Wednesday, August 30, 2006

"'s

Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next.
Spend your energies on moving forward towards finding the answer.
(Dennis Waitley, American motivational writer)

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
(Charles Dickens, English novelist, 1812-1870)

The golden opportunity you are seeking is not in your environment, not in luck or chance,
not in the help of others. It is in yourself alone.
(Orison Swett Marden, American author and editor, 1850-1924)

The bamboo which bends is stronger than the oak which resists.
(Japanese proverb)

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong,
which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
(Alexander Pope, English poet, 1688-1744)

Friday, August 25, 2006

We all scream!

Imagine any flavour of ice cream you would ever want to enjoy... and this one ice cream maker has decided to start creating ice creams that would appeal to people from all over the world... how about these flavours:

jack fruit, purple yam, guava, avocado, buco, durian, green tea, lychee, papaya and passion fruit

And in Canada at least, fewer people are consuming ice cream than ever before... so this new idea may help.

"A 2004 Statistics Canada food consumption study found that ice cream consumption had fallen to 6.2 litres per person per year, more than 25 per cent below the 1994 level. "

Now try to imagine what it would be like to consume your own personal average in one day....

6.2 litres - which is like 26 cups of ice cream. That's some bellyache!

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2006/08/24/ice-cream.html

This post brought to you by.. Milk... un verre c'est bon, mais deux c'est mieux!

What ice cream would you like to have? What ice cream do you think is missing in the world right now?

Friday, August 18, 2006

Ozone Layer

There are two things I haven't heard about lately - the ozone layer and acid rain.

Does this mean they are not still problems - or are they still severe problems and other stories have bumped them from the media?

As I was thinking of this the last few days I came across this story about UNEP and the Montreal Protocal which set out to reduce harmful CFC's, HCFC's and other mean yucky substances we can spew into the atmosphere.

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=484&ArticleID=5335&l=en

So the ozone hole will still appear every season (August, peaking in September) and it will for many years to come - but there has been some minor improvement!!

So we (and governments) actually *can* do something!

Here are the projections :

"According to the “UNEP/WMO Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2006”, the updated scientific understanding indicates that the ozone layer over the mid-latitudes (30° - 60° North and South) should recover by 2049, five years later than anticipated by the previous (2002) assessment.
The ozone over the Antarctic should recover by 2065, 15 years later than once expected. Because of special conditions within the Antarctic vortex (a natural cyclone of super-cold, super-fast winds), the Antarctic ozone “hole” is expected to recur regularly for another two decades. "

Are we doing enough?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Shingles


This is for my mom!
I hope they go away soon!

book tag

Tagged by Phil Plasma

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of it and the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag three people.

________________
Practical Unix Security by Simson Garfinkle and Gene Spafford, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
ISBN : 0-937175-72-2

Be sure to keep the master copy of the file of checksums some place safe (e.g., off-line) where it can't possibly be altered or manipulated by an intruder to mask a change. In addition, be sure to protect the checksum program against change.

There are many checksum algorithms available; Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) checksums are common. The sum command available on many different versions of UNIX also calculates a checksum that can determine differences between files.
________________

I don't know many bloggers to tag - so I'll see what I can do to find some bloggers to tag. Check back soon!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Let's do the jitterbug

I don't really mean dancing - I mean bugging!

http://www.livescience.com/technology/060807_jitterbugs.html

Keystroke logging is not new - it's been around for a long time - naturally as a way to help debug applications by honest programmers. It seems as though it's the unscrupulous among us folk that take good ideas and use them to hurt other folk.

The jitterbug idea is to not have the keystroke logger installed on a computer at all. Instead it will just use the services like MSN already on a computer - and the handy jitterbugged keyboard will send off the packets of data... fun fun fun - but I wouldn't want my passwords stolen! Then I'd have to remember a whole new set of passwords! Yuk!

Monday, August 07, 2006

Manatee spotted in New York's Hudson river

Isn't global warming fun?

I'm looking forward to having coconut palm trees in my yard and to watching the squirrels compete with the northward migrating lizards for food and nesting sites!

The light show on tuesday was spectacular.

What comes next?