Riz’s Blog

Yes, I’m back. I’ve imported the old posts… yeah…

Back at Queen’s I did quite a few extra-curricular activities. One of the things I did do is produce some software for the AMS (student government). It makes it feasible to run elections using preferential balloting. I was happy to find out that it’s still being used.

Good times… I guess I get to keep my engineering degree.

Why is technology seem to be designed to prevent me from doing things that are perfectly legal but could be used for illegal activities? Examples:

• iPods not allowing you to copy your music back to your hard drive. I don’t use my iPod to send my music to my buddies; what I do use it for is a backup system to ensure that my music never gets lost (if my hard drive crashes) but I have to hack it to get this functionality.
• Macrovision making it a pain in the butt for me to setup my home entertainment system in useful ways.
• Preventing screenshots from DVDs which doesn’t really matter since I can just crack the DVD but it’s annoying.

The reason for this post? I was just watching a DVD that I OWN and that I PAID good money for. I saw something funny, a marking on the ground that indicated where the actor should stand and was not meant to be caught on camera. I wanted to post this on my blog to share with others; this obviously falls under fair use if not journalistic freedom. Are we so paranoid of this evil thing call piracy that we’re willing to give all our freedoms up to a handful of major corporations? Is it really such a big deal to prevent the average person from doing what they want since the real pirates (in every instance) have ways around all known protection measures? “If I can read it, I can copy it.”

I’m very annoyed. Here’s the error message I got and am just too lazy to rip the DVD for one screenshot:

Hey Hey Hey, it’s Riz in Elf form!

OfficeMax has this cool site where you can upload a picture of yourself and create a dancing elf. The really cool thing is that they’ve integrated an automated call in number that allows you to record a message which your elf will say while dancing!

Update, 9:50AM: Ok, I’m a loser, here is another one I made with Star-trek characters. And another one I made with The Office.

Really? Seriously? I posted a chat transcript over on tumblr (just because it’s so much easier to post there than on wordpress). So I’m not a geek!  So I’m told. Too cool. Check it.

Some great news was just announced on Michael Geist’s Blog:

Industry Minister Jim Prentice has just announced that the government will put in place measures as part of the forthcoming spectrum auction to encourage greater competition within the Canadian wireless market. Prentice acknowledged that Canadian wireless pricing is too high, particularly for data. Accordingly, they will set aside a significant chunk of spectrum - nearly 40 percent of the auction - solely for new entrants and mandate tower sharing.

Of course this is legislative but combined with the $15 post I made a few days ago we could really be seeing the start of a large change in the Canadian wireless industry, one with less gouging and more choice! I think I’m going to faint.

Giving Tumblr a chance. Going to see how things go. Tumble blog. Tumble Feed. This blog will still be used for bigger posts or posts that you probably want to comment on but aggregated into the tumble blog.

I was just watching a bit of TV as a break and caught some of I Robot on Space. I just started giggling because it reminding me of an old Joke in GW: I did not Capsize him! HA! PURE GOLD! 

Yes I’m a big geek but it makes life easy sometimes. I’m going to the John Orr dance this year and wanted an easy way to see who else is going. The list they give you right now is an alphabetical PDF. I wanted an Excel version that would allow me to group people by year and degree so I can easily find people I know. I figured since I did all the geeky leg work I’d just share the list with the world (jonorroct31.xls).It’s current as of today. I might do an update if I feel the need to see a new list or if someone bugs me. I might be compelled to do the dinner list as well if someone bugs me.

I’m a massive geek and love Polarity. I decided to take some cool pictures of the game:

Note: This isn’t an active game… I just have the game on my coffee table for both a fun distraction and decorative flair.