Category: General

Deep Geekery: DD-WRT

So, because of the recently discovered vulnerability in DD-WRT, I figured it was time to update the firmware on my router. Yes, I know that since I don’t allow remote configuration of the router I was somewhat protected from the threat, but I was due for an upgrade anyway. However, I do have to ask myself why I always think… Read more →

Cain’s wife: a game the whole family can play

As a child–I think around 8 or so–I once got booted out of Sunday school for “disrupting the class” with a series of “outspoken incidents”. What actually happened, at least as I remember it now, was that I was politely but firmly asking the teacher a number of questions she found inconvenient about the material she was laying out. On… Read more →

Serious Ireland WTF?

Like many North Americans of Irish descent I quite often like to play up that aspect of my heritage–although in my case it runs more to quoting Yeats, listening to songs about killing the EnglishFace it, the rebels had better music., and drinking Guinness than to wearing KISS ME I’M IRISH shirts or drinking blechh green beers. From time to… Read more →

A What-Day-Is-It-Anyway Miscellany

I have now been on vacation long enough that I don’t remember what day it is. I think “if it’s Wednesday it must be San Francisco” logic may apply. With that in mind, here’s a list of a few things that caught my eye during my little bits of hotel-room surfing after the child goes to bed: The Pirate Bay… Read more →

I Kind Of Don’t Believe That Worked

So, Dell guy (actually Unisys guy) did show up with the new hard drive today. He basically took one look at me and said “Here, I think you can put this in without me” and left. Admittedly, I could do it–it’s a Lego operation; my Mom could do it–but I thought it was kind of funny. And then, miracle of… Read more →

You can see it everywhere you look: people just ain’t no good

Hmm… A study by the Ponemon Institute found that more than 59 percent of those surveyed kept corporate data after leaving their jobs. The survey, which was sponsored by Symantec, included responses from 945 adult employees who had lost or left a job in 2008. The most commonly stolen pieces of information were e-mail lists and non-financial business information, taken… Read more →

Defamyt, blamyt, schamyt

Boy, that Internet is just full of old bollocks and the utterly fascinating isn’t it? And sometimes the one will lead you right to the other. Take, for example, that article in the Telegraph earlier this week about the American professor who claims that rap battles are a Scottish invention. Or, to be more specific: Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that… Read more →

The Cold Ruling Class

Some recent research (here’s the researcher, by the way) might shed some light on a lot of what happens both inside modern capitalist societies and between the West and the rest of the world–or at least on how some things are allowed to happen. Not coincidentally, the same light is shed on intra-organizational behaviours, which means this is probably something… Read more →

Adding Some Character

When I finally gave in to Jobs and switched from my series of non-Apple mp3 players to the iPod I wanted to give mine some character. Ironically, one of the primary reasons I switched was all the third-party stuff that was available for the iPod, so it was easy to start looking into ways to “trick it out”. My first… Read more →

Have some art

Man, I like Scott Morse‘s work. I have mentioned that I have several pieces of his original art in the house. The stuff I have hanging, though, are Morse’s black and white ink style work (I have some originals of some of his more recent stuff not yet framed). Here’s one of his recent colour pieces. If I could find… Read more →

Oh, Canada

I am so disappointed in you. Especially you Ontario, and you B.C. I had steeled myself for 134 seats, but this… this is horrible. OK, it’s not quite as bad as a majority, but this is still terrible. And if this voter turnout thing is true–that the right-winger got out a lot more of their voters than the other people–well,… Read more →

Important Local News

One of the gadgets on my custom Google homepage is the “Top Nova Scotia News” feed. It displays the three “top” stories for Nova Scotia at any given time. Usually my eyes scan over the headlines without paying much attention, but lately there have been a rash of headlines that serve to highlight just exactly where it is that I… Read more →

What A Busy Weekend

So, just to review: Dark Knight on Friday night. It was well past time for me to have seen it, I know, but having children changes the number of opportunities you have to go to the movies, as well as really altering the economics of the “night at the movies”. And actually the primary reason we went out at all… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.