Justin Hayes DOT com

So apparently my birthday is coming up...

Justin — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:50:29 -0400

6 hours or so to go... Normally I don't make a big deal of my birthdays, not since I was about 12 or so anyway. But, this is my 19th one, which here in Canada means I'm of legal age to drink. And it's pretty much a defacto Canadian tradition to get so hammered you forget your own name on this special day. With that in mind, some friends of mine have volunteered to ensure that I get suitably drunk tomorrow, starting in the afternoon and ending sometime in the early morning. :) Thanks guys! I can hardly wait. :P

I haven't laughed this hard in a while

Justin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:16:56 -0400

Ohhh man, it's 2:12 in the morning and I'm laughing my ass off and probably waking people up...

Why? Was it the video? Something else? I really don't know for sure. Is this video as hilarious as I seem to think it is?

(read more for video)

Windows is not ready for the desktop

Justin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:54:40 -0400

I don't know how many times I've seen people writing articles about Linux not being "ready for the desktop" and just wanted to bury my face in the palm of my hand. It's certainly ready for my desktop, it's ready for my father's desktop, my grandmother's desktop, your desktop too.

So when I read this "review" of Windows by an old associate from my Automatix days, I had a bit of a laugh, because this one is actually quite true. Go read it and get an idea what you'd have to go through if your laptop/desktop didn't come with any OS pre-installed and you had to install Windows yourself. And while you're at it, Digg it.

Funpidgin is now Carrier Instant Messenger, releases version 2.4.2

Justin — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:15:21 -0400

I know this news is a little late, but I've been busy :) Funpidgin is now known as Carrier Instant Messenger. This name was suggested by Peter Nikolaidis of the Fresh Ubuntu podcast and the rest of the devs and users we talked to all agreed that it was perfect. We're still working on a final logo, but at least we have a name! And soon we'll also have a new website.

Development-wise, we just recently released version 2.4.2, merging changes from Pidgin upstream and packaging our new features from SVN like webkit-integration for Adium conversation styles, or the old Gaim-style protocol icons. Read the features page and the release announcement for more details, or just go and download it now :P

The Hardy Heron has landed... on my server :)

Justin — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:01:55 -0400

Today I found out that you could directly upgrade from Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake to 8.04. I know, I know... that should have been obvious given that they're both Long-Term Support releases. Anyway, moving right along... the instructions were found here and overall the whole process was very simple besides being constantly asked if I wanted to replace old config files with the newer versions. Looks like my concerns in this post were mostly moot, so far, no problems! *knock on wood*

Interviewed for a podcast

Justin — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:36:58 -0400

Today I was interviewed on the Fresh Ubuntu podcast (listen to it here) about a little project I've been working on called Funpidgin (name subject to change). Overall the purpose was to clear up some misconceptions behind the reasons for forking from Pidgin, the program we're based on. I also wanted to share some of our plans for where we're headed. The interview was great, Nikolaidis and Harlem are excellent hosts, and my only regret was having to do it over the phone instead of Skype. Go ahead and have a listen, the first 11 minutes or so contain the interview.

New site theme

Justin — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:45:09 -0400

Still working on a new theme for the site, as can be seen. There's still a lot of stuff that doesn't look right, I'm working on it. I'll be adding more graphics as soon as I'm feeling more creative.

Update: The new theme's feeling pretty complete now. There's a couple areas that still need some work, but for the most part it's done. Still trying to figure out how I can package it separately from it's Zen base-theme, but I need a name before I do that. Right now it's named Nails, because it was inspired by the layout on NIN.com.

My favourite thing about Spring & Summer: Hiking!

Justin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:26:18 -0400

Went for a nice little hike around my house today with my youngest brother, Chase. Sure is nice having nice enough weather for this finally :D I went to the bottom of Borer's Falls, which is pretty close to my house. I've lived out here for 14 years and until today had never managed to get down there, despite trying a couple different ways. Yesterday, while out walking with Lisa I noticed what looked like a usable path down to the bottom so I checked it out and it looked like it was possible to get down.

Turns out it was (although it sure wasn't easy!), and me and my brother got down to the bottom and then walked downstream to another path he knew about to get back. Turns out that wasn't as dangerous, but it was much more physically demanding. Oh well, good exercise if nothing else. I'm looking forward to going on more hikes this year.

Check out the other pictures.

Screenshot - 2008/04/12

Justin — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:24:31 -0400

When I want to relax, and get away from what I'm doing for a moment, all I need to do is minimize my windows and stare for a bit.

Automatix is dead

Justin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:02:54 -0400

Disclosure: I am a former member of the Automatix development team and primary web designer responsible for their web presence. Well, that was then, anyway.

While reading an old acquaintance's blog, I discovered what I feel should have happened a long time ago. The Automatix project is finally over, at least in it's current form. The official announcement says the remaining developers no longer have time to remain committed to the project, but I can't help but feel that they finally realized that their work is irrelevant, for all the reasons Iandefor listed. I certainly realized it, and so did most of the rest of the dev team, who left the project not long after I did. I won't get into all the politics that have gone on both behind the scenes and publicly in regards to Automatix. Most of it was petty anyway. I'm glad that they finally saw reason and decided to focus their resources on bigger and better things.

That's not to say I disrespect their work. There was a time when Automatix was exactly what people needed (even if it was a little... unrefined). I just don't think they should have beat a dead horse for as long as they did. Hopefully something new will come out of the ashes. Automatix still caries a heavy weight, if only in name. Maybe they will turn Automatix3 into some sort of advanced package manager for this new Linux distribution the lead developer was talking about, who knows.

My thanks go out to those that provided a great service when it was still necessary, and especially to Arnav Ghosh, the original developer for bringing me onto the team. In my time with them I did learn a great deal and I like to think that the experience helped to shape my current existence in some way.

KFC is gr1m \m/

Justin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:25 -0400

Please note: I hate KFC, I think it's disgusting. With that said, this commercial is hilarious.

(Continue on for the video)

I want this guy's job

Justin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:42:49 -0400

I really do love the show Top Gear and while it's true that I'd love to be paid to do almost anything they get to do on the show, this here is a particularly special case...

(Continue on for the video)

WTF/m

Justin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:53:24 -0400

Well, *I* thought it was funny :)

Iced tea experiment

Justin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:09:15 -0400

Out of sheer boredom and lack of those handy frozen iced tea concentrates, I just made my own iced tea (following this recipe). The results were... rather mixed...

I guess it shows that I'm an iced tea fiend that I would go to such lengths to have my delicious drink of choice. It's really too bad I didn't have any lemons or other flavouring because I have to say... this stuff is rather bitter, and adding sugar only made it taste like... sugar. Oh well, I'll chalk this one up to experience. Next time I'm shopping I'm getting some lemons :)

Also: I'm aware that I write about as well as a 6 year old.

Update: Tastes much better with lemon squeezed into it!

Another update: Heh... well I bet anyone reading this thinks I'm crazy considering you likely didn't *see* the ShareThis link at all. Looks like there's still some bugs in the code because it renders fine when I'm logged in (as administrator), but isn't showing for anyone else. I'm sure it'll be patched soon. Just as I thought, already fixed.

Wow, Ghosts blew my mind...

Justin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:27:02 -0400

This album (albums?) is so much rolled into one... I really can't even fully describe it, there's just too much to it. It is all acoustic, so those that don't like that should be warned. That being said it's just amazing. It's got so much mood and emotion. Each track is unique, each has it's own tone. I couldn't pick a favourite if I tried.

I cheated and downloaded the whole thing with bit-torrent, but I will buy the CD set as soon as I can. Totally worth $10 (and much more, I'd argue). Hell, I'm considering going for the $75 set with the fancy covers and included blu-ray.

Mad props to Trent for giving everyone reasonable choices... if only the music industry as a whole would hurry up and follow his example (no doubt that more and more artists will eventually do the same). That's all for now, must go back to listening! Wait, I never stopped :P

New Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV is out

Justin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:10:18 -0400

Holy shit! This came out of nowhere... Trent just released the newest album, 36 tracks of pure awesome and it's only $5 (for a digital copy in almost every format you can think of), or if the first 9 tracks are good enough for you: FREE! Go check it out.

I think everyone's curious to see how this new music business model is going to work, but I honestly think Trent can make it happen. He will lead the music industry revolution, I'm certain of it.

Anyway, here's a torrent link since the site isn't working so well:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4059158/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I_(2008)

Technorati Claim

Justin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:27:25 -0400

Claiming my blog on Technorati, nothing to see here :) For anyone interested, my Technorati Profile.

Some experiments with Lighttpd/FastCGI

Justin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:24:31 -0400

I setup Lighttpd 1.4.18 with FastCGI support for PHP on my development server last night just to see if it's gotten any better since I last tried it. So far so good, at least setup and install went much better this time. Ubuntu has had Lighttpd in the repos since Dapper (although only Gutsy and Hardy are up to date.) Setting up FastCGI was easy this time around, I didn't get any server errors at all, although it's possible I only owe this to better understanding of the documentation. Just for kicks, I also installed eAccelerator, which is a PHP op-code cache that I've been using on my primary server for a few months along with some other performance tweaks (mostly various types of caching.)

I also experimented with Apache's mod_proxy to forward requests to dev.w1ldt4ng3nt.net to my development server. You'll notice that that URL points to the same address as all my other ones and uses port 80, but the content is on two different servers on my network. This is done with a simple rewrite rule you can put in your virtual hosts config file or an .htaccess file (this site was a big help):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^dev\.
RewriteRule (.*) http://192.168.1.119/$1 [P]

I'm considering using a proxy setup to have all static content (such as images) on my site served from a Lighttpd server.

Overall, I really do like Lighttpd for it's speed and low resource footprint but I can't help feeling that the development team is really holding themselves back by not creating a module to handle Apache's .htaccess files that many web-apps these days rely on for things like rewriting ugly URLs into clean ones (such on this site itself). For now, Lighttpd will only be an experiment for me, I can't switch completely until I have a way to use .htaccess.

You never fully appreciate anything until you've lost it...

Justin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:16:04 -0400

NOTE: This was originally posted on December 14th, 2007 on my (now defunct) Tumblr blog.

So just now I was having a discussion with my girlfriend about what I used to do before we met, before I gained something resembling a life and real social skills, and what have you… basically I was a forum whore. I posted on forums night and day. I was a member of a community, I felt like I belonged somewhere and things were always fine in one community for a little while, but then things started to go sour, every time.

The first online community I involved myself in was for a tabletop game, Warhammer 40,000. It was called the Bolter & Chainsword. I was an internet n00b at this point, having just gotten cable to replace that silly dial-up business. It really opened my eyes. I think it actually defined who I am today. If not for this new, fast internet, I would not be the computer geek I am now. Now tell me that’s a bad thing all you want, but I don’t believe that for a second. I love being a geek, I enjoy this, all of it. And I really enjoyed posting on the B&C, as it was affectionately known. I met new people, people from across the world. I had expanded my social circle many times over and all seemed well. Well, until I started to realize how this new hangout of mine was a monolithic dictatorship. The admins made the rules, the mods enforced them, and everyone just went about their business, “yes sir, no sir”, etc… If you know me well, you know this definitely did not sit well with me. So of course I started to rebel. Just a little at first, then I became more belligerent and eventually I got enough mod warnings to realize that this was a useless endeavour and that nothing would change here. I considered just leaving, but then what about all the friends I made? Where would I post pics of my painted models? I pondered this for a while, until by accident I came across InvisionFree, a free host of Invision Power Board forums, the same as used by the B&C. I got on MSN with my best friend, Dan, a classmate and fellow dissatisfied B&C member. We decided then and there that we would make a better forum, a place where WE made as many or as few rules as we wanted, and we’d invite along our friends from the B&C to start it off. And start it off we did, we built a nice little community for ourselves, people were generally happy. Ya we had growing pains, hell, the power of being admin even went to my head a couple times but we soldiered on through it and learned and grew together, as a community. But not all was well in paradise, as they say… new membership dwindled, once active posters became less active and eventually I made the decision to pull the plug due to a lack of will to keep it alive, as well as being busy with various life issues at the time. It was a sad time for me, honestly. I know it seems weird to feel loss over a message board, but this really mattered to me.

Interspersed with the previous events, I also discovered and tried out Ubuntu Linux, my first time using the Linux operating system and I immediately fell in love with it because it was so easy to use, but also because it had a thriving community of users and developers who supported and helped each other with problems and also relaxed to chat about random things in other the Community Cafe, or the IRC chat room for the forum. This place was even better than the B&C, I thought. The community was so much bigger, and had even more like-minded people. I really felt at home here, I made many more friends and learned so much from so many people, I couldn’t even begin to thank them. But again, something was not quite right here either. The more I got involved with the community, the more I got closer to those actually running it. I befriended one of the head admins. With this I also began to see the ugly side of every message board, once again. It was minor at first, but eventually all the squabbling over forum politics gave rise to insults, rants, flame wars, and soon, bans. I didn’t like what I saw because it completely went against the principals of the Ubuntu initiative of everyone being equal, everyone being Human. Well… I guess that last one was right… because humans naturally fight each other for more power. That’s what I saw unfolding before me… a huge power struggle and it wouldn’t end well unless something was done to stop it. So once again, I took up my cause, I became a rebel. I sided with the others that desired to keep things open and free for all. And we lost. Nothing was ever said or done to me directly, but several of my friends were banned, and suddenly this community just didn’t feel welcoming to me anymore. I left without a word. I haven’t gotten involved with a major online community ever since.

This all occurred from between 2004-2006, a year ago now. The whole point I’m getting at here is that while some scoff at those that choose to spend most of their leisure time on forums, I saw it very differently. They were a way for me to socialize and interact with other people who thought much like me, and being a nerd like me meant that I didn’t get that chance in the “real world” so much. I really miss being a part of something I believe in absolutely. I really miss discussing something that interests me with other people that are interested in it. But I wonder to myself now, if these places seem like such paradises, why do they always seem to fail me in the end? The answer to that will elude me for a long time, if not forever. But I do know that I definitely miss the good times, while they lasted, and this didn’t really sink in until just now.