A bunch of us are currently down at Workspace in Vancouver, which is a shared office space situated right on the water in Gastown. I have a rather great view of the North Shore mountains along with the cruise ship terminal at Canada Place. One of my favorite photos is this next one from Gastown I took last year from the lookout at Harbour Center: I actually shot the photograph through a window, so it's surprising that you can't see any glass. But I've always liked all the angled lines in the photo, and of course the film-noir type lighting. If you're ever in Vancouver, make sure you head on up ...

As we all know, the flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible. Blogathon, on the other hand, is made possibly by everyone's favorite stimulant, caffeine. And so this post is dedicated to caffeine in various forms. I'm currently on my third coffee. I woke up and had a 7-11 coffee (because that's all I could find at 5:30am), then pounded back some coffee here at Workspace, and just picked up a new coffee from a little Gastown coffee shop called Lunas. I imagine I'll probably average a coffee every two hours or so, which would put me somewhere in the neighborhood of about 600 - 1200 mg of ...

While I don't have any kids of my own, what I do have are a really great niece and nephew that I love very much: Despite not really spending much time with them over the last ten years (mostly because I lived in a different city), I'm actually fairly close to both of them, and have really been enjoying my time with them since moving back to Chilliwack. Last night my niece gave me a phone call and told me about all of the boy crushes she had while at summer camp (count 'em people, 11 boy crushes). So this post is dedicated to all the kids in everyone's lives, and how special they all are. Feel ...

One of the hobbies I have that brings me a lot of enjoyment is photography. It's something I've slowly honed and improved over the years to the point where I'm fairly comfortable with my camera, and with taking photos in most situations. Given how much enjoyment it's been to me, I thought I would periodically do the odd photo-entry for blogathon and talk a bit about the photos I share. This shot of Kitsilano beach is one of the shots I'm most known for. It's currently used on the Kitsilano.ca website, and also in a few brochures. I was actually just randomly driving back from UBC one night, heading ...

Since I wrote in detail about Vancouver in my last post, it's only fitting that I talk a little bit about my current place of residence, Chilliwack. Chilliwack is a little farming community nestled between a mountain range, approximately 100 kms east of Vancouver. My apartment is probably only about 5 minutes from one of the nicest provincial parks in the province, complete with it's own picturesque lake: I currently rent a 1200 square foot apartment for about $100 less a month than I was paying in Vancouver for my 700 square foot apartment. A new grocery store opened about two blocks away from ...

Vancouver is without a doubt one of the prettiest cities in the world, something that I appreciate more and more every time I go on a trip. In fact, I was just mentioning to a friend yesterday just how clean and inviting Vancouver is compared to most cities, specifically San Francisco and Los Angeles (both of which seem grubby and dirty by comparison, even though I happen to like aspects of both). And while Vancouver is a pretty city, it is not without its problems. In fact, Vancouver's lower-east side is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of Canada, which is ironic given that it's about ...

The BC Children's Hospital Foundation is an organization that works to improve the lives of every child who enters and leaves the BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver. For many families, the BC Children's Hospital becomes a second home for a period time, often while they are helping a child of theirs get back to help: BC Children’s Hospital Foundation (BCCHF) supports the people, places and things required to ensure BC’s kids have access to outstanding pediatric care. Since 1982, BC Children's Hospital Foundation has worked with children, families, caregivers and hundreds of thousands of British ...

Welcome everyone the Blogathon 2009! Over the next 24 hours, I will be consuming insane amounts of caffeine while writing blog entries in an effort to generate some exposure and hopefully a bit of financial support for the charity of my choosing, the BC Children's Hospital Foundation. I can't imagine many things worse in this world then being a parent and watching your child get sick. The BC Children's Hospital is known Canada wide for the work they do with children, which is why I've chosen it this year as my charity of choice. I decided on the way to Workspace this morning that I was going to ...

In less than 8 hours, Blogathon 2009 will begin. I'm currently hanging out at Rebecca's house, watching Stand By Me and eating popcorn. I started working on a little spreadsheet of blog entries for tomorrow, but only filled in about 15 spots or so, which means the other 34 will have to be decided sometime tomorrow. To be honest, I'm fairly beat. I don't even recall last year's Blogathon at this point, although I do remember hanging out at my place with Rebecca, John and Raul, sometime around midnight. I imagine somehow I'll make it to the end tomorrow, but at this point I think it's going to be ...

In less than 24 hours, Blogathon kicks off in Vancouver. I forced myself to go to bed around 11pm last night such that I would have a pretty decent sleep. I tried to get up at around 7am, but my body wasn't too happy about it, so instead I slept in until around 8:30am, and now I feel pretty decent. In theory I should go easy on coffee today such that tonight I can have yet another decent sleep, so that's probably what I'll do. Tomorrow however I'll be pushing my little donkey cart down caffeine mountain there and riding it all the way to the bottom. I'm hoping there's some easy to access coffee ...

This morning I was thinking about Blogathon while hopping in the shower, and I had that image in my head of the joker from The Dark Knight saying "And Here.... We... Go... " In less than 48 hours Blogathon 2009 will officially kick off. Some people will be down at WorkSpace in Vancouver hanging out, and others will be congregating in the Valley somewhere. I still haven't decided where I'll end up, although I'm leaning towards the WorkSpace route, as it would be nice to hang out with some friends for the day, and cross the finish line as a group. Free Ice Cream is pretty rad too, so. There ...

I just got off the air with The Hawk, Chilliwack's Rock station, located at 98.5 on your Chilliwack/Abbotsford dials. Rebecca Bollwitt is currently putting a recording of the broadcast on her Viddler account, at which point I'll put it up here for everyone to listen to recorded the interview, and has provided it for everyone's listening pleasure -- thanks Rebecca! I hadn't really thought about a goal for fundraising, so I said I was going to attempt to raise $2,000. The good news is that I think that's a realistic goal, but I'll need everyone's help. So if you can help at all by pledging, then ...

Last week I had the chance to talk to Paul Henderson of the Chilliwack Times regarding Blogathon. We ended up talking about various other items, including Facebook and Twitter, and some of my thoughts about the stuff I was doing over at InTheWack.com (which I need to update a bit more frequently). Today the Chilliwack Times ran a story in the local paper, and it appears the online version is available here. Just a couple of clarification points: Last year Rebecca and I supported the Union Gospel Mission. This year she is supporting it (as well as others I'm sure). The caption in the photo seems ...

I've been approved on the official Blogathon website, which means people can actually start pledging for me now. Strangely enough, I've already received about $80 in pledges, several of which came in before I was approved on the website. They appear to be legit, but I can't for the life of me figure out where they came from. But anyways, as I've pointed out in previous postings, I'll be supporting the BC Children's Hospital on July 25th. So if you'd like to support my efforts and the children at BC Children's Hospital, then please consider pledging. Thanks for the support! ...

This year's Blogathon takes place on July 25th, starting at 6am PDT. As most people know, last year I teamed up with Rebecca Bollwitt to help support the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. With some help from Matthew Good, the three of us raised around $8,000 I believe for Vancouver's homeless. Without a doubt, Blogathon is an event that I wanted to be a part of this year. I briefly debated supporting a local Chilliwack charity, but given that I really don't know of many here, I decided not to go that route. Lately I've found myself spending quite a bit of time with my niece and nephew. Thankfully, ...

I've been lying in bed for about 20 minutes now, trying to slow my brain down enough so that I can finally catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, my mind has been racing ever since blogathon, and it's been rather difficult to shut it off. While in bed tonight, I started thinking about the day I had today, the people I spent it with, and the events of this past weekend. Like a hiker nearing the end of a long trek, I forced myself to stop and survey the trail from which I've come; the moments of exhaustion, the long rainy nights, the hills and the valleys, and the painful blisters that may never fully ...

As you can tell, this is my last entry. For the last 24 hours, I have essentially been in front of a computer, blogging about various topics that have interested me, and attempting to bring exposure to the realities that the homeless face in Vancouver. Rebecca and I joined forces this year to support the Union Gospel Mission, an organization in Vancouver that helps the homeless and the less fortunate in this city. First, I want to thank the Union Gospel Mission for nearly 70 years of effort with regards to helping others. By comparison, the little that most of us get to do for charity in our ...

I live right near English Bay, and right now most of Vancouver is gathering outside my front door to see the second night of the fireworks. As a kid, seeing the fireworks was something I used to really enjoy. But as an adult, I don't really enjoy large crowds anymore, or fighting to get a spot to sit. That being said, I appreciate that the event brings a lot of people together from various parts of Vancouver, and the Fraser Valley. Last year, our good pal Tony was visiting Vancouver, and we all got to hang out, drink a few beers, and watch the fireworks together. And while we didn't make it to ...

This is it folks -- only two more entries to go after this one. I have, for the most part, been awake since yesterday at 9am. I hit a pretty rough patch this afternoon, but thankfully managed to get through it. It's been a really great experience, and it's been a privilege helping bring some awareness to the issues the homeless face in Vancouver. Without a doubt, I'm pretty beat. My supper tonight consisted of peanuts purchased from the little store downstairs. Rebecca and John ordered Greek, but I've had so much caffeine that the thought of food basically repulses me at this point. I just poured ...

This next post hits pretty close to home. I work in the field of voice over IP. I write software for my day job that allows people to talk to each other using two computers. A popular manifestation of the technology I work with everyday is Skype, which many people use to communicate with each other. One of the benefits of Skype is that the entire conversation is automatically encrypted. In theory, this should mean that nobody, not even the government, would be able to listen in on your phone calls. However, a recent article speculates that there may be a backdoor in Skype that would allow governments ...