Old. Very old.

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Arthur

A couple of years ago, we were staying right in town for a couple of months: For our groceries we drove to the Sobey’s at McAllister’s. We always took our dog with us, which meant that one of us went inside the store and the other hung around with our 17 year old dog.

On one Saturday morning it was my turn to stay behind and I decided to sit down on the sidewalk. Suddenly, we were approached by a young fellow, who carefully and gently approached the dog, let her sniff his hand. He looked at me and then said that ‘he loved dogs’ and that he could tell right off the bat that this dog was extremely old. I told him he was close and that she was almost 17 or so, as we were never really sure if she was 16 or 18. Upon my question, how he could tell she was old, he said of her ‘composure’ (shoulders down) and her lack of interest of anything happening around. After a brief chit-chat, the youngster patted our dog for one last time, waved and walked away.

I only mention this story as the situation was a sort of surreal: me and the dog, relaxing on the sidewalk and an (obvious) dog-loving person paying his respects to our dog. You don’t see that all too often.

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Return to mail

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Arthur

So once in a while, this blog acts as my right-side brain part. I’ve mentioned Eudora plenty of times on this blog and back in 2006, I reported on the ‘open-sourcing’ of this Grande Olde Dame of e-mailing (Oct 11th, 2006 and June 24th, 2007 and Sept. 5th, 2007). Technically, Eudora OSE (as it’s formally called) is anything but Eudora: it’s more or less a ‘reimaging’ of Thunderbird (the Mozilla mailer), that is, with Eudora-style icons and graphics and some of the distinguishing features.

And to be honest, it smells and feels like Thunderbird: gone are Eudora’s excellent MDI interface, filtering methods and grouping of mailboxes. I’m not sure what the point was of the announcement of ‘Eudora going open-source’: it hasn’t really because some portions of the Eudora contained propriety code. Eudora (the actual client) is still available however and apparently, if you want to use it, you can find/get the appropriate (legal?) registration codes right from the Interwebs.

Should you care about mail clients these days? Since everybody is using on-line mail services these days, you might think there’s no point of using external mailers. On the other hand, a mail client would offer the possibility of making your own backups of your (own) e-mails and have them handy at your own perusal.

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Meanwhile in SJ

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Arthur

Way back in 1998 and 1999, I switched to the Gecko-flavoured Phoenix web browser, which eventually was renamed into the browser you now know as Firefox. When Chrome came out, what, 2 years or so ago, I switched mainly because Firefox was becoming a hog. Looking at the current installed browsers on my main machine (Chrome 8, Opera 11 and Firefox 4 Beta), all of them seem to have taken over Chrome’s UI choices. That is, main menus have gone and tabs are now part of (in Windows lingo) the main “Window Caption”.

Anyway: Since Google recently announced that they were going to stop supporting the H264 video codec (Mashable editorial, Google’s response to the announcement), I thought it was time to look back and try the current dev/beta of Firefox (Firefox 4 Beta). I could start with a snark about the best new feature of “Four” (the Feedback button), but honestly, it looks like the dev-team has actually made progress. Most importantly, Firefox finally seems to startup faster than the other browsers. And at least, at this stage,

So, is it time to return to the roots? Sort of: I’m not 100% convinced yet, but at least running Firefox would take care of that evil ‘Googletalk’ plugin that pesters my system. On the other hand: Firefox does eat up a lot of memory right from the start.

1 My famous 2006-ish browser timeline.

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In Vitro Music

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Arthur

Hey, it’s the new year and at xsamplex, we wish you a happy easter and a merry christmas. For 2011, that is. I only have a bunch of left-over links and for no reason, this posting’s title may have nothing to do with the contents:

Everybody and the world knows how much I heart the music of Kristin Hersh and the Throwing Muses: A long while ago I was going to mention her Cash Music initiative (which is an open model of media distribution, bypassing the large publishers and record companies), where fans can donate money to support her efforts. To be overly honest, I find her Throwing Muses ‘Season sessions’ lackluster. However, her solo-efforts are flawless: particularly her acoustic sessions in support of her book (‘Rat girl’) at the PBS (which you can find here and it includes all songs in downloadable format). ‘Gazebo Tree’ (listen) is the one that stands out.

Back in 2007, I reported about ‘how the sources to Buzz got lost’: yesterday I found out that Buzz is back in development (and has been now for a year or so). The main GUI is written in .Net/C# (Framework 4 required). If you’re not sure what Buzz is: it’s a (quite enhanced) midi tracker/wave mixer. At one time when I was using the old Buzz, it had excellent plugins that could convert single tracks to playable guitar chords. Or something like that.

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SAW

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Arthur

I‘ve played a bunch of on-line games, and while I was impressed with all of them, they always end up tiring out because the maps are too limited, your fellow players are too retarded, the enemies are too predictable or the AI is just outnumbering you. I’ve been picking up on ARMA2 multi-player, once again after a long intermission, and it’s like I’ve never left: the coop missions are still there and the community itself, from newbies to veterans, is always as helpful as ever in getting you through the mission. And as usual, the thrill to make it through after a carefully planned approach at the AO (definition) is… a good feeling: that is without feeling guilty that you hit your targets with an M249 SAW. It’s still a video game after all: a good one at that.

For example, earlier today, I parachuted in, joined up with a sniper team and advanced towards a small town. Everybody wants to be a sniper: for most people this means that they can hang far away from combat and get their ‘kill-list’ up. This works for most FPS, but not for ARMA2: if the AI gets hammered it will try to flank you or hit you back with superior suppressing fire. As I by experience knew what was going to happen, I positioned myself on the left flank and ended up with multiple run-ins with AI. Eventually someone hollered “What the hell is going on there”, I could only answer “Left flank uh clear, now”.

I do find that playing with more than 20 people online causes more confusion: that is, there are more friendly fires than normal because everybody is jittery and nervous when it’s time to do mop-ups or patrols. The only way to get around that is to team up with somebody or have someone team up with you: this happens fairly automatic though. You’ll thank your buddy for dragging you out of the line of fire and bandaging you if you get hit.

1 Youtube COOP Domination Multi-player.
2 Sample video how hectic it can be at times (foul language ahead)

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Data.

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Arthur

I woke up early with the thought of cleaning up and organizing this bunch of backup-CDs I’ve never touched since years. While I was tagging them one by one, I remembered this tool someone wrote for the MSX computer to archive and inventorize (that’s not a legitimate word) 3.5 inch disks (or ‘diskettes’ as we called them then). That would be a fun hobby project, if it wasn’t for time.

The net-result was that I didn’t find the data I was looking for: a huge archive of all my mails pre-2004, which I’m 100% certain were in some kind of Eudora archive. So, funny enough, I’ve got all my pre- and post 2003 sources (well, not all of them) but e-mails? Nope: it’s like that all my mail of the period between 2000 to 2003 disappeared in a black hole.

What I did find was interesting no-less: copies of Debian Sid, Woody and Sarge (god, I loved Sarge), old family photos from the time my mother-in-law was still alive, dad’s photos when he was over here, photos of a bunch of KDE hackers (apparently not mine), sources to a Delphi library to write and read BIFF files and recipes. Oh, and that copy of Wing Commander (the movie) that somehow made it onto one of my harddrives.

Mission not so accomplished. I think.

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From bridge to evolution

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Arthur

A bunch of links, collected from the Internet:

The prime-minister was in Saint John last Friday and gave away a freebie for the people of Saint John: The toll booths on the Saint John Harbour bridge will disappear. I’m not sure how much traffic hits that bridge (and the Harbour bridge authority’s website doesn’t really reveal a lot either), but apparently it has never been self-sustaining. I believe the fare is 50 cents, which when I heard the first time of this toll, I thought was really low.

You’ve probably heard that the TSA (the American organization that is responsible for the safety at airports) has changed safety rules, by enforcing pat-downs and using backspatter X-Ray machines (wikipedia). The use of those X-Ray machines is (still) controversial because of privacy concerns (MSNBC article with a proud ms. Hallowell showing off, well, her gun so to say. The lady’s photo is also used in ACLU’s campaign against this device). Anyway, Metafilter had a posting about the TSA apparently going amuck out of revenge against a traveller who dared to ask for an alternative screening of her breast milk because she’s afraid that X-rays might be harmful. Regardless if it’s harmful or not, what is exactly the point of X-Raying breast milk? And, yeah, what does the president think of this?

With Winter right around the corner and the snow already on the ground, please take a moment to read the drawbacks of our species’ evolution (link to Smithsonian) into standing hominids: backaches, hernias (that is a wikipedia link) and yeah, a 50-50 chance of choking because:

Simultaneously, our upright posture put the trachea and esophagus in a near-vertical orientation. Together these changes leave falling food or water about a 50-50 chance of falling in the “wrong tube.” As a consequence, in those moments in which the epiglottis does not have time to cover the trachea, we choke. We might be said to choke on our success. Monkeys suffer the same fate only rarely, but then again they can’t sing or dance.

So if you were watching Bristol Palin on ‘Dancing with the stars’ and you enjoy watching hominids dance: the combination of dancing and eating can be fairly dangerous.

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Fall. This.

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Arthur

We’ve finally had a 2 day nice weather stretch: Last week, we had so much rain (and for 5 days straight) that it didn’t surprise me that roads downtown flooded. I have no idea if this was a tropical storm or a combination of depressions swinging by the Maritimes. Not fun, particularly if you have to walk through it.

Three or four years ago, I bought the game Stalker (briefly mentioned here when I reviewed FarCry2): For some reason, I stopped playing the game. I recently re-acquired it and started it just a couple of days ago. I still stand by the opinion about the game (review coming up, some day, I think), however, I’m surprised how everything in the game looked so familiar. I got fairly far, so to say. This time, I’ll be taking my time.

I hate to bring TV commercials up on this blog, but SportChek’s latest commercials are hilarious, particularly the one with the lady, the son and the Chinese guy with the grease barrel can: a variant of that commercial can be found here. This is not the ‘crazy awesome’ version but it’s still absurd and funny.

Dec 4th, 2010: The “Crazy Awesome” commercial that I mentioned above is right on YouTube. Thanks SportChek.

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Mass Effect 2

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Arthur

I was going to write a rant about the current state of video games, but I just happened to finish off ‘Mass Effect 2’ (wikipedia) after 25 hours of (clocked) gameplay. That should tell enough.

Back in the early 90s when Origin Systems released ‘Wing Commander 3’ (wikipedia), the game was generally lauded as the first ‘Interactive Movie’: the game featured (beside the normal flight combat model) full-motion video cut-scenes and introduced an ‘interactive’ story line. Why do I bring this up? Everytime I play a Bioware game, it reminds me of playing WC3. From Knights of the Old Republic to Dragon’s Age (on xsamplex), each Bioware game is a game that features a linear combat system on top of an interactive story. And like the other games, Mass Effect feels extremely ‘boxed-in’ or ‘rail-roaded’ as some people prefer to call it: You cannot get lost and at all times combating enemies feels like a turkey-shoot fest. While the maps are gorgeous, I felt myself dragging my heels to get into combat just to get enough squad points (“what?”) to make it through the final missions (“huh, already”). And that’s basically the game: make enough squad points (“grind-grind”) so that the right story-line (“win! kerching!”) pops up at the end. Just like Wing Commander 3.

However, the storyline is incredibly compelling: there are the cliches and the ‘corny’ conversations, but generally speaking, the story is extremely well packaged. The story writers did extremely well at the end of the game despite the ‘run over the mill’ boss fight against the Reaper/Larve. The last fight can be described in the following words: “Hey, you’ve got to hit the eyes LOL”. Boring.

Is the game good then? Would I recommend it? Yes: sure, but only if it’s rental for consoles (Xbox, PS3). For the PC: I don’t know yet. If you’re into Bioware games you wouldn’t care about my words. If you’ve never tried Bioware games before, don’t let other games reviewers fool you: this is not an RPG nor is it a true third-person shooter. However, if you love interactive games, this game is definitely for you. You’re going to love to click the blue or orange texts or press the left and right buttons at the right time.

11/30/2010: Orange and Blue, via Reddit.

A couple of images after the fold.

Continue reading →

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Which twins?

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Arthur

If you look for twins on Google Images, the majority of the results show the oh-so-famous Olson twins. I only mentions twins here, because earlier, Gizmodo featured a story about a conjoined twin (the original story at Macleans): it’s a both fascinating and, in my opinion, a slightly sad story. The following bit made me laugh though:

They share thoughts, too. Nobody will be saying anything, and Tati will just pipe up and say, ‘Stop that!’ And she’ll smack her sister.

Since the brains of the twins are literally shared, BC doctors doubt that the twins can be separated particularly after discovering the ‘brain bridge. From the Globe and Mail’s article (written in 2006, mind you):

“It [the connecting tissue] is sort of the No. 1 highway that brings information to the surface of the brain, then delivers it down through the more basic functions and through the spinal cord. So it’s likely that there’s important wiring, so to speak, in that bridge.”

Obviously, the two (and family) seem to get the scientific (medical, rather) and moral support of the local community, which is something they’ll be needing. However, as hard as this is to say as a twin product myself, I’m mixed about conjoined twins. Fighting for their lives because of complex medical reasons is one thing: social acceptance in this society is the other.

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One world One voice

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Arthur

In 1990, the BBC broadcast the ‘One World One Voice’ documentary, a documentary to raise awareness of environmental issues. It was followed by an almost hour long chain of music, initially started as a tape by Kevin Godley (“10CC”) which he then shared with fellow musicians around the world. And quite a bit of musicians helped along: the list is so long, a good start is the Wikipedia article.

The result of all this, or rather, the mix is fairly good: there are highlights like Salif Keita’s piece and there are parts that could have been omitted (New Frontier). But the most outstanding part of the album is the Finale, which features Japanese Kodo drummers mixed in with a 2 minute or so classical piece performed by the Leningrad Symphony Orchestray. And not surprisingly, that’s today’s ‘Past the Bridge’ piece (
One world one voice 30+ some seconds). I’ve waited for a long time to see this clip appear on the Internet, but I guess, if you’re patient, everything will end up here: if you’re more interested in seeing the clip, or rather the whole documentary, try Youtube, of course.

I used to have the whole CD on one MD disk and if I was in a good mood I used to listen to the album from the beginning to the end: I don’t think a lot of people appreciated that, particularly when the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan faded in. Not that I loved his music, but it fitted quite well within, well, everything. I was not too old then, barely leaving my teenage years. An excellent age to discover World Music. An excellent age to terrorize fellow-train passengers with the sounds of World Music. An excellent age to discover that where ever music is played in the world, the notes always seem to overlap and that musical tunes, no matter where and how they are played, are truly universal.

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Walkmans

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Arthur

Sony has shipped the last cassette tape Walkmans to vendors (Crunchgear), according to multiple media outlets. It’s surprising that the Walkman was produced for this long: the very first Sony Walkman appeared in 1979 and was an instant hit. In today’s portable electronic devices market, Sony is sadly not a leading company anymore.

In the early 80s, I walked around with (non)-Sony portable cassette players: I think the only time I actually bought a Sony was a few years before I left for Canada, a thing I regretted instantly as I had already been moving to MD players. My very first ‘Walkman’ was an Erres (rather an Erres-branded Phillips thing): I’m not sure how much it cost those days or how I got the money to buy one. I think right after the Erres, I jumped on the Aiwa bandwagon: the very first one I bought was the one shown above. I didn’t know that Aiwa’s largest shareholder was Sony: In the early 2000s, Aiwa slowly slid to bankruptcy and was eventually bought up by Sony.

Anyway, there were good memories of having a walkman: one of them is that even back in the 80s news outlets reported that ‘more and more teenagers were getting deaf because of the use of walkmans’. They say that these days of iPods and MP3 players also. If you play loud music, of course you’re susceptible to getting deaf, but it seems that the media sometimes just sound like moral preachers stuck in repeating the same story every 10 years.

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It’s a plane…

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Arthur

It’s a plane, it’s a bird, no, it’s a new Canadian citizen.

So on October 20th of 2010 (20-10-2010, which is a highly remarkable set of numbers if I might say so), I became a Canadian citizen after having been living here now for 10 years. To celebrate that, I was featured on the CBC as well, a story you’ll find around here. Pay attention fooks because now you’ll finally discover what real Dutch people look like. Oh, wait, I already revealed that on the right here…

The event in Saint John was officially hosted by the CBC and despite the fact that it was a fairly underexposed event, it was attended by heavy-weights like the mayor of Saint John, Ivan Court (who had an excellent straight-forward speech about the economical value of immigrants), NB’s own Harry Forestell and an RCMP constable in full ceremonial dress. There were a host of other media people present, I saw the people from the regional newspaper around (I missed an opportunity to make a photo of one of the photographers). But mostly, this was about the immigrants who became Canadians: there were 62 of us from the different continents and countries.

As a new Canadian to fellow Canadians, stop drinking that Molson and drink real beer like, uh, Moosehead or something. Additionally, from now on, I won’t call your favourite sport ‘ice-hockey’ but just ‘hockey’.

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