Archive for December 2009

27
Dec 2009

Boxing Day Boxing - Round Three

Sun, 12/27/2009 - 16:02 — Sean Carney

Yesterday was the third annual boxing day boxing match amongst my friends. For the past two years we have gathered on boxing day to throw some punches and give meaning to the holiday.

This year we copied last year's format and combined the boxing matches with a game of Settler of Catan. If someone rolls a seven in the game they can steal a card from another player of their choice. In our version the person who is having their card stolen may then challenge the stealer to a boxing match in order to not have to give up a card.

This changes the game since you no longer simply consider who has a card you want to steal, but also will they challenge you to a fight, and do you have a reasonable chance of winning.

Here, in the first fight of the night, Girish decided to steal a card from Matt which lead to Matt challenging Girish to a fight and Girish losing the match. From there, multiple fights followed and Justin narrowly beat Mark to victory.

You can find more pictures of the fighting on my gallery.

23
Dec 2009

Every Day the Same Dream

Wed, 12/23/2009 - 18:36 — Sean Carney

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau - 1854

Every Day the Same Dream is a short game centered around the daily routine of a faceless office worker. The game is profoundly depressing since it shows how alienating modern life can be. When starting the game seems to merely repeat itself endlessly; however, there are ways for the player to break the monotony. These little breaks from routine give hope and advance the plot forward towards its conclusion.

Overall, the two messages this game left me with are "Not all lifestyles, even widely practiced ones, are sustainable" and "Every day does not need to be the same".

22
Dec 2009

The Photography of ck/ck

Tue, 12/22/2009 - 18:42 — Sean Carney

Sorry for another photography sharing post, but I came across ck/ck's photography today and was really impressed by it. Simple, clean, minimalist photography seems to be pretty trendy right now, along with the 1:1 aspect ratio.



These and the Rune Gunnerisen pictures are making me think seriously about asking for a 28mm prime lens for my birthday.

21
Dec 2009

Happiness in Business

Mon, 12/21/2009 - 23:52 — Sean Carney

Everything you need to know about starting a business.

From What Consumes Me?.

16
Dec 2009

My Email Has Returned

Wed, 12/16/2009 - 13:10 — Sean Carney

For the past two days my mail server has been rather aggressive in its filtering and decided not to talk to the outside world. The issue has been resolved, so if you had sent me an email in the past two days please resend it and I'll get it now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

11
Dec 2009

QI: They Say of the Acropolis, Where the Parthenon is...

Fri, 12/11/2009 - 19:55 — Sean Carney

[flashvideo file=http://www.seancarney.ca/seantv/qi-s05e13-they-say-of-the-acropolis.flv image=http://www.seancarney.ca/gallery/display/22189-2/qi-s05e13-they-say-of-the-acropolis.jpg /]

From QI season 5 episode 13

10
Dec 2009

Shrink the Wordpress Database Size

Thu, 12/10/2009 - 17:41 — Sean Carney

I was doing some routine backups for this blog when I was a bit surprised by the size of the database backup. I had 345 posts and 105 comments yet my database size was 4.9 megabytes - far larger than I had assumed. This isn't a huge difference and it isn't the end of the world, but it bothered me enough to find out.

As it turns out Wordpress acts a bit like Wikipedia in that it saves all the revisions of each post. So every time you change a post and re-save it, Wordpress keeps the original as a backup and creates a new revised post. My best estimate was that I had 1321 revisions which were unused and cluttering up the database.

Luckily there is one SQL command you can use to clear all the revisions out of the database, it is;

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

When I ran it I got the following output;

Query OK, 1240 rows affected (0.43 sec)

So it turns out I had 1240 revisions in my database that I really don't need.

Here is the before file and the after file to show the difference in my database size;

user@localhost:~/backup$ ls -all -h
drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4.0K 2009-11-26 15:21 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 user user 4.0K 2009-11-26 15:20 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 4.9M 2009-11-26 15:11 20091125-blog.sql
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 1.6M 2009-11-26 15:21 20091126-blog.sql

Much better! Now if shrinking the size of my gallery was only that easy...

user@localhost:~$ du -h
...
687M ./gallery
...

8
Dec 2009

How Non Profit Organizations Work

Tue, 12/08/2009 - 21:59 — Sean Carney

Currently in CASB I am learning about a number of things, two of which are corporate governance and non profit organizations. I am enjoying this greatly since we finally are talking about something other than numbers, and I get to reflect on several organizations I have been part of and see how they rank against the ideal. Most have been good, a few could be better, but none were terrible.

Todays posting to McSweeney's Internet Tendency made me laugh since it shows how the end of the world would play out assuming heaven was a stereotypical small non profit organization.

How the Apocalypse Would Happen if Heaven Were a Small Non Profit
By Daniel Cech

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will send e-mails to each other creating action plans and purposely not CC or talk about it with any of the angels. After about two weeks of this, Gabriel over hears a "private" phone call between JC and the Lord and immediately sends a scathing e-mail to all the angels (It is a small office, which they all share). The angels then decide to organize a meeting WITHOUT the Trinity to figure out how to handle the whole mess. The board finds out about the Angel meeting, and they want in. The Trinity hasn't been informed. All the while, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are creating a strategic plan detailing strategies and desired outcomes, none of which involve the angels OR the board. Tension mounts between the Trinity and the angels/board. More scathing e-mails. Neither party is talking to the other and can't figure out why. After about ten years of this (and total neglect of what's happening on Earth) Heaven is awarded a grant, and God brings in a consultant. After three months of meetings, SWOT analysis, and organizational training, the Trinity, the angels, and the board FINALLY are on the same page. Only then will Gabriel realize no one had CC'd the four horsemen.

6
Dec 2009

House of Pain vs Klezmer

Sun, 12/06/2009 - 19:28 — Sean Carney

By means of apology for showing you that creepy picture of Stephen Harper, here is House of Pain vs Klezmer from the holiday album Menorah Mashups. I know it's not the stereotypical unicorn chaser, but trust me, its very good. Enjoy!

[flashvideo file=http://www.seancarney.ca/seantv/faroff-house-of-pain-vs-klezmer.flv image=http://www.seancarney.ca/gallery/display/22184-2/menorah-mashups.jpg screencolor=0xFFFFFF /]