As many people on Twitter know, after four months of traveling I am finally back at home in BC. I was originally going to fly back home on Thursday, but the combination of a friend of mine having a death in the family back home and the fact that I found a really cheap flight leaving Dublin on Sunday made me decide to head back a few days early. Sunday was a long day: I had an eight hour flight from Dublin to Chicago, a five hour layover, and then another four and a half hour flight to Vancouver. Chicago was bursting at the seems, and people were literally camped out in the hallways waiting for ...

I left South America a few weeks ago, and have since been to New York City and a great deal of Ireland. Ireland was quite the whirlwind adventure. I spent the first night in Limerick at my friend Andy's place, and then the next day we did a road trip up to Galway. The day after we headed down to Cork, and made a quick pitstop to kiss the original Blarney Stone. The next two nights we stayed at little 200 year old cottage in Mitchellstown. All in all a great adventure. I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland Monday morning, and am currently sitting in a hotel. I haven't had time to go take my photos yet, ...

I'm currently at around 35,000 feet, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Puerto Iguazu. No, I'm not blogging from the plane, but rather I've set this post to publish while I'm up in the air. I wasn't going to do another post before leaving for Iguazu Falls, but then I remembered my weekly Friday updates and wanted to get another in. So I thought that for this week's Friday update it would be fun to create a few lists about what I enjoy here so far, and what I miss the most. Things I Love About Buenos Aires The People - Everyone I have met here has been super nice, especially when they find out ...

Here are a few photos from the little apartment I'm renting in Palermo Soho. It's located near the corners of Paraguay and Gurruchaga if anyone is interested. There are a few more on Flickr. In terms of location, the apartment is about a 5 block walk to the area of Palermo Soho with all the fancier restaurants and pubs (although, there are lots of little ones all over the place). About three or four blocks north of here is one of the main subway lines in the city, which will be nice (as soon as I start to use it). The only real downside is they are doing renovations on the apartment downstairs, ...

I'm originally from a small little town about 150 kilometres east of Vancouver called Chilliwack. It's a picturesque farming town nestled between a few mountain ranges, and far enough away from Vancouver to have a little peace and quiet. And while Chilliwack is my birthplace and where my most of my family lives, I've spent nearly a third of my life living in Vancouver, either out at UBC where I did nine years of post secondary education, or in the downtown core, where I've worked the majority of my career. When I set out on my upcoming travel adventure, it'll be from a familiar place: Vancouver ...

I've made a few posts about the little tube amp project I'm probably going to tackle in the fall, but decided to put the entries on its own blog, as I want it to be a single glimpse into a big design and build process. If you want to follow along, subscribe to the feed over at tubeamp.posterous.com. It'll probably only be an entry every week or so for the next few months as I debate things in my head, but I'm hoping to be in a position to build something in the fall or early winter. ...

Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn't grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for the live stream. In addition, they exported all my ...

Yes, that's all I've become. I wake up, I go outside, my plants get mad at me, and I spend the morning watering them and looking after them. For those who are just joining the saga, I planted a few tomato plants on my patio at the end of May. I've watched them grow, seen them fall down a few times, nursed them back to health, and in return, I've been rewarded by the growth of a pile of little tiny tomatoes. One of the challenges with growing fruits and vegetables on your patio is that it's really hard to get them enough water, especially in this kind of heat. With a normal garden, you can soak ...

Well, folks, Blogathon is over. Most of us left workspace sometime around 6:30am yesterday. I went with Rebecca and John back to their place, and we got there probably close to 7am or so. While everyone was totally fried, there was brief talk about watching a movie for a while to help the brain ramp back down to sleep mode. I laid down on the couch then, and woke up a few hours later to some of the sounds of downtown Vancouver. At that point I adjusted some blankets, and fell asleep again, waking up sometime around 12:30pm. Unfortunately, I couldn't really sleep anymore, so I decided to just get ...

Some days I wake up and still find it a bit weird that I'm back in my home town. I'm totally enjoying myself here, more so with each passing month, but certain aspects of being here are still strange to me. High school literally feels like yesterday to me, probably because I spent so much of my 20s in school, but when I think back to high school here, I have a hard time putting all the pieces together. For example, I went by my old house I lived in when I was 17. Strangely enough, I couldn't remember how I got to school in the mornings. I'm pretty sure I walked to school, and I'm pretty sure I ...

"These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another ...

Tomorrow I'll be packing up and making the long journey back home. Truthfully, I'd probably rather leave tonight if that were at all possible -- not because I'm not having fun here, but mostly because tomorrow is just going to involve sitting around and killing time before our flight. I fly out of San Francisco in the early evening, and will land in Seattle sometime around 9pm. From there, we have to find my car and drive back to downtown Vancouver so I can drop Rebecca and John off at home. While they've offered me up their couch for the night, I'm looking forward to hitting my own bed, and will ...

Yesterday was WordCamp San Francisco, and Rebecca, John Bollwitt, John BIehler, Dale and myself all attended. The night before we thought it was a good idea to sit around and drink margaritas until around 2am, so we were all a bit tired during the event. But it was a great event, and we're all glad we made the trip down. Several fairly exciting things happened during Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word Presentation. First, Matt showed a slide which displayed some of the new profile information that is going to be coming to WordPress.org -- BraveNewCode has actually been helping with that effort, ...

Well, last night was interesting, to say the least. For those of you who follow around here, about a year ago I decided to host my blog from home instead of on some shared hosting account. My main reason for doing that was that I had been through around 3 shared hosting providers that year, and all of them had let me down on more than one occasion. So I figured I could do it better myself. Which was true to an extent. However last night, while I was packing boxes near the server, I guess I accidentally bumped the power cable, causing my server to reboot. Normally, that's not a terrible thing, ...

Here's a shot I took of around Chilliwack, BC, Canada on my way back from a family visit. ...

Lately I've actually been sleeping fairly well, given how much trouble I have routinely had in the past. I've been trying to keep a fairly consistent schedule these days, going to bed sometime around midnight, and trying to be up around 8am or so. There's a period of time between about 7 and 8 in the morning that is pure bliss these days, where I just kind of fade in and out of sleep and stretch periodically. Now that it's a bit colder, my heater is on slightly, so my room is nice and toasty at the point. Plus, it's still a bit dark at that hour, which makes it easier to continue relaxing. With ...

Right now, in Las Vegas, is the huge Blog World Expo. Most of the Vancouver tech-scene is down there, including Rebecca, & Arieanna and Ianiv. Last night I decided to head down this morning and join them until Monday morning, since it looked like they were having such a great time. I actually found a pretty decent flight special late last night, and I booked it for this morning. Unfortunately, when 5am rolled around and I had to get up for the airport this morning, I didn't really feel all that well. Plus, doing six hours worth of plane travel seemed less fun than it did the night before. ...

This weekend I'm going to do something I haven't done in a long time -- I'm going to head home. To be honest, I don't think I've been back to Chilliwack since easter, which is a very long time for me. I'm not entirely sure what my plans are for the whole weekend, but I'm heading back to Chilliwack at least for a few days. I might end up in Osoyoos visiting a few friends, but I'm going to hold off making any plans until after I get caught up on sleep Saturday. I'm also hoping to spend a bit of time with my grandma, since I haven't seen her in quite a while and she hasn't been feeling very well ...

The following is guest post by my good friend, Keira Mellis, who happens to have a really amazing blog herself over at Keira-Anne.com. Also, we've received another donation, one that's eligible for my free photo giveaway. Here's a list of recent donations. Michelle Palazzo YOU - if you click here and pledge Also, to sweeten the deal, any person who donates $50 or more to the Union Gospel Mission will receive a free 8x12 photo of their choosing from my HDR gallery located at SmugMug. Since it's rather apparent that our blogalicious friend, Duane, has such a deep love for the spirit of all things ...

Wow, it feels like I've been disconnected from the Internet for a very long time. I spent today somewhere between Los Angeles and San Diego, hanging out at Legoland with my family. I actually wasn't really sure what to expect, given that I haven't really been into lego in a long time. But the good news is that Legoland was a lot of fun, and it was a nice change from the line-ups and the pace of Disneyland. Also, Legoland was near the water, and was a nice change from the hot weather down in Anaheim. Jessica, taking a break at Legoland. My nephew Derek spent about $150 on Lego in Legoland, and ...