Jan/100
Morning Bowling
Went bowling this morning with a friend of mine. Didn’t quite make the 200 mark but I was close. I jinxed myself at the last frame. Could have gotten another strike to complete the second turkey but it feel into the gutter instead :S
I don’t bowl often, but I’m trying to get find time to start bowling more often. That and play pool, if only I had enough money to buy a pool table at home or something. Overall my average score today was 171. Probably the best I’ve done in a long while. I need to invest in new bowling shoes tho and preferably a new bowling ball that hooks a little more to the left, not that the one I currently have is crap or anything.
Sep/090
Got a blackberry!
So… I decided to get a blackberry to replace my iPhone 3g. You might say it’s a downgrade, I got the Blackberry 8900 Curve, also known as the Javelin. It’s a 2G/Wifi smartphone, and doesn’t support 3g. That is a disappointment, but I will find a way to survive. The Blackberry has a solid proven design that has worked for them for many previous models. A physical keyboard comes in handy and the bb messenger is quit useful, since most of my friends have blackberry, which is a good thing. Blackberry is developed and manufactured by RIM (Research In Motion), a Canadian based company that developers business class smart phones.
I will also be developing for the blackberry since it uses Java as it’s supported programming language. The only problem is coming up with ideas for what sort of application I should make. All I have to do now is set up the environment to start developing on the blackberry platform. I’ve had it set up last year when I was in Mobile Programming class, but I’ve since reformatted the computer since the course ended.
Jul/090
Fixed the domain issue
I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed this before, it’s probably because I’ve been used to entering the domain without the “www” in it.
The problem was when you entered the domain (i.e. www.danielmak.net) the config file had a line that replaced the “www” to a double quote (“) which caused the css not to load properly. I commented out the line and everything was resolved. haha
May/090
Online Distribution, Bandwidth Cap
Online distribution seems to be growing in popularity every day while your internet service providers are cashing in on your excess bandwidth. Steam is an example of a successful Online distribution which sells gamers online and allows the customer to download their games instead of going out to the store and buy a physical copy of the game. It is an effective way to sell content, but with the bandwidth cap it can be quite limiting. I remember the days when ISPs offered Unlimited bandwidth when the internet was relatively slow (compared to today’s standard). But with advancements in technology you’d think the ISPs can handle the increasing traffic with less resources than before.
What is the point in offering faster download speeds “for file sharing” when the bandwidth cap isn’t even enough for 2 blu-ray discs worth of content. They say majority of the consumer base never go over the bandwidth. And what only 1% actually do. Yet they are spending thousands of dollars to prevent their 1% customer base from enjoying the full experience of the internet. Traffic shaping is already put in place to optimize the network so no one customer uses 100% of the providers speed. But a limit on how much you can download? It’s like putting place a limit on how much air you can breath in before you have to pay for it.
Take my provider for example. Hi-Speed Extreme. Offers 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up, sounds great before you calculate the bandwidth cap of 95GB per month with $1.5/GB afterwards. I know alot of people would say 95GB is alot and that they can’t think of any possible ways to use up all that bandwidth per month. Not yet maybe its hard, but when more full 1080p content show up, you rely 100% on making online purchases for games, music and movies through services like Steam or iTunes. That 95GB or even Comcast’s cap of 250GB would seem like a speck of dust. I can easily go over the bandwidth in downloading legit content from various websites without even breaking a sweat. Downloading a game off Steam is around 4-5GBs, Linux LiveDVD is around 4.7GB, 1080p content is at least 18GBs usually more. Add those up and you’re already half way there to the limit.
It just pisses me off that Providers are trying to control how much we access the internet. With their false advertisements of “Download as much high def content as you want” with the fine print of “as long as you stay with in the limit we set for you then you pay by the GB or in some cases I’ve heard people paying by the MB. We’re in 2009 where HD companies are talking int Terabytes now while Providers are still talking about Gigabytes and Megabytes. :S. I can’t even imagine how much worse ISPs are going to make things. Lower the Cap so they would make even more money while teasing us with Gb/s speeds? lol. But if it keeps up like this. Then the internet as we know it will no longer exist.
All I have left to say is. Stupid Monopolized Internet Service Providers trying to make more money by overcharging us with relatively slow connection speeds. -.-
May/090
Anime North 2009
Anime North was this past weekend (May 22nd-24th) at the Toronto Congress Center, Doubletree International Hotel and Renaissance Hotel. This year they seem to have used more of the Toronto Congress Center hence making it much larger than last year.
Three days is awesome doesn’t even start to describe it. There were alot of kick ass cosplayers and then there were the hilarious ones who tries too hard to play the role they aren’t fit for. There was just too much to do, my friends and I didn’t have time to go to alot of the panels. Next year for sure we will make it to the “How to get a Con Girlfriend” BEFORE the start time since by the time we got there, it was so bad you can feel the heat without having to walk in.
The video game area was at the Renaissance like usual which featured pretty much the usual video games with the exception to Street Fighter IV since it just came out. But generally fighting games and rock band. Doubletree had the usual board gamers and the Moonlight ball at the ballroom.
The Moonlight ball wasn’t all that great, certainly not worth $35 dollars. I don’t know if we’ll be doing that next year or not.
The J-Rave was alright as well. Pretty much people dancing to Japanese or Anime music. The dealer room was crowded as usual with lots of cool things to buy. Sadly, I didn’t make any purchases this year, but next year I will.
I am currently trying to think of what to dress up as next year, this time nothing that involves painting the face white or wearing a huge ass mask. lol I have a whole year to come up with ideas and to watch more anime so I have more ideas. I didn’t bring a camera to Anime North again this year, so I relied on other people to take pictures. They are on Facebook. I might bring my camera next year and post it on my site afterwards.
Can’t wait till Anime North 2010!!
Apr/090
Stop Stealing Focus!
This is a major pet peeve of mine. Is when one application insists on stealing the focus and being annoying. I open up Windows Live Messenger which usually takes its time to load. So I continue on with what I was doing. Whether it be typing a document, surfing the net or anything typing related. The next thing I notice is half my text I just type isn’t on the application it was intended on. WLM stole the focus and now I’m apparently searching though my contacts for such user which doesn’t exist for obvious reasons..
This problem seems to extend beyond WLM. Alot of applications tend to insist on being the active window when opened. Why can’t they just be programmed to open in the background and not try to steal the focus. Yes I opened the application for a reason but I don’t need it stealing focus to let me know the application finishes loading. -.-
Apr/090
danielmak.ca
I have bought and set up danielmak.ca to point to this blog. So now there are 3 different domains that point here! 
Apr/090
danielmak.com now registered!
I have convinced myself to have multiple domain names. danielmak.net just wasn’t enough I suppose. danielmak.com was available so I decided to jump at the opportunity to buy it.
danielmak.com and danielmak.net now points to the same place! my hosting package from mxhub only allows for 1 additional domain. I would have gotten danielmak.ca as well if I could. Oh well.
Just thought I’d post this 
Mar/092
Chain Letters…
Why are most people on the internet so naive when it comes to false promise of receiving money for forwarding useless chain letters to everyone on their mailing list.
I just received a few of these chain letters claiming Microsoft is giving away money for each contact you forward the chain letter to. Do people really think that Microsoft is that kind to just give you money? I got bored so I did a search on google. Sadly enough this exact chain letter was started in 1998. It was false then. guess what people. It’s still false NOW.. lol
The email itself is quite funny. Microsoft giving away free money, Intel and AOL apparently in discussing a merger
I pity the fool who believes this chain letter is legit. lol