Welcome
This is the personal website for Emil Tremblay, a software engineering student at the University of Alberta.
I have a bunch of different kinds of content here, all of which reflects the different kind of interests I have and the work I do.
If you're looking for professional services, I offer the following:
- web services: design, engineering, and service/support, hosting
- software services: engineering, implementation, service/support
- IT services: hardware sales/support, network, wireless, security, backups, etc.
I've recently accepted a position with the Fath Group, in Edmonton, Alberta. I'll be doing lots of interesting and exciting things with them and will write here about my experiences doing so.
As for interests, I'm a big proponent of open source software. I dabble in the support side of Ubuntu (IRC mostly) and work with the Drupal CMS quite a lot.
You'll see I'm into music, politics, and other similar fields.
Feel free to contact me with the contact form.
Cheers,
Emil
Garlic Naan-Bread
Submitted by Emil on Sat, 06/18/2011 - 18:18I found this recipe awhile back at www.indiaforvisitors.com/food/bread/garlicnaan.htm
However, this site is now gone, so I thought I'd put the recipe up here for others to use.

I make the dough, split it into about 14 pieces and then roll it thin, cooking it on a flat electric-griddle on very-high heat. After cooking I cut it into finger-sized pieces.
Ingredients
| Amount | Ingredients |
| .25 oz | Active Dry Yeast |
| 4 tbsp | White Sugar |
| 1 cup | Warm Water |
| 1 | Beaten Egg |
| 3 tbsp | Milk |
| 2 tsp | Salt |
| 4 1/2 cup | Bread Flour |
| 2 tsp | Minced Garlic |
| 1/4 cup | Melted Butter |
Preparation
- In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Proof until frothy. Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise. Let it rise until the dough has doubled in volume.
- Punch down dough, and knead in garlic. Pinch off small amounts of dough to make 12 to 14 pieces. Roll into balls, and allow to rise again.
While the dough is rising, preheat grill to high. - At grill side, roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle. Lightly oil grill. Place dough on grill, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until puffy and lightly browned. Brush uncooked side with butter, and turn over. Brush cooked side with butter, and cook until done, another 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from grill, and continue
- cooking until all the naan has been prepared.
- You can lightly sprinkle some more garlic on top for garnish
The Math Factor
Submitted by Emil on Wed, 11/24/2010 - 12:43I listen to a podcast called The Math Factor.
A few years ago I wrote in to the show with a solution to the problem. I don't want to lose the file, so I thought I'd throw it up here.
enjoy
Custom Environment Variables in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Submitted by Emil on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 18:01Coming from a Linux system, I am used to creating custom environment variables with:
export MY_VAR="the content of my variable"
With this, if I type $MY_VAR, my shell interprets that as:
the content of my variable
Very handy for saving typing. Now, in Linux, you can add that line to your ~/.profile file so that it persists for all future shell sessions.
I learned today that this does not work in Snow Leopard. It took me awhile, but I figured out how to do it. If you know an easier way, please let me know.
Open terminal, and goto your home directory.
$cd
Then, create the directory called .MacOSX
$mkdir .MacOSX
Now you have 2 choices. The first is to add the following into the file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/D TDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>MY_VAR</key>
<string>the content of my variable</string>
</dict>
</plist>Of course, you'll need to change 'MY_VAR' and 'the content of my variable' to the values that you want.
Your other option is to open XCode, create a new file called environment.plist of type plist, then enter the key and value that you'd like. Place that file in ~/.MacOSX/
After either of these solutions, simply log out then back in and you should be good to go.
A Great Ruby (Programming Language) Reference
Submitted by Emil on Sat, 09/05/2009 - 22:04A few years back I went through a free online book about Ruby (the programming language, not the stone). For a class I'm taking this semester I find myself needing to use Ruby, so I went in search of said reference book. Sad to say, the fellow who wrote it seems to have erased his online identity, including his copy of the book.
But not to worry, dear reader, I found a copy of the book in .pdf format and thought I'd share it with you (yes it's under the Creative Commons license).
Download Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby
I should mention that the author (why the lucky stiff), is somewhat insane; the book is strange, but awesome. I highly recommend it.
Insert Tabs in a Firefox Text-Field
Submitted by Emil on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 17:38When I'm typing away in the gmail web interface, I sometimes find myself wishing there was an easy, instant way to insert a 'TAB'-character into the field. As I'm sure everyone knows, the 'TAB' key in the browser advances the cursor through fields; you can't get it to insert that 'TAB' character even with ALT-CTRL-SHIFT or any combination. This would come in handy, for example, when I was informing a customer of his/her temporary login credentials, I want a way to quickly write:
username: bob passwd: qwerty
The text is all nicely aligned, and I've got myself a poor man's table. Sounds good, right?
Well, there's a Firefox extension that does just this, called Tabinta. It lets you easily assign another key to insert a 'TAB'-character. I chose ` (that's the key just to the left of the '1' key, just above the TAB key).
I hope that's helpful.
cheers
Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic on Ubuntu 9.04
Submitted by Emil on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 18:29I've had trouble in the past getting this sound card to work on Ubuntu, so I thought I'd quickly post the steps to getting it (Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic ) working on Ubuntu 9.04.
First, we need to make sure you have the tools you need to build a driver from source code. Don't worry if this sounds scary, it's actually very easy. You'll need a terminal open. If you're unfamiliar with terminal, go to Applications>Accessories>Terminal to open a new terminal window.
Enter the following command:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
You'll have to enter your admin password, and then it will download and install the tools you'll need.
Now onto the driver. You'll need to download the driver from Creative. You can do so here:
XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00.tar.gz.
Once the download is complete, open a terminal and navigate to the folder you downloaded the file to. For example, my downloads all end up on my desktop, so if you're unfamiliar with terminal type:
cd ~/Desktop
Once you're in the folder that contains the download (you can type ls to check if it's there), enter the following commands:
tar -xvf XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00.tar.gz
cd XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00.tar.gz
This extracted the archive and moved you into the extracted folder.
What's going on here is that you now have all the source code for the driver. To make it useful to you, you need to compile/build it and then install it. Enter the following commands:
sudo make
sudo make install
And that's it! You have now built and installed the driver. Your sound should be working great. If you have any problems or questions, just leave a comment to this post.
Cheers.
Where the Hell Is Matt?
Submitted by Emil on Sun, 06/29/2008 - 19:08I cam across this video on digg last week and wanted to share it with a few friends, so here it is. I would suggest watching it in HD, but if you'd like, I've embedded a low-res version below.
Lessig on Copyright
Submitted by Emil on Sun, 06/29/2008 - 19:03This is a very interesting talk from Larry Lessig that he gave at TED.
