movember

Movember, a fundraiser to fight prostate cancer. I'm participating this year and have been faithfully growing what I can since November 1st. I didn't think it would be worth it to put up my pic here, but I've raised $90 already. Please propel me over the edge to get a free Gala Parté ticket. This is a serious charity with a funny face.

more democracy

I don't know how peeps can justify staying with the First-Past-The-Post system we currently "enjoy" in Ontario. With that in mind, the upcoming referendum is much more important than the actual election. We need more democracy before we start forgetting what it really is.

I attended the Great Referendum Debate last week, held at the great MaRS facility, and Christina Blizzard from the Sun was embarrassed by Andrew Coyne. The quality of her arguments was woeful, and to makes things worse, she was offended on a personal level when the audience laughed. Repeatedly, she was dared to suggest that the current system always ended up reflecting the will of the people. Even if this claim had a modicum of truth, there wouldn't be any way to prove it. (We vote for a reason.) At one point she used the sports metaphor of winner-takes-all: if the Leafs and the Canadiens faced off in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and Montreal won 7-6, the winner is still Montreal and it doesn't matter how close the Leafs were. No one responded to this idiocy, but it was an opportunity missed: the winning team, freshly victorious, would not have the match score adjusted to 9-1 after being crowned champions. She partially made up for herself when she blasted Marilyn Churley for reducing MMP to a kind of affirmative action plan for female politicians.

As for Andrew Coyne, mad props.

wise lessons learned from software development

Greg Wilson, from the University of Toronto, compiled the following list of maxims accumulated from years of experience writing software. I recently found them stuffed in the confines of my archive folders and I thought I'd post them here. Just so I don't get accused of plagiarism or some other IP violation, I emphasize that this is his compilation, not mine.  When I was still in school (years ago), I remember him going over the fine points of some of these ideas. What he had to say was very enlightening: he was the first professor that stressed to me the importance of the more practical aspects of software development. The following is worth more than any clever algorithm or mathematical technique. I include them here because they apply to more than just software development. Also, you may find yourself editing some code at some point in your life.  (Did you ever think you would need to use Excel? Look where you are now.)

• A week of hard work can sometimes save you an hour of thought.


• Anything worth repeating is worth automating.


• Anything repeated in two or more places will eventually be wrong in at least one.


• The three chief virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris.


• It's not what you know, it's what you can.


• The deadline isn't when you're supposed to finish; the deadline is when it starts to be late.


• Never debug standing up.


• Tools are signposts, not destinations.


• Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.


• Code unto others as you would have others code unto you.


• Every complex file format eventually turns into a badly-designed programming language.


• Tools are amplifiers: they allow good programmers to be better, and bad ones to be worse.


• They call it computer science because it's experimental.


• Programs come and go; data is forever.


• There's no such thing as one program.


• Discipline matters more than genius; reality matters more than rulebooks.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is the modern day Voltaire.  Check him out.

liberals, pork

Liberals eat more pork than Convervatives and NDPers, apparently.  Interesting, the article shies away from the party members' religious affiliations or lifestyle choices.  Maybe those weren't deemed to be statistically significant.  Are the number of vegetarians who are on the left, and the number of orthodox Jews and devout Muslims on the right not a factor?  I ask the question.

perspective, scale

This is a cool, nerdy and old video. I'm the only nerd who had not seen it until now.

quality goods

I don't want to pick on Chinese companies exclusively, but this post makes me worried.  Sane, accountable, transparent and enforced government regulations save lives: this doesn't seem to be working in China right now.

emoticons

I remember new emoticons being devised by an engineering student a long
time ago.  I received an elaboration in a mass e-mail.  Whether the source is
the same is unimportant, but here they are.

You all know "smileys" or emoticons

:)     means a smile and

:(     is a frown.

Sometimes these are represented by
:-)

:-(

Well, now there are "assicons":



(_!_)       a regular ass

(__!__)     a fat ass

(!)         a tight ass

(_*_)      a sore ass

{_!_}      a swishy ass

(_o_)    an ass that's been around

(_x_)    kiss my ass

(_X_)    leave my ass alone

(_zzz_)   a tired ass

(_E=mc2_) a smart ass

(_$_)  Money coming out of his ass

(_?_)     Dumb Ass

Plantagenet

Plantagenet
In memory of Richard III, last Plantagenet King of England, who died 22 August 1485, defending his crown against the usurper, Henry Tudor. Memorial Service on Sunday, August 20 at 10:30 am.m at St. Bartholomew's , 509 Dundas St. E., Toronto. Loyaulte me. lie. Richard III Society of Canada, c/o 5238 Woodhaven Drive, Burlington, ON L7L3T4

http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii