I Refuse To Blog

The Man Cave

2012-01-23T23:20:00.004-05:00

It has been a long time, so I thought I would give a quick update on what has been keeping me busy lately (apart from family, work, and life in general of course). Last year I decided I needed a workshop. I was tired of spending an hour to move cars, arrange machinery, clean up, move machinery, and move cars again, every time I wanted to cut a piece of wood. Not to mention the fact that I could never do anything that required any sort of setup as I couldn't afford to leave things in any sort of steady state (besides "put away") for more than a weekend.

So I started digging.

This is what I started with:

And many, many (*MANY*) wheelbarrow loads later, I was part-way done:

And with a lot of sweat and some help from my good friend Todd, I got even further.

In the process, I was in between many a hard place and these:

But eventually, I got it to the point where I was ready to do something with the space.

And with a lot of understanding from my wife, and a lot of help from my brother, my dad, once again Todd, and the rest of my family and friends, I finally got the beginnings of a workshop.

And with a little more blood, sweat, and swears (and a significant amount of money), and some more help from Todd and my friend John, I have my very own Man Cave.

And tonight, Todd and I used that Man Cave to finish up this little beauty:

I want to say a huge "Thank You" to everyone who helped me make this little workshop a reality. I certainly have a fair amount of work left when the weather warms up again, but having this space to work in is awesome.

All I need now is a beer fridge and a scotch dispenser!
Stay tuned for more posts in the future!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T13:06:00.002-05:00

I hope you all have a good one. Perhaps I'll even post something else here in 2012.

Today's Linux Nugget

2010-09-06T12:15:00.004-04:00

I've been using Linux almost exclusively for quite a few months now and I have been avoiding setting up my printer until I needed it because it is connected via a USB to parallel port adapter and it didn't work out of the box. Linux seems to have no idea it is there.

Well, today I needed it. I rolled up my sleeves and got ready for frustration, but it wasn't that bad. Contrary to what I thought, there is no driver that I needed to install for the USB to parallel adapter. In fact, it was already installed.


~$ ls /dev/u*
/dev/urandom  /dev/usblp0  /dev/usbmon0  /dev/usbmon1  /dev/usbmon2

It is right there as /dev/usblp0. But the printing system in Gnome seems to know nothing about it. So how do I add my printer?

Assuming you are running Ubuntu 10.04 as I am: Select System > Administration > Printing, click the Add button, then select Other in the devices list. Now enter the magical device URI:


parallel:/dev/usblp0

Add your printer using the built-in Linux driver and voila!

More Baking

2010-09-05T20:13:00.001-04:00

I got around to making supper tonight, and some Chelsea Buns! I hope these taste OK because I have never actually made them before.

Pizza!

2010-09-05T14:44:00.004-04:00

Here are some pictures of the pizzas we made yesterday. We have been making one fancy one (prosciutto ham, sun-dried tomatoes, black olives, pesto) and the usual "kitchen sink" pizza. They are both good. The crust turned out a little thinner than it should have, but that was because I was pushing it to fit the two large pizza stones.

I think today I am going to try to make Chelsea Buns!

Long Weekend

2010-09-04T16:28:00.004-04:00

This weekend is a long one in Canada as Monday is Labour Day. We don't really have any plans, but personally I'd like to get the following done in no particular order:

Bake some bread

Play lots of guitar

Work on the latest amplifier cabinet

Clean out all the old computer carcasses lying around my basement

Seeing as it is freezing cold and raining, it should be a good weekend to get some indoor stuff done.

Since we didn't have our usual Friday night home-made pizza last night, we're doing it tonight. We've been making some rather nice pizzas lately. Perhaps I'll post some pictures later tonight before we eat them!

I'm Selling My Bike

2010-09-01T23:37:00.003-04:00

Let me know if you are interested!

From Motorcycle

Click here for the Kijiji ad.

Clearing Out The Cobwebs

2010-03-14T16:26:00.003-04:00

So it has been months since my last post. It really doesn't feel that long, but I guess time flies whether you're having fun or not. I recently saw the movie Julie and Julia, and it made me want to get back to posting on a more regular basis. I'm also thinking about actually making a webpage beyond the 'Coming Soon' that has been on my domain for years. At the very least I can point it here.

I've had some big changes personally this year, the largest being my slight change in career (again). I am still with the same company, but I have switched roles after more than 7 years of software development to more of an applications engineering position. What does that mean? Well, mostly it means I am doing 100 things at once instead of 2 or 3 - which I think fits better with my personality. It also means I'm dealing more with customers and will be travelling a bit. But the two biggest reasons I made the switch was to learn something completely new, and for a change of pace. I guess only time will tell if it was the right move or not.

Tomorrow we're heading to Mont Tremblant for March Break. I've never been there in the winter before, and I plan to do a lot of skiing, relaxing, eating and drinking. And there will probably be a few games of Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Citadels in there as well with Todd and Paulina. I am really looking forward to it.

I suppose I had better start packing...

Cool Relative Size Visualization

2009-10-31T16:51:00.005-04:00

This is very cool (click the image to go to the site):

(URL is http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/)

Now I know how big a water molecule is in relation to a sperm cell!

The image and original link came courtesy of Make: Online.

RichCopy

2009-10-23T23:07:00.004-04:00

This little gem of a utility saved me a lot of time (after wasting a good deal of it) the other night.

RichCopy

If you're like me and sometimes just can't be bothered figuring out arcane command lines (I fought with xcopy and robocopy before finding this), you may find this utility handy if you're a Windows user. I was trying to copy a DVD with many corrupted files on it and xcopy was incrementally choking (even with ignore errors turned on it was failing - go figure).

Anyway, two thumbs up on RichCopy.

Moon Shot

2009-10-09T08:18:00.002-04:00

Here's hoping they don't set off a chain reaction that sends all spiraling into a black hole.

Has It Been That Long?

2009-07-26T18:34:00.003-04:00

Has it really been March since I last posted? Man, this has been a busy spring and summer! I don't actually have time to post right now as there is a break in the clouds and I need to get back to stripping paint off of my garage doors, but I'll post soon. And hey, this counts as a post as well.

New Toy

2009-03-23T23:07:00.004-04:00

I am now the proud owner of one of these:

Now to figure it out and set it up...

Testing SyntaxHighlight 2.0

2009-03-23T20:45:00.007-04:00

This is a test of my new syntax highlighter.

This should be Python:


class A(object):
    pass

def a_func(arg):
    return A()

This should be some Java code:


/**
 * A doc string
 */
public static Object aMethod(int arg) {
    Object a = new Object();
    return a;
}

And finally XML:


<element attribute="value">
  <nested attribute="value">
  </nested>
</element>

That is all.

Update

2009-03-17T16:31:00.004-04:00

Just a quick update since I have not posted in so long. What have I been up to?

Well, I am currently on my second week this year of unpaid leave that my company has forced us to take. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess it is better than losing my job, but I would obviously rather be working and making money. This week is March Break here for the kids, so between keeping them busy and pet-sitting my brother's golden retriever Charlie while they are in Florida, I haven't really accomplished anything yet. It is only Tuesday, so I guess there is still hope.

Things I want to personally accomplish this week include:

Getting some work done on the next batch of guitar amps that Todd and I are designing.

Play around with and learn JavaScript.

Other things on the TODO list:

Become a rock star.

Solve the world's energy problems.

Come up with a unified theory of everything.

I figure if I at least solve the last item, that *should* take care of the second-last one, and perhaps the rest will come naturally. For now, I'm off to make some juicy burgers for dinner. We have to enjoy this beautiful, 14 degree weather while we have it!

Clean Power

2009-01-25T22:27:00.004-05:00

As part of my guitar effects house-cleaning I thought I would build a real 9VDC power supply rather than the mish-mash of batteries and hacked up wall wart that I use now. I also wanted to learn Eagle as it is always touted as the best, free CAD package out there for hobby electronics. I decided to start with this circuit for an adjustable power supply from Tonepad. Tonepad is great, but I think a lot of their layouts aren't the greatest since they don't try to minimize the amount of copper you must etch off of the copper-clad board. As a result, etching takes longer and you end up using more ferric chloride. This isn't really a concern, but I figured I could come up with an more optimal layout, and basically used this as an excuse to learn Eagle. I've never actually designed a single layer PCB before (my previous designs have been double-layer boards, ordered online from ExpressPCB), and never realized how difficult it was to route things given the single-layer design constraint. As a result, it took me much longer than I expected. I ended up with this layout:

I think it turned out alright, and I learned a lot in the process. Eagle is definitely much harder to use than ExpressPCB, but it has quite a bit more functionality (most of which I don't know how to use).

I also decided to experiment with Sharon's scrapbooking machine while I was at it. Instead of trying the usual toner-transfer method of etching the PCB, I thought I would try cutting the mask out of vinyl and etching the board that way. I loaded up her Klic-n-Kut, and cut out the layout which I had exported from Eagle.

I then applied the mask to the copper clad board. If you look really close you will see that the mask produced by Sharon's machine actually isn't all that great. I am on the very edge of the capability of her machine in terms of size. Basically, the size of the pattern I am trying to cut is so small, the machine can't produce it (the knife works by pivoting around a slightly off-center pivot point, which is about the size of one of the corners in my layout). There may be various ways around this, but I may just end up going back to the toner-transfer method for future layouts.

After about 15 minutes in ferric chloride, I had a PCB for my power supply.

All that was left was to drill the PCB and mount the components. After a bit of smoke (I soldered in one of the diodes backwards...oops!), the result was a working 9VDC power supply for my future guitar effects projects.

From Effects Pedals

Lots of Snow!

2009-01-25T22:19:00.002-05:00

We got an email from Michelle the other day saying it was snowing in Scotland. That's nothing compared to the mass of white stuff we've received over the past week or so. Check out these pictures I took a week ago!

From Winter 2009

This was as the snow was still falling, and we got quite a bit more overnight. We had a bit of a warm spell during the week and a bunch of snow melted, but we still have a good amount lying around. To be honest I'm pretty sick of winter right now and can't wait for spring to arrive!

Validating Archive Contents With Ant

2009-01-15T09:15:00.008-05:00

Have you ever wanted a quick way of validating the contents of an archive as part of your Ant build? I'm sure there are many ways to accomplish this, the most straightforward being to inflate it to a temporary directory, but yesterday I crafted up this little nugget to validate an archive in-place and it seems to work great. And the best part is there's no messy cleanup needed afterwards!


<!-- Compute the difference of the actual JAR and the expected zip entries -->
<resources id="artifact.set.discrepancies">
  <difference>
    <!-- Create a resource set from the actual archive -->
    <zipfileset src="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" includes="**/*" />
    <!-- Create a resource set of expected items -->
    <resources>
      <zipentry archive="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" name="afile.ext"/>
      <zipentry archive="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" name="anotherfile.ext"/>
      <zipentry archive="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" name="a/path/to/afile.ext"/>
      <zipentry archive="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" name="some/other/path/to/afile.ext"/>
      <zipentry archive="${path.to}/some_archive.jar" name="META-INF/MANIFEST.MF"/>
    </resources>
  </difference>
</resources>
<pathconvert property="set.difference" refid="artifact.set.discrepancies" />
<condition property="artifacts.verified">
  <resourcecount count="0" when="eq" refid="artifact.set.discrepancies" />
</condition>
<!-- Fail if any differences are found -->
<fail unless="artifacts.verified"
      message="The following artifacts were not expected: ${set.difference}" />

Note: I believe a minimum version of Ant 1.7 is required for the resources stuff to work.

Tonelab For Sale

2009-01-02T15:37:00.004-05:00

I'm selling my VOX Tonelab SE in an effort to minimize my guitar rig in 2009. If anyone reading this knows anyone who may be interested, feel free to contact me. The Kijiji ad is here.

I think I'll try to round out my sound with a few more home-brew pedals. I have a Tube Screamer and a Ross Compressor built. I'll need to find some good designs for a chorus and delay pedal and perhaps a flanger and a simple reverb unit. I wonder what's involved in building a tuner as well. Hmm... Tonepad here I come.

Enjoying Doing Nothing

2008-12-31T16:11:00.002-05:00

We've been back home for a few days now and we are all enjoying doing a whole lot of nothing. Our sleep schedule is all messed up (going to bed at 3 and 4 in the morning, and not getting up until noon), but we figure there is no point fixing that until after New Years.

Rock Band 2 was waiting for us when we got home (thanks for the instant shipping Amazon!), so Rhiannon and I have been playing that quite a bit. We finally unlocked Shackler's Revenge by Guns N Roses - now to find where they have hidden away the Megadeth tune. Rhiannon is getting quite good on drums. If we continue at our current rate of play perhaps Todd and I will have a drummer to jam with soon!

So what to do next? I think I'll open a frosty Boddingtons while I think about that. I love the holidays!

Intelliware Christmas 2008

2008-12-25T17:15:00.002-05:00

While were catching up on events already past, on December 6th, our band played at the Intelliware Christmas party for the fourth year (I think it was the fourth time?) running. Intelliware is the company my brother (along with the rest of the band members) works for, and I just join them every year in exchange for a free meal and open bar (my drink of choice every year is St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout).

The past three years have been at Hugh's Room, which has, to be quite honest, spoiled us musically. Hugh's Room is a great venue with a dedicated sound person and permanent (and great-sounding) setup. We literally would show up, plug in (and sound check) and enjoy ourselves. This year the venue was the Argonaut Rowing Club in Toronto. It is a great place, but there is no sound setup to speak of. As a result, we had to rent all of our own gear and set things up ourselves. We spent most of the day lugging gear and setting up, and by dinner time I was wasted and my voice was already screwed.

From Intelliware Christmas 2008

I wasn't particularly proud of our performance, but I am always hard on myself. What can you do; the bottom line is we had fun. The second set was particularly enjoyable as it was very late and everyone was mostly drunk as we banged out tunes until we were shut down by management at about 2:30am. ;) We still didn't get any of our Rush covers recorded (I think our rendition of Limelight was one of our best tunes this year), but we managed to pull off Money without too many hiccups.

If you look close, you can see Coco in the background (the one with the super-bright, blue LED) in all her tubetastic glory. She worked and sounded great all night. My thanks to Intelliware for hosting a great party, yet again. They really are a great bunch of people. The food (and the Oatmeal Stout) was awesome, and I had a great time despite my self-deprecating tendencies.

Christmas Eve In Tsawwassen

2008-12-24T20:57:00.003-05:00

It's Christmas Eve and we have been in Tsawwassen (just outside Vancouver) since very early Sunday. On Monday the women drove to Abbotsford to get the turkey and spent some time shopping so I got to spend the day with Jordan and Griffin.

This is basically what Drew and Rhiannon have been up to for the past few days:

With the unusual weather, we have been spending a lot of time indoors passing the time with games.

But the real news here is the weather. Apparently this is the most snow Vancouver has seen in such a short period of time in many many years. Lucky us! So much for coming from freezing cold Ontario to warm Vancouver! Here's a picture of Jordan and Tracy's back yard yesterday (before the latest 15cm snowfall!):

At least we're not in Saskatchewan where the temperature has not rose above -20 (Celsius) in the past 12 days or so! I'm also thankful we got here with only a minor delay. The Vancouver airport has basically been shut down for a couple days and many people won't be making it home for Christmas. Some people have been camped out in the airport for over a day with no flights in sight! While the snowfall here isn't all that much (we get stuff like this all the time in Waterloo), Vancouver is just not prepared to deal with it. There are virtually no snow plows to speak of here (we've pushed at least four cars out of the cul-de-sac here - it hasn't been plowed yet), and most people don't even own a decent snow shovel! Wow.

Tomorrow I'll be getting up early and making waffles for everyone, and then the kids can finally open presents. Drew has been counting the sleeps since we got here. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more to talk about and some more pictures (I've barely taken any so far!).

Merry Christmas to everyone!

The Melvin Family Christmas

2008-12-24T20:35:00.003-05:00

On the weekend of the 13th we had our Melvin family Christmas (yes, this is out of order, but I have been so busy lately - working, and now being lazy and doing nothing - I haven't been keeping up with things). Anyway, we made our way down to Wallaceburg and stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for the weekend. Sunday we all gathered in the local hall (our family is so big we need to rent a hall...) and had a really good time. My mom organized the whole thing (I think she enjoys that sort of thing); she got a few big roasts of beef and we all contributed desserts and various other items to the meal. We did a kids gift exchange, as well as an adult one. Drew has already watched Kung Fu Panda a few times, and we are all waiting until we can watch Wall-E together as only the kids have seen it. We forgot our camera in the rush to get out, so the pictures we did get are pretty crappy (taken with the cellphone).

Anyway, I think it all went well. Everyone had a good time, and there were no major fights in the process. That spells success in my books!

Chillin' Out In Vancouver

2008-12-20T16:58:00.002-05:00

Wow - I can't believe I haven't posted since October! I've been pretty busy with work and other things; but now I am officially on holidays for the rest of the year and we are spending the next 8 or 9 days in Vancouver (Tsawwassen, actually) with relatives.

We're staying with Sharon's sister Tracy and her husband Jordan, and we are meeting our nephew Griffin for the first time. We left on Thursday after a bit of confusion due to the impending doom of snowpocalypse. Our original flight was cancelled but we were booked on another one leaving 7 hours later. After spending a fairly boring day at the airport, we finally made it here and got to sleep about 5:30am (Waterloo time) yesterday morning. Sharon's parents are due to arrive today (their flight wasn't cancelled), and Drew is already counting the sleeps until it is time to open presents. Hopefully we'll get out a bit to see the sights and I'll post some pictures.

It is freaking cold here! I thought Vancouver was supposed to be warm and wet? We are expecting a big storm tonight so the girls are going out shopping before it hits. I'm happy to stay put with a drink and a warm sweater on, and just do nothing.

Happy Hallowe'en!

2008-11-01T14:41:00.001-04:00

From Fall 2008

A Weekend At Home

2008-10-19T19:09:00.005-04:00

This weekend was one of the first weekends we had at home (and without something going on like a sleep-over, TaeKwonDo belt testing, etc.). We were blessed with another gorgeous weekend weather-wise, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time outside. Yesterday I had a hankering for leek and potato soup. I'd never actually had it before, and figured I would make it from scratch along with a fresh loaf of bread while I was at it. I went with one of the first recipes I could find online, dug up a recipe for a quick loaf of basic brown bread from The Bread Book and went for it. Although we didn't eat until about 7:30pm, I think the results were worth it. It was delicious (even if I do say so myself!).

From Fall 2008

Today we went to the Liddel family farm and got our pumpkins for the Hallowe'en season. The Liddel farm is a little cheezy, but the kids love it, the prices are awesome, and we like to support the small, local farm while still enjoying the bigger guys.

From Fall 2008

After that we went to the Schantzholm farm to go through the corn maze. We did this last year, and ever since Drew thinks every corn field is a corn maze. We had a long walk through the maze, saw the animals, and had a very nice drive home amongst the fall colours.

From Fall 2008

We ended the day with a nice pork roast with vegetables that Sharon managed to find the time to prepare (whilst elbow-deep making apple sauce) which gave me time to put my motorcycle away for the season. All-in-all, a very relaxing Canadian autumn weekend!

Ant Wizardry

2008-09-10T13:44:00.006-04:00

I've been spending a lot of time messing around with builds lately and that means reacquainting myself with my old friend, Ant. Back in the old days, I always wished there was an easy way to do simple string replacement/concatenation, creating a new property as a result. Sure you could use the antcontrib tasks, but I usually did not have access to them when it really counted and it was one more dependency to worry about. The other option is to mess with temporary files or some other naughty-feeling hackery (I think I used pathconvert once to do something like this and felt really dirty about it).

Anyway, as of Ant 1.7, check out what is possible. Run the following build file:


<project name="test" default="test">

  <target name="test">

    <loadresource property="abc">
      <string value="One two three four" />
    </loadresource>
    <echo message="abc=${abc}" />

    <loadproperties>
      <string value="one=two${line.separator}three=four"/>
    </loadproperties>
    <echo message="one=${one}" />
    <echo message="three=${three}" />

    <loadresource property="test">
      <string value="${one} two ${three} four" />
    </loadresource>
    <echo message="test=${test}" />

    <loadresource property="test2">
      <string value="${test}" />
      <filterchain>
        <replaceregex pattern="f(ou)r" 
                      replace="f\1l"
                      flags="g"/>
      </filterchain>
    </loadresource>
    <echo message="test2=${test2}" />

  </target>

</project>

And you will see this output:


C:\testing\>ant -f testbuild.xml
Buildfile: testbuild.xml

test:
     [echo] abc=One two three four
     [echo] one=two
     [echo] three=four
     [echo] test=two two four four
     [echo] test2=two two foul foul

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

I wish I had this in my back pocket about four years ago...

Mandatory Software

2008-09-01T21:43:00.005-04:00

As Doug has already mentioned, an interesting product from Google is being released tomorrow: Google Chrome. I guess the rumors were true after all! Since I have recently re-formatted my computer and I am currently in the midst of re-installing all of my applications, their timing is relatively good.

I discovered something interesting while re-installing software on my PC. After re-ghosting my machine (and installing various hardware drivers, Windows XP Service Pack 3, and a large number of updates), I installed the following software first:

Opera
Google Talk
Steam (and various games...)
Python
7zip
Eclipse + PyDev
Vuse (formerly Azureus)
Irfanview
Notepad++
Foxit PDF Reader
...various other programs...

So Eclipse wasn't the first thing I installed, but it was quite near the top; and Vuse uses SWT under the covers so that's a pretty good showing for Eclipse-sponsored software in my little world. Also keep in mind this is my home PC, not my work laptop - so this list is not particularly tailored to full-on software development (hence the Steam install). I'll have to do another list when my work computer gets reincarnated. ;o)

I remember the Python blogging community chipping in about what programs they use daily (and would install first on a new machine) and it was quite interesting. I wonder what other people's short list might look like?

A Tale of Three Partitions

2008-08-30T21:51:00.009-04:00

Lately my home PC has had issues, the most annoying of which being that it would fail to install any Windows Installer (.msi) based product unless I dropped to a command line and forced it to install manually using:

runas /user:Administrator "msiexec.exe /i C:\full\path\to\installer.msi"

This was getting really annoying, and I have also been having my 13-in-1 card reader sporadically "go missing". I have a fairly new Dell XPS 710, and it is a pretty sweet machine. I can't complain about this thing as it is built like a tank and it is definitely a luxury model compared to past PCs I've had. Dell really knows how to build a machine.

Anyway, the Windows Installer thing has been bugging me for weeks because I have flexed all of my significant geek muscle trying to fix this problem and have come up empty handed. I was quite proud when I figured out the "runas" workaround (without it all installers just flash up a window and silently fail), but the fact that I cannot fix this problem just drives me nuts. I've tried removing almost every Windows-based component (.NET, Silverlight, etc.) and hacked around in the registry all to no end. So yesterday I decided to buy a second 500GB hard drive, and start from scratch (preserving my significant amount of data on the original 500GB drive).

Last night I started out by downloading a copy of the Linux-based Clonezilla LiveCD, and I used it to successfully clone my old drive to the new one. I knew from previous hacking that there were two other partitions on my hard drive besides my main data partition and I figured these were special Dell system partitions involved in the restore process and further investigation showed that they were in fact partitions containing the Dell diagnostics as well as a ghost image of the factory default WinXP installation. I basically now had two disks containing the following:


+------+--------------+-----------------+
| 47MB |   496GB NTFS | 3GB System      |
| Diag |   (Windows)  |    Restore      |
+------+--------------+-----------------+

Sure enough, I was able to boot from either drive and ended up with an identical working installation of Windows XP. So the next step was to restore the factory default disk image. I had what I thought was a recovery CD and proceeded to boot from it. It turns out, it was not a recovery CD, but a re-installation CD. I figured there was a chance it would still somehow use the system partitions to install the old factory image onto my 496GB NTFS partition. Well, it installed Windows, but it did not restore the factory install - it just installed Windows. As a result, most of my hardware did not work; not even my network card so I couldn't even access the internet to figure out what to do next!

So I decided to boot from a boot disk and have a look around the third 3GB partition and found there to be a couple batch files and executables (basically Norton Ghost), and a ghost image that *was* a backup of my factory default. I was able to manually run recover.exe and restore the ghost image to my NTFS partition, but when I rebooted I was greeted with an error message that indicated Windows setup was not completed properly and to install again. Weird. At this point I figured there *has* to be a way to restore my machine from this ghost image using Dell's built-in support for this. A little Googling revealed I should be able to simply press Ctrl+F11 after the initial boot screen to initiate the restore procedure. After trying this, I was greeted with the error message Cannot recover. Much more searching and I found this very informative Dell forum thread:
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_other&message.id=274416&query.id=299988#M274416

This ultimately led me to this website which contains a very detailed breakdown of the Dell system partitions, what they contain, and how they are used during the boot process. There are also utilities there for fixing your master boot record code, partition types, and more. Wow, this looked like just the ticket! However, after repairing everything (my MBR code and partition types were messed up during the cloning/re-installing of Windows process) I was still not able to get Dell's built-in recovery procedure to work.

Eventually, I tried resetting the partition types on the original disk to be normal FAT16 and FAT32 partitions (as opposed to special, hidden partitions) using the ptedit.exe utility, then re-cloning them to the new disk with Clonezilla, resetting them *back* to hidden, then attempting to recover by manually running recover.exe, as suggested by the owner of goodell.net in another thread. It was suggested that perhaps the source partitions being configured as odd, hidden types would confuse the cloning software causing things to be cloned incorrectly. Setting the partition types to standard FAT16 and FAT32 types before cloning may alleviate this problem. This time after restoring from the ghost image and rebooting it worked, and I am up and running with a fresh installation of Windows XP (with no Windows Installer issue!). Now to re-install all of the programs I use every day, and slowly migrate my data over from the old drive.

On a positive note, I can't say enough about the build quality of Dell computers. I have 6 SATA ports on my motherboard, and this computer comes with a neatly routed power connection and SATA cable to every drive bay in my machine. Also, every drive bay has a plastic drive carrier inserted in each location. The amount of money you save in not having to purchase cables and plastic bits and baubles alone is staggering. Finally, there are no fasteners required on anything. There is a spring-loaded mechanism on everything so pretty much any drive or component can be removed by pressing a button or sliding a lever. Check this out:

Anyway, here's a big "thank you" to Dan Goodell for his awesome utilities and instructions. You've obviously helped a lot of people with this in the past and you've just helped one more. I owe you a beer!

Thanks a lot, Murphy!

2008-08-22T07:43:00.006-04:00

Well, it is our last full day here in Scotland and we have no plans for the day except trying to accomplish some more work, and packing up for our flight in the morning. And as luck would have it, it is gorgeous and sunny outside. It is probably the nicest day we've had all week!

I guess I can't complain. We had a really nice day yesterday and I managed to get in a full day of fishing on Loch Rusky. The trout were rising all over the place and while Bob and I both had many strikes each, we just couldn't seem to hook the buggers! I did end up with one small brown trout though, and I had a second one on Loch Lubnaig later in the day that got away before I got him to shore.

Sharon, Stella and the kids went to Ayr (not St. Andrews like I had originally posted!) and spent the day at the beach. They also had lots of sunshine and the kids had a blast. All-in-all, it was a very good day.

NOTE: Since someone anonymously commented about this (on the wrong post) I did *not* keep this fish. It was released immediately as keeping brown trout on Loch Rusky is forbidden.

Still Raining

2008-08-20T17:52:00.003-04:00

We have been in Scotland almost two weeks now and it has rained every day except two. Bob and I decided to go out fishing on Loch Lubnaig on Monday, and planned to have a BBQ lunch with Stella and the rest of the family. It looked good when we left in the morning, but ended up raining pretty much all day, and poured rain while we were out on the Loch fishing in the late morning. We didn't see a fish much less catch one. We still had a small BBQ and I think everyone enjoyed themselves despite the rain.

Tuesday was the nicest day yet and we had a full day of sunshine as we visited Kelburn Castle. The scenery, gardens and countryside was amazing. There are miles of walking paths there and it would take much more than one day to see it all. It was the first nice day where I could get some more pictures and I have placed them all on the Picasa page. The gardens had some really amazing trees including a couple yews that are estimated to be over 1000 years old, and an absolutely huge tree called the Weeping Larch that covered 1/4 acre. Its branches grew into the ground and back out again in a tangled, twisted mass. They also had the outside of the castle painted up in what the call The Graffiti Project, which is quite cool to see (don't worry - it is temporary):

Today it rained pretty much all day again, but we decided to take the day off and Sharon and I both worked all day while the kids watched movies and played the Wii. I managed to get a full day's work in, most of which was spent writing Python scripts to automate a lot of grunt work that needs to be done before Friday's release which I hope to accomplish from here.

I'm hoping for a better day tomorrow as Bob and I are heading out for our last kick at the can fly fishing. It should be lots of fun if the weather holds. We are heading out on Loch Rusky, which is a private loch but we were invited out for the day by our ghillie from last week after a rather disappointing salmon outing. I'd better get some sleep!

Ah, sunny Scotland!

2008-08-15T14:03:00.004-04:00

We are on vacation in Scotland right now for the third year in almost as many. This is a nice destination for us as we very much like the country and Sharon has relatives here so apart from the flight over it doesn't cost a whole lot. But I must admit that is what bugs me the most! I am constantly trying to devise clever schemes of paying for things before Sharon's aunt or uncle does, and it is exhausting! Especially when using a credit card instead of cash seems to be such a hassle.

Anyway, I have not had a lot of time to comment on things but I have started posting photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.melvin/Scotland2008

We have finally got a real taste of Scottish weather. Our previous two visits have been amazing in terms of weather but we have had nothing but rain since we arrived. We have had one nice day so far (which I spent river-fishing for salmon), but the rest have involved drizzle or torrential downpours.

We are heading to the world piping championships tomorrow on Glasgow Green, so let's hope the weather holds for that. There is more fishing planned for next week, and many more visits to the pub. It should be a good vacation!

A Bedside Table

2008-07-23T23:19:00.004-04:00

It's been awhile...but I've been busy. I've been spending a bit of time trying to get a little more serious about music recently. I've got an audition with a band tomorrow night and I have been trying to write a little music as well. It has been slow going, and most of it has to happen well after midnight when everyone is asleep. Well, everyone except Drew; he's been going strong at 2am when I head upstairs for over a week now. I don't know how he does it!

I also got distracted by Todd and his oak. It made me want to experiment a little more with my router table, so I decided to make a very simple bedside table. The plan is to eventually make two of them, but the first one is complete and didn't turn out too bad at all:

Anyway, time to put the kids in bed so I can get a little more practice in for tomorrow night!

Mmm...Fresh Bread!

2008-06-29T00:05:00.004-04:00

I have been wanting to make my own bread from scratch for quite some time ("from scratch" scratch, not bread machine scratch) so this weekend I decided to give it a whirl. I've been keeping a recipe handy for Portuguese Sweet Bread for quite some time and figured that was as good a place to start as any.

Last night I started in on the dough, and immediately it looked like a disaster. Where the recipe indicated I should have a "smooth batter" I already had a very thick ball of dough. I was rapidly spiraling into panic as I had a lot more flour to add, and it already looked like the dough was too dry.

I persevered and continued kneading, using most of the recommended amount of flour (I left 1-2 cups out) and suddenly realized at the rate I was moving it would be 3am by the time I finished. We were heading to Sarnia to the in-laws in the morning so I decided to let the dough rise, wrap it up and refrigerate it, finshing the bread in Sarnia the following day.

After we arrived today, I attempted to form the dough into loaves and things were once again looking quite grim as the dough was essentially like rubber. It was very hard to work with and it was quite a struggle to form it into the required long, thin tubes for coiling and braiding. Once again, I pushed through and quite frankly expected the worst. After forming it into loaves and allowing them to rise for another hour, I glazed the loaves and sprinkled some sugar on top and threw them into the oven.

The result was far beyond my expectations considering how awful the dough-making process went:

And it was damn tasty too! Let's hope that I can reproduce this result the next time I attempt this recipe.

Choo! Choo! (chug chug?)

2008-06-25T10:26:00.004-04:00

I am mid-way through getting my Ganymede packages and suddenly Eclipse.org seems to have standardized on the Mozilla templates. ;o)

It's pretty spotty but as long as I can get through to my super-fast, local mirror I can enjoy 1-2MB/s download speeds. It's just getting through to the mirror that seems to be the problem. C'mon, just one more zipfile to go! I think I can...I think I can...

Update: Downloads complete! Next step: Profit.

Next Stop: 3.4

2008-06-24T23:42:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow (today at this point...is it really that late..err..early?) is the official release of Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede), and for us it marks that special time of year where we ship another major release of our commercial product* freshly minted to work with the latest version of Eclipse. We typically start integrating with the latest Eclipse development milestones around M6 or so, and file as many bugs as possible as we find them in the hopes of getting them addressed before June when the train ultimately leaves the station. Looking back, the move from Eclipse 2.x to Eclipse 3.0 involved a little pain, but subsequent releases have all gone relatively smoothly. There was also that little hiccup when the Debug Team introduced flexible hierarchy, but that was for the greater good (and the Debug Team is always so helpful!) so all was well in the end.

This year's minor wrinkle is moving to P2. There has been a lot said about P2, both positive and negative, but I think ultimately it is a good thing. I have been struggling with it quite a bit over the last week or two mostly due to the fact that we simply have not had time to pick apart P2 and figure out what it is all about. The bottom line is we did not budget any time to port our installer over to P2 or to make our features fully P2 compatible (so much so that I really don't even have a full grasp of what "fully P2 compatible" means yet), but I think once this release is out the door and we have time to suck in a lungful of air, we can enjoy the sunshine and move forward into that brave new world.

I was hoping to have some time to write up a little review about Ganymede, and that task is still percolating in the back of my head. I also have a 2.5GB AVI sitting on my hard drive that I have been meaning to finish turning into a screencast one of these days and I was also intending on finding the time to convert my EclipseCON presentation into a more useful article. Hmmm... Perhaps this summer will afford me a little more time to work on Eclipse-related stuff provided I don't get distracted by winning bread and life in general.

*NOTE: You have to visit this link twice if you are interested as the first time you are redirected to an acquisition info page and some sort of cookie is set to indicate that you have been "informed". Not my design - sorry.

George Carlin (1937-2008)

2008-06-23T08:48:00.002-04:00

Trout #2

2008-06-15T16:02:00.003-04:00

Today I went fly fishing for a couple hours with John and his girlfriend Heather. We didn't head out until after 10:30 so the timing wasn't all that great, but it was nice to get out - especially on Father's Day! After a very unproductive but relaxing outing we were just heading in for the day when I hooked into a fish just as I was about to reel in my line and exit the river. After a wild fight, I pulled in this monster:

I was hoping my next fish would be bigger, not smaller! But it is better than nothing, I guess. And I caught it on the same caddis pattern as the last one. Here is a picture of the fly I caught it on, which I tied the night before:

Another Late Night

2008-06-11T00:17:00.003-04:00

Tonight I had planned on going to bed early. Well, I figured I would end the night attempting to watch a Nova special on neutrinos I recorded recently (I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it), and I only dozed off for a few minutes this time. But the advertisment about an upcoming Newton special caught my attention at the end. Well, as I was about to turn off the television I noticed that the Newton special was in progress. After watching the last half of that I now find myself up much too late yet again.

Where did Newton (and all those other famous science dudes) find the time! I can't even cram in an hour to learn about how much smarter they were than the rest of us combined. I always assumed it was their lack of family that netted them all that spare time until I read a biography on Einstein and found out he was married with kids for most of his prime "thinking years"! Of course, his marriage fell apart, and he was constantly in and out of fashion with his kids but he always had a(t least one!) woman on the line it seemed. I would think that the constant emotional strain he must have faced would be worse than the family duties in terms of having an adverse effect on your ability to invent. Now there was a guy who could multi-task!

But I found a quote in a book about the Poincaré Conjecture that I am currently reading (I am trying to get past my extreme aversion to all things math - cold turkey) that was particularly melodramatic (and funny) by Farkas Bolyai to his son Janos regarding Euclid's parallel postulate:

For God's sake, I beseech you, give it up. Fear it no less than sensual passions because it too may take all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.

Oh well, I'm off! If I hurry I may get a chapter in before it becomes insanely late.

Finally!

2008-06-08T20:30:00.003-04:00

This weekend Sharon hosted a mother-daughter scrapbooking sleepover party. Naturally I spent Saturday night outside on the deck, and Sunday morning getting the heck out of Dodge.

I decided to head out early this morning and go fly fishing. I still had yet to catch a *real* trout in the Grand River since taking up the sport a couple years ago. I spent about an hour Saturday night tying a couple flies, neither of which turned out all that great but they were passable, and got up at 6am this morning and headed to Fergus. I managed to get onto the river shortly after 7am and after the first couple of hours I figured it was going to be a typical day of me casting in vain trying to locate a fish. And then it happened. I got a bite, and all of a sudden I found myself fighting a fish! After a few exciting minutes worrying that I would lose it and not be able to take a picture to prove that I actually hooked one, I landed this small (but HUGE in terms of building my confidence as a fly fisherman!) trout.

The best part was the fact that I caught it on one of the flies I tied the previous evening! Sweet.

I think I learned a lot today so hopefully the next time I hit the river I will have a better chance of catching another (hopefully bigger) fish. Oh, and I threw this guy back so he can grow a little for the next time Sharon's uncle comes over from Scotland! ;-)

Not Perfect, But Functional!

2008-05-25T19:14:00.005-04:00

Now that the warm weather is here I *finally* got back to my router table. I had some fundamental issues when I attempted to actually use it for the first time last year. In particular, the main router plate was sagging in the middle. I managed to score a piece of Lexan (thanks, Paul!) that really wasn't any stiffer than the MDF I had in there, but I figured see-through would be cool, and re-making it would give me a chance to figure out what was wrong and stiffen it up. After working on it all afternoon on Saturday, I had the new lexan piece in place, and even with an aluminum angle stiffener I was no closer to having a non-sag-alicious router plate.

I had an idea to install a tensioner between the linear slides so I could torque them back and maintain a flat surface. I worked late into the night drilling and tapping holes (and removing a snapped off bolt!) and after a quick run to Canadian Tire this morning - it works!

I took some time this afternoon to set up the 45 degree lock miter bit I have (I should only have to do this once) and after quite a few test pieces and fine adjustments the results are quite good!

There are still some things that bug me about this table. In particular, the router plate still is not perfect. If I had to do it all over again I would make it *much* thicker, and probably out of steel or aluminum. I really need to be mindful to keep pressure on the pieces as they are going through to get an even pass.
Also, the linear adjustment is just too sloppy. It is *good enough*, but it just feels home-made.

Ah well, someday when I have room enough for a real shop I will invest in a real router table. It would also be so much easier to fabricate pieces with a few key shop tools like a cut-off saw, and a milling machine! For now, with a little extra care I should be able to make what I need to make on this one.

Swiss Vacation - Day 7

2008-05-11T23:02:00.003-04:00

Day 7

The seventh day of our vacation found us getting up at 5:00am to shower and pack so we could catch a 6:20 train to Zurich. The hotel was nice enough to pack us ham and cheese sandwiches and some fruit the night before as we would miss the continental breakfast, and I snapped a photo from our room of the Lucerne waterfront at 6:00am on our way out. It looked liked they were setting up an open-air market all along the river, which would have been very nice to stroll through if we did not have a plane to catch.

We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, paid $4.50 each for an espresso and finished our sandwiches while we waited for our flight. There isn't a whole lot more to say as we just watched movies the whole way back (this time the Air Canada media system did not freeze or lock up on us), got home safe and sound to a couple of kids who didn't seem to miss us all that much, and went to bed early.

All-in-all, this vacation went off without a hitch; everything turned out great and there were no nasty surprises. We had amazing weather every single day, enjoyed amazing food, people, and scenery. I would like to say a final "thank you" to the people who helped us the most (and who I bugged the most with emails while researching for this trip!) - Alain, Marc, and Christophe. It was also your kindness and hospitality that made this such an awesome trip for us.

I also want to extend a big "thank you" to Sharon's mum (and dad) for watching the kids for us while we were away. I think Rhiannon is actually happy to have us back, believe it or not. But I am sure that will change tomorrow. ;-)

Swiss Vacation - Day 6

2008-05-11T11:34:00.003-04:00

Day 6

For the sixth and final full day of our vacation we left Montreux and headed to Lucerne. This was Friday, May 9th and happened to be our 10th wedding anniversary as well! We decided to stop and spend some time in Fribourg on the way as it seemed like a very interesting place to visit from the various things I had read while researching for the trip. Here is a photo I took of us with the timer on the camera as we were waiting for the train in Montreux. You can judge how good of a week it has been as it is directly proportional to the size of my gut in this picture.

We got to Fribourg relatively quickly with a quick train change in Lausanne. Fribourg is built along both sides of the Saane/Sarine River, and has an impressive cliff splitting the town as well. There is a small fenicular train you can take from the upper level to the lower level of town, or if you walk far enough there is a more gradual, walkable route down. It is an interesting city because it seems to be equal parts modern and medieval.

One of the main attractions to see is St. Nicholas's cathedral. I think you can go up in the tower for an impressive view of the city but unfortunately it was closed when we were there. The cathedral is very impressive, as can be seen immediately in the elaborate carvings surrounding the front entrance.

After a very pleasant and impressive walk down to old town we stopped and ate at the Brasserie de l'Opée. The waiter said he did not speak english, so we struggled through in french and by the end of the meal felt pretty comfortable talking completely in french despite the fact we told him we only spoke english. We had the daily special, which consisted of cream of asparagus soup (Sharon didn't even realise she was eating asparagus - she hates it!) followed by a mixed grill meat skewer with an unknown but incredibly tasty sauce on top and a fruit salad for dessert. We had a nice red wine with the meal, and ended with coffee. When the waiter swiped our MasterCard he said "You're from Canada and you do not speak french?". We do, in fact, speak enough french to follow a conversation but we are only able to participate if the person we are speaking with has the patience to work with us a little, which doesn't seem to be a problem over there. We received no dirty looks or eye-rolls when we attempted french, which was very refreshing. Anyway, I think the waiter's english was as good as our french after all, but I am glad he gave us the opportunity. After lunch we walked to the fenicular, and rode it back up to the upper level to catch the train to Lucerne.

We arrived in Lucerne in the late afternoon and found it to be a modern, bustling city with far more tourists rushing around than any city we had been to yet. We wanted to first find our hotel and dump our bags, then we planned on walking around to see the sights and find a nice place to have our anniversary dinner. We were staying at the Hotel Schiff, and found that our room was one of the top floor rooms with a river view. It turned out to be a very nice room indeed with a very cool view of the riverfront. Here is a photo from across the river (the Hotel Schiff is the yellow one). Our room is the one on the top floor on the right with the window open (if you look really close you may see my socks hanging up to dry as I needed to wash a pair for the trip home the next day!).

We changed for dinner and decided to see the city before finding a place to eat. I only had one thing I wanted to see, and that was the Lion Monument. I would have liked to see the transport museum but we simply did not have time. We stopped in at a few of the churches and local sights, then stopped at a chocolate and gift shop to get something for the kids and Sharon's mum (who was babysitting for us back at home all week!). We eventually made our way to the Lion Monument and I was very impressed. I had no idea what it was going to look like, and I did not expect the exquisite carving we eventually discovered.

After a short stop at the Lion Monument we made our way back to the waterfront. What suprised both of us was the fact that all of the stores were closing at 6:30pm. Lucerne by far had the most stores and shops of any town we had seen so far, and they were closing everything at 6:30pm on a friday night as thousands of tourists were still walking the streets. Wow.

We eventually decided to have dinner at La Bonne Cave as they reportedly had a wine menu consisting of over 140 different wines. We got a table right beside the river and ordered their special which was a starter soup (Surprise! Cream of asparagus again!) with a small glass of wine, followed by a steak, pasta and ratatouille with two more glasses of wine to try, and our choice of dessert. The food was good and the wine was great. The service was slower even than Swiss standards, but we had nothing better to do. Normally I would not mind, but there were times when we had no wine to drink, and no food to eat for significant periods of time. But the scenery and the weather were perfect, as can be seen in the picture below I took during dinner.

After dinner we headed back to our hotel room where Sharon went to bed and I struggled with the flaky internet access trying to upload pictures and blog posts, eventually giving up around midnight. We had to get up at 5:00am to catch our train into Zurich for a 10:00am flight, so I figured I had better go to sleep as well.

Swiss Vacation - Day 5

2008-05-09T17:27:00.004-04:00

Day 5

For day number five I had reserved tickets on the Golden Pass Panoramic Train from Montreux to Chateau d'oex, then on to Gstaad, and finally back to Montreux. Alain recommended that we stop in Chateau d'oex at a place called Le Chalet for lunch and meringue dessert. It is a fromagerie, so if you go at the right time you can even see them make the cheese they sell and use in their dishes. We had a bit of time so we walked around town for a bit first and climbed up a small garden to a temple offering a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside.

We then went to Le Chalet and I ordered a rotis with smoked ham and Sharon got a croûte au fromage – which is basically bread soaked in white wine and covered in cheese. Both meals were awesome, and of course we had meringue for dessert. This was a real experience. You get two large meringue twists and a bowl full of whipped double cream to dip it in. It was amazing.

Feeing incredibly full and quite sleepy, we climbed back up to the train station to wait for the train. We found some free wireless internet (in the middle of the mountains!) and caught up on email and while we were sitting there an old french guy came up and said in a thick french accent, “ASUS. It is genius, non?”. He then proceeded to pull a small ASUS Eee PC out of his travel bag identical to ours (but with an AZERTY keyboard). We got to talking (him speaking fairly good english while encouraging us to speak barely passable french) and found out his wife had just got back from a trip to Canada. After he corrected our pronunciation of Gstaad, we finished up our conversation as the train arrived and we were on our way again.

We made it to Gstaad, and had another two hours to kill before the voyage back. Gstaad turned out to be a very nice place with all kinds of really expensive shopping, but most of the stores were closed and everything was under construction or shut down. We walked around for a bit but eventually just found a bench and sat down to enjoy the scenery and the quiet until the train arrived for our return journey.

For the journey back I had reserved VIP seats at the front of the train. We had a front row seat for the entire ride back and the scenery was incredible. The only problem was, we had the sun directly in our face the whole ride back, and it was extremely hot. Since we were still full from lunch we actually had a very hard time staying awake! After a long ride back to Montreux, we found Alain waiting for us at the station to take us out for dinner again.

This time Alain wanted to take us to the Wallis region for raclette (and more wine). The restaurant he had in mind was still closed and he eventually found another one in Ovronnaz (La Promenade) that served a Wallis-style dinner with raclette. On the way to Ovronnaz we stopped at a waterfall outside Martigny and snapped a few pictures then drove far up into the mountains again – this time through a series of insanely-steep vineyards – to Ovronnaz. It was an incredible drive and the restaurant once again had a gorgeous view of the valley below.

For dinner we had a really good bottle of red wine from the Wallis region, and a Wallis-specific meal that consisted of dried meat and bread as a starter, followed by a traditional raclette with potatoes. The waiter would fill our plates with scrapings from the wheel of cheese he had heating on a special machine whenever we would run out, until we basically could not eat any more! Half-way through the meal the waitress brought a coup de milieu courtesy of the owner. This was a shot of pinkish alcohol that I thought tasted like grappa. Alain did not want his (as he was driving) so I later turned it into a coup de fin for me! For dessert we had a fruit compote and coffee. Once again, Alain had provided us with a perfect evening. Thanks Alain for all of your help and kindness – you made this vacation extra-special for us!

Swiss Vacation - Day 4

2008-05-09T16:56:00.004-04:00

Day 4

On the fourth day we left Neuchâtel and headed to Montreux where we would spend the next two days and nights. I had contacted a former Swiss colleague (Alain) who lives in Montreux about how to get there, where to stay and what to do while we were there. He was amazing and offered me tons of advice in the weeks leading up to our vacation. It turns out he also knows quite a bit about boats and recommended we take a boat from Ouchy (at Lausanne) to Montreux, and if we were incredibly lucky we may even get a steam ship on the particular day we traveled as sometimes they swap the steamers into rotation at the last minute depending on the weather and availability.

So first thing we grabbed a train to Lausanne from Neuchâtel and arrived at about 11:25am. Alain had told me in his emails that the boat left at 11:45 from Ouchy. I thought we may be able to find our way there in the 15 minutes we had available, but we could not immediately see how to get there. I eventually decided to call Alain, and he told me we had better take a taxi immediately if we wanted to make it to the boat. We grabbed the first taxi we could see and the driver did not speak any english (up until now everyone we had to deal with spoke very good english so the trip has been great in terms of language). Anyway, we were able to struggle through and eventually convinced him we needed a bateau from Ouchy to Montreux plus vite. We pulled into the boat launching area with about 2 minutes to spare, found out we got on for free with our Swiss Pass (bonus!), and were on the boat just before it launched. Not only that, Alain called us right back to ask if we made it and to find out what boat it was and it turns out it was the Rhone, which was one of the paddle steamers!

We had been treated to perfect weather all week, and it was a gorgeous, sunny day again on Wednesday. Needless to say, we had an awesome boat ride through the wine yard regions between Ouchy and Montreux, hitting all of the little ports in between. It was awesome.

We had intended on seeing Chillon Castle while in Montreux and the final port for the Rhone was Chillon Castle (parfait!) so that would be our first stop. However, we wanted to check into our hotel and dump our bags first. I say hotel, but it was really a bed and breakfast I found online for about half the price of a hotel. It turned out to be a room with a double bed and a private bathroom on the ground floor of the owner's house, and it was directly above, and thus only about a 10 minute walk to Chillon Castle. The owner of the bed and breakfast was nice enough to pick us up from the castle to drop our bags at his house, and we walked back down. We had a very nice lunch at a restaurant across the highway from the castle and then did a tour of the castle itself. Once again our Swiss Pass got us in for free, and we spent a good two hours in the castle. I could write a few pages about the castle itself but I will spare you the details. Needless to say, both of us found it very interesting and it was worth the visit. After the castle, we walked along the Lake Geneva (about a 45 minute walk) into Montreux to meet Alain for dinner. While waiting for Alain we found the Freddie Mercury memorial statue and Sharon took my picture.

Shorty thereafter, Alain appeared and we had a quick drink then he drove us up high into the mountains above Montreux for dinner. We went to a restaurant called the Auberge de Sonchaux that was very close to Alain's parent's house and it had a terrace with one of the most spectacular views I have ever seen.

We had cheese fondue and wine and watched the sun set on Lake Geneva, and then Alain drove us back down to our room for the night. It was an awesome experience. Thanks, Alain!

Swiss Vacation - Day 3

2008-05-09T13:36:00.005-04:00

Day 3

The third day we were headed to Neuchâtel with a short stop in Berne. The company I work for has an office in Neuchatel and I was hoping to see the office and meet some people there as I have never had the chance to go there on business. A co-worker from Switzerland (Marc), had also offered to have us over for dinner. We got up early, had another great breakfast at the Hotel Eiger and grabbed the train to Interlaken Ost, where we grabbed a train to Berne. This was closest we had come to missing a train. We got on the train to Berne just a few seconds before the doors closed!

The ride to Berne was rather uneventful, and when we got there we had no idea where to begin. We really looked like tourists as we had to pull out the Frommer's Guide to Switzerland that John (a friend from work) had lent me. Luckily it had a walking map of Berne, but we also found a pretty good map of the city right at the exit of the train station. We decided that we would at least like to see Einstein's house while we were here as both of us had recently read a biography on him. We walked down the main street for about 20 minutes when all of a sudden the pull-handle on my luggage ripped off, and my suitcase flopped to a halt on the cobblestones. I had been carrying my laptop on top of my suitcase and it was fairly heavy. I guess the cheap luggage we bought from Canadian Tire was not up to the task. It took me about 5 minutes to bend it all back into shape and get it in a state where I could pull it once again. Sharon noticed that in a sick twist of irony this all happened to take place right in front of the Samsonite store.

Speaking of stores, Berne was quite a shopper's city. I found the stores located underneath the street accessible via storm-shelter-like doors quite fascinating. I have never seen anything like this before.

After the great suitcase debacle, we found Einstein's house relatively quickly and headed inside. The lady running this small museum was very friendly and seemed genuinely in awe of Einstein and his life. I found it very interesting and quite surreal to be in his apartment and to see his desk and furniture.

After the Einstein museum we headed to the end of the street to see the bear pits. There is really only one bear that we could see, and I heard someone say that soon he will be relocated to the wild. It definitely looked like a boring existence, so I guess that is a good idea. While at the bear pit we met a fellow from Toronto interestingly enough. He saw the Canadian flag on my backpack and we had a short conversation.

After seeing the bear, we moved across the street to the Brasserie zum Bärengraben where we had lunch. The gentleman there was running like a madman serving everyone, and was quite nice. The food was incredible. We had Feuilleté de Roquefort, which was basically a very flaky pastry with ultra-stinky cheese in the middle browned enough so the cheese was melted. I am not big on ultra-stinky cheese, but it was quite good. By this point it was getting quite late and we had planned on being on a train to Neuchâtel by then. There was free wireless at the Brasserie so I sent Marc a quick email and we rushed to try to catch the next train to Neuchâtel. We walked as fast as possible back through crowds of people and missed it by about two minutes. There happened to be another train leaving in about 10 minutes time, so we waited and took that one. Unfortunately I think we grabbed a commuter train as it was full of people and made many stops on the way and we did not get to Neuchâtel until about 5pm.

The next challenge was finding our hotel. We walked along fairly major roads for quite some time and eventually found the hotel, but by this time I was extremely hot and tired and I needed a change of clothes. I called Marc and he indicated that there really was nobody at the office, so he agreed to come and pick us up at the hotel and we would go for a quick glass of wine in downtown Neuchâtel and then go to his house for dinner!

We stopped at a small pub (or whatever you call them over here) and had a nice local rosé. We then headed to Marc's house for dinner (slightly late – oops!). Marc's wife Magalie had prepared a wonderful meal of salad, an awesome curry dish with rice and lentils, followed by cassis sherbet for dessert. The amazing food was accompanied by very good wine, and very good company. Christophe (another Swiss co-worker) was there as well, and we also got to meet Marc and Magalie's children (who were valiantly trying to understand our english). After dinner I got to try some Absinthe (courtesy of Christophe), as well as some of Marc's fabled Swiss Energy Drink (basically very strong alcohol made from plums).

We ended up staying quite late and Marc had to drive us back to our hotel at around 11:30. Back at the hotel we called home via Skype and talked to the kids and I had a late night uploading photos.

We are very thankful to Marc, Magalie, and their children for letting us intrude into their home (it was a school night after all!), and sharing their wonderful food and wine with us. We are also thankful to Christophe for being there and providing excellent company as always (and the Absinthe!).

Bloated in Chateau-d'oex

2008-05-08T08:34:00.002-04:00

We are waiting for the train to arrive in Chateau-d'oex to take us to Gstaad as part of our Panoramic Train ride today (yes I know, I have not done the previous few days yet) and managed to find some free wifi. It is amazing how you can take a train through a mountain to a remote location in the middle of nowhere and still find wireless internet! We had an amazing lunch and are totally bloated on cheese and meringue at "Le Chateau", a place where you can watch them make cheese.

Anyway, I think I hear the train coming. I figured I would quickly post something while I had a signal. Funnily enough we just met an old french guy who started talking to us and pulled out of his bag an ASUS Eee PC just like ours and said something to the effect of "Linux is interesting - screw Microsoft!". It was kind of amusing...

Swiss Vacation - Day 2

2008-05-07T18:27:00.003-04:00

Day 2

Since we had such a long sleep we were able to get up early and had an awesome continental breakfast (again with amazing coffee) courtesy of Hotel Eiger. The plan for day 2 was to see both the Schilthorn and Jungfraujoch. Melanie at the front desk told us that would be pushing it and recommended we do it over two days, but we didn't have the luxury of a second day (unless we totally shuffled everything). Since we already had tickets to Schilthorn (the James Bond rotating restaurant) we decided to do that and see how things worked out from there.

We managed to find a train almost immediately (we have never waited more than 5-10 minutes for a train anywhere!) going to Lauterbrunnen, which was where we wanted to go to get to Murren. Once in Lauterbrunnen, we found our Swiss Pass also gave us free passage on the cable car and short mountain train up to Murren. Murren is a gorgeous alpine village with no roads leading to it. You have to take some sort of train or cable car to get to it. The entire place was a ghost-town however, as it looked like they were in between peak seasons. There was a short walk through Murren to the cable car that would take us up to Schilthorn/Piz Gloria, with one stop in the middle to switch cars at the Riggi station. It was really quite freaky heading up to Schilthorn because the clouds would come out of nowhere and all of a sudden you cannot see two feet in front of the cable car. Sharon had been on cable car lifts in the rockies in British Columbia but I had never really been on one before. The angle at which you are carried up the mountain (and the distance you are off the ground) is insane! I swear we were being lifted (or dropped) at 60 degree angles or more in places!

Once we got to Schilthorn, we immediately headed to the rotating restaurant for lunch while everyone else went outside and to the gift shop. It really was quite entertaining to have lunch there, and we enjoyed it a lot. There isn't a whole lot to see that high in the mountains (at least there wasn't when we were there) because the clouds roll in and all you see is white. But there were areas of clear sky and we managed to get a few really nice pictures.

For lunch we had a soup of the day (cream of vegetable) and a meat and cheese platter which we shared. The food was all very good, and the waitresses were quite friendly. Sharon had a small “shot” of wine and I had a nice beer. After lunch we went outside and snapped some pictures, and stopped into the gift shop. There were areas of cheeziness in terms of Bond memorabilia, but all-in-all we enjoyed this particular attraction very much!

After we came down from Schilthorn, we found that there was a train from Lauterbrunnen to Kleine Scheidegg, which was the start of the journey to Jungfraujoch. It looked like it was going to work out quite well and we would have plenty of time to do both attractions. We boarded the train but shortly found out that this was a special cog-wheel train that our Swiss Pass did not cover. But it was no big deal, we simply paid on the train for the entire journey (Lauterbrunnen -> Kleine Scheidegg -> Grindelwald), and stopped in Kleine Scheidegg to see Jungfraujoch. Jungfraujoch is the “Top of Europe” - a trip up to an observation area that is basically 4000m above sea level. For some reason I was expecting this to be all cable cars, but it turns out it is a 10 km train ride in a tunnel carved into the mountain! There are two observation points where the train stops on the way up for you to get out and look out over the mountains (they have installed huge windows in the caves), and after a lengthy ascent you are at the top. At the top there is much more than a simple observation deck though. There are restaurants, a shopping center, an ice palace, some sort of Bollywood-themed attraction (I don't understand it either), and in the summer you can even take dog sled rides out on the glacier. The bottom line is there is a lot to see and do up there and we suddenly understood why Michele told us to do Jungfraujoch on a separate day. We saw the interesting bits and then we decided to go outside and attempt the 45 minute walk on the glacier (which meant we would have to catch the last possible train down).

This walk looked harmless enough, but the incline combined with the extreme elevation had us gasping for breath fairly quickly. We stuck it out and made it within sight of the end point but decided if we were to catch the last train we had better turn back. Luckily the walk down was much easier and went much faster and we managed to find a seat on the last train down. On the way up we were wondering why everyone was sleeping on the trains coming down the mountain. Now it all made sense.

We made it down just in time to catch the last train to Grindewald, and we got back to our hotel at about 7pm, exhausted, but happy we managed to see both sights. We were thinking about what we were going to do for dinner as we arrived at our room to find the front door wide open, and the balcony door propped open with a chair! WHAT!? We called down to the front desk to find out what the heck was going on and nobody seemed to know. From what we could piece together, it appears that the cleaning staff aired our room out that morning and forgot about it, which meant our room was most likely wide open ALL DAY! Luckily the hotel was virtually empty, and nothing appeared to be missing. We had most of our stuff with us, but there was a small portable printer in Sharon's suitcase and it was still there. I guess we were lucky.

After that bit of excitement, we had a lengthy dinner (we have noticed the service here is much slower, but it seems to be a general trend that the wait staff here just leave you alone) at one of the other hotels in Grindelwald, and headed to bed.

Swiss Vacation - Day 1

2008-05-07T18:12:00.005-04:00

I had hoped to post every day on our travels here in Switzerland and I am already four days behind. It has been great so far, but slightly tiring – hence the lack of posts. Anyway, I figured it was better to get something up here and I can embellish with links and pictures later as I get time. So, here we go...

Day 1

On Sunday morning we arrived in Zurich. The flight was slightly delayed but other than that relatively painless. We arrived about 45 minutes late, but it really didn't matter as we had no real schedule for the first day. We managed to get some cash out of the bank machine, authorized our Swiss Pass, and grabbed the next train to Interaken. The woman at the train office who authorized our pass was very friendly and offered us two choices to Interlaken from Zurich. We decided to take the longer, more scenic route (through Lucerne) that was leaving right away. Sharon slept a bit on the train and I was worrying that she was missing all of the scenery, but considering what we would see in the next 24 hours it really didn't matter. As an aside getting the Swiss Pass was totally the right choice. We can basically ride every train for free, and we never have to worry about getting tickets ahead of time. We have managed to ride the rails totally hassle-free, and only had to pay once for the special cog-wheel train between Wengen and Kleine-Scheidegg (which was still half price with the Swiss Pass). We also got into Chillon Castle for free and the steam ship from Lausanne to Montreux was free as well (see Day 4 when it is done). It really was a sweet deal. You do need to pay for tickets for specialty things like the Schilthorn or Jungfraujoch, but we were already aware of that and they were discounted as well.

So, the trip from Zurich to Interlaken was enjoyable (except for some annoying teenage girls that were on the train for a short stint laughing incessantly and singing Mambo #5 in broken english...) and once we hit Interlaken we decided to stay for a bit and have some lunch. We walked quite a distance from the train station looking for a place to eat and decided on a Movenpick. I'm glad we did not decide to stay in Interlaken. I'm not sure we could have afforded to eat! What was interesting were the number of people para-sailing. There were quite a few places where you could arrange to go up (it looks like they just jump off the side of the mountain and ride the thermals), and some of them were waaay up there. I would love to try this but I shudder to think how much it would cost in Interlaken. It has to be about as close as you can get to actually flying though. It was amazing just how popular this was. At one point we saw a cluster of about 30 para-sailers all in the same general area. I was amazed they did not run into each other! Anyway, after a very expensive lunch (which was quite good, but still overpriced by a significant amount) served by a not-so-enthusiastic waiter, we headed back to the train station.

Another enjoyable and very beautiful train journey brought us to Grindelwald where we would spend the next two nights at the Hotel Eiger. We got there around 3pm (I think), and managed to find our hotel after a short walk and checked in. We found the woman at the front desk (Michele) to speak english very well, and she was very friendly and helpful. She upgraded our room immediately to a “comfort” room, and we were offered a welcoming drink of white wine or fruity mineral water. We decided to try the mineral water drink and it was quite good. As our room was not quite ready (the upgrade appeared to be a last-minute decision) we had to wait so we decided to go for a short walk. We were absolutely exhausted at this point however, and figured we would take advantage of the Hotel Eiger's free coffee and cake between 3 and 5. Much to our appreciation we found that the standard coffee here is really good, made with an espresso machine. After coffee and cake, our room was ready, and we did a quick email check, Skype'd home (this little Eee PC rocks) and crashed. We went to sleep at around 6pm, skipped dinner entirely, and did not get up until after 8 the next morning.

By the way, just before we crashed, I took a picture of the view from our room. There was a light rain (the only rain so far - we have totally lucked out on the weather this week) and the sun was glinting off the mountain in a very picturesque way.

Next up, Day 2!

A Little Behind

2008-05-07T02:52:00.004-04:00

Since a few people have this address and given the fact that I am waaaay behind in terms of posting about our vacation, I'll simply post a link to the web album that I have been dumping our pictures in. I have some posts in the making, but nothing ready to be posted live yet. We haven't had much time for writing, and when we are on the train there is so much scenery to see I don't want to have my head down punching away on the laptop.

Anyway, here are the pictures from the first three days. I'll keep adding to this album as I get more pictures, and more internet access.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.melvin/Switzerland2008

I'll get the detailed posts up as soon as I can. Today we are heading out from Neuchatel to Montreux. We are spending two nights there so it may be easier to find some time to post, but I am not sure I will have internet access as we are at a bed and breakfast outside the city.

A Vacation Without Kids

2008-05-02T23:07:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow Sharon and I are heading to Switzerland for our honeymoon...err, I mean our 10th wedding anniversary. We have always wanted to visit Switzerland and we had planned on going there for our honeymoon 10 years ago. Then we had kids, and well...that never happened.

We have taken a few pretty nice vacations so far with the kids. There was a trip to Wales and two trips to Scotland, as well as one trip to Disney in Florida, and really they were all quite enjoyable. The kids were not really that bad to travel with, and of course we all had fun. But this is the first time we are going away and leaving the kids behind, and it is a little frightening to be quite honest. Sharon's mom is retired now and she is here watching them (we're only gone for a week), so they are in good hands but it is always hard to leave them behind.

Ah well, I guess it is only a week and I'm sure they won't miss us one bit. Perhaps once we all get a taste of what it is like to be away from one another for a few days, it will make us want to do it more often! At any rate, what I am looking forward to the most is the week of dinners without the usual 3 hour marathon of whining, bribery, and threats to get kids - who want to do every *but* eat - to finish their dinner. That's worth the price of admission alone in my book!

So, I am going to attempt to post regularly (internet connection permitting) while we are traveling. It should be fun. The rough itinerary will be:

- Fly into Zurich and head to Grindelwald for 2 nights where we will see the Schilthorn (we are big Bond fans), and hopefully Jungfraujoch.
- One night in Neuchatel to take advantage of the legendary hospitality of some colleagues from our Swiss office
- Two nights in Montreux where we will meet up with another former Swiss colleague and see Chillon castle, as well as take a Panoramic Train to Gstaad and back
- Spend a final night in Lucerne, where we will get up early and grab a train to Zurich to fly home on the 10th.

It is going to be a full week, but I think I have kept it loose enough so that it is relaxing rather than stressful. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Now I need to pack! As usual, I have all of my electronic gadgets sorted out (laptop, portable printer, cellphones, digital camera, chargers, etc.) and no clothes packed. Ah well, if I'm poorly dressed and totally unprepared at least I'll be connected!

"Hello World!", said Eee PC.

2008-04-30T20:09:00.009-04:00

So I decided to get an Asus Eee PC, and I must admit I am impressed. I really wanted to get a 9" model, but they are still not out yet and to be frank, it looks like the price is going to be a little on the high side as well.

Anyway, Sharon and I are heading to Switzerland on the weekend for a week of vacation and I wanted an utra-portable laptop (especially considering my main laptop fried two hard drives recently, and is freaking huge - about 6 lbs). This thing is incredible! It is only 7" but it packs a punch (that's what she said) in terms of functionality. The model I got came with Linux installed and to be honest I was going to wipe it and put XP on it. I bought a 1GB memory module and upgraded that before I even turned it on, and I also picked up an 8GB SD card for storage (I only got the 4G model, so the main SSD only has ~1.5GB free on it). I even bought an IDE/SATA to USB adapter to immediately put WinXP (or even Ubuntu) on it, but so far it has handled everything I have thrown at it without a hiccup, including:

Connecting to my wireless network (duh)
Transferring files to and from my Samba server
Connecting my digital camera via USB and transferring pictures off of it (I did not expect this to work)
Gmail
Skype
Connecting to Facebook and changing my profile picture (taken with the webcam on the Eee PC - even Facebook Chat works!)
YouTube
And now...Blogger

My only complaint so far is that the keyboard is really cheap. I don't mind the cramped size so much - but the key presses are very inconsistent and that gets to be annoying real fast. But I don't expect to be writing novels on this thing anyway.

I guess I shouldn't be so impressed. I mean these are standard OS and web services, and I know that Linux (and Firefox) can handle all of this, but it is just so much more impressive on such a small device. I think this thing is going to pay for itself really quickly in convenience alone and I am glad I didn't hold out for the 9" model. This is going to be sooo convenient on our trip! And since it can do all I need it to do for us while we are traveling I think I am going to leave Linux on it for the time being. Maybe I'll start hacking it later, but for now it does what I need it to do.

I love technology!

Hacking At Home

2008-04-14T08:56:00.004-04:00

I came across this awesome hack of not only completely automating an espresso machine with a microcontroller and an LCD, but controlling it all with a Wii Nunchuk controller.

Sweet. Now I wonder if my wife will let me take a dremel to her Christmas present...?

Happy Birthday, Dear

2008-04-13T21:45:00.004-04:00

Today was a milestone birthday for Sharon (I won't say how old she is), so I figured since she didn't want a big party (at least that's what she said) I would spend the day baking and cooking instead. For breakfast, I made my signature waffles. Then I went grocery shopping and for dinner I made steak and risotto (OK, the risotto was from a box) with caesar salad. But for dessert I wanted to make a chocolate cake from scratch (icing and all!). I found this recipe online, and decided to go for it.

The recipe itself was fairly easy, the only problem was that the icing takes one whole pound of finely chopped chocolate! Chopping sixteen, one ounce squares of chocolate was not so much fun.

But all-in-all, the end result was much better than I figured I could have managed on my own. Well, I say "on my own" with a couple caveats. Rhiannon did help quite a bit, and I did ask Sharon a lot of questions...but I am fairly impressed with myself anyway, and the end result was quite passable as a birthday cake!

And it tasted quite good too!

The Future Is Unwritten

2008-04-02T23:56:00.003-04:00

Tonight I saw the documentary The Future Is Unwritten at the Princess Cinema with some friends. It is a rock-umentary about The Clash, and the life of Joe Strummer.

All I can say is - very cool. I highly recommend it!

Hello, Griffin!

2008-03-25T23:56:00.005-04:00

Say 'Hello' to Griffin Hart Hood!

While little Griffin was (a little scarily) premature and had to be delivered early via c-section, everyone appears to be doing well. Congratulations to Sharon's sister Tracy and her husband Jordan.

Chuck Lorre is my kind of guy

2008-03-25T22:49:00.002-04:00

OK, I admit it. I am addicted to The Big Bang Theory. Last week's bit on X10 devices was freaking hilarious:

And it looks like they even took the time to create a Wolowizard YouTube user to upload the video that Howard Wolowitz shot at the Physics symposium on his cell phone.

Priceless.

Not only do I think it is *the* funniest show on TV right now (and now that the writer's strike is over we finally get new episodes!), the vanity cards at the end of each episode are equally entertaining. I think Chuck Lorre is someone I'd love to shoot the sh*t with over a pint. The vanity card for last night's episode piqued my interest enough to find the (un?)censored version and I am glad I ventured to Chuck's site. I have always wondered exactly what it would take to write a hit sitcom, and now I have a step-by-step manual.

Like I said... my kind of guy.

Presentation and Source Code Uploaded

2008-03-20T15:53:00.004-04:00

The presentation for my talk on extension points has finally appeared on the EclipseCON website for those of you who wanted it. There are a TON of notes in there that are quite useful (I think), so it is worth downloading the source .ppt file for reference.

I also uploaded a zip containing the source code for my demo plug-ins for those of you who were interested as well. It seems the Cloudsmith SVN server is down, so I figured I would just upload them as an attachment to my presentation summary along with the presentation. But judging from how long it took the presentation to appear, it may be a few hours before it shows up. This code is completely unsupported, but shoot me an email (mark dot melvin at gmail dot com) if you run into issues. I tested it on Linux, Windows XP, and Vista, but did not test it on a Mac (let me know if it works or doesn't work if you have a Mac).

Thanks to everyone who attended!

Update: I am not sure the code is ever going to appear as a link on the main talk summary page, but you can always go to the Eclipsezilla submission page and download the attachment here:
https://eclipsecon.greenmeetingsystems.com/submissions/view/388

EclipseCON Updates

2008-03-19T21:32:00.005-04:00

Tonight I decided to bail early on the Poster Reception and nip over to the Faultline Brewery for a quick steak and a pint of stout. They have free wireless so I am actually enjoying a pint waiting for my steak as I type this. I remember coming here a few years ago for an earlier EclipseCON and it was great.

After dinner I'll head back and catch a couple BoFs. Then I have a bit more work to do to prepare for my long talk tomorrow. And I still have not had a chance to hack out a BUG app! It is going to be another late night.

Oh, and the stout is quite nice...

Update: The steak was awesome too!

Lots Going On

2008-03-17T15:26:00.003-04:00

Well, there is a lot going on both here at EclipseCon and back home. I now work for a new company (again)! It wasn't entirely a surprise, but it just became official today. I ended up making two versions of everything in anticipation of this acquisition and I even brought along a sticker to "modify" my EclipseCon badge. So now I can finally upload my presentations and sample code under the new company name. I know what I'll be doing tonight...

EclipseCon seems to be starting out alright. I'm a little tired, but I finally got a chance to grab a coffee (I was in line for registration and missed breakfast and coffee this morning!) and life is better now. I sat in on a couple OSGi tutorials that were interesting. Now it's time to see what this year's lunch spread is like!

Sleepless In Santa Clara

2008-03-17T04:37:00.004-04:00

So I just got to my room and I *just* got wired internet connected so I can check tomorrow's (today's) schedule. My flight was delayed and it took me about 13 hours door-to-door to get here from Toronto. That has to be one of my worst journeys yet. And now, there is nothing open here except McDonalds and Jack In The Box, so I just had a quarter pounder and fries for dinner (it is 4:30am my time). Yummy!

And to top it all off I can't get the Hyatt's wireless to work. I can connect to the tmobile access point, and I can even browse t-mobile.com. But no other address resolves, and it doesn't prompt me to sign up (which is what is supposed to happen). The people at the front desk are clueless so they gave me T-Mobile's tech support number. Well after explaining the problem all over again and waiting 30 minutes on hold for a *real* tech support person, I gave up and just plugged in the damn LAN cable. We're not off to a good start. The only good thing about today was my rental car was upgraded to an Audi A6.

Here's to a few hours sleep and hoping tomorrow is a better day!

Spaces Rocks

2008-03-14T20:22:00.004-04:00

So my last post came off a tad negative (that'll teach me to post when frustrated), but the email I got from the EclipseCon bot asked me to give the team some feedback by trying it out - "it" being Spaces. Well, I did that and I was frustrated by the initial overhead.

But I guess I should focus on Spaces - the Eclipse technology - and not AOL's sign-up process. And from what I see so far, once you get past setting up the XDrive account it looks pretty cool. So please, don't be put off by my initial experience. Try it out for yourselves.

So How Can I Use Spaces?

2008-03-14T16:39:00.004-04:00

So I got an EclipseCon email telling me I should share my code using this nifty new thing called Spaces. And to be honest - I'd love to use it. But is it just me, or it is only possible to use this service via AOL XDrive? First of all, I have never heard of this service (I mean, who uses AOL outside of the US?), but OK, fine - I figured I'd give it a go.

Well, I tried to set up an account and they only accept US zip codes. What's a poor Canadian supposed to do? Make up a US zip code, and fake phone number. Check. Well, after 5 more minutes and about 10 tries at trying to figure out why it won't accept my username, or password, or captcha input (I'm still not sure which is wrong - it seems to be telling me the captcha is wrong, but it looks right to me...) I'm giving up in disgust. Their website totally sucks. There is no way to check the username availability without typing everything in and seeing if it fails (forcing you to type it all in again), and I can't seem to type in correct information no matter what I do.

So - I *really* want to use the Spaces feature. Honestly I do. But why is it tied to AOL XDrive? Surely there has got to be a better service than this?? What about hooking into something like Google Code or Sourceforge? Henrik's blog suggests there may be Sourceforge support but I don't see it anywhere in my installed version. Am I missing something here? I'm about to just throw it onto my Linux server at home, but it certainly won't stand up to more than a few people downloading at once (although that's probably all I need anyway...).

But wait! I just read Henrik's next post about using bluestring.com instead, along with a fake ZipCode and it worked (after jumping through way too many hoops)! OK, so now I have an XDrive account and AOL or bluestring.com has a lot of information about me (most of it fake). Hmm...this had better be worth it.

Is there anyone else out there using Spaces? It looks like a great idea, but currently seems to be crippled by a crappy back-end. Maybe the Eclipse Foundation should consider providing some storage space for Eclipse-related projects? Either that, or the Spaces project should start supporting other backends very quickly. I'm a fairly patient guy when it comes to this sort of thing (I sign up for a lot of crap), so I can see the majority of people quitting after the first sign-up screen.

Looking Forward To EclipseCON

2008-03-09T22:45:00.002-04:00

While I am still cranking on polishing up my presentations for EclipseCON (is it March 9th already!?), I am definitely looking forward to a week in sunn(ier-than-here) Santa Clara. Especially after the massive dumping of snow we got this weekend.

And to think, I was BBQ'ing steak a couple weeks ago...

Total Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-20T20:08:00.002-05:00

It looks like it is going to be a clear sky for tonight's total lunar eclipse. Hmm...I thought I would have heard more about it in the usual Eclipse news channels today. The event should start around 8:45pm (EST) with the total eclipse happening at around 10pm (EST). If you live in Toronto, you could always attend the free* party.

*Free? I should hope so! I know I wouldn't pay to "look up".

Updating UI Elements From Command Handlers

2008-02-10T21:54:00.002-05:00

I struggled a bit with this tonight so I figured it was worth a post. I am piddling around with command handlers as part of my background work for my upcoming talk at EclipseCON (should I keep plugging EclipseCON, or is that enough already?), and one of my simple samples was building on the Hello World, Command PDE sample. I wanted a simple toggle command instead of the default push-style command, but I could not get the menu item to toggle state (checked versus unchecked) when I executed my command with the keybinding. A little searching led me to this newsgroup post, and an eventual solution.

The secret sauce seems to be:

Make your class implement IElementUpdater:


public class SampleHandler extends AbstractHandler implements IElementUpdater {
    //...
}

Implement said interface with your required logic (this code is for my particular case):


/**
 *@Override
 */
public void updateElement(UIElement element,
                          Map parameters) {
    element.setChecked(this.image != null);
}

Now, you need to get the command service to call updateElement. The easiest way to do this is in your execute method like so:


public Object execute(ExecutionEvent event) throws ExecutionException {

    //... actually do something here ...

    // Refresh the UI elements
    IWorkbenchWindow window = HandlerUtil.getActiveWorkbenchWindowChecked(event);
    ICommandService service = (ICommandService) window.getService(ICommandService.class);
    service.refreshElements(event.getCommand().getId(), null);
    return null;
}

StSanders Banned!

2008-02-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently YouTube has pulled all the StSanders videos for copyright infringement, according to Wired. I guess it is their policy to pull videos after three complaints and someone complained a third time. Rumor has it Yngwie Malmsteen may have been one of them.

I'm not sure how you can not have a sense of humor about something like this. Just watch this video and tell me it is not hilarious:

Haha - that one has to be my favorite. I can't imagine the effort that went into overdubbing some of these. Anyway, Wired Video is mirroring them all anyway. I guess they don't have any sort of copyright infringment policy. ;)

PDE Nuggets

2008-02-06T16:28:00.000-05:00

I find myself constantly amazed at the hidden gems you can find in Eclipse. Today's nugget is brought to you by the PDE, and is the Plug-In Registry View. I found it very useful while playing with namespace wackiness for my upcoming EclipseCON talk.

Some of you may say "What's so new about that?". Well, what can I say - I'm a little behind the times I guess. Most of my extension development has been done in Eclipse 3.2 or earlier, ~~and this view seems to have appeared in Eclipse 3.3,~~ so I'm sure there are others who don't know of its existence. (Correction: It looks like this view has been around far longer than that; as early as Eclipse 2.0, in fact. It just did not look or behave the same.)

I'm a little disappointed, however. I had this plan to write my own "extension registry spy" plug-in as sample code to accompany my presentation, but this view already does most of what I was going to implement. Oh well, I guess I'll have to think of another application to hack on for sample code purposes.

I guess it's more of a diamond in the rough than a gem as there are still some limitations and little bugs to be ironed out, but it is worth a look. So if you're a plug-in developer - check it out:

Window > Show View > Other > PDE Runtime > Plug-in Registry, or simply press Ctrl+3 (another Eclipse nugget), type "plu", and select it from the list.

An Empty House

2008-02-04T08:51:00.001-05:00

Well, we got Michelle off to the airport and back home last night and she managed to make it home to Glasgow with only one minor injury. Turns out she took a nasty fall one morning last week and dislocated her knee-cap! I've updated the photos in the gallery, so you can see her stylish knee brace there. So not only did she get to see real Canadian snow, she also got to experience our health care system first-hand with a three-hour stint in the emergency room. Welcome to Canada!

Thanks for visiting and staying with us Michelle, we had a great time and we hope you did too (despite your Canadian ice-induced injury)!

Lucky's Laptop Repair

2008-01-31T22:56:00.000-05:00

Recently a friend of mine asked me if I could look at his laptop for him. The screen (both LCD and external monitor) was showing multi-colored, vertical bars and was generally screwed up. I tore it down and did a lot of searching and came to the conclusion that the graphics chip was screwed. Since these are soldered directly to the mainboard I searched high and low for a reasonably-priced one from HP (yeah, right...) and on eBay. While the eBay prices were about a third of the cost of a new one, it was still prohibitively expensive and wasn't worth fixing.

Not one to be thwarted so easily, I kept scouring eBay for parts and busted laptops of the same model to no avail. Eventually, while searching one night for a potential source or method of replacing the chip itself, I stumbled upon a thread in a Mac forum about iBooks that apparently had a known flaw where the graphics chip would flake out. Someone figured out it was due to a poor connection between the chip and the motherboard (rather than the chip itself being screwed) and decided to try to fix it themselves with a heat gun. The graphics chips on most modern laptops are surface mounted using a ball grid array type configuration. If you can heat up the solder underneath enough to re-melt it (without melting the graphics chip or the motherboard, of course) you can fix the poor connection.

Well, since I had spent so much time on this and it was really starting to irk me, I figured what the hell, I've got nothing to lose at this point. So I borrowed a heat gun from a friend (thanks, Todd!), and tore the sucker down again.

I grabbed a bunch of aluminum foil and shielded the surrounding areas.

Then I threw caution to the wind and cranked up the heat.

I then re-assembled it all (with no extra screws, I might add; which rarely happens when I start tearing stuff down like this) and flipped the switch. Would it work....?

.
.
.

OH GOD!

Initially, the screen stayed black for a few seconds and I figured I had finally pooched it for good with too much heat. And then...

Nice. I fricking rule. Although with the amount of time I have spent on this particular challenge, I probably could have earned enough money to buy a new one 10x better. Oh well. That's not the point, right?

Revenge of the Gamers

2008-01-29T08:47:00.001-05:00

Well, on one hand I am glad there has finally been someone to come forward and apologize for propagating the outright lies told by various members of the media about the game Mass Effect, but I think Cooper Lawrence got the short end of the stick. Gamers totally blasted her books on Amazon, giving her a little taste of her own medicine, and while she was at fault for blindly spouting off on TV the real culprit should be tarred and feathered in my opinion. Why has he not apologized? Could it be he was just looking for publicity to make himself feel important, or is he really that stupid?

Winter Fun

2008-01-27T23:35:00.000-05:00

Sharon's cousin is here from Glasgow, Scotland to experience a bit of our Canadian winters. So far she hasn't been disappointed by the weather.

We've had almost constant snow since she got here a week ago, and we went for a quick night-time toboggan run during the week.

Today we had a chance to go back during daylight hours and had a fun day in much warmer weather (although a little less snow).

Heath Ledger 1979-2008

2008-01-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

Hello World!

2008-01-09T22:00:00.000-05:00

Hello, everyone! If all goes well this post should get automatically sucked up and spat back out squarely in front of billions and billions of people by that terraforming umilator that is Planet Eclipse. OK, maybe not that many, but I'm still worried about spelling and grammar.

I just wanted to post a quick introduction as well as a shameless plug for my talks at EclipseCON this year. I'll be presenting a short talk entitled From The Horse's Mouth - What Embedded Developers Like and Dislike About Eclipse-Based Development Tools, as well as the long talk Creating Your Own Extension Points: It's Easier Than You Think!.
(Why am I suddenly reminded of a certain Simpsons character?)

"Hi! I'm Mark Melvin! You may remember me from such presentations as Language Toolkits, 10 Tough Decisions You Must Make When Developing An Eclipse-based IDE, and Who are these people on stage and what makes them so qualified to talk about this topic?"

Unfortunately I could not make it to last year's conference (I've been to every other one) so I am really looking forward to attending this year! It looks like there are many interesting talks to choose from, and I'm sure it is going to be harder than ever to fit in all the ones I want to attend. Over the next few weeks I'll be trying to shape up the final abstracts and material on the website for my presentations, and hopefully I will end up with something people will find both interesting and useful. Oh, and I went ahead and changed this into a BoF. ;)

In the meantime I'll try to post here every now and again about Eclipse as well.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-20T09:58:00.001-05:00

I found this commentary on the holiday shopping season quite entertaining.

Then I noticed a link to this classic Eric Idle song (warning - explicit lyrics!):

Mwahahahaha! I hope my Dad reads this post. Bah-freaking-humbug!

McElway Basketball

2007-12-19T00:33:00.000-05:00

Worst Game Ever

2007-11-20T21:34:00.000-05:00

So a loooong time ago I bought Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End for the Wii. I basically bought it the day it came out because my kids love Pirates and I assumed it was going to rock. I mean, c'mon - swinging the the Wii remote like a pirate sword? how could that possibly not be completely awesome? Well...as it turns out - this is the worst freaking game I have ever played. And apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

The day we bought it - I surprised the kids and we put it in. We were all excited. This was going to be awesome! Well, after about 2 minutes the reality of just how hard this game sucked was already sinking in and my arm was already sore from randomly wanking the remote around like a madman (if my arm is going to be sore from wanking I expect to be getting something out of it). It was obvious Drew could not play it at all, and Rhiannon lost interest pretty much immediately.

So it has collected dust on our shelf since the day I bought it. I even tried to sell it online and didn't get a single offer. Well, for some reason Drew has been on at me to play it again. I say me because he just can't do it at all; but he loves to watch (he doesn't really comprehend the suck factor) me play. So for the past few nights we have been thrashing the remote around and making progress in the game. I don't know how close we are to the end, but I hope it is over soon because my right forearm is so freaking pumped up from remote wanking I can't take much more. I'll never buy a game sight-unseen again.

Guitar Effects PCB Etching

2007-11-16T00:46:00.000-05:00

Tonight I had some free time and since I am taking tomorrow off work to get some other things done I figured I would take a couple hours to polish off a half-bottle of wine and etch some guitar effects PCBs that I have had kicking around for quite some time.

Todd and I had printed out some guitar effects schematics from Tonepad a couple years ago when we etched the PCBs for Model II. Todd recently dug out the press-and-peel and tonight I transferred them and etched the boards. It turned out much better than usual. I think it had something to do with the smoothness of the copper-clad board. This time I wet-sanded it down to 600 grit. I was going to go to 1500 grit but I figured I'd give it a shot at 600. It only took me a few extra minutes to sand the board and I think the results were well worth the extra time.

There are two Ross Compressors and two MXR Phase 45s. Looks like I have a date with a drill press in my near future. In the meantime, I guess I should order some components!

Programming? What's That?

2007-11-15T22:35:00.000-05:00

So it occurred to me that since I actually write code for a living, why haven't I posted anything related to Eclipse or Python (the former being basically my life at least 8 hours a day, and the latter being my favorite programming language). Hmm...I wonder if that says anything about my real interests?

Anyway - on to today's topic. I guess something that has been quite interesting (and also talked to death recently) has been Google's Android and their announcement of the Open Handset Alliance. I still find it amazing that me, being the tech nut that I am, still do not own a cell phone. I guess I have just never found one I would consider a) worth the money, and b) useful beyond making phone calls. I have dabbled with PDAs in the past, but nothing really impressed me. I think I would like a Crackberry, but the service is too damned expensive. The iPhone was mildly interesting for the cool technology factor, but so locked down it was ridiculous. And I could never see myself joining the "Apple crowd" anyway.

But I would buy a phone based on Android. Of course, I would probably go for a high-end model, or even take a shot a building up my own if that was an option. I think it would be really cool if a whole homebrew hardware community grew out of this as well. That would interest me.

What I find particularly interesting about this is how Google dealt with the whole Java <-> Sun mess. There is a very good summary of it here so I won't go into the details, but I am going to make a bold prediction:

The next language Google will announce (I say 'announce' because I'll wager an implementation already exists) for their Dalvik virtual machine will be Python.

Now *that* would be something. One can only hope.

More Router Table Progress

2007-11-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

I made some more progress on the router table today. I got the linear slides mounted and the router bolted in place. Here is what it looks like so far:

I'm still not sure what I am going to use for an adjuster, and I also need to build a nice, rigid fence - but I temporarily clamped my crappy router table fence in place to see how things would work. I really wanted to try out the 45 degree lock miter bit that I bought. I didn't bother to set up the height or fence position (since there is currently no way to do that!) so ignore the misalignment, but I can already tell the joint is going to be really slick.

A Busy Night

2007-10-30T01:21:00.000-04:00

I had a busy night tonight. Dave came over and we set up Robosaw to finger joint some oak for a bookshelf he is building. It worked great!

Since I had the mess going I figured I would do some more work on the router table I am designing for my new router. I got quite a bit done, and basically just need to somehow mount the linear slides, create some sort of manual adjuster, and build a fixed fence. OK, I guess I have quite a ways to go yet...

Oh yeah! On the weekend Todd and I finished tolexing Coco so I could use the amp for band practice on Saturday. She's looking and sounding pretty darn sweet!

All that is left really is to come up with some nice faceplates to finish it off.

Now if you'll excuse me - I am going to go wash the sawdust out of my eyes, cough up a lungful of powdered MDF, and go to bed.

Happy Birthday to Me

2007-10-30T01:20:00.000-04:00

So, yesterday I turned 33. I was going to write some deep, spiritual thing about getting older and then I figured what the heck - I'll wait until I'm 40 to do that.

Beer Machine Awesomeness

2007-10-18T20:07:00.000-04:00

Perhaps this should be my next project...

We're Not Worthy

2007-10-17T08:37:00.000-04:00

StSanders, you sir are a genius.

Sex With Robots!

2007-10-16T22:40:00.000-04:00

According to this site, by 2050 people will be marrying and having sex with robots. Actually, they say that sex with robots could be here in as little as 5 years. I think my favorite line from the article is:

Instead of a woman saying, 'Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,' you could get 'Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?'

In fact, the article goes on to say There are people ready right now to marry sex toys. Really?? That strikes me as the ultimate Catch-22. I mean, I don't have to tell you what happens the instant you get married, so wouldn't you then be married to just a toy?

My New Router Is Here!

2007-10-02T20:23:00.001-04:00

So my new router (the wood kind, not the ethernet kind) arrived today and it is a beast! Check it out:

I can't wait to try it out with the new 45 degree lock miter bit I picked up recently. I'm interested in seeing if a lock miter joint is as strong as the finger joints I am currently making with Robosaw. It would sure be a heck of a lot easier. The setup doesn't look too bad either.

The big thing is having a decent router table setup. The new router has above-the-table micro-adjustment, plus above-the-table bit changing - which for the price is awesome. My current router table sucks however, so I need to start shopping for a reasonably priced one that will allow me to use this new router to its full potential.

Facebook Gets "In Your Face"

2007-10-02T20:00:00.000-04:00

Facebook has always had "ads", but is it just me or are they getting a little more crude? Check out the graphic on the right showing an ad that appeared in my sidebar the other day.

Gee...I wonder what kind of work I can do at home that will make me some "serious cash"? Sounds interesting!

It's Almost Done

2007-09-27T01:09:00.000-04:00

Well, it is another late night and I don't really have the motivation to write much - but Coco is getting closer to being finished. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

And now to get some sleep...

More Amping....Finally!

2007-09-25T00:14:00.000-04:00

Todd and I finally got around to getting some more work done on the amp tonight. We have both been extremely busy with summer vacation, travel, and work-work but we are finally getting back to finishing off the current prototype.

We are now tolexing the cabinet and I must say it is going to look pretty sweet when it is done. It is late so I'll be brief - but when it is done there will be more I promise. Here is a teaser of what it looks like so far:

We're calling her Coco.

Rush Rocks Toronto

2007-09-20T01:47:00.000-04:00

I just got back from seeing Rush at the Air Canada Center (or is it the Roger's Center now?) in Toronto. The music was awesome, the light show was awesome, and the audience was awesome. What a band. As it turned out, every member of the band I am in with my brother ended up getting tickets so we all got to see the show. It was pure music and none of the rock-star bullshit. You'd never hear "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" out of Geddy Lee. In fact, they didn't communicate much with the audience at all but that was fine. It was all about the music anyway and that's just the way I prefer it. They seem to have a really good sense of humor as well (the South Park cameo was especially entertaining) and they come off as a bunch of down-to-earth guys. I'd love to go for a beer with them sometime and jam. ;)

I decided to take the motorcycle to Toronto tonight because it was such a nice day. The drive there was a little hellish with all the traffic and construction and I was very sweaty and tired when I finally arrived after almost 2 hours fighting traffic. The ride home was awesome though as driving back at night was the perfect temperature, and it was dead calm outside. It was quite a nice ride, even if my bike isn't all that comfortable, and it only took me about an hour.

Just Installed Cherokee

2007-09-18T22:41:00.000-04:00

So after struggling with Jetty recently, I have decided to go back to basics and install Cherokee. Apache2 is so freaking complicated and bloated now, I have been using Cherokee instead as it is super-lightweight and super-fast.

Now I just need to add some web pages. ;)

The Drive Home

2007-09-10T23:16:00.001-04:00

So, after our Disney vacation was over we began the looong drive home on Saturday. The first day was very smooth and we made it to a very nice (and very new) hotel in North Carolina that was right next to a winery. As it turns out, the hotel is owned by the winery and has a wine bar and everything. It was a very pleasant (and very brief) stay and we are thinking about perhaps going back sometime to stay and tour the winery. It would be a very nice drive in the fall after the trees have changed color.

Although, after our second day I'm not sure I could take that drive for quite some time. The second day seemed to drag on *forever* and right about 4:00pm I was sick of driving. We didn't get home until about 10:30pm that night. You can imagine how long those 6.5 hours felt...

The only good thing about the second day was the brief stop at the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia. Our CAA route actually told us to avoid highway 19 due to excessive speed enforcement, but we took it anyway because it was shorter. I'm glad we did because that was probably the most picturesque part of the entire drive. We stopped at the scenic rest area here and I took a few pictures.

After that it was just grinding away the miles until we were home. It's good to be back.

Day #5 - Magic Kingdom (again)

2007-09-10T23:01:00.000-04:00

For our last day we decided to go back to the Magic Kingdom and re-visit some of the rides and attractions we missed in our previous visits. It was a pretty slow-paced day and there isn't much to report (and my motivation to post is waning quickly...).

We started the day with the Country Bear Jamboree. It was not what I remembered - but Drew seemed to enjoy it. We then went on a Jungle Cruise that was filled with non-stop (extremely bad) jokes and puns. We then headed over to Tomorrowland and on the way snagged a couple photos with Pooh and Tigger.

In Tomorrowland, Rhiannon and I went on Space Mountain and I thought my head was going to be knocked off the whole time by a rogue girder in the dark. We then watched the Carousel of Progress just to see if it was any different from 20 years ago (it isn't...we'll still be using voice activated ovens in the future) and tried to pick up a couple more rides on the way out (although Splash Mountain was shut down for the day - GRRR!).

That is about it. You can check out my Picasa page for pictures. Day five starts here.

Day #4 - MGM Studios

2007-09-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

For our fourth day at Disney we hit MGM Studios. I don't have a lot of photos of this day as we mostly went to shows and I shot a lot of video instead. When we first arrived, we started with the The Great Movie Ride. It was interesting, but I think the kids found it boring. It made me want to see a bunch of classic movies I still have never seen like Casablanca, as well as some classic film noir.

Next (and the order may a bit muddled here...) we saw Muppet Vision 3-D, which was another interactive 3-D movie. I think the kids liked that one. Then we went on Star Tours - the ultimate Star Wars thrill ride. This was a simulator that was quite realistic (though still not as good as Soarin'). It was very well done and I enjoyed it, but we could not convince Drew to get on it as the entrance was a little dark and scary.

Next we decided to sit and wait for the Lights, Motors, Action!™ Extreme Stunt Show and eat lunch. It was quite a show. Here is one of the videos I shot. Very impressive driving indeed:

What I found incredible was the heat from the fire at the end. We were near the top of the stands, but when the flames erupted there was a wall of heat that hit us. I would think the people down in front would have been...well...at least uncomfortable.

The other movies are here:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5430935464110493635&hl=en-CA
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3019183447712330153&hl=en-CA
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8310865315653744594&hl=en-CA

After that we went to yet another show - Indiana Jones ™ Epic Stunt Spectacular!. It was quite entertaining - especially the volunteer they got from the audience who claimed he was Patrick Roy from Ontario, Canada. Here is one of the videos from this show:

And links to the rest:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8883052261412609790&hl=en-CA
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5595075729076645452&hl=en-CA
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=2254180558691953151&hl=en-CA

After Indiana Jones we decided to go and see Journey Into Narnia: Creating The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but it was kind of disappointing. It really was just one room full of Narnia stuff but we did get to see a preview for Prince Caspian.

We then did some pictures with a few characters for the kids. Drew got to see the Incredibles, and they loved his shirt:

Then Rhiannon and I tried to go on the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster but it was closed for repairs. On the way out the kids stopped off in the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" Movie Set Adventure and played for a bit. This was a pretty cool play area that made you feel like you were shrunk in the back yard.

After that we headed for the exit and went back to the hotel to rest for our last day at Disney.

Lazy in North Carolina

2007-09-08T23:27:00.000-04:00

Well, we are halfway home and are in a nice hotel in North Carolina with *real* internet access (right next to a Winery - although we'll be leaving too early to enjoy a tour!) but I am too lazy to try and catch up commenting on our vacation. I'm going to wait until I get home before I comment on the last couple days at Disney and then I'll attempt to post the rest of the videos and pictures.

Day #3 - Magic Kingdom

2007-09-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

Wednesday we went back to the Magic Kingdom. We started off in Tomorrowland and did the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor comedy show. It was really cool, and I actually saw my evil twin. There was a guy there that looked exactly like me! I tried to get a picture of this guy but there was never a clear shot. The comedy show was quite funny and must have been done with improv actors hooked up to some sort of motion capture rig to time their speech and movements to the characters on the screen. It was really quite well done. And the best part was they singled out people in the crowd for questions and jokes. They even singled out my evil twin but I didn't have my camera on! They also put the spotlight on Rhiannon and made her part of the show as well but I couldn't get my camera on in time to get it on film. ARGH!

After the Monsters Inc. show we went to a Lilo and Stitch ride that was also labelled dark and scary and Drew refused to go on it. It was a good thing because after the DINOSAUR ride, it would not have been a good choice. We then went to Mickey's Toontown and rode a fairly tame roller coaster that scared the ba-jeezus out of Danielle (although she did want to do it again). After that we saw the Swiss Family Robinson house, and then unexpectedly ran into a pirate tutorial put on by none other than Jack Sparrow himself along with his trusty side-kick!

It was very funny and entertaining and Sharon was given a hug as the "Governer's Daughter", although I just missed it on film as I was focused on Jack leaving. Once again, Drew played shy and refused to volunteer. He could have actually been in the show and maybe even traded blows with Jack Sparrow himself if he had gotten lucky, but he was simply too shy. Perhaps if we go back we'll try to catch this show again and convince Drew to get up there.

After that we all went on Splash Mountain to cool down (it was almost as hot as the day before), then took a Liberty Riverboat tour, and headed home for another swim and some dinner.

I apologize to anyone reading this for the lack of timely posts but internet access sucks here. I still have to annotate this post and then I have two more full days to catch up on plus I have yet to upload a ton more photos and videos; and we are leaving tomorrow morning to start the two-day drive home. Perhaps I can catch up in the hotel room tomorrow night - otherwise I'll just have to do it after we are safely back home.

Day #2 - Animal Kingdom

2007-09-07T20:21:00.000-04:00

For our second day we decided to hit Animal Kingdom. We started off first thing in the morning and it was already brutally hot. There was very little shade to be found throughout the day and everyone was grumpy from having such a long day the day before, combined with the extreme discomfort from the heat.

We started our day in the Africa section and immediately went on an African Safari. We saw quite a few exotic animals such as rhinos, elephants, giraffes, zebras, an ostrich and some nile crocodiles. We had to stop for a few minutes and wait for a baby giraffe to move off the road out of the way of our vehicle. The truck we were in was quite open and I couldn't help but think about how little it would take for a lion or some other animal to jump out of the trees (sometimes only a couple feet on either side) and give someone a good swipe. The contrived clash with fictional poachers complete with gunfire was mildy amusing and was enough to confuse Drew.

After the Safari we took the Wildlife Express Train to Rafiki's Planet Watch and had some lunch. We saw a demonstration about snakes and we got to touch a huge Python. After that, Simon and I went on the Expedition Everest roller coaster, which was pretty cool. Then we all went on the Kali River Rapids ride, which was a huge tube that went down a Disney-made river complete with burned out forests and white water rapids. The ride was kind of neat and we got wet enough to cool us down, but it was very short. As we headed back through "Africa", there was a really cool limbo show which I recorded.

We decided to end the day by heading to the dinosaur portion of Animal Kingdom and we went on a ride called DINOSAUR. It was kind of a cool ride where you were teleported back in time to drive a rover in the jungle and look at dinosaurs. The head scientist was Clair Huxtable (it is kind of funny to see all of these Hollywood actors doing Disney things), but the premise of the ride was that the lab technician dude has secretly rigged the time machine to bring back a dinosaur with you, but he has timed things dangerously close to the asteroid strike that wipes out the dinosaurs to begin with. Anyway, you can imagine how it turns out. This ride, while cool, was a complete disaster. We asked them going in if it was suitable for kids (all the rides have big warnings on them, but most of them are not warranted) and we were told if they went on Pirates of the Carribean then this would be OK. What a mistake. This ride was extremely loud, full of strobe lighting, and really freaking scary for kids. Drew completely *flipped out*, and once the ride had started there is obviously no way to get off. We managed to make it through but Drew was a complete mess afterwards and we figured he would never go on another ride again.

At this point we were all hot and tired and ready to go home. We side-stepped another parade, but were caught at the gate by Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy all available for pictures and autographs. I honestly don't know how those actors do it in those suits. They were there in the blistering sun catering to line-ups of screaming kids (and parents). I was only there for a total of maybe 20 minutes waiting to snap photos of Rhiannon and Drew with all four characters and I could have sworn I could actually smell my flesh burning. We finally got out of the park at about 4:45pm, and found the car. It had been in the parking lot all day and was unbearably hot inside. The temperature gauge was reading 38 degrees Celcius outside BEFORE THE HUMIDEX! It was freaking hot. How do people live down here? Anyway, we all piled into the car trying not to burn ourselves on the seats while the air conditioning kicked in and headed back to the hotel for a nice swim in the pool to cool off.

Day #1 - Epcot, Pirates, and Princesses

2007-09-05T22:57:00.000-04:00

Our first day at Disney was going to be a long one. We had signed up for a special Pirate and Princess party in the evening (starting at 7:00pm and going until midnight) for which they were closing the Magic Kingdom. Thus, for our first day we decided to hit Epcot and make it a relatively short day. We packed a lunch and headed to Epcot (although we didn't actually get into the park until about 11:30am). We hit a bunch of the attractions, the majority of which were not particularly thrilling, but a couple of them did stand out.

The first notable attraction was Honey I Shrunk The Audience. It was a 3D, interactive experience based on the popular Disney movie series. The cool part about this attraction was the fact that the entire movie theatre seating was movable, and matched what was going on in the movie itself. It was quite well done, and you actually felt like you were being lifted, dropped, and shaken. There were also times where certain things happened in the movie and the seats would blow air or water on you to simulate what was going on (for instance, one time there was an army of mice rushing up the theatre floor and jets of air blew from under the seats to make you feel like hundreds of mice were brushing alongside the back of your legs). The ending was especially fun (I won't spoil it for anyone who plans on going to see it).

The other cool ride - and my vote for best ride of all time - was Soarin'. It is a newer attraction at Epcot and it is basically an ultra-realistic flight simulator. You are strapped into a seat which is raised about 10 feet off the ground and placed in front of a huge movie screen playing various aerial scenes. The fact that your entire peripheral vision is taken up by the massive screen, combined with the synchronized control of the seating to make you feel like you are turning, rising and falling (and it does an amazing job of fooling your senses) results in an ultra-realistic experience that had *everyone* cheering - even the kids! There are times where you actually thought you could dip your toes in the water as you sail by, or that you needed to pull up your feet to avoid them being whacked off as you zip over the peak of a mountain. It is really a breath-taking experience and the best ride I have ever been on by far. It was simply awesome.

So that was our *day* in a nutshell. We zipped back to the hotel for a quick dinner and then headed back to the Magic Kingdom for the Pirate and Princess party. This was really Drew's only reason for coming - he wanted to meet Jack Sparrow. He was supposed to be available for a meet-and-greet and autographs, but the lady we met in the Monorail on the way in (she was dressed like a wench from Tortuga...and she happened to work at Disney) told us that we had best go straight to see Jack as soon as we got off the train and expect to wait a minimum of 2 hours! We made a beeline for the Jack Sparrow line as soon as we got there and to our amazement we were the first ones there! We were told to wait a minute, and the guy working the door went in to check to see if Jack was ready. He came back out and motioned for us to follow him inside. We shuffled into a dark hallway and I felt like I was being led in to meet Colonel Kurtz. We all filed into the room and there was Jack. Drew was so star-struck that he just stood there staring at Jack and never said a word. Pictures were taken - like this one:

...and we were eventually led back out, at which point Drew was so excited he immediately said to the guy working the door (who happened to be dressed like a pirate and wearing a plastic sword), "FIGHT ME!", and started swinging at him wildly. The guy pulled out his sword and started to defend himself and we pretty much had to pull Drew off of him a few minutes later after he had backed the guy into a corner. Here is a video of the event:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.melvin/Disney2007/photo#5108715873029163890

Immediately after that Drew was asking to see Jack again so he could talk to him. He obviously regretted not speaking to him when he met him in person, but it was too late to go back as there was undoubtedly a huge line at that point. We decided to hit the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as an alternative where we saw animatronic Jack no less than three times. We then hit a bunch of different rides and Rhiannon, Simon and I went down Splash Mountain. We ended up getting stuck inside the middle of that ride for about 20 minutes with a stupid Disney tune playing incessantly in our ears, over and over and over. It reminded me of my first EclipseCON at Disney Land in California... But the ride was soon fixed and we finished and moved on. I was surprised at how many rides the kids went on with me - the last time we went to a theme park they wouldn't go an anything! Around about this time the fireworks started. It was a really good fireworks show, although not very long, and the fireworks were coming from every angle. There were also quite a few fireworks that lit up the entire Magic Kingdom as they went up. It was pretty neat.

The only issue we had was Drew constantly attacking complete strangers with his sword. If there was a Disney worker with a sword that showed any hint of play-fighting, Drew was in there whacking away. But the worst was when a father and son were in the midst of a very tame, mock swordfight and Drew just ran over and started wailing on the dad. Sharon was trying in vain to pull him off and I came over just in time to grab his sword arm as he was about to decapitate the poor fellow.

At this point it was getting extremely late into a very long day and we decided to head home. Unfortunately we could not find our way to the exit. After we did manage to get our bearings, we were completely blocked from leaving the park by a parade. I have to give it to the Disney people - they definitely know how to overwhelm you with constant stimulus. The parade was just over the top, and every float had a flawlessly choreographed dance number preceding it. And of course, who was near the end of the parade on top of a huge pirate ship? Jack Sparrow of course. We spent the entire trip to the exit chasing the Jack Sparrow section of the float, with Drew yelling at Jack trying to talk to him. Unfortunately, Drew went mostly unnoticed but I think he felt like he made contact. We finally managed to get around the end of the parade, and make it to the monorail and later the tram to our car, and we arrived home just before midnight.

Yeah, where's the Conce de Neon Mall?

2007-09-04T21:05:00.000-04:00

So, this summer our family vacation has turned out to be a Disney get-away in Florida. It's been awhile since I have commusicated, and getting an internet connection is kind of a pain in the ass as there is no internet in our condo unit - I have to drive up to the main building to get a connection - but I will try to post some stuff here as I get time.

We started our drive down right after work last Friday and made it across the border to Erie, PA on the first night. We then drove from Erie to Charlotte, NC on the Saturday, and finally through to Orlando on the Sunday. All-in-all it was a great drive - much better than I was expecting! Once we hit Florida, the roads started to suck and there were two fairly major accidents we had to stop for, but the rest of the drive was great. The country was beautiful - especially Pennsylvania and West Virginia - and the roads were pretty much abandoned (and most of them were new pavement)!

Before we left I bought the kids each a Nintendo DS Lite, and a couple R4DSes complete with 2GB micro SD cards to go with them. I ripped a few movies and converted them to a format that the DS could play, and I also bought a couple games (I actually *found* some ROMs as well for some variety...). I can't say enough about the R4DS. It does everything it claims, and it is a great product. Having Teletubbies and High School Musical 1 and 2 on a hand-held unit was more than enough to keep Drew happy. And Rhiannon had enough games to keep her occupied for a couple days as well. The only real issue was that we found out Drew gets very car-sick when concentrating on playing games in the car. It's weird as he can watch movies just fine, but the minute he starts playing a game - he will start to get ill after about 30 minutes. We actually had to stop for about 1.5 hours on the Saturday before we were able to give him some Gravol and he drifted off to sleep for the majority of the afternoon. While we were stopped, I happened to snap this photo:

Now, at first glance this looks like a very touching and poignant photo of a child crying on his mother's shoudler at the foot of a 911 monument. One could imagine a family who's father may have perished as a result of those horrible attacks. However, closer examination reveals that the child is wearing a Harry Potter robe and a Jack Sparrow headband complete with simulated dreadlocks. There is also a plastic bag on the mother's lap, and with some imagination one might realize this is actually a photo of a kid who is crying because he is car-sick from playing too many video games on his way to Florida, and they happened to stop at a mall that had a 911 memorial in the parking lot and his father - who was very much alive - was capturing the whole event on film!

Anyway, commusicating takes so much damn time I had better wrap this up. I have uploaded a bunch of photos to my Picasa page, but I'll leave it to another post to explain our first couple days at Disney. We totally lucked out and Drew got to meet Jack Sparrow in person - and saw him many times after that - but that's another story...

Oh - and you may be wondering what the heck is with the title of this post? Well, let's just say that is a private joke that goes waaay back to when I went to Disneyworld as a kid, and you'd have to be a member of the family to get it. ;)

I Can't Stop Laughing

2007-08-10T01:26:00.000-04:00

I stumbled across this video tonight:

...and I can't stop watching it and laughing out of, I guess, sheer joy. My God, does this guy have talent. And if the stories are true, this could not have happened to a more deserving person.

I just love watching the look on everyone's face as he starts to sing, then later as he hits those massive notes with such force. He is truly an incredible singer. I'm absolutely floored. There is plenty of information available on Paul Potts, and his winning performance on Britain's Got Talent is breathtaking. To be perfectly honest, I have never been a fan of opera, but to see and hear this guy sing...well - perhaps I have been missing out on something. ;)

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