If Chicken Little were here, he might be staring up at the sky, wondering just how much longer it would be until he could tell everyone he told them so. Without a doubt, the last few weeks in the stock market have been pretty brutal. While the markets have made small gains over the last year, the last few weeks have seen the destruction of most of that value. In fact, the TSX had its worst quarter since the 2008 meltdown. I know most of my investments are down about 6 or 7% in the last month, which is something I've gotten used to over the last few years. Thankfully I'm a buy and hold type guy, ...

About six months ago, Dale and I started laying the foundation for the successor to our popular WordPress plugin, WPtouch. We released WPtouch about two years ago, and it's approaching around one million downloads in the WordPress repository. Aspects of it were also integrated into WordPress.com -- it is the default theme on WordPress.com for iPod/iPhone mobile visitors, and represents around 60 million page views a month for mobile visitors. WPtouch 2.0 is a fairly big upgrade to WPtouch, adding approximately 100 new features. First, we redid the entire infrastructure to make the creation of ...

So I realize this could potentially be a pretty deep rabbit hole, but I thought I'd ask the question here. I'm in the process of trying to put together a simple web server configuration that is more robust than a single server configuration. Truthfully, I've never set something like this up, but for what I'm after I'm not looking for something amazingly complex or expensive. The server needs to basically handle HTTP requests, and interface with a database. In my mind, this would require two servers in separate co-location centres (which would help if one centre went down and not the other). One ...

I first started investing in the stock markets around 2000. Since then, I've had front row seats to at least two big market corrections. During the first, I was working out at JDS Uniphase in Ottawa, Ontario. If that name sounds familiar, you probably heard about us on the news -- in 2001, JDS Uniphase wrote-off the largest amount of goodwill in history, a staggering $45 billion dollars. When I showed up for work that day, news trucks were lined up all down the block, and employees were being constantly questioned as they tried to get into the building. We watched all the interviews take place ...

In 2004, Duke University completed a study of the Atkin's diet and released the results to the world. The results of the study showed that not only did people lose more weight on the Atkin's diet when compared to the conventional low-fat diet, their blood cholesterol profile also improved, ultimately reducing their risk of heart disease. Prior to the Duke study, most people in the medical community passively dismissed the Atkin's diet as both unhealthy and even dangerous. Robert Atkins, despite having a thriving medical practice which treated over 50,000 patients, was labeled a quack, and was ...

As I get older, I find I'm more and more of a homebody. Some of my friends think it's a bit strange that I enjoy hanging out around the house on my weekends, but truthfully, I find it a lot more enjoyable than hitting a pub and ending up with a hangover. While I enjoy a good patio beer as much as the next guy, I also enjoy putting on some music and tinkering away in the kitchen whenever I have a bit of time. Cooking is definitely something that's relatively new to me. When I lived in Vancouver a good home-cooked meal usually involved beef-jerky or some bologna from the little store downstairs. ...

When I was about 23 years old, at the encouragement of a family member, I read a book called The Wealthy Barber. The book chronicles the fictitious life of a small town barber and, through a series of stories, tells how he managed to become a millionaire despite having a relatively modest salary. There are two main take-aways from the book, both of which form the crux of personal finance these days. The first main idea is to pay yourself first - basically you set aside a fixed portion of your income (often 10%) and dedicate that towards a retirement fund. The second main idea is to take advantage ...

As you can see, things around here have changed. I finally got around to doing something I've wanted to do for quite sometime - I've removed all my old entries. Obviously I have backups of everything I wrote, and can reimport things at a later time. But truthfully, pretty much everything I wrote in the old days is all over the map, and I've been thinking about starting to write consistently in a few different areas. In terms of the look and feel, this is the default 2010 theme with WordPress 3.0. I debated spending some time re-theming this site again, but just don't really feel like spending ...

Well, that's a wrap. WordCamp Vancouver went off yesterday without a hitch, and it seemed to be very well received. It was hard for me not to contrast yesterday's experience with WordCamp Whistler, since that one was comparable in terms of size and planning. They were both unique, so I can't say one was better than the other, but they were definitely both a lot of fun. WordCamp Vancouver was a bit more grass roots than WordCamp Whistler I think, partially because the conference was split between three areas instead of just one. I actually liked that about it, and it was nice to have people wondering ...

I've been busy lately, busier in fact that I've been in quite some time. WPtouch 2.0 Pro has been a lot of work and a lot of fun, and we're getting ready to release it shortly. If you're interested in checking it out, sign up for updates. WordCamp Vancouver is this weekend as well, and the last week especially has been a lot of work. The event is shaping up to be really great, so I'm definitely looking forward to being there. That said, I'm also looking forward to being on the other side of it so I can get back into my normal routine. With everything going on these last few weeks, I haven't really ...

If you haven't seen the finale, then don't read this. Obviously there are a lot of spoilers below. I gotta say, I really liked the finale. I wasn't a fan of this entire season, but the finale sort of made the journey worthwhile. First, I'm glad a few of my predictions came true, namely with regards to Desmond being involved in helping save the island, the redemption of Ben Linus to some extent, the duality of Locke dying in the island timeline and Locke's legs being fixed in the sideways timeline. A few people seem disappointed with the ending. I for one loved the focus on each of the characters ...

Well, this is it. We're down to only one episode left. If you haven't seen tonight's episode, then don't read any further. First, I'll honestly say that this season has been a pretty big letdown. I mean, we spent five seasons getting to know these characters, learning about the Dharma Initiative, and also the others. Pretty much all of that has been irrelevant in the context of season 6. I've been trying to figure out what I think will happen in the final episode. The key to the whole mexican standoff that's undoubtedly going to occur in the season finale will be Desmond I'm pretty sure. Given ...

I was in bed, reading the BBC's website on my iPad using their ultra cool application, when I came across an article showing new research linking blood fats with heart disease. The link to that article is here. First, I should point out that there's never really been a definitive link between high fat diets and heart disease. That comes as a surprise to a lot of people, mainly because it's recited over and over so often as to be the conventional dogma. But research has never really backed that up in any capacity. There is a mild link between cholesterol and heart disease, but it's often misconstrued ...

Most people probably don't know it about me, but I used to be involved in weather forecasting a long time ago. My first exposure to it was a co-op job I had in the summer of 1997 up in Whitehorse, YT. I was working for Environment Canada's weather centre, helping to develop JAVA programs for visualizing some of their data. JAVA was a new technology at the time, so it was essentially one big prototype. It worked decently enough, but I doubt it survived much past the end of my co-op term. Years later I would be employed by the Department of Ocean Sciences at UBC as a part time software developer. ...

As many people know, Rogers announced the 3G data pricing for the iPad in Canada. As expected, many people are upset about it, partially due to the lack of bandwidth, and partially due to the lack of an option to couple it with the iPhone data plan. One good aspect of the announcement is the lack of a contract required for the data portion for the iPad. I for one am sick of locking myself into multiyear contracts, and think it's a step in the right direction. That said, I am currently paying $30/month for the 6G/mo data plan for Rogers, so it seems silly that I can't use some of that bandwidth ...

A while ago I decided that I would take a little break and have a little 'me time'. I've bounced around a few ideas in my head, and ultimately come up with a pretty good weekend adventure. I've been keeping the actual location to myself, simply because I want to just disappear for a few days, put the cell phone on vibrate, and get in a little rest and relaxation. The last vacation I took was back at the end of last November, so it's been nearly six months without a break. I don't really feel like I need a week off at this point, but a nice relaxing weekend adventure complete with a few days of ...

We're getting pretty close to releasing WPtouch 2.0 soon. We haven't officially set a date, but the release will probably be counted using weeks, and can probably be counted using the fingers on one hand. We'll hopefully firm that up next week. Dale wrote a pretty informative post over on BraveNewCode, so check it out. In short, we'll be releasing a very reasonably priced paid version that includes support first, then will eventually roll out another free version using the new codebase. The major addition to WPtouch 2.0 is a new theme framework for creating mobile themes. WPtouch 2.0 will also ...

I spent most of this weekend chilling out around the house. I took a bit of time out on Saturday to hit a few legs of the circle farm tour with Raeleigh and Eileen. One of these days I'll manage to hit the rest of the places on the tour, but I'm slowly nailing them, a month at a time. I've been meaning to take a weekend trip somewhere, but with the rain I haven't been motivated enough to get in the car lately. I want to get rid of my travel VISA soon, since it has a yearly fee attached to it, but before I do that I need to blow off a pile of points on it, and I plan to rent a pretty nice cabin ...

Given that summer is just around the corner (at least, I hope it is -- it's really hard to tell with this weather), I decided about 6 weeks ago to try and get in better shape. One of the things I wanted to do when I moved out to Chilliwack was to be a bit healthier. I've definitely done that in terms of what I eat, but not so much in terms of how much exercise I get in a typical week. Summer is usually better for me as I like hiking and playing tennis, so I'm sure it'll increase. When I got back from Hamilton at the start of March I decided to start hitting the gym hard and being very critical ...

Ever since I've moved back to Chilliwack, I've been having a lot of sinus headaches and routine problems breathing through my nose. I've never really had allergies before (at least, nothing other than an allergy to penicillin ), so I haven't really known what to do with it all. While cleaning my office last weekend, I found a few medical reports from my injury in 2006, most notably my first CT scan. While the doctor pointed out the obvious facial fractures, he also made note of sinusitis in both sinuses, something that was never pointed out to me. Regardless, I've been taking a lot of allergy ...