After years of benefitting from the toils of the Gentoo Development Team, I am now officially on the road to becoming one of them. Today I was accepted as a Gentoo Arch Tester with the amd64 herd. Basically the arch testers work with the developers to track down bugs and stabilize as many packages as possible. Should one wish to become a full-fledged developer after being an arch tester for at least a month or two, it is a relatively short mentoring process to get there.
This is exciting for me as I've been loving the Linux/open source community since I became involved about 3+ years ago and I've been looking for a good opportunity to give something back.
I didn't really need anything else to do outside of my school hours right now as my other jobs seem to keep me plenty busy, but this is something that I consider important and will prioritize time for. I do plan on becoming a full developer at some point, hopefully early in 2006.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Google. World. Domination.
Well, following along with the belief that somehow Google will eventually control most of the information resources we will take for granted, there is speculation that Google is about to announce the next step in Their Plan: the Google database.
What a terrific idea! Store what you want in it with web access from anywhere. Surely they will be putting together an API to allow people to concoct all manner of wonderous sites to take advantage of it.
Surely this one will hit right at the heart of Microsoft who continues to try to shove the overly expensive and needlessly complex Access down the throats of every Mom and Pop store and Holly Hobbyist that wants to store some information.
Go Google!
What a terrific idea! Store what you want in it with web access from anywhere. Surely they will be putting together an API to allow people to concoct all manner of wonderous sites to take advantage of it.
Surely this one will hit right at the heart of Microsoft who continues to try to shove the overly expensive and needlessly complex Access down the throats of every Mom and Pop store and Holly Hobbyist that wants to store some information.
Go Google!
Bad, Bad Blogger.
I am such a negligent blogger. People have given up reminding me to blog because they know I'm not going to do it with regularity anyway. Oh well, that's me.
Honestly there hasn't been a lot of interesting stuff going on lately, but I'll sum up some of the recent happenings in Scottland:
Dropped computer vision to instead take it next year as a graduate course. This was necessary because of the next point.
Have to go back to Stoney Creek at least 2 more times before Christmas, possibly 3. To that end I leave Friday for my next trip.
That leaves me with only matrix algebra which I could ace without really thinking all that much about it. The midterm was this morning and I'm pretty sure I got perfect on it.
Went to Boston about 9 days ago to go to the swapfest at MIT. Spent the morning trolling through thousands of pieces of used computer equipment, which makes it incredibly difficult to actually decide what you want to get and then makes it that much more depressing when you go back to the vendor who had what you wanted and now its gone.
Several people in our group picked up Mac G3 boxes and other assorted Mac hardware -- actually, that seemed to be the theme of this trip. I was the only person to decide on a plain ol' PIII (which I'll be using to run Asterisk at my house).
That afternoon was spent at the Boston Museum of Science which I wouldn't recommend to anyone older than 9, unless they're from the east coast or are a student attending Ryerson in Toronto. It was all very...simplistic. The planetarium was built in the 50s and doesn't look as if it has been updated since. Oh well, now I know where not to go in Boston.
And btw, who designed the streets in Boston? A bunch of Ryerson students it must have been. I've never seen a town so backwards. We got lost a couple of times which was complicated by the number of trees seen to be falling on cars in our path (it was really windy).
Honestly there hasn't been a lot of interesting stuff going on lately, but I'll sum up some of the recent happenings in Scottland:
Dropped computer vision to instead take it next year as a graduate course. This was necessary because of the next point.
Have to go back to Stoney Creek at least 2 more times before Christmas, possibly 3. To that end I leave Friday for my next trip.
That leaves me with only matrix algebra which I could ace without really thinking all that much about it. The midterm was this morning and I'm pretty sure I got perfect on it.
Went to Boston about 9 days ago to go to the swapfest at MIT. Spent the morning trolling through thousands of pieces of used computer equipment, which makes it incredibly difficult to actually decide what you want to get and then makes it that much more depressing when you go back to the vendor who had what you wanted and now its gone.
Several people in our group picked up Mac G3 boxes and other assorted Mac hardware -- actually, that seemed to be the theme of this trip. I was the only person to decide on a plain ol' PIII (which I'll be using to run Asterisk at my house).
That afternoon was spent at the Boston Museum of Science which I wouldn't recommend to anyone older than 9, unless they're from the east coast or are a student attending Ryerson in Toronto. It was all very...simplistic. The planetarium was built in the 50s and doesn't look as if it has been updated since. Oh well, now I know where not to go in Boston.
And btw, who designed the streets in Boston? A bunch of Ryerson students it must have been. I've never seen a town so backwards. We got lost a couple of times which was complicated by the number of trees seen to be falling on cars in our path (it was really windy).
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Oh, and BTW.
Kerry, a good friend of mine from Timmins (who refuses to start a blog!!!), who now lives in Kap (Kapuskasing for those of you who haven't been initiated into the HOLE that is Northern Ontario), just began working for Canadian Tire. She finally saw the light and came over from the retail darkside of Walmart.
I swear, I convert everyone.
There are like 7 or 8 Canadian Tire stores in Calgary which are always looking for middle-management type staff. Pay is better than most entry-level and the benefits package for management rocks. I'm just pointing that out.
I swear, I convert everyone.
There are like 7 or 8 Canadian Tire stores in Calgary which are always looking for middle-management type staff. Pay is better than most entry-level and the benefits package for management rocks. I'm just pointing that out.
Back to Life.
Actually I've been back in Quebec for several days now, but they seem to have disappeared rather quickly.
The Stoney Creek trip went generally well, by which I mean we opened on Tuesday morning at 8am as the Corporation wanted us to. The nine days that I was down there simply were not enough to complete the task before me. Worse, my time demands made some unfair demands on the 'normal' process of transitioning an old store to a new one; for instance, I diverted several of the people who should normally be moving stock over to the new building to spend 2 days moving technology and office furniture which could normally have been left to last. Having to get back to school dictated that I had to get stuff going asap.
So, the store is up and running and all of the various office PCs and the lan that connects them (along with associated web server, mail server, remote access, etc) are running and should remain in good shape until I can finish the job in December when I plan to spend two weeks in Southern Ontario.
Part of the problem is that we wanted all of the new technology for this store; the old store contained a glut of long-expired and unsupported technology that the previous owner should have replaced years ago, but didn't want to invest the money. His office looked like something out of an Austin Powers movie -- that should tell you something. If the technology move was just to take all the old stuff and put it in the new store it would have been simple, alas, that was not the case. But in the end, all of the new technology puts us ahead of the curve defined by the average of Canadian Tire stores; everything is crisp, clean, new and fast.
Some very basic (and uncorrected) pictures are available in my Flickr account.
So now I don't have to work through any more 15 hour days, but that said, I've signed up to be an 'on-call' web developer for the university bringing my official job count to 3+research+classes. Should be fun right?
The Stoney Creek trip went generally well, by which I mean we opened on Tuesday morning at 8am as the Corporation wanted us to. The nine days that I was down there simply were not enough to complete the task before me. Worse, my time demands made some unfair demands on the 'normal' process of transitioning an old store to a new one; for instance, I diverted several of the people who should normally be moving stock over to the new building to spend 2 days moving technology and office furniture which could normally have been left to last. Having to get back to school dictated that I had to get stuff going asap.
So, the store is up and running and all of the various office PCs and the lan that connects them (along with associated web server, mail server, remote access, etc) are running and should remain in good shape until I can finish the job in December when I plan to spend two weeks in Southern Ontario.
Part of the problem is that we wanted all of the new technology for this store; the old store contained a glut of long-expired and unsupported technology that the previous owner should have replaced years ago, but didn't want to invest the money. His office looked like something out of an Austin Powers movie -- that should tell you something. If the technology move was just to take all the old stuff and put it in the new store it would have been simple, alas, that was not the case. But in the end, all of the new technology puts us ahead of the curve defined by the average of Canadian Tire stores; everything is crisp, clean, new and fast.
Some very basic (and uncorrected) pictures are available in my Flickr account.
So now I don't have to work through any more 15 hour days, but that said, I've signed up to be an 'on-call' web developer for the university bringing my official job count to 3+research+classes. Should be fun right?
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