Well, I’m back home.. Currently I’m lying on a bed in the spare room at my dad’s house. Last night I hung out with my grandma and my mom, and then ended up drinking and playing pool at my uncle’s. Unfortunately, I drank a wee-bit too much, and woke up with a splitting headache today. I think I’m going to take a nap and then hopefully be rested up enough again to do a bit of web work. On another note, the alarm on my car has started going off for apparently no reason. I almost had to disconnect the battery the other night because I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Turns out you ...

Ok Mac guys, please don’t kill me. But for you windows people, I’m trying to figure out who has the .NET framework installed on their machine. Using some javascript trickery I’ll populate this box below with information regarding whether or not you have .NET installed. If you’re on Windows, please visit this page using IE. Can everyone please answer the poll answers after reading this post. Thanks. For you Windows users, the box will have something like this in it: “Windows, IE .NET CLR 1.1.4322,.NET CLR 2.0.50727,.NET CLR 3.0.04506.30,.NET CLR 3.0.04506.648” That means you are running ...

This weekend I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time — I’m going to head home. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve been back to Chilliwack since easter, which is a very long time for me. I’m not entirely sure what my plans are for the whole weekend, but I’m heading back to Chilliwack at least for a few days. I might end up in Osoyoos visiting a few friends, but I’m going to hold off making any plans until after I get caught up on sleep Saturday. I’m also hoping to spend a bit of time with my grandma, since I haven’t seen her in quite a while and she hasn’t ...

Ok seriously. What’s up Canon? Today you announced the new EOS 50D camera, but everyone has been waiting for the new 5D announcement. The 5D is a great camera, but it’s nearly 3 years old already. Since it came out, you’ve released the EOS 20D, the EOS 30D, the EOS 40D and now, the EOS 50D, all with APS-C sensors. We get it, you like the 1.6x crop factor. But it’s time to up the ante. While Nikon is coming out with cool features like HD video, you’re just regurgitating the same formula. At least put out a few 1.3x crop factor cameras or something. ...

As I alluded to in my previous post today, I’m definitely looking at getting into video sometime in the near future. Considering I ordered a camera shortly after writing that post, “near future” is actually more like “early next week”. I spent a solid twenty minutes or so trying to figure out what type of camera I wanted to purchase, and eventually narrowed it down to a few different ones. In terms of features, I’ve always wanted a camera that could do 24P. Most consumer cameras shoot at 30 frames per second in an interlaced format, which is quite different than how film is shot. Most ...

Over a few beers a few weeks ago at the AdHack launch party, Jay Grandin and I started talking about Twitter and thought it would be pretty cool to have some place to showcase all the best tweets from the web. We did a quick domain name check and realized that TweetDuJour.com was available. Since I had my iPhone with me, I quickly purchased it. After work tonight I decided to finally whip something together really quick for it. We created a user on Twitter called TDJ (Tweet Du Jour) and tied its @replies into the TweetDuJour website. We’re hoping people who encounter cool Tweet’s during the ...

Lots of people in the WordPress community know about Dancing Matt, but I thought I’d put this up for those who haven’t heard of him. This guy named Matt has been bouncing around the world and doing a little YouTube-like video dance whenever he stops. I’m not entirely sure how it started or what it was supposed to be, but it’s amazing what it finally turned into. Here’s a little ensemble of shots from Matt’s journeys: It actually took me a minute or two to figure out where he was dancing in Vancouver. The background looked like Yaletown, but the foreground looked like the Inuqshuk at ...

I’ve been saving some money for that last little while, fully expecting to make two purchases in the not too distant future. One of the first items will be a full frame camera body. I was forced to make a purchase of the 40D last year simply because I didn’t trust my current camera enough to shoot a friend’s wedding, but truthfully really wanted to get a full-frame instead. Canon’s only affordable (at least to me) full frame is the Canon EOS 5D, but unfortunately it’s about 3 years old now and doesn’t have a lot of the new bells and whistles in it. Canon has been basically silent on ...

I recently had the priviledge of attending WordCamp San Francisco, a conference dedicated to WordPress enthusiasts in the Bay Area. It was a great time, and I met a lot of great people. Next month, Rebecca Bollwitt and I are organizing the WordCamp Vancouver event to coincide with BarCamp on Sept 27th. For those of you who are unfamiliar with BarCamp, it’s a day long conference where the participants, first thing in the morning, decide the format and the topics for the rest of the day. Everyone who attends has the potential to be a speaker, and it’s a lot of fun. This year, the event is over ...

About a year ago, I was admitted to St. Paul’s hospital for what would later turn out to be a rather severe pneumonia. I don’t really get sick very often, so for me to suddenly be bed ridden after only two days of feeling bad was a very strange event. In fact, looking back I sometimes wonder if what I really had was pneumonia, or if that was just a symptom of what I actually had. I was going over my medical records a few months ago, and found all the reports from St. Paul’s. When they admitted me I was in pretty rough shape. I had a massive fever, low oxygen in my blood, and I was so dehydrated ...

I was going through some of my old videos tonight, and realized I have a pile that I haven’t uploaded yet. Here’s one of Feist singing 1234 at the BC Festival 150 in Victoria. [easyvideo video=”http://blip.tv/play/AcnFUAA”] ...

Part of the reason I drove to Seattle last weekend was that I was really anxious to try out Virgin America’s relatively new airline. They have already garnered a reputation for being fun and innovative, much the same way Canada’s West Jet is viewed by locals. Their planes are all new Airbus models, they have funky mood-lighting, and also plugs between all the seats so you can use your laptop during the entire flight. I even went so far as to email their media contact email address, and received a prompt, personal reply from the Director of Corporate Communications at Virgin America, Abby Lunardini, ...

I’ve hardly slept at all this last week, and I feel like absolute garbage. I don’t know what my problem is, but I spend most nights just tossing and turning. They had a bunch of free liquor at work today and I could hardly bear the thought of drinking any of it because I was so bagged. I got home tonight and promptly passed out on the couch. Of course, given my stupid body, I woke up every 30 minutes or so, and didn’t really get any rest. I’ll be honest — the only time I’ve had a decent sleep in the last year is when I was pounding back Oxycontin tablets after my first surgery. It ...

You know, I’m pretty tired of hearing about Olympic scandals. I mean, so and so did drugs, what’s his name did dope, and what’s her name wasn’t legal age to compete. It’s hard to blame these athletes really, considering that the fireworks were faked for the broadcast, as was one of opening songs. I mean, there’s corruption all across the board. But you know, I think the penalties for the people caught doping are pretty loose. Sure, you might lose your medal after the fact, but some of them probably get away with it. It sounds pretty harsh, but I almost think that if you’re caught ...

Well, I’m not actually sure if it’s today, but Dave Olsen recently had a birthday. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dave in the last year or so through Rebecca and John, and he’s an outstanding guy with a real love for the Internet and his friends. Not only is he an amazing podcaster, but if he were about 75 pounds heavier I’m pretty sure he’d be one of the few people to keep up with me at the bar, no doubt about it. In addition, Dave and I have actually been cooking up a little web kung-fu that we’ll be talking about real soon. I was down in San Francisco this weekend, ...

Well, the event is all over now, and I officially have a small hangover to remember it by. I met a lot of really great people last night at the social, and it was a ton of fun. I have yet to meet a blogger I didn’t like, and last night was no exception. Everyone was friendly, and a pleasure to hang out and drink beer with. The social event was at Pete’s Tavern, which is conveniently located directly across from the baseball stadium. The bar was completely open as were the pool tables upstairs, so there was lots to do. I tried my best to walk around and meet as many people as I could, but I’m ...

To say that yesterday was a rather crappy day would be an understatement. For several weeks now I’ve been planning on attending WordCamp in San Francisco. Since I’m paying for the trip out of my own pocket, I decided to try and be a bit more financially conscious than I usually am on trips. So I decided I would fly out of Seattle instead of Vancouver, which as it turns out was around $300 cheaper. I was actually looking forward to the drive, and burned myself a few CDs. I went into work for a few hours in the morning, and then hit the streets heading for Seattle. Somewhere around White Rock, ...

For those of you who follow my Flickr and my blog, you’ll remember a few weeks ago I encountered some of my photos being used commercially on the Internet without my permission. For a while there it looked like the only recourse was going to be through legal channels, but after meeting with everyone today at a coffee shop, I’m happy to say we’ve all agreed on an arrangement that should work out. I spend a lot of time trying to make sure rights of photographers are respected, and even went so far to do a podcast with the guys at Creative Commons last year. So I’m obviously glad that this ...

It seems like just a few weeks ago that I was down in California with my sister. Strangely enough, tomorrow I’ll be making my way south once again, this time for WordCamp San Francisco. While I’m pretty excited to go down and meet a lot of new bloggers and WordPress enthusiasts, I can’t say I’m looking forward to driving to Seattle tomorrow for my flight. For whatever reason, flying from Canada is super expensive these days, and I’m saving about $300 just by flying out of Seattle. I’m going to burn a few new CDs before the trip, so hopefully I’ll have a bit of music to keep me company. At ...

This is always a really great topic to bring up at the table after everyone has been drinking for hours. I obviously have my own opinions on this subject, but I thought it would be a fun one to bring out here. Given that a lot of people nowadays use Lavalife or one of the many other varieties of online dating services, what is the general opinion with regards to the guy picking up the bill on the first date? If you’re a guy, is that cool with you? If you’re a girl, would you pay your own portion? I know lots of girls who would openly admit they wouldn’t go out on a second date without the ...