Month: March 2005

Successful Weblogger Meetup!

Just finished the first Edmonton Weblogger meetup, and it went quite well! We went to Cargo & James Tea and most of us ordered coffee, go figure. On the plus side, there was wireless Internet! If you didn’t make it to this one, we hope to see you out at the next one!

We asked everyone who came to answer, “what is the funniest thought you’ve ever had after you were done doing the nasty?” Here is what they said:

Dickson: “When I woke up it was all over!”
John: “I want my money back!”
Felicia: “I should never have attended that weblogger meetup.”
Megan: “Thank god for twins!”
Mack: “Where did they go?”
Melissa: “I’m never wearing pigtails again.”

See you next time!

My latest addiction is delicious!

No, it’s not a food or drink. It’s del.icio.us, a social bookmarks manager. Here’s some details from the about page:

del.icio.us allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. What makes del.icio.us a social system is its ability to let you see the links that others have collected, as well as showing you who else has bookmarked a specific site. You can also view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists you find interesting.

I remember first hearing about del.icio.us a long time ago, but never actually tried it until last night, and I have been using it pretty extensively since then. It’s already quite useful and very simple to do! Not only can I track the sites and pages I read and might want to refer back to later, but I can monitor keywords and see what other people have found too. You can check out my page at del.icio.us, and you can even subscribe.

GoogleX

First Google created a Firefox start page. Now they have gone and paid homage to OS X, the latest operating system for the Mac, with GoogleX. I almost expect to see a Google Penguin page soon! While it is an interesting use of DHTML for the fancy buttons, it’s too bad they link to the old pages.

Read: Google Blog

Blogging Beyond the Men's Club

Here’s more on the “not enough women bloggers” topic:

The perks of alpha bloggers—voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes—are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process.

As I said before, I don’t think there is a “problem”. If anything, I’d say its more of an early adopter syndrome. And before you argue that with 8 million blogs we’re past that stage, let me remind you that there are hundreds of millions of instant messaging users and even more email users. Saying that “there are not enough women bloggers” is probably akin to saying “there are not enough women emailing” when only 8 million email addresses existed. Absurd.

Read: Newsweek

Edmonton Weblogger Meetup!

Are you busy tomorrow night? No? Great! Join us for the Edmonton Weblogger Meetup! All the details can be found at the Meetup site. Please RSVP and we’ll see you there!

Did the plague boost HIV immunity?

There is always a ton of different theories regarding HIV and how to cure/prevent it, but I thought this one was particularly interesting. A group of researchers at the University of Liverpool have speculated that black death may have enabled some Europeans to be immune to HIV:

Devastating epidemics that swept Europe during the Middle Ages seem to have had an unexpected benefit – leaving 10% of today’s Europeans resistant to HIV infection. But epidemics of which disease? Researchers claimed this week that plague helped boost our immunity to HIV, but rival teams are arguing that the credit should go to smallpox.

Either way, some European’s carry a mutation which affects a protein known as CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells. The mutation prevents HIV from entering the cells and thus doing their damage.

Intense stuff man. I wonder if they can use this knowledge to come up with a vaccine?

Read: BoingBoing

Purchasing Music Online

Just bought a few tracks from Puretracks.com, and it occurred to me that I don’t do that very often. And the main reason is that normally, I can find an album or a song from a download site well in advance of being released on a legitimate site or in the stores.

So there you go. If any music industry executives are reading this, give us high quality tracks for download well in advance of having them appear on illegal services! I am pretty sure I’d purchase more music online if I could get it really early.

The Passion Recut

One of the biggest films of last year will be back in theatres again in time for Easter. The Passion of the Christ has been shortened by six minutes to make it “more palatable for a wider audience” according to Mel Gibson:

“Some of you actually said that you wish you could have taken your Aunt Martha, Uncle Harry or your grandmother or some of your older kids, and you thought that perhaps the intensity of the film was prohibitive to those people. So I listened to that and it inspired me to recut the film to cater to those people that perhaps might not have seen it because of its intensity or brutality.”

Are you kidding me? Six minutes?! You need to cut a good 120 of those 127 minutes to make it more “palatable”. And clearly, I am not the only one who thinks so:

Newmarket had hoped the recut version would receive a PG-13 rating (parental guidance suggested for kids under 13), but the MPAA ratings board ruled it was still graphic enough to merit an R.

So the movie will be released “unrated” instead. Not that it really matters. The people who believe the movie causes miracles to happen would pay full price to see it again regardless of the rating or length. As I advised in my review of the original, don’t eat anything before or while you watch it.

Read: Canoe

Molson Kick

Looks like there is something good to come out of the Molson-Coors merger after all:

Molson Kick is a lager that will contain guarana, a South American plant that’s a natural source of caffeine. The beer will be available throughout Ontario, Quebec and Western Canada beginning March 21, and in the Atlantic provinces on April 1. It will be marketed in what the brewer calls “a sleek, fast-chilling aluminum bottle,” as well as in cans.

Read: Globe and Mail

No strippers found!

A while ago I posted about one of Google’s newest test services, Google Maps. Well I decided to play with it again, just to see if anything had changed. The first thing I decided to search for was “edmonton strippers“, expecting to see Diamonds or something. Alas, the service only returned furniture and upholstry services. Next, I decided to search for “edmonton university” and guess what? No University of Alberta found.

Clearly, the service needs some work.