The Blue Screen of Death for Dummies

Ah, the evil blue screen of death. Now, my home PC is running a (pirated) version of XP and is remarkably stable for a computer bought in August '99. My work laptop, running Win2K and Notes as the email client? That crashes daily.

The death screen isn't as easy to figure out. In fact, there's often no way for anyone except a technician packing professional-grade diagnostic tools to find the culprit. A bug in one program can corrupt data in
the computer's memory, causing an entirely different program to crash later. Bad hardware will also often lead to software errors; when the hardware doesn't send back data as expected, programs will start to fail. "A broad range of conditions can cause a Fatal Exception error," shrugs Microsoft's help documentation. "As a result, troubleshooting a Fatal Exception error can be difficult."

I'm sure if I asked any of my geekier friends, they'd agree and shrug as well, "True dat." Except that the article does point out for prosumers a likely solution (other than buying a grumpy geek beer):

You probably won't be able to figure out what's wrong with your computer by reading the gibberish on the Blue Screen of Death, but you can make an educated guess. A few years ago, Microsoft set up the Windows Error Reporting Service to help find out where crashes come from. After a Windows application—or your whole PC—shuts down, a box pops up asking you to send a confidential error report. Using pattern-matching software to sift through the data from millions of these reports, Microsoft
discovered a surprising statistic. Seventy percent of Windows crashes involve one particular kind of software: device drivers. (I couldn't get stats for the Mac, but, at least anecdotally, device drivers are a major cause of drop-dead crashes.)

So, in conclusion:

...If your computer is crashing regularly, you won't do any harm by looking for new device drivers. (One exception: Don't mess with video drivers unless you know what you're doing—you could end up with an
unusable computer.) Always be sure to save a copy of your current driver before installing a new one (click here for instructions). If your new driver causes more problems than it cures, Windows XP has a Control Panel option to roll back to the previous version, or you can swap it back manually on older versions of Windows. You can always just cross your fingers, search the Web, and try again.

Fishy

Good to see the mandarins at the Ontario health ministry have decided the best way to "save the health care system for a generation" is to start by banning fresh sushi. Seriously. Interestingly, John Allemang of the Globe beat Tanya Talaga & Greg Quill of the Star to this (I would link to Peggy Wente's column, but alas, the Globe's website is no longer worth visiting). So... People are up in outrage.

That said, here's some other thoughts on it:

• The funniest part is how no one will take responsibility for the new mandate. . .Ah, the age-old question, Canadian Sushi - a federal or provincial responsibility?
• http://www.iht.com/articles/513969.html Most Sushi is actually flashfrozen. Who knew?
• From that article: Both Masa and Nobu, considered to be amongst New York's best Japanese restaurants, use fish that has been flash frozen (at -60C). The sushi chef at Nobu can't tell the difference. It's probably worthwhile comparing fish that has been frozen (at -10C) to fish that has been flash frozen (at -60C).

post-movie thoughts

OK, so I watched Wimbledon tonight after playing ultimate (and in lieu of actually completing my work). Given that it's from the same people who created the Hugh Grant bashful romantic comedy factory (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually, etc.), I thought there was a reasonable chance that this would work - not to mention that I can't remember the last decent tennis sequence in a movie. Anyway, it's adequate, but indicative of the downward trend for Working Title. Paul Bettany is de rigeur as the bashful Brit and Kirsten Dunst is ok as the freshfaced female star. That said, the tennis sequences were awkward and uncomfortable to watch. My understanding is that they faked them (playing "air tennis" as it were), and then dubbed the ball's movements in afterwards. Problem - both actors' form looked like poor rec level players, and then the rallies were incomprehensible in terms of footwork, positioning, number of shots, shot choices, etc. Oh well, nice try then.

That said, if you're interested in the intersection of art and tennis, I will go with my old standby: David Foster Wallace's essay, Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm for Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness.

Tangent: the only mainstream sports writer with a focus on tennis is John Wertheim -check out his weekly tennis mailbag at www.cnnsi.com on Monday afternoons. His take on the movie?

Classic pwn consulting

This email pretty much sums up why I decided to do this:

hey, RC has visitors from australia and
wants to take a trip to show them the fall colours. can you please forward me that email you sent out a few days ago regarding the fall colours and where it's good at this time of year?

To which the response was:

Hey,
See http://ontariotravel.net/publications/fallcolourreport.pdf. It's released every Mon and Thurs.
Here's the key highlights:
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Just FYI - I was in Algonquin on Sunday and it was pretty much ideal. However, if there's a rainstorm, I suspect that a lot of leaves will simply drop. Depending on who you're taking (i.e. level of athleticism, age, etc.), the Centennial Ridges trail makes for a great day hike, with lots of views. The Ragged Falls looked great on Sundayas well. South of Algonquin, I didn't see much. Maybe by next weekend that will have changed, but as of right now, I didn't think even Dorset was that good.

Two quick thoughts:

1. Indian summer is the best time of the year in southern Ontario - all the upside of summer (good weather, great umm scenery, etc.) with the upside of autumn (good real scenery, not stupidly hot and humid, fewer tourists and kids in the way, etc.).

2. People dump on the gov't all the time (myself included), but how cool is this report? It combines data and guidance and promotions for the tourism industry. Nice. I'm a big fan.

...And that in turn reminded me that my antipodean housemate's parents are apparently arriving in our (under renovation) hovel, and he's decided that they should go canoeing to truly experience Canada. To which, I say "Good call!" however, he has decided to outsource the planning of this to, umm, pwnc. More later.

Weekend recap

Saturday was wasted on the laptop in a fit of work-related productivity, but Sunday saw a last-minute decision to screw work and drive to Algonquin PP to enjoy the fall colours. After getting a park permit at the west gate, opted to try the Centennial Ridges hike as it promised "scenic views" and was rated "strenuous." The park provides you with a very nice map and commentary at the beginning. Given time constraints, I ran the loop, choosing to run it backwards in order to deal with the steepest hill first. As the guide suggests, scenic views... I took my biking backpack, a bottle of water, the SLR and zoom - took a few pictures, but as they're not developed, see here. Left the trailhead at 12:40, back in the car at 2:35.

I would suggest:

• hiking it in the suggested order - the views do in fact get better, and the trail markers only face one way :)
• carrying more than half a litre of water on a sunny, windy 25 degree day while running a 10km with 1000m of elevation change

The fall colours were maybe 40% turned, predominantly red, with even then, there was a lot of brown tinges in the colour pattern. Still lots to go.

Drive time: 3 hours to west gate