Chris Charabaruk

Flaherty shows once again why the Cons are a bad choice

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:36:19 -0800

Everyone knows that despite the current economic crisis facing the world (or at least Europe, the Americas, and east Asia) the banks in Canada are faring better than average, and that before the federal election up here, they were given some additional support by selling mortgages to Ottawa for cash. So, of course, the banks need to be bailed out!

That's the opinion of finance minister Jim Flaherty, idiot neo-conservative and traitor to Ontario, the very province where he lives and holds his parliamentary seat.

After having already injected $75M of cash into banks to help keep them liquid, Flaherty has decided to buy up another $50M worth of mortgages. Meanwhile, there's no real relief for people in debt, nor for the Canadian auto industry, which may not survive the crisis without aid.

This is another blow, of course, to (Liberal Party friendly) Ontario, the same province that Flaherty infamously told businesses to avoid.

Meanwhile, oil prices continue to drop, throwing a dark shadow over Alberta and Newfoundland, two provinces pegged to be top economic dogs just half a year ago, when the value of oil was almost twice what it is today.

The mismanagement and spiteful moves of Flaherty and the Conservative Party threaten to completely unravel Canada's economy, already on edge thanks to our close financial ties with the USA. At a time when Americans are looking forward to a better future under a progressive leader looking to bring real and positive change to millions, we Canadians toil under a secretive cabal bent on growing provincial rivalries and gutting all that has made us a great nation.

Unfortunately, unlike Americans and people of many other democratic nations, we can't recall members of parliament who damage our country. And in fact, the very party that cried out about accountability in government, is ironically the one currently holding the power of government. Hopefully in the next federal election, we Canadians will find our Obama.

Hey, Americans: In Canada, federal and provincial governments have different portfolios too

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:59:26 -0800

I get really annoyed when I see articles like this one on TechCrunch, confusing provincial and federal governments, when the author even bothers to make a difference. Even worse is when research for such articles are so half-baked as to ignore the fact that there's more to the story than what's being reported.

Come on, people! If you're going to report on something, at least get the facts right, and make sure that if the story is bigger than what you're actually covering from it, provide information to allow people to know! For example, with that article, it should be Ontario, not Canada, that should be shamed. Second, the law that lead to the decision is under review and the provincial government agrees that it's outdated. Were the decision held off for perhaps another couple months, it would have gone the other way.

This lack of interest in getting things right the first time, or even caring to understand the issue, is one of the reasons why America is going down the toilet, education-wise, and one of the reasons jobs keep bleeding to India and China. (As Robert Scoble points out, it's not just because of cheap merchandise.)

When I was young, I was always told to think before I speak. Perhaps people who want to report the news from other countries should start thinking before they speak (or type) too.

I'm an idiot, but the sound problems aren't all my fault

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:21:41 -0800

So it turns out that the board supports up to six channel audio, and I just never noticed the additional audio jacks before complaining about the sound problems. An idiot is me. Still, it's not all my fault. While the onboard audio does up to 5.1, the lack of Vista drivers (and my inability to force the XP drivers to install) limit me to stereo, despite me being allowed to configure for quadraphonic (as befits my speaker system). Odd.

Of course, I have to determine this after buying a separate sound card. Then again, it was a cheapo $20 card anyway, with questionable Vista support itself. At least I can return it for store credit.

Neat uses of the XNA Platformer starter kit?

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:06:55 -0800

Image via Wikipedia

The latest version of XNA has been out for a little over a week now, and surely that's enough time for XNA fans to really start cranking things out with it. One of the neat new additions with XNA 3.0 is a starter kit, for building a platform game. (Remember the classic Sonic and Mario games? Fun times.)

Anyway, last weekend, as I was arranging to get the new/old computer from my brother, my friend Terry and I took a look at the starter kit. It actually looks pretty neat, and is complete with starter graphics, sound, and levels. It even has an enemy or two thrown in.

It's a great starting point. But, like any starter kit should be, that's all it is. There are changes to be made in order to create a complete game from it. For example, enemies are currently invincible, and contact with them kills you. Which is okay, as there are infinite lives (i.e. add a life counter). Levels are restricted to a single screen, rather than scroll to multiple screens. Et cetera.

I'm going to mess around with the starter kit, and see how it can be turned into a complete game. However, I'm sure there's still many people out there who've already begun that process. What have you come up with, so far? Let's see your games in progress!

SoundMAX + Vista = Pain and fail

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:31:43 -0800

Pretty much what it says. So, I got my brother’s old PC, and I’ve been spending most of my waking time getting Vista and various programs installed and happy. Unfortunately I’ve hit on a major stumbling block. The motherboard has no official Vista support (and indeed is out of manufacturer support) and there’s no working, usable audio.

I’ve spent the last six hours or so trying to find working audio drivers for the board, an Intel 845PEBT2 (which, apparently, has a SoundMAX audio controller, according to my brother). I’ve downloaded and tried to install various different AC ‘97 drivers, each time foiled by one problem or another. I’ve gone in pages-deep searches of Google for anything pertaining to 82801DB and Vista, always running into another download which doesn’t do anything but waste bandwidth. After one last attempt at installing drivers (foiled by Device Manager), I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing I can do is try to find a PCI audio card supported by Vista.

Any suggestions?

Might be getting a decent loaner system

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:01:20 -0700

Continuing from my earlier bad news story, my brother might be loaning me his old computer for an indeterminate time. It’s quite a bit newer than the Pentium II, and can even run Oblivion (although Fallout 3 would tax its poor little brain too much). The trick would be getting it home from Oshawa, and I’d need to get a new hard drive into it as he doesn’t want me to reformat the one currently in the machine. While this is no permanent solution, if I get it home after this weekend then I don’t have to worry so much about working on Drupal Publisher, as Live Photo Gallery works fine on Windows XP.

I’ll still need a new machine, but it’s no longer such an urgent situation. (Insert sigh of relief here.) I wouldn’t mind getting a Eee PC for portable computing, but I’d still want a powerful desktop solution for gaming and Vista development. The Eee is a neat little system, too — my friend Frazer has one and so I’ve been able to give it a spin. The limited screen space isn’t all that great, but it does pack some decent power, enough that newer models can apparently run the latest milestone builds of Windows 7. And they’re getting rid of the smaller screens now, too, so perhaps one of the latest Eee PCs would be all I need.

Anyway, I should get some sleep (although I probably won’t). Looks like things will turn out okay, if not great, after all.

Microformat support comes to Windows Live Writer, kind of

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:39:48 -0700

There’s a new microformats toolkit in town, called Oomph. The toolkit is three parts: An add-on for Internet Explorer, a plug-in for Live Writer, and a website toolkit including a jQuery based overlay and some CSS stylesheets for beautifying microformats used on a website. I’m trying out the Live Writer plug-in.

Unfortunately, it shows that more attention has been paid to the overlay and IE add-on. So far, all it does is provide a quick and dirty form for adding an hCard, in block form, to a blog post. As yet, there’s no hCalendar support, nor a way to take a person’s name and make it into an inline hCard. That would probably be much more useful, except to people who are trying to turn a blog into an online rolodex or something.

Still, it’s a good start. For someone who knows their way around HTML to begin with, taking the hCards as generated by the Oomph plug-in for Live Writer and making them inline shouldn’t take much time or energy, and it’ll certainly be easier to do than adding an hCard by hand (as I’ve done in the past on the site). Perhaps the Oomph developers will soon add hCalendar support, inline support, and build a nicer user experience.

Tim Kadlec - Microsoft Gives Microformats a Little Oomph!

Bad news: I'm getting downgraded

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:44:34 -0700

I need a new computer, right away. As of Tuesday I’ll be stuck with a ten year old Pentium II again, running (at best) Windows 2000. No more laptop. Doesn’t look like I’ll be getting a new computer for Christmas, either.

At this point, it looks like the end of my computer programming life. (Yay for pessimism.) Anyone able to help turn my frown upside down? Let me know. And quickly.

Right now I’m looking at possibilities for the survival of Drupal Publisher. I should still be able to work on it, but testing it won’t be much of a possibility. After all, Visual Studio 2008 doesn’t run on Win2k (although 2005 does, and I still have my VS2005 discs) and Live Photo Gallery requires at least Windows XP (and really, they aren’t joking about Vista being preferred).

Any companies in the greater Toronto area looking for a coder willing to work for little more than food and transit money? Please, get in touch!

I'm home again

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:25:34 -0700

I’ve been home since about 1pm, but thanks to all the e-mail I still received (an inordinate amount being from people I personally told I was going to be away, not from spam and e-mail newsletters) it’s taken me several hours just to clear out that backlog and unwind from it.

I might have some real content later today, although I doubt it. Enjoy the new Amazon box on the left sidebar, perhaps buy some books through it.

Gone for a week, back October 27

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:36:58 -0700

I’ll be offline for a while, and during that time there’ll be no updates to coldacid.net. I won’t be back until Monday October 27, actually. I’ll be spending the time with my lovely fiancée and preparing for NaNoWriMo, in a much more relaxed environment than home. I might be able to get the occasional tweet out, but I doubt that will actually happen!

Consider it a vacation.

When I get back, I have two or three successive weeks of presentations at Toronto Go-Getters, of which only one is something I need to actually write myself (the other two are educational modules). On top of that, I need to finish adding certain metadata support to Drupal Publisher and test it out, before releasing an update. I hoped to have squeezed that out during this week, but no luck. C’est la vie.

Well, enjoy your Chris-free week, and I’ll see you all back in ten days.

Chris Charabaruk

Flaherty shows once again why the Cons are a bad choice

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Hey, Americans: In Canada, federal and provincial governments have different portfolios too

I'm an idiot, but the sound problems aren't all my fault

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SoundMAX + Vista = Pain and fail

Might be getting a decent loaner system

Microformat support comes to Windows Live Writer, kind of

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Bad news: I'm getting downgraded

I'm home again

Gone for a week, back October 27