Today is the day after New Years Day. Tomorrow is Saturday. Some people are just getting off a Christmas vacation today for the one day before the weekend. This is the case if you work for Dalhousie - and a lot places I would imagine. The community college gave all of their staff the day off today which I think was really nice. The point I'm trying to drive home is that Triumph is gone. My work computer that hosted a couple of my websites. So until I can get another box up and running, halifacts.com and SarahBlades.com are not going to be available in their past state.

I know that my previous paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense together, but I think that I will let it stand. I'm a bit tired and quite a bit hungry.

Happy New Years everyone!

Not that much happened this weekend. I did manage to get all of my stuff up into the city and I am sort of settled in. My little UPS that I got from my brother for Christmas is up and protecting my computer from tiny little power issues, which is a nice comfort after having a few issues with that last term.

The big news is obviously that I am in class again. The first time in four months. I was quite excited last night and had some trouble sleeping, but I'm not sure if that was because of starting school or the four cheeseburgers I had for supper. I am also working part time again for some reason. It is fun to be around some of my old friends again, but after two workterms that I really enjoyed, it is hard to go back to general office work and dealing with people. More later.

In my quest for ergonomic keyboards, I stumbled across this cool keyboard. The Kenesis Advantage Pro is a pretty sexy keyboard - also pretty expensive $279 USD was the cheapest I found. Also I wasn't able to find anyone in Canada who shipped or sold these cool devices. Carry on.

I am generally a pretty optimistic type of guy who tries not to bad mouth people unless there is a damn good reason. And let me tell you I have a damn good reason.

Earlier tonight I had what was without question, the absolute worst donair that I could possible imagine. Before I even got it out of the foil, I could smell the fact that it was burnt... it almost made me gag. Nothing is worse (almost) than the smell of something burnt/burning, and this was burnt donair meat. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. And while I'm talking about donair meat - this donair had something else. I realize that different places have their own recipe for donair meat, but most donairs I have had in Halifax and at home have tasted roughly the same. This meat was quite different, not what I had expected. Not particularly bad except that it was way too salty. And it was burnt - did I mention that. The donair couldn't be finished.

All in all - Sarah and I are still alive and I guess I can be thankful for that. I'm not going to say where I got this donair in case they sue me for slander, but let me just say that they start with E and I order pizza there a lot.

Oh and their pizza is amazing, so I will continue to order from there, just not donairs - ever.

It was/is something like -30° C out there today with the windchill. Even without it, it felt pretty cold, but not like oh god it burns cold.

And unlike last winter which I watched with comfort from my office window, I am forced out into the cold every so often throughout the day to go to or come from class. And now as I type this I am freezing as well because I am certain that Glengary is out of oil, or something like that and that is why I don't have any heat. So I am off to Sarah's for a light supper and a movie - where apparently they have heat. Argh. Cold.

Personally I am a fan of the bulk food section of the various supermarkets in town. Bulk food is good because you can buy as much or as little as you like. I'm sure we all know this. And I'm sure that a lot of people know that society is big on OH&S and safe practices, etc, etc, sanitation and hygiene (except in the CS building) and all that. So I was quite surprised to see an employee at Sobeys using her bare hand to scoop out and arrange the bulk foods. First it was the dried bananas (that I saw) and then it was some sort of nut, I'm not sure, I wasn't right beside her. But essentially she was going down the line and refilling the bins that needed it. Personally, I'm sure that she is a nice, clean person and we don't have anything to worry about, but I'm surprised that gloves aren't required for that. It's not like a box of cereal where everything is safely nestled inside, these things are the very same things that you put in you mouth. Like Swedish Berries. Mmmm.

The second, potentially more concerning fact is that a lot of the bulk food section contains nuts, which get handled and then other non-nut foods are handled, essentially transferring nut dust (you know what I'm talking about) to the other foods. Then Mr. Nut Allergy comes along - grabs his Swedish Berries (or fuzzy peaches), goes home, eats a couple and wakes up in the morning, dead. No one wants to have that on their hands now do they? I'm not personally allergic to anything (that I know about - other than cats) so maybe Mr. Nut Allergy plays things safe and avoids the bulk foods on principle or maybe isn't that sensitive to the nut dust. Or maybe I should work on that work term report

Any of you who are followers of the great changes that are coming out of Apple, are sure to already know about the iPod minis (and their hefty price tag). And you also know about the G5 Xserves which are just plain sexy. I am personally a little excited about the iLife apps.

Normally the iLife apps aren't big news for me. I don't have a SuperDrive, so iDVD is pretty moot. I do use iTunes, but there have already been free updates to iTunes 4.2 by this point. I had a chance to use iMovie a month or two ago and while it made it quite easy to do what I wanted, it isn't something I see myself using a lot until I get a video camera. However, iPhoto 4 intrigues me (Like the big spider). I have iPhoto 2 right now and I don't much like it. I like the concept of it, as a way to organize my many many photos into albums and the like, but it is too slow and awkward to use. From what I have seen of the newest release, they have fixed most of this. It is now built fast, with no problem to handle up to 25,000 photos (which I many actually have if I go back far enough). It also allows you to rate the photos and arrange them into smart albums based on ratings and keywords and date and all that. So really... if it can handle all my photos in a way that I like, I will definitely use it. However, I don't think iPhoto 4 will be a free download for a bit yet. I would buy the iLife package, but I really don't care about the other programs. Except GarageBand - their newest addition. This program lets you compose music on 64 separate tracks using different samples and loops. You can also import your own music. I know I wouldn't belt out some great hits in our time, but I think I would have fun playing with it. It kind of looks like and feels like Sonic Foundry's Acid software, but it might not be all that. Or it might be and Apple is going for bust on this one. Which I find a little odd since Apple already has two professional sound composing tools on the market: Soundtrack and Logic Platinum. In any case, in this year - 20 years since the release of the Macintosh, we should see some sexy new things.

Infinite Rootbeer. It is a concept that brings a smile to my face. For this reason, any restaurant that sells Barq's Rootbeer and offers free refills on said rootbeer earns a special place in my heart. One such place is East Side Mario's. They currently have a deal on now, that allows you to order a few different types of pasta, which includes the unlimited salad and homeloaf. All for $10.99 — but wait, there is something else, free refills — on the pasta. Of course, of the half dozen people plus that took advantage of this deal, only one person got seconds on the pasta — me. Unfortunately, this second bowl, was not as creamy and didn't taste as good. It also came in a smaller bowl, which I now understand considering that I barely was able to eat half of it. Waste not, want not or something stupid like that.

Oh and that deal also comes with a dessert and tea/coffee. Overall, it was a really good meal and I got to share it with some really good friends. A tip of my hat to the ever popular, ESM. :)

This interesting mirror works with a camera and a series of chrome balls that are moved to create your image. Interesting, fairly useless, but something that would be cool to own if you could afford it.

I don't normally try to use awful little puns like the title is, so you know that I must think it necessary.

Yesterday, when I can home from work I noticed an unusual smell in my apartment. Weird smells do occur from time to time in here, but this was different, this wasn't as organic. I traced the source of the smell to my bedside window where I heard a car running. It was exhaust! So I go out the back door where some woman was clearing off her windshield because it had been snowing all afternoon. Not an unusual sight except she was backed up to the building and her car was on!! I was pretty pissed - it wasn't even a newer car, it was an older car that badly needed some exhaust work done. The carbon monoxide aside, car exhaust isn't supposed to smell as bad as the acrid fumes that made it into my apartment did. And whether it was the smell or the lack of oxygen, I started to get a headache so I packed up my gear and left.

I was going to post something right then, but I thought I might say something that wouldn't be exactly PG-13 (not that I care), so I decided to let it sit for a bit. About an hour later I braved into my apartment and I opened the windows despite the cold and tried to air things out. The smell eventually left and I am still alive. When I was on my way to class this morning I thought that I would check to see if the car was back. It was. And it was backed in! At this point common sense and good taste overtook me and I didn't write a note with CDR marker on her windshield or door, nor did I use a banana like was suggested to me. I did leave a note, but on paper and stuck it under her windshield. I basically just said, BTW someone lives in the apartment behind your car and would prefer not to die from CO poisoning or asphyxiation. I'll be interested to see if she parks there again tomorrow.

I come home after an extremely slow day at work and plug in my laptop, only the power light doesn't come on. The one that indicates that the battery is charging. I tried a different plug - no go. I think it might be the power adapter. I'm going to see if I can find a Mac user in the CSB who might have an adapter that I can test. I'll be damned if it is my laptop. Luckily the adapters aren't hideously expensive (although they aren't cheap) if mine was fried somehow. Boo-urns

A number of years back (5 or 6), I asked for and received Delphi 5.0 for Christmas (we can argue over the absolute geekiness of this later). It was the professional edition - one step up from Standard, one step down from Enterprise. I was pretty excited about it - I wrote a couple neat little applications with it and then it pretty much died for me. Like Visual Basic which I also used a lot in high school, Delphi got replaced with Perl, Java, C and PHP! I lost touch with Windows and started living a Unix life. It was good.

For those who are unaware, Delphi is a Rapid Application Development package that essentially consists of a development environment in which to create windowed applications and the like. Delphi is also know as Object Pascal because it is essentially the language Pascal tweaked for Object Orientation. Pascal is an unusual language that was used a lot in the past by mathematicians. It is really only unusal in comparison with most popular C-based languages like PHP, perl, Java, etc. In any case, this was what I am talking about when I say Delphi.

Then along came Graphic (CSCI 4160) and I have to create a graphics package. Well... I toyed with a few ideas and then late on the night before the first assignment was due, I installed Kylix on my Linux box (anna). Kylix is essentially a Delphi environment built for Linux. And using a TPaintBox (which encapsulates the TCanvas class) I was able to get something working in a short amount of time. Basically this whole post is designed to show mike that he can take his Java and well... I'll let you imagine the rest. Thanks and long live Delphi. And Macs.

I wouldn't call it Hell week exactly, but it was a sleepless, work filled week that is finally over. My work term report is in and my Graphics and Digital Media assignments are too. My apartment is still cold, but according to the forecast, it is supposed to get up to -6°C or something like that tomorrow. It's funny how cold and warm are often relative to each other. And now it is time for bed.

As you may have noticed, my site was out of commission for a bit over the weekend. MySQL went down on torch sometime early afternoon on Saturday and didn't come back online until today. Apparently there was also a power outage/issue in the computer science building over the weekend, but I'm not sure what really happened there.

Through consulting with a number of other people, we had determined that there was a campus wide email problem over the weekend too. As it turned out there was an issue with a virus that was bogging down our email servers. As a result I think that I lost an email or two that I was expecting, and I will have to see if they can resend the email because one of them was a software key. :/

However, my weekend was very relaxing after spending a few too many late nights working on the workterm report. Now back to a reduced version of reality as there are still many things to be done.

I am thinking about starting up a Mac User Group on campus. I have talked to a few people and it sounds like there is interest for one. Of course, when I say start up, I will likely rope someone else into starting it up - someone with a bit more time. Apparently as a larger group, user groups can get discounts on hardware and software over and above the student rate. Plus it seems that Apples is pretty supportive of campus user groups and the like and it would be a pretty worthwhile endeavour.

I have only been a Mac user for less than a year, but as you can see, quite passionate about them. For anyone at the point of buying a new laptop, consider the new iBook which is available for $1349 if you are a student. You will pay twice that for a similarly equipped PC laptop. It is definitely worth the investment.

With regards to my power adapter for my laptop. One week after it stopped working it is getting replaced. I am going down after work to Terra Consultants to exchange my bogus adapter with a new one.

Today marked the first meeting of Dalhousie's Programming Interest Group and athough I guess it was what I expected in terms of content the delivery was a bit off. Other than the maybe six profs who were there, it was asian grad students and two undergrads. For the most part. And this wasn't a huge shock, but then when I got there I realized just how awkward that whole situation can be. Academic types are supremely ego-centric and I guess that is fine for its part, but it makes having an honest, open discussion on anything academic almost impossible, especially when there is little to no structure. I like programming and I think that I have picked up a few things along the way and might even be able to share some of them, but that environment is not where that will happen. I want to bring it out with a practical, process driven motivation. I want to see things work, and to see them grow. But whatever... we don't all have time for that type of usefulness.

How much is too much money for a keyboard? $450? I am seriously considering the purchase of a Comfort Keyboard System. It is a fully adjustable keyboard system that allows up to six feet of separation of the three different sections. As well, each section can be rotated and locked in any number of positions, from fully horizontal to completely vertical. It also has the cool ability to remap any key to any other key at the hardware level. Along with builtin macro support, this is a pretty sweet keyboard.

Some people I have talked have the attitude that if I don't have nasty RSI then I don't need a keyboard that expensive. My response to that is that I would like not to get RSI and that this should be preventative medicine. That way in the future I can still use regular keyboards the odd time that I need to use them like on my laptop when I am on the road.

Now that was a movie that got you thinking. I must say, that it was a lot creepier than I had originally imagined it would be. I saw the previews and knew that I had to see it because it looked like it was about something that Chris and I had discussed at work. And it was. The movie left you with a sense of how things could be different. At least that is what I was feeling. I don't recommend the movie for any one who gets startled easily or anyone who can't handle dark human behavoir. That being said the average person should be quite fine with it.

I'm sure you all heard me bitch about the temperature of my apartment in the past few weeks. It got to the point where I was using my stove to heat the apartment while I was here. And that was working OK, except then I would go to bed and wake up freezing cold again. And the heating was working OK, it was just so cold out and my window sucked so much that the equilibrium point would often drop to 62°F which is about 17°C - which may not sound that cold, but trust me.... when you wake up to that... you feel it. It was like camping in October... sure I'll do it for a weekend, but at the end of the day I would like to have the option to be warm again.

That was before today. I took the initiative and contacted my facilities manager (which is skipping a couple of steps in the chain of command) and he agreed to send someone to try to seal up the windows. That was yesterday - and there was no one that came to do that. But true to his word, when I arrived home from work today... there was a note on my door - "Don't open the windows it will break the seal." Oh good, someone was here to fix my windows. And they were - and now my apartment smells like a paint shop. It is giving me a headache as I sit here, but I felt the windows and there is no cold draft coming from them like there was before. So I guess the adage is true, no pain no gain - but at least I'll be warm.