2008

Here are my weekly notes:

Sharon and I hosted a dessert party today for a few friends. It was something that she had wanted to do for quite a long time, and it went really well! I’ll post more about it tomorrow (with pictures) – it was a lot more work than I anticipated!
While preparing for the dessert party, I had my iPod plugged into the stereo system for some music. It was working fine for a while, then the next thing I knew, I had a paperweight on my hands 😦 Not sure what happened, but it won’t turn on at all now. Won’t even reset. I have filled out the service thing for Apple, so hopefully it’ll get replaced soon.
You can find everything on the Internet: Porn for the Blind (SFW).
If you live near Edmonton, you almost certainly heard about the terrible accident this past week with the semi truck. Here’s the initial Edmonton Journal article.
It was bound to happen sooner or later – Apple has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the #1 music retailer (overall) in the United States.
Here’s a couple of recent pieces on blogging from the New York Times. The first talks about bloggers getting book deals, and didn’t generate a lot of discussion that I saw. The second is about the toll blogging can take on a person, and it generated tons of discussion. My favorite response is this one from Marc Andreessen.
In gaming news: 72% of the U.S. population plays video games, and EA has dropped the PC version of their best-selling game, Madden ’09.

Time to sleep – very tired!

Notes for 3/30/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

Didn’t have the most productive day today, but it was nice and relaxing. Sharon and I had to get out of the house so we went on a photowalk downtown. Here are our pictures. I recently got a new battery for my Digital Rebel, so I took that.
The Logos of Web2.0 – really interesting post on fonts and designs!
There’s nothing new in this Wired article for Ray Kurzweil fans such as myself, but it’s still a decent read.
Funniest article ever! From a 1995 issue of Newsweek – “Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana”. It has some great quotes like this one: “Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”
Both Sharon and Dickson have mentioned this blog to me: Stuff White People Like. Funny because it’s true!
Apple wasn’t alone in it’s EULA snafu – Google also has strange terms. Techdirt has a good article on both stories.
Save the Developers! Stop Using Internet Explorer 6!
Another great article, this one from 1968 – What will life be like in the year 2008? This guy actually got some things right!

Notes for 3/24/2008

I don’t intentionally wait until Monday to post these on long weekends, but that’s what always seems to happen! Anyway, here are my weekly notes for this Easter long weekend:

Sharon and I made buttermilk biscuits today and they turned out great! We used a Bobby Flay recipe and then turned them into mini sandwiches. Quite tasty, and the picture looks really good too.
Here’s an interesting post from Michael Geoghegan that started a big discussion on podcasting this week.
Dell is planning a follow-up model to their Latitude XT tablet PC, creatively called the XT2.
I always assumed that Visa was a public company, but evidently not. They raised $17.9 billion this week in the largest U.S. IPO ever.
Alberta now has the third-highest minimum wage among Canadian provinces. It was raised this week from $8.00 to $8.40.
I finally made it to Transcend Coffee here in Edmonton this weekend. I’ve been meaning to go for so long. You can read about the trip here.
Apparently Windows XP SP3 has been delayed. The main reason I want it soon is to reduce the number of updates you have to install after SP2 when doing a clean install.
The Sirius-XM merger was approved today, and JPMorgan raised its offer for Bear Stearns from $2 per share to $10.

As much as I enjoyed my four day weekend, it’ll be good to get back to something resembling a normal schedule.

Notes for 3/16/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

Calgary was fun! Ate a ton of food, and have quite a few photos to upload. Was good to see Tom and Bry on the way home too! I’ll post more about the trip tomorrow probably.
From the Twitter blog: 17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe.
YouTube unleashed some new features this week, specifically around the API. They’re becoming more of a platform now.
Here’s an interview with the inventor of email. He says he didn’t foresee spam.
Local philanthropist Harriet Winspear died this week at the age of 103. Her husband, Francis, died about eleven years ago, before the concert hall named after him was completed.
Apparently there will be a beta of Flickr Video out in April. Not sure I want Flickr to do video, but I’ll wait to see how they integrate it. I hope it doesn’t ruin the experience for photos.
The 2008 Formula 1 season started this weekend with the first race in Australia. Lewis Hamilton got the win, Ferrari had a bad weekend.
Short week this week (and next) thanks to Easter.

Two Thousand Posts Later

I don’t know exactly when I started blogging, but it was around the time of the oldest post I have saved. In the 1587 days since that time, I’ve made 2000 posts – yes, this one is #2000! I figure that’s a pretty decent milestone, so I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

I’ve always said that I blog for myself first, and everyone else second. That’s still the case, and it’s the main reason that I don’t have any ads on here (I also don’t think they’d provide much value to my readers). I’m always surprised when I read old posts because they offer a glimpse into how I’ve grown and changed over the years. Sometimes I think to myself, “did I really write that?”

Both my style of writing and the topics I write about have changed quite a bit. Here’s a sample comparison, March 2004 and March 2007:

22 of the 37 posts I made in March 2004 had exclamation points in the titles, versus just 1 in March 2007
In March 2004, I talked about my university assignments, a cute girl at Tokyo Express, trying to get my friends to blog, the Edmonton Oilers, and our “with ease” motto.
In March 2007, I talked about using podcasting to get your book published, the amount of data created in 2006, the 2007 ETS Community Conference, a simple tip to make Outlook 2007 faster, my ten reasons to love Opera (the browser), and that podcasting is all about communication.

Except for the little exercise above, I don’t think I’ve ever gone back to look at my posts from March 2004. I’ve referred to the ones from March 2007 many times though (as have others). I think it’s safe to say that I’m writing more interesting and useful content now than I used to.

Another really obvious change is that my posts are a lot longer than they used to be. The increase in quality is part of the reason for that, but the biggest reason is probably Twitter. When I started out, microblogging wasn’t even a thought let alone a word. Now it’s an increasingly popular activity, with dozens of sites (such as Tumblr) offering the ability to post short thoughts, links, or images. I used to post things like “Arrived in Calgary” to my blog, now I just use Twitter.

The tools and technologies I use to blog have changed as well. I started out on dasBlog, moved to .Text, then Community Server, and I’m now on WordPress. I’ve used a variety of posting tools, such as w.Blogger and Windows Live Writer (which I use almost exclusively now). I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself using completely different tools in another five years.

200 posts

The one thing that hasn’t changed is how much I enjoy blogging. I’ve learned so much about myself, met so many great people, and have hopefully been able to help others a little bit, all through my blog. Who knew that such an awful sounding word could turn out to be so great?

Here’s to another 2000 and beyond. Thanks for reading!

Notes for 3/9/2008

Here are my weekly notes:

Daylight saving time sucks. Robbed of another hour of sleep!
My trip to Calgary with Megan was fun! Thanks Fel for your hospitality! The trip to Peter’s Drive-In was excellent. I’ll be in Calgary again this coming weekend for Dine-Out week with Sharon.
Apple announced this week a bunch of enterprise features for the iPhone/iPod touch. I’m particularly excited for Exchange support! They also released the long-anticipated SDK. Oh and Kleiner Perkins announced a $100 million fund for iPhone applications. That’s ten times bigger than a similar fund for Facebook apps.
Microsoft screws up big time, leaving Bungie to clean up their mess. I’m really glad things worked out for the gamer.
I really enjoyed “The Long Tail” so I am definitely looking forward to Chris Anderson’s next book, “FREE”. His article in Wired will give you a taste of what it’s all about.
I’ve been reading a bit about the “Vista Capable” debacle that’s in the news right now. Apparently Wal-Mart and most other retailers hate Vista Home Basic. The New York Times has a good overview of the story. I hope Microsoft doesn’t make the same mistake with Windows 7.
I keep hearing about the Clover coffee maker. I’m going to try it out on the weekend at Phil & Sebastian’s in Calgary. Apparently Starbucks is testing out the $11,000 machine.
This is pretty damn cool, even if it is somewhat impractical: an Etch-A-Sketch clock!

All Macked Out – Unlimited Magazine

paramagnus No, I didn’t come up with the title. But it’s sorta catchy, no? Anyway, that’s the title of an article in this month’s issue of Unlimited Magazine, part of a column called Look Who’s Teching. The column takes a look at the “wired west” and the growing number of individuals dabbling in technology here:

There’s momentum now, agrees John Bristowe, a development advisor with Microsoft Canada in Calgary. Bristowe, who talks to developers throughout Western Canada, noticed the shift in 2004. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, “but the tech community really began to take off.” Case in point: Calgary. “We’ve always had a vibrant developer community,” he says, “but what you’re seeing now is a growing interest in venture capital, entrepreneurship and the sort of things you only hear about down in Silicon Valley.”

The column introduces topics like “the unconference”, “tagging”, and “agile software development”, and profiles a number of individuals, myself included:

When Mack D. Male co-founded a software company in Edmonton at age 16, his goals were clearly and rigorously defined. One: fame. Two: fortune.

Eight years later, his ambitions have matured, and Paramagnus has grown in step.

mack in unlimited I can’t say I’m incredibly pleased with the photo – it’s kind of an awkward pose! That said, I think it’s pretty cool that they made the three photos look very similar, considering they were taken by different photographers in different cities! I haven’t yet seen what it looks like in print, but the photo online is pretty high resolution. The photographer I worked with was great too. He did his best to stick within the strict guidelines the magazine gave him.

I am quite happy with the article. I think Tyler managed to capture our conversation at Starbucks very well. He also did a really great job of ensuring he had the technical details of podcasting correct. I would however like to clarify one comment Tyler made:

Suddenly more money was going into podcast creation than was being made, and Paramagnus was left to search out the next big hit.

We’re always keeping an eye out for what’s new and cool, but that doesn’t mean that we’re ignoring Podcast Spot. We’re long overdue for an update, but we’ve still been working on it. And yes, we have something new in the works also.

Anyway, give the article a read and let me know what you think! There’s lots of other interesting things in “The Tech + Media Issue” too, so be sure to check it out.

Read: Unlimited Magazine

Notes for 3/2/2008

Since I am a bit late, and it’s officially March 3rd – Happy Birthday Mom! Hope you have a great day!

Here are my weekly notes:

It’s either really sad or really amazing that Twitter has to prepare for SXSW.
As a follow-up to my post on MindMeister the other day – it really shines when you use it with another person. I invited Dickson and we tested it out, it’s really amazing! They’ve definitely nailed the collaboration part.
Hey, we already knew this: Music 1.0 is dead.
Wired has a great article this month with the guys from 37signals. Definitely worth a read.
This is my kind of article: 35 Ways to Stream Your Life.
I have to agree with Michael Arrington – I hope Microsoft has something more on tap. I mean come on, give us something amazing!
Tomorrow is voting day here in Alberta. Go vote! You can’t complain if you don’t. The Elections Alberta website has all the info you need to know.

Notes for 2/24/2008

Made it back to Edmonton this evening without any problems. Here are my weekly notes:

Happy anniversary to my parents! And happy birthday to Kim! (in about an hour anyway…)
Darren did a post about Northern Voice 2008, and included an interesting graph showing the growth in the number of photos posted at Flickr. Frankly, the growth seems rather unimpressive.
Windows Live SkyDrive is now available in Canada. You get up to 5 GB of free storage space. In other Canadian Microsoft news, the Xbox 360 got another price cut of $50.
It’s no Microsoft-Yahoo deal, but Electronic Arts (EA) has offered about $2 billion for fellow game publisher Take-Two.
Four or five reasons why Starbucks is Losing its Mojo.
Is the Alberta Oil Sands really the most destructive project on Earth? According to an Environmental Defence report, by 2020 the oil sands will release twice the amount of greenhouse gases currently produced by all the vehicles in Canada.
Megan did an interesting post this weekend on the Oscars. She points out the disconnect between movies that win Best Picture, and movies that people actually see. It happened again this year, with No Country For Old Men winning the top prize.
Interesting explanation for why the Microsoft Office file formats are so complicated.

Notes for 2/18/2008

It was Family Day today in Alberta, so a holiday for most people. It seems I always post my notes on the holiday…ah well…here they are:

Haven’t been home much this weekend! Aimee was in town on Saturday, and last night was Jane’s party. Good times.
Actually, you might say it was a weekend of Rock Band. That game is incredibly popular. They had it setup at the bar we went to on Saturday, and Andrew brought his for the party last night. It’s a great game for groups.
Back in January of 2006, I blogged about Taco Del Mar coming to Edmonton. Friday night Sharon and I finally went to see what it was like. I had a quesadilla, and while it was really good, it was also quite expensive (about $7) considering it is more like Taco Bell than Earl’s.
I’m still kind of surprised at how fast HD-DVD died. My Dad blogged about Netflix dropping HD-DVD, and not long after Wal-Mart decided they too would go Blu-ray only.
Speaking of my Dad, it was his birthday on Saturday. Happy Birthday Dad! We got his blogs combined and converted to WordPress, so hopefully he’ll get back to posting more regularly 🙂
Interesting story about how many big investors have an interest in both Microsoft and Yahoo. They can’t afford for the Microsoft bid to become too expensive.
Amazon S3 experienced an outage on Friday. Nicholas Carr did a good job covering the story, and explained why it went down. Like SmugMug, we weren’t affected at Podcast Spot.
As you all know, the writer’s strike ended this past week. Hasn’t made much of a difference for me, though I am really glad to see that Jay Leno has kept a few of his strike segments (like the one where he answers unscripted questions from the audience).
Northern Voice 2008 is this weekend! I’m starting to get excited. For the uninitiated, Darren has posted some quick facts about the event.