Made it home from Banff safe and sound about a half hour ago. The drive was okay, except for the stretch from Airdrie to Innisfail which was plagued with heavy rain and winds. Basically means you need to concentrate extra hard, and that’s tiring. The final day of the conference went well. We didn’t get the impromptu tweetup off the ground, but I did get to connect with a bunch of Twitter users one-on-one.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Guess what, Twitter suffered a brief period of uptime this week! Heh, pretty funny. Even though IM is still down, Twitter was actually quite reliable for me this weekend.
• Here’s an interview I did with Ian Horner back at the EdmontonTweetup1. You can find Ian on Twitter here.
• Erasing any doubt, Hillary endorsed Barack. Pivotal moment in history?
• This is so awesome – a peanut butter jar with two lids! Great idea. Too bad the peanut butter manufacturers will likely never do it.
• Interesting piece from Scott Karp: What Newspapers Still Don’t Understand About the Web.
• I bought a Flip Ultra this week as they just came to Canada. You can get one for $158 at Wal-Mart. I like it so far! Very capable, handy little device.
•  Calgary’s second BarCamp is happening on Saturday the 14th. I think I might go.

I’d say my mouth is almost completely back to normal, so I’m finally done with my wisdom teeth. That makes me happy! Here are weekly notes:

• I installed the wptouch plugin today, which makes my blog look pretty darn sweet on an iPhone or iPod touch. Dead simple to use, just install it and you’re done.
• Another new feature for my favorite travel site, TripIt. They now have profiles and show you travel statistics (such as how far you travelled).
• Is Like.com using its facial recognition technology to serve up targeted Facebook ads? Sure looks like it. I think it’s both creepy and cool at the same time.
• According to a secret NHL report, the six Canadian teams account for 31% of the league’s total ticket revenues. Aside from the Canadian teams, only the Rangers, Wild, Avalanche, Red Wings, and Flyers make $1 million or more per game in ticket revenue. See the PDF for details.
• Here’s an article on podcasting from Grip Magazine that I was interviewed for. Grip is written by youth for youth.
• Has the Phoenix rover found ice on Mars? Follow the mission on Twitter!
• Wondering what there is to do in Edmonton this month? Check out this list of events from Sharon.
• Here’s a NYTimes piece on coffee tastings. Sharon and I have been planning to attend one at Transcend Coffee for months now.
• You’ve probably already noticed this, but Google updated their favicon this week (the little icon that appears in your browser when you visit a Google page). Do you like it? I didn’t at first, but the new one is growing on me.

Short week for me this week. On Friday I’m heading to Banff for the weekend to cover the nextMEDIA conference for Techvibes. Should be fun!

Good news and bad news about my wisdom teeth. The good news is that the swelling has gone down dramatically, the pain has almost disappeared, and I have only very faint bruising. The bad news is that I ran into caffeine withdrawal in a bad way today.

I only took two pain killers today, and one was very early this morning when I got up for the race. So this evening was the first time since Thursday that I was relatively drug free. Around dinner time I wasn’t feeling great, so Sharon and I went for a walk. The fresh air seemed to help, and I had a few small sips of her iced coffee. We got back, I ate some soup, and we were watching Spider-Man 3. Then I crashed. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but I had shakes, chills, a throbbing headache, and just felt terrible. I’m sure Sharon thought I was going to die.

I didn’t know what was wrong at the time, so I took my second Tylenol-3 of the day. Only after did we realize that it was probably caffeine withdrawal. So I’m okay for now (just a headache at the moment), but I better have some coffee or something in the morning.

Anyway, enough about my addiction, here are my weekly notes:

• I’ve started using FriendFeed quite a bit. I’m going to post more about it this week, but in the meantime you can find me here.
• The NYTimes launched their TimesMachine this week, which lets you browse 70 years of New York Times archives. They’re using Amazon’s web services to do it. Very cool stuff.
• In case you hadn’t heard, wikis are now serious business.
• David Crow has a list of startups that use .NET. I’m sure there are more. We need a directory for this sort of thing.
• Here’s a funny idea for Twitter’s business model.
• Can we live in public? Absolutely. Should we? I don’t see why not. No matter how much detail about your life you put online, the simple fact is that most people could care less. Sure someone could become a stalker, just like you could get hit by a bus today. Humans are social creatures, both online and in real life, stalkers and buses be damned. Just remember to look both ways before you cross the street.

I can’t believe that tomorrow is the final day of the long weekend. Where has it gone?! Here are my weekly notes:

• Today was the first of many blog upgrades that I’m doing for friends and family. I finally convinced Sharon to move from Blogger to WordPress, and with her own domain too! Starting today, she’ll be blogging at Only Here for the Food. Go check it out.
• I also upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.5.1. and my Dad’s blogs (which run WordPress MU) to 1.5.1. Looks like everything worked okay, but let me know if you notice any problems.
• This is a funny video: When Facebook Meets Real Life.
• It’s quite remarkable what you can learn in an airport. Check out this voicemail that Rick Klau overheard at Dulles (text, not audio).
• Unsurprisingly, officials in Canada’s north are not happy about the recent U.S. decision to put polar bears on the threatened species list.
• I started using Pidgin as my IM client for Google Talk this week. Pidgin a muli-protocol instant messaging client, which means you can login to GTalk, AIM, ICQ, and a whole bunch others all at the same time. I’m really happy with it so far! If you use it with Twitter over GTalk, you should definitely get this plugin.
• It seems that the earthquake in China has prompted the government to ease up on Internet filtering and restrictions. I hope it’s a sign of things to come (less government filtering, not more disasters).
• Want to buy yourself a gift, but not sure what to buy? Check out SomethingStore.com. For $10, they’ll ship you something chosen at random from their inventory.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Went to see Iron Man last night and quite enjoyed it! The critics pretty much unanimously agreed that Robert Downey Jr. made the film and was an excellent choice for Tony Stark. Couldn’t agree more! I look forward to the sequels.
• I’ll admit it – I often scan things online rather then reading them closely. Research suggests the practice is common.
• Here are some statistics about GTA IV sales thus far. Pretty amazing how well the game is selling.
• Tonight marks the final episode of Sue Johanson’s “Talk Sex” call-in show. She’s calling it quits after 32 years of being on TV. I think it’s amazing she’s been doing it for so long…I mean, she’s 77 years old!
• Sharon and I went to check out the new Urban Fresh Sobey’s on Jasper Avenue and 104th street yesterday after the Tweetup. The store is really nice inside, but it was extremely busy and there’s not a lot of room to move around. I’m not sure you’d want to buy all your groceries there, but the prepackaged meals and ready-to-eat food make it perfect for downtowners.
• Can’t remember where I found this, but here’s 50 ways to help the planet.
• I’m slowly but surely getting settled in the new apartment. Still missing a few things, but for the most part, we’re good to go.

It feels like I haven’t blogged in weeks though it has only been a few days! Haven’t been on the computer much due to moving into the new apartment. Some work-in-progress photos can be seen here. Here are my weekly notes:

• At Ikea on Friday while moving a heavy box into the van, I managed to mangle my middle finger (skin ripped off, etc). It was pretty painful, though it is healing well. This is the first time since then that I’ve really used a keyboard, and it hurts.
• Grandma made a nice dinner tonight and we had a full house with me, Sharon, Kim, Tom, and Bry. Last night we went to Sherlock Holmes downtown for drinks, with Megan and a few others joining us. Good times!
• This article about Grand Theft Auto IV potentially harming Iron Man’s opening box office made a lot of sense to me, but it didn’t pan out. Iron Man had the second-best premiere ever for a non-sequel, taking in $104.2 million.
• The StartupIndex.ca is a new site to catalogue companies and investors in Canada.
• I haven’t really had a chance to read this yet, but it seems that Microsoft has walked away from the Yahoo deal. It’ll be interesting to see how badly Yahoo is punished by the markets tomorrow morning. Tons of commentary on Techmeme.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Kim and I are moving into an apartment downtown this week. I’m starting to get excited! I’ll just be really happy to finally have my own space.
• Darren Barefoot does the math and concludes that Air Canada’s pricing is “hilariously audacious.” I have to agree!
• My Dad’s blog has been nominated for a couple NWT Blog awards. He likes to win, so vote for him! Details here.
• Happy Birthday to spam! Thirty years of the crap, hard to believe.
• Want to report a crime? Now you can send an anonymous text message to Crime Stoppers.
• China is now officially the world’s largest Internet population, just in time for the Olympics.
• Some interesting statistics about Facebook’s infrastructure.
• One of my favorite blogs, ReadWriteWeb, turned 5 years old this week. Congrats!
• After some really crappy weather in the last couple weeks, today was actually really nice here in Edmonton! I hope spring is here to stay.

Here are my weekly notes:

• Sharon and I went to the New York Bagel Cafe today for brunch. Food was good, but the wait was impossibly long. And I was extra annoyed by the signs and messages that remind you to be patient.
• Starbucks splash sticks are quite possibly the dumbest idea ever. Wasteful and entirely unnecessary.
• Here’s a neat trick for Outlook users – a safety net for the Send button. You can delay sending for a period of time, so that you can fix errors or accidental disclosures!
• More proof that Blockbuster has lost its way…they made an offer this week for Circuit City. No one knows where they’re going to get the money though!
• How Twitter saved one man’s cell phone.
• Speaking of Twitter, it looks like the Edmonton Tweetup is going to be on May 10th at noon, downtown at Three Bananas. Hope you can join us!
• The story of the week has got to be the weather. We went from spring looking like summer right back to winter again. I can’t believe how much snow there is! Totally sucks.

Made it to San Antonio tonight finally, and then spent a couple hours meeting both Questionmark staff and customers. Should be a great conference this week!

Here are my weekly notes:

• There were two really big tech stories this week: the launch of Flickr Video, and the launch of Google’s App Engine. Haven’t had a chance to play with either of them yet. Flickr Video looks exciting based on what I’ve read so far. Google-owned Jaiku announced it is moving to App Engine.
• A milestone for Canada and the Internet: 1 million .ca domain names!
• On the web, at least, the race between Obama and Clinton isn’t close.
• Interesting article on the NHL’s broadband initiatives, just in time for the playoffs.
• I mentioned local artist Samantha Schultz the other day – Sharon picked up her debut CD this week, it’s great!
• Excellent post from Fred Wilson: We Need A New Path To Liquidity. Be sure to check out the comments too.
• We need a Wikipedia for data. Great idea, I completely agree.

Not sure how much I’ll be blogging over the next few days, but I should be able to sneak in a few posts! I’m gonna get some sleep now though, it was a fairly tiring day.