Notes for 6/10/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • The rookie Lewis Hamilton won his first F1 race at the Canadian Grand Prix today. I called it! He’s had an amazing start to his career – 6 races, 6 podiums.
  • So far the applications on Facebook have worked fairly well, but I knew it couldn’t last forever. I was surfing some profiles tonight and saw one of the applications had puked out a bunch of error text. It didn’t affect the page at all, it just looked ugly.
  • Have you seen the logo for the London 2012 games? I think it sucks.
  • Eric Rice has an interesting discussion on his blog about Google Maps StreetView and terrorism. My take: it doesn’t make terrorism any easier or more likely.
  • This Matrix-inspired comic about Vista SP1 is really funny, but really geeky. That said, I absolutely love The Matrix, so I am not complaining!
  • I absolutely love Rihanna’s new album, Good Girl Gone Bad. My favorite song at the moment is “Don’t Stop the Music” but the entire thing is just really enjoyable. Maybe I’ll write a review this week.
  • Tuesday afternoon is my convocation – finally! I am not looking forward to the ceremony so much as I am looking forward to not having to deal with school anymore.

Notes for 6/3/2007

Can you believe it’s June already? Here are my weekly notes:

  • For a computer geek, I sure have spent a lot of time outdoors this weekend! I walked about 32 blocks on Friday in the scorching heat with Sharon to check out Famoso (it was kinda like “Quizno’s for pizza”). Went to a BBQ/water fight yesterday. And today I spent a lot of time planting flowers.
  • On that note, I have new-found appreciation for gardening. Not only is it time consuming and laborious, it’s expensive! Who knew flowers could cost so much?
  • Last week I mentioned the giant wild pig, and wondered how it got so big. This week, the answer: it was raised on a farm and recently sold to a hunting preserve.
  • Don’t you hate it when you order something from a fast food restaurant only to discover that it looks nothing like what you saw in the commercial? Here’s a collection of images showing just that.
  • This news is a bit old, but apparently you can send an email to Canada Post and they’ll turn it into snail mail for you. The service is called EasyPost.
  • Facebook Polls launched recently, and initially it blocked “restricted text” like MySpace, Orkut, and Friendster from being used in the poll. Kinda funny…a rep for the company said it was due to “outdated code” – riiiight.

Notes for 5/27/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • My roommate is gone! Kim has travelled north to Inuvik for the summer. Miss ya Kim!
  • I managed to lock my keys in the trunk of my car today. Not my finest moment. Turns out the tow truck guy that Honda arranged to come help couldn’t get the car unlocked! Apparently a special tool is required. Ah well…thanks Dickson for helping me with the spare key.
  • Went to see Pirates 3 tonight – much better than the second one. It didn’t feel like a long movie, though it was. And man oh man did Keira ever look amazing…
  • This giant pig is pretty amazing, but here’s my question: how did it get so large?
  • For my fellow Coke addicts – the New York Times has a really interesting article analyzing the past, present, and future of the company.
  • Research shows that infants have amazing capabilities that adults lack. That probably means there’s money to be made in helping adults unleash their inner-infant.
  • I have a couple job interviews this week that I am really looking forward to. Hopefully they go well!

Notes for 5/21/2007

I didn’t post notes last night, but it’s a long weekend, so I figure tonight is fine 🙂

  • We’re still working on an update for Podcast Spot. Not going home until we’re done. Like Dickson remarked, it seems we always work harder on holidays!
  • Went to see Shrek the Third last night. It had it’s moments, but I wouldn’t have been sad if I had to wait for the DVD. I am disappointed more people didn’t join us though!
  • Every time an online store announces DRM-free MP3s, I am going to think of this comic.
  • Mark Shuttleworth says that Microsoft is not the real threat. He predicts Microsoft and “Linux” will be working together in a few years (I put that in quotes because it will really be IBM, Red Hat, etc). His post is worth a read…I think I agree with most of what he’s saying.
  • I’ve been harping on Firefox for being a resource hog for years. The press seems to have caught on this last week. (That link is for Wired, here’s the NYTimes article.)
  • I really like data visualizations. I came across Breathing Earth this week via Darren. Pretty cool.
  • So I’ve been looking for a full-time programming job lately. Had my first interview Thursday, and it went very well. More on this later.
  • Halo 3 has a release date: September 25th, 2007.

Notes for 5/13/2007

Wow, another long time in between posts, this is not like me! I had a good reason though – Traz. Here are my weekly notes:

  • Traz is my Mom and Dad’s new puppy. He came all the way from New Brunswick and stayed with me Friday before heading to his new home in Yellowknife on Saturday. He’s totally cute. Here are some photos I took, and here are some from my Dad. Puppies are a lot of work! Good luck Dad.
  • Kim looked after Traz on Friday night for a few hours so I could go with Megan and Aimee to see Brand New at the Edmonton Events Centre (formerly known as Reds). It was a good show. They played a long instrumental piece at the end which Aimee liked, but I wasn’t so keen on.
  • The final episode of Smallville’s sixth season airs Thursday. It had better be good. I wasn’t that impressed with this week’s ep.
  • Microsoft showed off a public beta of Halo 3 on Friday – gamers gave it mixed reviews but there’s lots of time to go before it is launched. On the topic of games, check out the official Simpsons-themed Xbox 360.
  • Back in December the city of São Paulo banned outdoor advertisements. Here are some photos of the city from this month and last. I think the law should be reviewed. The city looks barren and ghostly now.
  • What a cool idea: a vending machine that allows “watching ads” as a form of payment for drinks.
  • News of the Windows Live Folders beta broke yesterday…is a “Windows Live Drive” on the way? I hope so. Some competition for Amazon S3 would be good.
  • As those of you on Facebook are probably aware, I’ve got a giant card for Mr. Rice who is retiring as principal of McNally after decades? on the job. Let me know if you want to sign it and we’ll work out a time. If you’re not in Edmonton anymore, email me.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Notes for 5/6/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

Notes for 4/29/2007

It wasn’t planned, but it was kind of nice to take a break from blogging this past week (with the exception of my post on Wednesday of course). If you’re a blogger, it’s important to post frequently, but it’s also important to make sure you have the energy and desire to do so! I think I was lacking the energy a bit.

  • My Mom joined Facebook today, so both of my parents now have Facebook accounts. My friend Todd, who was a long-time holdout, also joined. For those of you who still don’t have an account…LAME! You’re increasingly in the minority. That said, I’m not advocating giving in to peer pressure, and I’d love to hear why you haven’t joined Facebook.
  • Kim made her delicious shrimp dip on Friday – it was excellent! Sharon and I made a margarhita pizza, which was also pretty yummy.
  • Looks like my prediction about the PS3 was dead on. The PS3 is doing so badly that it’s creator, Ken Kutaragi, is retiring.
  • Kryptonite is real – I knew it, haha!
  • It didn’t happen in 2006 like I thought it would, but Toyota is now officially the world’s largest automaker.
  • More Internet speed records were broken this week. Yawn…these sub-10 Gbps records are getting old…let’s see this new 100 Gbps network that is in the works!
  • What is Computer Science? This article does a fairly good job of explaining it.
  • I can’t believe it’ll be May 1st on Tuesday…time just flies! On the plus side, that means Spider-Man 3 will be here in no time.

Notes for 4/22/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Happy Earth Day! Forbes has a list of the world’s greenest billionaires. New York plans to add one million new trees to the city’s landscape by 2017. There’s lots more Earth Day news at Yahoo.
  • Mom and Dad left this evening…was good to see them this weekend! Congrats to Kim on graduating from MacEwan!
  • Just watched Detroit eliminate Calgary in game 6, which makes me happy. Unfortunately Tampa Bay lost today. Go Vancouver tomorrow!
  • So Windows XP is once again available on some Dell machines. It’s not as big a deal as the headlines would have you believe!
  • Finally saw Blood Diamond last night, and I liked it. The amazing thing is that there were so many storylines they could have followed!
  • I suppose I should do some studying…two finals this week!

Notes for 4/15/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • My Dad relaunched his SportsGuru blog this past week, and from time to time I’ll make some posts there was well. Here’s my first post.
  • Tom came to town late Friday night for a visit and computer help. And Xbox 😉
  • Went to Squires last night to celebrate Megan’s birthday. It was fun!
  • You probably saw this on the news, but Apple announced this week that they have sold 100 million iPods. Hardly surprising, but still impressive.
  • Apparently the Twitter dev team thinks the performance of Ruby on Rails is horrible. Python, Java, and PHP are mentioned as alternatives. The author of the post says: “At one time, Java was almost unacceptably slow. That has changed.” Has it really? I don’t think it has. ASP.NET people!
  • I am excited for Thursday – finally a new episode of Smallville!
  • Just found this: the tech formerly known as WPF/E is now Silverlight.

Notes for 4/8/2007

Long time no post! My mind has been elsewhere, I guess. Still been Twittering though! Here are my weekly notes:

  • We launched a new Podcast Spot update yesterday.
  • I tried the new Dulce de Leche from Starbucks on Thursday. It’s not bad, but a little too sweet. Reminds me of the Caramel Corretto at Second Cup. I also discovered that PepsiCo bottles the Frappuccino drinks for Starbucks – never buying those again!
  • Jane’s gathering last night was fun! My photos are here, and there’s more on Facebook.
  • Sharon and I watched Jesus Camp on Friday. I won’t even comment on the content, but the film itself was poorly made in my opinion – it felt as though there was no direction whatsoever. On the plus side, it felt much shorter than 84 minutes.
  • We also tried Tzin, a new-ish restaurant here in Edmonton. It’s tiny, and expensive. Otherwise it was pretty good. I love their hours of operation.
  • Sensationalist headline of the week: Proof-of-concept iPod virus discovered. Puhleez.
  • Both Edmonton and Carolina will be watching from the sidelines during the NHL playoffs this year. It’s the first time in NHL history that both defending conference champs have failed to make the playoffs. Carolina is just the third team in NHL history to miss the playoffs the year after winning the Stanley Cup.