Archive for the things i’ve learned category

Real mobile Wikipedia

I’ve seen lots of talk recently about ‘mobile’ versions of Wikipedia. I’m a big fan of Wikipedia and I use it all the time. I’ve looked at all of the “solutions” for so-called mobile versions of Wikipedia and they all suck. First of all, many of them require full-on ‘net access or a cell phone, […]

Guess what? The router is crap.

So apparently, the Linksys BEFSR81 router that I scored isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Two major drawbacks are going to force me to get rid of it, possibly with extreme prejudice: The QoS features of this router are useless. You can do port-based QoS, but that only deals with transfers WITHIN THE LAN. […]

Getting rid of Bell: still a head-spinning exercise

The debate at home about going VoIP with Vonage for our main phone line heated back up at home yesterday. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for months, and according to our calculations we’d save $40 a month – but it has two main impediments: We use DSL for our internet connection and are not […]

That Axe Commercial

If you live in Canada, and you watch television, you’ve probably seen a commercial for Axe Shower Gel. In this particular spot, there’s a naked man being chased by a pack of dogs through backyards, etc (ostensibly because he was cheating with the dog owner’s wife/girlfriend). In any case Sandy and I loved the music […]

wedding bells…

Tomorrow, Sandy and I are getting married. That’s a really bad photo of our wedding rings. They were designed by my sister and made by an artist here in Toronto. If I’ve been incommunicado as of late, well, this is why 🙂 After the wedding we’ll be jetting off for two weeks of sun and […]

Adventures in electronics disassembly

I’ve got microelectronics to fix. Camera’s done, next will be a pair of eMates… Last night, I replaced the rear case cover on Sandy’s Kodak DX4530 digital camera. It must have taken a nasty bounce at some point a few weeks ago, because the clear plastic overtop of the LCD was cracked. It wasn’t in […]

Adventures in Babysitting

Not that one. Sandy and I took Raven off of Mike and Nicole’s hands for a night, to give them some time off. Here are some photos – cute little bugger, ain’t she? Sandy kept on saying that she is an extremely well-behaved baby, and at only two months she’s already making lots of trying-to-talk […]

When someone inconveniences you, hit ’em right bacl

I feel great. I just had someone’s car towed. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I’m starting to realize that living in the city teaches you to be harsh and swift. Last night we got home from seeing Erin Smith Band, and there was someone else’s car parked in our […]

If you are running Windows right now…

… I urge you to do these simple things right now to protect your machine: RUN WINDOWS UPDATE. Install any and all critical updates. If necessary, install the latest service pack, reboot and re-run Windows Update. It’s so darn easy to do and yet people don’t know about it. Get a decent piece of anti-virus […]

CDO follies continue…

…and because of this, my application still doesn’t work. I want to know who wrote this library, I want to know their address, and I want a plane ticket to the closest city. And a baseball bat. Grrrrrrrrrr. (addenum: and as I find the open SMTP server on the internal net, I want to cry […]