Pierre Phaneuf's Diary

Who Wants a Free Colour Laser Printer?

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:29:40 GMT

Yes, you read that subject right. I've got a Samsung CLP-300 to give away, for free. It's a nice, quite compact colour laser printer, that seems to have been well received. It is quite fast in black and white, does a pretty decent colour, and has a cost per page well below anything possible with ink jet printers (yes, even with recharges). One of my favourite feature is that it's a non-fussy USB connection (cable included), rather than those annoying and almost extinct parallel connectors.

But yes, you're right, there is a catch: it's a European model, which operates on 220 volts, and unfortunately, does not have a switching power supply (so a power plug adapter is not sufficient). We we did locate the adapter required, and it runs in the $80-90 (requirements are of 350 watts sustained, while printing, in power save it should be less than 17 watts). We might still have a pack of paper for it, but it might be A4 rather than 8.5"x11"...

azrhey got it while we were in France for coursework that was cut short when we returned to Canada semi-unexpectedly. I'm personally not a huge fan of printers in general, since I tend to keep and pile up paper everywhere, so my favourite solution is to avoid getting paper as much as possible, so we'd like to free the (relatively little) space it uses.

I know it's kind of tricky to get the power adapter for it (we can procure it for you, if you don't want to deal with it) and everything, but we'd rather have someone reuse this almost-brand new, perfectly fine printer than have it go to recycling, which more often than not, is almost as hazardous as having it go in a landfill.

Leave a comment, or send me an email (easy to find in my profile)!

Miss You

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:13:00 GMT

I hope there's some good music wherever you are, Denzo.

Shows I want to see, seeking company (help?)

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 01:06:59 GMT

Ok, so I've got this bunch of shows I want to go to, but going all by myself is kind of sad (although I've done that a few times in Toulouse, and it was the source of just about an equal number of crazy adventures!)... Anyone care to join me (or is already going) to any of those? The links are to the Last.fm event page, with samples of the music and further details:

The Planet Smashers (February 13)
Festival Montréal en Lumière: Nuit Blanche à Montreal (February 28)
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (March 3)
Bloc Party (March 18)
The Presets (April 5)
Ladytron and The Faint (April 7)
MSTRKRFT (April 11)
Peter Bjorn and John (April 27)
Animal Collective (May 15)
Festival Kinetik 2.0 (May 17)

I'm sure there's already people intending to do the Nuit Blanche, I'm just hoping to slip in a visit to the Metropolis in there. I'm also rather keen on the Trail of Dead show, since it's at La Sala Rossa, and I've been missing that venue something fierce.

Finally, if there are other suggestions or things I've missed, do recommend!

Edit: Added Peter Bjorn and John, as well as Animal Collective, as per cpirate's suggestion. The full list is the authoritative source for this, feel free to check it out (and I welcome the use of Last.fm's "suggest this event", as well).

Long time no see?

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:43:17 GMT

I really should write more, be it here, or elsewhere, no matter. I should be saying more about myself, not really because people need to know (well, ok, some people do!), I used to be so public and saying everything to the four winds, and now I feel a bit closed and inaccessible. I'm not sure why it turned out that way, but I have some good ideas, and they're all bad ones.

Maybe it shouldn't be as much as it used to be, that there's a happy middle to be reached. But this nothing, it's just another extreme. It's also not so much for my "readership" as for myself, more of a personal diary than a regular kind of blog, it's only public because of some strange personal convictions of mine, not because I'm trying to draft an audience. Would there be nobody reading this, it still would accomplish its goals.

For that reason, I'm thinking of separating this journal into a bunch of distinct ones (well, two, at the very least). I have some technical postings that I would actually like to disseminate more widely, and for which a readership of zero is a bit of a failure, and for those, the personal posts are just so much drivel to skip over. I also suspect the converse is true of those few who actually follow my personal posts, too!

That also gets me thinking about the people who are deleting their accounts on LiveJournal. I'm not sure I understand. Why don't they just not write (see, I was doing an excellent demonstration of that!)? This way, you can still read restricted posts, comment (and get notifications), etc... I can understand making all their posts private, or maybe even deleting them (although the archivist in me finds the information attrition saddening), turning off all the email notifications, but deleting the account? What's the harm in having the account at all?

In the meantime... I dreamt I was cheating on azrhey, just a simple kiss (not even a sloppy snog!), but something I knew full well I wasn't supposed to do, which I told her in the dream (waking up right after that), but I just felt tremendously uncomfortable, even when I woke up, I was feeling it, being all confused... Eurgh.

Mobile Annoyance

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:02:03 GMT

Pay-per-use data in Canada with Fido is 5 cents per KB, but when roaming to the US or Europe, it drops down to 3 cents?!? WTF!?!

For extra pain, it's 5 tenths of a Euro cent with Orange (not the cheapest!) I'm France, and roaming to the US or Canada is 1.3 Euro cents. The most basic package is also only 7 Euros, monthly, as opposed to 15$CDN here.

On the other hand, it's past 21:00 and I'm headed to the grocery. Ha!

This One's Just For You

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:05:36 GMT

Okay, so I don't post links to Youtube videos a whole lot, but this one is special. Make sure you view it on the site itself, with the US English language setting (because it really is special), and make sure to catch what's in the tabs at the top of the page.

Another One Bites the Dust

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:04:15 GMT

The wire/plug of my in-ear headphones has started flaking out, so I switched to the iPod stock earbuds. I had forgotten how annoying earbuds are.

On the short walk from home to the metro, they fell out of my ear twice, and they keep moving around, needing to adjust them all the time, with sound levels varying all the time. On the upside, I can hear my surroundings better, but right now, in the metro, it turned into a negative. Forget hearing any subtleties, too...

To be clear, I'm not taking aim at the Apple earbuds, but at earbuds in general. Of note, Apple will soon offers in-ear headphones as an upgrade.

Am I Hardcore?

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:58:32 GMT

Ok, so that was my first ride in some kind of snow. It's wasn't the best thing ever (imagine having your face, hands and front of your legs doused with water barely above the freezing point, then hanging out in the wind outside), but it wasn't the worst thing ever either. Icing snow accumulating in my glasses and my brakes having less and less effect (the pad themselves weren't gripping, the tires seemed all right, surprisingly) was probably the worst, but I guess that's more a factor of the precipitation. My gloves are not nearly resistant enough to wind and water, I'll have to see to that.

And I still have to go to the bike shop before the end of the month for a free tune up.

The future I used to have is back?!?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:58:52 GMT

I use to post entries to my online diary from my Palm, while I was riding the metro. Looks like I can do that again, thanks to some LiveJournal app! Although I do not ride the metro much, these days... And hopefully, my iPod touch will be spared the untimely demise(s) of my Palms!

(Almost) Got a New Bike

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:38:23 GMT

Today, I apparently felt very optimistic.

You see, Monday I went to Cycle Technique and asked them if they had some used bikes, having in mind of getting a rain/winter bike. Turned out they did, their summer rental bikes, they were pretty nice, and (allegedly) they had a large one that would fit me. I figured I'd give it a thought, then decided it was a good idea, and went on the Tuesday. I figured I'd walk there, pick up the bike, then ride to work. Except that large was actually a medium. So I walked to work instead.

Today, I figured I'd head over to Beaudry metro, check out Vélo Espresso and Revolution Montreal, for sure I should be able to get a decent used ride between the two of those, right? Well, no. Well, maybe. But mainly no. I had forgotten that Revolution mainly does custom built bikes, meaning that, no, they did not have anything for sale right there. Vélo Espresso had a used bike, but while it could have done, it was quite used. On their main floor, they had this rather weird bike, a Norco VFR 3 Internal. It's a fairly sporty frame, although not too aggressive, and it actually has space and lugs for fenders and racks (although I hear that it's not always the best fit ever), but it has an internal hub and a chain cover. An internal hub and a chain cover, but no fenders? I keep seeing utility bikes that have fenders, racks and lights, but no chain cover nor internal hub, and this bike has the reverse? Well, uh, it so happens that this is the exact set of things that you can't add, so I guess that's cool? I tried it out around a few blocks, and while it's not nearly an upright riding position, it's still surprisingly relaxed. It also comes with clipless pedals and clip-on platforms like those I already have?!? What a weird bike!

After that, I went to ABC Cycles & Sports, but it was closed (only on Wednesdays, argh!). I stopped by Brakeless, since it was just down from it, but they only had the one fixie, it seems more trendy than a place I'd actually want to get a bike from. I then headed over to Le Yéti, where I had a rather informative chat, and saw a ridiculously fancy German bike (I think? don't remember the make/model), which, while complying with pretty much all my requirements, and piling on disc brakes on top (because I really like brakes that work well), is also almost three grands, although it's now on sale at a bit past two grands. Uh, tempting as it is, I'll have to pass.

After that, La Bicycletterie JR, Sport Dépôt, and Pignon sur Roues. The latter had an interesting bike, the Louis Garneau Cityzen One, but is oddly missing just a chain cover (even though a blurb about the bike in Vélo Mag claims there's one?). Why is there almost no bike with chain covers?

I ended up going back to Sport Dépôt, and after some pondering, getting a Marin Belvedere. I had already spotted that bike from some research on the web, and while I knew they had Marin bikes there, turns out they pretty much only had this one, 20% off, so it was a happy coincidence. But... Their mechanic was off today, so they couldn't prep the bike, so I did not ride to work, once more.

Tomorrow, I shall ride home on my new ride! There's no stopping me! They may try, and Jeff might try to jinx me (I beat his Space Invaders high score to ward it off), but I'll be riding back tomorrow, rain or shine, and there'll be no stripe down my back if it's raining!

No Nick Cave and a Cycling Problem

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:50:33 GMT

Damn! I wanted to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, coming to the Metropolis in October, but it's sold out! Oh well, I'll be trying to go to more small shows, I think. It's been too long I have been to La Sala Rossa, for example, and places like Zoobizarre merit being visited again. Oh, and going to see Miss Kittin & The Hacker on the 27th at SAT! Awesome!

All those shows, I'd like to bike to them, but I've been finding my quest for fenders to put on my bike rather frustrating. It's a weird bike, rather easy to ride with its straight handlebars, but the rest is done in a racing style. Which means that there's basically no clearance anywhere between the tires, the frame, the fork, and the brakes, not a lug in sight for anything (well, except water bottles), and so on...

I'm also pondering a winter bike, as I'd like to try (to some degree, I always have my CAM in my bag!) to ride for at least part of the winter. I'm pondering what to do, as there are many parameters...

I'd like to have a city bike, that would fill in the role a car does for most people. It would have to be practical, something I'd be able to ride day in and day out. It shouldn't be a hassle to ride all the time. I do not want to be hardcore. I'd like to just dress normally, as if I had a car, and arrive maybe a bit rained on at best, as if I was parked a bit far, but not drenched, and no wet line along my back! It could be aluminium, to keep the weight (and the rust) down, but it wouldn't try to be super-light. I think an internal hub might be good, to minimize maintenance as much as possible. Chain cover, to protect my pants. Everything bolted on, so that locking it is easy and quick. Lights, possibly with a generator (but it shouldn't be awful like those against-the-wheel generators).

One of the problems I'm having in this quest is that most bikes fulfilling these criteria (that I can find here) tend to go for a vintage look and have some of the features I listed only because most bikes in the fifties had them, not because they're sensible bikes. One bike having all those items also had things like a seat with big springs (heavy if it useful, sure, but those are heavy and useless!), and a back wheel cover (so that my longcoat doesn't get stuck in the spokes). Stylish, yes, but practical? I live just at the foot of the hill between René-Levesque and St-Antoine, if my first experience when I take out the bike is consistently having this feeling that I'm going to die, well, uh, I don't think that'll be encouraging!

Batavus seems to have some interesting models, and while I haven't seen much of them in Montreal, they have a Canadian site, and there are some resellers in Montreal (I've been there before, but I don't remember seeing them, I guess they can order them, in the worst case). Some details are a bit off still, like the integrated horseshoe locks, which are pretty nice, but require replacing all the inhabitants of Montreal with Danish people first, so it's a bit impractical.

Another thing that's causing me some grief is the parking space. I don't think I want to give up my fast FCR for this hypothetical new bike, you see? On nice days, I don't see why I would deprive myself from the fun of zipping down Ste-Catherine at almost 40 kph! But at the moment, my spot in the basement is just big enough for one bike, maybe two if I could hang then (but it's a temporary setup, and I can't). And maybe I'll be wanting a crappier bike for the winter. And after trying out phython's fixie, I'm still longing for one myself (soooo smooooth!). Where am I going to put all of this bikery? I have my eyes on the mezzanine at home, but it's not very practical, so it might be good to put the winter bike in the summer and vice-versa, but getting stuff up and down there is rather annoying.

Ah, what to do, what to do...

I think I'll deal with the winter first, and get myself one of those cheap-ish Marin hybrid/commuter bikes...

Where is Mike Holmes When You Need Him?

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:34:10 GMT

So last Saturday, we embarked on a bit of painting. You see, the paint in our apartment is some sort of "priming basic paint", which isn't totally awful to look at (unlike primer), but isn't quite awesome either, it's prime quality being that it's easy to paint over. After we recently discovered that this quality also made it a fairly hospitable surface for mold, we decided we'd paint the bathrooms with a more appropriate type of paint. While we were there, we also wanted to paint some of the doors a darker shade, a bit like the cupboards.

Unfortunately, after sleeping at azrhey's parents and going to liberation_now and tygrbabe's brunchwarming (where several attempts to make us explode with delicious food were made!), we came back and saw that there was actually a number of screw-ups we hadn't noticed the day before that piled up to make it downright disastrous.

So there has been episodes of peeling off misapplied paint, sanding down some defects, putting in some spackle in places, and repainting some insufficiently covered areas. The bathrooms are more or less back under control, although the doors still need work.

That's combined with finally getting the delivery (albeit a bit later, and taking longer than expected) of the custom wall unit we had ordered a while back for the living room. It's very nice, although it has some of the warts of a one-off, such has just about zero cable routing and the very stylish smoked glass door apparently messing with the PVR's remote control. There was a small mistake in the design, but we actually like it better than what we wanted originally, so there (we'll be able to have a small bar in it!). Still, a fine piece of furniture. Now we just need to get more DVDs to stuff in its gigantic drawers!

It seems like I'm the worst bike mechanic in the world. For a few days now, I was hearing a bit of a metallic noise when I was going over potholes and cracks in the pavement, as if a screw was loose and a washer was bouncing around on it. I tried to locate the origin of the sound, grabbing my cables, derailleurs, and various other mechanical parts, all the while going along Notre-Dame (not the safest plan, by the way). No luck. So I stopped by Belleville Cycle Co-op on the way to work, worried that this might lead eventually to something more serious, like a broken chain or whatnot, and the guy there put me to shame. One of the unused bottle cage screws was loose, and the spacing washer was bouncing around on it. Duh! I swear I checked those guys, but there's four of them, and I as I was doing that while riding, I guess I skipped the culprit... Argh.

azrhey and I took a small break today to go to the Akoha, uh, thing. We've both left wondering a bit about where the money is going to be coming from (but you have to admit that you get to wonder about that for most of what you see on the Internet, and yet, it's there!), but it's a pretty cool and generally positive idea. I'll try to do well as a tester. :-)

Coming back from there, I saw a pretty sweet bike locked on St-Laurent, a Specialized Langster Seattle. I guess that for a fixie, getting it all done like that is kind of cheating, and I'm not entirely sure of what I want yet in a fixie anyway, but it looks damned nice (the Chicago colour is very nice, but the Seattle handlebars are more to my liking). The Seattle one has a coffee cup holder? Uh, anyway...

Of Pride, Biking, and Rain

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:25:20 GMT

Went to the Montreal Pride Parade last Sunday, which wasn't all that much to speak of, this year, in my opinion. There were some good floats, but they were few and far between, and there's a lot of ads, it seems. Some of them have a decent float, like that bank one, but some were so utterly boring and out of place, it was stunning. There was a juice ad, and really, there's no other way to call it, that was just one of those trucks with ads on the sides. That's it. Nobody walking along with it giving out samples or flyers, or even just waving, and, you know, being alive. Nope, just a guy driving a truck with big signs on the side. Nice. Thankfully, the company was much nicer, and liberation_now led us through some very nice alleys, good to know!

I also found out that my awesome new mini U-lock is only bare millimetres too small for those parking markers that replaced parking meters. The problem seems to be that plastic covering. Argh. But I think this is still vastly good in its lightweightness and ability to fit easily in my mini-messenger bag (or my jeans back pocket, in a pinch). It works just fine with "no parking" signposts, and there's no shortage of those around Montreal. ;-)

The after-parade barbecue at archdiva was much more fun than the parade itself, in fact. Met some fun people from as far as England, and apparently managed to have a conversation about where Ubuntu is going these days. The latter doesn't sound very surprising for me, but considering the locale, it was rather unexpected. There was burgers, and as per archdiva's requirement, big fat sausages.

I spent most of Monday cursing at the sky for being so sunny when I had left my bike home because of severe rainstorm warnings, but no worries, I got the rainstorm all right by the end of the day, just as I had to walk home with a heavy piece of hardware. How convenient!

But the weather was good yesterday (even took some detours, blazing down University and taking in the view along the Lachine Canal), and it looks very promising today as well!

Biking Frenzy

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:14:53 GMT

Tour de Fat
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf.

After my recent trip to San Francisco, which included attending Tour de Fat (I won't say "participate", because neither morethanreal or I could wake up early enough for the ride proper), I've been re-energized about cycling. Going up the Wiggle in the middle of a foggy night, and still having other people riding the same route, seeing all of those fixies and also the pretty city bikes, it's quite the sight.

So when I came back, I decided to reconfigure my bike slightly, to make it more practical. I got safety skewers to replace the quick-release ones, so that I wouldn't have to disassemble my bike anymore, got myself a mini U-lock that is just enough, small enough to easily fit in my bag, and lighter than my big one. I want to get fenders, but apparently, that's rather tricky for my bike. In any case, the point is that I want to remove any friction to my bike being a day-to-day vehicle. And I think it's going well.

I did get a flat by accidentally riding on broken glass on Ste-Catherine Friday, which I got fixed at Belleville Cycle Co-op, and after getting that fixed, I figured that I'd go check out Revolution Montréal. On my way there, on Maisonneuve at the corner of Aylmer, a mother and her daughter were crossing on a red, not paying attention to either cars nor bikes, while I was going on a streak of green lights at 40 kph. I braked hard enough that my rear brake cable snapped (I think it was iffy already), after having left a good deal of rubber on the pavement already. Stopping about six inches from the daughter, the only casualties were thankfully only my right ring finger and the cable, of course.

I should get myself a cycling icon... :-)

And, finally but not least, we celebrated ayria's birthday and triumphant return to Montreal! It was quite fun, although it is weird observing my own behaviour. I seem to be much less expressive about my feelings (not just with ayria, but in general) than I used to be. I think I might have said this before, but being away for a while seems to have hardened me in a way that I don't really like. Maybe I was too expressive before, I don't know, but this is certainly too much the other way. In any case, I did enjoy myself a great deal, even if someone's definition of "footsie" seems to be "stomping on my toes vigorously"!

Craziness in Frisco

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:30:26 GMT

So I went for a weekend in San Francisco... I was planning on that already, so I had packed a light raincoat and a few long-sleeved shirts, so I wouldn't look like a tourist, but as it turned out, I forgot them in Mountain View and looked like a tourist anyway! After obtaining a lender bike for the weekend (thanks Noé!) and deciding to leave my laptop at the office so I could travel light, I hopped on the Google shuttle and managed to get the wireless Internet they have onboard working on my iPod touch. This was already kind of cool, but I was totally amazed when I thought I would consult the map and I pressed the "go to my location" button, just for the heck of it, and it actually got it! I was then further amazed at how it seemed to do a kind of pseudo-tracking, updating my position every ten seconds or so... So I didn't feel quite as lost as I did the last time.

After getting together with morethanreal, dropping off my stuff at her place and inflating the bike's tires (I quickly found out that the brakes were not working well at all either, which was a bit worrying, considering how hilly San Francisco is!), we headed to some show she had heard was recommended that night. It was in a small but pretty cool art gallery, where they had a good number (maybe a hundred or so?) of speakers embedded in wooden sculptures, hanging by wires from the ceiling. The curator later told us that this is an art installation and that they are actually operational, seemed like this could be pretty cool in itself, but as it turns out, the main attraction of the night was a DJ. He was pretty competent, I have to say, and enjoyed his set, despite the fact that we had just missed a part of his performance where he donned a dinosaur suit and hugged everyone in the audience, I was a bit disappointed having missed that! It's funny how people recognize my accent, including in particular the bartender, whom I was asking for a beer. He pointed me at the menu with just two beers available (this was a temporary setup), and I told him that, well, I had no idea what either of those were. So he apologized quickly, asked me if I knew about Unibroue, to which I responded in the affirmative, and he then told me that I would find the first one horrible, and that the other one, well, wasn't nearly as good as Unibroue, but would probably not offend me too much. Heh!

After getting back to morethanreal's place, there was some inevitable discussion about music, of course, and I introduced her to the new Apple Remote application for her iPhone. She fell in love at first sight, it would seem, she even moved her iPhone dock to put it beside her bed! We were pretty tired, but she had put on Black Eyes's eponymous album, and it is quite good, we just had to finish it before going to sleep.

Tour de Fat
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf.

The next day, I wasn't feeling too sore from sleeping her couch, which was good, because we were heading out to Tour de Fat! There was a brief stop for chocolatines and cappuccinos, of course, it wouldn't have been civilized otherwise. There were crazy bikes, crazy bands, and crazy beer! Much fun was had, including bouncing around with (very) limited success on a pogo-stick. I then accompanied morethanreal to a tattooing session (hers, not mine!), which was pretty cool, including a pretty classic Californian laid back surfer artist. I then headed back with her to pick up my stuff, had some (spicy!) burrito on 16th, then headed to jbdeboer's place, where I elected to stay that night (thanks, by the way!). That place is up. Very, very up. Like, on top. Yowzer. I had some idea of taking a cab from there to the DNA Lounge, but I was too wiped and gave up (fail!).

On the upside of being at the top is the good view (hmm, there's the view to Lafayette Park, which can be interesting according to the "near here" feature of some random iPod Flickr app!), although it was a bit cloudy. Biking down Gough was mental, though! I realized at some point that with the intersections being flat, that I couldn't see past them! All of that while going upward of 40 kph, of course. That led me eventually to a nice breakfast at Cafe Petra, since there was too many people at Ritual (and I don't think they have food either). I biked around the Mission, dropped by Good Vibrations (got myself a book), then back up around Market and Stockton, where I resisted the siren call of the Apple Store. I managed to get some excellent coffee at Bluebottle Coffee, once more, and then eventually got lost in the Tenderloin without realizing it, while I was taking photos. It was very sketchy, especially with my big SLR camera hanging from my neck.

Monday, the excitement level was much lower as I went to Barefoot Coffee Roasters with a team-mate who is a fan of good coffee. It is also very good, although I preferred Bluebottle's. As it is customary in Mountain View, we were back home before 10pm.

The next day, we went for dinner on Castro (in Mountain View) at an Italian restaurant with a very colourful owner, who seems to be a big George Michael fan. Excellent service, though, setting up a table just for us (my other team-mates are known there, it would seem), and of course, singing at the table by the owner. There was some ice cream after, and some of us were rebellious and went home past 11pm!

Now, I'm about to be taken out to In-N-Out, which I'm told I just have to go to. Sounds questionable, but hey, I've done worse.

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:13:22 GMT

Thanks for everyone who came to my birthday party, last Friday! Yeah, I know, taking my sweet time, but better late than never... I got some gifts, but even though I'm grateful for those, I was very touched by how some people really worked hard to make it, in spite of distances, insane schedules and massive crowds, and that, wow, I'm quite flattered. Even some people that I don't see quite often and that I've often neglected in my being somewhat of an hermit did came. Thanks!

I'm now in Mountain View, about to head out for a day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where I'm told the water might actually a bit too cold for going in, but that I'm sure I'll manage to have a good time. Again, the sheer insanity of actually being paid for this is mind-boggling. On the other hand, I am in Mountain View now. But not to worry, tonight I'll be paying San Francisco a visit, going to a show tonight (I've never heard of them! woohoo!) and to the Tour de Fat.

In other bits of random knowledge, did you know that Norwegian actually has two written forms? Argh.

A shoe, the other shoe, and it's other half

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:40:47 GMT

A shoe, the other shoe, and it's other half
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf.

So I went for a ride last Sunday with cpirate and dfcarney. I'm not sure fate didn't really want me too, with a series of bad lucks that culminating with the aluminium sole of one of my biking shoes to let go. But it was fun, ice cream was had, and it all ended up on the roof terrasse with a beer. :-)

Monday, as it was my birthday, the lady azrhey took me out to PortusCalle, which was quite nice! There was some white Port, some rosé, fine food, lovely fondant au chocolat, and, of course, a nice espresso. We then headed down to the Katacombes for a few drinks with liberation_now and tygrbabe.

Wednesday, azrhey, slajoie and I went to play some pools at iStori, followed by a demonstration of my awfulness at Rock Band. At least, I didn't sing, or else we'd have been in trouble with the police, I think.

Yesterday, slajoie and fuzzyila joined me to attend Nista and The Human Kind, at Zoobizarre, which is a pretty cool venue (it's kind of weird, a stone cellar on a second floor?!?). The bands were pretty good, I think, worth getting the CDs for, although Nista doesn't have a CD at the moment. There were a few of my co-workers (and their friends) there, as Nista's guitarist is also a Montreal Googler. There was a song about angst at the supermarket, allegedly inspired by the Super-C near my place, heh!

Tonight, the grand celebration for my birthday! There's a number of people who have been making special efforts in order to be there, so I'm quite flattered! It should be awesome. :-)

My God, It's Full Of Photos!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:16:31 GMT

I'm going to go see Bran Van 3000 with Max-A-Million, Kim Bingham and John Kastner tonight, at the Jazz Fest. Who wants to go? Get in touch with me, we'll go together!

My laptop seems a little bit unhappy this morning. On top of the battery being on its last leg (it keeps only about 30-45 minutes worth of charge now), when I opened it up this morning, it was just off (I only closed the lid yesterday evening, it should have been suspended), and it had lost the time! Wacky.

I finally, after much procrastination, organized my photos sensibly. I have more than seven thousands photos in there, which always surprises me a little bit, because I'm both not very constant with my shooting (reminds me, I should take my camera bag tonight!), and having started out with film, I often end up shooting not too much (although I'm "better" now).

It struck me recently that while I don't feel all that depressed, I'm really having a bad case of being a shut-in, and it's not a very good sign. I think I changed in some ways I don't entirely like, while I was in France. For some things, I think it was for the better, but for others, not so much! I feel like I'm permanently out of the loop, somehow. One thing I miss is the Tuesdays at Grumpy's, it was a nice, mixed crowd, friendly, and was a regular thing, so it was the perfect time to go "hey, so-and-so, there's this thing Friday, wanna go?". Screw Facebook, that was the real thing! ;-)

Rode my bike around a bit yesterday, not so much in distance, but did a few silly things, like go up to the top of Peel, then down (whee!).

Might be just spring, but I'm in a bit of a... "rawr" mood. This is very much unlike the same moment last year, but I was rather depressed at that time. Combined with Montreal being apparently built upon a very large deposit of hotgirlsonium, made the ride yesterday trying on my concentration. Yay for Montreal? I'm not depressed, so I'll die in a horrible traffic incident? Hey, that might just explain all those observations of bad driving!

Nothing Sucks Like A Vax!

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:50:43 GMT

We moved into our new office this week (photos courtesy of MAD, thanks!), and it's pretty damned awesome! Considering the small size of the office (in number of people), it is extremely nice, the food is great, and so is the view (we had a nice view from the 24th floor, but now we're more "in the action", I like that better). Plus, we can easily reach the wifi from the pub nearby, hehe!

While the move was ongoing, we had an off-site activity on Île-Ste-Hélène that was pretty cool, involving, among other things, geo-caching, which I had never done before and is a lot of fun. It can be surprisingly difficult to find a small item, even when given the location within 10 feet! I bike there from home, and it was particularly nice, hitting 40 kph for fairly long stretches and all. On the return trip I was pretty confident that I'd get to the dinner's location first, but when I found out that the likely reason for my swift arrival was a wicked strong headwind, I wasn't so confident anymore. I did arrive first anyway, but I'm told they took a brief detour in a sketchy St-Henri bar first. Crazy people!

Today, we also obtained a vacuum cleaner at home. You're probably thinking that this doesn't really sound all that exciting, and normally, I'd agree with you, but that was before I met the Dyson DC20. As far as box-opening experience goes, relatively speaking (let's face it, it's still just a vacuum cleaner), they're taking lessons from Apple, it looks like. One of the selling points is how it can fit into a small space, and when I got the box, I was a bit worried that it'd be missing, you know, maybe the whole thing?!? But no, it was all in there, and even when assembled, it packs into almost no space, and is very cleverly engineered.

Tomorrow, a rather late in the making haircut.

Putting Thoughts Together

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:04:05 GMT

Something that I have said a number of times is that nowadays, there is almost no reason to pick C over C++ for a new project (one of the few reasons that I know of involve writing execute-in-place code for very small embedded systems, so no, GNOME definitely doesn't qualify!). Worst case, you write exactly the same code you'd have written in C, just avoiding using the new keywords as identifiers, and you then get better warnings (remember, no templates would be involved) and stricter type checking (no more silent casting of void* to pointers to random things! No more setting enums from any random integral junk you happen to have at hand! No more forgetting a header and using a function with the wrong parameters!).

But these slides really put it together, from someone who's generally thought of as neither insane or dumb. Doesn't really have much to do with GCC in particular, other than just the general fact that this is becoming so obvious that even GCC might be making the switch...

Edit: This article by Amit Patel is also pretty good on this subject.

Tempting Fate?

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:44:53 GMT

I talked about how the weather was great for biking recently in my previous post, when I left the office, it started raining hard, and it stopped just as I arrived home.

A sign? At least, it's not too cold...

Bourget, The New Decarie!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:52:50 GMT

Uh, there was a traffic jam on my small street today when I left for work?!? Complete with no less than two city buses, trying to work around the cranes and other construction equipment currently cluttering the street... Weird.

Oh, man, I've been meaning to post for exactly two weeks, yet didn't. I did this thing where I thought about hypothetical posts that I'd be writing while on the metro and biking, then forgot to actually post it.

It helps that there has been a fair deal of biking going on, beginning with what I called the Weekend of Doomed Awesomeness for a bit (if only in my head). This started by going to Mutek's Nocturne 3 with tygrbabe on the Friday. Then, went to the Mondial de la bière with azrhey in the afternoon, after which tygrbabe joined us to go to Mutek's Nocturne 4. How to follow this best? Sunday, I showed up at cpirate's place almost in time (9am-ish, after going to bed at 5am!) for, you know, a little Tour de l'Île (with scjody as well), after which we stopped for well-deserved poutine at La Banquise (and a coffee, so I could stay conscious). Then (the same day!), azrhey and I met with rezendi for a quick pint before catching Le Salaire de la peur at Cinéma du Parc. In case I might have survived, tygrbabe invited me to see She Wants Revenge for my birthday (got me brownies too, woot!), on the Monday evening (we were joined by too, ahoy!).

While I thought Nocturne 3 was quite excellent (Millimetrik and Modeselektor were awesome, Kid Koala very good, although I've seen better sets from him, and the other bands were quite fun too), Nocturne 4 let me a little bit down. Most of the bands didn't "click" with me much, and the whole programme was running late, which combined with the act I wanted to see most (Deadbeat, was excellent!) played last, made for leaving the place extremely late. Still, it was nice too, I just wish I could have slept in the next day!

I'll have to agree with tygrbabe, She Wants Revenge was good, but they'd have to put out a killer album for me to go to their next show. Some of their opening bands were really wacky and not all that good either, including a "punk" band that sounded like Avril Lavigne on speed.

So after that, I, uh, didn't do much for the two last weeks, as you might have guessed. I did bike to work a lot (for which there was tremendously good weather!), played with my own early birthday gift to myself (a new top-end 24" iMac, Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz and GeForce 8800 GS, smokin'!) and coded (mostly on Quadra, more than 20 commits just this weekend!). There was a visit from musicdieu and cpirate, watching of Euro Cup games, and Munchkins.

azrhey and I went out on the city last Saturday, was quite nice, and I got myself a nice watch (Danish design and titanium? sign me up!). We ended up going to the cinema and watching You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Yes, I know, I know, but it's actually pretty funny, mostly due to the weird cultural references (fizzy bubbles and hummus, baby!), and was saved because I have a small idea of what's going on in that culture, and would probably have been even funnier if I was actually part of it. I don't really expect it to do well, although there's a fair share of stuff that a lot of North American would find funny (silly fight scenes, sexual jokes), but I laughed really hard at the hacky sack, fish and hummus jokes, myself.

On a closing note, I've had a weird email recently from OkCupid (which I do find entertaining, for various reasons). I often get the "come back to our site so you can see and click ads" emails, but this one was different, telling me that there was one particular user I should message where there was some sort of category 5 crazy outlier match. Apparently, the love of my life is in New York state, which is too bad, because I'm not, ha! It then showed the usual "you might be interested in those people" bunch of people, but as opposed to the usual, this morning it was a bunch of my friends, so, well, I guess it sorts of works? I do like my friends, they're nice and everything. :-P

Moving On

Wed, 28 May 2008 15:29:20 GMT

Reg Braithwaite was writing not long ago about how we can be the biggest obstacle to our own growth. It made me realize how I've dropped things that I was once a staunch supporter of.

I was once a Borland Pascal programmer, and I believed that it was better than C or even C++. I believed that the flexibility of runtime typing would win over the static typing of C++ templates, as computers got faster. I belived that RPC were a great idea, and even worked on an RPC system that would work over dial-up connections (because that's what I had back then). I put in a lot of time working on object persistence and databases. I thought that exceptions were fundamentally bad. I believed that threads were bad, and that event-driven was the way to go.

Now, I believe in message-passing and in letting the OS kernel manage concurrency (but I don't necessarily believe in threads, it's just what I happen to need in order to get efficient message-passing inside a concurrent application that lets the kernel do its work). I wonder when that will become wrong? And what is going to become right?

I like to think I had some vision, occasionally. For example, I once worked on an email processing system for FidoNet (thanks to Tom Jennings, a beacon of awesome!), and my friends called me a nutjob when I told them that I was designing the thing so that it was possible to send messages larger than two gigabytes. What I believed was that we'd get fantastic bandwidth someday where messages this large were feasible (we did! but that was an easy call), and that you'd be able to subscribe to television shows for some small sum, where they would send it to you by email and you'd watch it to your convenience. That's never gonna happen, they said! Ha! HTTP (which I think is used in the iTunes Store) uses the very same chunked encoding that I put in my design back then...

Note that in some cases, I was partly right, but the world changed, and what was right became wrong. For example, the 32-bit variant of Borland Pascal, Delphi, is actually a pretty nice language (ask apenwarr!), and while it isn't going to beat C++ in system programming, like I believed it could, it's giving it a really hard time in Windows application programming, and that level of success despite being an almost entirely proprietary platform is quite amazing. Even Microsoft is buckling under the reality that openness is good for language platforms, trying to have as many people from the outside contributing to .NET (another thing to note: C# was mainly designed by some of the Delphi designers). Imagine what could happen if Borland came to its sense and spat out a Delphi GCC front-end (and use it in their products, making it "the real one", not some afterthought)?

I doubt that's going to happen, though. For application development, I think it's more likely that "scripting languages" like Ruby, Python and JavaScript are going to reach up and take this away from insanely annoying compiled languages like C++ (and maybe even Java).

But hey, what do I know? I once thought RPC was going to be the future!

Packed!

Mon, 26 May 2008 22:44:41 GMT

Ok, so after going to Festival Kinetik last week (where I nearly snapped my neck ogling!), I booked up this weekend pretty solid: going to Mutek Nocturne 3 and 4 (Friday and Saturday), the Beer Fest on Saturday, the Tour de l'île on Sunday and She Wants Revenge on Monday. It will be both intense and awesome, I think!

Gifted myself with an iMac 24" this weekend (the big one with the GeForce!), ostensibly for my birthday, and managed to play some Battlefield 2142, for, uh, "testing". The testing is pretty conclusive, and it's quite awesome. And, oh, so silent, yet so powerful! I will also be looking forward faster compiling on my old laptop through Xgrid.

I've also come up with a design in my head for doing zero-overdraw overlapping windows with support for alpha transparency. I'm dreaming of a "Quadra HD", and while I don't really know what it'd look like, I know that according to historical figures for development speed, we should release that around 2012 or so! I also got a "pre-opened" gamepad last week, which will allow for adding support for it in Quadra, which has been requested since more or less forever. That could be here as soon as 2009! ;-)

Timeouts In Blocking Socket Code

Fri, 23 May 2008 22:32:20 GMT

I was wondering how to handle timeouts correctly while blocked for I/O on sockets, with as few system calls as possible.

Thanks to slamb for reminding me of SO_SNDTIMEO/SO_RCVTIMEO! Combined with recv() letting me do short reads, I think I've got what I need for something completely portable.