Ahh... 2005, the year of opportunity. To quote Chris with a line I particularly enjoyed, There are a thousand forks in the road called January. We're taking it!

How true. Right now I am exploring options for working in other countries like New Zealand and England. I think I'm looking for something a bit different at this point. Fortunately my degree opens quite a few doors — but I am still a bit hesitant to walk through all of them in case I fall into a trap. Until I open a door though, I am quite content to sit and dabble in the pseudo-familiar until I get bored.

This message is up on Dal Online as a warning to people who need to do grade approval. I think that it might explain why it took so long to get some of my marks back.

Some people may experience problems with this process due to a problem with IE (Internet Explorer) and earlier versions of Netscape (7.0 and earlier), the recommended browser used for the grade approval process is Netscape version 7.2 or Mozilla Firefox. Use of IE or older Netscape versions may result in a "page cannot be displayed" or an authentication error message.

Please note, this is not a problem with the Banner system. This is an issue with web browsers that we are unable to resolve.

I think it is funny how they say it is not a problem with Banner — because clearly it must be an issue with Banner. I'm pretty sure that the web application can be written in such a way that supports IE and I'm certain that it likely does, but the Dal folks have bunged it up somehow. Not that I am condoning the use of IE — please avoid it, I'm just ranting at sloppy work.

Everyone in my house except my dad (yet) has been infected with some sort of stomach virus. Devon got it first — two days ago, but Mom, Peter and I got it last night. Word on the street is it is a stomach flu, but it only lasted about 24 hours for Devon, so I'm unsure.

Needless to say, last night sucked and I am incredibly dehydrated. :/

For those Dal CS people off campus who would like to use Dal's SMTP server, there is a way. Say if you are stealing wireless Internet from someone or you have other problems with using whatever SMTP server your ISP has provided (or in my case, I don't have the username and password for the Eastlink account at my house and I can't be bothered to ask anyone).

For Windows users using PuTTy, there is a way that is described on the Dal CS website, but that tutorial doesn't hint that there is an easy way for Mac and Linux users to also do this. I suppose, most Linux/Mac power users might be able to discover things on their own, but I thought I'd share.

This command doesn't actually give you a torch connection, but if you want to foward the ports and connect for an SSH session, remove the -N and -f flags. Also, the choice of port 10025 is arbitrary.

All you need to do after that is to set the SMTP server in your email program to localhost:10025. I'm thinking about writing a little Applescript that checks to make sure an SSH tunnel has been set up before trying to send mail.

As I was recovering from the nasty albeit short-lived bug that laid waste to my family this past week, I had a weird craving. It wasn't a food craving — not that I was eating much of anything at the time — but a game craving. It is no surprise for me to say that I am not a gamer. I don't play computer games despite spending a nauseating amount of time in front of one. But I used to play a lot of games — Super Nintendo games. I had a craving for Super Nintendo, more specifically Act Raiser. I'm not sure if anyone of you have ever played this game, but the gist of it is that you are this almighty being who has to fight monsters to clear lands for people to live on and then you continue to help solve their problems. Essentially it is a mix of action and simulation and you can I discovered beat the entire game — including maximizing the population of your villages — in one day.

Now I am in the middle of a game of Zelda III: A Link to the Past and it is a great little distraction when I don't want to do anything else. If anyone is interested, the Snes9X emulator has a mac version that works great and I have ROMs for all of the games that we used to/still own so there is no legal issue. I went through a big list of ROMs online and when I had downloaded all of the games I thought I might ever want to play, my brother pointed out that we owned them all on cartridge. I guess my tastes haven't changed much since those days — that or I only wanted to play games that were familiar for nostalgic purposes.

Well. It seems that I am now officially on some path for my future. I am going to be working on a project with Dalhousie and Symantec — and I believe that IBM is involved as well. This project will be a job essentially until such a point as I start my masters and then it will become part of my research for my degree. It all happened quite fast and I'm still not sure what is going on exactly, but I start next week and therefore will be moving back to Halifax for a bit. There is talk about me going out to Calgary for a bit, but again, I really don't know anything for certain at this point.

And while I was really skeptical about the whole masters thing, it will provide me with a better opportunity once I finish. And as several people have told me it is a lot easier to do it now than to go back later. :)

Apple today has released a whole handful of products today.

• Mac mini - tiny entry level Mac starting at $630 CDN
• iPod shuffle - very small flash-based iPod only $129 CDN
• iLife '05 - Updated version of all of the multimedia apps Apple makes.
• iWork '05 - A new word processor called Pages and a new version of Keynote.

For those people who were holding off on Macs because they were expensive and didn't have the software you wanted, hold out no longer. As of today you can get a Mac mini for $630 and BareBone Software has just upgraded their awesome TextWrangler editor and best of all — it is now free. :) For those unfamiliar with TextWrangler — it is the little brother to BBEdit, but it lacks some of the HTML specific tools that BBEdit includes. As a programmer or system administration editor, it is excellect — think UltraEdit for those Windows folks. This release was kind of overshadowed by all the cool stuff that Apple released today.

Is it sad that I am pretty excited about iWork '05 — in particular Pages, the new word processor that Apple released? Obviously this is an area that has been dominated by Microsoft for years, but Apple has shown with Safari, Mail and several other programs that quality makes a difference and they have the balls to challenge the status quo. The website makes it sound pretty impressive and I am glad that I will be getting my student discounts for a while longer. I have never had the chance to use Keynote, but I have seen it in action and it is very fine presentation software. And considering I was already thinking about upgrading my Office Suite and the only two programs I use in it are Word and Powerpoint, iWork may have arrived at the perfect time.

I also have a suspicion that there could be a spreadsheet type program emerge with iWork at some point, but I don't need one as I can do most everything with a combination of text editors and MySQL with a bit of scripting here and there. I'll be certain to let you know all about it when I get my hands on it.

With my move back to Halifax, I am in need of finding a place to live. So for the first time since I started university, I am not going to be living on campus. So with something close to two years experience working with people seeking accommodations off campus, the tables have suddenly turned. Fortunately I am playing a much easier game than most. I am intimately familiar with the city and know where I would like to live. I also have inside connections with Off Campus Housing, but fortunately haven't had to pull that card yet.

Chris has also been kind in offering his room because he is taking off shortly. I am actually looking at one place on Sunday once I get back into the city — which is my last avenue before I resign myself to taking Chris up on his offer. Thanks as well to mike who took the time to take a look at a place for me last Friday — too bad it was too small for my desk.

Yesterday I had to alter my plans for arriving in the city and left home early so that my mother would be able to beat the impending snowstorm. Fortunately she made it home well before the snow started falling, but our original plan of her being up overnight to work today might not have gone so well. The roads were pretty snow covered when I went to bed last night at around 1:30 and it was looking blustery. Upon waking this morning, mike informed me Dal was closed until 10 AM and further decisions would come in at around 8 AM. They did. And for my first day back to school in almost a month — the university is closed. Something that doesn't happen very often.

Mike and I have the great fortune of not having any heat or hot water since something is awry with the boiler in mike's building. However, it isn't cold in here yet, despite this being the case for handy 15 hours now. I just can't take a shower or shave. Other than that I am quite content to just curl up on the couch (which is my bed) and continue sleeping.

That's me, the hard working researcher — adjusting quite nicely to the world of the grad student apparently. Yesterday was my first day and I pretty much just got dropped into the middle of it all. I am currently looking at some data and working on ways to see which of it is good and which is useless. It is pretty interesting.

I am situated directly across from mike for those people familiar with the computer science building and mike's grad playground. I'm not 100% settled — I don't have an access card yet and I'm not quite finished getting my computer the way that I want it. I also had to bring in my own natural keyboard and trackball — but in all fairness, I didn't actually ask for these things, I just assumed that they would take a while so I took ergonomic matters into my own hands (and wrists :P). I am very pleased to have a nice LCD monitor here though — they are so much better for your eyes when you spend too much time staring at them.

Living with mike this week has been fun. The two of us are still talking despite living and working in the same place. Fortunately we both have laptops and are able to descend into our own little words for a chunk of the time — until something good comes on TV. :) It's not for much longer, I am going to be moving into Chris's room sometime next week and mike is actually going to Toronto this weekend. And that is pretty much all that I am up to at this point. I'll be sure to mention anything that happens as I slowly get resettled back into Halifax.

While perhaps not biblical in the tradional sense, I'm sure that many school aged children were thanking their respective deities yesterday as school was cancelled for the second time this week. The province was just recovering from the harassment it took on Monday from the "blizzard" that dropped up to 40 cm of snow in areas. Yesterday however, came the heavy, wet snow — still coupled with the high winds — creating a formidible foe for powerlines and large tree branches.

And then we lost power. The majority of the university lost power around 2:00 PM — around which time the university decided to close for the remainder of the day. People generally ran around here like the proverbial chicken sans head. All I know is that it was incredibly messy out there for a while yesterday and the resulting accumulation has made roads and sidewalks very hard to traverse. Especially now that it is -14°C and everything has frozen solid. Lovely.

Today is the birthday of two people I know very well — my brother Devon and my best friend Chris. Both are having a party tonight. Chris's party is also doubling as a going away party I suppose since he is taking off for Australia on Tuesday. Unfortunately, like every other year since I started university, I haven't been able to be home for Devon's birthday, but at least this year, now that my family has a Mac, we can use iChat to video chat — which is nice because it doesn't cost anyone heinous long distance fees.

Happy Birthday Devon Happy Birthday Chris

According to Environment Canada we are on the eve of another sizable dumping of snow. A blizzard warning has been issued throughout the province for tomorrow, giving estimates similar to this past Monday when they closed the university. However, this one is due to finish up by Sunday night so likely there will be school on Monday, but it likely won't be pretty. This will be the third large snow-bearing system to hit the province this week. While none of them are as intense as last year's White Juan, they are certainly having an effect on the operation of the city and province.

Four day work weeks that is. Dal is closed again today which means that someone should check for the damned walking the earth, because it seems that hell has indeed frozen over. Along with Halifax and the majority of the Maritime region it appears. I'd take a picture of the outside, but it is pretty much white.

In any case it looks like another productive day at home with mike. Yay!

It reminds me a bit of the snow after the crazy White Juan storm last year. And as Sarah mentions on her site, we have never received three snow storms in the period of a week before. I must say it does affect everything you do. Take for instance the fact that I was supposed to move into Chris's old room today. The room is ready — Chris is to the best of my knowledge probably still on a plane to Australia — but I have no practical way to get my things over to the frat house, amid all this snow — and cold, damn it's cold.

I'm sure that things will work themselves out... be sure that you will be kept in the loop.

And onto an air mattress. I have finally gotten my stuff pulled together and most of it is back in the city (except the big stuff) and into my new domicile at 1328 Robie Street. My bed is still at Glengary so for the time being I am sleeping on an air mattress. The huge snowbanks and the terrorizing cold are two of the major hurdles preventing me from bringing my bed over. But it will likely happen sometime this weekend.

It will be this time next week before I can get really settled as that is when my all important desk and chair arrive. As we all know — a proper workstation is the first step in reducing the risk of RSI.

Since I mentioned it in my last post — and other times as well I'm sure, I thought I should point out the RSI Awareness Day page that Geoff and I are putting together on the Society Wiki.

This isn't just a problem for Computer Scientists anymore — although we are still very much a primary risk group. More and more people are finding themselves in front of a computer these days — often for longer periods of time and our body just wasn't made to handle that form factor. Look for more on this from me in the next couple of weeks leading up to the annual RSI Awareness Day on Feb. 28.

I have finally implemented comments for my weblog here, however, they are slightly different from what most other sites do. I have integrated the forum with my front page comments so that any logged in user can spawn a comment thread based on any post that I make.

I figured that since this seems to happen informally on occasion, that this would be the best way to implement it. It carries with it the benefit/drawback (you decide) that only registered users of the site can make or read the comments — which are the restrictions of the forum in general.

If a post doesn't have a comment thread, then the link "Respond via Forum" will appear below the post. If there is one already started, the link will be called "View Comment Thread (n)" where n is the current number of entries in the thread. If you aren't logged in, neither link will be there.

The 15th Annual DSU Charity Ball that was held this past Friday night was raising money for the Lt. Chris Saunders Trust Fund. If you recall, I spoke of this event last year, and like last year, they seemed to have done a horrible job advertising — or maybe it is just me, because the event was sold out. In fact, I heard whisperings of the fact that they actually over booked the evening. This is at least the third Charity Ball that I have attended and I will say that despite moving to a waited dinner from a buffet, the food was better before. Also, the live auction had a different auctioneer and fewer items up for bid and definitely wasn't as interesting as years past. And even the lighting, although interesting, wasn't quite like last year. Talking to Blaine who helped setup the lighting, I guess the crew didn't like it as much either. The saving grace, the only thing better this year over last was the band. This year they had the Fabulous Fossils who sang mostly covers of oldies from the Beatles, Steppenwolf, CCR, and many other well know greats. I will say that their between song banter was rather corny to the point of embarrassing, but the music itself was very well done.

Apple has just upgraded their Powerbook line, but no G5s yet. Those of you thinking about getting a Powerbook, now is a good time. They range from 1.5GHz to 1.67GHz G4s all with a standard 512 MB RAM. They have also increased the hard drive speeds and sizes ranging from 60 to 100 GB. They still all come with 802.11g Airport Extreme and Bluetooth, only now they use Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rates giving 3X the performance of the previous standard. The models with Superdrives are now 8X. They are also shipping with the new iLife '05 - but not the iWork package.

There are two new features introduced this round that are interesting. The first is a feature that is already included in at least IBM Thinkpads that I know about and that is the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS). This is the one feature that is nice to have, but that you never want to use. Essentially if you drop your computer while it is on, this feature will detect the acceleration and change in axis and will lock the hard drive heads away from the disk surface so they won't get scratched in an impact. Like I said, not a feature that I'm about to test.

The other new feature is much more functional on a day-to-day basis. The scrolling trackpad allows you to use two fingers on the trackpad to scroll and pan around a document. This is similar to what SideTrack does now, except that you don't have to pay extra for this. I also expect that before too long, someone will figure out that the only difference between the old trackpads and the new scrolling ones is the driver software and they will hack together something that can be used by people with older model Powerbooks (like me).

That said, it seems like a good time to be getting a Powerbook, unless you are dead-set on waiting until they squeeze a G5 in there. The Canadian Educational pricing starts at $1775 for the 12-inch model. For more info visit the Powerbook product page or the Canadian Apple Store.