This is a short post, but I promised a few people I’d let them know where I’m off to. I’m officially on vacation right now, and I’m going to disappear for a few days to just relax, take some photos, and see where the wind takes me. I’ve never really spent any time in Seattle, so tomorrow I’m going to head down that way in the morning and enjoy some of the Pike St. Market. I’m taking all my camera gear, so hopefully I’ll get some good shots of city life..
I’m staying in a pretty decent hotel downtown tomorrow, and I plan to get as much sleep as humanly possible. After that, my ...
I’m sitting in room 1005 at the Forest Sciences Center at UBC, eagerly awaiting the “User Generated Content and Activist Campaigns” session to begin. Prior to this was the keynote address by Anil Dash, which gave some great insights into the importance of blogging, and a few allusions to where blogging may go in the future.
One of the most interesting part of this conference, for me at least, is a glimpse into the nature of bloggers. The other night at the social, Lee LeFever gave a presentation about his trip around the world, and one sentence that stands out in my mind from his presentation ...
Last night was the first event of the Northern Voice conference. Everyone met down at Heritage Hall on Main Street for some great food served by some local chefs here in Vancouver. The beer flowed like Vancouver rain, and people seemed to have a really great time hanging out and getting to know each other. Having been to many conferences, it was a pleasant surprise at how smoothly the events went and how social most people were.
Here are some sample photos northern voice so far, along with a live shot of Photocamp: ...
One of the great added benefits of having an online presence is that it allows people to find me pretty easily and figure out what I’ve been up to. My parents use it to get a glimpse of the stuff I’m up to living out here in the big city, my friends who have moved away get to see a little picture of home from time to time, and old friends sometimes get a chance to reconnect. Last summer I took a week off and visited New York City for three days, which was really cool. After that, my plan was to load the car with camping gear and head out to Banff and the Rocky Mountains for some rest and relaxation. ...
Tomorrow officially marks the start of the Northern Voice 2007 activities. Northern Voice is a Vancouver based conference where web-bloggers meet up and discuss various technological and social aspects of blogging. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, and Boris and his company Bryght are the main organizers for it.
The main social is tomorrow night, which will be a great chance for everyone to meet each other and break the ice before the main activities begin. Friday is “Moose Camp”, which is an opportunity for conference participants to gather around and form their own agenda based ...
I had an appointment this morning with an eye specialist to go over the last CT scan I had a few weeks ago. Prior to the CT scan, I was told that my double vision would probably be permanent, and the displacement of my eye may not be completely fixable. However, apparently the CT scan shows that the bottom muscle of my eye is depressed into the silastic implant that was put in back in November. So basically, that muscle isn’t moving freely and is contributing to my double vision and cosmetic differences between my two eyes.
The good news is that they think they can do something about it. That ...
So, I haven’t really listened to too much of their music, but I’ve been told that it’s unusually cool. Last night I was doing some shopping down at Pacific Center, and while crossing from one side of the mall to the other, I nearly walked into Jack Black. At first I wasn’t really sure it was him, but after doing a double take, I was pretty certain. He had his baby in a stroller and was just walking around checking stuff out.
I went home and Googled to see if that was him in town, and sure enough, he has a Vancouver concert tonight. So, if you’re a fan, you might want to check it out. ...
If you accessed my website at all today, you would witnessed one of the slowest websites to ever grace the series of tubes that we call the internet. I spent about two hours on the phone today with web hosting company GoDaddy.com trying to convince them that it was their problem. Unfortunately, even after escalating it multiple times, they still told me it was my fault.
So about an hour ago I decided that I had had enough of GoDaddy. I cancelled my hosting, acquired new hosting via HostMonster, and managed to change my DNS and completely set up my blog from scratch in a little under an hour. Unfortunately ...
Part of our Friday ritual of late seems to be gathering a group of people together after work and heading out for a few drinks at a local watering hole. Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to get a seat at a pub on Fridays, and most of the time we spend 20 minutes walking around before we find anything where we can get it. Smiley O’Neils is a cool pub right near work that I really like, but I think the secret is out on that place, because I can never seem to get a seat there.. Malones (Seymour and Pender) has recently finished renovating, which means they now have a bunch more seats ...
It’s that time again — time for me to take a little breather and catch up on sleep. Last week I was talking with my boss at work, and decided that maybe I should get away for a week and take some time off. I had originally booked a trip to Mexico back in November, but unfortunately due to a last minute surgery I had to have, had to cancel the trip entirely. So, I haven’t really had a proper break since July of last year. Needless to say, I’m a bit tired and worn out.
So, if all goes well, I’ll be taking the week after next off to relax. I’m not really sure what I’ll do. The Northern ...
My dad was down in Chilliwack today and he stopped at a home brew wine place. They had some special on so he asked me if I wanted to go halfers in with him on some homemade wine. Since I’ve never done it before, I thought I would give it a try and see if it’s worth doing again.
The one we ended up picking was a Washington Shiraz:
White Sands & Rattlesnake Vineyards, Yakima Washington A blockbuster with a rush of blackberry, plum, cherry and candied orange fragrances, which is followed by flavours of currant, fig, cedar and spice intertwined with a beautiful balance of toasted oak. The ...
I’m always amazed how little liquor some people can handle. Me, it’s pretty rare to get in a state where I feel like I’ve had too much.. But my pal Cisco — It doesn’t really take him a heck of a lot.
We had some beer with lunch today, and here are the results. I think you can rent him out for parties too. ...
Well, this day is finally over, so I can write about it. I cracked a bottle of wine at 6:30pm and started going through some old photos for something to do. I decided about mid way through that I would use the opportunity to try out some wines that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while.
At around 10pm Tiffany strolled by and helped me on the drinking front. It was a pretty decent evening. I gotta get to bed for a 9am conference call tomorrow, but here are a few photos from today. ...
I just looked at my computer clock and realized that today is Valentine’s day, and here I am, on my couch in the dark, alone. I talked with my ex-girlfriend briefly on the phone tonight, asked how she was doing, what she was up to, the same old same old. We were trying to figure out a time to get together for dinner, and she said that Wednesday night was obviously out. And even though I wanted to ask, I didn’t. Because really, who wants to know what their ex is doing for Valentine’s day?
So, what do I plan to do? I’m not really sure, but I imagine it’s going to involve some liquor down ...
So far, I have done a few things for Jill’s random acts of kindness challenge. You should visit my flickr page for some fun shots, or check some of them out there. You’ll need to click on the photo’s title to see what the photo is all about. ...
It’s been quite a while since I’ve been home on a Saturday night, and I have to say it’s been a nice change. I spent most of today walking around doing errands, and tidying up at home a bit. I bought some new stainless steel pots and pans, so maybe I will actually start cooking at home again. I even made a decent batch of chilli tonight, which is pretty amazing considering I’ve only cooked once or twice in about six months.
My eye was bothering me quite a bit today. Most days it’s pretty good and it feels normal, but today it felt all dry and scratchy, which put me in a crabby mood. ...
Well, it’s only been a little over a week since I open sourced the plugin used on this website. So far, based on the flickr API key statistics, it looks like 25 people are using it, which is pretty cool. A couple of people have emailed me a few suggestions, so I’m gonna try to release a new version soon incorporating some of them.
If you are using it, then drop me a line and let me know! ...
Jill emailed me on the weekend and said that since she met my challenge and changed a few lightbulbs, that perhaps I’d want to take a stab at her challenge. For those of you who don’t know, next week is officially Random Acts of Kindness week. And while I strongly encourage people to try and be kind for the rest of the year as well, this week is a chance to really up the ante a bit and see just how kind you can be to other people.
So, since it’s officially Jill’s challenge, let her know if you do anything out of the ordinary to try and make the world a better place next week. If you’re ...