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Biking to Democracy

Although it’s much overshadowed by the clown show to the south of us, there is in fact a federal election going on here in the Great White North. Thanks to some oddness of the Election Canada database, I was no longer registered in the riding I’ve been living in for the last five or so years, so I had to go to my local riding office to re-register — best to do that now instead of election day, the chap at Election Canada’s call centre said.

It’s about 24km by road, round trip, a nice easy bikeride for my day off assuming the damn rain held off. Re-registering took all of two minutes after a nice ride; asking the clerk about voting lead to him mentioning that there was, in fact, an absentee/advance polling station open right there, if I was sure I knew who I was voting for…

Remembering my ABCs, I decided to vote then and there… so I’ve done my bit, now I get to watch the show (ours and the Yanks) and complain about whoever wins!

As a bonus, it didn’t start drizzling until I was nearly home, too…

Are You Registered?

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Mountain Flying

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Dear Lazyweb: gweather icons?

Like most pilots, I’m a weather junkie. I need a regular weather fix even if I’m stuck indoors and not flying. GNOME’s Weather Report panel applet (gweather-applet, technically) is a great fast fix if all I need to know is “Is it raining at the airport right now?”

GNOME Weather Report

Aside from fantastic customisability, gweather has really cool icons for seemingly every combination of weather conditions. I’d love to use some of these icons in my own work (as per whatever license they’re under, of course!) but I can’t seem to find them on my /system files. There must be some way to coax this information out of my system (Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron) but my commandline-fu is weak in this.

So, anyone know where gweather tucks it’s icons away?

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%$#@*# Wireless

Today’s lesson: wireless involving old, cheap, slow routers is a waste of time.

In fact, such wireless networks are the reason Cat5 exists in 75ft lengths.

Getting old and crappy routers actually routing is for those who can’t string nice blue cable…