A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

I love my teaching schedule. The courses I teach are very draining as they're 16 hours per week with the same group of students. The great thing is that these COMM classes are just five weeks long. Students can put in a sustained effort when they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You see, these Intensive classes require a lot of work.

Between teaching these hectic sessions, I need the week off to recharge my own batteries. That's what is coming to an end soon. So, I'm already set to take on a new group on Monday afternoon at the Burnaby campus.

It probably is a bit soon to start dreaming about my next vacation, but we just bought air tickets online a few minutes ago. It'll be the second short trip of the year. In the autumn we try to get away for three or four weeks. For this short one, we're driving across the border and down to Bellinham, WA just to catch a cheap flight to Phoenix, AZ. That'll be the week of May 10 to 17. Actually, the Allegiant Air flies into Mesa Gateway Airport where we'll rent a car. The exact schedule of the road trip is pretty flexible but the main destinations will include the Grand Canyon and Palm Springs, CA. One week really isn't long enough for much of anything else. New Mexico will have to be on another occasion. I've not seen the deserts of the American Southwest since I was a child.



Of course, I did see a dry, sandy environment during my fifteen years of work in the Middle East. The picture above was taken in Kuwait around 1982.

Labels: Desert Southwest, Kuwait, road trip, travel planning

I'm going to think of it as a very expensive remote. I am not a game player, but my Sony PS3 just seemed to cry out for some company. I use the PlayStation 3 to play Blu-ray discs and increasingly as a media server. Its name on my home network is The Black Box.

I read something about how a PlayStation Portable (PSP) can be used to access its larger stationery cousin. I had sort of fallen in love with Sony's XrossMediaBar. The XMB is just a simple graphical interface on these devices. I wanted to see it on a smaller screen too.



So I ran to the Superstore and bought a PSP. Imagine, I'm not even that keen on games! I did, however, have to pick up a $20 copy of Daxter just so I could see a real example of the neat little proprietary-format optical disc. Sony tried hard to sell movies in that format but it never took wings. I will never buy a film on one as I can rip a DVD into mpeg4 file. I sure wish I hadn't needed to also pick up another of Sony's other proprietary inventions, the Memory Stick. I already have enough SD memory around the house.

I love the device as it's wifi capable. I went down to an unsecured network connection on the first floor of our building and turned on my PS3 from there. I was able to listen to an MP3 file on my computer's external hard drive. I can have my whole 40GB music collection whereever there's a wifi connection. It wasn't too long ago that I rambled on in one of my so called Furturecasts about my ideas of networking in the future. It has already happened.

Labels: Internet, PS3, PSP, sharing

I really should get back to the core site of this URL once in a while. The main pages were, of course, the initial part of my domain. I tried to separate resume-type information into various categories for web pages. I first started that process back before many people knew about web access. Some of the original keystrokes were made fifteen years ago! Even at that time, the ease of putting material online, meant that I ventured far beyond what would've been possible with a paper-based resume.

Now, I blog. In the last four and a half years, I seldom, if ever, visit those pages. They are in dire need of a makeover, but as most action occurs in the form of blog entries, I wonder why I should bother.



If I decide to update those pages, I can link to some data from this blog. That might just give a reason to proceed. For example, after the photo from the day before yesterday, I moseyed over to the 'Youth' section. As I grew up in New Hampshire, it might not be a bad idea to place a link on that page for the Sunapee label for information from over on this side. I like creating links to other things found on this server. It makes a ... well ... web of information about my favourite subject. It's always all about me, isn't it?

Labels: blogging, Sunapee

I hope this appears in my eJournal and images today!

I don't want to appear to be ungrateful. The usability of Blogger.com is a pretty good deal, considering what one has to pay for it. Well, it free so that means it's pretty good for nothing.

I noticed yesterday the post to my domain wouldn't work. The site just appeared to keep publishing with no results. I woke up this morning and yesterday's entry was there. It looks like the same deal is occurring today. Working on blogger.com is only annoying as the folks at the web site never seem to respond to trouble. In fact there hardly a place to actually complain. It's frustrating just having to wait it out in hopes that the problem will eventually be spotted, reported, and fixed.

On a totally unrelated note, I did a little spring cleaning today. The weather was cool but it was very sunny. The blue of the sky seemed to sear one's eyes. The buds are finally peeking out from the branches of trees and bushes. All in all, it made me want to throw away old junk.

I recently took a pile of clothes to the Salvation Army Thrift store. I got rid of all a great many shirts sized XL. Some were, of course, too favourite to say goodbye to. Due to the fact we seem headed into spring, I thought it was time to move the short-sleeved shirts to the front of the closet. After all, I will be able to start wearing them to the class that runs five weeks from next Monday. "Damn," I muttered, "they are mostly XL." I went through them and found eighteen that are now sitting on the floor for donation. I have no idea why I had so many. Who can wear more than one shirt at a time?

Labels: blogging, weather, weight loss

I couldn't think of much to share today. The fact I went to Wal-mart for niacin and kitchen sponges or filled up with $1.19/litre gasoline is hardly newsworthy. I also didn't feel much like creating an April Fool's trick. The photo above looks foolish enough.

It was obviouly taken at the old school in Sunapee, New Hampshire. I believe this was in a classroom on the second floor. During on year, it was a homeroom perhaps with Miss Davis. Since we hadn't moved to the new building in Lower Village, I'd say I would've been a freshman. I don't know who took the photo or why.

Labels: Sunapee

My new class doesn't start until next Monday. After last week's weird and wacky weather, things really started to look up today. In retrospect, even though it's only six o'clock, I cannot believe I spent so much time in front of this screen. I suppose I have to come to terms with the fact, I'm rather addicted to computers. As I'll be turning 49 years old in July, you'd think I would know myself well by now.

I guess it really wasn't a surprise to realize I am fascinated with PCs. I first spent hard-earned cash on a Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1980. The tasks I was able to do in those days weren't very inspiring by today's standards. I recall making a simple BASIC program that simply added one plus one and showed the result on the black and white screen. Then, it would add one more and print again. I let it run overnight and I couldn't believe the device had made it into the hundreds of thousands by morning.

Technology marches on. Today, I was playing with my computer, network, and PS3. I was using TVersity to make my PS3 into a media server. I downloaded video from the Internet through a BitTorrent. Moving around 600 megabyte files is probably something I wouldn't have thought possible when my Radio Shack had 16K of RAM. The fact most of these files were destined for a 16x9 format 42" LCD television screen, would've undoubtedly sounded like science fiction too.

Here's my belated tribute to the recently deceased futurist who lived his last fifty years in Sri Lanka:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)
Profiles of The Future, 1961

This show is not a video file. It's a live program streamed through
the net from a Sri Lankan TV network to this aparment in
New Westminster, BC.

Labels: computers, Internet, PS3, sci-fi, Sri Lanka 2006, television

I'm sorry but last night I didn't turn out the lights for Earth Hour. I realize there are those who rightly commented that it was mostly a stunt to make people conscious of our effects on the planet. One thing is, in BC, the majority of the power we use is hydroelectricity, one of the most energy-friendly sources of power there is. I don't like the fact so many people will think they've now done their thing by an insignificant act and will go about living an unsustainable lifestyle.

Maybe this will help me prove my point. We stopped up at a Save-On-Foods at Edmonds, Burnaby this morning. We generally shop at a Canadian Superstore, so I was again impressed by the more upscale shopping experience. The prepared and specialty foods near the entrance are impressive. The area boasts the variety of products available at a food fair or farmer's market. Okay, so lets get back to thinking about our environmental footprint. I marvelled at the unsurpassed selection of European cheeses. The refrigeration required for the fourty linear feet of commercial cooler displays was enormous. This, plus the energy required to transport the Dutch or French cheese to this market, would be phenomenal.

People should consider the physics of life. It's ironic that more than a few of the folks are proud of turning off their living room compact fluorescent for one hour. Yet today, many caused the earth much more damage with that little piece of French brie in the plastic grocery bag which was thrown in the empty backseat of a gigantic SUV.

Labels: complaints