Informative and surprising article at Globe and Mail’s suggesting that Lindows is making ways in Nova Scotia.
Apparently four Regional Community Access Program Centres have deployed Lindows workstations for Internet access. The company itself has opened a regional office in Yarmouth and is looking for retail outlets. Interested parties are encouraged to contact the San Diego-based company.
Pretty images of Deventer leave warm feelings behind. It’s in Dutch (you do speak Dutch, do you?), and the photographer apparently took his/her time to shoot those pictures. Pretty.
Basically, the article accompanying the pictures describes a touristic route straight through the center of the city, starting at the railway station and ending at the ‘Vogeleiland’ (Birds Island). The latter was actually the real reason for my search at Google: there’s a petit restaurant on that island and guess what: they’re not on-line as I can’t find any homepage. That picture of me on the About page was shot over there by one of the friends of my sister (the original is postcard sized and was presented to me as a wedding present) and the occassion marked the end of an amazing time (Henk, Alf and me). If I’m not wrong, the sister mentioned above introduced us to the restaurant and before we knew we were like regulars. We celebrated there a lot of times. They had great hosts then too. Time flies.
Well, in theory it’s still 
Fall, but it should be much colder than the forecasted 15 degrees (Celsius that is).
Not that I mind these double digit temperatures. I’m pretty sure we had a snowstorm around this time. However, I’ll not be over happy, since things may change drastically. The Weather Office’s traditional seasonal temperature forecasts do not reveal anything spectacular (“Near Normal” for Nova Scotia).
Not completely unrelated: splashy start page they have.
Via Metafilter: three dimensional street paintings. Really pretty and amazing.
The only point I was thinking of that these paintings should only be seen from one direction: if you think about it, how would the shadowing work anyways? Conveniently, the painter took the pictures from the direction those paintings have to be seen from, so he’s actually a bit cheating. Nonetheless, as said above, it takes a painter to make these kind of paintings.
Everybody’s favourite event, The 2003 International Rock Paper Scissors Championship, was held in Toronto this year and someone took his camera.
If you’re just as foreign as me (hey, that is the best excuse I can give anyone), you can find the basic rules over at the WorldRPS site. Learn from the masters (QT)! Learn how to coach younger players! Join your local RPS club. After all, martial arts is clearly derived from Rock Paper Scissors!
Via Scripting News an item pointing over at Paolo’s, about Google and Firebird.
“If it’s not a URL, the string is routed to Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature. Now, of course you still rely on DNS to get to the site, but if google would index IP addresses of sites we could probably live without DNS.
Now: do we want to give all this power to a company?”
I don’t get it. This is clearly additional functionality from the Firebird team. Type in ‘about:config’. Then type in ‘keyword’ (without the quotes) in the Filter box, et voila. Just set it to false. So? What’s the deal? Ignorance?
I had to find out over the phone that the Dutch team won the second leg of the playoff football (OK, soccer) game against Scotland. Interesting to see that a young talented Ajax Amsterdam player (Wes Sneijder) became the player of the match. Nineteen years young. When I was nineteen…
BBC has some pictures here: For some kind of reason the dry comments made me laugh.
This morning I briefly glanced through code written a couple of days ago: basically the code took care of spitting out data via late binding into Excel. I had no idea what I was thinking but it surely looks neat.
Then the bell tolls and you start to become aware that commenting the code is pretty important too. I always ‘log’ changes in a seperate text file, but those entries are merely short, explaining what was added or what has been removed. I wonder: if I now have a hard time to exactly comprehend what the code does, how would someone else feel? Hopefully they get struck by the beauty of programming that is boolean magic.
Good news re: the Man vs. Computer battle: Kasparov and the Amazing Three Dee (not one, not two, but three tables and a microphone!!) chess computer ended their serie with a tie. Yay. Says Kasparov in an utterly silly attempt to be smart:
“Machines are getting better, but we humans are also learning.”
We. Humans. Learning?
The most comprehensive resource for algorithms is still the DADS, NIST’s Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures. Completely recommended if you quickly need to look up a way to sort your data. DADS is also living proof why it’s ridiculous to patent software or algorithms: if you can’t find it in Knuth’s ‘Art of Programming’ or in DADS, then you’re doing something wrong.
Alfons showcases ‘breadth-first’ in his puzzle solving example. And if you’re using your spellchecker or thesaurus right now, keep in mind that it’s probably powered using DAWG.
From a outsider’s point of view, there’s something weird about (Northern) American commercials. A couple of years ago I was surprised to see commercials promoting medication and pills. Imagine a country where all these pills and commercials from those drug companies were regulated by the government, because after all, nobody actually reads the ‘small print’ at the end of the commercial.
So, two (three?) years ago I asked my wife if everybody here suffered from ‘acid reflux’ (and I could only conclude that maybe it had to do with the ‘Big Mac’ consumption) since that illness wasn’t in my vocabulary. The same thing was true for pills like Tylenol and Advil, which are generally known in Europe as ‘Paracetamol’. I have the feeling that those pills are advertized as a ‘cure’ in Northern America, while over in Europe they are basically marketed as painkillers.
Believe it or not: Nova Scotias first Sunday shoppingday was a success. The Herald reports that everyone was generally excited about the idea of this Christmas specific event.
Nova Scotia is the only province that doesn’t allow year-round Sunday shopping. The current minority government plans to let Nova Scotians decide if they want to keep the year-round Sunday shopping. That is, if they can wait until October 2004.
A couple of items around reminded me of the Eighties, the years of the Cold War. First off, Alan M. remembers the actual thoughts most Europeans had about the Red Threat and the chances of an all-out nuclear war. The world was literally painted red and blue and the governments of Thatcher and Reagan didn’t make those feelings of fear get away. I was one of the last of my generation to be called for active duty just because of this Cold War. Luckily, my time of active service didn’t last long.
Secondly, an interesting thought experiment (Barefoot), where Dave Pollard puts us in different shoes. Which reminded me of the (TV?) movie ‘The Day After’, which was shown frequently during my ‘high school’ years.
Yes, the Cold War was frequently in the back of our heads when we went to school. I vividly remember the demonstrations against the Pershing missiles in The Netherlands. Those days, the roaring Eighties so to say, were confusing, sometimes depressing, but highlighted by the introduction of the Personal Homecomputer.
At the height of the German Blitzkrieg, the part of the Second World War that ended in the dramatic surrender of most West European countries, the Nazi’s readied their propaganda machine by releasing their anti-semitic movie ‘Der Ewige Jude’ (The Eternal Jew).
The release was perfectly timed: the German war machine appeared invincible and as Hitler already prophesized in earlier speeches, something was going to be done about the ‘problem’.
Which brings me over at the Holocaust History Project website, which hosts the extensive analysises of the movie by Stig Hornshoj-Moller. Also with study material how to deal with propaganda in modern media and (naturally) still images from the movie. Only check that last link if you’re sure that you can see through propaganda.
