Firefox is great. I love its extensions, especially the Web Developer extension and Adblock. But still, on my Mac, Safari remains my favorite browser. It's snappier as long as there's no ad on the visited page. Ads can definitely make the whole web experience painfully slow .. Adblock is probably the most efficient counter-ad solution, but Safari doesn't care.

I finally decided to go the good old way; edit /etc/hosts. MacOS X doesn't use this file by default, lookupd getting information only from NetInfo. Fortunately, everything can be changed, right?

% su -
% niutil -create . /locations/lookupd/hosts
% niutil -createprop . /locations/lookupd/hosts LookupOrder CacheAgent FFAgent DNSAgent NIAgent

I add a cronjob to fetch Dan Pollock's hosts file.

0       9 *       *       *       curl -s http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts > /etc/hosts

So my hosts file blocks most ads and I can still use NetInfo to manage the DNS entries I have for my local machines. Beautiful. Final step: avoid error in Safari's activity window. That means responding to local requests on port 80. I'm doing it the easy way by starting Apache and adding the following line to my /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf:

ErrorDocument 404 "

Comme Jean, de plus en plus de pionniers décident de quitter des jobs apparemment enviables pour des boulots moins payés mais porteurs de sens.

Bon article à lire dans Le Nouvel Observateur.

Here I am. Friday nite. 11:00. Forgot to eat; too absorbed by my code. Just put some pizza leftovers in the microwave oven. Ahhhh. This is not a life.

But there's a new release of Spamity coming up ;)

From Mac Geekery: Paste as Plain Text, Dagnabbit!

I should have think about it myself. I just modified iChat and Stickies; wonderful! I even set Paste as Plain Text as the default command-v key combination :)

My iPod has resurrected. Thank God. I didn't realized how important this device has become in my life. tears

Problems appeared a few days ago when I wanted to perform my weekly songs rotation (15 GB is not enough!). iTunes refused to synchronize any song. The firmware being up to date, there was no much other thing to do than to try the scary restore function of the updater. The restoration ended with some useless error message (An unexpected error occurred., meaning I just don't have a clue what's going on with your iPod); impossible to mount the iPod on the desktop anymore.

Fine. Even though the 1-year Apple warranty is over, I fortunately paid the extra 100$ for the extended warranty, offered and coverd by my local Apple dealer, B.Mac. A few phone calls to the stores in my area; no answer. The web site is down. Google finally shed some light on the situation; B.Mac is going out of business! What's gonna happen with my iPod and my warranty? Panic and frustration.

I decided to have a deeper technical analysis at the problem. I can't restore my iPod. The display works great but I can't format the disk (Disk Utility hangs indefinitely). Why not change the drive myself? I can open my iPod and install a new or used hard drive. I must spend some money, but at least my iPod may survive. However, I was not fully confident since the hard disk test from the iPod obscure diagnositic mode returned "HDD PASS". Argh ..

Final precaution: I followed Boris' advice and visited the head quarters of B.Mac. Not only I found a sales person to speak to, but I also learned that my warranty was actually covered by another company. Wonderful! I don't have to worry about B.Mac anymore!

All my papers on my desk, I was going to call the insurance company when I decided to perform a final experience. I read comments from users having similar problems with their iPod and some of them resurrect their devices after completely draining the battery. Oh .. I succeeded in restoring my iPod! For no apparent reason, it's fully functional and I filled back the disk without any problem. Weird!

Miracle. At least for now.

That's interesting .. I received this information with my phone bill.

The information you submit on this form will only be used to stop unwanted direct marketing offers through CMA's Do Not Contact Service.

Let's see if anything change during the next year or so ..

Première spéciale du samedi. La justesse des notes prises en reconnaissance la semaine précédant le rallye sera mise à l'épreuve. À titre de spectateur, j'arrive trop tard pour voir ladite spéciale et être témoin du malheur qui devait s'abattre sur mon ancienne caisse. Ouch!

Une courbe un peu trop serrée prise un peu trop rapidement. Aucun blessé sinon la caisse, bien froissée. André dans son grand positivisme ne compte pas faire du Défi Ste-Agathe 2004 le lit de mort de la petite Swift .. De façon plus réaliste, je me demande bien si le premier tonneau de cette dernière ne sera pas son dernier ..

It's been over a month now that my server's logs have entries such as Jul 23 17:57:26 extra imapd[826]: login: francis.test.denison.edu[140.141.15.171] francis plaintext+TLS. It's been over a month that when I hit google in Firefox, I'm not redirected to google.ca. Over a month that I show my passport when I buy alcohol. I'm actually celebrating my longest stay out of my country. And that is, for business. Scary to realize I should have done this way before. But, it's never too late, isn't?

Luck is on my side, I must confess. The ingredients to a success story were all there; a nice apartment, an amazing area, a challenging job, a good laptop, and wonderful coworkers at the university. The work is getting done at a fast pace and other contracts are coming up.

But .. I ear whispers from the audience: What the hell are you doing? Oh! Heu .. yeah .. good point.

As a contractor for a consulting company located downtown Montreal, I came to Granville, Ohio, with a good friend to install a new email system for Denison University. Decided to go open source, the University's staff from the computing services department are enchanted by the Cyrus/Postfix/SpamAssassin we're are deploying. And so I am.

Mentallity changing towards open source even gave me time to release a new version of Spamity. I spent time making major improvements to Spamity based on their requests and during work hours. What more can I ask?

n.m. Québ. Réunion d'anciens élèves d'une même promotion.

Je n'ai jamais aimé revenir dans le passé. Si ma vie n'est qu'une succession de questionnements, mon objectif est d'y apporter des changements pour le mieux, même lorsque les réponses sont floues ou carrément inexistantes. Je veux que mon lendemain soit sans regret ni remords. Quand j'ai reçu au mois de mars dernier une invitation à un conventum des étudiants promus en 1994 de mon école secondaire, j'ai passé plus de temps à me demander pourquoi spam assasin n'avait pas détruit ce message qu'à me demander si j'allais y aller. Oublie ça ..

Sous la pression du seul copain du secondaire encore en contact avec moi, ironiquement un excellent collègue avec qui je réalise présentement un mandat dans une université de l'Ohio, j'ai déplié les 30 douilles nécessaires pour me présenter au fichu conventum. Je devais me trouver une raison pour me convaincre qu'il s'agissait de la bonne décision. Alors que la majorité considérait la rencontre comme des retrouvailles, je la qualifiais plutôt de bilan à une échelle plus personnelle. Comme beaucoup trop de nerds, mon enfance fût marquée par le triste constat que l'intelligence est inversement proportionnelle à la popularité. Heureusement, cette tendance semble changer avec l'âge et rien de tel que de confirmer cette théorie par une expérience sur le terrain ..

Deux jours avant mon départ pour les États-Unis, les retrouvailles ont lieu. Dans une caféteria aux couleurs dégoutantes inondée du bruit de lamentables chansons rétro, chacun personne que je reconnais et que j'aborde me ravive d'encouragement; aucune, mais vraiment aucune, me reconnaît d'emblée, me fournissant la preuve que les dix dernières années ont agi sur moi. Et la transformation est positive; j'écoute mes anciens camarades me raconter leur réalité et trop souvent leur histoire rime avec banalité. Un marriage? Une maison? Un enfant? Honnêtement splendide! Mais où sont passées les passions? Les rêves? Les ambitions qui renouvelaient notre quotidien, qui nous motivaient à se réaliser? Qu'est-ce qui se passe dans le tête d'un gamin qui a maintenant 27 ans? Aucune curiosité à connaître même mon histoire; leur comportement est prévisible. Et puis tant mieux, puisque mon histoire est trop longue à raconter ..

Je n'ai plus rien n'à envier de la popularité éteinte des somme-toute-respectables personnes avec qui j'ai grandi. Seulement, je me considère encore en pleine croissance. Trop peu ont l'arrogance d'en prétendre autant ;)

I just spent a solid 20 seconds looking for my fork. I was actually tightening it in between my teeth. While my hands were cooking food, my mind was somewhere else. I must blame a girl.

À défaut de le croiser online, je le croise on air, en grande discussion avec Miss Bazzo .. Génial Lino! C'est le temps pour nous de dévaliser les Renaud-Bray.

Bid Request Id: 140424

This is what I am looking for today:
A "community" type website similar to friendster. [...] Once they are in the site, they should have these features:
A Forum, or Message board. Not a phpbb or anything like that, but one build into the same template that I will provide for the rest of the script.
Search other members, add to contact list (similar to friendster.com)
They should be able to upload pictures, add stories, and poems. [...]
The script will also have a feature similar to "hotornot.com" Where people can come and rate the pictures, stories and poems that people have uploaded.[...]
Also need a banner page, where a member can upload his banner to his site, and it will be shown on a "links" page. [...] Also have a banner rotator so that I can set up banner accounts for advertisers.
[..] other small features such as the admin area where I can run queries on the database, send emails to all members, etc.

Max accepted bid: $150 (USD)

This kind of job-auction site discourages me. Someone has actually bided for the project. How could you develop it for $150? I guess you install Plone with the default layout and hope it satisfies the client ..

BTW -- I'm looking for a Herman Miller Aeron chair. Would pay $50 for it .. :/

Every year, on april first, geeks prove they like joking. Laugh and work do coexist, especially when you start your morning what's-going-on-in-the-world routine and read about Apple's triple-CPU system, Apple's PowerPod and the PC EZ-Bake Oven .. :)

Keyboard shortcuts are great. They become very useful once you developed fingering habits. However habits are dangerous. Specially when the same task in two different contexts have different keyboard shortcuts or when the same keyboard shortcut performs different tasks in two different contexts.

That's why I sometimes press command-shift-w in Safari to close the active tab and accidently close the window containing all tabs. The same key combination in XCode does close the current file of the editor, without closing the other files of the history.

That's also why I sometimes press ctrl-x in BitchX to send a message to the active channel and accidently switch to another channel. The same key combination in centericq does send the message I just composed.

Oh well. I'll try to improve my brain context switcher.

Rien de tel que de descendre St-Urbain vers la Place des Arts et arriver côte à côte avec la 2.5 RS d'un pote. Une rencontre fortuite comme celle-là, c'est du bonheur lancé en pleine face. Une soupe tonkinoise avec Tom et Lino et la journée ne peut que bien aller.

Vive les travailleurs autonomes!

Tu rêves de jouer à l'avant et on te fout dans les buts. -- Daniel, Taxi 1

Un peu pessimiste comme réflexion, mais quand même sympatique.

I should have done this years ago. So much time waste looking for the perfect tool. So much time waste using those tools. So much money waste on those tools! From now on I'm sticking to LaTeX! (with emacs, obviously ;)

I've been working for this company for more than a year. I've resigned and I'm quitting today. My new free-lancer life is waiting for me.

Over the hundreds of so-called programmers working here, I might have been the only one bypassing the firewall, except for the sysadmins actually responsible of the firewall; can't stay away from my Linux server.

So while IRC and IM were strictly forbidden, I was tunnelling my ssh connection up to my server and doing my "necessary" work; tailing my log files, reading #joitto (vive BitchX!), chatting with my buddies (you get use to centericq's commands and almost prefer it to graphical clients such as the excellent proteus) ..

Finally leaving .. finally the chance to work with geeks .. finally finding back my motivation.

<deep breath>

I can't believe I'm doing this. But I still think it's the best solution. Consider the problem: a service company, client of yours, wants to send a newsletter to a list of several hundreds customer email addresses. Neither the sender nor the receiver is a computer geek and therefore would not accept some plain text message. (by the way -- I'm a fervent evangelist of effective email; pure text, nicely flowed, correctly quoted replies. I was sending the smallest emails at the last company where I worked; my messages were usually under 1 KB while most of colleagues would eat twice as much just for their html signature .. eurk) The receiver shall not have to launch an external application to view some attached documents. Almost half of the list are hotmail addresses. You see me coming? HTML mail is the way to go. Simple and obvious question: how do you send HTMl mail? Neither my main MUA (Mail.app under OS X) nor the one I'm contributing to (GNUMail.app under OS X and Linux) has this feature. In front of such problem, I always rely on the Swiss knife of scripting: Perl. Quick reading of rfc 2854 and the solution becomes so simple :

#!/usr/bin/perl

open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t -odq")
  || die "Can't fork for sendmail: $!\n";
print SENDMAIL <<"EOF";
From: My client <donotreply\@host>
To: <user\@host>
Subject: Newsletter - March 2004
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1    

<!-- .. some valid HTML .. -->

EOF
close(SENDMAIL)
  || warn "sendmail didn't close nicely";

Loop over a list of emails and convince yourself you're not spaming ..

15. Never fear mistakes.
14. There are no dumb questions.
13. Serendipity is your friend.
12. Know yourself.
11. Know your customer - LISTEN.
10. Know your competition.
09. Vision is easy. Execution is hard.
08. Focus, focus, focus!
07. Get a great team.
06. Dont forget your friends.
05. Understand your business model.
04. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.
03. Do Good.
02. Do it because you love it.
01. Dream. You can change the world.

-- David Sifry

If you don't know what you are willing to die for, your spirit is already dead. -- Martin Luther King