Smurfmatic

I wrote my answer to the "But where are you from" project by Schema Magazine, an online publication started by Alden Habacon. Here's the link:

http://www.schemamag.ca/indepth/2009/06/kinda-chinese.html

My friends have pointed me to this Argentinean song by Facundo Cabral called "No soy de aqui, no soy de alla", which could well describe how we might feel about nationality, sense of belonging.

...ou Maisonneuve en direct, j'ai l'impression de lire des commentaires de blogue les uns après les autres... >_< Mais où vont les médias traditionnels?

Simple food. This is just linguine with a sprinkle of pancetta and old cheddar. The linguine was also pan-fried with olive oil, butter, quite a bit of garlic and dried parsley. I added some fresh basil leaves.

You can definitely try this at home... My inspiration came from La Distillerie, a Montreal pub whose trademark is to serve colourful drinks in glass jars. The time I went, I had a boring red-couloured drink that was, I think, rhum-based. I noticed that many people in the pub at that time had a bright blue drink, with a branch of rosemary in it.

Not having noted the recipe at all, we were set to improvise something. The base would be Blue Curaçao, a orange-flavoured drink known for giving mixtures their fluorescent blue tinge. We added dry gin (Bombay Sapphire) and Perrier water. For the flavouring: fresh lime juice, frozen lemongrass and a branch of rosemary. Put lots of ice.

Drink it with a bowl of papaya for the extraordinary colourful effect. You can sprinkle salt and lemon juice over the papaya -- that's for the explosion of tastes.

One of the latest and last projects I was involved in at CBC/Radio-Canada was with the integration of pCDN, a pilot project that consists in contents delivery through peer-to-peer, and implemented on Bande à part's (aka the French CBC Radio 3) summer podcast feed. Here is the website that was launched this week by Bande à part: http://bandeapart.fm/pcdn/.

pCDN was developed by the Network Systems Lab at Simon Fraser University in the Vancouver area, along with CBC/Radio-Canada's Strategy & Planning based in Montreal. Here is a published paper written for the company's technology review by the main people involved in the project.

Bernard has told me that peer-to-peer delivery systems were already common in the USA. I remember using a system developed at CNN during the night of Obama's win. pCDN is just for progressive downloads, as far as I know.

The idea of using "BitTorrent"-like delivery helps alleviate traffic between users and contents delivery servers by redistributing it between users. It's a win-win situation for both the users and the big contents providers. It's potentially an alternative to today's pervasive, but costly, mirroring services such as Akamai.

It remains to see if it actually speeds up downloading. From an observer's point of view, it will become most noticeable when server-to-peer becomes a bottleneck. From a geek-user's point-of-view, I can't wait for when/if we extend the service to other potentially downloadable contents (full-length shows anyone?).

I'm on Linux (Ubuntu Jaunty) and tried pCDN on this platform. pCDN's source code is in Java, thus it's cross-platform. I downloaded this package and tried the links on the pCDN-specific podcast feed. Extract the archive (it's going to be a hidden folder named .cbc-pcdn) and in your terminal or otherwise, execute "launch.sh". This starts pCDN on your local computer and makes it "ready" to receive requests to download (and upload back), as you would for any P2P program like uTorrent or Transmission.

After starting pCDN, make sure to upgrade to the latest version (right-click the icon for "Mise à jour").

You will notice that the links in the podcast feed are all in the form of "localhost:54321/__SOME_HASH__.extension". When you click on them, they call pCDN and it is checked through the system whether this file is available among other connected peers. If not, it will download from some central "seed" server. Tadaa!

(The feed itself is a must-listen... It's music selected by Pascal Asselin, a electronic music artist better known as Quebec City's Millimetrik.)

AMK - The Peak, the Doll and the Lollipop
MLA's cover version

I'm nursing an upstart cold w/o coughing and made chicken congee. I spent the last hour since coming home from my RCV meeting looking at the music videos related to the "Donald Tsang, Please Die" phenomenon, a song written by one of my fave bands in the world, Hong Kong's My Little Airport. A few weeks ago, Tsang, the Special Administrative Region's Chief Executive, declared that he represented Hong Kong people when saying that 6/4 happened a long time ago and that Chinese people moved on.

Three days ago, they wrote a follow-up.

We discovered other music videos made by artists related to this one. Kind of like the music scene in Montreal / Quebec, it seems like everyone just know, collaborate and sleep with each other. One of these discoveries is the Forever Tarkovsky Club, which I think is made up of the two guys in duos MLA and Pixeltoy.

This is the promo video of their "semi-nude Christmas party" that never happened because police told them it was forbidden to hold public functions in private premises.

永遠懷念塔可夫斯基 - 聖誕半裸派對 from Gregor Samsa on Vimeo.

Wuzzah, Hong Kong.

(And if you want to hire me, here's my CV.)

Through the Gate from Christopher DeWolf on Vimeo.

I've known Chris mostly for his pictures and written press pieces in Montreal, but now here's what's his first video documentary that he made as a HKU student.

It's about the Jamia Mosque in Mid-Levels, Hong Kong. If you take the Mid-Levels escalator, one of the more peculiar "touristic" attractions of Hong Kong Island, the Mosque can't possibly be missed. In fact, on my first visit to Hong Kong, I had a pic of this said Mosque, taken on my "tour" of the Escalator-To-Almost-Nowhere:

Hong Kong is in fact a more "diverse" society than any other in East Asia, as could be seen in movies like Chungking Express.

Eh ben, ça ressemble à ceci. Pas mal moins impressionant, car on pourrait bien facilement les falsifier dans le but de les vendre (mais pourquoi vendre des billets si chèrement acquis?). De plus, ça serait con de racheter des billets électroniques.

For the record, the Canadiens lost that game, match #4 against the Bruins and concluded their season with it. There was no happy celebration, but it was a nice moment booing and cheering the Habs in a same game.

CBC/Radio-Canada announced some 800 job cuts this morning. Of those, 335 affected French services. Of those, they said 9 of them would affect Radio-Canada.ca, perhaps the largest French-language media website in the country. And one of those nine jobs turned out to be my position. =(

If you are looking to hire an IT specialist, with experience and a special interest in developing new means of communicating information, then here's my CV:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfn5mmm7_116g6cprdd6

I've done a few interesting things while I was there and learned a few technical things (rich Javascript apps, GIS) and a few more intangible things (working under pressure, working with real professionals). Great deal of stuff that I still want to do.

While I'm preparing to live on sprouted beans, ground pork and rice for the next few weeks, I'm also going to give my self-made projects a few more days of work before launching. I've really become obsessed with maps and other renderings of statistical data into something graphically appealing. The technical side is absolutely fascinating - the editorial one is even more so. Anyways, it's just talk for now. Stay tuned, then!

C'était le souper de fête à Doris, mais au bistro où on était, ils avaient une grosse tévé qui montrait la game de Canadien contre le Maple Leafs de Toronto. J'ai donc passé la soirée à hurler ma déception pendant que les Kulemin, Grabovski et Ponikarovsky s'amusaient aux dépends du bleu-blanc-rouge. Score final: 5-2.

Comme disait le Maxim Lapierre après la partie lors de la séance de torture devant la presse, la casquette bien basse, "sac', st..., e' va être dure à digérer celle-là".

Mais comment la digérer alors en tant que fan? Ben, on pourrait commencer par écrire sur son blogue. Certains préfèrent appeler sur les lignes ouvertes, ou bien se défouler sur les forums de discussion.

Vous pouvez aussi poursuivre en écoutant les échos de vestiaire, qui prennent de plus en plus des allures de scènes de funérailles. Josh Gorges, vers la fin du vidéo, essayait tant bien que mal de rationaliser, en se détachant du contexte, comme s'il était devenu un ancien joueur qui parle des mauvaises séquences de son équipe d'autrefois. Réjean Tremblay, chroniqueur au quotidien La Presse, nous rassurait lui aussi hier matin en relativisant les choses.

Franchement, j'ai beau m'imaginer dans ma tête qu'après celle-ci, les choses iront mieux. Comment je fais? J'essaie de penser positif, du genre, oh, les joueurs ont passé un beau samedi après-midi avec leur famille et ils auront le coeur à l'ouvrage. On en gagne une facile contre Toronto, pis c'est parti pour la gloire (scénario à l'eau depuis la fin de la première période ce soir). Pour mardi qui vient, je m'imagine que Sergei Kostitsyn apportera l'étincelle qu'il avait apporté en 2007-08.

Autrement, tu peux aussi écouter le point de presse de Gainey où il dit qu'il convoquera les joueurs qui ont mal joué samedi (pour leur dire quoi? qu'ils ont mal joué et qu'ils feraient mieux de ne pas recommencer??). Tu peux aussi aller checker du côté de Guillaume Latendresse dans l'émission d'après-match, au cours duquel il s'est permis de tourner ça avec le sourire avec les Michel Bergeron et Dave Morissette qui voulaient entre Gui dire ce qu'il pense _vraiment_, à la tévé. Même quand ça va mal, vaut mieux essayer d'en rire.

Tu peux aussi aller te défouler sur Facebook. J'ai posté la nouvelle sur Sergei Kostitsyn qui revenait à Montréal après son sevrage exil à Hamilton à faire de l'autobus avec le club-école de Canadien. Je l'ai postée avec bien entendu un petit commentaire sarcastique. Ça fait du bien.

Enfin, on peut aussi se dire que notre équipe est mieux que celle qui nous a battu et qui ratera les séries probablement pour une cinquième saison de suite. Pire encore, ta blonde pourrait te laisser, ta mère pourrait mourir, et tu pourrais perdre ta job (ça risque d'arriver, à cause des coupures à annoncer ce mercredi). Bref, y'a des choses pires que ça dans la vie.

Je pourrais aussi aller en Chine, là où la photo ci-dessus a été prise. J'ai alors manqué la presque déconfiture contre le Bruins de Boston, et comment le Flyers n'a finalement fait qu'une bouchée (ou cinq) de Canadien grâce au bourreau dénommé Umberger. Là-bas, personne n'avait rien à cirer de Canadien.

(PS: Dans la catégorie « Comment rationaliser la défaite », ne manquez pas ce texte du Sportnographe intitulé Serge K : "Je suis essentiel à la pérestroïka de Canadien".)

Ou encore, la caricature à Chapleau résume bien la situation:

This is a talk by Tim Berners-Lee. The project in my previous entry is merely an example of what Berners-Lee is advocating for.

(I'm going to release my complete method a little later.)

I've started putting some time again this weekend on the project that I was talking about last week.

To tell the truth, I had previously made this particular project work. In vague terms (I'll be less vague when I get something solid down), I was taking some huge sets of data from one particular national agency and making it meaningful on a geographic support, namely Google Earth. I did it, but it was terribly inefficient (what about loading thousands of points on the same map?) and unreadable (what if those points were all focused in urban areas?).

The next step was to use a less custom approach, with a web framework named Django, and its GIS libraries bundled into what's called GeoDjango. This framework can possibly use flat files as backend, but to store geographical data, the best choice is PostGreSQL and its extension PostGIS that adds the ability to store geographical data, as well as make operations of the kind of "select these points within a certain perimeter".

This is the neat part that I didn't have in my original project with a plain MySQL database backend. MySQL also has spatial extensions but does not support nearly as many spatial lookup types as PostGIS.

Now that I have my data in a database, I'm looking forward to play with the presentation part. It'll also be interesting to work on making this a compelling user experience.

I confess - I'm watching a gal series. However, I am staying true to myself, and pointing out that the main character of Being Erica probably uses Linux! The mail client in this screenshot of last week's episode Everything She Wants, the 9th of the season, she is using Horde on Firefox for her mail, on what looks like a Linux system with a really really old "Crux" theme.

I told myself that I would just write about what I'm doing in order to keep notes. So, this is basically just to keep track and for later to look back.

I'm working on a particular mashup for Google Earth. I actually had a version on a computer at work in December, but it was generated using a PHP program with a MySQL program. Besides having something that worked, my objective was also to make something that worked _efficiently_. Therefore, I've been trying to learn about new tools to do it more efficiently.

I first looked into web servers. Apache's HTTP Server is the default server everyone uses (if not IIS, guh). However, already with my last project, I had been experimenting with Lighttpd, one of those next-gen super-light web servers. nginx is the other that people use and is gaining ground as the fourth most popular web server according to Netcraft this month. Since I started with lighttpd, I decided to keep using it.

Then, I tried looking for a new language to use besides PHP, just because. I don't know if it's being tired of the same language one uses all the time or perhaps the reputation that other languages have. So this language would be Python, one language which I worked with in university during the course of one semester but didn't touch since then. The more you program, the easier you find picking up a new language is.

Then, I was looking for a Web framework, which greatly helps when developing web-based apps, which is what I want my application to be. So, I went for Django, which is today one of the leading Web frameworks for Python out there. Because geographical information is such an important component of today's world of mobile phones equipped with GPSes, then naturally there are geographical extensions written for Django which are part of GeoDJango.

From there, it's pretty exciting. I still need to see how I can store my geographically mashed data and how I can make retrieval efficient in Google Earth or any other platform supported by GeoDjango.

Everything is run from my laptop computer, because it's the best machine around over which I have entire control. Now, I should learn tricks about "getting work done" since that is definitely the most important hurdle right now...

L'autre jour, notre PDG Hubert T Lacroix a fait une apparition à l'émission matinale sur la Première Chaîne.

In a sense, if I paid attention, I would've known that In The Name Of AMK was indeed a cover album.

In fact, I just took the album booklet out, and read what was behind it. A number of texts written by people who were/are influential in the scene, such as the members of the AMK band. Unfortunately, I am still illiterate in Chinese, so I feel like those Asian kids who want to speak French because it sounds pretty.

It's a little weird that I did not post for over a month on Smurfmatic. But here it is, this is my latest food obsession: black bean spare ribs. The result is unfortunately a little too "nong", so I hope that when I eat it tomorrow, the soft tofu that I will add will make the taste a little thinner.

It's a pretty simple recipe to make. Check here for the ingredients:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smurfmatic/sets/72157613298521626/

The Lee Kum Kee black bean sauce is the main ingredient. You should add something sweet to compensate for the overly salty taste of the sauce. This can be done with brown sugar, honey, just plain sugar or oyster sauce (which is what I did). In fact, my mother called me as I was making it to suggest that I add the latter. Sesame oil and rice wine can be added to the mix. Chopped chili peppers is optional if you like it spicy.

I first fried a little bit of minced garlic (it was not really necessary with the sauce containing garlic already) and a few large pieces of ginger. Then I added the pre-marinated bundle of ribs. I fry/mix and left it to simmer for an hour. I'll then let it cool overnight, store it in the fridge next morning, and have it for dinner tomorrow. =) I will beforehand add tofu and a few strips of scallions.

I've been looking for a way to record sounds (namely music) off websites like MySpace and Neocha, because the music that we play on our show has to be 1- indie, and 2- Chinese.

Needless to say that I couldn't play music from many of the bands that I hear on Neocha's NEXT music player, just because they happen to be obscure Chinese bands that may not have considered an international audience (some, however, have been touring the world). In fact, as far as I know, you can't download the songs even if you wanted to pay for it (don't even think about finding some of those bands on P2P networks).

I finally got to try out a solution that my friend Rob suggested. And that's the Audacity, a free open-source software for mixing and recording sounds/music. There's nothing so special about Audacity (except that it's free), but it's when you use Audacity with a sound source that's your computer's stereo mixer that it becomes interesting (see instructions).

I found out that my own computer, a Dell XPS m1210, has a sound card (a STAC92xx by Sigmatel) integrated to the motherboard (Intel). On Windows, the driver provided by Dell "C-Major Audio Driver" does _not_ let you mix stuff, and does not give you access to the output of your stereo system. I read somewhere that you could somehow replace this driver (its XP version only) by the same driver provided through LG.

Since my Windows is Vista, I rebooted into my Ubuntu (now 8.10 Intrepid Ibex) instead and looked at my options from there. Audio has always been a part of the Linux world that I neglected. I used mplayer before to save streamable videos (it's even more simple as in my entry, because you just use the "-dumpvideo" option). How about audio then?

I understand that ALSA is the mixer - your applications speak to ALSA and pass it to PulseAudio, which is the layer that redirects everything back to your sound card, aka The Hardware. Aside from recording, you can also use PulseAudio to make modifications to the output, redirect to different "sinks" (a wireless network-based sound system, anyone?).

There's a nice info page on the Ubuntu wiki. In fact, a section at the bottom ("Recording example...") was what I used to record my music. I also installed the PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol), Volume Meter (pavumeter) and Device Chooser (padevchooser). The latter is a GUI that lets you choose and configure what applications output to PulseAudio and what devices on your computer (front speaker, headphones, or elsewhere?) are used to play sounds.

(PulseAudio is now the default sound server on Ubuntu, replacing Esound from previous releases.)

Following the instructions in the Ubuntu tutorial, I used padsp, a OSS wrapper, which starts an application connect to a PulseAudio server through a OSS audio device ("padsp starts the specified program and redirects its access to OSS compatible audio devices (/dev/dsp and auxiliary devices) to a PulseAudio sound server."). The command is:

padsp -d audacity

(with all the comfort of debug info...)

Then choose the OSS (/dev/dsp) device as you would on Windows with a non-restrictive sound card driver, and start recording using your system's sound output (ALSA something...). Make sure to mute the microphone, also through the PulseAudio device choose!

It's a powerful method, but may be illegal in some countries (not sure which - it's just the Ubuntu tutorial saying).

A pipe broke in the apartment two floors next to mine. The one directly below it, and right above mine is flooded, so is my next door neighbour's! I'm lucky: not a single drop of water, but quite a smell of damp plaster / cardboard.