theconsultant.net » General

On Steve Jobs dieing…

dAVE — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:13:03 +0000

I think Apple said it best, in their Think Different campaign:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore.

They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Archiving selected emails to a single file.

dAVE — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:31:15 +0000

I needed to gather about 50 emails into a single file so I could sift through them and pull out a variety of information. Going through them one at a time in Mail was going to take longer than I wanted, or was willing to do at once, so I decided to save them to a single file so I could do it later.

It turns out to be very simple: you select the relevant emails, in my case the result of a search, and do a “Save As..”. At this point you have a choice of how to save them, and I chose the default “Rich text Format”. I ended up with one file with all 58 emails in it.

Now I can open it in TextEdit and delete the parts I don’t want.

Grand Opening: Carbon Computing Ottawa!

dAVE — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:48:07 +0000

carbon-lineup, originally uploaded by jfingas.

Standing in line waiting for the Opening Sale to start..

Flickr

dAVE — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:43:34 +0000

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Fingerpainting recipe..

dAVE — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:52:26 +0000

I spotted a nice and simple recipe for fingerpaint linked off of swissmiss‘s site.. but it contains food coloring, which I would prefer to avoid, seeing as my son is allergic to it.

Alternatives anyone?

“Introduction to Mac” Workshop coming up on January 26th

dAVE — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:28:36 +0000

I will only quote part of the announcement regarding the Workshop Tom and I are offering next weekend… all the details are on Tom’s site: Introduction to Mac course, in Ottawa, Ontario, on January 26th, 2008.

As you can guess from the course title, we will be doing an introduction to the Mac, from the outside in!

Some of the major applications which will be covered include; Mail, Safari, Address Book, iCal, iChat, and the iLife suite of applications. There will be time at the end to address specific questions, which we expect will arise!

As Tom says:

Now that the details are (finally) worked out, I can safely announce that Dave Rostenne and I are offering our first combined course for users who are new to Macs, or have just "switched". The course will take place over at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (SPAO), and you can find details on their special events page or in this printable PDF file.

When

Saturday, January 26th, 2008 from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, with an additional hour afterwards (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM) for questions and answers.

The cost and how to register

The cost is a very reasonable $79, and to register, you can either call (613) 562-3824 or email ADMIN@SPAO.CA. Register soon, because seating is limited to 20 people!

We hope to see you there!

Speaking of Ottawa

dAVE — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:10:47 +0000

Speaking of Ottawa is a project I have been working on with Tom. There is now some detail on what we are working on on the site.. go look and while you are there, sign up for the annoucement list!

Bus tracing under Windows.

stany — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:08:00 +0000

I’ve used USB Sniffer v1.8 to sniff USB bus transactions under Windows. It works, although generates very verbose output (and I have to copy the .log files to a unix box, where grep/sed/awk can actually make them useful. Yes, I know about cygwin, no, command line editing under windows still sucks).

I was told to give a free version of Bus Hound a try, especially for looking at IDE transactions. (BusHound supports alot more then just usb bus, and I was told that it’s quite good, which is a win, since I am thinking about foregoing using USB to IDE adapter, as using USB introduces extra data in bus traces, by wrapping around CDBs.)

P.S. Reading ATA/ATAPI 7 and MMC 6 specs gave me headaches. So I stopped.

Peter Watts’ Books are licensed under CC

stany — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:38:54 +0000

Peter Watts, a Canadian Marine Biologist responsible for Vampire Domesticantion lectures (Which you should spend 40 minutes and listen to, and definitely read the little corporate slogans at the corner of each slide) licensed a bunch of his books under CC license, and made them available for download.

Thank you, Peter! I was looking on Amazon, and at 50 to 90 dollars a copy (per softcover), it was not feasible for me to buy them.

If you liked these, consider buying Behemoth: A-Max and Behemoth: Seppuku. They are also good.

Oh, and regarding slogans: in F.E.A.R, on certain levels there were posters that said “Remember, it’s Quantity, Quality, Safety in that order!”

Kino (Part II)

stany — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:16:42 +0000

In Part I I’ve translated some Kino songs for Alan.

I’ve realized that I never translated “Группа крови ” (Gruppa Krovi “Blood Type”), even though I promised.

We aim to please here, so here is the translation:

Теплое место, но улицы ждут
Отпечатков наших ног.
Звездная пыль – на сапогах.
Мягкое кресло, клетчатый плед,
Не нажатый вовремя курок.
Солнечный день – в ослепительных снах.

Pleasant (lit: Warm) place, but streets wait
For footprints of our feet.
Stardust is on our high boots.
Soft chair, tartan plaid,
Firing pin not depressed on time.
Sunny day in blinding dreams.

Группа крови – на рукаве,
Мой порядковый номер – на рукаве,
Пожелай мне удачи в бою, пожелай мне:
Не остаться в этой траве,
Не остаться в этой траве.
Пожелай мне удачи, пожелай мне удачи!

Blood type on the sleeve
My sequencial number is on the sleeve.
Wish me luck in fight, wish me
Not to remain on this grass
Not to remain on this grass
Wish me luck, wish me luck!

И есть чем платить, но я не хочу
Победы любой ценой.
Я никому не хочу ставить ногу на грудь.
Я хотел бы остаться с тобой,
Просто остаться с тобой,
Но высокая в небе звезда зовет меня в путь.

And I something to pay with, but I don’t want
A victory at any cost.
I don’t want to put my foot on anyone’s chest
I want to remain with you,
Just remina with you
But sunrise (lit: High star in the sky) is calling me on my way.

Translator’s note: Tsoj wrote songs in a rather terse way, with setenses that are not really complete. He is trying to conjure up imagery, and imagery that he is trying to conjure is not necessarily easy to translate into a different language.

Of course Victor Tsoj is dead (in spite of the “Tsoj lives!” graffitti that pops up every once in a while). However Ленинград (Leningrad) did a kind of tribute to Kino’s Gruppa Krovi:

В магнитофоне играет группа “Кино”,
Ты говоришь мне: “Выключи это гавно”.
Тебя ломает от всякого старья,
Заткнись, это любимая песня моя.

Tape deck is playing group “Kino”
You are telling me “Turn off this shit”
You are getting headache from random old stuff.
Shut up, this is my favorite song.

О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.

Oh, blood type on the sleeve.
Oh, blood type on the sleeve.

Ты можешь помолчать хотя бы пять минут,
Или пожелай мне удачи в бою.
Группа крови – моя любимая песня,
И когда мне плохо, её я пою:

Can you be quite for just 5 minutes,
Or wish me luck in the (upcoming) fight.
“Grouppa Krovi” is my favorite song,
And when I feel down, I sing it.

О, группа крови на рукаве.
О, группа крови на рукаве.

repeat first verse and reprise as needed.

MP3 is available while it’s available.Translator’s (mine!) notes:
ломает is a conjugated form of ломать – to break. However it is also used as slang for ломка (literally: breakage), which is the general unwellness feeling one gets when one is craving drugs (or coming down from a trip).

On a separate note about drugs…. Don’t do them, m’kay? I don’t really want to project my morals onto anyone else on the interweb, however not too long ago I’ve read a book by Eugenij Roizman (Евгений Ройзман), called “City without Drugs” (Город без наркотиков). Oh, my…. He talks how in the late 1990s city of Ekaterinburg in Russia got flooded with drugs of all kinds, and how he got involved in fighting drug distribution, rehabilitating addicts, and generally fight the lack of care by law enforcement (that was commonly bought off by the drug dealers and distributers).

Most effective method that actually worked was to handcuff the addict to the heating radiator for a month, feeding him, and once the initial craving got broken, getting him into hard physical labor – construction, etc.

Parents that had “connections” and had clue, were arranging, paying even, police to arrest their teenage kids, and jail them for a year. Jail their children! That’s because even though situation in Russian jails is not great, and cases of tuberculosis and hepatitus are common, people with clue realized that chancing that in jail is infinitely better then guaranteed death from OD, AIDS or hep C in 2 – 3 years. “Normal” rehab didn’t work, and people were back to being on the street and addicts in weeks after leaving care. So people without connections were bringing their children to Mr Roizman, into the care of a NGO fund that he created. Many of addicts to whom Mr Roizman helped went on to lead normal lives – finished universities, married, have kids, and now are thankful to him.