Author: mike

  • comment spam fix

    A while back I wrote about the comment spam plague that affects a lot of blogs, including mine. One of the reasons that comment spam exists is to boost the spammer’s site rankings in Google. Some of the blog software vendors and Google have gotten together and released a way of fixing the site rankings,…

  • offsets

    Offsets are the plague-of-the-week in my life. At work, we’re having trouble with messaging, seems some of the message headers are messed up, some of the bytes are offset by one. It causes all sorts of havoc like messages not going where they’re supposed to and other such grief. At home, I realized all the…

  • Happy New Year!

    This post has been a long time in coming. So first of all, Happy New Year! We had an excellent holiday, so good in fact that I didn’t touch a computer for something like 7 days in a row. That’s a record for me, and a well deserved break after the crunch we went through…

  • ponies

    Today’s picture of the week is brought to you by Mikaela, with fresh ‘ponies’ right after her bath. They only stay like that for a few minutes while they’re still wet. Her hair is getting so long she can hardly get through a door like this.

  • obfuscated

    obfuscated: To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand The art of obfuscation in programming is very interesting, and is often done to protect vital intellectual capital. In Google’s case, as I wrote about previously, the nature of web pages demands that part of their Google Suggest code is…

  • google suggest

    Just when you thought Google was the answer (what’s the question?), they come up with auto-complete on a web page. Have a look here. It’s the regular Google page, except with autocomplete included. Those of you who have done any web design or programming know how difficult this is to code. There’s a good explanation…

  • Categories

    As of this post, this blog will contain both technical and personal writing. If you are interested in only one or the other, please use the links Personal: https://www.gybe.ca/index.php?cat=2 Technical: https://www.gybe.ca/index.php?cat=4 And if you don’t care, then continue using the same links as before. As always, the categories are also available on the sidebar.

  • A computer in every home

    The picture of the week was sent to me today, (read “I can’t verify the authenticity but it is good for a laugh) from a 1954 Popular Mechanics. It’s RAND Corporation’s idea of what a home computer would look like in 2004. Not sure about you, but this beast sure doesn’t look like what I’ve…

  • picture of the week

    The discerning reader will quickly realize that this blogger has failed miserably in his quest of posting a picture of the week. So far the posting rate is around 1 in 29 years. Some quick extrapolation shows the picture isn’t due until 2035. Hark, what is that sound? Why, it’s the sound of not one,…

  • rent-a-blogger

    Want to start blogging and don’t know how? Rent a blogger for three months…

  • What a gas

    Two hydrogen atoms were talking, and one said “I just lost an electron!”. The second replied “Are you positive?” 🙂

  • MAPS

    On Saturday Jodie (my lovely better half) and I attended the annual awards dinner for the Mcmaster Association of Parttime Students (MAPS)… Jodie won a scholarship for having one of the top 5 running averages of the 2400 or so students. That’s not the top 5%, but the top 5, as in 1,2,3,4,5! Congratulations Jodie!

  • For the want of a pipe

    We’ve been fighting a bug for the past few weeks, one of the worst kinds. Not a viral physical kind, but a cybernetic kind. It’s intermittent, and only pops up in something like 0.01% of the time. Turns out (the brilliant programmer I’m working with found it, not me) that in the 11,000 or so…

  • Picture of the week

    I’m going to start posting the picture of the week, for two reasons. One is so I’ll be forced to keep up with sorting my digital pictures, and the second is to keep posting. I’ll also post any pictures you may want to submit, but I reserve the right to deny them. The album is…

  • Firefox

    In case you’ve been living in a vacuum the past few days, Mozilla released the latest version of their web browser, Firefox v1.0. It’s available at www.mozilla.org, and it’s only 4.7Mb… attainable even if you’re on the poor end of a 56K modem. Download it now!

  • Hair

    I found my first grey hair last night. I’m not even 30 yet. Bah. I’ve warned my lovely folicles that if the trend continues, they’ll all be shaved off. I don’t think my wife would be too happy about that though. So how does one spell ‘grey hair’. Is it gray hair or grey hair?…

  • Ottawa

    I visitted Ottawa to see whether or not the pictures spoke truly of my newest nephew. Alas, the pictures lied. He’s far cuter in real life. He’ll stare at you for as long as you’re willing to hold him, and he like me so much he fell asleep on my shoulder. What an awesome little…

  • Lucas Gerbrand Hart

    I have been remiss in announcing the arrival of my nephew, Lucas Gerbrand Hart. Born to Brian and Alanna, fourth grandson to my parents, he looks like a really cute little guy. Unfortunately he lives 500km or so away, so it’ll be a few more weeks until I can vouch for this myself. Congratulations Brian…

  • Dulcimer

    I’ve been working on a hammered dulcimer for some time now, and here are some pictures. It’s slow going, but I hope to get it done sometime this winter.

  • Family and Friends

    Here’s an interesting blog entry from a friend about my brother, with his response. Everything they write is true… they were very good friends. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 😉