DerekMartin.ca

1. John Lennon with The Beatles
2. Johnny Cash
3. Stan Rogers (renowned Canadian folk singer - many songs of the sea & adventure)
4. Mark Sandman (the band “Morphine” - can you guess how he died?)
5. Buddy Holly? (i had to wrack my brain for a 5th one)

One of the easiest things to forget over here, is that the showerhead does not turn itself off when you turn the water off. I mean, the water stops flowing, but the passageway to the actual showerhead remains open unless you close it. At least twice now this has resulted in me turning on the water and being completely drenched, immediately, by an unexpected torrent of either hot or cold water - not to mention that it soaks the entire bathroom. Just thought I’d share. Good news for open-source developers — mySQL 5 has stored procedure support! and 5.1 will have trigger & foreign key constraint support! Wheeeeeeeee! Finally! And just in case you haven’t RTFM in a while, it already has transaction & rollback support (as of 4.something). Did you know that the mySQL manual is 1135 pages long? I’m giddy for php5 and mysql5. Oh boy! What’s your favourite sourceforge download location? I always download files from the Ibiblio mirror in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I don’t know why. I just do. “What do I want to do with my life?”This is a question that has been on my mind for quite a while. I’ve always known that I want to help people. First I tried to do this by becoming a psychologist - but I got interested in computers along the way. I also loved my university, and protested Bonnie M. Patterson’s (bmpatterson@trentu.ca) changes to it. That was the beginning of my involvement in activist stuff. Anyway, how could I help people through computers? That question coupled with a bad experience in writing a psychology thesis resulted in TakingITGlobal.org, and started my involvment in the not-for-profit sector. Then I taught web development for a while, and did some freelance web development — a bit of floundering around. I came up with a few cool ideas for how to facilitate actions in grassroots/distributed organizations along the way. Last Thursday I had a conversation with a Croatian Activist (who shall remain nameless), and that person was talking about how there’s a need for web hosting that doesn’t reveal any information about its clients, and doesn’t mind of there’s politically explosive material on the site. Well - since I already like activism and am a web developer, I decided that being a web hosting provider specifically for activists would be cool. A quick search told me that “ActivistHosting.com” was not taken — and so now it is. I own it. I also managed to create a partnership with a Toronto-based hosting company whereby I can re-sell their services under the name ActivistHosting. They get the majority of the profit, but I get some too, and all I have to do is sell/advertise etc. When I get back to Toronto I’m going to try to get more involved in the scene, and promote myself by being out there, with them. I think that will be really cool. Plus, I’ll be ‘helping people’ in different ways. Once that’s up and running I would like to get back into riding horses, and target shooting, and would like to get a bit part in a gangster movie, and would like to build my own house, and learn carpentry and electronics. Also I constantly flirt with the idea of doing a Masters at Trent (while living in Toronto) with Regoczei, but can’t really bear the idea of incurring more debt. It takes as long to drive to Trent as it does to take the bus to Humber. Does anyone know how I can set-up an SMS gateway to allow me to send messages to cell phones? In other news, scientists are baffled by a teenage Russian girl who appears to have x-ray vision. Natasha Demkina from Saransk, has already disproved several medical diagnoses without the benefit of x-rays or ultra-sound, and has not made any mistakes.

Comments from my old blog:

mom said: i think you have been away too long, our shower at home is the same and you have just forgotten! i think many are. the process of life is, paramount, it is the journey that is important, . if you ever achieve all your dreams and goals, i would expect you would no longer be living, at least not in the full sense of the word. so…when you stop learning, you stop living. love mom at 2004-01-19 15:35:15

(frank)[http://chromewaves.net] said: Mark Sandman died of a heart attack on stage. at 2004-01-20 12:56:57

derek said: What kind of activities/substances can make a relatively young guy keel over on stage? It was right around when ecstasy was becoming popular ‘underground’, along with many other ‘goodies’. Perhaps it was just too much bacon & sausages, but I dunno… at 2004-01-20 13:09:50

Steve said: My Top 5 5: Stevie Ray Vaughn 4: The Doors 3: Ella Fitzgerald / Louis Armstrong 2: Miles Davis 1: Frank Sinatra

i could easily come up with top 100!! at 2004-01-21 01:50:15

(uncle wiggly)[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000996GS/qid=1074696107/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-9687115-6577542] said: Come Poop With Me at 2004-01-21 14:44:19

(matt dan)[http://www.mattdan.com] said: Hey I like Japancakes too! Who knew…. at 2004-01-22 14:29:45