SV Concordia Lost - All Hand Safe

The West Island College Class Afloat's tall ship sinks off the coast of Brazil

The tall ship S.V. Concordia (from www.classafloat.com)

Just starting to get news articles about the loss of a vessel I can best describe as one on which I always wanted to sail but never did. It is always sad to hear of the loss of any vessel, tall ships make that loss feel closer to home. All initial reports indicate that all hands are safe and accounted for - that is the silver lining.

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Killing a Virus on a Friend's Machine

killing the dswave32.dll and it's associated garbage

I spent the last 2 days working on a friend's computer to remove a nasty little virus that the anti-virus software didn't seem to do much about apart from detecting it. To help, I reported my findings over on my technical blog - but I thought it might be good to cross post that here for your reference.

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Inhibeo Egrotatio

Calling in sick for work? Throw a good latin name at them...

For those times when you really need to call in sick from work - you might as well have a good illness to use for the big "phone call" Seeing as Latin is frequently the language of choice for things medical... here is a good one "Inhibeo Egrotatio"

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Positions Rolling In

Great to see the tracks from Swift and Grace as they sail through the summer

It's great to see the positions coming in from the summer program as the Pacific Swift and Pacific Grace ply our local waters. For the armchair sailor like me, this is about as close as we can get to be back out on the water...

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2009 Minor Softball Team

A fun way to help out in the community

The 2009 PawPrint MiniMite Team

Back in 2007 I started sponsoring a minor softball team in Sechelt. This year they sent a little bag of goodies after the season had ended. It contained a photo, ball cap, and card of thanks.

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Clarks Maritime Online

A new web site for some old friends

Screenshot of the clarksmaritime.com site

I'm pleased to announce the launch of the Clarks Maritime web site, a home for the various nautical endeavours of Martyn and Margaret Clark (who will be familiar to many of you by name) This site was a joy to design and produce.

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Which OS - My MS Muddle

XP64, Vista, or wait for Windows 7 - trying to unravel the OS arena

In my ongoing quest to get more performance out of my system, and thus more productivity for my day-to-day existence I'm starting to bat around what will be my next operating system choice. As much as I complain about Micro$oft I know it will be some form of windows - the only question now is... which one!

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Getting over a cold

not with much help from these pills...

Spent the last 2 days getting over a bit of a cold - but it seems a good excuse to post these funny "pills" my parents gave me for my birthday. In reality they are just mints but I love the idea as a great joke.

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Robertson II - Two Years Later

Looking back, 2 years after we lost the Robby

Sailing off the Sunshine Coast

Strangely I received an email about the Robertson II just yesterday - exactly two years after the tragic night that she ran aground and left us forever. It reminded me that so many who will be touched (wounded) by learning of her fate, probably still don't even know it.

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Firefox 3.5 Launch

The fastest Firefox launching today

As promised I'm going to keep this blog going - but talk about whatever I'm currently thinking about and not necessarily try to make it relate to nautical happenings - so here we go with that... Today marks the launch of the latest version of Firefox (my favorite web browser) and I simply must rattle on about it.

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SALTS 2009 Summer Program Starts

... and I return from being the ghost of blogging past

Today marks both the start of the SALTS 2009 Summer program, and my return to trying to keep this site up to date with some news of happenings around my world. I Was a bit reluctant to return to blogging here because my nautical endeavors have been reduced of late - but - probably better to continue and be less nautical then not to continue at all.

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Google Chrome -

Sample of the comic-book release notes

Just when you thought it you knew the browser contenders - along comes Google Chrome to rock the boat. I feel like the proverbial bowl of petunias saying "Oh no, not again..." but here we are - released in a unique Google way - comic-book style...

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Oh My Gotcha!

For anyone considering an upgrade to MySQL 5.1 BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE I just spent the morning working with a web host who also spent the night after what should have been a simple upgrade completely fried several databases! We did find the workaround though...

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More on AIS

AIS Receiver

Over the weekend I finally got my Java based AIS decoder software working and have started to post technical details on my AIS information pages for the benefit of others looking to accomplish similar tasks.

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Are they done yet?

I know that a lot of people love them but for those that don't, myself included, I think it's about time to turn off the Olympics and get on with real life...

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My First Computer

Heathkit H89 Computer

I just found a photo online of my very first computer (now I feel old) it was called the Heathkit H89 (kit because you build it yourself) and was given to us by a friend of my father who built it.

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Street Level Maps Ready

Sample Street Map

After a little over a week of work I finally have the entire Sunshine Coast road network mapped out, including ferry routes and some of the major routes to get here.

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Fun With Street Maps

Sechelt Street Map Example

Now that the new mapping interface is running well, it seems many of my customers want street level data - only problem is that that data is very expensive (roughly $25,000.00 per year!!!) so I needed to find an alternative...

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Log of the Pacific Grace (2007-2008)

Throughout the voyage of the Pacific Grace 2007-2008 during the "Pacific Odyssey" offshore voyage Bonice Anderson kept a meticulous log of what transpired. A bound copy was presented to her upon their return. You can download a copy of it here.

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Power Failures, Wind Storms, and Forest Fires

East Porpoise Bay Forest Fire

Some days are mundane, yesterday was anything but. It started in the morning with an unseasonable wind storm - gusting about 40kn plus all morning. Then, for obvious reasons the power flickered off rendering my work day basically over. On going outside to find something "powerless" to do, I first sighted the water bombers descending over Sechelt...

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New Tracking Map Interface

Sample recent vessel positions map

I have mentioned this quite some time ago - but it's finally online and running for the 2008 summer SALTS trips. New and Improved interface for vessel tracking that uses an advanced open-source mapping engine along with custom chart data for coastlines around the world.

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R.I.P. Mr. Carlin

George Carlin

One of my favorite comedians has passed away. While he is well known for his sometimes unpredictable performances and for pushing boundaries - my favorite aspect of his humour was always his intelligent look at English grammar and the idiosyncrasies of our society.

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The printer knows

I recently printed out a Service Overview from my printer and was very surprised to learn all that the thing was tracking silently in the background... For example, I know know that since it was purchased the paper trey has been removed 83 times!

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Welcome Home Pacific Grace

It's been just over a year since the grace left Victoria for places South and interesting. Today marks her return home and having tracked her progress across the Pacific these last months it's wonderful to welcome her home.

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Firefox 3 and Languages

Been working on the back-end of all my web sites again in earnest lately - largely in the vein of translations and multilingual compatibility. At the same time I'm now using the Release Candidate 2 of Firefox 3 as my primary browser and loving every minute of it!

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