Simon Law’s Journal

The S.W.A.P. Team — launch party and fundraiser

2009-06-23T03:46:10Z

Take one part vintage clothing store, add some cool DJs and throw in a dance party.

What do you get?

The S.W.A.P. Team
North America’s biggest clothing swap charity.

And we’re throwing a party tonight!

Our Montréal launch party is raise awareness and funds for
the best clothing swap this side of the ocean.

And you’re invited!

Make sure to R.S.V.P. to
aleece@xmedia.tv
or on Facebook.

The S.W.A.P. Team
Launch Party and Fundraiser
Tuesday, 22 June 2009
18:00 – 23:00 EDT
28, rue Notre-Dame Est. Suite #400

( Français | Twitter | Facebook )

cygwinreg: Windows registry access for the Cygwin toolkit

2009-04-07T02:43:10Z

Windmill
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I’ve been tilting at windmills, recently.

Windmill, actually.

It’s a Python program that lets your computer drive a web browser, without any human interference. We use it at Akoha to run tests that make sure that our website works with Firefox.

We use it to help us test our site with Internet Explorer. So I dutifully set up a Windows machine and tried to get it to run our test suite. I quickly realized that our software was going to need something more Unix-like.

Cygwin is the answer to that problem. It provides a full POSIX environment inside Windows. I built all our software and tried to fire up Windmill.

ImportError: No module named _winreg

Uh oh! Windmill needs to access the Windows Registry. According to the winreg documentation, it’s only available for Windows. Apparently, Cygwin doesn’t count as Windows. So I spent the weekend writing a library that fills in the gap.

cygwinreg allows you to read, write, and explore the Windows Registry from inside Cygwin. Whenever you want to use winreg, use cygwinreg instead.

import sys
if sys.platform == "win32":
    try:
        import winreg
    except ImportError:
        import _winreg as winreg
elif sys.platform == "cygwin":
    import cygwinreg as winreg

After I did that, I plugged it in, stepped back and ran my tests. They worked!

Download cygwinreg
or install it with
easy_install cygwinreg

A dream within a dream

2009-04-06T23:01:37Z

Laughing
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(11 more photos)

Montréal Python 5

2009-03-12T04:27:31Z

If you’re interested in Python but have never shown up to a Montréal Python session yet, you really should.

At Montréal Python 5, we saw some really cool presentations.
One of which was Alexandre Vassalotti’s talk on Porting to Python 3.0.

Alexandre Vassalotti
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(7 more photos)

Return from India

2009-03-07T18:52:01Z

Serving drinks
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Jen and Clint
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Watching the slideshow
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(31 more photos)

Om nom nom nom

2009-03-02T22:24:19Z

We found this cake hiding in the Akoha freezer.
We think it was about three months old before it was pulled out.
The warning sign had no apparent effect on the cake’s desirability.

Really old cake
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Now we’re cooking with gas

2009-03-02T01:54:56Z

Steak flambé
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I highly recommend dining at Le Champlain.
girl_tm and I were fortunate enough to get reservations for Valentine’s Day!

But perhaps that is because I’m a sucker for tableside service?
The filet mignon was very, very good.
So was everything else!

(12 more photos)

On the train

2009-02-23T16:08:03Z

Vestacular
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Attempted murder

2009-02-12T01:20:45Z

girl_tm: You know, I’m thinking of getting rid of Linda….
sfllaw: Is that because she tried to kill you?
girl_tm: … … … Yeah….

Bye Bye Boo-Boo

2009-02-07T20:12:30Z

Fiona
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Fiona died yesterday at 17:30 yesterday.
We were there petting her the whole time; she was surrounded by the people who loved her.

She was the best dog.

Happy Birthday to me!

2009-01-28T15:30:33Z

Everyone asks me how it feels to be older.
It’d be nice if the back pain went away as the years rolled by.
Pity…

Cake
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

The cake was good, though!

Math is hard!

2009-01-28T07:59:20Z

Going to Macy’s
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It’s not that bad

2009-01-18T02:43:41Z

girl_tm has returned from her globe-trotting adventure.
The first thing she said when she stepped outside?
“It’s not that bad.”

Buried cars
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

A Standout Akoha Christmas

2009-01-17T15:33:39Z

This is what happens when you mix:

four stuffed toys,
three little kids,
two sister startups,
and a swiss ball in a big room.

iPhone
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Surprise
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Yule log
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(39 more photos)

Boxing Day Madness or A Shameless Attempt To See Friends While Simon Is In Town

2008-12-25T20:51:34Z

Since I’m rarely in Toronto and rarely in Toronto for more than a couple of days, I often miss my good and wonderful Torontonian friends.

However, in December, I get to stay a few more days, which I hope to be jam-packed with adventure. Or barring that, hugs and smiles.

I propose that we sally forth on Boxing Day and take over some establishment. An establishment, that perhaps serves food and drink?

Loons
416 Roncesvalles Ave.
26 December 2008 at 19h

( Facebook | Map )

Toronto, then Paris

2008-12-23T22:02:14Z

I’m leaving in about an hour for Toronto and will be there until 28 Dec. Torontonian friends, I’d love to see you again.

girl_tm and I are also leaving for Paris on 29 Dec until 2 Jan. Parisian friends, I haven’t seen you in a very long time and it’d be lovely to get in touch again.

To show how small the world is, we’ll be staying in a Parisian apartment, swapped with someone I met the night before he left Montréal for the City of Lights. And this apartment swap was arranged through the miracle of the Internet. For all of its scariness, it sure is helpful!

Anonymity and privacy on the Internet, or the return to small-town life

2008-12-21T21:34:37Z

My friend, Janina, recently pondered who you are on the Internet.

Back in the old days, when you could actually write down the names of all the people on the Internet, people simply used their real names, in abbreviated form: ken, gls, dmr, rms, etc. After all, wasn’t the whole point of a world-wide telecommunications network to put people in touch with each other? And if everyone on the Internet was someone you knew or were going to know, it made sense to use real names. That way, you could be found.

Then, the Internet got a whole lot bigger and a whole lot stranger. People started using pseudonyms called handles or nicks, which provided some degree of anonymity. These became commonplace and became the norm. Especially when you consider that using your real name becomes impractical when there are hundreds of Davids or Muhammeds or Lees in the world.

As people joined the Internet, they still wanted to find each other. So social networks are all the rage now. LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook all exist so that you can find and track the people around you. With Facebook, you’re even forced to use your real name, to make it easier for people to connect. There is, however, a compromise to be made. Because you post information about yourself on-line, people you barely know can find out where you live, who you hang out with, and what you’re doing.

This is nothing new, though. We used to live this way, not so long ago, when most people lived in small, rural towns. After all, the neighbours talked! There would also be gossips who’d keep track of when you were coming or going, and with whom you went with. Nobody in their right mind would assume that they could keep bad behaviour under wraps, you always had to keep up your reputation. And when someone new moved into town, they were watched carefully until the rest of the townsfolk accepted them. This, of course, was a good thing.

This whole assumption that most people didn’t know about you came with the great migration to cities, kicked off by the industrial revolution. Now there were so many people flooding in that it was impossible to know everyone you met on the street. That brought a big social problem, because now you had to trust complete strangers. Imagine how stressful that must have been! No wonder the biggest problem in industrial London was the Gin Craze, a collective booze-up that lasted until a generation of people had figured out what city life was like.

Now we have to opposite problem: people having lived all their lives protected by anonymity having to come to terms with it being stripped away. If someone wants to find out about you, they can. Be it with Google or Facebook or Twitter, you have to accept that there are traces of you that anyone can see. And that’s got to be pretty stressful too.

So what can we do about it? Friends-locking posts and privacy settings come to mind, but at best these provide a false sense of security. Remember the controversy surrounding LJfind, when people’s friends-locked posts started showing up in public? And now, every few weeks, someone discovers that a Facebook application is leaking their data. But even if you’re really careful on websites, they are still software are written by programmers. As a programmer myself, I can assure you that we make mistakes, and those mistakes include a simple typo that resets your privacy settings. Oops!

If technology can’t help us, then what? The opposite approach is to be wary of the Internet. You can delete your Facebook account, avoid using GMail, and never use your real name on-line. Sadly, the network effect is working against you here, because other people aren’t doing the same. This year, quite a few people have joined Facebook because they weren’t getting invited to parties and stopped hearing from their friends! Social networks have brought social change, just because it’s so much easier to do the things you want to do, when you’re using Facebook.

OK, what if you just like to stay at home and invite friends over? Well, are you comfortable with party pictures appearing on Flickr? Or birthday wishes posted on Blogger? Well, you can ask your friends not to post anything about you on-line at all. But that doesn’t matter, because organisations are busy putting up their own records on-line. Like the Canadian Tax Court records, which include wonderful tidbits about income, marital status, and other information that’s become public record.

Going down this route is getting more and more unproductive. It seems like these days, if you want to stay truly anonymous, you have to build yourself a shack in the wilderness and isolate yourself from the world. But still, someone can impersonate you on-line with a fake profile, if you’re not watching out for that. So you still have to create your own profile from your wilderness retreat, just to keep the identity thieves at bay.

Remember those rural towns I wrote about? Well, they lived life in a way that we’re going to have to go back to. No longer can you assume that you can say whatever you want or do whatever you want and be lost in a crowd. You’re going to be aware of every camera pointed your way and every blog-post with your name in it. Basically, you can’t just assume your reputation, you have to manage it.

Your public image is going to be one of the most important bits of you in the future. Potential employers and potential friends are bound to do a little reference checking with Google. What if the police start using the Internet for investigations? Or schools for background checks? And your on-line presence is so very difficult to eliminate. People used to call it keeping up appearances, nowadays we’d refer to it as personal branding.

Now I’m not saying that we all have to become full-time professional bloggers. But what you can do, nay should do, is maintain a profile on the Internet that reflects who you want to be seen as. Reserve an account for yourself on the big social networks, put up information that’s relevant and appropriate, and do periodic Google searches on yourself to make sure you’re not being misrepresented.

Maybe some day, in the future, we’ll all be more understanding about youthful indiscretions on-line. But for now, your first impression will be your Google ranking, so you’d best make the most of it.

Montreal Girl Geek Dinners #9 and #10

2008-12-14T17:16:58Z

Janina Szkut
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(Montreal Girl Geek Dinners 9)

Michelle Blanc
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(Montreal Girl Geek Dinners 10)

GAMMA 3D

2008-12-01T03:19:13Z

Every year, the Kokoromi Collective throws a wild party.
A wild party involving video games!

GAMMA 3D was a wild ride of stereoscopic fun.
There were tons of people in 3D glasses.

It was like going to an old 3D drive-through.
An interactive 3D drive-through.
Without cars.

And if you own a pair, you can play too!
Download the games!

Red and cyan
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Double vision
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

3D spectacles
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Fireflies
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Excitement
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(107 more photos)

Party pix

2008-11-27T10:46:05Z

Last week, girl_tm and I were in Toronto.

To everyone we saw, it was so nice to see you again!
To everyone we missed, alas, we will have to arrange something next time.

It was the first time I threw a party with Flora.
It was amazing to have her friends and our friends meeting each other.
Plus, I got to meet Flora’s new beau.

I’d like to add that Vecchio Frak was very, very nice and very, very accommodating.
And the cocktails were pretty good too!
We shall return.

Rob, Aleece, and Flora
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

(37 more photos)

Betsy

2008-11-24T07:04:22Z

I just bought one-sixteenth of a cow. Cows are pretty big, so there’s plenty of beef.

I conspired with diluvienne to cook some of her share.

We made huge pots of boeuf bourguignon and beef chili. Our plan is to have some of it for lunch tomorrow.

I have no photos of this wild culinary excess. Instead, here is a picture of something completely different.

Crème brulée
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Drinks in Toronto

2008-11-15T15:55:10Z

We’re having cocktails tonight, from 20:00, at Vecchio Frak.

If you’re in Toronto, girl_tm and I would love to see you!

Let us know that you’re coming: here or on Facebook

Ticket to ride

2008-11-13T21:08:49Z

Toronto
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

girl_tm and I are on the train to Toronto.

We shall be there until Sunday and we’d love to see any of you who are in town!

I think we’ll have a little soirée on Saturday night. More details will follow.

Run for the cure

2008-11-12T04:05:26Z

It’s amazing how much exercise you get, when you’re lugging around camera equipment chasing after runners.

Pulled along
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Runners
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Fast
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Memories of picnicking

2008-10-16T07:13:27Z

Beer
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Allison
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Aleece and Simon
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.