Wired 13.04: La Vida Robot

Wired 13.04: La Vida Robot

After reading this I feel like a real ass for not wanting to take the garbage out tonight, geez, these kids built a whole robot!

Made Me Cry

This post mad me laugh so hard when I was reading it to my wife I was in tears! I swear his mother and mine are the same person.
123 I love you: Screwed because I think I just had the same conversation with my mother a few weeks back.
We were painting the kitchen, i'm painting the ceiling.
Mom: "Are you going to paint the ceiling?"
"No I'm just holding this roller against the ceiling so the paint will drip on my eyes".
"You missed a section (pointing at the other end of the kitchen"
"I have not got there yet."
"I think the line you painted is crooked"
"Then we'll fix it on the second coat"
"Are you going to paint that end of the ceiling?"
......
Ah Mothers, we love them so.

Strata and my love for "TiVo"

About 4 months ago I had an ich to build my own "TiVo". Now, I'm not religious, so I thank the almighty Gates every day that we have this thing.

It's a thing of beauty if a non-geek type can love (Tech specs are at the end of the post for you geeks).

Why does this magnificent piece of silicon deserver so much blog time? Well where do I start?

1. Strata Meeting tonight ( would have missed Scrubs)
- I think that all of our normal manners get left in our suites before we mere humans go to a Strata meeting. I don't envy those on strata council one bit. Also, if you are at Council, listen to the questions being asked. If you have a hard time listening because you are trying to remember your question you want to ask, write your question down and listen to the ones being asked. This one lady consistently asks questions that were answered 30 seconds before she asks her question. Common!
2. Dinner with the inlaws (what would I do if I had missed Desperate House Wives?)
- The first thing my father in law said to me was: "Father Tim wants you to come to Church." I reminded him that I'm not Catholic. My wife is and she does not go, why would I? When I got married I made a promise to the Church - I would not stop my wife from going to Church, and we would raise our Children Catholic (at least I would not interfere in them being raised Catholic). But I NEVER promised to go to Church myself. I really am trying to figure out how an entire Church (not the religion) recruited and retained members through extreme guilt.
3. Day Job (well, OK, I could not have missed anything, but I really needed The Daily Show when I got home.)
4. Late Night work (countless countless past misses are all but forgotten.)

Now in the past, these would have caused countless minutes of cursing when I realized I would never know if the Simpson had another wacky adventure, or just a boring normal Sunday.

BUT NOT ANYMORE! Now I can come home, and watch 1.5 hours of TV in an hour and a half by skipping the commercials. Now that is efficiency!

And, my wife, who is very busy with work and shows, can watch all 18 different CSI and Law and Order shows whenever is convenient for her.

On top of not missing things, there is nothing like a Simpson marathon. You can easily record about 10 hours of the Simpson a week. The same goes for Seinfeld and The Family Guy. I also get the X-Files, The Apprentice, The Amazing Race, Alias, Medium, and new this week - The Office (freekin funny).

Now, one may say "But Adam, it seems like you watch way to much frickin TV!". But I counter that.

You see it is simple, we use to watch crap just because crap was on, and we would not necessarily get to watch things we like. Now, not only do we only watch what we want, but we don't have to watch the commercials. So I say, NO! I don't watch to much TV, but I do watch a lot of good TV :D

-----------------------------------------
**Ok you Geeks, here is what you wanted:

System Specs:
P4 3GHz with Hyper Threading
Radeon 9600 Pro video
1 x 200 GB 7200 RPM Hard Disk just for TV shows
3 x 30 GB drives for OS, DATA, Movies and other
1 GB DDR Ram
8X DVD +/- Burner
48X CD Burner
Optical out for sound
This is hooked up by DVI cable to my HDTV and is all controlled by remote control.

OS is Windows XP Media Center Edition.
- I tried about 8 different TV Recording / Watching apps, and this one was the most stable. It did not have all the features, but it does everything the average person needs, and it only crashed once in the last 4 months.

I also use it to play my Itunes collection on my stereo.

Back to my Tivoed (is that a verb yet?) Desperate House Wives.

Just as I figured

I took this questionnaire at the BBC website, it is a scientific study consisting of 6 parts that is suppose to be able to tell you if you have a more male or female brain.

It also told me I like more fimine faces (no surprise) and that I'm interested in systems of all sorts (again no surprise).

So, really it told me what I already new.

But it was still interesting. For one part in particular, they show a series of 3d shapes, one on the left and 4 on the right. 2 of teh 4 are matches to the one on the left, but the are all at different angels.

Well, 1/3 of men got 100% on this, but only 10% of women did the same. Quite interesting.

If you have about 30mins to kill, take the test and find out once and for all, if you are manly or girly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

Why do I watch this crap

I'm sitting on the couch watching TV. I flick through the onscreen guide and for some reason I flick to "What not to wear: Americas worst dressed couples".

Why am I watching this?

I want to change it, maybe throw in a movie or turn it off and read, but for some reason I am drawn in by the fact that I get to laugh at these people for the way that they express themselves through clothing. Now, I'm not the sharpest dresser, but I have to say, these guys dress kinda strangely. BUT, they dress this way because it is who they are. Why do the rest of their friends feel they need to change them?

Now they are getting the couples to say stuff about outfits their significant others are wearing, they are now laughing at each other and we all get to watch.

Update: A minute after I published this post they interviewed the couples after they had been torn down by the "fancy smancy" hosts of the show and teased about their clothes. One lady is crying, one wants to change her clothes, but could neve afford it. The guys were basically like "whatever, i'm happy the way I am, but since the clothes are free i'll do this".

This is television at it's best.

Living downtown, when you go out of your house, you see and meet all sorts of people. Now that I don't have a car (gone a week ago, since I work withing 100Meters of home, figured driving would over do it) I'm walking around quite a bit more, and I'm noticing that people are following me!

Now, I'm use to people asking me for some spare change, and I usually don't give change, but have bought the occasional cheese burger or coffee when someone really seems to need food. When they turn that down, they usually want cash for drugs and hey let's face it, I can't even afford to keep myself at an acceptabel intoxicated state let alone others.

Lately though, I'm not being asked for change, i'm just beeing followed with a cup. Take tonight for instance. I walked up granville from smithe, this girl on a bmx bicycle was following me on her bike with a cup in her hand. She was a couple of steps behind me, so I could only see her if I looked to my left, but she was holding the cup in my direction.

Now, I did not want to be rude (I am Canadian after all) but I had my ipod turned up and my earphones in, so I chose to pretend I did not notice her. Afte a block and a half she stopped to ask a group of teenagers for change - actually, she stopped because she saw this old guy walk up to one of the teenagers and take their lit cigarette from them and then walk away smoking it; it was pretty funny.

So I went to london drugs to pick up new headphones (the ipod ones always fall out of my ears, and they bug me), and then walked back down granville to Davie St. Down Davie I saw this woman who I see all over town asking for money. Almost every time I'm walking around I see her, and she just looks at me pitifully and put a white styrofoam cup in my direction. Now, I proably gave her change once or twice, but common, I can't do it every time. So I walk buy, again with the ipod on choosing to ignore the advance. A minute later I glance to my left and she is right next to me about a pace behind with her cup in my direction!

Was there some kind of begging convention on that tought them to use this following technique or is this just me?

Maybe I just look like I'll cave in and give them a buck, I don't know.

If I were needing change, I would find some way of earning it through entertainment. There was a guy in gastown a few years back that would tell you an original poem that he made up on the spot. That I will pay a couple of bucks for.

While on the topic, there is this one guy that stands outside of the London Druges on Robson at Bute who my wife and I both agree has the MOST annoying whiny begging voice in the city, if not the country. He is there almost every night, and has been for a couple of years. He says to every single person walking by: "Please sir/miss, can you spare some change", and this web page does not do it justice, you have to hear it to beleive it.

Ahhhhhh... the joys of living downtown.

Cookies

At my new job our department has a tradition that the rookies bake everyone cookies. They call them ... (drum roll).... "Rookie Cookies".

So, I have spent the last 4 hours cooking 154 cookies. I need about 250, but I bought the wrong stuff and now have to go back to the store to get some more cookie making stuff.

I was going to do the entire thing from scratch, but my wife who is wise beyond her years suggested I use these bags of mix that i just add eggs, butter and some water... man am I glad I listened to her.

I think the worst thing about cooking all these cookies is that I can't eat any as there won't be enough for everyone if I do.

I'm also not sure how I will distribute them, I'm sure they have a system for this.

I usually like to have a beer while I'm cooking, but I don't usually bake cookies, or anything for that matter, is it wrong to drink beer while baking cookies? I feel like I should be drinking milk or something.

What about a beer flavoured cookie? They have oatmeal cookies, they have oatmeal stout beer, why not outmeal stout beer cookies?

Things that do not make sense

I saw this article on Slashdot today: "New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense"(New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense - Features). It is a list of 13 things that do not make sense - most of these items have cause some deep and profound problems for some of physics generally accepted theories, without which all of our rules for explaining the Universe fall apart.

I found this quite interesting, and it got me thinking of other things just as profoundly confusing that just don't make sense in this world.

So I thought that I would write my own list of things that just make sense, but funny that, i had writers block.

Here is a start, feel free to add:

1. Why is it that the simpsons have not aged over the last 13 years? Come on, we can tell, just make the kids a year older at least.

2. I know university graduates who can't read a map - how does this happen?

3. ...

A little bitter....

Ok, as my friends will tell you, I tend to get a bit bitter at companies who do things that don't make sense or just piss me off.

I had to go to aircare yesterday. I have a 2002 car, so I only have to go once every two years. Great! you say... that will only cost half as much!

But WAIT! It does not work like that. The f****ers charge more for the newer cars. Here is the price structure:

1991 or older car: $26/year
1992 or newer car: $47/every two years

What!? How can this be you ask?

That is right, on new cars, they only test 1 time every two years, but you pay $1 more than the older cars, who get tested once a year.

THIS MAKES NO SENSE! Why pay more for half the work? I hate blatently obvious cash grabs! If they made me go each year I would not like it, but i would not feel as ripped off.

I had a simmilar problem at the Keg in Whistler. We went for New Years Eve. I ordered a New York Steak Classic dinner. The waitress asked very causally - "Do you want some peppercorns on that?".

Now I had looked at the menu and I new that the price difference between the New York and the peppercorn New York was $1.00. Yes a buck. So I said, well, ok, but can you put the stuff on the side?

So the steak came, it was undercooked, and peppercorns were cooked right into it. It was OK.

When the bill came, there was a charge for peppercorns as expected. $5.95! That is right SIX FRIKING DOLLARS FOR PEPPERCORNS!!!!!

Now, I don't mind paying for them, even 6 bucks if that is what it costs. But it is the principal of the matter. Whey would it be a $6 difference on this meal versus a dollar on the other?

Man it gets my blood boiling.

Anyway, don't tell my wife I was talking about the peppercorns, she hates it when I talk about the peppercorsn.

Feeling a bit better after venting.

Correction.

Actually I'm 26. I can't even remember how old I am.

And my wife says I act like i'm 12

Saw this on Blogthings.com. Suppose to tell you what age you act.

You Are 25 Years Old

25 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Good thing, because I am 25. Hah! See honey, I doooo act my age... nananananaaaanaaaaa!

Geek Etiquette � The Poo Rules

Geek Etiquette - The Poo Rules

I saw this and immediately thought of a friend of ours Christian. For some reson, all of our friends know WAY more about his bowel movements than we even know aobut our spouses or anyone else for that mater. It is funny most of the time but his wife really gets annoyed with it. His co workers call him 2 by 9. He is so regular you can set your clock by them. Anyway, the Poo Rules have just been emailed to him.

Blogs I have seen afar

Sharon is away on business for the week so I have a lot of free time. This actually combined with the fact that really I have no work to do this week until Thursday afternoon and Friday, which is my last day at the current job.

So I have been reading a lot of blogs. I love that little button at the top of the blog page that says "next blog". Every click is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. (The honest truth is that I wasn't sure what type of stuff I should write in a blog and so I was peaking at other blogs for ideas.)

Having said that I have noticed a few themes as far as the types of blogs that are out there. I have found some really intersecting information, some hilarious links and a lot of garbage as well.

Here is are some of the types of blogs I found:

1. Political blogs. Now I'm Canadian, but as a most Canadians I follow US politics about as much as Canadian politics (not that I follow either a lot). So I know that currently the US political scene is about as divided as possible. C'mon, I watch the Daily Show, I know what is going on.

So Republicans Unite, democrats for Peace, my Political blog, and on and on. The only thing I think of when I see these sites is "why the heck would anyone want to read this boring crap". I have yet to find a single Canadian Political blog - I'm sure there may be one or two out there - but they will not be as numerous as the US political blogs. I would not want to read the Canadian ones either.

Politics boring me...

2. Religious. Yup, the top number of sites I have found have been the two things you are not suppose to talk about: Politics and Religion. It is just good manners, I was brought up that you don't talk about these things with people you don't know to well as it is possible to offend. So why is it then that these bloggers feel the need to talk about these things in the most public forum of all? Well, after thinking about this for a while I figured it is because as public as a blog is, it feels somewhat private as no one is "here" so to speak. No one can immediately start arguing with me right now, and even if they do I can just delete their comments.

Jesus, Buddha, Athiest, Satan, and I'm sure some of those languages I could not understand spelled out the bloggers feelings on their own God who is unknown to me.

Some of the religious sites were preaching on behalf of their god, some ranting at their god, some mocking their religion or the religion of others. One spoke of a missionary who met someone who would be stoned by their own family if their family found out they had converted to Catholism. Freaky.

As a point of mention, I have no specific Religous sect that I belong to, take part in etc. My wife is Catholic and so I have spent a few Christmas eves in Church with her while she sings in the Choir. I always feel out of place there, but that is another post. I have not studied any religion to the point of being able to tell if I would take part fully in one. I know that I see things in the most public of Religions that we see in the news everyday that I do not understand and do not agree with, and things that make sense.

Huh, I guess I have answered my own question on this one, the reason I think people blog about religion and politics is because people feel so passionately about both of these topics. It is always easy to speak convincingly about something you know and you are passionate about.

3. Link Farms. Yup, blogs are a huge repository of link farms.

Example: http://headache-relief.blogspot.com/

This is a blog that has the sole purpose of having search engines place the site they are promoting higher in search results. This is a tricky but most likely somewhat effective to increase your visibility on the internet.

4. Poetry.
Things like this:
self-imposed
dot my I's
cross my t's
the burdens of
being me

This was not from me, but from someone who's blog claims they have a fondness of big words. I have never been into poetry, and most likely couldn't write a poem to save my life... Or could I :0)

Adams TV Haiku:

Survivor and Lost
Law and order CSI
My week on TV

5. Vacations
Well this seems obvious. I have friends who have traveled Europe, Asia and other areas of our beautiful planet, and have sent us emails every few days. That is great, but it is better on a blog. Why? It is permanent and maintains context. You can post pictures and links. Vacation blogging should be mandatory for any trip over a week.

6. Family. This is always interesting. Peoples lives are generally interesting as they are different from our own.

Family posts come in many sorts. New Baby. Sick Sibling. Rambling about family members.

One blog I was reading a frustrated mother was writing about her son who seems to have what would most likely be described as ADD, but is most lilkely due to being bored. She takes him to gimberee, he is not interested and seems to be in his own world. She mentions that all the other kids do all the moves, and do them well, but her some will not, and just seems to do his own thing and not pay attention. She takes him to a class where he is not interested, until the teacher starts talking about food, and then he is interested and asking questions and participating, once this topic is done, he is no longer interested and goes back to his own world. She finds this quite frustrating and then remembers and incident that she had when she was 17 and attending some classes for gifted children. She realizes that he is a lot like her. She is frustrated, but obviously loves her son.

Another mans blog with a title something like "living with a bipolar child" describes living with his two children, one bipolar and one with ADHD. The description of the site mentions all the drugs his son is on.

7. Single Posts.
Some people start a blog, post one thing, and never return.

8. School, boys and icky stuff like that.
Teenage life is so complicated.

9. Work.
Not to much on the specifics, or you can get fired. www.dooce.com.

10. Random other strange items and inner thoughts.
These are the most interesting as far as I can see. Duncan wrote 13 paragraphs on The Lost Art of The High Five. Common! That is good writing! Who would of thought such a thing could be done? The NewYorkIntern did an experiment with google adsense (the ads from google you see on the right of the page). He put a bunch of really strange phrases in a post to see if it would affect the type of ads that come up. The results were that google is not funny.

11. Misc.
Everything else.


All in all there is some pretty strange stuff out there. What does it all mean? As Napolean Dynamite might say "How the HECK should I know!?"

I came across this at Darren Barefoot's Blog (www.darrenbarefoot.com) :
http://www.brightcoop.com/livehaul/ez_video.htm
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am not a vegitarian, or even close to one. I like meat. I know about all the horrible things that are done to animals, but I, like most of the rest of the world, just try to not think about it as I go on with my daily activities. This type of thing still freaks me out though.

One part of me is amazed at the engineering and just completely strange and brilliant thoughts that went into designing this machine, and another part can't help but cringe as the chickens are flung through the machine.

DVDs
I received my first 4 DVDs from zip.ca today via express post. They shipped Friday, and arrived Monday, not bad. I'll be trying to get them back tomorrow to see how fast the turn around on the next set will be.

Napoleon Dynamite
If you like dark comedies, different comedies, you have a strange sense of humour, or just have two hours to spare, this movie is good. The more I think about it the funnier it is.

Anyway, Napoleon is a teenager with absolutely no social skills. He is what we might call weird, or a dork, or a weird dork. He lives with an almost equally strange group of family members and makes some strange friends.

Anyway, I saw this linked from someone else's blog and thought I'd share. http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-243.htm

Rent this movie if you like to laugh and are not only into the usual Hollywood comedies.

To blog or not to blog... about work

I was just reading slashdot and it pointed to this article on CNN regarding people who were fired for things they posted on their blog to do with work. Really makes you think twice before posting anything in such a public forum. Having said that, some of the things they got fired for were not quite fair in my opinion. This one lady from Delta Airlines got fired for some pictures of her in her uniform... nothing racy, just playful. And one lady (dooce.com) now has a word in the the urban dictionary from her getting fired. DOOCED: to lose one’s job because of one’s website.

I wonder how many people have been given jobs because of what is in their blog. I'm sure the numbers are equally low as those who have been dooced.

On a pretty geeky note, I was reading this article on how to set up your own PBX system using Linux and a peice of open source software called Asterisk. For a couple hundred bucks max you can have a full fledged PBX with voicemail, VOIP access, faxing and fax forwarding to email, and on and on. and that is just cost for hardware, the software is free. http://techdatapros.com/asterisk/ is where the how to article is. I think if i can get an old pc that is powerfull enough I will try this out.

Sharon and I went for some butter chicken and curry on Friday night at India Gate restaurant. We have had take out from there before, but I did not find it very good. Well we went back because there is a coupon in the entertainment book and a lot of reviews on the web said it was good. Well we really enjoyed it. Really good butter chicken, great service, clean and nice atmosphere, and not to expensive.

We went over to future shop after to get some blank DVDs to backup movies to ;0). While there, i was showing sharon the HP Media Center Z545, the coolest media center pc currently available. Someone had put some songs on there including a rendition of "Baby it's cold outside" by Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey... man that is the worst thing I have ever heard.

Sharon is off to Denver tomorrow for the week. It is the first time she is travelling on business. So I'm baching it for the week, that will involve pretty much the same as usual, minus Sharon sleeping next to me. I'll miss her but she's back friday!

DVDs

Last week i cancelled some shaw services, shaw extreme, the movie channels, Independent film channel, tech tv. We don't really use them anymore as we are recording tv shows on the normal channels. We have so much tv that we can't always watch it, so why pay for these other services we don't use.

So, instead, i'm trying out www.zip.ca. It is an online DVD rental company. You pay $25/month, they send you 4 dvds at a time, you watch them, send them back in the pre addressed envelope, and then get 4 more sent to you. There are a few companies out there that do this, but this one has the best selection of movies, and the nicest interface on their website.

I added about 50 movies to my "Zip List". This is the list of movies I want them to send me, they have shipped the first 4 today:

The best of Triumph the Insult Dog
The Delicate Art of Parking
My Little Eye
The Terminal

I'm going to try this out for a month or so and see how it goes, depending on how long it takes to ship, this may or may not be a good deal. It is nice to be albe to research some good movies and then just search the site and add them. I always hated looking for movies at the movie store because you never know if they are good or not. This site you get user reviews, they have their own "critics" who recommend movies, and you can check reviews on other sites as well.

New Job, New web site

Well it is official. I have taken a new job as a Customer Support Engineer for Server products with Business Objects.

Business Objects is one of the largest software companies in the world. In Vancouver they are known for buying out Crystal Decisions a couple of years ago. Their products are business intelligence products. Really cool stuff if you are into business, data and making things more accessible to the people running businesses.

I start March 14th. The best part... the office is right across the street for our apartment :D

I am most likely going to be completly inactive with Nerds, but not gone. I don't want to close any doors. There is a small chance that I may help with some things in my free time, but that remains to be seen as of right now.

I've also finally got my new website up and running. www.CheapEatsToday.com is a website to find deals at restaurants in Vancouver. Basically, if it is Tuesday night, and you want a good meal, but you want a deal, go to the website, under Tuesday and see what is available.

I'm also want to do a website for good food in Vancouver. Not expensive food, just good. I would review places with my friends as we all love great food.

Christian and I have been doing this thing Tuesdays where we go for some cheap good food, then watch a movie. Now his brother Reiner and Dylan are starting to come. We all love food, cheap food, good food. Makes sense to tell others what we find.

I'm finding myself a little bored at night lately, probably because Sharon is so busy with rehersals. I'm looking forward to seeing her next show wich is Guys and Dolls. Anyway, I guess I should do something... excercise...read...go out... but i just seem to watch tv. I think i will at least try to watch more movies.


Anyway, all for now.