FOSSLC Panels and Me
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Posted by austin in: Technology, Toronto, comments closed
I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate recently to be invited to participate in two panels presented by FOSSLC and hosted by the University of Toronto.
The first panel, held on the 31st of March, was about participating in the Google Summer of Code and my experiences as a mentor. With me on the panel were Diego Novillo who works at Google on GCC; Blake Winton (@bwinton) who mentored for DrProject; Nelson Ko who mentored for Tiki Wiki; and Behdad Esfahbod (@behdadesfahbod)who was in different years a student for, a mentor for, and an organizer for the GNOME Foundation. It was a lively and informative panel, and I think a lot of interesting things were said.
The second panel is what FOSSLC calls a “Leaders panel discussion”, taking place next Wednesday, the 23rd of April. I’m going to be participating with some fascinating people (not everyone is yet listed on the page) and I’m looking forward to it. The questions haven’t been decided yet, but I think that there will be interesting things said.
Revisiting the iPhone on Rogers/Fido
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Posted by austin in: Apple, Toronto, comments closed
A few days ago, I wrote that I wasn’t planning on getting the iPhone under the data plans that Rogers/Fido offered offered.
I didn’t.
When they offered the $30/6 GB data plan, I started looking at my options and on Friday, I ordered an iPhone (16 GB, Black) with the $30/6 GB data plan, combined with my existing 300 minute plan totalling out at $75. I don’t have Visual Voicemail or text messages with this, but I can add Visual Voicemail and a few other features for $15 per month, so for $90 a month I’m getting a pretty good plan—and I don’t have to give up my long distance option.
I may shift my voice plan around a bit since the plan that I’m on has been grandfathered in and includes voicemail already (which I won’t need with Visual Voicemail) and I’m pretty sure that I can save some money doing that.
Even better, since I ordered my iPhone on-line, it’ll arrive sometime next week (without having to stand in line) and it’s going to be $48 dollars cheaper than it would have been because I had 48 “Fido Dollars” in rewards.
Go me.
Rogers/Fido, the iPhone, and Me
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Posted by austin in: Apple, Technology, Toronto, comments closed
I’m a happy customer of Fido. Even after Rogers bought them, they didn’t ruin them.
Now, Rogers has the iPhone. And the best data rates that they’ve come up with are absolutely insane — with no unlimited data and that we should feel that their plans are “High Value”.
Colour me not interested. Here’s the text of my feedback to Fido:
Thank you for showing that Rogers is both stupid and greedy. I had planned on getting an iPhone in two weeks. Now I will NOT get an iPhone because of your absolutely insane data pricing. You call it “High Value” pricing; I call it “highway robbery” pricing. When AT&T has a better price plan than you, it strongly suggests that you’re out of touch. Let me know when your prices return to Earth with an unlimited 3G plan and I’ll happily upgrade to the iPhone.
I should have pointed out, but did not, that I have no problem with the idea that I have to spend $75 or more per month—I’m already spending a lot of money. But I want value for that money, and Rogers plans are anything but value to the consumer. They’re a pure rip-off.
That said, there’s a petition on-line that I refuse to sign, mostly because I refuse to have my name associated with some of the disgusting things (including wishing Ted Rogers bodily harm). I may think that Ted Rogers is a greedy pinhead, but we should act civilized, people. Grow up.
More Old Magazines
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Posted by austin in: Personal, Toronto, comments closed
So, I went back to the medical devices place to return the trial mask and buy the permanent mask. I had to wait a while, so I dug through all of their magazines. At first, it seemed that the September 1989 magazine I found was the oldest:
A couple of minutes more digging yielded an older magazine, though, by five months.
But I kept looking. Long before my appointment was ready, I found something twenty-four years old:
But right under that one was one that was even older: Woman’s Day from February 1982. Twenty-five years old, almost twenty-six.
Would you go to a Fake Steve party?
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Posted by austin in: Apple, Toronto, comments closed
I’m more than just a little behind on reading my feeds, and I noted that Daniel LyonsFake Steve is going to be in Toronto from October 17 through 19 and is considering having some “Fake Steve Jobs” parties.
Could be interesting. I’ll see.
Why I (now) wholeheartedly support MMP
Monday, 1 October 2007
Posted by austin in: Politics, Toronto, comments closed
I’ve been doing some serious thinking about the referendum question facing Ontarians this fall. Spacing Votes has been quite useful in distilling some of the issues and features of MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) as opposed to FPTP (first-past-the-post, the current system), as evidenced by an earlier post I made. They continue to do so with MMP Disproportionality, Part I (Local Seats); I’m looking forward to part two.
I have, however, been thinking about the “list” seats versus geographically-based seats (”ridings”) and come to the conclusion that the problem isn’t list seats, but ridings. My office-place is an interesting example in this problem, in that the office is in nominally in Oakville (it’s at Winston Churchill and Dundas, right at the very border between Oakville and Mississauga), but very few people live in Oakville. A lot of people live west of the office, in Hamilton, St. Catharines, or Burlington; a lot of people live in Mississauga proper. Some, like myself, live in Toronto. I spend nearly ⅓ of my life away from where I live, and of the ⅔ that I’m at home, roughly ⅓ of it is spent sleeping.
So while I care about my neighbourhood’s representation in parliament (both federally and provincially), I also care about the places where I work and (at a minimum) the transit corridor I travel to and from work every day. My concerns are less about where I live than how I get to and from work, which means that regional transit policies matter to me. I can’t effectively and efficiently use a transit system to get to work. (The local Go station is ~10 minutes from my house, the train doesn’t run that often and even less often coming home, and the nearest station is still ~15 minutes from work by bus; my total commute by car is under 35 minutes).
I care about how municipalities (who should be caring more about the local rights and responsibilities) are being run over roughshod by the OMB and developers and the province itself. Mike Harris did more damage to Toronto’s infrastructure through forced amalgamation and downloading than anyone else. He also reduced our democratic representation by cutting the number of city councillors from 57 to 44—the City of Toronto web site says this was adopted by City Council, but I recall reporting at the time was that the adoption was at electoral gunpoint, just like the almagamation itself.
In other words, 90% of my concerns aren’t limited to my relatively small geographic region of the Parkdale-High Park riding, and the concerns I do have about Parkdale-High Park should be addressed through City Council and my local councillor rather than my provincial representation.
Ultimately, I don’t know that I care whether my representation is regional, and even think that regional representation may be the oddity in today’s world. As such, I can only end up supporting MMP. It may not be perfect, and I may regret supporting it in the future, but I don’t believe that being held hostage to the past in this case is a good thing.
Update: Reading a bit more, I have found another point that puts me in favour of MMP. The claim is that regional ridings represent the will of the people. This is only partially true, in that there are plenty of examples of parties parachuting in “star” candidates. I think Ken Dryden was this way for the federal Liberal party; while the people of his riding ended up voting for him, he did not have to win his party’s nomination for the seat.
Andrew Coyne: Why conservatives should support proportional representation
Posted by austin in: Politics, Toronto, comments closed
In September 22nd’s National Post, Andrew Coyne wrote an editorial in support of MMP, entitled Why conservatives should support proportional representation.
Let me be perfectly clear: I disagree with Andrew Coyne on most of what he says and writes. I don’t believe the way he believes. He believes that Mike Harris was good for Ontario (when exactly the opposite has proven true). But he is absolutely right when he says:
A Tory government…of Ontario would look much the same under Mr. Tory as under Dalton McGuinty. It would do much the same things, at much the same cost, with much the same results.
Oh, Mr. Tory would fiddle at the margins — cut a tax or two, expand funding to a few thousand kids in religious schools — issues that both leaders would like you to think show the vast gulf between them. But they’re not kidding anyone. Whoever wins, the forecast is for McGuintory governments, as far as the eye can see.…
[The current voting system creates most of what we find in] Canadian politics — viciously partisan, yet unspeakably trivial; much ado about nothing much. McGuintoryism, in short.
I think that John Tory would be bad for the province (he keeps pretending that he’s like Bill Davis, but he’s much more like Mike Harris), but that doesn’t mean that I think that Howard Hampton or Dalton McGuinty are good for the province. Something has to change; MMP may not be the best change, but we have to try.
(Via Spacing Votes.)
Ontario Votes: Voting Format Referendum
Friday, 21 September 2007
Posted by austin in: Politics, Toronto, comments closed
There’s a referendum going on in Ontario on how we will vote in the future. Others summarize it far better than I do:
I don’t think that it’s a bad system, but I am concerned about the reduction in the number of geographically-bound seats (ridings) from 107 to 90; I’d rather see us have 120 geographically-bound seats and an additional 29 “list” seats. I haven’t really decided which way I’m going to vote on it, but I am edging in favour of it.
Still, it’s interesting stuff and if you’re an Ontarian, you really need to vote on this.
Updated 2007.09.24: Added the link to the Spacing web resources for MMP. It’s important to note that MMP isn’t just a random proposal, but something strongly considered by fellow Ontarians.
FogBugz World Tour in Toronto
Posted by austin in: Technology, Toronto, comments closed
So, Joel Spolsky has been making his world tour demonstrating the latest version of FogBugz (6.0), and I was able to attend last night’s demonstration. It was a small pleasure to be able to meet someone whose blog I’ve been reading for several years.
Joel doesn’t present FogBugz as a bug tracking tool, but as a communications tool. FogBugz is definitely an example of opinionated software, and works better when you adapt your work practices to it rather than trying to make it adapt to your work practices. After the demo, I asked Joel how he felt FogBugz and Basecamp work together or differ. His response suggests that there’s some similarities in how the two tools work, although he sees limitations in how Basecamp handles tasks and schedule changes. (Disclaimer: I have not used either FogBugz or Basecamp at this point.)
The software development lifecycle as presented by FogBugz is presented in its five major modules:
- Vision and design (wiki)
- Implementation (project management)
- Release planning (evidence based scheduling)
- QA (bug tracking)
- Support (email and discussion)
Of all of the features that I saw, the wiki seemed the least useful, although the WYSIWYG editor for it was pretty impressive. The value in the wiki is not the editing space that it provides, but that it provides it in the same place as you track your implementation, releases, QA, and support.
The other three pieces are all based around case management. A case in FogBugz can be a feature, a bug, or even a development task. Cases have time estimates and work times that are used in calculating estimated ship dates. FogBugz uses R-squared analysis of a developer’s estimates and actual work time to determine their reliability of estimates, and then runs Monte Carlo simulations to determine when the last feature or bug required to be fixed will likely be completed based on current task assignment, giving an estimated ship date. It’s all very impressive. (Estimates and work times aren’t immune to gaming, but that’s more of a social problem than a technological problem.)
Case entry and management is insanely simple. There are no required fields (which will, of course, bother some people), but it makes adding cases (which are tasks, bugs, and even support requests) dead simple. There’s no implicit dependency tracking, but you can easily link two cases together simply by adding a note (e.g., “waiting for case 72″) and FogBugz automatically provides a link between them. One clones bugs the same way. There’s good SCM integration into FogBugz (including for Perforce), and there’s even a VisualStudio plug-in for task/case management.
The demo was useful to see, but the hard part will be in seeing exactly how it would integrate into work’s development cycle. It’s not that expensive, so it may be worth getting a few licenses (or trying a few months of the hosted version) so that we can see whether it would work for us.
Married (+70 days)
Saturday, 3 February 2007
Posted by austin in: Toronto, comments closed
As some folks may remember, I talked a lot last year about the fact that I was getting married. Well, 70 days ago, I did. On the 25th of November to my long-time (ten years!) girlfriend, Anne-Marie. It was a perfect wedding and a perfect day for the wedding. I have posted the pictures that I took on my Flickr account (Austin & Anne- Marie's Wedding). There’s a lot more pictures that the wedding photographer took on his site: Ceremony, Formals, and Reception. Those will probably be taken down later this year; I may replicate them on my site when he does that. He has a real eye for what will work, and he has generous licensing terms. If anyone is looking for an event photographer in Toronto (or out of Toronto—he travels!), Brian is a great guy.
I will get back to work on the Ruby PDF Tools soon, as I will also be updating this blog a bit more often. The nature of my posts will also be expanding to include more non-Ruby topics, but Ruby-related content will remain the majority of what I post here.
