| Weblogs at Western |
[Aug. 25th, 2005|11:44 am] |
Welcome to everyone that is visiting Redune.com for the first time. I hope that all of the readers that are coming in from Weblogs at Western will keep on coming back again.
I am currently hosting my weblog off of livejournal due to the fact that I am moving back to London this weekend. I have been working in Waterloo for the last 16 months at Maplesoft on an Internship.
I hope to have the weblog back over on my own server as soon as possible. Hopefully that will be some time next week. In the meantime, feel free to browse around my livejournal and also check out my Photos on Flickr.
I'm also glad to see that UWO has chosen one of my photos to be highlighed on their photoblog. Once I'm back in London, I'll be taking lots of photos of UWO and area and hope to see many more of my shots there. |
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| Finally Coding |
[Feb. 15th, 2005|11:19 pm] |
As you can see below, I actually have been spending some time doing development on my own time. This is a great feeling. I am actually working on the new website that I've been dreaming about for a couple of months now. Maybe it will be something really big, maybe it won't. I sure want to get it working. For a teaser check out EPIC.
I'm making good progress at the small first steps. I've got a lot of work ahead of me before something useful comes out of this, so we'll see what happens.
Wish me luck!View this post on my main blog |
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| Flickrpress 1.0 |
[Feb. 14th, 2005|11:55 pm] |
I have created a php script entitled Flickrpress. This script will get all of the photos uploaded to flickr by a specific user in the last 24 hours. It will then post the thumbnails to a Wordpress blog. You can see the results here.
To use the script, just download the source and place it on your web server. Then set up the script file to be run daily. The full instructions are located in the source file.
Download the source
Download the daily script file
Please add any questions or suggestions to the comments. Any feedback would be appreciated!View this post on my main blog |
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| Flickrpress |
[Feb. 14th, 2005|12:02 am] |
Well I just whipped up a cool php script that automatically checks Flickr and gets the pictures that I uploaded to the site in the last day. It then posts the thumbnails to my weblog.
You can see the results in the post below.
I based this on a script that gets my links of the day from del.icio.us. You can also see the results of this running below.
I will be setting up proper installation instructions shortly so that all Flickr and Wordpress users can check it out!
Update: The full information on the plugin can be found hereView this post on my main blog |
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| 50 Gmail invites |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|05:08 pm] |
I just noticed that I now have 50 gmail invites available.
If anyone wants to get onboard with the kick ass thing that is Gmail, comment or send me an e-mail, and I'll send you an invite.View this post on my main blog |
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| Comment Spam |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|05:05 pm] |
Well it looks like the thing that I've been safe from for a while has finally hit.
I'm getting a lot of comment spam. If you take a look at any of the below entries, they all have a comment by "Texas holdem". He is just trying to get Google to see all of the links back to his website so that his website will rise in the search rankings.
I'm going to have to implement something to stop that. Blarg!
Update:
Well, I just installed the WPBlacklist plugin and I was able to delete tons of spam comments. Over 500 of them! I had no idea the problem had gotten so bad. Hopefully the plugin will be able to stop them from posting any new comments as well. If anybody finds any spam getting through the cracks, please let me know!View this post on my main blog |
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| The Width of a Horse's Ass |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|11:59 am] |
Eithne Sent me this:
The joys of backwards compatibility...
Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they usedfor building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing..
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.
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View this post on my main blog |
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| Lonely Tree |
[Feb. 1st, 2005|07:16 pm] |
I took this on a wonderful photo walk that I took with LL on Sunday. It was so beautiful in London that day. You can see the rest of the great pictures at this Flickr Gallery.
This tree was standing by itself in someone's front lawn. It is nearly completely covered in snow. I was amazed that the bulbs are still on it.View this post on my main blog |
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| The Age-Old Light Bulb Question |
[Jan. 31st, 2005|10:50 pm] |
My Tante sent me this, she certainly wouldn't have actually gotten even 1/4 of these jokes. They all are pretty good. But you definitely need a lot of computer experience to properly get most of them.
Q: How many Windows programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 472 -- One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle(), one to write WinQueryStatusLightBulb(), one to write WinGetLightSwitchHandle()...
Q: How many telephone support technicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: We have an exact copy of the light bulb here, and it seems to be working fine. Can you tell me what kind of system you have? Okay. Now, exactly how dark is it? Okay, there could be four or five things wrong...have you tried the light switch?
Q: How many managers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: First. although we've heard reports from the field of light bulbs burning out, we believe that they are isolated incidents and do not provide sufficient proof that light bulbs burn out and need to be changed. Second, the bulbs that do burn out do so because of customer error. Third, the technicians that reported the burned-out light bulbs have been reported to Human Resources as not being team players.
Q: How many testers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: We just find the problems, we don't actually fix the problem.
Q: How many Microsoft technicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 3 -- 2 holding the ladder and 1 to screw the bulb into the faucet.
Q: How many MIS guys does it take to change a light bulb?
A: MIS has received your request concerning your hardware problem and has assigned you request service number 39712-A. Please use this number for any future references to this light bulb issue.
Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: You're still thinking procedurally. A properly designed light bulb object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class, so all you'd have to do is send a light-bulb-change-message.
Q: How many developers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The light bulb works fine on the system in my office...
Q: How many shipping department personnel does it take to change a light bulb?
A: We can change the light bulb in seven to ten working days, but if you call before 2 pm, and pay an extra $15, we can get the light bulb changed overnight.
Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Bill Gates will just redefine Microsoft Darkness™ as the new industry standard.
Q: How long does it take a DEC repairman to change a lightbulb?
A: It depends on how many burned-out bulbs he brought with him.
Q: How many Newton users does it take to change a light bulb?
A: FouR there to eAt LeMons, axe gravy soup.
Q. How many computer geeks does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "What, you mean it's dark in here?"
Q. How many database people does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three. One to write the light bulb removal program, one to write the light bulb insertion program, and one to act as a light bulb administrator to make sure nobody else tries to change the light bulb at the same time.
Q. How many IBM engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. They just let Marketing explain that "Dead Bulb" is a feature.
Q. How many IBMers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7502439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank," and 20% of the
definitions are of the form "A...consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks."
Q. How many Macintosh users does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. You have to replace the whole motherboard.
Q. How many IBM PC owners does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but he'll have to go out and buy the light bulb adapter card first, which is extra.
Q. How many system administrators does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Just remove the rights of everybody allowed to go into the room.
View this post on my main blog |
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| Back Up |
[Jan. 27th, 2005|10:11 am] |
So, yesterday morning I arose to find out that the Internet was not working correctly in my apartment. This was a touch upsetting, but I blamed it on Rogers (My ISP). Turns out that it was actually a problem with my Smoothwall firewall. I have replaced the firewall with a generic D-Link router, and it turns out that this little thing does pretty much everything that I need.
I still do want to give m0n0wall a try though. It looks very cool, but I think I'll have to replace some hardware from my old beater first. We'll see.
Please let me know if you find any problems with my site.View this post on my main blog |
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| Home in the Cold |
[Jan. 20th, 2005|09:17 pm] |
Boy it was cold out there today. For todays picture I decided that on the way home I would get off the bus one stop late and walk back and take pictures on the way.
As always, the rest of the photos are available at this Flickr Gallery.
This is actually a pet hospital, but it does look like a home. And boy was it cold!View this post on my main blog |
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| Off to Video Shop |
[Jan. 20th, 2005|05:50 pm] |
I think that I will finially be getting the video card that I've been dreaming about for so long today. I'm looking forward to that. We'll have to see what the prices are like and if the card is still in stock...
I'll update again tonight. Hopefully with another POTD as well. (Aren't I doing well lately?)
Update: I decided against the purchase for now... I'll wait and see how the prices change. Maybe I'll get my dream LCD and video card in one bang.View this post on my main blog |
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