Here are my weekly notes:

• I had a good time down in Calgary this weekend at ALT.NET. Was great to meet some new people and put faces to names. Thanks to the organizers for hosting a great event!
• Canada finally started winning some medals in China! We currently have 7, but with only 2 gold are ranked 19th. If Michael Phelps were his own country, he’d be ranked 6th.
• Looks like the RIAA is getting a taste of its own medicine! They have paid $107,951 USD to a lady who counter-sued the group.
• Ever wish you could be invisible? The capability might be here sooner than you think!
• The Free WiFi Project is growing really well here in Edmonton! I wrote about it this week on the newly revamped Techvibes.
• This week is going to be a busy one. Going to a couple Fringe shows, have a bunch of meetings, and then Thursday we leave for Vancouver!

Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see Swing Vote today with Sharon. We’re both quite interested in the election, so we enjoyed “political celebrity spotting” – James Carville, Arianna Huffington, Larry King, Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, and a bunch of others all play themselves. Overall though, we were disappointed with the movie. Madeline Carroll was the one bright spot – she could definitely become a big star!
• Eric made the front page of the CityPlus section in the Edmonton Journal on Saturday! He was interviewed about the Free WiFi project. I’m going to write more about it later this week, probably on Techvibes.
• Who in their right mind would think that in 2008 you can tape delay something and not expect people to look elsewhere? Bunch of morons running NBC.
• A new Facebook application called “Schools” hopes to take Facebook back to its roots. Clever idea and business model.
• I have seen bits and pieces of the opening ceremonies in Beijing and like everyone else I was impressed. Here some photos. By the way, search Google for olympics and they’ll show you the latest medal count.
• Check this out: a nearly perfect DIY Batman Tumbler. Totally awesome. The bat suit is a bit strange, however.
• This Russia-Georgia-South-Ossetia thing is getting out of hand. Planes being shot down, tanks being destroyed, boats being sunk, etc. Not to mention the thousands of civilian deaths. The U.N. Security Council has met four times already, but nothing much has come of the meetings. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse.

In keeping with tradition here are my weekly notes, posted on Holiday Monday:

• Had a good time at the Heritage Days Festival this weekend – photos are here. Sharon and I also went to check out Movies on the Square.
• Flickr is celebrating another 24 hours of Flickr on Friday. The event is called Flickr 888. I plan to participate again this year – my photos from last year are here.
• Here’s an interesting post from Steve Rubel that caught my eye: could wireless radios become the next tobacco? Everyone has a wireless device of some kind these days, kind of like cigarettes many decades ago. Will we one day look at them differently?
• Some researchers at MIT have apparently made a “revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source.” The advance is related to the storage of energy. I hope it is as big a deal as they say.
• I can’t wait for Chris Anderson’s new book to come out (he wrote The Long Tail). In a recent blog entry, he tackled a question he gets asked frequently: how big is the free economy?
• The great firewall of China will remain active for the Olympics. I’m disappointed that the IOC cut a deal with China to block “sensitive” websites.
• Check out this video of Microsoft’s Sphere. Maybe your next computer won’t be a big ass table after all, it might be a big ass glass sphere instead!
• Here’s a super-cute bunny named Broccoli.
• The Dark Knight continues its domination. It is the first movie of the year to top the box office three weeks in a row, and it will very shortly become the fastest movie in history to reach $400 million.

From The Onion:

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity’s hubristic folly.

I love The Onion! Look for Gore to make a splash at the DNC later this month.

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

• Google says they are now indexing 1 trillion unique URLs. Not pages, as they used to report, but unique web addresses.
• Sharon and I went to Taste of Edmonton last night. It was pretty good, and very busy. My favorite item was probably the butter chicken, and my least favorite was definitely the Mexican Deep Fried Ice Cream. The coating was just too soggy. Photos are here.
• The Dark Knight continues to shatter box office records. It grossed $300 million in just ten days – that’s six better than 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Could TDK surpass Titanic next?
• The “bacon” meme continues with: Diet Coke with Bacon, and Bacon Mints!
• Apparently the new del.icio.us is once again on the way, which is exciting news. As TechCrunch says though, we’ve heard that before.
• What a waste of paper: they’re making a print version of the German Wikipedia. Stupid, stupid, stupid idea. The whole notion that it’s a glimpse at a specific time in history is bollocks too – bury a DVD or something.
• Jay Leno’s last night as host of The Tonight Show will be May 29th, 2009. Conan O’Brien takes over June 1st.
• Here’s an interview with Spencer Elden, the naked little baby on Nirvana’s iconic 1991 album Nevermind.

Here are my weekly notes:

• I’ve tried both of the new Vivanno drinks at Starbucks – the Chocolate Banana and the Orange Mango Banana. I have to say the latter is my favorite.
• Sharon and I went to check out Capital Ex tonight. No rides, but we did have mini donuts, a corn dog, wandered around the grounds, checked out Sip, the Birdhouse Factory, and of course the fireworks.
• I have seen The Dark Knight twice already, once in IMAX, so I did my part to help it set the weekend box office record. It took in $155.34 million this weekend, and broke a bunch of other records too such as opening day and the total for an IMAX film. I’m going to write about this week.
• Here’s the article on Obama that goes along with that very provocative New Yorker cover. It’s long, but worth the read.
• Should everything taste like Bacon? You can make it so with Bacon Salt.
• No surprise here – the Nintendo Wii has surpassed the Xbox 360 to become the best selling game console in the US.

Here are my weekly notes:

• This photo sums up the problems Apple had this week with the launch of the iPhone 3G and the new software.
• Interesting article on The Dark Knight and Chicago, where much of the movie was filmed. Only four days – I can’t wait!
• Went to Koutouki downtown on Friday night for a friend’s birthday dinner – it was great! Food was tasty, and the service was superb.
• Here’s the Jerry Yang picture worth 1000 words. Priceless.
• Mevio, formerly known as PodShow, has raised another $15 million in funding. Not sure why. The $38 million they have raised thus far seems extremely high.
• I don’t remember having to do a big project in the I.B. program, and certainly nothing like this kid’s wooden bicycle.
• Did you see the photo of four Iranian missiles this week? Turns out they know how to use Photoshop – there really was only three! Here are some other versions of the photo made by BoingBoing readers.
• Sharon and I spent the day taking in some local events. First we went to the Old Strathcona Fashion Extravaganza & Whyte Avenue Street Sale & Art Walk. Yes, Whyte Ave was a busy place today – photos here. After that we went to St. Albert for the Taste of Summer 2008 event which showcased local food and artists – photos here.

For some reason they had the waterfall on the High Level Bridge running today. We stopped to snap a few photos and a short video.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see my Dad at the airport yesterday as he had some time to kill before his flight home to Inuvik. They must have raised the prices for parking, because it cost me $11 for just an hour and half!
• Not sure how I missed this, but it turns out that the downforeveryoneorjustme.com website was created by Alex Payne – he works at Twitter.
• Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on the Bear Stearns collapse. Some believe it was the greatest financial scandal in history. It’s long, but worth the read if you’re interested.
• 37signals is dropping support for IE6 across their entire product line. I think we’ll see a lot more announcements like this, especially as IE8 nears.
• Fellow WordPress bloggers – here are 10 things you need to know about WordPress 2.6.
• According to a study by Ipsos MediaCT, 82 percent of Americans have never used text messaging. I call BS – I don’t believe that for a second.
• After a week of incredibly hot temperatures, we had quite a bit of rain in Edmonton this weekend, complete with thunder and lightning. I managed to take a couple photos of a rainbow that appeared yesterday evening.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Happy Birthday Sharon! (tomorrow) We celebrated yesterday with dinner at Characters, some skee-ball at Chuck E. Cheese, and Get Smart. Fun!
• Popular blogger Louis Gray documented the birth of his twins this weekend using Twitter and FriendFeed. He summarized things on his blog. How did he do this? Wi-Fi at the hospital. Yet another reason to support free wi-fi.
• The Coca-Cola Happiness Factory is one of my favorite advertisements of all time. Scott Beale has found the original 60 second spot, the 3:30 mini-movie that followed, as well as a “making of” video. Very cool.
• PwC thinks that gaming will be a $68 billion business by 2012.
• Despite server hiccups due to the load, the launch of Firefox 3 was a success with over 8 million downloads in 24 hours.
• Time to start planning Edmonton’s second Tweetup. Unless someone comes up with a much better idea, I think it makes sense to go back to Three Banana’s Cafe downtown. On a related note…some of us in Edmonton have started using #yeg to denote tweets that are of interest to the Edmonton community (we copied the #yyc guys).
• Congratulations to Chasing Jones, a local Edmonton band who released their debut EP on Friday at the Starlite Room. I went to high school with front-man Nick Di Lullo. He’s interviewed in Vue Weekly here.
• My Dad is passing through town on Thursday, so I’m looking forward to meeting up with him for dinner.

Happy Father’s Day! Here are my weekly notes:

• Had a great time in Calgary, and BarCamp was awesome. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.
• Sharon and I went to see Young People Fucking last night. The movie was actually pretty good, and it was a lot funnier that I expected it to be. We thought the actors and actresses all resembled more well-known actors and actresses.
• Opera released the latest version of its desktop browser this week. I like the new look of Opera 9.5, and it does indeed seem faster.
• Here’s a fantastic sign-off post from one of the blogosphere’s best Microsoft commentators.
• The empty Dell building on the southside of Edmonton is going to become the new head offices for Servus.
• In 1983, Edmonton hosted the first and only Universiade to be held in Canada. This week it was announced that our city will have another shot at it, in 2015. The other bid the CIS evaluated was from Quebec City.
• TechCrunch turned three years old on Wednesday. Certainly seems like it has been around a lot longer than that!