In the community of voices I follow online, one of the continuing themes is the narrowness and antiquated coverage provided by NBC(I launched into a screed on the topic this weekend).

I have also heard that many people are using the tools at their disposal (open proxy servers being the most notable) to circumvent the geo-location tools of the providers to view coverage from other national providers. I thought I would share some of my experiences with two of the providers, BBC and CBC.

BBC

Finding proxy servers in the UK turned out to be relatively simple, and I was able to get to the BBC site and view, with substantial performance penalties, some of the video on the site. This was a tactic I have used before, as I am a fan of English Football, and need to use this method to gain access to highlights and match-day broadcasts.

CBC

I am, well, disappointed with the lack of success I have had with the CBC. I hear from people in the homeland that the coverage makes NBC looks like the US is the only country in the Olympics, where the CBC provides a true global perspective. However, finding a proxy server that can fool the CBC video servers has been impossible. Therefore, I continue to not watch any Olympics at all.

I am sure that there are other means (P2P, Torrents, etc.), but I am finding that, well, I don’t care that much. It is the events in South Ossetia / Georgia, Zimbabwe, and other hot-spots that I am finding far more relevant to my day-to-day life.

So while I appreciate some of the challenges posed by circumventing the monopoly of the mind that NBC wants to claim, once that was achieved with the BBC, I found that I was in a So what? position.

But before I give up, has anyone had any success with getting the CBC feeds to work outside Canada?

Just read a story on the BBC site where the chief Latinist (new word to me) bemoans the death of Latin. [here]

Although I would be the first to admit that the teaching of Latin has little relevance in today’s world, I found my lack of Latin a serious hindrance when I was considering the study of Medieval English History in graduate school.

It was offered as a course in high-school, by correspondence only. I often dreamed that I attended one of those brutal old English boarding schools, if only to receive some semblance of a highly impractical liberal and classical education.

I share Father Reginald Foster’s despair over the loss of Latin to our culture. The foundations of who we are, our political and legal structures, are found in Latin (Roman and Medieval; and yes there is a difference), and in Classical Greek. And those items that the Catholic Church tried to hide or destroy, the cultures of the East, and Islam held on to.

Losing the base languages of our global cultures leaves us with poor translations, interpretations of what was said, filtered through the passage of time.

For those of you who are addicted to the mayhem and destruction of Mythbusters, Buster is a beloved, if unfortunate, member of the cast.

Well, Buster may be out of a job.

Apparently, a guy in Minneapolis managed to prove not one, but two myths in a single 10-12 second period [here]. Namely:

1. A person can break through a piece of tempered plate glass with a single impact, thereby exiting the building above ground-level
2. An awning can slow a person’s a 17-storey fall enough to prevent said individual from being killed after exiting the building through a broken window (See #1 above).

Mr. Savage and Mr. Hyneman, give this damn lucky person an award!

Since August of this year, I have been exploring the insides of my mind in greater detail. If you read this blog regularly, you are pretty likely aware of the fluctuations in my mood, and the rationality of my behaviour.

If you get the chance, find and watch The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive hosted by Stephen Fry. In his open, intelligent and witty way, Fry tackles the topic of Bipolar Disorders (oh yes, there are more than one), including his own. If you can find it (you will have to try all of the usual channels to get it in North America), watch it.

So, why am I openly discussing the fact that I am Bipolar in a public forum? Why would I confess to the world, to people who may in the future meet me, or even consider hiring me?

It’s simple. Many months ago, I wrote that if you were going to hire me based on what I had done in the past, or what school I went to, I most likely wouldn’t want to work for your company anyway. The same applies to this illness, this condition I suffer from. If you or your company won’t hire me because I suffer from an illness that is beyond my control, that I will have for the rest of my life, why would I work for your firm?

I have had Bipolar for a long time. I can track the behaviours that identify the condition back into my childhood, through my teens, through until today. Normally, the cycling that I go through is benign, punctuated by periods of utter and complete hyperfocus. Most of the time, hyperfocus is a benefit for me — it is what got me through re-building the GrabPERF interface last year, and helped power me to absorb and write as much on Web performance as I have.

The manic side does have its pitfalls. My mania usually results in buying and spending sprees that have often endangered my financial stability. An example of this is my acquisition or stationery supplies, pen, notebooks and books.

Two weeks ago, I cleaned out my desk and aggregated all of the writing instruments I have purchased over the last 12 months. When I was done, I had filled a 1-gallon Zip-Lock baggie with pens, pencils, highlighters and Sharpies.

In my lifetime, I could never use them all.

I fanatically acquire notebooks. Rhodia, Moleskine, Rite-in-the-Rain, anything. How many of them have I written in? Well, lets just say that my kids will be using my blank notebook collection for many years after I have departed this world.

The spending sprees, the intense desire for the acquisition of things, is my most noticeable manifestation of manic behaviour. In most instances, the manic process starts to wind down after a while. In a few instances, it continues upward. It continues upward until my rational mind dissipates, and I start ranting and raving, making irrational and potentially destructive choices in my life. Choices that have (or could have) affected the course of my life.

I suffer from a small subset of the condition, Bipolar I. What differentiates this group from the standard “manic-depressive” or Bipolar diagnosis is that is more MANIC-depressive, with a sustained emphasis on the manic episodes. Depressive episodes occur, don’t get me wrong; but it is the intense and unstoppable mania that has shaped me more than the depression.

However, this condition is not “curable” in the standard way. It also doesn’t manifest any physical symptoms. So in most cases, people just say that I need to get a grip and get on with my life. I am grateful that I have an understanding and (in some cases) forgiving wife who is intent on helping me control and regulate my behaviour. I am also extremely lucky that my current manager understands this part of me, and gives me the freedom I need to ebb and flow with the condition.

To wrap this up (I hate long postings), I leave you with this thought. In his programme, Fry asks his interview subjects the following question (and I paraphrase it here):

If there was a button you could push, a button that cured you of this condition, and gave you a normal mind, would you press it?

Only one of the interview subjects said yes. Everyone else said that despite the pain and suffering that accompanies the condition, there is no way that they would be willing to give back the state of mind that allowed them to achieve what they had achieved.

We are not in our right mind. And I am proud of that.

Technorati Tags: Bipolar, manic+depression, manic+depressive, Bipolar+I, psychiatric+illness, mental+health, depression, mania, manic

my packing technique is unstoppable

Originally uploaded by ryan christopher.

Sometimes, you have to be in awe.

On a recent musical connect the dots tour through Wikipedia, I stumbled across a reference to Nick Drake. I had first heard of Nick Drake through a review of his work on All Things Considered months ago.

The sound is ephemeral. The sound is haunting. The sound is a lost gem of our time.

It has shocked me how much the songs he made are what I have needed over the last few weeks.

If you get a chance, watch A Skin Too Few, the documentary of his life; you will have to look in the usual places online to find it, as it hasn’t been released on DVD yet.

Find him. Listen. You will never go back.

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you’re here
Brighten my northern sky.

Technorati Tags: Nick+Drake, Bryter+Later, Five+Leaves+Left, Pink+Moon, Tanworth-in-Arden

One of the performance hits that the GrabPERF system has is the dynamic generation of the main page. The nature of the SQL calls and the underlying PHP makes it scale exponentially past a certain number of measurements.

Last night, Kevin Burton made a grand suggestion: generate a static page on a regular schedule.

Duh!

Today, I wrote the script that does this. The performance of the main page has adjusted accordingly.

Yikes!

UPDATE: Ian Holsman reminded that if I use cURL, I can use the exiting PHP to build the pages without a PERL script.

I. AM. AN. IDIOT.

Now, bedtime.

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Web+performance, PHP, MySQL, Dynamic+pages, Static+pages, HTML

Pat Robertson is at it again.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Top US evangelist targets Islam

Outspoken US Christian evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has accused Muslims of planning world domination, and said some were “satanic”.

On his live television programme, The 700 Club, he said radical Islamists were inspired by “demonic power”.

God is banging his head against the wall while Beelzebub is reserving the 11th Circle of Hell just for Pat.

Technorati Tags: Pat Robertson, Religious Extremists, Christian Extremism, 700 Club

At 2AM EDT Oct 30, 2005, it will become 1AM EST Oct 30, 2005. This shift will take us from GMT -4 to GMT -5.

As always, hang onto your hats, as I have no idea how the time change will affect the graphing in GrabPERF. My theory is that there should be double measurements for the 1 AM hour, and the hourly rollup will fail, as there will already be an entry for the time period.

I could write an exception for this twice yearly foobar, but let’s just say this update is scraping the bottom of the GrabPERF punch-list.

At least I don’t have this problem.

This was in my mailbox just now. Huh?!?!?

NEW BBC SERIES

Thinking about having a baby?

We are looking for couples to take part in a new BBC series exploring the science behind getting pregnant and pregnancy. If you are thinking about trying for a baby or have already started trying and would like to find out more, please call us on 0141 204 6620 or e-mail: baby@mentorn.tv

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS – REPLY TO mailto:BABY@MENTORN.TV

We’d like to advise you that we got your email address from a mailing list company. Their lists are compiled from those who have agreed, when visiting relevant websites, to receive contact from third parties

If you would like to be removed from our list please reply to mailto:BABYLIST@mentorn.tv

I am trying to figure out what list I said yes to to get this email.