Mottie's Webomatic

Ankara First Impressions

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:09:23 -0800

Upon arriving in Turkey all Canadians have to purchase a visa, and it must be paid for in cash. I wasn't carrying cash, which worked out pretty well for me: I was escorted past the lineup at passport control to a bank machine, I paid the man, and was on my way. No delays or lineups, not even a cavity search. I haven't had a lot of time to get out and about in Ankara, but what I have seen has been great. The food here is excellent, and the people are very friendly. There is an unusually large ratio of good looking women here, which is especially strange considering that most of the old women are four feet tall and roundish. The population of Ankara is mainly (90% I was told) Muslim. Five times a day there is a "call to prayer" (sweet wav file included) that can clearly be heard throughout the city. The first time I heard this I was in a taxi with a Mosque on one side of the car, and transvestite prostitutes on the other. Strange to say the least. There has been alcohol in most of the restaurants I've been to, and there is a stocked mini bar in my room. I had assumed before coming here that things would be more uptight and there wouldn't be alcohol and the like..

Anyways things are going well, working lots and the weather's great.

Happenings

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:51:33 -0800

Lots going on these days. It's summer and we're already into the full swing of things. This past weekend Dayna and I took a spontaneous trip to Victoria to see her sister and speedo. The girls baked on the beach while speedo and I played some frolf. We also managed to stop in and see Eric & Jill for some bocci and a delicious BBQ.
Tomorrow is an extremely big day for Dayna as she's graduating from SFU. She's done extremely well and there will be a lot of proud people watching her walk up. We're going to head out for a celebratory dinner with both of our parents which should be great. After that I'm off to Turkey for a little while, and should be back in plenty of time for Mottiepalooza VI (not emacs).

That's it for now..

Coming Up for Air

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:06:55 -0800

Wow I've been busy. Between the growing my Canucks playoff beard, Dodgeball, Volleyball, starting an Ultimate team and wedding planning I haven't had any time to think for the past few weeks. My tennis rival moves to Vancouver on May 1 and so I'll soon have another hobby to add to the mix.

Friday my parents were kind enough to deliver our new TV and so far we love it. LCD is so much better than rear projection, and it makes our living room look so much larger.

That's my quickie update for the day..

Spring

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 09:37:58 -0800

Apparently spring has sprung. This past weekend was the first in forever without rain, and it was also the first weekend I've worked 15 hours every day since summer. I slept like the dead last night, and am ready to head to dodgeball tonight.

What I've been up to:

Dodgeball, our team is in 2nd place with a very respectable 27 and 3 record. I'm pretty sure we lead the league in headshots as well, which isn't intentional, but is pretty sweet.

A friend and I are trying to organize an Ultimate team for the upcoming VUL Summer league. I've been playing for about 7 years now and it's about time I took the reins and captained a team. We're trying to get a bunch of athletic people who like to drink beer on the sidelines, can't be too tough I would think.

The Canucks are 2 wins away from winning the Northwest division, I am praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I can get playoff tickets..

Dayna's finished her first semester of school and has almost all of April off, so wedding planning is going to kick into high gear. I'm hoping I can convince her to go with this cake.

I still haven't completed my taxes and my accountant hates me. Hopefully I can do that this week.

Last but not least, it's Brad's birthday, so head on over to shogunate.ca and wish him a happy birthday.

Light Bulbs?

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:54:56 -0800

There have been a few eye opening articles on CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulbs) recently. As a result Dayna and I have been swapping them in around our place for the last while. Here's some quickie quotes from the articles, and links to the articles themselves.

[..] If every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/108/open_lightbulbs.html

[Australia is] introducing new energy efficiency standards and these old
lights simply won't comply, they will be phased out and basically over
a period of time (3 years) they will no longer be for sale," Mr Turnbull said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21258888-421,00.html

On the negative side of things, the packaging for the bulbs don't mention anything about what generation of bulbs they are, so we've occasionally brought home bulbs that take a second to turn on, which sucks.

The Sun Doth Shine

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:31:17 -0800

I learned recently to never let your license expire as cmac had to make an emergency drivers test appointment in Victoria this past weekend. We watched the Canucks game with Damien, and then Dayna's sister came and met us for a drink. The next day we went for lunch with speedo, cmac passed his test and now I'm back in Vancouver. All in all it worked out pretty well, a pretty good way to spend a Sunday night.

Tomorrow Speedo and I are headed to the Tenacious D concert at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. It should be amazingly wicked and I can't wait.

Erik and Tom both posted to their blogs after I mentioned that everyone seemed to be in hibernation mode, and now it's a sunny Monday, and apparently it's snowing like crazy up at Whistler. I think that between us we managed to lift the curse..

Update! V1.1

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:55:06 -0800

After updating my page today I was reading over my latest post and noticed that on my new LCD at work the links/archives/recent entries were all in a little bit of a different sized font. I had a quick look at the HTML/CSS and found the issue and have made a minor update. In the process I figured out a little bit of CSS magic, and changed the colours a little bit. Thought I'd make a posting about it as I doubt anyone would notice if they weren't told to look for it..

Also, Tom has taken the bait and updated his site!

Hibernating

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:10:32 -0800

I use a Personalized Google start page, and it has been static for quite a while now, I think everyone's laying low, waiting for spring. Blogs aren't being updated nearly as often these days, and I haven't seen new pictures uploaded since Tom's birthday.

It's definitely "winter" in Vancouver. Rainy and dark, with lots of crappy snow on the mountains. At least dodgeball is starting up again soon. My parents are on their maiden voyage in their new motorhome right now. Last time I heard from them they were in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. They are gone for a total of a month, wouldn't that be nice..

Last weekend Sean, Sheldon, and I managed to sneak in a round of Pitch and Putt golf on the Stanley Park golf course. It was great to be outside in the sunshine, even if our shoes did get soaked from all the mud.

Speedo passed his CCNA this week, which made me relook at the Microsoft Certification Planner. I only need one more exam to get another designation, so I'm going to take that next week.

Anyways, I'm going to make an effort to take more pictures and update this thing more frequently in the coming weeks.

Still Kickin'

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:50:10 -0800

I'm not dead, and I don't hate you, I just got busy and extremely good at making excuses to not post anything here for a while, so you get a summary post.

- Christmas in Vancouver/Ladysmith/Kamloops was great. I met some more of Dayna's family, drank a bunch, and won a whopping $1.25 at darts.

- New Years was equally great, hung out with some close friends in Tofino, drank champagne at midnight, watched 2/3 of the Godfather trilogy, and blew up a lot of fireworks. Skarb has pictures here.

- Dayna has started her PDP program and is absolutely loving it. Everyone in her class has worked extremely hard to be there, and they are all great people by the sounds of things. On Monday she started her practicum, and the kids all call her "Miss McGrath" (not for long though, 8 months until she's Mrs. Mottishaw)

- Tom turned older, and we had a manly celebration. They rented a room at the Fairmont, and we all dressed in suits and hit the clubs. Erik has pictures.

- We have booked our honeymoon, and will be spending a week in Nova Scotia and PEI. It didn't make sense to head somewhere tropical in late August. We've also never been to Eastern Canada, and PEI has some amazing beaches.

- I spent last weekend down at Mount Baker with Ryan/Angele and crew. It was amazingly sunny and icy, but the pre/post party made it more than worthwhile. Ryan and I swapped gear after lunch for a few runs and I tried skiing for the first time. It was fun to try planks and sticks. I did pretty well, and managed to avoid snowplowing and figure out turning/stopping. I should be uploading pictures soon.

That about brings everyone up to date. I've missed a few things, but at least I finally made it to 2007.

Vista Activation Workaround

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 15:39:23 -0800

I've been running Windows Vista for just over a 30 days now. How I know this is that Microsoft is nice enough to let you run it for 30 days without activating. It has taken a while for the PO to get approved to purchase licenses, so when 30 days ran out I received this error message telling me that "Windows will no longer work". Since I obviously need to work, and have no control over when the licenses would be purchased, I simply moved the dialog box off my screen and ignored it. I was able to work fine for three or four days and had forgotten about it when this afternoon my machine mysteriously rebooted, and in the process closed the dialog box.

When I logged in, I received a new dialog box telling me that I would have "reduced functionality", meaning that I would only have access to Windows Activation and IE7 so that I could purchase a key online. The retarded part is that you can simply use IE7 to launch c:\windows\explorer.exe and be back to having a fully functional copy of Windows Vista without ever activating. The only thing you can't do is close the Windows Activation box or it logs you out.

How is it that most Internet Cafes can lock down their systems so that you can't access the file system or a command prompt, but Microsoft can't figure it out? How can Microsoft put so much time and effort into WGA and antipiracy efforts but leave such a simple back door wide open? Obviously I don't condone pirating software, and can't see anyone running with the Windows Activation dialog box on there screen for an extended period of time, but c'mon..

Happy PC Holidays

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:40:25 -0800

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, non-addictive,
gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced
within the traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or
secular practices of your choice (with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others or their
choice not to practice such traditions at all).

Furthermore, we offer our (non-binding) best wishes for the onset of
the generally accepted calendar year of 2007, but not without due
respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose
contributions to society have helped make Canada great. (Which is not
to imply that Canada is any greater than any other country). These
wishes are offered without regard to the race, creed, colour, age,
physical ability, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of
the wishee, even if you're a Liberal.

Happy (if happiness is in your belief system) Holidays (if you recognize them).

Jeff and Dayna

Furminator!

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:34:04 -0800

I spent a little time researching a new brush for our cats as Dayna and I are constantly covered in cat hair and brushing them does basically nothing. I finally purchased the furminator after reading a tonne of reviews on Amazon. Admittedly I didn't expect much, but it was worth a shot. Wow! This thing is every bit as good as people have claimed. Linus got bored of being brushed after 10 minutes or so, and so I figured it was time to quit, but by that time I had already gotten a mountain of hair off him, and was no where near done. I give it 42.5 gold stars.

Compressed Christmas

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:40:06 -0800

Christmas is going to be a bit hectic, as we're doing things a little bit differently this year, We're starting early and having xmas dinner with Dayna's family on Dec 13 because her sister is spending Christmas in Australia with her boyfriend. Then we're off to the island on the 15 to see my parents for our second early xmas. Then finally we're spending the real xmas in Kamloops with Dayna's whole family (which means snowboarding on sunpeaks!). Last but not least, my brother and his wife live up in Kitimat so we've got to get their gift shipped out early enough for it to arrive on time. I guess it's time I started shopping...

On the topic of shopping I broke the one cardinal rule of Christmas shopping yesterday: Never buy something for yourself in December. Option-NFA had a warehouse sale, and I managed to pick up a new board and a new jacket. Will be great to have new gear finally as my old jacket was getting pretty old and heavy.

Storage...

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:56:52 -0800

It's finally done. The last little while I've been installing a new medicine cabinet in our bathroom. I went the hard route, and put it in the wall, as opposed to surface mounting it. Looking back it would have been a lot less work to go the lazy route, but I learned a bit from it, and I'm very happy with the finished product.

Here is before, and here is after (not the same angle unfortunately, but you can see the ugly huge mirror in the first picture). Although it's not a major cosmetic upgrade, it does add a tonne more storage. No more storing crap under our sink, and no more tiny crappy medicine cabinet on the side wall.

Windows Vista

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:24:27 -0800

I'm now running a full release copy of Windows Vista and I have to admit it doesn't suck like I initially thought it would. I ran a number of the betas over the course of the past year, and fully anticipated the final product to be big, bulky, and extremely slow. I'm on an 'older' laptop (1.6GHz 1024MB RAM) with a crappy video card (Mobility Radeon 8000) and a Vista System Rating of 1.0 (which appears to be very low) and it runs perfectly smooth, even with Aero Glass as my default theme.

Pros:
- I read this before I installed, so I've noticed the new sounds, they're not annoying which is good.
- I like that Alt-Tab now includes a "Desktop" feature, so you can now switch to a blank desktop in addition to any other running application
- Better security, you are prompted for your password (much like OSX I think) before you can install a program or make a change to your system
- Aero is pretty, I like that it's black

Cons:
- It's Windows XP with a new theme, I haven't seen any reason to recommend that anyone upgrade yet
- Better security, you have to enter your password for every little thing (even to let windows update to run). I don't mind this because I can see why it is necessary, most people don't have passwords on their XP install and this may confuse and annoy them.
- The password prompt's aren't always very descriptive. The first time I visited a website required flash I was prompted for my password before the site would load, and the dialog box only mentioned it was trying to install "an add-on". There was no mention of the fact that it was Adobe Flash, or that it was digitally signed.

Other Observations:
- "Run" isn't on the Start Menu anymore, but if you press the Windows key you can simply type the name of the program (or the web address) and it will start.
- Windows Gadgets try to mimic OSX's Widgets, but so far I hate them. They take up valuable desktop space and there isn't an auto hide option. I use a Google Start page for my RSS feeds so I don't find Gadgets all that useful yet. I think in OSX they're hidden until you press F12? (Yes they'd probably be good on a widescreen display, but I hate widescreen laptops).

Conclusion:
I would recommend Vista if you are buying a new system, or if you can get it for free. I'm on a work laptop, so it cost me nothing to upgrade, but I will continue running Windows XP at home for the foreseeable future.

Update: I initially thought they had removed 'telnet' from Windows Vista. Which would have sucked as it's a great troubleshooting tool. It turns out it's been turned into an optional feature which can be installed following these instructions.