I went down to the passport office yesterday (in Edmonton) to apply for a passport, and the process was a lot more quick and painless than I expected. As long as you’ve read the directions, filled out the form properly and brought proper credentials, it shouldn’t take long. I was only in there for about half an hour, and this was at lunchtime, when there would probably be more people than normal. I was initially worried because my former housemate had applied for a passport through the mail, and it took close to four months for his to arrive. They said mine should arrive within a month or so, so let’s hope for the best – it looks like the big “rush” to get passports is mostly over.

If you can, definitely go to the local passport office to apply. It will be much faster and you don’t have to send sensitive stuff like your birth certificate in the mail.

After I built my AMD Athlon X2-based dual-core system last year, I started noticing some weird speed issues in certain games. At seemingly random times, the games would speedup and slowdown, making things very jerky and jumpy. This would basically make the game unplayable. It turns out that this is a known problem and can occur when single-threaded games run on a dual-core system. (So you may even experience these problems on an Intel dual-core system.)

The solution is nicely outlined in the [H]ard|OCP Forums, where it’s aptly known as the “Benny Hill Effect”. Turns out that the problem has to do with power state management issues and how they affect the read time stamp counter instruction (RDTSC), which is used for timing. I followed the guide, and it fixed my problems.
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My Mom recently won a second-gen iPod shuffle. After helping her get it setup, I have to admit I was enamored by its design. It is definitely one of the most stylish MP3 players, and the integrated clip is just plain nice. However, I just can’t see myself getting one because of the lack of a screen, and I also don’t like that you can’t simply dump MP3s onto it like a storage drive. Despite these shortcomings, it’s still one heck of a cool MP3 player, and if you don’t care about a display, it’s probably your best choice.

If you’re running an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard like me, and are using the onboard Realtek ALC850 audio (AC ’97 compatible), you may have experienced high levels of sound interference on the audio outputs. This interference manifests itself as “static” on your speakers, and appears to be correlated with system activity, such as: accessing the HDD, network activity or even moving the mouse. The static can be quite noticeable, and is especially annoying when there’s nothing else coming out from the speakers, or if you’re using headphones. In particular, the interference is unacceptable at high volume levels.
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Facebook recently launched its Marketplace, a local classifieds service. It allows users to freely post wanted or for-sale ads, localized by the networks that the user is in. For example, a member of a university-based network will be able to view all the classified ads in that area, simplifying the buying and selling process.

It seems that before the launch of this service, Facebook decided to solicit some feedback from its users about its usefulness to them. After the “debacle” that surrounded last year’s introduction of the “News Feed”, perhaps they were a bit edgy about introducing new features without getting their users’ opinions. However, I believe this new service will be a big success, and should have come earlier. It also perhaps signals that there are more services to come.
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I recently splurged and bought a Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP, a 24-inch widescreen flat panel. I had been using a Samsung 172T for the past 3.5 years, and it has served me well, but I was looking for something a little more. All the reviews of this baby seemed to indicate that it was “the one” to get, so I decided to use some of the money I’d been saving to indulge a little. All I can say is that I’m very impressed – this display certainly lives up to the hype. Not only does it provide a large native resolution of 1920 x 1200, but it does so with a great picture quality. Gaming is also very nice on it, even at non-native resolutions.

Another key feature was the inclusion of many inputs. Not only does it support the standard DVI and VGA connectors expected of any LCD monitor, but it also has composite, component and S-video inputs, making this of jack-of-all trades when it comes to displays. It also has a 4-port USB hub and a memory card reader built in, adding extra value. About the only downside I can think of is that I now have a reason to upgrade to HD-DVD or Blu-ray for movies!
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I was multitasking the other day across two computers, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with another student one summer ago. We were talking about the rise of communication devices, such as cellphones, BlackBerrys and the like, and how they are potentially disruptive to productivity, because they interact concurrently with the daily tasks we must perform. He gave me an example of a meeting he had attended when working for a big company, where everyone was “plugged in”, either using their laptop or PDA, for the entire duration. No one was really listening to each other, and the only time they stopped using their communication devices was when it was their turn to speak.

Of course, this is an extreme example, and is not indicative of most situations. But certainly all of these devices are affecting the way we interact with each other and get work done. In fact, I think that overuse of these devices and their “always on, always connected” nature can lead to something I like to call Constant Partial Attention. This is a state where you are alert, but because you are multitasking between so many different jobs, you aren’t as productive as you could be.
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I’m finally done my undergraduate studies at Queen’s University, and if all goes well, I’ll be receiving my B.Sc.E in Electrical Engineering soon. It’s been a fun, but hard, four years, and I don’t regret the experience at all. This last semester was particularly hard – due to a combination of our fourth-year project and the fact that this truly was the “last mile”. It certainly wasn’t as easy as I had expected.
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If you ever are in need for 10 or more synonyms for the word “blend”, and don’t have access to a thesaurus… just look at the settings on any blender. The makers must have had a tough time coming up with all those descriptive settings.

I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.1, a month after it came out. I’ve been really busy with school work and whatnot, and while it doesn’t take long to upgrade, I wanted to set aside time so that I did it correctly.

As expected, a lot of the plugins I was using needed to be upgraded, which was somewhat of a tedious process. Most of them now work, though for some of them I was unable to find updated versions. However, they all seem to be working. Please let me know if you see something that isn’t working.
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