Feel the peace flowing thought you...........

Mark Light - The Zen Garden (flash)

I'm more enlightened already......

Doors Open Toronto---Home

This weekend, (Saturday, May 29 & Sunday, May 30, 2004) Doors Open Toronto celebrates its 5th anniversary with a special focus on post-1945 contemporary Canadian architecture and architects. ...

Toronto was the first city in North America to launch this prestigious event, based on a successful European program dedicated to built heritage, architecture and design. Developed as a millennium project in 2000 by the City of Toronto Culture Division, Doors Open Toronto has since attracted over half a million visitors to hundreds of buildings throughout the city.

See this PDF for whats NEW this year

Last Year we visted the Distillery District, and the newly open Carlu

Just when you thought life coudn't get more complicated.....

Supplementary Characters in the Java Platform:

Abstract
This article describes how supplementary characters are supported in the Java platform. Supplementary characters are characters in the Unicode standard whose code points are above U FFFF, and which therefore cannot be described as single 16-bit entities such as the char data type in the Java programming language. Such characters are generally rare, but some are used, for example, as part of Chinese and Japanese personal names, and so support for them is commonly required for government applications in East Asian countries.

The Java platform is being enhanced to enable processing of supplementary characters with minimal impact on existing applications. New low-level APIs enable operations on individual characters where necessary. Most text-processing APIs, however, use character sequences, such as the String class or character arrays. These are now interpreted as UTF-16 sequences, and the implementations of these APIs is changed to correctly handle supplementary characters. The enhancements are part of version 1.5 of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE).

Besides explaining these enhancements in detail, this article also provides guidelines for application developers for determining and implementing necessary changes to enable use of the complete Unicode character set.

disruptive wireless access point and router is The Little Engine That Could

Robert X. Cringely writes about the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be bought for as little as $US69.99. Since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive technology.

The adaptable WRT54G allows you you "hack" the firmware.Third party firmwares inculde those from Sveasoft here's what you can use it for after less than an hour's work. You get all the original Linksys functions plus SSH, Wonder Shaper, L7 regexp iptables filtering, frottle, parprouted, the latest Busybox utilities, several custom modifications to DHCP and dnsmasq, a PPTP server, static DHCP address mapping, OSPF routing, external logging, as well as support for client, ad hoc, AP, and WDS wireless modes.

You too can be a WISP (Wireless ISP.

The point is (I think) that wireless access point and routers - like the Linksys WRT54G - that allow firmware mods and have the potential to either a) radically lower the costs to companies entering the market or b) non- profit / DIY WISP (Wireless ISP) and VoIP hot spots.

SlashDot has jumped on this under the banner Do-It-Yourself VOIP Telco


Here's a link to the Linksys product page for the Wireless-G WRT54G and the Sveasoft WRT54G Firmware Documentation

Update June 3 2004: Linksys WiFi Gateway Remote Attack Risk Discovered

Macromedia offering Flash Player 7 for Linux:

Via InfoWorld. Now Flash and Flex become contenders for a universal rich client platform.

Asterisk - The Open Source Linux PBX

Reading Jon Udell's blog I came across a reference to Asterisk - The Open Source Linux PBX. Cool. You can watch a 1999 Real Player presentation by UT Austin's David Gracy which gives lots of details.

I was thinking about the functionality in the Office place, when I wondered about using this to setup a Home PXB (private exchange) : separate voice mail for all your room mates; redirect to their cell phones if they do not answer the extension; blocking ex-girlfriend phone number; ring a couple of extensions for siblings when their mother rings; (they did not mention it but) different ring tone for different numbers.

The presentation is done is a style which I've only rare seen : 2 panels, one the the speaker and one for the slide show, synchonized to the speaker. It's nice to have a PDF to read/print but the value add for this is HUGE, whether conference or school lecture. Tthe only thing I've seen better is adding a synchonized transcript to the 2 panels, and give speech to text software this must be easier. It this case the RealVideo stream synchronized to a slide show was done via Virtual Courseroom Environment (VCORE) project which was the real subject of Jon's blog pieice.

Swisscoms Wifi win's corporate placement spot by being worst pay-for-WiFi service in Europe

An excerpt from Cory Doctorow's forthcoming Tor Books novel "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," due sometime in early 2005. This scene based on a true story.

And Cory's is not the only one to have such poor experiences with Swisscoms, not to mention that they don't like having it pointed out just what people think of their crappy service, expensive as hell

One of the problems mentioned is a lack of available cards. This artificial scarcity leads to the silly sight of customers doing the dance of "please let me give you money". Is there a reason beyond incompetence or BHP mis-management that explains why this problem hasn't been addressed? SwissCom's current sales director - Dick de Pater - seems to think "it's just fine, please stop complaining".

Extensible Programming

Extensible Programming, also an earlier version Gregory V. Wilson: "XML-Based Programming Systems". Doctor Dobb's Journal, March 2003 (PDF)

My Canada includes AccordionGuy

Joey takes to task (in the nicest - Canadian - way) racist wing nut who whines about a lost Canada that hasn't existed since at least 1867 (and even then only in few with small hearts and pin heads). Canada has always been about people (and people's) coming together to form a new and greater community, and although we have made a few missteps on the way, it has resulted in a wonderful place. This creature of the night makes me embarrassed for my "British heritage", and the sooner "it" exits stage right the better.

We love you Joey, and are very proud of you.


Via Boing Boing

Securing Your Domino Web Database

Via notestips.com :: Securing Your Web Database is a great check list of things to consider.

Arrows, Posts, Comments, Mail, Bullets , Print & Carts & Bags

From 300 Images From 1800 Sites, a collection of icons images, gathered from across the web. Useful if you need a quick action icon (prototyping?), or to start brainstorming on style / brand image.

The sidebar on using "backwards" arrows in the breadcrumb is a great idea.

This is the sort of thing that takes a LOT of time, to surf and really - really - look at a lot of web sites.