Month: January 2004

Rich and famous

So apparently, Clinton had only sent two pieces of email during his presidency. And one of them was only a test. (The other one was sent to John Glenn while he was on the space shuttle, which admittedly is pretty impressive.)

I wouldn’t really single out Clinton on this – I doubt Bush is an Outlook fiend either. It does make sense, if you consider that emailling is a fairly menial task and time is better spent, say, running a country. Why should they have to worry about macro virii or Windows crashes or herbal Viagra spam? That’s what their entourages of executive assistants and secretaries are for.

Of course, this begs the question: how in touch are they really with their people? They are all older, wealthy Caucasian men from large, powerful families. Many people remember the brouhaha over George Bush Sr. being amazed at the sight of a grocery store checkout scanner. The story may not be true, but it was apparently the first time that entire year he set foot inside a supermarket.

If you recall, Clinton did pass the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996. It was a well-intentioned, but heavy-handed piece of legislation as it basically called for turning the net into a police state. Fortunately, it was later struck down in court as unconstitutional. However, other absurd laws exist – Canada’s recordable media tax levy, and the so-called CDA II. It makes you wonder, since these leaders probably never have to touch a computer, how can they understand what repercussions would occur from the laws they pass?

“All I know about the ceremony is what I saw on Monty Python.”

– Bill Gates, on what he’s expecting when Queen Elizabeth gives him an honorary knighthood

The Glass o’ Water: Finale

V has finally figured out who was entering his apartment, and touching his stuff. It turns out the landlord’s preteen daughter and her friend decided to play hooky from school that week and, having nowhere to hide, lifted Daddy’s master keys and helped themselves to V’s apartment. Being morons, they left shoeprints, moved his stuff around, and even turned off his PC. Maybe they should stay in school more often, since they’d make lousy criminals.

The funny thing is, V didn’t find this out with the glass of water, or his motion-tracking camera – it was through the power of MOM. The landlord’s wife discovered her daughter didn’t make attendance on the same days V reported the break-ins, and put two and two together.

Moving sucks

I hate it. Despite all the planning you do, you always end up having make major decisions in the last minute.

  • Subletter hasn’t been accepted yet do to bad credit. Heck, half the people that called regarding this apartment seemed like fruits.
  • TO landlady is either unwilling or unable to find out from the current tenant when she is moving out. We suspect she is going to stay until the very last minute to exact some kind of bizarre revenge on the landlady.
  • I can’t even reach the landlord to find out when I can pick up the keys.
  • Haven’t decided on how to move – by uber-expensive movers, or disorganized ragtag gang of friends and family who don’t really want to do it in the first place.
  • It’s bloody -30°C with the windchill right now.

The origins of invention

“The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention…Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements.

“I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life — energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.

“I do not rush into actual work…I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time.”

– Nikola Tesla, My Inventions

It is the conceptualization and realization of an idea that requires the most effort; the prototyping and manufacture is, while physically demanding, quite straightforward.

“When I was a freshly appointed instructor, I met a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension. I was sorry for a man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science-in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat at the very center of the glow.

“In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery…I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the ‘growing edge’; the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead. But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and come greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree?…The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leafs themselves their meaning.

“There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. ‘If I have seen further than other men,’ said Isaac Newton, ‘it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.’ And to learn that which goes before does not detract from the beauty of a scientific discovery but, rather, adds to it; just as the gradual unfolding of a flower, as seen by time-lapse photography, is more wonderful than the mature flower itself, caught in stasis.”

– Isaac Asimov, Adding a Dimension: Seventeen Essays on the History of Science

Invention is based on past work. The study of past and current findings is the source of future discoveries.

I shall return in the dark and be seen

I can now say it. In a Tuesday morning in late October, I was called into an abrupt meeting with my boss, and was told, due to “rightsizing” initiatives, I was being laid off.

I walked into the meeting room at 10am sharp. I was escorted out of the building by the career consultant within half an hour. I had to surrender my keys and my laptop. I was told to pack up my things, but I promised I would come back later that week to pick them up. The career consultant gave me her card and a pamphlet titled “Losing Your Job: The First 72 Hours”.

I was initially so confused I didn’t know what to think. Business was brisk, and I was even given a new account just the week before. Until that fateful meeting, I didn’t know how fragile my world was. All in all, I was part of a larger crowd of employees let go to balance the books of 2003.

I couldn’t really fault them, though. For example, they could have let us know about the layoffs in advance, but then they run the risk of disgruntled workers stealing stuff – or even stealing customers. They could have waited until after Christmas,but then they couldn’t balance their books. I was given a reasonable severance package, a career consultant, and membership in the company redeployment program. Business is business.

So, for the remainder of last year was me sitting at home, waking up late and pumping out resumes. I started forgetting what day it was; every day was a Saturday. I discovered that employment had contributed a big part to my self-esteem. After all, the first thing people ask you is, “What’s your name?”, followed by “So, what do you do for a living?” Which, at that point, was a big fat nothing.

The most frustrating part of it all, I found, was the fact I was not in control of the situation. I had planned to transfer out of London anyway in six months, and had campaigned heavily to my boss. I was also in the middle of projects and obligations; I had personally promised one client over the phone to take care of an urgent matter just a mere five minutes before The Meeting. But all that was swept aside. My position, my coworkers and customers, my world, they were now gone in less than 30 minutes.

Fortunately, being part of the redeployment program paid off, and I have been reinstated back into the Company. Not in my old position mind you – but in Intellectual Capital Management, and in Toronto. I’m glad I’ll be back at work, and to be back in my hometown.

Year of the Monkey

Bozo engineering

While discussing the strictness of XML parsers Hyatt points out the sad reality of HTML rendering: “The #1 reason that HTML pages render incorrectly in alternate browsers is because of differences in error handling and recovery.”

Specifically, IE is very lax in dealing with badly-coded HTML. IE also abides by its own versions of HTML and CSS standards. The result: websites that don’t work right in anything except IE for Windows.

Why is that a problem, you say? After all, IE Win has 90% of the market – they’re the de facto standard, right?

De facto standards are fine when there aren’t any other standards to work with – but there are. This was not always the case – in the early untamed days of the web, Netscape introduced its own proprietary tags (such as FONT, BLINK and LAYER) and standards when the W3C, the web’s standards body, dragged its feet. During the browser wars, Microsoft just mimiced Netscape’s example. Even today, you’ll see pages stating, “Best viewed in Such-and-Such browser”.

Today, the W3C have clear outlined standards for HTML, CSS, and XML. Most other browsers such as Apple’s Safari, Mozilla and Konqueror follow these standards. (Aside: Opera straddles the fence between W3C-ness and IE-ness, making it particularily quirky to work with.)

If you run a site of commerce, why bar entry to Netscape 7 users or people with Macs? You’ve just lost 10% of your potential customer base.

In the end, open standards promote choice. Why lock everyone into a single software product that only runs on a single platform?

In other news, apparently some folks in Norway actually liked the old Silentblue “Blue Plaster” design …

He does it again

I am proud to say my design for Silentblue.net has been finalized. I may still work on a few tweaks, and the archives have to be redone, but the final site layout you see is frozen. silentblue2themakingof.jpg While I’ve been working on this design since the birth of Silentblue on June 7th, 2003, but finally bit the bullet and deployed it. It has taken me two days.

Wrangling with CSS2 and DIV tags is no fun, but fortunately I had some tools that made the ordeal a little bit painful. The awesome glish.com CSS site explains how to make those crazy floating CSS columns in plain English (something the W3C doesn’t seem well versed in). The DevEdge Netscape Sidebar Tabs provides quick access to W3C’s HTML, JavaScript, and CSS reference guides right inside the Mozilla or Netscape 7 browser.

To top it off, Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Extension for Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird gives you a plethora of excellent website tools. Want to see what the site looks like in 640×480 or without any images? Want to view the CSS file or stored cookies? It’s all there. There are even web shortcuts to HTML and CSS validators. My favourites are the Outline tools, that automatically draw borders around DIV blocks and TABLE cells; they’re a great timesaver when fiddling with margins or looking for missing /DIV and /TD tags.

Unfortunately, these tools are not useable where they’re needed the most – when the viewing the site in Internet Explorer.:rollseyes: If you’ve ever been a web designer, you’re probably nodding your head now. You probably remember, with some affection, coding a complex yet beautiful standards-compliant site, only to spend just as much time working on hacks and workarounds to try to get the damn IE to display it properly.

Here’s a fun one:

<div id="boxcanyon">
<img src="images/boxcanyon_top.jpg" width=804 height=142 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />
<div id="boxcanyon_middle">
<img src="images/boxcanyon_topoverlay.jpg" width=804 height=114 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />

This code should display two images, one on top of each other, flush against each other. But IE will not make the two images kiss each other, no matter how much “padding-top”s or “margin-bottom”s you try. No, it only works if you remove all hard returns and spaces from the code:

<div id="boxcanyon"><img src="images/boxcanyon_top.jpg" width=804 height=142 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 /><div id="boxcanyon_middle"><img src="images/boxcanyon_topoverlay.jpg" width=804 height=114 alt="" border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 />

It took me several minutes of alternatively fiddling with CSS and tearing my hair out to figure that one out. Well, it’s done now. It’s a major improvement over the old quick and dirty “Blue Plaster” layout. I’m not still 100% satisfied with it, but then again, there comes a point where you spend so much time slaving away at something, all you see are flaws… 😉

The apartment hunt

I have a habit of being rather exact whenever I need to make a big decision. Looking for a new apartment in Toronto was no different.

Being exact means lots of research, such as checking out the local neighbourhoods – obviously descriptors such as “low-income families” or “public housing” can be red flags. Examining crime report statistics from the various police divisions may shed some more light; typically downtown TO and Scarborough get the most crime, and North York gets the least.

And then there’s location, location, location. Is there any nearby malls? How easy would it be to get to work or anywhere else by public transit?

Of course, this was all speculation compared to the real test – actually looking at the apartments themselves.

Candidate #1: Parkdale
Close to downtown core. Spacious, carpeted, and even had special debit cards for the laundry machines. Unfortunately, it was badly maintained. There was a hole the size of my fist in the kitchen. Polyfil splotches lined the walls in the hallway. I’d hate to see what the internals looked like.

Candidate #2: High Park
A quiet residential neighbourhood, hemmed in with a giant park and long parallel streets that don’t intersect. Hence, not very close to the subway or any shopping. My heart sank when the landlady pointed out the only thing available was a basement apartment, but it was only two years old, clean and had a dishwasher. It was also only half buried in the ground, so it had surprisingly large windows.

Candidate #3: Islington Village (of the Damned)
After seeing this apartment, Silverlotus wanted to clean her shoes. It was evidently rented to students, although that doesn’t fully explain the used underwear and pigeon feathers on the floor. There was a scorch mark about a foot in diameter in the middle of the living room floor, the stove and the floor around it was in a dried puddle of reddish-brown grease, and the balcony was covered in pigeon shit. Landlady smiled and said “We’ll fix all of this up!” but that only seems possible if they burn the whole place down and start from scratch.

Oh, the Wanted poster in the front lobby of an elevator rapist was a nice touch.

Candidate #4: Islington Village
A next-door building. Landlady was very friendly, and it had an indoor pool. Unfortunately we were trapped on the 32nd floor due to a busted elevator. The neighbourhood is also a bit skeezy.

Candidate #5: Parkwoods Village
Weird puke-green disco tiling in the washroom. Nicely sponged ceiling, although Silverlotus spotted some patches – possible from past water leakage?

Candidate #6: Don Mills
Too small. It was old, so it had the walls had that weird custardy look when walls get painted over too many times. Cupboards and doors don’t close right because they were caked in too much paint. Why don’t people ever strip paint off?

Candidate #7: York Mills
A basement apartment in a house. We showed up early, no one was home, and we decided to just give up and go home.

Uh, I think we’ll go for #2.

A real window screen

In a prototype home in Utah, windows are woven of microfibre LCD screens. One of these special windows can be turned opaque white with the flick of a switch, or, even more impressively, double as a television projector screen or a speaker set. The window is can also be used as a touch-sensitive computer display.

These multimedia windows are only one of two other specialty windows in this so-called Project Odyssey.

Living lighting

vospad_living5_s.jpgWhen I first read about the Vos Pad, an apartment lit completely with LEDs, I envisioned some garish Christmas lighted monstrosity created by playful college students or kooky crackpots. But it really looks like a work of art. Maybe too much like art; it would look nice in a swank restaurant or nightclub, but something tells me that you won’t be reading too many novels in lighting like that.

Of course, if you combine it with this apartment that was completely covered in aluminum foil, and you’ll get a real bumpin’ pad.