In just three days, I'll be heading to the airport again on what will undoubtedly be a great tour of North America. I'm meeting Luciana in Toronto, and her and I will slowly make our way via train to Québec City. From there we are going to head back to Ottawa for a weekend, then off to Banff, Lake Louise and hopefully Jasper. After a brief stop in Vancouver, we're going to head down to San Francisco for some San Francisco Giants baseball action, and hopefully a few winery tours. Driving in the Canadian Rocky Mountains Many of the places we are heading to are places I haven't spent much time ...

I was doing a Google search the other day, looking for some photos of me at the last company I worked at, when I discovered US patent 7,958,276, Automatic Configuration of Peripheral Devices. When I worked at my previous company I started playing around with an algorithm to automatically configure a voice over IP device. One of the main problems people would have previously is that they would plug in a new audio device and have to spend a pile of time figuring out how to configure it. The same was true with video. So at the time I came up with basically a complicated priority list that would ...

Rebecca is over in Victoria right now for Social Media Camp, and it sounds like it's a great event. WIthout a doubt, everyone is interested in social media right now, and learning how they can leverage it to build relationships and better run their business. While it hasn't been officially announced yet, I'll be giving a talk about WordPress and social media on June the 23rd at the monthly WordPress meet-up in Vancouver. It'll be at the Network Hub, and should be a fun event. Hopefully whoever comes out will be up for hitting a pub afterwards and continuing on the WordPress discussions over a ...

About two months ago I was packing up my items in Buenos Aires, getting ready to fly to New York City and then to Europe. I've been out in Port Coquitlam now for almost a month and am pretty much back into the swing of my normal routine here. I've been thinking quite a bit about the summer, and of course what my plans are after that. Everything is still up in the air, but here's how I think things will shape out. I've been planning for quite some time to take most of July and August off. I have a few little personal side projects to work on as well as some house keeping items over at BNC, but ...

I remember taking a summer off from UBC one year and heading back to Chilliwack. At the time gas was sitting at around 39 cents per litre. It's hard to imagine that it's only been around ten years since then and gas is now hovering at around 140 cents a litre in the Vancouver area. To put that into context, the $60 I spend filling up my car would have cost around $16 back then. In fact, now that I'm back in the Vancouver area, it's not lost on me just how expensive it is to own and operate a car. I have a 2006 Mazda 3 Sport that I own outright. My insurance runs me around $135 a month through ...

There's a new kid on the block in terms of Vancouver WordPress conferences, and that kid's name is WordCamp:Developers. Unlike previous incarnations of WordCamp in the Vancouver area, WordCamp:Developers will have less content about the beginner aspects of WordPress (like the difference between .com and .org, which comes up at many conferences) and more content about advanced aspects of WordPress, such as development. As many people know, I've helped organize three WordCamp conferences in the Vancouver area. The first was a small WordCamp Vancouver that was attached to BarCamp (which is no longer ...

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 ...

Tomorrow is the kick-off party for BarCamp Vancouver. While I do indeed have a ticket, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be able to make it at this point. I'm right at the end of a huge client deliverable, and my attendance will depend on whether or not I can get it all done tomorrow. In addition, I'm also hoping to start moving things into storage this weekend if I can. That said, I've been to a few other BarCamp Vancouver events before, and am hoping to make an appearance at the party if I can. BarCamp is an unconference - attendees put conference suggestions on a board, and everyone votes ...

In case you don't know who Garth Turner is, he's a former MP and now financial guru who has been predicting the troubled real estate market for years. Obviously not many people took him seriously a few years ago, but the majority of his predictions have panned out. Tomorrow night Garth is speaking to a sold out audience at the Four Seasons hotel in Vancouver. Since Vancouver is thought to be ground zero for the impending real estate market implosion in Canada, many people are obviously eager to hear him speak. The event was originally planned for around 300 people, but due to popular demand, is ...

I spent this afternoon out in Hamilton, Ontario, watching the Canada vs the United States hockey game. This morning I predicted that they would win with a 3-2 margin, which they did. And on that note, thus ends the 2010 Winter Olympics. I'll be honest -- I was against the Olympics. I was against the costs, against the expenditures, against the further widening of the gap between the rich and poor. But truthfully, I'll carry the three days I spent in Vancouver at the start of the Olympics with me for the rest of my life. I have always loved Vancouver, but I have never seen a Vancouver in love before: ...

I went down to the Atlantic House the other day with Rebecca, John Bollwitt, and John Biehler. We did our best to help the Atlantic House with their excess beer problem, and eventually had to solicit the help of a few other people, namely Robert Scales and Kris Krug, who happened to be in the area and swung by. Since I had my video camera on me, I thought I would take a quick stroll and see if I could find out what some of the people in Atlantic House thought about the Olympics. The end result is this 13 minute video, which I'm hoping to have on Blip.TV and/or YouTube sometime soon. ...

John Biehler and I decided to grab some grub around 7pm tonight, but unfortunately, had a hard time finding a place that could initially accommodate us. The first pub we tried to get into (on the corner of Robson and Granville) was completely full, so we decided to try the Kingston Pub on Richards street. While it was also extremely full, they managed to find room for the two of us downstairs near the large screen TV. Shortly afterwards Rebecca and John showed up, and we watched the Women's Mogul event while sipping a few beers. When Jenn Heil started her final run, I turned my video camera on, ...

We just walked back to the west end from the Kingston Pub, and ended up walking past a huge group of people around Granville and Robson. Here's what it looked like about an hour ago. ...

I've started putting some of my Olympic photos on VancouverStockPhotos.ca for use by organizations seeking stock photos from around Vancouver during the Olympics. John Biehler is also going to be putting a pile of his photos up soon there, so if you know of anyone looking for commercial licenses for photographs, by all means send them to the 2010 Olympic Stock Photos gallery. If you're a non-commercial organization, then you are free to use the photos as long as you follow the attribution clauses as indicated on their associated Flickr photos (non-commercial, attribution). The set of CC licensed ...

This morning I got to walk along Robson Street and watch the protests as they occurred. Given that I saw first-hand how the police officers and the protesters interacted, I thought I would make a few comments. First, it is everyone's democratic right in Canada to be allowed to protest peacefully -- these rights are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That said, you are not allowed to protest violently, or to break any of the normal laws of this country while in the process of protesting. Vandalism and destruction of property are not forms of protest, they are forms of violence. For ...

I actually didn't apply for a media pass, so I technically do not have access to the BC International Media Center. That said, if you have access, you can sign people in as visitors, so I'm currently down here as a guest of John Biehler. Here's a quick video that John and I shot to give everyone a little tour of what it's like inside. ...

This morning John Bollwitt and I were sitting on his couch watching TV and saw that there were a group of protesters heading towards Robson Street. Both him and I immediately grabbed our cameras and headed outside to see if we could see what was going on, and possibly grab a few photos. The group involved was waving a green and black flag with a big "A" in the center, which apparently stands for anarchy. Several of the protesters were wearing masks, and the police were following behind closely, but not engaging any of the protesters. At one point both John and I saw a group of protesters ...

I'm somewhere near Surrey I think, stuck near the back on a Greyhound bus. The mood here is pretty dismal -- most people are either sleeping or in some weird state of iPod euphoria. The scheduled arrival time, barring any major road hiccups, is around 12:10pm I think. The first order of business for me will be to store my luggage somewhere, most likely in a locker in the bus terminal. That'll of course mean that I have to come back and get it later, but that's way better than walking around with a suitcase all day. It's no secret that I haven't been a huge supporter of the Olympics games in Vancouver. ...

I have all my camera gear packed up, which for me, is quite a lot of stuff. I pulled my old laptop/camera-bag out of retirement, which means I can have the majority of my gear, as well as my laptop, all in the same bag. It is as convenient as it is heavy. I bought a ticket on the 10am Greyhound bus leaving Chilliwack for downtown Vancouver. I decided that having my car in the city wasn't really a good idea with the games going on. Right now I'm just sipping a coffee, then I'm going to head down to the Greyhound and wait down there. I have a pile of work on my laptop, so I should be able to get ...

If you're stuck at home during some of the festivities over the next few weeks, don't fret entirely. Yes, you'll miss out on TONS of great events, but the good news is you can catch a few things remotely. To that end there's a new Yaletown web camera that's now operational that gives views to the North and South. Tomorrow you'll be able to see the Torch Relay go through that area by watching on the web cam. The webcam is sponsored by Wasserman + Partners Advertising, and can be viewed here (the links to activate it are in the top-right corner). Enjoy! ...