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By Matthieu, 2010-12-18 22:03

QDB: Quote #5273.

<erno> hm. I’ve lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can’t figure out where in my apartment it is.

fortune?

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-18 22:02

QDB: Quote #414593.

DragonflyBlade21: A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-17 22:56

Hello,

This is a message for the commenter “WC from Bristow” who posted a review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the Apple Store website on Decemer 11, 2010 (review posted below for SEO/reference).

I just wanted to let you know that your MacBook Pro is DEFECTIVE. I hope that by some strange chance you might read this before your warranty expires. There is a known issue with the GeForce 9400M graphics chips in the original unibody MacBooks with removable battery. There is random screen flickering. This is a hardware issue, and no matter what you do will not go away. If your laptop is still under warranty, and even if it’s not, take it back to Apple and demand a replacement. They will probably swap it for a new, current-generation MacBook.

Just a friendly suggestion from someone who went through the same frustration.

Not Impressed

• Written by WC from Bristow
• 11-Dec-2010

Snow Leopard brought some serious problems. Mail will chew up 50 to 75% of the processor just idling. Flashing video/screen on MacBook Pro 15″ when on low power video card setting causes me to run all the time in high performance mode so it does not flash… and now my battery lasts for an hour and a half if I am lucky. (in part because of the processor overloading of Mail). This adds 2 lbs+ to the laptop because I must now carry two extra batteries (and I do).

I spend a lot of time in Mail… and bugs like copying the email address and getting a bunch of extra garbage that needs to be trimmed after pasting is aggravating. Dock lockups, Browser lockups. Spinning beach ball of death with much greater frequency than normal Leopard. At points cascading chronic app crashing which is “cured” by rebooting the machine (a la Windows)

Hope that Lion brings some relief. Snow Leopard has fleas.

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-17 20:17

Vancouver’s city council says that Internet traffic metering discriminates against video and audio streaming providers.

Finally, some level of government is taking action against Bell and the CRTC’s decision! For those who don’t know, all of us Canadians are being ripped off by our broadband carriers. They impose arbitrary bandwidth caps and require end uses to pay premium prices for extra speed in order to up these limits.

Now, before you get all “well I never hit my cap, it must be all those BitTorrenting pirates. They should stop complaining and buy movies like the rest of us”, let me point out that there are a many ways of acquiring content with high bandwidth requirements legally online. To name a few, iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, as well as the websites of every national television network and radio station. Not to mention the loads of freeware/shareware and open-source software, digital downloads of proprietary operating systems and productivity software, SDKs, game demos, benchmarks, software updates, and even data transfer for business purposes. The list goes on and on and I won’t bother or even attempt to list more uses.

Point is, what is the purpose of having an “information superhighway” if some users are faced with arbitrary tolls and speed limits in addition to advertising?

How is streaming media supposed to render optical media obsolete if we aren’t free to consume it? How do we keep our systems up to date if we have to count the bytes downloaded for each update pack? How are we to move to video conferencing, VoIP, and social media with horribly limited upstream bandwidth?

Anyway, enough with the negativity. Thanks to Vancouver and openmedia.ca, there is a glimmer of hope for Canadian Internet users!

For more info, check out http://stopthemeter.ca/ .

via Canada: We might be America\’s hat, but we don\’t like caps.

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-16 23:17

After nearly a year of being slightly annoyed at my Nexus One’s stock keyboard having only an AZERTY French keyboard as opposed to a  QWERTY one we use in Canada, I finally took matters into my own hands and modded the recently “leaked” Gingerbread keyboard to make the French keyboard QWERTY. Download below.

Après près d’un an avec mon Nexus One et son clavier soit anglais, soit AZERTY, j’en ai eu assez et ai décidé de modifier le clavier Android pour permettre l’entrée du texte français via un clavier QWERTY. Téléchargement disponible ci-dessous.

gingerbreadkb-multilang-update-signed-fr_CA-qwerty.zip-signed.zip

References/This would not have been possible without:

• Original idea: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8494#c18
• How to create a signed apk: http://www.androiddevelopment.org/tag/jarsigner/
• How to create a signed update.zip: http://www.robmcghee.com/android/creating-an-android-update-zip-package/
• Original Gingerbread keyboard with French dictionary: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9794752&postcount=109

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-12 03:57

By default, deluged on Arch creates files as -rw-r–r–. I want -rw-rw-r– so that other non-daemon regular users have access to modify and delete the downloaded files. The fix is to add the non-deluge users to the “deluge” group (125), then add umask 002 to the “login” process of the daemon. So, in /etc/rc.d/deluged:

    stat_busy "Starting Deluge Daemon"


    [[ -z $PID ]] && su -l -s /bin/sh -c "umask 002 && /usr/bin/deluged >/dev/null" $DELUGE_USER

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By Matthieu, 2010-12-04 01:33

Hello readers,

First, let it be known that I have no idea where I’m going with this. I just felt like writing. So here.

I just finished watching “Easy A“.I must say, when I first saw the posters and TV spots, I thought “oh god, not another one of those teen dramedies.” But for some reason, tonight I decided to watch it. Maybe it was because my back and abs are in pain from too many sit-ups after too long a hiatus. Maybe it was because I saw the poster again and thought Emma Stone was kind of cute. Maybe it was because I might have seen someone post something about it on Facebook. Maybe it was because of its ambiguous title. In any case, I watched it, and here’s my two cents. Because you all want to hear my opinion. Right?

The movie opens with the customary light rock/pop tune together with some establishing shots of the city of Ojai, California, and its high school. Some beautiful shots, by the way. Really makes me want to visit California. Anyway, the premise of the film is a girl, Olive, who always seemed to pass unnoticed, manages to attract the attention of the whole school after the old rumour mill gets a hold of a little white lie. Naturally, this lie is about sex. I mean, what else would it be? It’s high school, and it’s Hollywood. Sex sells, as they say.

And now, those shots of California. More of my rambling after the break.

Our protagonist sets the scene through a voice-over monologue, sprinkled with humourous remarks, which turns out to be a webcast, sort of a Gen Y take on the classic “This is My Story“. We’re given a who’s who tour of the school and are introduced to the unlikely best friend with large breasts (this fact IS pointed out in the movie, by the way) and the cool teacher. Now I just realized I can’t really say much more without giving up too much plot (and boring everyone), so I’ll keep it short. Smart (pretty) girl feels unnoticed, but is not really unhappy. Besides, she’s above all that angsty teenage stuff and has strangely supportive parents. Happens to tell a lie that gets out of hand, but then decides to run with it because it gives her sort of a rush. Problem arises, stuff happens, presto, a movie.

Not really sure exactly what it is, but I really love this movie right now. Maybe it was the 80’s movie references. Maybe it was the original idea. (At least I think it was original…) Maybe it was the small town, non-LA non-beach view of California. Maybe it was high school nostalgia. Maybe it was the Sylvia Plath reference. Maybe it was the cute, clever protagonist. Maybe it was the 30 Rock-esque product placement.

Anyway. In conclusion, watch it, form your opinion, and make fun of me if you must. Also give me a break, it’s almost 2AM.

And finally, in support of my “cute protagonist” point, some YouTube.

By the way, I definitely do NOT do this when I’m alone… ahem.