Edward Andrew Robinson

It has been ages since I last posted, and for that I am sorry, but I have kept up with my twitter and identica accounts. Things have been moving really fast for me of late and as a result my blogging has slipped. So whats new in the world of earobinson?

1. I am now working for CAE, more precisely CAE PS out of Toronto, and I am loving every moment of it. They have a very open culture and encourage the use of open source tools when appropriate. I have been able to use Ubuntu to host some of the websites I have developed in Django. This has kept me very happy. I can honestly say that I think that my Ubuntu, and Open Source knowledge set me apart.
2. I have been getting more and more into photography with my new Canon EOS Rebel T1i, you can follow me on flickr.
3. I have been ramping up my fitness (and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills) at Toronto BJJ.

This brings me to my goals for the future, I am falling in love with Django and as a result I want to play with it more and more, now my current hosting provider 1and1 has served me very well up to now. But now that I want to start playing with Django more I need to get a hosting provider that can support Django (because I want to show off my work of course). I would hope that any new hosting provider I use could support both Django, and ruby on rails (as I may want to play with it in the future). So dear lazy web what do you recommend? And I know I could use Google app engein but I like the idea of pure Django, not some hack, I have also looked at djangohosting.org but would love some recommendations from actual users of hosting plans.

Any advise lazyweb?

Hot off the press, get yours now at the Ubuntu store. Congratulations to everyone on the release of the Karmic Koala (late I know but I wanted to wait till I got my shirt)! And here is a picture of me modeling my Ubuntu shirts (and I know I look grumpy I was focusing on my new camera and tripod to keep the backgrounds aligned)

Left (Jaunty Jackalope) Middle (Karmic Koala) Right (Hardy Heron)

Looking forward to the Lucid Lynx. You can also check out all the Ubuntu code names here!

<rant>Yesterday Bell, my super fast ISP, started to redirect unfound urls to their own website (www.domainnotfound.ca). I have been very happy with Bell for the last few years and have been thinking of moving my cellphone subscription to them as soon as they support the android.

To Bell’s credit they do offer a way for you to opt out of the service however when you opt out instead of returning a DNS error they you get a blank page, not very useful for me. I have a habit of typing anything I am looking for into the address bar and then letting google take over. This works very well for me if I want to visit reddit I type reddit and google seems to figure out that I want to visit reddit. If instead I type “reddit bell dns hijacking” google still seems to figure out that they do not know what I am looking for and so they take me to a search results page. This is how I brows the Internet, I do everything from the Awesome Bar (the bar in Firefox that you type your url into). And yesterday Bell broke that.

NoRedirect (Firefox Extension Link) to the rescue!

NoRedirect lets the user take control of HTTP redirects. It can be used to interdict an ISP’s DNS search redirection hijacks, preview/screen “shortened” URLs (e.g., TinyURL), stop the annoying redirection of “smart” error pages, etc. — Source

This lets me set any url mattching the following regular expression http://www\.domainnotfound\.ca/* to be interpreted by Firefox as a DNS error giving me back my Awesome Bar and my ability to type anything I want into it and have google do all of the work!

I think this is an exteremly evil move by Bell and I am quite disappointed. at least Firefox + NoRedirect has saved the way I brows my internets. But this is another step by our ISP’s to erode our digital freedoms and net neutrality and another reason to move to TekSavvy. I should not have to resort to a software solution to preserve how I browse the Internet!</rant>

With all the posts on planet ubuntu lately about twitter it got me thinking about my micro-blogging habits and how I update my online status in general. I started using twitter about a year ago, and since then I have become quite the huge micro-blogger. However a while ago I stopped thinking about it as twittering or identi.caing (?) and started thinking about it as updating my online status.

To understand why let me tell you what happens when I make a tweet (I think twitter has won the terminology war). When I want to tweet something I open up gwibber (thank Jono)and fire off my update, gwibber then updates my pidgin (MSN and Google Talk) status as well as my identi.ca account (If I am not at home I go directly to identi.ca). Identi.ca then  updates my twitter account that then posts the updated to my website, and my facebook.

From Public

What I really like about this setup is that all of these services have the built in ability to update each other. I know I could also use something like ping.fm to do the job but currently I have no need, just by updating one account I can update all my online profiles status.

So what’s your tweet flow like?

Also add me on Identi.ca, Twitter, or anything else!

earobinson.org went down for a bit tonight but it is now back up. Please let me know if you find any problems.

A lot of this post could also be applied to the Ubuntu Brainstorm but since I use reddit (an open source social news site)  a lot more I will make this post about reddit, yet it could apply to any voting site.

I use mainly reddit, and google reader to get my news online. Google reader is great letting me subscribe to sites I am interested in. Reddit is great letting me see what other people think is cool and find new sites that way. In order to decide what topics to show reddit lets users vote up or down a link and the displays the top links on the front page.

reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is submitted and voted on by users like you.
– http://www.reddit.com/help/

I love the up or down vote system. It is much better than the star system for me (looking through my rhythmbox library most songs have either 4, 5, or zero (unrated) stars) and the up down system seems to work a lot better for me. However looking at just my liked, or disliked votes does not tell the whole story. I have 1000’s of liked votes but less than 50 disliked votes in the 2 years I have used reddit. Looking at a screenshot of my reddit homepage tells an even better story.

Looking at the above screenshot you can clear see that today I have clicked on 15 links but only liked 2 one of which I did not even click on. I feel that this is an important metric that reddit is missing from its stats, looking at the comments of a posted article tells you how many up and down votes an article has got. Maybe at least to start tracking and telling us how many clicks an article got is a good start. Why, well because if you have two sites one has 100 up votes and 100 clicks VS one with 100 up votes and 1000 clicks that info tells you something about the article. What this tells us yet I am not sure but maybe one is a niche article that a small community of people really care about as to read the article and up vote it (for example a colour blind patch for fluxbox, and yes I don’t even know what that would be), but maybe the latter is the release of the next version of ubuntu. I feel that this information could make reddit even better and as an added bonus for those of us who use reddit on more than one computer reddit could keep track of our clicked links for us.

Edit: This has been submitted to reddit. Please up vote it.

This message was going to be on twitter but it got to long (due to links), and so this is my first post of the new year! (Happy new year everyone)

My old mouse finally crapped out on me, I loved that old school microsoft mouse, and it is the only microsoft product that I use. The size, weight and sensitivity have always been perfect for me and I don’t have to buy batteries for it.  Deciding that I did not want to spend $32.99 on my old mouse I headed to collage street looking for a mouse. I hate the idea of having to change the batteries on a wireless mouse so if I got a wireless mouse it would have to come with a charger (I think that the way my old mouse sat on my desk caused the mouse cord to pull and that’s what broke it).

I learned two things today, the only wired mice I could find are really really garbage ones or really really high-end ones for gamers (and I’m not a gamer). Secondly most (in fact all but the one mouse I found) wireless mice use batteries no charging station. WTF I don’t want to buy batteries for my mouse ever X months and no one could tell me how long the batteries lasted.

I did finally find the Micro Innovations PD955P Wireless Optical Navigator Mouse (yes its not even listed on the Micro Innovations website anymore) at Canada Computers for only $11. The mouse weight is perfect for me, the size is great, it has a charger (I am still a bit worried about how long the charge will last or if I will remember to charge it),  I am not sure sure about the sensitivity so far it doesn’t feel perfect but Ill keep playing with the settings. And yes it works perfect with ubuntu.

So far all the non gamers out there what mouse do you use?

Well here is another one.

• Take a picture of yourself right now.
• Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
• Post that picture with NO editing.
• Post these instructions with your picture.

Full discloser the picture was taken yesterday morning when I read about this post but I only am just uploading it now.

Well there is another meme on planet ubuntu and this one is about the name of your computers. I typically name my computers after different ways of saying NULL in different programing languages. I currently have:

• MinusOne – This is my main computer. -1 is a way sometimes used to mark an int as NULL.
• NaN – This is my laptop, a dell inspiron 1300 … also my battery is dead if anyone knows where I can get a cheap one in Canada that would be great. NaN stands for not a number in matlab.
• Void – This is my current test box. I’m not really sure if void is used in any programing languages but it seemed to me like a synonym to NULL.

In the past I have also had:

• NULL – This was my first linux computer and the mother board died.
• Zero – A laptop that no longer works. Zero is also used as a NULL value.

I also have three devices that currently do not follow this naming convention:

• xo – This is my OLPC XO this computer came whith that name and I have not changed any of the default settings on it.
• Neo – This is my work computer, named after Neo from the matrix. When I have more than one work computer I use other matrix character this helps me keep my work machines seperated from my personal computers since some of them travel with me and spend a lot of time on my home network.
• DD-WRT – This is my router and yes it is using the DD-WRT firmware. The DD-WRT firmware is a great way to get all the power out of your router. I only just started using this and would love to get some neat tips and tricks or other recomendations that people find better and why.

Lastly I have one virtual computer:

• earobinson-PC – This is my vista box, this is the name vista gave it, and I hardly use it so it can stay like that. (Well the last time I used it was to check out google chrome)

So what do you name your computers? Also I do intend to recycle the no longer used names but if anyone has any ideas for more ways of saying NULL I would love to hear them so far the only unused one I have is None from python.

With the release of wordpress 2.6.1 I have once again updated my hackergotchi. This will be my third hackergotchi since 2006, and the original image was taken by my mother at our cottage in Pointe au Baril, and yes I am sitting on the barrel that markes the site of the original barrel that the town gets its name from.

New Hackergotchi