There was a shooting in Toronto tonight around 5:30, one young woman killed, about 5 shot and injured. It is horrible, and I was there. I went to pick up a new camera, but before I could, madness took to the streets as people started to run for cover. The shooting apparently occured in a night club (78 murders in Toronto so far this year; 52 by gunfire -- twice as many as last year). After the situation stabalized, I went and picked up my camera, and took a few photos (I was going to say shots, but that's not very funny). The bodies had been taken away within 30 minutes, but the scene was still very surreal. Have a look in the December 2005 Gallery for some more photos (some on page 1 and page 2). Most shots have no flash (i.e. hand held) at night, with a 12.8 Megapixel Canon EOS 5D and a the Canon 28-70 2.8L lens (big honking thing). To save space, pics in the Gallery will be 1280 pixels wide in their longest dimension (this camera's RAW files are somewhere between 12 and 19 megs each! (I think)).

The world is a tricky place. Stay safe.

So I was in Tucson Arizona, and it was allright
I ate only Mexican food, and tried a restaurant that Bill Clinton ate when he visited Tucson (had presidential plate). I spoke at the conference, but was amazed that they wanted me to pay a registration fee, even though I was a speaker. Apparently wires got crossed, for that's just not the way things work in PAULSOP.COM town. I've spoken at conferences of all sizes, all around the world, and this was a first. They tried to explain that their business model is a non-profit one and that everyone needs to pay. I explained to them that a) I'm not responsible for their business model, and b) perhaps they ought to improve their business model. So I'm sending them a cheque, pro-rated for the amount of time I was attending, and I'll even be kind enough to add the cost of the muffin and coffee (I'm indexing Starbucks prices). That's what they get, and they should be glad of it. My ego is not so incorrect that I should pay people to listen to me. .. . wait. I pay for paulsop.com hosting. hmmm. I should reflect more on this! :)

On another note
I'm speaking at the KWSQA in January (see member companies) in January (thanks for the invite Chris!). If you're around, do pop by. I have promised more animation than ever before, and possibly larger fonts too. Topic: "Top ten things to test for when testing software security." I am not asked to pay here (again, my mind boggles).

Back to Tucson for a second...
It's an interesting place. A university town to be sure, but the environment preserves buildings from many eras, so you'll see very new buildings right next to extremely old ones.

All the residential buildings are so vastly different than those in Ontario Canada where I live. They seemed more like rectaliniar shade structures. Many were very shiny and new looking, but the desert and dust around them was littered with bits of ... well .. litter. It had an antiseptic feel to it for sure. When the sun would go down, all the desert colors would set in, the sky would turn azure, and the earth would turn pinky red. Each night, there'd be a different effect. It was like Arthur C. Clarke's Mars imaginations.

Deserts
I really love deserts (I've camped more in deserts than anywhere else), so I took a few tours of the area. I had hoped to find a big rock to camp on, but instead, I found a great cave (Colossal Cave). I'd never been in a cave before, and it was certainly not how I'd imagined it. It really made you appreciate 3 dimensional space more than any architecture humans have built. I'm thinking I'm hooked on caves, and will need to check more out as soon as possible. Cave photography is very difficult -- I believe I'd need a very wide lens, and some clever lighting. I've only included one shot of the cave in the gallery this month (even though I took several). You'll notice that the many of the stalactites are broken -- cowboys in the olden days would shoot them for target practice!

Scary Landing in Tucson
Oh, when I landed in Tucson (went from Buf to Atl, and form Atl to Tuc), there were some exciting and tense moments, for the landing gear had a fault and the tires were flat! So I, sitting in the exit row, along with the other folks in the exit row, had an extended 30 minute safety session. Apparently some sensor told them that the tires were too hot. We landed safely, however it was very bumpy, and there were lots of fire trucks to greet us. Since the plane couldn't move with its broken wheel, we had to exit via a bus to the terminal.

I asked a flight attendant how many times she'd experienced something similar. She informed me in her 20 years, this was the first. I told her, this is my third landing gear fiasco.

Flight Delays
On the way back, there was weather, so all flights were delayed by about 12 hours . I finally landed in Buf at 4am in a snow storm, with all hotels booked. I was tired, but kept driving home. I stopped at every hotel I saw, but they were all booked along the QEW. It normally takes 2 hours to get home (max), but it took me about 5.5 hours due to the weather, and a few 'sleep in the car for 30 minutes' episodes. Some ask: why not fly from Toronto? Well, even though there was huge hassle on this flight, the average time I save by flying out of Buffalo vs. Toronto works like this:

Buf: 2 hour drive on empty roads, 10 minutes mostly empty border, 30 minutes in mostly empty airport
Tor: 1 hour drive on busy road, 30 minutes in customs, 60 minutes in airport -- with much more walking, and lots more congestion

So it's 2 hours 40 minutes of peace in Buffalo, or 2 hours 30 minutes of crazyness in Toronto. Oh, and Toronto costs more too. I'll take the peace anyday.

On the matter of peace
I've been flying for years, collecting points. I think I had close to 100 flights in 2004! Yowza! So after a while, when something is delayed, or a connector doesn't, you just learn to cope. Lots of other folks do not cope. They get angry, vocal, and animated. I think Southwest did a reality show on this a while back (was a gas! I was in BWI (Baltimore) when they were filming!). It's very curious to watch those who choose (the key is they CHOOSE) to go crazy, vs. those who choose to find a good place to lean and read a book, hook into the WiFi, have a nap, contemplate zen, etc... I've found that you can meet the nicest folks from all walks of life, from all over our sphere, while delayed. It's a great opportunity for fun. Look for people who are sitting on the ground -- those chairs are just not comfortable for several hours of sitting. The uptight folk usually sit on the chairs while the groovy world travelers find a nice place near a heater by a wall and the floor. Seek them out.

One more thing on Toronto
There's a twist as well, for Toronto's 401 is very unpredictable. Sometimes it takes 45 minutes for me to get to that airport, sometimes it takes 3 hours. It all depends upon a complicated formula with 42 variables (e.g. IQ Density on the 401, the inappropriate construction index, etc...) I've always left in plenty of time to catch flights in Toronto, only to miss flights while stuck in inexplicable traffic. This has happened only once for Buffalo.

Moral of this blogpost: Fly from Buffalo; seek floor when delayed; be thankful to arrive alive; find small local restaurants.

Updated two galleries:

ELECTONIC MUSIC STUDIO: Pics of the studio with the new Continuum Fingerboard that Lippold Haken made for me in Illinois. It's hooked up to the Symbolic Sound Kyma Capybara, which I've upgraded to 12 DSP's.

75th BIRTHDAY: My father has made it the 75 year milestone! W00t!

Finally, Harry Potter on IMAX is an awesome movie. HP GOF is so good, an effectively flawless movie, that I'm happy to give it the first 111% rating -- BUT, since an IMAX screen is like 4 normal screens (at least), the final rating for the HPGOFIMAX concept is 444%, a new multiversal record.

Hey, I'm presenting at ACSAC in beautiful Tucson Arizona (whose slogan should be "Oh my God, it's full of stars" (even though I prefer "oh my star, it's full of Gods"). Michael Abrams of MITRE will be chairing the portion of the conference I'm a part of.

The conference runs from Dec 5th thru the 9th and seems interesting. My presentation will be on BDL - Baseline Description Language, a langauge I invented for specifying the rules by which network traffic can be clustered into fuzzy gramatical sentences, and subsequently visualized. The work is promising, and maybe next year I won't need to look at ports and IP's anymore -- instead I'll be able to look in more meaningful symbolic ways.

Since two of my passions are information security and computer music, I even tried writing rules to classify audio. Not working as well yet, but there is hope.

A lot of the work on BDL came from a brain seed planted by inventor of Fuzzy Logic Lotfi Zadeh in a gripping lecture in Waterloo several years ago. I've been following his work for some years prior to that, and over the last two years have greatly enjoyed his "computing with words and perceptions" paper, and the work around it.

Anyway, if you have the time, do pop by the conference. If you're interested in the topic, drop me a line and we can discuss it. It's a novel approach that offers good symbolic classification power that I've not seen elsewhere. If you have a lot of network data or other signal data, and need to make some sense of it, do give me a shout.

I'll post pictures when I get back.

I am looking forward to seeing the new Harry Potter (Goblet 'o fire) this Friday in IMAX. A crystal clear 6 story high screen with 20,000 watts of surround sound!

Since I can't get Hogwarts off me mind, I made a fun version of Hedwigs Theme last night, the MP3 version of which you can listen to.

Yes I know I've been hiding -- lots to tell. I'll try to post it all soon but here's a quick thought. So I'm trying to cancel a few services that I don't use: XM Radio (satellite radio), Tivo (digital video recorder), and Zip.CA (DVD rental). It is very HARD to cancel services. Here's my story:

XM:
I have not listened to XM radio for months. I did listen to the service a lot when I drove more over long distances, but I am driving less these days. Overall the XM service was good, but I found the audio quality to be less than that of an iPod experience. XM also constantly advertises XM. It gets tired pretty fast, since you're already listening to XM, and paying a monthly fee for same. Anyway, even though the service was what I expected, I thought I'd cancel it for I'm not listening to it much these days. I think it would be a great thing for hold music or office lobbies and elevators. Here is my experience cancelling:

• Log in to my account on the web - yea! remembed my password
• See I have to call support
• Call support, talk to someone who really doesn't a) speak english, b) know what a sentence is
• Eventually this flesh unit transfers me to someone else who handles cancellations --- AFTER 10 MINUTES OF HIM MUMBLING and trying to up sell me to new service levels... ?
• The other person is a woman, and she tries also to upsell me, give me 2 free months, transfer it to a family memeber, etc... it's all cute and procedural, but alas I tell her it is in my trunk and I do not listen to it. She again reminds me of my considerable investment in their receiver technology, to which I reply that it may be a nice gift, or a garage sale item -- I'm sure someone will use it to sign up again. Eventually, after a 7 or 8 minute sales pitch, the service is cancelled.

XM procedure verdict: Resonably Smooth

TIVO: I haven't hooked up Tivo since I moved it back to Canada (I had a place in Virginia in 2004). I have not hooked it up since comming back to Canada as the box requires a phone line to sync up and get schedules. It apparently works in Canada, but I didn't have a phone line long enough, and I'd have to rewire some of my video connections to incorporate it. Further, it degrades the quality of video going through it somewhat. The service costs about $13USD each month, so I decided to cancel it. Unfortunately, I have found that it seems impossible to cancel the service from Canada.

• First, none of their 800 numbers work from Canada so it is impossible to contact their technical support
• Second, they do not offer email support
• Third, they only offer 800 numbers for support, no direct lines
• Their corporate phone number (408 519 9100) which is at the physical address of tech support also does not work. Further, it says they are closed, and lists its office hours -- even though they are open in their time zone. So their automated system lies
• The self serve web system (which takes 15 minutes to send you your password update email) gives you lots of options to spend more money, activate more features etc... but gives you no options to cancel a subscription

TIVO verdict: Still trying to cancel. It may not be possible.

ZIP.CA: This service sends you DVD's to watch, which you can keep as long as you want. Once you return them, you get new DVD's. It's a low monthly fee for all this. There are two problems with the service:

• you can't guarantee what you get
• most of the good titles may never get to you (I think)
• you actually have to mail the DVD's back to get new ones (why, the nerve of them!). I've had the same DVD's for about 6 months now, and I think I've lost the return envelopes.

So I visit their support/contact page http://www.zip.ca/ContactUs.aspx and give them a call. Here's how it went:

• Naturally, they are experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls. I believe that to be a lie, since every time I've called them that seems to be the message (hence long wait times are normal). I wish member service centers wouldn't lie to us. The shrill voice on the phone (I had to turn the volume down) is telling me that I can go to zip.ca and read the FAQ's. Every 10 seconds the voice repeats to annoy me.
• Eventually I get through to a woman who is very funny. We have many laughs. She tries to convince me to stay on, but realizes that it is silly since I've had the same 4 DVD's out since April (April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November... ? at 24.95/month). Their service is too good, but I forgot about it, so it needs to be tamed. The call ended all feel-good and the service was cancelled.

ZIP.CA: Seems like a good company. Good service. Just not for a forgetful guy like me.

BTW: I suddenly have an XM RADIO RECEIVER (car model) AND a TIVO for sale. Call me 800 966 1337 and leave a message if you're interested.

So I'm doing a lot of work today. Lots of work. Hard work. Requiring deep concentration. Focus. Excellence.

Well, that WAS the plan. I'll tell you it's bloody HARD TO ACHIEVE since every 25 minutes, my door knocker would clack-a-clack.

It seems a large portion of biomass had lots of free time to pop by my house. Jehovah's witnesses were out in spades (you'd think they could get their canvassing zones straight). A swarm of little girls selling chocolate (it's so hard to get mad at them, but gosh, I tried). People just 'lost' (is this the Sherman's? -- I'm here for a Party), and more.

So one of the visitors suggested I put up a sign on my door saying do not disturb. So I did. Here's the sign:

All was going well, but I had to eat, so I went and got a Salad. When I came back, my peepers spied the jolly fellow Jim Lang walking down my street to intercept my house. So then the evening became one of radical imaginations, conspiracies, and meta-cultural cthulhu analysis.

Monday will be better. Oh wait, It's Monday already. I should fix the TimeZone on this server from UTC to something sensible..

Hey, click here to see where the last 100 people have come from

You'll see a map like:

The red dot would be the last visitor. Green dots are last 10, and white dots are the rest.

Apparently, I'm not big in Japan (Yet).

Today was a sort of buzzy day.
- Went to gym.
- Had Starbucks steam milk (no whip cream) with sugar free vanilla.
- Got a breakfast sandwich at the quick sandwich place.
- Got some new orange 'new balance' running shoes (old ones worn out).
- Saw and chatted with Eva at the shoe store. That was nice.
- Got home, checked my mail, made a few calls for projects I'm working on.
- Did some coding while watching an Anime.
- Went to lunch with Gus at the Charcoal (he is not feeling well).
- Went with Gus to get a new Washer Dryer at TA.
- Got some alligator test clips at Waterloo Electronics, and some heat shrink tube.
- Made a little website for Chris, oh won't he be so happy.
- Downloaded latest version of FruityLoops (music program) and checked it out.
- Went to Timmies and had a coffee.
- Reinstalled Oracle10g.
- Answered some emails re: a few projects I'm working on.
- Tried to pay some bills online, but multi-acount difficulties mean I have to go to the bank.
- Did some DB Modelling for RedWolf with CA's ERWIN
- Only approached by two 'sales' people. One person trying to sell me Rogers VOIP, the other WatchTower.
- Ate Vegetables for dinner. They had some sea-salt on them.
- Watched a spot of Lexx
- Did some work on a presentation on Internet Audio and Video and Latency I'm giving soon

Tomorrow's an average day too:
- Get a list of some stuff for a project manager
- Go to the gym.
- Make a few time series for demo data for a project.
- Go to the bank, get those accounts figured out.
- Pay Bob, Neiman, Credit Cards.
- Do some RedWolf coding (I'm finally getting the hang of Rails).
- Run a bit (iPod's make running fun).

So I'm working on sharpening up some skills: playing chess (man have I slipped), doing some problems from The Art of Computer Programming, and some ACM programming contest problems I picked up at the UofT Library last week. N-E-Way, yesterday I was playing around with searching for an elite palindromic number created from the 196-algorithm.

This algorithm is where you take a positive integer, say 132, you reverse the digits (231) and add them together (132 + 231 = 363). You'll notice that 363 is a palindrome. If the result for a particular n isn't a palindrome, you just take it and add its reverse, repeating what you just did. Most numbers turn into palindromes pretty quickly with this 'reverse-then-add' approach, but some don't (like, 196 doesn't seem to, even after >10 million tries). Since 196 is the smallest number that doesn't seem to ever reverse-add to a palindrome, they called the algorithm the 196 algorithm.

So I did a search for palindrome numbers obtained by the 196-algorithm that have the number 1337 or 31337 in them (for that is humorously elite like my phone number (800 966 1337). My program hasn't haven't yet found one with 31337 in it, but I did find one that started with 1337 (LEET), and that's good enough for this blog post.

So, if you take 11207151140109101108120410517120 and add it to its reverse 2171501402180110190104115170211 then you get the elite palindrome: 13378652542289211298224525687331 (which has 32 digits, which is also sexy).

Go tattoo it on your bodies.