Today the country is celebrating its 138th birthday. As is the usual tradition in Pictou County everyone piled into Westville to watch the Canada Day parade. It isn't much of a parade, but it is more of a tradition that we try to get out to when we can.

Sarah and I along with Sarah's two roommates are going to the Nova Scotia International Tattoo tonight. We both went last year as well — and while the shows are quite similar from year to year — they are always a bit different, and always enjoyable to watch.

I suppose that it is time enough to tell everyone the good news: I have been accepted into the European Commissions new Erasmus Mundus programme under the particular program of MSc in Network and eBusiness Centric Computing. At this point, I don't have a lot of details per se, but I will tell you what I do know.

The program, which is a new addition to the ERASMUS (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) programme is aimed a providing higher level — Masters — degrees to both European and third country students, and promoting European study in third countries.

The European Commission has a bit of info regarding motivation and some of the more generic goals of the programme. The jist of it is, there are various consortia of universities that together offer a Masters level degree that requires study at at least two of the schools. The particular program that I was accepted for will have me studying in four different universities over the course of 18 months. There are apparently only a total of 13 spots available in my program for students outside Europe and Asia — and at most 3 people from Canada. I feel quite fortunate to have been selected, but above that I have been granted their scholarship for third country students which will total €30 000 over the course of my 18 months.

The different locations I will be studying in are:

1. University of Reading — Reading, England
2. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — Thessaloniki, Greece
3. University Carlos III — Madrid, Spain
4. Trinity College — Dublin, Ireland

The only other information that I have on the program is that I start in October of this year and I have a pretty good idea what courses I will be taking were, because that info is outlined in this syllabus (PDF, 145KB).

Apart from that, I have very little idea of what will be happening when and the process to take from here. Apparently they are sending me some information by postal mail and that this information had been delayed from the central commission in Brussels. As I learn more, I will try to keep you in the loop. Up until now, I had wanted to kind of keep a lid on this information because I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do. So sorry for the delay.

Well, it finally happened. For a long time, the clasp that holds my laptop lid closed has been flaking out. It wouldn't latch for a long time about a year ago and I can't remember the last time the spring worked — the one that was supposed to retract it when the cover was open. Yesterday however, it just came right out. So I tried to wrangle it back into place, but that wasn't to be.

So this morning, realizing that I wasn't going to be able to sleep my computer because when the lid opens it wake up, I started to do a little digging. No where in the system preferences does it allow you to specify whether opening the lid will wake up your computer (which is the default) and more importantly it doesn't let you disable that feature. But a quick search of Mac OSX Hints and read of a man page and I discovered the relatively undocumented utility pmset

If you are on a Mac, you can learn more about it in the Terminal by typing: man pmset but the important usage for me is this:

sudo pmset lidwake 0

which will — after you type your password — set it so that opening the lid won't wake your computer. You can re-enable the wake on open by repeating the above command with a 1 instead of a 0. You can also have it wake from sleep when you plug it in to AC power by using acwake 1 above.

Thought I'd share in case anyone else has a desire or need to do this.

Opera, probably the best browser in the world — although the world doesn't realize it yet, has just added BitTorrent support. I think this is a good first step. I realize that BitTorrent has received a bum wrap because of all the music, movie and TV show downloads, but as a protocol is really quite powerful. Now when a site releases some software or a trailer goes up, if people were to use bittorrent, there won't necessarily be any server outages. :)

If you haven't heard yet, there have been a series of what have been dubbed terrorist attacks in London. Several explosions in the subway as well as one on a bus have accounted for several deaths and many injuries.

More info:

Google News
The Register
CNN
Bomb Locations
Tube Locations

Everywhere you look there are bad reviews for the Fantastic Four movie. And I will have to admit, it isn't as strong as some of the other comic book adaptations that I've seen. (Most notably Batman Begins is excellent). However, I think it achieved what it set out to do which is to provide an effects riddled action flick based off of a classic comic book quartet. Perhaps the problem is that the original comics started appearing in 1961 and most of the movie goers today and even most of the critics weren't alive then — certainly not in a position to embrace the power of this family of super heroes.

Like any movie adaptation, certain liberties were taken to provide a workable screen play. However, I think that taking this into consideration will help you see that this movie is quite successful at providing one hour and 46 minutes of fine entertainment. I personally really liked it and so did everyone in my party of five people. Some of you won't like it I'm sure — you know who you are — but anyone who doesn't walk through life with some deep rooted resentment or something to prove I'm sure will enjoy it.

Yesterday when I was at the theatre, I saw a preview for the Transporter 2. This action gem is set to come out on September 2 of this year which is just around the time when I was planning on heading over to Europe. Given this news and the mind blowing implications of the trailer, I think that I will stay to watch this one. Just thought I'd bring people into the loop — especially those who like myself loved the first Transporter movie.

With the wedding less than a week away, I figure it is about time to publicly congratulate and wish my friends Marion and Al all the best for their future. They are getting married this Saturday in Halifax and I am definitely looking forward to it. This is the first wedding that I am attending where the bride and groom are actually friends of mine as opposed to relatives. It is a bit of an experience to realize that your peers are getting married and you are no longer a kid anymore. I suppose that graduating from University should have tipped me off, but why ruin the surprise. :)

So again to Marion and Al: congrats and I'll see you Saturday (or sooner) (not that either of them read my site)

Yesterday they released another upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger — up to 10.4.2. I was reading through the list of changes and they address a lot of the issues that I had heard people bring up in a lot of forums and weblogs. And as I was reading, one fix caught my eye as something pretty obscure and specific:

Orange iCal calendars, with alarms that go off while iCal is not open, no longer change color after the alarm is snoozed.

I'm glad that didn't ever happen to me or I would have been pretty pissed :) The thing is I can't really think about what piece of code might have screwed up to cause that to happen. However, given the state of some commercial software, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising.

My take on flavoured water: buy juice instead. Today for lunch I thought I'd try something different and get a bottle of water instead of the usual pop or juice. When I got to the beverage cooler I saw that they had Aquafina Flavour Splash. Essential what it is is water with the slightest hint of flavour. In the case of the one I got — raspberry. The other choice I had was Citrus Blend.

When drinking it, I found that it tasted like water going down, but left a light raspberry aftertaste. However, after a while I started to taste the slight sugary flavour which was only barely there and it left me wanting something sweeter. So if you want something a little sweeter than water, your best bet is to go with some sort of juice. The artificial taste to this flavoured water just isn't worth it.

[PS: there is an unprotected wireless network in the VIA Rail station right now :)]

I got a mass email yesterday that was sent to all of the Erasmus Mundus students. Basically it said that the information is in the mail and that we should contact the British/Greek/Spanish/Irish Embassies in our countries to inquire about student visas. Well — let me tell you, this whole student visa situation isn't as simple as one would hope. Well England isn't so bad — I can study in England for 6 months without a visa, and the application is online anyway. One down.

The greek embassy said that I had to apply in person — in Montreal — and I would need a medical certificate, police check, proof of finances, passport, and the blood of a virgin. The guy from the Spanish consulate said that I can't get a visa this far in advance and that I need to be in Canada when I am able to apply. I can get away with 3 months in Spain without a visa, which might be enough. However there is a small problem of the Schengen agreement which permits free travel between several European countries including Greece and Spain. This means that that three month window applies to this whole region, and since I have a term in each of those two countries, I am SOL.

I haven't been in touch with anyone from the Irish consulate yet, so I'm not sure what the scene is there, but I suspect it is more like England and less like the other two. The guy from the Spanish consulate said that Canadians usually just end up staying [longer than the three months] and no one says anything because — well we're not American and therefore welcome pretty much anywhere. The other thing is, while this program is new in terms of Masters programs, a similar undergraduate program known as Erasmus Socrates has operated for almost 20 years. So obviously I can't be the first Canadian student doing brief stints at a number of different universities in Europe. I think that my next step (beside waiting to get my hands on the info package) is to snoop around the web site for the Erasmus Students Network (ESN) to see if there is any literature surrounding this whole visa process.

I guess all of this is to be expected, but for the mean time it is a perplexing issue that I'll need to figure out. I'll keep everyone in the loop.

One of the noteworthy facts that I mentioned from my trip out west at the beginning of June, was the proliferation of bunnies on the UVic campus. Well that has nothing to do with what I am talking about now.

For the past two weeks, we have been invaded by/graced with two bunnies in our yard. Those who have known me a while or quite well may recall that we used to own a couple of bunnies as pets when I was in junior high. These rabbits however have made themselves comfortable in our flower beds and feasting on the clover in our not-mowed-often-enough lawn. As you can see, this one let me get pretty close, and I have other photos of it closer. The other rabbit is more of a sandy colour and we call it 'Blonde Bunny' and this one is creatively the 'Black Bunny'. I noticed yesterday (and obviously while I was taking this picture) that black bunny has white feet, which is interesting looking when it is running. It is kind of like it's own lucky rabbit foot.

So if you spend any time at our house these days you are likely to see it. They are around quite often. Obviously the dog can see them from the front window and quite naturally goes nuts wanting to get outside. Mom remarked after realizing they had been around a couple of days, "You'd think we lived in the country." Which of course is true, but most of the time we don't see much wildlife — unless you consider swarms of black flies or moths. Oh and bats, we usually have bats winging around here at night.

I must say that the wedding I attended last night at the Martime Museum of the Atlantic for my friends Marion and Al was fantastic. Everyone and everything looked beautiful and the venue definitely added something to the whole experience.

I managed to grab a couple shots of the first dance, but the room was pretty big and lighting not at its best for photos with my camera.

Congratulations Marion and Al

It has been a really hot week here in Pictou County and from what I have been hearing, the whole province of Nova Scotia as well. Monday and Tuesday which were supposed to be rainy just turned out to deliver that moisture in the form of depressing humidity that essentially cut you down unless you were fortunate enough to have air conditioning. Even the pool was little refuge and only served to aggravate the dampness.

Yesterday and today weren't as bad with the humidity but with temperatures above 30°C the heat didn't let up. Yesterday I think the heat got to me and decided that I should mow the lawn. Granted, the lawn needed mowing but yesterday afternoon was not the time to do it. Unfortunately I don't have any sweaty, fly-bitten photos this time, but I did grad a shot of the one remaining flower/weed that survived the wrath of the blades when I mowed around the basketball court.

The pool was quite warm after a week of hot days — reaching 30°C Friday. So around 10pm I went on to the deck to escape the heat of the house and read my book and thought why not go for a swim since the water was warmer than the air at this point. I was in the pool for about 25 minutes just enjoying the quiet before my youngest brother Devon noticed that I was swimming and joined me. Then believe or not but my mother also got in (she normally finds the pool a little cold and doesn't stay in very long). It wasn't long before the rest of my family was in too. Adam was home for the weekend, so it was my entire immediate family in the pool around 11pm. Not only that but we were in for at least 30 minutes at this point. I must say it was a nice family experience together.

This story was brought to you by the letters S and P and the number 6.

Today was the first of two days for my Shad Valley seminars. Mike's site has a bit more information on what Shad Valley is all about. My tiny contribution (tiny only relative to the work that Mike has to put in) is to teach a handful of the Shad kids (12 this year) about the web and Flash. Looking in my archives I realize that I have never mentioned the fact that I have been teaching seminars for Shad Valley going on 4 years now. It started off with a one day Flash lecture the first year and quickly escalated to a 4 day web design lecture in year two. Last year I organized 4 days, but only taught for two of them because I had class. And this year I only have two days to do which is pretty easy because I have plenty to talk about to fill the 6 hours total.

Instead of listing all the things I am talking about this year, just take a look at the Shad Valley 2005 Web/Flash Lectures page I put up with the Syllabus.

Sarah, Ange and I went for Thai food for supper tonight. It was my first real Thai restaurant experience, and I must admit that it was very very good. We went to Baan Thai on Dresden Row. I found it to be better than Chinese food, probably because it seemed a bit fattier, but hey it's always nice once and a while.

I just stumbled across this interesting street art with a 3D perpective. Pretty cool looking.

I finally received my package of information concerning my offer to the Erasmus Mundus programme. Too bad I need to have everything in by Sunday. Actually I was in contact with the program coordinators and I think things are going to be OK. I still have to worry about the visas, but I now have letters from each of the universities stating that I will be studying there, that I am fully funded and that I have full health coverage. That alone should go a long way in greasing the wheels of consular bureaucracy.

I also have a list of the 25 other students I will be studying with. From what I can tell I may be the only one who speaks English as a first language. However, given the diversity of the group, I can tell this is going to be a cultural experience for me. From India to Guatemala to Ukraine I'll be studying with folk from all over the world.

For those of us who spend a significant portion of our time in front of a computer — usually earning a living, there are certain tools that we use every day and wouldn't be complete without. There are also tools that we need from time to time to do some specialized task. As a web developer I have a few applications that I more or less depend on. Obviously I need a browser, but aside from that it is the text editor that is paramount.

If it isn't clear from the image above (and it likely isn't) I have about about five actual text editors on my dock and another four specialized editor/IDE programs. Do I use them all at once? Definitely not. I don't even use all of them on a semi-regular basis. In fact I can't think of the last time that I launched Eclipse — but I have launched it and it remains on my dock because I have a small place in my heart for any editor/IDE.

A couple of the editors pictured (the two leftmost) are quite new in my personal toolkit. The one with the red fruit is Smultron and it is free and open source. It is my current favourite, but my needs are always changing. The gear on the purple backdrop is called Textmate and it isn't free — €49 I believe. That is the main reason that I don't use it as my primary editor. It is quite impressive and under active development, but I don't know if I want to invest yet. I'm still on my 30 day trial. If you are looking for the be-all and end-all of Mac editors, this one has that potential.

The one with the green characters holding a pencil is SubEthaEdit and really shines in the area of multi-user collaboration on a document over the internet. It is free for non-commercial use, and I will occasionally use it on my personal projects because it is lightweight. However, I think that Smultron has replaced it as my quick goto editor for the moment. As an editor it is quite nice, but in my mind lacks in the document management department. I used to assume that I wanted tabs for my documents (ala. UltraEdit) but I have found that a list on the side of the window to be even more useful. Smultron offers that, but I first encountered it in the now free Text Wrangler (the yellow 'W' on the blue diamond). Text Wrangler is the baby brother of the Mac stalwart BBEdit — and as such has more of a classic feel to it. It suffers a few usability maladies, but otherwise is a competent editor. I use it a fair bit for editing remote sites.

skEdit is the one with the yellow helmet and it is one that I have not only paid for (around $20 US) but I am a beta tester. The author is a college student in the states and he is actively developing it. I have found a few bugs at various times, but I will admit that I haven't used it much lately. I think that once it is a bit more refined and a couple extra features are added, it will be a contender that will threaten some of the more established editors.

The other four (on the right hand side) are Xcode, Eclipse, TeXShop, and Script Editor. None are the greatest for anything to do with the web, but are used on occasion for their own purposes. I can't speak for Eclipse in general, but I have heard there is a plugin called Trustudio that can be used for working with PHP files. I have used a really old version that wasn't worth it, but I have been lead to believe that great progress has been made. At this point in the game, I'm just too comfortable with what I have to bother investigating it.

I think that sometime in the near future I would like to compile a bit more of a comparison grid between some of the various editors that I have used. Then I could have that online as a good reference for all of the switchers who are looking for their own editor fix.