iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Formula One’s biggest hot-head is in Intel’s latest commercial series. I don’t think you’ll see it in North America because it’s about F1 and trains – you’ll probably only see Intel commercials with hobbits, popcorn and airplanes during prime-time.
Intel: Driven To Perform

CORRECTION: I saw this ad during The Office (NBC style) tonight. Thanks also to Ben for spotn’ this.

iBegin.com” id=”image248″ alt=”Toronto Highway Traffic Flow from iBegin.com” src=”http://mattclare.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/Picture%201.thumbnail.png” />Using the Google maps API and some method of getting the MTO’s data iBegin.com has created a live highway traffic flow map for Toronto. This should prove useful once Toronto Hydro sets the whole city up for WiFi with the one-zone project!

When I write code I like to make it interesting. For example, a variable¹ named $person can just as easily be name $dude. I once wrote a Flash animation with a function² that created four rings, naturally I called it audi().

1 A value that can be set and changed.
2 Bunch of code that does something, written as a function so the function can be executed instead of recreating all of the code in it. Functions are called with their name and brackets at the end in which you can pass values in.

It’s because of this style that I really have to commend BeOS, the operating system created by Be Inc. Not only did Be and it’s owner, Jean-Louis Gassée, have the Bes to scoff at a mere $200 million when Apple tried to purchase BeOS for OSX and held out for $400 million – they didn’t get it. BeOS also has the following system functions that I could work with:

get_system_info()- The get_system_info() function tells you more than you want to know about the physical capacities of your computer….
is_computer_on() - Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn’t on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
is_computer_on_fire()- Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn’t on fire, the function returns some other value.
More at http://www.tycomsystems.com/beos/BeBook/The%20Kernel%20Kit/System.html

I’ve been told that I can write a good E-mail – or at least one that can be undertstood. I’ve been asked for advice but generally I defer to those who got a book deal out of their’s. Ben Goodger, lead developer of Firefox (no book deal though), recently posted some advice:

..It’s great when people make contributions in the form of ideas and proposals, but it’s even better when they’re written for busy people. Here are some examples:

• Making important points up front
• Clear taxonomy of headings, and lots of them
• Writing clearly and succinctly
• No long, unbroken paragraphs or tracts of text.
• Preferring bulleted lists with clear points to paragraphs.
• Use of emphasis in formatting to make important things clear

I would add:

• Avoid pronouns. If your E-Mail is about something technical your reader will soon lose track of what ‘it’ you are talking about. It also helps with scanning.
• Try to model your sentence and paragraph structure on that of The Toronto Sun, etc.
• Put thought into the E-Mail subject, and if the original in a reply/forward exchange is poor, change it.
• Watch out for those homonyms and the spell checker. You want to be sure your message can be red.

And last, but not least (but maybe the least practised): Read back your own E-Mail (or blog posting) to yourself before you send it.

Around 2:00 today this truck carrying a load of rolled paper/fiber turned over on the tightest corner of the 406 north in St. Catharines Ontario Canada. This picture was taken from the St. Paul’s street bridge directly above the paralyzed truck.

The 406 highway is the major artery of the Niagara region after the QEW. Despite what the regional representatives say, this highway is rarely congested and this ~5 hour closure of the northbound lane is not common. Peninsula Towing & Recovery was on the scene to right and remove the truck. Rumour has it that each truck is $400 an hour per truck.
It would appear that the driver is OK and no other vehicles were involved. The driver’s first priority was duct tapping over the rig’s logo, he had done so before the truck was righted.

My pictures can be found on flickr.com.

Here’s video of the truck on it’s way.

What’s that great song from that Zellers start fresh for spring ad?

Answer: Birdsong, by The Golden Dogs from Everything in Three Parts.

“Birdsong can you lift me up from all of the wrong I’ve done?” is how it all starts and then that amazing guitar starts and sounds like, like, like a birdsong.

I first heard the song on the CBC and was unable to find it in the iTunes music store. This normally is the point at which I try to steal music through other services, but it can’t be found there either! I had to goto maplemusic.com which appears to be an excellent resource for MP3 downloads!

So there you are, you can listen this amazing song without Zellers getting a hand in your pocket.

This gentleman (rheauchyr) came home to a melted/corroded new MacBook Pro and Magsafe Power connector. He thinks that the cats saved his house from burning down by disconnecting the cable – the consensus on the internet (at least on digg.com) is that a bad power supply would melt, not corrode. These pictures look more like the effects of cat pee and Direct Current electricity.

Wordpress is what powers this blog and is also what we used at work for The University Teaching Podcast Wordpress can podcast right out of the box: codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

What wordpress can’t do is include information podcast clients appreciate like an image for the podcast’s icon or the extensions iTunes added. In order accommodate this I choose to edit wordpress’ wp-rss2.php file in order to take advantage of the iTunes podcast standards and other podcast focused tags. The one thing these modifications don’t address are the and tags for each episode – all podcast clients we’ve come across can determine this information from the file once it arrives.

You will also notice the addition of the 60 tag — this Time To Live is not always honored by podcast clients, but if your podcast does experience popularity beyond your sever’s bandwidth, etc. this might make for a more graceful failure.

Here is The University Teaching Podcast ’s current wp-rss2.php file. Please feel free top copy and paste this over your current file and make your revisions.

The source code is posted here: www.brocku.ca/~mclare/itunes_podcast_with_wordpress.php
It’s posted on my work webspace in order to take advantage of PHP’s ability to colour its own code.

UPDATE: A wordpress plugin called WP-iPodCAtter also addresses this issue, I have not tested this plugin.

I saw Dave Chappelle’s Block Party this weekend, I missed it at the Toronto International Film Festival, but it’s now in wide release. It was an excellent movie and I recommend it to any of his fans and anyone who is a fan of east coast hip hop acts like The Roots, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Kanye West (who only has a small role), Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Cody Chesnutt and The Fugees (yes, all three of them). If you ask me that’s a short list of the greatest hip hop acts to release an album this millennium.

The movie is a concert movie, and not really a documentary. That said, you really get a genuine feeling for Brooklyn and a good feeling about the impact this simple event is having on the audience Dave brought together for this event. Most of all this is an amazing concert and if you don’t see the movie you should keep the soundtrack in your car for a long trip – I took both approaches.

This

is this

textorizer-ed with “Matt Clare” via textorizer.whatfettle.com.

Check it out with the URL from any web image (like the above mattclare.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/IMG_2209.jpg or the flickr logo example.)