An Exercise In Futility

Haiku about how great my Linksys VPN Router is.

sema4 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:04:00 +0000

Data, Encrypted,
Through the tunnel flows, But then –
Dropped. Link Lost, AGAIN.

Climbing Update Oct 07

sema4 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:15:56 +0000

When was my last climbing update? Eons ago i expect. Working towards a goal of leading 5.12 in the gym by xmas. Been feeling quite good on the wall recently, climbing 5.11+ without much difficulty, and working those 5.11 leads a lot. Have not hit a 5.12 in a while, i think tonight should be the night! :> I will also try that sustained 5.10something that traverses the roof. I am stoked!

Youtube not working in IE or Firefox?

sema4 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:07:33 +0000

I have had this insane problem for over a year where youtube would not work in Internet Explorer or Firefox on one particular machine. In both browsers, the youtube website looked like crap (as though CSS was not rendering) and it whenever i tried to play a video, a message appeared indicating that I had to install flash player or enable javascript. Based on things i had seen mentioned in many posts on the interweb, I fiddled with all sorts of settings, updated Java, updated Flash player, updated Shockwave player, uninstalled Quicktime… nothing seemed to help. Something else i saw mentioned a lot was that Norton, or some firewall system, or some ad blocker, or some popup blocker, was blocking ytimg.com. Well, i knew for a fact i had no firewall software running on that box, no ad blocking, no Norton anything.

Then today i had a brainstorm — What else could cause ytimg.com to be blocked? a hosts file entry to deliberately redirect requests, perhaps? YES, sure enough, i had pointed s.ytimg.com at an unreachable local private IP address, a very long time ago, and had completely forgotten about it.

Vote YES for BC-STV in the Referendum on Electoral Reform

sema4 — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:00:04 +0000

On May 12, BC voters will be asked to choose between two voting systems: The current Single Member Plurality (SMP) system, or Single Transferable Vote (STV). This referendum was also conducted last election, with almost 60% in favour of a change to STV (the government decided this was sufficient support to hold the referendum again).

Last time around, i flip flopped on this since i did not fully understand the issues and i was swayed by people who i believed DID understand the issues. By referendum time i was mostly against STV, and in the end i did not even vote on it.

This year i have done more research into it and have solidified my stance: STV is not the best alternative to SMP, but it is a good alternative that will benefit most British Columbians. In fact, the only people who will ’suffer’ from a change to STV are those who feel that fringe or independent parties should not have an opportunity to win seats.

Very simply put: BC-STV is a system that provides better proportional representation in the legislature than the current SMP system.

Under SMP, a candidate will win the seat in their riding with anything more than 50% of the vote, which means that up to 49.x percent of the constituency would have no local representation at all. By having larger electorate deciding multiple seats, there is more opportunity to elect someone who represents you and your ideals. Which is better: having an MLA (who you would not vote for) who is “accountable to you” because you can drive to their office, or having an MLA sitting in the legislature who you DID vote for?

The choice is clear: Vote YES for BC-STV.

nothing to say

sema4 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:19:27 +0000

i almost feel like i ought to dump the content of the blog to hardcopy and be done with it. Twitter is more than sufficient for telling people about how much coffee i drank or what colour the pavement is today.

Coffee

sema4 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:53:31 +0000

Ideal coffee making system - unit would be plumbed in to water source and drain, the only user interaction would be to tell the unit when to make coffee (either on demand or by pre-programming), to drink the coffee, and to refill the beans/grounds and soap when near empty. Soap is required for self clean. Carafe would be removable but a robotic clamp could grip the carafe during the cleaning process to dump the contents. Or spigot type dispenser. Problem with spigot system would be downtime while system self-cleans (carafe system can cycle between 2 carafes). Beans or grounds would be dispensed internally in preprogrammed amounts. System could contain both decaf and caf, and combine in desired ratios. System would have a web-based interface for configuration and operation, but unit could also be operated at the physical unit itself (one touch brew).

i bought a $100 coffee maker with insulated carafe last year and i have been disappointed. The $20 kmart special i had before made WAY better coffee.

No Chilled Beer from the BCL. Here’s Why.

sema4 — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:38:04 +0000

I visited the BC Government Liquor Store at Terminal Park in Nanaimo the other day. This one has probably the best selection in town and is open fairly late, so it is really the liquor store of choice. However, as long as i can remember, they have not offered any chilled beer. In fact, no BCL store offers this “feature”. The Terminal Park store was recently renovated so i expected that they would have added coolers, it seemed like the logical thing to do. But no, the brand-new looking store still had no cold anything. So i asked someone working there, “is there a law against BCL refrigerating their beer?”. The answer is as stupid as you would expect: The lobby group for private liquor stores fought this a long time ago and won - their argument is that “cold” is what makes the private stores more unique. That my friends is bull shit. What makes a private store unique is that it is open when the government stores are not. I guess what also makes the private stores unique is that they generally charge more for their alcohol (plus cooling fee if you grab it from the cooler). Maybe if ‘cold beer’ is the defining factor for the private stores, we could lobby for them to be barred from selling non-chilled beer? That would be awesome, i guess it is unfortunate that there are more important battles to be fought.

Nikon

sema4 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:20:20 +0000

There are two things i dislike about this camera we have, and they are both to do with manual focus. One is that the focus ring has no markings, so it is not possible to set the focus to infinity. Maybe a focus reticule would help in that case - and that is peeve number two. On our old Minolta there was a reticule in which you had to align two images that appeared in two half circles - and that would indicate that the subject was in focus. I am barely an amateur photographer but it made sense to me that this would eliminate any focus error that would be introduced by my eye (which focuses independently of the camera). On manual focus with no focus reticule to assist me, i am having to guess when the subject is in focus. Or am i fooling myself?

Climbing at the Steppes

sema4 — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:46:20 +0000

Went climbing at the steppes again this weekend. It was great! Tried leading a 5.11b (something on sherlock wall but not sure which one), it kicked my butt in the endurance department, i got totally pumped out by the 7th bolt and had to leave behind a couple of draws. Wanted to rappel off the top to retrieve the equipment but the bolts were wiggly in the rock and i didn’t think my life was worth $30. Maybe i can climb it again sometime soon to get them, that is if nobody has pinched them yet.

I have also updated the map for Steppes access. apparently the copley ridge road is a dead end and requires a bushwhack - so i’ve removed that until i (or someone else) can confirm/map-out a reliable route. Also added a second gate location to the map and confirmed the location of the cabin access trail.

Active day on the fault line

sema4 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:15:09 +0000

Within a 16 hour timespan today, there have been 12 earthquakes between magnitude 4.0 and 5.2, all around the same spot about 200km WSW of Port Hardy, off the north end of Vancouver Island. This location is known as the explorer transform, a transform fault at the north end of the explorer ridge.

Update August 28 10:23am: The count for quakes in this region is now up to 32! Overnight there was a 6.1 reported (now downgraded to a 5.8). Not exciting for most people, however, because it was too far out in the ocean to be felt by anyone on land.