chuma.org

Author: chuma

  • oh yeah, another thing

    I saw Tony Shaloub yesterday.

    I was walking up Church St at Queen, where the big Henry’s camera store is, and a Cadillac Escalade parked on Church St across from Henry’s. Tony Shaloub wearing some sunglasses got out of one side, and some other guy got out of the other side. I saw Tony, recognized him pretty instantly. I looked at the other guy, who immediately gave me a “keep f*cking walking” type of look. Which I did. I glanced back a few seconds later and I was still being stared at.

    Not sure if this ranks higher than the time I saw Richard Dreyfuss jaywalking across King St E back in 2001.

  • Finally, an excuse to wire all floors

    I bought a broadband adapter (aka Ethernet card) for my GameCube yesterday, $29 pre-owned at EB. A pretty good deal I think.

    Plus, I’m planning on setting up my PowerMac 6100/66 in the basement, now that i have an extra monitor to use with it.

    So now… I need to figure out how to get network throughout my house. Luckily, my house is small. Also luckily, the wall behind the entertainment unit where the GameCube backs onto the stairs to the basement, and the other side of the wall is unfinished, so that will make it much easier to say mount a proper wall box with an RJ-45 jack.

    Also, this wall is right below where the computers are right now, and right above where the computers will be when we finish the basement – so it’s relatively easy to run cable.

    Mmm, now I can’t stop thinking about going home and running cable. Cable runs are good.

  • Sad news for UTS folks

    CBC News: Toronto student killed in solar-powered car – The student is Andrew Frow, UTS class of 2001. I remember going to high school with him at UTS, even though he was three years younger.

    This story is all over the place now, including slashdot.

  • It’s that time again…

    Time to get more t-shirts. Via boingboing I found this awesome place called Jinx that sells really cool geeky t-shirts like these.

  • wireless shopping list

    Because I have old hardware, I need weird networking devices.

    • PCI 2.1 (not 2.2) and Linux compatible 802.11b network card. Almost all cards are PCI 2.2, and the motherboard in my home server freezes when I try to use a PCI 2.2 card.
    • 5V 16-bit PCMCIA 802.11b card – must be based on Lucent/Agere or Prism/Prism2 chipsets – basicially any card on this list.
    • Some kind of 802.11b <-> Ethernet bridge, so I can extend the home network into the basement where the PPC Mac and other things will live.

    Anyone got this stuff kicking around? Let me know.

  • BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | At play with firm’s clone kittens – Uhh… apparently now they can clone cats with a high degree of success. Genetic Savings & Clone

  • TO movie shoots

    I just noticed this news item over at CBC Toronto, about how a large part of Toronto has been turned into 1930s USA.

    On the weekend Sandy and I were downtown and a facade on Richmond St downtown had a big overhand attached to it, with garish neon letters and a marquee. The sign said “MADISON SQUARE GARDENS”. I kicked myself for not having my camera on me! Apparently it was for this same movie the article talks about.

    I love seeing New York type things popping up in Toronto. The yellow cabs are a dead giveaway: if you see a yellow cab in Toronto, there’s a movie shoot nearby. Toronto has no cabs that are actually painted yellow.

  • go ahead, do your worst

    comments are re-enabled again.

    Despite it being a short week due to holiday Monday, it was still busy as all hell at work this week. At times my mind felt like liquid metal. I’m not sure why…

    Jordan got Sandy and I hooked on The Flaming Lips. I think we listened to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots for about a week straight. It’s great for all kinds of activities:

    • Driving
    • Commuting on the train
    • Playing Mario Kart: Double Dash
    • Playing Simpsons: Hit and Run
    • etc…

    Sandy’s had a very busy week at the computer store too. There was a major storm that caused a flood of broken machines to come in.

    I’ve been soooo lazy with uploading photos from our wedding and honeymoon! Problem is that the wedding ones are on film. We’ve already got prints and re-prints and will probably get even more. Work and house stuff is still top priority, and this means that this site and Newton stuff has to get pushed off to the side for a while.

    The house! It looks great! All the major painting is done (except for one room) and we hung our pictures and posters on the wall. It really has that lived-in look now. Plus, I steam-cleaned the carpets downstairs and they look quite a bit brighter (white carpet sucks).

  • Just what happened yesterday

    Last night when I got home I was incredibly tired. But it was the day to put a second coat on the “Blue Monster”: that’s the huge wall in our stairway that we’re painting blue. I moped around a bit and then did it with some help from my friends Mr. Extension Pole and Mr. Ladder.

    I try not to look at the walls after I paint them, because they never look right until they are completely dry. Still, I peeked at the wall this morning and it probably needs some more work.

    This morning while walking through BCE Place with the morning rush, I almost wiped out when a woman in front of me stopped to pick something up Off the ground. I turned around just long enough to see her lift her foot and pick up — I Swear — a contact lens. Shudder

  • John Shirley on marketing turning into brainwashing

    In this guestblog writeup on BoingBoing.net, John Shirley talks about what I’ve been thinking about marketing for the last 10 years: the lack of ethics, and the extreme tinkering with brain control going on.

    Best part of the writeup:

    A marketing guy at Toyota complains–he’s complaining about this!–that young people “have the total ability to block out anything they don’t want to get through…that’s what makes this animal so scary.” The Wired writers don’t seem to see, no one seems to see, which animal is really scary. What’s scary, dude, is that you think it’s scary that these guys have the free will to block out your advertising. Hey, there’s media overload, in our society, there’s advertising OD; people learn to block it out or their brains crash like an overtaxed computer.