When I was your age

"Granpa, have you seen the TV remote?"

"Is that the device I use to turn on the lights?"

"Yes, but it also controls the TV, opens the garage door, plays music, receives calls, flushes the toilet, and feeds the cat"

"You know back in my day, the TV remote did one thing only..and that's how we liked it.
We didn't have these fancy multi-tool gadgets around the house. We liked our coffees hot and our Snickers fried.

"The only regret I have from our generation is from those punks who used to wear their pants down to their knees, like a bunch of clowns. Then again, it was a time of ignorance and stupidity. Kids used to watch a really old movie called 'Pirates of the Caribbean' where Disney had convinced us that Pirates were the coolest people to ever roam the earth...having monkeys, and giant squids to do their bidding. Pirates weren't usually your typical Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom engaged in a sword fight...In fact, real piracy was more about living to near starvation and sleeping in filth. And without fridges, they can only eat whatever they could store for months in barrels. Often, they were eating in the dark, having to bang on the table to scare away bugs in their food. And after that delicious meal, a pirate's daily routine involved cleaning and maintaining the ship; The same tedious, repetitive back-breaking tasks day after day. Oh and lets not forget scurvy...See without vitamin C, scurvy was a common illness. Your teeth fall out, gums bleed, and upi have uncontrollable diarrhea. If your pirate buddies don't rush you to the nearest emergency room, you'll basically die shitting too much.
They never showed that part in the movies.

"What was I saying....AH yes!..Today's generation is spoiled..with their sonic xm3 music, and DTV signal. Growing up, we had analog TV signals with our aerial antenna, filling the room with a warm radiation feeling... not this fancy compicalted digital signal. Why would you ever want to replace the warm feeling of a continuous analog signal, with a stressful abruptly state changing signal, going back and forth 10101010101101010201010101....it's madness!"

"Mina, stop tormenting the poor child with your stories from a thousand years ago, he has to get ready for school"

"Bye Granpa!"

"Cute little lad, very dumb though...probably gets it from his father...
Damn when was the last time I took a shit. Last week maybe? Maybe I'll make myself some tea with chopped onions. I have to go down all those stairs...it'll take me all day before I get to the kitchen. You'd think they would have invented teleportation by now. Bunch of lazy scientist is what we got on our hands..

"Has anyone seen my Dr. Dre CD?...Where did I put my Dr. Dre CD?"

A post for the blind

A quick observation,
I was registering my information on a website last week, when I was asked to enter the information shown on a 'CAPTCHA'. Now to ensure all readers are following me so far, a 'CAPTCHA' is that little window showing a sequence of distorted random letters and numbers. This ensures the person entering this information is a human, due to the fact that a computer is not able to recognize these scrambled characters.

*A side note - 'CAPTCHAS' are used by libraries and companies such as google, to scan all new and old books; That also includes old scriptures and journals into a digital form. When the computer doesn't not recognize the characters, it is turned into a 'CAPTCHA' and it's only a matter of seconds before someone on the internet unwillingly extends a helping hand and aids the computer by filling in the scrambled characters. Giving it a second thought, in a way, we're just helping the beast, in a philosophical sense. If by 'beast' I mean, the amount of spam generators on the internet just waiting to create an account with your name and emailing your friends and family with xxxplicit content and junk mail.*

I digress....back to my captcha. Staring at the captcha for a second to decipher its content, because I don't want to make the mistake of confusing a scrambled '4' with an 'A'. I get nervous thinking the website will think I'm an idiot and just block me from registering. "You have failed to enter simple characters as they are written in front of you. This website does not accept registration from morons. May we suggest Ottawa U. -- From the people at Carleton"
As I took a closer look at the characters, I noticed a tiny symbol on the side showing a picture of a speaker. Please note I said "tiny" symbol. As curious as you are as me, I had to find out what that button was for. And the obvious behold, it was an audio clip of the characters shown on the captcha. I thought that was pretty cool. What better way to enter a captcha then by having Steven Hacking’s talking computer read it out to me?!

Ok so here is what a Captcha sounds like:

WHAT WAS THAT?!?!? I couldn't even fathom any logic reasoning to why this option is available. It sounds like a bunch of random audio clips overlapped. These could be movies, songs, even phone conversations. What if it was a bit of a conversation from a sex hotline? How awkward would that be? Would the captcha come with a warning "The previous Captcha contained adult language and nudity and should not have been heard by a young audience."

Ok so what is the point of this audio Captcha? Lets go down the list....


First off, illiterate people. Surely they can't read-- there's no way they would get passed the captcha. If that's so, what are they doing filling a registration form in the first place? Hell, lets assume they complete the form, and are at the step of entering the Captcha. And they click on the audio link, then hear this disturbing sound, then must type the matching characters from their keyboard. Get it?!...typing the characters on the keyboard is the act of reading! Ok so illiterate people are useless for the purpose of this argument.

Oh, how about....Old people..They have a hard time seeing small font, let alone scrambled small font characters. Then again, old people also have a hard time hearing. Picturing a 75 year-old Nana trying to listen to this captcha and gets a heart attack thinking it's the noise of the devil or at least that girl from the exorcist. And all she wanted was to register to get updates on her local sewing club. What a tragedy.

And finally, we come to the blind; Perhaps the administrators of this website are making their website handicap accessible so that more users may benefit from their service. There are computers for the blind, but I doubt a blind person would successfully find that 'icon' anywhere, especially if there's no button that would change that icon picture into sound. Then you would need another button for the audio version of the first button. Not a very user-friendly way of building a website.

It would be the same if I were to open a singing school, and offered a coupon to all mute people. It's insulting. And this captcha should be insulting to the blind community. People with disabilities know they won’t be able to perform normal activities and tasks we do everyday. But that doesn't mean we should pretend we're being sympathetic and offer an alternative which is impossible to reach due to the nature of the process of registering online.

In a sense, this post is for the blind community. I ask of them to stand against such insults disguised as acts of charity and kindness. If you acknowledge this message, go forth and protest in your own way. We shall go forth and rebel: Branding the city with our own braille graffiti. Or perhaps break all the lenses on all movie theater projectors. The public will surely go crazy trying to watch movies with only sound......

-- We will call ourselves the "Blind Bandits"

Blind Bandit Chief signing out.

"...the evil one"

Today, I found my doppelgänger. Wiki defines it as: "...any double of a person, most commonly in reference to a so-called evil twin." You probably think I'm crazy, or believe that I was to hasty and that I shouldn't jump to conclusions. Ok, lets take a look at this twin. His alias name is "Mystro" according to his profile. He's a male, residing in Canada (which I must confess, is not very convincing..Canada is a very big country) But here's the shocking facts. Take a look at this so called "Mystro"'s interests:

Similarly, I, too, am interested in Computers, biking, TV, books, Movies, ENGINEERING, friends and etc...
As for Music taste: I love Muse, and Pink Floyd and of course Queen.

Ok, you're still skeptical, I don't blame you, here's another proof. Looking at this mysterious shadow of mine, his last blog entry was July 7th, 2004. He was working on a summer project to build his own computer. It's here where the line is clearly drawn. As I stare down at his webpage, with the eerie glow of the computer screen projected on my face, a shiver crawls down my spine which could only be explained from a shriek of terror. Looking at his list of specs for his sub par piece of machine was all the evidence I could muster.

In the mean time, July 2004, I had just finished high school and got a handsome sum from my parents, and was eager to start university in a couple of months. I deserved to have something new and powerful for University. [I am sure you see where this is going]. So with the money I got, I went out to buy components to...build my own computer. I don't need to go into detail, but his specs almost matched mine, except for his poor choice of an AMD 2400+. Mine was a stunning AMD 3200+. All other components aside, it was disturbingly similar.

I hope you're feeling unease as I do right now. Because I forgot to mention one thing..."In some mythologies, seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. Queen Elizabeth I of England was shocked to see her doppelganger laid out on her bed. The queen died shortly thereafter." (wikipedia)

So now that we know this person is my double, it's hard to pin him as the "evil" twin, this guy could be a nice guy, who helps people and has never hurt a fly. On the other hand, I'm not the nicest guy in the bunch. I'm quite mysterious in my own ways, no one knows exactly what my intentions are. And I have certainly plotted several evil schemes in the past. Which only leaves one thing......I am the evil one.

So it's in my professional opinion that I should get rid of this "Mystro", before he gets rid of me. It's not as easy as it may seem; Referring to the Medusa paradox..how can you kill Medusa without looking at her and turning into stone?

This good "Mystro" is my kryptonite and anyone out there could use this weakness against me.

....I shall have the last laugh

See you on the dark side,

Evil Mystro

"The mind is a chaotic database" Pt. 1

This is my first blog post. I'm starting this mainly for myself, to keep track of my own thoughts. If I happen to get a few subscribers, I will try and keep up with my posts. But at this time, I cannot ensure the fact that I would keep writing on this blog.

Moving on...About a month ago, I had an interview at a consulting company in the GTA. During the interview process, I was asked several technical design questions. The first one was "draw an inverting amplifier [using op-amps]". This was quite easy, I must say. But the question that stumped me, was to connect an LED to the output pin of a micro-controller. And it is known that the output voltage on that pin is 3.3 volts. I had to make the observation that this potential was not enough to power the LED. OK, so I can't just connect the LED straight to the pin and expect it to work. I proposed to add the amplifier drawn in the first question, with a specific gain to be able to power the LED.
At the time I thought my design idea was great, and that I did very well at the interview without giving it a second thought.

I'll tell you now that I did not get the job, for several reasons I'm in no mood to mention.
Three nights ago, just after lying in bed for less than 5 minutes, for no logical reason, I thought of another much better design circuit for that question. I wasn't even thinking about the question, or asking myself if I could find a more efficient solution. NO, the solution was the first thing to pop into my head. Which made me realize how the mind is a chaotic database. I am more stunned by how I had no control on my own train of thoughts. A normal person would ask himself if there's a better way to implement this LED circuit, then put his/her thoughts to use. I seem to have skipped this normal pattern of behavior and went straight to a solution. Now this may not seem like a bad thing, "I found the solution to a problem even without thinking about it".
I'll get to this point in a bit, but here is the alternative solution which is better than the one I had provided during my interview. Simply use an NPN BJT, where the output of the micro-processor is at the base, and the LED at the emitter. The collect is driven by a source enough to power the LED (ie: 5 volts). A BJT is much cheaper and smaller then an Op-amp which comes usually in an IC and usually includes 2 op-amps. Why didn't I think of that at the interview? Could be just the pressure to perform on such short notice, but I don't blame myself for that. Any smarter person would have probably given a million better designs than my op-amp configuration.

It is on this note that I shall retire. I will come come back and dwell on this later.

Cheers,
Mystro