Author Archives: Dorian

The Forecast for 2009

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First of all: Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Christmas and ringing in the new year.

So it looks like the second day of the new year is slowly coming to a close.  This year promises to be as exciting and interesting as last year.  Maybe even more so.

This year I plan on finally achieving the goals I sat out last year.  I have a lot of writing and coding ahead of me.  Hopefully I will get involved with the KDE and Maemo projects early this year.  Also the transition from student life to corporate IT worker should sink in soon.  I am optimistic I will grow drastically in all aspects of my life this year: academic, professional, artistic and personal.

However some doubt, and grey clouds lie on the horizon this year.  The situation on the economic front looks dire.  I worry since the parallels of the great depression and hell that followed afterwards are there.  Except that this time around ideals seem more distant, nations seem more violent and the machines of war are far more lethal and potent.  And I don’t think literature or computing will cut it to get us out of the mess, we set upon ourselves so long ago.

Hopefully, my darkest nightmares will not realize themselves.  They did not solidify last year.  Instead many a happy accident happened.  And this year looks like many more happy accidents will occur.  But this I wouldn’t put up a todo list.  It doesn’t seem practical, and doesn’t account for the unexpected.

Perfectionism Rant

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I’ll be the first to admit it. I am a perfectionist.

At first glance, this is a very positive trait. I pay attention to detail. I can “hyper-focus” on a task, and flesh out all the issues with it. I want to bring into existence the best solutions, the most efficient code and most beautiful art. It helps avoiding mistakes. It helps with paying attention to details, others skim over. It helps bring masterpieces into existence.

But there are downsides to perfectionism as well. Time does not always allow for the perfect technical solution. Historical reasons-I shiver at those words as a excuse for past sins-and other things outside of your control don’t always allow for a solution to getting even close to perfection. You need to maintain a healthy level of pragmatism and be realistic, or you will go crazy.

More importantly, perfectionism can lead to a pessimistic perspective of life. You may bring the bar up so high, that no human can achieve to your perfect ideal. The worst, you can’t either. If I tried to write the perfect piece or code the perfect application, I would never get anything out the door. So remember to give yourself a break occasionally. No one is perfect.

Oh no! What happened to your site?!?

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If you are wondering about the strange collage of colours on this blog, well, it is totally my fault. Basically while the default Blogger themes are nice, I find them limiting. So I grabbed the thisawayBlue theme from Blogger, and started to replace elements in it. I am still a long ways from getting the right mix of colours. So please expect some breakage and truly zany colour combinations. I promise I’ll find and implement a decent looking theme in the next few weeks.

Why Ubuntu is Important for Me…

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So Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community leader (and mister communitizing the community using community tools 😀 )  asks why Ubuntu is important to me.  In my case this would be why is Kubuntu important to me, but then we will be arguing over semantics.

Yes, the freedom Ubuntu brings into my life is one reason why Ubuntu is important to me.  In general I value things free in nature: free will, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of association, et cetera.  Ubuntu brings me freedom in the software that I use.  The obvious freedoms stem from the free software that makes the Ubuntu ecosystem: the freedom to use as I see fit, the freedom to study and enhance my knowledge of computing, the freedom to modify to my needs, and the freedom to distribute my modifications.  But heck almost every Linux distribution gives me the same freedoms.

What differentiates Ubuntu Linux from other Linux distributions, are the more subtle freedoms.  I have the freedom to setup technology to work the way I want it to work.  Yet I also have the freedom of having the technology actually work.  I have the freedom to choose between free and *gasp* non-free software.  I have the freedom to access and install applications from one of the largest package repositories, aside from Debian.  I have the freedom to choose where I get excellent support, from the community or from Canonical.  I have the freedom of which architecture I want to run on.  In essence, I have the freedom to use my computing resources as I see fit.  You can’t get this on a Windows PC or a Mac.

The other reason Ubuntu is important is the reason why Ubuntu is so successful: the people involved.  Without the strong, friendly community, the responsive developers and enlightened leaders in and around Ubuntu, this distribution would not exist.  So thank you, all of you involved with Ubuntu.  Thank you for your time, your effort, your contributions and your sense of humanity.

BBLUG in Review

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Ok, so I didn’t expect BBLUG to go off without a hitch.  However it doesn’t seem like a Linux or BSD-only tech group is all that interesting.  I’m still debating whether or not to continue this LUG experiment.  Maybe we can start a computer group, but that is really not my interest nor do I have a ton of spare time for organizing a general group.  I blame it partially on my lack of advertising.  But also maybe the FOSS environment is not as exciting to others as I thought.  KDE 4, Compiz, Maemo, Linux are all interesting technologies, and is interesting to see the how FOSS newcomers react to seeing alternative computing ecosystems.  However computing is at the end of the day an enabling technology.  The technology itself while interesting, doesn’t look as interesting as what you can do with it.

Still… thanks to Rudy and Ryan who came out yesterday.  I’m glad I wasn’t the only person at the meeting.  Next time, lets just go out somewhere to chill.

The First Brampton BLUG Meeting Tomorrow!

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Eugene and I decided to start up a Brampton BSD-Linux User Group (BBLUG!).  This will hopefully grow into a community of open source enthusiasts in the Brampton and Mississauga region.  While we are competing in theory with the folks at GTALUG and WGTALUG, this is more of bring something to Brampton.  I know there is a Brampton LUG group on Facebook.  However I tried contacting them, but it doesn’t look like they are all that active.

So tomorrow @ 8PM, we plan on meeting up in the Coffee Culture for 2 hours.  If you are an enthusiast of Linux or BSD and live in the Brampton area, feel free to drop by.

OK, I should of announced this meeting much earlier.  I’ll try to do a better job of advertising the meetings next time.  I planned on putting up ads for this but… I kept putting it off.  Sorry. 🙁

Mathematics Can Be Fun!

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Yes, it is true.  Even math can be fun and enjoyable.  Especially when presented in an interesting manner.

Check out the Dimensions series.  This series goes into visualizing multidimensional objects, using projections, fiberations and complex numbers.  Very interesting and informative.  The first three and last films are good introductions to 4D geometry.  The other films may feel a bit heavy for mathematically uninclined though.  Still great films.  I wish these films were around when I studied dimensions, basises n-space matrices and vectors in linear algebra.  I might of gotten better marks in that course. 🙂

Early Morning Report for Those Who Can’t Sleep…

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I finally managed to steal some time to blog again. It is the morning too, so not everything might sound coherent.

So the past few weeks have been exacting on me. My life has become a bit of a gaming sprint. Not that I game as much as I used to. No. Rather each day feels like a gaming sprint with a schedule as follows: I wake up at 5 AM each morning, arrive at work at 6, do some personal stuff from 6 to 8, work like a dog for my client from 8 to 4 PM, travel home and work like a dog at home until near midnight-ish. Then rinse and repeat every workday for the past 2 maybe 3 weeks. It is getting tiring. Productive. But tiring.

I am still trying to organize a LUG in Brampton. But the guys on Facebook claiming to already operate one in the region, don’t look like they are doing much in that regard. So if you are in Brampton and like/love/hate Linux then come out December 16 at 8 PM to the Coffee Culture. I plan on putting up some flyers too.

Also writing and coding are off to the side right now. I still need to catch on important life/reality based stuff first. However I think my original TODO list is nearing completion for this year. I might need to revise the dates when I plan on actually finishing stuff. I reckon everything will be done before Q2 of 2009. Look at me talk like some corporate drone. 🙂

Anyways, I will try to update this blog more often. I think life should quiet down after Christmas.

Supermarket!: The Action Show

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This has to be a first. I saw one of my coworkers who works on a handheld-related project, dual-wield barcode handheld scanners. Quite an amusing sight to see, and yes he can read the barcodes too while doing so.

Facebook No More!

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UPDATE: Ok, so I lied. Getting off Facebook is much harder when you do have people you want to stay in touch with. I’m just going to make sure that all the info on Facebook relate only to the friendship side of things, and not to business or other parts of my life. Hence the blog feed no longer autoupdates on Facebook. But the same applies to LinkedIn.

Today I finally caught me myself off from Facebook. Not because I am anti-social. No, not at all. It is just that Facebook doesn’t work for me. Yes, it notified me of a few events. And I could follow what my friends do. But honestly… I’m not exactly interested in every pokey little detail about my friends either. I prefer to catch up on e-mail. Or read people’s blogs. And hence RSS and e-mail clients prove to work better for me.

Anyways, I’m too busy for Facebook. I stored too much information on it. Mea culpa. And I linked it to a blog. Mea culpa again. And Facebook won’t help getting you a date. I know, I tried.

Facebook is only part of the picture here. I am trying to exorcise the nitty-gritty, time wasting aspects of my life. I have far too much going on. And I’d prefer to spending 30 minutes on writing my novel or my games then on Facebook… …wondering why I’m bombarded by ads supposedly helping me out of my single life. Gimme a break. The social networking I need is on LinkedIn anyways.