“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” -Kettering

Engineers rarely make good graphic artists, as graphic artists rarely make good engineers. Rarely is this truism better illustrated than in this poster for the Manchester Metroshuttle entitled “Making the City Work Together”.

Linksys WRT-350N – thumbs down.

Like any good geek I like to keep my networking equipment current and speedy. So recently I went out and bought a Linksys WRT-350N router. It has great specs — wireless-N support, a gigabit-ethernet wired switch for your desktops, USB storage support — but frankly, you’re better off not giving this one a second thought. It’s like when I try to cook: the ingredients are there, but the end product sucks.

Continue reading “Linksys WRT-350N – thumbs down.”

Tough times for bond insurers.

This is definitely not a good time to be in the bond insurance business. With large-scale insurers Ambac and MBIA — and with smaller players faring no better — one could well think that in the end the lending crisis has brought to light considerable flaws at the very basis of the American — and indeed global — financial sector. (all links above except the first lead to 6-month stock charts).

Continue reading “Tough times for bond insurers.”

It sure is a good thing that Canadians are getting shot at every day to defend Afghans’ ‘freedoms’.

You’d think that with all the international troops there the people of Afghanistan could be considered free, unlike when they were living under the Taleban. It doesn’t really work out that way though — just ask Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, a journalism student who’s been condemned to death for printing and distributing a paper off the internet which supposedly violated the tenets of Islam. It’s hard for me to think that Canadians are getting sent to the ‘stan to defend a regime which, as it turns out, doesn’t seem all that different from the brutal and savage old Taleban regime.

MB makes a value proposition.

This article drove down the street to http://ambitiousbutrubbish.com/2008/01/mb-makes-a-value-proposition-with-the-all-new-c230/… update any bookmarks you may have.

I can only hope it fails as fast.

A former dBase architect sees ominous parallels between Ashton-Tate swan-song dBase IV and Windows Vista. Looks like Microsoft’s much-maligned OS could in fact be the beginning of the end for Redmond. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Bill Gates has decided to end his day-to-day involvement in the company at this time.

Ah, I long for the days when Canada was a sovereign country.

A few days ago Canada’s diplomats were issued a training manual that listed the USA and Israel as countries which would potentially torture prisoners we handed over to them. I had a sinking feeling that this wouldn’t last, because Stephen Harper is such a pathetic little servile house-boy to his American masters… and I was right of course. The government today has servilely apologized to the countries that torture. The sooner we’ll be rid of those little shits that are in government today, the better off the country will be.

I’ve been in the business for a while, and this seems spot-on.

Confused by all the software engineering methods out there? Don’t be! Chet Haase has written a blog post that untangles everything.

If only there had been some way for them to kind of foretell the future…

The Astrological Magazine was forced to stop publication in December 2007 due to “unforeseen circumstances”. I guess they just didn’t see that one coming…

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I’m a big fan of the BBC show Top Gear. That’s not a particularly rare or interesting fact, but I also happen to be a fan of SOMAfm‘s Secret Agent net radio station, and while re-watching some old episodes of the BBC TV show I couldn’t help but notice that a surprising amount of the music used comes straight from the net radio station’s playlists. I’ve been watching one and listening to the other for a couple of years, and I’d never noticed that before…