"Le Patron" Writing Assistant

I found this really nice French grammatical assistant from the university of Alberta:
"Le Patron" Writing Assistant

It is free to use, and I found it ironic that it's coming from an English university (as opposed to one in Quebec)

Depression, My own little explanation

I get to this subject at least once a year, and it's one topic where I can easily lose my own temper, so I'll try to write a complete explanation of the concept of depression. I'm not talking about a passing condition, a sort of "I don't feel well today", but of real clinical depression. But before any sort of explanation, there is a very nice article on Wikipedia on the subject:
Clinical depression

But the article in Wikipedia doesn't address the common misconceptions on depression (It's not the purpose of a encyclopedia) so I'll try to debunk a couple of those...

First of all, it's not something which can be easily 'fought out' or 'overturned'. It's a condition that slowly drain all the motivation or energy of someone, the very thing required to 'fight' the condition. It's like trying to run with chains attached to both feet. So someone depressive is not like that because he is too lazy, he instead lose any interest in why he should do anything.

Second, a depressed person can be really difficult to understand. Irritability is one of the symptoms and it can make someone very unpredictable. They will get angry or upset for the most irrelevant things, and wonder why they got angry 2 minutes later. Some will have a "I just don't care attitude" which can be a real pain. Others will simply pretend everything is all right, while still acting strange (The "Everything is fine, leave me alone" attitude).

Third, depression may not be because of a particular event, but be rather a large accumulation of smaller more insignificant reasons, or sometime for no particular reasons at all. Stress, strain, loss of sleep, diminution of daylight, etc.: a lot of factors can contribute to a depression, and they are not always visible at first. It is also important to note that it's not the nature of the events, but rather the perceptions of these same event that count.

Last but not least, don't treat a depressed individual like it's their fault. The "It's all in your head" or "Just cheer up" remarks only help to make the depressed one guilty about his own condition, which in turn, doesn't help at all. Social stigma is the worse thing anyone can give to any individual suffering from any form of mental illness.

Of course, this is all from my own experiences over the years... I'm pretty sure there are others I'm simply missing, but I think it's a good start.

If you would like more information on the subject of depression and metal illness in general, see the Mental illness foundation's website

Warcraft Doesn't Have To Wreck Lives... but it does...

And in opposition to the posting I did yesterday, come this one:
Slashdot | How Warcraft Doesn't Have To Wreck Lives

Online gaming is now part of our internet lives. And whatever you do, people will always critic your work. But these dicussions seems to lose sight of the real question that should come out the oppisition of these ideas:

Why are some people wrecking theirs lives in a MMORPG while others don't?

To get a full answer to this question, we need to go back a bit, stand way back and examine the problem from a more historical perspective.

These MMORPG, when you come down to it, are simple games. A pretending game with a set of rules in a fictionnal universe. Just like D&D, or Warhammer 40000 from a couple of year ago. People have wreck their own live with theses games also, but on a smaller scale. Technology brought better immersion into the game, as well as lowered the bar for the rules of the game. Thus, with online gaming (in the form of MMORPG), every problem that has existed in the past in the form of a table-top game, becomes much worse.

Even worse, most of theses onlines games are made to give the player easy and tangible rewards. While, it does tend to make the game more fun, it does keep players hooked ("just one more... ").

But the biggest problem, table-top, real live, or online is that the responsability of playing responsably falls in the hand of the player. If the game is engineered, by choise or by chance, to keep the player hooked, it can become like a form a addiction.

A good life, is a well balanced life. Everthing can become an addiction or a obsession, but when taken with a responsible mind, it's all good.

Soul Kerfuffle: The View From the Top

This got posted on slashdot (and Digged also), but I still think it's a worthy read:
Soul Kerfuffle: The View From the Top

It's basicly a story how an MMORPG can ruin lives...

But I think, if you spend this much time in a game, you problem have a problem with priorities or are trying to compansate for a bigger problem.

It's an addiction not quite unlike gambling. Except in this case, you don't get the same kind of reward. But, as with gambling, you cannot 'win' the game...

You have to kept in the mind, that it is just a game, and only a game... nothing more...

Defective by Design's Day Against DRM

From Micheal Geist's Blog:

Defective by Design's Day Against DRM: "October 3rd is Defective by Design's Day Against DRM . The group has compiled a list of hundreds of things that people can do to address the issue. There are several Canadian activities planned. At the conclusion of my 30 Days of DRM series, I provided a list of 30 things that people can do about the threat of DRM and anti-circumvention legislation."

I don't support the idea of DRM, because it simply doesn't work. I can easily understand why the content distributers want this sort of protection on the content, but it simply puts limits on material than real criminal will find ways to circumvent.

DRM is sort of like the idea of Crypto, but the problem is that the recipient of the content is also the same one you are trying to protect the content from. Like protecting a candy jar from a kid. The end result, is that you have to design a system based on the activity of the recipient, and thus, you wind up stopping legitimate activities because they are, from the perspective of the DRM system, indiscernible from bad activities.

The end result, is a set of arbitrary restrictions, based on the best interest of the content distributer, not the consumer nor the content creator.

If you don't believe me, you can read it directly from the artists mouth, from the Canadian Music Creators Coalition's 'what we stand for' page...

Apple Estate pictures

We went to an apple estate this weekend, just south of the city. And while we forgot to bring a camera, I found a couple of old pictures from 2003. This one is the view from up in mountain in the back of the estate. I'll try to bring a camera next time and post more pictures.