Time Travel through Old Catalogues – The 60s and 70s weren’t that Bad were They?

April 3rd, 2010 Thomasso

I was searching the web for some information on a old prehistoric computer, one called the Commodore 64, and its predecessor, the VIC-20. Many many years a go I had both of these bad boys, and I used them a lot. Anyway, while searching for pdf manuals, I hit upon this little website that threw me back even further into nostalgic mood of my humble past. Yes, somebody took the time to scan and copy as many of the old Sears catalogues as they could find and post them so that everyone could look back into this archive of an era gone by.

Sears – Wishbook Website Link

The first thing that hit me about looking at these old gems are the prices for everyday items such as a early microwave oven, television and basic clothing. I have being working one a problem that most people go through when they try to a “Adjusted for Inflation” algorithm into the research data. These old Sears catalogues made it that much more difficult.

The second thing were the styles. OMG, am I ever glad people didn’t embrace the cyclical styles of the 70s and 80s. Both men and women’s style, in my opinion, sucked compared to today. And the colours of the 70s? What up with that? The furniture was scary then.

With men’s skin tight disco pants, who needed a man’s purse to carry their wallets around, to women’s 2.3 kg of underwear and hairspray, I think this last decade is a whole lot better looking in comparison. However, I do have a soft spot for the 60s. I don’t know why, perhaps becuase I never live through all of it.

Posted in General, Humour, Photographs, Social economics | Comments Off

Monolingualism Can Be Cured

April 1st, 2010 Thomasso

This was a caption that I read when I was doing some French homework. This was a recommended link that my prof posted so that we could use in order to help us further in our up coming finals. The “Monolingualism Can Be Cured,” banner just made me laugh when I saw it. I suffer from a strong sense of ignorance that perpetuates my  monolingualism. I am now convinced that fifty percent of my problem is fear and laziness when learning the French language. Having grown up with nearly all of my life speaking only English, I realize now that I have missed on some golden opportunity becuase of this. Sure, the world seems to revolve around English, but that is only in my mind – the English speaking me. Speaking French is like looking through the world with a whole new lens – the view is so much different and beautiful.

Here are a list of excuses I have compiled:

Excuse #1: I look down on our current provincial government for treating out schools like game pieces on a monopoly game board. Shame on you BC Liberals. This happened to me in the mid 1980′s during my days in high school when the then Social Credit (right wing) were in control. Having gone out of a brutal recession in the early 80′s, times were tough, and the answer was electing a government that would cut taxes -  and boy did they ever. The residual effects are felt today – i.e., Tom having to learn French in 2010, becuase French was cut in high school back then.

Excuse #2: Age. Everyone knows that once pass that ripe age of four to eight years old, your brain is fully imprinted with the language you are bought up with.

Excuse #3: The only way I can truly learn French is to marry a French woman, move to France, and move in with her family.

Excuse #4: All of my francophone friends will not take the time to help with French becuase they don’t want to speak French – they prefer English. For a while I really believed this when I asked them for help. But of course, this has more to do with lack of time, not a preference to their second language. There is the posiblity that they hate me becuase of my monolingualism, or they just plane hate me?

I think I have covered all of my excuses?

It is not over for me yet in French class. I still have the verbal assignment (responding to questions in French and answering back, in French) and the grand final exam, still a total of 40 percent of the term to do yet.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Homework and deadlines, Humour, University classes | Comments Off

Playing Around With Ubuntu 10.04, Alpha-3. Code Name: Lucid Lynx.

March 26th, 2010 Thomasso

Yay! It looks like Ubuntu 10,04 LTS (Long Term Support) will be a “hopeful” success. I took some time to play around with the early, bleeding edge build, to see how it is shaping up, and took it out for a test drive. With the predicable bugs and hick-ups, it went very well. There are some surprises that caught me off guard, like my tablet still worked, after reading all bugs that were causing that device to brick. My Lexmark E210 laser printer still worked, and my Nvidia card still pumped out the 3D desktop and eye candy that I love so much.

The final release with April 29th, 2010. I strongly recommend that you do not install on your main machine! The Alpha 3 is still bug ridden, so you might as well save yourself the headache and wait the 30 to 40 days for the final release. The Ubuntu Web Site “Alpha 3 Page,” strongly says this.

Although at first there didn’t seem to be that much of a change from 9.10 Karmic, once I started to poke around, the subtle yet drastic changes started to pop up. I would also strongly recommend a total install, not a upgrade due to all the configuration issues most people will have, like with certain peripherals and PCI cards. I lost all of my MIDI functions from my Audiophile 24 x 2 sound card, and along with it my digital audio out.

Oh, the look and feel are great with a fresh install. Way faster than 9.10. I can honestly say that this blows the door off of Windsow$7, both in performance and time. Window$ still has way too much “stuff” to load while 10.04 only takes what it need to boot-up. Window$ 7 = 1.24 sec., Ubuntu 10.04 = 0.21 sec., from boot-up to desktop. This is using a PhenonII X4 965 Quad Core CPU with 4 Ghz of DDR2 Ram, and a 1TB SATA 32M Hard drive Seagate, 7200PRM, SATA2, with 32MB Buffer. Note too that I have always had this USB issue with Window$7 that I cannot get rid of.

Here is the release schedual, if you are interested in this: Ubuntu Release Schedual – 10.04.

Below are two YouTube clips, the first is from mark Shuttleworth, the brainchild of Ubuntu, and the last one is a short demo of the boot-up sequence for 10.04, and what to expect while installing.

Note: this guy below is using virtual machine to load and use 10.04 and he is suffering from a slow boot up while running virtual box. The jumping and skipping on the video is him using a time-laps fast forward speed while going through the start-up and installation process. It is quite funny. And it didn’t work, I got Alpha 3 to run in Virtual machine.

So, I’m looking forward to installing Ubuntu 10.04, LTS,  the Lucid Lynx out in April 29, 2010!

Posted in General, Humour, Linux, Software, Video | Comments Off

I Admit it, I’m a Lost Fan Too! People Hate Me for it.

February 13th, 2010 Thomasso

For Ten long agonizing months I waited while rerun after rerun played before the launch of season six kicked in on the boob-tube, or flat-screen this month. As of two weeks ago, season six of the television show Lost finally started, and life seems to be back to normal, although normal is such a loose word these days. I have being capturing the last two episodes on my home-made PVR so I can watch it during the times I have to myself. Many I know love the show. I love the show becuase it has a cool narrative and a plot that would make a prime-time soup-opera look like a skit on kid’s TV.

The nice thing about the whole plot are the never ending twists that each character takes. I mean you really need to take notes on some of these details that go on. I also enjoy finding mistakes, especially the continuity of one scene to another, or editing mistakes where make-up changes dramatically–a cut, or gun shot location on a actor’s piece of clothing. There are some really good websites too that have hundreds of them listed.

I also love it when people poke fun at the show. The Onion News Network is probably one of the best American parity shows on the web that I have seen. There are many spoofs of the show Lost on the web, but this one has a lot of truth to it–you either love it, or hate it to death.

We will see what the final season of Lost brings, 17 episodes of suspense, drama and gut wrenching plot. Hopefully they (the writers and producers) can really make everyone heads spin with weirdness as the plot goes where no plot has gone before. I can’t wait!

Posted in Events, General, Humour, Video | Comments Off

Is this Incredible Weather or What?

February 6th, 2010 Thomasso

For the last five weeks, I must admit, I was paranoid about having to go through another winter like the one we had last year in the Fraser Valley. For the first couple of week in December it looked as if we were going to endure another super cold one, but as luck would have it, we are getting California like weather in the middle of winter for 2010. Is this Incredible Weather or What?

I know that we should be worried about having such wonderful weather in a place like Canada this time of year because it is unnatural, and nature has a way of turning such a nice thing into a huge nuisance later on down the road. I am thinking of the mosquito problems we have here along the Fraser River. With every warm winter, there follows a wet spring, and mosquitoes love water to lay their eggs in. There are other bugs too that are loving this weather, take the Roach for example. Yes Fort Langley has Roaches–although some people I know will not admit it and call them something else, like a Termites. I saw one zipping out of the storm grate alone Glover Road yesterday when I was walking back home. That congered up bad memories from when I lived in Toronto, Ontario. Toronto is a place that has a huge roach problem. Also there is the infamous Pine Beetle that has destroyed a large portion of our Pine forests in BC–can  we say “Global Warming.”

Not having to deal with shovelling, huge heating expenses and the inconvenience of driving on snow and ice, I can enjoy this weather in the short term. I say keep it coming! I love thisI In fact, I am asking myself if I should even bother heading to Mexico, in stead, stay here where it is warm?

Posted in Bitching about weather, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

Buns of Steel at 108C.

January 8th, 2010 Thomasso

I believe that I can prove that the old saying that people who are experts in their chosen field should not venture off into other fields and lay the claim that they are successful at them. Like the doctors who diagnose themselves, to the lawyers who represent themselves, there is a well defined reason why the patient and client should not become part of the treatment and challenge process. Professionals are best to conduct themselves at their craft and call that their landmark achievement, while leaving the cooking up to someone else who can do a better job.

Volunteering is a time honoured tradition among academics. It is how they get their foot in the door at the very beginning of their careers. But volunteering is also a two way street that if the wrong turn is made, this could land you down a dead-end alley with no way of backing out of it. To say, at the goodness of your heart, that you are going to use your time and effort for the greater good is the noble quality that sets one apart from the rest, but that time should also include your best performance too, or the cause may end with not so good of consequences.

Last night, after my last class of the week, my friends and I decided to go to a small gathering at Colleen’s house. (Not her real name). She lives less than five minutes from the University and is quite the host of small gatherings, in fact, legendary. About three years ago I first went to one of her gathering, and was amazed at her skills as a hostess because the whose who of the University go their from my clique, so you get to meet a wide spectrum of students from the campus there. It is also a great opportunity to meet some of the big-wigs too in the field of Criminology from the Vancouver area because of its location. But back then, the rule was, you bought your own food, like a pot-luck event, everyone was expected to do it. I did not know that there was a reason for this rule?

Now Colleen is a very nice person, and she gave me permission to write this, but I also wanted to keep her real identity a secret because she too taunts people with her secret—and the surprise is always best kept for the newbie. Her sense of humour is unmatched by any standard. I heard of her through the campus grapevine, but the rumour was nothing close to what I saw when I first met her because you see, I was told that she had “buns of steel.” What I saw was nothing close to a body builder’s perfect form, but the opposite; the heaviest thing she lifts are her textbooks, and maybe only two or three at a time.

We entered the threshold of her home and the smell of baking bread was in the air. We all sat down in the living room where several chairs had being strategically laid out, and then Colleen greeted us with orange juice, coffee and muffins. I sat directly by the “fake” fireplace, and was automatically in charge of adding more chairs because the extra chairs are kept there too. Sitting in that location also meant that I was right in the path of the on coming traffic from the kitchen area. It was then, as I just sat down and made myself comfortable, that I heard Colleen asking me to help her in the kitchen.

Like a page out of a horror novel, there sitting in a tin tray were freshly baked buns of bread. With her oven mitts on, she picked up the tray and shook the buns off into a wicker basket and asked me to try one. Not even a fork could penetrate the mortar encased shell of the pumpernickel. We laughed as I said, “My dear, you do indeed have buns of steel.” And she replied, “I guess formula 108C doesn’t work either…”

Posted in Criminology, General, Humour | Comments Off

Doomsday Documentaries Are Really Stupid

January 7th, 2010 Thomasso

OK, you have seen them, on the Discovery Channel, stories of prophecies where some dude two or three hundred years ago writes a bunch of letters that says the Earth will end either in some fiery ball, or mankind nukes himself to death and all life ceases. They come in all forms, from biblical predictions, to a crazy guy who might have been severely nuts in today’s standards, all saying the same thing – the Earth will end.

Whether the predictions come to pass or not, it is the people that I run into who make me laugh when they tell me about them. When the air time on television increases the numbers of these doomsday documentaries, the more entrenched some of my regulars become. They become so transfixed that this is the honest truth because of the proliferation of these documentaries that arguing with them that they are just predictions becomes a moot point. From the Mayan Calendar that only tells time up until 2012, to the earth loosing its magnetic field in twenty years, these are just some of the weird things I hear people  saying that will spell doom for the Earth.

The problem is that even the documentaries get it wrong, or they just focus on the out come like fear-mongering, rather than asking the real questions of what the prognosticators are really saying, or not saying. And of course stuff gets lost in the translation. The point I am making here is that all of these predictions are so steeped in vagueness and ambiguity that they could literally translate into anything for anyone, especially if you have an agenda like profiting from doomsday documentary making?

Maybe the real question here is why are people so caught up in these prophets and their prophesies? Wishful thinking that they, the believers, will be only ones left on the planet and it will be up to them to sow the seeds of mankind thereafter. So much for the gene pool.

There is so much scientific observations that proves otherwise that it is so hard not to keep a straight face when hearing the doomsday conspiracies. The predictions are just so absurd to logic that it becomes really good comedy. The man who told me about the Earth loosing its magnetic field said that we will float away, our atmosphere will get sucked into space, and only those who choose to live in underground homes will survive. It is the “no atmosphere” part that throws a ringer into my buddy’s plans. But hey, he supposedly got if from a documentary so who am I to argue!

Posted in Diatribe, General, Humour, Law and Order | Comments Off

Post New Years Disorder

January 4th, 2010 Thomasso

Now that everyone is nicely in debt, suffering from the flu, and ready to get back to work, I now must take a step back and see the world that I am part of and ask myself why people do what they do, especially pondering the question of why is everyone so pissed off this time of year? Since the new year has started I have noticed a shift in the people around me, and more so from those who I work with, but this also applies to some of my friends too. However, I think there is more to it than meets the eye?

We just got off of two long weekends in a row with two paid statutory holidays. We went through, for most cultures, the most festive season in the calender; of course, I am the exception as I don’t celebrate the Christian, Jewish or Muslim traditions, but the Season of Tom (sic), which is 365 days per year–I am not a lemming. I enjoy everyday and treat everyday like it is New Years. So most people gave each other gifts and had fun with family and friends, and I am sure it was time well spent, but what happened afterwords, when it is time to go back and renew the year, the week, and continue on with our jobs?

So why does everyone seem so pissed off? Is it becuase the party is over? Hum? No, I think it goes deeper than that?

I think part of the answer is in the frustration that times are leaner, and becuase of the tight economic era that we now live in, people are “taking it out” on the first person that they encounter becuase they are frustrated with themselves . People have over spent. As the cost of living shoots upwards, so does the cost of giving in the monetary sense. So far since I have come back to work I have heard nothing but complaining about how in debt everyone is, and how expensive things are getting. Also, the labourers seem unwilling to motivate themselves as one person put it, “How can I work for this much when it now costs me more to do the job in the first place…” When they complain, the management resorts to apathy towards them. When they come to me, they act sometimes so vulgar and pathetic that I tune them out too.

Take for example the “Coughing More-On.” Today while I was setting everything up to start my day, this one guy comes in coughing and hacking his lunges out becuase he is in the full throws of the flu. First, he shows up at work so sick that he could pass out from coughing so much.  He then starts coughing without covering his mouth. He told me that If he caught it, then it should get it passed around also so he can “give it back” to whom ever he caught it from down the line. Stupendous logic here, eh? I know for someone with AIDS, there is a section in the Criminal Code of Canada that deals with that, and under the Infectious Diseases and Control Act, there are provisions for dealing with those people, but there ought to be something in there to the flu too, especially on the job. But I ask this question, because he is sick, does that mean he must make everyone else around him sick too?

So money and health seem to be the first casualties of the new year. This does not surprise me? I heard on CBC Radio One that the stats on consumer spending surveyed by the Bank of Montreal says that Canadians are confident about the economy. First, a Bank telling us that we are happy with the economy – now that is a joke. But it also says that if the Banks are happy with the way we are spending, and unemployment is still increasing, than that only leave debt as the only logical answer to this social phenomenon. Throw in some flu germs and you now have the recipe for Post New Years Disorder.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Social Justice, Social economics | 3 Comments »

Woo-Hoo, First Post for 2010 & Drawing Cherries With InkScape!

January 1st, 2010 Thomasso

Now, …what should I type? Awh, later.

OK, I am back. Today I am going to talk about InkScape, becuase I am getting a lot of emails from my friends about some of the images I have being posting on my blog. First of all, if you are the unfortunate who is running Window$, and  feel for you, you are still in luck becuase InkScape does run on it, but I have noticed that it is not completely stable in my experiences on the OS. With that out of the way, Vector image programs are completely different from those programs that manipulate images. InkScape does work with photographs, but not in the same way that programs like the GIMP do.

Think of Vector images as drawing with Math, in other words, every shape or element of the image you create is just a bunch of numbers that represents what you are seeing. This means two things. First, you can increase, or decrease the size of the image without compromising any loss of detail. Second, you must render the finished product into a image so that your audience can see your lovely creation.

I have created these cherries.

Each cherry has six elements, or components in it. The two basic shapes, or primitives, are a circle and a rectangle. The stems are made of two rectangles, twisted to curve into the shape and each shape also is shaded with a different colour, darker colour on the bottom, and the lighter on the top layer. The cherry is just one big circle with red colour fill, and three smaller circles, with different sizes, each with lighter colours, with the effects of transparency and blur added to give the reflective look from the light in the virtual room the cherries are in.

If you want to see the SVG file for yourself, click here, “Cherries01.svg” to down load it, and then run it with InkScape. Also note that this was created on  version 0.47 at the time of this writing. Enjoy the file.

Posted in Art, Events, General, Humour, Linux, Photographs, Software | 2 Comments »

Happy New Year! Another Has Come and Gone!

December 31st, 2009 Thomasso

Well, I can’t really say that 2009 was one my best years. In fact, I would put this year close to the lower end of the average scale. I am however, looking forward to this new year for a couple of reasons. One, I will graduate with my BA, and hopefully an honours degree attached to it. Two, I may relocate and find a more permanent home, but still in the Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley. Three, more income.

I hate looking back over the last twelve months during new years becuase it doesn’t make sense to me to do that. I mean why? What is so different from this month to the next, or this year to the next becuase looking back like this sort of puts a faults sense of preceptive on it. I like to look at things by the season. For example, I like to compare summers and winters to each other. I also like it when I can say that last winter was brutal compared to the one before it. It is ridiculous to say that the last major snowstorm last year, but really it was the year before becuase winter started in 2008, December 21, but we think the storm was in 2009–wrong!

But who am I to kid around. It is a really good excuse to have a long weekend! I love long weekends. Who doesn’t love them?

So here we are, another long weekend, another year end, and tomorrow when I wake up, another year to remeber everytime when I write the date on my invoives.

Posted in Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off