General

A duck soap opera

There are several artificial ponds in front of the library at Langara College. In the winter it is drained due to the chance that it could freeze and blow up pipes or something. But as of late March it’s been filled anew with water.

Earlier this week a pair of ducks took to swimming about in the main pond, a male and a female. A cute little duck couple.

The next day the female duck was gone and only the male paddled about the pond.

By day three there were again two ducks, except now both were males. Today, day four, the pair of male ducks were still there, swimming and then sunning at the pond.

The way I see it is like this:

The male and female duck had a fight. The female flew the coop–literally–leaving the male behind. The male swam about dejected and lonely. He put out a call to a buddy and was joined by him the next day. The buddy lent a sympathetic shoulder (if ducks had shoulders) and generally provided support and comfort. By the next day (things move quickly in duck world) the original male duck figured his buddy looked pretty good and they agreed to try an ‘experimental’ relationship.

I expect next week an interloper in the form of a seagull will throw a wrench in the works.

The new theme has landed

After using Blocks2 for a good long while I felt it was time for a new coat of paint on the website and have replaced Blocks2 with the Rembrandt theme by Tomasz Mazur. In terms of layout I’ve kept the site pretty much as it was before, right down to using the same header image (which will eventually change) but the body font is now the warmer but still very readable Georgia and the header font is Oswald, one of Google’s web fonts which has a classy modern look to it.

So far I haven’t messed with any CSS directly so I’m still using the parent theme but I expect to be mucking about in it soon enough so I’ll create a child theme to do that. While I never had to worry about changes overwriting the custom work I did to Blocks2 (since it was never updated) that could potentially be a problem with Rembrandt.

For comparison and archival purposes, here is a shot of the modified Blocks2 theme I was using previously:

Blocks2 blog look
Blocks2 blog look

Now I am back to the usual problem of generating worthwhile content.

Happy (?) April Fools Day

April Fools Day, especially in the era of the Internet, seems to be split between clever and obviously fake ads, stories and such, along with other ‘pranks’ that are mean-spirited, insulting or deliberately meant to confuse and/or falsely raise expectations.

I’m glad it only comes once a year.

On the plus side, today was another sunny, mild day. The weather is expected to change tomorrow but I’ve taken advantage and walked or run over 40 km in the past three days. My feet may not be on speaking terms with me at the moment but I plan to bribe them with new comfy shoes next weekend.

When PSUs are KIA -or- The Day the (PC) Power Died

I came home from work on Wednesday to find my PC shut off. This may not seem unusual except I keep my PC on 24/7. A quick perusal of clocks and such confirms no power outage. I brace myself for Bad PC News.

I press the power button. Nothing. I press it again. Nothing.

I jiggle the power cord, then swap it out and try another one. Nothing and nothing.

The amount of nothing is pointing toward one thing: the power supply, which has worked faithfully for over three years, has died. The only way to confirm this was to put another one in and I don’t exactly have a bunch of spares kicking around.

It wasn’t until today that I was able (or willing–picking things up after work during rush hour is a certain kind of madness) to get a replacement. I would be turfing my modular 700 watt OCZ for a modular Antec 620 watt. I felt safe getting a lower wattage PSU because I’m running two drives now instead of three, one of which is a low-energy SSD.

I pulled the PC out from under the desk and set it on the table in the living room. Both the underdesk and the inside of the PC case were resplendent with dust. Compressed air in a can was generously blasted all about and the resulting dust bunnies collected with a broom and pan. I extracted the dead PSU and noted how it resembled the head of Medusa, with its twisty cables the snakes. Having not turned to stone by gazing upon it, I set it aside and installed the new Antec power supply, plugged everything back in and hit the power switch, hoping for more than nothing.

It came on without a hitch. Hooray.

Ironically, after spending time working inside the cavernous interior of my MegaCase™ I was left with a desire to go small for my next PC, whenever I might get it. I’d like something that plays games decently but can sit on a desk, run quietly and work more like an appliance. I think this means I’m over my mid-life crisis or something.

I shall call it The Alan Parsons Project

I’ll go into more detail at some point but for now here is my ranking of the 10 albums released by The Alan Parsons Project, from 1976 to 1987. It is telling that the best albums are the earlier ones. The Alan Parsons Project is an example of a band (in as much as they were one) devolving its sound into one that became slicker and less interesting with each album before finally getting back to the wacky and evocative sounds of their earlier work.

  1. Eye in the Sky (1982). The first half of this album is some of the most beautifully-crafted progressive rock recorded.
  2. Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976). By turns weird and wonderful. It sounds almost alien today.
  3. The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980). An entertaining precursor to Eye, stately and always catchy.
  4. Pyramid (1978). A short album with no filler and perhaps the broadest range of material, with the mood ranging from melancholic to bombastic and even playful.
  5. Eve (1979). Not exactly an anthem to women, the lyrics are the most cutting of any Project.
  6. I Robot (1977). A bit dated now but the best tracks hold up well.
  7. Ammonia Avenue (1984). The follow-up to Eye apes that album in a number of ways but has its own standout tracks, especially the title track and the ‘wall of sound’ in “Don’t Answer Me”.
  8. Stereotomy (1986). A decent attempt to return to form that mostly succeeds.
  9. Gaudi (1987). The pop part of the Project was getting a little too glossy by the final album but the closing instrumental is stirring.
  10. Vulture Culture (1985). Not a bad album but not particularly memorable. Without the orchestra a number of songs feel plain. Oddly, the bonus track “No Answers, Only Questions” which is a spare acoustic number, is one of the best.

Mysterious and random polling

I was recently invited to take an online survey by Probit (which, I know, sounds like a robot you wouldn’t want to get too close to in a medical lab) and among the questions about political preference and such was this one:

Polling number three

I’m pretty sure I answered it correctly (I chose ‘3’) but now I’m curious what this means for the number 3 in the future. Have I helped it? Hindered it? Will a future poll shed more light? So many questions.

Star Wars: The (Old) Crone Wars

Recently it was announced that J.J. Abrams would be directing the next Star Wars movie, due out in 2015 after George Lucas sold the keys to the kingdom to Disney for 400 billion quatloos or thereabouts.

Once people were done with all the lens flare jokes and reassured of at least the promise of a coherent story since Abrams wouldn’t be writing the script (I’m thinking here of his ‘every idea gets added to the plot’ approach to Super 8), speculation turned to what the actual story would be about. The least interesting approach for me is the most obvious–set the events roughly the same amount of time as has passed since Return of the Jedi (32 years by the time Episode VII rolls out), bring in as many of the old cast as possible and make it all about their kids. And it looks like both Harrison ‘Grandpa’ Ford and Carrie ‘drugs are bad’ Fisher are already signed, with Mark Hamill a distinct possibility so there’s a good chance this is exactly what the story will be.

This isn’t bad, per se. I’m a sucker for some good nostalgia so it will be nice to see the old characters, even if they more resemble Jabba the Hutt now than their 1983 selves, but with an entire universe to create new stories in and without being constrained by the nonsense of the prequels I am hoping for something a little fresher than ‘Luke has a kid and OMG he has the Force and will he be good or bad?’ plus space battles and several hands being lopped off along the way.

I guess we’ll find out in a few years.

iPost, Part 2

I’ve found it strangely soothing to lay in bed and tap out a post on the virtual keyboard of the iPad. I do so using the WordPress app rather than loading in this site directly, as the app smooths off the edges of working on a tablet’s smaller display.

Speaking of Macs, I now have a Macbook Air, my first laptop and also my first Mac. I’ve used Macs on and off for years and always resisted the siren call because of price, lack of good gaming choices and as of Windows 7, OS X is no longer a compelling reason to venture over to the Mac side of things.

Regarding the first point (price), ultrabooks (super-slim and light notebooks) and the Macbook Air are pretty much at price parity, with neither side holding a definite advantage on comparable specs. This will probably change over the next year as more Windows 8 ultrabooks come onto the market but for now the pricing and features are close enough to remove it as a deciding factor.

On the gaming front, things have improved in Mac land but it still sucks compared to the PC side, it just sucks less. And that’s why my main machine is still running Windows.

On the third point, OS X has its flaws and strengths much like Windows 8 (which I currently run), so that’s a wash, too.

I opted to get the Macbook Air because it’s especially light (less than three pounds), has excellent battery life and the keyboard is backlit, something I’m always a sucker for. Its primary function will be for writing when I am away from the home machine, so this sucker is ultimately meant to pay for itself. Or at least pay a little for itself. Really, I’d probably be happy if it just paid for the taxes.

Ironically, I made this post on the PC while the Macbook was updating.

Delicious spam stays in a can

From the dashboard of this blog (which runs on the rather popular WordPress platform even as my programming friends rail against PHP at length and with great vigor):

Stop Spammer Registrations has prevented 26753 spammers from registering or leaving comments.

That is a pretty impressive number of thwarted spam messages and accounts for a site that is only read by myself and possibly the ghost of my cat, underscoring just how pervasive and persistent these naughty spammers are.

Somewhere in that number there’s a short story waiting to be told. I shall mull the possibilities.

Combating your posting inner demon

Actually it may not even be an inner demon at all but one who hangs around, possibly on your shoulder if small or casually leaning nearby if not, like a shifty friend you can never quite trust.

I am speaking about the urge to post things on message forums that go against both your natural inclination and also your reputation, such as it may be, on the forum in question.

I was once cynical as all get-out and prone to sarcasm that was as thick as maple syrup on a wintry day. The cynicism has faded over time but the sarcastic impulse remains. I indulge myself from time to time, often making myself the primary target.

The difficult moments are when I see someone post something blatantly dumb, redundant or whiny and I fight this hill giant-sized urge to say something sarcastic. I stop myself by thinking about the irony in making a negative comment about something I see as a negative comment.

So instead I keep quiet and soothe myself by tooling around in GTA3 for a bit. As noted in my previous post on GTA3 this inevitably ends with me flipping the vehicle and blowing it up. It would be cathartic if it was intentional but I’m just a really lousy virtual driver.

And a nice guy. So instead of saying it elsewhere I’ll just say it here:

Some people sure complain a lot.

A walk on the windy side

Yesterday I walked around Burnaby Lake in anticipation of actually running it again (hopefully sometime in March–once I resume jogging I’ll have to ramp up slowly before I can tackle the lake’s 11+ km circumference). There was a wind warning in effect that I was unaware of–until my cap whipped off as I strolled around the athletic field. These are the only conditions under which it’s okay to wear my cap in dork mode (backward) because that’s often the only way to keep it on my head.

The walk went quickly (two hours for 14.5 km) and apart from the wind it was decent, with mild temperatures and sun for about half the way. Most encouraging, though, was the first tentative appearance of buds on tree branches. I am calling this the first confirmation that spring is on the way. I approve.

That is all.