Category: Distractions

Guelph Downtown Webcam

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Update as of 2019-10-19:

I’ve moved away from Guelph! :( My webcam is now offline. I’ve left this post here for history’s sake, though, and I fully intend to provide a tarball of all of the pictures it took. Thanks for your interest!

Original post:

For a few good years, the Co-operators Insurance company in Guelph had a webcam pointing at the Church of Our Lady in downtown Guelph. I moved from Guelph in 2012 after living there for five years. While I was away, I kept an eye on my favourite Canadian town through this webcam.

Co-operators Guelph 2015-06-26
Webcam capture from Co-operators Insurance and Financial Services on 2015-06-26.

Unfortunately, in August of 2017, the webcam went down and even though they had brought it back up after a quick message on Twitter a few times previous to this, it seemed that this time it was down for good.

I moved back to Guelph in April of 2018 and resolved to set up my own webcam to point at the same church, now known as The Basilica of Our Lady. Obviously, I can’t place a webcam in the same spot, but my apartment is close to their building, so it has a vantage similar to theirs.

Bookmark my Downtown Guelph Webcam page and check back often.

Every thirty minutes, the webcam snaps a new picture. The pictures from my webcam are licensed openly, using Creative Commons. I’ve also provided the horribly written bash script I use to get it to fire via a cron job, information on the camera I’m using, and some weather data on Guelph.

webcam capture of downtown Guelph

Perhaps one day, when this webcam retires, someone else will pick up the torch.

Block all web notifications in Firefox

Posted on by John Rockefeller

There’s a currently growing trend in website design where website owners request access to send you notifications. I can’t think of a case where this would ever be required or wanted and yet many websites are asking, sometimes even before the content has fully loaded.

To block all notification requests and all notifications from all websites in Firefox, type “about:config” in the address bar and search for “dom.webnotifications.enabled”. Double click that row to set the value to false and enjoy a happy, interruption-free web browse.

While you’re at it, read up on and consider enabling Tracking Protection for all websites. It makes browsing much faster as it skips the ads from shady advertising companies while you’re on your favourite sites.

Please don’t change things just to say you did

Posted on by John Rockefeller

play-buttonIt was a trend during the dark days of the web (read: before html5, when the world required Flash for animations on the web) that designers would create custom, wacky, non-standard navigation elements on their sites in an effort to look more “hip” or “cool.” When you went to any given website that employed this tactic, the first few minutes were spent hovering over icons to figure out what each of them did. This is, of course, after you waited for the website to “load.” This sort of horrible design got so bad that it became known as Flashturbation.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen much of Flashturbation since around the time MySpace died (correlation, not causation, I’m sure).

Still, it crops up from time to time.

Why am I writing about this? I just wanted to call out Red Bull’s website and their decision to break the play button, which has been a dominant design standard since the 1960s. I got halfway down the page before my mouse accidentally hovered over the triangle icon and it was then I discovered that the images were actually videos that could be played.

It’s okay to style an icon. It’s not okay to break it.

Hellblade Mobs / Xandorus Minecraft Server Warps

Posted on by John Rockefeller

lilfirecracker

As most of our players have noticed, since Minecraft Release 1.8.x, xWarp has been broken. It’s been a mixed blessing: it’s fun to play true, legit survival, but it’s a pain if you want to visit a friend’s build without giving up the ability to warp back home. Until xWarp is fixed (I may have to do it myself), I’ve taken the time to export the warps from their cage in the SQLite database to JSON format. It’s not the easiest to read, but here’s how you can find the X, Y, and Z co-ordinates of your warps:

  1. Open Hellblade Mobs / Xandorus Minecraft Warps in your web browser
  2. Search for the warp name you are looking for (not one at a time, use the Search feature)
  3. Get the X, Y, and Z co-ordinates
  4. Type /tp <player-name> <X> <Y> <Z> in-game to teleport to your warp

Have fun!

Notepad++, “Je Suis Charlie” Edition

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Finally got around to updating my version of Notepad++. Was surprised but then delighted by this nugget that types itself out when it restarts:

Freedom of expression is like the air we breathe, we don’t feel it, until people take it away from us.

For this reason, Je suis Charlie, not because I endorse everything they published, but because I cherish the right to speak out freely without risk even when it offends others.
And no, you cannot just take someone’s life for whatever he/she expressed.

Hence this “Je suis Charlie” edition.
– #JeSuisCharlie

Xbox Live Beta Tester 2002

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Let me set the scene: It’s 2001, pre-9/11, high school.

Having finally accepted the Dreamcast’s fate and being a major anti-PS2, Dreamcast fanboy (cut me some slack, I was 18 and lived in my parents’ basement), I became enamoured with Microsoft’s first foray into console gaming: The Xbox. I bought one on day one, fervently posted on all of the major forums, racked up hundreds of hours in local multiplayer Halo…

Then, to my happy surprise, I was to be part of the Xbox Live beta test. I was a bit of an online PC gamer at the time (Tribes 2 ftw) and had played quite a few hours of online console games on the Dreamcast.

Fast forward 12 years, and here we are.

I have been re-organizing my office since a number of people have given me boxes of their old videogame collections. In one of my chests, I found my Xbox Live beta tester box, which I received from Microsoft in September of 2002. Here are some snaps!

Original Xbox Live beta box
Original box – names removed to protect the innocent :)
Xbox Live Beta Test Discs
This is before consoles tracked how many hours you’ve played each game, but I bet “hundreds” for MotoGP and Re-Volt, each.
Xbox Live Beta Test Discs
Welcome to the future of gaming!
Xbox Live beta end of life
Set your clocks: 11.15.02.

By 2004 I had moved almost exclusively to the PC. I bought an Xbox 360 but sold it to a friend shortly thereafter, unimpressed. I was also very disappointed that they gave away my Xbox Live GamerTag, which was supposed to be ours for life.

C’est la vie.

Ever consider biking to work?

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Last month, I bought an e-bike. It’s an Emmo Alien. I got it used on Kijiji for $600. Where I live, it doesn’t require insurance or a license to ride. It costs me nothing to charge since my rent includes utilities.

Emmo Alien E-bike
Emmo Alien E-bike. Mine’s black, though.

Like pretty much everyone in Canada, I’ve had at least one bike at any point in my life. I never once considered riding it to work. My mental picture of a person that biked to work was a sun-glassed, angry man in really tight spandex. I couldn’t imagine biking all the way to work, sweating the whole way there, angry at other drivers for cutting them off or not knowing the rules. It’s just not for me. It felt like riding a bike to work meant you had to join some sort of environmental cult.

The truth is, while I care very much about the environment, I’m a cheapskate. And I’m lazy. Riding an e-bike is free. And I don’t just mean free as in beer. It feels free, as in freedom. I haven’t used my car in so long, a tire went flat from sitting. The insurance on my car (never mind gas or repairs) per year pays for more than two e-bikes per year. I could actually buy a second one, put it into a dumpster, light it on fire, and I would still be ahead.

And, do you know what? Riding an e-bike is fun! It’s liberating. My girlfriend finds it empowering. She’s never gotten the hang of riding a regular bike, but she’s learned how to ride the e-bike. We do groceries (it has hooks to put the bags as well as two storage compartments), we go for picnics, we go out and get fresh air, we get some sun.

Sure, a cyclist looks ridiculous, but when a driver in a big pickup truck zooms past in a testosterone-filled money-burning pissing contest, who looks more ridiculous?

I’m a bit late in posting this, but June is Bike Month in Waterloo Region. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be just June or just Waterloo Region. Have you ever tried biking to work? Do it tomorrow and let me know what you think.

If you’re interested in some data, it takes about 7 hours to charge from completely empty to completely full. A full charge lasts me about 2 and a half hours of continuous use, or about 50-70km, depending on whether or not it’s just me or with a passenger. My trip to work (including to McDonalds for breakfast) is 7.5km, each way. I do this trip Monday to Friday, rain or shine.

The single largest trip I've made on the ebike so far.
The single largest trip I’ve made on the ebike so far. With a passenger. Had half charge left when I got home.

 

All that, for this.

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Interview on NPR with John C. Inglis of the NSA:

While Inglis conceded in his NPR interview that at most one terrorist attack might have been foiled by NSA’s bulk collection of all American phone data – a case in San Diego that involved a money transfer from four men to al-Shabaab in Somalia – he described it as an “insurance policy” against future acts of terrorism.

(Source)

Emphasis mine.

Quality Control

Posted on by John Rockefeller

I saw a feel-good Amtrak post come up on the /newest section of Hacker News the other day which covered the new single-level long distance Amtrak cars being produced in the US. The first thing I saw when watching the video was the flag of The Netherlands painted across each of them.

I love trains and I hate to bash or bring negative attention to anything to do with rail. But, I feel that at least someone should point out this mistake.

My Car Makes a Nice Office But…

Posted on by John Rockefeller

While I wait patiently for Canada to adopt a comprehensive high-speed rail line and commuter service, the next best thing is a car for working on the go. Though I’m the primary driver these days, there have been times when I’ve been the passenger. I write this now from a very comfortable position next to Exhibition Park in Guelph. I’m doing work on the laptop in the passenger seat (using a 3G USB adapter from Wind mobile).

Rail is my favourite mode of transport because:

  1. You face people. Seats are positioned in a way that fosters communication, unlike cars, in which everyone faces the same direction and it’s hard (and sometimes impossible) for people sitting less than a metre away in the back seat to hear conversation in the front seat.
  2. Free Wifi.
  3. Work while you travel. When you’re driving, you can’t do anything but drive. It’s dead time; a complete waste of human existence. If you travel by rail, you can accomplish work, read, think, relax, read.
  4. It’s fast. Even current rail service in Canada, specifically between Guelph and Toronto, isn’t that bad in terms of speed. My GPS reported that we reached 140km/h at one point. With some proper funding and planning, that could be the average speed, not the top speed.
  5. It’s safe. Rail is a very safe method of travel, especially compared to the car.
  6. You can pee. Every car has a washroom built right in. You don’t have to stop transport to pee.

Still, for times when I need a third place and cafes are closed, I use my car. It’s a 2001 Chrysler 300m. Here are a few things that could have been done better.

  1. Built-in inverter. My car has two access points to DC electricity: One in the front and one in the centre console. It uses the traditional cigarette lighter type adapter, to which I plug in an inverter which gives me AC electricity for my laptop.  (An even better solution would be to buy laptops that include a DC plug as well as an AC plug so I could just plug straight into DC since that’s what laptops use natively).
  2. Auxiliary input for the car stereo. I won a free car stereo and had the installers provide access to an AUX IN jack so I could plug my laptop audio in but it would be awesome if this came included out of the box. I have all of my mp3s, oggs, and music modules on my laptop.
  3. DC Access point for the back seat. Currently there is no way to access DC power in the back seat except through the centre console, which, when left open, is uncomfortable for the driver.
  4. Better fuel economy. While I’d love to have a fully electric car (such as the Ford Focus Electric), I realize that in 2001 the technology wasn’t close to being ready. My car gets an average of 11L/100KM in town and 7L/100KM highway. It would have been nice to have the ability to switch the engine between performance mode and economy mode whilst in the city.

Spending Less Time At Facebook These Days

Posted on by John Rockefeller

Facebook has recently changed the way it handles my news feed. Because of this, it’s likely that I’ll be reading it less and keeping it around just to post things and check up on to make sure I haven’t missed a message.

Here’s why: I don’t equate friendship with following.

When I’m your friend, I want to keep in touch, maybe hang out, and share something with you directly. I don’t want to see your thought stream.

Don’t take it personally because it isn’t personal. When I read stuff online, it’s usually news. I want to learn something new about the fields in which I am excited, not in which you are excited. If it’s not news, it’s an editorial on said fields. If it’s not an editorial, it’s a tweet from someone who might be generating the previous two examples.

I had spent the last 6-12 months whittling down my Facebook news feed to weed out most people’s/most page’s posts from showing up.  The little down arrow icon with the “Hide all from xyz” was my best friend.

Then, a week or so ago, all those settings got wiped in favour of a new “acquaintences” system where you specifically select which group you want to read from.

Here’s why it doesn’t work: I have no clue what people are going to say before they say it, so I have no idea who I would like to follow. But, once they’ve said it, I sure as hell know who I would like to unsubscribe from.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to be their friend, it just means I don’t want to mix their stuff in with mine is all.