I've earned a reputation with my students and colleagues as being "the guy who makes you blog."  I don't mind that, actually.  As the new students get going on their open source work, I thought I'd make my point by showing some recent examples of why this is…

I just wanted to say thank-you to the CRTC for insuring that we no longer get calls from telemarketers since they've introduced the "Do Not Call List."  I should probably also thank them on behalf of the dozens of people now calling me who were able to get…

I've been hunting around for a good project to do while I freeload in Peter's Mac Development class.  I'm just about to finish up my Thunderbird Growl and Spotlight integration bugs, and I'll be needing something new to do.  Here it is: Bug 457546 - add Quick look support to…

Gary pointed me to an article on Ars Technica today about Canvas3D and Cathy's C3DL js lib: Another project that we have been watching closely is the Canvas 3D JavaScript library (C3DL), which aims to facilitate the development of browser-based interactive 3D graphics with JavaScript. It is highly experimental and…

The continuing strike at York is a disaster, and if you needed more proof, there's word today that first-year applications are down: The number of high-school students selecting York as their first choice for university fell by close to 15 per cent this year. The drop comes at a time…

One of my colleagues is teaching a class on Cocoa and iPhone development, and it happens to fit nicely into my schedule.  Today he was showing different bits of Inteface Builder and XCode, and I paused to ponder the Research Assistant: It got me thinking that a Mozilla version of…

I've written previously about my colleague Jordan working on and with Eclipse WTP.  Today I see a nice article in IT World Canada about the partnership: Past collaborations with Mozilla Corp. and Red Hat Inc. have proved fruitful for the communities and students, and “now, what we’re interested to…

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I was thankful for CUPS.  My in-law's printer had been shared over their network via an SMB share on a Windows XP box.  After 10 years, that old Gateway decided it was time to head to greener pastures.  Luckily, I had an…

I listened to Jian Ghomeshi interview Jimmy Wales on Q this past Thursday about Wikipedia.  But don't follow those first two links: they're too tainted with inaccuracy to trust, or so says Jian.  I enjoy Q most of the time, but I think Jian missed it this time.  The episode…

I’m fairly meme proof, but I’ve been tagged a number of times now, and to be honest, I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else tell their secrets.  So here you go. The Rules Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above) Share…