ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • Nerd Nostalgia: Computer Chronicles

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    imagesComputer Chronicles was very influential in my early development as a nerd.  I had almost entirely forgotten about the show until a recent series of posts on reddit. The show covered the rise of the personal computer revolution in typical PBS news magazine type format. According to Wikipedia, the series ran from 1981 – 2002. I would’ve watched it during the mid to late 90s. Back in those days before the internets, it was my only window into the tech world at large. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stewart Cheifet was the first person to introduce me to the “world wide web.”

    Earlier this evening I watched a good hour and a half of older episodes from the late 80s, thanks to a blog that’s making an effort to categorize the episodes: cchronicles.com. I immediately dawned on me that Cranky Geeks with John C Dvorak is essentially a modern, low-brow version of Computer Chronicles. Dvorak even appears to have been a regular contributor to the show.
    Here’s an episode from 1981 where he rips apart a brand new $6000 IBM PS2 Model 50, same ole Dvorak. [Video – Jump to about 11 minutes]

    It’s really interesting to me how technology has come so far, but the topics shows like TWiT, BOL, et al discuss and get excited about aren’t really that different. There’s still a lot of talk upgrade cycles, what the next OS has in store for different classes of users, vapourware, copy-protection, the latest hardware and why it probably isn’t as good as the marketing material wants you to think it is. It’s almost as if you could replace product names in those old episodes, leave everything else intact and come out with a current sounding episode.

  • How To: Watch Comedy Central Videos From Canada

    in ,

    UPDATE 05/2012: If this isn’t working for you anymore, you might want to try this new method.

    UPDATE: Some visitors are reporting that this works for Hulu as well.

    The relationship between Comedy Central and Canada’s Comedy Network is the worst example of what can happen when rights owners assert copyright on the internet, based on national borders. If you are not aware – like Hulu, TV.com and others – Comedy Central videos will not play in Canada, but it’s worse. ComedyCentral.com – the entire domain – is unavailable to Canadian IPs! When you try visit it, you are redirected to comedynetwork.ca.

    I found a workaround to this buried in a comment thread on reddit. Firefox users only:

    For Canadian viewers, if you are using firefox, install the following addon:
    http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967     then:

    1) In Firefox, Go to tools->modify headers
    2) From the drop down box on the left select add
    3) Then enter: “X-Forwarded-For” in the first input box without the quotation marks
    4) Enter: “12.13.14.15” in the second input box without the quotation marks
    5) Leave the last input box empty, and save the filter, and enable it
    http://imgur.com/Feb4.png
    6) Click the ‘Configuration’ tab on the right then proceed to check the ‘always on’ button.

    Close the Modify Headers box and it should work.

    [orginal post]

    Works like a charm!

  • How To: Exclude Words Like “An, A, The” From Alphabetized MySQL ORDER

    in

    When ordering lists of names or titles it’s sometimes desirable to exclude articles or other words from the order clause (eg. you want “The Burning Hell” to show up before “Great Lake Swimmers” in a list ordered by name). Early on in my career I must have assumed it was not possible and never bothered to look into again because I don’t recall ever ordering a list like this.
    Anyways. Here’s how you do it:

    SELECT name FROM artists ORDER BY TRIM( LEADING "a " FROM TRIM( LEADING "an " FROM TRIM( LEADING "the " FROM LOWER( name ) ) ) )

    [thanks metafilter]<