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The Outbreak – Day 8 of Self Isolation

Matthew 0 Comments

Today is not going to be of numbers.  To tell you the truth, I spent the day engulfing myself it getting up our Wurm Unlimited game server to keep us busy during these rough times.  Instead, bellow you will find links to all sorts of things to help those out in times of need.  Government sites, Banking sites, and other stuff to keep you busy.  We will save the numbers game for another day.

Canada’s top 6 banks to provide relief : BMO, RBC, CIBC, TD Canada Trust, National Bank of Canada, ScotiaBank

Government of Canada sites: Employment Insurance, Ontario E-learning Website, Covid-19 Outbreak site, Economic Response Plan

Sorry for the short post today, but I really wanted this one to be positive. …

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The Outbreak – Day 5 of work from home, Day 7 of self isolation

Matthew 0 Comments

I was hoping to get to this earlier today, but with work and the fact it’s Friday, the time sort of got away from me.  I read over my last few articles, and I realized that the tone wasn’t very positive.  Can you blame me?  It’s hard to stay positive when the world is in peril.  The facts are not pleasant… Today I watched as the number of reported cases soared by ~30,000 world wide, over 5,000 of those were in the United States to our south, which almost surpassed the new cases of Italy! (US: 5,594, Italy: 5,986).  I try to keep a pleasant and positive demeanor but, how? …

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The Outbreak – Day 4 of work from home – Day 6 of isolation

Matthew 0 Comments

It’s strange stepping out onto my friends back porch… the only noise you hear are the distant transports and the Canada Geese flying above… other than that, complete silence.  Inside, my friends wife is keeping up to date on all the Covid 19 news videos on YouTube, and catching up on articles posted throughout the day.  Almost 900 confirmed cases in Canada, 257 of which are in Ontario.  Although it does seem to be slowing down a little in Canada compared to predictions, it’s still not over.  Militaries around the world are prepping for the worst.  There are rumors of the possibility of Martial Law and other military actions starting to brew on the net.…

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The Outbreak – Day 3 of work from home, Day 5 of lockdown

Matthew 0 Comments

Yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada announced that no one should leave their home unless absolutely necessary.  So we are now on official lock-down. We broke our volunteer lock down the other day just to make sure we had enough food as it looks like this is gonna be a lot longer than 2 weeks.  Most stuff was stocked, as long as you were looking for fresh goods… toilet paper, most pasta, canned goods, mac & cheese, those were all gone… But we got what we needed.

Last week, before I left Montreal, my work sent out a notice that they were going to test the feasibility of working from home by sending the IT workers home for 2 weeks starting Monday, that was last Thursday.…

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The Outbreak – Covid 19 Crisis

Matthew 0 Comments

As I look out the window of my friends shop at the 401, seeing nothing but Transports going back and forth, I have but a glimmer of hope that this will all blow over.  The shipping industry is still moving, so it cannot be that bad… Right?

The problem is trying to gauge the affect of something that we, in our life time, have never dealt with.  A pandemic this size has not been seen since the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918.  We should know better right? Except this is not 1918, and this is not the flu.  We are more advanced now, medically and technologically, so why is this such a threat? …

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Updates coming to Considered Normal… Shortly… I hope

Matthew 0 Comments

It’s no secret that I have not posted much in the last little while.   I mean I managed to get 2 posts up the whole of 2019… What the hell is that?

First and foremost, 2020 marks the 8th year, I have lived on “The Island”, or 2920 Days (As of January 1st).  So I will be posting an update on that as a lot has happened since my last “X Days on the Island” post.  And of course, I am learning a lot of new techs with my job, from Kubernetes to Mongo, to a whole slew of other stuff I can write about. …

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Deepfake – What dangers are we facing?

Matthew 0 Comments

I have been wanting to write this article for a while now. In fact, I actually wanted to do a video about it, but I just have not found the time. Deepfakes are hitting the web by storm, and the technology that creates them is getting more and more complex, and near indistinguishable from reality. What are the implications of this? What are the benefits? What are the dangers?

So what is a Deepfake? Wikipedia describes Deekfake as:

We have a similar technology which we have used for years where we map one person’s face onto another.  One great example of this was Weird Al’s “We Perform this way” where they used the body of an actress and mapped Weird Al’s face in post, however, this is not quite the same as a Deepfake, and in several frames, you can see how the mapping didn’t quite work so well.…

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The Art of Photography

Matthew 0 Comments

So many things have changed over the years when it comes to Photography. My mindset before this point was that the art of photography was lost as taking pictures became simpler and easier to do. The things you would do in a darkroom can now be done in camera. No more having to know what order the chemicals needed to go in to develop your film, or photo. No more need for safe lights (or complete darkness in the case of color photography). But the most amazing advancement in the world of photography is the post processing.

Here is a quick before and after look at a photo I recently took on my walk home from work.…

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10 years (and a bit) of Considered Normal?

Matthew 0 Comments

Ok, so no I have not been living in Montreal for 10 years, but my domain name “ConsideredNormal.com” was registered 10 years ago on April 14th, 2018.

Back then I started a blog to process my feelings over a break up that had really affected me. It was used as a tool to express my feelings in a way I could not through normal means. After a year I tried to make the site into a webtoon, but that didn’t fare well. My toon was based on photos I took, but I just couldn’t get into scripting… my mind just wasn’t in the right place, as this was just after my father passed.…

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An open letter to my father

Matthew 1 Comment

Hey Dad,

Bear with me, as I started writing this for your Facebook page, but none of my other posts from previous years show up, so I decided to post it here.  So again bear with me, there are already tears in my eyes.

We just past the 10-year anniversary of your passing, and not a day goes by that I don’t reminisce about the good old days when you were alive and well.

It took me 10 years, but I finally had the courage to open your Nikon case.  I took the camera out of the foam padding and held it in my hand.…

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