rwmtest

I don't have a formal article to post, but I have some ideas I want to get out there to be discussed. Please respond to this post as my hope is to get a thread going, and to see what other people think. I was at the OpenConcept 10'th anniversary on Friday, and one of the people I bumped into is Mike Kaulbars . He was Rina's TA back at Carleton, and I know him from PERC . He is someone who is now dedicating much of his time to climate change, and if you read or listen to him he is not optimistic. While there are some who disagree with the scientists, I'm not one of them. I believe we are in a global experiment that we can't predict, and that will have dire consequences for our species. I don't personally think we are talking about extinction level event, but given how fragile our societies and economies are I expect disruptions far greater than anything we have ever seen in our past. It would be understating the issue to compare it to a world war as I beli...

I'm trying to figure this out for a couple I know where the husband died. The husband bought a Taranova timeshare that finishes in the 2040's, which would have made the couple over a hundred years old. The widow didn't have any interest in the timeshare. The whole thing reads like a scam to me as there doesn't seem to be any easy way out, and they continue to demand fees of the widow. Is anyone more familiar with what these things are, why anyone would ever want one, and how a widow could get out of it?

Interesting that ZDNet Larry Dignan is suggesting that Android phones will mark the end of traditional GPS devices. Android is a mobile operating system, and I don't see why traditional GPS hardware can't eventually become Android devices without the phone. I guess I see value in separating the hardware feature of a wide variety of devices we may want from a more open operating system that could run on this hardware. I was thinking of purchasing a Neo FreeRunner phone running Openmoko instead of a GPS device, and depending on when I decide to purchase I may end up with an phone (with GPS, media playing capabilities, etc) running Android as a different option.

I have a small project that keeps dragging me deeper into Google API's which seem like they will do what I want, but not quite yet. The latest was to find Google Apps Script , only to find out the preview has ended . I've asked when this will be available (See also: BLOG posting ) for http://spreadsheets.google.com , and haven't yet seen any replies. Here is the scenario. The final output is a Google map that will show up on a website. That part of the Google Maps API I seem to have figured out. As inputs there is a Google Map that has farms, restaurants, and other locations pinpointed and labeled with a ID. That ID corresponds to a row of information that is currently held in a spreadsheet. What I want to do is mash together the Map information (KML output from Google Maps) with the spreadsheet information such that I have lat and long columns filled in. It is trivial to upload this spreadsheet to Google Docs, and the person maintaining the information has already ...

My current contract has me working in the Skyline Campus in Ottawa. This 8 building complex was purchased by PWGSC back in 2003 when it was still occupied by Nortel. It is now occupied by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). This is the end of my first week at this new location, and more AAFC people are moving into this campus all the time. It seems that not everything was cleaned up from when Nortel was here. On the 2'nd floor mens room there is graffiti which is clearly left over from Nortel. Some things seen on the walls of the stalls: "How the " (not to be blogged) "does Nortel expect me to feed my kids" "nolonger@nortelnetworks.com ---> welfare.org" An irony for those who know some of the mistakes that Nortel made that meant that they are in the hard times they are now: all the desks and conference rooms (and so-on) in this complex have Cisco IP phones.

The following was sent yesterday morning to CBC Morning and to my councillor Clive Doucet. I think we need to fire any councillors that still support Mr. O'Brien in this issue. I was appalled to hear on the radio this morning that Mr. O'Brien has injected himself as the sole representative of city council on this issue. I could say like some callers that I am "done" with Mr. O'Brien, but I was never with him in the first place. The only reason he is mayor is because we still use the antiquated First Past the Post electoral system. He was not the first choice of the majority of Ottawa voters, and if we used a modern ranked ballot voting system we would quickly have realized he wasn't their second or third choice either. I believe it is overdue for city council to put in a better representative, or speak individually as representatives of their constituents. We don't elect the Union, and they are only intended to represent the drivers. Councillors are...

I seem to have run into a number of problems with my video. I figured someone reading this might be able to offer some help, and getting some frustration off my mind might make me more calm. I broke a personal rule this year: I participated in boxing day shopping. The Samsung SyncMaster T220 LCD monitor was on sale for $200. Since I wanted to stop using my old tube monitors to save electricity, I figured this would be a good time to do this and I bought two (one for my desktop, one for my wife Rina). Took them home, plugged one into Rina's computer and it just worked right away. We set the resolution to a lower-than-maximum which was more to Rina's liking (1024x768). This computer is using the S3 Savage video built onto the motherboard (Chip: id 8d04, "ProSavage DDR-K"). It runs Ubuntu with xorg autodetecting everything based on a bare-minimum xorg.conf. I plugged the other one into my computer and the screen simply displayed “Not optimum mode. Recommended mode...