Mark Roseman's Blog

Canadian vs. American Values.

Had a chance recently to read Michael Adams' Fire and Ice, which is a comparative study of Canadian and American values. Based on a series of three polls (all pre-9/11... 1992, 1996, and 2000) the book reports on how peoples' values in the two countries are changing. What's interesting of course is that the changes are going in very opposite directions in the two countries, with the Canadian polling data suggesting a move in a more conventionally post-modern direction, and the American more retrenching and nihilistic. Would love to see how the pace of these trends has been affected by recent world events.

What I found particularly interesting was the analysis based on different regions in the USA; there were incredibly large variations, with areas like New England being much closer to Canadian values (contrast that with the deep south). All in all, I found the book mapped well onto my own experiences and those of others, providing a nice easy-to-read but analytic look on some important sociological trends.

Under one month to go.

The written part of Pauline's Royal College exam is in just under a month (the oral part not until about the start of June). Going to be a pretty busy month for her, but at least she's been dealing with it really well so far. I'm just going to try to stay out of her way!

Another Nice Day.

Another really nice day out today. Was hoping to go out for a nice long run, but my gut was telling me that lots of bouncing around might not be the brighest idea in the world, so went out for a bit of a walk instead (looking forward to working out on the back deck soon!)

Speaking of, picked up another good gluten-free cookbook this weekend. Been around a year without wheat already (luckily its just that, not all gluten.. heck, and you thought I was picky about what I could eat before!). While there's a lot of stuff you can get at the grocery store now, and I did have some decent recipes already (our pantry is getting weird looking), it's definitely good to get a few more ideas. Sure glad I've got time to cook at home though.

Completely off topic, but also picked up an iSight webcam for use with iChat too. Impressive little thing.

Cycling.

Gorgeous day out today so took a bit of time out this afternoon and went for a bit of a ride (after a spin class this morning.. ok, probably not the best planning). First time out since last fall, but felt really good... leg strength had really improved with the gym time over the winter. Woo hoo!

Time for Ted to Change Jobs Again.

Now that his current company has bought ProjectForum licenses, its time to move on to another place who will be ripe to purchase as well...

HTML Standards.

Was playing around a little bit with the HTML that CourseForum/ProjectForum generate... cleaning things up, adding ALT tags for images, all that sort of good stuff. Decided to stop short of making it fully validating.. lots of little details, and even things like adding a DOCTYPE can really have some unexpected effects (which in turn can mess up any styles that other people have done... something I'm hesitant to do). So I think for the time being the apps will be like every other not-quite-official-but-good-enough HTML site out there.

Cross-Platform Audio/Video Chat.

The new version of iChat allows audio and video chats with people on Windows running the most recent AOL AIM clients. Cool! Another reason to pick up an iSight...

Ups and Downs of Job Searches.

Pauline's just ignoring the somewhat insulting offer I mentioned. Spoke with the people behind the good one today, and of course, trouble brewing there too.. this time in terms of getting approval at a higher level for the position, though it doesn't sound like they've tried too hard yet (duh). I think she communicated loud and clear that if they want this to happen they'd better get their act in gear, and provided the necessary ammunition to help out.

This is starting to really drag out (and her exams are just over a month away). At this rate we may just get pissed off and go take a really long holiday afterwards instead. Nice to have that option financially.

Background Reading.

Been reading the rather thick Cocoa Programming in my spare time. While I've done a little bit of Cocoa stuff (e.g. the CF/PF front end for OS X) it's mostly been picked up from bits and pieces of random documentation, parallels with other systems, etc. Though I don't see having the time or need to do any large projects with it in the near future, it's good to be aware what is readily available - or in other words, what things might not actually be large projects.

SSL.

I swear, everyone and their dog seemed to have discovered the SSL feature in ProjectForum last week. Mostly the problems were pretty straightforward (confusion around keys), but there were a couple of mostly obscure bugs with the underlying code that needed to get resolved. While its not the most intuitive part of ProjectForum right now, most people who want to use it seem to have pretty good success without needing to completely tear their hair out.