2008 December archive at Puck’s Blog

Archive for December, 2008

Dec

Null Christmas

By Puck 5 Comments

Categories: Personal

Yes, I’m an atheist who enjoys Christmas. How can you not? People get time off work, are nicer to each other, get together and get social and friendly. Just because the “reason for the season” is (arguably) a religious myth’s birth doesn’t mean the effect isn’t enjoyable! I don’t go as crazy for it as some people, though.

But this holiday season has been one of heavy snowfall here. So much so that we, and others, can’t go anywhere. Mel and I usually go up to Pender Harbour to spend the holidays with my family, but that had to get cancelled when at first they got a big freeze — my mother’s car had to be abandoned “in town” — and then we got a big dump of snow.

And just as the weather seemed to get warmer yesterday, promising the break needed for socialization, we’re getting a second big dump of snow!

Our new house is great for socializing and gaming, but that doesn’t mean anything if people can’t get over here!

So instead we’ve stayed in, played World of Warcraft, watched a few movies and the Doctor Who Christmas Special (it was great!) and just waiting for a thaw that’ll let us see family and friends.

But, thanks to technology, it’s not totally lost. I can IM with my friends, play games online with them (geez guys, buy Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 already! They’re on sale!) and if I bother to hook up the old webcam I can videoconference. Sure beats the old-timey days when all we had were phones.

But I can do all that stuff any time. As a holiday this Christmas has been a bust.

Bonus: Here’s our car in the driveway, and the snow continuing to come down. You can see I dug out access earlier, but it’s filling up again.

Dec

Google Reader = Awesome

By Puck 1 Comment

Categories: Software and Web

If your Internet habits are anything like mine, there are a lot of web sites you check up on regularly. I’d tried a few RSS readers before, but didn’t like having to run yet another program, or I didn’t care for the way it worked in the browser if it was integrated and finally just ignored them. Instead I used tabbed browsing and “groups” of links. I’d have a folder of, say, “Blogs” and I’d use my browser’s “Open all links” function to open each blog in its own tab. This got slow, of course…

Ok, I linked to the Wikipedia on RSS, but here’s a summary: RSS is a way to offer a “feed” of the posts on a site, independent of layout and using a standardized presentation so it can be viewed by any “reader”. Many RSS feeds, such as the one on my blog (at this time, anyway) are simply “snippets” of each post, with the URL on how to read the full article. Others have all the information.

I started seeing a few news articles on Digg about Google Reader’s new look/features and finally decided to check it out. Wow, I wish I’d started using it earlier. What an incredible, easy-to-use, and most of all helpful web site!

All you have to do is go to http://reader.google.com/, log in with your Gmail account (sign up for one if you don’t have it — Gmail is the best way to deal with Email right now, hands-down) and start adding site feeds.

My Google Reader page, using the Google Chrome Browser

So there’s my Google reader. Boldfaced subscriptions are those with new entries, I can click them individually to see them, or click “All Items” which I currently have to set “New Items Only”.

And because it uses AJAX (a technology that lets web pages update with Javascript without the entire page being reloaded — you see it everywhere these days) you can just keep the site open in a tab and it’ll automatically check for updates all day.

Here’s where it’s vastly superior to other feed readers I’ve tried: Because it’s site-based rather than program of browser-based, I can check on the sites I’m following from anywhere. I can check it at home on my main desktop, or while on the couch watching TV, or even on my iPod Touch through its Safari web browser. Google Reader recognizes the iPod and formats itself a little more pleasantly for such a small screen.

I’ll never have to load up 20 tabs at a time again! If you read even a few sites regularly, you really owe it to yourself to try out Google Reader!

Dec

Harper values his position more than he does Canada

By Puck 0 Comments

Categories: Rant Tags: Canada • coalition government • harper • politics

The non-Conservatives decided to form a coalition government because Harper wasn’t doing anything about the crumbling economy, and what does he do? He suspends parliament for seven weeks, so absolutely nothing can be done.

And already the attack ads have begun. Almost two-thirds of Canada voted AGAINST the Conservatives, yet Harper is calling the coalition creators “undemocratic”. What’s undemocratic, Mr. Harper, is you and your Canadian neocons decided that being a minority government means you can try to screw over the democracy-ensuring voter-credit political parties get and further your right-wing failed-in-the-USA unregulated market ideas to make yourselves and your friends rich.

Why did people vote Conservative? Much like G.W. Bush, Harper doesn’t give a crap about his country, just the profits of his corporate buddies, and the future of his party’s place in power.

Don’t give up, NDP & Liberals. Fight against this guy and his party, for the future of Canada. If you let him get away with this now, he or others like him will think they can get away with even worse.