Category Archives: General

Political Compass

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Political Compass is an interesting site. It asks you to fill out a short questionnaire and then gives you a rating of where you stand on the political map. For reference the site also gives the values for some famous people like Hitler, Stallin and Ghandi.

My location according to this site is
Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.85
which puts me in the same area as Ghandi. Since I don’t know that much about Ghandi’s politics I really don’t know what that means.

It’s probably not wise to take this thing too seriously but I would have thought myself to be much closer to Paul Martin than this graph shows. Also, I certainly do not think collectivism is the best way to run the economy but somehow I ended up towards that part of the scale.

Political map

Ironic

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It’s particularly ironic that a few hours after I had posted my little rant on Police fund raising I discovered that the drivers side window had been smashed out of Karen’s car and the steering wheel ripped apart. Looks like some pretty stupid theives. It was around midnight when I noticed this. At ~05:00 I was awoken by the sound of another car window being smashed. I called the police. Hopefully they caught someone.

Update: Two other cars in the parking lot had windows smashed too. As far as I know none were actually stolen. Pretty lame thieves.

Linux QoS API

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My wrapper library for the Linux QoS system is coming along nicely. Here are the function calls necessary to add a filter that matches the destination field in the IP header.

filt = classifier_u32_new();
classifier_u32_set_class(filt, class);
classifier_u32_set_priority(filt, 5);
classifier_u32_set_protocol(filt, IP);
classifier_u32_set_interface(filt, 3);
classifier_u32_add_match_ip_dst(filt, "x.x.x.x");

if (!qos_classifier_u32_add(con, filt)) {
	g_print("Adding filter failed.n");
}

I am now trying to figure out how to handle the representation of the currently installed filters and classes in the API. Somehow the application needs a represenation of these things so it can make changes. Since the structure of the qeueing disciplines, classes and filters is very much like a tree I think this may be the best way to go.

Canadian Election

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Well it looks like there will be a minority Liberal government in Canada this term. Considering the polls said the Conservatives might form a minority government the final numbers are pretty surprising. For anyone reading this outside of Canada the Liberals have held a strong majority in parliament for the last three terms.

Ontario, Canada’s largest province, is the traditional Liberal stronghold. Ontario elects ~1/3 of the seats in parliament so this support has translated into a lot of seats. There have been a few screw-ups in the government recently that have hurt the Liberals pretty badly. Combine this with the fact that the traditionally divided political right has united into one party this election could have spelled doom for the Liberals. Indeed, the polls showed that the Liberals and Conservatives were running neck and neck. Why were the pre-election polls so far out? Here is my little theory on what happened. Ontarians didn’t want to elect the Conservatives but they did want to punish the Liberals for their problems. So, some Ontarians told the pollsters that they were not going to vote Liberal but when the day finally came support fell on the traditional side. I am a strong Liberal supporter but at the start of the election I probably would have done the same. Besides, lying to pollsters is fun.

Canadian Copyright

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I found a couple of interesting articles with respect to changes in Canadian Copyright law. It’s scary to see the Copyright battle start in Canada. As in the US it looks like the pro restriction groups are doing their best to make sure they dominate the process. The Star has two articles here and here. Both of these articles are written by Michael Geist.

Friday

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Had a nice easy going Friday night. No homework or other work related things. First went to the London International Airfest. It was a great show. This is the first time I have gone to the Friday evening show. Though there were still a lot of people, it was no where near as busy as Saturday or Sunday usually are. Pictures from the show are in the online photo album.

Afterwards, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I enjoyed it but not as much as the first two. The movie seemed very rushed to me. It could have easily used another 30 minutes of footage. Hopefully they can find a way to address this problem as the books in the series just keep getting longer.

Dogma

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Earlier tonight I stumbled upon Dogma on TV. One of my all time favorite movies. I’m sure traditionally religious people are appalled by this movie but the image of God presented at the end is the most powerful and positive I have ever seen.

Fedora Core 2

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I have had Fedora Core 2 installed on my three computers for a couple of weeks now. Traditionally I have used a stock install for my gateway and laptop but have customized the desktop components of my main work station. Typically this meant building the latest GNOME from source via Garnome. Fedora Core 2 is the first Linux installation I have had in a long while that I don’t have the urge to customize. Sure, I have installed some new stuff that is not part of the distribution but the core desktop components are stock. Kudos to Fedora for putting together such a good distribution. Someday I’ll take the time to get familiar with Debian but at the moment I don’t have much incentive to.

Marathon

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I just got back from the National Capital Race Weekend in Ottawa. Ran the half marathon (21.1 Km). Finished with a time of 2:16:08. This is the first time I have ran a marathon so I am pretty happy with that time. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Pictures from the weekend are in the Photo album.