I don't think that there is any argument that this is a lion of a beginning to March — at least here in Halifax. With a combination of wind, snow and freezing rain, it doesn't get much worse out there. Looking outside I see that the trees now have a nice gleaming layer of ice on them which although quite beautiful, usually means bad things as far as falling [tree] limbs and other ice related damage. I'm just glad that I don't have to drive in this — and I wish the best of luck to those who do.

The word is that Bill Gates is being Knighted. Can't say that it wouldn't be cool to be Knighted.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but it seems that Environment Canada is now recording the temperature data to the tenth of a degree celsius. I'm not sure how accurate their measurements are — maybe they always recorded this much detail and only now decided to display it. In any case, nothing exciting, just something I noticed.

Tonight I will be seeing Million Dollar Baby, which is the movie which has won many awards including Best Picture just last week at the 77th Annual Academy Awards. This is the first step in watching at least a couple of the five nominated movies this year. I will let you know what I think.

As a student, I am not unfamiliar with stress. Assignments, papers, exams, decisions to make — all of this is enough to unravel the best of us. I do know however, that there are people out there — some of whom I know who don't handle this as well. Having taken computer science, I have the inclination that some other degree programs provide a larger dose of stress to the students. I'm not here to debate the relative merits of a tough, stressful program or anything like that. All I wanted to do was quick plug a possible solution for some people.

Eli Bay is a relaxation therapist — he does seminars and sells CDs of his relaxation programs and if you haven't tried one, you don't know what you are missing. He has CDs for various purposes including increasing focus, sleeping better, relieving physical responses to stress and more. You can order the CDs online and the whole process is pretty painless — my CD arrived less than a week after ordering it. Living with stress isn't good for you, and some people manage it better than others. I guess you could say this is my glass of red wine a day. :)

I spent the most of the day today mucking about in Xcode trying to create a Cocoa/Objective-C program that will allow me to make posts to my website directly from the application. And if you are reading this message then it was successful.

At the moment my solution is kind of a hack — obviously it is designed for my site only, so there isn't much use for the program commercially. But as well, I am doing most of the hard work with a PHP script. Essentially all the Cocoa part does is provide an interface (I even created icons) to compose and prepare the entry. When I click Post, the application writes out a plist file — which for the non-Apple folk are simply XML property lists — and then runs a PHP script on that file. The PHP interprets the file and makes a HTTP POST to my website with the proper credentials. I decided not to connect directly to the remote database because even though I can do that now, when I move my site it may not be possible.

The plan is that soon the program will allow me to save drafts of articles that I am writing. Then I can call up older drafts and edit them and when I'm done — post them. I'd also like to be able to edit my posts on the site with this tool, but all things in due course. As I get more comfortable with Objective-C I will start moving more of the functionality into the Cocoa app and at some point probably implement an XML-RPC server so that I can communicate in a more standard way. At the risk of losing even more people I think I should probably stop there and continue later as the project progresses.

If you are trying to write an Applescript that uses the useful do shell script command to run something, and you encounter the error: An error of type 1 has occurred. you might be using too many pipes. I was trying to use a command with two pipes and it continued to give me that error. I even tried to put the multi-pipe command into a bash script and run it that way, but it still caused a problem. I eventually rewrote the command to use awk instead of grep and that allowed me to use only one pipe.

As a side note, if you want to determine programmatically whether or not the screen saver is running in OS X, you can use this command:

ps -auxww | awk '(/ScreenSaverEngine/) && !(/awk/)' -

If it returns something then it is running, otherwise not. It can be used in an Applescript that you might have either running as a cron or looping with the on idle construct. I'm using it to set my iChat status to Away when I turn on my screen saver — which is something I do when I'm not at my desk. Combine that with the script using my network addresses to determine my status message and I don't have to worry about keeping iChat current. If anyone wants this script let me know.

I believe I mentioned the fact that I convinced my father to purchase an eMac which obviously made me happy. In addition to that, he spent the last week or so deciding whether to get a Powerbook for work and I learned today that he ordered one. I believe that his machine will be twice the computer that my little obnauticus is, but I'm happy all the same. The more people using Macs the better — as I'm sure that you've heard me utter on more than one occasion.

His new laptop will hopefully be in by Easter weekend which is when I will be going with my family to a wedding in New Brunswick. Nothing says a good time like setting up a new laptop. :)

Just to make sure everyone is informed — voting for the DSU elections has started. You can vote at iVoteOnline. The irony of the situation for me is that this is the first year that I feel informed about the candidates, but it is also a year in which I can't vote because I'm technically not a student this term. :/

Go vote.

Apparently, I missed this news - even with plenty of PHP related feed in my news reader. IBM announced recently that it will support PHP through a collaboration with Zend Technologies — the folks who make the PHP parse engine.

The article talks a lot about PHP versus Java and how the two fill different needs — with PHP being aimed at small to medium sized businesses. I guess this is IBM feeling a need to defend their investment into Java, which if you ask me isn't as strong as some people maintain. This new union with IBM would have PHP add support for Cloudscape — IBM's embedded database system. It would also have PHP increase support for web services with better XML handling and out of the box support for popular protocols. I'm not sure exactly which direction they were planning on going with this because PHP already has XML-RPC and WDDX support and with the introduction of a tree-based XML parser — SimpleXML — in PHP5, I think that PHP is a great web service platform. Add to that the packages which are available with PEAR, and you have yourself some serious Java-ass-kicking ability.

At this point, PHP is too well established for IBM to be able to interfere negatively, but I think that we may see some changes made for the better. I for one accept our new Big Blue overlords and hope perhaps that Java and WebSphere just kind of disappear.

Good news for all you fans of the new medical drama/comedy House. Originally they only ordered 13 episodes, but given its success, there will be a full 22 episode season and they just got picked up for a second season.

I guess part of the credit needs to go to American Idol (as much as I'd hate to admit it) because it is on right before House and caused a lot of lead in viewing, which is responsible for getting more people interested. It really only takes one episode and you are hooked, but it is that first episode that is hard to get these days amid the deluge of crime and medical dramas.

"The little ones call me Uncle Greg."

I just discovered that the weekly Geekbeer that the Computer Science Society holds every Friday night was written about in the Dal News. They even have a quote from me in it. :)

Next week is March Break in Nova Scotia for kids in the public school system. I just found out tonight that two thirds of my family will be flying to the Dominican Republic for that week. Apparently my mom just booked the trip today so it was a last minute thing for everyone involved as they leave tomorrow night.

It has been since high school that I've had a chance to travel anywhere exciting — not that my programming competition trip to Rochester and my road trip to Ontario weren't exciting. I'm hoping that this European masters program I am applying to works out because that would be pretty exciting. Otherwise, I am hoping to take a trip or two when I can find the time within the next year or so.

For those who haven't heard, JetsGo went belly up this morning. They announced that they will be making no more flights and anyone with an existing ticket is SOL. The article goes on to say: if you show up at the airport, there won't be any JetsGo people there and you will have to make alternate arrangements. Even people with return tickets are stuck wherever they are until they can get another way home so to speak.

I'm just glad that my family didn't fly on JetsGo when they left last night at some unholy hour in the morning. Adam and I went to the airport last night around 1:30AM to liberate my dad's car and bring it back to Halifax — payment for not being able to go on a vacation in the sun. When we were planning our little excursion to the airport, both of us pictured the busy airport that we were used to seeing during the day, not realizing I guess that the airport is practically dead between 1AM and 6AM — only Tim Hortons is open.

Driving back, I realized that Halifax does in fact sleep at night unlike other larger urban areas. So yea... I'm tired.

Chris sent back a few photos of the second part of his trip — the New Zealand part. I have added them to my list of photos in Chris's Oceania Adventure. Looks like an amazing trip.

If you are interested in getting a very nice 20" widescreen monitor (1680x1050) at a great price, Dell is offering their 2005FP model for $599 for today only — $350 off the regular price. It is a part of their 10 Days of Deals program. Tomorrow something else will be on sale.

I have a very similar Dell 20" non-widescreen at my desk at work as a loaner and let me tell you — it is fantastic. Bright, crisp and it has a 4-port USB 2.0 hub built-in. It is height adjustable and supports both DVI and VGA inputs along with S-Video and Composite inputs if you decide you want to hook it up to your DVD player. It also has Picture-In-Picture if you want to watch TV and code at the same time — on the same monitor. It also supports Picture By Picture which if I understand correctly lets you split the screen in half with two different inputs. This would be useful to show something from two different computers to a client for comparison or just to use two different computers on one monitor. Oh yea — you can also pivot the monitor to use it in portrait mode if you would rather. :)

In any case, I just bought one for use at home since the EMF in my room causes a wobble in my CRT. I haven't decided yet, but I might be selling my 19" Viewsonic CRT after I get this so if you are interested, get in touch and I'll keep you in mind.

What happens at SAN stays at SAN — at least according to Mark Szepes the outgoing VP of Student Life for the DSU. Last night was the annual Student Appreciation Night in the McInnes Room of the SUB. An invitation only event that honours the hard work and dedication of the students who make the student societies run smoothly. Really for me it is an excuse to put on my suit and enjoy some music. The highlight of my evening is when the Computer Science Society won "A" level society of the year. Mike also won a lifetime achievement award which I feel is well earned. Unfortunately I don't have any exciting or sordid stories to tell about the evening, I didn't even breech the dance floor which is unusual for me. The music was really good, but I have no idea what the name of the band was. They sang covers of numerous artists including Oasis and Rod Stewart and although they weren't the most danceable selection of tracks, I thought the music was some of the best I've seen at SAN. The DSU is getting better at choosing groups to perform at their events — which I wish I could say about us at the CS formals.

3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912

When I can afford it, my next desk might look something like this one here. If you have money to burn either personally or perhaps from some grant or other source of funding, then I suggest taking a look at BioMorph desks. They sell a number of ergonomic products, but their desks are truly interesting. Adjustability is a hot topic right now as people are starting to realize that one size can't fit all with computers. While a number of their products are aimed at production and design professionals, their exo and x02 models are a bit more student/home office oriented.

Another collection of "unorthodox" furniture and devices can be found at the Workspheres exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. I stumbled across this yesterday when I was searching for information on the Netsurfer Classic — an ergonomic chair/workstation combination that apparently isn't being sold anymore. It was manufactured by Snowcrash — a Swedish company that I can't seem to find much information on.

I was just taking one of my little walks around the third floor of the computer science building to stretch my legs. During these outings I like to scope out what is going on down in the atrium. If you have ever been in the building you know how open it is and how fascinating it is to just stare downstairs and watch people go about their lives.

So during my most recent vigil, I noticed a young couple on one of the couches. This isn't uncommon as it seems this is the only place that isn't Mom and Dad's basement that these couples can grope each other. However this particular pair didn't look exactly like boyfriend and girlfriend — but more like captor and hostage. The guy has the girl trapped on the couch with his arm in a position that looks like if it isn't painful now he'll regret it when he's older. The girl looks entirely uneasy and the guy keeps kissing her shoulder. If the whole situation didn't scream CS awkward I would assume that something nefarious was going on. :)

And now that I have that out of my system, I think I'll meddle in my own business for a while.

I'm really not a big fan of drive thrus. For the most part I don't have a car available to me, so using the drive thru is not something that I have to deal with a lot, but I went to McDonalds last night and it was late and the main restaurant part was closed and I happened to be driving so I went through the drive thru. Now I should say that I'm not much of a take out person either. If I've gone to the trouble of walking somewhere to eat something then I am going to stay and eat — even if I am by myself. This sentiment obviously carries itself over to the drive thru concept as well. I would rather stay than take my meal home.

Eating "in" has several advantages in my opinion:

• You actually speak with a person not a sign.
• Often you have more forms of payment available to you inside.
• Personally I like to take my time and look over my options before ordering — even if I know what I want and this is much easier inside.
• They are less likely to stick you with cold fries or other sub-par food if you are going to stick around to complain about it.
• Conversely if you do get sub-par food, you can complain and get free stuff.
• Eating in the car is not an easy experience.
• If you are taking it home it will likely be cold — especially in the winter.

So that is my case for not liking the drive thru.

Yesterday I had a Subway salad for the first time. Granted I do eat at Subway a lot, but I'd never tried the salad before. And my recommendation to others would be — unless you are specifically avoiding the bread (carbs), the salad isn't worth it. It is more expensive than a 6-inch sub, but you only get that much stuff minus the bread. In fact, the grilled chicken salad I tried was more expensive than my usual foot-long cold cut sub.

All told, I wasn't disappointed with the salad itself, but relative to the rest of the lineup, I just don't think it is worth it.

As an homage to Mac OS X, Google has released Google X which pays tribute to the Dock application. At the bottom of the page is the line: "Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you."

Truer words have not been spoken :)

According to this article at eWEEK Mac OS X 10.4 aka. Tiger should be available starting on April 15. There is speculation that an announcement of this will be made on April 1 — which is the 26th anniversary of Apple's incorporation. Hopefully this will turn out to be true as many of us have been eagerly anticipating this since its announcement at the 2004 WWDC last June 28.

Various sources are saying that an upgrade to the iMac G5 and eMac line will be made as well, but I haven't read any specifics. Be certain that I will write about any new information regarding this matter.

(link via MacRumors)

I learned today that my application for an NSERC PGS M was accepted. This means that I have a bit of flexibility as far as my graduate degree goes. The one thing that I must mention to dispel the confusion that some of my friends and family have — the NSERC scholarship must be tenured at a Canadian University. I can't use it for the Erasmus Mundus program if I were to be accepted. I will speak to the Erasmus Mundus program more tomorrow perhaps. However, my options are open and I do have some serious thinking to do. While I do love Halifax and Dalhousie, I'm not certain whether or not I want to stay here. And if I do stay here whether I want to continue in the same vein that I have been.

Many of these are the same questions that plagued me just after Christmas when I finished my undergrad degree. Only now I have pretty much removed actually getting a job from the equation. One way or another it looks like I'm getting a Masters degree — whether it is from Dalhousie, the University of Victoria, the University of Reading or somewhere in between is yet to be determined.

The unix time stamp right now (March 17, 2005 21:58:31) is 1111111111.

With all the school related hoo-hah that was going on this week, I almost forgot to mention the great new movie I saw on Tuesday. Sarah and I went to see Robots at the IMAX for the late (21:00) show. We were worried that because this is March Break that there would be throngs of bratty kids there, but that was not the case. In fact there were only a few rows of people there and all told it was a very pleasant experience.

As far as the movie Robots itself I will say the following. It is very funny. If you like Robin Williams in some of his more goofy roles, you will like this. I will also say that despite the popular opinion that I have heard floating around, this is not a Pixar movie. It was produced by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. As such, I was told that the characters aren't as good as a Pixar movie — although the animation is still quite spectacular. I didn't find this to be the case — and I quite enjoyed the Fox-esque quality that they demonstrated. This movie had me laughing almost all the way through — certainly after the character of Fender (voiced by Robin Williams) was introduced. And because it is from Fox it seems to cater quite well to the adult audience as well as the children — indeed the theatre was filled mostly with adults when we were there.

On another movie related note, I bought the Incredibles on DVD last night. As well, the 10 DVD Matrix box set. Why? Because.

According to the Dell.ca Order Status page, my monitor has shipped and is on its way. Originally it said that it would arrive on the 28th, but I was talking to Ian who also ordered one and his arrived today. So I checked and mine is now estimated to arrive between the 22nd and the 24th. Why the different delivery schedules considering we both ordered on the same day I don't know, but I'm excited regardless.

This Dell 2005FP 20" monitor is the cat's meow. It is even better than I could have hoped for. It was like my computer was trapped behind my obviously sub-par 19" CRT and has been unleashed in all of its digital glory. Not only that, but the brightness of this thing is stunning — yet it is so much easier on my eyes. And it doesn't wobble like the CRT did, which means I should be more productive at home.

If you spend more than a couple of hours a day in front of a computer, you need to consider using an LCD if you aren't already. Not only do they provide the obvious savings in space, but they are also much better on your eyes and for your posture. The better contrast means that people don't need to be so close to the monitor all the time. This can keep you from hunching forward — allowing you to lean back into a more natural position. You keyboard plays a factor into this as well, but that is another story altogether.

Sometimes people make bad decisions. Like deciding that getting a Sub toasted at 7pm on a Sunday might be a good idea; that it might not be rock hard. Let me ruin the surprise: it will be. But they did give me the middle of the tomato, something that I am picky about. I like tomato, not over/under ripe tomato bits.

But I'm OK now — I came into the CS building to do something on my laptop and the place is crawling with people studying or working on various assignments — something that I don't have to worry about until I stick my hand into that proverbial blender next term with three grad classes.

A day with different significance to different people. For some, it has spiritual meaning — a new beginning for life. Others might say it is when the day and night are of equal length. I say it is the first day of spring. And at least in Halifax it isn't a bad day today — or yesterday for that matter which is officially when the vernal equinox was, at about 8:30 in the morning.

Those of you who took Natural Disasters or certainly any astronomy classes probably remember the Milankovitch cycles which detail the oscillation of the orbit of the earth around the sun and the obliquity of the Earth which affect our seasons. These cycles have a considerable period — 21,000 years and greater, but the fact is that they are ever changing. I'm not sure where I was going with all of this — I guess this is what pops into my head when I start thinking about Earth's orbit and all that.

So happy first full day of spring in the northern hemisphere.

Apparently there is some controversy about the use of a particular Gaelic song in Nova Scotia advertising campaigns in Ontario and New England. The song was written in the 1800's by a settler who had come to Nova Scotia from Scotland and who missed their homeland. The song continues on to refer to Nova Scotia's shores as "miserable".

I had seen a Nova Scotia Tourism ad the other day and noticed that they had changed the song, but I guess the one I heard wasn't the one in question. The one they are using locally is a Matt Mays song. The controversial song is only being used in Ontario and New England — where odds are they don't know what Gaelic is let alone what it translates to.

James recently mentioned a program called Evince that can be used to read PDF (and other) documents in Linux. I decided to give it a whirl when I had a PDF document that wasn't looking so good under Konqueror. So I installed Evince which didn't take much of a fuss once I updated all of my libraries. I opened the file in question and: it looked exactly the same. No sexy magic, just the exact same unreadable document sitting in the same interface that I was used to — only with fewer features.

I've been using Konqueror to view PDF files as long as I've been using Linux and I must say that it does a fine job. It is also a file system browser so I can manipulate and navigate my PDFs and then one click and I am viewing a document. Konqueror also has thumbnails of the pages along the side as does Evince and it allows me to scroll through the whole document and not just the current page. I'm sure this is something that you can turn on and off, only I didn't see a way to do it in my cursory look through Evince's menus.

I realize that Evince is young and immature, and I'm sure it will be a special person when it grows up, but for now, I think I'm going to stick to Konqueror. Turns out the PDF I was trying to look at wasn't rendered very well in the first place and didn't even print very well. It was readable in Preview.app though and I must say that is the best third-party PDF viewer available. But yes, only available on the Mac — would you expect any less?

I believe that I mentioned at some point that I would be going away for the long weekend. Well. I am. In fact I am at home in Durham right now. Tomorrow morning my Dad and I will be on the road early headed to St. Andrew's New Brunswick. The purpose: a wedding. My aunt is getting married on Saturday (when the rest of my family minus Adam will be joining us) and it promises to be a great time. It will be good to see a lot of my extended family that I really don't see very often.

It is also Easter weekend, so I imagine that too much chocolate will be consumed by everyone and I'll presumably end up in some glucose induced coma. Have a happy Easter everyone.

I'm not a religious person, most holidays hold only secular meaning for me, including Easter and the corresponding Good Friday. However I will say that I'm glad that unlike some people I don't have to go into work today. That is all.

I would like to congratulate my aunt Kate and my new uncle Patrick and wish them all the best with their lives together.

For those interested, the wedding went beautifully and the reception has been wonderful so far. Those who know me well will know that I am already quite sweaty and loving every second of it.

I guess a welcome home is also in order for Chris who I can only assume made it home on schedule, although I have no way of verifying this. Welcome home buddy — see you tomorrow. :)

So I just had a chance to see Chris's sky diving and bungy jumping videos. Whoa.

Let's just say that while the sky diving I might be able to handle, I don't think that I could put my trust in a elastic cord after jumping out of a gondola and falling for 134 meters. Much kudos to Chris for making that plunge quite literally.

I had a bit of time to try to figure out what I want to do this coming year and I might have a bit of time this summer for a bit of international exploration. I'm not sure if I'll be able to blow all my money on a trip quite like that yet, but I guess time will tell.

I hope that everyone had a relaxing long weekend. To those of you for whom tomorrow is also a holiday let me convey my envy.

O.o

There.

Despite my bad pun, the fact remains that Sony was recently ruled against by the Northern California courts to pay in excess of $90 million for patent infringement.

Macworld has the story, but in summary, Sony used haptic feedback technology that is patented by Immerson Corp. This technology is the generation of vibrations or other haptic responses to stimuli in software — best known for use in "rumble packs" or "rumble controllers" for PC and console systems.

I would like to think that as a society that we would have the ability to go from our homes to our places of work without necessarily getting wet. I guess I should be thankful that for the most part, Nova Scotia doesn't get a whole lot of rain. Or maybe it does and I just never go outside — I really don't know. What I do know is that BC gets a fair bit more rain than we do so I guess I should prepare to get wet a bit. Maybe buy a rain coat or something.

As it is, we have been getting dumped on here since yesterday afternoon and it looks like it is going to continue all day delivering a further 30-40 mm. That sucks.

I think that there is something inherently wrong with keeping large amounts of personal and private data on a laptop. Sure I have plenty of my own personal data on my laptop, but not that of thousands of other people. Such was the case of a laptop stolen from UC Berkley on March 11. Data like that really belongs on a server with many electronic as well as physical safeguards in place. Wired has the full story.

I finally made my intentions clear that I have decided not to do my Masters at Dalhousie University. I am currently courting and being courted by several west coast universities so I am desperately trying to decide where would be most suitable for me to go. University of Victoria is currently my first choice, but I am starting to think about what kind of focus I would like to put on my research — more HCI or more software engineering.

The University of British Columbia is an option, but not that high on my list anymore. I might be in touch with University of Alberta and the University of Waterloo for software engineering.

My interest for software engineering has heighten significantly today which is amazing considering I tend to lose interest in thing rather than gain interest the longer that I explore them. There are two aspects of software engineering that don't have any direct relation to the web (who would have thought) and that have sparked my interest.

• Source Code In Database or SCID is a concept for managing program source code in a database or repository type structure instead of in files. Having read the linked article which essentially outlines the types of things that might be available for developers if an appropriate system was implemented — I am totally on board. Apparently the idea has been around since the 70's or perhaps earlier, but it goes back to the saying that the cobbler's children have no shoes. While we strive to create a perfect usable interface for our clients to use, we developers are often left hunting through dozens, hundreds, or thousands of source files, man pages, documentation files and who knows what else. Add into the mix other programmers, over a distributed geographic area, old documentation and inconsistent styles and you have a veritable mess. This is certainly an area in which I might devote some brain cycles. Link via Michael McCracken

• Secure Design is idea of designing software with security in mind. While this might seem obvious, this is not how much software is written. As many security experts will tell you there is no absolute security. It is more or less a best effort game that you are either winning or losing. However you tackle it, you really shouldn't run into it wearing your pants on your head — naked but for a large target painted on your chest. I don't claim to know much about secure design or even what some of the best practices are, but I do know that any aspect of design certainly interests me and I am willing to learn more. This was mentioned in a security talk that was given earlier today by Alfred Huger, a senior engineer for Symantec. It certainly seems like an interesting topic.

So those are the ideas that have me a bit hot under the collar and a bit more comfortable in my plans to complete a Masters degree. If you have any thoughts on either of these areas please comment via the forum and I will be glad to banter about it. :)