Category: Uncategorized

Crazy March Snow

I cannot believe how much snow there is in Edmonton today. It had started to snow pretty hard when I got home last night around 4, but it wasn’t too bad. When I got up today though? I literally had to dig myself out of the house! I took some pictures this afternoon, because I don’t think we’ll have another dumping like that for a while. At least I hope not.

The roads are pretty bad in the city, but not so bad on the highways. Many of the major roads have been cleared, except for a few like the Yellowhead, but none of the secondary or residential streets have been cleared.

Tom, Kim and I went to Boston Pizza downtown tonight for dinner and to watch the Oilers, and during the first period, Tom and I ended up going outside to help push a car that had gotten stuck in the snow. To make things worse, the driver totally didn’t know how to drive, and he flooded the engine.

So if you’re out driving in Edmonton, be careful, and don’t get stuck!

The WHL comes to Edmonton

Post ImageLooks like things are going to get a little more crowded here in the heartland of hockey. Patrick LaForge’s efforts to bring a WHL team to our city are starting to bear fruit:

Today at a Western Hockey League Board of Governor’s Meeting in Calgary, a decision was made to conditionally award the Edmonton Oilers a WHL expansion team for the 2007/08 season. The Oilers have been granted 30 days to study the conditions of the expansion, and to assess their suitability as it pertains to their business plan.

Further details on Edmonton’s WHL expansion team will be announced in the coming weeks.

The decision has been criticized by some existing WHL teams, but I think it will be great not only for Edmonton, but for the WHL too. Increased visibility, more room for players, and new competition are all great benefits of bringing a team to Edmonton. Hopefully this deal really does go through!

Read: Edmonton Oilers

CBC Radio One coming to Edmonton FM

Post ImageLooks like Edmonton will be getting another FM station, this one run by CBC, according to radio-guru Tod Maffin:

The CRTC CRTC this morning approved CBC Radio CBC Radio’s request to add FM transmitters to serve listeners in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg.

The AM transmitters in those cities will remain on to continue to serve outlying areas, but the Commission agreed with the CBC CBC that “urban growth, the construction of high-rise concrete and steel buildings, increased electrical noise from overhead wires, large and small appliances and portable radio transmitters have impeded the ability of its radio stations to deliver reliable high quality AM signals to listeners.”

I wonder if this will really have an impact on the number of listeners? I mean, I tune into 630 CHED when there is a program I want to hear (usually hockey), and that wouldn’t change if it were an FM station, its not like I’d randomly keep it on or anything.

Read: Tod Maffin

Windows Performance Rating

Post ImageThere are lots of great new “little” features coming in Windows Vista, features that you might not hear advertised or that you may not experience right away. One of those features (unless it becomes advertised in stores which would be great) is Windows Performance Rating, a numerical value that represents the performance of your computer:

“The idea behind the Windows Performance Rating is to help average consumers easily understand their Windows Vista PC’s overall performance, and to simplify the process of determining whether certain software applications will run smoothly based on their system components,” Microsoft said in a statement provided to CNET News.com.

It’s not exactly clear how the rating is calculated, or if it will have the same scale as what is currently available in beta builds, but that doesn’t matter. This feature is going to be great for consumers. No more worrying about how much RAM a machine has, or how fast the processor is, etc. What’s the performance rating? That’s all you need to ask.

This rating is similar to the change in processor naming that happened recently. You no longer have to compare clock speed to determine relative performance. Instead, you simply look at the model number (for example, Pentium 4 Processor 630 versus a Pentium 4 Processor 651). This method gives a much more accurate picture of relative performance.

And even better, the performance rating appears to go beyond simply performance, and takes into account other system components to determine how well they improve the Vista experience.

Read: CNET News.com

Dell to buy Alienware?

Post ImageDid Dell buy Alienware or not? Word spread around the web yesterday that the deal was already done, but Dell has said otherwise:

Dell has moved to quash rumors that suggested the company has acquired rival PC vendor Alienware. Speculation about a possible buyout has been rife since Rahul Sood, CEO of original equipment manufacturer Voodoo PC, posted his thoughts on such a move on his blog two weeks ago.

Questioning the accuracy of the information, Paul McKeon, Dell Australia and New Zealand spokesman, said the original source–Voodoo PC–is unreliable since the company is an Alienware competitor.

I would be somewhat surprised if Dell did buy Alienware, simply because Dell is not known for making acquisitions. On the other hand, they haven’t denied it. All McKeon did is suggest reasons why it might not have happened.

Read: CNET News.com

Windows Vista Presentation Tonight

Want to learn more about Windows Vista? And especially the development side of things? Then you’ll want to attend the Edmonton .NET Wizards event this evening! John Bristowe will be in town talking about Vista, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, and much more:

You’ve heard a lot about Windows Vista from the user’s perspective. But what about the developer? How does one target this platform? In this session, we’ll cover WinFX, which represents the evolution of Win32, the programmatic interface to the Windows operating system. You’ll hear about how to interconnect applications through the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and provide a rich and compelling user experience through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Along the way, you’ll see how Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides a flexible workflow engine for co-ordinating automated and human-based activities.

The event is free, no registration required. All you have to do is show up! Here are the vitals:

WHAT: Windows Vista Presentation
WHEN: Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 6 PM
WHERE: ETLC 1-007, University of Alberta

For maps and more information, click here. Hope to see you there!

Read: .NET Wizards

Teaching Kids About Cyber Security

Post ImageFor all the fuss about hackers and spam and viruses and all the other malicious entities that exist in the digital world, there is very little done about education. It makes sense to teach kids about ethics and cyber security in an attempt to reduce viruses and exploits doesn’t it? I think it does! Looks like the United States is taking the lead:

A group of students at Rome Catholic School are learning how to become the future defenders of cyberspace through a pilot program that officials say is the first of its kind in the country. The program teaches students about data protection, computer network protocols and vulnerabilities, security, firewalls and forensics, data hiding, and infrastructure and wireless security.

Most importantly, officials said, teachers discuss ethical and legal considerations in cyber security.

I wish I could have taken a class like that in high school! Would have been much more interesting and relevant than some of the other stuff I had to take. Sure beats typing! And the content is useful on a day-to-day basis too, as our world becomes increasingly more digital. My only concern is that teachers won’t be qualified to teach such a course! Apparently they have a special training week for instructors.

Read: Wired News

Sex Podcasting

Post ImageOkay, admit it. The only reason you read my blog at all is for the sex-related podcast news right? Well it seems that’s why some people read my blog anyway. I discovered today that my blog made it into AVN Online’s February 2006 resource guide called Sex and the Podcast:

Here are some of the sites that either offer podcasts of adult content, maintain directories of adult-oriented podcasts, offer podcast search engines, or syndicate podcasts. New ones are being created daily.

And just in case they take it down, here’s an image from the page:

So if you’ve come to my blog looking for sex podcast related content, here it is:

It never ceases to amaze me what can be accomplished with a Google search and an aptly titled blog post or two.

Read: AVN Online

U of A ExpressNews Podcast

Post ImageAs Dickson mentioned yesterday, the University of Alberta has decided to get more involved with podcasting, joining many other universities like Duke, Princeton, UBC, and the University of Western Ontario. The brand new ExpressNews podcast is a project of the UofA’s Office of Public Affairs:

Stories in the inaugural newscast include a fascinating interview with forestry researcher Dr. Mel Tyree, complete with the sound of trees drinking; a Parkland Institute report calling for a five-year moratorium on new oilsands projects, a reading by former U of A writer-in-residence David Adams Richards, and more.

The coming weeks will see a greater expansion of the podcast, with the development of a web page dedicated to audio and video files.

This podcast will probably become the U of A’s most well known, but it was not the first. Our ever-ahead-of-the-game Library has been experimenting with podcasting since September of 2005, and the Library site is full of links to other podcasts from around the world.

I’m really happy that my school has seen the light and will start podcasting. I only wish that Paramagnus could have helped them do it!

Read: U of A ExpressNews

Thought Typing

Post ImageI’m sure you’ve heard of “touch typing” but have you ever heard of “thought typing”? Imagine being able to control the computer simply by thinking it. The technology has been developed, and the latest demonstration took place at CeBit in Hanover, Germany this week:

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – dubbed the “mental typewriter” – was created by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany.

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.

Apparently it only takes about 20 minutes to “train” the device. Obviously, there are many huge benefits to technology like this, benefits that go well beyond typing without having to touch the keyboard. Medical uses are the most obvious and will likely be the first applications of such technology. Longer term though, this could lead to new interfaces for games, automobiles, just about anything that can be hooked up to a computer (and really, that’s almost everything these days).

I’d love to try something like this out. The great thing about it is that it’s non-invasive. I bet the experience is still pretty crazy though!

Read: New Scientist