blog.mroberts.me

Bear McCreary - Passacaglia - Solo Piano (by bearmccreary)

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:22:00 -0400

Bear McCreary - Passacaglia - Solo Piano (by bearmccreary)

gameofthrones: Daenerys

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:34:33 -0400

gameofthrones:

Daenerys

All Out: AllOut.org Thanks Electronic Arts (EA) for Standing Up For LGBT Youth, Visibility

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:24:34 -0400

All Out: AllOut.org Thanks Electronic Arts (EA) for Standing Up For LGBT Youth, Visibility:

alloutorg:

In Two Days, Over 60,000 Sign Petition Urging Electronic Arts to Resist the Power of the Dark Side

San Francisco, CA - In the face of right-wing attacks by the Family Research Council, consumers and citizens around the world are strongly backing one of the largest video game makers,…

On the Decline of our Political Environment

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:15:00 -0500

(Image via CBC.ca - Image Gallery - This week in Canadian politics)

Note: I am not associated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the signs they are holding just express how I feel.

TL/DR: Assuming the accusations are true, did vote suppression win the Tories the election? Nope. Continue reading if you are interested in seeing how I came up with this.

It’s time to stop being nonpartisan. Looking at the political news recently I see a lot of stuff happening which I would have never expected to hear about Canada. Seriously, what the hell is going on in this country? I hope the RCMP and Elections Canada get to the bottom of it, and the people responsible are appropriately punished for breaking the law.

Watching a CTV Atlantic interview last week, the question was put forward to a political analyst: if enough of the close political ridings were affected (where the Tories won by close margins) and it was discovered through the investigation that vote suppression techniques were used to discourage enough Liberal & NDP voters that the results of the elections were invalid, would Elections Canada nullify the previous results and call by-elections?

The political analyst said no, that the Tories did get a majority so even if a few ridings were affected, it probably wouldn’t have had a large effect on the house composition. So let’s do a little analysis:

Conservatives: 165 seats
NDP: 101 seats
Liberal: 35 seats

Potential seats affected: Riding | Incumbent (runner up | # votes)

But let’s throw out the results where the complaining party won, or the victory margin was > 1000* people. This isn’t because these ridings aren’t important, any election fraud should be taken seriously, but I just want to see if vote suppression bought the election.

*Not much information has been released on the number of calls made in each riding, so I am going to say anything beyond 1000 people is a clear victory, and the phone tampering would not have affected one way or the other. This might change if more specific numbers are released, and I will update my analysis.

Liberals:

~~Cambridge (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 14,000 votes, Liberal by 21,000)~~
~~Egmont (P.E.I.) Conservative (Liberal by 5000 votes)~~
~~Eglinton-Lawrence (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 4000 votes)~~
Etobicoke Centre (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 26 votes)
~~Guelph (Ont.) Liberal (Tory by 6000 votes)~~
~~Hamilton East-Stoney Creek (Ont.) NDP (Tory by 4000 votes, Liberal by 16,000)~~
~~Haldimand-Norfolk (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 13,000)~~
~~Kitchener-Conestoga (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 17,000, Liberal by 18,000)~~
~~Kitchener-Waterloo (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 2000)~~
~~Kingston and the Islands (Ont.) Liberal (Tory by 1000)~~
~~Lac-Saint-Louis (Que.) Liberal (NDP by 2000, Tory by 3000)~~
~~London North Centre (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 2000)~~
~~London West (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 11,000)~~
Mississauga East-Cooksville (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 676)
~~Mount Royal (Que.) Liberal (Tory by 2000)~~
~~Niagara Falls (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 16,000, Liberal by 18,000)~~
Nipissing-Timiskaming (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 18)
~~Oakville (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 13,000)~~
~~Ottawa-Orléans (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 4000)~~
~~Ottawa West-Nepean (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 7000)~~
~~Parkdale-High Park (Ont.) (also on the NDP list) NDP (Liberal by 7000, Tory by 17,000)~~
~~Perth-Wellington (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 15,000, Liberal by 16,000)~~
~~Pierrefonds-Dollard (Que.) NDP (Liberal by 2000, Tory by 3000)~~
~~Saint Boniface (Man.) Conservative (Liberal by 8000)~~
~~Simcoe-Grey (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 20,000, Liberal by 23,000)~~
~~St. Catharines (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 13,000, Liberal by 15,000)~~
~~St. Paul’s (Ont.) Liberal (Tory by 4,000)~~
~~Sudbury (Ont.) (also on the NDP list) NDP (Tory by 10,000, Liberal by 14,000)~~
~~Sydney-Victoria (N.S.) Liberal (Tory by 765 votes)~~
~~Vancouver South (B.C.) Conservative (Liberal by 4000)~~
~~Wascana (Sask.) Liberal (Tory by 1532)~~
~~Wellington-Halton Hills (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 26,000)~~
Willowdale (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 961)
Winnipeg South Centre (Man.) Conservative (Liberal by 722)

NDP:

~~Davenport (Ont.) NDP (Liberal by 10,000)~~
~~Edmonton-Centre (Alta.) Conservative (NDP by 11,000)~~
~~Edmonton East (Alta.) Independant/Tory (NDP by 7,000)~~
Elmwood-Transcona (Man.) Conservative (NDP by 300)
~~Essex (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 7000)~~
~~Ottawa Centre (Ont.) NDP (Conservative by 19,000)~~
~~Parkdale-High Park (Ont.) (also on Liberal list) NDP (Liberal by 7000, Tory by 17,000)~~
~~South Shore-St. Margaret’s (N.S.) Conservative (NDP by 3000)~~
~~Sudbury (Ont.) (also on Liberal list) NDP (Tory by 10,000, Liberal by 14,000)~~
~~Thunder Bay-Superior North (Ont.) NDP (Tory by 17,000)~~
~~Windsor-Tecumseh (Ont.) NDP (Tory by 7000)~~
~~Winnipeg South (Man.) Conservative (Liberal by 8000, NDP by 17,000)~~

Conservative

~~Peterborough (Ont.) Conservative (NDP by 15,000)~~

Green Party

~~Saanich-Gulf Islands (B.C.) Green (Conservative by 9000)~~

The Final Cut:

Liberals:

Etobicoke Centre (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 26 votes)
Mississauga East-Cooksville (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 676)
Nipissing-Timiskaming (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 18)
Willowdale (Ont.) Conservative (Liberal by 961)
Winnipeg South Centre (Man.) Conservative (Liberal by 722)

NDP: Elmwood-Transcona (Man.) Conservative (NDP by 300)

Okay, what would this do to the house?

Conservatives: 165 seats - 6 = 159 seats
NDP: 101 seats + 1 = 102 seats
Liberal: 35 seats + 5 = 40 seats

Results:

The Conservatives still have a majority government (>154) but the margin is closer.
The NDP are still the official opposition.
The Liberals have 40 seats.

What did it change? Not much.

However, if this is true, I can imagine that the Tories being convicted of election fraud would change the minds of lots of people across Canada, and if you performed an election again, the Tories would loose even more seats as a result.

Sources:

Scored by Bear McCreary, www.bearmccreary.com (Battlestar...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:56:00 -0500

Scored by Bear McCreary, www.bearmccreary.com (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, Eureka fame)

I have always loved space.

(via CAD The patches begin) Disregard the SWTOR references,...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:41:06 -0500

(via CAD The patches begin)

Disregard the SWTOR references, Obama or Tuvok?

(via FoxTrot 12/25/2011) $sponsored_device = “Blackberry...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:08:21 -0500

(via FoxTrot 12/25/2011)

$sponsored_device = “Blackberry Playbook”;

Yep, got a BB Playbook for Christmas, my parents picked on up for super cheap but didn’t really know what it was or what it was for [“Matthew, that is kinda big for a phone, isn’t it?”] so they gave it to me.

So far its only redeeming feature is that the Android Market is coming in February.

(via Lesson #1271 - Nutmeg)

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 12:38:01 -0500

(via Lesson #1271 - Nutmeg)

"A documented bug is not a bug; it is a feature."

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:18:42 -0500

“A documented bug is not a bug; it is a feature.”

- James P. MacLenna (via wihtiko)

Dear Internet: It's No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:17:00 -0500

Dear Internet: It's No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works:

NO WAY! A geeky, safe-for-work Cyanide and Happiness comic?...

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:07:43 -0500

NO WAY! A geeky, safe-for-work Cyanide and Happiness comic? (via http://www.explosm.net/)

jephjacques: UN Hearing On AI Rights

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:54:53 -0500

jephjacques: UN Hearing On AI Rights:

jephjacques:

The subject of this debate is whether AIs are “people-” whether they possess the same degree of personhood as humans, and whether that entitles them to the same rights.

You have heard all the arguments for and against the consciousness, intelligence, free will, and cognition of artificial…

Brand Identity

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:41:00 -0500

Brand Identity:

A striking resemblance to Dharma Initiative supplies ;)

ALIENWARE M11x! And what’s the first game to go on...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:35:45 -0500

ALIENWARE M11x! And what’s the first game to go on it’s fast little hard drive? MINECRAFT!!!

The End of an Internet (Explorer) Era

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:12:00 -0400

The End of an Internet (Explorer) Era:

It’s about time! According to Arstechnica, http://arst.ch/rg6 which cites http://www.netmarketshare.com, Internet Explorer has finally dropped below 50% browser market share. As a web designer, this comes as a great relief.

Microsoft’s slow adoption (read: blatant ignorance) to web standards, has been a curse to web designers for years. Instead of focusing on design and usability, the design process becomes more about fixing all the little bugs that IE throws as it tries to load and display W3C compliant web pages which should render perfectly.

This is not my first IE post nor my business partner’s, as early as 2007 Malcolm’s posted:

and I’ve posted:

We’ve been disappointing since we started our company and unfortunately, unlike my last post suggested, Microsoft never really did accept standards.

For the same reason that Microsoft swept Netscape Navigator out of the browser wars, (before they even started) Microsoft installing Internet Explorer as the default browser on all Windows machines skyrocketed their market share because for the average user, the E icon was the internet.

The increasing publicity of alternative browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari; and Google’s educational website, http://www.whatbrowser.com are trying to increase the knowledge of the average user so they can make an informed decision and not just blindly accept IE.

An other aspect cited in the article is the increasing usage of mobile devices, a market in which Microsoft has yet to make any significant contribution.

I hope that Microsoft does step up it’s game, competition is key to any healthy marketplace and when corporations compete, it’s the users who benefit, but the way thing’s are going doesn’t look hopeful.

Also available on http://blog.stikmen.ca

A Wiki? Yeah!

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:45:00 -0400

A Wiki? Yeah!:

http://wiki.mroberts.me

Full disclosure: I totally stole this idea from Wesley, but it has helped me study for Psychology so far so I am going to run with it. We spend so much time writing these notes things, why shouldn’t we do something with them?

If someone in my classes finds these, it might be useful to them, maybe no one will but having to type them out and format them forces me to re-read them and that’s studying. #BrainHack

Also, I have decided to add in as much supplemental material as I can, pictures / links to articles / Wikipedia, to make the notes as complete as possible.

In my Psyc*2390 class, my prof mentioned how the depth cue of occlusion was one of the first used by artists, dating back to Egyptian art. In that section of the notes, I added a link to an Egyptian painting that illustrates that.

Hopefully I will keep this up, but it may stagnate when I get super busy, and as for my classes from previous semesters… If I ever get super bored, I might put them up, but it won’t have the studying incentive, so it might be later rather than sooner.

Tech Specs: I’m using DokuWiki, which is a fairly simple wiki platform designed with PHP and uses files as storage not a DB (for easy backups - just copy the wiki folder), has revision control, has a fair amount of plugins to increase functionality and allows for ACL enough to satisfy me (keep them griefers away [Minecraft reference]). It also features a simplified syntax similar to MediaWiki, which I prefer to WYSIWYG.

I debated keeping it publicly editable in case someone wanted to add additional information to my notes, but I realized that they would stop being my notes in that case, and I want to be in control of them. That being said - if someone wants to join, send me an email and I will give you an account. If someone other than me joins, I will add some type of talk page feature (using the aforementioned plugins) so we can discuss before we edit each other’s pages.

#BAD11 Blog Action Day 2011

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:13:19 -0400

#BAD11 I know I am a couple days late… silly university being busy and all that.

Hello World

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:02:00 -0400

I have decided to follow in the steps of my business partner Malcolm McCulloch, and friend Wesley Ellis, and add a blog to my personal site.

My journey started with Ruby on Rails and PHP-MySQL, but I decided I didn’t want to spend the time to develop something from scratch. Looking into platforms like Google Sites, Blogger and Wordpress, I wanted to completely customize the design to fit it into the current site design. I finally reached a decision to use Tumblr.

This is the final result.

I am still working out some design kinks, but it is complete enough to publicize. I decided not to have a picture of me on the back… that seems a little vain for a blog, whereas my main site is more portfolio / resume driven. Right now it is a picture I snapped from Cape D’Or, near Advocate, NS but this will probably change. (Maybe in the future I will set up a rotating background between a couple predefined pictures.)

Signing off for now,

Matt