Older blog entries for psj (starting at number 6)

Yep, ciphersabre is kinda neat. I went and did one. It was fun.

Inika came back from Australia this weekend, bearing wonderful gifts:

  • a bottle of 1998 Wolf Blass Bilyara Shiraz Grenache
  • a chocolate Easter Bilby (looks kinda like a rabbit, but with snouty nose), and
  • a little bottle of Vegemite

It was good to be back in Toronto on such a gorgeous weekend. Nothing better than wandering around on a sunny afternoon drinking quality beer.

I continue to spend large portions of my day hacking OmniMark code.

Biked along the Ottawa River for a bit this evening -- watched the sun go down over the Gatineaus. Beautiful...

The Music of Ornette Coleman: Something Else!

Note to self: treat Sambal Oelek with a little more respect next time.

I like Python a lot, but writing code generators for it seems markedly unpleasant because of the indentation thing. Or am I going about things the wrong way?

Just for yuks the other day, I revisited Sam Rushing's asynchronous sockets library for the first time in a few years. I forgot how impressive this stuff is: it's simple and it's very cool. Glad to see that it's gotten worked into Zope via Medusa. More stuff to distract me, I guess.

Ankh, did you make it to the TPM meeting?

The ants are winning. The conflict escalates...

100% connective tissue

It would appear that I'm sharing my apartment with a (very) extended family of big black ants. This is not optimal. If they go after my food, then they're out: my days of putting up with moochy roommates are over.

Gorgeous weather in Ottawa the last few days. Turns out that this is a great city for bicycling.

I'm

  • toying with Pharmacy. Glade must fit in here somewhere.
  • missing the Toronto Perl Mongers monthly meetings. Pizza and beer with guys who talk about evaluating things in scalar context...
  • becoming unwilling to give my girlfriend's guitar back when she gets back from Brisbane. It just sounds so good...

That's it, world. Have a good one.

Today's a beautiful, warm, sunny spring day in Ottawa. Outside, the birds are chirping, cyclists cycling, children screaming. The Byward Market is bustling with young folks, happy to have left their coats at home. Everything is right with the world...

Montreal Linux Expo was interesting, if a little sparsely attended. I certainly didn't feel that it was all that well marketed. (I mean, when you find out about these things at work...) Linux Expo Hippest of Show Award: ZeroKnowledge, hands-down!

Enjoyed finally seeing rms speak, but was hoping for a talk with a little more, well, insight. I don't believe he said much that I haven't read in the philosophy section of the GNU site.

Just for yuks, I'll submit my position on a recent article regarding the Advogato certification system. Maybe "Dimwit" is cute, but I think that "Outcast" is a bad call. A couple of reasons, neither of which I believe is original here:

  • A community is about inclusion. "Outcast" is about exclusion. What's the point of allowing someone to log in with an "Outcast" sign hanging around their neck? If you to cast someone out, you cast them out; ie. take their login away. Or is "Outcast" just a way for the rest of the community to have someone to look down on? This is dangerous...

  • More importantly: the original certifications were based on a whole different dimension: (roughly) the value of the person's contribution to the open source community (whatever that is). "Outcast" (and "Dimwit" too, I suppose) are based on a different axis: (roughly) the person's behaviour on Advogato. So what happens when a really productive (Master, even) contributor is an obnoxious jerk?

I've been my usual voyeuristic self here on Advogato, and so am very happy with being an "Observer." I really enjoy reading Advogato, but I worry a little bit that the some of us get a little too uptight about the "trust metric/certification" thing.

In other news, I turned 30 today. How did that happen so quickly? Sneaks up when you're not looking, I guess...

Other questions:

  • Does C++ need to be that large?
  • Why does a peaceful Canadian guy like me become agitated and uneasy when he sees someone driving a Lincoln Navigator?
  • How much coffee can I drink in one day?

More questions later...

The joys of springtime in Ottawa. I just know my friends are laughing at me...

Looking forward to the Linux Expo in Montreal next week.

Went for a nice hike in Gatineau Park this aft, and managed to fall down an embankment. Wheee!

Reading Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind. Been a while since I thought about calculus...

Hacked a bit more Elisp for OM-mode.

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!