You may have noticed that the photo and video sections of this site have disappeared... This is because I've had some compatibility issues upgrading from an early version of Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.9. It may take me a little while to get around to it, but I do plan to restore most of the missing content. I will also be adding a fair bit of new content, and the order of things may change to reflect it.

I must say that I’m happy to be back, and outside of my upgrade issues Drupal 6 is a beautiful thing.

You I never realized the number of sites that have been using drupal: The Onion, Warner Brothers, HarvardScience, SonyBMG's BS Weekly, Amnesty International, Popular Science, and Forbes Office Pranks.

It's DemoCampMontreal2 night at the SAT. The presenters look pretty interesting this time around, so I'd suggest signing up and swinging by the SAT at 6:30pm.

• HughMcGuire - Collectik (or possibly the project behind door #2)
• Martin Dufort - Kakiloc : Mobile Social Networking (We are back on after some arm twisting by Austin ;-))
• iotum Talk Now Technology Preview on BlackBerry - Try it Today
• Brett Gaylor - Open Source Cinema
• BumpTop

I found this on join-the-dots, but the photos are from jackrabbit.etsy.com on Flickr.

I wonder how hard it is to get crochet cartridges? For the more violent at heart, you should consider checking out the woven guns...

So I wrote my DemoCampMontreal1 post for Midnight Poutine, I uploaded some photos to Flickr, and I added a couple of videos to my YouTube account. The event was interesting, nicely setup, and pretty well organized. Criticisms: the presentations by Evonium and Evolution felt more like a sales pitch than a "sharing" (but that's not really a big deal), and the bar was closed (I really wanted a beer).

I'll definitely be going to the DemoCampMontreal2.

Just a reminder that DemoCampMontreal1 is tomorrow night (Tues Feb 27 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm) at the SAT. If you wish to register as an attendee you can do so here.

FYI I just been approved as a contributor to Midnight Poutine and this Democamp will be the subject of my first MP post.

Democampmontreal1
Society for Arts and Technology (SAT)
Tues Feb 27, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
1195 Boul. St. Laurent

Went to Ottawa for the weekend, and while I got a 12km of skating in on Sat I'm not going to count it. On Sun I did little other than hang out with my Dad, and on Mon I was in full geek out mode with a Drupal 5.1 setup for mile-end.qc.ca and a well overdue Gentoo upgrade on my Mythtv box.

Julien at in over your head posted this blog entry Montreal… needs… brains…….. which sparked a flurry of comments about the state of geekery and the geek community in Montreal. His blog continues the discussion with the entry Montreal has brains?. Robin at IM2 | OQP adds to the discussion with Montreal, action !, and I myself...


I haven't been paying enough attention to the tech community lately to truly be entitled to an opinion, but I do have geek friends, I do work geek jobs, I do know that there is a fairly large community here, and I'm feeling an interest in probing the edges of possibility...

Enter BarCamp, and more specifically BarCamp Montreal; If you're unfamiliar with the concept of BarCamp you can checkout this entry in Wikipedia. I have never attended one of these things, and I don't have anything to demo, but I think that I will attend the Feb 27th event at the SAT to get a sense of what it's all about.

The dates of the Montreal BarCamp activities are as follows:

DemoCampMontreal1 - Tues/Mar Feb 27, 2007
DemoCampMontreal2 - Thurs/Jeu Mar 29, 2007
BarCampMontreal2 - Sat/Sam Apr 28, 2007
RoCoCoCamp - May/Mai 18-20, 2007

iPhone not running OSX? Hmmmm is Apple fibbing... not that I would expect them to be honest. I mean their entire add campaign of Mac vs PC is at it's core a lie. Their campaign is really Mac vs Windows... a PC is a hardware platform and not an OS. In fact the PC platform is the primary platform used for Linux, FreeBSD (who's code base is partly at the core of OSX), and many other OSs. This is why it urks me that people worship Apple, they're a company, and their business practises have historically been little better than those of Microsoft (though OSX is significantly better designed than XP).

Even the battery life on the iPhone is tolerable... I so want to dislike it, but I don't... In any case I have a contract that will last another year and a bit so there's lots of time for the competition to come up with something (preferably a Linux device).

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not the biggest fan of Apple. I like half their design decisions and hate the other half (those clam shells were hideous). I respect OSX and find it quite usable, but in the end Linux is way more fun and interesting. However, what I hate most about them is their fashion oriented trendiness; I especially hate the iPod trend (although they are technically sound, I would never consider buying one). I regularly use a 17" powerbook that I got from work, and while I really like it (the screen is great), I'm somewhat embarrassed when I have it out in public. In fact if it weren't a work computer I'd definitely plaster over the apple symbol with a bunch of stickers and install Linux on it.

But I think I may have to hand it to apple when it comes to the iPhone. From the look of things they appear to be the first to have gotten the convergence device right. This might be the device that I've been waiting for. I'll have to reserve my final judgment 'til I see it in action but...

However, Blork points out that their deal with Cingular in the US brings some user rights issues into play (at least for Americans).