Author Archives: Matt Simpson

Earth To Amy!

So my friend (and co-worker) Amy is somewhere down in Peru right now on a three week * “vacation” and we were just sitting around the office a moment ago wondering what exactly she is up to right now. Perhaps she’s wandering around Lima, perhaps she’s taking flight over the mystic Nazca Lines, perhaps she’s even hiking the ancient Machu Picchu Trail… What ever she is doing right now, she is probably having the time of her life and enjoying a touching, life changing, cultural experience. She sure is a traveller.

So Amy, cu-do’s and enjoy your trek! Oh and a big high five from Canada, in the odd event that you are actually reading my blog while enjoying your time in a small rural Peruvian village. erm… prolly not, at least I hope not. Oh but in case you are, HAPPY belated BIRTHDAY (it was yesterday). Our birthday wish for you was that you don’t have to endure the eating of small rodents while on your vacation… of course being a vegetarian and all, not because eating guinea pigs is weird or anything. erm…

Safe journey and we’ll see you when you return. We’re looking forward to reviewing the 4GB’s of photographs you’ve taken while away, on Flikr no less.

* The word vacation is in quotes because to me, a vacation entails being served copious amounts of strawberry daiquiris while sitting on my ass in a beach chair by the warm ocean. For the love of all that is holy it’s called “Vacation Time” Amy; not “Haul Your Ass Around The Globe Time” geeze! haha. But of course when I return to work after a vacation, I’m “dumber” to the nth degree as a result of all the booze and sun versus you returning smarter and energized as a result of your touching, life changing, cultural experience. But come on! *thinking of the Simpsons episode when Homer is walking down the beach in a speedo, singing “I’m in Ri-o! And I’m walking on the beach, I’m a speedo!”*

Cozy New eHome, Open For… Who?

Well I finally got my sh@t in order and spent the time required to get my personal website up-and-attam; so without further ado, welcome to version 1.0 of MattSimpson.ca. I’m not sure how regular I will be blogging on this site (hopefully at least weekly) but it’ll be a place (mostly for family and friends) to check up on me and see how everything is going.

Since I’m technical, I’ll start with the technical… for anyone who’s interested: Yes, I’m a PHP developer who is quite capable of building my own complex site from scratch; however, I’m smarter then that… really! Instead I’m using a WordPress installation for the main website, with a modified version of the K2 theme (SVN) which uses my own photography and artwork. For my Photographs section I’m using Gallery2 with the WordPress to Gallery2 (WPG2) plug-in installed to integrate my Gallery2 installation with my WordPress website.

Overall, I’m very happy with the outcome from a software standpoint… Everything is working really well together. I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel for a personal website, and I’d rather spend the development time doing an upgrade to ListMessenger.

Other then that, enjoy the site if you’re visiting. Feel free to register and comment on any posts if you desire… I’m pretty sure I have that setup 😉 Thanks for coming out!

Passport to Pass Port

I’ve recently been following some wrangling rants from various Canadian political big whigs including Stephen Harper, miscellaneous business giants and even civilians who are all up in arms about the United States requiring border crossers to have valid passports or advanced ID to enter the country by 2007.

I don’t normally side with the US Congress on issues (not because I have a vendetta or anything, but because they’re usually wrong), but I don’t really see the harm or major Economic impact for that matter that this will supposedly cause. You already need to show birth certificate / drivers licence when crossing the border, what’s the big deal with getting your passport? Sure it requires a bit of work on your part, but come on, everyone should have a valid passport anyways.

As for Canadian businesses that cross the border every day, the Canadian government will have to come up with a solution sooner rather than later, so stop complaining and start pressuring the politicians to get their ass in gear and come up with a nice RFID solution (which is already in use by Americans at 5 border crossings). I mean geeze, the technology doesn’t have to be invented or something, piggy-back on the existing Homeland Security project already.

Again, normally I don’t like to follow a US led anything, but I think Canada should have a similar policy at our borders. No passport, no entry… simple as that.

Goodbye Children, Bye Chef

Andrew just sent me a link to a post over at 411Mania about Issac Hayes wanting to leave the voice of Chef from South Park because he is upset about a recent episode that pokes fun at Scientology.

Issac Hayes upset over Scientology episode…

Issac Hayes is trying to get his release from the TV show “South Park.” He has served as the voice for Chef since 1997 but is apparently upset over the show’s recent episode making fun of the Scientology religion. Hayes is a Scientologist.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,” Hayes says. “Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.”

The reason I find this so comical is that it actually took South Park making fun of his own religious beliefs before he was upset enough to want leave the show. I don’t seem to recall any outbursts when they were making fun of Christians, Jews, Jehovah Witness, Muslims, Barbara Streisandism, etc, but when they make fun of Scientologists and Scientology it was no longer comedic satire, but “intolerance and bigotry”.

I’m sure there is more to the story than what I’ve read thus far, and I don’t claim to know the whole issue… but come on Mr. Hayes, the chocolate salty ball is in your court to clear your name of being a serious hypocrite.

The Simpsons in Real Life

No, I’m not talking about me actually being a Simpson (I’m Matt, not Bart or Homer, hell that’s old already)… I’m talking about real life people actually acting out the timeless “The Simpsons” cartoon introduction that my generation loves so much.

It’s pretty amazing and very well done, almost to a T. The only issue I noticed on first watch was when the end-of-day whistle blows at the Nuclear power plant and homer is rushing off, the glowing power-rod doesn’t stick to his back like it does in the cartoon introduction, yet he still pulls it out and tosses it when he’s driving in the car on the way home. Minor detail of course.

Did you see anything else missing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjP

P.S. Thank-you Karla for forwarding me the link to this! Mucho gracias.

Ugly Coding Standards Are Standard?

I just read through the manual on the much anticipated Zend Framework and for the most part, I really like the implementation. It is a collection of a number of classes I already use from around the net, which is fine by me. True, PHP is in dire need of a good framework that everyone can standardize on. Right? Yeah, well, I think so, but I’m not really sure… Isn’t that what Pear is? (as a friend reminded me this morning).

My major problem is their stupid coding standards; I honestly hardly agree with a single one of them… it actually makes me angry. Here are a few that I read through until I got so mad I just closed the damn manual website and did something else (wrote this angry blog post).

B.2.2. Indentation
Use an indent of 4 spaces, with no tabs.

I despise spaces in code… why hit the space bar 4 times when you could hit tab 1 time? So what, you have different editors with different default tab stops… who cares, it’s a preference. I refuse to use spaces.

B.2.3. Maximum Line Length
The target line length is 80 characters, i.e. developers should aim keep code as close to the 80-column boundary as is practical. However, longer lines are acceptable. The maximum length of any line of PHP code is 120 characters.

No way, not in a million years. I like long lines… sure, I may have to scroll horizontally to see some code, but it is a hell of a lot simpler to read if you’re looking at the whole file or a large chunk of code.

B.3.3. Filenames
Files that are containers for single classes are derived from the class names (see above) in the format “ZClassName.php”.

Whatever… this is silly. Have they ever used an FTP client before? Some clients by default change filenames to lowercase when the upload files… like they should be. As far as I’m concerned filenames on the net should be a-z 0-9 – _ . period. If everything is in lowercase you never have to worry about case-sensitive operating systems.

B.3.5. Variables
Variable names may only contain alphanumeric characters. Underscores are not permitted. Numbers are permitted in variable names but are discouraged.

Whatever… again, I use $variable_name and refuse to use $variableName… If you have the words “some string” does it make more sense to say someString or does it look more accurate to say some_string. My opinion is the later. camelCaps is ugly in PHP code. I agree with their definition of Constants, but it leads to the question of… if underscores are permitted in constants, why not in variable names? If the answer is to clearly separate the two, then why shouldn’t variable names be all lowercase and constants be all upper case.

B.4.2.4. String Concatenation
Strings may be concatenated using the “.” operator. A space must always be added before and after the “.” operator to improve readability.

$whatever = “that is “.$tupid;

I just give up… I refuse to conform to that less-efficient “standard”. My own personal “standard” is almost the exact opposite of this Zend outline and in my opinion it is much nicer to read through and work from. I’m actually a Graphic Designer turned developer… my whole education and philosophy revolve around making things look good and stay functional… I personally think I’m qualified enough to say those standards stink.

Duhbya Says What?

After not blogging for a little while I couldn’t help myself today when I was reading an article on MarketWatch about US President George Bush allowing a company owned by his daddy’s big powerful friends, I mean, the United Arab Emirates to purchase six of the USA’s Seaports…

Congress “ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they’re going to do,” Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One.

I’m not joking, that quote (according to the article) actually came from George W Bush… Wow, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I couldn’t believe it! *laughing* Here’s a quote for you:

George Bush and Congress “ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they’re going to do,” before invading foreign countries in illegal wars over oil and control, busting heads, blowing up villages, civilians and children.

On that note, I’m not even American and I installed this funny little Widget for Mac OS X called Duhbya’s Days Are Numbered which shows the days, hours, minutes and seconds left of Duhbya’s presidency. Maybe check it out if you’re a Mac user.

It Still Works?

I’m currently writing an informational article / how-to document for Queen’s Medical Students, instructing them on how they are able to use different calendaring applications to subscribe to our automatically generated lecture and events iCalendar (.ics) calendars on our server, and then sync this data with their portable devices. It’s a very sought after document because it recently became apparent to me that even though we are providing this feature, not nearly enough people actually know how to use and implement it.

I use a Mac (it’s not secret) so I take for-granted that Apple provides me (free of charge) with an excellent calendaring solution (Apple iCal) capable of subscribing to remote iCalendar files and automatically updating them hourly; however Windows users, as always, receive the short end of the stick. Either way, I was researching Windows applications that are capable of supporting this feature and found a link to a page on Microsoft’s website titled “Works“.

Now I thought to myself “I really recognize that application name”, so I said it again to myself “Microsoft Works”… it all came back to me *whoosh* Windows 3.1 for Work Groups, Windows 95, Microsoft Publisher… haha, I couldn’t believe it. Microsoft still makes Microsoft Works and not only do they still make it, but they still develop it, still support it, still sell it, and even more unbelievable is that it apparently supports the very feature that I’m looking for when Microsoft’s own top of the ladder calendaring application (Outlook) does not even come close.

Just goes to show you, what’s old is new again (to me) and in the case of Microsoft Works, it apparently does just that and with a much smaller price tag than Office does. That being said, 99% of people that I know are just as happy with OpenOffice and don’t pay a dime unless they want to donate to the cause.

E-Mail Inefficiencies

Today was the straw the broke the camel’s back on the topic of e-mail. As a server administrator I deal with e-mail servers regularly and as any e-mail administrator knows, spammers are evil. Their tactics are such a pain, causing nothing but problems and stress on servers around the world. It’s also no secret that I’ve often wished “SpamAssassin” was actually an elite Ninja squad who specialized in removing the extremities of selfish good-for-nothing spammers.

That said, spam was not the issue today… it was actually a “legitimate message” that tipped the scale of sanity. The e-mail in question was several pages long and consisted of several people replying to messages, replying to CC’s and talking about something that some how I am involved with (because I was CC’d). Since I was CC’d on only the last few messages it’s now up to me to sort through the disgusting mess of in-line responses since the beginning and find out what the hell this has to do with me.

After about an hour of reading to figure out who-is-who and who-is-saying-what I find that right in the middle of the mess is my name as a contact (used as an incorrect reference to a project I had little to do with). So now I’ve just spent an hour of my life figuring out this whole twisted problem to find out I really don’t have anything to do with it.

The more I deal with e-mail, the less efficient I believe it is becoming. Not because of the technology itself of course, but because of how it’s being used and abused. HTML messages with colours and picutures, long correspondence, complex issues and the lack of security behind SMTP are all contributing factors to my continuing hatred of my e-mail account.

At present I do not know a solution to the problem… it seems to me like going back to usenet for business correspondence may be a solution worth investigating. What’s old is new again, isn’t that right? Perhaps with all the new social Internet concepts someone will develop something that becomes more useful and business oriented… who knows.

Until then… if you e-mail me and require any sort of response, your best bet is to keep it to the point and text-only. If you have a secret about how to efficiently handle 100 or so messages per day, for love of grey, tell me, I’m all ears.

Another Bump in the 2006 Track

On my continued report of 2006, I’ll say that the second week ended with a bit of a bump. I was sitting at home on Friday evening and around 8:20PM my telephone rings… It was my wife, stating she had just been in a car accident.

I jumped up off the couch, wrestled with trying to get a stubborn sock on my foot and sped off to the intersection she gave me to make sure everything was OK. Upon arrival a spectator filled me in on what she saw happen… my wife was in the middle of the road turning left and clearing the intersection on a yellow light, when another car tried to make it through the yellow / red light. It just so happens that the car that tried to beat the light was a female off-duty OPP officer, who we’re told is a sweet-heart.

This unfortunate accident resulted in both parties being charged. Karla got “Left turn – fail to afford reasonable opportunity to avoid collision” which is a $110 fine and 4 points. We’re still thinking about whether to fight this in court or not, because the fact is that Karla did nothing wrong, she did exactly what she was supposed to do.

All in all, Karla’s poor new Yellow Saturn is pretty much destroyed and we’re waiting to hear from the insurance company as to what the verdict is as to whether it is a write-off or not.

We’re just so lucky that both Karla and Tanya are OK and I’ll definitely be giving updates on this as they happen. I’m especially interested in blogging about dealing with an insurance company for the first time. We have all of our insurance through State Farm and have always been happy dealing with our local office, this should be a good test of their system.

Experience Log with State Farm:

[-] Small Issue:
My local office wasn’t open on the weekend so I had to wait until today to talk to them. We could have filed the claim with the 24 hour toll-free number, but I’d rather talk to my local people.

[+] Positive:
First thing Monday morning I was speaking with my local office and they got everything started for me right away. They asked a few questions and said I should expect a call shortly from a claims officer. I was called within an hour and the lady setup a rental car for my wife, and contacted the garage where the car was towed. Easy as pie thus far.