Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Orlando photos

Photos from our Orlando trip are up in my photo gallery.

We had a good time on the trip. Went to Seaworld where we got to pet penguins and dolphins and feed stingrays. Rode on Kraken, one really kick ass rollercoaster and got soaked on Journey To Atlantis.

The next day we drove out to Kennedy Space Center and explored around there most of the day. Very cool place. I particularly enjoyed the Apollo/Saturn V center. It's hard to imagine just how large the Saturn V really is until you see it up close.

Our last full day we spent the evening at Downtown Disney and saw Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba. I love Cirque du Soleil. They're so much fun to watch. And like many shows, it's even better to see in live. Definitely worth going to if you have a chance.

Hooligan wedding on the way

Congratulations to my fellow Hooligans on their upcoming arrival and as yet unplanned wedding. All my best wishes to the round headed kid and his little blonde haired girl :). I'm looking forward to the festivities!

From Hooligan.net:

Someone is pregnant!
Ok you may have heard the rumours, you may not have, either way it is still big news. Someone who shall remain nameless for the time being (not because I want to protect the innocent, nor the guilty. But because it is fun to make you guess) is now preggers. I will only reveal that this is an old dear friend of the hooligans, whom we have known for many many years and who dates back to the gleee club days. I think we all wish this leggy blonde all the best, and hope that the father of her baby will do the honourable thing and marry her. Granted a promise has been made to that effect but nothing more has been forthcoming. Why is he waiting to make plans? only hoo knows.

Opposites really do attract

My wife and I are completely and totally the opposite of each other. It's a wonder that we get along as well as we do.

• My wife is a social butterfly and people person. I am not.
• She likes going out clubbing and dancing. I hate clubs, and have no rhythm at all.
• She likes eating out at fancy restaurants. I just want to go to the burger place down the road.
• Physics turns me on. It turns her off.
• I like playing outdoors and doing outdoorsy things. She can't stand being anywhere bugs might land on her.
• She likes to plan and schedule everything. I have a hard time planning what I'm going to be doing in 10 minutes.
• I cook experimentally and throw together whatever happens to be on hand. She wants to stick with the recipe.
• She waffles. When I make a decision, I'm committed unless there's a good reason to make me change my mind.
• I'm a pack rat. She's forever looking to throw away my stuff.

Despite all that, we still manage to get along amazingly well and have been for the past 11 years. Rather than thinking of us as being total opposites, I prefer to think of us as being very complementary.

From the Really Weird Dreams Department

Sometimes I have these really inexplicably weird dreams that wake me up and leave me wondering "What the heck was that?"

It started off with me wandering around the townhouse complex where I grew up. There was this funny looking chihuahua following me around for some reason. Then this funny looking dog thing appeared. It looked a lot like Speak, the South American rodent thing that the Tick adopted as a dog. Suddenly, the chihuahua gave a yelp, jumped up and landed on the back of the Speak-resembling-thing and started humping it.

A woman standing next to me asks "Is that dog humping the other one?"

After looking a little bit, I replied "No...I think he's trying to ride it...like a horse"

Eventually the Speak-resembling-thing took off with the chihuahua riding on it's back. There's this guy filming the chihuahua jumping onto the Speak-resembling-thing's back to send to America's Funniest Animals. He's recording it on a strange format film, so when it's played back it looks and sounds like slow motion.

Suddenly, Speak-resembling-thing is being operated on. Midline incision is made, and strange looking guts are revealed. And then I woke up.

Remind me not to read my wife's anatomy textbooks before going to bed...

Beats using a cadaver

So my wife started her summer Gross Anatomy class yesterday. They hit the ground running pretty fast, so she's spending a lot of time studying.

In the process, I've become her anatomy model. So while she's studying, every now and then she'll call me over and use me to check something out that she's just learned. So I have to stop what I'm doing, get up, and sometimes contort myself into several pretzel like shapes so she can see what she's been reading about.

Fortunately I'm only good for surface anatomy. For the rest of it she'll have to stick with the cadaver.

Do I stink?

Got a package in the mail yesterday. Wasn't anything terribly unusual, just one of those promo sized things of deodorant.

What was unusual was who it was addressed to. It was addressed to one of my Hooligan aliases, which as far as I know has never been associated with my snail mail address.

When I first saw the package, I thought "Cool, something from my friends!". But then when I opened it, I was rather disappointed to find that it was just a promotion for a brand of deodorant.

Perhaps my friends are trying to tell me something. I don't think I smell that bad, do I?

We're now a multi-computer family

After getting tired of trying to share computers at work and at home, the wife decided she needed to get a laptop to use for school. We were planning on getting one eventually, but yesterday she decided she needed it now.

So last night, I got onto the Dell website and after some hemming and hawing, bought a Dell 5150. It's a bit of a hefty laptop, but after she decided she probably wouldn't be hauling it around with her all over the place, I opted to go for power over weight.

Now we wait and hopefully it will arrive in a week or so.

Looks like I'll be hanging onto my beater Honda for a little while longer.

Venus Transiting

Today's APOD is an amazing picture of Venus at the edge of it's transit, taken by the Swedish Solar Telescope.

You can also see some cool movies taken by the Dutch Open Telescope.

Shrek2. Go see it.

Saw Shrek2 tonight during a brief outing with the wife between study sessions. Funny funny movie. I thought it was just as funny as the first movie. Like most animated movies, there are jokes the kids will laugh at, and plenty of jokes for the adults to laugh at too. Definitely worth seeing and adding to the DVD/video collection.

Picture Linkin'

Dampeoples switched his weblog over to WordPress recently and has started posting some really cool pictures to his weblog. He's got more cool looking stuff in hiw photo gallery.

While I'm on the topic, over at karenika.com, she's started a nifty project collecting pictures from each state in the US. There are some really cool pictures in there and she's taking submissions.

Lots of cool stuff to be seen around the country that you just won't find in travel books and magazines.

Warning: Gross Anatomy class may be hazardous to your family's health

In addition to learning all the various bits and pieces that make the body work, my wife has been learning all sorts of nifty tricks that you can do with your appendages.

Things like if you hold your index, ring and little fingers flat against something, it's impossible to move just the very tip of your middle finger. You can move it from the second joint, but not the very tip. Try it.

Or various spots that open up when you move into certain positions so you can hear things better.

And how to dislocate your shoulder, or mine as she was thinking of doing last night. How to put it back in is next week's lecture. Good thing for me she decided not to try it out on me. I can just see it now, me wandering around with a limp arm waiting until she learns how to pop my arm back into place.

I'm starting to have second thoughts about this medicine thing she's doing. Maybe they need to put a warning statement on this gross anatomy course.

The laptop is here!

It's here! It's here! It arrived sooner than expected, but I won't be able to pick it up until I head home for the day. Maybe I'll cut out of work for lunch and go pick it up. The wife will be happy it's here already. Looking forward to playing with it and checking it out.

It's got more horsepower than my desktop at home. I think it's time for an upgrade soon...

Cell phone worms

Guess it was just a matter of time. Now worms are propagating through cell phones. This particular one is more of a pest than anything else, but it probably won't be long before a nastier worm comes by.

If I ever get a BT cellphone, I'll have to make sure to guard against this kind of thing.

Found at Slashdot.

From the Symantec alert:

EPOC.Cabir is a proof-of-concept worm that replicates on Nokia Series 60 phones. It repeatedly sends itself to the first Bluetooth-enabled device that it can find, regardless of the type of device (ie even a Bluetooth-enabled printer will be attacked if it is within range).

The worm spreads as a .SIS file, which is automatically installed into the "APPS" directory when the receiver accepts the transmission. Upon execution, it will display a message then copy itself to a directory that is not visible by default. The worm runs from this directory whenever the phone is rebooted, so it continues to work even if the files are deleted from the APPS directory.

Once the worm is running, it will constantly search for Bluetooth-enabled devices, and send itself to the first device that it finds. There is no payload, apart from the vastly shortened battery life caused by the constant scanning for Bluetooth-enabled devices.

My Cyborg Name

The IMABUG Mark IV. I think I like the sound of that.

Get your own cyborg name.

Found at Tangible Thoughts.

Stupid computer tricks

Now this is what true computer hacking is all about. Make your computer beep at you or flash keyboard lights when your firewall drops packets. It's a simple one, but I think it has a high wow factor, especially for non-admins and non-geeks. Maybe I'm just easily entertained.

The Spinning Cube of Potential Doom is another nifty visualization for firewalls.

I like the beeping one. I'll have to try that out on my server.

Houseboat Hooligans: The Garbage Scow

It started off to be a fine house boating trip. Just another pilgrimage to the house boating mecca of the Shuswap lakes. Only this time, there were womenfolk accompanying us. Food, beer and liquor were available in abundance. With the women aboard, the food was of a somewhat higher quality than the ramen and dry and canned soups of previous trips. Canned and dry goods just wouldn't do. They wanted something fancier and more elegant. Fresh meat was stocked in the fridge. And there was also shrimp among the provisions. Dinner the first few nights was good, much better than most were normally used to house boating.

The next couple of days were spent floating in on the water between several regular destinations. None of these destinations had facilities for disposing of garbage though. This wasn't something that we needed to deal with in the past. Trash from dry and canned goods compacts easily and doesn't take up much space. But this time, the trash was more organic. The trash was shrimp shells and meat packaging. So for two or three days, garbage bags accumulated on the back deck. The weather was warm and sunny. We floated around blissfully drunk, pointing the houseboat into the wind so the smell from the back deck wouldn't be blown into the main cabin. And then, one day, the wind stopped, or the smell of trash and shrimp shells baking in the sun became too overpowering. In any case, suddenly the trash needed to be disposed of. The stench from the trash was just to much to handle.

The map was consulted to find the nearest garbage disposal area. It was at the other end of the arm and would take most of a day to get there. Too late to head off for it, it would have to wait until morning. So another night was spent partying on the beach and getting loaded. There was little happening near our houseboat though. The smell was just too bad. All the action was happening up the beach.

The next morning we traveled to the Narrows and disposed of our trash. But the smell lingered. Not nearly as bad as before, but it was still there.

Shrimp was never brought on a houseboat trip again.

Need more gadgets!

Ok, so the laptop is running quite nicely, and I've tested the wireless in a couple of spots at work. I even did some wardriving last night on the way home from eating out. Found a surprising number of APs on the short drive home.

Now the wife is pestering me to get some kind of wirless network thing going on with our desktop.

Ok. Just dropped a brick load of dough on the laptop, and now I have to go out and spend more. That's technology for you. Well, something I planned anyway...just not quite so soon.

So now I have to learn about wireless networking. I figure I'll need a wireless AP to start. Tried to do some wired networking between the two, but I only succeeded in messing up the desktop so that I can't even connect through the modem. It dials and connects, but all I get are socket errors when I try to get online.

No problem, I've been wanting to rebuild the machine anyway. It's been a while since I last did it, and some things are getting flaky. And thanks to the 160GB hard drive I put in it, I can back everything up to that drive and safely blow away the contents of the primary.

1st Blogiversary: Today, or tomorrow?

June 23, 2003 I made my first weblog entry, which I think would make it my first blogiversary. But thanks to leap year, today marks the 365th day this weblog has been up and running.

Maybe I'll celebrate both days.

Blogging: One Year Later

Boy, time sure flies. It's already been a year since I jumped on the weblogging bandwagon and surprisingly enough, I'm still on it.

When I first started, I didn't think I'd really have all that much to say. I probably still don't, but I say what I want people to know about me, what I do and what goes on around me. If anyone actually reads it, even better!

Being an anniversary, naturally I thought I'd look over my entries for the past year to see if I could spot any evolution in my weblogging. I'm not sure my writing has changed or improved at all. Lots of linkage, lots of writings that I just seem to cut off without really finishing. I tend to do that when writing. Write and write until I run out of stuff to say, then just end it. It definitely makes it hard for me to write up my research, but I've been working at changing that. Bad habits die hard though.

It's been a fun year, and definitely busy and eventful.

I think one of the more interesting things I've discovered doing this weblogging thing is other webloggers. It's interesting and fun to meet people through their weblogs. Some are very personal and spill out all their guts for the world to see, others less so. And all the variety in weblogs! It feels like you can surf and surf and surf until your modem/router burns out and only just touch the surface of the weblog iceberg. Simply amazing. I love cruising through my list of regular weblogs and finding links to interesting things, or checking out a random weblog at Weblog Review.

I think I'll hang around the weblogging world a while longer

Taking Fedora Core 2 for a spin

The new Windows XP desktop system the computer guys rolled out at work just didn't fit the way I work, so I decided to install Fedora on the box instead (2.4 GHz Dell Optiplex GX270). Too many constraints on their desktop model, including a 30 MB limit on your login profile which apparently includes all your data files as well. Heck, my stored mail alone takes up more than 30 MB.

Like Fedora Core 1, Core 2 was a pretty easy install, and the 2.6 linux kernel seems much peppier than 2.4. Compiling GCC 3.4 took hardly any time at all. The only glitch I ran into was the BIOS version on the computer caused the XOrg server problems with detecting the proper graphics card settings, leaving the display stuck at 640x480.

Argh. Spend a couple of hours trying to troubleshoot the X server and figure out how to make it do different screen resolutions. Google search yielded several promising posts and web pages that said the GX270 BIOS version A03 was the source of the problem and and upgrade to the latest version would fix it.

Download the latest BIOS version (A04) from Dell and copied it to a floppy. Uh oh, the BIOS flashing program only runs under Windows.

No problem, I'll just make a DOS boot disk, boot off the floppy and run the flasher from the disk.

Well, then I discover that you can't make bootable floppies with Win2K (the only other Windows machine I had around).

Crap. Stoopid Windows. I guess MS has decided nobody needs to boot off floppy disk anymore.

Stumble around trying to come up with a way to get around this. Finally I remember that I have a Win2K CD! But that means I have to wipe out the FC2 that I just installed. Well, nothing else to do so I break down, install Win2K just to flash the BIOS, then reinstall FC2. PITA.

But finally, I have a working, stable (at least until I start hacking at it) installation of Fedora. And so far I like what I see. Working on getting Apache properly configured and migrating stuff over from my old Sparc20. I think I'll even try using it to replace my Win2K box for a while and see how it goes with OpenOffice.

This is going to be fun...:)

Houseboat Hooligans: Chumming for Clowns!

There we were, enjoying another sunny day on the water floating around on the houseboat. Somebody produced a bag of balloons from somewhere, which we proceeded to blow up. I think they might have been water balloons or something. So there are a few balloons floating around the inside cabin. We start off to our next destination, and then Joe starts throwing balloons out the window.

"Joe, what the heck are you doing?!" we ask.

"I'm chumming for clowns!" came his reply.

OpenOffice doesn't like my spreadsheets

Finally got my Win2k box to map my Fedora box as a network drive and transferred over a bunch of stuff. First thing I discovered is that my Excel spreadsheets apparently use a bunch of functions that aren't implemented or have slightly different implementations by OpenOffice's spreadsheet. There are a bunch of 502 and 504 errors that I'll have to try to figure out how to fix. Already the transition to the Fedora desktop isn't quite as seamless or painless as I hoped. Still, it could be worse.

On the move

In a few weeks, we'll be moving to a new place. A bigger place, with more space for our Stuff. We're not moving far. In fact we're just moving to the other side of the building we're in now, to a 2 bedroom apartment. The extra space will be very nice indeed, as we're about bursting to the seams in our current place.

Now I have to collect a bunch of boxes to pack stuff up into, see about finding some mover guys to haul my stuff from one end of the building to the other, do the address changes and get utilities taken care of.

Fun fun fun.

Tour de France 2004 in 6 days!

It's coming! 6 days to go until the Tour starts. All the focus (particularly on OLN is on Lance Armstrong's attempt for a 6th tour win. It looks like he's still strong, but I wonder what the team is like this year. Seems USPS is dropping it's primary sponsorship of the team, and they've lost Roberto Heras (one of their big climbers) to another team. I think it'll be a good tour to watch this year.

Countdown to Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion

In just two short days, Cassini will fire it's engines to slow down for Saturn orbit. 15 years in the making and after an almost 7 year trip, it's finally arriving. Looking forward to some pretty sweet data from Cassini and later from Huygens when it drops down to Titan.

20 Questions

Every now and then I'll get one of those emails from one of my friends with a bunch of questions that you're supposed to answer and send back to people you know. You know those things that are supposed to tell your friends (and other people you don't know) more about yourself, and things that they might not know about yet.

Got one of those today from my friend Mike, so I thought instead of spamming a bunch of people with it I'd just blog my responses. My responses probably won't be quite as entertaining as Mike's, but maybe someone will find it interesting.

What time do you get up?

My clock goes off at 6. I used to just let the radio play until about 6:30 and then wake up. Now I usually just get up when it goes off because the wife has 8AM classes.

If you could eat lunch with one person who would it be?

My wife. It's always nice to eat lunch with her.

Gold or Silver?

I like platinum

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

Shrek 2. Very funny.

What is/are your favorite TV shows?

Stargate: SG1, Mythbusters, Babylon 5, Good Eats

What did you have for breakfast?

A bowl of ceral

Who would you hate to be stuck in a room with?

Hmm. Not sure.

What is your middle name?

Don't have one.

Beach, City, Country or Mountains?

Beach, all the way. Although mountains are nice too. A beach by the mountains would be perfect.

Favorite Ice Cream?

Definitely chocolate.

Butter, Plain or salted popcorn?

Salted popcorn.

Favorite color?

Blue

What kind of cars do you drive?

I have a 91 Honda Accord that I drive around in.

Favorite Sandwich?

French Dip. With cheese.

What characteristic do you despise?

Stupidity.

Favorite flower?

No, not really into flowers.

What color is your bathroom?

Like most bathrooms in apartments, it's some kind of off-white colour. May have been white at one point.

If you could go anywhere in the world for vacation, where would you go?

Barbados.

Favorite Brand of clothing?

Whatever my wife decides to buy me.

Do you pray?

No.

What is your favorite Board Game?

Axis and Allies. I sucked at it though, but it was always a lot of fun playing.

Money or Love?

Love. Definitely love.

What quality do you admire most in a person?

I'm with Mikey on this one. Intelligence and a sense of humour. Gotta be smart and be able to laugh at my stupid jokes.

Where would you retire?

Barbados.

Favorite Day of the week?

Fridays. Last day of the work week, and I get to look forward to sleeping in the next day.

What did you do for your last Birthday?

Hmm, I think we went out for dinner somewhere. Actually, according to my weblog, I did this.

Hah! I knew this weblogging thing would be good for something...

Where were you born?

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Favorite sport to watch on TV?

I usually don't watch sports on TV, but when I do it's usually cycling or hockey.

Who do you least expect to send this back to you?

Probably Mark. He's either dead or replaced by a sophisticated AI program.

Person you expect to send back first?

Maybe Rick. He's one of the few people that actually visits this place.

What fabric detergent do you use?

Usually Tide. I like the way it smells.

Coke or Pepsi?

Coke.

Are you a morning person or night owl?

I used to be a night person, but now I'm mostly a morning person.

What is your shoe size?

8.5

Do you have any pets?

No

Who sent this to you?

Mikey, fellow Hooligan and former roomie.

Carolina Barbeque

One of the best things about South Carolina (next to living close to the beach and ocean) is the barbeque. I'm not talking about burgers and hot dogs on the grill. No sir. I'm talking slow cooked, wood smoked hunks of pig. Smoky juicy tender shreds of pork and slabs of falling-off-the-bones ribs. Mmmmm, oh yeah.

There's lots of places to get barbeque around here. I haven't been to all of them, or all that many of them. But the ones I have been to have all been good. I'd hazard a guess that you would be hard pressed to find a bad barbeque place around here.

But what's a guy to do when there's no barbeque place around? Well, you could do it yourself, but that takes a lot of time and babysitting. Definitely the way to go though if you've got a few hours to kill and are trying to avoid yardwork. But not everyone has that much spare time.

That's where the slow cooker comes in.

I love my slow cooker. It is without a doubt my favourite kitchen appliance. My wife isn't too wild about slow cooker food (she says all the flavours get melded together), so I don't get to use it quite as much as I want to.

Slow cookers are the perfect appliance for busy people. Throw everything in before you leave for work, and when you come back dinner's ready! And that makes it perfect for barbequing. Not real barbequing of course. That would require smoke, and slow cookers aren't that good at smoking. But you can fake it pretty good with one.

So here's what you do. Brine your hunk of Boston butt per Alton Brown's Pulled Pork recipe. Then go with the Pulled Pork Barbeque recipe from Slow Cookers for Dummies.

After brining your hunk of pork, throw it on a hot pan and sear the outside. Put the seared meat in the slow cooker, and toss some sliced onions and chopped garlic into the pan. Brown and add a half cup of your favourite barbeque sauce. Simmer for a few minutes, then pour over the pork. Pour in a couple of 18 oz bottles of your barbeque sauce, turn the slow cooker on to Low, and head off to work.

When you come back home 8 hours later (or however long your work day lasts), you've got a hunk of cooked pork in your slow cooker that's so tender you'll have a hard time lifting it out in one piece. Careful not to burn your tongue eating while you shred.

It's not real barbeque, but it sure tastes damn good.