Very cool idea.

Project Blackbox by Sun similar to what we heard Google was doing with their shipping containers. but now we get to tak ea virtual tour thorugh one.

Combine an international shipping standardised containers and a lot of racks filled with 250 Sun servers, and things get interesting.

What coders really think revealed by Google Codesearch.

What coders really think revealed by Google Codesearch.

The joy of Cover Browser.

So, I have been playing with iTunes 7 and the new Cover Browser. It has changed the way I look at my music collection.

I guess by using so many digital forms of media, that I lost some of the joy that I experienced in purchasing vinyl. The feel of picking up an album sleeve and looking at the artwork was as much a part of the experience as listening.

Suddenly, obtaining the cover art for an MP3 has become as much a part of the process of encoding a song as getting the album name and track numbers right.

A couple places I have scoured for cover art

Google Images - wide variety of images available, not always the best quality

Amazon - Good selection and fairly consistent quality

AllMusic Guide - Usually have the cover art but it is very slow to search, I usually search with Google using a site: switch

Musicbrainz - They get their art from other sources, usually amazon but, this can be convenient when you are tagging your files, to grab the cover art as well. Musicbrainz Picard occasionally adds album art as a metadata set but this can be a little flaky.

Finally iTunes Get Album Art command - I have found this to be a reasonable way of filling in the majority of album artwork, but it is very dependent on the album name and not very forgiving for slight changes in name. Often I am filling in the gaps where iTunes has found nothing to match the file.

And people say I am difficult to buy for?

How could not know what to get me when items like this exist?

Hell Trip

Well, I took on Toronto Airport and almost won.

The trip started early afternoon in Winnipeg. Earl drove me in and stuck around to ensure that there were not any problems with my luggage.

The luggage weight was not a problem and I setlled down to wait for the flight to Toronto. The timing was slightly tight, and I had about an hour and twenty five minutes to get myself between terminals and checked into Zoom.

The flight was delayed out of Winnipeg and a failed approach at Toronto added to the time. I was standing in the baggage claim at Terminal 1 and looked at my watch and thought, "wow, I still have plenty of time", until I reralised that I had lost an hour and I had less than 20 minutes to get to the Zoom Check-in desk. Halfway there the left wheel fell off my suitcase but I made it with 5 minutes to spare, they took my luggage off me and gave me my boarding pass and stuck my baggage claim ticket to it.

Then they sent me to a set of closed security gates - in fact at this time, the whole airport had closed down. I had to walk back past the gibbering idiots at the Zoom Desk and find an open set of gates to get through security. I breezed through that (after taking my belt off) and got myself to the departure gate. The plane had almost fully boarded and I got myself on and was feeling good until a large couple came along and sat in the neighbouring seats. The wife sat next to me and spilled into my seat for the entire journey, pretty well elimiating any chance of sleep. About an hour outside of Glasgow I started to talk to the husband and after finding out he was from Manitoba as well, we traded Prairie Stories.

I thought I had got through this trip relatively unscathed, until I tried to claim my baggage. Half an hour later as I (and about forty others) watched a single unclaimed suitcase wind its way around the baggage claim area, I knew that this story was not over yet. When I filled in the lost luggage form, I doscovered that the idiots at the check-in desk at Zoom had attached my baggage claim ticket to the portion of the ticket that the airport staff had retained in Toronto. Fortunately the lost wheel should be a pretty good identifier.

Liz met me at the airport and after kisses and cuddles, I got myself home to a warm bed and nice snooze, after roughly 24 hours of travelling.

Good to be home

Cycle Diary

Ride to Work - Paisley to Glasgow, 10 miles, dry roads, good weather, 18C

First ride in a long time. I finally ran out of excuses. The hot weather and the sight of several old guys pedalling towards Glasgow wiped out all weather and danger reasons for not riding into work. The pensioners pedalling was probably the worst, nothing as a cyclist makes you more ashamed than to see a old guy pedal past as you asre trying to explain the dangerous lifestyle of an urban cyclist.

The ride in was uneventful. I left early, so traffic was light. The early morning air had that heat wave crispness to it with none of the heat itself. All in all, a good ride in, too bad that my body has given up. My legs had no power, and my heart while not at its max heart rate was definitely being pushed. The worst aspect though was th feet. My plantar fascia started to scream a couple of blocks into the ride and did not stop until I hit work. I need to stretch this out and hopefully it will settle down with more riding.

What the Hell?

Is Lordi the type of music being produced out of the country that gave us nul point failures. So the finns decided to give us Orcish musicians playing Melodic Hard Rock. A eurovision Slipknot to challenge the techno status-quo at this politically driven musical contest.

Well they won. The video of their performance is here.

Kiva lets you loan as little as $25 to a qualified low income entrepreneur in the developing world.

Not sure what controls are available but it sounds like an interesting way to bring folks in the third world out of poverty.

The Paisley Beer Festival was last night and the incriminating photos are in.

You can find them here

As a guy who peeked and poked his way around a Commodore PET in the early eighties, this mod is very cool.

I still remember trying to explain reverse polish notation to my Comp Sci teacher who was a bit of a diddy.

His last words to me were "document your code more". I should have followed it.

Mark Ho's Artistic Metalwork is astounding. He learned his metalwork like I did, working around craftmen who moved and shaped metal.

His current creation looks incredible.

It is snowing in Paisley today.
















It is Sunday, so I am not sure if tomorrow will be a snow day - instead of a work day.

I have been waiting for the arrival of the Google Calendar for a very long time. These screenshots are the first ones leaked.

Today, I have a couple good Bike Make projects.

The first one is a 500 Lumen BIKE LIGHT for around 10 bucks and the second one is SpokePOV (a Persistence of Vision Mod for your Bike).

A new SNL Digital Short on YouTube.

Starring Natalie Portman, it is probably better than Lazy Sunday - Chronic,les of Narnia.

A new SNL Digital Short on YouTube.

Starring Natalie Portman, it is probably better than Lazy Sunday - Chronic,les of Narnia.

Make a Bicycle Parts Belt.

Better than huge cowboy belt buckle.

My pal MrBen is documenting his Lent this year.

I decided to do something Lent-ish this year, in the same vein of other Lent-esque things I have done in the past. It is more an attempt to remove my dependency on things in my life (ie. a watch, glasses, etc).

This time it is my iPod.

I have been using it quite intensively to listen to Techblogs and IT podcasts and it occasionally is colliding with other things I want to do.

I am hoping not having the iPod will push the studying for the certifications (one of the things that conflicted with listening to Podcasts).

I am not doing all 40 days - instead I plan on doing a Spurlock Lent period and only do the 30. So March 31st, I will get my iPod returned to me and I will have a lot of podcasts to catch up on.

This Pot growing setup is very impressive.