Ars Slacktica

My grandmother Vivienne died last Friday; succumbing to a weakening body, and a failing heart. She was 86, but it was extraordinary that she had lived this long. For half of my life, she was plagued with health problems that pushed her so near the edge, I lost count of the times that I rushed to a hospital to see her, fearing that it would be the last time. She clutched at life though, in spite of the pain she seemed too taken with this world to leave it and her family behind. Hearing that Grandma was sick began to lose all meaning to me, as it was just assumed that she would once again pull through. She always did.

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For anyone reading this who knew my grandmother, there is a memorial website at http://vivienne.hallams.ca - there are photos of her life (some cool ones of her early years in inter-war Vancouver, and some really awful ones of me) and other content from the memorial service.

This is the top rated entry in the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song contest:

I am totally pumped for hockey now!

(Background on this amazing song available here: http://torontoist.com/2008/07/logan_aubes_hockey_night_theme.php)

Just in time for the long weekend, grab a patio table and bench for only $15 each! Table legs are removable.

Let me know if you're interested, and I'll save it/them from Craigslist.

Start the summer off right with a new propane grill - my propane grill! I'm moving to a building that doesn't allow propane appliances, so I have to find it a new home. Features include:

• 40,000 BTU
  
• Stainless steel enclosure
  
• Warming Rack
  
• Side burner
  
• Comes with
  • Propane tank
    
  • 5-piece tool set (spatula, knife, fork, tongs, basting brush)
    
  • Long shish kebab skewers
    
  • Vegetable basket
    
  • Cleaning products (grill cleaner, stainless steel cleaner, venturi brush)
    
  • and more..

I'm looking for $150 for the whole set. If you're interested, let me know. Pick up is in the Bathurst and St. Clair area.

( Pics under the cut )

As I just posted an article on the CBC's first baby steps into Bittorrent distribution, I thought I should also post about some of the basics of Bittorrent security.

When you download something over Bittorrent, you leave tracks on a number of different servers that can be used to trace back to you. Media companies use this information to take legal action against doawloaders (in the US, anyway). If you are concerned about this, you can use Firefox, Tor and Peer Guardian2 together to help protect yourself.

Tor takes your internet traffic and makes it appear like it's coming from another random computer on the internet (all volunteers) so it can't be traced back to you. Firefox has a Tor plugin that lets you easily turn it on and off while you're surfing. Whenever you search for a torrent you enable Tor, which will keep your IP address from being recorded on the web server. You can then configure utorrent to use Tor which will keep you anonymous when you connect to the tracker that tells utorrent where the files are.

Now the only way that someone could tell what you were downloading is to connect directly to the same torrent you're connected to. It's not a good idea to run your actual download traffic through Tor (it's a big burden for the Tor network and makes things slow for everyone), which is where Peer Guardian helps. You can't shut out everybody from connecting to your computer when you download, as you need to trade files from them to get what you want. Peer Guardian keeps a list of the IP addresses of known snoops (mostly media companies and the companies they hire) and blocks them from connecting to your computer. It's imperfect, as the snoops can always change IP addresses, but it's still better than downloading without any security turned on.

Now this isn't actually necessary to download the CBC torrent, as they've made it perfectly clear they want you to download their files; but if you start clicking around mininova.org while you're there, you'll at least want to consider some of these steps.

Let me know if you have any questions, tips or disagreements!

Links:
Bittorrent Guide: http://dessent.net/btfaq/
Windows client: http://www.utorrent.com/
Mac client: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Firefox: http://www.getfirefox.com
Article about P2P privacy: http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/peersharing/a/peerguardian.htm
Article about Anonymous Surfing: http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/internet101/f/anonymous_surf.htm
Peer Guardian2: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Tor: http://www.torproject.org/ (configure utorrent with Tor)

Early Monday morning, the CBC hit a new milestone by being the first major North American broadcaster to distribute an episode of television for free, with no DRM, over Bittorrent. They did just about everything right: they provided two versions of the content in XviD and in h.264 (for ipods) and posted them to the popular and easy to find torrent website/tracker mininova.org. This is very comfortable ground for anyone who is familiar with torrents. But rarely is the content ever this legal. This is a great first step for them, and I've been doing my part by seeding the file all day - I want to see more of this.

Michael Geist wrote an interesting article discussing this event, and adds his views on how this could shape the network neutrality debate in Canada. The CBC has to be one of the last groups in the country you'd want to be seen as limiting access to, but it appears that Bell and Rogers may be doing just that, as they throttle (reduce the speeds) all torrent traffic on their networks.

If anyone is interested in downloading this episode who hasn't used Bittorrent before, I've provided some links:

Beginner's Guide to Bittorrent: http://lifehacker.com/software/ultranewb/a-beginners-guide-to-bittorrent-285489.php
Windows client: http://www.utorrent.com/
Mac client: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Firefox: http://www.getfirefox.com

You may also be interested in my introduction to Bittorrent security.

Thanks to everyone who came out to dinner on my birthday, or messaged, or called, or posted, or took me out for lunch or coffee - it all added up to a very memorable and appreciated day for me. Now I just need to get through the next week of school and work, and the holiday can begin!

The one unexpected side-effect becoming a Mac owner, was my introduction to CBC Radio 3. It's at the top of the Public radio list in iTunes, and so far, I've been really enjoying it. It has the same general playlist as I listen to from eMusic, but with a Canadian slant - I feel kind of stupid for knowing it existed for all these years without giving it a try. Go public radio indie rock!

Yanked whole from matthewgood.org.

Let’s take a magical journey back in time to 1994 so that we might watch, listen, and learn…



No, you’re not dreaming.

The next, inevitable video game franchise movie: