I’m heading to DemoCampToronto is tonight. Sign up here.

“Whether you are looking for a job, looking to hire, looking for inspiration, needing to kill time before going home. DemoCamp offers good company in the form of demos from passionate developers, designers and entrepreneurs.”

This is just plain silly. If you haven’t tried google maps on your mobile device lately, just try it. It knows where you are without using gps. Very slick.

Just saw this after the fact on LifeHacker, they explain how google’s doing it.

Once again I’m messing around with the language that won’t go away. If you haven’t read these in regards to python, have a peek.

• Eric Raymond explains Why Python?
• The zen of python.

Were I not an Asteroid I’d be a Pacman apparently.

I am an Asteroid. I am a drifter. I go where life leads, which makes me usually a very calm and content sort of person. That or thoroughly apathetic. Usually I keep on doing whatever I’m doing, and it takes something special to make me change my mind. What Video Game Character Are You?

Dang! I was in the process of checking out on a purchase for a decTOP when I see that the cheapest shipping option is $55. Ummm…that’s 50% of the product cost for shipping? Oh well.

I cringe and do my best to bite my tongue whenever someone claims an application has a “random error”. In all my years working in computers I have yet to encounter a random error.

Computers are a lot of things but random they are not. Okay sure, if you write a random number generator that introduces a bug some of the time then technically it’s random but it ain’t really “random”. Wow…

Errors are only random until you discover the pattern, and then eventually the cause. That’s the challenge and frustration in debugging applications. It’s detective work.

Aye! I installed Akismet a while back in an attempt to deal with some of the comment spam issues here. Since I’ve installed it, it’s dealt with over 5000 comment spams. That’s bonkers. I don’t get it. Are people clicking spam links?

I get asked a lot why it’s called DemoCamp/BarCamp etc. I have no clue and this may contain garbage but here’s how I understand it:

1. Tim O’Reilly started an invitation only unconference titled FooCamp.
2. People who weren’t invited but loved the concept decided to do it themselves and invite their friends. What’s the opposite of Foo? Hence the name became BarCamp.
3. The Toronto BarCamp community felt the need for a lighter version of BarCamp and eventually created DemoCamp. The idea being a BarCamp style conference focussed on demonstrating projects people in the community are involved in.

Just a reminder to anyone paying attention, our second democamp runs this Wednesday evening. If you’re coming out, please add your name to the attendee list on the wiki.

Just a reminder, this isn’t a BarCamp where everyone must participate so come out, have a beer and a 1/2 priced burger and just lurk. There are a few demo spots left so contact me if you’d like to demo.

I finally got around to buying a small UPS. It’s silly how reasonable the prices are now. This Belkin 900VA was $86 at tiger direct. I think I’m getting old because I find myself having to resist the urge to say “I remember when simple power bars were $60″.

These are heavy so the shipping costs were a tad high. I did a quick compare to see it picking one up at staples would be cheaper. Unless I’m missing something, the exact product is $176 at staples. In that light, shipping was quite reasonable.

Why am I posting crap about batteries……sad times…How could this get any more sad? There, a picture of said battery….