Good news is I’m fairly happy with the outcome, especially with the branding part of it. Plus transcoding only took about 3 or 4 minutes. I signed up for a Pro Account on a month by month basis for this upcoming weekend. It gives me priority transcoding and the ability to automatically generate iPod specific versions at the same time. The only question left is weather to shoot at 320×240 or 640×480. If I were at home, I’d just shoot 640×480, but the files end up rather large, and if I’m limited to a crappy hotel connection, might prefer speed over quality. Plus, 320×240 is basically ...

Up until about a year ago, I used to comment entirely using the name “Duane”. There wasn’t really any big motivation for doing so, it was simply something I was used to doing from my old IRC chats. At one point though, I realized that it seemed a bit weird leaving big, technical comments on web-sites but not having my name associated with them. At the bare minimum, it felt like it lessened the impact of what I wrote if I use only my first name, or if used an alias. After a year of going by “Duane Storey” pretty much everywhere I write or comment, I can say that without a doubt it’s ...

I spent most of the last hour on the couch, just thinking by candlelight. It was a nice break from the norm, having a dark apartment sans the sound of computer fans spinning or other randomness that goes beep in the night. Looking out my window, it’s hard to tell just how many people participated. It seems slightly darker than normal I guess, but for the most part it looks like business as usual in this city. For those of you who missed it, I took my site down for a few hours in support of the event. Here’s a snapshot Rebecca took: And lastly, I just want to mention that WordPress 2.5 was ...

After setting up my RAID 5 array last night, I decided that maybe I would take a stab at self hosting my blog again. Up until two years ago, I had always run my blog from home. It’s not really that hard to set up your own Apache server, and Linux can literally run for months or more without requiring a reboot. The downside of course is that home internet connections can be flaky, and most co-locations and hosting companies have UPS backup when things go wrong. I recently upgraded my home fiber internet connection to a small business plan, so my internet connection at home is actually fairly ...

For those of you who hadn’t heard, today is the day of Earth Hour, a event set up by the WWF to show support against global warming and climate change. From their website: On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund. Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 ...

Thanks to everyone who left some feedback the other day about the new translation plugin. I’ve had some really great comments about it, and even the odd person that’s really anxious to test it out. I’m hoping to put a version up online tonight for people to download and try for themselves. For those people who didn’t catch it, what I did was write a WordPress plugin that takes advantage of the Google AJAX language API to dynamically translate the content of my blog into whatever language you as a reader ask for (by adjusting your browser settings). This works in both directions: blog entries ...

Me, Keira, Rebecca, John, and Amy Photo “Credit” by Keira Mellis — Attribution by force ...

For those of you who follow what goes on in the web services part of the internet, this little tidbit may interest you. Amazon has offered relatively cheap cloud computer for the last year or so, but one of the major downsides was that it didn’t have a static IP address. So if all your machines / images were to crash at the same time (which has happened before due to a power or internet outage), you lose your IP address and potentially may be allocated a new one when you restart your service. Today Amazon announced that they are offered Elastic IP addresses (which is a funky way of saying Static ...

I just realized I don’t own any glasses, just mugs My plants are all dead or dying My christmas tree is still up I don’t look at bills before I pay them, I typically just pay a random amount and hope it’s right I’ve lived in my current apartment for two and a half years, and I still don’t have a bedroom suite or a dresser for my clothes I have the boxes for my iMac and my Macbook pro still in the corner of my living room. They make me happy I collect wine. But I don’t really drink it. I get groceries once a month, and my fridge is about 50% beer I have nine cores worth of computing ...

Can anyone recommend a good accountant to me for doing personal taxes? I’ve typically always done them myself, but due to the odd web and photography gig I’ve had over the last year, they are starting to get a bit complicated in terms of write-offs etc. If you can let me know, that would be great. Preferably someone close to the downtown core. ...

The one promise I made myself last year was that I was going to spend more time this summer doing the things I like. Number one on the list is of course my favourite past time, camping. For the first time in most of my working life, I now get *three* weeks of vacation a year, as opposed to two (I should also point out many places outside of North America get four to six weeks of vacation a year), so I’m looking forward to spending more time in the wilderness this year. I sent out a few emails to some friends tonight to try and figure out somewhere to camp. Since I have a few close friends out ...

I set up my computer to do backups using Apple’s Time Machine a while ago. The good news is that it appears to be working just fine. The bad news is it seems to fire up my external USB drive far more than I would like, especially during the evenings. Since my iMac is right in my bedroom, the spinning, chugging drive doesn’t make my sleep situation any better. If I can’t find a way to dial down how often it does a backup, I might have to look at getting a quieter drive. ...

The official home for the theme will be over on BraveNewCode, so add a link and keep track if you’re interested. ...

Ah yes. The sun is almost shining, and I had a good sleep. I free pretty good. I’m just packing my bags to head to Chilliwack for the day and hang out a bit with my nephew on his birthday. First order of business is to run downstairs and get some coffee though. The best part is there’s still a pile of weekend left, so I can do some more relaxing back home on the couch. I’ll probably head back out to Vancouver tomorrow afternoon as I have some stuff I want to get finished up out here. Also, I think it’s about time to take my Christmas tree down. What do you think? ...

Yes, they are rare. I’m usually the guy with the camera. But looks like someone managed to snap a photo of me the last time I crawled away from the computer and into the light. There are lots of people in the photo, and I’m sure I’ll miss some names. But from left to right are Alexa Booth, Scott Hadfield, Rebecca Holt, Ariane, Boris Mann, Matt Mullenweg, (up top now) Phillip Jeffrey, Jessica Mah and me. This was the day after Northern Voice down at Havana on the Drive. Photo By Phillip’s camera. ...

Stuff like this amazes me. Scientists just witnessed the largest explosion they’ve seen in space. It’s from a star 7.5 billion light years away. What that means is that the actual star has been dead for 7.5 billion years, but we’re just seeing the light from the explosion now. Poor star. ...

I love stories like this. Starbucks has just been ordered to pay $100 million worth of cash that was taken out of their employees’ tip jars and given to managers and shift supervisors. It always boggles my mind how establishments like that routinely try and screw their employees, many of which are making minimum wage. My teen years were pretty much filled with an endless string of shitty jobs. First, there was Bonanza, an interesting establishment that tried to cross fast-food with grilled steak, the result of which probably kept the local hospital busy with food poisoning cases. Like Starbucks, ...

I haven’t been sleeping well at all this week, and on Monday night only got about three hours of sleep. So last night I picked up some Sleep-Aid from the pharmacy on my way home from work. I was originally going to force myself to stay up until 11pm before hitting the sack, but actually passed out on the couch at around 7:30pm and woke up around 10:30pm. I did a bit of work on the computer until 11:30pm, then popped a Sleep Aid for the win. I woke up at around 6:30am this morning feeling rather good actually. It’s nice to have a full sleep for a change. This weekend is easter (I think), and ...

So, I give this guy a few brownie points for making some cool robotic arm thing. I think he has a little too much time on his hands though. Although the dog sure seems to be having fun. ...

When the Juno awards were announced a few months ago, I put my name on the list for media accreditation. I didn’t hear anything for a while, so I sort of assumed it wasn’t going through. Today I got an email saying I had a media pass, which means I have full access to photograph the Canadian Juno Awards. I’ll be photographing and writing on behalf of Urban Vancouver, so look on my blog and over there from time to time for photos and a few entries. I still have to sort everything out and see if I can get a hotel room and what not, but it’s fairly likely I’ll be heading to Calgary for ...