Shortly after arriving in Vancouver, I saw someone Tweet that the Barenaked Ladies were busking on Robson Street, so I strolled on down. Sure enough, right on the corner of Robson and Burrard was a massive group of people and music playing. I only got to listen to a few minutes worth of music, but the crowd was definitely into it. Here’s a shot of the bass player, Jim Creeggan, that I snapped shortly after the show was over: ...

If you’re stuck at home during some of the festivities over the next few weeks, don’t fret entirely. Yes, you’ll miss out on TONS of great events, but the good news is you can catch a few things remotely. To that end there’s a new Yaletown web camera that’s now operational that gives views to the North and South. Tomorrow you’ll be able to see the Torch Relay go through that area by watching on the web cam. The webcam is sponsored by Wasserman + Partners Advertising, and can be viewed here (the links to activate it are in the top-right corner). Enjoy! ...

I have all my camera gear packed up, which for me, is quite a lot of stuff. I pulled my old laptop/camera-bag out of retirement, which means I can have the majority of my gear, as well as my laptop, all in the same bag. It is as convenient as it is heavy. I bought a ticket on the 10am Greyhound bus leaving Chilliwack for downtown Vancouver. I decided that having my car in the city wasn’t really a good idea with the games going on. Right now I’m just sipping a coffee, then I’m going to head down to the Greyhound and wait down there. I have a pile of work on my laptop, so I should be able ...

I’m going to have to spend some time going through all my friends’ previous posts about the Olympics, because truthfully, I really have no idea where any cool events or things to see or do are, other than the actual events. It sounds like there are a lot of international houses that are worth visiting, as well as a few pubs (although based on some of the Tweets, the prices seem rather incredible for beer, even by Vancouver standards). As it stands, I have a few events to attend next week already. There’s a party/event on Robson I’ve been invited to, which I may swing by and check out. ...

I’m planning to hit Vancouver on Saturday sometime and spend a week or so in the city checking things out. As I mentioned before, I’ll be working during the days, most likely near Gastown. At lunch and in the evenings I’ll hopefully be bouncing around with my camera, taking photos or checking out what’s going on outside of most official venues. I made a few small changes to this site to facilitate me writing posts during the Olympics. The main page has been changed to show Olympic related posts, and I’ve added a Flickr gallery to the bottom which will ultimately start showing all the ...

Well, here we are, two days away from the start of the Winter Olympics. As everyone knows, the event is massively over budget. The last time I checked, the total cost (thus far) of the Winter Olympics was at 6 billion dollars, the majority of which was paid for by the people of British Columbia. I’ve been on the fence for a while now about whether or not I want to be in town for the Olympics. I didn’t vote for them, but at the same time, here they are, and there’s no going back now. So to that end, I finally decided that I’m going to try to be in Vancouver for at least a week during the ...

I’ve been playing around with Google Adwords a bit, experimenting with a few basic campaigns to figure out how it all works. I was partly inspired by a friend of mine who drove some traffic to his retail store here in Chilliwack using a Facebook Ad campaign over Christmas. The part that I don’t really understand is how Adwords is a good investment at the CPC prices they charge? For example, I was trying to target Vancouver Stock Photography using an adwords campaign. After playing around with a few keyword combinations, it quickly became obvious that the average CPC for something that targeted ...

I’m currently in Victoria, awaiting my ride back to Vancouver. I already checked my laptop as baggage so I’m writing a quick entry from my iPhone. Today was a gorgeous day out here, and Jeff, Maya and I spent most of it outside. One of the things I decided today was that I want to join some sport or team this spring, even if it’s on a drop in basis. I kind of miss being outside or being involved in a competitive sport, partially due to the exercise, and partially for the social aspects. I used to be pretty good at badminton, so I might try to find a local badminton league to get into as ...

I can’t really say that I’ve seen much of Victoria since being here, since I haven’t really been out that much. That said, it’s been really great just hanging out with some old friends and taking it easy. My friend Jeff (who has been a friend of mine since high school) picked me up at the Helicopter pad in Victoria on Friday night, and we spent most of the night just chilling at his place watching movies. Today Jeff, Michele and I took Maya (their 2.5 yr old daughter) down to her gymnastics class and watched that for an hour or so. Then we came back to Jeff’s house and made a pretty ...

Here’s an exclusive look at the iPad: The iPad – watch more funny videos ...

This upcoming weekend I’m shutting the computers down and heading over to Vancouver Island. One of my best friends from high school (and also university) lives over in Oak Bay in Victoria now — strangely enough I haven’t really seen him in about a year, mainly because we’ve both been busy. I’m sort of known amongst my friends as the guy who is always busy. I don’t try to be, it just always seems like there’s some event or something I’ve committed to that I have to go to. That’s why a few months ago I said I was taking a break from all the Vancouver events — it’s not that ...

It’s true. Sure, it might not have flash, and it might not come with 3G by default. But really, do any of those things matter when you’re sitting on the porcelain god? I think not. Obviously a laptop is too big to take into the can. Well, at least I hope nobody is taking the laptop into the can (Dan Lilly, that means you buddy). That leaves the iPhone or the iPad. iPhone works decent, but really, there are usually a variety of pads in the can, so might as well add one more. It’s pretty easy to use the iPhone with one hand while grabbing some TP with the other. I imagine one will have to ...

If you’ve seen Food Inc., you’ve undoubtedly seen a few scenes with one of America’s most well-known farmers (at least nowadays), Joel Salatin. Joel is a revolutionary farmer in so much as he has stuck with more traditional methods of raising and growing food. While he’s applied a few basic modern tools (such as low-power electric fences) most of what he does on the farm has been passed down to him by his father. I’ve seen a few videos of him talking now, and he’s so passionate about his quest for better food and accountability in the food system that it’s hard not to get caught ...

I had a rough sleep the other night, so I was a bit tired yesterday. I passed out on the couch for a bit in the late afternoon and early evening, and woke up just long enough to grab some McDonald’s for supper. Afterwards I started watching a bit of Lost, but could hardly keep my eyes open. I strolled into bed at around 9pm last night, thinking I would read for a while. Apparently I passed out, because next thing I knew it was about 4am in the morning. By the time the night was over, I had slept 11 hours, which is a pretty long sleep for me. I’m just taking it easy this weekend. I have a WordCamp ...

Read a pretty good piece at the LA times about how art is becoming a commodity. ...

As most people know, I moved back to Chilliwack (a small farming community, where I grew up) last year. Recently I’ve begun looking at houses in Chilliwack and decided to solicit the help of a realtor. I obviously had a lot of choices, but I homed in on one. My mom was in real-estate years ago, and she said very few people were very nice to her except for one guy. That guy went out of his way to be nice to her when she was starting out, and was the only person who helped her career instead consistently. So, nearly 20 years later, I called that guy up and told him that based on how he treated ...

This is actually kind of a sore spot, so I thought that I would touch upon it. The New York Times recently announced that they were going to start charging for content in 2011. Strangely enough, most people who grew up in the Internet age seem to think that everything, including premium content, should be free of charge. I personally don’t believe that’s the case, and would even go so far to say that having an economy based on content generated at the expense of advertising dollars is an extremely bad thing. But at the end of the day, it always amazes me how little people are willing to pay ...

Hard to believe the Olympics are only a few short weeks away. When I was living downtown I remember when they erected that big countdown clock. I remember thinking it seemed strange that they put that up nearly three years before the event, but I have to say, it went fairly quick. It’s interesting to see the city ramp up to the event, and all the associated problems that are starting to occur. Last week the local skihill Cypress shut down in an effort to save snow for the actual Olympic runs. Given the unseasonably warm temperatures right now, it’s even hard for the local mountains to create ...

Well, today there are at least two important events that happened in the past. First, on January 15th, 1977, my friend Brennen was born. Since that time he has pretty much been a major pain in my ass, causing me to lift boxes for weekends at a time, to fix countless porn-infested computers, and to drive out to the edge of the world (White Rock) on weekends. That said, he’s a great friend, and I hope he has an awesome birthday today. Also, at this exact time last year I was packing up the last few things in my desk in Vancouver and leaving my job there for the last time. Hard to believe I’ve ...

So today is January 13th, which means I’ve been both caffeine and pop (soda for you Americans) free since the start of the year. I’ve given up caffeine at various times in my life, so that’s not amazingly impressive for me. But I can’t say that I’ve ever given up pop for more than a few days at a time before. I’ve had quite a few problems sleeping over the last few years, and I often have trouble both falling asleep and staying asleep. It seems even the smallest of noises will wake me up sometimes, or even something as small as a breeze blowing across some exposed skin. To be honest, ...