Last night I saw Knock Knock Ginger play at E.bar.

Andy from the band drove me, Peter, SteveW, and Luke. When we arrived on Quebec Street Andy realized that he forgot to pickup Sarah which was only blocks from where we left.

They were opening for some band and were being opened for by a weird rapper. I heard he was called White Mouthed Octopus (update: I didn’t hear right, it’s White Belt Octopus). He is white and wears a red octopus costume on his head. It has big eyes and its legs hang over dude’s shoulders with his face showing through the oc’s big mouth. He closed with some break-dancing or something.
The band was good. I hadn’t seen them play since in the guys’ basement probably two years ago. The sound was good. It was fun to see Andy play a quarter of the keyboard and then the theremin.

I had told Owen that I might not make it, but i was glad I did get there. I also saw Mike from purple94, he is working as a grade 7 teacher in Guelph. I probably hadn’t seen him in seven years, so I was glad I remembered his name.

I went to the Armoury for the first time in a while.
Thursday 27 April 2006 10:40 — 8 people
Thursday 27 April 2006 10:50 — 7 people

I almost exclusively been using the PAC since the fall. The equipment has been rearranged. There is more spac ein the mat area and there are brackets on the wall, I guess, to mount large banners.

I ran into Simon today. I recognized him from a distance at University Plaza and went over to say hi.

We spoke briefly I told him about what I was up to and asked him how things were going at the Accelerator Centre. He said that it’s great and the program is really helping him. His company, Semacode, is part of the program at the R+T Park
He also mentioned BarCamp to me and suggested maintaining a list and feed of UW-business related blogs.

Semacode

Semacode’s Software Development Kit is a system for ubiquitous computing. Using the Semacode SDK you can create visual tags for objects and contexts, and read them using a mobile camera phone. [...] The SDK software contains the capability to detect and decode the tag very rapidly with the camera on your phone.

Bar Camp

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

Accelerator Centre (acceleratorcentre.com)

The Accelerator Centre will encourage the growth of high-tech firms and act as a catalyst for the creation of new products and services. [...] It goes beyond simply providing office space; it provides entrepreneurs and new companies with access to coaching, mentoring, professional management advice, and even services, such as accounting, IP management, high-speed internet access and vital business networks. [...] To maximize the economic return to the community, the Accelerator Centre will help systematically evaluate the innovations, protect the intellectual property, help form companies from the most promising technologies and license other innovations to established companies.

Many people refer to uwstudent.org incorrectly, in both written and oral communication.

There are only three ways to correctly refer to uws they are:

• uws
• uwstudent.org
• The uwstudent.org Media Corporation

I ahve included a graphic below of correct ways and the incorrect ways I have read or heard.

Ipsos tells me that most Canadians are accepting of the Prime Minister’s use of “God Bless Canada”. I already thought about this issue from hearing United-Statesians’ use of “God Bless America” after speeches, like the name of the Irving Berlin song.

I have often said that Canadians should close their speeches with “O Canada,” which is the name of our national anthem. It is suitably open and progressive for Canadians and I predict a >90% approval rating.

Anyway this is what Didier’s people have to say about it:

When asked to consider Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent use of the term “God Bless Canada” at the end of all his speeches, the majority of Canadians (65%) indicate they feel this is “acceptable and he should keep doing it”. But one in four (26%) feel that this is “unacceptable and he should stop doing it”. According to a new Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of CanWest News Service/Global News.

Speaking of our national anthem many people don’t know the additional verses, albeit unofficial, from the Weir poem upon which the official anthem was based. There are some choice lines like:

May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise; To keep thee steadfast through the years; From East to Western Sea,

which is from the third stanza or this part from the second stanza:

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow. Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.

The translation from the french version is also interesting:

O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.

Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

That is much different in meaning than the English version. The dual message is reminiscent of the Conservative slogans during the first election of 2006. In English it was “Stand up for Canada” and in French it was “Changeons pour vrai.”

I wonder if that quarter of people would be happy if Harper ended his speeches with “God keep our land” ou “Protégerions nos foyers et nos droits.”

I found this interesting story about a company that makes insulating and light diffusing glass, Advanced Glazings Ltd.

From the company website:

Advanced Glazings Ltd. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Douglas I. Milburn to develop, manufacture and market sustainable and commercially viable technologies related to sunlight. To date, Advanced Glazings Ltd. has developed two important products; SoleraTM, for the architectural daylighting market and InsolCoreTM for the greenhouse market, both based upon transparent insulation technology. Solera was introduced at the 2000 conference of the American Institute of Architecture.

The TorStar story, Going green with glass 5 Dec 2005 describes a hockey arena project in Cape Breton. They use the special glass to allow natural light in but maintain ice quality and even lighting.:

Ojolick consulted with Douglas Milburn, founder and president of Advanced Glazings Ltd. in Sydney, N.S. Milburn is an expert in transparent insulation, having spent the early 1990s doing his Ph.D. on the topic at the University of Waterloo.

During that time Milburn engineered a transparent honeycomb-structured glaze for glass that acts as an insulator for windows and has the ability to diffuse direct sunlight. After graduation he founded Advanced Glazings, and since then his insulating glaze product, called Solera, has become an architect’s dream.

I took some courses from Milburn’s supervisor. It would have been interesting to hear about their research back then. It is still interesting now though.

The Kitchener-Waterloo lacrosse team is moving up from Senior B to Major Series in the Ontario Lacrosse Association. I just saw the 7 March 2006 announcement from K-W Kodiaks:

With the unanimous support of the Board of Governors of the Major Series Lacrosse, the KW Kodiaks have purchased the St. Catharines Athletics from former owner Bill LeFeuvre with approval to immediately move the club to Waterloo for the 2006 season. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The new Kodiaks, moving up to play Major Series Lacrosse, will be a blend of the best players from the Athletics with those of the 2-time Presidents Cup Champion Kodiaks. The existing Kodiaks’ Executive, coaching staff and support staff will remain in place to guide the new club.

The Kodiaks organization has done well. The team only restarted in town three years ago. They won two cups and now they are joining the majors.

It looks like when Chris was updating his site, studentlifecentre.com, it was hacked, but so poorly that likely no one saw it nor did Chris even know.

While he was upgrading the software that runs the site the site had a directory listing. I looked in a content sub-directory to see if I could view a front page and I found this:

I looked at the source and found a message that on some browsers would scroll across the bottom of the window:

What is strange is that this page was the index of a sub-directory and not the root directory, where people coming to see the webpage would see it.

I looked for other directories that had been modified recently and the images/ was the only other one. Aside from containing images there was a php file that seemed to be some kind of cracking tool.

I alerted Chris about it when I found it and waited to hear back before posting this. I didn’t want to tell expose a vulnerability before it could be removed.

Two weeks ago I bought a new soccer ball. It is a Nike Tiempo Classic. I like it. It is inexpensive and it does what I want. Inexpensive soccer balls have come a long way since I was a lad. It is hand-stitched synthetic polymer, polyurethane, outer and a “carbon-latex” bladder.

It is black and white like a classic soccer ball except that instead of the pentagons being black eight of the hexagonal panels are black. The Geo brand ball, i think, has slightly modified panel shapes to make the ball have a better shape. The niketown website says: “Exclusive Geo Balanced Technology for true flight.”

It is “Geo” which was introduced about five years ago with a commercial where footballers were in the Nike Geo Force and broke into a lair of robot ninjas to break out the special Geo ball because “it’s rounder.” The juggled the ball around and deked these robot ninjas and escaped by helicopter.

uwstudent.org will be returning once classes begin in May.

We are working to ensure that archives of uws will continue to be available, while making an appropriate system that will allow us to operate as we should and provide value to students. We will return to delivering quality news as well as other relevant information, maintaining student knowledge of UW. In those endeavours we will continue to provide opportunity for participation.

Delivering news and information

Blogging about news reported at other sources and providing commenting is useful but generally not that difficult. Chris has achieved well what he set out to do, but that sort of thing is easily replicable. There is value, differentiation, and barrier to entry in investigating and reporting original news. Furthermore now at Waterloo, there is a dearth of it happening. uws did well in providing good original news coverage and that will continue to be a part of uws operations.

Knowledge

In addition to time-specific information there is space to collect, maintain, and provide more timeless or ongoing knowledge. There is a lot of important and interesting knowledge in uws archives, but it is not as easy to access and learn.

We will set up a media wiki to house knowledge in a UW student encyclopedia. Contributing to the wiki will be open, but it will not be for any types of content. As it gets established, it is even more important that the quality and focus be maintained

Participation

Any student will, as before, be able to participate in discussions, in reader-directed content, and certain other types of content. Students who want to be more involved and get a richer experience can learn research, investigation, and reporting to provide valuable news to students. Since original reporting is an important part of uws, we need to ensure that participants are trained and able to fulfil that role.

Service

The value of uws is not simply news discussion, but the finding and the delivery of the truth. Reporting the truth to students and having students informed about their organizations and the university will make them better able to exercise influence and more effective in whatever role they play on campus.

• Will uwstudent.org come back? 21 Apr 2006