Happy BC Day!

Just a note to say the lack of updates today is two-fold, one, it's a public holiday here in British Columbia, in particular, BC Day, which I spent with my loverly wife at the Fort Langley festivities. I'll post some pics somewhere if anyone cares.

The second reason is I'm really wanting to upgrade this server to the latest version of Movable Type. Currently it's 3.2 which is ancient compared to the most recent 4.3 release. Not sure if I'll get around to it tonight or not, we'll see. I did a test upgrade and it all seemed to go quite well. Still looking for someone to bring the site design out of the dark ages though. Email me if you're wanting to help out.

Normal posting will return tomorrow as myself and the rest of the lower mainland drags themselves up and to work as normality resumes.

Forest Fire in Whistler BC

Youch! Seems lightning ignited a Whistler Blackcomb Mountain Wildfire. Pics in the link, and you can follow more on twitter on #whistler.

This Day 22 Years ago was the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

Link on reddit pointed to an article on the Space Shuttle Challenger and noted it was 22 years ago today that it exploded on takeoff. I remember this vividly too, just like everytime I hear the line in the song Nineteen Somethin' that goes:

Space Shuttle fell out of the sky
And the whole world cried...

I remember looking into my elementary school window (I was in grade 5 or 6) and seeing my teacher either watching TV or crying, or both, and wondering what the heck was going on. I don't remember if I found out what had happened in school or when I got home, but the image of the smoke from the explosion stuck with me and still makes me shiver, knowing what that smoke trail meant for the crew and the lone civilian teacher on board.

Another Sighting

Oneiros pointed me a few days ago to what Scott Kurtz called a Brent Sighting. Nope, it's not Brent but your friendly neighborhood Arcterex, back in 2000. Glad to see this has popped up again :)

Someone Selling My Photo on eBay!

So this is something that's completely pissed me off. I got a comment posted on my personal site that someone has listed my picture as their own on eBay!

It's stupid and lame for a few reasons (£0.01 for one thing, second is "shipping is free"? third is it's the wrong format for wallpaper anyway), and the auction has ended. However, it's still up there and in violation of copyright I believe. Anyone have experience with this, specifically how to get the auction removed or who to contact at eBay about this in the future? Their help system doesn't seem to have a nice "report abuse" link that's readily visible.

Note to self for the future, don't post large versions of images, and if I do, watermark them. :(

Dang, seems you can't trust anyone these days...

Update: The bastard has listed it again! The image (linked to my site) has been replaced this time though.

Closing Comments Automatically in MT 3.x MT Close Comments plugin, for my upcoming move to MT 3.12. Now my question is, can one leave certain particular blog entries open within the closed comment range? I have certain entries which attract very interesting comments which I'd like to leave open to the masses of morons out there. Case in point.

ArcterMoved Just in case anyone was wondering where my personal website disappeared to (all three of you) the ip changed (long story) and you can find me at http://70.69.65.225/blog. Or, set your primary DNS server to 65.110.12.162 (ns1.ufies.org).

You may now go back to watching up to the second voting coverage of the elections.

ArcterUpdate This is for those who can't get to arcterex.net (due to it sitting in a corner of my basement), I figured I'd throw out a bit of an update. Read on for why I've been silent here and more.... For those of you who don't know, I bought a house, lost my job, started doing massive renovations on the house, and found a new job (starting tomorrow) all in a quite compressed length of time.

The move is complete! All my worldly possessions are now stuff into the basement of my new house, along with cats, computers, etc. We are still (still!) waiting for the guy who is doing the ceilings to finish, and as soon as that is done we can finish the floor (currently a stylish bare plywood motif), and when we have a floor the fun stuff, like unpacking and not living out of boxes, can start. I do have internet, in that it's set up and I finally broke down yesterday and hooked up my linux workstation so I could get some net time.

The cats are adjusting as well as could be expected, with some changes in position on the feline totem pole (Corny has re-claimed the bed (well, foamy on the floor of the someday-to-be office) as his, and is defending it feverantly), and other fun stuff (they are just learning about the concept of stairs for example). The house is full of very scary noises and new smells, but they have lots of places to hide amidst my their boxes.

I found out from the cable modem guy that the wire that Cat5 nicely put in all over the house for me (he worked his ass off wiring the entire place with coax for cablevision and cat 5e for both phone and net) was old and busted. Turns out no one told him that the pile of wire that he used was ripped out of my in-laws house by the cable guy saying it was old and busted! D'oh! Cableguy left a box of good wire though, so I'll be re-pulling some of the cablevision runs in the next couple of days. Some have already been walled up so they'll have to live with a less than perfect signal.

Other than that life goes on. I'm resisting setting up any more computers simply because of the construction going on around and my lack of desire to have to re-set everything up when the office is turned back into an office and not a make-shift bedroom :) Well, that and there isn't any room.

Slashdot Randomness Wow, two +5 posts on /. in two days. Does this mean I win? I doubt it, only that if you say the right sort of thing, at the right time, attached to the right post, you can "manipulate" the /. moderation system enough to rack up loads of karma that you really don't care about :)

Now back to your reguarily scheduled randomness.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!! I just can't escape them! (via fark)

Happy Birthday Mithrandir! Just a quick note to say happy birthday to Mithrandir!

A Special Happy Birthday A big happy birthday goes out to my good friend Engel, recently moved away, but definately not forgotten. Have a good one my friend!

The Hair Just in case anyone was wondering, yes, I did it.

Laser Surgery? Just a quick question for everyone out there. I've been toying with the idea of getting corrective laser eye surgery from the Valley Laser Eye Center for a while. Anyway, I wanted to get any input from other people that I could. How it was and how are the results basically. The lovely Webdiva has already given me her experiences, now I'm looking for a wider range of people. If anyone has had this, and wants to share, please let me know by email or by commenting below.

Things I'm also wondering about are age, how bad were your eyes, how is night vision, halos around things, and playing quake (yes, seriously... I can play just fine with my glasses on but with contacts I can't "focus" (or something) on the screen sometimes.... just for 3d fps though), and have you needed touch ups since.

Thanks for any info anyone can give me!