rob was here.

Lately there has been some remodeling going on at my parents house (where I currently reside since I've absconded from the university).. Right now the focus of the remodeling is in the area of the front porch, laundry room, and the like. The floor is being prepared for some tile to be fitted down and what not.

A sudden consequence of this remodeling is that hot water boiler will be removed tuesday morning, and won't be re-installed until saterday at the earliest. Upon first hearing the news, I kind of shrugged this fact off.. but then I realized.. that's 4 days without ANY warm or hot water. For anyone not in Newfoundland, it's getting damn cold outside now (.... And thats where the water comes from... From the outside.)

Now. I'm a 2 shower a day kind of guy. I have to have a shower every morning or I won't be able to function correctly till around 3pm, and then I usually want another shower around 6-8pm.. I'm not sure what the purpose of that second one is, I just like "rebooting" myself before I go on to whatever I'm going to do that evening.

In these 4 days with only on-the-edge-of-freezing water, I am prepared to do whats necessary to uphold my 2 shower-a-day routine. It all comes down to technique.

My morning shower usually lasts anywhere from 15-20 minutes, depending on how awake I am.. The first few minutes typically consisting of me just standing there, head down and eyes closed in a trance like pose, letting the water punish down on me till I awaken up enough to actually start soapin' up, as they say.

This first stage has to be completely removed. There exists no room for error.

My maximum shower time has to be shortened from 15-20 minutes, to a 4-5 minute power shower, which will be composed of a stunning display of quick movements and cat-like reflexes as I dodge in and out of the shower stream - only bouting myself with water when absolutely necessary.

The second shower of the day is usually shorter than the first, as I don't require the wake-up period at the beginning.. This one will be reduced from it's current 8-10 minutes, to a 2-4 minute ultra time-bending warp shower. Theres no explaining my movements and planning for this one, as they will be probably be determined on the fly.

Now, I'll see how the first half-day day goes (as it starts tuesday when I get home from work), and see how the whole process works out.

Pray for mojo.


oh god.

You will notice that I've recently placed a few software promotional logos at the bottom of the right-hand column of my blog. Check them out!

Why put these things there, you ask?
Why, to support the little guys, says I!

These are some great open-source applications which I use daily at either home or work.. or both.. I also wanted to put a "get java" logo there, as java is my favourite language/technology for software development, however sun (the java guys) appear to be very protective of their logos! check it out!

What's better?

1) A small amount of code that works good, all of the time

2) A large amount of code that works great, most of the time

For anyone who's up on the latest technology, you'll know that very recently Apple Computers have added video capability to their iPod music player and iTunes software. I really think that this, in concept, is a swell move and I commend them on their transition.

The new video iPod looks fantastic, and the idea of taking around your home-videos or downloaded tv-shows and music videos is really forward-moving. I was amazed by the concept that they have partnership with ABC which allows you to purchase their shows right off of iTunes and put them on your computer and iPod.

"Wow! This is great!" is what I thought at first, until i realized that I already downloaded my favourite ABC shows in high definition (HDTV) xVid MPG4 format soon after they aired on television.. What does this new apple format offer me that my current routine doesn't? Besides the fact that you have to pay 2 dollars per episode with Apple?

Until now, I've always thought that downloading a past-aired episode of a cable show was no different than recording it on your VCR, TiVo, or PVR. Essentially, it has already aired on my house through cable, and I've had ample means and opportunity to record it for my own viewing pleasure. I thought to myself, "Self, does the fact that I have to pay for these shows using iTunes mean that I should be paying for them when I download them from whereever else?? What about Fair Use??"

Fair Use (better known as Fair Dealing in Canada) is the legal mumbo-jumbo which outlines what you can and can't do in terms of copyright infringement. It was always my understanding that the reproduction of copyright material for one's personal use was legit under the policies of Fair Use, and this goes doubly for copyright material which you yourself have purchased. Copyright infringement that is not for one's own personal use (which includes outright distribution) or for one's personal gain is not covered under Fair Use, and thus is illegal.

Under these guidelines, I (and many of you) have done things like record songs off the radio as a lad or ladette, or taped off your favourite t.v. show with your VCR. Nobody can or could touch you for doing these things: it's Fair Use.

This brings new questions to mind. Is downloading a t.v. show off the internet different that recording it onto your tivo or with your VCR? It's a different methodology of obtaining your show, but in the end the results are the same. The only catch is the mechanism of internet transfer. With a method such as bittorrent, you are (perhaps unknowningly or unwillingly) distributing packets of data from your download to other downloaders. You are becoming a distributor. The issue gets deeper..

This then leads into the question of if it is legit to download a pre-aired t.v. show using a internet transfer protocol that doesn't support a cooperative distribution network? Again, the net result in terms of personal use of a single user is the same which ever way you look at it.

I'm not asking these questions with any kind of answer in mind to give you: I seriously don't know if downloading a T.V. show in Canada while you legitly pay for the cable station it airs on is an illegal activity or not.

I'm not blaming Apple for hurting the seemingly downward slide of fair use, but they certainly arn't helping with their DRM (Digital Restriction Management).. Essentially they are making it impossible to play the media on anything other than Apple hardware (iPods) or software (iTunes). Talk about a lock-in. That said, I will probably try it at somepoint if I miss an abc show (the only one I watch is LOST), just to do a fair comparison of quality/capability compared to the HDTV downloads that I usually try to obtain.

Hopefully, Apple's DRMs will continue to be cracked under projects such as hymn so you can use the hardware and software you want with your apple purchased media.

Wow, what a weekend. On Friday I departed for the seemingly familiar shores of Nova Scotia, to visit my girlfriend. On Friday I was treated to an IMAX film of Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon.. a documentary put together by Tom Hanks. It was quite an interesting film about the personal devotion and engineering hardships the 12 moon-destined astronauts had to endure to get where they did. I recommend seeing it if you're able. Then, it was onto mini glow-golf. Quite interesting for sure! Think glow-bowling... only replace "bowling" with "mini-golf" and you have an idea.




Saturday was filled with just driving around Dartmouth and Halifax doing some shopping, and on Sunday we drove to truro to visit my brother and his wife at their home. I noticed some green frogs (one of eight frog species present in Nova Scotia) in my girlfriends front yard.. Here's one:




Finally, this morning I flew home to be welcomed by a thanksgiving feast.. I'm still quite full and content. Alas, the weekend is over, and it's back to work tomorrow.

Alas, I have finally decided to take down my telnet bbs, seventy-seven melt. It started off as a means for me and my classmates to play text-based door games (such as lord and bre) back when I was in term 7 engineering.. and I must admit, it was quite fun back then!

However, those times are gone, and I don't have the drive or resolve to keep the thing running and deal with problems when they come up. The only users who still frequent the server are a gaggle of usurper players (who I assume found the board through various places I plugged on the internet some time ago).. At any rate, I appologize to those players for cutting the cord at such short notice, especially players who spent so much time developing their usurper characters.

I just checked out the board statistics and I am amazed to see that there are 173 registered users, and around 6500 logins over the last 18 months or so that the board has been public.

I shall keep the board's binaries and data files for novelty's sake, and you never know, someday I might put up another server :)

A funny quote from a classmate from back in the day, regarding lord:

This will probably sound like the geekiest thing ever, but it's pointless to attack the dragon unless you have a fairy in your pocket. --MBW.

the melt: march 2004 - october 2005.