I saw this idea today here.  Simple, We can’t find the page you’re looking for, maybe you can find one of these kids we are looking for.  Absolutely brilliant and I have to echo the thoughts of some of the commenters there; It’s a shame we didn’t think of it sooner.

An example of a temporary implementation on my site is here: http://smooshspace.com/foobar which is just a lift of the code from the site linked above stored in a PHP page on my server.  Then I inserted an iframe into my wordpress theme’s 404.php template.

I would very much like to make this geo-aware, but it’s not working at the moment.  I’ve also considered finding a good canadian source of this data that is easily readable by a php script, but I cannot find any RSS or XML feeds with the data for Canada.

If you are reading from the US, there is a great resource at missingkids.com that has feeds on a state by state basis.

I’m going to keep an eye on any development around this myself and perhaps put my own hat into the ring if I get a chance to do some coding.

The worst part of this is that through all the testing of this today I’ve had to stare at the faces of missing children afternoon.  Very sad. 

If you maintain a site, I think it would be great if you were to jump on the bandwagon and get those faces seen!

A list of Canadian missing children can be found here.

The Highway Drive to Work
(50 minutes)

This Morning’s Scenic Drive to Work
(80 minutes)

In the last week, since I’ve made the full switch to Ubuntu, I’ve started asking myself this question, do I need Windows.

So often when I had that other boot option my though was Yes, I need Windows. “I need this program or that, I need to do that thing that only Windows can do.”

As the week has progressed without the handy fallback, I am beginning to realize that I have never in fact needed Windows. What I had needed was the comfort of the only operating system I have ever really known. I started with PC’s back in the days of DOS 2.0, and have since been staring the Microsoft brand in the face nearly every day of my life.

Over the past week I have found that 75% of what I do on the PC includes a web browser, a media player, and a graphics editor. All of which are quite handily accomplished with the likes of Firefox, Amarok and GIMP. (Among other alternatives) So with that in mind I can easily say that that at least 75% of the time, I don’t NEED Windows.

Of the other other 25 percent of my PC activities, at least 15% is dedicated to general fiddling, scripting, programming, poking around and messing things up. Activities for which Linux grants more than ample opportunity. Far more than Windows…So much in fact that that 15% may rise dramatically for the foreseeable future.

What’s left? 10%. This 10% has been perhaps one of the prime reasons I have stayed with Windows for so long. I have for a number of years been an avid casual gamer, floating from one virtual world to the next, slaying dragons and delivering packages for any number different elves, dwarves, mages, thieves, etc… Gaming has kept me in the Windows world for a very long time.

Since the birth of my daughter, whose images pepper my site frequently, gaming has become a distant priority. That time being replaced with time playing with her. Gaming at it’s best in my opinion. There may come a time that I want to get back into it, and here I must admit that I don’t know where Linux currently stands with this type of activity as I have not explored it in the least. (Unless TuxRacer counts…)

All that aside, I would hesitate to say that I need to game at all at the moment. I just want to from time to time. But even if I were to say that Linux does not handle gaming at all…I am still left with having no real need of Windows 90% of the time. (Or 100% of the time as I’m not currently in gaming mode)

I am really beginning to see that much of the pain people have in switching to Linux is not really based on what Linux can or cannot do, but rather, what is different from that which they have become so very accustomed to. Be it a specific program, a specific way of accomplishing a task, or maybe just that ubiquitous Windows startup sound that so many of us hear multiple times daily in our cubicle farms and homes.

If people were exposed to Linux in it’s current state (as a desktop operating system) from the start, it would be Windows we would look at with dismay and suspicion, and wonder quite loudly “Why in god’s name would I want to PAY for THAT? And PAY for virtually any program I want to run on it? I can do all that and more for free…”

So here’s what started my story…

Yesterday my wife received a call from a young woman looking for “Matt” from an unfamiliar number. When she was told that Matt was not there, she seemed disappointed.

Well, I had no idea who might be calling me at 8:30 on a Thursday morning, and my curiosity was peaked. We had the phone number, so I could have called back and found out what was up, but instead I took the following route and was quite surprised at what I was able to find.

1. Reverse lookup: I wasn’t able to find the name of the caller, but I did find out that she called from a cellphone, and I was able to determine her mobile carrier.
2. *67 Callback: blocks your number when calling the person, just in case I didn’t want the person to know it was me calling back. This low tech approach got me to the voice mail which gave me a first name of the caller.
3. Google.com: This is where it gets interesting. I had a phone number and a first name. Ok, lets put both into trusty Google.
   Result: I found a university housing page listing the number I searched for and full name of the person, and street address. Now I’m curious as to what more is out there.
4. University Site: Ok, search the name.
   Result: Well, now I know what program she is in, and look here, and athlete too, with a link to a player profile. A wealth of information here: Home town, birth date, current university year, picture. Enough? One last step…
5. Facebook: person search, yes that’s her…I know from the picture from the last search. While I don’t have access to her profile, I can see her friends names, and based on the surnames, the names of a number of her family members.

Now, I want to stress here that I am not a strange internet stalker, but from the phonecall my curiosity was peaked, and then through the process of the search I was really intrigued, not so much about the person, but at the shocking amount of info I could find given a few minutes.

Info summary:

• First Name, Surname
• Age
• Date of birth
• Address
• School
• Cell provider
• Univeristy program
• Athletic history and activities
• Home town
• Friends names
• Family members
• Picture

All from…a phone number on a call display, and commonly available, legal, internet searches. No hacking or subversive methods involved. It took about 5-10 minutes. Think about it. How much do people know about you?

And in case you were wondering…no, I don’t know the person.
It must have been a wrong number.

So my newest toy, courtesy of work is the Blackberry 8800.

One of the newest features of this blackberry over my last, the 8700, is the addition of the built in GPS receiver.  While I generally do know where I am, I have played with GPS before and I do like the idea of having a handheld device capable of giving me my location to within a few metres.  It seems so Star Trek, and being that I am a nerd who grew up wishing he were aboard the Enterprise (any one of them), something that brings me closer to Trektopia is always a welcome addition to my life.  The GPS in this device seems to be quite capable and has functioned well in my limited testing.  It finds the satellites quickly, and promptly tells me where I’m at.

While the built in software doesn’t have the capability of speaking turn by turn directions to me, I believe there are other 3rd party applications that offer this.  I am not too interested in that though.  I find if I have a map, which I always have handy by way of Google maps, and I know where I am on that map…reaching my destination is not too difficult.

Another addition is the voice dialing system.  Now, there have been around for quite some time, but I do like this implementation.  Rather than having to create a specific voice command for each voice dialing entry as I have had to do in the past with other cell phones, this one uses a voice recognition system that will allow me to speak the name of the contact as it appears in my address book without any prior training.   It has been quite good at understanding me so far.  Again, one step closer to the Trektopia. "Computer, tea, earl gray, hot."

And finally, I am glad they finally added expandable memory via a MicroSD card slot.  Now I can use my BB in a similar manner to a USB memory stick, which I so often have trouble keeping track of.  I have yet to lose my Blackberry.

I do love the toys…..

Honestly, I’m likely not going to have a daily blog post stating that Lily hasn’t shown her face yet…but well, that is still the case.

Actually the reason for this post is that I am playing with the Windows Live Writer, a desktop application from Microsoft designed for managing and updating your weblog.  (Got this link via Lucky7)

I will have to play with it some, but it was very easy to set up.  After an install all it asked was the url of the site and the login and from there it automatically determined that I was using WordPress and configured itself accordingly.  I have no issues with setting things up manually but I certainly understand that others may be a bit dumbstruck things like this.  I do have to give the developers credit in the User friendly department.

It is worth an extended look I think.  Sometimes the ease of a desktop application is a bit nicer that dealing with a web interface.  Don’t get me wrong, the WordPress web interface is quite capable and overall, very good, certain things are just more efficient off web.

Pro’s

1. Installation was easy and quick from the Ubuntu DVD
2. All of my hardware was detected and drivers were installed with no issues.
3. The default software packages give me what I need to do most of the time.
4. Adding new software packages is easy most of the time using the add/remove system.
5. Plug and play drivers worked nicely for my Canon digital camera right out of the box.
6. Everything I normally do on my home laptop I can do with Ubuntu.
7. The Terminal server client lets me remote desktop into my XP desktop as if I were using the remote desktop client on windows.

Con’s

1. Getting the wireless connection to connect with WPA encryption without entering passwords all the time was a bit cumbersome, but I got it working with this walk through.
2. I miss the large selection of windows apps I am used to downloading when I start up a new system, but I may just need to get familiar with whatever the Ubuntu community offers.
3. A few of the shortcut keys I am used to using in windows now just leave the laptop staring at me with a blank look on its face.

Most of the cons are not a really big deal as I can work around them, and they may just be a matter of getting used to life in Linux.

Overall I notice very little difference in what I would normally do on my laptop, and I think I might just leave it as my default laptop OS. Granted, I still have dual boot set up so I can go back to windows at a moments notice. But I am extremely impressed at how easy it has been overall to make a switch to a linux desktop. I’m by no means a linux guru, but at least I have reached a milestone in having a fully function non windows system that I am happy with. It’s not about to replace my desktop system as the primary OS of choice, mostly due to my dependency on certain applications Windows offers, but its certainly much closer.

Yep, I’m an Ubuntu user, and proud of it.

First, a friend at work turned me on to a great 3rd party firmware upgrade for my Linksys WRT54G wireless router. DD-WRT adds a tonne of new features the router and increases it’s value 10 fold if you enjoy monkeying around with networking. It allows you CLI access into the linux side of the router, as well as some good software for creating a managed wireless hotspot. Very cool…I may even set up some public access for people to use. I think I can allocate a certain amount of bandwidth as well as lock out certain services (Bittorrent etc) so that people would be free to check their email, but not hog my connection.

Second on my nerdy entertainment list was to set up Ubuntu Server v6.10.

My original plan was to pull out my old VIA EPIA M series mini motherboard and some old pieces of hardware, put it all in a shoe box and go, but unfortunately I got nowhere with that as the motherboard seems to be dead.

So I tried going to the new local Tigerdirect to get some used or refurbished hardware like an old notebook or junker PC to run it on, but I came up empty handed. (Old hardware is ok for a non GUI linux box that’s just going to be a sandbox and my home intranet web server etc…)

Then I remembered that microsoft had recently made their Virtual PC 2004 software free to download so I grabbed it and set up a virtual pc on my main system and installed Ubuntu on that. It’s actually pretty cool. So now my main pc is both a Windows XP and a Linux box in one, and I can just SSH into the linux side to monkey around with it and ftp files to my new web server. Wonderfully enough, Ubuntu Server has the option to install LAMP so all the hard stuff related to installing a web server is done during the initial install of the OS.

There you have it, my nerdy weekend in a nutshell.

I love open source….so free and wonderful…

With that in mind I offer you this link: Open Source Games for Windows

Hours of time wasting goodness can be found here…please proceed with caution.

Sweet. Blackberry gets along with wordpress interface fairly well. That makes me happy. Yes. I love the crackberry. I have been waiting for a portable device that connects me to the rest of the world and all the info I can imagine since I was about 13. For those counting, that’s 18 years. Wow…seems a long time ago to me too.
I heart my blackberry 8700.

My Fart Came Out Lumpy

The new acronym thats sweeping the internet faster that lol or wtf.

Ok, not really but it makes me laugh.

Our Chuck Norris DVDs showed up today. We’re quite excited and shall break into them this evening. A great end to the year…some real Chuck style American justice…

So I figured something out this weekend with regards to extending my wireless range without upgrading my wireless router hardware.

You see, I have a reasonably up to date 802.11g wireless router froim Linksys. I have been having trouble with getting signal in my living room which is on the opposite side of the house from my computer room and WRT54G router. The connection was intermittent and spotty at best. I had it set up with the default setting of using 802.11g mode, and wireless channel 6. I assumed that this would be the best it could do. Until I happened to read on a website, which I can unfortunately not find again, that mentioned that using Wireless channel 1 and the 802.11b standard gives you greater wall penetration. I was sceptical at first but decided to try.

Much to my suprise, I now get almost full wireless signal where before I had almost unusable coverage.

The drawback I must mention is that your wireless speeds willbe reduced to 11mbps from a potential of 54mbps. This seems like it would be much slower, but the fact you must remember is that most often people use their wireless connection for internet browsing, which normally only runs at 1-8mbps. Leaving a fair bit of overhead in most cases under the 802.11b speeds. You will only see the issue in file transfers on the local LAN.

So there’s my tip for the day.