A quick hint for compiling the LKC parser. The kbuild system requires that bison 2.3 is used. Newer versions (in my case, 2.4) generate code that throw a compilation error.
Archive for the 'Asides' Category
The Globe and Mail placed the Canadian Copyright reform bill on a wiki for users to edit. I think this is a great use of a wiki and gives us an opportunity to read up on our rights and (maybe) make a change.
I was debugging a seemingly random crash in some graph layout code. An hour later… feeling proud of myself for having fixed the problem, I wanted to file the problem in the bug tracker, only to find a bug report with the exact problem and resolution. Lesson learned: Always, always, check the bug tracker before trying to debug broken code yourself.
Computers fail again. The TSX halted its trading for an entire day due to problems with its data feeds. What sort of problem with data feeds could be so horrible to require an entire day to fix? Source.
The second trailer for the next Star Trek movie is out. I looks like quite an exciting action movie. The trailer almost has the same tone as the Transformers movie. Definitely not the Star Trek I used to know and love, but hey, I’m open to a series “reboot”.
It seems that Adobe doesn’t want to be left out of the Web 2.0 office application fad with it’s Acrobat.com. It provides document writing, desktop sharing, PDF creation, and a neat online PDF reader. All of this was made possible by employing the formerly Macromedia’s Flash technology. I was initially excited about the online Acrobat reader since the Linux reader is quite slow, and the other online solutions, such as Scribd are less than impressive. However, the Flash plug-in for Linux isn’t very impressive either. Well, in any case, Adobe seems to have gotten the right idea, by starting work on an open-source Flash and certifying PDF as an ISO standard.
The United States’ Department of Homeland Security now has the power to detain a traveler’s laptop indefinitely at the border, without any cause for suspicion. This is frightening, especially since all of my work and personal life is stored inside this machine. Not to mention that I use Linux, which might set off a cyber-terrorist alert, since it is the OS of hackers… apparently.
I was looking for traffic conditions prior to my drive to Toronto and found that the Ministry of Transportation uses Google Maps to display the location and images from the highway traffic cameras around Toronto. Very neat!
In anticipation for the Dark Knight, here is a clip of the dynamic duo from the original Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward. A batcopter, a batladder, four cans of ocean repellent batspray… “Holy Sardines!”
So the iPhone aka “something big” according to Roger’s has been released, and one of its greatest strengths is it’s extensible application platform. The iPhone SDK is available for free… but in order to have your application run on an actual iPhone, it will cost a developer $99 and an Intel powered Mac. Hmm.. great idea there, Apple. Charge the very people who might write applications promote the sales of the iPhone.
A visual comparison between using the PHP rand() pseudo-random generator and the numbers generated by random.org, a truly random generator.
We may have a celebrity moving into Waterloo… Stephen Hawking!
Switched providers and updated design. I found the old design far too distracting, so I hope this one is an improvement!
Zachary Quinto will play Spock in the upcoming Star Trek movie. Sylar is definitely one of the most memorable characters in Heroes, so I have high hopes for the new Spock!
Crazy. I don’t know why there’s this obsession over thin electronics (like the Moto RAZR), but the Intel Metro laptop is insane. Take a look. I love my chunky Thinkpad Z61p, but hey, if Intel can pack as much power as my Z61p into that small package, then I’m all for thin 
The Suspend2 project has been renamed TuxOnIce in order to differentiate itself from the actual process of suspending to ram and suspending to disk. TuxOnIce screams geekiness.
The Lenovo Thinkpad T61p has just been announced. It has the option of a WUXGA (1920×1200) screen, and comes with UWB, the successor to Bluetooth, which allows for 100 megabit transfer speeds… meaning the possibility of wireless port replicators. Imagine hooking up the laptop with your desktop keyboard and monitor, wirelessly. That’s cool. I think that the WUXGA screen is an IPS screen still, but don’t count on future models having IPS displays.
