Category: Geekdom

Please Rob Me Buzz

This is one of the most brilliant pieces of intertube activism I have ever seen. Please Rob Me. Combines public messaging and location services to tell the world who is not at home, and where to go to rob them.  It is all about raising public awareness of the lack of intertube privacy we have established with our mobile location services.  I happily broadcast the location of my phone using google locate.

On a less fun note please I was going to link you to a read about how Google’s miss step with their cool tweeting service Buzz caused some more serious problems. A compelling post on the blog Fugivitus would have told an interesting story about how gmail’s assumption that everyone you have an email conversation is a friend. Well in the case of this blogger much of her gmail correspondence was with her violent ex husband who she was hiding from. The moment she clicked yes to buzz he was alerted to her google reader, picasa and youtube accounts. From this he found out where she was hiding from him. I hope that she is okay, but I now can see that her blog has be made private.

Returned From Whistler

Just returned from a lovely visit with Peter Jonasson, the tallest man I love, from Hamilton. Peter is up at Whistler with the Olympic Broadcast Service delivering the wonderful images you are seeing at the winter Olympics. He put me up in his hotel so I could check out the Whistler Polyclinic.  Spent time just walking around the village having a fun time soaking in all the fun.

This is a shot inside the Whistler Polyclinic Mobile Medical Unit (MMU). It is essentially a pop out ICU trauma unit that drives around on a transport truck. There is also an operating room.

Zip For Leonardo

I had the pleasure of attending a most amazing exhibit of the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. Hundreds of his original sketches are on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibit is also free. There was a huge line at Robson Square apparently 6 hours in length. But it was not for Leonardo. It was for people waiting to get a ticket to ride the 8 storey high zip line that dangles above Robson Street.  The red arrows are the line up for the zip line the yellow arrow is the start of the zip line. It is cool. Click on the image to see it in action.

The sad thing was that there was no real line for Leonardo’s sketches. Which a collection of 200 that is unlikely to appear anywhere again in our lifetime.

Flame Lighting Troubles

Sadly Catriona LeMay Doen was denied her 1/4 chance to light the sacred flame due to a hydraulics failure. I really enjoyed the gala (both the live rehearsal and the televised one). My favourite part was the whales. If the torch bearers had been fashioned with one of the below lighters nothing could have stopped them from getting the job done. If you are a smoker you might was well light up in style. You can find every manner of lighter at this site, except this lazer pointer machine gun torch. No these would not get through a mag and bag.

Transit Woes

It is hard to get around in Vancouver. I was on my way to see the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at the VAG.  Transit gets especially hard when your bus pops a connection to its electrical power on the Granville Street bridge. Our brave transit driver ventured out into traffic to get us restarted. The video shows the empty driver seat and the Granville Bridge out the window.

gallery test three smooth gallery fail

[smooth=id:001;]

This is a test of smooth view next gen gallery wordpress plug in. Still working on it. The picture quality has a massive drop off. But I am still working on trying to get things properly uploaded. This is what I had to do get Next GEN gallery to upload anything at all.

  • make hughmacleod.com accessible with ssh-bash on PLESK panel
  • delicately adjust php.ini. to change the upload_max_filesize to 32M
  • delicately adjust php.ini. to reflect a post_max_size to 64M
  • then reboot the apache server, which I did through PLESK.
  • I can upload photos now, but they look fugly.

Feeling Around WordPress

Thank you to those who have expressed interest in my reappearance on the intertubes. I am at that odd stage where I am groping my way through all the new wordpress features. Kind of a mix of overwhelm and awe. The old blog is still alive, just hidden. I may put it in an archive somewhere, as well I would like to add the 666 error page. So much to do so little time.

Presently I am in Vancouver living with my dad. I am volunteering in a lovely blue smerf outfit at the Cool Sporting Event On the West Coast of Canada taking place right now. As I understand it I cannot say anything else about it. 🙂

Retiring Error 666 Page

Well I am gonna blog for a while. How long it will last I do not know, but for the time being Error 666 will be put aside. And for those who managed to get past the css trickery there were always links to pics, movies, comments etc. They were just hidden. 🙂  Above is a screen shot of the error 666 page (what you are looking for cannot be found). The screen shot also shows Google Chrome for Linux Ubuntu which rocks my world on the lappie. No Mac or Windows for me.