I’ve got writer’s block. There are things I want to blog about, but I’m finding it hard to write them. And it’s starting to frustrate me.

My blog doesn’t have a particular theme — I write about whatever grabs my attention. There are some themes that have emerged over the years, such as photography, climbing and geocaching, and there have been “current affairs” type posts about things like the transit strike a couple of years ago, but I really can’t point at my blog and say “it’s about x” because it’s not. (At the first Ottawa bloggers’ brunch I went to a couple of years ago someone asked me what my blog was about and I couldn’t really answer the question.)

For much of 2008, I was averaging at least twenty posts a month. At the time, I was still a newly-minted research analyst at work and was trying to get into the habit of writing in preparation for some a research article and a report that I was going to have to write. I hadn’t had to do any significant writing since graduating from university about ten years earlier, so blogging several times a week was a great way to get the creative juices flowing at the time.

Lately, I’ve found it hard to get started, but it’s not for lack of topics or opportunities. Over the last few weeks, I’ve thought of half a dozen things that made me think “that would make a good blog entry”, and recently I was approached to contribute some articles to another blog (actually, that might be the incentive I need), but I seem to have stalled. I suspect a large part of it is because I’ve been the last six months or so working on a survey report at work, which has involved a lot of writing, and I’m getting tired of writing. I’m not sure how real authors handle this — I should ask my cousin about it.

The report I’ve been writing for the last few months is being released in a couple of weeks and then I’m taking a short vacation for some sunshine and saltwater (and golfing) about a week later. Hopefully that will recharge my creative batteries.

@DaniGirl retweeted a link to an article about the pitfalls of installing free WordPress themes that you find by searching for them on Google. In a nutshell, the author of the article, Siobhan, found that all but one of the first ten links Google returned pointed at themes that were incredibly dodgey. Most of them used obfuscated code in the theme to insert links and ads that the owner of the blog had no control over.

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So, 2010 was another busy year.

Blogging

Apparently, I posted 103 blog entries in 2010.

2010 opened with the brief reappearance of the illegal radio station Jayhaed Saadé was operating out of his family’s hotel. After ignoring several cease-and-desist orders from Industry Canada, the RCMP and Industry Canada finally showed up and forcibly removed an estimated $80 000 worth of broadcast equipment. He hasn’t been heard on the air since.

I wrote about reality television shows that were on the air at the time. Of the shows that I liked at the time, I still watch most of them from time to time.

February saw a couple of posts related to the Olympic games and one about excessive amounts of salt being used outside a building in my neighbourhood. As it turns out, this building spent the summer having massive amounts of work to deal with leaks done on it. I bet that the damage from the salt didn’t help the situation.

March saw a number of posts about the Gatineau Park Ecosystem Conservation Plan that was announced by the National Capital Commission. In a nutshell, the plan describes how the NCC intends on managing Gatineau Park. Unfortunately, because of its approach of conversation conservation before recreation, many users have been adversely impacted by it including the climbing and geocaching communities. The climbing community, in particular, mounted a comprehensive campaign over the next few months that included a climbing management plan based on best practices used at other managed sites around the world. Unfortunately, the NCC chose not to accept this proposal and went ahead with closures based on the poor science in the GPECP. The Climbers’ Access Coalition was able to negotiate a few additional routes beyond those initially offered by the NCC, but in general the climbing community is incredibly frustrated and disappointed in the National Capital Commission.

I also looked at the enforcement statistics for Ottawa’s Idling Control By-law. It turns out that the number of warnings dropped by almost half between the first and second years it was in effect.

While most of my posts in April had to do with the GPECP, I did write about correcting colours of photographs taken at night and also a walk I took along the Rideau Canal.

May saw just three posts, including one about a very closed minded individual and another related to the overreaction by a geocaching reviewer to the GPECP.

June saw several posts including some about the earthquake that hit Ottawa and what not to do in an earthquake, and a short photowalk (actually photoride) I took.

In July I posted pictures from the B-52s concert at Bluesfest, talked about graffiti, and posted the first entry about my trip to the UK.

All of my posts in August were about my trip to Scotland and England, including seeing Hadrian’s Wall. I tried to blog the whole trip, but the blogging got in the way of enjoying the trip, so I only ended up blogging the first part.

September saw me write about, among other things,  camping in my new tent, and the problems with different CAPTCHAs.

Ottawa’s municipal election in October led to a couple of posts about voting. It also saw a post about World Statistics Day, in addition to a few other topics.

November saw an entry about poppies, another about lamp post caches and a suggestion for a new home for the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

I wrote a number of entries about the weather in December, fur coats and giving away a car.

Travel

Being an even-numbered year, I didn’t make that many trips (in odd-numbered years I tend to make a number of trips for work), but I did get down to Toronto several times, including twice in the fall and I made a trip to Scotland and England where I did some geocaching, camping and visiting with friends. I also popped across the border into New York state to do some camping and geocaching.

Work

It was another busy year at work. I spent most of the last part of the year analysing the results of survey I manage and working on the report that’s going to be released in a couple of months. (That’s probably one reason I didn’t do as much blogging in the fall.)

Play

Fortunately, 2010 wasn’t just about working. Once again, I steered for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings at the Ottawa Dragonboat Festival and the Fall 400 in Carleton Place.

I logged 86 geocaches in 2010, with about a third of them while I was in the UK, including cache number 500 (Barts Road (GC2AF63)) and the Mega Scotland 2010 event cache (GC1XDQ0) in Perth, Scotland. I met a lot of really nice people at the event and I’m thinking about returning to the UK for the Mega Wales 2011 (GC2921G) event in July.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to the B-52s concert at Bluesfest. I have been a big fan of theirs for years, so it was a real treat to see them on-stage again.

I also got out golfing a number of times, though not as many times as I’d have liked. Because the weather in early-April was so mild, I was able to take my dad golfing for his birthday on the second of April.

I did some camping this year, both in Scotland and England and in northern New York state. It had been several years since I last went camping and I think I’ve been bitten by the camping bug again. Having purchased a new tent while I was in the UK and a new sleeping bag and other gear from MEC, I’m looking forward to doing more camping next summer.

Looking ahead to 2011

So, what’s in store for 2011? Good question!

I’ve already committed to steering for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings and we’re thinking about going to some other races besides the ones in Ottawa and Carleton Place, so I’m looking forward to that.

It looks like I’m going to be going to be escaping to Florida for a week or so in March – a healthy dose of sunshine will be nice!

There’s another geocaching megaevent in Wales (GC2921G) at the end of July that I’m thinking about attending. I haven’t been to Wales, yet, and it would be nice to see some of the people I met last summer at the event in Scotland. Time will tell whether that’s going to happen!

The severe restrictions imposed by the NCC on climbing in Gatineau Park has made it more necessary to know how to lead climb, so I’m hoping to find a course/instructor to learn this style of climbing.

So, what are you looking forward to in 2011?

Caution: This post contains higher than normal levels of geekery. You’ve been warned.

Looking for the story mentioned in a comment on Gizmodo? Try here.

If you’ve been around the ‘net for a while, you’ve probably seen cryptic URLs (like http://bit.ly/b36LBg) that “magically” take you to a real URL (like https://gordon.dewis.ca/2010/10/25/municipal-election-day/). This “magic” is thanks to URL shortening services like bit.ly, tinyurl.com, and a whole bunch of others.

Well, a little while ago I noticed that Iceland has the .IS top-level domain. And that my last name ends in “is” (well, I’ve known that for a long time).

€39 later and I’m the proud owner of dew.is.

Cool.

So, now I’ve set up YOURLS and have my own URL shortening service at dew.is.

Very cool. And very geeky.

The number of comments that have gotten through the Ironclad CAPTCHA since I installed it yesterday but been caught by Akismet is significantly higher than the number that slipped past SI CAPTCHA. I suppose I could do away with the CAPTCHA altogether, but then I’d have to wade through the Akismet queue on a regular basis.

So, I’ve switched back to SI CAPTCHA while I look for something more effective. There are some picture-based CAPTCHAs that require the user to pick a specific image out of a collection of  images. One is Confident CAPTCHA, which has an online demo. It requires the user to pick several images in the correct order to prove you’re not a ’bot. The problem I can see with it is that it’s too much of an inconvenience and requires a user to spend longer than they’d probably want to to pass the CAPTCHA.

So the search for a more effective CAPTCHA continues.

In the mean time, I leave you with this thought: All spammers must die.

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote about a device called an electronic thumb. Electronic thumbs were used by hitchhikers to flag down passing spaceships and help them get on board. Since not all spaceship captains were inclined to give hitchhikers lifts, some engineers spent all their time creating new devices to protected against electronic thumbs. This lead to the engineers creating electronic thumbs that could defeat these new devices, leading to even more anti-thumb devices, leading to better electronic thumbs, leadi…. you get the idea.

The people who create CAPTCHAs and the programmers who work for the spammers are locked in a similar epic battle.

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Gather ’round, boys and girls, for I am going to tell you the story of the CAPTCHAs. Once upon a time, the Internet was a wonderful place, full of intelligent people, and useful sources of information. People could have serious conversations in public forums and everything was good.

Then came things like AOL and the Freenets came along and suddenly this wonderful place started filling up with not-so-intelligent people. The useful sources of information became less useful as ads started to appearing in the middle of the conversation threads because some people thought it was acceptable to post their ads wherever they went. Some even went so far as to create programs that surfed the web and automatically posted their ads wherever they went.

The intelligent people who ran the sites didn’t like this, so they started coming up with ways to confirm that the messages being posted in conversations were being written by people and not ‘bots.

And thus the CAPTCHAs were born.

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