I remember back around Christmas, Sony announced that they were unable to meet the holiday demand for the PS/3. I suspect part of this may have been artificial, since the resulting huge line-ups across the country showered the company with press everywhere. Unfortunately, those events lead to the deaths of a few people in incidents that occurred while in the long line-ups in sometimes cold, outdoor conditions. During that period, I had passively walked into whatever electronics store I could find, and asked if they had a PS/3 for sale. The answer was always no. So here we are, nearly six months ...

I remember back around Christmas, Sony announced that they were unable to meet the holiday demand for the PS/3. I suspect part of this may have been artificial, since the resulting huge line-ups across the country showered the company with press everywhere. Unfortunately, those events lead to the deaths of a few people in incidents that occurred while in the long line-ups in sometimes cold, outdoor conditions. During that period, I had passively walked into whatever electronics store I could find, and asked if they had a PS/3 for sale. The answer was always no. So here we are, nearly six months ...

When I first started my current job, the COO and one of the founders was a guy named Erik Lagerway. During the time he was at our company, we shared many a beer and even a plane ride or two together (the most memorable being the one to Phillidelphia where we got to witness first-hand drunken broomball in Horsham and Whatchamachukinchunk). His current brainchild is a service called Gaboogie which was designed in an attempt to simplify conference calls in the enterprise environment. Most conference calls today are setup via email, and involve participants calling into a conference bridge at a specified ...

A few days ago, Flickr gave me the not-so-subtle warning that my account was about to expire. Since I've had a pro-Flickr account for a full year now, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the service so far. Flickr sort of came to the limelight about 18-24 months ago as one of the leading websites that had real Web 2.0 technology. If you haven't been there you should definitely check it out. Most of the website utilizes Ajax and as you use it, sometimes it feels more like an application than a mere website, and that was really one of their original selling points. Most ...

I wanted to pen this entry really quick before bed. A few days ago, one of the main encryption keys for the HD-DVD platform was leaked, apparently by an insider within the video industry. Basically, having this key will allow anyone with access to the hardware the full ability to decode and decrypt every HD-DVD that has been manufactured so far. Oops. The key, which amounts to no more than a 128 bit string, has been circling the internet, pulling a string of cease and desist orders along with it. Many a webowner has tried to publish the key online, only to be given a legal letter demanding they ...

I'm a gadget whore, plain and simple. If you were to come into my apartment, you would probably be surprised how many useless techie gadgets I have. From my iPod stereo adapter to my Satellite radio in my car, I just love things the beep and glow. This isn't a recent development either -- when I was a kid, my parents always made sure I had some type of computer around to play with. My first experience in the realm of engineering came probably around the age of 12 when I decided it would be a great idea to dismantle my entire commodore 64 and it's disk drive using a screwdriver -- I did manage ...

Yesterday, partly by chance, and later by design, I found that I didn't log into an IM client for nearly the entire day. No Jabber, no Yahoo, no Windows Live or whatever they are calling it now -- just me, alone with my machine. And it was everything that I thought it would be. Now let me just tell you what a typical day is like for me on IM. I have, quite easily, well over 100 people on my IM client. A small percentage of these are personal (friends and family), but without a doubt, the majority are business related. During a typical work day, I'd say 70 of them or so are online and working in ...

Now that I'm officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it's really time to let loose and party it up a bit... I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I've spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I'm going to check out later.. I can't be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I'm going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability the other ...

I approximately 24 hours, I'll be stepping off a plane at Heathrow and rushing madly to see some of London before my connecting flight to Vancouver leaves in the early evening. I think I'll probably only have about 3 and a half hours to see London, which I'm sure doesn't give me much time to see very much. With the time constraints, it looks like I'm gonna shell out $100 for the express train that goes from the airport to Paddington Station near central London. From there, I'm really not sure what I'm going to do. It still seems like quite a haul to get to any of the attractions, so I imagine ...

I've been in Oulu, Finland for a few days now, and thankfully last night I actually got to go out and see a few things. Jari and Seppo were nice enough to take me to a pretty fancy Russian restaurant last night where we had some great food, nice wine, and of course some type of random vodka shot. Afterwards, we sort of started our own mini pub crawl, checking out a few of the bars in the Oulu downtown. I really love the architecture over here. I'm not sure how you'd really describe it, but everything is really quant and different looking. Last night was pretty cool because there was this fog over ...

So my body decided that it would take a brief unscheduled break from sleeping at around 2am this morning.. I decided in that time I would throw a few photos up from yesterday (I don't have that many). Oulu is pretty quaint so far, and I'm actually really eager to walk around and see some things (since the architecture looks really cool from my hotel window). I have to be on-site around 9 this morning (which means I need to get back to sleep), but afterwards I think my hosts are all taking me for dinner. For the most part, my digital SLR has been in my backpack most of the time. I took a few shots ...

When I lived in Ottawa, there were times when I used to get a little homesick and miss Vancouver and Chilliwack. When that happened, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a little website called KatKam.ca. It's a live webcam that points into the direction of the evening sunset, only a block or so away from my apartment in Vancouver. To this day, I always religiously check it out from time to time when I'm out of town, just to see what I'm missing back home. Here's a shot of the sunset tonight that I missed. I'm heading to the airport now to fly up North. See you guys in about a week. ...

As most of my faithful readers now know, I'm currently in Helsinki, Finland with work. So far, I haven't really seen much of this city, although walking around it was really awesome to see the old style buildings and narrow walkways. Someone asked me what the buildings were like, and I stopped myself before saying "they look European" since I guess that's obvious. Yesterday someone flew down from a little town called Oulu to hang out with me for the day and work on some stuff. One of the things that we discussed was me going up there for a few days, since there are more people up there ...

So, there are a million things I could say about this week, but I'm just too tired.. It's been long, and I have to get on a plane in less than 24 hours to head to Europe.. It's nearly 15 hours of travelling, and when I get there it will be cold and snowing. I went out with Derek and Cisco for a few hours tonight, despite being completely bagged. We ended up at Salt in gastown (which is a really wicked wine tasting place). Here's a shot of me tonight. And here are a few more from the night. Special thanks to Van for lending me his 24-70 f/2.8L for the week in Europe. ...

This morning I came into work fully expecting to have a long day and then go home to bed. But it now appears I have to go home, do laundry, and pack for a last minute trip to Finland. Which is cool I guess, since I've never been anywhere in Europe before (which in itself is strange considering how much travelling I've done). It's going to be a work related trip, so I probably won't have too much time to relax, but I'm taking a few days at the end (I hope) to explore a little bit and see what it's like. ...

So last week I decided that I was going to try and break my whole staying up late, getting up late routine and actually make an effort to go to bed early and get up early. For the most part (except for getting in a bit later today, which is excusable but unfortunately not bloggable), I've been keeping to a routine of hitting the sack around 11, reading on my laptop until 11:30 or so, and getting up at 7am. Now, I have a queen sized bed. I've had one for years now I guess, ever since university. But the funny thing is, I will never ever be able to sleep like I have a queen sized bed. For the most ...

I've had an iPod now for probably at least two years. On my birthday, Des picked me up one of those iPod Minis back when they first came out. And as I sit here, on my couch, patiently waiting for it to charge enough so it will make the rainy walk to work, I thought I'd reflect a bit on the iPod. Since I usually walk wherever I go downtown, I pretty much take the iPod with me when I can. I'm sure I'm going to be part of that generation that goes prematurely deaf since I'm somehow genetically inclined to listen to my iPod on max or near-max volume all the time. In fact, if it could go louder, I'd ...

I've had an iPod now for probably at least two years. On my birthday, Des picked me up one of those iPod Minis back when they first came out. And as I sit here, on my couch, patiently waiting for it to charge enough so it will make the rainy walk to work, I thought I'd reflect a bit on the iPod. Since I usually walk wherever I go downtown, I pretty much take the iPod with me when I can. I'm sure I'm going to be part of that generation that goes prematurely deaf since I'm somehow genetically inclined to listen to my iPod on max or near-max volume all the time. In fact, if it could go louder, I'd ...

I'm just gonna jot this here in case anyone is interested in this sort of stuff. On saturday night, there will be a total eclipse of the moon, visible from all seven continents.. Set aside some time this weekend for sky watching. On Saturday night, March 3rd, there's going to be a total eclipse of the Moon. This means the Moon will glide through the heart of Earth's shadow and turn a beautiful shade of sunset red. Totality can be seen from parts of all seven continents including all of Europe and Africa and the eastern half of North America. Check out spaceweather.com for more details. ...

I thought I'm chime in with my thoughts and feelings so far now that it's been a few days without a PC. First, I'm definitely really happy with my purchase. For the most part everything has just worked, and I haven't had to mess with very many things so far. Sometimes I lament not having more control over cetain elements (for example, trying to figure out which WiFi connection to use in a public space isn't exactly obvious -- in Windows at least you can see signal strength and public/private all at once. I haven't figured out how to see all that on the Mac). The windowing manager on Mac OS X ...