The Trawna Diaries

Is this thing on?

(Cross-posted from my Facebook page.)

Those of you with kids, teachers, adult tutors or others who are using mutliplication drill software in or outside classrooms: I need some input.

After watching some college-level remedial math classmates' difficulties with times tables, I thought I might write a teen or adult-oriented drill game as my first game-programming class (CS106 at UAB) project. My observation was that the classmates who ended up retaking the course all, to a person, did not know fully know their multiplication tables. Their lack of speed seriously hampered them during homework and on tests, knocking fully two grade points off of what they might have otherwise achieved.

My objective is to make a tedious^^er^^necessary memorization task fun, and (hopefully) addictive, while building speed and range in upper table values.

I'm envisioning developing a multi-level game, using a point-and-shoot type interface (the model of what's being pointed and shot will vary, from snow-throwers to water pistols to paint-guns to tennis balls) with a range of targets (answers), a time limit for each answer (the time it takes for an equation to fall from the top to the bottom of the page) and points accumulation for faster and more accurate answers. The scope will depend on how much time it's going to take to develop the interface and modules, but I can see further developing the game once the class is finished. I'll be using the Alice programming environment.

So, what games are you currently using? If you are, what are their good points and bad points? What would you personally want to see in a game?

Please feel free to pass this request along to anyone you know who might be interested.

Yes, I've started another semester... and the first of my programming courses, whoo hoo!

MonsterKitten is getting bigger and becoming the Kitten Who Plagues... for attention, food and pats.

Have to write up more stuff. Later?

I have the wedding pix up on Flickr. It's locked down, so let me know if you want access. Finally!

As part of my American gov't class, I need to pay attention to local politics.

I need to get up to speed on what's behind the current political situation in a) Alabama, and b) City of BIrmingham (and region, Shelby and Jefferson counties). As I'm not local, it would be useful if such sources can explain things that may not be obvious to outsiders (by I'll take non-miracles too!)

If anyone on my friends list can point me to some thoughtful, creditable souces of analysis, I'd be forever grateful. (yes, I'm asking around in other fora.)

I have the Southern Poverty Law Center bookmarked, but that's about it so far.

Does anyone reading this know downtown Atlanta well?

There's a presentation on using XML with InDesign that I want to attend next Tuesday and Google Maps is currently routing me through the downtown at rush hour. Am looking for bypass options from I-20 in the west to I-75 three miles north of downtown.

Hi everyone,

Need a quick fact check regarding replacing zippers in a leather coat.

From what I recall, this is _not_ recommended because of the problems with putting a second line of stitch holes in one area of leather and therefore weakening the material structurally.

I'm making a decision as to whether to have a broken zipper in an ten-year-old, well-worn black leather coat replaced or whether it's time to send it off to the Great Re-purposing Bin in the Sky.

I should also add that I'm moving to the American South from southern Ontario; can you say "need a different wardrobe?"

Getting a place ready to show for sale is one process.

Figuring out what you want to keep vs. what you should really get rid of is another... and more time-consuming when you feel some responsibility to get rid of stuff in a responsible manner.

As in not sending it to the dump, but passing it along to someone who will use it, either via Freecycle, fundraising sales, family and friends or the local thrift stores.

I hold my mortgage through a Dutch-Canadian credit union. They lent me the money directly (no securiziting of bulk mortgages here!) I just received my annual report in preparation for the credit union's AGM.

As of this year? 34,000 members (account-holding customers) $800 million on deposit, $700 million loaned out to members and $100+ million as invested reserves. 5% growth over 2008. They've up their reserves a bit against bad loans and financially rough times, but because they are personally connected with every one of their members (I know my branch manager and staff by first names) and are conservative with their lending, they have a low default rate.

In Canada, credit unions and caisse depots this large aren't unusual; we've had a wave of consolidations and general bulking when the CUs were allowed to expand their membership beyond their original direct sponsoring organziations 15-odd years ago. There are lots of smaller ones formed into networks and alliances.

I can't help but think that this type of lending is what's going to buttress the world economy against the current finanical storms. Lots of smaller loans. Carefully managed. All that soft people skills stuff.

(as heard on CBC Radio One) Hockey Night in Canada coverage in Punjabi. Yesssssssss!

Thumb drives _do_ survive a trip through the washer and dryer.
They take a licking and keep on ticking.

You meet the best people via Craigslist.

I posted my funky cool dresser for sale - and am hearing from an awful lot of people in the local arts community. :)

It's fun!.

It's platform warz, folks.

For the graphic design and printing people amongst us, it's also the second of two shots across the bow for Adobe, Quark and the current state of the printing industry's digital technologies. Given that it's been over twenty-three years since Quark 1.0, we were due for another turn of the technology wheel - this will ratchet things up considerably.

Here's why:

The Kindle uses a proprietary format, .AZW, which is created using HTML. There is no mention on the Amazon upload site as to whether or not styling is done with CSS (although I would expect so - keeping style commands and formatting separate from content ia Good Thing(TM)).

Running along side this is the initial release of several CSS-driven desktop publishing applications. For long documents there is Blaze from Madcap,, higher-priced, full-featured proprietary package (I want to tryit out!). Publishing Perfection is a lighter weight, lower priced package.Scribus is an open source desktop publishing app showing up as part of the growing wave of open source software. This is on right on target with Eric S. Raymond's original predictions in his 1995 essay, _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_.

All of these apps can deliver file formats to _either_ CSS/HTML or PDF. CSS and HTML can be reformatted on the fly for delivery to different viewing devices. As can PDF, but only with some serious PHP and javascript goodness running in the background using the same CSS/HTML formatting. But PDF is more device portable, in that it isn't locked to the delivery channel, has better security features and better other language support. It can also deliver a richer formatted environment and better rendering of illustration and images.

So which format is going to win out?

It depends. Can Amazon dominate the market with the Kindle within six months? Amazon delivers content to the Kindle via proprietary pipes, with a small toll charge for delivery. If Sanyo, Microsoft, Apple HP or Dell can distribute another lightweight viewing platform with similar features, but with open source standard formatting, it's going to be to another book vendor's competitive advantage tto support that one. Not to mention public libraries, universities and the school system's (lower text book costs?). They don't have Amazon's pipe delivery muscle. But they _do_ have lots of eyeballs and an incentive to co-operate.

Meanwhile, if you are a graphic designer and _don't_ know CSS and HTML, understand XML and haven't yet started writing basic code (yes, there still are some older print dinosaurs out there - I was one until three years ago) get cracking. If you want to stay working, you're going to need to know it.

It's been a _long_ time since hot wax, let alone cold type.

Had to put the Budster down today.

( Gritty details. )

It sucks. He was a sweet, darling cat - who could, when he wanted to, be a real SOB.
Buddy 1996 - 2009.


I'm going to miss him.

What happens when a creative-types get bored.. and remember that they live close to Riverdale Park's long slope down to the Don River.

He eateth. He drinketh. He smelleth. But he groometh.

I codeth. :P PHP is _not_ My Freend(TM).

When I went back to the pet supply store to swap some cans of food that Buddy wouldn't eat for ones that he would (anything to get food into that cat, I tell you - chicken and liver pate diluted with a bit more water, yum, yum) the sun was shining, there were great slurpy puddles of slush and water at all the street corners....

Yes, we needed to see this. Yes, it's wunnerful. Damn, I need to stay inside and and finish working through some CSS style sheets. (They are evil. And complicated. Think parent/child relationships, desendant classes and floating div containers. My head hurts thinking about it) I _really_ want to be outside, skating or skiing or building gratuitous snow scupture. I do.

ION, I've conceded to the prudent and bought a Metropass for the month. This allows me unlimited use of the TTC, which I used to go and get the aforementioned cat food.

Whrn you can't find your passport - and you know darn well that you saw it ten days ago. the problem is that you don't remember seeing it for a good chunk of that time.

Buddy doesn't thinks s. He'd prefer it if this whole change thing went away.

Science fiction author Charlie Stross is giving forth at Crooked Timber for the next couple of days. Head on over. Interesting discussion of his ouevre.

Damn, but I have to leave reading it all until Friday. At which point, I'm looking forward to consuming a glass of wine and _catching up_.

I'm easily amused.... man this is so _hardcore_.

I want. Ktraks.

NO MORE EXCUSES!!

FInding the neatly organized folders of application paperwork from the last application for school fifteen months ago that you had carefully stashed in a box, but _didn't label_.

When you are delighted to discover six subway tokens in the bottom of your handbag.
Dicken's maxims regarding happiness holds.

Edit:I should have just stuck it in when I wrote this.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Not politically. Southpaw!

_High five!_

You have a new president. He gave a hell of a speech. I, and twenty of my fellow workers timed our lunch breaks so that we could hear the broadcast. It was well worth it. There were a lot of nodding heads in the seated crowd.

I'm loving this new time management tool.
http://www.craigotis.com/mac/

Edit: Mac only, I'm afraid.

Background: I've started writing scripts this past year (first Applescript, and now, beginning in Java), having been lurking on the edges of the open source programming community for much longer. I had a steep learning curve over the past seven years wrt to managing and renovating apartment buildings, figuring out which energy retrofits were cost-effective, cost-benefit analysis, building and automating spreadsheets and human relations and communications.

In addition, I have a day job in design.

Would it be possible to improve building construction by going to a more uniform open source model?*

I mean, we do now. It's called "building codes" but we have issues when we need access inner workings in many buildings to replace stuff or switch out technologies. We also have issues with building codes being regional, ie: state or provincial in NorAm and by country in the EU. Switching out technologies usually involves breaking through walls, ripping off and replacing stuff or digging large holes in the ground. But what if we mandated modularity into design and building codes so that it would be possible to disassemble for change as fast as we assemble (or "build") for use?

Yes, it would increase costs up front, mainly for the design work, but my gawd, it would increase the usefulness of the item to the end user! And lower renovation and updating costs for both the building owner and the municipalities and regions where the buildings are situated.

*The questions is sparked by a) a _Quirks and Quarks_ interview with a physicist regarding how important it is for Obama to have good physics and energy advisors in which he made a comment about how plunging natural gas prices in the '70s spurred the switch in NorAm to natural gas as an energy source; and b) my own internal ruminations about my co-op building's past energy systems and the cost involved in switching each time! (there is a switch out of boilers planned for this summer)

After a long quitish listing period (thanks to my impecible timing of putting the place on the market just as the holiday party season was starting), a whole bunch o' people came to see the place in the last two weeks.

For various reasons, I'm not at liberty to talk nitty gritty real estate details just yet, but..... we have an agreement of sale. At the price I was wanting. There are a bunch of hoops to jump through (approval by Board, estoppel certificate et al) but if all goes well, I have a buyer who's OK with a long close and three months to finish getting my shit together.

The market in Toronto is flat and slowing, but hasn't dipped terribly far from peak for most properties. Canada's holiday shopping numbers went _up_ (everyone was a tad surprised, but heh - there were bargoons galore and enough wallets opened for discounted prices) and while the auto and resourece sectors are struggling nationally, enough key sectors aren't locally. (biotech and pharma, specifically, plus the backbone infrastructure jobs)

It's -21 ˚C outside today.

I'm breaking out the silk long johns and the layers.

Will be troubleshooting one of the department Macs while my partner-in-crime continues work with rush jobs on my machine. There's nothing like Mac OSs gone bad to start your week off right.

Is my new favourite website.
Damn you, Tina Brown.

It has exactly the right mix of smart, sassy and sarcasm.
( Edit: Let me tell you why I think this is important. )

Hulu.com?

I can't watch the streaming video as I"m outside the United States. But this appears to be a licensed delivery vehicle for commercial shows.

Whaddiya think?

I've got stuff to do. Mustn't read any more blogs.
( In which your heroine discovers the long-forgotten advantages to being a student. )

Had more people looking at the place tonight. This is good.

Getting back in the groove, waiting for the next round o' winter storms.
Can you say "snow?"

Rapid summary:

1. Was the second last person successfully registered for courses at Ryerson U last night before the Registar's Office closed (the line was cut off at 6:30 pm, but they processed everyone who was in the line. Yay tolerant and hardworking uni staff!). The cashier's office was closed by the time I was done, so I still need to _pay_ for my javascript course. Convinced three people in line that if that they want change (something) they have to organize and _do_. Sent them scampering off to look up Saul Alinsky's _Rules for Radicals_.

2. Went out to the PU's place for dinner, a visit, rapid fire consult on scanning and image file metadata, furniture moving, return of laptop, exchange of various bits of shopping (they live close to a good South Asian supermarket, I live close to the Polish one) and pick-up of a Christmas present. Kudos to Baby Sib for getting me the newest edition of _WordPress for Dummies_. I think the ink was still wet when she unpacked this one at her store; it's that new.

3. Yay to realtor for doing three showings during a holiday period and for arranging additional ones for later this week. Guess I can go pay that course tutition after work tomorrow and come home late! Another serious sniff of interest.

4. All that work that our shop (and other industry printers) weren't getting this fall? It showed the week before we shut down the printing plant for the holiday break. I need to log some OT tomorrow and Thursday. (calculate time delay between U.S. presidential elections and marketing decisions being finalized) There's that much work - and it's all ultra rush, super rush and just plain ol' rush. This is good. Good thing I've been working on my automation and scripting chops. Me and my partners in crime going to need every one of my workflow speed tricks to get through this lot. Have a wee bit of tricky trapping to finish tomorrow.

5. Finally, my evening was made last night by seven teen-age girls who walked through my clubbishly full subway car, picking up all the discarded Metro commuter newspapers and stuffing them in a garbage bag. That civic-minded act of random kindness was unusual and worth noting. I told them so. Cute girls, making a party of it. It was _so_ cool. Made me smile.

If you have a laptop with wifi and a decent battery. Which my loaner laptop doesn't. So far, I've been cancelled twice. I'm glad I brought lots of study material.

( Storm stayed in Buffalo )

Including my dad (look down in the comments section for a Fortran reference)

if programming was a religion....

Nick'd from horshoo

When you're into a paragraph and halfway through, you realize that the copy that you're checking it against is in the _other_ language.

Bad proofreading, reading for context, not copy!

Tonight, I stopped by my local cycling shop to pick up my bike. A small matter of having worn the brakes down to nubbiny rubber slivers.. and finally realizing that it wasn't safe.

I was in partial winter cycling garb (AKA, "dipped in yellow gortex, iced with reflective tape and spun dry") ready to ride my newly-tuned bike home. As I break clips on red blinkie lights like other people toss litter, I needed to pick up a couple (one to wear and a spare) as "hit me" marks and as well, I'd been tossing around the idea of getting studded bike tires for winter riding.

I've been taking the bus to work for the past five weeks - and it's showing up on my waistline. Given that I would rather spend next year's dollars on tuition, not clothes, this was a problem. As I have a classic heart-attack-on-a-stick figure, it's also not healthy.

My current work route travels along a mix of lightly used neighbourhood roads and high speed arterials. When I priced tires three weeks ago, I was looking at $200 for a set of studded tires with lots of, well, studs. $200 for tires or $200 for two months of tax deductible bus pass, plus needing to spend additional time exercising? It was a toss-up this year.

But when I went to pick up my bike tonight, an excited wrench* pulled me to one side and told me that they'd had a pair of studded tires returned by a customer and I could have them at a discount. I didn't hesitate. $50/tire was a heck of a lot better than $100/tire. So, I'm back on bike. I rode home tonight, with the tires slung around my body, new red blinkie light telling the motorists where I was, through the rapidly dropping temps of an approaching snow front.

After I deal with some personal bumpf, I'm putting those tires on the rims. I want the option of riding to work through my local icy park tomorrow.

*(bike mechanic)

Renew your domain registrations ahead of time. It sucks when your (now) main email address isn't functioning and you have to reserrect the old one. :P

Plus, you can't test stuff parked at that domain.

www.velochicdesign.ca, www.velochic.ca and www. humberterrace.ca should be active again on Monday.

Apparently, it's fine down in Brattleboro, but full ice storm effect at the higher elevations, including Marlboro. Here's the chatter.

Michael Ignatieff (my MP) will be the new Official Leader of the Opposition and the federal Liberal's new leader. Bob Rae, his former undergrad U of T roomie, former premier of Ontario (Edit: and chief competitor for the position) has bowed out. Let the coronation begin.

Hang on to your popcorn, Stevie-boy's now got an opponent who can kick his ass.

How much money do you put on him being PM by the spring?

I think I reviewed 3000-odd WordPress plug-in options, downloading about 150, of which I probably end up using 20 -30.

It's like trolling for pearls, picking out the pieces you need.
Then, there's the rest of the back-end install, config and debugging.

Argh. I need exercise. Except for the funeral and laundry, my butt's been in the chair all weekend. :P

There are very, very many WordPress plug-ins. 3,528, to be exact. :P

CBC Radio's Sunday Morning is doing indepth coverage this morning.
It has a time delayed start by time zone. Start time is 9 am EST, so choose a western city on the map for a time-delayed listen.

Cross-eyed from poking at a plethora of se-up options and testing configurations.
Edit: I broke the installation just after I posted this. Guess the first thing I'll be doing tomorrow morning is fixing it.

Want to get working on the CSS styling as soon as possible. I have a distinct goal in mind wrt to look and gallery styling. I'm limited in how fast I can go by my (current) rudimentary knowledge of JavaScript, PHP and MySQL.

It's a pretty powerful CMS.

In other news, another showing this afternoon. I went to the grocery store on short notice.
I'm glad I did the laundry as early as possible this morning. I walked to the store through a fresh inch of snow.
This will be the first that stays.

Here in T-dot, creating transit-themed art, be it painting, spoken word, music or video, is rapidly becoming a local subgenre.

Why? Because it's a key part of a lot of local lives (including mine). Love it or hate it (and we do plenty of both) it gets you to the club, the grocery store, to work and to your mother-in-law's.

( So, here's the latest. )

On the music side, meh-eh. Lyric? Not bad. Not great either, but not bad. Video? It looks like most of the station interiors were filmed on the west end of the Bloor-Danforth line, but most of the above ground street scenes look like they were recorded in Scarborough (east end Toronto).

Those are my stations; I catch my bus to work from Keele.

Our Thanksgiving is in October.
Halloween is the last marketing season before Christmas.
Therefore, November 1, the Christmas decorations go up and the commercial themes switch for seven jolly commercial weeks of fat elf marketing.

Unfortunately, we listen to a commercial radio station in my department at work. I'm heartily sick of Christmas advertising _already_.