Saturday night I managed to add a big piece of the puzzle to my room — my bed. It had been resting peacefully in my old apartment and I was left sleeping on an air mattress. However a late night incursion into Glengary was able to liberate the bed and transport it to the Frat house. Many many thanks to my brother Adam for helping me carry the bed through the snow and cold — and just after he got off work too. My room is definitely starting to feel a bit more like home now that I have something to sleep on.

My family has had a cat for about 2 years now and he and I have an interesting relationship. He loves my room — probably because when I'm not there, no one disturbs him and my bed is comfortable. I on the other hand am allergic to him and so on the rare occasion that I visit home, my mom usually goes throught the trouble of washing my bed coverings and then keeping the cat out of my room. And while I do like the cat — I find them quite fascinating — I have to keep him out of my room and I can't really play with him for very long without consequences. That is the background of my next little episode.

One of my roommates in the new house has a cat. That is fine by me, I won't bother her and she won't bother me — hopefully. However, I must attract cats, because whenever I happen to leave my bedroom door open to use the bathroom say, I will invariably come back to find the cat snooping around. A couple of times she must have heard me returning and bolted out of my room and up the stairs where she resides. I'm sure you can imagine that this usually startles the hell out of me. So just last night around 4:20 I guess, I get up to stumble to the bathroom. When I return I collapse onto my bed again and resume sleeping quite quickly. At some point I thought I heard a banging noise, but assumed it was some sort of extraneous house sound and didn't give it much thought. Then about 30 minutes later I'm awoken by another noise, this time quite obviously coming from nearby and I turn towards my radiator to see — a zombie! the cat!

I had clearly trapped it in there when I returned from the bathroom. Needless to say this brought me out of whatever sleepy haze I was in and headed to the door to open it — assuming that it would take off like it had the other times it was in there. Nope. And what was worse was that I couldn't even find it anymore. I turned my light on and grabbed my flashlight and searched under my bed and around my couch and closet. Nothing. So after about 5 minutes of searching I was convinced that it couldn't be in my room anymore and went to close my door — and there she was, peering at me from the hall. I quickly closed the door, somehow thankful that I was too tired to actually go out and harm the cat. The adventure over, I retired back to the comfort of my bed in my newly cat-free room. Nothing eventful happened after that until my alarm went off at 8:00. Oh yes. Cats are wonderful. Conniving bastards.

As it turns out, Shubenacadie Sam and Punxsutawney Phil both saw their shadows this morning — however Wiarton Willie did not. The official ruling is for 6 more weeks of winter — which is how long this snow is going to take to melt anyway, even if it was warm. That said, my weather widget is saying that we will have temperatures on the happy side of zero starting tomorrow until at least Saturday.

Despite my lame puns, Apple's newest foray into the software market entered my eager hands earlier this afternoon at a price that was more than reasonable. Obviously it was the academic version, so if you qualify as a student then you can pick up a copy at PCPC for $49. I'm not sure if they ordered any extra to have on stock, but if not in this initial order, than soon I would imagine.

I just finished piecing together a tiny presentation in Keynote 2. The experimental kind of slideshow that uses a different transition on each slide and makes unnecessary and gratuitous use of various features — although now that I think about it, I didn't add a chart. If it is anything like any of the other features of Keynote, then it will be remarkably easy. I can't compare Keynote 2 to the first version because I never used the original. I've seen older Keynote presentations and they were quite attractive — possessing a little bit of class over Powerpoint. Compared to actually creating a slide show with Powerpoint, there is no contest — Keynote is so much less cluttered and more intuitive. Even creating complicated animations within a slide (know in Keynote as builds)

Believe it or not, but I haven't even opened Pages yet. I didn't have enough time tonight and I didn't want to rush my initial experience. From the screenshots that I have seen, I know that the interface is extremely similar to Keynote, which will make it far more easy to create complicated documents in — especially compared to Word. You can be certain that I will be saying more once I get a chance to iWork with Pages. Sorry again.

For those out there who didn't watch the Superbowl last night, you missed quite a show. I'm not a huge football fan myself, but I did enjoy hanging out in the CS building last night to watch the big game. We had two large screens showing the game, plus a full bar, BBQ and pizza. Combine that with the leather couches which are always in the atrium and you have yourself a great place to watch the Superbowl with friends.

And it was certainly a tight game — tied at 14 after three quarters — a first in Superbowl history. However the New England Patriots were able to maintain a small lead in the last quarter — leading to a 24-21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles. This is the third Superbowl in four years for the Pats and the beginning of what some people are dubbing a dynasty.

We were stuck watching the Canadian ads during the game, but the American ads are available for viewing at iFilm. Enjoy.

It was kind of bothering me that the last entry on my site was about football. However, I haven't been up to much lately to speak of. I don't think I mentioned my trip home this past weekend — which isn't surprising either since it was pretty routine. I did however manage to score a free carpet out of the weekend from my grandmother — all it took was a little tech support for her computer. So now my bedroom is fully carpetted for the most part and I even splurged on a chair mat for my desk that is serving more to protect my feet from the splintery floor than the floor from my chair. :)

For those of you not in the loop on my lunch routines, Mike and I have been going to Subway for lunch pretty much every day. While Subway is likely the best choice as far as fast-food is concerned, the drain this is having on my wallet is becoming a slight concern. The Subway we frequent is located in a hospital across the street from the computer science building. It opened last October and now, only a couple of months later, there is a new one that has just opened up two blocks away. In fairness, this new location has a tremendous amount of foot traffic — especially from students. And they can sell cookies (the one in the hospital is next to a Tim Hortons and they don't sell cookies).

However, be warned. This Subway (on the corner of Robie and Spring Garden) is very small — and warm. Staying there to eat (although they only have two small tables) will leave you saturated in Subway smell for the rest of the day — or until you can burn your clothes. To make matters worse, they took all the new crappy trainees and stuck them in this one restaurant. Overall not worth it just to get cookies :).

I can't recall if I've mentioned it before, but when I first got my laptop almost two full years ago, I was having trouble finding a text editor that did what I wanted it to do. At that point, the Mac OS X platform was only beginning to emerge as a serious contender. Jaguar was fairly new and the OS was becoming more stable, but it still didn't have the massive volume of software that Windows did. The software that did exist was better, but there wasn't as much variety and as far as features went.

That was then, and this is now.

Now there are a number of good programming and web development editors that I can use. Even some of them which I have been using for over a year are slowly evolving in the way that I wanted them to — adding the features that I needed. Here is a quick list that I will add to if I find any other applications:

I've used:

• SubEthaEdit
• TextWrangler
• skEdit

I plan to try:

• TextMate
• HyperEdit

In todays world of weblogs and no time for anything real, some people have dozens of sites that they read every day. And with all us geeks in computer science there are a fair share that maintain online jounals of sorts. So James had the idea of combining them all together using the RSS feeds and a piece of software called Planet. So if any of you are inclined the aggregation is available temporarily from James's account and is called Planet Dal CS. We are still very much in development, but the faculty is behind the initiative and we will likely be getting a subdomain and a link from the front page for this in an effort to promote the CS community to prospective students and the general public.

So if you are a CS student and you have a feed, let me know. If you don't have a weblog or other site that lends to RSS feeds, or you want to add RSS to your site, or you don't know what RSS is, then please contact me and I will help you on your way.

Because everyone else is talking about it. :) I brought up one of the current projects I was involved with — the Planet Dal CS a couple of days ago. One of the things that this site lets you have is a 64 by 64 pixel icon or avatar as they are known. I've been using them in the forum for almost three years. However, the attempt has been made to use icons that are physically accurate to the people they are representing.

Mike mentions in his recent post, the CS Heads are the collection of heads in question. The one that I originally used was the one on the left below. I made a much larger version of this that was originally going to be used for a since abandoned version of this site. The image served that purpose well, but I thought I should create a new version that has better colour and form. (And me wearing a suit) So far, this is the only CS Head that isn't wearing glasses. I know that James uses the GIMP for his heads, but I've been using Photoshop. I guess since his software is free, he comes out ahead in any case. (pun intended).

As an interesting note, there is a service that has been around for a couple years called Iconize Me that does iconic caricatures of people for $15 USD a pop. And as more useless trivia, the guy who runs this service is 19 years old.

I know that a lot of people find it to be a distasteful occasion, but personally I've always kind of enjoyed Valentines day. I don't even have a particular reason, but ever since I was a kid, it brought with it a kind of excitement.

I remember those big books of Valentines that my mom would buy and you punched out the cards which were of various shapes and sizes. Some of them were benign — others a bit more evocative. In those younger years, you would give Valentines to everyone in your class whether you liked them or would rather jab the cutout cardstock into their eye. But you would give the largest and most suggestive to that special someone who made you feel different inside in a way that you weren't yet old enough to understand. I think that Valentines Day changed for a lot of people in junior high or high school when the scene became a lot more political. Everyone had a social agenda and horimones raged to the detriment of many.

Call me a romantic, or maybe I just like a splash of red in the otherwise bleak February, but I personally don't understand the overt hostility that many exhibit when the subject of Valentines Day is mentioned.

As it turns out the new 2005 Powerbooks that were released Jan. 31 use USB keyboards and trackpads. This not only allows for the use of the new double finger scrolling, but allows users to swap the Ctrl and CapsLock keys — which the ADB keyboards didn't support. Apparently it is possible to get double finger scrolling on older trackpads, but I am quite happy with SideTrack.

Dave Shea mentions that word is out that there might be an IE7 released before the release of Longhorn (whenever that might be). Previously, Microsoft had mentioned that there would be no new IE as a stand-alone application, and that updates would only happen through the OS upgrades. Clearly the importance of browsers was brought to the attention of someone with some decision making power over there and they might actually fix the horrible disfigured IE6. They might, but given the track record I would hold my breath. Dave did point out one very interesting tidbit about style sheets that I didn't know about: The * html bug in IE which lets you specify styles that only IE/Win and IE/Mac will render. Worth a read if you have ever been frustrated with IE's [lack of] support for CSS.

Last night I did laundry. As exciting as that is on its own, it was the much needed first time I've done laundry since I have been living in this house — err... actually since I moved back to Halifax in January. And not only that, but it was free. After having lived in university owned accommodation since starting school 4.5 years ago, the concept of free laundry was something that only happened at home. And at home, my mom handled all the laundry.

I'll try not to wait until I reach Laundry Alert Red before I do my next load. At least I can tell myself that. :)

Surely by now you have all been to The Planet Dal CS, and you know of the dolphin that resides there. Now the story of the dolphin is long and I'm not the right person to tell it, but suffice it to say, it has some meaning. As far as that particular picture of a dolphin goes, it was once a full sized photo and I cropped it and gave it the border you see around it now. Today I was flipping through my open programs and noticed I still had the original photo of the dolphin open and so I took it into photoshop and made a "CS Head" out of it. I did the whole dolphin body actually — just click the head to see it.

Recently I've been having problems with Photoshop when I try to save a file. It will tell me that the file can't be saved because the disk is full — or something similarly ominous. With 190 GB free on Athena, I doubt that there is any trouble finding space for a 40KB PNG. This happens both trying to save files I open and modify and files that I create from scratch. After a long editing session I tried to save and it wouldn't let me — needless to say I was concerned. Enter a dash of Google and a cup of rifling through various forums, and I found someone that had a similar problem. Apparently if you just try to save it to a different volume it will save OK. Fortunately I have a couple of options here and I was able to save the files to my USB JumpDrive. In Finder I was able to drag the files on to my hard disk in their intended locations and all was well.

I'm pretty sure that this only occurs once Photoshop has been running for a while and that quitting and relaunching will fix the problem, but when you have a complicated multi-layer image open that needs saving, this isn't a particularly attractive option. So if you encounter this issue, mount your iPod or other external drive — or if worse comes to worse, you should be able to save it to a blank CD or a new created disk image (.dmg)

Last night I decided to try my hand at creating something other than a head in Photoshop. Fueled by my renewed interest in my pen tablet, I decided that I might pick up my old past time of drawing with pastels and attempt to emulate that on the computer. The image above is a mere slice of the whole deal, but I think that I did a pretty decent job with it. It is a different medium to work in, but fortunately a bit more forgiving than chalks and pastels. (And less messy.)

You learn new things everyday, even in areas where you are vastly familiar. I remember discovering the include_path php directive a few years ago and how that made programming my sites so much easier. You didn't need to worry about how deep into a directory structure you were, the include and require statements would find the library files you were looking for. Definitely made ones code more portable — something that my early work was not.

I should have read that list of directives more carefully at that point, because nestled among the useless and benign were two gems: auto_prepend_file and auto_append_file which will make my life that much simpler. These directives allow you to specify per directory with the .htaccess file any scripts that you want included before and/or after the main page executes. Not only does this mean you can have your libraries in one convenient location, but you don't need to include them manually on each page. According to the manual, these specified files are included using the include() call. So you may not want to directly include any important libraries — instead include a file which in turn calls require_once() for each of your important libraries.

The format of the entry for these directive in the htaccess file is as follows: php_value auto_prepend_file "/path/to/file.inc"

I'm on a roll now. My second piece of artwork in as many days. The things you can do when you don't have classes and you neglect your other day to day responsibilities. :)

Yes. Not only do I have a finished product this time, but I also created a step by step showcase of the process I used to create it. :) Enjoy.

Irony is a funny thing. Not too long ago, I mentioned the cat that lives in this house and had a certain fondness for my bedroom. Well now I find myself trying to coax the cat into my room, reassuring her that I intend her no harm. And indeed I do want the cat in here, because if cats are good at anything it is finding mice, and that is what I'm hoping Ashes is going to do.

For as you might allude, I have been host to a mouse for the past couple of days. Part of the problem of having over an inch of clearance between the bottom of my door and the floor. I've seen it a couple of times, venturing out to investigate the pizza box on my floor and I've even put the loaf of bread that he started on my table onto the floor in hopes of luring him out. He did end up in the bread bag when I took a shower today, but I wasn't fast enough with my container that I am intending to trap him with.

So now the cat is in here, apparently OK with the fact that I am in here as well and she has been patrolling my room back and forth quite thoroughly. I'm fairly certain that she knows the mouse is in here because she wanted in something awful the other day when apparently the mouse found my room. It sort of feels like I've hired a private investigator — she has pretty much been everywhere in here — closet, under my bed, behind my dresser (I didn't even know there was space there), around my fridge. I'm half expecting her to hand me a bill for services rendered. And if she catches the mouse, I'd consider paying it.

And now it seems that the cat is gone. I didn't hear any sort of commotion so I can only assume that she couldn't find the mouse. I'm sure she'll be back once she realizes that she is working on commission. I just confirmed with a couple of my housemates that the mouse did in fact enter my room on Friday night — so I'm going to lock up my food and hopefully the lil' bastard will leave on his own accord while I'm at work or something.

Every once in a while, I give Javascript its due credit. I have mentioned my reservations about javascript before so I'm not going into it now. This morning I was reading about Ajax and I must say that I was getting excited. Essentially Ajax is what some people are calling the use of Asynchronous Javascript and XML — which simply put is a way to create a more responsive user interface for web applications.

Currently, any time that I want to provide some sort of processing for my web applications I am required to load a new page from the server. This action provides a break in the interface — even with a fast connection, the page needs to redraw at the very least. Using an XMLHttpRequest, a request is made in the background while you continue to use the page and data can be returned and content or other aspects of the current page can be modified using the Document Object Model.

My usual caveat of making sure that any validations you think are done using this manner be redone when the page is finally submitted stands here. I know that I will likely be using this for a couple of things on my website — at least on the administrative side.

Quite literally. Today I got a couple of mousetraps and I set one of them in my bedroom. The instructions say to point the baited end towards a wall — I would assume this is to stop the mouse detritus from flying across the room. I did one better by putting the trap inside of an empty pizza box — a venue that the mouse has been known to frequent. However this time I added some cheese that I had that was starting to change colour and has quite a fragrance. If that doesn't draw it out, I don't know what will. And this way, if I do get him then I can just close the pizza box and throw the whole mess in the garbage. :)

All of this is assuming that the mouse is even still in my room — perhaps the cat got it or it left out of hunger once I cleaned all the garbage out of my room. I also have to make sure to keep the cat out of my room, because when it comes down to it, I would prefer not to break her foot with the trap. I will be sure to let you know if anything develops in this front.

It turns out that Dalhousie is getting desperate for people to stay in residence next year. Previously the word was that they were guaranteeing space to any returning student. This was a considerable change from the good luck lottery that they used to run for a returning spot my first year. Now they stepped even further:

Housing, Conference and Ancillary Services is pleased to guarantee space in residence for 2005/2006 for any current Dalhousie student who makes application by March 4.  Applications can be submitted online at www.housing.dal.ca or please come by the Residence Office at 1443 Seymour Street.

It used to be that once you were out of the residence system it was hard to re-enter and even harder to get in as a random upper year student. Now they are guaranteeing it — and throwing in a bunch of incentives like DalCard money and study groups and all that business. As someone who just left the "non-traditional" residence scene last term, I would say that if you are looking for a convenient place to live then it's not a bad deal — but even with the bonuses they are offering, the price is quite high.

Today is the second birthday of obnauticus, my 12 inch powerbook. It may not be as fast as athena (my G5), but now with a new battery, it is certainly still as useful as it has always been. It is amazing that in only 2 years, I have become such an Apple fanatic.

Buy a mac.

I spotted the mouse earlier tonight when I got home. He had ventured out to around my dresser and I thought I had him trapped behind it, but he is a fast bastard. So he scurried back behind my bed to wherever it is he goes when trying to escape me. So I baited up the second trap with a bit of peanut butter on the advice of Sarah and everyone else I've talked to about this. I'm fairly certain that he has a hole or crack that he hides in because I can never seem to find him when he takes off — I've had my flashlight out looking under the bed and radiator, but he is nowhere to be found.

I'm hoping that some time he'll come out for the peanut butter and then — BAM! — no more problem.

OK. I apologize — this should be my last post about the mouse. Since he managed to eat the peanut butter without springing the traps so I have decided that I will try a home-made, non-lethal solution to catch him.

And because I was in the mood it seems, instead of explaining my plan, I am going to show it to you via an animation.

I'm sure that some of you have created windows icons (*.ico) before, or perhaps you tried and weren't that successful. There are some free icon editors out there, and there are some commercial ones too, but any that I've tried tend to be pretty limited and not always very easy to use.

Enter png2ico — a freeware utility that will convert png files to Windows icons. Now you just need to create a 16 by 16 pixel PNG file, for which you can use any number of better suited image editors. The only reason that any sensible non-Windows user would want these icons are for your website's favicon.ico file. This is the file which most graphical browsers request as an icon to represent your site in the location bar or with bookmarks.

Every year since I started this site, I have made "predictions" and announced my hopefuls for the annual Academy Awards — the Oscars. For each of those three years, I had it easy — one of the Lord of the Rings movies was up for awards. This year is different though. This year, I haven't seen any of the five movies up for best picture. So I have no basis for comparison in any of the main categories.

The only movie I have any loyalty to this year is The Incredibles — I would like it to take the few awards it is up for, but other than that, I'm out of steam for this year. I would like to see some of the nominated films before too long, but I don't think that will happen in the next 2+ hours.

Just an FYI for anyone who wanted to give blood at Dal tomorrow. There is going to be a clinic in the cafeteria at the Tupper building from noon until 4pm. For first time donors, make sure you are feeling well and haven't had any recent dental work, tattoos or piercing — and bring ID.

After a bit of tinkering and much reading of the TWiki source code, I found a good way to implement Wiki-like lists. I also decided to finally toss the nl2br that I had been using in favor of a more useful method of only replacing blank lines with <p />. All of this will allow me to add extra parsing features which will make my life easier, but might not affect you.

Excuse me while I test:

• Simple unordered list
• It is quite easy
  • to create.

1. Numbered lists
2. are useful.
   • And I can mix them.