Et Tu, Flickr?

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I've been a pro member of Flickr for years now, and it's one of the few services where dropping $30 a year is a no brainer for me. Unfortunately, they seem to have done something to the service the other day that makes it more difficult for me to use in general now. Specifically, I used to be able to option click on a photo and copy the image URL so I could use it in a blog posting. Now on the individual photo pages, an option click seems to automatically put you in notes editing mode. Anyways, not sure what they did, but I really hope they undo it. It makes my blogging workflow a bit more laborious ...

WestJet Website Issues

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So, I love WestJet as an airline. They are fun, funky, relatively cheap, and they fly out of Abbotsford, which is a way better location for me than Vancouver International Airport. That being said, their website doesn't support Safari on the Mac (possibly just Safari 4), which I think in this day and age provides a pretty poor user experience. Here's the notification you get when you fire up your browser: First, I'm glad WestJet supports an ancient browser like IE, but given what a forward thinking company WestJet is, I'd really like to see support for some more modern browsers such as Safari. ...

Three Years Ago Today

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I just went to get a few groceries, and had this weird feeling my stomach like I was forgetting something. I looked at the time on my iPhone and realized that it was three years ago to the day that I went through that window in Vancouver. Times flies I guess, as do people. ...

McChicken Before Bed

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Not a good idea. I had some of the craziest dreams I've had in a long time last night. Back in the day I used to work at McDonalds. I remember one time I went to take the garbage out and hucked a big green bag full into the compactor into the back. Part of it missed and the bag exploded over the concrete. Since I was only making $5/hour, I didn't really care. A few hours later I came out and looked at some of the stuff that had landed on the concrete. Where a few McChicken used to be was now a big puddle of chicken juice. So, I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure normal chicken doesn't melt out ...

Sunshine, Windy Times, Dirty Clothes

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How's that for a title? It'll pretty much sum my day up when it's all over. For whatever reason, I've been super tired lately. Despite getting a fairly normal amount of sleep during the week, I've hit the last few weekends completely exhausted. Yesterday, for example, I spent a few hours sleeping on the couch by the fire. Upon waking up in the early evening, I watched a few movies, and then went straight to bed, sleeping in until around 10am (after the time change). It definitely feels great, but I really don't know why I'm so tired lately. Friday afternoon I went out to see Matt and the boys ...

Swine Flu Fatigue

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To be perfectly honest, I'm kind of tired of hearing about the swine flu. Lots of people continue to talk about it on Twitter, and lots of people continue to fear monger on TV. I've had quite a few people suggest I should get the vaccine, and I've politely told everyone my reasons for why I'm not getting one. Unfortunately in this day and age, the ease of producing content essentially ensures that the internet is filled with as much garbage as it is good. So when it comes to doing any kind of research, it takes considerable effort to try and wade through the muck in order to find the facts. That's ...

WTF Of The Day

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Not sure where this came from. If anyone knows let me know and I'll attribute it. But I found out about it from Darren on Twitter. ...

A Calorie Is Not A Calorie

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A lot of the nutrition researchers continue to argue that the body needs to obey the laws of thermodynamics, that is energy in minus energy out has to equal weight gained or weight lost. Using that definition, the way to lose weight is to create a negative caloric balance (by cutting food or increasing energy expenditure) such that the weight disappears. That viewpoint neglects the fact that the body is not a closed system, and the internal cellular metabolism depends on many aspects, one of which is thought to be the macronutrient composition of the food that goes in. For example, protein is ...

The Idiocy Of Men's Razors

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I went to the store last night to pick up a new razor for my face. Unfortunately, I have rather coarse facial hair, so the typically blade for me lasts 3 or 4 shaves, and then I have to toss it out. Given that a razor and a set of four blades costs around $12 - $14, that means I'm paying at least $1 a shave, which kind of sucks. I went in last night originally to buy a set of new blades for my Mach whatever razor. Unfortunately, since blades are big money I guess, they keep those under lock and key, which means you basically have to flag down someone and get them to open it. I wasn't really in ...

60 Million Page Views And Counting

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Wow, it's only Tuesday, and already we've had quite the week so far at BraveNewCode. Yesterday we pulled the curtain back on a brand new Vision Critical site. Vision Critical was recently announced as the fastest growing company in British Columbia, and it was a lot of fun working with that team. Today Dale and I woke up and starting seeing some press about the new mobile versions on WordPress.com. WordPress.com is the free, hosted version of the WordPress platform, and currently has around 5 million blogs or so on it I believe. As of today, the iPhone plugin for WordPress that Dale and I created, ...

Acoustic Amplifiers

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I need an acoustic amp for my Takamine electric acoustic guitar. I really have no idea what the brand names are, or what a good amp to get is. I don't need much for it. I would probably prefer it had a clean channel too so I could pump a mic into it. Any recommendations? ...

One Day We'll All Be Dead, But The Plastic Will Live On

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Head on over here if you want to be sick to your stomach. Photo by Chris Jordan ...

The Compartmentalization Of Science

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You see it all the time these days. I guess it's because everyone is so specialized in their particular fields that they often don't have the knowledge or ability to make connections to other fields. When I read medical research, I often find it strange that a paper that focuses on endocrinology doesn't make an obvious comparison to another field, for example, nutrition. Some of the implications of the compartmentalization of science are so obvious that it seems strange that making the mental connections is so hard to do. For example, there's still so much ongoing nutritional research that carbohydrates ...

Replacing Tires

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Sometime in the near future I have to take my car in and get the tires replaced on it. Without a doubt, the tires on it currently (the ones that came on it when I bought it brand new) are pretty much the worst tires I've ever had. The handling in rain is pretty bad, and totally horrible in the snow. In fact, I nearly bought the farm a few times in Vancouver when it snowed. One time I was coming up to my place (which was at the bottom of a slight hill) and couldn't stop, so I ended up sliding down to the end of the cul-de-sac. Had a car been there, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from ...

International Day Of The Nacho

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For those people that know me, I'm pretty serious about nachos. I'm the only person I know with a complete lack of a sweet tooth. Chocolate, pies, cakes, candy, gummy bears, sugar -- you could starve me for a week and put that stuff in front of me and I wouldn't crave it at all. But put a plate of gooey, cheesy nachos in front of me and that's a different story. I've slowly honed my nacho-making ability over the years to the point where I'm pretty much a nacho snob now. When I was down in Portland I went out of my way to find some nachos, only to be served a batch where the cheese was microwaved. ...

Retainer Free

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Yesterday I had an appointment with my old orthodontist to get a little retainer removed from the inside of my bottom teeth. It seems so long ago now, but I once had pretty messed up teeth. Back when I was about 13 I had my first visit with the ortho, and they started to plan the torture regimen for the next few years. First, because my teeth were so crowded, they extracted four permanent teeth from my mouth. That still didn't provide enough room, so they cemented this little device to the roof of my mouth that reminds me of "The Rack". Basically every night I'd stick a little key in ...

Blogging from bed

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I don't do it very often, mainly because my fingers are not iPhone friendly, but i have the wordpress iPhone app which allows me to blog from anywhere pretty much. So here I am in bed, working my iPhone. Today was a long day, and tomorrow will likely be as well. Good news is there's a light shining at the end of the tunnel (hopefully it's not a fuse). Not sure what I'll do this weekend. I'd like to hit the gym a few times if possible. Other than that, probably catch up on errands and maybe catch a movie in the theatre - haven't done that in a while. That's me on the iPhone, signing out. ...

A Weekend At The Delta Grand Okanagan In Kelowna

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A while ago I was approached by a Vancouver public relations company and asked if I wanted to be a guest of the Delta Grand Okanagan hotel in Kelowna for a weekend. The offer came right at a period of time where I was feeling a bit burnt out, so I gladly accepted and started packing my bags. The route from Chilliwack to Kelowna involves taking a highway through the mountains. Depending on the weather conditions, often you'll find snowy conditions near the summit. Just in case I encountered those types of conditions I packed my chains for the car and also left early in the afternoon so I'd pass ...

Disgusting Habits

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Some of us have them, some don't. As for me, I've been chewing my nails pretty much my whole life. I really don't know how it started to be honest, but once it did, my fingers have never really been the same. I tried that polish you put on them that tastes bad, but that didn't even come close to stopping me. Basically you just get used to the foul taste and chew anyways. The thing is, most of the time it's not even conscious, it's just one of those things I end up doing while driving or sitting on the couch. There are lots of famous nail biters, so I know I'm not alone. Elijah Wood (Frodo from ...

A Little Stock Goes A Long Way

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I've been reading a lot of food/cooking related books lately. No real reason, just haven't had too much else around to read. I actually stumbled across an 1,100 page culinary manual on the internet a while ago, and have slowly been absorbing it. In addition, I've been passively thumbing through various cookbooks I have around the house looking for dishes to try making over the next few months. Last night I made myself a little roasted chicken for thanksgiving and watched a few movies by the fire. After the chicken was done, I decided to make my first chicken stock, thinking I would start making ...