Achievement Unlocked: Bike Ride in November

It was a short trip down to the library, but it counts!

Alligator (1980)

Happy Halloween!

For Halloween, I thought I'd post about a horror movie I've watched. I had a subscription to Shudder in our house for awhile, and one fun thing to watch is the various shows that describe old horror movies. I've added a lot of old horror movies to my to-be-watched list.

Alligator is basically about the urban legend that if you flush a baby pet alligator down the toilet, it will grow very big. This even happens once to Grampa Simpson.

The movie takes a different turn with the addition of corporate toxic waste. I love the idea of a movie where the municipal government struggles to handle a monster. And the best part is there are political reasons why can't handle this particular monster.

The best part of the movie, of course, is when the alligator messes up the rich folks party. It's in a very 1970s class war spirit.

Robert Forster (1941-2019) does good work here as a cop no one wants to work with because he keeps losing partners. And they aren't wrong not to want to work with him.

Apparently they released a board game based on the movie. Who wouldn't want to play this game?

Chaos Day

You know the kind of day when nothing goes quite right?

I sometimes think of it in Tabletop Role-Playing Game terms: You roll so badly, you are going to get a penalty to all your rolls going forward.

Then thank makes you mess up the next roll, then the next. Pretty soon you can't do anything.

If I look at it objectively, it's not quite that bad. But in the moment, it feels quite demoralizing.

That said, there were some genuine moments of awesomeness today. Quite a few people went out of their way to help me out today. I'm extremely grateful for that. That said, there were some genuine moments of awesomeness today. Quite a few people went out of their way to help me out today. I'm extremely grateful for that.

Anyway, I wanted to keep my blog posting streak going. See you tomorrow.

Last updated November 1, 2025.

Hello World!

As you can see from my posting history, I've managed to keep this blog actively recently. I've been able to post at least once a day for over a week now.

Granted, that isn't much of an achievement. This blog is a random collection of things that interest me. But since I don't have any commercial or other purpose (aside from getting me to do some writing) I think I'm in pretty good shape.

I can't really tell how many readers I actually have either. I don't run any website analytics on this site, though I do log basic information from requests to the web server.

The logs mostly tell me that my site is under attack constantly. Attackers scan for access to WordPress control panels that aren't installed. I'm sure most of the requests come from AI scrapers and other bots.

Anyway, if you are a genuine reader of this blog, please reach out. I have provided a contact form for the purpose. I also have my social media networks at the top of the page, please follow me there. If you see something interesting, let me know.

But really, at the end of the day this blog is for me. It is my deliberate writing practice. It might change over time, become more focused. Only time will tell.

Process JSON with jq

I grabbed some JSON using the Github API. I wanted to filter it with jq

The -C option of jq keeps the colour control codes and the -R option to less uses those codes..

List all the records in the JSON file:

jq -C '[.[]]' github_repos.json | less -R

List all the unique values for the visibility property:

jq '[.[] | .visibility] | unique' github_repos.json

List all the records where visibility is private:

jq -C '[.[] | select(.visibility == "private")]' github_repos.json | less -R

Sort the records by updated date (reversed):

jq -C 'sort_by(.updated_at) | reverse | [.[]]' github_repos.json | less -R

Sort the records where visibility is private by updated date (reversed):

jq -C 'sort_by(.updated_at) | reverse | [.[] | select(.visibility == "private")]' github_repos.json | less -R

Finch West LRT

From the Ontario Newsroom:

The Ontario government has successfully completed Revenue Service Demonstration (RSD) for the Finch West Light Rail Transit (LRT), marking a significant milestone in the province’s plan to bring 230,000 more people within walking distance of fast and reliable transit. With the final 30-day “dry run” complete, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) will assume full operational control of the line no later than November 3, 2025, with an opening date to be determined by the TTC as it trains staff and prepares to launch the new light rail service for the public.

This is the second time I've worked at a post-secondary institution that has been hooked up to the TTC's rail network. The new TTC Line 6 Finch West LRT will have a stop right at Humber Polytechnic. The station, however, has not kept up with Humber's name change and is still called Humber College station.

I'm looking forward to riding on the line. I got to ride on the TTC Line 1 extension to Vaughn, which I was very excited about. That extension made my commute to York so much better.

The Finch West LRT won't impact my current commute unless they extend it to the Woodbine GO Station. I'm really hoping that happens.

Personally, I don't think I will use it very often. But it does connect Humber's North campus to TTC's Line 1 by rail. That will be a big benefit for students and everyone else coming to Humber's campus. I am looking forward to doing an analysis of it.

Secure File Transfer

When you run surveys or you analyze the data from surveys, you really do appreciate when your colleagues or vendors provide process and technical information. I treasure those manuals and they have saved me quite a bit of frustration over the years.

You can't rely on them 100%, which means you do need to communicate well with the rest of the project team.

The manuals are often written in a particular language, which provides the technical details for people who aren't from a technical background.

One of my favourite bits is something like the following:

The files will be transferred to you by a secure transfer protocol.

This suggests to me that someone has a binder with a list of steps to transfer the files. Which seems a lot more interesting than saying they will use SFTP.

I can only assume there is a bit of a game of telephone between the people who set up the technology and the authors of the document (or their bosses). It's not wrong exactly, but it definitely feels a bit off.

And I have discovered that instead of SFTP they sometimes mean regular FTP over SSH. I didn't know that was actually a thing until recently.

Anyway, I am glad they put the secure in there as the idea that you would use FTP to move survey data always worries me. Just like sending that stuff via email, but that's another story.

Last updated October 26, 2025.

Furious (1984)

Decades ago, I sat down with a friend to watch a movie. A martial arts movie, in fact. Even though it wasn't really my favorite genre at the time. This friend has worked at multiple video stores, back when video stores were a thing. He was perfectly suited to that job as he is gregarious (and sometimes garrulous), obsessed with movies and possessed of an excellent and slightly off-kilter taste. And yes, he did go to film school.

His pitch for this movie was that they build a whole dragon head and it's only in the movie for less than 30 seconds. Naturally I had to watch it.

I never forgot that movie, but what I did forget (almost immediately) was the TITLE. For decades, I tried to figure out what this movie was. It never quite reached the level of obsession, but it would be something I would try to search for every once in awhile.

There are some very specific elements in this movie: the chicken wizard, the aforementioned dragon head, the astral plane right. But none of these availed me in my search until recently.

Then I found this post and I immediately knew I had found the movie. I'm so grateful for that post, as it has answered a question that has dogged me for decades.

I watched it with my partner the other night and it was a lot of fun. The story is mostly an excuse to have lots of fights--but there is amazing stuff in those fights. They have some really great outdoor locations for duals and group fights. There's a nice big fight on a wooden bridge that lets them show off the use of different weapons.

They also make good use of a helicopter to take full advantage of the Southern California scenery.

But the stuff that really made it stick in my mind all these years is the wired stuff. I already mentioned the wizard and all the chickens. There are guys who just might be aliens and they have a band. And yes, there is a post-credits scene!

We found it streaming on Tubi and it has less than a 90 minute runtime. It was great to watch it again after so long. I'm so glad I finally got to re-watch a movie that I have been thinking of on and off for ages!

Tarsnap

I keep a personal task management system, but I don't keep it particularly well. I feel it has been more observed in the breach than actually used to keep track of critical tasks. However, I have kept it going through life events, job and role changes, COVID-19, moving and general chaos.

One consequence of this is that I have some long standing tasks in that system. These are things I mean to do,but for some reason I just don't. There are usually two reasons whey they stay on my list for a long time.

The first is that I really don't want to actually do it or there is some part of it that I don't want to do. If I don't really want to do the task, why does it stick around? Well, I probably don't want to admit to myself that I'm never going to do it.

The second reason is more interesting. This is where I don't actually have a full picture of what the task entails. This is either because I haven't thought about it enough, or because have misconceptions about it.

That was the case with my task to set up Tarsnap backups. I knew it was an interesting service and that people found it useful. What I didn't know is how to actually use it to make useful backups.

I even purchased a book about it. That helped a bit, but I still didn't know exactly how I should apply it to my use case.

My first attempt was to back up a large amount of data one single time. It worked, but I blew through my money on the service too quickly. It was not a lot of money, the service is inexpensive, but it told me that I had chosen the wrong data for that task. I have since backed up that original data to physical media and stored it at a second location.

I also made the mistake of sending emails from tarsnap to my email archive. I received, but didn't see, several emails warning me I was running out of money and my content would be deleted. So, lots of lessons learned from that first experience.

I think the reason it took me awhile to figure out tarsnap is that I've never really been responsible for either tape backup or regular backup for a work system. Since tarsnap emulates that, I didn't really have a good reference. I had used tar, but mostly for un-archiving--not backing up.

My father's work had a tape backup system. I remember he had to take home the tape backups on a regular basis, just so they were off site. I remember those tapes, they actually had a metal bottom so they looked like they could survive anything.

I also remember his working having a teletype machine, which I found really interesting. We would sometimes get the really wide tractor feed paper with alternating sections of green and white. I think we were always clamouring for more paper to write on.

The part about tarsnap that I didn't get is that the backup tool doesn't dictate how you back up. The consumer-level tools that I'm more familiar with build that in, but with tarsnap you are responsible for picking a name for your backup that has the critical information like what you are backing up and the date of the backup.

Then you need to set up a system to make regular backups: say daily or weekly. It's all up to you to figure out how to prune the old backups according to your schedule.

The nice thing about tarsnap is that it handles the compression and de-duplication of your backup data. I had to think a bit about how to backup a database so that it isn't an opaque binary to tarsnap. And I also learned you want to let the database software ensure that you're not backing up the data mid-transaction.

So, I may have had this task on my list for a long time, but I'm really glad to be finally using tarsnap for something that is very useful for me.

Maybe that means I'll finish off some other long-standing tasks.

CIRPA Day Three

So that is a wrap for the main portion of the 2025 CIRPA virtual conference. You can see my posts on day one and day two for more information. This is my first time being a conference chair, and it's really only now dawning on me that I won't have our regular bi-weekly conference planning meetings to go to.

The day started out with a great discussion of modeling, machine learning and AI in Institutional Research roles during our networking session. We had some modeling experts in the room and it was really fascinating. I was glad to see that my workhouse model the logistic regression is still delivering results for people. It was also hard to hear that a lot of the modeling efforts that IR professionals do are still off the side of their desks.

I facilitated a sponsored session by Plaid Analytics and Northern Lights College on using an API to leverage an operational reporting tool to create a data warehouse out of their Student Information System. Since I'm putting together a data warehouse myself, it was a really interesting session for me.

And finally, Phillip Wallace brought down the house with his closing keynote: "Beyond Waffle House". I really loved his presentation and thoughtful answers to all our questions.

And with that, all that's left of the CIRPA conference is the President's Reception. I'll see the rest of the CIRPA folks there tomorrow.