The buds on our lilacs are opening. And I have a new macro lens! Can’t decide which of these I like better.

 › photos     2008-04-19 19:21   ...0 comments

Jay Leno did a bake-off between morse code and text messaging to see which one is faster. Watch it to find out if Motorola will be implementing a morse code SMS input mode on their next phone.

 › technology     2008-04-14 12:14   ...0 comments

Several years back I wrote about Captchas. By now we’re all familiar with them, they’re the little automated “please type these words” tests that websites use to stop automated systems from posing as users.

A very cool new project has popped up called Recaptcha that is getting users to digitize historical books by offering a captcha service to websites. They want digital copies of very old books, and scanning and using OCR (optical character recognition) just produces too many errors. What they do is take images of two words and present them as a captcha all over the net. You type the two words in, they get the help and you prove you’re human. It’s a great solution.

You can use this too. You can use their public “mailhide” api when you need to post your email address online. You post a link to their site and they reveal your real address only if a human correctly answers the captcha. It’s called Mailhide. Here’s my address: c…@orange-carb.org

Learn more about how Recaptcha works over here.

 › technology     2008-03-28 09:15   ...1 comment

I just spent three days in Co. Dublin and very much enjoyed my time there indeed. Here’s a few photos from the trip.

Bottles at the Guinness Brewery

Read the Complete Entry

    2008-03-06 10:34   ...0 comments

I have long said that I have done all the winter camping that I ever want to do. I am willing to make one amendment to that. Anyone wanting to send me for a few nights at ICEHOTEL is more than welcome to do so. This would be an awesome place to stay for a night or two. In a thermal sleeping bag on a bed of ice.

ICEHOTEL

    2008-02-19 15:14   ...4 comments

Sent today to the Citizen, a big improvement on the rant I sent around to councillors earlier.

Edited Feb 13 to add the revised version of this letter that was printed. The Citizen’s letter editor actually called me, we discussed the issue at some length and he suggested I take another run at the letter. This one is much less of a flame. I think it’s a better letter.

 › letters     2008-02-08 15:16   ...2 comments

Tom West’s whiteboard admonishment to his team — “not everything worth doing is worth doing well” &mdash was quoted by Tracy Kidder in Soul of a New Machine.

I have always wanted to live by these words, but it is hard for me to do so. (q.v. what you learn from a Ph.D.)

My boss Kevin just sent me a link to a great rant that makes this point using a different quotation: Better is the enemy of Good.

Actually, Voltaire’s quote is “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” which is pleasantly ambiguous: either better or perfect is the enemy of the good. You decide. Perhaps they are the same. To me, Voltaire’s quote actually illuminates West’s. West’s quote always had me wondering “should I do things poorly?” The truth is that good and done is better than well done but coming.

 › normative     2008-01-24 14:20   ...0 comments

The City of Ottawa has created Design Lansdowne. This is an online community (run by a pollster) for debate and discussion on the Lansdowne project.

Anyone can comment, and if you register you will get to vote on surveys they will be sending out that will help to shape the design competition.

    2008-01-24 11:44   ...0 comments

I just clued into the fact that Keltie is posting her 365 masks on a different blog than her regular one. It’s at 365 Masks.

    2008-01-24 11:42   ...0 comments

We’re finally done our long-awaited Home Edition of PhoneValet.

It has now shipped. I can go to bed.

    2008-01-14 04:11   ...2 comments

Sent today to the Ottawa Citizen:

 › letters     2007-12-11 14:28   ...1 comment

Jen is interested in environmental footprinting as a way of analysing environmental costs and benefits of various lifestyles.

Along the same lines, BLDGBLOG has an interesting essay today on the topic of the carbon footprint of internet servers. This is something I haven’t really thought about before, but it is true that even a small server room can pump out a lot of heat. Of course all this heat, and the energy to run the massive cooling systems that have to move it outside, come from electricity which has a fairly high carbon footprint.

One server (particulars not specified) is apparently equivalent to an SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. One data farm (particulars not specified) uses up to a small city’s worth of power, primarily for cooling. Makes you think about what benefit we are getting for the costs.

ETA: In other news, it turns out that divorce is bad too (for the environment that is).

 › environment     2007-12-03 17:45   ...2 comments

Well, there is a very long story behind this, but suffice it to say that I’m getting some firefighter training, probably next week. We’ll be going into a training facilty under live fire conditions and probably learning about smoke movement, and fire behaviour. I’m really looking forward to it.

Of course, you have to have the right equipment, including SCBA breathing apparatus. We were fitted for masks today and tested with computer equipment that makes absolutely sure that the masks work. In order for the mask to work it needs a very good seal with your face. For men, this means that you cannot have any facial hair from the corners of the mouth down.

This required me to shave. I have worn a Van Dyke beard since December 1999, so I was a little put off by this. But since beards do grow back, I decided to go ahead with it. Now my face feels a bit naked, and cold!

Of course, the opportunity is too good to pass up without documenting with photos — some people have never seen me beardless! So here’s me with progressively less and less hair.

Before

Click for the real me!

 › self     2007-11-26 15:45   ...4 comments

My proposal defence was this morning. Feeling quite tired out by it. I am told that it went well and I have nothing to worry about. I did feel a bit beaten up by the process, but I have been told that is part of the territory. There was one detail that I hoped would be easily put to bed that is still up in the air, so that is of some slight concern. However, all in all it seemed to go OK. I have not been asked to revise the proposal, and the work proposed has been deemed satisfactory for the degree if completed as promised.

 › school     2007-11-23 13:40   ...0 comments

I just found out about this cool non-profit site that fronts for microcredit institutions. You can lend $25 to someone, helping to back their microcredit loan. When the money is repaid by the person you get your $25 back to lend to a new person, or to withdraw from the system.

The site works with organizations that specialize in microfinance and who know how to recommend loans that are viable. The current default rate is 0.24%, on 23065 loans. There are currently 147525 lenders like you and me in their system. And if the loan does default, well a charitable donation of $25 is not going to break you, eh?

You don’t make any interest on the money, and the players along the way cover their costs with this interest. So it is more of a refundable charitable contribution than an investment. However, you are directly funding the person, so there is a social benefit.

I am thinking of getting involved in this.

 › cool     2007-11-22 13:16   ...0 comments

Halloween was a great success here. I’m sure we had well over 50 kids, the best costumes going to a listerine bottle and some rolaids or something.

Here’s our pumpkins for the year.

 › photos     2007-11-01 09:11   ...1 comment

I’m still irritated with the Mayor relating to the reconstruction of Lansdowne. I wrote him a letter, changed that into a letter to city council, and then edited it down for a letter to the editor of the newspaper.

I often do this, working a letter down from a first draft to an individual (that can be a bit longer) to a short — hopefully pithy — letter for the editorial page. I thought I would post all three versions here, so you can see how I do it.

The newspaper letter follows, click the link to read the other two versions.

Read the Complete Entry

 › letters     2007-10-04 10:44   ...1 comment

Cholesterol may be the most misunderstood substance in most people’s minds. And it’s all wrapped up with fat.

For years our mothers have been telling us to eat a diet low in fat, with lots of fibre-rich fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The problem with fat is that it has high calories (bad for most urban Canadians) and in the old days we believed that eating fat was a serious cause of heart disease.

In the old days we thought that eating fat boosted cholesterol in the blood, and cholesterol deposits in the bloodstream cause narrowing of the arteries. In the heart’s supply arteries a blockage causes a heart attack. We know that is bad. So we existed for many years with this view: eating fat causes heart attacks.

It’s understandable that people are a bit confused right now, because the view has become a bit more complicated. But it’s not so complicated that you can’t understand it. Just think about it a bit.

There are two types of cholesterol: HDL (we’ll call it good cholesterol) and LDL (we’ll call it bad cholesterol). Having lots of good cholesterol is good, because it cleans up bad cholesterol. You want more good than bad cholesterol, and preferably lots more. If your good cholesterol cleans up the bad cholesterol, then it doesn’t deposit in your arteries, and so you avoid a heart attack.

The evidence for the benefit of good cholesterol is getting stronger every day, to the point that today it was reported that keeping good cholesterol high is important even if you take drugs that artifically lower your bad cholesterol. In other words, it may have benefits beyond just cleaning up.

So where does this leave us with fats? Well, we need to realize that there are four broad classes of fat (for our purposes) and they have different effects on the good and bad cholesterol.

The worst fats are trans fats. They raise your bad cholesterol and lower the good cleaning-up kind. Most are in convenience foods. I try not to eat artificial trans fats at any time, and don’t worry about eating the trace amounts in milk and meat products.

Then comes saturated fats. They raise your bad cholesterol, but also raise the cleaning up good cholesterol. Best to limit them where possible, but I don’t declare war on them.

Unsaturated non-trans fats are the key! Eating unsaturated fats lowers your bad cholesterol and increases your good cholesterol. By doing so they reduce your risk of heart attack.

Of course, unsaturated fats are still high in calories, but as long as you don’t overeat, replacing trans fats with unsaturated fats is the way to good heart health!

 › health     2007-09-27 14:38   ...0 comments

The CFL has had a long history in Ottawa, but no one cares about football here these days. Recent team revivals have failed because Ottawa just can’t get too excited about sports. Sure, we all have fun if the Sens make the playoffs, but we are not a devoted team town.

That’s what is so annoying about the Mayor’s latest backroom deals with developers to see off Lansdowne Park. Trade a few hundred houses for a failure waiting to happen in the shape of another stab at the CFL. What is lost? A jewel of a site that everyone agrees is in poor shape.

The will is there to do something spectacular with that space, so why hand it to a developer on a silver platter?

 › letters     2007-09-26 12:18   ...0 comments

It is done.

It is almost as long as a thesis… Here are some stats: 58 single spaced pages, 27 604 words, 171 422 characters, 584 paragraphs, 2 201 lines. I wrote it over 23 days which is an average of 2.5 pages per day, or 1200 words per day. Of course, I didn’t write every day, but probably did something most days in that period.

Automated readability tests are quite funny. The fairly standard Flesch score is 24.37 (anything below 30 requires a college education). The grade is 17. The amusingly named Gunning fog index scores at 42, meaning the document requires 42 years of formal schooling to understand. Of course, I hope these are wrong as I tried to write clearly, but I guess it’s a hazard of the document type.

 › school     2007-09-20 23:47   ...3 comments