Blrg - Personal

Nexus One!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:25:30 -0400

So I've gotten myself a Nexus One, an Android-powered cell phone, hoping to have a good platform to test Android apps on (Only to learn that months ago, Google was giving away phones to developers).

Anyway, so far it's been great. The only gripes I have is that the touchscreen seems to be a little off and the wifi has issues remaining connected now (it used to work fine), but the Wifi Fixer app works as a work-around for the latter.

Furthermore, I've gotten the phone connected to WIND Mobile, and so far my experience with WIND has been OK. Even ignoring the issues getting started (the people signing me up were kinda new, so I forgive them), every now and then I seem to drop out of their towers' reach and be considered roaming! Also, in some situations where other providers would manage to get *some* signal, I get none at all - but I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess. These situations are the usual suspects - elevators, bus network basements, etc..

On the bright side, though, the cost is fairly small (~30$ for voice+voicemail+data) and I have unlimited texts for a year.

What a summer.

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:32:14 -0400

August has been an... interesting month, not counting the humidity.

It started off with my ear infection (which actually started some time during the second-to-last week of July), which gradually got better and finally went away. It also had coupled itself with an eye infection which I had to deal with an eye infection which I had to deal with at the same time.
However, it ended perhaps a few days before I was scheduled to go off on a canoeing-camping trip (more on that later), and hardly had the time to recover, nevermind time to do exercises to be in shape.
It doesn't end there; during this time I'd noticed some tiny insects - feel free to make your guess, but I've stumped everyone so far - around my apartment. I originally didn't think they were a big deal, but I eventually noticed that regardless of what I did, they stuck around.
I'd done a last ditch effort at the last minute before the camping trip, and even that hadn't done much. And when I came back... I realised that they'd originated from my mother's house. They were on every floor; they'd gone unnoticed because these insects (or mites, or pseudo-lice, or whatever they are) are light-shy, activity-shy and seem to only eat... ...well, I'm not sure what.
The day I realised this I informed my mother about it, but she wasn't terribly worried, especially when I mentioned that I believed they were book lice, and that one source said that one of the things they feed on is mould. *sigh* Mentioning that one of the ones in the basement was a tad larger than I'd seen so far had no effect.
I wasn't convinced these bugs were benign due to their quantity; My argument was that it is rare to see, for example, large amounts of spiders in a human living area and there was a fair quantity of these bugs around. At this point you're likely wondering why I didn't contact exterminators or even the land-lord; I'm not sure. Part of it was procrastination, part of it was that I didn't even know what kind of bug it was, and part of it was that I thought I could get rid of them myself.
Oddly enough, I seem to have done just that; I do not see them in my apartment anywhere anymore, so one or more of cleaning, vacuuming, powder insecticide, and compressed "air" did the trick in getting rid of them. I'm thinking that it was a combination of the last two, because a day after using the compressed "air" they were all over, a fair bit bolder than they'd been before... ...and then the next day, they seemed to have altogether vanished save one or two.
I have yet to scour the apartment for them, however, to make sure they simply haven't just located another source of food (something I could not doubt considering my roommates (several reasons)), but I will do this soon as I'd like to capture at least one and bring it somewhere for identification (Any suggestions? The apartment's office staff will not recognise them, I'm sure, given my past... experience with them.).
As for what I suspect them to be, I believe they are book lice (in which "lice" appears to be a misnomer).

Update: Actually, they're still around. Guess they were napping.

A whole lotta notta

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:09:48 -0400

So, as a few of you know already, I've moved out. In fact, I moved out on the 1st of Feb, so I've been here since a month and a half. We've got most things set up, but I've still got a few boxes to unpack mostly due to not having anywhere to place this stuff.

Though some of it is due to not having put up the shelving units I've gotten from my brother.

So, things have been set up, moved in and so forth; The apartment is, while expensive, very nice and spacious (we've got TWO bathrooms) and has some niceties to it that I'm sure will come in handy (like a pool and an exercise room). We've got the pre-paid billing and electricity billing set up, yaddi yaddi yadda... the only negative thing so far is that the windows need replacing since they leak air and get condensation all over them - but we're not too worried about that, since we've never had to use the electric heating so far ^_~

I've gotten my laptop replaced; Eurocom finally decided, when I returned my laptop again, that they'd give me another model and this one seems somewhat better-behaved, though I still need to figure out if it's the way I configured the system or if it's the system itself that's giving me issues.

I've finally got a new phone which I think I will like, and it's all set up with a pay-as-you-go service... only that it's got unlimited browsing and unlimited text messaging. Quit looking at me that way! I only activated it yesterday at midnight, so that's why I haven't told anyone yet what my new number is ^_~

I'm considering changing my career, I suppose you could say, as I don't find I can do programming as an active job. The problem's that I'm not that enthused about it, and I want to do it as more of a hobby than my job. The problem with all this is that I haven't really got anything else to get into; I could go into writing and editing, but with writing I'm generally uncreative and with editing ... well, I haven't tried that much so far. Perhaps it would go well. The only problem is that a sudden career change would likely be rather harsh, especially on the wallet, so I'm not sure I want to do that just yet. Perhaps taking a part-time job first would help, especially r?sum?-wise (i.e. job experience).

Socially, things have gotten a little better, a little worse. I need to start thinking about others like it's a natural things, as memory and such things aren't at all natural for me. I'd grown into the need to ignore yesterday and tomorrow as though today was the only day, the only day I'd have to live the torture of being alive.

But I've lived past 20.

Celty is gone

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:42:31 -0500

Dear Celty has been given away last Sunday.

I'm sure her new owners will take good care of her.

Busy... or not busy?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:38:57 -0500

I've got a tough few months ahead of myself.
I keep looking at various things and wishing I'd done something similar. I have to concentrate on one thing and stop spreading myself thin... which is really hard, considering I have immense trouble with concentrating on any single thing for long periods of time.
That, and I have to move out. I've located an apartment and have to start packing, assuming nobody else takes it (haven't signed yet: I want to see it before I sign, damnit!). It's a really good spot, too... I may just throw caution to the wind and grab it, since the other apartments I've seen so far were absolute crap (and what we saw of another apartment in the same building was pretty damned nice).
Grr.
On the upside, I've gotten my laptop back and it appears to be working just fine.

Stop the widescreen craze!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:13:54 -0500

I don't understand this obsession with widescreens. I don't.

No, I don't like widescreen at all. It has it's uses, but for me, I'd rather it stick to TVs. Leave my monitors and especially my laptops alone! Arg!

The only laptop I could find that was still being sold that isn't a widescreen is Eurocom's D700T Enigma. A fine laptop, but I'm having an incredible amount of difficulty with them and getting a working laptop. (When I bought it, I had to bring it back the "next" day to get it fixed. Only about three weeks later did they finally stop trying to fix it and basically gave me a new system; Even so, the video card appears to have issues and I may have to bring it in again!)

I'm still looking for a portable media player that can be truly customized. First one to suggest an iPod will be shot. It may seem silly, I want to load the 10+ different file types that I use and not have any problems playing them (companies looking for small codecs may be interested in looking at the source code of foobar2000). Bonus points if it comes with (or there is, somewhere on the internet) software that can re-encode certain formats to lower bitrates (since you aren't going to get full sound quality from a P.A.P. anyway) automatically and still manage to handle changes on both sides transparently (e.g. if, on another computer, I change the tags or add/delete files, those changes will affect the library on my main system).

What? I can dream, can't I?

On a related aside, I've been looking at the GP2X (official) (which has found it's way into my wishlist) and VirtualCogs - specifically, the Portable Computing COG which I may yet use to build and sell a mix between P.A.P. I'm looking for and the GP2X. Hmm, I could sell that. I wonder if Virtual Cogs Embedded Systems Inc. has anything against that sort of thing.

Gizmo and Celty still not getting along

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:43:00 -0400

Gizmo's been getting more and more upset with Celty, not less. Originally, he was graining weight - I think someone else may have been feeding him when he went outside - but I weighed him today and he's actually at 11 lbs (!).

So...

My mother's planning on getting rid of her in some way, whether that means giving her to my brother, bringing her back, or bringing her to the SPCA...

Anyone local interested in a kitten?

Or anyone have any suggestions for getting them to get along (unlikely, but, I'm still open to suggestions)?

Stay or gamble?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:20:51 -0400

A little bit of risky business, telling your potential employer that you might only be around a month. But I did it.

You see, I have two options at the moment:

I have an employer who's interested in hiring me (at least, I originally thought this; the above news seems to have rattled his cage a bit), who'll be giving me 12-14$/hour.

I have another potential employer who's to contact me "within a month or so" to let me know whether or not I'm hired. They, however, would pay me approximately 25$/hour (if my calculations are right: 50,255$ - 58,000$ yearly was their figure)!

Obviously, the danger here is threefold:

If I insist to the first employer that I may only work for about a month, he may decide I'm not worth the time and not hire me (though, as I understand it, there are several openings in this position).

If I accept the first job, the second employer may slam the door in my face if I tell them I can only work in two weeks from their notification (I really don't want to "quick quit", especially seeing as it's become kind of a standard).

If I don't accept the first job, I may not even get the second job in the first place (despite still qualifying for two out of three positions), and be left with nothing.

The whole "Which would you prefer doing?" question doesn't help, either, as I'd like to do either.

Grr. I wish employers were more open about applicants' chances of being hired, even if it were a simple "You're one out of X applicants left.".

Something important I forgot to mention...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 16:13:06 -0400

Yes, my cell is once again unusable.

Oops.

More on Celty

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:12:39 -0400

Alternative title: Oh boy, we're going to have our hands full!

I'm not sure it's hit my mother yet how much effort it's going to take to train this kitten - because we're going to have to, I'm sure - especially as she seems to be a bit of the stubborn kind. Or maybe she's just that energetic, which makes more sense as she's still a kitten.

The movies are up now, but may require IE, sadly. Movies are XviD encoded to make sure to grab (or update) your CCCP.

I forgot to mention last time: We had a choice of a black male named Riker, a peach/tan-colored male (I don't really remember his color, and at the time I had trouble deciding what to call that color to call it), Celty (pronounced Kelty, by the way), and a gray faintly-striped female who apparently, despite not being the eldest managed, to be the alpha of the family. Originally, we were to get Riker (this was, I think, my mother's choice), but after looking up information on introducing a new cat (and asking our vet) we found that it was better to introduce a cat of opposite gender and thus upon hearing that we had the pick of the litter I immediately ruled out males as an option. Possibly unfortunate, as Riker did look cute, and the tan-colored male seemed to be the submissive type (though playful). I wanted a somewhat creatively colored kitten, so that pretty much left me with just the choice of Celty.

But... she's a noisy one when not being given attention... and those claws!

We've got a new kitten! :o

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:20:02 -0400

That's right... There's a new kitten in town, or rather in the house, and her name's Celty.

I didn't think it was entirely a good idea, as Gizmo doesn't seem to react well to visitors... but I figured he could use some company. So far, however, they're not really getting along. Of course, this is no real surprise as Gizmo's never had any visitors save the mutt, which my mother gave him grief for (And does he ever remember!). Sadly, this means it's nearly impossible to even pet him right now as he's so ticked off and afraid that he doesn't want to be near us. I'm actually afraid he might run away.

The kitten, however, seems to be adjusting to her new home alright, although whenever she's awake she's clamoring for attention. Toys aren't good enough for her because she wants some actual interaction with another being - not surprising as she was just separated from her family. Thankfully, she's already litter-trained, and despite being locked up in my sister's room for a night or so, doesn't seem to be scratching anything (at least nothing that's already been, or is not carpet). I think she hasn't yet reached teething stage, though...

Either way, pictures of the new kitten. Videos as soon as ffmpeg is installed, but they're not great - I already had to boost the brightness and contrast.

Oops, botched that poll!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 11:21:27 -0400

I meant to post this sooner - had noticed the error just the day after, but I've been somewhat busy (and cranky - I hate waking up early, especially to paint, but can you do?).

I say that I've botched the poll because it had the wrong emphasis; I also failed to note that I was facing west, and therefore it couldn't be sun-up. Rather than just rerun it, though, I'm going to ask you to take another good look at the "Day or night?" picture and see if you notice anything amiss, and then read the rest of this post.

Now tell me...

Do you think you see the sun in that picture? Take another look if you need to.

If you still think so, you're quite mistaken. This picture was taken at five in morning, before the sun rises. What you see, ladies and gentlemen... is the moon. Magical, isn't it? The picture was taken in landscape mode, which makes the camera keep the shutter open for longer than usual; You'll notice the picture is also blurry, a sign that I either thought the shutter was already open or that I had trouble keeping the camera steady (likely the former, but then again, I was fairly excited by this nice picture). Until I looked at my pictures later on, I hadn't realised that this had caused the moon to look like the sun: Since it was a full moon, it was reflecting a large amount of light and I think that's why even the sky looks pale (It didn't look that way from naked eye.).

Pop Quiz: Day or night?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:03:10 -0400

Can you tell if it's day or night?

Kudos to you if you can figure out the approximate time, too.

DRM in Canada? Why of course...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:07:07 -0400

Vito Pilieci from The Ottawa Citizen states in a Canada.com article titled "Copyright board OKs levy on iPods, MP3 players":

The Copyright Board of Canada is again backing a tax on Apple Inc.'s iPod and other MP3 music players that could boost the price of the devices by almost 30 per cent.

This is truly unfortunate and ridiculous. It's becoming into some odd fight against the innocent consumer, the computer-illiterate consumer that has no way to do anything about this. Those who're pirating aren't going to care about this (and computer-literate users are going to see this "tax" as an encouragement that says "Oh, don't buy it from the store - buy it from Ebay.ca") since they likely already have portable audio players or they don't have nor want one and only use their computer for music anyway.

Despite all that, it doesn't surprise me in the least: Big Suit types never want to research anything, they just want a quick fix and they want it now. Anything they can do to justify their salaries and make it seem like they're actually doing something productive. The sad part is, it'll injure them in the long run.

And since when are recording devices taxed, anyway? Were tape decks ever taxed this way? Ghetto-blasters? Stereos? And what's next - CD/DVD recorders get taxed since they're "recording mediums"? Copyright is an outdated system for outdated governments (and don't get me started on patents) - I realised the futility of it as a child, and I realised the ridiculousness of it when a teacher at college copyrighted a code skeleton file, and I now realise the obsolescence of it as it lacks any real structure or system.

It's... been a while.

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:55:37 -0400

Time flies. I really don't know what it is, but it seems I've little time for anything these days. I guess it's more a matter of prioritising things, and I haven't been doing that; Problem is, that's a task on it's own. I figure, though, people deserve an update, especially a certain someone out there who doesn't seem to be fairing too well and probably doesn't have the time to contact my directly. My heart goes out to you and I hope things get better... and yes, I'm na?vely thinking they will.

Well, let's see - my posts have been far and few between, as well as rather bare. I'm going to take what is probably going to be a few hours, and try to give some detail on what's going on. Knowing myself, though, I'm probably going to get tired of it halfway through or forget things I wanted to mention.

On the job front, I now have no job. My time as a casual ended in mid-may, and for the next month I was working as a contractual worker. Thankfully, I was still able to apply for EI and that seems to have gone through without a problem - either I applied correctly, or they were able to mistake my misunderstandings. Either way, seems to be just fine there. I just have to keep in mind that EI's only going to pay me if I can prove I've been trying to get a job - sometimes I get lax about these things for over a week, and it seems that's not going to be an option ;> It's possible that I get a permanent position at my old job, though, which is kind of interesting. I have mixed feelings about that, honestly, but I'm not sure how in-depth I want to go about that in public - maybe I'll write another protected entry for that.

I've been trying to add some content to my forum - hopefully I'll get a few more interested people. I'm not certain whether I want to keep the politics (et al.) sections hidden to members only, though; I'm thinking of opening them up until I can get some regular (if sparse) traffic. By the way, I've resolved the spam issue for the time being. Until the Akismet plug-in for punBB matures, I won't be using it: It apparently does not have any setting other than "ban immediately" - I don't care how easy it is to unban people, I don't think they deserve to be banned outright. It's bad enough that punBB claims that hidden forums are "invalid" (I wish that were an option, but I may just manually hack that in myself) and don't suggest that maybe you need to log in.

I've just updated my copy of Windows Live Writer; Functionally it seems mostly the same, but they've added their fancy UI to it now. Seems a slight bit more sluggish due to that, but that may also be because I had to lower my hardware acceleration setting (My mouse does not move if I have hardware display acceleration set to the maximum. Not sure why, and I really don't know what caused it. I may have to get myself a new... uh... sheesh, I don't know. I'm at a loss on this one.). Sadly, my hardware woes don't end there; About as recently (But no, not simultaneously) my DVD drive has decided it no longer wants to eject - and before you try to help me with it, I'm convinced that it's a mechanical issue; It seems to be the same problem that "Drive X" (for lack of a better name) had: when the tray attempts to eject, something gets in the way and instead it just goes "clunk" and fails to move forward. This one doesn't have a pop-open door, though, so the only way I'll be able to inspect it is to open it up. For the curious, I have a LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S finally showing it's true colours, and it's way off the warranty (not sure it ever really had one anyway).

Interestingly, it seems I didn't post on my birthday. Hmm. Don't remember what I got; I'm sure I updated my wishlist, though. Speaking of getting things, ... wait, I did mention the camera. One thing I didn't mention was the 160 GB USB drive I got (Wee~!). I'm actually planning on taking the drive out and replacing it with a 20 GB, and using that; The 160 GB will likely go either in my PC, or in a future NAS that I'm planning to build when I move out (or right before, since that might help with moving). On that subject - I'm now the one that has no job, and now Eth has to put up with me :P

On the technology/news side of things, ignoring the over-hyped piece of crap that is iPhone, Apple has announced that it will offer non-DRM music in it's iTunes store at a higher price - but I think what's more interesting is that EMI says people love it. I'm reading between the lines when I say this, but, I get the impression Steve Jobs is doing this intentionally as to try to give DRM a shove away from domination. If so, I've more respect for the man than ever, to be so bold as to actually consider the option.

(Certainly more respect than I've got for a particular worker from Futureshop, at any rate, but I'm going to blog about that only later once I've got a response from him about his blatant goof - much to Futureshop's shame I might add - and know whether or not he was letting himself get hot-headed on the subject.)

Among my other findings on the Internet are an interesting view on global warming, which if you are about to watch I strongly suggest you watch all videos posted by the same person (It really doesn't make sense to only get half his opinion - people are entitled to correcting themselves, as the above paragraph demonstrates ;>).

And finally, one last thing and this one's from the paranoia department: Why use email encryption? It's an interesting view on e-mail encryption, though personally I believe that encrypting every e-mail might be a tad overdone - but then again, since once you've got it set-up it's mostly a "fire and forget" type of thing (Not that you can't change it's settings, mind you), you almost might as well. I currently force all e-mails going out on my name-e-mail-address (Yes, I have an address that's my first@last name) to be digitally signed, even if the recipient can't necessarily verify that signature, since I use this for official contact (e.g. work, applications, etc.).

Phew! On the project side of things, I've gotten a co-worker (well, was-co-worker since my contract ended) interested in helping me translate Ozy & Millie - I think I'm going to write to the author and webmaster again soon once I've got a steady stream of strips going and tell them that someone's actually going to get things going for the French version ;> (It seems a few other people have already gone at it - sadly, there's not even fifty strips translated yet! Arg! What a sad state it's in!)

I've been really tempted to buy myself a GP2X - but there's four things holding me back:

The cost - Buying a GP2X, though possibly worth every penny, costs about as much as a PSP right now. And that might even be without taking shipping into account.
The lack of stores having it in stock - The only store I know that stocks the GP2X in Canada is one I've never heard of, GamerSection. It appears to be a Qu?bec company, but oddly the French translations are poor if even present. On the other hand, there is a representative from TigerDirect who tells me he can get it custom-ordered for me; We'll see how the price ends up looking like soon.
The apparent lack of quality games, as playing games that already exist on other platforms seems to be one of the few quality options. The fact that it would be possibly to port any SDL-based game as well as easy develop my own games for it is nary a comfort.
I'm not even sure I'd use it! I've not finished the games I have for my PS2, never mind the ones on my GBA, and I hardly use my portable audio player during this time of joblessness. Speaking of joblessness, I'm also not sure I want to spend money while I have no job.

Eh, it finally happened. I forgot what I was going to say. Good enough for today, I dare think.