Aruba

Source: Aruba Travel Guide

Anyone ever been to Aruba? I just booked my wife and I a short trip there. Got a good deal. We originally planned to go to Jamaica on an amazing deal, but I was too slow in booking it and the trip was no longer available. I'm a dolt sometimes.

I hope it's nice.

Chris Sells Loves His Job

It's refreshing to read an account of somebody who appears to love their job. Chris Sells works for Microsoft and loves it. I'm extremely jealous.

Blogger Angst

I predict within the next year, psychiatrists will name a new disease -- "blogger angst". Simon Phipps has it, as he frets that he blogs and he blogs, but doesn't feel part of the inner circle. He's not the first, and he won't be the last.

Remember you heard it here first.

GOLF != Gentlemen Only

The project manager at my most recent job believed the word "golf" was an acronym for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden".

I felt it was best I didn't send her this link to snopes.com to refute it.

Annika on the PGA

i�ro�ny (n):

I'm just sitting here watching the PGA's Colonial Golf Tournament on the USA Network, where Annika Soremstam is making waves. The main corporate sponsor for the TV coverage? "Just For Men" hair color.

SARS pinups

OK, a few weeks ago, when the SARS story was in its first week, I saw a news story about designer surgical masks being sold in Hong Kong. Hello Kitty, and other cartoon characters. I had thought I had seen it all.

But then tonight, I found an obscure link to this:

"SARS pinup models"

Next week, someone will be modifying Playboy pictures to add surgical masks.

Bulletproof Monk Snaps

As a followup to yesterday's post, I took a few snapshots from the trailer:

This first shot is an example of image manipulation in films. I added a couple of red asterisks to this photo to help make my point.



The building on the left is the CFMT television station headquarters. In the center, towards the back, is a school. Way to the back is Toronto City Center Airport (TCCA). The building on the right (with the red asterisks) is fake. Those buildings aren't there in real life. In real life, there is a street (Bathurst Street) and a gas station (Esso) on that spot. I guess the movie company didn't want to insert a free plug for Esso, so they added a building into the scene. By the way, I recognize that building they inserted -- 600 Queens Quay West. In real life, it is off camera to the left of the scene.

What's odd is, this scene (and the next two) never appeared in the real movie - just the trailer. Yes, Chow Yun Fat does some spectacular helicopter leaps, but you never get to see any "background" in them. (I noticed that there are a few other scenes in the trailer that never made it into the movie, probably having to do with backstory.)



Just off camera to the right of this shot, is the City Centre driving range and golf course. What you see in this photo is a pit mine, train tracks (Go and Via) and the west end of Front Street (where the cars are). The yellow building is a surplus store. To the left of that is a Harley Davidson dealership, and to the left of that is a Lambourghini dealership. The only Lambourghini dealer in Canada. He sells 12 cars a year, what a job!



Here, off to the left of this shot, we see the building that was inserted into the first shot. Either Toronto architects aren't very original, placing two identical buildings on the same street, or the movie makers thought you wouldn't notice the same building in two spots. By the way, I live just one building left off camera. Damn, almost made it into the film.



I remember the day they filmed this.



In the background, you can see Scotia Tower (red logo) and Bank of Montreal's First Canadian Place (blue logo). Two big Toronto banks.

Bulletproof Monk

I finally watched the movie Bulletproof Monk. It wasn't that good of a movie -- the plot seemed to be lacking. A former Nazi chasing a Tibetan monk around the world? Come on... you can do better than that! The only two reasons I wanted to see it at all were:

• I like Chow-Yun Fat as an actor (the Corruptor, the Replacement Killers, and Crouching Tiger)


• The movie was partially filmed across the street from where I live

I remember one weekend last summer, I looked out my window and saw two helicopters hovering over the abandoned building across the street. One seemed to be firing thousands of rounds of ammunition, while the other was filming it. It took me all of 2 seconds to realize it was a movie being filmed, although I wonder how many people called 911 to report what they saw. I also saw them film the "satellite dish falling off the building" scene. That building has no satellite dishes, so the ones you see in the movie were put there just for filming.

Anyways, you can see most of my neighbourhood (the driving range at least) in the background during the helicopter scene. Even the movie's trailer has a nice glimpse of it. I'd buy the DVD just in the odd chance that my condo makes a cameo appearance in one or two frames. I also recognize other parts of Toronto, such as the Yonge-Bloor subway station (where the little girl's falls on the subway tracks), the some of the bank towers (TD and Scotia), the Toronto skyline, etc.

Scott

The Hundred Year Language

Paul Graham has written an interesting article called the Hundred Year language. What programming language will people be using in 100 years?

It's hard to predict what life will be like in a hundred years. There are only a few things we can say with certainty. We know that everyone will drive flying cars, that zoning laws will be relaxed to allow buildings hundreds of stories tall, that it will be dark most of the time, and that women will all be trained in the martial arts.

Heh. I don't know why, but I totally agree that women will all be trained in the martial arts.

When I say Java won't turn out to be a successful language, I mean something more specific: that Java will turn out to be an evolutionary dead-end, like Cobol.

Testing at Microsoft

I am really starting to love reading other people's blogs. I can sit there all day listening to the words of wisdom coming in from the ether...

I just read a very interesting first-hand account of how application testing is performed at Microsoft. Thanks to the ScottGu blog. Scott is (and I could be wrong about this) Microsoft's development manager in charge of Visual Studio .NET and ASP .NET.

A tester -- sitting in their office -- can configure the operating system and hardware they want to use (for example: Windows Server 2000, Advanced Server Edition on a 2 processor hardware configuration with a German language build) as well as the test suite they want to run (for example: all session state tests). The automation framework with then find a hardware machine that meets the specification selected, reformat and re-image the operating system for the choice selected, and then execute the test suite run. All pass/fail results can then be viewed by the tester on their own machine with their office (fairly fancy -- we are quite proud of this testing framework).

Wow. A tester presses a magic button, and the testing system will find a server that matches the hardware specs they require. Then the chosen server reimages itself to match the operating system and language of the tester has choosen. Wow. And did I say, wow. Or, and can I please add a drool.

I would love to work for Microsoft in Redmond. If anyone is out there, I would move out there in a heartbeat.

Iraq Revisited

It's been a while since we heard anything about Iraq.

Salam Pax is back online blogging, and he recently had this to say:

I keep wondering what happened to the months of "preparation" for a "post-saddam" Iraq. What happened to all these 100-page reports, where is that Dick Cheney report? Why is every single issue treated like they have never thought it would come up? What's with the juggling of people and ideas about how to form that "interim government"? Why does it feel like they are using the [lets-try-this-lets-try-that] strategy? Trial and error on a whole country?

That's an interesting perspective from someone living inside the country.

Can anyone tell me what the return of children to schools really means? ... I mean there are a million more pressing issues for these committees meeting daily than getting children back to unsafe schools.

He's paying $5 an hour for Internet access. I think if everyone who reads his blog regularly gave him $1, he wouldn't have to worry about the price of Internet access...

Scott

Good Limerick

It's been a long time since I heard a really good limerick. This one is from an old DaveNet piece:

There once was a lady from Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.

Hot Topics

* There's a woman named Isabella who writes a blog named A Flight Risk. She claims that she is "on the run" from her rich and powerful family, whom want to marry her off in a prearranged marriage. She also says she was able to take a lot of money with her, so her early blog entries are mostly about finding a discreet money manager and a good lawyer. Who knows if it's real or not? But even if it's fake, it's a compelling story.

* Wired magazine has a big feature this month on the Wireless revolution. That's ironic. 10 years ago, the big revolution was that everyone was getting wired, thus inspiring the name of the magazine. Now it's hip to be wireless. Only lamers are wired, right? They'll soon have to change the name of the magazine to remain cool...

* Matrix 2 looks really cool. Can't wait.

* There's a new audio tape purporting to be from Saddam Hussein. They know it's recent, because the voice on the tape thanks the Iraqis who were out on the street celebrating his birthday a couple of weeks ago.

* Apparently, Uday Hussein withdrew $1 billion in cash from the Iraqi central bank just days before the start of the war. Bank employees thought that was odd, since normally he just withdraws "small amounts... like $5 million". Ah yes, apparently in Iraq, $5 million is considered a small bank withdrawl.

Salam Pax is back

Either that, or someone cracked his password and wrote 15 lengthy posts...
http://www.dearraed.blogspot.com/

I think questions of his autheticity can now be disregarded. He was there.

2008 Olympics

Hey, I just had a thought. Do you remember a couple of years ago when Toronto and Beijing were the two finalists for the 2008 Olympics? Beijing won in a controversy. Well, how does SARS impact Beijing holding the games? That is, if the disease continues to be a problem, will they have to move the Olympics to somewhere else?

And will Toronto not be chosen as the alternative destination because of its relationship with SARS?

The Burning Question

I know we're well past the time of New Years Resolutions. I didn't make any this year, but I want to make a couple now.

1) My life has been consumed by (a) working during the day and (b) writing books on nights and weekends. The unfortunate casualty of this has been my free time. I still make time (regardless of whatever deadlines I may have) for my wife, but I need to make time for myself. I have a pile of books on my bookshelf that remain unread. I still buy books (mainly from Amazon.ca), but I can't read them. And I have a pile of movies on my hard drive that need to be watched. This will free several gigabytes of space once I watch them and delete them.

2) I had a year of steady work to concentrate on picking up a new skill, like J2EE or .NET. But have I made use of that time? No, not really. Note to self, your skills is what puts food in your stomach. Don't neglect them.

Scott

Still Using SharpReader

A month ago, I started using SharpReader. I'm still using it. It turns out it does a good job of saving your settings on exit and reloading them on start, so forget what I said about that.

Build Your Own Cruise Missile... Cheap!

There's a guy in New Zealand who is attempting to build his own cruise missile for under $5,000, just to prove he can do it.

And you know what, I bet he can do it. That's a scary thought.

I did find it funny that one of his objectives was that he had to be able to build it in his garage without his neighbours knowing. How would you like to be this guy's neighbour?

New Home Page

This week I updated my main web site. Many thanks to Matt Vanni for helping me create the new look.

Miss Elizabeth dies

I hadn't thought about her in literally 10 or 15 years, but police say former WWF star Miss Elizabeth was found dead today. Her wrestler husband, Lex Luger, has been arrested on drug charges. Police still aren't sure how she died.

I have to admit I had a bit of a crush on her in my early teens...

Implications of having a blog

I'm relatively new to the blogging world. I've been doing this off and on for nine months, although I've only been making regular contributions to this site in the last two or three months. I met someone for the first time today, and they started the conversation by saying, "So I had a chance to stop by your web site...".

I was momentarily worried about it. What did he see there? Did they see my main site (mydemos.com) or did they see this one? Did they read some of the opinions posted to this site? Did they agree or disagree with some of them?

And that, I suppose is one of the implications of blogging. Every day, people are reading what I say here and making prejudgements about me. Normally, in the Internet world, prejudgements are fine. But when you're meeting someone in the real world for the first time, and that person already knows quite a bit about you from the Internet, that's quite scary. This is a one way medium, after all. It's like a bathroom wall in some respects. There is no opportunity for me to explain things or rephrase things if someone misunderstands me. If I am opposed to something one month, and in favor of it the next, which opinion will this person see? Will I say something offensive?

Moral of the story: I have to watch what I say here. Sadly, I also may have to go back and remove comments that turned out to be rash or ill-advised. After all, this blog is a reflection of who am I. I don't mind people knowing a bit about me from this blog, but I don't want to give the wrong impression either.

Best regards,
Scott