Decent Break

Last week and a bit have been pretty decent for me. Starting on the 19th my roommate had a huge party-ish at our townhouse. A couple of my friends came and a couple pussied out. We drank a bit of everything in the beginning of the night, some beers, jagerbombs, tequilla etc. Jesse then wanted to go to a warehouse party that his sister was throwing on, so we went there. Turns out it really sucked. Maybe not for him because he knew everyone but for Shaw and I we were bored.

We quickly left and headed back to my townhouse. We tried running after a bus but some dick bus driver wouldn’t stop for us. So we had to wait for a bit for a bus to finally come. By the time we had gotten back to Rez my roommate was passed out. The rest of us ended up playing drunk twister till 4 am. By that time most of the people had passed out. I went to my room and found two girls passed out in my bed.

The next day I was supposed to head out to my grandparents but there was so much snow that I got stuck in my townhouse. I waited for a day for the snow to pass and get plowed before I headed out to Chilliwack. There I just chilled with my grandparents for a few days. It continued to snow really hard out there.

Christmas day I didn’t do much since my family was up in Quesnel. From my grandparents I got some money and some axe stuff. Christmas dinner I went to Cloverdale to my Aunt and Uncles. I got a Futureshop giftcard from them. I ended up spending the night playing PS3 with my cousin on some game called Warhawks I believe.

I headed home to rez only to see that Futureshop was opening at six am the next morning and I wanted an xbox 360. I called up Tom and then headed to his place. We drove around and saw people were lined up all over. We continued to drive around and the only thing we found open was a 7-11. Tres depressing. We ended up going back to his place where I slept till 5:40 and he just played Wow.

When we got to Futureshop, the store was just packed! I have never seen so many people inside Futureshop and at 6 AM! The parking lot was also full and we had to park a bit aways. But I ended up getting my 360, plus an extra controlled, plug n’ play packs, Guitar Hero III with a guitar and a bunch of games. Tom and I went back to my place and ended up playing that for the last few days. We mostly played Mirror’s Edge which is a really good game. It’s a first person action game about these messengers who use Parkour to get messages across the city since they live in a Totalitarian society where communications is controlled.

Tom introduced me to the following video which I thought was hilarious:

On the 27th we went out to Kits where we ate at a really good breakfast restaurant called the Wooden Shoe. I haven’t eaten their since September. The Vancouver roads are really horrible. The new Happy Planet mayor of Vancouver won’t last long since his snow removal plan seems to be, “Let it melt.” Srsly if you go off any major road in Vancouver you will need four wheel drive. Even major streets like Oak had to be shut down because of how bad they were.

I bet he will soon implement the “Walk it Off” health care plan.

That evening I went out to watch the movie the Day the Earth Stood Still. If you don’t know or remember, that was the movie that was filmed at SFU and that I snuck on the set as an extra and filmed two scenes. Well I watched the movie and I saw the two scenes that I filmed in and I made it in the movie!! I am so excited. Now I am going to wait for a DVD copy of the movie or a DVD quality download so I can screen shot that shit and prove I was in it.

The 28th I went out to Chilliwack once again as this was my true Christmas. My parents were in town and my brothers who I haven’t seen since August, for a brief moment. We exchanged presents and I was excited as I got a bunch of stuff I really wanted and needed. My mother gave me spoons (as I only owned one), some pots and tea towels. I also got a calendar, candy and the second newest Redwall Book, Eulalia from my younger brother. My younger-older brother gave me a $100 gift card to Futureshop. I was pretty impressed that he did that, apparently he wanted to buy me a whole xbox because of all the stuff I have gotten him in the past (a Wii, games etc). My Aunt and cousins gave me a chapters gift card and I also received a roomlamp, some new jeans and a belt.

I headed back to rez today, where I was playing xbox all day. I downloaded some new A State of Trances that I have not listened to, including the yearmix and the top 20. It was Shawn’s birthday today (Happy Birthday man!) and we went out to Red Robins and the Foggy Dew. It was definitely a decent night.

As the year is coming to an end there has been a lot of good stuff that has happened this year, specially near the end of it. I will write a full year recap next year as I still have a few days left. In the next few days I will be going snowboarding with my brother, out shopping for a suit jacket, dinner with the third set of aunt and uncle and a NYE party on the 31st. Next year I have some big plans, including living in my own place off rez which I am starting to looking for now. Either that or I need a roommate which I am also looking for.

So, my final words of this post and possibly this year: A pimp is just a business manager with assets.

‘Twas the Night before XMas (Canucks Style)

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through Vancouver,
Not a creature was stirring, the snow too hard to maneuver.
It was an off day anyway, so there was nowhere to go,
Nothing to do but watch game tape and lay low.

The Canucks with two nights off to sit and relax,
Able to focus on things other than opponent attacks.
But how would they spend their short holiday,
Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh?

Not Darcy Hordichuk, that’s for sure,
He tried that once, but stepped in manure.
This rugged tough guy will be inside filling out lists,
He’s suing Law and Order for stealing the names of his fists.

Kevin Bieksa and Ryan Kesler both became dads this year,
So it’s days off with spit-ups and diapers instead of chips and beer.
Both guys are fine with it, they’ve got such deep layers,
Then again they are raising future hockey players.

Mason Raymond will have weights on his ankles but he isn’t sour,
It’s what allows him to reach speeds of 100,000 kilometers an hour.
Surrounded by family and friends, his days are slow and steady,
He knows that if Santa needs a speed boost he’ll have be ready.

Captain Luongo, you can bet, is happier than anyone,
To have a day off from every sports writer under the sun.
Nothing fancy on the agenda, watch some Deal Or No Deal,
Just lying around giving that groin time to heal.

Daniel and Henrik Sedin – insert IKEA joke,
They’ve been getting last minute gifts since we last spoke.
These Swedish twins are packed full of holiday cheer,
They exchange gifts with each other by looking in the mirror.

Pavol Demitra, what with his head so bright,
Might actually help guide Santa’s sleigh tonight.
Riding shotgun with jolly old St. Nick he’ll be tempted to say,
Veselý vianoce do celý, a do celý za dobrú noc!

Kyle Wellwood, there’s just no telling what he’ll do,
In Toronto he didn’t own a TV, apparently that’s true.
That puts watching A Christmas Story in serious doubt,
He’ll have to reenact it as Ralphie – careful not to shoot your eye out!

Good ol’ Willie Mitchell, the jokester of the locker room,
He’ll be visiting teammates in a Santa costume.
No bundle of toys flung on #8’s back,
Big Willie Style carries only lumps of coal in his pack.

Mattias Ohlund is coveting having some time to himself,
He’s busy prepping the guest bedroom by adding a shelf.
A fellow countryman and NHL all-star is coming to stay,
Welcome Mats Sundin the bedspread will say.

Maximums Mats is still back home in Sweden,
Imagining Vancouver as his garden of Eden.
While visions of a Sedin-Sundin-Sedin line dance through his head,
He logs onto Canucks.com and suggests it in a thread.

As the man responsible for bringing Mats to the coast,
Mike Gillis will surely spend this time off as a ghost.
Out of sight, out of mind, free of responsibility,
Planning his team’s playoff push backed by Sir. Louie.

Two days off gives Vancouver time to recharge the batteries,
So that a solid start to 2009 is a whimsical breeze.
Forty-seven games remain for the team to fight through,
They surely couldn’t do it without support from fans like you.

A toast to Canucks fans, the best in the league by far,
Other teams are stuck with duds, while you’re a shining star.
Thanks for being a part of what could be a magical sight,
Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good-night!

Simpson’s Apple Parody

Thank you Stumbleupon for finding me this.

How to Mod Rewrite

This tutorial of mod rewriting assumes you have some knowledge of programming and web developing.

One thing I have noticed while working with PHP is that often you will get really ugly urls that look like: www.example.com/test.php?var=foo&cat=1&prod=24afa.

These sure look disgusting. What is worse is that google will not look at your page because they are dynamically generated. So GG Google indexing your website. However, there is a way to deal with this. It is quite simple. It is called mod rewriting. I know this works with Apache but I am not sure about IIS. I don’t use it, never will so I am not going to bother with it at this second.

What mod rewriting will do is take that same URL and allow you to rewrite it to look like www.example.com/test/foo/1/24afa/.

WordPress uses it all the time. To do this you only need to edit or create an .htaccess file with two lines of code.

They are:

RewriteEngine On # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteRule ^test/([A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/?$ test.php?cat=$1&prod=$2 [NC,L] # testing out

The first line just tells the server to turn on the mod rewriting. The second line is our meat of our code. The second line, in this example allows you to turn: test.php?cat=something&prod=somethingelse into test/something/somethingelse. It should be obvious that you must make a rewrite rule for each URL that you wish to edit.

The rewrite rule line is made up of four parts and they are as follows: RewriteRule, new address, old address and exception rules.

The RewriteRule is always the same and it never gets changed otherwise the server wont know what to do.

The new address is what you want your URL to look like. You must use regular expressions to allow different types of variable input and you can have as many variables in the URL. In our example the new URL will look like: test/var1/var2/. We can see we have two variables in the URL and with the REGEX rules I have specified you can have only letters and numbers in the variables. A cheat sheet for REGEX can be found here. All new URLs must be defined between a ^ and a $.

Now we need to map this new URL to the file. We do that by specifying the file. In our example we have said the old URL was: test.php?cat=$1&prod=$2. This means the new URL will be mapped to the file test.php with the variables var1 and var2 being passed by HTTP GET to the specified variables in our rewrite rule (cat and prod).

The final part we need are the flags. Currently we have defined: [NC, L]. The NC means the matching should be case insensitive. The L defines that once it has matched a file we do not need to continue checking every line in the file, which can speed up load time of the web file. A whole list of mod rewrite flags can be found here. All flags have to be between the square braces and separated by a comma.

That is it, that is all that is needed to rewrite your URLs on your website. You should be able to do it.

Two last tips before you go off and try this. Make sure you don’t already have a .htaccess file as you do not want to lose whatever is in this file. If you already have this file, just append to the end of it the rewrite rules. Secondly, if you get a 404 error with your new URL, you may have entered non-valid characters into the variables of the URL.

I hope this has helped.

Snow ((Hey Oh))

Well… it is another snow day… this time it sucks because I can’t go to my grandparents house. Right now I am stuck in my townhouse being bored. Sure there are some things I could do like work on my website project, work on the rowing website, update the CRIM website, clean the house, read, write a letter for the peak etc.

This is what it feels like in Vancouver right now.

I was driving down hasting’s street this morning at 4 am to deep cover and the entire way was covered in snow. I am so glad that I had snow tires because there were so many cars that were stuck and not able to make it.

Instead I decided to finally install stumbleupon. The only reason I did not want to before was because I do not like toolbars on my web browser. They really annoy me, and they take up screen real estate.

I managed to find this really cool link, it reminds me of STOMP.

I’m in the Globe and Mail

It’s really not that exciting though and Jesse and Cory were in it too.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081218.GONDOLAPEAK18/TPStory/?query=Blackcomb

We just happened to be in the Peak 2 Peak Gondola at the same time as they were. Because they never asked who we were, I am the Australian Snowboarder, Jesse is a Japanese Skier and Cory is the Young Snowboarder from North Van.

Future SFU Classes

Over the time being here at SFU I have found many interesting classes that I would like to take and here I have compiled said list. Some classes are ridiculously easy, others seem interesting and not related at all to my major/minor and some I can actually use for my degree. Either way, they are all on the list.

• EDU 465 – Children’s Literature: In this class all you do is read many books that we loved as children and then analyze them. You don’t analyze them like you would in an English class, but you learn what they mean and you write what you thought about them. The books include: Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG, The Witches, Holes, Fairy Tales, just to name a few.
• MATH 197 – Hitchhikers Guide to Everyday Math: this class is a pure GPA booster. It is basically a math course easier than MATH 12.
• PHYS 192 – Logarithm and Blues: Learn the physics of music. A physics class for non physic students. Another GPA booster.
• PHYS 190 – Astronomy: Literally… learn about the stars and constellations. Another GPA booster.
• HSCI 120 – Intro to Human Sexuality: This is no boring class on the biology of sex. No, this is a full on discussion about everything related to sex, from the best positions, porn, transvestites, and there are many guest lectures in the class from each of these categories of subjects. In Fall 2006, the first year it was offered, more people bought the textbook for the class than were in the class because it contained a DVD on the making of porn.
• CRIM 241 – Introduction to Corrects: Learn about jails and take a field trip to the three different types of jails.
• CNS 390 – Hockey in Canadian Pop Culture: This is not an easy class from what I have heard, so don’t take it thinking it is. It definitely seems interesting though.
• KIN 143 – Exercise Management: Another GPA booster, learn to come up with work out plans and in tutorials go for a run for 12 minutes.
• EASC 310 – Paleontology This class isn’t about dinosaurs that much but it seems interesting. It is a W class so I am assuming it will be a lot of work.
• HUM 305 – Medieval Studies: Learn all about the people of the medieval times.
• ARCH 131 – Human Origins: Learn all about where humans came from. If you are a creationist you should probably not take this class.
• ARCH 226 – The Prehistory of Religion: Shamans, Sorcerers and Saints: Learn all about how religions came to be.
• ARCH 252 – Egypt and Africa: Learn about the ancient civilization of Ancient Egypt as well as some other facts about the continent of Africa.
• ARCH 373 – Human Osteology: A detailed study of the skeleton. It is needed as a pre-req for ARCH 442.
• ARCH 442 – Forensic Anthropology: Current techniques on how to identify the human body.
• COGS 100 – Introduction to Cogitative Science: Basically all about how the brain thinks and why it does act in the way it does. Definitely interesting if you want to do some neural network classes like CMPT 418.
• CRIM 312 – Criminological Perspectives on Social Problems: Talks about the legal issues with “social problems” such as drug abuse (alcohol, nicotine, heroin and others), suicide, prostitution, obscenity, gambling and abortion.
• CRIM 413 – Terrorism: Apparently this class is a lot of work (says the Criminology students). It covers basically the impacts of Terrorism and law in the world.
• CRIM 315 – Restorative Justice: This is a really easy course, write some journals, write a few quizes (with questions like, “who is in your tutorial”) and you will get a high mark for little work. And the answer to the question of “Does Restorative Justice work?” The answer is no.
• CRIM 316 – Sex Offenders: I assume it is about rape and sexual assaults.
• CRIM 317 – Prostitution in Canada: I also assume this is about the effects of Prostitution in Canada.
• CRIM 334 – Law and Human Reproduction: I assume this is about laws regarding human reproduction.
• CRIM 336 – Corporate Crime and Corporate Regulation: About the effects of corporate crime, which as we all know costs more than all of the combined blue collar crimes.
• CRIM 357 – Forensic Anatomy: I can’t find a course description on this course. I assume it is about the forensics of the body, which was briefly covered in CRIM 355 (Forensics I). I know it is taught by Lynne Bell who is a good prof and a really easy one at that too.
• CRIM 412 – Crime, the Media and the Public: A course of the affects of crime in all sorts of mediums which makes us think different about crime and usually it is not true.
• CRIM 451 – Advanced Techniques in Forensic Sciences: I am not sure what the subject is, but it is taught by Gail Anderson and I know she is one of the top Forensic Entomologists in Canada.
• CRIM 318 – Special Topics in Criminology: CyberCrime: Being in CS I like anything related to computers. Although this class seems to be mostly about identity theft, it does not seem to be a horrible class and I am interested in it. As long as it is not offered in slurrey exclusively.
• CRIM 452 – Skeletal Pathology & Criminalistics Again, another Forensics course taught by Lynne Bell. Doesn’t seem to be too bad but it seems like a lot of this Forensic stuff overlaps.
• CMPT 354 – Databases: While I have worked with databases for the last six years this would be a really easy course, especially since a lot of the 4xx classes require this as a pre-req and I need two more 3xx level classes.
• CMPT 383 – Comparative Programming Languages: I have heard good things but I don’t know any specifics.
• CMPT 419 – Machine Learning: While I didn’t do that great in 310, that was because of the horrible scheduling of the exams. We didn’t really cover this topic too much and if Greg Mori is teaching it then I would be down for taking it. He is definitely one of my favourite professors.
• CMPT 431 – Distributed Systems: I think that this class would be a lot harder than I would like, but both Vaughan and Fedorova teaches it and Vaughan is a good prof himself. I think I would rather take 401 (OS II) with him instead.
• CMPT 454 – Information Retrieval & Web Search: A class on databases that seems to teach how databases work. Definitely something I would be interested in, though I would have to confer with Sepand and ask him how he liked it.
• CMPT 470 – Web-based Information Systems: Well I have been working with PHP and MySQL for years so I think I could do decently in this class. Plus Baker will be teaching it again and while I have not have had him, he is also apparently godly as a professor.

This is just a few classes that I would like to take.

Goodbye Webmail

So after two and a half years of being at SFU, they are finally getting rid that old software that they called “Webmail”. I stopped using it after first year when I got all of my email forwarded to my main email (josh [dot] weissbock [at] gmail [dot] com).

They brought in some new software called Connect SFU (I believe). I haven’t really used it much as I still plan to have it forward all my emails to my gmail.

I did switch over early, but this lead to problems where it stopped forwarding so I had to figure out how to get it to reforward again.

So I know a lot of you have your SFU email forwarded, and since SFU is forcing the switch over to the new Connect during the winter break, you will be running into the same problem. So if you have yet to switch over, I suggest doing it now, because once you have switched over you will want to get SFU to continue forwarding those emails.

Good Game Credit Card

So today was payday, one of my two favourite days in a month (not including Shark Week). I look at my balances and I go to pay off my credit card… when to my surprise, I no longer had any options to view transactions or to transfer money to it.

I didn’t think much of this, but I thought I would ask them since I had to go to the bank and deposit a cheque. I get there and mention this to them and they were a little confused. The phoned up visa and five minutes later they were like, “Please step into this office over here.”

I was like, “uh oh… what did I do?” I felt like I was a little kid being sent to the principle’s office. They give me the phone and the lady on the other end informs that there have been some questionable charges on my card. So that ask me if I had done any of them.

Turns out someone got hold my credit card number and was trying to spend it on things that cost more than my limit.

So they cancelled my card and are currently sending me a new one. What I am wondering is how did this person get my card? Hadley would have probably said, “I told you so” if he had heard about this.

Dick Move

What a dick move to do to a kid, especially on Christmas. I did have to LOL a little though. I will see you in hell.