Hubert Chathi

An interesting presentation about teaching mathematics.

In a long tradition of comparing some aspect of computers with some other aspect of real life comes: "If programming languages were religions". There is one flaw with this article, though: programming languages are religions.

I used to pretty much only use my laptop, which was nice, because all my data was stored in one place. However, I now use a desktop computer at work. For the most part, it's OK, because I don't need to access much work stuff from home, and vice versa. However, occasionally it does happen, and so I'm thinking more about online services.

Clipperz is an online password (or other textual data) manager. Now for most security-conscious people, “online” and “password manager” do not go together. However, Clipperz uses JavaScript to encrypt all your data before sending it to their servers. That means that none of your data can be accessed by Clipperz (or anyone else) unless they know your password.

Even better, Clipperz is free/open-source software, which means that if you really don't trust them, you can audit their source code. Or run your own service.

I had thought about implementing something similar, but Clipperz does more-or-less what I want it to, plus some things that I hadn't thought of. The only downside is that I wish it would have better organizational features (in particular, a hierarchical organization).

(see also: /.)

The National Research Council has released a 352-page report that tells us what most of us knew already: trying to use data mining to find bad guys doesn't work very well. The problem being that there are too many false positives.

Whether or not this will actually stop anyone from trying to do it anyways remains to be seen.

Web-based chatrooms. Thanks to the magic of XMPP/Jabber, BOSH, JavaScript, etc. it works just like regular chatrooms, except that it's all in the comfort of your web browser. You can create your own room, set themes, etc. You can even join Jabber conference rooms on other servers.

It's somewhat similar to an idea that I had, except that I'm not sure that the traditional chatroom format is what people want. But I could be wrong. (Who am I to tell people what they want.)

Nevertheless, it illustrates how XMPP can make the web more dynamic and interactive. Like my Talk-to-me web chat. And it looks like the Jabber website will soon have more lively content.

(Speeqe is also Free/Open Source, so you can, among other things, download it and run your own server, and modify it to your heart's content. (As long as you follow the licensing terms.))

(see also: Globe and Mail)

From the article:

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

...

A local environmentalist who attended the Long Harbour meeting, Chad Griffiths, said of Sandy Pond: “It's easy enough to consider just one lake as just one lake, as a needed sacrifice, right? But it's not one lake … It's a trend. It's an open season on Canadian water.”

Blegh. Stupid government.

Read the article.

I have nothing more to add.

Update: CBC followup story: Fisheries minister defends the move. I like the reader's comment on the story that says:

I can remember back when the Fisheries Minister's job was to protect fish habitat, not peddle it to the highest bidder

(see also: /.)

As we all know, the only way to make sure that terrorists don't sneak weapons onto planes is to require that all airline passengers fly naked, without any carry-on luggage. Well, it looks like we're one step closer to that. Several American airports have installed new scanners that can see under peoples’ clothing.

And, like most recent airport security measures, the security scanners are not only completely unnecessary and useless, they also seem to be completely ineffective too.

The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin, said Peter Siegel, a senior scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "You probably could find very common materials that you could wrap around you that would effectively obscure things," Siegel said.

Yes, apparently you can find some certain materials, wrap them around your body, and hide weapons there.

In similar spirit to “If operating systems were airlines” John Goerzen has written about what it would be like if version control systems were airlines.

For the record, I've used RCS, CVS, Subversion, tla and git, and I generally agree with John's assessments. RCS was horrible. CVS was a great improvement over RCS, and Subversion was a great improvement over CVS. (Except that every once in a while, Subversion would decide that it wanted to change its on-disk format.) tla was revolutionary in its day, but it's complicated (“tla help” is 198 lines long and lists 114 commands), and kind of slow (yes, I know I need to use cacherevs). I've only started learning git, and it seems like a pretty nice system. And it's supposed to be very fast (it was created to handle the whole Linux kernel).

My brother blogged about this briefly, but I thought I would point it out to those who read my blog, and not his. The Greater Vancouver Regional District has a bunch of information on building green. They have information on things like green roofs, water conservation, and things to consider when making improvements to an existing building, or building a new building.

On a related topic, I should also link to Wildflower Farm, which sells wildflower seeds (usually requires less watering) and Eco-Lawn. Eco-Lawn is an environmentally friendly grass mixture, made up of native grass species. It is drought-tolerant so it hardly needs watering, doesn't need to be fertilized, and requires less mowing (at most once a month, if at all) since it grows slowly.

The CBC has an interesting article right now on the increasing price of grains, and some of the factors contributing to it. It's a pretty interesting read.

(See also: The Record, CBC, CBC, The Globe and Mail)

This Saturday, March 29 at 8:00pm, is Earth Hour. Earth Hour is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness about climate change, and is supported by many municipalities around the world. They are encouraging people to turn off their lights for an hour at 8:00pm local time.

If you want to do more than just switch off the lights for an hour, calculate your carbon footprint, and see how you can reduce it.

Apparently, I have over 1400 email messages marked as “unread”. Technically, that's not entirely true, though: a bunch of my emails have been read, but need to be “dealt with” in some way. Which is still pretty bad. This website gives some tips and advice on bringing your inbox count down to 0, and how to keep in (near) there. (Here's a hint: delete the ones you don't need. He uses mildly techie/geeky language, but it should be understandable for almost anyone.

The rest of the 43f site has other organization tips and tricks, including an introduction to Getting Things Done.

(By the way, on Monday, I had about 1700 email messages marked as “unread”, not including the stuff in my spam folder. I'm not following his advice completely, otherwise I would probably be down to 0 by now. But it's still an improvement.)

Although I am not completely a pacifist, I do agree that war sucks. War creates a whole lot of problems, and should be avoided as much as possible. There are many alternatives to war, and many ways to avoid war. It isn't just a problem for the governments to handle. There are things you can do. And everyone should learn about conflict management.

Choose peace, whenever you can. I am revolting. Are you?

Lately, I've been seeing Zapfino used in many different places. I can recognize it, because I stared at it a lot, designing our wedding invitations, wedding program, etc. It really is a good looking script font. It is also included in MacOS X, which probably partially explains why it's being used so much.

Unfortunately, it's not being used very well. You see, Zapfino is actually six different fonts: four “regular” alphabet fonts, one ligature font, and ornaments. Or there's the Zapfino Extra family, which adds more features, another “alternate” font, and small caps. Or there's the pro font, which adds a bunch of nifty OpenType features. The “regular” fonts are designed to be mixed and matched to give you variation in the letter shapes. It is, after all, a script font, intended to look like handwriting, and you never write a letter the same way twice.

So why are professional design firms just using the Zapfino that came with their computer, instead of the full set? These are people who are supposed to know what they're doing, right? That's why they get paid the big bucks, right?

When I first found out about Zapfino, I was hoping that it would be the beginning of the end of ugly script fonts. But now that designers are using it badly, it's starting to become just another ugly script font.

Here's a fun illustration of the cycle of violence for math majors. Möbius strips are fun.

One of the great things about growing up in a French immersion school was food. Like maple syrup at the cabane à sucre, and tourtière. Tourtière, for those who haven't had the privilege of trying it, is the best meat pie out there. This recipe calls it the crème de la crème of pies.

I made this recipe today for supper, and it turned out fairly well. Except that I forgot the beef stock (whoops), and the pie crust that we made was a bit on the dry side. The recipe also needs a bit more spice than what it says. Other recipes suggest adding thyme and a bay leaf as well. We also used about 1 lb. ground pork/1 lb. ground beef instead of 2 lb. ground pork.