Dave Kellam

Last night was not a good night for me and technology. Our cable internet isn’t working because the cable is unplugged at the hub on the side of our building (i’m assuming that a squirrel ripped it out by sitting on it), you need a ladder to get to it.

Next up, a Bell technician was supposed to come over in the evening yesterday, but never showed. We’ve been paying Bell for a week or two, but they’ve yet to get the phone actually working in our apartment. Last up, i was plugging the ethernet cable into my xbox and clipped one of the wires attaching the power switch to the modchip. So, I have a normal xbox right now instead of a nice modded one.

Update: I called Cogeco today, the tech support lady was ready to put me through the wringer with the call-script and what not; she got the idea when I said i had physically traced the cable out of the apartment and it wasn’t attached to the wall. Anyway, they can’t send someone to climb up a ladder and plug it back in until Monday. Yea big faceless corporations.

Time for a small recap of the last week or so, just to get me started. I need to post a bit more, it’s become the weekly update. The quicklinks section seems to be getting the majority of my effort.

First off, Canada wins the World Cup of Hockey. It used to be the Canada Cup, but I guess that was a bit too exlusive or something. Regardless, Canada can rest easy for awhile, it has the Olympic gold, the last two World Championships and this Cup. As Canadians, we probably wouldn’t have cared as much about the World Cup if the NHL wasn’t planning on locking out the players. We’re likely to get some hockey in the form of the Original Stars Hockey League.

Next up, my story. I’m doing teacher’s college this year, so I had a bit of an earlier start than most of the other students at the university. The first week was a lot of giant classes in the auditorium, but not a whole lot happened. Class is in full swing now — I’m not really used to having a whole day full of them. Overall they don’t seem too difficult to wrap your head around, it just seems like a good chunk of work. More of a time commitment than anything. Just like teaching I guess, a lot of time spent compiling resources and planning how you’re going to approach class.

Last up, i’ll give you a few more links to make the non-personal visit worthwhile. Wes has an mp3 weblog called Angels Twenty, it makes me want to start offering weekly mp3s again. An NYT review of the new G5 iMac. Marc has a domain now, dunno if I posted that or not, it’s been in my links for awhile. Capsula Mundi, Italian bio-degradable coffins. That’s it for now.

Hola chicos. The summer seems to have gone by too fast. I’ve had a week off from work, but could use another. A good chunk of this week has been spent gathering my shit up and preparing to move apartments. I was woken up this morning by a friendly Cogeco representative who told me that there was a tech waiting at the other apartment to install my internet. It’s a fun way to start the day.

School for me starts on Tuesday, so I don’t get to party it up during Frosh Week like the rest of the goons. It’s alright though, I don’t think my first week’s going to be all that hard. I need to find out when I’m supposed to be there on the first day though.

So, internet is up in the new place now. Phone sometime tomorrow I think, although that could end up being delayed. If you want the new location and contact info, let me know. Time for some bed.

Here’s an excerpt from a Time interview with Laura Bush:

TIME: Have you ever had a gay couple stay with you in the White House or in Texas?

BUSH: I’m sure we have.

TIME: You wouldn’t have any objection?

BUSH: No, of course not.

This one is curious, I’m not sure if she’s lying. Anyone know if the Bushes have let a gay couple stay with them? Cheney’s daughter maybe?

My second summer with Science and Computer Discovery Camp is over. It’s hard to believe that the summer has gone by this fast. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun at the same time. I’m going to miss it.

Now, it’s break time for a little while. But not long enough, I could use an extra week or two to relax. I have to move apartments in the next few days and school starts up again in about a week.

Wheee, did a bunch of web work tonight. I tweaked the site header a little bit, so the green is flush with the left hand side.

The newest installment of the Conform Project is up. This one is by Piero Desopo, a guy who used to be part of suffocate.org. If you haven’t been to his site, you should check it out: PhoenixArt.

I changed the account hosting BolderStone, but the domain had to change machines. There’s a new look to the site, but it’s pretty minimal for now.

That is all.

We made a great dinner tonight, which included my new favourite salad. Not that Manadarin salads aren’t normally good, but this was kickass.

Ingredients:

• organic leaf lettuce or romaine
• green onions
• can of mandarin oranges
• bag of almonds
• brown sugar
• oil/vinegar dressing
• salt/pepper
• tobasco

Instructions:

Take the bag of almonds and smash them up with a hammer. Put them in a frying pan and cover them with a bunch of brown sugar. After it’s all melty, get the gooey mess out of the pan and onto some wax paper or tinfoil. When it cools, you can break it up and throw it in the salad.

Meanwhile, you want to be putting the lettuce in a bowl. Chop up some of the onions and put those in too. Then strain the oranges and dump them in. Take the left over orange juice, mix it with equal parts of the oil/vinegar dressing. But a bunch of a pepper in it, a bit of salt, a few teaspoons of brown sugar and a few hits of tobasco. Mix it into the salad and you’re good to go.

There are some articles popping up on news sites about Northface University, a new computer science school in the States, that’s heavily backed by corporate sponsors (not that most schools aren’t). You pay $60000, do a CS degree in two and a half years and get a bunch of certifications. I equate it with a diploma mill or maybe a nerd mill. Yeah, they’re going to pound out good corporate citizens that have tons Microsoft and IBM training, but they won’t be well-rounded.

Meanwhile, my school has been heading in the other direction, trying to give their computer science students a more balanced education. I was one of the first to get a redundant sounding degree, that I can see them renaming: Bachelor of Computing, Subject of Specialization Computing. It’s essentially the same program as the old B.Sc but they require at least 5.0 credits to be in courses other than Math or Stats and 1.5 of those credits in the humanities.

One of the big things that people are starting to realize is that computing is everywhere now. It’s not just mathematical theory and producing hardware. Almost everyone in a modern environment uses some form of computing at home and work every day. And they’re not all dorks. What may seem like a simple and intuitive interface to the programmer is not for the end-user. Computer Science should act as a technological bridge between Arts and Science; their needs to be programmers with backgrounds in fields like biology, chemistry, economics, english, and fine arts, that help produce intuitive software.

The world needs hardcore dorks like the ones Northface will produce. But we’ll also need computer scientists who understand people as well machines, so we can stave off a citizen’s revolt against computers and technology.

Was sick of the red. Here’s something different but the same.

Depending on how long you’ve know about this site, you may or may not remember Conform. It’s a project that I used to run for Suffocate.org (an old group of designers). I decided to revive it about a month ago and received pretty good response. I’ve been almost finished for awhile, and I wanted to have at least four images finished before it went live.

Parts of the design are a bit hacked, but it should probably be valid CSS (I haven’t checked yet). It may look like shit in some browsers, it’s fine for now though. I could sit around and keep tweaking it but i’d never get it finished. There are some things I still have left to finish, like the bottom tagline thingy, it will have more variations. And the etc section, it’s empty right now. The archives are sparse too.

It’s now loose on the world. With that, I’m going to return to Brockville for a night and then go camping for a night, so I won’t be around to fix problems. yea.

the Conform Project — Go there and check it out.