Moments in Time

Posted by rae in family
at 1:39 pm on Wednesday, 25 June 2008

This week marks Ronnie and Michael’s respective graduations. Ronnie from Grade 8, Michael from Grade 12.

Next year they both head out to new schools, and both of them will be taking the TTC instead of walking to school. They’ll both be in classes with completely new people, almost all of whom they don’t know.

This week was the last time both of them will be seeing many of their schoolmates. And yet, they’re both somewhat unaware of all this. Luisa mentioned Michael’s reaction, and Ronnie’s — although perhaps a bit more elequent — hasn’t been much different.

I suppose it’s often the case that you can be unaware of some large changes when they resemble other, smaller changes that have gone before. Ronnie and Michael are used to starting summer vacation. It’s the end of that vacation that will really be different.

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“Southland Tales”

Posted by rae in entertainment, video
at 3:19 pm on Wednesday, 18 June 2008

Southland Tales

I just saw “Southland Tales” which is a mind-warping SF movie. It reminded me of “Charlie Jade”, “Repo Man” and “Johnnie Darko” (the last makes sense since it’s the same director). But before you see it, be sure to read parts 1 to 3 in graphics novel format first. The movie starts with “Part IV”.

It has some surprising names, for such an unseen movie. Sarah Michelle Gellar (”Buffy”), Dwayne Johnson (”The Rock”), John Larroquette, Christopher Lambert, and Jon Lovitz. There is a bizarre musical in the middle starring Justin Timberlake, who plays a minor character.

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My favorite comment on the new hi-res galactic snapshot

Posted by rae in General
at 9:30 am on Wednesday, 4 June 2008

spitzer galaxy shot

NASA has released a HUGE image of the milky way galaxy (396,032 x 13,520 pixels!) (yes, I downloaded all 16 full-res pieces — new desktop pics abound!), and there was news that some of the spiral arms of the galaxy may be “demoted” from bring major spiral arms. Shades of Pluto!

There was a very pithy comment on slashdot:

“two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.”

I suspected something like this might happen, I just didn’t dream that they’d go so far.

I mean, you have to be just a little suspicious about whether all star-forming arms are on an equal footing when you look at the names. There’s Perseus and Sagittarius. Then we get to Scutum-Centaurus, and you have to wonder if the astronomers needed a leg up in the imagination department. And then all doubt vanishes when we get to the fourth arm…Norma. Yes, Norma. Like the girl who couldn’t wait to get old enough to disown her parents, legally change her name to Chantal and get a job at the brass-pole ballet.

You just had to know they were having their doubts about arm number 4.

On a more positive note, the same bunch of guys who just slammed Scutum-Centaurus and, um, “Norma”, are also telling us that they “obtained detailed information about our galaxy’s bar, and found that it extends farther out from the centre of the galaxy than previously thought”.

A bar that’s closer to the house than you thought can’t be a bad thing. Especially when you need to walk home.

– I’ve calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.

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Firefox Download Day 2008

Posted by rae in General
at 10:24 am on Thursday, 29 May 2008

The folks at Firefox are trying to set a new world’s record for the number of downloads in a single day. I dunno, what’s the current record?

Okay, I got sucked into it. I even created a Facebook event for it, and joined the Facebook group.

So sue me. :-)

And download Firefox 3 on the day it comes out!

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Trying out “Disqus” for comments

Posted by rae in General
at 12:51 pm on Monday, 26 May 2008

Disqus

Let me know what you think of the new comment system. I’ve installed if for all zero-comment posts (which includes all new posts), so old posts with comments still have the old WordPress commenting system.

This may involve you having to create a Disqus account, but the idea is that you can use that account across blogs. I am also setting up Disqus on Tech Tok so you only have to create your account once for both places.

Leo Laporte has also set up his blog to use it. Maybe it will spread everywhere.

The idea is that your comments belong to you, and Disqus makes it easier to follow people, as opposed to blogs.

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gdb_stl_utils for Mac OS X

Posted by rae in development
at 2:31 pm on Thursday, 15 May 2008

Oh ya, this will have a wide audience..

There’s a very useful little utility for debugging STL under gdb, and it’s called gdb_stl_utils.

However, the Makefile that comes with it doesn’t account for multiple architectures like Intel/PPC on the Mac. So I updated the Makefile and posted the whole thing on clith.com/gdb_stl_utils. I’ve mailed the new Makefile to the person who most recently updated it in hopes of helping others use this very useful tool.

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GeForce 8800 GT in my Mac Pro lets me run Windows games again!

Posted by rae in General
at 11:42 am on Monday, 12 May 2008

With my new GeForce 8800 GT installed in my Mac, all my 2D window-drawing artifacts are gone, and I am once again able to play 3D Windows games (via BootCamp) without having the machine crash from overheating after 10 minutes.

So Walter, Iain and John should watch out for a new Team Fortress 2 user by the name of Clith de T’nir!

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Most Romantic Books

Posted by rae in General
at 1:46 pm on Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Not sure how I got there, but this page has a list of people saying what their favorite romantic books are.

A quick Perl script later, and here are the top books with the number of people on that page that mentioned them:

15 Gone With the Wind
15 The Bridges of Madison County
12 The Thorn Birds
11 The Notebook
8 Outlander
5 Wuthering Heights
3 A Knight in Shining Armor
3 Jane Eyre
3 Pride and Prejudice
3 Whitney, My Love
2 A Farewell to Arms
2 A Town Like Alice
2 Cyrano de Bergerac
2 Five Smooth Stones
2 Green Mansions
2 Joy in the Morning
2 Katherine
2 Love Story
2 Rebecca
2 The Flame and the Flower

So there you go.

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Iron Man

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 12:52 am on Wednesday, 7 May 2008

I went to see Iron Man on Thursday, the day before the erstwhile opening day.

With me were Andy, Jeff K and Craig. Overall, it was quite a fun movie, which required the usual comic-book suspension of disbelief. A quick explanation of why Tony Stark was able to ignore inertia would have been nice. “Engage inertial dampeners” would have sufficed.

Definitely recommended. I certainly enjoyed it enough to go see it again on Saturday with Luisa and Ronnie. (Ronnie had piano practice on Thursday night)

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This year’s April Fools

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 11:43 am on Tuesday, 1 April 2008

  1. Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars
  2. YouTube changes all “Featured Videos” into RickRolls
  3. xkcd goes to the wrong comic
  4. GMail Custom Time

More as they appear..

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