage my guilt and hypocrisy, I bought a pair of vegan, non-sweatshop skate shoes. See, I care!

Remember the SuperSubs?

2005-08-12T01:19:00.000-04:00

I recently found out that both Buck 65 and Metric are playing Frosh Week (or whatever they call it) here at U of A. The fact that I'll be here almost makes me glad I'm taking too long to finish my thesis.

Also, what rule says band web sites need to be cripplingly flash-based to the point where they're difficult to use?

2005-08-12T00:09:00.000-04:00

My laptop seems to be screwing up. Every now and then it fails to recognize my user, and I get the above message. It was amusing at first. Now I just can't wait to wipe the drive and install Tiger.

Occupational Risk

2005-08-08T15:33:00.000-04:00

Lately my hands have started hurting. They hurt in the tendons that go to my fingers, as well as a general ache of my hands. I think it's a pretty clear case of repetitive stress injury. I also remember the last time this was a problem for me: when I was working on my last thesis. I'm pretty clearly using the computer more now in a more typing intensive manner.

So, the challenge: will I finish my thesis before my hands hurt too much to finish it? If I finish in time, I can spend a month relaxing, letting my hands rest, and then I'll make sure I have a decent keyboard setup at my new job (when I get one). If I don't finish in time... who knows! Maybe I'll need to go to a doctor, maybe I'll need to buy an ergonomic keyboard to use instead of my laptop one, maybe I'll need to amputate my hands. Only time will tell.

Here goes!

Fitness!

2005-08-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

As a person who makes an effort to always take the stairs instead of an escalator, I feel I have the right to laugh at this photo I saw linked from Metafilter.

Back, Sort Of

2005-08-01T21:51:00.000-04:00

Well, thesis "crunch" is over, but thesis is not. I was working to hand to my committee the final copy of my thesis on this Friday. Well, Friday is 3 days away, and I still have 4.5 chapters to write and 2.5 chapters to edit, some coding to do, and most of my tests to run. So it really doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do it. In my defense, I'd like to claim that I was on vacation for two weeks, preparing for a conference talk for a week and that the only reason most of my tests aren't done is because I did a lot of re-coding this weekend now that I have a bit more time. I haven't been slacking off, but it feels that way when I think that I only wrote half of a chapter in the past 4 weeks.

The final, end-of-the-world-if-I-miss-it deadline is October 3rd, because that's the last date to apply for graduation in November. Which means I need to have a final copy of my thesis in to my committee on September 3rd, which gives me almost exactly one month to do everything that there is to do. I'm not worried about missing that deadline, but I do have a lot to do. I'm hoping to finish writing the chapter that I'm currently working on this week, as well as plan out the next chapter. Next week will be filling in the results for three chapters and writing an introduction and conclusion. That gives me a couple weeks after that to do revisions and additional experiments. At least, that's the plan.

Job-wise, I still haven't applied anywhere because I'm waiting to hear back from one of my references. Also, I'm scared. Now is the time when I find out what all this school that I've done is going to get me. The concept of the real world is terrifying; probably much more terrifying than the real world actually is.

Pause

2005-07-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

This blog is on pause until after thesis crunch is over, which will be at least the next four weeks. Have a good summer.

Some Things I've Discovered Recently

2005-06-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

The Decemberists. I really like them.

Since seeing Napolean Dynamite, I can no longer use the word "skills" seriously.

Doing a Master's degree and not getting involved in student politics makes your resume seem way less impressive than it used to be.

Vegan mac and cheese made with nutritional yeast isn't that great; partially because of the psychological hurdles.

Horses fart a lot, loudly, but people just ignore it. Because they're horses, and they don't follow our social restrictions, and we can respect that.

Why the Heck Not?

2005-06-24T15:49:00.000-04:00

Like Andrew, I also promise to not make a habit of this. But it's for science.

Required Reading for Canadians

2005-06-24T12:47:00.000-04:00

Rick Mercer has a blog. Enough said.

Coincidence?

2005-06-22T01:56:00.000-04:00

Next up in "Peter thinks characters look like people he knows": anyone else think that the new Batman (played by Christian Bale) looks a lot like Derek, aged a few years?

Leave My Things Alone

2005-06-20T17:47:00.000-04:00

Earlier this afternoon, I got a mass-email from someone in the university about something (the subject was both irrelevant and boring). Then a few minutes later, I got a strange message: "So-and-So would like to recall the email, "Subject Line of Original Email"". Okay, someone sent an email by mistake and wants me to ignore it; fine, it happens. But attached to the second email was a "winmail.dat" file. I gather that if I was using Outlook, this second email would have deleted the original email from my inbox.

Scary.

It seems to me that this technology is both dangerous and pointless. First, it only works with other users of Outlook, so it's not like you're actually going to be able to delete the email, except maybe if you're in a busniess where everyone uses Windows. Even then, it only works if no one has read the original email yet, and with any sort of large mailing I'm sure someone happens to read their email immediately. Second, I really don't like the idea of other people being able to tell my email client to delete things. I'm sure there's some sort of security on it, but the idea is still scary. I'm glad other email client makers (Mac Mail, Thunderbird, Evolution) haven't adopted this new "feature".

[Update: I'm lying to you. See the comments. In my defense, a former employee of Microsoft told me that's what would happen.]

[Update 2: Outlook can recall email. It has nothing to do with the "winmail.dat" file.]

Casual: Not Just for Fridays Anymore

2005-06-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

Anyone with a Flickr account probably received the following email in their inbox, recently.

The Flickr team has up and moved this week to Californ-i-a and has been singing Beach Boys songs non-stop since arrival. And you're moving too!

We're moving each and every pixel, bit, and byte, all your data, lock, stock, and barrel, from our humble server shack in Canada to our new server palace in the U.S. of A!

This process will begin during the week of June 28 and will result in speediness, stableness, and happiness. For more information, please visit the FAQ about the data center move. http://www.flickr.com/help.gne#94

Thank you, Flickreebies, for making Flickr such a wonderful place to share, connect, and befriend. We love you! (In an entirely non-creepy way.)

- The Flickroobies

There are a couple things I thought when I read this:

I enjoy the casual tone of the email. It seems like many recent and popular companies take a very casual tone in their communication with customers. Google does it, Yahoo does it a little; this new free newspaper/magazine called Dose does it; I enjoy that these things aren't carefully worded press releases that I don't want to read. I'm not sure where business got the impression that everything has to be so formal, but it's entirely not necessary.
It's possible to be too casual. The above email is entirely uninformative for me. I was expecting reassurance that moving my pictures and information to America would not change things like privacy concerns, etc. Does the American government now have access to all my personal information, where they didn't before? I don't know, because the email didn't tell me. So casual is good, but please don't remove the information.

Interesting Essay on Music Piracy

2005-06-17T00:15:00.000-04:00

This essay on music piracy is the sort of thing I would transiently link to with little fanfare on my sidebar, if I had a site I had more control over. However, I'll make it a full post because it's that or nothing, and something is usually better than nothing.

Will Whore Self for iPod

2005-06-15T12:49:00.000-04:00

I am considering being sucked in by TD Bank's "switch your chequing account and get a free iPod Shuffle" promotion. Because, while I have nothing against CIBC, TD loves me enough to give me a decent MP3 player. Leaving CIBC is just a way of letting them know that the stakes for my love are higher now. Maybe they should give me an iPod Mini, or an iPod Photo.

PS: Notice in the picture on TD's page that they indicate the Shuffle plays music, using advanced Photoshop techniques. The girl's not even wearing headphones. I like to think a summer intern made the photo in five minutes before going to take a 3 hour lunch.

Sunrise and Sunset

2005-06-13T13:51:00.000-04:00

I rented Before Sunrise and Before Sunset this weekend. I'd heard about them sometime in the last 6 months, from a couple different places I think, and had it in my head to rent them. Before Sunrise was the superior movie, and worth renting (preferrably with a date), but most of my comments have to do with Before Sunset.

[I'm trying to make this post not contain major spoilers, but I make no promises. Stop reading here if you plan on watching both movies regardless of what I say.]

I'll preface my comments by saying that Before Sunset wasn't made for me. It wasn't made for someone who rents both movies at the same time and watches them on consecutive nights. It was made for emotional teenage girls who saw the first movie when it first came out in 1995, and fell in love with both characters, and are dying to know what happened to them.

I'll also say that Before Sunset was a decent movie, in the sense that the characters were well done, the scenery was nice, the dialogue was interesting, if a bit thick at times, and the acting was fine.

However, Before Sunset basically failed as a stand-alone movie. It was essentially a postscript to the original, and probably could have been summarized at the end of the first movie by having one of those soft-music montages where they say what happened to the characters after the movie ended. My main problem is that the sequel actually took away from the original; part of the charm of the original was that it closed on an ambiguous note. Before Sunrise not only destroys the question of "What happened to the characters after the movie?" but goes back and destroys some of the questions left open about the events during the first movie.

What baffles me is that the creators of the movie recognize that this ambiguity existed, and the importance of it, because the first thing they do in Sunset is to discuss it. And then they go right ahead and wreck it.

I think Before Sunset would have benefitted from a 9 year gap between watching it and the original. For most of Before Sunset, I just kept thinking "Ethan Hawke looks like such a drug addict".

Furthermore, it surprises me that Before Sunset is more highly rated on IMDB. Maybe that's just the new-movie effect, but Sunrise was clearly the better movie.

Overall, my recommendation would be to watch Before Sunrise, and then only watch Before Sunset if you can't stand the thought of not watching it. I kind of wished I hadn't watched it.

Thoughts?

Rapid afterimage

2005-06-07T18:03:00.000-04:00

I think this optical illusion is really freaky.

How many flies did you swallow, Bill?

2005-06-06T16:57:00.000-04:00

Bill Jumping over Log

This is my roommate, Bill, jumping over a log while on a hike. I think this is my favorite picture of him, ever. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way -- action shots are awesome.

Update on NIPS Paper

2005-06-04T00:56:00.000-04:00

I seriously can't believe how awesome this beer tastes.

The LaTeX Game

2005-06-03T19:18:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm in the final stages of getting my paper together for NIPS. I'm playing the game where you go through the paper and try to find any paragraphs whose last line is only a few words long. Then you figure out how to reword the paragraph so that you eliminate just enough space to make the paragraph one line shorter. If you're lucky, the paragraph wraps to the next page, and by fixing that line you end up saving yourself three lines of space! If you play this game thoroughly and diligently, then at the end of the game you will have room for one more paragraph in your paper.

I want that paragraph.

(I've already played the games where I squashed the height of my images and reduced the line spacing in my lists.)

A Dark Secret

2005-06-02T22:49:00.000-04:00

I am sometimes embarassed by how much the right kind of marketing works on me.

Yahoo! Mindset

2005-05-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! Mindset

Search by intent. Awesome.

I lied about not procrastinating

2005-05-29T18:16:00.000-04:00

I've been ignoring The Sith Sense in my RSS feeds for days, but I finally looked at it today. It's an advertisement from Burger King, that basically does 20 questions (possibly licensing 20q.com?) in a "Darth Vader is reading your mind" motif.

Don't get me wrong. I hate:

Fast food restaurants.
Advertisements that use irrelevant movie tie-ins.

But between this and Subservient Chicken, the marketing people at Burger King deserve a raise. They clearly understand the power of fun internet memes. How else would they get me to specifically pass on their advertisement to you?

Now I'm going back to work, for reals.

Also...

2005-05-29T17:50:00.000-04:00

In the past three days, through a regimen of constant coffee, espresso, chocolate, Coke and chocolate containing espresso beans, I have increased my caffiene addiction to the point where I need to be constantly drinking coffee to stave off a headache. Meth is for sissies.

I'll stop procrastinating now.

Roller Coaster Continues

2005-05-29T17:39:00.000-04:00

Research out of the crapper; partially. Started writing a paper for NIPS; due Friday. Paper will be expanded into thesis. Supervisor's wife had twins last weekend; he'll be scarce for the duration of writing this paper and my thesis. This must be what it's like to do grad school at U of T.

Urban Adventurers

2005-05-25T17:01:00.000-04:00

From Action Squad's "General Info":

In a nutshell, Action Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms. We climb buildings, sneak into factories, crawl through all kinds of tunnels, spelunk old brewery caves, poke around abandoned buildings, and run across the rooftops.

I would love to do this; although admittedly I'd be scared of getting caught trespassing. I actually spent a part of a summer doing something similar to this "Action Squad". It was the summer I spend in the States; frequently referred to as "the summer I went around climbing stuff". We were in the States, in a town we didn't know, a town that seemed slummy and dangerous -- a town that our co-workers called "the murder capital of Massechusetts". And my roommate and I spent our evenings after work wandering around, climbing fences or rock formations, wandering through cemetaries, and trying to see if we could get into places it would be interesting to get into. All my best stories come from that summer.

Urban Adventuring is closely related to another sport I want to take up: buildering.

More Upbeat

2005-05-24T19:47:00.000-04:00

On a more upbeat note than my previous entry: it occurs to me that I've never actually made a significant bad decision in my life. Sure, there were questionable decisions (like deciding to have another drink when I've clearly had too many), but when it comes to the big things, I've done pretty well.

That's just my way of saying that, although I'm hating it at the moment, I don't regret my decision to get a Master's degree at all.

Research Makes Baby Jesus Cry

2005-05-24T18:10:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to remember how much I hated my last semester in undergrad. And I haven't even started writing my thesis yet.

Google As Homepage

2005-05-19T20:27:00.000-04:00

I've previously lambasted the concept of having Google as a person's start page. Well, Google now has a portal, so there's now a reason.

Yeah yeah, it's the same as any other portal. But it's Google, so it's cooler.

[Update: I posted this before it was on Slashdot. Just trying to maintain some indie blogger cred.]

Neat Sculpture

2005-05-17T01:49:00.000-04:00

The Young Family

I saw this linked off BoingBoing. It's a sculpture called The Young Family by artist Patricia Piccinini.

I'm not a Designr

2005-05-13T20:33:00.000-04:00

Dropping the 'e' from 'er' makes words look cool and modern.

A couple months ago I had an idea for re-vamping my site, and spent a couple days working on a new design. A mockup of it can be found on pumpkin. I was really excited about it, until at some point I realized it looked terrible and stopped caring about it. In the past week, I've been inclined to pick it up again, but when I saw how nice Ryan's new look is, I'm now going to just leave graphic design to the experts.

Also, I'll be moving this site again sometime; I bought a domain (three guesses on what it is) and Derek has offered to host if we can figure out how to do virtual hosting on gentoo.

Newsflash

2005-05-11T20:06:00.000-04:00

Tostitos "Zest of Jalepeno" corn chips are better than their "Zest of Lime" variety.

Did You Press One to Oppose Same-Sex Marriages?

2005-05-11T11:49:00.000-04:00

This page has a couple mp3s of someone calling a Christian telephone company in the States that's against gay marriage. The first one is okay; the second one is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard. You must download them.

Can't Wait Until Next Week

2005-05-09T15:33:00.000-04:00

Last week was bad news for my health, with a sore throat (a night spent tossing and turning in pain) leading to an earache (a night spend literally writhing in pain) leading to a ruptured eardrum (think pressure building up inside your head until the inside of your ear gives way). I'm on antibiotoics to avoid infection, and I can't get any water in my ear. I'm also a bit dizzy, which I think is because my inner ear is a little messed up. And I hear a constant high pitched tone. The antibiotics are making me woozy.

Plus, whenever I get sick and live on Tylenol for a few days, I tend to use it as an excuse to give up coffee for a couple weeks and detox my body (since I'm on Tylenol, I'm not going to get a caffeine headache anyway). But now it's the next week, and I'm dizzy and disoriented and woozy and listening to a high-pitched tone, and I just really want a coffee.

PS. Today's Whisper Apologies is awesome.

At Long Last

2005-05-09T13:59:00.000-04:00

Last night, I finally finished watching the last of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I'll claim some indy cred and say that I was a fan Buffy long before most fans I know converted (I watched 3rd season when it was originally on TV), but I'm also the last fan I know to finish it.

For all those people who haven't watched Buffy, you should try renting or borrowing a season -- I recommend starting with the third season, then going back and watching the first and second. For those who have a predisposition to thinking it's a stupid show: Get over yourself. Yes, it has a silly name. It's also bloody brilliant.

Been There, Done That

2005-04-26T00:19:00.000-04:00

Anyone just coming to the revelation that drunk instant messaging is a new problem clearly didn't have an undergrad at Acadia.

Stars: Set Yourself on Fire

2005-04-25T12:32:00.000-04:00

I just can't get over how great the new Stars album, Set Yourself on Fire, is. I had never heard of them until a couple weeks ago, when we saw them in concert. Anyway, the album is number one on at least one chart in Canada. Unfortunately, since their tour across Canada was right-to-left, anyone reading this has already missed their chance to see them. But you should still check out the album.

Hot nerdy girls and indie rock boys! With glasses!

2005-04-23T03:01:00.000-04:00

I didn't actually mean to abandon my blog forever. And this post isn't really worthy of a comeback. But whatever.

Most people know I'm not unfamiliar with (attempts at) internet dating. I saw consumating linked off of BoingBoing or del.icio.us or something today, and thought it was interesting. Any dating site where "pinkhaired" is a listed tag is a good one in my books :)

The disclaimer: I'm taken, so I'm not looking. I just think that niche sites that happen to exactly fit my niche are cool.

Making Linear Web Content Better

2005-04-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

Every now and then, I have some thoughts about The Way Things Should Be. In today's episode, I bitch about some missing HTML meta tags.

Basically, I think there should exist a standard for having <prev> and <next> tags on HTML content. Many, many web applications have their content stored in sequential pages. Some examples:

Blog archives
Web comic archives
Multi-page news articles
Search results
Emails in webmail programs
Probably many more...

Wouldn't it be great if web pages that were split into many parts specificially encoded what the "next" and "previous" pages were? That way, browsers could have special buttons that automatically goes to the next and previous pages in a series, instead of having to hunt for wherever the web designer decided to hide the "next" link. Furthermore, such actions could be tied to mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts, etc. And possibly the best application of this meta content is that the next page could be pre-loaded and rendered in the background, so that if you're attempting to read the pages sequentially, the next page could load instantly. Imagine being able to read the archives of a web comic without ever having to wait for a comic to load!

Of course, this idea isn't new. The Opera web browser came out a few years ago with "Fast Forward" and "Rewind" buttons, which attempted to decipher which link on the page was the "next" page. However, when I tested out their browser so long ago, I found that the Fast Forward button more often than not took me to some random page that was linked (maybe) from whatever page I was reading. Maybe their algorithm has gotten better since then; I don't know. But the point is that they shouldn't have to guess; the linear nature of the information should be made explict in the metadata of the page.

Update: Based on John's comment, it turns out that not only are next and previous links already in the HTML standard, but there is already functionality available in most browsers for it. Looks like I don't need to write a Firefox plugin after all.

How Many Could You Take?

2005-04-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

A long time ago, my friend Brian asked a question of my group of friends: "How many elementary school children could you beat up in a fight, assuming an endless supply of children?" Predictions ranged from mid-single-digits to high teens. But part of the point of this topic is that, no matter to what group of people you ask this question, they always seem to take it seriously and thoughtfully consider it (granted, I wouldn't try to verify this by asking my parents, or a nun).

This McSweeney's article addresses the issue, although they use 12 year olds. I always find it strange whenever an oddball topic of conversation that I had is "validated" by finding it independently in popular media.

Holier than Thou

2005-04-04T14:59:00.000-04:00

From The Election of the Next Pope after John Paul II:

Usually the man chosen to be Pope is a Cardinal, or at least a prominent Bishop, although the Cardinal electors can choose any adult male Catholic.

Any adult male Catholic? That means I'm in the running for the next Pope. I should write an acceptance speech, just in case. And maybe put together a smear campaign against the other Pope-ful hopefuls.

CBC is Geeky

2005-04-03T01:58:00.000-05:00

I've decided to get into listening to radio, a little, and I'm starting with CBC. But since my reception in my apartment is abysmal, I'm going the internet radio route.

I'm not sure how much I like the music (too early to tell), but I'm delighted to discover that CBC is totally geeky. On their main internet radio page, not only do they acknowledge Unix, but they test their stream on a Gentoo box. Not a Fedora or Red Hat install; Gentoo. So geeky. Furthermore, they're actually testing an Ogg Vorbis stream.

Things like this make me proud to be Canadian.

50M3 P30p73 C4|\|'T R34|] T|-|I5

2005-03-31T20:09:00.000-05:00

While I'm on a roll...

I just read this article, which isn't so interesting in itself. But it reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend from undergrad, who took arts (English major, philosophy minor). I happened to make a joke by typing something in leet-speak, and ended up having to explain to her what leet-speak even is. And she spent the last four years at Acadia, one of the most (if not the most) internet-oriented school in Canada. Sure, I would expect something like that from my parents, but not from a girl my age who is a bit of an internet addict in her own way. It amazes me whenever I find out that I live in a world so different from others, and things that are so common place to me are something most people haven't heard of.

On a related note: when I went home for Christmas, none of my friends had heard of Gmail. This was 7 months after I had gotten a Gmail account, 6 months after Gmail invites were being sold on eBay and given away on every forum site around, and 5 months after I stopped being able to find people to give invites to.

My world is a bubble.

I, for one, welcome our new Yahoo overlords

2005-03-31T19:59:00.000-05:00

Second Sight is an article predicting the death of Google to Yahoo, or at least that Yahoo is currently winning in the online war. This is the second such article I've read in the past week or so; most of the spectulation is based on Yahoo!'s purchase of Flickr, as I mentioned earlier, and also on their recent release of Yahoo 360, which I haven't checked out but would love to get an invite to (I predict that there will soon be an invite selling frenzy, as there was with gmail invites).

I'm not willing to predict Google's death. The biggest reason for this is because everyone still uses Google to search. Googling is still a verb. Many people have Google as their homepage (which is pointless and stupid, because any reasonable browser has an integrated search bar).

What does interest me is that the "search engine war" appears to be outside of actual internet searching. Photos and blogs are what have Yahoo! "winning" the war; not the quality of their search results. So it looks to me like people aren't looking for a search engine. They want a company to control their online "life". And while Google and Yahoo (and Microsoft?) duke it out, we all get to enjoy the kickbacks. Keep it up, Yahoo!.

Got you!

2005-03-31T18:52:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this post as a warning to everyone that tomorrow is April Fools Day. Traditionally, I'm always caught by at least one "joke" (i.e. lie) on April 1st. This year, I went to the extent of setting up an alarm on my computer that will remind me when I wake up tomorrow not to believe anything I hear or read. I don't support April Fools jokes, I won't be playing any, and I'm going to do my best to spoil it for others.

April Fools Day is the one day a year when people are allowed to lie. Any other day of the year, liars are jerks, but tomorrow, I'm supposed to just shrug it off and say "Ha Ha. You got me." What a fun idea for a holiday! I have another one. May 1st can be May Sucker Punch Day, where you're allowed to just go around and punch people in the stomach. Awesome!

Ah! The Day-Star! It Burns!

2005-03-31T18:39:00.000-05:00

Honestly, there hasn't really been much going through my head that's worth discussing here, or much going through my eyes that I felt like photographing. Hence the radio silence for the past week. Like Derek's latest, this post is to mostly touch base and say that I'm still alive.

Edmonton is finally recovering from its mini-Winter that happened last week at the start of Spring. Green grass is emerging from the snow, the giant swimming pool-sized puddles are evaporating from the sidewalks, the temperatures are remaining stable at above freezing, and I've starting wearing my hoodie in lou of a coat. This also means that my productivity is at an all-time low. I've been at work for six hours, and one of those hours was a meeting with my supervisor, and the other five have been procrastination. I don't know how Spring does it. My office doesn't even have a real window, and I'm not working outside, but the simple knowledge that it's sunny outside is destroying me.

Soon I'll get the mythical Alberta "Hey, it's April" scholarship (unless it actually is a myth), and I'll buy a bike. I need to exercise more. I think I'm getting fat.

Today I've been mainly distracted by an idea for a web page project. It's mostly just a redesign of my blog, but it will involve buying my own domain and doing some fancy CSS and maybe Javascript. Buying domains is more complicated than I expected. Price differences, the extreme sketchiness of some of the registrar sites, and curiousity about DNS issues are impeding my progress. Any buying advice?

Sleep with me, I'm not too young

2005-03-25T12:04:00.000-05:00

This seems like one of those sites that everyone's heard of, but Stairway to Heaven Backwards has some pretty cool clips of "back masking" (hiding Satanic or other bad messages when you play a song backwards). I don't actually believe that any of this was intentional (except the intentional one), and most of the "messages" are unintelligible. But there are a couple pretty cool examples that you can hear after you read the lyrics.

From the archives...

2005-03-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

Rubber Glove

I didn't post anything substantial for the past couple days, so as filler, I'll post this picture from a party a month ago. I have a rubber glove stretched over my head. That's John in the background.

7:35 in the morning

2005-03-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

7:35 in the morning is a cool short film. It was pointed out to me from qwantz.com.

Tell me a secret...

2005-03-21T18:01:00.000-05:00

Jon pointed PostSecret out to me. It's a confession site where people send it postcards with secrets on them. It is both sad and extremely interesting, as car crashes tend to be.

Follow Your Dreams?

2005-03-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

A Coder in Courierland is about a guy who worked a cubicle job in Toronto, found it unfulfilling, and then switched to being a bike messenger.

I read articles like these every now and then, about people following their dreams and doing the unconventional, and loving it. I never read articles about people giving up their normal life and embracing the unnormal, and hating it. Which brings up the question of biased sampling: people who stopped doing normal things and hated it don't write about it, they just go back to doing normal things.

But at the same time, I think: Do I want to have a job riding a bike around Toronto? Yes. Do I want to have a job that keeps me in shape and is undeniably cool? Yes. Do I read this article and imagine myself getting out of the white collar paradigm and just living it up? Yes. Will I ever do it in a million years? No.

Now that the end of school in conceivably in sight (although I don't know if I'll finish by August, as was originally planned), and now that I've crossed off "Academia" from "Peter's List of Futures", I'm starting to get a little anxious about what I want to do. Was IBM really that great? Am I imagining it to be better than it was? Probably. One of the things I dislike about school is that I go home so often feeling unsatisfied, as if I haven't put in a good day's work (I'm writing this from school, of course). And, now that I really remember, there were definitely days like that at IBM. Lots of them. A whole consecutive month of them, if I remember properly.

I'm not inclined to be a sad person. Whatever job I end up getting will be okay. It almost certainly won't be fantastic. But I'll be better at it than most, and it'll bring in a good paycheque, and I'll find some friends and have a good life. That puts me better off than many, many people. But every now and then I'm going to read an article like that one, and it'll put me into a funk.

Interesting Times

2005-03-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

I saw an article on FlickrBlog that Yahoo! has purchased Flickr. This is making me think a couple things:

The next few years are going to be interesting times in the online-community wars. Yahoo! is trying with all of their might to win the hearts and affiliation of Google's supporters. The purchase of Flickr will make their blogging service all the better. They recently bought ice cream for everyone in Canada and America (although Google bought me a beer, so they're still winning). And I'd be very surprised if Yahoo! doesn't have a few more projects in store for us. It's a good time to be a member of the online community.
Is another online bubble going to happen? Flickr is a relatively new company, based in Vancouver. Yahoo! bought it for an undisclosed amount of money, but we can probably assume it's a pretty large sum with the popularity that Flickr has been experiencing. Granted, Flickr had a good service going; it's not like before the crash when any old web page could be worth millions. But things seem to be looking up in the online industry; I think now might be a good time to be looking for a computer job.

He Probably Misses His Old Glasses

2005-03-20T20:24:00.000-05:00

My New Glasses

I joined the ranks of the bespectacled this Friday. I've had glasses since Grade 10, I think, but I've never really worn them. Now that I paid for glasses out of my own pocket (expensive!) I think I'll be wearing these a lot. Plus, you know, seeing is cool.

Ubuntu One; Fedora Zero

2005-03-20T19:45:00.000-05:00

My, it's easy to neglect these blog thingies. There goes my posting-every-day record.

So, I was becoming increasingly less satisfied with Fedora Core 3 on my desktop. I could give a laundry list of things that I didn't like about it, but suffice to say that I was looking for stability and ease of use, and Fedora provided neither. I looked at Suse and Mandrake, but both of those seem to be primarily KDE-based, and didn't solve the package manager problem to my liking. Debian would have been nice, but it's desktop packages seemed hopelessly out of date. My roommate, Bill, mentioned that Ubuntu seemed to be getting significant press on Slashdot. I looked into it, and it was basically exactly what I wanted: Debian, but with a focus on useability and an up-to-date Gnome desktop.

The install disk was one CD, which was a pleasant change from Fedora's 4-disk monstrosity of packages I didn't want. Installation was a snap, and I went from putting the Ubuntu disk in my drive to "Look Ma, new operating system" in about 30 minutes. Granted, after installation there was a bunch of things I needed to do to make it home, but that's to be expected of any Linux install. I've been using it for a little over a week now, and I have yet to find anything I really dislike about it. Its package manager is Synaptic, which is a GUI front end to apt-get, and the only GUI package manager I've actually liked. Because it drawns on Debian packages, Ubuntu also has the best selection of software of all the distros I've tried.

No Love

2005-03-16T13:09:00.000-05:00

The paper my supervisor and I submitted to IJCAI (in Edinburgh, this summer) has been rejected. Not much of a surprise; I didn't really expect it to be accepted. But combined with not submitting a paper to ICML (in Bonn, Germany), it looks like my hopes for a European vacation are quashed.

The Next Step in Web Photo Albums

2005-03-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

What's in my bag?

I happened to come across this picture in Flickr. What's notable isn't the picture itself, but the fact that different parts of the picture are hotspots, with comments attached. (Hint: click on the picture to see what I mean). I've noticed before that Flickr displays its photos using Flash, which I didn't see any reason for until now. Now I'm convinced that the ability to hotspot digital photos is extremely brilliant and totally obvious.

It also makes me wonder what the next step in digital file format will be. At the moment, JPEG files contain EXIF data that has information like the date and time that the picture was taken, what kind of camera took it, what the aperture was, etc. These stats are well and good for photo buffs, but now digital photography is becoming mainstream. The average person doesn't care about what shutter speed was used to take the picture. A short list of features I'd like to see contained in photos include:

an overall comment about the picture
a set of "category" tags
a list of the people in the photo
a list of hotspot coordinates with attached comments

I'm sure if I spent more time thinking, I could come up with a lot more features. EXIF data needs to go from being photography-oriented to display-oriented. I think that's coming soon.

Some of these features are currently provided by photo-display programs. Flickr lets you hotspot, iPhoto lets you tag categories and put comments, etc. But the problem with this setup is that the essential data is kept outside of the file. If I painstakingly comment and categorize all my photos in iPhoto, I can never switch to a different program. If I put the photos up on the web, I need to retype and recategorize everything (unless I use something that iPhoto happens to integrate with). Imagine if all your mp3 tags went away if you switched from Winamp to iTunes. Unacceptable.

The digital photo revolution will be similar to the digital music revolution, I think. A few years ago, people's mp3 collections were mainly a jumble of files with strange naming schemes and no directory structure and ID3 data that was only half filled-in, and frequently just plain wrong. Now that iTunes (and other music players that follow the same model) are becoming more popular, people see that correct meta-data actually leads to a better music experience. Soon pictures will be the same way.

Rilo Kiley

2005-03-15T16:34:00.000-05:00

Just figured I'd point out the webpage of a band called Rilo Kiley. They kind of remind me a little of Polyphonic Spree. The video for "It's A Hit" is fairly cool, although the video quality is kind of crappy.

Pi Day

2005-03-14T02:39:00.000-05:00

Pi Day

Hot on the heels of Prime Time comes its more famous cousin, Pi day. Every year on March 14, at 1:59 PM, math nerds everywhere celebrate their beloved 3.14159...

The computing science grad association is holding a bake off tomorrow, so of course I made an apple pie. It's competing with a pie made by my friend, who is the undisputed champion of apple-pie-making, so wish me luck.

Unfortunately, I won't get to celebrate Pi Day (or sample tasty food from the bake off) because I have a meeting scheduled at that time. Oh well; there's always next year.

Who Needs Hockey?

2005-03-14T02:29:00.000-05:00

Brier 2005

If you weren't aware (and it's okay if you weren't), the Canadian men's curling championships (aka. the Brier) were being held in Edmonton this year. Like the majority of people back east, I don't pay much attention to curling, but it's pretty popular here in the west. Anyway, my roommate happened to have a pair of tickets for every game in the tournament, but I declined to go until tonight, because I really don't care about curling.

Turns out that Nova Scotia's team is actually quite good, though, and tonight was the final game. It happened to be between Nova Scotia and Alberta, which I thought was especially appropriate. To make the story short: I'm still not a huge fan of curling, but it's definitely more interesting than I thought it was. As an example, in the second last "end" of the "draw" (there are 10 ends in a draw, with eight rocks thrown per team in an end), the Alberta team elected to not score any points, and actually knocked one of their rocks from a point-scoring position, in order to set themselves up better for the last end. That's some interesting strategy.

Anyway, Alberta won, which was disappointing, but not altogether unsurprising. Maybe now my interest is piqued enough to pay attention to it next year.

Goodbye, Jetsgo

2005-03-11T02:13:00.000-05:00

It looks like Jetsgo is out of business. I'm not too surprised; they didn't seem to be generating much customer loyalty since they're flights were so frequently late.

I Just Wanted You to Watch a Commercial

2005-03-10T17:56:00.000-05:00

I was originally just going to do a short post linking to Hello Tomorrow, an Adidas commercial done by Spike Jonze (of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation fame). But in my IMDB fact-checking (I thought he did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, too), I found out that Spike Jonze was also responsible for the "Sabotage" video for the Beastie Boys and the "Praise You" video for Fatboy Slim (both of which I assume everyone's seen). More importantly, IMDB also reports that he's doing Where the Wild Things Are (the screenplay for which was co-written by Dave Eggers, who wrote the brilliant book "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") and that there will be another Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman project coming up in the future. I can't wait for either of them. And it turns out that
Spike Jonze was/is married to Sofia Coppola, who did the excellent Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation.

Anyway, the commercial is pretty cool.

Pros and Cons

2005-03-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

The blessing of RSS: Now I don't have to spend minutes manually checking all the internet pages that I like to see if they've updated.

The curse of RSS: Now I need to figure out how else to spend those minutes procrastinating.

Avast!

2005-03-08T17:20:00.000-05:00

My favorite thing I read today is from Overcompensating:

Hackers are like pirates except instead of treasure they steal information and instead of raping they bother people.

Indie is as Indie Does

2005-03-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

I discovered a new web comic recently called Questionable Content. The storyline is essentially about the romantic tension between a guy and the girl who moved in with him; the humor comes mostly from clever banter between the characters. Of course, with a comic like this, it's essential you care about the characters, so I recommend you hit the archives. The author of the comic also has good taste in music.

As an aside, I think Faye (from the comic) looks like someone I know, but people who are more qualified disagree with me.

A Walk Down Whyte

2005-03-06T22:33:00.000-05:00

It has been an amazing mild winter this year in Edmonton, and it's already starting to warm up (at least temporarily). Since it was six degrees and sunny out, I could resist going for a walk this afternoon. I took a couple photos of art on Whyte Ave. that I've been meaning to take.

Family Tree

There are a bunch of these painted boxes on the streets just off of Whyte. I'm not sure what they are -- electrical boxes of some sort, maybe? Today was the first time I saw this one; it's my favorite of the bunch.

Inuksuk

This is a large inuksuk that's standing outside a coffee shop on Whyte. I think it's cool.

ysearch: esearch for Fedora

2005-03-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

One of the things I've missed a lot since the move from Gentoo to Fedora is a fast package searcher. Gentoo users know that esearch is the best thing since sliced bread. It enables practically instant searching of every package. Fedora has a decent command line package manager, called yum. But it's ass-slow when it comes to searching.


pumpkin ~ $ time yum -C search gaim
[output omitted]
real    0m26.486s
user    0m12.938s
sys     0m0.743s

I got so frustrated with this that I actually looked into how esearch and eupdatedb work, and wrote a very basic version for Fedora. I'm calling it ysearch, and it actually works surprisingly well.


pumpkin ~ $ time ysearch gaim
[output omitted]
real    0m0.111s
user    0m0.065s
sys     0m0.014s

A speed-up of 23,000% isn't too bad :)

I'm pretty sure that no one who reads this runs Fedora, so I'm not going to post a link to any code. It's pre-alpha software, anyway. But if you're interested (or if a Fedora user finds this by googling for "esearch yum Fedora" like I tried to look for), feel free to email me for a version of the code. If there's enough interest, or I fix it up some more, I might even start a sourceforge project.

Your control does not matter

2005-03-05T01:59:00.000-05:00

Men's Bathroom Blackboard

We went to Muddy Waters tonight to hang out and show a prospective U of A CS Master's student how cool we are. One of the things that makes Muddy's so hip is the blackboard in the washroom. It's like the traditional bathroom graffiti, but condoned by the establishment (and usually more high brow). I happened to have my camera on me, so I recorded what was on it for posterity.

Early Breakfast

2005-03-02T12:55:00.000-05:00

PrimeTime (March 2nd, 2005 at 7:11:13 am)

Photographic evidence that I was up and celebrating Prime Time, and that I wasn't the only person geeky enough to do so.

Prime Time

2005-03-01T15:22:00.000-05:00

For my readers who are both geekily inclined and prone to random celebration (which is most of you, I think): tomorrow morning will be Prime Time. It will be the 2nd day of the 3rd month in the 5th year, at the 7th hour and the 11th minute and 13th second. The upside of this is that it won't happen for another thousand years (until 3005, assuming we're counting our years as mod 1000). The downside is that you need to be up at 7:11 AM to celebrate.

Sure, you could nitpick and say that 2004 was actually the 5th year of the millenium, since 2000 was a year. Or you could say that Nov. 7, 2013 at 5:03:02 AM is just as valid to be Prime Day, since it just depends on how you order the digits. But neither of those means that you're shouting at 7:11:13 tomorrow morning, do they?

[Update: Sverrir explains Prime Time]

Research Impaired

2005-02-28T22:08:00.000-05:00

My supervisor and I are still working at making a last ditch effort at getting a paper ready for ICML. This is impeded by the following facts:

We haven't started the paper.
We don't have a topic for the paper.
The paper is due next Tuesday.

I wish something would finally work, or that I had enough math/logic/proof skillz to invent some theory.

Quoth the Raven

2005-02-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

graffiti

This piece of graffiti has been on the U of A campus since the fall, but I just got around to taking a photo of it today. I really enjoy graffiti that's well done and intelligent (although I'm not quite sure to what I should be listening).

Local Music

2005-02-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

guiness smile

We went to a small show at the Black Dog, a local bar on Whyte Ave. The musician was the wife of a friend of a friend (Carrie Horachek), and she sounds just like Ani Difranco but with bad song writing. Worth listening to, though; a couple of my friends bought her CD.

This is a photo of a smiley face drawn in my Guiness. Because hey -- when you're drinking a Guiness at 4 in the afternoon, you're in a good mood.

[Editor's Note: Yes, this was actually posted on Feb. 28th, but I figured there's nothing wrong with cheating the date.]

Peter's Guide to Master's Research

2005-02-24T02:02:00.000-05:00

1. Have an interesting idea, or be told an interesting idea by your supervisor.
2. Do initial work to that makes the idea seem promising. Get your hopes up.
3. Run experiments.
4. Obtain results you can't explain.
5. Find bug.
6. Fix bug.
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6, until jaded.
8. Realize that the idea was never going to work in the first place. Give up.

I'm currently at Step 8. Looks like the paper I was going to write to get me to a conference in Germany isn't going to happen any more.

Google Does Rotten Tomatoes One Better

2005-02-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

This won't be news to those who read Slashdot, but it seems that Google is starting to do movie review summaries. They apparently do (rudimentary) question answering about movies, and also recommendations.

This might be the death knell for Rotten Tomatoes, which I used to use as my meta-critic on movies. I wonder if eventually it'll take down IMDB, too.

Intro guide to del.icio.us

2005-02-22T01:30:00.000-05:00

In my investigation into del.icio.us, I came across a couple interesting links. This guide is a pretty good introduction to del.icio.us, and what it can do for you. And this page gives a list of the most popular del.icio.us bookmarks, and this page shows some results for the useful tag.