We found 0 resources for you...

Personal Rants

Compared to OC-Transpo, I prefer STM. However its not without its blunders…

Matthew 0 Comments

The Société de Transports de Montréal (STM) has been a great refreshment compared to OC Transpo back in Ottawa, the buses here just seem to flow better. And without the stretch buses, there are less jackknives in the winter, but as with any vehicle, the buses still get stuck in the snow (as I found out last snow fall, had to walk 45 minutes from Lachine to Dorval).

The only thing I cannot compare to OC Transpo is the Montreal Metro System. Now some could argue I could compare the Metro to the O-Train, which is similar but quite different.…

Continue reading
Personal

Easy Netflix on Linux, well Ubuntu based flavours anyway.

Matthew 2 Comments

Well this has plagued me for years, trying to run Netflix on Linux. The root cause for Netflix not working on Linux is Microsoft Silverlight, the viewer Netflix uses to stream the movies (Its a plugin like Flash). Now Linux DOES have an open source equivalent called Moonlight, however it does not have DRM (Digital Rights Management) support which Netflix requires to run.

netflix600
I search about 2 years ago or so for a solution and came up with NOTHING at all on how to accomplish this. Between then and now I am sure a few tutorials of how to hack it using Wine have appeared, but dealing with Wine and getting things to work right can be a bit tricky, and definitely not for everyone.…

Continue reading

Losing my bearings, or maybe just my mind…

Matthew 0 Comments

Took the “Orange” Line for the first time this morning… I can’t believe I lost my bearings…. Every Morning for the last 3 months I have always taken the “Green” Line from Lionel-Groulx Metro Station, which I take one stop to get to off at the Atwater station. This Morning however, I stopped by the Couch-Tard (Mac’s Milk for you Ontarians) to grab a pack of smokes and a few drinks for work… I saw the metro arrive and quickly hopped on without thinking.

Something didn’t seem right, the seats were wrong, they were black instead of blue, the side walls were orange instead of grey… I had my headphones on so I didn’t hear the next stop announcement so it didn’t really all click in till I arrived at the Georges-Vanier Metro Station.…

Continue reading

New Project This Summer – Exploring the Montreal Metro

Matthew 0 Comments

Well now that my life is getting somewhat back in order, I have decided to take on a personal project this summer. Being from Ottawa, Ontario, the Montreal Metro system is somewhat of a marvel to me, having miles and miles of underground tunnels, linked in with something they call the RESO, which is the underground city of Montreal which connects several malls, office buildings and apartment buildings in the downtown core.

After living in Montreal for over a year now I take the Metro on a daily basis, but I only go one stop. Not much in the way of exploration.…

Continue reading

Windows 7, The last of a great Windows Series….

Matthew 0 Comments

As the title suggest, Windows has gone off the deep end, well at its core anyway.

Today I installed a test run of Windows 8 Pro in a virtual environment just to see what the OS had to offer… within the first 5 minutes I was pulling out my hair and screaming for Windows 7.

When you first install Windows 8, you are presented with, well, as their commercial theme song would suggest, “Everything At Once” which to some, like myself, is considered information overload. When I first saw the Windows 8 Menu, I had no idea what I was doing.…

Continue reading
Personal

Happy New Year! 2013 – Day 364

Matthew 0 Comments

2013

Well, its my 364th day on “The Island”, and for those who have never read my blog, or even know who I am, it means I have spent 364 days living outside my native Ontario, on Montreal Island Quebec. That’s right 1 day short of a year. On January 2nd, 2012, I left my brothers apartment in Cornwall Ontario and made the huge leap to move myself to a whole new city and province. The very odd thing is, is how this all came about…

It all started about 2 years ago, I was working for Davis + Henderson (Formerly Resolve) as an Real Time Analyst when half the team got lynched during the take over.…

Continue reading
Personal Technology

Ghost in the machines

Matthew 0 Comments

Finally having a job in my field is not without its challenges. I came across a situation I cannot explain, let alone understand. Mid morning yesterday one of my colleagues informed me that the 2 computer systems at the circulation desk had, for what ever reason, dropped off the internet. As we had work being done in the area the night before my first thought was that they got disconnected, but on second thought that could not be a solution; for one, it’s too easy, and second, the systems still had access to the PDC (Primary Domain Controller) which allows the users to log in.…

Continue reading
Personal

Holidays are near, I want an 84-in TV….

Matthew 0 Comments

Its rare that I have sit at the Volunteer desk at work, and when I do, I like to browse the web, something I don’t get do very often, well besides the obvious Facebook and email browsing. During my frolic through the interweb I came across Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide which lists 3 levels of gifts, the On the Cheap, which they feature Apple TV, which allows you to stream content from your apple devices directly to your TV, along with the ability to connect to Twitter, Facebook, Netflix and more. On the Mid scale they feature the updated PS3, which would be a nice addition to my own home as its a nice BluRay player and would allow me to play some nice games with my buddy in Ontario (One Province Over).…

Continue reading
Personal

Google now taking walk throughs of Historic Buildings and Businesses

Matthew 0 Comments

Google Maps is a huge resource these days for those looking for directions. In the last few years they have traveled the streets giving you the ability to “Be there” visually instead of just looking ta map. Recently Google has taken on a new challenge, bring you into local businesses and Historical Buildings.

One of the buildings Google has taken on is the Atwater Library and Computer Centre where you can now find a pic of Yours Truly (see picture below).

Some other cool places they have been in are Kappo Nagi in Kyoto, Japan, Chataigner Yves in Paris, France, and even Restaurant Chez Queux here in Montreal, QC.…

Continue reading
Personal

From Ubuntu to PearOS

Matthew 0 Comments

I have been meaning to look for an alternative to Ubuntu since they changed the GUI from Gnome to Unity Desktop. The unity Desktop is so lacking in functionality I just hated it. For the last 2 versions of Ubuntu that I have used (11 and 12 and its subs) it has been bugging me, so I started searching and found a french derivative of Ubuntu called PearOS.

PearOS runs a modified version of the Gnome Desktop, which makes it look even more like a Mac (for those not too familiar with the desktop GUIs, there were 2 major ones back in the day: Gnome which was an Apple knock off, and KDE which was a Windows knock off, I always preferred the Gnome interface).…

Continue reading