Rrrroll up the Rrrim 2005

Posted on March 2, 2005 by Arthur

I see that Tim Hortons has launched their Oh NO!2005 ‘Rrroll up the Rrrim’ contest. Once again, I’ve added the this year’s Rules and Regulations to this blog for your viewing and statistical pleasures.

First glance: The Atlantic Provinces (NB, NL and NS) added 9 extra stores and got less medium cups but more large and extra large cups. Not that it will help your chances: there’s one less second price to win (last year 16 [Plasma TVs] vs. this year 15 [Home Theatres]). There are 3 less third prices to win ($1000 cash!). And to top it off: of the last ‘grand price’ (this year it’s a George Coleman, vs. last year’s Schwinn’s bikes) , the Atlantic provinces only have 1122 of them to divide, vs. 1177 last year.

Rrroll Up Your Rrrim and get more trims. (2003, 2004)

update 01/01/06: small corrections to location and images.

Posted in xsamplex | Tagged | 2 Comments

Fascinating

Posted on March 1, 2005 by Administrator

Come to think of it, I posted two links today that are tied together in a way but are completely different immigration cases: first of all, Sanja Pecelj returned yesterday from Mexico. After a long Immigration struggle she got her awaited Permanent Resident status. Her story (and several interviews with her) was big news on several Canadian channels, particularly in the Maritimes. Congratulations: I know exactly how that feels.

The other case is the one of the Holocaust denier, who was deported from Canada, after Germany was able to seek extradition. It took Canadian authorities two years to establish whether he posed a threat to Canadian security. A federal judge (yesterday) found:

  ” that his anti-Semitic and hatred-inciting activities were not only a threat to Canada’s national security, but also a threat to the international community of nations.”

Sometimes even I have to admit that immigrations laws go over my head. In some cases the system doesn’t work. In some cases it seems to work.

Posted in Provincial-Scotia, We-reflect-news | Comments Off on Fascinating

How to Slashdot yourself

Posted on March 1, 2005 by Arthur

Besides continuously patting yourself on the shoulder, how you were at the forefront of the PodCasting/RSS/YourSelfInducedInventionHere rage, here over at XSamplex we’re proud to present a unique way to make your site (weblog or pages) a prominent place on the Internet. The secret to this is called ‘Slashdot-yourself’ and regardless of what everybody says, it’s easy! You just need a tab enabled webbrowser.

And you need to have an attitude too.

What is ‘Slashdotting’

Slashdotting is the effect after a renown site has published an article that (exclusively) links to your weblog or website. Hordes of intellectuals visit your site, either bringing your webserver to a crawl or, as Modern-Day-geeks normally call it, ‘burn your b0xenz1!1111 LOL OMG!!’.

LOL, indeed.

But I want to become famous!

Hold on to your b0xenz1!111 LOL OMG!!! If your webserver survives this kind of traffic you can add yourself to the list of people who have been ‘Slashdotted’ and have survived this unnatural phenomenon. You get the gist? As long as you’ve not been Slashdotted, you’re not of A-List importance. Nor can you join the ranks of other self-proclaimed prophets like… uh…. yes: you know who you are!

But I just want to be important!

The other way around is to find an acronym that nobody knows yet. You won’t find to many: RSS, PodCasting and OPML have already been invented. I’ll give you a freebie: try PBSSP (PushButton Spreadsheet Power) or OS2CP. You can figure that one out yourself.

There must be another way, you say (TMBAWYS)? [NSFW]

Continue reading →

Posted in Hyperlinks | Comments Off on How to Slashdot yourself

Yay.

Posted on March 1, 2005 by Arthur

Your daily XSamplex has moved to here. We’re still pondering the import of all your favourite MT entries. Thanks for all the years of fan mail.

Oh wait. Scrap that last sentence.

Resubscribe here if you use an RSS reader.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on Yay.

Novell Seminar

Posted on March 1, 2005 by Arthur

Today, I attended a Novell seminar where they extensively promoted and showcased Novell’s Open Enterprise Server (OES) and SuSe’s Linux Enterprise Server software. There was also somebody from HP, explaining the relationship between the two companies and why you should use their hardware to run OES/LES software on. I made a couple of notes.

I’m still not sure if OES (Novell’s dual Netware/Linux kernel package) is actually already released or not. For the uninitiated, OES is Netware directory services incorporated into (a version of) Linux (“Netware on Linux”) or Linux services on Netware (“Linux on Netware”). Interesting stuff, trust me, but I’m not sure (as others in the room also noticed) why someone would want to replace his Linux for a Linux on Netware (or viceversa). Although I’m impressed with Novell’s directory services, the general question asked was ‘What will OES give me what I can already do in Linux?’. Once again, this was a question that struck a many a chords in the room and our host admitted that he didn’t have the right answer on that one except for ‘that Novell has the most powerful and secure directory services in the world’.

Continue reading →

Posted in Truro NS | 2 Comments

Browser stats

Posted on February 28, 2005 by Arthur

In the light of everybody trying to figure out the latest browser stats (Firefox vs. Internet Exporer), I decided to look up the same stats on this server for this weblog:

 
  Firefox 1.0 (Windows XP|Canada): 98%
  Firefox 1.x (Linux-i386|Netherlands): 2%.

Reminder to bloggers: You can manually increase any browser referrer string/agent by loading your personal site in your favourite browser and hit the refresh button every so once in a while (try every 2 seconds). Golden Tip: See also ‘Slashdot-Yourself’ effect.

Ed: I resisted the urge to add a graph to this post.

Posted in Hyperlinks | Comments Off on Browser stats

Weather then.

Posted on February 28, 2005 by Arthur

Tomorrow, we’ll be expecting another 10 cm. of snow. Apparently the snow will be changing into a drizzle in the afternoon. Says Weather Canada:

  Snow becoming mixed with ice pellets or freezing drizzle late in the morning changing to rain or drizzle in the afternoon. Snowfall amount 10 cm. Rainfall amount 5 mm. Occasional blowing snow. Fog patches developing late in the afternoon. Wind east 40 km/h gusting to 70 becoming southwest 40 gusting to 60 late in the day. High 6.

Is it March tomorrow, already? Looking at the Dutch weather forecast, I’m surprised to see that they have the same kind of weather. Over there it should already start to warm up quite nicely.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on Weather then.

Left Outer Joins

Posted on February 27, 2005 by Administrator

More database stuff: the most exciting stuff of databases is actually analyzing the data afterwards (after the regular integrity checks, naturally). It’s a goldmine, except for that you need to know how to actually capture that data. Here’s a tip for the math lovers: if you’re not sure how your query should be built, think unions. Remember those junior years when you were wasting time drawing circles of collections of apples and pears? They’re back!

Continue reading →

Posted in SQL | Comments Off on Left Outer Joins

Databeast and time

Posted on February 27, 2005 by Administrator

Earlier this week, I thought I had made a crucial mistake when I was testing a couple of new and existing reports on my Debian database server (at home). For some kind of reason, firing up a query that returns a selection between two dates didn’t return the results I wanted to see (example):


SELECT * from atable
WHERE date_in >= '01/01/05'
AND date_in < = '01/31/05';

Under all normal circumstances this query should return all the rows that fall in between those days, including the 31st of January. My home server didn’t.

It ended up to be a timezone configuration error on my server: My server was set to EST, while AST would have been more appropriate.

Posted in SQL | Comments Off on Databeast and time

Games

Posted on February 27, 2005 by Arthur

While playing Manhunt I noticed the same things that hamper the playability of other games for platforms like the XBOX: graphically these games are miracles but in terms of storyline most of them suck. Add to that, that Manhunt is most likely popular (or infamous) because of the gore in the game itself.

So what are the games I enjoy playing? It’s FIFA Soccer 2005 (the PC version). Sure, the game has lots of areas where it needs improvements (offsides, strategy and position play of AI), but it’s the only game I still play often. There goes nothing above, ‘kicking the ball’ for three games and then dive back into the coding.

Ed. Link fixed.

Posted in Truro NS | 2 Comments

Hello world!

Posted on February 26, 2005 by Administrator

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

BG and that free episode

Posted on February 24, 2005 by Arthur

I watched the full first episode of Battlestar Galactica (Real Player only), and once again, I must admit it was pretty good. I think it’s actually better than the original one.

A thread over at Metafilter (which refers to the same link above) reminds me of stories (or rumours) that the original story was based on the Book of Mormon. For some kind of reason this rings a bell: however, I can not really remember if this actually caused a discussion over on the Olde Continent.

It’s good stuff nonetheless. I’ll be watching out for these DVDs.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on BG and that free episode

Desktop publishing

Posted on February 21, 2005 by Arthur

Looking for good HTML to PDF converters for my Debian (“Elsie”) box (plain server, no KDE/GNOME), I stumbled upon the word ‘Desktop Publishing’. Actually I ended up at the Scribus site, an open source program that claims to bring award-winning desktop publishing to Linux.

Desktop Publishing sounds so early Nineties. You know, those days that a wordprocessor was actually called a ‘text processor’, because after all, it was meant to make editing text really easier. Desktop Publishing, that was something like literally ‘typesetting’ banners or ‘making 3 columns newspaper-like’ flyers. Ever tried doing that in Word? It’s probably easier now, but I doubt it will look professional.

It would be interesting to see a graph showing the correlation between the use of WP 5.x and Desktop Publishing software like Ventura and QuarkXPress, juxtaposed on a graph showing the use of Word and other graphical ‘word processors’. I bet the demise of WP 5.1 and DTP software are pretty much related.

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on Desktop publishing