CBC.ca has recently redesigned their front page, just about a year after they underwent a major redesign, incorporating a mostly standards-based approach. While there doesn’t seem to be a big change, they’ve made a few small changes to direct their readers’ focus to different areas. For example, three big blocks in a horizontal row (with accompanying images) now direct users to the top stories in news, sports and arts & entertainment. Even more attention is drawn to the big header at the top of the page, that is used to focus users’ attention to the CBC’s traditional media offerings on TV and radio, headlining what major shows will be airing that day. One might wonder why the CBC is attempting to push people back to traditional media when online media is all the rage nowadays.

While I find the new design to be refreshing and more visually attractive, there are some deficits with it.
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I recently begun to clean up and organize files on my desktop. It’s been about a year since I built it, so as you can image, there were files and documents scattered all over the HDD in various unorganized and cryptically-named folders. This chaotic mess of files was making it hard to find anything, even with search, so something had to be done. I endeavored to organize everything into the “My Documents” folder for easy access from a variety of programs, and then remembered why I’d stayed out of it in the first place – all the clutter that’s already there.
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If you do a lot of running, you’ll often find that you’d like to keep track of how much distance you’ve accumulated. This is especially important if you’re training for some event, or even if you’re just a casual runner looking to build up your endurance and stay in shape. However, short of running around a track endlessly, it can be hard to gauge how far you’ve gone on your running route.

Short of having a fancy device such as the Nike iPod Kit (which requires calibration), or an even more costly GPS watch (that’ll probably eat through batteries), you can still manually measure your running distance using the many free tools out there, all of which are based upon the fantastic Google Maps API. Let’s have a look at some of them.

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Google Street View has been out for some time now, and its proven to be a pretty nifty feature. Basically, Google has sent out teams of people in vans with cameras mounted on the tops to major cities across the US. They’ve been able to capture 360-degree panoramic views of most of the streets in these cities, so you can view the surrounding area on almost any point in the street. This is obviously a great feature for people who find that maps don’t provide the best experience of “getting to know a place”. With Street View, you get the best experience of seeing what a new place will be like, short of actually visiting it. It’ll be great for visitors. Google hopes to extend to feature to more cities as time goes on.

However, the new feature has obviously raised some privacy concerns, but perhaps not in the strictest legal sense. Since Google has taken these pictures from public areas, they’re probably in the clear. However, they is somewhat of a difference when these public pictures are being integrated into the largest search engine for everyone to see.
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I recently got The Beatles’ latest compilation album, entitled Love. Released back in 2006, the music was originally compiled and produced for the Love Cirque du Soleil performance. For those of you not familiar with the Canadian act, Cirque du Soleil, it’s basically a lot of acrobats and dancers doing impossible and eye-catching things against the backdrop of extravagant and novel stage setups.

I’m a fan of The Beatles, so naturally I was excited to listen to this album. Since it’s a soundtrack to a theatrical production, all of the tracks blend into one another and it’s best to listen to it as a whole, at least once. I was pleasantly surprised with what George Martin (the producer of most of The Beatles original studio albums) and his son, Giles, were able to accomplish. Basically, they’ve taken the sounds from songs you know and love, and mixed them together to produce some nice results. The album flows very well, which is expected since it’s part of a bigger production.
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I was working on some PHP development recently with my editor of choice, UltraEdit. In my view, UltraEdit is the text editor to use. (Assuming you’re in a Windows environment) It basically has everything I need, and is especially well-suited for web development. Where it may fall short is for developing desktop applications, as then a specific IDE may offer more features, though UltraEdit can be configured to work with compilers and so forth. (UEStudio is probably a better choice in this case)

While I don’t want to argue about the merits of UltraEdit, as people’s passion for their text-editors seem to border on the religious, I wanted to point out a potential solution to a code highlighting problem some of you may have encountered when developing with PHP 5.
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Last week I ordered an APC 750VA UPS for my main system. As I’ve noted before, the power can be flaky around here at times, and it’s also prime season for thunderstorms. As it was on sale at the time for $80 CAD with free shipping, I thought it was a pretty good investment for a backup power supply. I placed the order late Tuesday morning, and to my surprise, it came, via airmail just past noon the next day! Mind you, it was only shipped from a Dell warehouse in BC, but still – airmail for a free shipping option was quite unexpected.
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Facebook recently launched the latest version of their Platform, which combines their API with FQL and the new FBML. Facebook launched the next version of their platform at their developer’s conference, and accompanied the launch with many partner companies that rolled out applications designed with the platform simultaneously. This was also a huge event for independent developers, many of which got to work immediately on their own Facebook apps. (Thousands are now available) This is a huge event in the history of Facebook, and perhaps the next step in where the hugely-popular social networking site will go. As with any change in a social networking site, this one was met with some resistance and concern, but is it warranted?
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My old computer was a Shuttle SN45G XPC that I used from 2004-2006 before I replaced it last year with my current Athlon X2-based system. I outfitted the SN45G with a AMD Athlon 2500+ (Barton), 1 GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro and a 200 GB HDD. It served me well, but started to show its age, especially in this era of dual-core and multi-core systems. I have since retired it to the green pastures of my parents’ home (where I am for the summer), where it peacefully serves the duties of Internet browsing, e-mail, and video, though it is capable of much more.

Recently though, the 200 W custom-sized PSU powering the rig died after an untimely power outage – contractors working in this new neighbourhood apparently severed a line while doing some construction work. It seemed weird to me that a mere power-outage could cause the power supply to die, so I wondered if it was because of the UPS it was plugged into, which failed to provide battery backup. The UPS was an older Belkin model that has also since failed, leading me to believe that it could have negatively affected the PSU. Though, it’s more likely that the PSU was already in poor condition, and that the power outage was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
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This past weekend, I attended my convocation at Queen’s University. I now officially have a B.Sc.E. in Electrical Engineering! I also won some awards for my time at Queen’s. It’s been a long four years, but well worth it – I’ll never forget my time at Queen’s, and I think it’s an experience that everyone should try. While the work was at times intense, so was the fun, and it’s unlikely that you’ll find such a combination anywhere else.

The convocation ceremony itself was long and somewhat dull, but necessary. Thankfully, it wasn’t too hot in Jock Harty Arena, where convocation has been held for quite some time. This year is actually the last year that convocation will be held there, since it’s being torn down this summer to make way for the grand Queen’s Centre. It was also nice to be back in Kingston and to see all my friends again in one place for one last time before undergrad is over. Continued