Myke's 'blob.

This is why you're bored.

2012-02-02T03:30:26Z

Home Stereo Setup

2012-02-03T06:10:00Z

How Myke Listens To Music At Home - Anablog style

iPhone 4S
Mac Mini, AirPlay
Ubiquiti AirRouter
FreeBSD graid3
Asus EEE PC 701 netbook, ArchLinux, Shairport
Altec Lansing Speakers

Coming to Grips

2012-01-30T18:35:03Z

About four days after the surgery last week, I realized two things:

Not being able to take off the cast at the end of the day is getting really old, and didn't feel good.
The drugs are reminding me why I stopped drinking; I don't like what they do to my mind & body, but I need 'em to cut the pain

Thus, I was looking forward to my follow-up appointment today; I'd caught the train down on Sunday, and thanks to a nice promotion - in Via 1 First Class

After a quick ride across the Dundas street car, I arrived half an hour early for my appointment and was shown into an exam room almost immediately.

Click for the rather-large-but-not-very-gruesome size.

An ortho-tech came removed my cast, removed the wound dressing and showed me to the sink and said I should clean up.

That didn't go very well - the first time I tried to bend my wrist, my whole body convulsed in pain. Same for trying to make a fist. It hurt. After a few more jolts like that, I smartened up, pulled a chair over the to sink and Mahomet went to the mountain via many soaked paper towels. I was in agony. It took a while to get most of the red antiseptic off and clear up any odoriferous zones. As I regained my composure and tried to relax the spasming mass that is otherwise known as my left arm, the ortho-tech came back and trimmed the ends of the sutures and explained that rest will eventually dissolve away.

Moments later, Dr. v.S arrived, he seemed content with the state of wound and applied some Steri-Strips. Only a week post-op and one of the three incisions for the arthroscope is almost invisible, the other two just look like deep papercuts, the larger incision doesn't look like it'll leave much of a scar either.

Then I got the recap we've all been waiting for:

the scapholunate ligament had a moderate/significant tear (but not a complete tear)

he cleaned it up and tightened up, hence the larger incision in addition to the arthroscopic slits

there was evidence of previous injury

"also other signs of wear and tear"

but "everything worked out beautifully"

That sounded pretty good to me, but when he also said I am susceptible to wrist-injury (Period.), I asked how likely it was that I might suffer a similar plight with my right hand, he said he hopes it never happens, but it's a much higher than average possibility.

Oh - and that horrible wrist-popping thing he did to me? It's a Watson's or Lichtman's "catch up clunk" test. He did it to my right hand and it didn't feel weird at all - a good sign, normally it's not an uncomfortable sequence. See this page for a battery of tests.

Next step: "FAT free for 5 weeks" Eh? Fingers-And-Thumb Free short-arm cast for until early-March. It's better than a thumb-spica that locks you into a thumbs-up pose, but I may have whined about the cast inhibiting wearing a proper coat or ski jacket... and that Ottawa is really cold. That got him on a mini-rant about how Ottawa is always cold... then, with no further prompting from me, the plan went from:
Plan A: 5 weeks FAT-free cast to
Plan B: 2-3 weeks FAT-free cast to
Plan C: 5 weeks in a splint, 23.5 hours a day (yay! normal showers!)

Unfortunately, when the Occupational Therapist (OT) tried to fit me for the stupidly-designed pull-over splint, I was in just too much pain and I couldn't get my hand through it... and when I finally could get it all the way on by the 4th agonizing try, I couldn't tolerate it being adjusted tightly enough to her satisfaction.

So back to Plans A and/or B, and I'm in a cast for a period of 3-to-5 weeks.

Feeling blue.

I ponied up for a fiber-glass cast, which means I can just fit it through the ravaged sleeve of my old ski-jacket, so I'm not going to freeze quite as much now. Still can't really wear a glove or mitt over my finger tips however.

During the brief time that Plan C was in motion, I mentioned driving... sadly, it was very strongly discouraged. I'm legal to drive, but he's is very concerned about torquing the wrist and that it would be in my best interest to stay grounded until he says so. And that applies even to driving an automatic.

But you know what they say; no pain - no narcotics.
wait a sec...

Worst. Papercut. Ever.

2012-01-24T03:20:34Z

_{(I shall write about this on my 'blog!)}

First off, thanks to Beez'z suggestion, it's time to change the Twitter hashtag from #BustedWrist to #RepairedWrist, after all, we have the technology - we can rebuild him.

No Big Deal

0900: Arrive at Pre-Operative Care Unit. Nervous.

Not This Hand!

0932: Change into gown & housecoat. Anxious.

TWH Spa Stylin'

0951: seen by intake nurse, she takes pertinent info like weight, temperature, allergies, etc... Nervous wreck

Welch Allyn Connex® Vital Signs Monitor - it has a very dusty USB port... and makes me think of fruit juice!

1013: Lead to my lounge chair, chat with some other people waiting for their procedures. Keeping it together, mostly.

1021: anesthesiologist comes to discuss the procedure:

will sedate me somewhat for nerve block procedure

will knock me out for the main operation (yay!)

okay, ready? Let's go.

! (Panic!)

Leads me down the hall, past all the other ORs - where I peek in every window

Get to a pre-op procedure room where they have me lie down on a bed, attach monitors, start sterilizing my neck & shoulder while trying to start an IV, which she couldn't for a while. Finally she does and pushes "two" of midazolam which immediately ends all of my anxiety. Calm.

The anesthesiologist then began ultrasounding my neck and showing the medstudent how to locate the nerve bundle. I couldn't figure out the 2D display... They shot the nerve bundle up.
Sensation in the fingers faded almost immediately, but not completely. It took a good ten minutes for things to really go away. In that time they left me alone... So I started watching my vital signs on the monitor... And screwing with them - until I tripped an apnea alarm when I held my breath too long... I stopped experimenting after that. Then they came and checked on my because I was wiggling my feet in time with my heart beat. So they poked me with a pin. It still kinda hurt.

Dr v.S came in to say hi, asked me how my wrist was doing, I complained about how when he popped my wrist it really interfered with my ability to play guitar... He did it a few times to me but at that point I couldn't really feel much of it. His medstudent didn't seem to enjoy it when he did it to her though!

Minutes later they hoisted me onto another stretcher and wheeled me into the OR.

Can't feel a thing!

Next thing I knew they were putting a sling on me and Dr v.S was asking me where I live and when did I want to come back... He said the procedure went well. My arm was warm and in a cast, my brain was foggy but slowly coming online.

1305: I was wheeled up to recovery, where a nurse named Svetlana tended to me. I groggily explained that she shares her name with a brand of vacuum tube. I don't know why I felt the need to tell her that. I assume was the drugs.

1430: Dad comes and picks me up, gets me some really good drugs. I take some.

Hi!

1500: Back at hotel, laze around doing not much and watching TV

Vampire bites for nerve block

That's it.

I go back next week... I don't really know anything else!

To-Do for Monday

2012-01-21T15:20:00Z

"Does it pain?"

Holy crap only two days...!

How To Get To 5 Days To Go

2012-01-19T09:27:00Z

It's crazy to think that after two and a half years, that it's just a scant 5 days away from (hopefully) the beginning of the end of my Busted Wrist saga...
Perhaps a fitting exclamation point completion to first month of 2012, here's a braindump.

MacPwn Dies - forever

It's put in many years of hard work, and while I need to replace it - it'd be stupid to do it now as Apple hasn't updated the hardware in almost 2 years! I expect they're waiting for Intel's Ivy Bridge chips to be ready. And to those of you saying I don't need a MacPro - sorry but no: accessorizing an iMac or Mini with adapters & converters & enclosures to the point that it could serve as a MacPro puts me pretty much on-budget for a MacPro... and wastes the LCDs I've got (DVI, not Tbolt!)

My Neighbourhood is Better Than Yours
Last week the 613 was finally embraced by winter's icy hold and dumped a pile of snow upon us. I dressed up and set out to clear as much snow as I could while my hand would let me - but it wasn't even 5 minutes before my neighbours to the south began yelling at me, "Mike! Stop! Don't hurt yourself! We'll have the snow blower going in a few minutes." I plowed on anyway, I need to get some upper-body exercise... Then the neighbour to the north ended up clearing the foot of my driveway - and then the city sent a front-end loaded down my street and it too all the snow away.

Snow Goes

Culinary Consumer Success!
And slightly further away, (and even moreso now), another neighbour - Hintonburger, has unofficially added my egg-free sammich to their menu, how awesome is that?!

Hildaburger w/Lettuce, Extra Pickles, Mustard

A New Friend
Siri and I are learning how to get along. The iPhone 4S is very nice update to my iPhone 3GS (Black, 32GB, it's for sale)

I'm sorry too, Siri.

And Old Friends
Lots of people are offering to make food and come dote on my while I recover - which is super beau youse! Even before the big slice, I was invited out and became the godfather of this fine dinner host.

Kitty!

Not Taking Photos
I put UnderExposure on hiatus just before I moved, and since then, I've done very little shooting. However, I've been quite actively engaging other photographers - yesterday I met with Paul Couvrette as result of some forum turmoil, and tomorrow night I've arranged a Flickr-Ottawa meet-up where we'll commence round II of our 'Crazy Collaborative Film Project' with my grandfather's Olympus OM1 camera and a roll of Ektachrome 100 slide film.
Incidentally - I've become quite adept at repairing a dislocated catch-spring on the Zuiko 135mm lens I've got for that camera, need to figure out a better permanent fix though.

A fun lens, also on my 5D MkII

New tube in the Tonelab

Even I think it's weird to be excited about a 'new' vacuum tube that's older than I am.

More bad luck with couches!

2012-01-17T04:33:00Z

... Don't worry, it's not what you think. My right hand is fine. And pedantically-speaking, it's a loveseat, not a couch.
However, it has broken my heart; after a weekend of relentless shopping, I bought the loveseat pictured here on the left. It has the perfect level of cushy firmness, it's a great size and the colour really works with my room.

The Chelsea Chocolate Set

Unfortunately, while I was smart enough to measure if it would fit up the stairs of my house, I wasn't forward-thinking enough to check if it would fit through the door of my bedroom: It doesn't

I've already got two couches in my living room, I certainly didn't want a loveseat down there either. I have a huge bedroom and a perfect place for it... sadly it seems the only way it'll come in is if the door & casing are removed! (Granted, there've been discussions about replacing the door...)

Anyone want to buy a brand new loveseat? I'm so sad about it

A discussion of food

2012-01-17T18:37:27Z

Because I love you all,

No eggs doesn't mean no bacon!

Bright Lights

2010-08-10T05:04:47Z

Foreward/Forewarning: This is a lengthy post about specialized flash photography techniques & equipment. I tried to write in a way that anyone can learn... please leave feedback in the comments, I appreciate it!

It's not the newest idea at all, but the Strobist movement has definitely become very popular in recent years. Put simply, 'Strobist' is off-camera lighting. That's it. While there's no particular technique, per-se, most of it focuses (*cough*) around multiple strobes (flashes), modifying the way light falls and discussing solutions to challenging or interesting situations. Studio photographers have been doing stuff like this for years, with their big flash units and whatnot, but it's becoming more accessible nowadays given most portable high-end flashes are coming with built-in wireless communications systems - allowing their use outside of a studio - without needing to drag cables & generators around.

So that's pretty cool. Of course, "Speedlites", those 'accessible' flashes with the communication bits I referred to, cost upwards of $300 but usually closer to $500... which is as much as most hobbyist cameras cost! And to be totally honest with you, their communication kinda sucks. It's all infrared based, just like your TV remotes. Sure, dying batteries aside, TV remotes are pretty reliable - in your living room. Take your TV outside on a sunny day and see if your button presses keep working. Odds are they won't because the sensor/receiver in the TV is blinded by all sun. Speedlites suffer from this a lot... they also suffer from directionality issues, as all the components in the system have to be able to see the IR beam from each other. After a while of screwing around with unreliable IR communication, a budding Strobist is going to be casting about for some kind of flash trigger that doesn't suck.

And there's a plethora of RF (radio frequency) options out there, from the $30 "Poverty Wizards" (Cactus, PT-04, etc...) which are basically glorified garage-door opener remotes, to the $500/pr professional/industry standard Pocket Wizards. And about a year ago, I found myself doing this exact search.

Sticking to my 'poor people can't afford to buy cheap shirts' mentality, and after reading reviews & consulting with friends about the cheaper triggers, I decided I wasn't going to buy something that I'd likely want to upgrade (or smash into pieces) in short order. The cheapies were out.

Going high-end wasn't too appealing either: Pocket Wizards are used by most high-end photographers and are The Gold Standard for wireless triggers - from sports stadiums to portable setups. Unfortunately for me though, they're about $250 an end. 'Per End?' I hear you ask? That is, you need one unit on your camera to transmit the flash signal, and then a unit to receive the signal on each flash. I'm planning on having 3 flashes going, which means 4 units... a veritable Kilobuck. Plus cables and other attachment accessories. $1000? No thanks! I could buy a nice lens for that much, especially since we're broke from all the cash we invested in all of those Speedlites already.

A bit more research later, I found that there is a middle ground, namely the Elinchrom Skyports and the Alien Bees Cybersyncs. The latter held my attention for a few months since they were around $150 per-end and reviewed quite well, but I never actually ordered them... I wasn't completely sure if they were the best solution for me, and I was still not sure if the value was there for me at that price-point.

During all this slow-motion pondering, another brand kept getting mentioned, RadioPoppers, but every time I looked at their site, they were either teasing a new product or out of stock on it. It didn't help that the first time I went, I saw their Px system, which was around the $250 per-end price point again - so I wrote them off with the Pocket Wizards as just being too expensive for my needs.

In retrospect, I should've dug deeper... Later Pocket Wizard came out with a 'smart' system, which augmented the communications from the basic "Fire the flash now" message common to all units, to having the full smarts you'd get out of using Speedlights in infrared mode (namely power-control, but also allowing the camera to use it's smarts to automate the whole setup) - in short, they made the system smart and transparent to the camera's native smart-flash functions.

This was definitely cool. But still stupidly expensive. And it didn't help that Pocket Wizard's system wasn't working well with the Canon EX580 II Speedlites: the $500 flashes which I have a pair of. Write 'em off again.

But out there on the Internets, there was mumbling about this problem... "RadioPoppers don't have that problem." Huh?

It turns out RadioPoppers PX system I ignored earlier did exactly what the new Pocket Wizards do - but over a year earlier and without interference problems (ha! Just like the IR reliability problems all over again!) Okay, but I'm not really looking for 'smarty' functionality, because the camera's only really any good at automatically figuring out what I want when the flash is mounted on top of the camera, otherwise it does dumb things to the picture, ie: no dramatic lighting effects.

But let's give RadioPoppers a second look anyway, since they seem to have beat the big guys at their own game...

... Oh hey, what's this? A new RadioPoppers system at $90 per end? "JrX" eh? That looks cool. Dig dig dig. Buy!

The fine folks at RadioPopper had realized exactly the dilemma non-pro-but-really-serious-about-it photographers like me were going through: Cheap triggers just weren't good enough, and good triggers weren't cheap enough. So they set out in a non-compromising fashion to design and sell a high-quality-yet-affordable flash-trigger system. And they did it. And there's even a bonus feature: Not only do they provide a very reliable flash trigger signal, the JrX 'Studio' receiver unit also allows for power-control of the flash! This means one can control the intensity of up to 3 flashes (or 3 groups of flashes) from the transmitter unit on the camera. All this in an $80 receiver, using a $100 transmitter? Hot Damn! Not only is this cheaper than the similarly priced Cybersyncs - it's also more feature than just about everything else (other than the $250+ 'smarty' units.)

A big element of doing Strobist/off-camera flash photography is just simply controlling light. As I mentioned above, I don't want nor trust the camera's intelligence to actually do what I want. Manual power control is exactly what I want. And now I've got it.

Two flashes beyond me: one aimed at me, one pointed down the hall

And I like it.

One flash on the picnic table shooting through the fence towards the camera, another to the right lighting the front of me up

Unfortunately, since every camera manufacturer comes up with their own way to communicate with their flashes, RadioPoppers had to make a generic system, which couldn't directly interface with anything... But not before long, they also came out with brand-specific adapters so one can actually use the remote power-control feature with Speedlites (Canon) and Speedlights (Nikon). The "RPCubes" they called them. I ordered them within an hour of them being available.

My RPCubes arrived on a late-spring day, and I gleefully ripped them from their simple packaging, hooked 'em up, and hit the test-fire button. My flash emitted the slightest of blip of light. Cool! I cranked the power to full, hit the test-fire button again... and the flash emitted the slightest blip of light. Wait a sec...

Fast-forward a day, RadioPoppers were express-shipping me a new set of 'Cubes. Turns out there was a slight manufacturing defect with the first run. Oops.

A couple days later, I was in business, with full power control of my two Canon flashes. I have to say, it was pretty awesome, and they worked fantastically well. I was in love.

Okay, that's the two Canon flashes. I'd mentioned above that I was planning on using 3 flashes... but #3 wasn't a Canon, nor Nikon. It was a venerable Vivitar 285HV, a fairly 'mature' (read: old) design flash that cost me about $89 in 2003. It features... well, not much. Power-control is largely manual, although it has a small sensor which can vary the intensity somewhat, but it's not very practical nor reliable. In other words, it's straight-up dumb.

I said 'was'. It's not so dumb anymore...

Modified Vivitar 285HV with RadioPopper JrX Studio receiver and JrX Transmitter

More online research lead me to some documents that revealed how the manual power control on the Vivitars worked, and how simple it was to hack it to interface with the RadioPopper receiver. An hour later and some solder fumes, I had full power control over the 285 too!

For the next couple of weeks I went around extolling the virtues of the RadioPopper JrX system to anyone who showed even the slightest interest: an excellent price-point, highly-reliable system, affordable adapters & cables for interfacing with various flash units, opportunities for hacking old/disused flashes to work with the system. I really was in love.

And then while I was out shooting one evening with friends... it stopped working at all.

In my zeal and excitement, it appeared that I damaged one of the signal pins on the transmitter unit... it no longer connected to the camera's 'fire' signal. Ooops again.

And yet, a day later, RadioPoppers were apologetically shipping me a new transmitter - even though I broke mine! Now that's customer service!
But not only that, a week later, when they received my damaged unit - they refunded me all the shipping charges! Whaaaa? I haven't had customer service this good since Fujifilm swallowed a $400 repair job after they accidentally broke my camera (more) when I sent it in for repairs.

RadioPoppers kick ass. Not just the product, but the company and people behind it. These guys rock. You should buy their stuff.

There, I said it. 2 problems they fixed, but irregardless of that, the product is great.

Every silver-lining has a cloud though: It is a great little system, but not super durable. I managed to break the transmitter a second time... and I'll definitely blame myself for this one: I basically bashed off one of the power-control knobs sometime during the movie-shoot. (I used all 3 flashes to fill a large gymnasium so I could get crisp photos of a fast-moving game.)

Frankly, I'd feel too guilty to let them replace my transmitter again, even though I have a feeling they'd do it with a smile. So I opened up the unit, noted the model of the potentiometer I broke and ordered a replacement part off of Digikey.

My other complaint, again with the transmitter, is that it doesn't stay seated very well in the hot-shoe atop the camera... it tends to slide out quite easily. I've tried to mitigate this by using a Cap-Saver, but this is a poor solution, which isn't helped by the all the curved or textured surfaces that make for poor adhesive contacts. RadioPopper should add a loop or some sort of alternate attachment point so a photographer can mechanically tether it to their camera or strap - I can foresee myself losing the transmitter outright because of it.

Sabre Toothed Tiger - a bit of a colour issue, but otherwise nicely lit

In closing, these wireless flash triggers have definitely enabled me to control light in new & fun ways, and I look forward to working with them even more in the future! I highly recommend the JrX system to any budding Strobist. Given you can source the Vivitar flashes cheaply, the modifications are easy... it seems like a no-brainer to me now. So much so that I'm considering selling my Canon Speedlites and just getting more cheap flashes.

At the top of this (rather lengthy post) is a 'pull back' photo of the setup I used to produce the following image...

Click here for detailed notes on how I made this image

They Don't Call us Patients for Nothing

2011-12-21T03:57:50Z

Big day today... I arrived at the hospital in Toronto at 11AM this morning, registered and headed up to the Hand Clinic - where they promptly told me to go away until my appointment at 1PM! Anyway, I managed to derail that notion since I knew they wanted some X-Rays and figured I'd have to chill in radiology for a while anyway (... and I did.)

Incidentally, while we were doing the paperwork, I saw the letter Dr. L had sent, saying he'd "exhausted all possible treatments" and "(due to my) young age and extreme persistence for treatment" that Dr. vS should scope it. I won't hide my disdain for Dr. L, but I think that assertion was rather... overstated? Belligerent? Although saying anything to get on the wait list is fine by me at this point.

November 2011 MRI

The wait in radiology's was an hour, then I was back up to the clinic, where I was seen by a resident immediately. He didn't say much except to express how baffling it was for me to have sustained such an injury at low speed (ie: not while skiing or motocross) - "you must be very strong" ... sure. He drew a few lines on the films, checked my grip strength, palpated and manipulated both my hands.

Dr. vS waltzed in, polite, confident, quick. Did some more manipulation and palpation while the resident droned on... the only thing I caught was "oh yeah, there's the DC" (??) and ulnar-side pain. And he did something really weird to pop my whole wrist that I'd never felt before and hope to never again. He highlighted the grip numbers and the wide difference.

Then he delivered the findings, and I quote:
"Well of the 3 kinds of scapholunate damage you can have, you've got the least bad. It's still really bad, but it's the easiest to fix." (best news ever?) (Merry Christmas?)

He then postulated if we had an MR we'd probably see volar damage to the scapholunate ligament... so I gave him the most recent MRI report (which reads "Evidence of injury to the volar and membranous components...") and I let him have his little victory lap

At that point he was set on performing an arthroscopy and plication repair of the ligament.

Just like that. ("Unfortunately you're going to have to do a lot of commuting.")

Volumetric view... no idea what it means or shows, but it looks super cool.

Other commentary:
- "80% chance of making it 80% better"
- "and if we don't make it any better, at least you'll finally have a diagnosis - for whatever that's worth." "and you've been waiting long enough"
- 6 weeks (!) in a cast then 6 more weeks (!!) in a splint

And just like that, the man of the hour was gone.

For the next half hour, the resident and I tediously went through all the paperwork and surgical checklists... but every now and then another resident would come in to look at my films, and then manipulate my hand... I asked why so many people were doing this and it turns out that word spreads fast in the ward when there's an interesting (who knew!) case on deck and they all wanted to see. Amusing, flattering and degrading all at the same time

The resident's tongue finally loosened, he said while it's a very rare injury, they deal with it all the time there and Dr. vS's success rate is VERY good and I have nothing to worry about.

Surgery is so soon! (January 23rd!)
My father will be retired by then so he can chauffeur me back to Ottawa the day after while I'm all coked up on whatever they give me. Or at least, that's my plan as of now...

It is hard to believe I'm going to be completely without my left hand (again) for almost 3 months, but as one of my friends said "Hey, at least there's a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel now." So true.

My business partner was less supportive: "huh, so I guess you weren't faking it."

Jerk.

Anyway - if I'm going to TRY skiing this winter, we'd better get some snow, and I'd better hit the slopes hard all before I lose what little function I have...

Finally a watch I can wear on my #BustedWrist

Notes On Desert Bus

2011-11-22T03:40:24Z

Sweeten The Pig: To make a current offering even better
Spacebid: To outbid oneself at auction
Madness: $300
QWOP: How to walk with a keyboard
Herp a Derp - subsequently, Derping a Herp
Paul can sing

For The Chillren

Housemate wanted

2011-10-13T16:58:17Z

The space:
- In Hintonburg
- Fully detached house with a yard suitable for lounging and using a BBQ
- Lease starts November 1st
- quiet street
- 2 bedroom (you get one, I get one)
- 2 parking spots (I need one, you can have one, or we can find someone else to rent it to)
- within walking distance to Bayview O-Train station
- within biking distance of downtown
- stone's throw from the Ottawa river
- forced-air Natural gas heat
- high-speed Internet included
- mostly furnished
- laundry on site (considering making a photography darkroom out of the space too!)
- freshly renovated kitchen

Me:
- 30 (and a third!) year old male
- Non-smoker, non-drinker, non-drug user
- Keep weird hours (think Pacific time.)
- travel a few days a month
- Will be maintaining an office (off the kitchen) where I will work and may need to entertain clients & business partners
- get & make a lot of phone calls
- have only a goldfish for a pet
- don't mind having a 4-legged friend around, but can't be responsible for my own - won't be responsible for yours
- play electric guitar and a lot of music - but I do own headphones
- do a lot of photography (Smile!)
- half-decent cook
- work on the computer a lot
- know how to respect your space, time and sleep
- am acting as the super/property manager
- occasionally have a friend or two over, but my door is not revolving, nor am I a party animal

You:
- need somewhere to rest your weary head
- have budgeted $600-$700/mo for rent
- don't smoke. period.
- are reliable and can clean up your own messes
- keep the doors locked
- need furniture or have it
- don't have raunchy all-night parties all the time
- could be male/female, black/white/green, vegan/vegatarian/Kangatarian, I don't care. You respect my choices, I'll respect yours.
- can handle the fact that the living room may have a Lego play area...

Today's Progress

2011-11-07T04:59:00Z

- Woke Up (I was cleaning till 2AM last night!)
- Rolled a whole bunch of clocks back & checked smoke detectors
- Brunch with the 'Rents (it's their 40th wedding anniversary!) at Sconewitch
- Bought paint
- Helped them paint some of my new house
- Had a friend help me move one of my couches in (... and we both have broken hands. It was comically pathetic.)
- Had my electrical work on my parent's kitchen reno inspected - and complimented
- Take-Out dinner from Hintonburger & Loblaws cake (it was the best present/thank you I could give 'em!)
- Met a bunch of my new neighbours; I'm in a cool 'hood with some cool peeps. (I'm so damn urban.)
- Wrist MRI at 1AM tonight

Tomorrow my new bed gets delivered
(This is probably the thing I am most excited about right now: Sleeping on it.)

I've had one person come check out the place, but while I'm waiting to see if that happens, you should know I'm still looking for a housemate.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T07:19:00Z

(By Jonathan Mak)

Long-awaited wrist update?

2011-10-05T05:48:00Z

It's still busted and hurty, my bad-ass wrist brace helps, but doesn't solve the problem
MRI booked for November 7th
Surgical consult with Dr. v.S. (Surgeon #2) booked in Toronto for December 20th

Apple Announcement Summary

2011-10-04T18:41:19Z

the meat:
- price drop on iPod Touch, white
- iPod Nano has built in sports features and updated software
- iPhone 4S, basically iPad2 guts, same form-factor, 8Mpx camera
- iOS 5 October 12th (for iPhone 4 & 3GS, iPad 2& 1, Touch G4 and G3)
- iCloud October 12th
- iPhone Preorders Oct 7th, GA on the 14th, including Canada
- Siri is the big new feature for the iPhone 4S... it looks pretty amazing. (Assuming it's limited to iPhone 4S. Requires Internet access.)

Broken Finger

2011-09-26T21:26:03Z

Here I'm holding it in my left hand:

Broken finger, clean, complete break.

This is the pressure plate from the clutch assembly in my 2005 Honda Element:

When the finger broke away, it inhibited the pressure-plate from separating from the disk, so the clutch could not be disengaged at all.

I could not get the truck in gear Friday morning, this is why. My mechanic says it wasn't my fault, it just happened on it's own... And that Honda clutches rarely fail. Even the service guy from the Honda dealership was surprised.

Pressure Plate & Disk
Usually they kiss, and I separate them.
Right now they're not getting along. Before I couldn't get between them.

Haven't gotten the final bill, but the last estimate was $1100-$1200... plus the $100 for the tow truck.

Update:
So clutch #2 turned out to be defective...
so I'm still waiting...
so this sucks...
so much...

Top ten reasons to date a photographer

2011-09-14T06:51:50Z

Perhaps geeks aren't your thing?

Try hanging out with a photographer...

They work well in the dark.
They’re used to funny smells.
They make things develop.
They work well on many settings.
They know how to focus.
They can make big things look small and small things look big.
They work well from many different angles.
They zoom in and out. And in and out..
They shoot in many different locations.
They can find the beauty in anything.

Not Loving The Diet

2011-09-04T16:43:09Z

But the effect is pretty nice:

This is what needing to avoid eggs & processed dairy does for you.

To my credit, I've also been more active - and while probably not enough, but I also haven't tracked a lot activities either.

After Hours Coffee Shop: The Drunkalog

2011-08-30T03:59:00Z

C: Are you making a video?
M: Yes.
C: Oh that's why
E: Oh shit you can jus you can't jus... aww man
E: We'd gotta say something smart
C: Uhm.
E: smart smart smart smmmart
E: we got it covered
C: yeah we don't even need to say it, that's why
E: we don't even yeah, yeah-yeah
C: we're geniuses
E: yeah yeah, we're like covered
C: It's true
E: y'know... y'know what? if you need to fucking cover the event horizon, the way you do, you just
C: divide by zero
E: divide by zero, you covered the event horizon by half
E: we've got, we've got two event horizons
E: we know exactly, y'know what it's seeping out of our skin, it's seeping out of our pores, we even know...
E: I'm actually quoting patients I have because I'm a mental health nurse.
E: WOW!
E: It's coming straight of my... that's not that's not fine.
C: Straight out of your... hahaha straight out of your geniu..

RIP Jack Layton

2011-08-22T18:39:19Z

I may not have voted for you, but you stood for what you believed in and tried to help people in this country. You fought more than one brave fight and you deserve our respect. Ironic, cliché or just silly, here's my little tribute.

My Jackstache.

_{The Before shot.}

The problem is your flügelhorn doesn't have enough eclectic fluid

2011-05-19T19:35:00Z

For more info, see this site: Encabulate.com

Playing Games

2011-02-02T08:57:00Z

Some ways to pass the time... not that I've had much lately.

Beast

Beast is the first computer game I can ever remember playing. I half-wish someone would port it to OSX... or maybe iOS - but only half-wish, because I know how much time would get sucked out of my day playing it.

Quake II

It's true I have an extreme affinity for Quake II, even so far as to have a permanent running Q2 server at Server North (Q2.SVRNI.ca), but this is the exception. I seem to prefer playing simple, low-paced games.

fl0w

fl0w: Probably one of the most beautiful and simple games ever made. Unfortunately I rarely play this, since it's Flash based, but would love it on iOS - legally.

Strategery

Strategery: Current chronic addiction for over a year, play me on GameCenter!

Some others...
- Samegame (mostly on PalmOS, ie: not anymore)
- Crusher Lite
- Weave, just started playing with this, very... relaxing
- Balldroppings... boing boing boing...
- Solitaire... although not much given the omnipresence of my iPhone and the above games.

Do you have any other recommendations? Similar games you love? Do you play any of these?

Rollerblading

2011-05-09T22:00:00Z

Portal II, or Participaction?

Went rollerblading for the first time this year... I estimated about 7 KM, probably could've gone much further, but I've still yet to figure out the ideal socks to use. I keep forgetting how much I enjoy it, and since I still can't comfortably ride my mountain bike, I plan to do a lot more of it this summer. I'm just wondering if anyone wants to be my rollerblading buddy? I'm thinking Monday and/or Wednesday nights, as a regular committed thing.

Interested? Leave a comment, or shoot me an email. Obviously it makes more sense if you live or work towards the south end of Ottawa, as my typical circuits are along the Canal/River, the ponds along the Airport Parkway between Walkely and Hunt Club...

The other neat thing I discovered, thanks to WTL, is RunKeeper which I hope to populate keep updating with more nerdy stats of physical activity

You'll Blow Away If I Breathe Out

2011-04-22T05:57:00Z

I actually sought this out on iTunes immediately after hearing it. I really like it, a lot.

The whole urban exploration/abandonment theme in the video was completely unbeknownst to me until I dug up the video a few minutes ago to post it here!

iPhone Tracking

2011-04-20T22:39:29Z

No access to iPhone required.

Produced with files left on my hard-drive from iTunes, using this desktop app.

Wonder if there's "nothing important" on your computer now?

Four Squared, Twenty Elevened

2011-04-16T20:04:00Z

Currency:

Cuban Change?!

Off work early, but laptop takes the rest of the week...

Sold a computer to a computer store

All-Season tires, this snow is done:

Thank you Max

2011-03-26T22:36:59Z

My brother from a different mother;
Maximus Daemon Tay of Cairnpit, 2000-2011

My 800 Watt Space-Heater

2011-03-19T03:59:00Z

DIY Ring Light

I've arranged a big photoshoot this Sunday so I have some material to submit for a 'Faces and Figures' competition at the RA Photoclub next week, and I decided to finally build this lighting rig because I love the effects it can provide. I decided on 8 clear 100W bulbs rated for 130V ("Country"/Anti-Surge), I'd've preferred 230 volt bulbs, running at 120, to get more heat and colour-cast out of them, but they were considerably more expensive and weren't rated nearly as highly anyway (40W @ 230 is 80W at 120)
It's setup with 2 $7 600 watt dimmer switches, splitting the circuit in half. I could've used one switch, but the only one rated for 1000W was over $50!

Watch this space and UnderExposure.ca (and Flickr!) for hopefully some interesting results...!

_{How many of you saw the title of this post and thought I'd bought another computer...?}

The Wait is over; The Wait Begins Now

2011-03-09T04:59:00Z

(Or "How I Learned to Stop Expecting Anything From Anyone Anymore.")

About a month ago I cited the suggestion to go to the Mayo Clinic, but I didn't give much explanation... I was far too upset about the premise of the conversation, but also I needed someone to do something before I reamed them out.

Well they did it, so now I can explain. Or rather, affirm the ugly theory I posited just after xmas: Dr L never sent the referral to Dr v.S in Toronto, so I never was on that 1-year wait list.

Until yesterday.

So the past year? Yeah, let's pretend that didn't happen.

I dropped by Dr L's office on Jan 25th because I was in the neighbourhood. After 10 minutes, the receptionist found my file - on the doctor's desk, where it had sat for the past 11 months (other than when Dr T's office requested the non-existent consultation report.) Just at the moment where my worst fears were being confirmed, Dr L just happened to walk by... I think he figured out what I'd just figured out and he immediately went for damage-control-via-bullshit mode.

"Let's step into my office for a chat. / I'm not getting any traction with the people in Toronto"
... blah blah about 'being out of the scene' by being in Ottawa...

Dr L: "You could search the internet."
Myke: "For what?"
Dr L: "Well you know what your injury is..."
Myke: "No I don't, you have a theory, but you said you were going to the MRI re-read to confirm it, since you said you weren't an expert-"
Dr L: "No, I'm not."
Myke: "So I really don't know what I'm searching for. Tell me what to look for, but what am I going to find that you or Dr v.S don't already know?"
Dr L: "Well, you can search for the Mayo Clinic"
Myke: "I don't have money to go somewhere like that."
Dr L: "I guess I can write another letter to Toronto, and if you get an appointment in a year and half, you'll be lucky."

... And do I even need to mention that that MRI re-read never happened either?

Then, I'm not so proud to deny it, I sobbed all the way home from Kanata, probably the first time I cried in a year.
But I had my moment of anguish, and moved on. This wasn't completely unexpected. Very disappointing of course.

'bout a week later, I met a radiologist at the photoclub, and while he's not an orthopedics kind of guy, he's getting me hooked up with someone who is: the Chief of Radiology at the Ottawa Hospital, and seeing about having him re-read all my films. So that's an unexpected bonus, and he gave me the info already, so the ball is in my court to move things along. Will update here when something happens. I figure it can't hurt to be armed with that info before I go to Toronto next spring.

I think my mom is trying to tell me something

2011-03-07T23:50:00Z

Montréal's been looking good lately...

RBCP

2011-01-20T01:58:00Z

My iPhone rings, number is +1 0000123456... for all I know it's an idiot sales droid from the left coast or a client calling...

Me: "Hi this is Myke."
Caller: "Hi Mike, what's your favourite operating system?"
Me: "Hi... who is this?" (I know this voice... who is it?)
Caller: "It's Brad."
Me: "Oh, if that's the case, then it's CactusOS"
Caller: "What? Are you serious?!"

If this means anything to you, you know how freakin' hilarious this is - especially since I caught him completely off guard. What're the odds?
If this means absolutely nothing to you, I basically got crank-called by an well known Internet phoneloser, except I figured out who he was and used his own prank-catchphrase against him.

This just in!

From ^-^guppie___ on #pauldotcom

No audio, sadly.

Nuit Blanche Montreal

2011-03-03T08:03:11Z

A Slideshow

Mostly street-shooting, since almost all the visual exhibits were inside of museums & art galleries, where photography is fairly... gauche. Check back often, as I'm adding photos every few days.

Nuit Blanche Montreal is this weekend

2011-02-23T04:59:00Z

Hmm...

So let's give that a try...

If you enjoy my photography and videos of past Nuit Blanche-s (or my work in general), please chip in a few bucks. This'll help cover transport, hotel and other costs. And if you donate $10, I'll mail you a 4x6 print of your choice. For $20 a bigger or four 4x6 prints. If we get to $100, I'll shave my head for April 1st

I'm not holding my breath on getting any donations here. I'll be shocked if it gets to $10, let alone $50.

And if it gets to $500, I'll shave my eyebrows too!

Updates!

5 minutes after posting: First donation received: $100.00 CAD. I guess it's going to be an interesting April Fool's Day! So the Hotel is mostly covered now, anyone wanna take car of train/gas next? Maybe dinner?
45 minutes after posting: Another $50! Wow! This is amazing!
6 hours after posting: $25 - from someone shaves her own head....
8 hours after posting: $10 - "It's just hair; it grows back."
8.5 hours after posting: $20 - From someone who's hair colour is never the same twice - in a week
19 hours after posting: $10 - "Hopefully I won't be the only #SPORKStar without eyebrows anymore!" (Oh god.)
20 hours after posting: $20 - "from your uncle who is losing hair ontop without shaving."
21 hours after posting: $10 - from someone who cuts his hair annually... I think?
5 days after posting: $10 - finally the parental-pity donation shows up

Sunday

2011-02-20T19:06:14Z

Sunday: washing sheets, playing guitar, took some photos.

Best! Firmware! Ever!

2006-01-07T21:10:34Z

I just found a video on digg... It's simply insane.

It's an HP ScanJet that has a built-in routine that plays a song... I've mirrored the video here. (Sure is nice to be an ISP

Toronto Travel & Agenda (aka First Road Trip with the Element)

2005-12-14T21:37:57Z

Saturday December 17: Drive to Toronto, depart Ottawa between 0900 and 1200
Sunday December 18 0800: EI Catalyst (Yes, 8AM)
Monday December 19: Finishing up things at EIC, maybe getting Alia and Martin at YYZ
Tuesday December 20: Return to Ottawa, probably stop for spring-rolls in Kingston

EI Catalyst has an 8AM Maintenance Window on Sunday (their post) and I have 2 more Gigabyte motherboards for Server North, so I'll be watching over our gear during the maintenance and making sure everything comes back up properly. Then I'll get to work replacing the motherboards in p0 and m1. 'm1 again?' you ask? Well we swapped m0 and m1 after it showed that the Gigabyte boards are total champs.
If anyone has an 3-5V and/or 64b PCI-X 1 or 2U benders - I'll be your friend forever.

And since it's the season of ~~shopping and consumerism~~ giving, a few people mentioned they wanted rides or knew others who did - let me know by Friday night please! I've got plenty of room.

I'll be staying near Avenue & Lawrence with a friend of the family.

Now I have to keep an eye on the weather:
City of Toronto
3:12 PM EST Wednesday 14 December 2005
Snowfall warning for City of Toronto issued

Snowfall amounts of 15 to 30 centimetres on Thursday and Thursday night.

A Major winter storm is expected to bring heavy snowfall to regions just north of the lower Great Lakes and St Lawrence Valley. The heavy snowfall is expected to start over Windsor and Sarnia regions early Thursday morning. Reaching Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe area by Thursday evening then spread farther eastward to Cornwall Morrisburg area overnight Thursday. Snowfall amounts will vary from the 15 centimetres mark over the western sections of the warning area to 20-30 centimetres over the east.

In addition. There is a risk of freezing rain over Niagara Falls - Welland - Southern Niagara Region Thursday afternoon.

Wrist Support

2011-02-11T16:02:11Z

In another unexpected round of good customer service, the inventor of my latest wrist brace, Jeff from Allsport Dynamics just phoned me to say thanks for buying his product and to see how I was doing. Said to let him know if I needed anything, and thanks for 'blogging about the functional wrist brace.

Internet, you are seriously cool. You too Jeff.

"You could try the Mayo Clinic" he said,

2011-01-25T19:46:32Z

... After he prefaced with "This isn't the end of the road, "

So - anyone got a scalpel and a spare rubber band? I'll provide the alcohol - for both of us. Maybe I can let y'all take turns until something works. OHIP sure ain't.

I really hate January 25th. This isn't how 2011 is supposed to go.

Assessing the HP Proliant DL120 G6 Server [Updated]

2011-01-16T23:37:00Z

Proliant DL120 G6 - Is it on? I don't know.

The new server arrived early on Friday ... I'd basically ordered it on Thursday. Wow. Already off to a decent start; with the Suns it was weeks between first-sales call and final delivery. Being able to buy the server from my favourite local computer store doesn't hurt either. (And they're a customer!)

Some notes, roughly cribbed from our internal Wiki:

Arrived with 1x2GB stick of memory - notable because bcrl says these CPUs have really finicky memory controllers that usually want pairs

Arrived with 2x500GB 7200.12 consumer-class drives - sure, at $1200 this is a 'cheap' server, but really? Desktop-grade hard-drives?

Requires a Torx key, included in a rear-mounted snap-in holder - this will get lost, at the most inopportune time

Torx is needed to unlock lid

Empty HDD caddies will take drives, Torx bolts are included. Not hotswap. Dell, Oracle, IBM blanks won't take drives.

Power LED has almost no differentiation between on & off - at least to my colourblind eyes (green/yellow? I think?) and some fans are always on, which makes determining power-state even more difficult!

Rails are cheap, but better than the generic stuff, haven't racked the machine yet, so I don't know how it'll go. Looks to only need a screwdriver if your cabinet is more than 31" deep. (IIRC ours are 36" because we have some super deep machines)

Uses less than an amp! At 121VAC, it's maxxed out at 0.9 amperes. Pretttttttty good!

On now?
_{Both images' white balance set to 2600K}

The biggest thing for me is the IPMI/"iLO" system. Basically it's a tiny computer running in the server that's meant for managing and controlling the base hardware. On the Suns, it's fully featured - letting you control power, hit the reset button, connect to the console over the network like you've got a keyboard & LCD jacked right in. They also let you attach a CDROM over the network so you could install an OS or some other random software. Very very very cool stuff. Huge reason we switched to Sun.

Alas, HP isn't quite so generous. You don't get the RKVM or remote media support with base iLO license - you have to pay up for that! I don't know how much, yet. Pretty much all you get is power control and serial redirection, both of which are important and probably all I'll need for this role.

I like the machine though. The cable-management is cool, it'll take 4 drives, which is super nice, and it's easy to reroute the cables to the PCIe risers if I find I don't like the on-board SATA controller.

Just tried memtest86+ over the serial redirection... works well! How often can you copy 'n paste the output of that?



       Memtest86+ v2.01      | Pass  6% ##

 Intel Core 2527 MHz         | Test 80% ###############################

 L1 Cache:   32K 126352 MB/s | Test #3  [Moving inversions, 8 bit pattern]

 L2 Cache: Unknown           | Testing:  140K - 2040M 2039M

 Memory  : 2039M  33250 MB/s | Pattern:   02020202

 Chipset :

  WallTime   Cached  RsvdMem   MemMap   Cache  ECC  Test  Pass  Errors ECC Errs

  ---------  ------  -------  --------  -----  ---  ----  ----  ------ --------

    0:00:41   2039M     265M  e820-Std    on   off   Std     0       0

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Motherboard of being photographed?

Will we buy more? Probably.

UPDATE Yow! The license to get full RKVM & RVOL is $350... a year?! No thanks. No remote OS reloads going to be happening on this box!

Leaving the Sun behind

2011-01-14T02:13:00Z

Since Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, I can no longer buy my favourite Sun Fire X2200M2 Servers anymore... (and the replacement product is about 5X the price) I needed to look to a new manufacturer of servers:

My hatred of Dell is long lived and well deserved, so they're out. (Got to buy their drives, their IPMI/"DRAC" is terrible, any interaction is an hour long phone call...)
Supermicro is a maybe... their IPMI is hit-or-miss, and it's difficult for my supplier to source any of the parts.
HP is possible, but you have to license their IPMI/LOM, and I think you're locked into buying their drives too. Other than the old stuff, everyone seems to like them. But their website is terrible.
IBM has one Opteron-based server, and it's even more expensive than the Oracle - with half the guts.
I don't want to DIY... too hard to get the chassis + mobo + PCI Riser + HFS to all agree.

After a few days of very tedious and frustrating hunting, I gave up trying to find a G34-socketed Opteron server and expanded the criteria to include specific Xeon CPUs. In the end, I ordered an HP DL120 G6 for about $1250 - a nice promo deal that included 2x250GB drives and 2GB of RAM. Compare this to the Intel or SuperMicro kits, which were going to cost about $900 for the chassis, PSU and motherboard alone. (Add CPU, RAM, Disk and rack rails.)

It should arrive in the next few days, we'll see how that goes... We already use HP Procurve networking gear at Server North Inc., so maybe we're slowing going to go that way...?

10-10-10

2010-10-11T02:10:00Z

I caught wind of a 10-Hour Photography challenge going on today; no prizes, no real guarantee of recognition, just a challenge. The rules were pretty simple: Take a photo on the hour, every hour, for 10 hours. Bonus Challenge - no retakes.

I wasn't able to quite follow the rules since I knew there was no way I could hit the top of the hour every time, so aimed for the bottom, and I wasn't too religious about it.

Here's 10 hours of my day... (click each for the mini-story)

101010 Ten - Charged

101010 Eleven - All Systems Go - I Think.

101010 Twelve - Aberdeen Pavilion

101010 One - Lunch

101010 Two - D1of2

101010 Three - Sign+Post

101010 Four - MDTC.BW

101010 Five - Table Setting

101010 Six - Recharging

101010 Seven - Dishwasher

Single-Handed Combat

2011-01-10T06:51:27Z

Modeling my new Donjoy CXT wrist brace in a mirror while playing with a friend's Fish-Eye lens

'Bout a week before Christmas, I went to visit my wrist-doc again (Dr T), since I'd had absolutely zero medical attention since I saw the first surgeon (Dr L) back in February, when he added me to a 1-year waitlist to see Dr v.S in Toronto because he didn't feel brave enough to tackle the damage.

When I last saw Dr T, almost year ago, she'd told me this anecdote about another patient who'd screwed up his shoulder, it was unstable and that he'd never sought proper treatment/therapy for it. 10 years later he wanted to get it fixed up, but in the interim he'd practically not used it all... but it was too late to do anything. "I don't want that happening to you" she'd said to me, worrying that my near-constant immobilization would lead to a similar story. Well, maybe that guy could go a decade without a shoulder, but at that point (5 months to the day) I had zero intention of just waiting around doing nothing, hoping for my hand to get better on it's own. Obviously the PT & OT got me nowhere, and I have to wait for surgery for any real progress to happen. I assume my pain lessened in the winter because the broken bone had fused, and I'd gotten back into playing guitar, and weaned myself from needing gross-support or immobilization for extended periods of time. I think I made it through most of the summer without any splints or braces much at all... and a good portion of the fall too. But in late October and into November, I felt found I was regressing, more pain, more immobilization - and heading right into that trap of disuse.

And I sure didn't want that.

Hence the visit to the sports-doc. She agreed that it was a bad sign, and while I posited PT as likely being useless, she agreed but countered that it couldn't hurt - figuratively at least. I'll see about giving that a shot.

My other qualm was that while I typically have no neurological problems impeding the use/control/sensation of my hand, the wrist joint is so unstable, I frequently 'pop' something and am left in quite a bit of pain for several days afterward, leading to immobilization and disuse. (Starting to pick up on a theme here?)

Some research later, and I've picked up a Donjoy CXT functional wrist brace Unlike the casts & splints I've been encumbered with previously, this very sci-fi looking hardware lets me functionally use my wrist (to some degree) while providing protection and limiting range of motion.

And two days into having it, it's like a breath of fresh air. There's a lot of things I couldn't do at all before, but now that I can brace my hand against the brace, I can actually do! While I still can't grip, since it doesn't support my wobbly thumb, I can push against things with force (transferred to the hinge) and carry stuff! Yay! It's an experiment that's going well, and I'm doubly happy about it because it's cost me about $525 so far. (Would've been $750+HST if I'd bought locally...)

Of course, it's been pointed out that every silver-lining has a cloud... The 1st surgeon (Dr L) never actually sent a consultation report back to Dr T after he saw me in January. This has me greatly concerned because it might also mean the referral to the second surgeon (Dr v.S) may not have been sent either... which would mean I've just wasted the past 10+ months thinking I'm a waitlist I'm not. Stay tuned for news on that front: Dr T requested the consultation report, hopefully that'll spur some motion and resolution... we'll see - these things take a lot more time than they should. My phone hasn't rung yet.

I do think this new brace looks pretty bad-ass on me though, don't you? No room for LEDs, but maybe I can get some EL wire tape and Tron it up...

2010

2010-12-31T19:25:00Z

I have a serious hate-on for 2010... but in some ways I had a pretty serious hate on for 2009, and 2008 etc... while I now realize 2009 was vastly superior to 2010, I think I need to look at what was positive about 2010, and realize that most of what made it suck will continue to do so after those drunken parties tonight.

Notable stuff that happened in 2010, in no particular order:
- Family trip to Costa Rica
- Got my guitars back, actually learned how to play songs in standard tunings (as opposed to drops!)
- A number of photography gigs (GTAT, Fashion show, DCO, Stila, Doucet/Election)
- Joined the RA Photoclub
- Had my photos published in fewer places than 2009, but in higher visibility venues
- Lots of TV appearances (because of the election)
- Finally gained Full-Member status on UER.ca
- Checked out some cool sites (Symes, Hearn, Foymount, Morrison's Quarry, )
- Started actually getting paid real money by Server North!

Things that didn't directly happen to me, but were important:
- Chilean Miners
- BP Deep Horizons oil disaster
- June Earthquake
- Olympics in Vancouver

Looking forward, I've decided that 2011 can't suck as much as 2010 did, and I'm going to get all self-empowered and disallow things from making it suck. A lot of what made 2010 really hard was beyond my control, and that's one of those things I've need understand; I'm not responsible for everything that happens, to me, or to other people around me. What I need to do is have more concern for myself than I do for others. I deserve it, and nobody else is going to make it their priority, so I have to.

Maybe it sounds cold, but that's just it - I have to care of myself first, and that's what I'm going to do. It doesn't mean I'm going to become insensitive to others, but I'll have to check how I'm doing first.

... Which may be why I'm going to end UnderExposure.

_{Delayed Post-post-script:}
Oh, and to close out 2010 with extra panache, this 'blob post was delayed by more 2010 awesomeness.

Bose noise cancelling headphones

2006-05-08T19:10:00Z

Thomas recently won these Bose noise canceling headphones at a conference.

I'd been thinking about getting some high-end listening devices (ie: buds, headphones, in-ears...) because many of the environments I work in are quite noisy and rarely require me to hear anything other than a boot-up beep or my cellphone ringing... and the EMP effect of that is apparent in many other ways anyway

After a useless experiment on Friday when the battery died, I'm trying them out again today in a 'data center mit desk'. And I have a handful of spare batteries... no idea how long they last.

At first, the noise cancellation don't seem to do much; I put the cans on my ears then turned them on, ambient noise dropped somewhat, but probably not as much as the actual cans were dampening anyway. Start the iPod, (in a Breach of Trust mood today) and instantly get deafened by the settings I use in the car. Whups. 100% -> 50% output. Less pain.

Listening is enjoyable, but the sound is 'damaged'. Bass response if notably reduced, which is rather weird because noise cancellation doesn't really have to happen much down there, and it usually more difficult to do because of the high-latency... While playing music, it 'feels' (acoustically) that you've either got a cold, just come out of a loud concert and your ears are desensitized; during quiet moments of a song, you feel as if in an anechoic chamber or listening with too much echo-cancellation (used for cell and VoIP calls)... That said - it doesn't really ruin the enjoyment of the music.

Down to 30% volume

But when you take them off after even 10 minutes... Wow.

I had no idea this room was that loud. I knew it was noisy... but not this noisy. Think of standing at a very busy intersection... you have to almost shout to be heard.

The data center that the SVRNi gear is in is significantly louder too, I wear ear plugs there now.

So yeah, if I'm going to continue working in these types of environments... which we all know I will... I'm going to invest in something to protect my hearing. Unbelievable.

Now I don't want to take them off.

As I spray myself with Gatorade

2005-11-20T02:57:46Z

y'Know - I hate these twist-suck mouth-pieces they put on the bottles, but I don't want to take it off for fear of spilling some on the computer equipment. Yar - I be postin' from ye olde Eee I Catalyst lo!

I'm here to try a new motherboard on one of SVRNi's SAN nodes. I'm replacing a Tyan S2882 with a Gigabyte GA-7A8DR-H. The Tyan had been crashing a lot on us, it seems that the Broadcom GigE (bge) interfaces were a prime culprit, but we can generally knock the machines over with heavy PCI-X traffic (ie: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0), and in a SAN member, that is a frequent situation and not a good place to have crashing. I suspect we'll have to replace the motherboards in two other machines... but UF1 has an S2882 as well, but it's never suffered a hardware crash. (mod_perl leaks, RAID failures and runaway apaches on the other hand...) The Gigabyte board has some nice features that surprised me: Dual Intel GigE (tho not the same chip...?), really nice RS232 redirection for the BIOS all the way thru the OS boot, offBoard (but included) dual channel UW SCSI and no cruddy Silicon Image SATA controller. Obviously all of the above are areas the Tyan was deficient in, but what I am missing from the S2882s are the lack of fan connectors, our SAN cases have about 15 fans, an all but 5 of them could be connected to the board. The S2882 also had an Intel 82559 (fxp), but the GA-7A8DR-H more than makes up for this with the dual Intel GigE. A few things that bug me about the GA is that it's unreliable for auto-start on AC applied when warm... bench testing was not good, but when I put it in the rack it started with only one of the power-supplies jacked in. Also - there's fewer front panel connections on the board, so I no longer have my front-USB or network lights working.

And we all know what kind of travesty it is to not have more blinken-ligchstzen. 'specially because they're all sexy!

Alright! Enough about computers!

Well, maybe not, my laptop is dying... the LCD flickers - in the 1 in 3 tries just to get it to turn on, the indicator LEDs only work intermittently (I'm SURE it's on and running even though the LED says it isn't.) Oh! And the USB ports are practically useless for anything that draws more than 15mA... even if the device is externally powered. Argh. And the WiFi doesn't work on the 2.6 kernel, but it looks like there's been some work done on the ENE chips lately.

Want. But considering the vehicular situation and Christmas' fast approach, I could settle for a nicely loaded D6200 Lifebook; considering it's spex and size, it's significantly cheaper than my current 2 year old piece of junk... and just generally a better unit.

Okay - really - enough about computers now.

I sent Chris out to pick-up our pizza for dinner. I made sure he wouldn't get lost
It's probably better for my waist-line that we don't have Mamma's in Ottawa.

Also had a few nibbles on the sale of the van, happy about that. Only one loser so far, asks me how much I want, "$500 is the current bid, I'm hoping for more" / "But without a transmission I won't pay that much, $300" / "Right.". Selling the Prelude was a similar situation since it wasn't drivable either, cheap repair tho. It was much older and had more miles on it. I actually sold it to the second highest bidder because the highest (by only $50 mind you) was he was being a total jerk about it. Or he was just doing a mind-job on me to make me think it was worth less, which is really ironic considering he was the highest bidder.

I miss the 'Lude.

I'm really missing having a large vehicle now even more though. 'course, me pops and I still have to figure out who gets the proceeds from the sale... I mean - I have been doing all the repairs and maintenance on it in the past 2 years. Maybe I'm making a mistake selling it, or am I completely deluding myself by thinking a dealer will give me a better value as a trade in...

Anyway, the plan is to return to Ottawa tomorrow afternoon, maybe meet up with Dave on the way back. Hopefully this drive will not be as tense as the one on the way down, what with it being the first snow, Chris' first long trip, the deer we missed by 12" (I thought it was less) and night time.

I have my new car!

2005-12-08T20:13:24Z

That's right! Just before noon today I picked up my new wheels: A 2005 Honda Element! I don't care how ugly you think it is, it's mine and I love it.

Photo from my Razr

The deets:

2005 Honda Element LX
"Fiji Blue Pearl"
160 HP engine
5-speed standard transmission
16" Wheels, Goodyear tyres
Y-Package (Cruise-control, map-lights, big stereo, arm-rests, nice rims, security system, etc...)
front wheel drive
fog-lights

I'm actually quite happy I bought the 2005 model; the '06es have matching plastic panels and not-nice colour choices that loose the character I've come to love. Stay tuned for Tangerine and Lime Green in addition to Bone White... apparently.

Now - I need a name for the thing, I'm open to suggestions. So far all I've been able think of is "allotrope" ('allotropy' defn.) Any suggestions? (Please use the comments section.)

I'll have more/better photos in the coming days, don't you worry.

Yay! Season of getting!

2005-12-26T04:59:00Z

It can be seen approaching for months, instilling fear, stress, fruitcake and large debts striking deep into the hearts of the men and women of the world.
...Yet fall the eve of December Twenty Fifth and lo! A cry! Rising from o'er the plains! Victory! Christmas has been defeated for yet another year!

And what glorious spoils I snared from the battle:

Logitech G7 Mouse (Alia & Martin)
Ball of Steel World Puzzle (Alia & Martin)
Black Apple iPod Nano 4GB (Mom & Dad)
Salomon Skis bag (Mom & Dad)
Sevendust - Home, Breach Of Trust - (Self Titled) (Stef)
$200 CAD (Thomas)

iPod Nano

Clearly the most exciting and anticipated gift for me this year was the iPod Nano. I've been wanting one of these ridiculously tiny units since... well, the day after they came out. (I was busy on the big day!) 4GB and totally sweet. And while I'm no big fan of iTunes, having various podcasts being updated continuously on there I suspect will be very nice to have... I can think of times when I'm driving and no music suits my mood where talk radio (which is what most podcasts are) that's on demand and of interest to me would be welcome. The laser-engraving which isn't entirely visible in the photo reads "Mikey likes it!" and my personal E-Mail address.

G7 Mouse

In my right hand, we have the wonderful Logitech G7 Gaming mouse, and while I'm not a big-time gamer, this is certainly a fine piece of hardware... and I've been desperately needing a nice mouse for my Mini for some time now. It is pretty sweet in Quake and I need to play some real people in death match and see how I do. Sean has the G5, the wired equivalent, and I kid you not - his score doubled when he started playing using the G5, so, f33r my rawkets!!!

Earth Puzzle

Also from Alia and Martin is this puzzle. And this one just goes to prove it's the thought that counts: they received it as a free promo gift from a supplier, but it one of the neatest artsy/puzzle things I've gotten in a while. I'm almost afraid to take it apart, but I suspect it'll be even more photogenic when I do.

Ski bag

Feeding my Salomon addiction, my parents also give me this (cute?) little(?) ski bag that collapses down to a handbag, but it meant to hold my skis and poles. While red isn't usually my colour, Salomon gear just looks best in it. I will kidnap their product stylist. You must make all my graphics. Forever.

$200! Yay!

And since few of my clients feel like paying their invoices on time, Thomas' gift of 2 bills is well appreciated. And even though the card said it's to help keep the tank in the E' full, I think I'll buy a Salomon ski/snowboarding helmet. I was surprised at Mt. Tremblant last year to see that I was a minority of non-helmetted skiers. I'd been wanting one for some time anyway. ∗insert jab at Chris for calling 'em dumb one day and buying a helmet the next∗

I don't mean to marginalize the rest, but also under the tree was the requisite chocolate and other yummy-unhealthy-food, books, clothing, restaurant gift-certificates and CDs.
It should also be mentioned that The Element was heavily subsidized by my grandfather, which qualifies as the biggest Christmas present ever in my family... I think.

Of course there's the complement to The Season of Getting, which is briefly preceeded by The Season of Giving! Under the tree, others in my family found (not just from me) a Laser-level, exercise ball, beef-jerky, CDs and DVDs, a really fancy powerbar, the state of Florida, FM xmitter for iPod Mini, iPod Nanos (for Alia and Stef), iTunes & Chapters gift certificates and much more that I'm forgetting right now. Absent was the Rocketboom T-shirt I'd ordered for Mom. Due to a sizing mix-up (to which SarahBANG! was the beneficiary), she won't be getting it for a little while, and Amanda couldn't tell me when for sure

Christmas dinner was a wonderful turkey feast; fresh 9KG butterball... There were fears it wouldn't be enough for all 8 of us, but even now, several hours later - I'm still feeling quite sated. And chocolate fudge... [insert Homer Simpson-esque drooling]

It looks like the rain outside has finally turned to snow too. With any luck, the strike will be over at Tremblant soon and I'll be able to hit that in the coming days. Sean got a Sony video camera and we've both got ideas as to making a vlog... It's not like the Ridertech guys are all that amazing at going down the slopes! He wants to hit Jay Peak and soon... I'd like to get some practice locally before wasting my summer-legs on a real(er) mountain. Chris is up at MSM for the next couple of days... I'd like to get out there, but Alia and Martin are only here till Thursday...

Full-size images of the thumbnails are here in my gallery.

Ohh! Shiny!

2006-01-14T02:28:37Z

So I took Nightshade to Computer Recyclers for the first time today...

And the price is right!

I'm proud to say...

2006-01-16T07:47:10Z

... I didn't come up with this:

"Podcast"

_{(As seen from somewhere on the web... Don't have the reference, and I couldn't deep-link)}