The 4th of April, 1984... I know what I did that day.  I was just 14 years old, but I know exactly what I did that day.... 

One of the teachers at the school I was attending at the time decided that all the students should get together and do something silly... put something in a time capsule.  Being 14 at the time, my contribution was... predictable, and a funny snapshot of life in rural Canada.  The funny thing is, many things have not changed much...

The condition of the form is... rather sad.  The time capsule was a glass jar.  Not exactly the best choice for a container you were about to bury in the ground for 24 years.

Some funny bits from the list of favorites (what most of the page consists of):

Food:  Pizza
Pastime:  Video Games

 Hmmmm... nothing new there.  Pizza is still high on my list, and video games... sadly I am an addict... particularly of World of Warcraft.

TV Show:  Hardcastle and McCormic
Movie:  Boy Did I Get A Wrong Number

What was I thinking?  Hardcastle and McCormic? Boy Did I Get A Wrong Number?  I don't remember being such a fan of tacky 80's shoot'em ups or Bob Hope Movies

Subject:  Math
Teacher:  Apple II E

Math has always been a favorite of mine.. all through school and university.  There is something about how it all works that can keep me occupied for far longer than it should.  And My favorite teacher was Apple II E?  Hmmm an indication of things to come... computers were just starting to "arrive" for the average person, and I was already hooked.

Animal:  Animal!

Hehe... I loved the Muppets then... and I still do.  Animal... my favorite of all of them.

Beverage:  Irish Cream

Hmmmm at 14.... how did I know about Irish Cream?

Book:  Red Planet

I was a SciFi fan then and I still am.  Red Planet by Heinlein was and still is one of my favorite books.

So... despite 24 years passing, It looks like little has changed... I'm still rather eccentric, enjoy pizza and SciFi books... I think, though, that my movie tastes have moved beyond Bob Hope classics, and my favorite TV Shows are... well.. not much better and include the new Dr. Who series and... sigh... Top Gear.  OK, so I'm still 14 years old

snow falls on Hamburg
it is cold outside today
i hate winter

There... that is about as close as I have come to a Haiku in 30 years   I wish I could take a photo of this horrible white stuff.  It's falling in big clumps... not flakes anymore.. clumps... and melting as it hits the ground.  Snow is... my arch nemesis... my enemy... snow is something you fly to... ski on, and then fly away from... not something you need to walk in to get to and from the office.

Sigh.

One year ago today I had just arrived in Kigali, Rwanda... walking off the airplane into warm sunshine, and taking a deep breath of African air (there is a distinct difference in how the air smells in Europe vs Africa).

Today, I am in the office, looking out the window at a typical Hamburg winter day... cold, steel grey sky, slightly foggy, and damp.  Where did I go wrong?

I know that when you ride public transit in any country, you are bound to run into some of the more eccentric types... it's either that public transit draws them, or more likely that you are putting a group of people together in a small area and the odds are that some will be a bit.... odd... different... (yes I include myself in that eccentric group )

The bus route I ride on has its fair share of the strange.  One guy in particular stands out.... I call him Sudoku Guy.  I see him usually 2 or 3 times per week... sometimes on my way home, and sometimes on my way to work.  At first glance there is nothing unusual... he is well dressed, carries a briefcase, and could be any one of many people on their way to and from a normal office job. He stands out thought because he spends the whole time he is on the bus doing Sudoku puzzles. 

Now, there is nothing unusual about someone doing puzzles while they ride on public transit.  It is a great way to keep your mind busy and maybe even challenge your mind a little.  What is unusual about this gentleman is HOW he does his Sudoku puzzles.  He always has one of the large puzzle books you can buy at almost any newsstand... and he methodically works his way through every single puzzle by looking up the answers in the back of the puzzle book and copying the numbers to the puzzle he is working on.  He never actually tries to solve a puzzle... he just starts a new one by copying the answers from the back, line by line.  When he's done copying, he moves on to the next one.  Each puzzle takes him maybe a minute, and as you can guess, he goes through his puzzle books fairly quickly.  He is always intensely focused on his task of copying the answers from the back of the puzzle book, and oblivious to everyone and everything around him.  I wonder some days if he misses his stop.. he is that involved in copying the answers.

Every day is an adventure when you ride public transit  

I live near the Hamburg-Harburg S-Bahn train station.  People like to tease me about it being a slightly dodgy area of the city... which is emphasized by the fact that this particular train station has full time security guards patrolling the train platform.

Normally the guards are just there, wandering about, chatting together, or sometimes chatting with a commuter that they happen to know.  You never really noticed them.  Lately that has changed.

To set the scene though you have to understand how the people here travel on the train to work each day.  Harburg station is a one of the main train stations which means that there is a lot of people converging on that station to get on the S-Bahn train.  There is a train scheduled to arrive on the underground platform every 4 minutes, and generally speaking the trains are usually pretty close to on time.  So, you have a large train station, and a train departing every 4 minutes heading into the Hamburg city center.  Now comes the people.  They arrive up top, and run down the stairs to the train platform.  They run as if all the demons of hell are chasing them.... especially if they think there is a train pulling into the station.  They will practically kill themselves to get to the train... and when the train door closing alarm sounds they sprint even more.  This is normal... despite the fact that there is another train arriving in 4 minutes, the people still do this.  I think they are insane, but that's a topic for another blog entry

Now, lately, the security guards have taken to standing near the last train car, just at the bottom of the stairs... waiting... and when the door alarm goes off and everyone starts that last mad hell-bent sprint to get on the train before the doors close, they start shouting and yelling... it is a bit startling to come down the stairs and be yelled at by some security guard... especially in my case where I don't speak the language, and some big guy in a uniform is yelling in my general direction "HALT!..." and a few other words I don't know.

Life in Germany... it's weird some days...

Hmmm... yet again, I have been neglecting my blog, not posting anything.  I can't even really say I've been too busy... I just haven't had a lot to say I guess... and for those of you that know me, yes it is possible that I don't have an opinion on something

I've been reading a really good book lately... the autobiography of a man I really admire... Nelson Mandela and the book is called Long Walk To Freedom.  It is a really interesting insight into who he is, where he came from and the drive he had to make South Africa its own again.  It's a good read even if you are not much of a fan of biographies.

Been keeping busy with nerdy projects at home - a friend gave me a nice Koolance water cooling kit for my computer, and this past weekend I set it all up.  I have been interested in water cooling because my computer tends to run so hot.  I've done a lot with it to try and reduce the noise - the computer sits in my living room, so noise is an issue.  I replaced all the stock fans with low dB fans, and bought an expensive Zalman CPU heat sink.  My video card is a passive cooled nVidia card.. and so on.  The result was that the noise level was dramatically reduced, but at a cost of increased heat build up, especially when I started pushing the CPU and GPU a bit.  Under load, the GPU would heat up to 80C, and the CPU would peak around 60C.  Even the case temp would build up rather quickly... if I stopped the case fans (I have 2) then things would get even hotter.... not so good. 

So.. water cooling is now in place for the GPU and CPU, and there was an immediate difference.  First off, the 3 radiator fans are noisier than my previous heatsink and air cooled setup.  Second... even under load the temps don't move much.  The CPU sits idle at about 25C, and under load gets to 42C.  The GPU is idle at 40C and under load at 44C (the most dramatic difference).

One last think to think about.. the Northbridge heatsink gets hot... really hot... I am thinking maybe I should bring it into the water cooled loop as well...

Oh, and I plan on replacing the 3 radiator fans with some low dB fans to make it all nice and quiet again.

Wow.. I am a boring person aren't I?  Oh well... c'est la vie.

This past weekend, the guys responsible for The Sims have released a new game called Spore.   The basic premise is your character starts as a simple organism in the primordial soup of a newly formed planet.  Your job is to guide your little amoeba-like character through its evolution into a space-faring race, and then conqueror the galaxy.  Simple... right?  Well kinda.

First problem... I use only Linux at home.  EA have released this game only for Windows and Mac. [1]

I bought the game from the EA Store with the intent of downloading it direct instead of buying a box set from a shop.  So out came the credit card, and away I went.  Tappity tappity, and my card was charged, and I was all ready to download my new game.  Nope... not possible.  EA requires you to use their proprietary downloader tool... Windows only.  I tried installing the downloader in Cedega, but it was a no-go.  I contacted EA Customer Support asking if there was another way to download the binary... and was not-so-politely told to go away. 

Well, there is always a solution... I fired up my trusty VirtualBox, and booted a Windows XP VM.  I installed the EA downloader there, downloaded and decrypted the Spore installer (for some bizarre reason they "encrypt" the main download).  A bit of fiddling and I had it moved over to my Linux /home. 

Now the test... the big test... will it actually install in Cedega.  I warily launched the installer and to my surprise... it worked... it actually installed with no complaint.  I also installed the DirectX9 Redistributable (part of the Spore install process).

The next test... will the game itself launch... well... it worked!  It actually worked (using the latest Beta RC from Cedega).  Cool.  There are a few minor issues - such as two error messages on startup, but they are not critical and have no impact on gameplay that I can see.

There are a few problems with the game though... DRM being the major one.  EA in all their wisdom implemented one of the stupidest DRM schemes ever in an attempt to limit or stop piracy... they used SecuROM (one of the most hated DRM "solutions" on the planet) and they limit ALL paying customers to 3 activations.. after that you're out of luck and cannot install and play the game anymore.  All they have succeeded to do was alienate a significant portion of their potential customer base, and drive even more people into pirating the software... if only to circumvent the stupidity of the DRM.  To add insult to injury, the crack for the DRM was actually available online several days BEFORE the actual release.  EA 0, Software Pirates 1.  EA lost the fight before they even released the software.  How stupid can they be?

That said, the game is a lot of fun, and I'm really enjoying designing my own spaceships and taking over the galaxy.  If you do decide to give it a try, be aware that the SecuROM DRM stupidity is almost impossible to remove from your computer (assuming you still use Windows) without a reformat and reinstall.

[1] The Mac port was done by Transgaming, the same company that produces Cedega for Linux - the Wine engine you can use to install and play a lot of Windows games in Linux.

When I was back in Canada this summer, I stopped by the place I grew up in... not much is left actually.  A few broken down houses... and a couple that are still lived in.  The house I feel most connected to.. the one I lived in with my family from 1976 until 1984 is still standing... barely.  It stands abandoned and looking rather shabby... but still I have good memories of that house.

I remember one particularly snowy winter, there was a nice big snowbank up against the side of the house.  It was perfect for sliding down on my Crazy Carpet.  I would climb up on the snowbank which reached almost to the roof of the house, jump on the Crazy Carpet and go careening down the slope into the yard.. over and over.  It was getting late, and my mother wanted me to come in.  She tapped on the window and called me to come in.  I had to get that one more slide in... just one more.  I lined up, and then slid backwards into the dining room window.  I didn't end up in the dining room... but I did break the window... one of those big old style wooden framed windows with stained glass at the top.... in the winter time.  I was not exactly popular around home that evening.  I wonder if my parents remember that little incident?

You cannot see where that window was on the photo.  The place where the window was is covered up by the grey house.  Hmmm that's another long story.  As the family grew, we needed more room... so my parents bought the grey house next door, lifted it up and moved it up against the original yellow house.  Then knocked a hole through between the two houses right where the old (broken) dining room window was.  Result... instant double sized house, and no broken dining room window to replace.

Life in that home was... well... we had no running water in the form you probably know it.  There was a big cistern in the dug out basement under the yellow house.  We filled it with water from a 1200 liter tank in the back of a pickup truck.  This meant water rationing to save what water we had.  We started out with a hand pump in the kitchen, but that was soon replaced with a simple pressurized system my father cooked up.  We had a bathtub... first a galvanized tub we filled with heated water from buckets.. then a "real" tub with a shower once the pressure system was installed.  The toilet was a 20 liter pail in a "chemical toilet" (a metal can with a toilet seat and lid).  Heating the home was through something called a Gravity Furnace fueled by propane (LPG) and a big wood burning fireplace in the living room.  I guess you could say life there was pretty basic, but I loved it.

Hmmm I think I miss that old house... 

I just returned from a trip back home to Canada.  This is the first time I've been back there in 6 years.... and a LOT has changed.

When you're gone from your "home" you don't think much about it.  Well, I don't anyway.  Traveling back this time though was... weird... I felt so out of touch with life there.  Everything was so... big.. and spread out.  The city I was born in has almost doubled in size.  The small town I grew up in has almost disappeared.  The people I knew when I lived there have all grown old.  Errr... maybe I am doing that too   There is a nice description (with some photos) of the place I grew up on the Ray Cooley website.  The garage described in the story there is the same one my father owned and operated from the mid '70's to the late 80's.

I had a good time though.  I went to two reunions while I was there.  The first was a reunion for all the students who went to Cereal school.  The second was a reunion for my massive high school graduating class... all 9 of us.  It was pretty interesting to see everyone again... it's been 20 years (eeep!) and the funny thing is.. most of us still look the same.  Not really any older... maybe a little less "Breakfast Club", but still the same.

One thing that will stick in my mind was the "Time Capsule" dig.  In 1984, one of the grade school teachers in Cereal got this idea to get the whole school to put together a bunch of stuff and bury it in the school yard.  We filled in a questionnaire and put it all in a jar and buried it a little over a meter deep in the school yard.  The hole was dug straight out the back doors of the high school wing, right where the sloped ground met the level of the baseball diamond.  Photos were taken, and then the hole was filled in, and most of us forgot about it.  Some remembered... kind of.  No one really remembered exactly where this hole was dug, and conveniently... the playground had been landscaped a couple times in the 24 years the capsule was buried.  The slope off the back of the school was gone... the teacher who arranged the time capsule is no longer alive... and all we had to go on was some vague memories addled by the years.  Despite all that one of the former students found a backhoe and we set about digging.  We guessed where to start and found... a gas pipe... weeping tile from the 1940's... and no time capsule.  We excavated an area big enough to bury a couple pickup trucks and put in a nice swimming pool... no capsule.  After several hours of this we gave up, filled it in and called it a lost cause. 

A couple of people wouldn't give up though.  They went digging through the archives and found some old photos.. compared the landmarks in the photos to landmarks that still exist, and worked out to within a half meter where they thought the capsule was... about 3 meters away from where we dug the swimming pool.  The next day out came the backhoe again, and... they found it.  Ha cool.  I am getting some photos of the contents sent to me in the next week or so... looking forward to it.  I'll see if there is anything worth sharing here... if anyone is interested in what a goofy teenager put into a time capsule 24 years ago.  Ha.

I have been resisting getting drawn into this whole internet social networking thing for a long time... OK, I have a profile on Classmates, but hardly anyone I know is on there, and I might check it once per year at most... and I have a profile on LinkedIn, and again... I rarely check it although I do know a lot of people there. 

This past week I got an invite from a long time friend to view his profile on Facebook... so I click.. only to discover that the only way to view his profile is to make my own.  Oh, how devious is that?

Curiosity got the better of me and I created a profile.  I figured... why not... I can delete it again right.... at least I think I can.  Anyway I loaded up a profile... and then went poking about.  Hmmm same problem... hardly anyone I know is on there... or more to the point, a lot of people I know are there, but only a few that I want to contact   I did get one contact from an old school friend within a few hours of setting up the profile, and I found the profile of my Jr. High Social Studies teacher... which was kind of cool.

So I've caved in.... I've succumbed to yet another aspect of the internet I wasn't planning on getting involved in... I am now an official member of the Big Book of Faces.  I will have to go poking around in there some more to see if I can dig up any other ghosts from my past.

So there was apparently a big football game last night.... Manchester vs Chelsea (is that spelled correctly?).  A friend is a HUGE fan of football, but couldn't bear to watch the game... I was asked to watch the game for them and report back on anything big that was happening.  Errr... right... so the TV was on in the background while I did other things around the apartment.  The score hit 1-1 by half time, and we were chatting on the phone... the excitement was high... on one end of the phone conversation anyway.  I kept kinda watching... not really understanding the game all that well, and not paying a lot of attention.  The regular game ended, extra time ended, and they went into a 30 minute overtime... that also ended with them still tied 1-1.  This meant some kind of kickoff thing where they took turns on goal.

Now this is where my football numptiness comes in.  I thought it was some kind of "sudden death" kickoff where they simply took turns and when one team missed and the other scored it was over... on the 3rd attempt Manchester missed and Chelsea scored.  I figured.. game over, so I called my friend and said.. Chelsea won... lots of woohooing later (my friend doesn't like Manchester, so roots for any team who plays against them), I realized that the kickoff wasn't exactly over.... errr... ooops... there were several more kicks to go, and in the end Manchester won.... and I was in trouble.   Oh well.... one day maybe I'll figure out why people get so worked up about this game... maybe...

I stumbled onto something called Zattoo this past weekend http://www.zattoo.com

It is a P2P streaming Television service that uses a concept similar to BitTorrent to provide very high quality video to your desktop.  It is cross platform - Windows, OSX and Linux/Unix, which is a major plus in my books (since I refuse to use that horrible disaster of an OS called Windows).

The program is quite easy to install (I installed in openSUSE10.3 and Kubuntu 8.04) and even easier to use.  The interface is quick, clean and fast.  The video being shown is live, not delayed (I compared it with common channels I also get via my DVB-T tuner).  The quality is excellent.. not full digital like I get from my DVB-T tuner, but close enough.  I had TVoverIP from my ISP for a while, and that was only about 50% the quality of the video feed from Zattoo... so a definite thumbs up for video quality.

There are limitations though... the biggest one is that the application uses geolocation to pin down where you are connecting from, and if you are connecting from an "unsupported" country, you're out of luck.  Currently only a few western European countries are available.  If you connect from a German ISP, you will only be able to get local German TV programs.... same if you connect from France, or the UK.. only local "allowed" programming.

The whole geolocation thing is probably good for the broadcasters, but it is a MAJOR pain for the viewers... the customers.  The broadcasters are still stuck in a 1953 mentality, but the world has moved on.  So many people are on the move, living in countries outside their country of birth... more so than ever before, and a service like this would be more than welcome if... for example... a UK citizen living in Portugal could watch English language Television from the UK.  But on the surface, this is not possible... technically more than possible, but restricted for reasons the viewing public don't care about.

Anyway, a bit of a rant there... because I am one affected by the geolocation thing when I don't want to be.  I want the BBC... I got used to the BBC when I lived in the Netherlands (I like to watch Doctor Who episodes for example), and it is not available where I live now in Germany.  I "could" get it with Zattoo... but cannot since I am connecting from the wrong IP.  Maybe it's time to investigate proxies in a little more detail....

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but... I really don't "get" the appeal of football (or soccer to the uninitiated people from North America).  OK, it's a fun game to go out and play in the empty lot around the corner, but the fervor and passion it generates among the fans blows me away.  These people will drop EVERYTHING to watch a game.

Case in point.... I have a friend staying at my place right now.  This friend came running into the house last night just before the Barcelona-Manchester game started... bang, down on the sofa, and was totally glued to the TV for 2 hours... jumping up and down at every missed goal, and getting annoyed or worked up over referee calls and the various player's actions.  I sat there shaking my head and laughing.

I just cannot get into football... all these grown men tripping over butterflies (I can't see anything else out there that throws them so violently to the ground), and then rolling around in apparent agony until they realize the ref hasn't noticed... zip they are back up and sprinting for the ball and looking for another butterfly to trip over.. or maybe an errant blade of grass.  Another thing I noticed from the game... water has absolutely astounding restorative and healing properties.  It didn't happen in the game last night, but in other games I've been subjected to by friends, some poor baby of a player would trip and fall... thrash about as if he had broken his leg... the coach (or someone) would run up, pour a little bottled water on the player and shazam, like magic he was "cured" of his life threatening injuries and back in the game.

Maybe that is where my total lack of interest in this game comes from... a "professional" game consists mainly of grown men acting like preschoolers, tripping and falling to get some attention.

One of the things I enjoy about my job is that I get to interact with people from all over the world with all levels of computer skills, from the ninja programmers to people who are afraid to click anything.

This is also one of the more baffling aspects as well.  I find it incredibly difficult to understand how it is that someone can use their computer, sometimes for years, and not realize that there is a list of installed programs in the "Start" menu (assuming they are using MS Windows)... they assume that if the icon is not on the desktop, the application is not installed.

I always thought that simple curiosity would prompt people to explore a little... to see what's there... and discover what they can do... not just with computers, but with everything in life.  Something is holding some people back though.  Are they conditioned to be afraid of trying for fear of breaking something?  Is it simply an education thing, and these people simply need to be shown what is possible?  Or is it something else deeper and more fundamental?