…has been announced, and it’ll take place on August 28th. Make sure you come out and meet all your fellow Twitter users in the Vancouver area. The event will be at the Two Parrots pub, which (in my humble opinion) has some of the best nachos in the city. There will probably be a John Biehler endorsed photo walk afterwards for those of you without compact cameras that want to learn more about taking photos in the dark. ...

I get the odd inquiry about the work involved in organizing a conference, particularly a WordCamp. Rebecca, John and I have organized several WordCamps, but WordCamp Whistler was undoubtedly the hardest of the bunch, mainly because none of us had the opportunity to assess the location until the night before. While the event was really successful in my mind (the speakers were great, the staff at the Fairmont were helpful, and everyone I talked to felt that they got good value from the event), in retrospect I might have organized something a bit more local. The costs associated with the event kept ...

It’s been nearly four weeks now since I had some minor surgery on my face. For those of you following along, I made a decision a few months ago to have a few moles removed from my face. As a kid, they were awesome beauty marks that made me the envy of the playground, but as I got older, they had slowly increased in size to the point where they were interfering with shaving and what-not. Two of them were fairly flat, but the one on my cheek was raised slightly, and would get nicked from time to time by my razor (at which point I’d spend the next few hours trying to get it to stop bleeding). ...

Peter Jackson’s next film is “The Lovely Bones”, based on the novel with the same name. I haven’t read the book, but I understand the basic premise — a young girl is murdered, and she watches the aftermath of her life from the great beyond. Other than that, I don’t really know that much. But given how much I liked Lord of the Rings, I’m anxious to see how Peter Jackson does with a new film. Truthfully, I thought his King Kong remake was a little weak. Here’s the trailer: ...

I stumbled across three interesting things tonight. First, I purchased and installed ClearTune, which is a pretty kick ass guitar tuner for the iPhone. While a few people in reviews had issues with it, most of the individuals who got it working said it was the best tuner they’ve ever used. I have to say, it seems deadly accurate for me. It not only has a coarse scale, but it also has a fine scale, so you can see just how many cents you are off and adjust the string even further. Second, since ClearTune supports a wide range of musical temperaments, I decided to do some research about guitar ...

It’s cloudy here today, which is a nice change to be honest. While lots of people love summer, I’m not really one of them. Sure, I like sitting on a beach as much as the next person, but I hate being too hot. Fall is probably my favorite season to be honest, since I love walking around with a coffee and taking photos. I’m off to do a few errands and to find a little coffee shop or something to do some work. Last night when I came back home my car smelt kind of burnt, so I’m not sure if I didn’t full disengage the e-brake or if something is up. I’ll be paying attention to it this time, ...

I’ve been waiting for a rather big cheque to finish clearing in my account this past week. I woke up this morning, logged into my online banking, and noticed it had cleared, so I decided I would finally make the call I have waited almost ten years to make, and pay off my first student loan. At one point I had nearly $40,000 in student loans, something that seems almost insurmountable when you finish school. But unfortunately, that is the high price of an education nowadays, and banks sure don’t seem to mind capitalizing on that. Back in March I paid the final $8,000 of my car, and today I ...

Placed call #2 a few seconds ago. My BC student loan of $682.47 is now officially gone too, freeing up a whopping $30 a month back into my pockets. Happy trails, student loan. I have one last student loan remaining, valued at $1,630. I’ll try to knock it off sometime soon as well. ...

While I’m not officially debt free yet, I’m close enough that I’m going to do a post about it. Strangely enough, making those calls today to pay off my loans felt a bit anti-climactic. I’m sure it’ll sink in over the next few days, but right now it doesn’t really feel that much different. It’s amazing how debt changes your life though. Had I been debt free years ago, I probably would have quit my job in Vancouver and branched out on my own then. But unfortunately, when you have nearly $1,000 worth of monthly debt payments, you really can’t afford to take that much risk. The only ...

While out watering my tomato plants outside tonight, I noticed that a few of the roma tomatoes were looking a bit limp. Upon further investigation, it appears that not only are they ripening a bit early, they also have some weird dark spot on the bottom of most of the fruits. I did a bit of research, and it sounds exactly like blossom end rot. Blossom end rot typically is a result of lack of calcium, which in a lot of cases is due to inconsistencies in moisture or large temperature swings. Given that my plants got pretty dry there a few times, especially in this last heat wave, I’m pretty sure ...

So, I was lying in bed last night, letting my mind fill up with useless dribble, when I started thinking about WordPress permalinks. I came to the conclusion that the WordPress friendly permalinks aren’t really permalinks in the traditional sense, in that they can be changed after the fact by an end-user. First, here’s a definition of a permalink: A permalink, or permanent link, is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. An example of ...

Just for yucks, I integrated Google Latitude into the sidebar in my blog section. Google latitude, for those that don’t know, allows people with GPS-enabled devices to share their locations with their friends (I think it can do it based on geo-IP as well, but that’s not super exciting IMO). I’m not entirely sure showing a map with all my friends on it is particularly useful to be honest, but I thought I’d toss my location up on there for something to do. Far better, in my opinion, would be integration with services such as IM, such that I can see my friend’s list sorted by distance to ...

I was out the other day having a few beers at a local watering hole. I actually don’t really drink all that much nowadays, something I’m pretty thankful for. The thing is, when you work in high technology, there are always a lot of opportunities after work to go schmooze at a pub with your bosses or whoever is in town negotiating a deal. Strangely enough, I’ve never liked drinking all that much. The irony of that is that me and my friends were pretty well known for our drinking prowess in university. In fact, I’m still sort of known as the guy who can pound back an insane about of liquor, ...

As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to try giving up Splenda to see if that helps my stomach out at all. Splenda is a sugar substitute (technically called Sucralose), and it’s chemically similar to sugar, although it has a few chlorine atoms added on which makes it mostly indigestible. Unfortunately, since most sugar substitutes essentially can’t be processed by the body, they can sometimes cause some distress as they pass through. At the top of that list are certain sugar alcohols (which are used in gum and lots of chocolates), which sometimes have a strong laxative affect. I came up ...

Strangely enough, my home town, and the town I’m currently living in, has a reputation for smelling pretty bad. Truthfully, it’s a farming community, so that smell is usually just manure or other organic matter than ultimately yields everyone’s favourite Chilliwack corn or other farming goodness. I’d be the first to admit that as a kid that smell used to gross me out occasionally. But really, you only can smell it in the summer, and only pretty much in the heart of the growing season. Most of the time in the winter all you smell is that crisp, clean air that comes as a result of being ...

I spent the better part of the day converting InTheWack.com from WordPress to WordPress MU with BuddyPress. I still have lots of cleaning up to do, but essentially it’s done. InTheWack is basically Chilliwack’s first local social network, and I’m hoping it takes off! ...

As I’m sitting here writing this, my face is covered in snot and I can barely feel my tongue or my lips. I just made what must be one of the hottest pico de gallo dishes in recorded history. You think it was hot outside there today in Vancouver? I’m pretty sure it was way hotter in that bowl of pico. One of my hot red peppers was ready tonight on my patio, as well as a few yellow banana peppers. I wasn’t really sure what to make for dinner, so I decided to have a light dinner of pico de gallo. I went to the store to pick up some lime, roma tomatoes, fresh cilantro, and some nacho chips. ...

I’ll admit, keeping up with birthdays on my blog is pretty hard to do. I have a hard enough time remembering dates and making phone calls when they roll around, something I’m thankful my sister helps me out with. That being said, I missed blogging about one on Sunday, probably because I was so exhausted from Blogathon. It was my dad’s birthday this last Sunday, and I just wanted to wish him a happy belated birthday from my website here. I managed to remember to call him on Sunday, but somehow this blog entry got missed (sorry bud). Hopefully we can get together for a quick drink sometime ...

I just wrote myself a $12,000 cheque, which represents money saved up on various web projects over the last year or so. Since leaving Vancouver, I’ve been living fairly frugally (in fact, I probably have only paid myself about 25% of what I was making in Vancouver), mainly because I wanted to once and for all be done with my student loans and finally be debt free. In March, I dropped the last $8,000 on my car, finally becoming the official owner of a 2006 Mazda 3 Sport. Given that the car I had before that was a totally junky 1993 Toyota Tercel, I’m obviously pretty proud of myself for buying ...

Disneyland I’ve basically been on-the-go non-stop since San Francisco, so I haven’t had much time to do anything on the computer. I originally had a 11am flight out of San Francisco, but for whatever reason it was delayed nearly four hours, and I didn’t arrive until close to 4pm. It probably would have been faster to drive. Tony took me out for a great night down in Los Angeles. We went on a full tour of Hollywood, then picked up a few tall-boys and just chilled for a while. I also had some really great mexican food at a local hole-in-the-wall that Tony frequents from time to time. I only ...