Geoff's Amazing Blog

Happy New Year

2007-01-22T23:09:00.000-05:00

Got up to see my Dad over Christmas. We traipsed around the countryside on the Saturday and Sunday before, taking photos. You can see Dad's over on his flickr account.

Orwell E-Texts

2006-08-05T23:00:00.000-04:00

I've just been perusing a collection of George Orwell e-texts, starting with his criticism of Dickens, which was linked from one of my favourite personal blogs, slacktivist.

Also available is Orwell's fascinating Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

The Great Canadian Beard-Off

2006-07-01T19:26:00.000-04:00

This Canada Day, I had a picnic with some friends, at which I took my beard off. This being such a significant occasion, I made sure it was well-documented.

(First two photos by me, the rest by Mel. Thanks, Mel!)

Mel and Kyle and Andrew and Mugg. Kyle set up a barbecue, and Mel (the chef) made us hot dogs. Mugg and Andrew are eating taralucci. There was much argument over whether taralucci are pretzels, biscuits, or something else. Well, not that much argument.

Before.

Scissors. My friends kept me entertained, quite possibly in an attempt to get me to stab myself with the scissors while laughing.

Lathering up.

It took me several goes to get rid of my curly beard. It was far more tedious that these photos indicate.

Mel thought I didn't look happy enough.

The end result.

Thus concluded the Beard-Off. Next year I might do the whole head, so watch out for that.

Harper Can't Take Own Medicine

2006-05-24T22:23:00.000-04:00

Former Leader of Opposition Won't Listen to Opposition from Press

CBC reports: ``Harper says he's finished with Ottawa press corps''.

Update: CTV reports Harper says no one cares.

Sprinkling

2006-04-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

Another sprinkling of photos from my hike a couple weeks ago.

Intention

2006-04-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

On the fence outside the Toronto Fire Academy.

I do not remember this safety mascot from my youth. It's quite possible it's been hanging on that fence for longer than I've been alive.

Speaking of the fire academy, there are three large wooden(?) letters on the property that spell out ``ZOT''. Anyone know what the ZOT is for?

Lakeshore East

2006-04-14T16:01:00.000-04:00

Some photographs I took while on a little hike Sunday.

Python and UTF-8 rant

2006-03-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I felt compelled to rant and scream and make a fuss.

March 15

I need to emit a rant. You can safely ignore this post.

I'm working on some software for work: an application that will take an uncompressed DAISY book (with WAVE audio) and encode it to a compressed book (with MP3 audio) suitable for distributing on a CD, and create MP3s for online distribution.

I'm doing this in Python, because that's my ~~pet~~favourite language. However, there's some glitches that keep cropping up, and I'm getting tired of dealing with them. The biggest one is unicode. How come a default installation of Python doesn't just handle unicode so that it just works? I'm constantly having to convert/unconvert unicode to utf-8 or cp1252 or whatever just to get it to not completely fail. This of course leads to lots of repetitive code, something I chose Python to avoid. That wouldn't be so bad in and of itself if the standard libraries also did this. I.e., I'd like to be able to use ConfigParser with utf-8 files. If I don't edit the file by hand, then it's okay, actually, since utf-8 codes for the accented characters that show up in French are the same as Latin-1 or whatever the hell it thinks it is. But when I edit the file in, say, Notepad, it helpfully changes the file to utf-8, which is probably the correct behaviour. Of course, when I try to run the app after this, it throws up a big pile of exception gobbledegook on the screen, because it doesn't understand utf-8 magic number code.

So ... don't use Notepad? Do all my configuration through the interface, which at least works? No, of course not, that's why I chose the ConfigParser module in the first place! I wanted to be able to edit .ini files by hand; that's why they exist.

I'm not quite ready to give upon Python yet, since nearly all the programme is written in it (except for the parts I didn't write myself, like the MP3 encoder). But seriously, Guido et al. need to get working on making Python's unicode handling mature.

Addendum, March 16

So I have it partially figured out. I need to use the codecs module to explicitly specify the encoing of the file. I was already passing around a file object instead of a filename (so I could close the file immediately after having read/written it), so this was pretty easy to do.

Except that it still chokes on files from Windows machines, with the byte order mark at the beginning. Apparantly this problem isn't present for utf-16; it's just the Python handles utf-8 wrong. There's an easy fix, if you're dealing with the unicode string--take off the BOM, if present. Problem is, I'm not dealing with the unicode strings directly--those are being handled by the module. So it looks like I'm going to have to write a wrapper to the codecs.open(f, m, 'utf-8') function just to read and write utf-friggen-8.

Further reading indicates that a utf-8-sig decoder will strip the BOM if present. Although the patch was written last April, it wasn't committed until January, ie after the release of the most recent version.

Also, the utf-8 encoder doesn't give me \r\n line terminators, it only gives \n, which means that the files are not editable in Notepad. Guess what the default application is for opening .ini files in Windows?

Addendum, March 17

Screw all this. I'm tired of wasting my time on this. I've switched over to utf-16, which is the native Windows Unicode encoding, anyway. If Python ever gets the fix in, or if Windows decides to drop the utf-8 BOM, then I'll switch back.

Officially Happy

2006-03-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

I'm officially happy with my new scope.

(I bought a 102 mm Mak-Cas with a German equatorial mount a few months ago. I've taken it out only four times so far because of cold and weather and illness and general laziness.)

This time, I actually let it cool down to ambient temperature before using it (yay!) and I was able to get quite good looks at Saturn and the Orion nebula. I also tried Mars and the Pleides, but they were just above the roof, so the seeing was awful. Orion was the best I've ever seen in the city. I could make out a little bit of structure, and with averted vision some contrast between lighter and darker areas. Saturn was directly overhead, so I got a pretty good view. With my higher-magnification eyepiece, I was able to see a bit of contrast between the rings and the surface of the planet, and a little bit of the shadow on the rings.

I'm still not really happy with the mount. Partly this is because I'm not used to the German equatorial design (the old Questar I used to use has a fork mount), but it is a little rickety. I'm never sure if the scope is mounted securely, and most of the screws don't screw tight without more mnual strength than I have. But since the deal at Khan's basically got me the mount for free, I'm not going to complain too much.

Susan Kare

2006-01-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

Susan Kare User Interface Graphics

Came across her page while browisng Wikipedia. The portfolio speaks for itself. Suffice it to say that she designed many of the icons of my youth.

A kind of scottish fruit

2006-01-26T22:53:00.000-05:00

I got myself a new toy last Friday. I'm still getting used to it, but once I migrate my e-mail to it, I think it's going to be my main box. I hate to shun Linux, but I'm tired of Things Not Working because I Bought Hardware from Evil Vendors Who Support Only Windows on Intel. I might try putting Linux (and OpenDarwin) on this puppy, but maybe down the road.

I do still have a few questions, though. I'm using iTunes to sort out my music collection, and I'll probably use it as my main jukebox app. What does the "Sound enhancer" actually do? I tried playing with it, and it sort of applies an Aphex Aural Exciter effect. But what's it actually doing? All Google gives me is press releases saying that this feature is wonderful, and articles telling you how to turn it off.

In Firefox, when I go to the dropdown in the address bar, why do all the site names show up as Chinese characters? This isn't a showstopper, since I usually go by URL, but it is kinda confusing.

How come Darwin Ports sucks? I mean, apart from it being a package manager and all.

I was going to wonder what sort of desktop switching there is available, but I found what looks like a good app for that.

Math You Can't Use

2006-01-15T22:23:00.000-05:00

PJ at Groklaw has posted a sample chapter of what looks like a good book on software copyright and patents:

Math You Can't Use, Ch. 6 ~ by Ben Klemens

It's a well-written bit, and it puts down in words some of the same ideas I've had myself about copyrights in general. Only this guy actually knows what he's talking about. Thank you, Mr. Klemens, for saving me from writing the same stuff but worse.

In other news, influenza is fun.

Wiki solves the halting problem!

2006-01-10T21:37:00.000-05:00

Caught this little gem over at Wikipedia:

Queen Marie of Roumania - Tour Through Canada 1926

2006-01-07T03:15:00.000-05:00

Queen Marie of Roumania - Tour Through Canada 1926

I found this while looking up pictures of Queen Marie of Romania. It's remarkable for its breathtakingly boring history of Canada and CN, the depictions of the Bulgarian and two of Canada's coats of arms, and the complete absense of CPR. I'm sure Her Majesty found this a great sleeping aid on her tour.

``They had visions of a second transcontinental line extending from Moncton in the Maritimes [...] to Edmonton and on through the Yellowhead Pass[!] and the practically unexplored mountain kingdom of the Northern Canadian Rockies [...].''

GNOME 2 rant ... the sequel

2005-11-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

Warning: severe geekishness follows.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote an angry rant about GNOME 2. It was, of course, critically ignored. In the time since, Pat Volkerding, the maintainer of my favourite Linux distribuion, Slackware, famously removed the GNOME packages from Slackware. I'm not a user of slackware-current; I prefer to keep to the stable releases. So I've been using Slackware with no GNOME at all for 41 days, 15 hours and 5 minutes.

On the whole, it's barely affected me. There are two things I miss: Gnumeric and gThumb. That's it. Two applications. Gnumeric is still my favourite spreadsheet programme, since it works and is lightweight. I haven't looked at OpenOffice in a while. It could be that it's gotten lighter and easier on the eyes since version 1.1.0. As for gThumb, I liked it because it had a nice interface for rotating images (this is good for my digital photo collection). I haven't found a suitable replacement, but I imagine there's one out there.

I was going to add that without gnome-control-center I couldn't change the font used in GTK+ applications, but I was able to do so with xfce-setting-show just now. I still don't know how settings in GTK+ work without GNOME around.

Also in the rant, I said that KDE was the only window manager that did what I want. I think I could probably use Xfce now, but I'm really enjoying using Enlightenment 0.17. It's a little buggy, since it's in heavy development, but it's really pretty.

I hardly miss GNOME. It's a good thing that Linux, and Unix in general, are flexible enough to allow all sorts of different applications and desktop environments to be used both interchangeably and concurrently.

No page like home

2005-11-05T09:29:00.000-05:00

My old web site is mysteriously up and running again.

Shell

2005-10-30T19:33:00.000-05:00

DAISY pilot

2005-10-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

CNIB has released a report on a pilot project they've been running with HRDC to determine the efficacy of DAISY digital talking books (aussi en français). I have no idea if anyone else will find it interesting, but I like how it supports what we've been doing and makes it seem worthwhile. Also, it mentions one of the projects I helped narrate (Actex actuarial study manuals).

One thing that I was glad to read was the comment that the DAISY format could make it easier for blind and visually impaired people to flip through a book than for sighted people. This ties into ideas I (and other people) have had about promoting DAISY as a general-audience audiobook format. Currently the only thing really holding back sighted people from using DAISY already is the fact that nearly all existing DAISY format books were made for free libraries for the blind. Thus, they aren't distributable to the population at large since they were produced under exemptions in copyright law specifically for materials for the blind and visually impaired.

You can learn more about the DAISY standards on the DAISY Consortium's web site.

Kanukmusik

2005-10-23T12:09:00.000-04:00

I bought some CDs on Friday. Great Big Sea's all-trad The Hard and the Easy, Great Lake Swimmers' self-titled album, and Fembot's The City.

The last two because I heard interesting songs on CIUT while walking to the Subway, and the first because of an accident of alphabetic sorting.

Right now I've hit the Fembots' song that I caught, Demolition Waltz, which is serious goodness.

The Great Big Sea album is awesome. It comes with a bonus DVD of them singing most of the same songs over again, only in the wrong key!

Great Lake Swimmers seems like mostly a write-off, except for i will never see the sun. I'm such a TTC junkie I may keep the album just for that one song.

Riverdale

2005-10-01T20:46:00.000-04:00

Went down to Riverdale today to pick up some coffee and take some pictures. I took this shot from Riverdale Park East of a TTC streetcar with the Holy Eucharist Ukranian Catholic Church in the background.

Killer of trees

2005-10-01T13:56:00.000-04:00

At work, they had a fundraiser, selling the print copies of books we'd recorded in the studios. The books are marked up something fierce, and some have their spines chopped off, so they were going for $1 apiece, all proceeds to the United Way.

So, since they were only a dollar, I picked up a bunch that I might not have ordinarily bought:

Judith Cowan, Gambler's Fallacy. Short stories about life in Trois-Rivières, Québec. The Porcupine's Quill, 2001.

Keath Fraser, The Voice Gallery: Travels with a Glass Throat. Fraser has a rare neurochemical disorder that has rendered him unable to speak. The book is about his travels finding other people who have lost their voices. Thomas Allen Publishers, 2002.

Kenneth J. Harvey, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe. A small Newfoundland outport comes down with a mysterious illness that makes them unable to breathe automatically—breathing is a conscious act. Raincoast Books, 2003.

Dennis Lee, un. A collection of fractured poems. I've already cracked this one open and browsed, and they read rather like Dissociated Press. Anansi, 2003.

Caitlin Sweet, A Telling of Stars. Sort of generic-looking fantasy. I'll see how it goes. Penguin, 2003.

Dianne Warren, A Reckless Moon. Short stories about people being reckless. Raincoast Books, 2002.

Add to this Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and English as She is Spoke, which I picked up Monday, plus the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, plus a textbook on digital signal processing, plus the Miles Vorkosigan books that Dad wants to press on me, and I've got my reading cut out for me for the next several months.

Accidental candy

2005-09-26T22:18:00.000-04:00

I had honey-garlic chicken wings last night. I had leftovers. I reheated the leftovers in the oven today, liberally pouring the sauce over the wings.

I reheated too much.

The honey caramelised and stuck to the baking sheet.

Honey-garlic taffy is awesome.

Grace ginger beer

2005-09-06T21:02:00.000-04:00

I used to think that Old Tyme was the king of ginger beers in Toronto. Now, I have found, not its match, but its better. I submit for your admiration the emperor of ginger beers: Grace Ginger Beer/Soda Piquant au Gingembre!

I was going through the pop and snacks aisle at the supermarket, and I came across this brand. I'm always sceptical about ginger beers, because not many of them actually list ginger in their ingredients. But I checked the labe, and there it was, just after water and sugar. This is the most my throat's burned since I started drinking this stuff (did I mention that I like Hunan food?). I's actually burning my tongue as we speak!.

Oh, and it tastes all right, too.

Long weekend

2005-09-06T00:32:00.000-04:00

It's technically over, but I'm still glad it happened. As in still. I managed three amazingly stress-free days. I've caught up on sleep, on meals, on webcomics, and on most of the spring cleaning. I've also nearly caught up on Harry Potter; I've been rereading the first five before I have a go at Number Six.

I saw Much Ado About Nothing at CanStage's Dream in High Park. It was several kinds of awesome, especially in that they made good with two of the weaker characters. I'd recommend it, but it closed on Sunday. So, too bad for you!

I'm ready to take over the world. Or at least call the ISP to have them reinstate FTP access. I have to catch up on putting up photos from this year's Pride, as well as the 3015 Days project.

In the meantime, something a little more recent. Again, this is from the Distillery District:

As I was out a-tarrying...

2005-09-05T22:39:00.000-04:00

Who needs modern anti-{drug,drunk driving,teen sex} propaganda when English folk ballads give you a whole laundry list of things to avoid?

Katrina

2005-09-03T00:24:00.000-04:00

The response to hurricane Katrina has left me more angry than sad.

A photo for you

2005-09-01T21:19:00.000-04:00

I still haven't figured out what's wrong with my camera, except that it isn't my USB cable. So I got myself a card reader. It's hard to find readers for xD cards, and even harder to find a cable for my camera. I'm not sure I'm going to be buying Fuji when I go for a new camera.

The card reader has the advantage of having the following written on the bottom:

1.USB CARD READER/WRITER
2.USB connector may need to be moved back and fifth when being taken out of its slot.

Anyway, I can now get stuff off of my camera. Le voici.

Bad names for cars

2005-09-01T20:58:00.000-04:00

Ford Indigestion
Mazda Parasite
Volvo Whiplash
Acadian Invader

Intro post

2005-09-01T00:52:00.000-04:00

So I've finally given in and gotten a blog. My personal webspace at Look has crapped out on me, and I figure it's too much of a bother to try to get them to sort it out. They've proved to be pretty useless over the past few years, and the only reason I haven't quit with them is inertia.

I'm hoping to post weekly photographs here, only my camera has crapped out on me, too. I'm hoping to get a new cable or card reader or whatever the heck it is I need tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a picture of couple of goslings: