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| [ Happy Crappy Birthday ] |
06 Feb 2009 + 10:36 PM |
| Yup.. it was my birthday on Monday the 2nd. The only problem is that I was pretty sick all day. I'm only getting over it now. Oh well, these things happen. |
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| [ 1234567890 ] |
19 Jan 2009 + 12:24 AM |
On Feb 13th, 2009 at 23:31:30 UTC, the Unix timestamp will reach the value 1234567890!
This occasion is will only ever happen once (well, in the current 32-bit form with the 1970 epoch) so perhaps we should all find a way to celebrate this important moment in history?
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| [ Almost 2009 ] |
31 Dec 2008 + 9:40 PM |
| Well, there's time for one last post before the end of '08. And what a year it was! Between the end of May and now, we celebrated the arrival of our firstborn, drove across Canada and went to Australia. What a crazy year it's been! But we had a great time. Here's to hoping that 2009 turns out even better. Have a happy new year, one and all! |
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| [ Merry Christmas! ] |
25 Dec 2008 + 11:21 PM |
Well, I guess I'd better say it while it's still Christmas! We were pretty fortunate this year, it snowed for most of today giving us an extra ~5cm on top of the ~20cm already on the ground. I honestly can't remember when it snowed on Christmas last, so this has been a pretty special year. Hope everyone has been having a fantastic Christmas this year.. and all the best in 2009!
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| [ Finally, an update! ] |
20 Dec 2008 + 7:20 AM |
Long story short, we've been away. We've just returned from a six week trip to Australia, visiting with family and showing off the little one. To be honest, it was a good break - a chance to relax and take it easy.
Arriving back was a bit of a shock though. When we left Australia, we were somewhat fortunate that the weather had been rather poor for the last few days of our visit and thus the cooler temperatures helped us acclimatize somewhat. But arriving back in Vancouver, we left the airport at 8:00am to experience -7C temperatures. We decided to brave the five hour drive ahead of us and ended up sneaking in just before another dump of snow hit us. Now it's -20 and with more snow on the way, it sounds like we just got back in time.
Now of course with weather such as this, it sounds like all of Canada may get it's first nationwide white Christmas in 30 years. That would be a treat! Here's hoping that we end an awesome year with something as cool as that.
Merry Christmas! |
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| [ eeePC Experiences ] |
23 Oct 2008 + 8:57 AM |
Well, I've owned my eeePC 701 for nine months now, so I think I have some pretty decent eeePC experience under my belt. First, the hardware.
The eeePC is absolutely tiny. Despite being a big fan of miniature computing devices, the eeePC nearly borders on frustrating due to it's incredibly compact form. However, with some practice, I can safely say you will get used to it.
I've never tried to do anything incredibly CPU intensive on the eeePC. I don't expect it to perform particularly well and so I just don't push it. It has no problem doing the mainstream things I ask of it; like playing mp3's or videos. Pretty much all the videos I have are DivX encoded which plays full screen without any glitches and no noticeable dropped frames. Some coding, light web surfing and email pretty much rounds out the majority of what I use it for so it's not a problem for me.
The default OS installed with the eee is Xandros. Xandros isn't my first choice of an OS, so I tried replacing it with FreeBSD 7. Although there's a fair bit of development being done (with drivers and so on) to allow FreeBSD to run on this platform, it's just not there yet. The Attansic L2 ethernet driver has apparently been committed (apparently this is ae(4) but it's not in any of the releases yet), wifi is sort of working but requires a kernel rebuild to make it work, and of course the webcam is out of the question. Most everything else works fine though, including the audio, touchpad, video, acpi, etc. So it's nearly there, just not quite yet.
At one point, I started using the eeePC heavily for paperless geocaching, so I tried putting Windows XP on it for fun. I was pretty surprised how well it actually worked. But, Windows isn't my idea of fun, so I really wanted a Unix OS. So, with few options and not wanting to spend a huge amount of time with this, I reinstalled Xandros and after ridding myself of the so-called "easy mode" I finally found my solution. I still don't understand the strange partitioning scheme they use but it doesn't matter anyway since I store everything externally on an SDHC card and USB flash sticks. Don't want to wear out that SSD, it would be a pain to solder in a replacement ;)
Anyway, bottom line is that for what it is, the eeePC is perfect. Sure, there's lots of people who use one of these two arguments:
1. Why buy the eeePC when you can get a "normal" laptop for $100 more?
or
2. The eeePC is overpriced! It should be cheaper.
To those I say: that's your opinion, fine. But they don't get it. The eeePC is a marvel, it's portability alone makes it just about perfect, it's so well balanced. Here's my thoughts on some of the features:
1. It's just about too small, but just barely. The keyboard is tiny, but you can get used to it with practice. Most people don't use these for any intensive data entry, and hey, who likes typing on a laptop anyway? I just plug in an external keyboard, monitor and mouse which makes everything a whole lot easier. And then, you have this tiny portable computer when you're on the go. Fantastic.
2. It has quite a lot of features packed into it, but they didn't go overboard. It's got the usual, mic, speakers, webcam, NIC, wifi and USB. It also has some great bonus features: the SD slot, which is an awesome addition, and the external video jack. I like that. I just wish it had an s-video jack, but oh well. I'm glad it didn't come with a modem, it obviously was designed to have one but I haven't used a modem in 10 years so in my humble opinion, I would prefer to save the few dollars and be without one.
3. I personally like the small onboard flash. Sure, it would be nice to have a larger capacity at your fingertips like the 900, which adds a second SSD of 12GB for the Windows version and 20GB for the Linux. But it doesn't really matter too much with the SDHC slot available. 16GB SDHC cards are now cheap enough, and 32GB cards are starting to come down in price. Storage is always an issue.
4. The default OS is actually pretty decent. Asus has done a great job in hiding Linux and has created a great, out of the box OS that pretty much even the most computer-illiterate person could use without any major hurdles. And for the average Unix guy you can get rid of that and just run an ordinary WM. Or, if you're a real hardcore hacker or just plain have too much time on your hands, you can run debian or ubuntu or some other Linux flavour. Or, if you're really hardcore, NetBSD.
5. The eeePC is what it is, it has some weaknesses, a lot of strengths, and it's just an all-around useful tool for certain applications. It's not going to replace your desktop, and it won't replace a full size laptop in some instances. But it has it's place, and what it does, it does well. |
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| [ Election day ] |
14 Oct 2008 + 8:55 PM |
| It's election day! This is your chance to help make a difference, so get out and vote! |
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| [ Canada Votes 2008 ] |
27 Sep 2008 + 5:34 PM |
With a federal election nearly upon us, it is important to recognize the political agendas of the various party leaders and how they translate into real-world changes for the average law-abiding Canadian citizen. A classic example of this is the seemingly central issue of gun control in this year's election which seems to have come into the spotlight moreso than ever before. It could be related to the timing between the upcoming election and a number of gang-related shooting deaths in Canada - mostly in Toronto, but there seems to be a great deal of emphasis placed on banning handguns by some of the parties under the guise of reducing criminal activity. This, to me, is an obvious effort by some very ignorant politicians to try and play us all for suckers and garner themselves extra votes.
I think this is downright insulting to the voting public whose intelligence shouldn't be so grossly underestimated! Banning handguns wouldn't reduce crime, we all know that. Most of the weapons used by criminals have been illegally smuggled over the border from the US or even from overseas. Regardless of their origins, banning these weapons wouldn't reduce the number of criminals carrying guns - that much is obvious. All it would do would impose another useless law that would do nothing to reduce crime and take sporting handguns away from honest, hard-working and law-abiding enthusiasts. It's another classic example of politicians attacking an issue from the wrong angle and ultimately hurting the law abiding citizens of this country while doing absolutely nothing to reduce crime and violence.
I offer here and very brief summary of the political parties and their stance on gun control.
Let's start with the Liberal party. Stephane Dion has repeatedly stated that his is in favour of "serious gun control". He also made a much-publicized statement on September 8th that he was in favour of banning "military assault weapons". The problem with that statement though is that most weapons that fall under that definition have already been banned since 1978. Conclusion? He has no idea what he's talking about. Dion is certainly trying to use the "gun control angle" to further his political platform.
On to the NDP. One thing that we can all count on with the NDP is Jack Layton changing his mind. This party leader changes his position so frequently that from one day to the next, you just have no idea which way this party is leaning. To his credit, the one thing that he hasn't ever changed his stance on (to my knowledge) is his position on increasing gun control. And just a week ago, he made the official announcement that he was in favour of a total handgun ban.
Ok, how about the Green Party? Surely they must have their priorities straight. Despite being well and truly outpaced, they've been steadily gaining momentum over the past few years with a lot of supporters believing in their principles. Heck, even Vancouver area MP Blair Wilson just became the first Green Party member of parliament this year. However, I was aghast when I saw the news report of Elizabeth May (commenting on the recent shootings in Toronto) that all handguns and semiautomatic rifles should be banned. Talk about a damaging statement, and one that contravenes public opinion. How could someone hoping to take on the top political parties in Canada be so ignorant?
What does that leave us with? The Conservatives. Stephen Harper is the only political leader in the running who seems to possess common sense. He's not talking about banning anything, he's talking stricter penalties for the possession of illegal weapons and the criminal use of firearms, cracking down on the smuggling of weapons (remember what I mentioned earlier about this? Stephen Harper gets it!) and adding more police officers to the force. These are effecive strategies for reducing gang violence and punishing criminals for using firearms in crimes.
Armed with this knowledge, we can now identify the politicians who are trying to push their misappropriated ideals on us hard working and law abiding citizens. Although I don't own a handgun, I'm not a sucker and i'm not falling for these politician's cowardly agendas. Anyone who says that banning handguns is full of rubbish and I - for one - am not voting for someone who is.
I know who i'm voting for. Do you?
[update: Toronto Star article regarding the proposed handgun ban by the Toronto mayor - I quite enjoyed reading the seven pages of comments left for this article] |
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