I sat down right now to write a blog entry, and this is the one I came up with. There have been numerous entries on various websites over the last few weeks that have hinted that blogging is dead. While I don't necessarily believe them, I can't help but see some truth in a few of their statements. First, let it not be forgotten that the *ability* to blog is at an all time maximum. Thanks to the work of Automattic and WordPress, it's relatively painless to start a blog, either on WordPress.com or on your own hosted server. That being said, I have to question just how many people are listening these ...

I started messing around with some CSS3 stuff the other day and managed to add a web font to my site. As you can see, the title of every post is now rendered using a non web-safe font (at least if your browser supports CSS3 - right now I believe only Safari does). It's a bit premature, as many browsers do not support them, but I thought I'd start figuring out the tricks of tomorrow's trades. It's just a bit of CSS magic, along with a true-type font on the server. The browser downloads the TTF and renders the titles using that font. I think it's a pretty cool new feature, and I am looking forward ...

One of my major criticisms of Google over the last few years has been the state of most of their products. While many of them are initially innovative and useful, they usually fall by the way side and seemingly get abandoned. The "beta" moniker seems to be ever-present on most of their services, leading one to almost believe that there is no such thing as a finish product within the walls of Google. I just read this article where someone took the time to figure out just how many of Google's products are in beta. The verdict? Nearly half of them, including the four year old gmail product ...

This isn't really a huge surprise to me, but apparently BlueRay sales aren't doing very well at all. In fact, sales of BlueRay went down last month compared to the month before. There are probably a lot of reasons why other people aren't buying them, namely the high price of current BlueRay players. But in terms of me, I'm not buying one simply because I'm still pissed off from the whole HD-DVD/BlueRay battle. On my shelf at home is a now useless HD-DVD player, which I purchased thinking HD-DVD would be around a little while longer. Since the industry basically screwed consumers with that whole ...

To be honest, I haven't really spent much money on my home theatre setup in about seven years or so. But for a while there, I was into fairly decent home audio equipment. That's not to say I don't do the odd update from time to time, because I do: last year I purchased a HD-DVD player, and more recently an Apple TV, the former of which was a rather poor investment (although it performs quite well as a basic upsampling DVD player). My current home setup consists of the following. In terms of speakers, I've never been big on home theatre, and have always tried to have my system focus more on stereo ...

I recently had the priviledge of attending WordCamp San Francisco, a conference dedicated to WordPress enthusiasts in the Bay Area. It was a great time, and I met a lot of great people. Next month, Rebecca Bollwitt and I are organizing the WordCamp Vancouver event to coincide with BarCamp on Sept 27th. For those of you who are unfamiliar with BarCamp, it's a day long conference where the participants, first thing in the morning, decide the format and the topics for the rest of the day. Everyone who attends has the potential to be a speaker, and it's a lot of fun. This year, the event is over ...

You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I really have no idea where I'm going to end up career wise, but one of the things I've thought about in the last few years is becoming a real-estate agent. Sure, it's not something I'd probably enjoy, but I think I could handle the truck loads of money. It's not something I'll probably ever do (as I have my own plans), but there's something to be said for a job outside of the technology sector where you can set your own hours and fill your bank account up with rich people's cash. I mean, let's be honest - how hard is it really to sell a house ...

I've been toying with this rather amazing idea for the last few years. I'm going to toss this out there, because I'm rather fond of it. The Vancouver technology scene is rather impressive. Almost every week there's a really awesome event taking place that brings together some great minds. I can't tell you how much I've learned from my peers in the last few years. Given that we all take time out to get together and discuss technology, I always thought it would be fun to all go somewhere all together. Sort of like a less formal SxSW, but with more of an unconference component. So here's what I imagine. ...

I've been toying with this rather amazing idea for the last few years. I'm going to toss this out there, because I'm rather fond of it. The Vancouver technology scene is rather impressive. Almost every week there's a really awesome event taking place that brings together some great minds. I can't tell you how much I've learned from my peers in the last few years. Given that we all take time out to get together and discuss technology, I always thought it would be fun to all go somewhere all together. Sort of like a less formal SxSW, but with more of an unconference component. So here's what I imagine. ...

Also, if you still want to be eligible to win a Nintendo Wii, head on over and fill out the survey. I haven't been very quiet about my recent reservations about Google. I really don't think they really have any amazing products any more, and are heading in a downward spiral. People used to brag about Google's flat corporate structure as a huge bonus, and at first it seemed really appealing. But after recently visiting the company's main location in MountainView, and talking to a few people, I'm more of the opinion that it's hurt them more than it's helped them. In fact, I think part of the reason ...

I feel like writing a blog entry right now about as much as I feel like putting a spinning drill-bit into my temple. But I really wanted to jot down some of my thoughts from today before I passed out. There's a group of seven of us down in Mountain View right now. The purpose of this trip is to try and hash out a complete peer-to-peer communications protocol based on open-standards. When it's complete, it will essentially be an open source framework that will allow functionality similar to Skype, including encryption between nodes, even in an adhoc configuration. This trip marks the first time ...

My mom used to always say that somethings in life seem to happen for a reason. Surprisingly, she's been right most of my life, and the strangest things sometimes happen to me that end up pushing me down a path that turns out to be a good one. While camping this weekend, my Samsung A880 phone went into a spiral of death, and started complaining about not being able to find service. I figured that I maybe forgot to pay my bill or something stupid, and called up Bell Mobility yesterday. After spending two days on the phone with them, they are all of the opinion that my phone has just gone the way ...

Jay from Giant Ant Media just emailed me a few awesome YouTube videos they did with regards to Roger's customer service. I thought I'd share them with everyone, because they're a riot. Given the content of my last post, I think these are particularly relevant. Now, I've been a Bell Mobility customer for a long time, and I can honestly say that they're not very good either. I suspect the grass is always greener, but I'm fairly certain most wireless users in Canada would agree that we need some new blood in the market to help keep the current breed of wireless providers honest and competitive. ...

I missed the boat on the first round of Canadian iPhone action last year mainly because I was (quite stupidly) locked into a crazy Bell Mobility contract. The current consensus of the rumour mill is that Apple is gearing up to announce the 3G version of the iPhone on June 9th, which would hopefully put that model into Canadian stores sometime in the near future. I have been patiently awaiting it's arrival so I can call up Bell and tell them where they can shove my phone and my crappy contract. The only problem is that Roger's has been completely silent on what type of plan will be available for ...

I read an article this morning that made mention of QR codes, and to be honest, I had never heard of them before. After doing some research, it appears that QR codes are essentially two-dimensional bar-codes that are fairly popular in Japan. A user with a camera phone can simply point their phone at a QR code and, assuming it is QR code aware, will decode the symbol. QR codes can be used to encode URLs, phone numbers, text information, and SMS messages. So you can have an advertisement and simply put your URL as a QR code. A user passing by could simply hold their camera in front of the code, ...

I read an article this morning that made mention of QR codes, and to be honest, I had never heard of them before. After doing some research, it appears that QR codes are essentially two-dimensional bar-codes that are fairly popular in Japan. A user with a camera phone can simply point their phone at a QR code and, assuming it is QR code aware, will decode the symbol. QR codes can be used to encode URLs, phone numbers, text information, and SMS messages. So you can have an advertisement and simply put your URL as a QR code. A user passing by could simply hold their camera in front of the code, ...

I've been using Google Reader as my main RSS reader for some time. For the most part, I'm pretty happy with it. They've recently added the ability to share items, which makes it far more interesting. The one thing I'd love to see though is the ability to add local comments on those shared items, comments that only my friends could see. So many times I've read items in my friends' shared feeds and really wanted to say something, or get clarification. Going to the real site and posting a comment sort of implies a certain level of knowledge on my part (especially if it's a technical discussion). ...

Yesterday I read a really interesting article about the end of Windows as we know it. I can't say that I disagree with that assessment at all. As many of you know, Windows Vista was basically my sole reason for moving to a Mac last year. I had installed it on my Toshiba notebook computer and it was the slowest piece of a garbage I had ever used -- none of the drivers worked properly, and it crashed for no reason. The worse part was their "upgrade wizard" said my machine would be fine. Here's a little video I took while installing it (looks like it's up to 50,000 views on YouTube): The ...

Ok, I'm going to go into rant mode. Why is everyone so enamored with Google these days? I read yesterday about their recent Google App Engine, and didn't really see anything that particularly turned my crank. I've been bouncing around the web today reading what people are saying, and for the most part, everyone is down in the People's Temple drinking the Kool-Aid. I don't think the App Engine is a bad idea, I just don't really get why you'd even consider it, especially considering AWS is around and has a much more flexible offering. First, I'm going to start by saying that 99% of web companies ...

I went out tonight and bought a new digital camera, the Canon SD 870 IS. I did some basic research before hand and that was one of about three cameras I considered buying for this upcoming weekend. What sold me on it was that a guy at work recently picked it up and heaped a pile of praise on it. Also, it's the only camera in it's class that had image stabilization *and* a useful wideangle end (something most cameras lack of this size). This is, unfortunately, probably the 8th digital camera I've purchased in about as many years. Several of them had untimely deaths, and one was even the victim ...