Category: Uncategorized

Upcoming Movies I Want To See

Post ImageThere’s a long list of movies coming out over the next few months as the summer blockbuster season gets underway in May. Here’s a list of the movies opening up in the next month that I want to see, complete with links to the relevant pages at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes so you can check out reviews and such (and I can refer back to them later):

  • United 93 – IMDB, RT
    I think enough time has passed since 9/11 that we need a movie like this. It’s all part of the healing process.
  • Stick It – IMDB, RT
    If this movie is anything like Bring It On, I’ll happily call this movie my guilty pleasure of the summer.
  • Akeelah and the Bee – IMDB, RT
    It’s produced by Starbucks, how could I not at least check it out?! And it has Morpheus 😉
  • Mission: Impossible III – IMDB, RT
    Tom Cruise may be a nutjob, but he usually doesn’t disappoint in these movies.
  • The Da Vinci Code – IMDB, RT
    Who isn’t going to see this movie? Except for Sharon, because she’s weird.
  • Over the Hedge – IMDB, RT
    Looks like a funny animation film to me!
  • X-Men: The Last Stand – IMDB, RT
    Ah part three! So far I have really enjoyed the X-Men movies.

And further out, I am really looking forward to Superman Returns (IMDB, RT), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (IMDB, RT), Cars (IMDB, RT), and Casino Royale (IMDB, RT).

Who knows how I am going to afford all of these movies, but that’s the list!

Speak Clearly Please!

Post ImageAs I mentioned a few days ago, my desktop computer sort of died. Essentially the hard drive that I installed Windows and all my applications to failed (but my separate data drive is fine). Easy enough to fix, but it kind of happened at a good time too. We needed some computers around here at Paramagnus to do various bits of processing, and our development machines were getting fairly sluggish. So with that in mind, we’ll use our old ones for the processing, and we ordered some new machines from Dell.

Now I have read countless accounts in the blogosphere about how crappy Dell’s support is, and I have some friends who love Dell and some who hate it. The reason we went with Dell is that the price was just too good, and I like how they list the details of every component on the site. Everything went smoothly online, but for some reason, they called me and I had to call them back. Dickson also had to call (we did a couple of orders for various reasons). That’s where things went downhill.

Why can’t I speak to someone I can understand?! Everyone I have spoken with at Dell except for one person had a heavy Indian accent (or whatever nationality they are, it doesn’t matter). So much of an accent, that I can’t make our most of what they are saying! If you’re going to hire people to talk to customers, at least make sure the customers will be able to understand them!

Now don’t go getting all huffy at me. I’m not complaining so much about the accent as about the fact that I can’t understand the representatives. Whether they have a heavy accent, are slurring or mumbling, or for whatever other reason cannot speak clearly, it’s all the same to me – they shouldn’t be working in customer support.

Podcasting Legal Guide

Post ImageA new legal guide for podcasting has been released at the Creative Common site with the purpose of providing “a general roadmap of some of the legal issues specific to podcasting.” The document is quite lengthly, and while I haven’t read through it all, I did notice that it only applies to US law:

This Guide covers only US-based legal questions. Since podcasts are typically distributed world wide, legal issues from other jurisdictions are relevant for you but we are unable to include them at this time. We have released this Guide under a Creative Commons license that permits derivatives works and so we hope that practitioners in other jurisdictions will translate and adapt this Guide for their jurisdictions. Please let us know if you do by emailing podcasting@vogelelaw.com so that we can link to your version of the Guide.

Interesting project, but due to the length, I question how many people will actually read it. Tip of the hat to Geek News Central.

Read: Creative Commons

IE7 Beta 2 Released

Post ImageMicrosoft has released the latest test version of the new Internet Explorer 7 browser, this one titled simply Beta 2 (what the heck was with that Preview anyway). From the official IE blog:

We acted on a lot of the feedback and bug reports from the previous public releases. In particular, I feel good about changes we made based on reports from web developers around some CSS behaviors, application compatibility feedback, reliability data (yes, we do analyze the information that comes when you click “Send Error Report”), and user experience feedback. People on the team will post additional details about changes over the next few days.

Unfortunately you have uninstall any previous IE7 releases before installing the new one, but this is the last release that you’ll need to do that for. Apparently the rendering engine is now complete, which means that the way pages look in this release is how they’ll look in the final release too.

Most of the UI is the same as older releases, but it’s funny how small things make a big difference. The tabs now have a gradient that I didn’t notice before, and when you open a new tab, there is a “help” page displayed which is great for new users. A couple other things I have noticed:

  • If you right click a link and choose “Open in New Tab”, the new tab opens right next to the current tab, even if you have a bunch of tabs. Makes it easier to organize them which is nice!
  • When you press CRTL-T to open a new tab, the address bar does not receive focus which is incredibly annoying. I want to open a new tab using the key combo and then immediately start typing the address!
  • I still don’t get the “multiple home pages” feature.
  • I really love that the menu bar and stuff auto-hides when you enter full screen mode (F11).

So far, I quite like IE7. This release still uses quite a bit of memory, but that’s not really an issue at the moment considering Firefox ALWAYS uses more.

Read: Internet Explorer

Goodbye Dante

Today was a sad day for my family. We had to have Dante, our black, nine year old Portuguese Water Dog, put down. My Dad (on his way to the U.S.) brought him down to Edmonton last night, because his health had taken a turn for the worse. According to the doctor, Dante had a degenerative joint disease and possibly also some sort of endocrine disease. He was in a lot of pain when he moved around too much, and had lost a lot of weight recently. He was on pain medication over night so that he could have some tests done. Today, the doctor thought that euthansia would be best for him, as there was nothing to be done for him and he was in a lot of pain. We didn’t want him to suffer anymore, so we made the decision.

Dante was such a good dog, if a little funny at times! He was a water dog, yet he was a big chicken when it came to lakes or rivers or even large puddles! He had this habit of running into things wherever he went – he’d always bang his head on something. Whenever there was food in his dish, he pretty much vaccumed it down, and he always came running the moment he heard the snap of banana being opened. Dante didn’t drink water, he tanked up like a camel, and always came over to get your legs wet from his dripping beard when he was done. And funniest of all, he definitely had the “lap dog” complex. He thought he was a lap dog, just like Bijou, even though he was a pretty big dog!

So now Dante is gone. It will take some getting used to for all of us, even Bijou and Cisko (our other two dogs) who have been wandering around looking for Dante. They could tell right away that something was up! Dante is the third dog our family has lost over the years, and it never gets any easier. We decided to have him cremated.

Goodbye Dante!

Update

I haven’t posted much in the last little while, and posting will continue to be light for the next few days, for a few reasons:

  • I have been away from the office and home for most of the last few days.
  • I tried very unsuccessfully this morning to score Oilers playoff tickets.
  • My workstation computer is on the fritz.
  • The weather has been so nice out!
  • My Dad is in town tomorrow, and I have a final exam coming up on Monday.

Your regularly scheduled blog will resume shortly.

Podcasting and Radio

Post ImageRadio industry research firm Arbitron has released a new report that has some information related to podcasting, though they consider it a form of radio. I wondered the other day, as I have in the past, if podcasting was stealing some of the audience away from traditional radio, and the Arbitron report seems to answer no:

According to the report, “Seventy-seven percent of Americans say they expect to listen to AM/FM radio as much as they do now despite increasing advancements in technology.” For people that have listened to podcasts, 27% expect to listen to less radio, and among satellite radio users, 36% expect to listen to less radio.

I guess we’ll find out won’t we? The report also states that 22% of Americans have heard of podcasting, and that 11% have actually tried podcasting. Evidently, the people that are using podcasts are young and relatively affluent.

Read: Podcasting News

Quick Update

A bunch of us went out to the Thirsty Turtle followed by Denny’s for Megan’s birthday on Thursday night which was lots of fun, pictures are here. Happy Birthday Megan! I went and saw “Take the Lead” last night, and I have to say I enjoyed it! I like Antonio Banderas much better in that kind of role than the Zorro type.

I probably won’t be posting again until Tuesday – lots of work to do, and I’m heading up to the lake for Easter Dinner tomorrow. Have a great weekend!

Edmonton Radio Ratings Spring 2006

As you may recall, back in December I posted about 96X becoming Big Earl and the reasoning behind the switch, which was based mainly on ratings. Now that the first quarter of 2006 is complete, the radio station ratings have been updated, and it doesn’t look good for poor old Earl:

The Spring book measured Edmonton radio audiences from January 9th to March 5th, 2006.

CKRA “Big Earl 96.3” (Newcap) had a more disappointing book than newcomer Magic 99, posting an all-time low at 2.7 for station formats occupying the 96.3 frequency. Despite the popularity of the country format in Northern Alberta, Big Earl seems to have repelled listeners rather than attract. If Corus is to take some good news from this book it would be that CISN seems bulletproof.

Yeah no doubt! CISN fell from 11.2 to 10.5, but still easily occupied the second spot. I am impressed that The Bear made such a comeback, rising from 5.5 to 8.7, totally didn’t expect that. You can check out the full listing and commentary at lastlinkontheleft.com. The site also contains the Fall 2005 data, and links to more detailed data sources.

In a somewhat related story, it seems that podcasting and MP3 players are in fact stealing some of the audience away from radio:

According to Dave Van Dyke, President of Bridge Ratings, “By 2010, today’s 94% penetration for terrestrial radio will have sunk to 85%.”

27% of people 12-24 attribute their reduced use of radio to MP3 use; 22% attributed it to tired radio programming; 3% attributed it to podcast listening.

I can only expect that last number to grow as podcasting becomes more widely adopted. And once it does, advertising dollars will follow. Too bad there is no geographical data. It would be interesting to know if the audience in Edmonton has shrunk at all because of MP3 players or podcasting or something.

UPDATE: Check out the new 630 CHED helicopter which launched on Wednesday, April 12th!