Author: MRJ

Today I thought I’d share a great video that’s making the rounds on the old internet. It’s a Great Tribute, but to me it exposes the problem with modern music. It’s to easy to use Technology to make anyone, even someone not singing sing on tune.

Enough editorializing, check out http://www.symphonyofscience.com/ for more about the video. Enjoy the video:

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve been working on a little program for use with the Ping.FM servers*. It’s been a fun process but I’ve been doing it mostly by the seat of my pants. I have an idea of what I want the application to do and I’m writing it. It’s not a complicated application, but the further along in development it goes I’m finding it harder to manage both it’s over all  vision and the things that I need to do with it. Where there are bugs, what I’ve done and what’s left.

So I’ve been looking at different solutions online, but I’ve ran into a problem. All the solutions seem like too much work, specially when I’m the only developer. I also know from my attempts to add new tools for project management, they are useless unless the whole team is on board. Somehow that hasn’t been easier when it’s a team of just me. I’m thinking about using a software repository like Subversion or Git for my code and perhaps which ever service I choose for that will provide me with some basic project management.

Or perhaps I’ll continue to work with my random text files and entries in my Google calendar.  Do anyone out there have some recommendations?

*Hope to have a version available for people to download on Monday, just doing some more testing and waiting for a production key.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the TTC Riders Strike. A response to the proposed fair hikes. Riders are frustrated with an increase that could see our fairs raise to 3 a ride and increase the cost of a monthly pass to $126. So they plan a boycott to show the TTC how we feel. But I don’t see the point. A one day boycott wont hurt the TTC it will hurt the boycotters who need the TTC to get to work. It wont get the TTC funding to cover the operating expenses. Sure it will show the TTC that people don’t like fair hikes, but they know that. They aren’t doing it because they want to.

The problem is our Transit system is underfunded. The city needs a provincial and federal government that supports transit and not just splashy projects that they can point to at election time to say, see we care about transit. We’ve got a subway extension, and multiple Light Rail extensions planned for our city, all funded by multiple levels of government, but none of these improvements include increased funding for operating the increased capacity. Sure the city needs to expand it’s service and maybe the new subway to Vaughan (link)  will actually get enough riders to justify the 2.6 billion dollars. I’m also a fan of Transit City, bringing dedicate light rail lines to more of the city is good, but what good is it if we’ll have to pay $5 to ride because nobody thought about increasing the funding to TTC to run it.

I understand that people want something to change, but you need to pick a better target the the TTC fair box. It’s the political machine that is the problem. They are content to make big gestures with big photo ops but when it come time to make sure that your bus arrives on time and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to ride forget about it. There aren’t any photo ops for operating expenses.

Some related links:

Blog about the Riders Strike: http://ttcriders.blogspot.com/

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=322914960299&ref=mf

Local Transit Activist’s blog: http://stevemunro.ca/

The last week has been a whirlwind of milestones for our little cupcake. First on Friday while out with Mommy she decided to wave hello and goodbye to all the strangers in the mall. We’ve been trying to get her to wave and it was nice to see that she’s picked it up and shared it with the world.

Then last night she decided to showcase some of here other recent milestones. First while playing on the floor with me she climbed up on me and said Dada. she followed that with mama while looking at Melissa. These aren’t the first time she’s said Mama or Dada, but to hear them right after the other was great. Then later while playing with mommy on the floor she grabbed Chloe and said kitty. I was impressed with how well Chloe handled having her little hands grabbing  her. Violet really likes our cat, unlike Jacob when he was a baby.

Its amazing how its the little things that bring a smile to my face and makes me realize how much my little girl has grown.

Over the last week I have done 2 clean installs of windows 7, one for my Work computer and one for my home desktop. The process of setting up a computer can be time consuming, but for these installations I used two different tools to help make it easier. Ninite and AllMyapps, though I like the idea of both I found that each had its issues.

Ninite

www.ninite.com

Its all about being simple, the website lets you choose applications by categories. Each category has between 3 and 9 applications to choose from. When you are done your section you download a single executable. You run it and it installs all the selected applications. There are a limited number of apps but they have all but one of the applications I included in my Apps for a new system post back in may. The only one missing is a commercial application so that isn’t bad.

The installs themselves seem to be done in sequential order and seem pretty fast. There also seems to be plans for a business orientated version with additional features and of course a fee. It will be interesting to see what the looks like.

Allmyapps

www.allmyapps.com

Is a much more ambitious concept, instead of being just a way to build a custom installer for your favourite programs. Its a site for managing and installing applications. It consists of the website for selecting the application and a desktop client that does the actual install. You can install all the applications in your List in one go, it also provides allows you to do one click installs for all the applications in its repository. Which seems to contain a lot of programs, including games.

Another added benefit is support for multiple operating system.  The site also supports Ubuntu Linux, and though I don’t have a computer running Linux to test it on, there seems to be more Linux applications then windows.  If face as I looked over the blog and other parts of the site, it would seem that Windows isn’t there primary focus, which could explain why some of the Windows applications I installed weren’t up today. There also seems to have support for commercial applications in the interface, though everything I looked at for windows was free.

Conclusion

Both of these sites make setting up a new computer easier, Lets look at each and what I liked and didn’t like. I want to touch on one of the biggest strengths and weaknesses of these tools. They are both wrappers for installers. For both you choose the applications you want download the wrapper and execute it. It then goes online to get each program you selected and installs them using default selections. These is great in theory but in practice it can fall short. First off if the repository used by the application is out of date you don’t get the newest versions. Second the thought of adding another few hundred meg to my post install downloads seems like it could be excessive if you are setting up more then one computer. These could be solved if there was a cache that could be used instead of always pulling from the Internet.

In the end I’m impressed with both these Sites and will be watching them in the future to see what surprises they have in store for us.

For your viewing pleasure this Sunday Night.

Thanks the @ambermac for posting this video on Twitter.

Today was Jacobs 4th skating lesson. It’s been quite a ride, every lessons Jacob acts out in some why. Either before getting on the ice or during the lesson. Over all he’s been good but take today for example. He didn’t want to even put on his skates. We talk him into letting us put his skate on, and once they were on his feet he was walking around and seemed excited about going out on the ice. The lesson went great and he didn’t even want to leave the ice at the end of it. Which says to me that he might be a little scared of heading out onto the ice. Now whether it is falling or the cold. I’m not sure, but I’m hopping that all he needs is a little more confidence.

The more I think about it the more I am convinced that it is the same problem we’re having trying to get him to jump into the swimming pool.  He is scared but doesn’t know how to express it. What he needs is a little more experience so that he gets past the fear and gains confidence in his abilities.  The best way to do that is to get out on the ice and into the pool more. We have been planning to start going to an evening free swim on Tuesday nights. Perhaps we should look at finding a free skate on another night to get him out onto the Ice more then once a week.  We’ll watch his development over the next couple of weeks to see how he does. Then if he needs more ice time we’ll find a way to get him more ice time.

Tonight after spending some time with the kids, I sat down at my computer to make good on a goal I set for myself on Monday. To write more code. To complete an application every 2 weeks. I’ve been working on different things every night this week. It wasn’t till last night that I decided that though I really wanted to write the TTC Schedule App I didn’t have the patients to work out the all the details of the data. So I went to work on my Ping.FM application.

I’m happy to say that the first beta of the desktop application is almost done. It will support selecting of Posting Method and posting images. I’m not sure about the current interface, I’m still working out what I want it to look like. Once I’ve got this beta working, I’m thinking of working on a WPF interface and a Windows Mobile version.

I’m still not sure under what licences I will be releasing this, though I’m still leaning towards the GPL or a GPL compatible Creative Commons Licences, of course I’ll want to clean the code up a bit before posting it.

The people that know me, know that I’m a bit of a transit freak. It’s an obsession of mine that doesn’t get onto my blog often, but every now and then something happens that makes me want to post about it.

Today that’s a video I found on a great site for people using transit in Toronto, MyTTC.ca The only knock I have against the site is I’m not sure how often the scheduling data is updated. When I was comparing it to some schedules the other day it seemed off. It’s still a fascinating site, and if the OpenTO includes Transit information it could become indispensible.

Enough talk, onto the video:

TTC Weekday Service (HD) from Kieran Huggins on Vimeo.