Colin's Journal in August 2003

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It's been far too long since I last updated my journal.  My parents arrived on Tuesday, and I've been making as much time available as possible to be with them.

So far we've done shopping, ice cream, little Italy, Peruvian food, picked up the rental car, the beaches, brunch, and the Distillery district.  They've also done other things while I've been at work, but this is my journal, so that's the list so far.

Updates over the next week are likely to be thin on the ground as well for the same reason.

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Greg Dyke has announced that all BBC radio and TV content will be made freely available online, a potentially very important development.  While no details of how this will work have been released, it could alter the nature of TV in a fundamental way.  The amount of content that will be included is truly massive if all archive material is put on-line, but even if only new programming is made available it will quickly grow to be a substantial archive.  If the quality of the on-line archive is high enough (e.g. full screen DivX rather than small Real Audio) it could even become a more convenient way to watch TV than the more usual broadcast method.

Hopefully the BBC will provide encodings of their programs that are suitable for streaming, as well as higher quality ones that are suitable for downloading.  They could even take the innovative step of using BitTorrent to reduce the cost of distributing their material (something I've written about previously).

It will also be interesting to see whether this move has much impact on DVD sales of BBC material, and whether the money received for sales to other countries will be reduced.  It's already possible for anyone in the world with an internet connection to listen to BBC radio online, and it might not be long before watching their TV output online will be possible.

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We had lunch at the newly opened Beaver Cafe on Queen Street West today.  It didn't get off to a great start when we had to move tables because of the number of wasps that were bothering us in our original location. 

The bigger problem though was the tardiness of the service.  Drinks had to be ordered multiple times, and the food took nearly an hour to turn up.  An hour for a meal to turn up can be acceptable under some circumstances, but when the meal consists of a toasted sandwich and some toast this seems somewhat excessive.

The food was actually very good, but having said that I wouldn't recommend it.

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It appears that someone has written a new worm, which removes MS Blaster (AKA Lovsan) and patches up the system, by taking advantage of the very same MS RPC vulnerability used by the original. 

Network Associates has a complete description of the worm Nachi.  I wonder if this is the first time someone has written a worm to patch up systems using the same vulnerability as the original worm?

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It took 41 hours for our power to return, from 4:08 when the kitchen clock stopped on Thursday afternoon, to 9:04 this Saturday morning.  The house is starting to cool down, all be it very slowly, as the air conditioning kicks in, and we can use our fan to help keep things bearable in the meantime.  The fridge is slowly cooling down, with the freezer compartment almost below zero.

Last night we did a barbecue, using all the meat from the freezer that had thawed out over the previous night and day, supplemented with some corn on the cob.  We've been warned to expect rolling black outs, and some of our friends have already seen the power come and go, so we're avoiding restocking the freezer for the moment.

Hopefully we'll keep power from now on, with life returning to normal by Monday...

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After an evening like this I would normally write up a journal entry, but due to the lack of power I'm instead preparing this entry offline on my laptop - for publication when the power eventually returns.

I decided that, with planes being the unreliable things that they are, I would fly down to NJ tonight (Thursday) ahead of meetings tomorrow morning.  I dashed to the airport in a bit of a hurry, having spent most of the morning wrestling with patching my laptop with the latest and greatest service packs and patches.

Upon getting to the airport I joined the inevitable check-in line, which was progressing fairly smoothly.  Then black smoke started to pour out of the side of the terminal building, clearly visible through the end window (the check-in desk was the last one in the hall).  It was persistent and thick enough that I left my baggage and wandered across to the window where the source was visible.  There was a large rusty pipe sticking out of the side of the building from which all the smoke was issuing. 

For the fast thinking among those reading this, it will clear that what I was witnessing was the starting up of the emergency electricity generation system for the airport.  It started with enough smoke however to prompt the lady manning the check-in desk to make a phone call, shortly followed by a brief visit by a couple of fire engines.

It was a good twenty minutes before we realised that the check-in wasn't just slow, but actually stopped.  I noticed a message board at another airline's desk, which said, "US Immigration Computers are down".  We had to wait another 10 minuets before it was announced that not just was Toronto Airport not accepting any flights in and out due to power loss, but also New York had the same problem.  I called home to find out that our apartment was also suffering from a lack of power, a rather suspicious coincidence.  It was shortly after this that, enterprising and mobile equipped that most passengers are, we soon discovered that "north-east America and SE Ontario is without power".

To cut an increasingly long story short, I eventually decided to set off back home, having to take the TTC bus because there didn't appear to be any taxis or limos available in either departures or arrivals.

The journey home was hot, long, and crowded.  At each major intersection there were police, and the odd person not in uniform who had decided to help out, directing traffic.  As we got closer to downtown we started to get some information regarding this state of the subway (not running, but shuttle buses instead), and the streetcars (also not running, and no replacement services).  As we passed college I saw a streetcar standing dead without power, abandoned by everyone except the driver.

During the trip I made and received many calls on my mobile, which tells you something about both the telephone and mobile networks of Toronto.  It was through these calls that I learnt about just how wide spread the power outage is, and it's fairly staggering.  As soon as power is once again available I'm sure I'll be able to see maps which demonstrate it and estimates of the number of people affected.

Upon finally getting home there was just enough light left in the day to get together our considerable collection of candles and light a few.  We've come up to the deck, to avoid the heat now trapped in the apartment.  Now that the sun has completely set we have by far the best view of the stars that we have ever, and probably will ever, see in Toronto.

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I've uploaded PubTal 1.2.  This includes a good few fixes as well as extra functionality.  If you are looking for a tool to help manage a small website please check it out!

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I've hopefully finalised version 1.2 of PubTal.  I'm going to sleep on it, and if I don't think of any crucial missing bits, I'll upload what I have tomorrow.

I've also got another entry on the 1.3 wish-list: the ability to automate the uploading of modified files to an ftp site.  There is a danger to adding this functionality, which is that any web content not managed through PubTal can easily get left behind, but I'm still inclined to think it will make life easier.

We are also midway through re-carpeting right now.  The only good thing about this is that, by being midway, we should only have one more day of disruption.

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This tech summary was originally going to be included with the weekend post, but then I thought better of it.

Plugins in PubTal now work, including the Textile one I mentioned earlier.  This shall ship as the demonstration plugin, and so provide both a working example and give PubTal support for Textile.  My plans are to update the documentation and release version 1.2 before adding any new features.  The new features under consideration, and which will probably not be in 1.2, are XHTML support and plugins for adding extra context programmatically.

Bastian Kleineidam has put together a version of SimpleTAL which includes limited support for the Zope Page Templates Internationisation standard (known as i18n).  If you are looking for such support check out his page for details of what is supported, and how it works.

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This weekend we had Shana's parents brief visit us, which was also coincidently the weekend on which this years Taste of the Danforth was held.  The Taste of the Danforth has grown significantly from last year, stretching an extra city block compared to last year.  It also had a greater variety of food available than I remember, which is good because while Souvlaki is all well and good, it does leave something to be desired after the first mile of not seeing anything else. 

This year there was a significant showing of Japanese and Indian food, along with some Tex-Mex and a handful of other categories of food.  It was fairly warm out, so after a couple of hours wandering around I had caught the sun a little across the shoulders, but not so much as to be painful.

On Sunday I finally did some more skating again, along with Shana and Kelli (thanks for the lift!).  The first run down the trial and back was fairly slow and painful, but after a rest I found the next trip out and back fairly good.  Today I've got a few aches to show for it, so it must have been worth while.  If I'm really good I'll try again on Wednesday, but with re-carpeting going on that is unlikely to happen.

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The IHT is running the first article I've seen from a mainstream news source which doubts the percieved demographic crisis in Europe.  It's not a particularly well argued case, with little in the way of figures to back up the arguments, but it does at least tackle the issue.  It also talks about the false linking of demographic with cultural decline, which I've written about previously.

While the current birth rate in Europe (and as I've pointed out before, almost all OECD countries) will lead to significant population reduction if they are maintained, that's a fairly large if.  Take for example Spain, which according to these figures, had a fertility rate of 1.2 in 1996.  Going back just 16 years to 1980 the fertility rate was 2.2, a fairly huge change over the matter of a decade and a half. 

Given such historical changes in fertility rates it seems rater premature to make dire predictions regarding the future population of Europe come the end of the century.

(Thanks to Europundit for the IHT link).

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I'm currently adding plugin support to PubTal, thanks to some feedback from Andrew Dalke.  This means that I can add support for textile very easily using an optional plugin (although it'll need at least Python 2.2 because that's what is required by PyTextile).  This will also allow people to develop their own plugins to add support for custom content while still working within the PubTal framework.

Another feature that I'm working on will allow Catalogues to treat their entries as content, which is rater hard to explain without an example.  The feature will allow PubTal to generate a table of contents page as well as easily managable previous/next buttons for each sub-page.

Another feature being thought about would allow plugins to add extra context to existing content types, which will add a lot of extra flexibility.  Hopefully I can do all this without making PubTal even harder to explain than it already is...

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Toronto is a city of many different neighbourhoods.  If you want to buy computer parts then you go to Spadina and College, if you want Greek food you go to the Danforth.  Today I went with Becky for an exploration of Little India and the Distillery District.

We used to live fairly closely to Little India, but despite its proximity we had only visited a few times, and then only to visit one or two of its restaurants in the evening.  This time it was a Sunday afternoon on a long weekend (long live Civic holidays!) when almost all of the shops were open.  I picked up a garlic chutney that I've not seen in ages, and had an excellent snack/lunch from one of the outdoor vendors.  It was during our wandering that I spotted this amusing sign in the window of a closed shop.

The Distillary District is a recently renovated area filled with art galleries, restaurants, and several outdoor stages.  We plan to go back because we didn't really have much time to look around, and there is easily a full days worth of things to see.  The most impressive has to be the Sandra Ainsley Gallery which exhibits a collection of amazing glass work.

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I've had some thoughtful feedback regarding my previous posts on the war in Iraq.  It made me realise that I've not written about the question of whether the intelligence used to justify the war was manufactured or altered for political reasons.

In my opinion the answer is certainly "no".  Too many people are involved, and the stakes are so high, that manufacturing or distortion of intelligence evidence is not a credible accusation.  What I do think happened was that the government (or parts of it) decided to go to war, and then utilised the available evidence to justify the action.  It is in this context that I make the assertion that the PM mislead the houses of parliament and the country.

The impression that many MPs were under, and which was perpetuated through the country's media, was that Iraq posed the most serious threat to the national security of the UK.  Intelligence evidence, suggesting that Iraq was trying to gain capabilities that would allow it to be a threat, existed but as the weapons inspectors demonstrated, there was little or no evidence that Iraq had made any progress in achieving this aim since the end of the last gulf war.

It's my belief that the PM lead the country to war for strategic and political reasons.  However, even if you believe he genuinely perceived Iraq to be such a serious threat, it is obvious by now that he was wrong: Iraq was not a serious threat at all.  The weapons inspectors should have been allowed to finish their job (showing that no WMD existed), and we should not have gone to war on the basis of the threat that Iraq posed to the UK.  An argument can be made that we were right to invade Iraq for humanitarian reasons, but this was not the argument that the PM promoted.

Either the PM mislead the country, or he was wrong.  In either case we waged war on another country because of his actions, and he should be held accountable.