A few blog posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to do my best to return back to my pre-last-relationship weight. To that end, I have spent the last week hitting the gym from time to time and attempting to watch what I eat. The first week has been a bit rocky, and I hit a few tasty speed bumps at Rebecca’s Cinqo de Mayo party, but for the most part I’ve been on track. Since my life is a bit crazy thesedays, it’s challenging for me to always have access to “healthy” food, but I’ve been doing the best I can.
So without further ado, the progress after week #1 is (RSS drum roll please):
5.5 ...
You thought this day would never come, didn’t you Air Canada? All your posturing, your laughing. You may not remember us, but we sure remember you. Oh yes, we haven’t forgotten the night we had together, have we precious?
We remember landing in Toronto, coming back from a brief trip to Boston, so anxious to finally get into our own bed in Vancouver and fall asleep later that night. And dream. Yes, we dreamed once. Of fields and sunshine. But it took that from us. Yes, took it from us they did, my precious.
Upon arriving in Toronto, one of its minions came forth, only to announce that our ...
Monday is typically the crappiest day of my week. A big contributing factor to that is the lack of sleep I usually get on Sunday nights, partially because of the coffee I usually end up drinking during the day, and also because I tend to stay up late working on something I’ve been meaning to accomplish all week.
Last night I had my second big battle with Garageband, and I’m starting to learn more about the inner workings of it. The one problem I already see is that most of the recordings tend to be slightly noisy and echoey. The echo is obviously due to the fact that I’m recording in my ...
When I first started my current job, the COO and one of the founders was a guy named Erik Lagerway. During the time he was at our company, we shared many a beer and even a plane ride or two together (the most memorable being the one to Phillidelphia where we got to witness first-hand drunken broomball in Horsham and Whatchamachukinchunk).
His current brainchild is a service called Gaboogie which was designed in an attempt to simplify conference calls in the enterprise environment. Most conference calls today are setup via email, and involve participants calling into a conference bridge at a specified ...
A few days ago, Flickr gave me the not-so-subtle warning that my account was about to expire. Since I’ve had a pro-Flickr account for a full year now, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the service so far.
Flickr sort of came to the limelight about 18-24 months ago as one of the leading websites that had real Web 2.0 technology. If you haven’t been there you should definitely check it out. Most of the website utilizes Ajax and as you use it, sometimes it feels more like an application than a mere website, and that was really one of their original selling points.
Most ...
I wanted to pen this entry really quick before bed. A few days ago, one of the main encryption keys for the HD-DVD platform was leaked, apparently by an insider within the video industry. Basically, having this key will allow anyone with access to the hardware the full ability to decode and decrypt every HD-DVD that has been manufactured so far. Oops.
The key, which amounts to no more than a 128 bit string, has been circling the internet, pulling a string of cease and desist orders along with it. Many a webowner has tried to publish the key online, only to be given a legal letter demanding they ...
Tonight I went down to Tom Lee music in Vancouver and picked up a new microphone. Originally I was going to get something that would simply allow me to record a few guitar tracks into GarageBand, but I think it’s pretty decent for Podcasting as well.
Check out the audio here. The microphone discussed is the Samson C01U. ...
When I left Ottawa years ago, I was a pretty chubby guy. Two years of working crazy hours, drinking tons of beer, and eating primarily in restaurants had taken its toll, and my old university self had been replaced with your stereotypical software engineering stature. As soon as I got settled in Vancouver and started classes again at UBC, I decided to undo all the damage of my Ottawa experience — I started watching what I ate, getting a bit more exercise (mostly by rollerblading and hiking), and even sleeping in a bit more. In about six months, I had dropped 40 lbs, and ended up being substantially ...
On May 5th, Flickr is having a big world-wide event were everyone is being asked to record a day of their life in photos. I think this is a pretty cool idea, and it should make for some really interesting browsing when it’s all over. Unfortunately for me, May 5th will probably involve mostly sleeping and chewing pain killers, but I’m definitely going to try and participate if I can. ...
When I left for Chilliwack on the weekend, I accidentally left my phone sitting on my bed back in Vancouver. Considering I was only going for a day, I didn’t real think that much of it, and checked my messages from Chilliwack on Saturday night. When I got back to Vancouver yesterday evening, my phone was dead, so I simply plugged it into the wall and went to sleep.
Unfortunately, upon checking my messages today, I realized that I had missed a call yesterday from my plastic surgeon saying that they couldn’t perform surgery on Thursday, and that they wanted to bring me in and do it today. By ...
Friday afternoon I had yet another enlightening visit down at St. Paul’s hospital. I actually went in rather grumpy and upset with the whole process, but about five minutes into it was greated by a really cute, friendly medical student. So, my spirits rose pretty quickly to the point where I was making light of the whole situation. It was actually rather funny, because the first little bit of dialog went like this:
Cute student: “so why are you here today?”
Me: “I have no idea”
Cute student: “what do you mean you have no idea? You came in.”
Me: “My doctor’s office called me and ...
Last night we had a mini drinking event at work where we said goodbye to Chris and Hanh. After consuming a few beers, we sat down and started to watch a bit of the hockey game. After the second period, Hesty and I ventured down Robson street on our way home and met up with John and Rebecca for a drink at a local restaurant.
This morning I woke up around 11am (and man, was it nice to sleep in), had a quick shower and hopped into the car headed for Chilliwack. It seems like it’s been a really long time since I’ve been back home.
My dad and I went halfers on some homemade wine a while ago, and ...
Tonight I found myself down in the gastown area, having a few beers with old pal Boris Mann down at the Bryght offices. He was nice enough to invite me to some of the Thursday night BBQ lovin at his offices, and introduced me to the ever-sought-after “Save On Meat” store around the corner from the offices.
Photo by Roland TanglaoAfterwards, I stuck around and hung out for the Drupal monthly Vancouver meetup and learned both about Drupal 6.0 and some of the Install Profile work that the guys at Bryght have contributed back. I’m in the process of setting up a new website with a different ...
If you were reading the news yesterday, you probably heard of the allegations that Canadians overseas have aided in the torture of Afghan prisoners by handing them over to local authorities and then not following up on their treatment. To quote a few paragraphs from the Globe and Mail:
Critics demanded the resignation of Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor yesterday over new allegations that Afghan prisoners, detained by Canadian soldiers and handed over to local authorities, had been tortured.
[…]
Professor Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia, a specialist in international relations, ...
As most of you know, I have been waiting anxiously to have my surgery performed down at St. Paul’s. About two weeks ago, I had a meeting at the hospital with my surgeon (where I sat and waited for three hours just to sign a few forms) where we discussed the surgery date (which was supposed to be this week), and a few of the details. I called last Thursday to try and nail down an exact date, but they said they wouldn’t be able to give me one.
So today, I called down to the doctor’s office to find out what was going on. I was told that for some reason, nobody even submitted my name into the ...
I’ve had a few requests lately from people asking if I could send them a copy of my master’s thesis. So in the interest of saving time, I’m throwing it up here in case anyone wants to download it and read themselves to sleep.
My research was primarily in the area of high definition video compression, specifically on a new codec called H.264 that is used in the new HD DVD formats such as Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I proposed a novel scheme to combine concurrently broadcoast MPEG-2 standard definition (SD) streams with H.264 spatial difference information to create a HD broadcast stream at a ...
As of this moment, I am officially “on call” for my next surgery at St. Paul’s hospital. I was hoping that I would have gotten the call on Sunday night for a Monday morning surgery (I just want it over with), but unfortunately I still haven’t had the call yet. I won’t be able to eat for twelve hours prior, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to get at least that much notice. It would be nice if they could give more notice than that, but apparently the hospitals are rather busy, and it’s difficult to book them in advance.
Photo by jekemp on Flickr (click photo to view) My dad has a ...
A few months ago, I wrote a flickr plugin for wordpress that integrated with a few different image galleries including Lightbox and Greybox. As last count, 126 different blogs were using the crossroads plugin to show their flickr images in their posts.
While updating my blog theme last night, I realized one of the current problems I have with most of the themes I downloaded. Typically, a theme will present the full content of a few blog entries on the main page. A few of the “cooler” themes I’ve seen only show one post on the main page, which is sort of a neat idea if you don’t write very ...