I live in a part of Canada that defies most of the conventions regarding what it is to be Canadian. For example, I was mowing the lawn in November and again in February.
That said, there is still a distinct “difference” for me when it starts to feel like spring. Today was the day for me, even though technically its been warm and reasonably spring-like for weeks. I took a few photos outside the house to capture the moment: here is my favorite: (more…)
I'm a hacker...not a security hacker, not a script kiddy, but an old school, widget-writing code developer. I write code, I don't theorize about it.
But I've always felt guilty. My brief stint in University (I dropped out of Honours Comp. Sci after about six months) made me feel like real computing science was all about mathematics and set theory. Then I found this article by Paul Graham, which really hit a chord with me. Basically, Paul's suggestion is that Computing Science is, for many people, not a science. Instead, it is more akin to an art form. Coders like myself don't write out some mathematical theory for a program, then transcribe it. Instead, we work with materials and theories to create. Some of what we do is sketching, some of it transcends mere sketching and becomes "beautiful". But it is a far cry from a formal science for many (most?) programmers. Just like a good artist or architect, good hackers don't program randomly: we start with a theme or a context (the requirements for an application, a problem that needs to be solved), and create something "organically" that fulfills or perhaps transcends our original intent. I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling guilty, or sometimes angry, regarding the way I code versus the way I had been taught I was *supposed* to code. Paul's article helped me see this in a different light. In fact, its encouraged me to dig a bit more into theory: not because I feel I have to, but because it might help me be a better coder.
You may recall my story about the amazing stock trader, Andrew Carlssin, who claimed to be from the future.
Well, I was fooled. I didn’t read the fine print regarding where that story came from. It originated on Weekly World News, and was reprinted all over the net. Apparently, the SEC and FBI were flooded by calls from news agencies to verify the story, so at least I wasn’t the only one who got sucked in. (more…)
Everyone knows that Microsoft products are the subject of a great deal of hacker attention. Sure, Microsoft hasn’t in the past been very good about securing their products, but with all the script kiddies and coders making them their #1 target, it isn’t too surprising that problems keep cropping up. (more…)
I've had the same car (a 1994 Intrepid) for nearly ten years. It served me well, but with over two hundred thousand kilometres on the odometer it was starting to show its age. A little breakdown earlier this month started me thinking, and then Irene began to talk about going car shopping.
Meet my new car...
The TSX was the first car we looked at. I was pretty much sold after driving it around the block. I put up a brave fight...I must have spent thirty minutes looking at the Cadillac CTS at the dealer up the road. But the CTS was very "plasticky", to say nothing of the fact that it cost $15k more...and up close, those appealing lines looked kind of cheap. The TSX was calling me back. I booked an appointment to put together a deal for the next day.
What is the Acura TSX? Well, its basically a European Honda Accord platform. That means smaller than a North American Accord. Add a 200 hp 2.4 litre four cyllinder engine, a drive by wire throttle, your choice of either six speed manual or 5 speed auto with "tiptronic" style gated "manual" shift, and single "fully loaded" trim package (leather, sunroof, dual zone climate control, 17" wheels, 6 CD 380 watt 8 speaker stereo...), and thats the TSX.
This is only the second "brand new" car I've ever owned. The last was when I was about 23 years old...16 years ago now. The TSX is a ton of fun to drive, and yet is still practical enough that Irene didn't have too much of a fit.
Now I just have to get used to having a car that is small enough for me to walk around when its parked in the garage...
Warning: the following is my current opinion. As my sagely nephew often says, Opinions are like a$$holes...
George W. Bush ("Dubblya" to his friends) said that the American people had to strike against the "axis of evil". Thousands went to war, and I think the battle went as cleanly and quickly as any of us could have hoped. But what was it about? And what happens now?
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There is a guy currently in jail in New York for the crime of making too much money too quickly on the stock market. He started with $800 and, in two weeks, had a stock portfolio worth over $350 million. He did this on in a mere 126 trades, every single one of them successful.
But that isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is that he says he's from the future...
Andrew Carlssin says that he's from the year 2256, and that he travelled back in time with the knowledge that our time period was one of the low points in the stock market's history. He also had a list of the key stocks and dates to buy. All he wants to do is go back to his time machine and travel back to his own time: if he's set free, he'll reveal the location of Osama Bin Laden, and will provide a cure for AIDS.
Okay, the guy is nutty as a fruitcake. But the claim that he is benefitting from insider trading seems pretty darned far-fetched as well. 126 perfect trades? 126 different stocks? This guy must have a freaking huge list of "insiders", all of whom know exactly how some announcement or another is going to drive their stock. Doesn't this seem just the teensiest bit unlikely?
So, how did he make 126 perfect and ultra-highrisk trades in a row? Furthermore, there is no record of this guy existing prior to December, 2002. Maybe he is from the future...
You may recall that I was lamenting earlier this week that several of my news feeds had choked and died. I don’t give up easily… (more…)
Its official: the new server hardware for this site is now in place!
My apologies for the sporadic availability of this site during the last few days. All three of you are probably incensed :-) But as with any upgrade of this type involving hobbiest hardware and configurations, it wasn't smooth.
There were a ton of bits and pieces that I had installed software-wise over the last year, some of which were critical to operating certain pieces of the site. Stuff like php-cli, nc, and other things of that ilk. But to add insult to injury, the new versions of several key pieces of the site (E.G. Apache, PHP) now handle configuration files differently. As "obvious" as certain directives no longer working, and as subtle as required environment variables now needing different initial values. So I couldn't just copy over my old config files and call it a day.
With all of this hassle, you are probably wondering why I did this. I refer back to one of my previous entries here
The old server was an 866 MHz Pentium III. More than adequate for my needs. But now the server is running on a dual processor "2000+" (1.66 GHz) AMD Athlon configuration. Processing-wise, at least, I now have four times as much power. And a larger hard drive: nearly twice as big.Of course, the most important thing is that I've freed up some hardware to use for building Irene a new computer. Yeah, that's the ticket... :)
The website has been down quite a bit today. I'm installing upgrades and, as is often the case with such things, it hasn't gone perfectly Right now the server is…