Category: Uncategorized

Roloson is out, what now?

Post ImageAs you probably know by now, the Oilers lost game 1 tonight against the Hurricanes, and worse still, Rolson is injured and likely out for the remainder of the playoffs. So the choice now is either Jussi Markannen or Ty Conklin. Listening to Overtime Openline on 630 CHED, I need to point some things out:

  • Al Stafford keeps pointing out that Ty/Jussi won over half the games they played for the Oilers, so don’t discount them. He’s missing the point. Most of the games we lost with those two could have been won if only we’d had one or two key saves, something Roloson has been able to do.
  • Don’t kid yourself. The main reason the Oilers are in the finals is Dwayne Roloson. He’s been able to keep us in games when we’ve needed it most. We’ve been outshot almost every game so far in the playoffs.
  • If you take out the first three games Roloson played for us this season, he’s been amazing, and better still in the playoffs.
  • Not Bergeron’s fault? There was no need to hit the player into Roloson – it was completely boneheaded. I would bench Bergeron, he played an absolutely terrible game.
  • Ty Conklin should never be allowed to play for the Oilers again after a play like that. Miscommunication or not, cold or not, that just isn’t something you can do in the Stanley Cup Finals. There’s a reason he isn’t a starting goalie, and he proved it right there.

There’s lots of faith by a lot of people that Ty or Jussi can step up, and I just don’t think it will happen. And we need the goalie to be amazing, it’s the way we play. Giving up lots of shots, sending lots of players up on rushes, etc. I mean the Oilers have still got a good shot, they’re playing amazingly well as a team, but losing Roloson is a serious blow. I guess we can only hope the Oilers will find a way to get it done.

I say play Devan Dubnyk. He’s a young guy, with something to prove, and the rest of the team can rally around him. And he doesn’t carry any negative stuff with him, like both Ty and Jussi do. Either that, or let’s put Pronger in net. He stops more shots than Conklin, seriously!

Entrepreneurial Genes

Post ImageBad news for the business associations of the world who try to foster growth in small business – genetics make the entrepreneur, not environment, according to a recent study:

A study of identical twins by researchers in Britain and the United States suggests family environment has little influence because nearly half of a person’s propensity to be self-employed, or entrepreneurial, is due to genes.

The rate of entrepreneurs among twins is the same as in the general population. [Prof. Tim Spector of St Thomas’ Hospital in London] and his team found that identical twins increased the odds of their twins following the same path more than nonidentical twins, which suggests genes are important.

I always knew there was some special about me 😉

While I find this study and it’s conclusions very interesting, I try to keep an open mind. I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that genetics determines everything. If they manage to isolate the gene(s) responsible however, I bet someone could turn that into a nice little business!

Read: CNET News.com

See Windows Vista

Post ImageI just stumbled across the SeeWindowsVista site via Scoble. It’s basically a marketing site that gives you some interesting information on what Windows Vista can do for you (when it finally launches).

Apparently the site got 39,000 unique visits in the first 24 hours of being live, which is pretty good. My only complaint with the site? Let me see the start menu! Gah, why put the icon there in the bottom left if it doesn’t do anything?! I was very disappointed I couldn’t activate a virtual start menu.

Read: SeeWindowsVista

Format and Reinstall

After attempting to install another gigabyte of RAM into my computer yesterday, it went completely bonkers. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t seem to fix it (and actually I don’t think it was related to the RAM itself). I have lots of experience fixing computers, and yes I tried everything, but I just couldn’t get it to work again. So I went to my last resort – format and reinstall.

Everything is back up and running perfectly now, which makes me happy. For the longest time I have kept one drive for Windows and applications, and one or two other drives for data. I even remap My Documents and all of those folders to the data drives. Because of this, I can format and reinstall the system drive without losing any data. The only negative effect of a format and reinstall is the time it takes to install all my applications again! So that’s my advice – keep your system and data drives separate.

Another nice side benefit of formatting and reinstalling – everything is super fast 🙂

Dickson and I were talking about this yesterday, and we got on to the topic of virtualization. He suggested that it would make a lot of sense to simply run a virtual OS all the time, because you could move it around to any host. It’s a pretty good idea, but I am not sure how well it would work in practice. For one thing, it still wouldn’t fix a device driver or something from crashing and ruining Windows. On the other hand, I guess you could backup your OS image to an external device every night so that in the worst case, you could go back to yesterday! The other thing is the hardware – you probably wouldn’t be able to take advantage of an awesome graphics card or sound card or something inside a virtual machine. Maybe one day!

Podtrac Survey Results

Post ImageI am happy to see a large number of podcasting surveys and research efforts lately. The latest comes from Podtrac, who claims to have developed the largest podcasting demographics database in the world, with over 55,000 detailed demographic profiles. Some of the findings:

  • 56% of podcast audiences listen to and view podcasts on their computer, compared with 46% on a mobile device.
  • A huge majority, 88%, listen to or view podcast episodes in their entirety.
  • 76% of podcast users are also online shoppers.
  • 41% of U.S. online adults were aware of the term “podcasting” at the end of Q1 2006, compared with just 32% at the end of Q4 2005.

The results are more or less the same as some other similar surveys. Perhaps the only one that seems low is the number that listen/watch on their computers. I think the true number is actually quite a bit higher. I also wonder about the 88% who listen to an entire episode – I am willing to bet that will go down over time.

Read: Podcasting News

The Melting North

Post ImageNope, this isn’t about global warming – sorry activists (don’t you know most of that global warming stuff is hogwash anyway?) – it’s about Inuvik, where my parents live. Well, Inuvik and Aklavik. For those of you who don’t know, Inuvik is a planned town, created because Aklavik used to flood all the time. It’s been about fifty years since it last happened, but Aklavik has completely flooded again, forcing an evacuation:

River water started to flood the community Friday, and many roads are still underwater. The hamlet declared a state of emergency, flying 300 people, mostly seniors and children, out of the community over the weekend. Most of the evacuees are staying at Inuvik’s army barracks, while others are staying with relatives.

Apparently the water is really high in Inuvik too, according to my Dad:

There were ice chunks the size of cars. There were trees of all sizes. There was a 1000 litre fuel tank. There was a telephone pole. The annual spring break-up of the Mackenzie River is under way and it takes anything that stands in its way with it. This years break-up has the river higher than I have seen it before in my 16 years here.

The other interesting thing about break-up is that prices rise temporarily, as goods must be flown up. Normally trucks can drive up, crossing the river either using a ferry in the summer, or just driving right over the ice in the winter.

Hopefully the break-up will be over quickly. My Dad has a good set of pictures if you want to check it out, complete with telephone poles floating in the river!

Norton 360

Post ImageI stopped running Symantec’s consumer products a long time ago. I like the corporate products, but their Norton packages were always too bloated or confusing I found. Or they wouldn’t behave as expected, or they’d interfere with something. Okay now that I think about it, there’s lots of reasons I don’t like the Norton software applications. And now, I have one more reason:

Symantec unveiled plans for its new software, then code-named Genesis, in February. The product is to rival Microsoft’s OneCare and Windows Vista security technology, and will integrate components of Symantec’s current security, PC optimization and backup products, the security company has said.

On Wednesday, Symantec announced that Genesis will be called Norton 360 and that the product is slated to ship by the end of March next year, a change from the original September due date.

Are you kidding me? What kind of a name is Norton 360? Nevermind that they already have SystemWorks, which does the same thing. I wasn’t initially that happy that Microsoft called their new Xbox the Xbox 360, but it grew on me. It’s a fairly unique name though don’t you think? Not exactly the kind of thing that can be appended to any old product. I mean, what does the “360” mean for Norton? Unless it means a complete turnaround in their software’s performance and effectiveness, I don’t like the name one bit. Maybe they think the “360” will make their software seem “cool”, like the Xbox. Maybe they forgot they sold security software, and that no matter how hard you try, it simply isn’t sexy or cool.

Well the release date has been pushed out quite far, so they still have time to change the name. Here’s to hoping!

Read: CNET News.com

Red Deer Trip Recap

Post ImageMy trip yesterday to Red Deer with Tom went very well! He is all registered now and ready to start classes in September. My many years of registering for classes and creating timetables came in handy as Tom was one of the first to be done registering. The only thing left to do now is find a place to live!

I had never been to Red Deer College before, so I learned a lot about it. Here are some thoughts on the college:

  • The college is not nearly as big as I thought it was, in terms of physical space. I can’t seem to find out how many students are registered at the college, but it can’t be that many.
  • They did have wireless networks all over the place, but you need a student username and password to access it, which didn’t surprise me.
  • There was apparently the largest number of students ever at the registration day for kinesiology yesterday. Most of them were female.
  • In fact, I have decided I am in the wrong program. There are a few girls in computing sciences, and a few guys that look like girls, but Tom’s program has a ratio of about 4-1 girls to guys, and they are all extremely attractive.
  • Speaking of computers, they do have a technology program at RDC, but it’s clearly not the focus. The computer labs and stuff were excluded from our tour, described only as “being in the basement and sort of dark.”
  • They need to fix the signs for public parking, as it was quite confusing to figure out where to go!
  • The campus itself is quite nice – lots of grass and trees outside. Inside there seems to be a mix of old and new.
  • Parking is WAY cheaper than the UofA. The daily maximum is only $6! We ended up not paying for parking though, which was fine by me.
  • Everyone we encountered was friendly and helpful.

I think Tom is excited to get started in the fall. Looks like he’ll be quite happy at RDC!

Off to Red Deer Tomorrow

Post ImageMy brother, Tom for those of you who don’t know him, is planning to go to Red Deer College next year, so I am his transportation tomorrow (bright and early!) for the open house event for prospective students. Thus, I’ll be in Red Deer most of the day. I don’t know much about the college, but it looks pretty good. Tom is planning on doing the university transfer program for the Bachelor of Kinesiology and Sport Studies degree, which sounds pretty interesting but way over my head! From the About page:

Red Deer College has one of the top athletics programs in Canada – the Kings and Queens have the best overall record at national competition of any college in the country. The Kings Volleyball team has been Canadian College Athletics Association champions for the past six years.

Sounds like the right place to be starting a degree in kinesiology and sports! Like just about every other post secondary institution in the province (at least that’s the way it seems), Red Deer College is currently in the midst of a multi-million dollar expansion, building a new Healthy Communities Complex.

I wonder if they’ll have accessible wireless for me to tap into? I doubt it, but it would be a nice surprise 🙂 I guess I could always track down a Starbucks…sigh…still such a long way to go to reach “wireless everywhere.”

Read: RDC

Twenty Years of Burgernomics

Post ImageWay back in 1986, the editor of The Economist had the brilliant idea to invent a Big Mac index, as a “light-hearted introduction to exchange-rate theory.” I first learned of the index roughly three years ago when I took an international economics course, and I thought it was rather ingenious. This year marks the 20th anniversary, so The Economist is looking back on the index:

The Big Mac index is most useful for assessing the exchange rates of countries with similar incomes per head. Thus, among emerging markets, the yuan does indeed look undervalued, while the currencies of Brazil, Turkey, Hungary and the Czech Republic look overvalued. Economists would be unwise to exclude Big Macs from their diet, but Super Size servings would equally be a mistake.

According to the latest edition of the index (May 22), the cheapest place in the world to buy a Big Mac is in China, where it costs just $1.31 USD. The most expensive place is Norway, at $7.09 USD. Here in Canada, we’re only four cents more expensive than our American counterparts, at $3.14 USD.

The index was never intended to be a precise predictor of currency movements, simply a take-away guide to whether currencies are at their correct long-run level. Curiously, however, burgernomics has an impressive record in predicting exchange rates: currencies that show up as overvalued often tend to weaken in later years.

I wonder if it will continue to be as successful in the next twenty years. In any case, I am sure it will continue to be one of the more interesting indexes that economics has produced.

Read: The Economist