I do the odd post from time to time on health issues and current research I think is interesting. About a year ago I posted an article discussing how caffeine seems to have a negative influence on the body’s insulin signaling, which ultimately affects blood sugar levels in the blood. What this ultimately means is that caffeine might be a major contributing factor in the obesity epidemic, since high insulin levels in the blood promote the storage of fat and make it difficult to burn it.
Here’s a recent 2008 study that investigated the effects of caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee on ...
I found this useful deep-cycle battery FAQ that included a rough voltage level chart which helps you determine how full your deep-cycle battery is:
State of Charge12 Volt batteryVolts per Cell100%12.72.1290%12.52.0880%12.422.0770%12.322.0560%12.202.0350%12.062.0140%11.91.9830%11.751.9620%11.581.9310%**11.31**1.89010.5**1.75**
While I haven’t blogged about it, I have a small solar panel setup on my patio which provides enough power to run a few lights in my living room each night for a few hours. This information lets me know how charged the battery system is. Right now my battery is at 12.75 ...
I left Vancouver yesterday to set out on a mini adventure. First, I swung by Langley to have lunch with my dad, and laid out a few options about where I was going to go. During the course of the meal I eventually finalized on doing the North Cascades Highway in the United States, and headed out shortly afterwards.
I spent about an hour waiting in the line-up to cross the border. Considering I didn’t really have a final destination, the border guard was actually pretty nice to me and even chatted with me for a bit about life in Vancouver. I made it to Rockport on the first night, and set up camp ...
Most of us have been waiting patiently for Rogers to finally release their data rates for the iPhone 3G that is coming to Canada on July 11th. The good news is that the wait is finally over — Rogers just released full information about their plans.
Unfortunately, Rogers completely missed the boat on this one. They had the chance to bring Canada to the forefront of the wireless world, but instead felt compelled to keep us locked up in our draconian past. There are no unlimited data rates for the new plans, and anything approaching 1GB will cost you $100 or more per month (plus, I’m sure, the ...
Wow, it feels like I’ve been disconnected from the Internet for a very long time. I spent today somewhere between Los Angeles and San Diego, hanging out at Legoland with my family. I actually wasn’t really sure what to expect, given that I haven’t really been into lego in a long time. But the good news is that Legoland was a lot of fun, and it was a nice change from the line-ups and the pace of Disneyland. Also, Legoland was near the water, and was a nice change from the hot weather down in Anaheim.
Jessica, taking a break at Legoland.
My nephew Derek spent about $150 on Lego in Legoland, ...
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 had one night ...
Last night we left Google at around 9pm and headed up to Palo Alto for a nice dinner. Derek and I both had flights this morning, so we thought we might as well move our hotel close to the airport. We grabbed a really cheap travelodge, which was one of the scariest hotels I’ve been in for a long time.
I somehow managed to misplace my laptop charger down at Google (more than likely, someone else accidentally grabbed it). That basically means I’m currently without a laptop and a cell phone. I’m hoping to get a SIM for my cell and hit an Apple store really quick to pick up a new charger. Hopefulluy ...
So, it’s 30 minutes past midnight, and we just got back from another long day at Google. I’m sitting in Scott’s 82 degree fahrenheit hotel room with Derek and twelve beers. Last night we realized that a 14 hour day would be a lot better if we had a few beers to finish it off, so we basically started the midnight-gas-station-beer-run tradition.
For those of you who don’t really know what Silicon Valley is like, I’ll give you a little heads up. Most of Silicon Valley is centered around a city south of San Francisco called San Jose (affectionately called “Man Jose” by the locals, since ...
I feel like writing a blog entry right now about as much as I feel like putting a spinning drill-bit into my temple. But I really wanted to jot down some of my thoughts from today before I passed out.
There’s a group of seven of us down in Mountain View right now. The purpose of this trip is to try and hash out a complete peer-to-peer communications protocol based on open-standards. When it’s complete, it will essentially be an open source framework that will allow functionality similar to Skype, including encryption between nodes, even in an adhoc configuration.
This trip marks the first ...
Well, I’m sort of packed. Given that I no longer have a dryer at home, I was forced to dry most of my clothes out on the patio over night. Good news is that most of my clothes are completely dry. Bad news is some of them aren’t dry yet.
It’s a nice sunny day in the Bay Area today, so I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In fact, today seems like a pretty warm day in Vancouver as well, so for all of you people hanging out at home, enjoy. I’m heading down to the airport right now.
**Update – First, big thanks to Dan for helping me get through the custom’s line in short order. That easily ...
Last night I ventured across the water and ended up down at Dave’s house in North Vancouver. It was good times, complete with an amazing BBQ, some rum, and a bunch of tech talk. I didn’t really feel like hiking to the bus stop at 1am to head home, so Dave let me crash in his guest room.
The one thing about having a huge chunk of plastic under your eye is that you can really tell when your body is a bit dehydrated. For example, right now my left eye is really sore and I have a mild burning sensation, which usually happens when I’m dehydrated, or when I’ve had a few drinks. Obviously that ...
Ok, ok. I’ll take a break from writing about the iPhone. But business has been great lately – my traffic has nearly doubled in the last few days. Not like I really pay attention to those things, but it’s pretty clear when there’s a big prolonged spike — clearly people are excited about the iPhone.
To be honest, while talking about web traffic, I’m actually surprised mine has stayed up. I used to host all my plugins here and sort of assumed when I finally moved them over to BraveNewCode that alot of my traffic would disappear. But for whatever reason, my traffic has actually increased ...
My mom used to always say that somethings in life seem to happen for a reason. Surprisingly, she’s been right most of my life, and the strangest things sometimes happen to me that end up pushing me down a path that turns out to be a good one.
While camping this weekend, my Samsung A880 phone went into a spiral of death, and started complaining about not being able to find service. I figured that I maybe forgot to pay my bill or something stupid, and called up Bell Mobility yesterday. After spending two days on the phone with them, they are all of the opinion that my phone has just gone the way ...
Dave summed up the sentiment behind this post with one of his recent Flickr photos:
While most of Canada is ecstatic for the release of the iPhone in Canada, one company seems rather mute about the whole event. Ironically, that company is Rogers, the only company that has the technology to actually bring the iPhone to Canada. As Dave pointed out, the Apple website has been updated to reflect all the available information regarding the iPhone in Canada. Roger’s unfortunate marketing campaign involves what exactly? A simple teaser, like we’ve all been living in a cave and have absolutely no ...
I stopped by the new Vancouver Apple store on my way to work to hang out with John Biehler and watch a bit of Steve Job’s keynote. Obviously the question on everyones’ mind basically revolved around the 3G iPhone that was rumoured to be announced.
The good news is that the release date for the iPhone in Canada has been officially set for July 11th. The bad news is that not only is the jury is still out on just what type of data plans Rogers and Fido are going to be offering with the plan, but also most of the Rogers and Fido people seem completely clueless about the offerings.
The first comment ...
I’ve seen a few rumour sites suggest that Apple is preparing to seed developers with an early 10.6 release of their operating system. You can read about it here. If true, it sounds like it’s more of a maintenance/stability release, which makes me really wonder why they would name it a 10.6 instead of a 10.5.4. And to be honest, I’d be really disappointed if they were to release 10.6 as a real, full fledged (i.e. you have to pay more money) update to the operating system, considering Leopard isn’t that old and that it’s far from stable as it is.
It’s obviously just a rumour, so I’m ...
Jay from Giant Ant Media just emailed me a few awesome YouTube videos they did with regards to Roger’s customer service. I thought I’d share them with everyone, because they’re a riot.
Given the content of my last post, I think these are particularly relevant.
Now, I’ve been a Bell Mobility customer for a long time, and I can honestly say that they’re not very good either. I suspect the grass is always greener, but I’m fairly certain most wireless users in Canada would agree that we need some new blood in the market to help keep the current breed of wireless providers honest and competitive. ...
A while ago I mentioned just how much fun June is going to be, and tomorrow it basically starts for me. Tomorrow after work I’m heading to a campground with a few friends for a weekend sitting around a fire and eating steak. I love camping, and really enjoy the fresh air and relatively peaceful sleeps I have when in a tent.
I booked Friday off a few weeks ago, thinking that it would in fact be nice and sunny in June. Unfortunately mother nature doesn’t really look like she’s going to cooperate, and rain is definitely in the forecast. But no matter — we’re troopers and have several hundred ...