Yes, today is my mom’s birthday. I lost count of how old she is years ago, but she’ll always be 39 in our hearts.
Have a great day today mom! And hurry up and call me back so I can wish you Happy Birthday myself! ...
Tonight, while sitting at home on the couch, I was reminded of a conversation I had last week with someone that I hadn’t talked to in quite some time. That person was someone I used to hang out with quite a bit in university, but haven’t really seen that much of in the last few years. We both somehow ended up in software development, although I’ve stayed more along the lines of developing software while he has moved on to managing a small team of developers.
The thing is, I left the conversation somehow being made to feel bad that after eight years in my career I haven’t advanced to full-time ...
I just read the results of an interesting study done down south. Apparently americans spend approximately three hours per week grooming themselves and looking good, but less than an hour (per week people) on foreplay and intercourse. So it appears the collective mass would rather look good in bed than be good in bed.
Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the write-up.
Americans spend nearly three hours every week grooming themselves, but less than one hour on foreplay and sexual intercourse. It’s no wonder that only 46% of us describe our love lives as exciting, or existent for that matter.
On ...
I’m hopeless, really I am. I do stupid things all the time, most of which I end up thinking are pretty funny. A few years ago I went to work with my shirt on backwards and inside-out. Since I like laughing at myself, I never take these things too seriously.
This morning, after taking a shower, I went into my room and sorted some clothes looking for something to wear. Underneath a couple clothes in the corner there was a plastic bag. And in that plastic bag was….
everyone’s favorite packaged pig, Mr. Bacon. Yes, I’m so not shitting you, there was bacon.. in my room. I actually remember ...
I guess this makes complete sense, given what I know about physics. Blue lasers were actually extremely difficult to make, and they didn’t emerge until nearly a decade after red-lasers hit the market. Since the wavelength of light is inversely proportional to the energy of the photons, making blue light (which has a low wavelength) takes a lot of energy. In fact, most of the original blue lasers wouldn’t last very long because they basically burned themselves out. Also, as Hesty pointed out, the computation requirements for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far greater than MPEG2.
Slashdot is reporting ...
I’m a big believer in corporate responsibility. That is, I think big corporations should reach out and do more for people in their communities, or use whatever means they have to contribute positively towards society. Surprisingly, the Vancouver technology scene is fairly active in this area, and I’ve witnessed many technology-driven events in this city geared towards feeding people in the Lower East Side, helping acquire clothing, etc.
So today, I was rather pleased to see an announcement from one of the largest technology companies around. Google has just announced that they are going to ...
This morning I had the pleasure of swinging by MacStation in Yaletown on my way to work and picking up a brand new MacPro computer for work. I could sit here and quote technical specs until the cows came home, but I’ll just say that this sucker completely rocks. It basically has two of everything:
Two CPUs, each of which has four 2.8 GHz cores
A dual-head video card capable of doing 1080p video on each port
Two network cards, so in theory you could put one on a private network and one on a public one
I’ve spent the last year sort of bouncing between multiple machines. In fact, looking back ...
Given that I’ve been with my current company for the last four years, I haven’t really had to think about salaries for quite some time. That being said, I’m actually curious how Vancouver is doing in terms of salaries in the high-tech department. I know it’s fairly easy to acquire a +100k job in the Bay Area, and in New York you can easily approach 200k in some fields (Math+Programming in the stock market for example). By talking to various people over the last few months, I gather there’s a pretty big spread amongst most companies in this city.
I’ve thrown together a few quick and ...
I’m just heading out the door to meet my fate – I get the results of my MRI back today, and should know whether or not I’m having surgery again on my eye socket. I meant to wake up today and do a humorous post about boxer shorts, but I probably won’t have time until later tonight.
I’ve had my head down deep in work the last few days. Part of that has brought to my attention a PHP framework called Symfony. I’ve spent about 30 hours playing with it, and I can say that’s fairly amazing, even though it’s a bit daunting at first. All these people who swear how awesome Ruby is should ...
Today Apple officially unveiled the new Apple MacBook and MacBook pro laptops. Not a whole lot of excitement with the announcements, since many people were expecting a new form factor, but it looks like there are a few small improvements. Of note is the addition of the multi-touch track pad that is part of the Apple MacBook Air Notebook, more video memory, and faster CPU speeds.
You can read more about it here. ...
Last night while lying in bed I had the crazy idea to try and make a mosaic out of all the photos from Northern Voice. Tonight, while sitting in front of the TV, I decided to make an attempt at it. So, here is the end result.
It’s 40 tiles wide by 40 tiles tall, for a total of 1600 individual images. If you want to see it large, click on the image to download a huge version (approximate 9MB). ...
I’m in the market for a new laptop bag. I currently have a backpack which holds my laptop and my camera gear, but when I don’t carry my camera gear I find the bag is fairly big and bulky. So, I’d like to pick up a nice, slim laptop bag that goes over my shoulder.
I googled a bit this morning trying to find recommendations where to go, but most of those sites just talked about bags and didn’t really point me in any useful directions. Rebecca gave me the name of a site on Robson, but when I went by this morning they were still closed.
Can anyone recommend a good place to buy a laptop bag? ...
Today was a good day. I woke up this morning fully refreshed thanks to the 10 or 11 hours of sleep I got last night. I basically had no plans upon waking up, but found a message on my cell phone this morning from Boris saying that people were meeting up on commercial drive for some brunch.
Scott Hadfield and Matt MullenwegI hopped in the car and headed down to Havanas on the Drive, which is a pretty funky restaurant/gallery that I’ve heard good things about. There I met up with about twelve or so people, most of which attended Northern Voice. Matt Mullenweg (now with a +1 from here for his battle ...
I’ve spent most of this last week thinking about blogging and Northern Voice, so tonight I’m going to unwind a bit in front of the TV and just relax. So, while I plan to write a Northern Voice summary, I’m going to hold off on that for a day or two.
One of the aspects of Northern Voice I enjoy is the opportunity to take a lot of different photos in various settings. I practiced doing the odd wide-angle shot in some of the rooms, and used my 70-200mm for a few close ups of speakers. For the most part, I took a lot of the same shots I always take. But for some reason, something’s been really ...
I’m sitting here with John and Rebecca waiting for the Northern Voice keynote to begin. This year it’s WordPress’ own Matt Mullenweg, who will be talking about blogging and WordPress 2.5.
Boris Mann and Matt MullenwegKeynote is over. It was really entertaining and enlightening, and I thought some of the points about advertising overload with sites like Facebook were interesting. ...
Northern Voice is officially rolling out at UBC. Since today is an unconference, people are putting their ideas up on the wall for sessions that will happen during the day. I’m still waiting to here when the Internet Bootcamp and Photocamp sessions are.
Megan ColeI have to finish my plan for the little talk I’m giving, so I’m chilling out on the side right now. Will drop a few more blog entries as the day goes on. Check my Flickr stream for photos as they happen. ...
Tonight was the big Northern Voice social event down at the Waldorf Hotel in East Van. I was really looking forward to attending, and it didn’t disappoint in the least. I hardly ate at all beforehand, so the thought of roast pig keep me going most of the afternoon.
First of all, I have to say I was the luckiest guy in the house, having been fortunate enough to make an entrance with these two fine looking women:
Rebecca and Keira-AnneUnfortunate Rebecca’s husband (and all around great dude) John couldn’t make it – he was missed, but will be leading a podcasting session tomorrow so make ...