Author archives: Mike

I got a last-minute invite from Michelle to go to Aleck's poetry evening. Was all people I know, save for two friends of Aleck. Hadn't seen Golnar or Shadie in ages, it's even been a while for Kathryn.

Anyway, turns out the evening wasn't really about reading one's own poetry, it was more about reading ...

Wound up spending the whole day on the VoIP project, wrapping up all the little loose ends of deployment, then writing a largish piece that we'll need to deploy to the public. Which is to say I didn't spend the day on thesis-related work. This is the first week since I started working on the ...

Just saw the announce on Python List that Patrick (the original creator of the PyDispatcher module) has created a new project for working on the pattern, Louie. Haven't downloaded it to look yet, have burned too much time with mucked up setuptools... some day I'll recover enough to try one again.

Anyway, I think ...

Rogers has just announced that they are going to discontinue their usenet feeds; no more comp.lang.python.announce or comp.lang.vrml. This comes on the heels of their attempts to strongarm us into "upgrading" to digital cable (incompatible with the PVR software on the computers) for an extra $10/month (before the cost of the hardware to adapt the ...

We (VexTech) do contract programming, and generally I try to bill to the minute, just for those minutes actually spent on the project. It keeps me focused on the needs of the project when working at home.

Unfortunately, today, I had at least an hour, maybe two, where I forgot to record time, mostly because ...

Just finished the first successful test of the Asterisk install. I'm actually using a VoIP account over on our client's network as an inbound communications channel and connecting via a PSTN (regular telephone network) phone to the box sitting next to me. The Asterisk box is behind a NAT-ing firewall configured to trigger an opening ...

Spent the rest of yesterday and all of today so far learning Asterisk (starting with the Asterisk The Future of Telephony book). It's more for our new venture, but it may come in handy for upcoming iterations of the VoIP project.

Probably start into experiments this evening. Yum, experiments.

Took a few hours off to hit the Toronto Philosophy group meeting. Good discussion focused primarily on the question of morality (and the sources thereof). Interesting set of sources, from culturally-inculcated objective idealism through utilitarianism and a sort of Lockian or Randian relativism.

Anyway, quite worth the trip down. Next meeting is the third Wednesday ...

We're pretty much down to deployment and testing tickets for the VoIP project soft launch. There's still a few legal-requirement tickets as well, but the basic code is all there. I'm starting to feel that impulse to draw a line and consider the project's first iteration well and truly finished.

Unfortunately, I haven't pulled in ...

There's a point in a project where everything that's left is either not a priority, or so messy and ugly that you just don't want to tackle it until you have a better spec. I think I'm almost there for the VoIP project. There's a few big-ugly items (such as 9-1-1 location-data verification and a ...