If you donÂ’t feel like accomplishing anything this afternoon, head on over to Acts of Gord, it is quite funny.


People in the wrong threatening to sue you are another one of my big favourites.

Every once in a while I think about some good times I had with a friend, in Windsor, back in high school, grade school, whatever. I punch their name up in Google, browse for a bit playing with different additional search terms (Canada, Windsor, Oakville, etc), get frustrated and give up.


The depressing part is, I know few of them look me up in the same manner, because a search for mine name yields me, every link, for the first four pages (then I got tired of looking). I do hear from the occasional person, and thatÂ’s super, I just wish more people were easier to find via Google.

Once the book goes to print the Amazon links to me will probably rocket to the top of the Google search, but I guess thatÂ’s OK, since it will have my picture there, and people can be sure it is indeed the paul they were looking for.

I've spent some time thinking about how much sarcasm I should include in my book, though I do feel that my editor(s) and I may have a small difference of opinion on the subject. I personally feel that there should be lots and lots, and I have this nagging suspicion that they feel there should be little to none. Now if there was just one editor, I might be able to slip some through, but there is in fact three of them, and they get to make up the deadlines, for me and themselves. So I donÂ’t think that I can slip too much through.


When it comes to my sense of humor, some may describe it as a dry wit, though slightly damp with sarcasm. Then they correct themselves as to the level of dampness, and progress over to saturated, then to dripping, then to drenched. Somewhere along the way they stop deluding themselves and cease using the word ‘wit’ entirely, and just describe it as sarcasm, dripping with the hate and loathing of the common man that only years of working technical support can provide. Luckily the reader of this book won’t be the common man, but the ‘professional’ PHP programmer, who will hopefully recognize that when I speak to the reader in a way that could be interpreted as derogatory, I am not in fact speaking to them, I am infact speaking to the l337 h4x0r who picked up the book to start himself on his way to hacking into Google on the Gateway PeeCee that his mom bought him for not getting suspended for a whole week! Or, better yet, they just don’t read those parts until after they have paid for the book and lost the receipt.


(God I hope my editor(s) doesnÂ’t read that)


(Or better yet, they spend all their time reading that, and forget to edit out the sarcasm)

I have about a TB/mnth of transfer at the moment, paid for, but unused. I have Share The Beat on a high load plan, but canÂ’t use it until I finish the site (which isn't happening to quickly while writing a book). So it is just being wasted.


So if you need something hosted on a temporary basis drop me a line and we can probably work something out.


Or if someone knows of a project like Freenet that doesn't require me to install Java, that could work to. It is a Linux server of course.

I just posted something to my wrox blog for the first time to get it all set up so I can use the feed as a resource in my Consuming Web Feeds chapter. I will use some of my code there in order to cross post everything here automatically. More on that code later.


You can view the blog here for now.

I was flipping through the channels after a late dinner and saw the tail end of ‘Rebel Billionaire’ it looks pretty fun. Billionaire dude comes up with all these challenges, and uses them to slowly eliminate all the contestants; winner gets to run his (the billionaires) companies for a year.


Anyways, the challenge was this, get into a specially constructed barrel, developed in partnership with NASA, and inside it, go over the Victoria Falls. There were two contestants for this event, one backed out; the other went for it, with the billionaire taking the other seat.


It turns out that the challenge was a scam; it was in fact a test, to examine the two contestant’s decision making abilities, ability to asses risk, etc. The one who decided not to get in the barrel ended up being the ‘winner’ (ie not being eliminated).


I must admit, if I had been there, I would have gotten in. For a couple reasons:

- Some guy with billions of dollars says I will live

- I will never get this chance again

- The dude worth billions of dollars probably doesnÂ’t want a dead guy hanging over his shoulder

- When the billionaire mentioned that he would go if one contestant backed out, that would have sealed the deal for me, thereÂ’s no way this dude is going to risk his life if he doesnÂ’t believe in it, and he probably has a plethora of PHDÂ’s telling him what is and is not safe.

The reviews on the web are plentiful, but I might as well add my two cents. I loved the game, and IÂ’ve only played single player. I finished the campaign last night, it seemed shorter than the first one, but that might just be a result of me playing more consistently. The story line was good, I was happy with the cinematics, voice acting was great, etc.


Spoiler Warning **


I loved being able to play a character from both races, switching from Master Chief to the Arbiter mid game was fun. Being able to use the ArbiterÂ’s cloaking option added some new dimensions to the game (though I often forgot it was an option). The energy sword was a welcome addition, as was dual wield. It took me a while to get the hang of dual wield and dual weapon slots, but once I did, I really appreciated the different approaches it allowed. I found the long drawn out battles with the flood rather tiresome in the first one, those sequences were left out of this one, but there were still a few areas I played more than once in order to make it through. None often enough to stop being fun.


** End Spoiler Warning


Graphically I didnÂ’t find it too different from the first, sure there is probably another billion polygons on the pistol, but I didnÂ’t notice. The first game looked good, this one does to.


Something I believe Bungie deserves full credit for is their handling of loading saved games. If you turn your X-Box on, and start your game right away, loading everything will probably take like 30 seconds. Par for the course. However if you turn the X-Box on, then go grab a coke, then return, and load your campaign it takes like 3 seconds. It loads all the necessary data while displaying the intro cinematic, this is an excellent idea, I wish more companies would do this. One more thing that they perfected is in game loading, there simply isn’t any. You wait to start the game, then you can play start to finish with no more loading, sure it says ‘Loading…’ on the screen, but you can keep playing. Death is also pretty seamless, no pause, no nothing. The camera zooms out on your body, and then you start up again at the last checkpoint, perfect. It really ticks me off in other games (cough Burnout 3: Takedown cough) when you want to repeat something and you have to wait for it to load all over again.


Apparently Multiplayer is ‘where it’s at’ in Halo 2, unfortunately I don’t know many people living in Waterloo to play with, and I don’t have the time or the money to spring for X-Box live at the moment.

(It is, I counted)


For those of you mere mortals living in a newish house, or a house with a reasonably sized property, or perhaps even an apartment building: You know not what fall brings. You walk through the park and smile, taking in the pretty colours, enjoying the sound of the leaves beneath your feet, then you return home, to your sanctuary, and leave it all behind. I have no such sanctuary. I live in a house built in the 1800s, on a street full of other houses and trees far preceding me in existence. All of these trees get together and build a calendar, of which tree will drop which leaves when. It isnÂ’t a quick process, they donÂ’t all pick the 23rd of October, no they spread it out, just so I can be out there with a rake 3-4 times a week. Oh the joy.


This isnÂ’t some afternoon excursion into the back yard, with laughing, jumping in piles of leaves and hot cocoa. No, this is serious business. Involving multiple pieces of heavy, and hand wielded equipment, squad based organization, and sheer exhaustion. The fact that the house happens to be up for sale implied that this was done on a daily basis for quite a while, as the yard had to be picture perfect should anyone decide to drive by.

Just to give you some measure of the sheer magnitude of the leaves involved, these are a few pictures of the street,

where a BULLDOZER just drove by to push the leaves into less manageable piles. ThatÂ’s right, a bulldozer! Normally associated with the magnitude of dirt removal required to build homes, they need one just to get the leaves off the street. This isnÂ’t the first time they have come either, oh no, in that case the homes on the other side of the street would no longer be visible due to the mountain of leaves in the way. This is the third. The previous time required no less than four employees of the city to complete this task so arduous. One man to drive ahead in a pick up truck, and manage the crew, one man to drive the leaf sucking, steaming, shredding, storing monstrosity, one man to wield the great hose of sucking, and another to brandish a rake in a threatening manner, ready to teach any tardy leaves a lesson.

Just after dinner I remembered my monitor could rotate 90degrees, so you ended up with a tall skinny monitor, rather than a wide one. I gave it a try, I think I like it. The size makes a lot more sense for writing than I had anticipated, even with the Wrox style stuff on the left side.

I am a big fan of ‘distributed’ downloads (as I should be, being a past employee of MetaMachine, authors of eDonkey, Overnet & KDrive). Everybody downloads from everybody, everybody uploads to everybody. It is a great system to get big files out to hundreds, thousands or even hundred of thousands of disparate clients spread over the globe. I also think it is the perfect way to distribute free content to the masses, say the latest RvB episode, or Knoppix ISO. Its big advantage over one (or several) server with a huge pipe, is just that, the main server doesn’t need that big a pipe. Instead every one of the downloaders uses some of their own upload bandwidth to share the files with others. In a well designed network (such as Overnet) speed is actually directly proportional to file popularity (for direct downloads via FTP or HTTP the exact opposite would be true, the more downloaders the slower the transfer).


I am currently using the ‘Blizzard Downloader’ to grab the World of Warcraft beta (I quote blizzard downloader because it is really just a wrapper for a BitTorrent client, or so I am lead to believe). My upload/download ratio is hanging around 1:1, which means my upload pipe is choked with traffic. I am okay with this, because it is a free download, and presumably I will get to play the game for free at least once or twice. This method of distribution, particularly with this client (eDonkey, and the eDonkey BitTorrent plugin for example allow you to configure your max transfer speeds), does have some disadvantages. Firstly, since my upload pipe is completely saturated everything else I do online is slow and sluggish. Typing into putty is painful and very lag prone. Web surfing takes forever. Secondly I’m a bit worried about monthly bandwidth caps that may or may not be enforced by our ISP.


It is for these reasons that, I would not, and will not, accept this method of distribution for paid content. I paid for the content once, I shouldnÂ’t need to pay for it a second time in bandwidth charges and reduced productivity. IÂ’ve heard a bit about Steam, ValveÂ’s distribution system for Half Life 2 (and related patches, etc), if it does indeed use customers bandwidth to distribute patches it would probably stop me from purchasing the game.

It sucks when youÂ’re surfing OkCupid to avoid doing homework, run across a profile of a person who actually seems pretty cool (but lives 217 miles away), then read that they havenÂ’t logged in since July.


Dang.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the whole ‘Kids can do it’ phase that Hollywood went through while I was a kid, that definitely seems to be over now. Kids films are usually animated these days (and often related to some sort of card game), and don’t seem to carry the same punch. So I have been trying to work out a mental list of films I watched as a kid that I want my kids to see.

Explorers – A bunch of kids make a space ship, and explore outer space
Goonies– A bunch of kids find a treasure map in the attic. They follow the map navigating booby traps and avoiding some evil adults to find the treasure of ‘One Eyed Willy’
Space Camp– A bunch of kids enter space camp, and end up going into space.
Iron Eagle– One kid’s father gets captured overseas, so he steals a fighter jet, and flies in to rescue him.
The Last Starfighter– One kid beats a video game only to discover it was a recruiting device, he gets recruited to fly a star fighter and save the galaxy.
The Karate Kid– One kid often harassed by bullies learns a little about karate and a lot about himself.
The Neverending Story– While reading a book one kid gets transported away to the fairytale land described in the book to live through the story.
Labrynth– A frustrated older sister wishes her brother away, only to go rescue him from the labyrinth.
Home Alone– Young boy gets left home alone at Christmas, and must protect his house from two burglars.
Flight Of the Navigator - Young kid escapes a military institution by flying an alien space ship with the help of a witty robot.


I’ve restricted myself to the ‘Kids Can Do It’ movies, but you don’t have to. What movies do you remember fondly, and want to pass on to your kids?



--

War Games - A kid accidently hacks into the government computers and starts a war, and must race against the clock to turn it off.

Hey All, I am quite interested in starting up a Kitchener Waterloo PHP users group. I really enjoyed the monthly NY-PHP meetings I attended over the summer, and would like to keep something like that going. However, it doesnÂ’t seem like there is anything of the sort here in Kitchener/Waterloo (Ontario, Canada).


The general format of a meeting was pretty simple. One of the groupÂ’s leaders went up, talked for a moment about the group, any business to attend to (new members, work required on the group website, etc), then the talks started. Usually either one or two people would give a talk on a particular PHP related topic, such as HTML_QuickForm, Smarty, OO Design, Upgrading to PHP 5, etc. Overall the quality of the talks was excellent (many of the speakers went on to give the same talk at OSCon, for only a few hundred dollars more ), and well received. After the meeting many of the group members headed over to a nearby restaurant for refreshments and conversations.


So, is there anyone out there interested in helping me start the group? I can probably either write a talk to give at the first meeting, or twist a few arms to get someone else to come down and talk. But I need some help with publicity and finding a place to hold the talks themselves. In NY the talks were held in office space generously donated by either IBM or Digital Pulp (employers of group members), I however donÂ’t have any good connections in the area.


It would be great to get a few people with campus connections at Laurier and UofW on board to help publicize the meetings on campus. If youÂ’re interested either leave a comment or send me an email.

I basically threw myself down the stairs last week to avoid stepping on (and thereby killing) our cat. I half caught myself on the arch that sits at the bottom of the stairs, and it felt like I broke the arch because it broke away. It wasnÂ’t the arch breaking away, it was my thumb. It wasnÂ’t actually broken (I hope), but the fleshy part has turned a really nice shade of purple/black. ItÂ’s great! This is greatly inhibited my ability to use the PC, so I am currently trying to play catch-up.