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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

I have no idea where the hell this song came from. I went to Canadian Tire with Rebecca and John last night and somehow we ended up singing this stupid song. Anyways, here’s a quick recap from the late 80s, in case you missed them. ...

Office Worker Meltdown Second Angle – Watch more free videos Another Angle: Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane – Watch more free videos You can’t help me wonder what set this guy off, or if he has some illness that led to this outbreak. I’ve had some bad days at the office, but nothing like that. Hat Tip: John Biehler. ...

I work in a big highrise downtown, which means I have the pure joy of dealing with the elevator system whenever I need to go anywhere. For whatever reason you can only take the stairwell in our building on the way down. Considering we’re only on the third floor, the inability to walk up a few flights of stairs is a big pain in the ass. One of the things you notice after a while is that some people invariably lose their bearings whenever they enter an elevator while others do not (the confusing part is we have a bank of elevators, and sometimes you end up in one of the south side of the building, ...

The other day John contacted me and told me about a new hack for the Apple TV. It’s basically an amalgamation of all the available hacks and updates for it, but it’s packaged in a nice, easy to use USB installer. Before I get into my hacking attempt, I want to give a quick review of what I think of Apple TV so far. To be honest, I really like the idea of what Apple TV is supposed to be. Unfortunately, it’s not really that yet. The main problem is there really isn’t enough content on it. I check back every week, hoping for a massive change in titles, but for the most part there’s just ...

A while ago I did a quick and dirty hosting experiment with some of my readers. I actually need a bit more data, although what I’m after is a bit easier this time. So, if you have a blog, all I ask is that you let me know the following: The URL for your blog The name of the hosting company that you’re on If you like it or not So please post a comment if you have some of that info, or send me an email if you don’t really want it public. If you know of any friends and where they are at, let me know too. Thanks! ...

You know, I remember back in the good old days when you could cross the US/Canada border relatively easily. The worse thing that would typically happen was for you to have your car searched, or get asked a pile of questions from a border guard. That changed a few years ago when the border agents were given the ability to search your laptop for child pornography. And while I think the end goal (cracking down on pedophiles) is a good one, I have to say that I’m against the current method of blindly searching through digital content. Luckily I’ve never been searched at the border, which is rather ...

A few years ago my mom convinced me that I should finally ditch my 1993 Toyota Tercel (which seemed to be running on only 3 cylinders) and upgrade to something nicer. After spending a few days test driving cars, I finally went out and bought a 2006 Mazda 3 Sport Hatchback. For the most part, it’s been a really great car. The mileage isn’t super amazing (it’s not that bad either, but definitely no Prius), but it’s fun to drive and it looks pretty sexy (for a hatchback). The only downside is that last year Mazda admitted to a problematic design flaw in the locking mechanism, one that allowed ...

if (is_single()) { ? } ?Please, for the love of god, stop making movies. Whatever magic you used to bring to the table evaporated a long time ago. As you can tell, I saw the new Indiana Jones movie on the weekend. Unfortunately, I didn’t really enjoy it, and found myself looking at my cell phone from time to time to see how much more I had to endure. First, you don’t need CGI gophers to propagate the plot. The first time the camera swung by and I saw them, I almost groaned out loud, seeing the obvious resemblance to the little furry Ewoks that stunk up the screen during Episode VI of Star ...

As most of you remember, last year I threw the environmental gauntlet down and challenged all my readers to replace their old, energy inefficient incandescent light-bulbs with the newer CFL variant. Many of my friends and readers quickly went to work and replaced many of the bulbs in their houses, some even going as far to replace every single one. I replaced most of the ones in my apartment, and probably save on average of about 0.3kWh every day in my place alone. I actually started a Flickr group for this purpose last year to help motivate people. I was a bit surprised to go into it tonight ...

Ever since I was about 18 years of age, I have had a credit card. The main reason, at least at first, was simply to build up a credit rating in case I ever needed a loan (which I ended up requiring when I went to university). Nowadays, I use my visa primarily for work expenses, since I tend to do a lot of traveling with my job. To that end, I probably spend close to $30,000 on my visa a year, a good portion of which comes from plane rides and hotel rooms when I’m on the road. I have no idea what my credit limit is on my visa, but last time I checked (which was a few years ago), there was enough ...

I read this article this morning, and as a photographer, found it rather surprising. A few weeks ago CityTV used some guy’s photos off of Flickr and used them in an on-air broadcast. The person who took them did talk to someone from CityTV, but did not give them permission to use the photos. Nonetheless, they aired the photos without any sort of attribution. Obviously the person who took them was upset, and appealed to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) about it. After nine months, the CBSC finally ruled that CityTV should be forced to apologize on air: As a result, City must issue ...

Well, by now everyone and their dog has blogged this, but I’ll jump on the band wagon as well. Rebecca just pinged me on iChat and told me about the opening of the new Apple store this Saturday. To be honest, it comes as a fairly big surprise given the state they were in last month (based on rumours). Obviously I think it’s a pretty cool thing that they are opening this weekend. Considering that many of the rumour sites are alluding to big announcements from Apple on June 9th at the developer conference, I can’t help but think the construction of the Vancouver store was accelerated for ...

I got back from Deception Pass early this afternoon, and I have to say, it was a really great trip. I spent most of the time there just sitting around the campfire reading, often taking a sip from a can of beer when my attention wandered from the pages. I took a little day trip on Saturday, driving back along the water towards Anecortes, and then south towards Oak Harbour. Driving along the open road with the windows open made me realize just how long it has been since I’ve gotten away for a weekend. Not only that, but it makes me extremely excited for the block of time off I’m taking in ...

Being that this weekend is the May long weekend, and unofficially (at least in British Columbia circles) the start of summer, I thought I might get in the car and take a little road trip. My sister and the kids are camping near Deception Pass in Washington, State, and I’m seriously considering hopping in the car later tonight and making the trek down to hang out with them. It’s supposed to be 30C, which is rather nice weather to be sitting outside. I have to see what the state of my camping gear is in the back of my car, but assuming it’s all there are prepped to go, I might head out around ...