I recently returned returned about four month’s ago from a three week visit to Australia. I managed to make it as far as New Zealand in 2011, but didn’t have the time to get across to Australia. Despite appearances, most people think Australia and New Zealand are fairly close – but they are actually separated by a distance that would take between 3.5 and 4 hours to fly between them, which is obviously quite far (like going from Calgary to Toronto). I left Vancouver on a Wednesday with the goal of being in Sydney on the Friday (you lose a day crossing the date-line). It was a long flight ...

Last year I sold my Nikon DSLR and replaced it with an Olympus OM-D M5 micro four-thirds camera. While I’ve had a few of the micro four-thirds cameras, the Olympus OM-D camera was the first one where the image quality seemed on par with my DSLR, not just for outdoor photos with tons of light, but also for low-light photography as well. As a former wedding and concert photographer, it was a bit challenging to go from my Nikon and Canon gear (where most of my lenses were f/2.8 or faster) to my micro four-thirds lenses, where most zooms are f/3.5 or slower. The lack of a built-in flash on the OM-D ...

In 2011 I spent three months living in the beautiful country of Argentina in South America. I enjoyed my trip so much that in 2012 I went back and spent another two months there. From the steaks and tango in Buenos Aires, to the vineyards of Mendoza, to the rolling hills and epic landscape of Patagonia, the Argentina scenery all around the country is absolutely amazing. If you’re thinking about taking a trip to South America, then definitely make sure you visit Argentina, one of the prettiest countries that I’ve ever been to. It’s also a great place to eat steak, if you’re a meat eater. Here ...

I was originally looking for a hostel on the internet that was central to Kuala Lumpur and also had a view of the Petronas Towers. Eventually I found the highly rated Reggae Mansion hostel, which had an amazing roof-top bar with views of the KL Tower and the Petronas. Without a doubt, my stay at the hostel was the highlight of my trip to Kuala Lumpur. After the first night of drinking, most of us quickly became friends in the hostel, often eating together and heading out in the evenings together. Down the street from the establishment is an actual reggae bar, so most of us would head down there ...

After traveling the world for almost 2.5 years, I’ve become pretty knowledgable, mostly through trial and error, about which technology is useful to bring along during a trip and which should simply stay at home. It’s not always obvious, as evidenced by about 2 pounds worth of technology currently in my suitcase which I haven’t made use of in a long time. But one item that I’ve found practically indispensable is a portable external hard drive, especially since many of the new laptops (such as my Macbook Air) have a limited amount of built-in SSD storage. WD My Passport The best external ...

Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD), photo from Wikipedia It’s no surprise to anyone reading my site that I’m a big advocate of reducing carbs. Pretty much everything out there nowadays is full or both refined carbohydrates and sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup. While complex carbohydrates aren’t that bad for a person, anything that converts immediately into glucose (such as simple carbs and sugars) can cause large insulin spikes, leading to fat gain and ultimately diseases such as diabetes. Unfortunately there’s so much misinformation in this area that most people are completely ...

It has been a long-time dream of mine to finally visit Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas. I actually tried several times over the last few years, but somehow never made it to the ruins. I even bought a plane ticket earlier this year from Vancouver to Cuzco, Peru, but ended up not being able to go due to work commitments. Since I’ve been living in Brasil for the last month with my girlfriend, we decided it would be a good opportunity to finally visit Peru and Machu Picchu. A Few Days In Cuzco Most people who visit Machu Picchu initially have a stop in Cuzco, a medium-sized city approximately ...

Anyone who uses an iPhone knows that under normal usage the battery rarely lasts a full day. When I’m at home relaxing, the battery life issue is not really that big a deal since I can simply plug my phone into the USB charger half-way through the day and top the battery up to full, usually in an hour or so. But unfortunately when I’m traveling (which is quite often as most people know), plugging my phone into an outlet isn’t always an option . Sometimes when I’m working from coffee shops it simply isn’t possible to find a plug. Occasionally an airplane will have a USB port in the chair ...

Luciana and I headed to the airport around 1am last night, with plans to catch a flight at 3:50am for Lima. Obviously that’s not an ideal flight time, but since it was heavily discounted we thought we could live with it. Another reason we booked that particular flight is that it was with TAM airlines, and they happen to be with Star Alliance. Since I’m going for Gold Status this year with Star Alliance, I welcomed the chance to get 6,000 more miles with them. Unfortunately when we got to the airport, TAM told us that we had to go over to LAN’s counter and check-in with them. I said I was ...

I few months ago I blogged about the fact that I had finally purchased a ticket to go to Peru and see Machu Picchu. Unfortunately due to the launch of WPtouch Pro 3, I wasn’t able to go at the time, and ended up tossing a $1,000 plane ticket in the garbage since Expedia wouldn’t give me a refund. All in all though the launch was a big success, so I can’t really complain. Sacrifices like that are part of owning your own business, and why I personally don’t feel as guilty when I enjoy a bit of relaxation time when things occasionally slow down for a while. Now that I’m finally back in ...

I’m currently down in São Paulo, Brazil, living with my girlfriend Luciana in her apartment in Vila Leopoldina. The original plan was to spend two or three months here exploring Sao Paulo, and then eventually head to Europe to continue on with our travel adventures. Our plans have changed somewhat though in that Luciana is now able to travel sooner than she would have originally been able to. So we’ve decided to accelerate our plans slightly, first by heading on a trip to Machu Picchu tomorrow, and second by heading to Europe in just a few weeks. I’ll be heading back to Canada on August ...

Not long ago I posted a few of my thoughts with regards to obtaining good travel health insurance for a year long trip. I wanted to clarify a few issues with regards to Canadian travel health insurance. British Columbia’s MSP actually is only valid if a person is in the province for more than six months in any given calendar year. If a person is planning on being gone longer, then insurance should be reapplied for upon coming back. Outside of that, a person can make use of a two year exception to the rule once every five years, which is the route I took. But you can only go that route once in ...

One of the hardest parts of traveling to remote countries is that it is not always easy to find some of the foods you enjoy the most back home. That in itself presents a great opportunity for exploring new foods, but let’s face it: sometimes it’s nice to have some tried and true comfort food. Homemade Salsa A good example of that for me is mexican food. It’s probably my favourite cuisine, and it was pretty rare that we didn’t have tacos at least weekly in my household growing up. Unfortunately in many parts of the world I’ve been in, finding mexican salsa can be a real pain. Even if ...

For many software developers, grabbing a can of soda is far more natural than grabbing a glass of water. At several companies I’ve worked at previously the employers even stocked the fridges with free soda. So when given a choice between grabbing a can from the fridge or getting a glass and going to the water cooler, often soda was chosen, especially in my case. When I was younger I never gave much thought to how much soda I consumed, but definitely in the last few years I’ve been more conscious of just how many bottles of diet soda I go through. I remember a period of time where I would ...

In just three days, I’ll be heading to the airport again on what will undoubtedly be a great tour of North America. I’m meeting Luciana in Toronto, and her and I will slowly make our way via train to Québec City. From there we are going to head back to Ottawa for a weekend, then off to Banff, Lake Louise and hopefully Jasper. After a brief stop in Vancouver, we’re going to head down to San Francisco for some San Francisco Giants baseball action, and hopefully a few winery tours. Driving in the Canadian Rocky Mountains Many of the places we are heading to are places I haven’t spent much ...

Other than the odd time when I’ll go down to Future Shop and make a purchase, I do almost all of my shopping online these days. Part of that reason is that I live in a small town that really doesn’t have a great selection for many items. The other reason is that I’m often busy, and so I can simply make an order online and have it show up a week to ten days later. The same can be said when I travel too. Other than the markets that you find all over the word, and the odd mall, some things on the road are still best to purchase online. A good example of that is when I bought a new DVD drive ...

I’ve been a ‘world traveler’ for almost two and a half years now. Back then I hadn’t really been away from Canada for very long before, and the thought of spending multiple weeks, let alone multiple months, in a foreign country was a pretty strange idea. Now the idea of loading a backpack up and heading to a new country feels about as foreign to me as doing a load of laundry. If I saw a plane ticket somewhere for a good price, I could probably be at the airport in three hours, ready to go on a new adventure. One of the pains of being away for an extended period of time though is figuring ...

Two days ago we finally pulled the veil off of WPtouch Pro 3.0, the mobile plugin for WordPress, which is a fairly substantial update to WPtouch Pro. Most of my family and friends know just how hard we’ve been working on it over the last few months, and especially these last few weeks. Last night we had a little party with a few employees and some company friends, and today most of us finally get to relax a little. The amount of effort we put into this launch we basically an order of magnitude larger than the one we did almost three years ago. As if it wasn’t hard enough launching just a ...

I’ll do a big post about the launch of WPtouch Pro 3.0 in a few days, but for now all I’ll say is that it has been a fairly massive undertaking that we started almost a full year ago. We’ll be revealing everything on Thursday, but for now everyone will have to make due with a quick teaser: If you’re interested in being notified when we launch in a few days, head on over to BraveNewCode.com and sign-up at the bottom. We’re definitely looking forward to pulling back the veil and showing everyone what we’ve been working on for quite a while now. WPtouch Pro 3.0: Now Available WPtouch ...

Back when I got back from Europe in December, I decided I needed a hobby to help me get through the cold Canadian winter. I eventually decided to take up beer making, since a) I like beer b) some of my friends brew beer and c) most of my friends like to drink beer, especially when it’s free. I’ve probably done close to 10 all-grain beer brews so far, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned in this adventure. Had I read a post like this before I started, it probably would have saved me lots of pain and grief. But in the nature of giving back to beer drinkers and brewers around ...