GXT comments: Useless at best, Confusing at worst

See the screen shot the return value doesn't make sense as commented.

Shouldn't an outerHTML return the outerHTML and not the innerHTML?

GXT sucks moment

I was using this library called GXT at work and man does it have bugs.

Here's an example if you click on a menu button too fast your context menus never disappear.

It would appear that web developers don't have the same level of robustness as conventional developers / engineers. Then again maybe the people behind this library are just lazy.

Doors Open Hamilton

May 8th 2011 was doors open Hamilton I drove down to Hamilton with my 2 past roomies. This year we decided to check out the HMCS Haida (a destroyer in our own backyard and I never knew about it even though I lived so close to it while I was in Hamilton)

 

The Ancaster town hall (it is tiny)

And the main event the Warship

The parents where no where to be found….

Old torpedo launch tubes (I earlier generations fired directly from deck as opposed to our modern closer to sea level versions)

Apparently part of the mechanism still was functional you can rotate the turret! (Lucky for me the crowed distracted the staff long enough for the test).

There’s apparently lots of things to hit your head on always. (People where shorter back then).

You can’t really see it but it says meat locker.

Crews would apparently put meat here to thaw. I guess it also gave everything an ocean salty taste.

Space it always a luxury on ships.

That goes for the washrooms too.

You know what they say they don’t put up signs unless it became a problem.

The Radio Room

Look closely…. Are you looking?…. Yes that’s an iPhone.

There were no permanent beds on board if you wanted to get some shut eye you strung one of these up.

No longer working… Most likely the last time that power was given to the ship.

Here Maddy demonstrates the ammunition loader.

Her Majesty’s Flag

Here Maddy demonstrates the tight corridors and how she can only stand up in one special spot. I’m assuming that sign she’s giving says “Hey I found a spot where I can stand up”.

(or something like that).

According to the signs the catwalk were put in after to help with safety… Did they just jump before?

Anyone that has played video games this should be a familiar sight.

Chicks with guns!

Very Canadian I’m debating if they installed this after the ship was dry docked.

Here’s a top down view of the torpedo launcher I was trying to activate earlier.

The bridge

I believe these are the secondary ship to ship guns. Apparently American made and like everything American everything was big.

If you slip it’s actually a pretty far drop.

I don’t know what this is, it’s not a garden hose or some abstract art piece.

You know how you know it’s Hamilton? Smoke top right corner.

2 Cameras different white balance.

I dunno what this one’s about.

This was taken by an iPhone note the blurry cam.

Crazy Antenna Array.

R8 Practical

This is always next to the grand and toy and it does seem like the owner is using this as his everyday car.

 

Radeon HD 5870 Quiet Mod

I noticed that the squirrel cage fan in the HD 5870 can at times make a medium pitched wirr. After some messing around I realized it was the plastic shell that was very good at transmitting the noise.

So I got out some foam board and created a sound damper.

 

 

 

 

 

The end result is that frequencies are now isolated to much lower end of the spectrum and the video card generally remains barely audible.

This also has not yet shown to affect thermals in any way so it’s the best of both worlds at the moment.

My Opposition Letter to The CRTC regarding UBB

There are several major problems with UBB I will outline them for you below.

1. Independent ISP's already pay for the infastructure congestion is on the bell end and is not caused by the "strain
of independent ISP's" as they only get their agreed upon rate.

2. There is no free ride happening independent ISP's pay for infrastructure upgrades just like everyone else.

3. Accountable metering is needed if we go with UBB: For metered internet to be viable each house will have to get a certified meter installed of which the measurement is validated and government approved. Similar to the requirements of retail scales, gas meters, electricity meters, water meters. In the current model Bell can claim the user used X capacity and the user has no recourse as bell can claim whatever they want. This meter must be readable without requiring logging onto Bell's website (aka must not use bandwidth to check it).

4. Bell is not penalizing the "Bandwidth Hogs" the problem of capacity lies in what is known as "peak hour capacity" that is when everyone is trying to get online. Bell penalizes a 5Mbps plan more by giving them a lower cap vs a 25mbps plan. But the 5mbps users is far less likely to cause congestion because they simply cannot be as demanding as the 25mbps user.

5. UBB is a discouragement for network upgrades and continue investing. If you were Bell and you could just simply penalize your customers for using the service they paid for as a way to make your users demand less would there every be a need to upgrade your infrastructure? Nope. In fact if you knew every customer was capped at 25GB why would you even bother investing any capital at all in improving your network infrastructure? You've essentially frozen all possible future demand.

6. The tariffs don't reasonablely match the cost to produce each GB. Most of us understand there is some markup but Bell's markup model is insane. The price to deliver a GB including network upgrades done annually is less than 3 cents / GB. Yet bell turns around and charges of $2? The cost / GB would be reasonable if UBB was implemented at a rate of 5-10 cents / GB.

7. The tariff's don't reward the non-bandwidth hogs. If we have these tariff's in place what happens when you don't exceed the 25GB of allocated bandwidth? Surely bell will give you a refund or a credit for unused GB? You can carry them over to the next month right? Nope this 25GB just dissapears you don't get it back.

8. Canada already has the highest internet prices in the world. And yet we still can't keep up with our internet? The USA is already offering fiberoptic to the house while charging their customers far less. The argument that Canada needs to charge more to keep it's network running is completely fictitious.

10. Conflict of interest: Bell's own TV service isn't metered in any way. They are using UBB to effectively prevent new errants from entering the market like Netflix.

11. There is something seriously wrong when filling up 6 hard drives then overnight shipping them, and simply throwing them away will cost less than if the same data was delivered over the internet. http://www.canadiandownload.com/ is a business model that shows just how backwards our internet is.

12. Innovation will leave. Why in the world would companies that are creating new and innovative experiences on the internet stay in Canada when the Canadian public will be completely unable to utilize their services?

Usage Based Billing : The Fight Isn't Over Yet

As many Canadian's breath a sigh of relief I would like to remind them the fight isn't over yet. In this CRTC hearing the behaviour is shameful.

Admist the 400,000+ now that have signed the petition against Usage Based Billing the head of the CRTC is still ignorant a belligerent and insistent that their stance is pro-consumer and not for the telcos:

http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&hl=e&clipID=5030

In addition when asked "How do you come to these figures" Referring to statistics regarding how much internet (GB) consumers use and what impact it would have on consumers Fickenstien continuously reiterates "Bell told us the average user uses 15GB", "Bell told us this would only affect 4% of the population".  The same was applied to overage charges they admitted they just took Bell's figures for their retail customers and applied a discount instead of actually calculate how much it costs for a gigabyte and see if the markup is reasonable.

How does the CRTC a regulatory body even do any regulating if all they do is take data that Bell claims and doesn't so much as do a little verification?

Stop Internet Metering In Canada

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are about to impose usage-based billing on YOU.
This means we're looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay MUCH more for less Internet. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

These Big Telecom companies are forcing small competing ISPs to adopt the same pricing scheme, so that we have no choice but to pay these punitive fees.

This will crush innovative services, Canada's digital competitiveness, and your wallet.

We urgently need to send a clear message to Ottawa, saying that we won't stand by while some of the most profitable companies in the country indiscriminately add new fees to our Internet bills. Enough is enough. 

Click here to sign the petition and tell Ottawa your against Usage Based Billing.

The Rebuild Begins

A few days ago I finally got all the parts together for the Blade CP Pro. I’m in the process of starting the first rebuild since a mechanical failure caused a crash due to a servo that failed to respond.
It does baffle me how bad the stock E-flite servos are. I’ve since replaced those with my trusty HXT900 (I apparently buy these by the dozen now).



Since it’s winter this time around I have time to make sure cable management is done right. This is probably the most clean cable route I’ve done so far to the bird.
Blades still need to be installed but I think I’ll get around to doing that once we are closer to flight season so I don’t falsely think I can just take it out and fly it.

Global Agenda First Looks

Recently I purchased global agenda and after a few long sessions I have finally come up with an initial opinion on it. Global agenda is not an MMO. Why would I say this? well global agenda does not have a shared space required for a true MMO.

The construct of global agenda consists of a main lobby area were people can change and buy items and then instance missions. The instance missions themselves just activate after you waited X amount of time in the queue. The best way I can describe this game is it's like TF2 in PvP and L4D in PvE but since most of the time you only play with 4 in co-op and 16 players in PvP there's nothing massive about this game.

A lot of people called Global Agenda the new planetside. I don't think this is a fair assessment. PlanetSide the norm was to have 100vs100 wars and sometimes 100vs100vs100 when things got really hectic. Unfortunately global agenda isn't this exciting or dynamic.

Global Agenda has recently added a shared questing area but unfortunately it's far too short for me I finished this area in about 2 days that's hardly any time at all for an MMO.

Although some may argue that the game has been streamlined I believe that it is far too streamlined to. The draw to MMO's was always there was this massive persistent world where you could explore together with other players. Random encounters (with other players) are always encouraged and add to the experience. However here Global Agenda misses the point as well because the only random encountering your going to get after the initial quests (which are more like a long tutorial anyways) is the randomly being put together with a few other people when your assigned a mission.

This would be fine if the missions were more varied but sadly they are not they always consist of killing some random spawns. Going through a trap and then defeating some boss. To that end the boss don't even have any real strategy to them it's just hit them with all you got.

TR0N planning (for Dec 17 2010)

Looking to get together a few people for TR0N opening night here's what everyone replied:

Joel	No
Eva	Yes
Andrew	No