I finally hooked up my Wizard Scorecard app to update the Wizard Stats site automatically.  Here's how I did it:

• Changed the Wizard Scorecard app so there's an option to output a .json file attached to an email
• (The user fills in the To: field (it's a subdomain of ericdsouza.com) and sends the email)
• Configured the MX records for the subdomain so the mail goes to my Amazon EC2 instance
• Configured Postfix to pipe emails for the virtual email address to a php script
• Added a php script that reads the .json file and updates the Wizard stats database

Lots of help from Google and other people who posted tutorials on the various steps.

I used email to transfer the file (rather than say a direct connection from the app to the database) because the app is public, and the stats site is for personal use. Other users of the app can output a .json file and use it for their own stats.  Although, I'm expecting to get requests to output as a .csv because I suspect most people will want to dump it into Excel.

Making sure the whole thing was secure took up more time than actually making it work.  I won't go into the details cause that will make it less secure, but it should be good enough.  

...

My ankle (technically, my talus) is feeling better every day.  On Sunday I was running at about 90%, and cutting / defending at about 60%.  I had physio yesterday and Karen said I could go further.  I'll see how it feels today.  Luckily we just had a downpour this afternoon, so if it also rained up at the school we play at today, the field should be soft.  A couple weeks ago we played on a such a dry field it was like running on pavement with cleats.

I should get ready for Ultimate. 

So it's been a week of learning more web stuff.  I set up a virtual Linux server in the Amazon cloud, and installed the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).  Surprisingly, I actually got the Apache welcome page when I browsed to the site!  I didn't think it would all work the first time around without an error.

The last couple days were googling around to make sure the site is locked down and secure.  My ericdsouza.com & laumoda.com sites are on Amazon S3 -- they're just static content; Amazon provides the web services so I don't need to worry about security.  However, for the virtual Linux server, it's the same as if I set up a physical server at home that's accessible to the web -- I need to take care of patching and security etc.

I have yet another 'Hello World' page up today, this one generated from PHP.  Next is to create a database, load it with test data from the Wizard Stats spreadsheet, and then display the results of a query on a web page.  Thanks to all the free tutorials on the web, this looks to be straightforward, although security will probably be more work than the web page itself.

...

Today's Heather's birthday, and we're having dinner at home.  At first it was going to be a multi-course meal, south american inspired, with ceviche to start and then grilled chicken with quinoa.  But when I was buying the halibut I forgot it was just for one course and bought 380g.  So we changed the menu and we're having ceviche as the main.  It's 'cooking' right now, in lime juice, garlic and coriander in the fridge.

...

I'm cleared to play Ultimate again this Sunday!  I hurt my right foot in hockey three months ago (to the day -- Feb 9).  My talus bone took most of the impact, and stretched the ligaments that hold it into place.  Scar tissue built up, holding the talus in not exactly the right spot, blocking my ability to bend my foot properly.  With physio they're trying to break down the scar tissue, and have the muscles build up to keep it in the right place.  I'm okay to play this Sunday, with a brace.  I'll have to use the brace for about a year when I play sports or go for long walks.  (Hockey is okay cause the skate provides the same ankle support as the brace).

...

Well I have to go chop up some more coriander and the like for dinner.

I migrated my ericdsouza.com domain from enom to GoDaddy, mostly because it's way cheaper ($60 / year at enom vs $15 for the same service at GoDaddy).  It takes a few days to process once you request it.  I also opted for anonymous registration, which means a 3rd party actually registers the domain (for all internet domains, you can look up whois databases and get details about the registrar, which causes spam amongst other bad things).  The transfer occurred earlier this week, and the next step was to set up a new website for ericdsouza.com using hype and hosted on AWS.  In the past I've used Google / Blogger to host websites (cause it's free), but the templates are limited, and there's Blogger and Google badges on the site.

You can check out my new ericdsouza.com site!

So the next little project is to automate the stats for Wizard (the card game that my Ultimate friends play).  We keep annual stats and have a trophy (which I've won once).  The stats are a bit complex, 50% for wins (weighted for number of players), and 50% for percentage points of the winner (so if the winner had say 200 points and you got 150 points, that's 75%).  We added the percentage points because too many people were playing favourites if they were out of the game.  Now at least there's a reason to keep playing for yourself.

Currently the stats require manual data entry of the game's scores into a Google spreadsheet, which then has a bunch of formulas and a manual sort step to create the leaderboard.  The leaderboard is shared out over the web (it's just a checkbox on Google docs to activate).  It's at bit.ly/WizardStandings2012.

I'd like to change the Wizard app so that it can output a data file as an email attachment.  I'll need to set up an email pipe to a script, which then updates a database.  The leaderboard is then driven from the database.  There's also some sort of security needed to prevent anyone from uploading a datafile.  You'd need to know the email address, which is probably good enough for our use case; I was thinking of something additional like using gmail rules to forward only emails with specific details onto the pipe.

The idea is to do this in AWS so that I can learn how to use it.  The good part is it's all free!  Amazon has a free usage tier for the first year, and after that, almost all of it would continue to be free because it's below the threshold where Amazon starts charging.

...

We only had 8 skaters for our hockey game last night, and we were on the big ice (Rink A).  I was more tired after last night than the four games in three days over the tournament last weekend.  (I probably had more total ice time last night than the tournament).  We lost 5-4, I had at least an assist.

...

The WD40 store on Queen St E near Carlaw that looked like it was going to be an Irish pub is up for lease again.  I wonder if the liquor license application was turned down?  Anyways that's too bad, it's a great place for a pub.  We've been amazed at how popular WAYLA (right beside the WD40 store) has become.  There's been line-ups with a bouncer outside the last couple times we've walked by at night.  Line-ups!! In Leslieville!

We're having veal loin chops with arugula for dinner tonight, I have to go chop up the garlic.  It tastes better if the garlic's added to the veal a couple hours before grilling.

I've decided on laumoda as a company name.  I'm surprised at how easy it is to set up the digital part of a company.  Here's what I've used in case anyone else is looking to do the same:

• I bought the domain name (laumoda.com) from GoDaddy.com.  It was one of the lower priced sites, plus a lot of other sites have built-in interfaces with GoDaddy (such as setting up Google Apps).
• I'm hosting the site on Amazon Web Services.  It's free for a year, and then about $5 - $10 month depending on what I'm using (space, bandwidth etc).
• I set up email using Google Apps.  Because I went with GoDaddy, I didn't even need to edit the MX records myself; it was just a couple clicks.  If I'm using the @laumoda.com email addresses, I just sign into gmail with the account, and then it's the same as using gmail.
• I built the website using hype.  I was looking at cloud-based html5 content creators, but they all charged between $5 - $10 / month if you wanted to remove their logo from your site.  I'd be okay with a free site with the logo (e.g. this blog has a blogger logo) for a personal site, but its looks decidedly unprofessional for a business site.  Hype is an installed software app that was $40.  One limitation of Hype is that it only does fixed-dimensions (so you have to define components in pixels, as opposed to say 100% width).  I was trying to figure out the optimal width, fortunately there's cool sites like this one that have a lot of data. 
• I built the favicon (that's the little icon that appears in the browser tab) using a free website (just google, there's a lot).  .jpg in, .ico out.

That was it!  

I'm trying to choose a name for my company.  I have four criteria, in order of priority:

• .com is available
• if you google the name, you'll likely find my company (which rules out names such as "digital solutions" with 294,000,000 search results)
• there's minimal confusion on how to spell the name once it's seen (which rules out things like "travelers.com" or "travellers.com")
• it has a meaning behind it.

To find names that fit my criteria, I was following the example of kijiji, which is swahili for "meeting place". The finalists are all words from esperanto, which as a language works particularly well with criteria #3.

I'm running a survey to see how the name fares; I'm more influenced by the survey if the name is generally disliked (the first selection of names all polled very poorly; based on that I came up with different names).  If you'd like to vote, go ahead!


I'm nearly done with the wobbly table app.  It was working great on the iPhone, but when I tested it on the iPad none of the text showed up.  I finally figured out it's because I used a font that's only available in iOS5 but not iOS4 (I've upgraded the OS on my iPhone but not the iPad, cause I want a device running both for testing, and this a great example of why).  I wish there was some sort of error message if the font isn't available, instead of just showing blank text.  Anyways I changed to a font that's available in both iOS4 & 5 and that fixed that problem.  Except I caused some other problem with all the changes I made trying to troubleshoot, which I now have to find and fix.


It was a almost winter again today, although the forecasted snowstorm did not materialize.  Call off the army!  But it was a good day for spaghetti and meatballs, with a caesar salad.  Mmm good.


I had physio again today for my foot (which I hurt at hockey almost three months ago).  I now have an ankle brace, and with it I can run without pain (yay!)  So I'll be good for Ultimate in three weeks when the spring seasons start up.  My ankle doesn't bother me at hockey, I think because the skate boot has the same effect as an ankle brace. 

I forgot to mention, our hockey team (the Rockets) won our division!  We're champions of Thursday D2 Men's 30+ hockey!  The summer season starts today, but we also get to continue the winter season in the facility championships next weekend.  (They should come up with a more exciting name than "facility championships"). There's four D league teams from the various nights that play at York, and we're all in a playoff to go onto the regional playoffs.  Every team plays each other, so next week we'll have our regular summer season game on Thursday, then the facility championship games which includes one game on Friday evening, two on Saturday, and then Sunday if we are in the top two teams.  Five games in four days!  I'll be in good shape after that.

Well I figured out the math for my app.  The iPhone accelerometer provides the acceleration along the x-, y- and z-axis.  If the iPhone is laying flat, the x- and y- values are 0, and the z- value is 1 (because gravity is pushing down with a force of 1).  If the iPhone is static but tilted in various directions, the accelerometer returns the appropriate x- y- and z- co-ordinates.  I use the following formula to figure out the angle of the iPhone's plane relative to a world frame:

radians = atanf(z/sqrtf(pow(x, 2) + pow(y, 2)))

The next step is applying a low-pass filter to the readings, there's a lot of noise that I need to average out.

Yesterday MC and Robin dropped by before dinner, they were out taking Corben (their 4-week-old) for a short walk.  They looked really rested for new parents.  Corben is very cute, with a full head of hair.  We chatted for a few minutes, it was good to see them.

I'm on to my next app, this one is to figure out how to use the accelerometer.  The previous one (which was about InApp purchases) is with Lloyd and his kids for testing.

This new app is to measure how to fix tables that aren't balanced.  In theory, I should be able to get the position of the iPhone in both the balanced and unbalanced states.  Next theoretical step is to get the angle of difference between those two planes.  Then, based on how far apart the legs are, I can figure out how much to raise a leg (ie, how thick do you need to fold the coaster to fix the table?)

I've got to the point where I've captured the two table positions.  The next step is the math part.  If I have it figured correctly, I'm trying to covert the iPhone's accelerometer coordinate system to Euler angles.  I think.  This is one of the few times in my life I've had to put my math degree to use.

This evening is our last Tuesday Ultimate game.  It's at 11pm, so the team's going out before the game for dinner.  I'm still out with my ankle / foot injury.  We're heading to Bar Vespa, beside Brazen Head.

On Sunday Heather and I went to the new Scottish pub on Gerrard near Jones (McGuggan's).  We had tried their food a couple times, and it's been pretty good, except almost all of it is deep-fried, or a salad.  There's no real in-between choices.  On Sundays, however, we figured they'd have a roast beef special (it must be a law for pubs).  It was really enjoyable, the yorkshire pudding was one of the better ones I've had.

I just spent a couple hours trying to figure out why my app wasn't working, and it turns out Apple's test AppStore is down.

The main purpose in this app is to learn how to use InApp purchases.  (The majority of revenue from apps in the AppStore is now from InApp purchases, as opposed to the purchase price.  InApp purchases are things you buy when you're using the app, like virtual water for virtual plants).

In any case, it was working fine yesterday.  Today I refactored some of the code, and then couldn't get it to work.  Two hours later finally found the forum where a bunch of other people are having the same problem.  At the very least, my app now has much better error handling in place.

...

There's yet another new pub opening up near us, on Queen St E in between Carlaw and Boston (just west of WAYLA).  It's in the old store that Heather and I used to call the WD40 store.  The old place had a huge amount of retail space, that seemed to be mostly occupied by cans of WD40.  Anyways, there's a liquor license application in the window, for An Sibin Pub.  From a little googling, I think these are the same people who got stuck when The Real Jerk held on to their lease.  The WD40 location is a nice size for a pub.  We're still waiting for a bar to call our "local" -- maybe this will be it!

...

Yay, it looks like Apple has fixed the problem with the sandbox store, so back to coding I go

IP devices at home

Read a tech blog post about how many IP devices people have at home.  The author had 34, although he is a tech blogger.  We have 11:

1	powerbook
2	mac mini
3	ipad
4	iphone
5	voip modem
6	thermostat
7	printer
8	airport extreme
9	HD homerun
10	toshiba laptop
11	cable modem

which is probably not a lot, considering we don't have any tvs or game consoles.

It's the unofficial end to summer, and it looks like the weather got the memo.  It's only 20C outside.

I was at Kirk's cottage for the weekend.  Heaney came down and so did all of us from university (the same guys that went to the Bahamas), plus a bunch of other people.  Kirk had a DJ on Saturday night and a band on Sunday.  It was a fun weekend.  Some came with their kids, mostly aged 8 - 12.  The first night the older kids were getting into the beers in the coolers, so the 2nd night we set up a little bar area and Doaner and I bartended all night.  Kirk's neighbours from around the lake joined us -- there were about 40 or 50 people each night.

I got a ride to Kirk's from Panko, in his new toy, a Tesla roadster.  It's a fully electric car, and goes from 0 - 60 mph in 3.7 seconds.  Because it's electric, there's torque at all rpms, and so there's no gears.  Kirk has a 240V outlet in his garage (for welding) and so Panko was able to recharge in about 90 minutes.  It took about 75% of a full charge to get to Kirk's.  One of the controls shows the g-forces when you accelerate.  The highest I saw was 0.68G.  Anyways it was pretty cool to ride in.


I was going to start looking for a job in August, but there's not much going on because of vacation, so instead I wrote my PMP exam in mid-August.  The exam is changed on Sept 1, so I wanted to write the exam before then, because it takes some time for the study guides to catch up.  It's 200 multiple choice, and all you get is a pass-fail, so I don't really know how I did, except that I passed.  It's computer-based so you find out right away as you leave the exam centre.

I thought about doing other credentials such as Six Sigma, but I haven't seen many jobs looking for anything other than PMP or ITIL (both of which I now have).

So the next thing on my list over the summer was to develop an iPhone app.  There'a a card game called Wizard that my Ultimate team plays after games.  It's a trump-based game based on bids.  Generally no one likes to keep score; so I thought it was a good task to write an app for.  It's also relatively simple, because it's just form-based.  So I dusted off my C+ text books and with considerable help from Google, I wrote the app.  As a developer I can only load it by cable onto my iPhone, for testing.  The next step is to submit it to Apple for approval, which I did last Thursday.  If I'm lucky it will get reviewed (and approved) by Apple by end of this week, and then it's in the App Store! (where anyone can download it).  I'm just putting it up for free at first.  I wrote the app more for the sake of figuring out the process, and also to use it amongst my friends, so I'm not too concerned about how many other people download it.  As per Apple rules, I had to set up a support site, so that's all ready to go too.

The weather is finally warming up to spring temperatures. Every year (well, two so far), I've taken a picture of the maple tree that I planted on Heater's birthday in 2009. I looked back at the picture from last year, and the tree was full of leaves. This year they're still just buds. Our irises and tulips have yet to appear.

Thursday was the first nice day since we returned from vacation, so I drove up to Humber Nurseries. I bought some perennial grasses for the front planters, which we're hoping will look good right through winter. The nursery folks said I need to transfer them to the ground over winter for them to survive (I'm guessing otherwise they'll die from the cold?); but I'm going to leave them in and see what happens. We need to replace our front door (it's the original door from the house), so maybe the draft of warm air escaping will keep the grasses alive :)

Most of the potted perennials in the backyard made it through the winter. The clematis also survived -- we weren't sure if it would, as it's planted in the ground surrounded by limestone screening (which is basic (as opposed to acidic)). Also, one of our neighbours (Walter) have a nice elephant ear plant that is spreading too much, and he's offered a cutting (or whatever it would be called). I had planted one years ago in the front yard, but it died in the sun and dryness. I'm hoping by potting it in the shady backyard it may live.

I've been looking for a job primarily through LinkedIn. I signed up for a premium account for $30 / month, just to see if it's worthwhile. It lets me see who's visited my profile and some other features. It's almost like a dating site, except I'm trying to meet companies :)

I also signed up to become an Apple iOS developer (which means I can develop and distribute iPhone and iPad apps). I did most of my computer science assignments in C, so it's not too big a deal to learn Objective C. Apple has some nice tutorials for free on the web. I dug up my old "C programming language" text book by Kernighan and Ritchie (it should be a Penguin Classic!) to brush up on my C. I did pay the $100 to Apple so I can actually distribute the app (which is sort of the point, I just want to become familiar with the process). Soon enough I'll be writing my "Hello World" app for practice.

Also on the career side, I'm trying to get my PMP (Project Management Professional) certification. I have the prerequisite qualifications; I need to submit them and have them approved, and then write a 200 multiple choice test. It won't make too much of a difference to my experience, but seeing as I have the time I might as well get the letters after my name.

On Wednesday I went out for wings with Marissa, Tony and Bernice, at a bar in Bloor West (Whelan's Gate). It was a nice little pub, they had buck-a-shuck oysters (malpeques) (the 1st Wed every month), and the wings were pretty good. Bloor and Keele is central between the four of us, although it's still a 45 minute trip from our house by transit. I just missed the bus transfer coming back so walked home from Pape Station.

We tried fish from the new fishmonger in our neighbourhood, Hooked. They had a feature story in the Star last week, including a pickerel recipe, which turned out pretty good. We had it with a side of arugula and new potatoes, and a petit syrah.

Rack of lamb was on sale at Loblaws yesterday (about $7 per full rack!) so you can guess what we're having for dinner tonight. We normally have lamb loin, so it will be an experiment in barbecuing. I better get started though.

Heather and I are back from a six week trip to South America. We were originally going for three weeks but extended it to six. We've been back for a couple weeks now, Heather's finishing her dissertation and I've started looking for a job.

My resume is up-to-date and I've sent it out to a few places so far. (If anyone has a VP IT role available, please feel free to let me know!)

Sports is in between seasons. Summer hockey has started up already, but Ultimate doesn't start for a couple weeks. I'm playing Ultimate on Sundays and Tuesdays, and hockey on Thursdays.

I've started looking into home automation again. A while back I was thinking of buying an Arduino. However I've had second thoughts about using the Arduino as the gateway to connect devices. I think it will be better if each device connected using wifi (or maybe Bluetooth, in any case, some standard wireless protocol).

I surfed for a wifi temperature monitor, but just found products targeted at businesses, with data centres or other things to monitor, priced at business prices ($450 and up). Then found this wifi thermostat at Home Depot for $99(!), unfortunately just in the US. So Lloyd bought it for me, my parents will bring it back shortly. The company has just released APIs so I can write my own app to control it.

Well I have to get ready for hockey.

Most people already likely know that I'm no longer with the Star. I took a buyout package on January 27th, and now have a bit of time to figure out what I'm going to do next.

In the short term, there's been good-bye lunches and getting ready for our trip to Chile, and getting financial and career stuff in order for when I get back.

In the meantime I've also set up my Top 100 Travel Sites, a la Hillman's Wonders (I've been to 58 on his list).

2010 Book List

The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas 2010.08.26

The King of the Golden River
John Ruskin 2010.08.28

Notre-Dame of Paris
Victor Hugo 2010.11.03

We're almost set for Christmas. Maricar got us our tree again, this time a little skinnier and it fits the house much better. Mom and Dad came over last weekend and we decorated the tree. Heather and I get each other a tree ornament every year, and we now have enough to make the tree look somewhat filled in with them (it's our 6th Christmas together).

Yesterday we went shopping in our neighborhood. We didn't end up crossing anything off our Christmas lists, but we did find a couple things for the house -- a big antique iron pot that fits nicely on the top of the linen cabinet in the bathroom, and another glass milk jug. I bought two old milk crates years ago that we use as end tables in the bedroom. They hold six milk jugs each, and I've only been able to find half so far. We got both at Highway 11 on Queen E, which has pretty good stuff at reasonable prices.



My sports team didn't do very well last week, going 0-3. On Sunday we ended up with no guy subs, against The Spinners. We were actually up by a point with 15 minutes to go, and then ran out of steam and eventually lost. On Tuesday we were up 7-1 and then lost. We also lost 1-0 this week in hockey. The good thing is the teams in our leagues this season are fairly even, so almost all the games are competitive where anyone can win.

We had steak for dinner on Friday, and had leftovers. So yesterday I made a Dagwood Bumstead sandwich, which turned out really good.

Heather and I decided on Chile for our next trip. The main goal is to do the W trek in Torres del Paine. It's become quite a popular trek, with limited accommodation, so we've actually had to plan and make reservations ahead of time. After the trek we'll travel around Patagonia and then up the coast of Chile back to Santiago.

The fall and winter Sunday Ultimate seasons overlap this year, so we have two games today. The fall game is at 2pm, outdoors at Downsview. It's the finals, against Ultimate Warriors who are a really good team. It's the last outdoor game of the year. Then later tonight we have a speedpoint game at Lamport, in the bubble.

I finally got in a hockey game on Thursday. I had pulled a muscle in my back a few weeks ago and so missed a couple games, and the schedule in November has been awful -- 11:30pm, 6:15pm, 11:15pm and a bye. We've been getting a lot of skaters out this season, usually 12 - 14, which means three sets of wingers and less ice time. I missed a tic-tac-toe play in the 2nd period, the puck went off the heel of my stick and then got caught up in my skates. Oh well.

We're getting yet another coffee shop in the neighbourhood, Bobette and Belle, where Hogar Home Decor used to be. From the signage that's up in the windows, it looks like it's more about artisinal pastries. It's a lot of square footage for a bakery / coffee shop.

We had 41 kids for Hallowe'en this year, which is about the same as previous years. There's a lot of families with babies in Leslieville, so in a few years I can see the number going up.

I swept up the leaves in the backyard yesterday, four bags worth. There's still lots of leaves on the trees. Hopefully the leaves will all be down and we'll have a sunny stretch before the first snowfall. A few years ago, it snowed just before everyone did the final raking, and it was a mess all winter with leaves clogging the drains.

Well I should get ready for Ultimate.

The condo on the southeast corner of Queen and Pape is coming along. This pic is from a couple weeks ago:



I finished the flagstone around the car at the start of October. I didn't leave much room to actually park the car, there's only about eight inches on each side of the wheels. I'm making a 6-point turn every time I park (I always reverse in). I want to put little curbs (3"x5"x8' ties), which will leave even less room. At some point next spring I think I will re-layout the passenger side, but make it 16" wide (it's about 24" now). It will depend on how good I get at backing in over the winter.

Hockey started up again, and I managed to pull a back muscle on the last shift of the game a couple weeks ago. Last week was a bye and I skipped tonight's game, but I'll be back next week.

We finally lost a game on Sunday Ultimate last week. We were down 6-1, then came back to tie it at 11-11, but eventually lost 14-12. We dropped too many passes that we normally catch.

We lost the championship on Tuesday (a few days after I pulled my back). We had two full lines of guys. The other line had a 10-minute point, and then a 15-minute point, which used up most of the clock (we have the field for 55 minutes, but by the time people warm up, we play for about 45 minutes). We ended up losing 8-6. Craig and I were only on the field for maybe 10 minutes. I much prefer having fewer players (in fact no subs for outdoors), but then it's more work for Trishia as captain to find subs for the games that someone can't make it. I can't wait until indoors starts, because we'll be playing speed point and get much more exercise.

I did more research on home automation. I think I'm going to buy an Arduino. The first application will be an outdoor thermometer, ideally hooked up to my iPhone. This will mean setting up the communication between the external thermometer to the Arduino, hooking that up to the LAN, and then writing an iPhone app to display the temperature. If that all works, then I can move to more complicated stuff like running the furnace. Eventualy it would be cool if I can connect the thermostat to my alarm clock, so that the house warms up depending on what time I'm waking up the next day. Anyways that's my little winter project.

Well I should go start dinner. We're having asparagus stuffed chicken with white wine shallot sauce, with new potatoes. Mmmm good.

I had plans to set the flagstone today but it's drizzling right now so I'm waiting for the afternoon. It's easier to level out the limestone screening when it's dry.

So the next home automation that I'm looking at is hooking up the thermostat, so that it can be controlled remotely. I surfed briefly and there's a lot more options today than there were a couple years ago. There's three components: temperature sensor, electromechanical controller, and a console. The options I looked at all include a fancy console, which I prefer that they didn't. I already have a remote console (also called an iPhone), so all I really need is the temperature sensor(s), and the controller (which ideally can be separate devices, communicating over the LAN). Anyways I'm going to search a bit more to see if these exist.

(There's a pretty cool page on a "killer app for IPv6", which I think only Lloyd may find funny).

There was finally some more construction activity on the condo on the southeast corner of Queen and Pape. Looks like they just poured some more cement, but at least the project's not completely stopped.

The little bugs that come around every fall have been back for a week. It makes it a pain to barbecue, which we use about three times a week. We try to just use the front door (for some reason the bugs only fly in from the back door), which for barbecuing means we're carrying our food around the alley to the back to cook, and then back around to the front. It's supposed to go down to 3C overnight this weekend, so maybe that will kill them off. I think though that it needs to drop to freezing to get rid of them.

It was a nice day yesterday so I took the afternoon off and went golfing with Craig at Lakeview. My short game was okay but not great, and I ended up with a 99. I've stopped using my driver (hitting with my hybrid off the tee) and I've been much more consistent in getting to the green. So now my score just depends on my chipping and putting.

A couple rivets had popped out of the bottom of my skates (which hold the blade to the boot), so I left them at the pro shop at the arena last week. Unfortunately the pro shop didn't work on them, so when I showed up on Thursday to pick them up before the game, they were still sitting there, and I missed the game. I'm going to give the arena a call on Monday to complain.

Tonight's Helen's and Nick's 40th birthday party. Helen plays on my Ultimate teams, and her and Nick (and their kids Sarah and Noah) live just up in Riverdale, about a 10 minute walk from us. It should be fun.

Anyways it looks like it may have stopped drizzling outside.

We went for dim sum last week, except our usual place on Gerrard had a big "closed" sign on the front window. So we stood hopelessly in front of the restaurant, when a man and his son walked by, and informed us that the place was closed for renovations, and that there was another dim sum place just down the street, which was pretty good. Which was the exact thing I suppose we were hoping would happen.

We tried the recommeded place, and it turned out really good, in fact better than our usual place. We went there again for dinner tonight because we couldn't decide on what to make, and it was great for dinner too. Who'd have thought. I can't remember the name of the place though. It's a bit west of Boulton on Gerrard, although that's not a very specific description for Chinatown.

A new bar opened up last week, called The Avro, on Queen St E, in the old Bergstrom place. We went for a quick beer to check the place out. It's pretty cozy, a nice place to drop in for a beer. I think it will do well.

The fall Ultimate seasons have started. So far we're doing well, we haven't lost a game yet. Most of the games are at Lamport, which makes it convenient to get to the games. The fall season is pretty short -- it's done in four more weeks, because then the domes go up on the fields for winter. I prefer indoors because it's speed point, which is a better workout.

I cleaned up the backyard where the car is parked, to put down flagstone around the back and side of the parking spot. It was getting a bit like a jungle on the passenger side. There were two old birch stumps that I had picked up at Kirk's years ago, which I had intended to turn into stools or side tables. We didn't like the look of them, and so they sat beside the parking spot for the last couple years. So I put them up on Craigslist for free. Some guy came and picked them up, along with four patio stones that came with the house. So this weekend I weeded and put down landscaping fabric, a few bags of limestone screening, and then Heather and I did the jigsaw puzzle of flagstone pieces. I still have to set the stones, which hopefully I can do next week if the weather is good.

Before pic:

Just got my iPad today. So far so good! Big difference so far in the typing. I can type at pretty much the same speed as on a regular keyboard. On the iPhone it was a bit of a struggle.


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