terrill.ca

I can't pull your teeth.

It's like pulling teeth to get your teeth pulled 'round here!
"We can take you now if you have a minute", she said.
"Sure", I promptly replied. I'll take the morning off work if she'll pull my teeth.
... three minutes pass ...
"Looks like they're impacted", she said.
... two more minutes pass ...
"You'll need to see a specialist for these. Suzzy, please get him Dr. C's card."
"You mean you can't pull them yourself? But I can see them", I begged - but to no avail.

8 Years post secondary, and she couldn't pull two teeth! To me, that is a basic skill all dentist must be able to practise. If they can't – they neither deserve the prefix on their name nor the letters that come after it. It's like me somehow getting my Masters in Mathematics, but not knowing how to take a double integral of a continuous function. Not only that, but miraculously getting a job after that! It's not an easy task, but you really should know it... after 8 years.

Pencil Crayon Artwork from Highschool

You'll never guess what I found today!

For about a year I have assumed that my artwork from high school had been lost in a move. Nope, it was hiding safely at my parents house. So, I cracked out the Nikon D70, and started digitizing everything I could get my hands on.

Unfortunately I know that this isn't an exhaustive list. A few pieces have been lost over time due to weathering, accidents, and being given away as gifts. I've tried to keep as many as possible though. Here are a few. Commentary on the pieces is available in the Flickr PhotoSet.

In retrospect it is always better to give prints. There's few things more satisfying than unrolling(*cringe* rolling is bad...) an original piece. I'm working on getting them framed, don't worry.

Photoshop Tip: When digitizing artwork using a camera, you'll inevitable find that the colour 'just ain't right', no matter what kind of lighting you try. To regain some of the bright-whites and dark-blacks try adjusting the levels in Photoshop to match the histrogram, like so:

Fancy graphing with PHP and CSS

Sometimes I just can't control my 'Not-Invented-Here' syndrome. Vertical bar graphs, unlike their easy-sleezy cousins (horizontal bar graphs) are hard to create. They require a bit of CSS trickery and some relaxing of the "no style within my body tags, thank you" mentality. Thus, they are a fun challenge for someone who is obsessed with markup. If you combine them with a database full of information, it only gets better.

I can't count the number of times that I've implemented something similar to this at work. Feeling more than a bit sorry for people whos' job it is to create stuff like this in Excel on a weekly basis, I wrote a tutorial about making them for yourself. Hopefully someone finds it useful. Its also an excuse for me to show off a few of the styles that I came up with.

If you write any styles to go with this, I'd love to see them. I may even start a little gallery of graphing styles, so yeah... contribute! Oh, and I'm listening so if you have some feedback, let me know.

BarCamp Waterloo

I signed up to do a demo at BarCamp Waterloo a while ago now, and it looks like they've set the date for Saturday, March 3rd. In case you are wondering, from what I can tell this does not involve any alcohol. It is in fact a gathering of tech-savvy web oriented types. This will be my first time attending, so I don't know exactly what to expect.

If you're one who's all up on the web 2.0 scene and have something to demo, or a strong voice to contribute, then let it be heard and join us in the brand new Accelerator Center. Wow, that site looks like a pre-fab p.o.s. by the way. Don't let it fool you though, the building is really quite nice (Yes, that is a <marguee> tag).

That'll be $25 Million, please

Slashdot gave me a reason to write about global warming.

Branson's offering up a $25 Million bounty to whoever can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1 Billion tonnes per year. That would be easy though. According to this emissions report documenting 1997, there are over 5 Billion tonnes produced every year. By now it is probably 6. So, we need to reduce it by 1/6^th.

The Solution: mandatory real time Fuel Economy Displays in all new cars. Ten years from now about 50% of the active auto population would have them. 50% of people would at least be conscience of their bad driving habits and, hopefully, be making the necessary corrections to increase their fuel economy.

Could 50% of people drive 30% better? Well, there is certainly a lot of room for improvement. Either way, things would be better. Every person I've every met who's used one gets addicted to it and continually tries to beat their old records.

You only need to take a short walk to see how stupid most city drivers are. Pedal to the floor on green... continue as fast as possible, changing lanes if needed... 100 yards from a red stomp on the brake... repeat. Show them how bad it really is and maybe things will catch on. Who knows, with the extra attention being payed to how their driving, it may even improve collision and accident rates.

Looks like one forward thinking senator's had this thought also. Maybe she will split the $25 Mill with me :)