Tag: lists

Things Of Love From 2007

Great post today by MegFowler. She says:

I know that none of us feels loving or loved all the time, but sometimes forcing yourself to think through the things you enjoy/are passionate about/get the tingles for is a good way to pull yourself through the muck. A small step, but an important one.

But instead of focusing on the next year yet, I’m going to ask YOU to tell me what YOU loved in 2007.

Using her template, here’s my list.

Movie of Love: Transformers – such a good movie! I’m still impressed with it.

Song of Love: Umbrella by Rihanna. I also listened to JT’s What Goes Around… quite a bit. Yes, again. Oh and Linkin Park’s What I’ve Done…great song!

Book of Love: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I read so many books it was hard to pick, but Dawkins wrote a book that definitely made an impression on me.

Album of Love: Riot! by Paramore. I’m still not sick of this album. Love it!

Place of Love: Facebook. Hard not to love it now that almost everyone is on it!

Month of Love: December…all the travel (London, New York, Yellowknife) was tiring, but totally worth it. Plus there was Christmas with my parents, and my birthday too!

Best Day of Love: June 12th because I graduated from university!

Best Moment of Love: Justin Timberlake concert, especially when all the cameras flashed, it was so awesome.

Word of Love: sweet! I also said "that’s how I roll" quite a bit.

Purchase of Love: Moleskine notebook, though I don’t use it enough! And I bought a second one while in NY (at the United Nations store).

City of Love: New York, of course! I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Food of Love: Goat cheese. Dunno why, but I seem to have fallen in love with it!

Beverage of Love: Coke Zero, my drink of choice. Also drank an awful lot of Starbucks.

Person of Love (someone who made a difference for you this year): So many people made a difference, in so many different ways. I’m thankful for all of them. If I had to pick just one though, I’d say Mom. She’s always making me smile with her Facebook and MSN messages! Yeah, I’m a momma’s boy 😉

Spot of Love (the best place to go to just be): Starbucks, for dozens of reasons.

Clothing Item of Love: Gap socks! So glad I finally bought some.

Random Thing of Love (anything you want): Text messaging. Couldn’t live without it!

That was harder than I thought! What does your list look like?

Read: MegFowler.com

Five Geeky Things I Want To Learn More About

Like lots of other netizens, far too much information passes across my virtual desk in a day. With blogs, TechMeme, Twitter, and dozens of other sites and services, there’s far too many things to process all at once. At the same time, I don’t like missing anything. Usually what I do is bookmark things with del.icio.us, and then review them later. Sometimes those links are unrelated, other times they are part of a larger topic or subject. Here are five such topics:

  1. Silverlight
    Microsoft’s platform for Rich Internet Applications. I’ve checked out demos, examples, overviews, and other general information, but I need to get my hands dirty. I need to create something using Silverlight.
  2. F#
    Another Microsoft item on this list shouldn’t surprise anyone. F# is a functional and object-oriented programming language. I’ve heard many developers say that you should learn one new programming language a year, and F# seems to be worth looking into. Especially since Visual Studio will have full support for it!
  3. SOCAN
    Society of Composers, Artists and Music Publishers of Canada. The link is an Engadget article talking about the SOCAN push for a tax on music downloads here in Canada. I’ve been reading tons about the music industry lately, especially since the Radiohead experiment, but I want to know more about how Canada specifically is affected.
  4. OpenID
    A decentralized, single sign-on system that seems be all the rage these days. I’ve actually played with some code on this one, but I need to devote more energy to it. I want to know how it works with other systems, and where the system is going in the future.
  5. APML
    Attention Profiling Markup Language. Possibly the geekiest thing on this list. Essentially it’s an XML format for sharing your “attention” or “interests”. It enables you to rank your likes and dislikes, and to share that information with other services and applications. I think it could enable some really interesting scenarios if it was used widely enough.

There are dozens of other things I could have mentioned, of course, but these five are particularly interesting to me.

The 10 Most Connected Cities

Believe it or not, most people think that North America is the best place in the world in terms of Internet access. They are shocked when I tell them that in comparison to the rest of the world, we suck! Internet access here is expensive, and not nearly as quick as in other places. Finally, there’s a list to back up what I’ve been saying (via WiFi Edmonton):

Through a blend of private and public investment, a number of cities have had remarkable success in providing almost complete connectivity throughout their city limits. For residents in these cities, high-speed access is available almost anywhere and at any time, and often for below-market rates.

Number one is Seoul, and the example I always use, Hong Kong, is number four. The top 5 spots are Asian cities, Stockholm is number six, and at number seven is the first North American entry and it’s not even a city; it simply says, “Various Municipal Projects, United States.” The only other North American entry is Silicon Valley at number ten (even though Mountain View is included in the number seven entry too!)

Clearly, we have a long way to go in making North America the most (and best) connected place in the world.

Read: DailyWireless

Ten Favorite Rock Songs

Last week my Dad posted about a book he is reading called Broken Prey. In the story, the main character tries to come up with the 100 best songs of all time. So my Dad took a cue from the book and is asking for input on the ten best rock songs of all time. Now, typically a meme like this starts somewhere in the digital world not a book, and when you take part in the meme you’re supposed to actually take part (my Dad is not posting his top ten until later), but I’ve seen it circulate before too, so I decided to take part this time. Megan’s recent listing of her ten favorite albums also swayed me to posting this.

First let me say, it’s damn near impossible to come up with only ten songs for any of these kinds of lists. I basically said to myself, what songs can I listen to over and over again and still love? I came up with more than ten, so I had to spend some time narrowing it down to these ten:

  1. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana
    From Nevermind, one of my favorite albums of all time, this is one of those songs that I never ever get tired of hearing. It’s really too bad Nirvana’s life was cut short, as I am sure Cobain and the boys would have made some more classics.
  2. Weapon by Matthew Good
    Though not from my favorite Matthew Good album (which would be Beautiful Midnight) this is definitely my favorite Matt Good song. The musical build up is amazing, and the video was pretty interesting too.
  3. Billie Jean by Michael Jackson
    I guess I could have put all of Thriller on this list, but Billie Jean has always stood out for me.
  4. Wonderwall by Oasis
    I’ve never been a huge Oasis fan, but this song in particular I have always loved. Great lyrics in this one.
  5. Numb by Linkin Park
    Linkin Park have come to be one of my favorite groups in the last few years, and while I like almost all their songs, Numb is the best one for me.
  6. Fill Me Up by Staind
    Another favorite group of mine is Staind, and I absolutely love the lyrics in this song.
  7. The Ground Beneath Her Feet by U2
    I could have put just about every U2 song on the list, but this one has great musical build up that gets me every time.
  8. Blurry by Puddle of Mudd
    This song makes the list due to it’s lyrics and the memories it makes me think of.
  9. Enter Sandman by Metallica
    It was this song from the Black album, or more correctly their self-titled album, that really got me into Metallica.
  10. Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
    One of the best songs of all time in my opinion!

Here’s ten more songs from my list of favorites: Every Breath You Take by The Police, Forget It by Breaking Benjamin, Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard, Last Train Home by Lostprophets, You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette, Clumsy by Our Lady Peace, Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden, Zombie by The Cranberries, 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins, and Time of Your Life by Green Day.

You’d think it would be easy to list your ten favorite songs, but it’s not. It’s a good exercise though, because you probably haven’t thought about it before, and you’ll probably discover some forgotten favorites in the process.

2005 – Year in Review

Post ImageThe year 2005 is almost over, so I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the past year through the eyes of my blog. Here is a selection of some interesting posts on my blog from each of the last twelve months:

There you have it! There’s lots more “2005 in review” lists and posts out there. Here are some of the ones I found interesting:

Definitely check out that last link…it’ll keep you busy for a while!

Ta-da Lists

Post ImageGot lots of stuff to keep track of? Of course you do, you’re a busy person, just like the rest of us. How do you keep track of the things you need to get done? If you’re like me, you probably write stuff down then go and lose that piece of paper. Happens all the time. But not anymore!

Lately I’ve been using Ta-da Lists, mainly because we’ve been using it’s big brother Basecamp at Paramagnus and liking it. Here’s what you can do with Ta-da Lists:

  • Keep track of all the little things you need to get done
  • Make lists for other people (co-workers, friends, family)
  • Share lists with the world (“My favorite movies of 2004”)
  • Subscribe to your lists in RSS so you’re always on track

It’s a great application, and it’s free! You just can’t go wrong. I especially like that my lists are on the web, so I can get to them from any computer. And the interface is simple, fast, and effective. If you’re looking for a better way to keep yourself organized, definitely check out Ta-da Lists.

Read: Ta-da Lists