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Planet, meet Tippy. Tippy, meet the planet. Tippy is Ms. Vissers’s parent’s new dog. He is a long haired daschund, and he’s as tall laying down as he is standing. »

Trent Reznor put out the whole of ‘the hand that feeds’, from the forthcoming NIN album, with teeth, in GarageBand format. I’m a huge NIN fan (I stood in line down at Sam’s on Barrington on a Monday night until midnight, so I could get the fragile when it was first released), so this makes me very excited. On the other hand, I mix and compose music about as well as I play sports (which is to say, horribly), so I think I can do without playing with GarageBand, and just wait for the album to come out. »

The Dal-ACM, in conjunction with nSLUG, the RAND corporation, and the letter ‘U’ are going to be holding an old-skool Install Fest on Saturday, April 30th, from 12 noon till 6pm in the Computer Science Building atrium. You can check out the details, or if you’re already sold, add your name to the list of attendees. I’m gonna bring along a laptop chock-full of uber-leet apps, like beagle and luminocity, and there will be drinks and nibblies. »

So, allow me to present a scenario: You are helping to organize a conference on Open Source. You receive emails about it daily, and some of them have attachments. Some of these attachments are internal to the organizers, and some are from external sources. Many of them, from both sources, are in MS Word doc format. Understandably, you are disheartened; not just because doc files are a hassle to open, but also because the people who are sending doc files are most likely running a non-free OS, using a non- free word processor, and are generally just not exhibiting the qualities of people who should be organizing an Open Source conference, or submitting presentation proposals to an Open Source conference. »

It’s official. Ubuntu Linux 5.04 aka. The Hoary Hedgehog was available on April 8. The list price is $0 USD, but the educational canadian price is (also) only $0.00. And in case anyone is wondering why they should upgrade, a visit to the Ubuntu Linux page should fill you in. However, I will list some of the highlights: Free – Not only free of charge, but also in the sense of freedom. »

O’Reilly’s codeZoo (aliases: CodeOrNot, RateMyHack) launched last week. It’s like Version Tracker for developers, which I think is long overdue. It’s rare enough when you find someone who isn’t writing the 1.456e52th linked-list implementation, let alone when you find someone actually using the best tool for the job; I blame the universities for this. Hopefully, a pretty corporate-backed website with a search feature, advertisements, and links to the latest O’Reilly titles will remedy that problem. »

CBC played the first episode of the new Doctor Who series last night; Ms. Vissers and I watched it. I had avoided securing myself an unauthorized reproduction of the show, so as to preserve the phosphorus glory that is only achieved through the inability to skip commercials. Doctor Who is definitely going to be one of my regularly watched shows from now on, but I’ve always had a thing for British sci- fi. »

Planet Dal CS is nearing critical mass; with only a few more subscriptions it will become self-sustainable. To help it reach this point, and to reward existing subscribers to the Planet, I have launched the Planet Dal CS Subscriber Loyalty Programme What is the Loyalty Programme? Existing subscribers to Planet Dal CS (henceforth referred to as ‘the Planet’) as of 04/02/05 receives 100 points towards their account. Every entry (or ‘post’) a subscriber makes to their weblog (henceforth referred to as ‘the blog’ or ‘online journal’ or ‘electro-diary’) earns said subscriber 10 points towards their account. »

Here’s to a super-fun april 1st. At least one of you got punk’d (time zones are no excuse!). Three of my favourite pranks this year have to be: G12 and mandatory donations Hipster PDF How to put on pants And remember kids, lock your workstations! »

The Waterfront Warehouse Bash was brilliant. Thanks to these two guys, and everyone else who was involved, for an awesome night. »