Northern Express Bus service in High Level

October 7th, 2011

For some years now, High Level has had its own passenger bus service called the Northern Express Bus Line, and they now have a web presence with schedules and maps. (Teresa and I have been wanting that for a long time. It’s such a great bus service (and local business) that we think more people should know about!)

[A Northern Express 12-passenger van]

A Northern Express 12-passenger van

The Northern Express has daily routes to both Edmonton and Grande Prairie. For the High Level – Edmonton run, they leave High Level at 10:00 a.m. and arrive in Edmonton by 6:30 p.m. at the Continental Inn in the West End. Seven days a week. The return trip leaves Edmonton at 11:00 a.m. and arrives back in High Level at 8:00 p.m.

Over the years that we’ve lived in High Level, Teresa and I have preferred Northern Express over the Greyhound. It takes less time, has a much better schedule (no red-eye), and feels a lot more intimate. In terms of travel time, it’s about the same as driving yourself (unlike Greyhound’s 12-hour runs).

They deliver packages, too! We once bought wood and sinew snowshoes off Kijiji and had them sent up to us via Northern Express. Another time, we forgot some important books back home and had them sent down to Edmonton to meet us.

So, if you ever need to travel to Grande Prairie, Peace River, or Edmonton from High Level, or if you’re in Edmonton and want to come to High Level, be sure to check them out. It may even be cheaper that the gas you’d spend yourself.

Teresa’s Peace River Expedition

July 12th, 2010

Last Thursday, I put Teresa in the water at the town of Peace River to begin her 9-day solo kayak expedition to Fort Vermilion. You can follow her progress by clicking on the map below:


[Clickable map of Teresa's progress]

Dell laptop BIOS update using FreeDOS and ISO Master

April 17th, 2010

I recently needed to update the BIOS on a Dell Inspiron 630m laptop. The file, available from Dell support, is a DOS executable named MX51_A04.EXE.

I had two problems with this file: (1) Windows would not boot, so I couldn’t run the file using Windows. (2) The laptop had no floppy drive, so I couldn’t easily boot into DOS.

Now, one can solve this problem by booting from a FreeDOS LiveCD to run the file. But then you have to figure out how to get and run the MX51_A04.EXE file from within the FreeDOS environment. Various websites suggested methods using USB flash drives, but I couldn’t get this to work.

Instead, I was able to add the file to the LiveCD ISO image before I burnt the CD. Here’s how it worked:

  1. Download the FreeDOS LiveCD called fdfullcd.iso (153MB).
  2. Under Linux or Windows, install and run ISO Master.
  3. Load the fdfullcd.iso in ISO Master and then add the MX51_A04.EXE file to it.
  4. Save the modified ISO under a new name.
  5. Burn the modified ISO to a CD and boot from that.
  6. When you boot the laptop using this modified FreeDOS LiveCD, be sure to choose the LiveCD mode and not the install option.
  7. Once you have a DOS prompt, the command X: will switch you to the X: drive, where you’ll find the contents of the CD and the BIOS update file.
  8. Run it, cross your fingers, and reboot.

A Better Online Dictionary

April 8th, 2010
[die.net]

I like using the online dictionary at die.net because it’s fast and clean.

It’s easy to query, also. Just append your word to the end of the URL. For example:

It describes itself as offering “free cross-referenced definitions, spelling correction, and word searches from WordNet, Webster’s, FOLDOC, and a variety of specialized sources.”

In the “spam” entry above, some of the sources include the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing, the Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms, and the Jargon File.

Which editor should I learn?

March 23rd, 2010

On serverfault.com, Rory McCann asked, “What’s the best terminal editor to suggest to a Unix newbie? i.e. not vi or Emacs.”

This answer, which purposefully ignores the original poster’s restriction, says it best:

My take is still Emacs or vi. Even for a beginner.

Why?

Because time invested in learning an editor is productive only as long as you keep using that editor. All those less expressive options are poor choices for the long run, and will be abandoned eventually. At which point the time spent learning them is wasted, and the user still has to learn Emacs or vi.

In other words, the best (most expressive) tool for the job is one of Emacs or vi, and so you’ll eventually switch to one of them. It ultimately doesn’t matter which one you choose, but you would be smart to invest yourself into learning one of them.

For the record, I’m a vim user, and I love using it.

Wil Wheaton has a new podcast

November 25th, 2009
[Memories of the Future Jellyfish]

I just learned tonight that Wil Wheaton has a new podcast out, called Memories of the Futurecast.

The podcast is a promotion of his latest book, Memories of the Future, Volume One, which is Wil’s going-down-memory-lane review of the first 13 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I listened to the first episode of the podcast already, and I’m looking forward to hearing the rest (12 of 13 have been published so far, as I write this). I enjoy everything Wil Wheaton does.

Check it out.

How to Disable Autosave in WordPress

March 30th, 2009

The autosave feature in recent versions of WordPress (versions 2.5–2.7) is actually a misfeature:

… A misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all).

The improper functioning of the WordPress autosave has bitten me several times. It’s supposed to prevent you from losing work by periodically saving your blog edits in the background, when in fact it has caused me to lose work by its very operation.

[WordPress Logo Inverted]

Basically, the most recent edits made to a blog entry often get dropped when you go to “Preview” or “Publish” the entry. In other words, during either of these two operations, it reverts you to what it had autosaved in the past and the new edits are lost. The frustrating thing is that most users would expect the “Preview” operation if not the “Publish” operation to properly save what’s in the edit box. So often, you might end up publishing an incomplete or incorrect version of your blog entry without even knowing it.

This is madness. Let’s stop it.

Find the following four files in the wp-admin/ directory of your WordPress installation:

  1. page-new.php
  2. page.php
  3. post-new.php
  4. post.php

and comment out the following line:

wp_enqueue_script('autosave')

by changing it to:

//wp_enqueue_script('autosave')

This will disable the autosave feature in the WordPress user interface.

A secondary part of the solution, too, is to always hit “Save Draft” before hitting “Preview”. I’m not sure if this is strictly necessary, but now I’m paranoid.

Thanks to Allen Day and William Lone for showing me how to do this.

How to Relax Your Body Through Your Thoughts

March 29th, 2009

Thoughts are Energy

Have you ever had that feeling in your gut when someone close to you is about to tell you bad news? Or what about the pit in your stomach when you know you have to face something that you know you don’t want to face? Well, behind these feelings and physical sensations are thoughts. These thoughts are sometimes conscious and oftentimes subconscious, but they are there.

These feelings and the thoughts behind them demonstrate that thoughts are energy. The thoughts that we hold in our consciousness, and those that lie below the level of consciousness, have an effect on our emotional lives. Through them, we can be lifted up and “energized” or be brought into states of fear and anxiety. Where you end up on this scale depends on the level of spiritual consciousness of the thought itself.

A Way to Relaxation

[Cultural Creative Figure]

Along these lines, then, we can find way to achieve relaxation and calm the body through conscious thought. Basically, ask yourself the question, “What does gratefulness feel like?” Now, this is not a question for the intellect, to be mulled over and processed by the thinking mind. No, hand your awareness over to your body as you enter the state of being grateful.

How do you do that? Well, this may be slightly different for every one of you, but I start by thinking about things I am grateful for. That is, I enumerate the wonderful things in my life, from the exceptional to the mundane. But the key is this: I don’t stay at the level of the thinking mind. Instead, as I bring each thing into conscious thought, I start to pay attention to how I feel—in my body. In other words, I shift my attention from the mental image to the sensation in my chest (or in my heart or in my forehead). For me, this immediately shuts off the thinking mind and allows me to enter into the awareness of who I AM—the thinker behind the thought.

Experiment

Now, as you read this, I encourage you to give it a try. Examine for yourself what gratefulness feels like and where it shows up in your body. How does it differ from the feeling of universal love? Which emotions work best for you as a way to connect with and relax your body?

As you practice and become increasingly familiar with this method of relaxation and meditation, you can start to use it in your daily life to change how you feel in any situation. You can shift your thoughts to what you want to focus on and to the emotional state you wish to achieve in any given moment.

Dialog Box

December 31st, 2008

Does the following dialog box make sense to you? That is, are you able to answer the question it asks?

[Nonsensical dialog box]

Think about it for a bit, then see the comments for this post for the answer.

School

December 27th, 2008

[xkcd's 11th Grade]

Interestingly, Python was first released when I was in Grade 11. Via xkcd.