Sep

17

Pluto will now be known as 134340

Science

On Friday, September 15th 2006, the former planet Pluto was dubbed asteroid number 134340 to reflect its new status as a “dwarf planet.” Personally, I found it a little freaky that the scientific community changed the named so quickly. Plus, we’ll definitively have another thing to add to our list of things to tell our kids when they are older. “Yes, yes, daddy and mommy knew asteroid 134340 as planet Pluto in our young days.” To which he/she will probably respond: “What do I care ? Now, get out of my room.” Ha ha. A day to remember in my opinion.

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Sep

12

ALA Sandbags: Revisited

Web Development

The picture used in this example is A List Apart’s own picture and is used on this blog to show how to create the effect originally posted on ALA.

I recently bought Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman, which I mentioned in an earlier post, and do not stop learning. It is one of the best purchases I have made in a long time. Whenever I take the time to sit down and read a chapter (or two for that matter), I just can’t stop. So, I recently decided to subscribe to the RSS feed of A List Apart to get my fix of web standard compliant advices and tricks to add to my webpage. Last week, I was delighted to find a post on how to create a wrap around text effect, like the one in this post, which I had previously observed in action on Mike Davidson’s site.

I presume that Mike [Davidson] had computed the “sandbags” by hand, which would be fine, I guess, if you only have to do it once or twice a month, but could end up being a very long process. However, the article in question: “Sliced and Diced Sandbags”, promised to automate the process using a little php script, written by the author himself, Rob Swan. Automate the process it did. And very well I might add. It is based on the transparency values stored in png files, but let’s not get into the details. Explaining the nuts and bolts of his script is not the point to my story today.

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Sep

09

Windows Vista: Finally here.

Technology

The world’s biggest software maker announced, earlier this week, the final prices for the new Windows Vista, according to an article from Reuters.

The new operating system has been in the making for about 5 years now. It has seen no less than four new operating systems released by its major competitor, Apple : Puma (September 25, 2001), Jaguar (August 24, 2002), Panther (October 24, 2003), and Tiger (April 29, 2005). A couple of months later and it would have also witnessed the birth of the brand new OS from Apple: Leopard.

Personally, I am pleased to hear the news as it will be nice to get a fresh new look from Windows. I am tired of looking at the (now) boring look of Windows XP these days. So let’s hope that Windows did their homework and hired really good designers to make their product more appealing to all of us. The release of Windows Vista might secure microsoft a couple more years of my business seeing as I was wondering if I should switch to Mac for my next desktop. Only time will tell. But, I don’t think I see a switch anytime soon though, I think having a Powerbook G4 as a laptop and a windows-based desktop machine is the perfect setup in the software developing world.

So, in a nutshell, Microsoft has released the RC1 (Release Candidate 1) edition of the operating system to about 5 million people last week and should be fixing bugs for the next couple months. Chances are that there will be no official release date announced for the next couple of weeks, but I am sure glad to hear about this RC1 release.

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Sep

04

The Crocodile Hunter dies at 44

Personal

The great Steve Irwin past away today while they were filming a documentary on Sting Rays on the Great Barrier Reef, off Port Douglas.

Feeding a crocodile

I was shocked this morning as I learnt, on the radio, the horrible death Steve Irwin had, especially considering the number of incredible stunts he has been pulling off his whole life. Steve was stung by a ray right into the heart while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. Dr George Isbister says:

“What happened to Steve Irwin is like being stabbed in the heart. It has little to do with the venom and all to do with the trauma caused by the barb of the stingray.”

The freaky thing is that sting rays are not known to be very aggressive. In fact, there exists only one other record of death by a sting ray in Australia, and it was in 1945. Plus, if the sting ray would have stung anywhere else, chances are that he would be fine. The death of Steve Irwin is an horrible news for fans a around the world.

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Sep

03

Comedian [9 out of 10]

Movies / Reviews

The Comedian, 2002
Director: Christian Charles
Main Actors: Jerry Seinfeld, Colin Quinn, & Orny Adams

Bonnie is gone at her parent’s cottage for the long weekend, and so things are kind of boring here. I had to stay over in Montreal to help my dad, my uncle, and my brother with putting up the new roof. We finished yesterday, and so I am now stuck at home until tuesday without Bonnie. It’s pretty boring here without Bonnie, and so I decided to rewatch this movie. I had seen it a couple of times already, but it was still very good.

It’s basically a documentary about what it is to be a comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. It’s actually very well done because it follows Jerry, after his decision to throw away all of his material and start from scratch, and a relatively new comedian Orny Adams. Because it is filmed as a documentary, it gives the viewer a good idea of what life is as a comedian, or a glimpse of it at least. And not any comedian, we get scences with conversations between Jerry and Ray Romano, Chris Rock, Bill Cosby, and many more. Also another very interesting angle in the movie is to see a big star like Jerry struggling to deliver a new set of jokes, while comparing this with Orny Adam’s struggle to deliver and grow as a comedian.

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