Unmemorable Memories

… is a quotation from French philosopher Descartes attempting to prove that he existed. Usually translated as ‘I think, therefore I am’.

When asked the question, “How do you know you exist?” many people struggle to answer the question. Some who have had some exposure to philosophy will quote the above line without really understanding the reasoning behind it and without understanding how or whether it does or does not prove your existence.

One night, I asked Chris the following question while staring at her collection of teddy bears: “those bears, they don’t think. So do they exist?” A very interesting discussion ensued, which kept us up way past our bedtime.

How would you answer that question?

-- Posted in Bible, Religion and Philosophy

“We have no internet!” were the words that Chris uttered last night. I thought it was just one of those temporary outages that I occasionally experience from my Internet Service Provider. But just to satisfy my curiosity, I checked my system, checked the modem, checked the cabling, everything was fine. As I suspected, my ISP was having problems. What I didn’t realize is the gravity of the problem. This morning my internet connection was still non-functional.

My ISP, istop.com has been in dispute with Bell Canada over the tarriffs that Bell charges them. A few months ago, I suffered an 8 hour downtime because Bell had disconnected their service to my ISP. I should have switched ISPs then. But I have such a forgiving attitude, I decided to give istop a chance and continue with their service.

Tonight the inevitable happened. It seems they will be down for good. All of a sudden, their name, Istop, has a new meaning.

This morning was spent scrambling for an ISP that can put me back online ASAP. My new provider, start.ca, not only has a better name, they got me online within two hours of signing up! In comparison, every other ISP I contacted said I would need to wait 5-7 business days for service to be activated.

In hindsight, I should have learned from my past experience and switched ISPs the first time Bell cut off their services. I guess to be bitten once was not enough for me. I had to get bitten twice.

-- Posted in Geeks Paradise

This “dad” thing is great! I actually get a day just to celebrate that fact! Yet everytime I hear those words “Happy fathers’ day” the phrase “who me?” pops up in my head. Then I remember that yes indeed I am a dad! It’s not that I forget that I’m a dad. How could I? With such a cute adorable baby as Caitlin it would be impossible to forget. And with all the diaper changes, feeding, loading and unloading of baby gear into and out of the car, I am constantly reminded of that fact. But, I enjoy being a dad so much that it doesn’t seem like an added role that I have to play. I guess you could say “I’m a natural.”

To Chris and Caitlin, thank you for the Father’s day cards, and the book, “Just Daddy & Me” by Robert Wolgemuth. You know I need that book.

Happy Fathers day to my Dad. And to all the fathers out there, greetings to you as well.

-- Posted in Journal, Greetings

Look what Chris gave me for my birthday!

It’s a Lowepro Mini Trekker Classic backpack in black to carry my growing collection of photographic gear. The best part of it is she bought this without affecting our budget by saving whatever little spending money she has over a period of… I won’t tell you how long!

A million thanks to you, Chris for the backpack and for supporting my hobby and encouraging me to pursue it.

Update: That wasn’t all. I came home early from work and found the house wafting in the aroma of a freshly baked chocolate cake! I went searching for it in the oven, in the microwave, in the fridge, but I didn’t find anything. I asked Chris, and she said she didn’t bake anything. And just when I left it to be a figment of my imagination, I went up to the computer room, and there sitting on my chair was a freshly baked pan of chocolate cake, with a “homemade” greeting card sitting on top of it! That did it. My heart just melted.

-- Posted in Journal

I was pleasantly surprised when one of the managers at work gave me a new computer to replace my three year old desktop. This new computer is not your ordinary run of the mill 32-bit computer. It’s one of those systems that use an AMD 64-bit CPU.

What better way to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU than running Linux. Which Linux? My favorite Linux distribution is Debian. But I’m starting to grow some dissatisfaction with that distribution. The versions of software that come with the “stable” release is very old. I guess Debian likes to sacrifice features for the sake of stability. But having aging software is beginning to bother me. I can’t compile new applications because my libraries are old. I can’t install new libraries, because they would conflict with the existing old applications which need the old libraries. If I re-install all the dependencies, then I might as well build my own linux distribution. Not something I would like to undertake. I need to use my computer, not fiddle with it until it is usable.

Enter Ubuntu. A Debian based distribution that comes with all the modern linux software one could ever want. I installed Ubuntu with no major mishaps. A few things I wanted to change:
1) The default fonts are too large. They make the screen look beautiful. But I’d rather have smaller fonts so I can fit a lot of windows on my desktop.
2) There is no easy way to edit the menus.
3) The default installation of the new version of gnome in Ubuntu did not provide a mail notification applet like my old gnome 1.x did.

The first problem was fixed by enabling bitmap font support using the command ‘dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

The second problem was more bothersome. I tried Smeg. It was buggy. It didn’t place my menu entries where I want them to be placed. However it was useful in teaching me how Gnome2 menus work. By using Smeg and adding one simple sub menu, with one entry, I discovered that menu entries are .desktop files located in $HOME/.local/share/applications. Sub-menus are located in .directory files in $HOME/.local/share/desktop-directories. The actual menu that defines what items are in the gnome menu is located in $HOME/.config/menus/applications.menu (an XML file that is easy to understand and can be edited using any text editor).

Problem #3 was easy. Install the “mail-notification” package. Once installed, it can be configured in the “System->Preferences->Mail Notification” menu selection.

So far, my experience with Ubuntu is positive. However I’m not so sure about my AMD-64 system. Sure it’s fast. Very fast. And my software takes advantage of it. However, switching architectures is not painless.

1) My plugins for firefox do not work. This is because firefox has been built as a 64-bit application. The plugins are 32-bit. Since firefox uses dynamic loading/linking to load the plugins, this does not work across architectures. It is currently not possible to mix 64-bit apps and libraries with 32-bit ones.
2) Adobe acrobat fails with a core dump. Possibly also related to the fact that acrobat may be using a plugin architecture which may be mixing 64 and 32 bit binaries in my setup.
3) Running 32-bit applications work, most of the time. Unless they start using some libraries that are only available in Ubuntu as 64-bit binaries.

To fix these issues, all applications would have to be built as 64-bit. All plugins must be built as 64-bit binaries. All 64-bit libraries need to have their 32-bit counterparts as well to allow older 32-bit applications to continue to work.

I’ll leave that to the developers.

-- Posted in Geeks Paradise