Mike's Blog

First cool Pic

2011-06-22T21:38:00.000-04:00

Just posted on 500 px

Why Bell Sucks And You Should Never Get A Phone With Them.

2011-05-11T18:36:00.000-04:00

So, as you may know I have a Palm Pre. The thing about the Pre is that it is made out of plastic. Plastic breaks pretty easily, so, after almost two years with my Pre it’s feeling it’s age and I’m starting to think about it’s replacement.

A couple things you should know about Bell Canada. First, unlike our neighbours to the south, we here in Canada must suffer three year contracts (as opposed to two years or less). Second, despite there being a lot of company names on the market there are really only just two main companies: Bell and Rogers (and a bunch of smaller companies that are fronts for Bell and Rogers). There are a couple other independent companies too but they’re price takers, not price setters so we basically have an oligopoly. As a result we have expensive voice and data plans – some of the most expensive in the world in fact – and ridiculously long contracts with high termination penalties and no incentives for companies to compete and offer consumers better choices.

I’m about two thirds of the way through a contract that if I were an American my contract would be over come August. I went to the Bell store to see about my ‘upgrade’ options fully prepared to plunk down more money and possibly extend my contract another few years. I tell them that in August it will have been 2 years and that I’d like to get a new phone if I can by then.

They say no.

I actually have to wait until Feb 29th, 2012 to get a new phone at a discount if I want it. That’s the end of Feb next year or two and a half years into a three year contract for those of you keeping track.

Now just to be clear, I’m not looking to get a new phone for free. I’m actually looking to pay for a new phone (albeit at a discount) and extend a contract I don’t even really like just so I can get a new phone and Bell is treating me like some sort of unwanted troll.

I’ll give you a little history to put this into more context (and possible make me look like a fool).

I was one of the few that actually pre-ordered my phone with Bell. I was really excited about this phone. I bought it on launch day and paid what was then the subsidized full cost of more than $200 (plus at least $70 a month for the next three years…naturally). I’m what some would call an ‘early adopter’. I even evangelised the phone and managed to convince two of my friends to also buy the Pre, a high-end, expensive smartphone having successfully convinced both friends that it was time for them to ditch their cheap feature-phones for something more capable (and by extension expensive).

Not only did I pay ‘full price’ for a phone that was being given away for free within six months but I also gave Bell two new high value customers stealing them from other carriers and putting them on - not a cheap plan but - an expensive smartphone plan.

Man was I duped. (Sorry both friends, I feel really bad about that now.)

So here we are today. My phone is starting to crack and fall apart. It was abandoned months ago not only by the carrier that sold it to me but by the very company that built the damn thing to begin with. (Palm hasn’t sent an update in months and has no plans to update the phone ever again. It is officially now ‘abandonware’.)

Naturally I’m looking at getting another smartphone (because once you have one you can’t go back). I’m even willing to pay a premium to upgrade early and extend the already stupidly long contract so Bell can keep me for another few years. Instead of encouraging this type of behaviour that one must think can only be good for a company like Bell, they have instead decided to all but prevent it. If I want to upgrade I either have to wait and hope that my phone lasts until early 2012 or pay and unsubsidized full price for an ‘off-contract’ phone that Bell is more than happy to try and sell me. But here’s the thing.

If I want an off contract phone I don’t actually need to buy it from Bell. Bell uses sim cards now which means any unlocked phone that uses sim cards will work. I can get one off eBay, or directly from a manufacturer like Apple. A side benefit of not buying an off contract phone from Bell is that it will be unlocked. If I buy such a phone from Bell it will be locked to Bell, if I buy it from Apple I can use it on any network once my Bell contract is up. As if to put icing on the cake, Bell charges extra for the ‘privilege’ of buying an off-contract phone. (When I talked to Bell’s customer service they mentioned something about an extra $35 fee to buy an off contract phone.)

Like I said, it’s as if they don’t even want me as a customer anymore.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do. Rather than pay Bell for the full cost of a new phone, I’ll buy it directly from Apple for the exact same price - probably even less. The benefit of buying the phone from Apple instead of Bell is that the iPhone direct from Apple is unlocked so when my contract is up I can go to a competitor, hopefully one of the new start-ups. I’ll blog about this experience in the off-chance someone at Bell reads such things (doubtful but whatever) and come August 2012 I’ll be saying helloooo Fido, or Mobilicity, or Wind, or maybe even Rogers. One thing I’ll definitely be saying though - with my unlocked iPhone – is “Screw you Bell!”

P.S. Oh, and the early adopter thing works both ways, next time someone asks about a phone, I certainly won’t recommend Bell.

So…DSLR Then???

2011-04-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

After many hours of fruitless research I have concluded that the camera of my dreams does not exist in the real world. As a result I have switched my search to the DSLR market.

I have decided that my everyday point-and-shoot needs will be taken care of by the iPhone 5 (or 4G, whatever they plan on calling it) when that comes out and my real camera needs will be done by a proper DSLR.

With this in mind here are my requirements:

- Auto. exposure bracketing (for HDR shots)

- Time lapse or the ability to use an intervalometer (either wired or wireless)

- Ability to shoot in RAW

- Built-in flash

- Budget of around $1,000

As you can see the requirements stay pretty much the same as before although I have dropped the requirement for the camera to be compact and added a budget restriction because DSLR prices are out-of-control.

So far, my understanding is that Nikon’s include a built-in intervalometer with their DSLR line so I’ve narrowed it down to two possible Nikon candidates. That said, I’m definitely open to suggestions so if there are any Canon fanboys (or fangirls) out there speak up and let me know if there’s a Canon camera I should look at.

The two Nikon’s that caught my eye are the D3100 and the D90. In both cases I’m looking for a lens that will be a good all around lens for the majority of shooting situations. I’ve come to understand that an 18-105 mm or 18-200mm lens fits the bill but I could be wrong.

So far I’m looking at two packages, the D3100 with an 18-105mm lens for about $949.95:

And the D90 with an 18-105mm lens for $1099.00:

I’m assuming that more money equals better camera somehow but I’m not sure.

Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated!!

Mikey needs a new camera

2011-03-31T21:27:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I started looking into getting a new camera. I only have a few requirements but it seems those requirements are too much to ask.

Here is what I need my new camera to do:

- Exposure Bracketing – at least 3 frames in at least 1/3 steps so I can do HDR

- Time lapse or the ability to use an intervalometer so I can make cool movies

- Ability to shoot in RAW

- A flash – dumb requirement but some cameras don’t have one

- A compact body – not necessarily point-and-shoot sized but definitely not DSLR sized.

I’ve looked at a lot of cameras and have even made feature comparison spreadsheets but have not found a single camera that meets all of these requirements so I’m asking the internet hive-mind for help. Does anyone know of a camera that can do these things that is for sale now? Please leave your suggestions in the comment section of this post.

So far the closest I’ve come to find the ‘one’ is the Samsung WB2000 (aka TL350). I’m given to understand that it does both bracketing and time lapse although I’m not sure of the exact specs on either function. Specifically I don’t know whether it does true bracketing or ‘onboard HDR’ which I’m not interested in. Also I don’t know what the ‘time lapse’ feature is like, is it only in certain configurations or can I choose between a variety of time lengths?

Cameras I’m not interested in:

- DSLRs – they’re simply too big and heavy, I’d never take them anywhere.

- Canon G12 or it’s twin, the Nikon P7000 – both are simply too big. I want a compact-sized camera with a decent lens.

Cameras that have potential:

So far the three I’m most interested in are:

- Panasonic DMC-LX5 (but time lapse ability?)

- Canon S95 (again, time lapse? maybe with CHDK?)

- and of course the Samsung WB2000 (bracketing and time lapse?)

Other cameras I’ve looked at:

- Olympus E-PL1, E-PL2, E-P2, XZ-1

- Sony NEX-3/5

- Canon SZ230 HS, S95

- Nikon S9100, P300

- Panasonic DMC-TS3, DMC-LX5, DMC-TS10, DMC-GF2

Anyone have any suggestions? Have I missed one?

Why my Palm Pre is still a great phone!

2010-12-29T21:41:00.001-05:00

I’ve been meaning to post something about my phone for a while and now that I have time off for the holidays I can!!

The phone I use and love is the Palm Pre. It’s a great phone but sometimes it seems I’m the only person that has one, which I suppose makes me part of an elite club right?! Ya, that sounds good, I’ll go with that. I’m part of an elite club of Pre owners! And to help other members of my elite Pre owner’s club I’m going to make a guide of apps and settings that I think make the Pre the awesome phone it is!

First off I’ll address the biggest problem with the Pre - battery life. It sucks. I’m told that other phones, mostly Android phones, have similarly bad battery lives so I don’t feel too bad but still, that doesn’t change the fact that the Pre’s battery life sucks. To remedy that niggling issue I bought a Seido Innocell 1350 Extended battery for the Pre. It costs $44.95 and will help your Pre last a whole day, which is nice. For those interested you can buy yourself one at the precentral.net store. It fits in the same space as the original battery but has more capacity and thus lasts longer than the original.

Next up are apps. Most phone platforms boast about how many thousands of apps they have in their app stores. HP-Palm doesn’t. That’s because they really don’t have that many, about 4,000 or so.
As a result many find the app store lacking but I’ve discovered that I only really use a handful of apps anyway so 4,000 is plenty – assuming they have the ones you need. In my case they do (mostly). Here are the apps I use and the tweaks I’ve done to make my phone awesome;

Messaging & Email: I’m not going to go into detail about how the messaging and email apps work, if you have a Pre you already know how awesome they are and if you don’t there are plenty of websites that will explain the sweetness that is “Synergy”. The tweak I’ve done to the built in Messaging and Email apps is change their rings so that I know if I received a text message or an email and in which specific email account said email went. To do this, simply launch the app (Messaging for example) hit the top-left corner and select “Preferences & Accounts”. Then hit the “Alert” dialogue, pick “Ringtone” and set whatever ringtone you like, you can even download and use custom ringtones if they’re in an mp3 format by plugging your phone into a computer and dropping the files into the “ringtones” folder. Do the same set of steps for each of your email accounts in the Email App.

Dropbox: Unfortunately Dropbox hasn’t made an app for the Pre but they have made a mobile website which works perfectly on the Pre. There is an app called Dropboxify but it doesn’t allow you to save images and stuff in a way that can be accessed by other apps on the phone so if you wanted to save a Dropbox-based picture to use as a wallpaper for example you can’t with Dropboxify. Not so if you use the Dropbox mobile website. Simply navigate to m.dropbox.com login and you’re good to go! Also, if you want an icon on your launcher simply hit the top-left of the screen while on the Dropbox page, select “Page” and then “Add to launcher” and you’re done! You can even get the cool Dropbox Icon you see in the screenshot of my launch at the top of this post by just moving the little icon box over to the Dropbox icon!

Evernote: Evernote was nice enough to make an app for the Pre and it’s great! They’ve even updated it recently to add more awesomeness. You can do things like select specific notebooks, change views and of course you can post directly to Evernote with text and pictures. Everything is stored in the cloud so take a picture of something or write an idea in Evernote while out and about and it’ll be on your computer when you get home!

Weather: WeatherIcon is an app that does something that even people with iPhones can’t do. It shows up-to-date weather information based on your current location right there on the launcher screen through it’s icon! You don’t even need to open the app to get an idea of how cold it is and whether it’s raining or not. For more detailed weather information you can of course open the app but I prefer to use the mobile version of the WeatherNetwork website for that. I did the launcher icon thing with the WeatherNetwork site for Ottawa and it’s great!

Engadget: The folks over at Engadget made an app for the Pre way back when the Pre was still a new phone and it’s been a great app right from the start! It’s slick and loads fairly quickly and is just like reading the Engadget website only perfectly formatted for the Pre. What more could you want?

Timepiece: I downloaded timepiece when it was still a Homebrew beta and have used it ever since. I think it is the best clock for the pre and I use it daily as my alarm clock to get me out of bed in the morning. It even has support for Pandora although that service is not yet available in Canada for some ridiculous copyrights BS reason. It works in both portrait and landscape mode and is dimmable. Perfect for the touchstone!

Mileage Monitor Plus: I’ve used this app since day 1 and it’s been fantastic. So good in fact that I paid for the “Plus” version. I log every fillup and it keeps track of the details. Notice how the last fillup in the screencap is much higher than the lifetime? Ya, that’s what happens when your car battery dies and you can’t turn off the car until you get a new one! Hopefully the next fillup will show lower numbers.

Twee: I don’t use twitter often, but when I do I use Twee. It’s simply the slickest Twitter app on the Pre. It easily lets you do things like see you’re @ mentions, check your Twitter mail, look at trending topics and of course search. It’s a great app, now if only I can figure out the point of Twitter we’d be good to go!

Facebook: The Facebook app has always been great and I almost prefer it over the website version on the PC. A recent update has added “Places” functionality and some other improvements. As you can see it looks great and it’s really nice to use.

Kobo: I don’t often read eBooks on the Pre but the Kobo app makes it way more likely. As you can see I just downloaded War and Peace and because Kobo has a ‘whispersyncish’ type thing going on (ie it’ll sync your bookmarks a-la-Kindle) with other Kobo reader apps on other devices I’ll be able to start a book on the Pre and finish it on my iPad. Since Amazon doesn’t have a Kindle app for the Pre, Kobo is it!

CBCRadio: CBC was out early with their App and it’s a great app! It lets me listen to the best internet radio station of all – CBC Radio 3! It even shows the title and artist of the current track, just put your Pre on the Touchstone and listen away!

XBMC Remote: I use XBMC on my media PC that’s hooked up to the TV so I was pretty excited to see that they made an App for the Pre. It took a little finagling to get the XBMC server thing going but once you set it up it works like a charm! It’s like having a remote control for my computer!

Angry Birds: on the Pre, ‘nough said. (Yes I used Engadget’s Angry Birds picture – sorry Engadget – my screencap thing didn’t work in Angry Birds for some reason.)

Netstat / Bell Self Service: Netstat is a great little utility that comes out of the Homebrew community so it’s not available through the App Catalogue. It tells you all kinds of important stuff like how much data you’re using over the 3G network vs. Wi-fi this month. Bell Self Service does much the same thing and then some, both are good apps for this sort of thing.

And those are the apps I use most on the Pre. See? Only a handful! With these apps I’ve pretty much covered everything I need my phone to do and then some. There are many other apps of course but these are the ones that I think are most important and use all the time.

I’ve Tasted The Kool-Aid and It’s Delicious! (oh dear…)

2010-09-01T21:52:00.001-04:00

Now that I have an iPad I’m paying a bit more attention to Apple announcements, like Steve Job’s keynote from today. While I’m excited to hear about the new iOS update coming to the iPad what I’m really interested in is the new Apple TV. If more TV networks sign up it could

Technorati Tags: Apple,Windows 7,Palm,OS,Computer

become a replacement for our $72-a-month satellite TV. First-run shows on demand, the day they air? That is really compelling but only if I can replace my existing TV service provider and save money in the process. What I’m not interested in is yet another thing to hook up to the television. I like the idea of replacing a big, hot, slow and often noisy satellite receiver with a small, silent more capable box. What I’d really like to see is a monthly, all-you-can-eat subscription for less than I’m paying for satellite. That would be great.

In other news, Lifehacker has informed me that I will be able to run OSX in a virtual machine on my Windows 7 PC. If I can get it to work as advertised I will finally be able to rid my system of iTunes and confine the terribly written piece of crapware to where it belongs, on Mac OS living in a virtual machine inside of Windows 7. Then my computer will finally be able to return to it’s pre-iTunes glory days of speed and reliability (I’m not kidding, iTunes is THAT bad).

Also, Palm will apparently be releasing WebOS 2.0 sometime in the near future which looks awesome and I’m hoping includes some battery-life-extension tweaks.

And, the Zune HD still rocks.

Finally in an update to my previous post, no sooner do I rejoice in the cool autumn air does it change to a hellishly hot and humid 40 degrees Celsius. The weather boffins assure me however that I must only bear the brutal heat two more days before it goes back to a more pleasant 15 degrees. I’m glad I now work in an air conditioned office building.

Still…damn you sun worshippers, damn you!!!

Fall is in the air...(yay!)

2010-08-28T09:38:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I heard geese going south, today Starbucks brings back the pumpkin spice latte. The air is becoming crisp and clear and the tree in the back yard is staring to change. Yay autumn!

iPad and my move to the dark side

2010-07-16T19:58:00.003-04:00

As some loyal readers of this blog may know, I tend to rag on Apple a little bit, not because they make bad stuff but becaue they charge too much for the stuff they make and because there tends to be a cult following around Apple products which often ignores the real world shortcomings of those products and exaggerates, or outright lies, about the shortcomings of competitor products.

Competition is good, lying isn't.

As such I have been criticized as an Apple hater and Microsoft fanboy when really all that I'm trying to do with this blog is highlight innovative and interesting technology.

Technology that I can afford.

Generally speaking Apple technology is often neither innovative nor affordable. Their computers, while pretty, are built on technology that is about one hardware generation behind but sometimes more. That's not necessarily bad but it's not something they advertise. There are much better phones on the market than the iPhone too - always have been - and there are also much better mp3 players than the iPod - the ZuneHD for example. Be that as it may, these wouldn't be big issues if those products weren't so damn expensive.

Which is why I'm excited to announce that I now have an iPad.

Yes the iPad is a bit pricey but not overly so. It also happens to be the only device of it's kind on the market. Sure there are tablet PCs - I even own one - but none of them have the iPad form factor. Coupled with the fact that most major magazine publishers are working on bringing their mags to the iPad and that you can get almost any book through either the Kindle app or iBooks and the case for the iPad becomes pretty compelling. I've been looking for a device to read magazines on for years and I even thought that a tablet pc might do the trick but tablets are too heavy to read with comfortably and ebook readers don't do magazines well at all. The iPad however changes all that. With it one can read magazines comfortably and publishers can even improve upon them. Books work well on it and the battery life of the device is not an issue at all. Besides reading you can surf the Internet and read more stuff there or you can install apps but don't believe the hype. Of the tens of thousands of apps in the App Store, only a handful of them are actually useful. The rest are simply ways to separate you from your money. All in all, I'm liking the iPad so far and the future looks promising. As a platform it is still very young but I'm sure as it evolves it will become as ubiquitous as smart phones and mp3 players are now.

P.S. This entire post was written using my iPad.

The Awesomeness of My Tether

2010-06-04T12:38:00.001-04:00

As you may know, I’ve been playing with the idea of getting an iPad and have pretty much decided that I want one. But which one should I get? There are six to choose from. I narrowed it down to the highest capacity two of the six which means the 64GB wi-fi only version and the 64GB wi-fi + 3G version. The wi-fi version is of course much cheaper (by $100 or so) but you have to rely on wi-fi networks which aren’t always available wherever you happen to be. With the 3G version you have internet almost everywhere but it adds another monthly fee on top of your regular cell fee which isn’t an attractive option at all since I already pay for mobile internet access on my phone and don’t want to pay for it again for another device.

That’s where My Tether comes in. It’s an app for my Palm Pre that lets me share my Pre’s 3G internet connection over wi-fi. I installed it on my Pre and tested it by connecting my laptop and sure enough it works perfectly!! It’s surprisingly fast too! I highly recommend the app, it costs 15 bucks but it’s a one time donation and I can confirm that it does work on Canadian Palm Pre’s using the Bell network.

The install is pretty straightforward and it’s all explained on the install page although you will need access to a computer in order to do it.

For those of you keeping track this is a trick that an iPhone cannot do. I find it interesting that you can’t tether an iPhone to an iPad but you can tether a Palm Pre to an iPad (or anything else for that matter).

What I’m interested in finding out is how many devices the Pre can support as a wi-fi router. MiFi solutions can support up to 5 devices so I imagine it’s around that number but I don’t really plan on connecting more than one device anyway.

My Honor’s Thesis was right!!

2010-06-03T22:16:00.001-04:00

A few of my Honor's Thesis policy recommendations made it into the real world today!! DND is basically following the second, third and forth recommendations that I laid out in my honors thesis although I really doubt anyone at DND has actually read my thesis because it wasn't published and they are pretty common sense ideas anyway. But yay!! It means I was right to recommend them in my thesis!

If you're curious I recommended that DND and the government;

1) Define what an effective procurement policy means to each stakeholder.

2) Strategically plan long-term procurement goals for long-lead items like ships and airplanes.

3) Create procurement policies that target and support a few specific industries (like shipbuilding and aerospace) that the government deems to be strategically and economically important (as opposed to supporting every defence industry like the US does because we're just too small a market to do that effectively).

4) Ensure there is long-term sustained demand for the industry so it doesn’t die off (30 years should be good).

5) If an industry can't be or won’t be sustained, favour schemes like industry partnerships and licensed production to maximize industrial benefits to Canadian business when we do buy things from that industry.

The press caption is as follows but you can find a more in-depth press release here: The Department of National Defence and the Government of Canada’s National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy

"June 3, 2010 - Lansdowne Park, Ottawa, Ontario

The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy was announced by the Government of Canada the CANSEC/CADSI tradeshow the morning of June 3. The 30-year plan will invest tens of billions of dollars in federal fleet renewal for Canada's Navy and Coast Guard, ensuring effective maritime security and service, while boosting domestic industry. The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy commits to building and repairing these new ships in Canadian shipyards, and will ensure continued operations in Canadian, Arctic, and international waters. By creating a reliable shipbuilding relationship between the federal government and the marine industry, this long-term strategy will see the creation of new jobs, improved technology, and increased competition to sustain Canada's sovereignty and prosperity."

- DND website.

NewsStand reply!!

2010-05-26T11:08:00.001-04:00

So a day after a wrote my letter to NewsStand I got a reply in my inbox which I have to admit was much faster than I expected!

Here’s what NewsStand had to say:

Dear Mr. Banks,

Thank you for contacting NewsStand's Customer Support and for providing your feedback. Currently our developers are working on a version of the software that will replace the NewsStand Reader. Unfortunately at this point in time we do not have a release date for this software. Until then, I will be sure to forward your comments on to our development staff for consideration.

Should you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,
Zoe
NewsStand Support

So it looks like something new is on the way although I’m a bit disappointed that they can’t tell me a release date quite yet or any details on what can be expected in the update although it kinda sounds like it might be a big release since she said they’re going to “replace” the Reader.

Newsstand, you’re on notice!

2010-05-22T12:20:00.001-04:00

I recently wrote NewsStand, the company that makes the NewsStand Reader on which I read my weekly subscription of Flight International, a letter detailing why they need to change the way they do things. Here’s what I sent.

To whom it may concern,

I’m a subscriber to a weekly magazine that uses the NewsStand Reader software to distribute its digital edition. Thus far I have not been impressed with the experience. I don’t mind paying for magazine subscriptions - especially well written magazines like Flight International - but great publications like Flight are being let down by terrible software like your ‘Reader’. I’ve been a paper subscriber of Flight for many years and used to read it religiously every week but the electronic version promised to be more convenient so I made the switch about two years ago. I have noticed that with the digital version I now go weeks without reading Flight at all because I dread the awful user experience of the software. I keep hoping it will be updated and improved but sadly it has not and with new slate and tablet devices on the horizon I fear NewsStand Reader is becoming increasingly obsolete. The software could have delivered on the potential of digital magazine distribution if not for its shockingly poor design and implementation. As a result, I have put together a list of things that need to be addressed by the next release of Reader. These are high-level things that, in my opinion, should have been fixed a long time ago.

1) GUI: The graphical user interface of Reader is primitive and ugly. It is cumbersome, a pain to use and horrible to look at. Worst of all it detracts from the content that users view with it. Good GUI design would ensure that the interface is visually appealing and unobtrusive. A good Reader GUI would get out of the way when the user is viewing content. Content like magazines and newspapers should be displayed full-screen with no window ‘chrome’ around them whatsoever and the GUI should really only appear in certain circumstances on demand. It should be simple, visually appealing and provide smooth and elegant transitions. In order to do this properly however the software needs to be…

2) Touch-aware: Reader needs to recognize when a touch interface is available and it needs to exploit that built-in capability effectively. This is especially true with the bevy of new touch devices currently out and soon to be entering the market including convertible laptops (which I presently use) and slates. Not only does it need to be touch aware but it needs to be multi-touch aware meaning that the software should recognize multiple finger inputs especially ‘pinch-to-zoom’ and…

3)Gestures: The Reader software absolutely must include gesture support which enables easy, more natural navigation of content including simple swiping back and forth motions to turn pages and double-tapping to zoom in on specific articles. There are many ways to implement the above-mentioned changes, some of which will also address the final problem which is…

4) Platform independence: The Reader software should be platform agnostic. It should work on Macs and PCs and perhaps even some smartphones but especially tablets and slates. To do this it needs to be written in a platform independent environment like Adobe AIR or Microsoft Silverlight. A good example of software that already does this is Graphic.ly which is a great piece of software for buying and viewing graphic novels (comic books). It is visually appealing, easy to use and gets out of the way when the user is looking at content. Newsstand would do well to emulate and build upon the experience that software like Grahic.ly provides.

As it stands now I’d have to recommend that Flight International and others consider switching digital content distributors as they do not seem to be getting their money’s worth. As a consumer it seems to me that I’m getting ripped off by poorly realised, second-rate software and that the Newsstand Reader software developers are asleep at the wheel when it comes to updating their program and ensuring its continued relevancy. I’m curious to hear how NewsStand plans on making my digital content viewing experience as pleasant as it once was with paper-based magazines.

Exo what?

2010-05-21T22:14:00.001-04:00

Continuing with the tablet theme I think I may have stumbled upon the perfect tablet device!!! (at least for me)

Yay!!!!!

It’s called the ExoPC and surprisingly it’s made by a Canadian company.

If you haven’t heard of it before I can’t really blame you. I only recently stumbled across it. It seems that the ExoPC suffers from a lack of publicity and seeing as it’s Canadian I’ll do my bit to spread the word as much as I can. (Okay technically it’s French-Canadian as in Quebec – Rimouski to be exact - but it’s certainly not France French as some tech-journalists claim.)

The ExoPC is basically a netbook without a keyboard. What that means is that it runs a full x64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium and therefore can run anything you would normally expect Windows 7 to run including Flash, Java, ebook software like Amazon’s Kindle and the super-cool-kinda-dirty-sounding Windows 7 Touch Pack.

As far as the hardware goes, unlike most netbooks, the makers of the ExoPC cleverly fitted it with a solid-state hard drive (SSD) which means faster boot times (about 40 sec) and less power consumption although storage space does take a hit with only 32 and 64 GB options being currently available rather than a more conventional netbook hdd size in the hundreds of gigs. That said I’m curious to see if the hard drive is user replaceable because if it is, one could conceivably replace it with a bigger one sometime in the future when SDD prices come down.

The ExoPC is based on some pretty typical netbook guts including a 1.66GHz Atom-Pineview processor and 2GBs of RAM but what’s really interesting is the stuff that’s different from both conventional netbooks and it’s main rival, the iPad. The ExoPC sports a Broadcom Crystal HD video processor which enables flawless High-Def video playback and saves battery power at the same time. Unlike the iPad, the ExoPC actually has a widescreen display so HD movies won’t have the annoying black bars we’ve all just finally gotten rid of on our TVs (HDTV anyone?). The prototype battery currently lasts a respectable 5 hours but the shipping version is planned to have a higher-capacity battery and they’re shooting for a 10 hour battery life although they’re only promising 5 still at this point. If it got 8 hours like the iPad which I think is realistic I’d be delighted!

As expected it has a capacitive multi-touch screen, wireless n, bluetooth, USB 2 and mini-HDMI ports, an SDHC card slot, and yes, a front-facing 1.3 Megapixel webcam and mic for your Skype chat needs. (Take that iPad!) What that really means is that unlike the Apple device you don’t need to buy any stupid adapters to use it with your camera and you can even print from it! It’s also roughly the same physical dimensions as the iPad according to the website - with the same thickness and width although it’s slightly longer of course because of the widescreen.

What I’m really curious about is the visual layer they’ve placed over the Windows 7 user-interface which you can see in the picture above. Each little circle is an icon that seems to be easy to touch with meaty fingers although I’d like to see some more reviews before I’m totally sold on that. The column on the right of the screen seems to act like a taskbar where you can close apps and the whole UI seems to be very Zune-esque which is good. I think it looks great and it certainly looks like a good answer to Windows’ current touch shortcomings (ie small buttons etc.). It also looks better than the Apple icon grid a la iPhone and the company says you can even turn off the layer if you want/need to and go straight to the usual Windows interface.

For those interested, the price is planned to be the exact same as the iPad so about $600 depending on whether you’re talking Canadian or US currency. It will be available (hopefully as planned) on September 7th in Canada, the US and France and I’ve signed up for the early registration email list so I’ll post something as soon as they tell me when I can order one.

Oh, and if you’re worried about missing out on the digital version of magazines like I am (pretty much the biggest part of why I want a device like this) don’t be. According to the people making the iPad version of Popular Science and the like, their Mag+ format (ie digital) magazines should work in Windows too because they are written in something called Adobe Air which is platform agnostic meaning it will run on Windows, Mac, or iPad. I already have a program for graphic novels called graphic.ly which uses Air and works on my laptop perfectly and is coming to iPad.

So there you go, an epic post and the ultimate reason to not buy an iPad, at least not yet. I had decided earlier this week that I’d probably end up buying an iPad when version 2 comes out but now that I’ve discovered the ExoPC it’s looking more and more like I won’t. And you know what the best part is? I can continue my Apple-free existence!!

On tablets and phones

2010-04-30T14:57:00.001-04:00

As you can probably tell from my previous posts, I’m very interested in the tablet form factor for several reasons, chief among them is for reading magazines. Apple has of course released its new iPad and since it’s not available in Canada yet I can’t really talk about its suitability from first-hand experience. That said, so far it doesn’t yet seem to fit my needs from what others have said who have actually used it, but I can see its potential and the second generation might be exactly what I’m looking for.

For now however there are other tablets on the horizon, and an interesting possibility has been raised that I hadn’t considered. According to Jason Perlow of ZDNet, HP’s recent acquisition of Palm might hold some interesting prospects for the future. I won’t rehash his entire post which you can read for yourself in the link above but he raises the possibility that HP might be able to put Palm’s awesome WebOS onto their concept HP Slate.

I’ve always thought that HP fancied itself to be a version of Apple. Witness their Envy line of laptops (below), they look remarkably like Macbooks although they have much better hardware inside and can play games. Where Apple likes to make things white, HP likes to make them black (which I prefer). Both sell consumer products like, well, laptops and computers but HP has been missing out on cell phones which are a huge part of Apple’s portfolio and now tablets.

Of course HP has assets in both areas, but their phones suck and their tablets have been limited to convertible laptops so far (I’m actually using the first generation HP convertible to type this post) running Windows 7. Convertibles are fine, great in fact, but not conducive to reading magazines and eBooks in a comfortable way. Now that Apple has popularized the slate form factor I’ve been hoping for some more competition in the market.

If HP does manage to put WebOS on a slate the outcome could be amazing. Not only would they have a decent competitor to the iPad but they would have the chance to actually beat Apple in the slate market given WebOS’s superiority and potential. WebOS phones, like my Palm Pre, can do things Apple phones can’t but that hasn’t been communicated very well - mostly because Palm is a small company with limited resources. Throw in HP’s muscle however and things get interesting, especially if they put WebOS to good use on a tablet.

Of course HP hasn’t had a really good track record of buying companies and innovating with them. They bought a high-end PC company called Voodoo and after a couple of years of teasing promising products shut it down. Compaq is just another laptop now and their iPAQ smart phones are all but dead. Hopefully the same fate does not await Palm.

iTampon…err MaxiPod…err iPad

2010-01-29T15:43:00.001-05:00

I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been busy working but given the giant media frenzy right now over Apple’s latest creation I figured I might as well add my thoughts to the noise. A while back I played with the idea of posting a whish list of what I would like to see in a tablet device but I couldn’t figure out how to make the post interesting (even for me) and I got lazy and never bothered so here it is:

- 8” or so widescreen
- full colour screen (for magazines)
- Windows 7 or an OS that will let me run Windows apps (One of my emagazines has proprietary Windows software)
- lightweight, easy to hold
- touchscreen
- wi-fi enabled

These are the things that I’d like to see in a device that I could throw in my bag and take wherever I want; I would use it to read magazines rather than carrying around a bunch of paper versions; I would use it to read whatever books I happen to be reading at the moment; I would use it to surf the net and watch videos. Basically I’d use it to dick-around…umm…I mean ‘consume media’. I don’t see myself as using this device for real “work” which is why I’m a little surprised that ‘the next great thing’ out of a company known for making stuff that’s good for dicking-around but not actual work (Apple) doesn’t fit the bill.

The screen of the iPad is the right size at 10” and it looks thin enough too but apparently Apple didn’t see fit to include widescreen (16:9) support so all my HD videos will have the stupid black bars that we’ve all tried to get rid of over the years. Ideally it should be the size of a magazine but with a 16:9 ratio to watch HD TV and movies.

iPad’s full colourness is good and I don’t buy the whole ‘eInk is better than LCD’ for eye-strain argument. I have a Sony eReader right now with an eInk display and I also have a laptop (tablet btw) with a conventional LCD screen. Neither cause eye strain for me. In fact the only time I remember getting eye strain while reading was after marathon reading sessions with actual paper books!

I’m disappointed with the maxipod’s OS. I was hoping for at least a version of OSX that I could then install Win7 on but alas that is not the case. The reason I need a real OS is because one of my eMagazines (Flight International) requires proprietary Windows based reader software to access it. I’m willing to do this through BootCamp or whatever or even virtualization but to do that I’ll need a real OS.

The pad gets points, as usual, on design and while I’m not keen on the size of the bezel around the screen it’s certainly not an ugly device from what I can tell and the bezel probably prevents you from inadvertently touching something. As expected the touch screen has multi-touch and appears to be as responsive as an iPhone or Zune HD.

Wi-fi is a must as I plan on downloading most of my content over the air on my home network. 3G isn’t as important to me especially if is comes with an extra monthly charge.

Although the iPad was a letdown I’m getting excited about the HP Slate. There aren’t many (or any really) details out yet about it but it looks like it could be my magical device. We’ll have to wait and see but in the mean time here are pics of both devices.

The Win 7 migration begins!

2009-10-25T12:55:00.001-04:00

I just bought the final version of Windows 7 from Best Buy and have started to install it on my various computers. If you’d like to join in on the Windows 7 fun there are a few relatively inexpensive ways of doing it. For starters there’s the Windows 7 Family Pack. I bought the Win 7 Family Pack from Best Buy for $149.99 which gives me three licence keys but you can get it online for a limited time at the Microsoft website too.

Best Buy is actually selling the family pack for $199.99 but if you go in and let them know that Microsoft itself is selling it for $149.99 online they’ll price-match it. $149.99 isn’t all that cheap but considering that a copy of Win 7 with one licence key is $129.99 three keys for 20 bucks more isn’t a bad deal at all.

We have four computers at home which means we’re still short one key even with the family pack. Luckily my fiancée is still in school which means we can get a copy of Win 7 Home Premium or Professional for just $39.99! (They’re both the same price for the promo.) All you need is a valid university or college email address and you’re good to go. Here’s the link for the deal in Canada:

http://www.windows.ca/studentoffer

For an extra $12 bucks they’ll even ship you a DVD which is what I ended up getting because I plan on doing a clean install and a DVD is the best way. Otherwise what you get is a download file which is a few gigabytes and will take a while to download. Sadly the file you get is not an .iso file which is easy to put on a DVD but rather it’s an .exe file which means you can’t really make a bootable DVD. The file is basically designed to do an in place upgrade of your system and not a clean install. For 12 bucks extra though you get a legit, bootable DVD which brings the total for Win 7 Pro to a whopping $52 which is way less expensive than the $219.99 it would cost otherwise.

For my American cousins and others around the world you can check out your own country specific deals at www.win741.com.

Although I’ve been running Vista on my laptop for most of the year (see here for the reason why I had to) I’ve had Win 7 running on all the other machines in the house with almost no problems at all. Since the other machines are running the Release Candidate build of 7, they’re good until June 2010 so there’s no real hurry to get them on the final release. I decided instead to install the final version on my Vista laptop to see if anything in the final code has changed and because the PC was a dog with Vista. Much to my pleasant surprise Win 7 has been changed a little and has sped up my laptop noticeably!!

First and most importantly, the wi-fi problem I found in the Release Candidate version of 7 seems to have be fixed in the final build. I’m hesitant to install an available optional update for my Broadcom wi-fi card however, just in case it breaks my now perfectly working wi-fi connectivity again. Another thing I noticed is that the ‘reveal desktop’ button on the right side of the taskbar has gotten bigger in the final build although that could just be my imagination or it could be that it’s bigger on tablet PCs compared to other more conventional screens, all I know is that it’s now bigger. I’ve had fewer driver issues on my laptop than I did when I installed the RC build on it a few months ago and overall Win 7 is quite a lot faster than the Vista install it replaced although I’m pretty sure some of that new speed can be attributed to the fact that I’m now missing the HP bloat-ware found in Vista.

Overall I’m happy so far with it and haven’t had any problems as yet. There are deals out there to get cheap versions of Win 7 so I’d do a bit of hunting rather than pay the full retail price. Also there are credible rumours that it is again possible to do a clean install with the upgrade version. I won’t get into the details here but if you’re curious Google it.

Picture of the Day!

2009-10-06T10:39:00.001-04:00

I saw this on our way out of the Rona parking lot on Hunt Club Rd. Maybe it’s only funny because my mom’s a nurse but I think it’s awesome! I wonder if the Lil Stool House did it on purpose?

Renovo Hardwood Bicycles – make me want to bike more

2009-09-28T18:40:00.001-04:00

What’s this? Bikes made out of wood?!? That’s right. And these bikes are absolutely gorgeous. In fact, if I had a couple grand laying around I’d totally buy one! Maybe I should put it on my wedding registry?

Anyway they have several different kinds of bike depending on price and what you’d like to do with it. (ie touring, racing, commuting etc.) They use a wide variety of wood types each for their unique properties and appearance. Personally I like the R2 Road bike with Maple and Bubinga. (pictured below)

The people that make these bikes call them “heirloom quality” and I have to agree. Check out the site, the bikes are really cool!!!

http://www.renovobikes.com

First World Malaise

2009-09-25T11:47:00.001-04:00

A group of people rushed toward what looked to be a shipping pallet sitting on the ground. They quickly encircled it and began tearing away at it’s contents. Grown men and women pushing each other out of the way to get at what lay in front of them. Toddlers, frightened by the animal-like behaviour of the adults around them, began to cry as their mothers tried to protect them from a crowd that was growing increasingly frantic. ‘Would there be enough?’ Older women in the crowd, perhaps once mothers themselves, soon began to lose their sense of civility and became increasingly aggressive, forcing their way to the front. Empty boxes began to fly back into the crowd as others awaited anxiously to get at what lay on the pallet. It was everyone for themselves. Courtesy and dignity had long since vanished and some people on the fringes of the mob eventually gave up and continued on their way.

What could have caused such a scene? A desperately needed food shipment to a starving population? Maybe. Urgently needed medical supplies to a disaster zone? Perhaps, but not in this case. No, in this case it was 29 dollar bed sheets at Ikea. That’s right, Ikea Ottawa had a sale on bed sheets and people went ape. I was there of course because I too needed bed sheets and they were selling ones that match my decor. I never actually got to the front of the mob though because I decided it was not worth losing my sense of self for $29 bed sheets. Plus I was afraid someone might try to claw my eyes out or something if I got too close. Thankfully some kind soul realized they had grabbed the wrong colour and asked if I wanted a crème-coloured queen-sized bed sheet. I did and thanked them for it. I stood and watched the mob for a little bit somewhat disgusted with society then left to go have a $1 Ikea breakfast. It was delicious.

The scene got me thinking, if that’s how people behave for $29 bed sheets I’d hate to see a real emergency situation. Maybe I really should learn to hunt and keep enough fuel around for me to get to the cottage in a pinch. You know, just in case a disaster hit or zombies attacked or something. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about the primal instincts of other city dwellers in the event of a food shortage and could just hang out in peace at the cottage.

Seriously people?!? For bed sheets?!? Come on!

Me and my Pre

2009-09-10T00:40:00.001-04:00

I finally got my hands on the new Palm Pre and it’s a bit different than what I expected, in a good way mostly. The first thing I noticed about it is its form factor – its size and shape. I was a little concerned when I first saw it on the internet since most people back in January that got to see it up close when it was unveiled to the public at CES were comparing it to the iPhone. Some of my friends have iPhones and what strikes me about the iPhone is how big it is. It’s thin but it’s also long and wide. It is after all a pretty big slab of glass to be carrying around in your jeans and I don’t even want to think of how people sit down with it in their pockets without breaking it in half.

For me the perfect cell phone form factor ever introduced was the original Motorola V3 RAZR. I loved that phone and I bought it new for almost the same price I recently paid for my Pre because of it’s size and shape. The RAZR was small but not tiny so it still felt like phone and it had a nice weight to it making it feel solid (but feeling solid and being solid, as it turns out, are two very different things). Unfortunately for me the day I pre-ordered my Pre my trusty old RAZR decided to die and I have not been able to coax it back to life since. Lucky for me a friend had an old but reliable phone for me to borrow until my Pre arrived. To my delight the Pre – as seen below – is roughly the same dimensions as my RAZR!! That was actually pretty surprising to me but good.

The Pre is a bit thicker than the RAZR it replaces but not by much.

So far the Pre has been a great phone although I do have a couple of things I want to point out.

Firstly, while it seems that most people seem to think the processor is fast for a phone, I find it can lag at times. I may not know much about the guts of cell phones but as a consumer I don’t think phones should stutter launching apps and they should feel snappy no matter what. Anything less is just shoddy craftsmanship which applies not only to Palm (because I do think they did a pretty good job here with this phone) but to all phone manufacturers who now seem to think that it’s okay to sell the public incomplete phones that are effectively ‘beta’ versions of their eventual final device. Consumer devices should be perfectly functional the day they are launched and they should not require ‘upgrades’ to fix all the problems people find with them.

My second complaint has to do with the hardware which I also suspect is a product of slipping standards, in this case shoddy Chinese manufacturing. Sure making stuff in China is cheap but I’ve got to be honest. The build quality of the Pre isn’t stellar and borders on being cheap even though it’s a $200 phone. This isn’t Palm’s fault, they’re just trying to compete in a system where all the other phone companies are building devices in China with inferior build quality and materials and a consuming public that seems to be okay with the results. There’s a reason people use the saying ‘they don’t build‘em like they used to.’ It’s because they don’t. Stuff from as recently as the 80’s and even the 90’s is built noticeably better than stuff today. We used to expect cheap Chinese crap from the dollar store. That was ok, it was the dollar store and we only paid a buck for it. Nowadays though, it’s like all consumer products are from the dollar store only now stuff doesn’t cost just a buck.

Take my RAZR for example. When I bought it I thought it was a solidly built phone. That is until it died after only three years of use. Compare that to the phone I bought in 2001 which still works to this day (not that I use it anymore but still…). Why are we okay with ‘designed obsolescence’?!? I demand better. I demand a phone that won’t break after only three years (because frankly I think the Pre won’t last that long). I want a phone that isn’t made mostly out of cheap plastic and that won’t break if I drop it by accident. I also shouldn’t have to buy a protective case for it either. That’s just gratuitous profiteering. It’s a phone after all. It will get dropped. It needs to be a bit tougher than that.

Since when have we been cool with paying $200 for something that we know won’t last as long as our phone contracts!?? (at least Canadian phone contracts anyway) I blame Apple and Google for this. Apple because it gets people to think that it’s normal to change your tech toys after only a year or two. I blame Google because it made it okay to use the consuming public like a bunch of guinea pigs (Gmail anyone? It was only in Beta for what? 6 years?!) These practices have to stop and people should really start demanding more for the money we pay. (True Gmail is free but it’s created the ‘beta culture’ that now seems widely acceptable) Oh, and it shouldn’t cost more to get better quality. We’re not buying this stuff from the dollar store where we expect everything to be cheap Chinese crap. If I’m shelling out over 200 bucks for something it had damn well better last more than three years.

Real Chicken?

2009-08-13T11:32:00.001-04:00

I drive past a KFC on my way to and from work and I noticed an interesting neon sign in the window the other night. It said “Real Chicken”. I thought to myself “of course it’s real chicken, what else could it be?!”

Then I thought “wait…what else could it be?!”

I mean why would they go through the effort of putting up such a sign in the first place. I’ve certainly never heard of synthetic chicken, except maybe tofu which is usually advertised as being a good thing anyway since it caters to the vegetarian-type people. So why the sign saying ‘real chicken’? Is there some kind of fake chicken we’re simply not aware of?

Then I thought, what if there is a kind of fake chicken they can use but don’t want people to think they use because it’s terribly bad for you or something? Would they try an hide it by stating the seemingly obvious and hoping that no one questions it?

What if it’s like all those countries that we know aren’t democracies putting the word democracy in their names like the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the German Democratic Republic (GDR, aka former East Germany), or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea)? If you lived totally sheltered from the world you might think they are/were democracies right? I mean it says democracy right there in the name doesn’t it?!? Why would the lie? (Well we know why they’d lie but still…)

Maybe it’s the same thing in the fast food world with “real _____” but we are sheltered from the ‘real’ world of food production so we don’t know any better? Could ‘real chicken’ in fact mean fake chicken just like we currently suspect ‘real beef’ at McDonald’s is probably somehow fake?

Maybe we just avoid questioning the obvious because really, what else could it be? And because it tastes so damn good!

What are you hiding KFC…you and your “Real Chicken”!??

MS Office and Open Office

2009-08-06T14:40:00.001-04:00

You’ve probably heard of Microsoft Office; either good or bad, at work or at home, on PC or the Mac. But have you heard of Open Office? I ask this question for two reasons. One is that I think it is a pretty good alternative to MS Office if you can’t afford the $99 to buy the real thing (Open Office is a free download, I won’t go into detail so if you’re curious about it check out the link above) but also because Mary-Jo Foley just wrote an interesting article in her blog about how the Open Office people are thinking of adopting MS Office’s new “Ribbon” user interface.

A lot of luddites have complained about the Ribbon since it was unleashed in Office 2007. If you’re using Office at work you probably don’t have the famous (or infamous) Ribbon yet but if you’re a student then chances are it came with your new PC. I happen to like the new interface. I think it makes it more visually appealing and much easier to find the functions you need when you need them.

Like I said before, there has been a lot of criticism of the Ribbon by many bloggers, journalists, and tech “experts” but if the Ribbon is such a terrible idea why would Open Office be thinking of copying it? My feeling is that it’s not really a terrible idea at all. People are simply afraid of change. I find that older people especially don’t like their computers to change because they’ve become used to doing things a certain way, even if that way is silly or inefficient. This is why many people I know - my dad included – make their brand new Windows machines (XP and Vista) look like it’s running Windows ‘95 in all of its sharp-looking, dated, square button glory.

Last I checked imitation is the highest form of flattery so if the Open Office people want to copy the Ribbon UI I say go ahead! If you haven’t tried the Ribbon because you heard people complain about it give it a go, you’ll probably end up liking it.

Taxes

2009-08-02T19:14:00.002-04:00

I know, it's been a while since I posted but it's summer and you should be outside doing things instead of reading blogs anyway.

Today's topic is a couple of new taxes I've discovered while going to see the new Harry Potter movie (which as excellent by the way!). Most people probably don't know this but when you go to the movies you get charged an "Amusement Tax" at a rate of 10%. Don't believe me check your receipt next time, you'll see. This is on top of the 5% GST we already pay as well. As it turns out this tax is actually a legit tax from the Ontario government. Here's a quote of the actual section from the tax act:

"Tax on admission to a place of amusement
Every purchaser of admission to a place or places of amusement shall pay to Her Majesty in right of Ontario a tax computed at the rate of 10 per cent of the price of admission where the price of admission exceeds $4. R.S.O. 1990, c. R.31, s. 2 (5)."

It's part of the Retail Sales Tax Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. R.31 Consolidated Statutes of Ontario which came into force on May 14, 2008.

One interesting tax that I could not find is a so-called "Concession Tax" on the popcorn and stuff we bought. This tax is also at about 10% but appears to be seperate from the Amusement Tax and the GST which are both also listed on the receipt. Oddly I can't find any evidence that such a tax exists in the Ontario tax act so it's possible this is just a made-up tax to gouge more money out of consumers. Does anyone know anything about this tax or is it made up?

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-r31/latest/rso-1990-c-r31.html#BK2

Windows 7 RC Issues

2009-06-09T19:19:00.001-04:00

I recently started testing the Windows 7 RC (build 7100) and have noticed a few not-so-minor problems that have appeared since the beta. The first and most important issue is a Wi-Fi connectivity issue that has appeared on my laptop.

What happens is that when I boot my laptop will eventually find the network and internet connection (it often takes a little while) and I’ll be able to use the internet for a varying number of minutes before the connection is lost. The speed of the connection varies from slow at time to fast depending on what Win 7 feels like having at that particular moment it seems. Once the connection is lost the only way to get it back seems to be a complete system reboot.

Initially I thought it may be because of interference from nearby networks. I tried changing the router’s broadcast frequency, I reset the router to factory defaults and I tried setting it to broadcast in wireless N only. These actions had no effect and my fiancée’s computer running Vista has no problems whatsoever connecting.

Upon ruling out the network itself I shifted my investigation over to the laptop. The laptop I’m using is an HP tx1220ca with a Broadcom 4322AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adapter. I installed the latest Microsoft drivers which gave me even less connectivity. I re-installed the HP supplied Broadcom drivers which at least consistently connect for a little while after boot. I then thought that maybe it’s my Wi-Fi antenna as I seem to have more luck with the PC in tablet mode than in normal mode. (ie flipping the screen around to tablet mode). Totally at a loss and thinking my computer was broken I hit the forums and sure enough I am far from being the only one with this problem. In fact this problem seems to be rather common.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/5098a34c-1f38-4dbc-a723-eda56578eea8

In the mean time I guess I’ll have to try my luck with a good old fashioned wired connection or perhaps I’ll re-install Vista until they RTM version of 7 comes out.

On another note I’m also having trouble with my desktop computer running the RC. I ran the Beta on it since day 1 with only the most minor of problems. (It didn’t recognize some piece of hardware – I have no idea what - but it didn’t seem to affect anything.) I installed the RC on it recently and have been having a few headaches there as well. The most irritating problem on the desktop is a jerky mouse. For whatever reason the mouse moves around fine when the computer isn’t busy but as soon as the harddrive gets going it becomes almost unusable. This shouldn’t be the case as I have a pretty decent machine which includes an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor running at 2.9GHz, a SATA 2 harddrive, 8GBs of RAM and a brand new GeForce 9800GT video card. Those a pretty good specs so you’d expect the PC to be able to move the mouse around the screen smoothly. The mouse I’m using is the Wireless Microsoft Explorer Bluetrack Technology (totally awesome btw).

I’m at a bit of a loss as why I’m having mouse issues and a quick check in the forums again reveals that I’m, once again, not the only one with these issues. I still have some troubleshooting to do as my previous video card did briefly catch fire last week due to a fan failure so I first have to rule out damage to other components but it did seem very localized to the old video card. (which amazingly still works btw, it just runs really really hot and I wouldn’t dare use it for gaming or any other graphics rendering anymore. It’s now out of my system and sitting on my desk.)

I also doubt that it’s my new card but it is possible I suppose. I’ve installed the latest drivers and I’ve run the benchmarks which indicate that the card performs as advertised. I’ve even played World in Conflict which is a graphics heavy game with no issues whatsoever. The card seems fine and Windows is stable save for the stupid mouse issue.

Does anyone have any ideas?

What?! Twitter can actually be useful?!?

2009-04-21T22:30:00.001-04:00

I know! I can't believe it either!! For quite a while now I (and probably you too) have been trying to figure out what-in-the-hell people use twitter for. Most of what I've seen on Twitter is a bunch of people telling whoever's following their "tweets" that they've just crossed the street or eaten lunch or some other boring crap that no one cares about. And this is mostly what Twitter is today. As if to further demoralize Twitter fans the media absolutely loves Twitter which should always raise at least some red-flags. CNN and others claim to have over 1 million followers now so does Ashton Kutcher which leads me to think Twitter is probably some useless internet gimmick.

I just couldn't figure out why people cared so much about such inane stupidity...until now.

It turns out that if you use Twitter in just the right way it can actually be pretty useful for a few things. Like for things you need to know about, like, omg, right now!!! right this second!!!

You see, if you use Twitter search (search.twitter.com) kinda like you currently use Google search you can find out about things that have just happened - like sports scores or local events or maybe even just find out why your internet at home seems to be down right now - using your smartphone of course. (It was that car that hit a post a few blocks over by the way.)

This information is of course only available if people "tweet" it so you're encouraged to join the growing throngs of "twiteratzi" (or as I like to call them “twits”). Of course the things you tweet could end up on CNN (like during the Bombay terror attacks) and you probably won't get anything but the satisfaction of knowing that millions of people got one tiny tidbit of news from you for a second or two.

Sweet!

It also saves the mainstream media from actually having to go out and get real news since they've basically just recruited you to go out and do it for them for free.

Super Sweet!

Of course you can use Twitter for free to get your news too and completely ignore mainstream media so whatever.

Anyway, if you have a bunch of interesting and smart friends you can also potentially use them for the 'call a friend' type stuff on Twitter if you ever get thrown a Who Wants to be a Millionaire -type question. Or, if asked some crazy-random question you don’t know the answer to you could just do it the old fashion way, you know, like what people did before Twitter by either saying "I dunno" or just making something up.

In all seriousness though Twitter will be what you make it and it follows the time honoured GIGO rules. Garbage-In-Garbage-Out. If you post intelligently then maybe, just maybe, people will find your posts to get the info they need. Or you could just get your chair to tweet your farts. Whatever suits you best.

The flip side is also true. You don't necessarily have to read about people farting in their chairs, you can sometimes actually get useful information from Twitter too. I see its potential as possibly growing if more and more people get smartphones and choose to tweet usefully about their surroundings. (Hey look, there's a car accident, maybe I should tweet about it!)

The primary advantage of Twitter is that it can provide instant, up to date, and mostly useful information. Notice I said it can provide, does it? Not usually.

Whether or not people will use it for such noble purposes remains to be seen since, frankly, most of us don't have too much going on that other people would really care about. But hey, you know, if evil-doers ever strike near you or you see something that might cause major traffic delays feel free to tweet about it. Someone might be listening.

For more info on this hit up the link.

Credit Cards and Price Codes

2009-04-17T18:05:00.001-04:00

I was recently going through CBC’s “Marketplace” archives and stumbled upon this little gem. It’s about credit cards. I know what you’re thinking…oh no, not another stupid credit card thing…well keep paying attention because this might actually save you some money.

It seems that the various credit card companies in Canada, and likely in the US as well, are charging their customers “insurance”. They do this whether you know it or not because they’re pretty sneaky about it. Their so-called insurance is a scam since they charge you every month for something they have no intention of paying out should you make a claim. We’ve seen this sort of thing before on other episodes of Marketplace involving mortgage insurance and this is no different. The bottom line is you don’t need it so check your bill for it – if you find they’ve been charging you call them up and ask them to stop. They may try and convince you to keep it but trust me don’t – on an annual basis it’s not worth it even a little. You can also try to get your money back which actually seems to have a decent shot at working. Simply argue that they’ve been charging you this without your informed consent (which they need by law and which in all likelihood they don’t actually have since you’ve just discovered it….) and that you’d like your money back. Rather than spend money fighting you they’ll probably just pay out.

If you need more info just hit up the link.

Another interesting tidbit of consumer advice, next time you go shopping check your receipts. It turns out that 2% of all items in Canada are miss-priced which means that what it says on the shelf is usually lower than what the item scans for. The rules are that if the item is listed as being cheaper than what it scans for; if it’s less than $10 you get it free and; if it’s more than $10 you get $10 off.

So…assuming you spend $500 a month on groceries, you could potentially save $30 a month. That’s $360 a year! Check your receipts..oh and by the way, Wall-Mart is the worst offender. The rules are called the “Scanner Price Accuracy Code”, Google it for more info. Cool eh?

Commercials (Updated - April 13th, 2009)

2009-04-09T18:21:00.006-04:00

It's no secret that I'm not really a fan of Apple. Not because I'm a giant fan of Windows or anything, I'm really not, but mostly because I don't like the snobbery and excessively high prices for what you get when it comes to Apple products. I find myself often tempted by Apple mostly because they are very pretty but sadly I'm not rich enough (or cool enough apparently). In fact just the other day I was seriously considering an iPod shuffle to use at the gym because my iRiver has a mechanical hard drive and everyone knows (or at least should know) that running and spinning mechanical discs don't go well together.

I thought 'great! I'll get a cheap 1GB flash-based mp3 player to do the job' and I figured they'd cost about the same as a USB key since those can carry 8GB or more using pretty much the exact same technology so the price should be pretty close too right? I mean sure you need a small OS to dish out the music etc. on an mp3 player but seeing as I'm looking for a relatively small capacity that shouldn't put too much of a price premium it over its USB key brethren. I figured I should be able to find one for about $20 - after all that's around what most USB keys cost and I'm not looking for nearly the kind of storage space you find on a key.

Boy was I wrong.

As much as I hate the design of the new shuffle I looked at it anyway and yes, I know the old was is still on the market because it's pretty much the prefect design for the job whereas the new one has brought needless change and thus ruined it. To my surprise the new shuffles cost $99! What the hell!?? These are things that companies used to give away for free if you signed up for some service or another but really? $99. Apple, seriously. You've got to be high. My 20GB iRiver cost $99 and it has a screen and a radio!

Well, I thought, the old ones should be cheaper right? because they're older? Not so much. They seem to cost $49 bucks at the cheapest price I could find. While slightly more tempting it's still pretty steep considering that it only holds 1GB of music and has no screen or anything. The non Apple products were at more reasonable prices, there are a few for 20 bucks, some more for 30 and hey look, they have screens and stuff! Even Sony, a company not known for its low prices, has a player for the same price as the old shuffle but has a screen, twice the capacity and can play video and show pictures.

In the end I didn't buy anything, partly because my girlfriend would probably kill me, partly because I really wanted an older shuffle since it's the perfect form-factor for what I want to do with it but again, there's no way in hell I'm paying a $20 apple tax, let alone an $80 apple tax for an inferior new shuffle! Maybe I'll find something on eBay. In the mean time anyone looking to get rid of their old shuffle? I do accept gifts!

Then there's the whole iTunes debacle that I won't get into but needless to say I'll be using Songbird if I do end up with an Apple product. iTunes for the PC simply sucks.

But back to the original inspiration for this post, the new Microsoft commericals. So far there are three. You can see them below:

The first one...

...and another one...

...and the newest one...

What I'm not a huge fan of is the fact that people are getting so defensive about these. It's sad that people think it takes bashing to get the message across although I am glad that Microsoft took a bit of a higher road than Apple criticizing them with a bit more subtlety. While Apple has blatantly ridiculed Microsoft for years for certain things, namely Vista, Microsoft has taken a somewhat more subtle approach and merely pointed out that Apples are very expensive for what you get.

Watch the commercials and let me know what you think.

A debate has been raging on other blogs with Apple fanboys/girls screaming bloody murder and Microsofties saying nah nah but I really don't think these ads are all that provocative.

What do you think?

(Update - April 13th, 2009)
This just in from the folks over at Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/13/22-ipod-shuffle-shocker-components-tiny-inexpensive/

It looks like it costs Apple roughly $21.77 to produce the new iPod Shuffle which is around the price I thought it should cost to buy. Fair enough, factor in a profit margin etc and the Shuffle could cost say...$30. Does it? No. It's Apple we're talking about here, so tack on a mandatory "Apple Tax" of something unreasonable....say....$70 and you're much closer to the current price of a Shuffle. That's right, $99. Hit the link to find out more.

Show me the monneeeey!!!

2009-03-19T20:20:00.002-04:00

So I log into my online bank account yesterday with President’s Choice Financial and see this nice little message saying that come April they’re going to raise my interest rate by one percent.

Now, a one percent hike may not seem like that much but that’s not the point! The point is that they’re backhandedly trying to change the agreement. When I signed up for the “Low-cost borrowing account” I agreed to pay interest at a rate of prime plus a certain percentage, in my case 1.75% because I have good credit at the time of credit approval. For me right now that translates into an effective rate of 4.25% (bank prime is 2.5% plus 1.75%).

Prime rate is based on the Bank of Canada’s Prime Lending Rate which for the past year or so has been falling pretty steadily and now sits at 0.75%. Of course 0.75% percent is what the banks pay for money, not consumers. The prime rate for consumers is set by individual commercial banks and at PC Financial is currently set at 2.50%, a full 1.75 percent higher than what they pay the Bank of Canada for money which is fine, I knew that going in to this deal. To their credit the commercial banks, PC included, have been lowering their respective prime rates for the most part in unison with the Bank of Canada; effectively passing on the savings to consumers.

They have been pretty good at keeping up with the Bank of Canada’s drops except once last fall where the banks initially decided to pass only half of what the Bank of Canada cut but later, due to a large amount of negative press and public outcry, passed on the rest of that cut as well.

The Bank of Canada has been lowering its rates to encourage banks to lend and consumers to spend.

That’s all well and good but now I’ve got this little message sitting there on the screen from PC Financial. I understand that the central bank cuts to interest rates may be taking a bite out of PC’s profit margin (although not likely) but we had an agreement.

PC sets their prime rate however they want. I pay 1.75% over and above that prime rate as per my good credit score. That was the agreement.

Now they’re saying, sorry, we can’t make enough money off the prime rate we set ourselves because the Bank of Canada’s prime rate is too low and some people have bad credit. Excuse me!? Shouldn’t they have thought of that before they lowered their own prime rate, or when they decided I was eligible for their best interest rate?

If they had trouble making profits maybe they should have set their prime rate so they could still make money; and if they thought I was a credit risk (which I’m not) why did they give me their lowest rate?

Slapping an arbitrary 1% increase on my agreement is a backhanded way of dealing with the credit crisis issue, or profitability. Rather than be open about it and saying to the public “…look, we know the Bank of Canada has lowered rates but we just can’t go that low so our prime rate will stay where it is…” they instead lowered their prime rate to avoid bad press and instead choose to increase their rates through the back door.

Has my credit rating changed? No. I’ve checked.

Will the mainstream media pick up on this? Probably not, it’s not as juicy a story as when the major banks blatantly refused to pass on the interest savings to consumers like they did in the fall.

The banks have changed their tactics in order to make more money without the bad press, unless of course lots of people read my blog…I’m pretty sure this post qualifies as bad press….

The only reason they’ve been lowering their rates is apparently because they fear public outcry. Maybe if the public finds out about the new little scheme PC Financial, and no doubt others, are trying to pull they will cry out once more. Until then I’ll consider calling the bank to complain but I doubt that will do any good.

Unscientific Science minister?

2009-03-18T00:31:00.006-04:00

A friend of mine, Louise, forwarded me an article in the Globe and Mail today that shocked and appalled me. It was a story about Canada's Minister of State for Science and Technology and his controversial budget cuts to science funding.

As it turns out Gary Goodyear - a conservative chiropractor from Cambridge ON - was asked a question about evolution and his reply; "I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate..."

I'm sorry, a question about your religion?!? What the hell is that?!? As the article pointed out, evolution is a scientific fact and not really up for debate, at least not by people without mental problems. Sure you can debate the finer points, like which birds evolved from which, but the basic principle is pretty much set. Kind of like how the earth is round or how light can be split into different wavelengths. You know, irrefutable scientific facts that any sane person would recognize is being factual, logical and rational conclusions.

Of course if you're a religious person then factual, logical and rational doesn't really apply to your normal way of thinking but I would expect that if you are the Minister of Science you'd at least believe in...well...science. Not that believing is required since science is a rational, fact-based exploration of the natural world by a skeptical mind open to new information based on new facts but whatever.

When it comes to evolution, it has been tested many times and proven right each and every one of them. There is nothing ambiguous about it and while some may challenge its existence, they do so based on wholly made-up religious grounds that by definition are not based in reality. Until a complex creature is found to exist that is not the product of a proven evolutionary process I think its safe to say that the theory of evolution will stand.

It is crap like this that, for the first time in 8 years, has Canadians seriously thinking that the United States is probably better-off than Canada at the moment. So basically, an underachieving, undergrad degree holding chiropractor is in charge of directing Canadian scientific investment into the future. Wonderful. Maybe we should just closeup the National Research Council all together and open a big-ass church instead. I think it's time the Conservatives were shown the door. Don't you?

Combat School

2009-03-15T20:24:00.001-04:00

So Discovery Channel Canada has a sweet new show on called “Combat School”. It’s a very close-up and personal look at the training and operations of the Canadian Forces. Based on what little of the show I’ve see so far, and from my own experience in the infantry, it’s a very accurate representation of what it’s like to be a soldier. Everyone should definitely check out this show, even if you typically don’t like military stuff!! Here’s the link: Combat School on Discovery. It airs Tuesdays at 10pm EDT on Discovery and there are some videos on the website, check it out!

The Windows 7 taskbar

2009-02-28T16:34:00.001-05:00

I’ve been playing with the Beta version of Windows 7 for some time now and while I, like others, have made it crash; been delighted by its speed; approve of its aesthetic; and all of the other things that bloggers like myself have noted and written extensively about regarding the Beta there is one thing in particular that I feel needs to be addressed in more detail. That thing, as you may have guessed by the title of this post, is the taskbar.

Look at the picture above, it just doesn’t look finished does it?Unlike other bloggers however, I have no problems with launch icons ‘intermingling’ with running applications; I like the general idea of how the taskbar works; and I like the fact that the new system tray hides all the programs running by default. I even like the fact that there are no words on the taskbar by default because it DOES make it cleaner. I also don’t mind moving my mouse over an icon to see what’s running and I don’t think most ‘normal’ people will mind either.

My complaints are mostly aesthetic. I wish I could center the icons on the taskbar because I’m not really keen on them being gathered together on the left. Not because I feel that would improve workflow or anything but because as it stands now the taskbar isn’t balanced and thus looks ‘wrong’. In fact, I think it would be neat if the start menu was at the center of the taskbar with all other icons flanking it. Maybe it could be used as a divider to have launchers on one side and running programs on the other? Either way I realise these wishes are mostly academic at this point since I probably have as much pull with Microsoft as your average house cat but I do feel that the current paradigm isn’t the best way to do things – the taskbar doesn’t look finished – and have a blog so unlike a house cat I can tell people who read it what I think.

The one big thing that I really think should be addressed is the look of the taskbar in general. Apart from what I talked about above I would be content if a single simple change was made. That change is one part of how the taskbar looks but I think it would add a lot to the visual appeal of the taskbar.

I think there should be a shadow above of the taskbar. (or below depending on if your taskbar is on the bottom or the top of the screen)

If you look at the picture above you may notice that the taskbar is just there. At the bottom of the desktop. There’s no tie-in. It’s like it wants to be a separate thing but no one took the time to make it so so there it sits, at the bottom of your screen, part background part something else but not quite finished. I think a simple shadow would both separate it from the background image while also framing the taskbar as something different.

There are shadows around other elements of the interface which give an illusion of depth and a certain level of polish to the User Interface (UI). I think the taskbar should be no exception. As it stands now the taskbar is the largest single element of Windows 7 that visually sets it apart from Windows Vista – but it doesn’t look finished. I think a shadow would add that missing level of completeness. It would ‘frame’ the taskbar while at the same time tie it into other features found on the desktop like windows which themselves are surrounded by shadows of their own. Shadows separate visual elements from each other and add a sense of depth and polish. It doesn’t sound like much but I think it would give enough visual polish to solidify the new taskbar as part of the new UI and different than Vista. It would give the new taskbar a sense of belonging in the familiar Windows environment.

That is all I ask as a Beta tester, that there be a shadow around the taskbar. That’s not too much to ask is it?

Palm Pre at WMC

2009-02-17T06:53:00.003-05:00

I haven't seen this posted yet anywhere (other than Palm's website that is...) but yesterday Palm announced that it will be showing off its new Palm Pre at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain this week. Why is this important? Because the version of the Pre they will be showing off is the European UMTS version which was until now only speculated to exist. UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telectomunications System and may be more familiar to North American users as 3G. (As in iPhone 3G). This not only confirms the existance of a 3G/GSM version of the Pre but also indicates that it's ready to go as well which means that the Pre may show up here in Canada with either Bell (in its already announced CDMA form) or Rogers in it's GSM form. For what it's worth I've heard rumours that Bell will get it first but no one really knows at this point. A Bell Canada launch would make sense because unlike the US with a number of major carriers, in Canada there really are only two major carriers; Rogers and Bell. (There are others but they are 'value' brands owned by either Rogers or Bell or are smaller independent firms with little market presence like Virgin and Telus.) Rogers has the iPhone and Bell has...well nothing close to the iPhone which is why they'll probably get the Pre. Sorry Blackberry users but the Storm kinda sucks so it doesn't count.

In other news, the Pre will also get Adobe's Flash player (like you have on your desktop computer) so unlike the iPhone, the Pre will be able to go pretty much anywhere on the internet without any problems. Click here for the full press release from Palm for details.

Still no word on the Pre's release date though.

Greendustrial Revolution

2009-01-31T02:09:00.002-05:00

All this talk of the budget and economic stimulus has got me thinking. Unlike probably many people, I don’t see the impending economic downturn as some sort of doomsday but rather as an opportunity. It’s a chance for our collective society to get back to basics, back to home-cooked meals, brown-bag lunches, and cheaper entertainment alternatives because frankly, people may not have the money to burn on frivolous spending as the once did. I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing, I think as a society we’ve been relying too much on credit to buy the stuff we want and that prices for many things have become ridiculous ($14 movies or $5 coffees anyone?) We have forgotten the basics of budgeting and spending less than we earn. I think we should become less of an ‘instant gratification’ type society and more of a thoughtful and rational society. It would be good for us all.

The opportunity I see here is one that the government would be foolish to squander. There was a time, not-so-long ago, where government deficits were unspeakable. Now the government is set to blow upwards of $40 billion on a number of things it thinks will help the economy and, while some grumble about it, there’s hardly an outcry since most people seem to feel that the current situation requires some kind of deficit spending. Given the new permissive atmosphere of deficits I think the time is ripe for government to finally kick-start the ‘greendustrial’ revolution. What is the ‘greendustrial’ revolution? I might not be the first to coin the term, and it might not seem all that original either but I did come up with it by myself only to run a quick Google search later to determine how widespread it is. Turns out it isn’t all that widespread so I hereby coin it!

For years green industries have been looking for massive amounts of support. In the past such support was not really possible because it would almost certainly require large amounts of government spending and governments were constrained by the fact that their people did not want them to go into deficit and that they had better things to do with public money. Now times have changed. People are looking for ‘economic stimulus’ and are much more forgiving about government deficits. Given this climate (no pun intended) it seems the time is perfect for governments to spend massive amounts of money on promising green technologies. And why not? Green industries like solar and wind power generation have the potential to create thousands of new jobs, high-skilled jobs that did not previously exist and that are a perfect match for our highly educated and highly skilled workforce. These jobs of course would have the usual spinoff effects much like what happened with the oil sands recently when the price of oil was over $100/barrel only this time the jobs would be more permanent (renewable energy doesn’t run out and neither does our demand for electricity and technology) and better for both the economy and the environment. Canada could become a world lead in green technology, we’re already a world leader in aerospace and communications technology, green tech would not be much of a stretch and we have the benefit of not having much global competition in that market (yet).

The government could mandate building code changes for federal buildings stating that they need to install green technology in all new government buildings to support the new industry and help bring manufacturing costs down for eventual commercial adoption and also because it would reduce long-term government operating costs. It could spend money on subsidizing green tech and people would likely not complain too much about that even if it meant the government went into deficit because A) we’d be saving the environment – an ever-popular proposition and B) we’d be saving the economy with new jobs. Over time the industry would become self-sustaining and therefore require less government support which is good because governments should not be in a deficit situation forever and industries should eventually leave the ‘infant’ stage. I’m not only talking about solar panel and wind turbines here either, I’m talking about anything green-related, like fuel-cell technology (like Ballard Power), or new types of batteries, new types of transportation, basically anything that may make our world a better place but that is currently too expensive to do through conventional private means especially given the current credit situation.

On a related topic, why not seriously consider building high-speed rail in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor (including Ottawa of course)? One might also consider building such a rail system to reach as far west as Sudbury with future plans to extend it to Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay and maybe even Winnipeg. I suggest we start where the most people are and work our way out from there. Why? I think it's time we took a page from Europe's book and started relying on high speed trains rather than highways and airplanes. I'm not talking bullet trains here either, I'm just talking normal European train speeds (which are much faster than North American speeds). We could copy what the northern Europeans have done – like Denmark or something. They've obviously dealt with the whole winter thing a long time ago so it’s not like we’d have complicated engineering to overcome. Now I realise that European readers may say, ‘Well most of our trains are not really “high-speed” what’s the big deal?’ and they would be correct. Most European trains aren’t really ‘high-speed’ but compared to our trains they may as well be. Most people here drive faster than our trains currently go. Part of the problem is that our passenger trains share tracks with slow freight trains and the other part is that we don’t currently have the ridership to justify the expense of building more modern, dedicated passenger rail tracks capable of speeds higher than…say…115km/hr or so which seems to be our current real speed limit. I submit that the reason for the low ridership is two-fold. Those that can’t afford to loose several hours travelling simply spend the money and fly because it’s faster than driving. Those that might otherwise take the train drive themselves because the reality is that it takes about the same amount of time and you have the benefit of having a car with you when you arrive. While some people will still want their cars with them at their destination I think most would agree that given the choice of having a car in Montreal or Toronto or arriving 2 hours earlier than if you drove and spending money less than the cost of a plane ticket they’d likely choose arriving 2 hours earlier and simply rely on public transit (which also needs work by the way!).

Basically the reason people don’t take the train right now is because there isn’t much point in doing so. It’s not faster than driving and while it may be cheaper than flying it’s much slower. If trains were faster, people would probably take them instead because they wouldn’t have to deal with airport security and they’d get there faster than if they drove themselves. While the passenger rail system has been stuck in something of a Catch-22 (no one takes the train because they’re slow but trains are slow because no one takes them so there’s no money to make them faster), the new economic crisis has created a need for public works projects and what better a project than a massive and very necessary infrastructure project?

The time is ripe people, get on it!

Windows 7 theme pack.

2009-01-30T09:05:00.002-05:00

I’ve made a Windows 7 theme pack for anyone interested. Both contain pictures I’ve taken myself of Ottawa and I think are quite nice. I also made a custom glass colour for them. Feel free to download them from my SkyDrive via the links below, as usual these are intended for personal and not commercial use; please don’t change anything; and if you want to do something with them please ask my permission first. Otherwise, enjoy!!

Life without iTunes

2009-01-23T23:37:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine has asked me where it she can download music legally without having to use iTunes. That’s a very good question because in Canada many services, like Zune Marketplace and Amazon.com won’t let you buy music if you aren’t from the US. Now I’ve already covered how to sync your music (once you have it) with your iPod without having to install iTunes - which is an evil, unstable little bugger of a program with virus-like tendencies (at least on the PC anyway). That alternative of course being Songbird. But how do you acquire new music?

Well Songbird does have some really excellent internet music search functionality but what if you want to just one particular song and are prepared to buy it for about $0.99 or so, like you do on iTunes, where do you go? Well, unfortunately you’ll need to go somewhere other than Songbird. Like I said, in the states you can download almost any song from Amazon.com or Zune Marketplace but that doesn’t work for Canadians because I guess we don’t matter. Do not fret fellow Canucks for I have an answer! That answer is Puretracks.com, a Canadian website that has millions of songs at various prices and the option to buy (Digital Rights Management) DRM-free mp3’s which do work on your iPod or the DRM-laden wma files which don’t work on your iPod. The nice thing about mp3’s is that you can keep them forever and you can put them on any device you like without worrying about them self-destructing or bothering you about copyrights. So Puretracks is your best bet. All you need to do is sign up for a free account and you’re off to the races!

There is also eMusic.com which also requires a membership and offers mp3 format songs and such although you have to download eMusic software in order to get the songs. Alternatively you can also try InMusic which is similar to Puretracks. In fact it’s so similar I wonder if the two aren’t in fact the same company. Nevermind.

So there you have it. I personally haven’t tried any of them since I prefer to buy CDs and rip them thus ensuring that no matter what I have a physical copy of music that I purchase and that my digital versions have the best sound quality I can get (which isn’t always the case with downloads).

Holy Hell OC Transpo Union!

2009-01-16T01:35:00.001-05:00

So I was at work tonight and came across this little nugget of a Newswire story:

Ottawa takes $2,500 bonus off the table in ongoing transit strike

Date/Time: 1/15/2009 11:31:00 PM
Source: Canadian Press

OTTAWA _ Striking transit employees stormed out of city hall on Thursday accusing city staff of continuing to mislead council and the public about driver scheduling.

Craig Watson, the transit union's scheduling representative, said the refusal of city officials to budge on the issue shows they're not interested in finding a way to end the strike.

``We wanted to speak to them (city councillors) to give them the truth, they chose not to hear from us,'' Watson said. ``We are very disappointed in council.''

City manager Kent Kirkpatrick has proposed the city hire an independent fact finder to resolve any misunderstandings or misconceptions either party might have about the scheduling issue.

The city also announced Thursday it has taken the $2,500 bonus it had previously offered off the table, and plans to stand firm on its offer of a pay increase not exceeding 7.25 per cent over three years.

In a presentation that followed a 14-hour closed-door meeting, city officials warned that Ottawa commuters are ``exposed to unacceptable risks of fatigue'' by OC Transpo bus drivers.

General manager of transit services Alain Mercier said about 65 employees drive more than the normal legal standard of 14 hours a day at least once a week. To get overtime on statutory holidays, about five operators get less than six hours rest in 32 hours of work, he said.

Mercier said having more control over driver scheduling will allow the city to get a handle on the amount of overtime it pays, which has increased 400 per cent since 1997.

The city is proposing drivers be allowed to drive a maximum of 14 hours in one day, that they get a minimum eight hours of continuous rest per 24-hour period, and a minimum one day off every two weeks.

OC Transpo is exempt from federal restrictions on hours of work and work-rest rules, so council is asking the federal government to amend the legislation to include drivers.

The 2,300 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 279 walked off the job on Dec. 10.

(Ottawa Sun)

Note the part I bolded at the bottom and put in red. What the city is pushing for as far as scheduling goes is NORMAL LABOUR CODE STANDARDS. And that’s exactly what the union is fighting! Isn’t the union is supposed to be pushing for better hours and more pay?!? Most unions fight to have their workers not have to work insane hours but not Ottawa’s transit union, no, they fight so that their workers can work ridiculous hours! I’m glad that’s not my union! I mean a maximum of 14 hours of work per day sounds reasonable to me – after all, the city isn’t supposed to run sweat shops - so does 8 hours of continuous rest for that matter, and I would love to have 1 day off every two weeks!! And who is pushing for this? The union? Of course not it’s the ‘evil’ city!!! Imagine the evil employer wanting to get better working conditions for its employees! Plus there’s the whole WHO-GETS-TO-CHOOSE-THEIR-OWN-SCHEDULE-ANYWAY thing too!?!. I mean really, who?! I sure as hell don’t! It’s the only transit union in the country that does! Getting to pick your own hours on the taxpayer’s dime. Ridiculous. “Who wants to work rush hour? Nobody? Okay!”

Finally there’s the economic argument of not having the most expensive workers working the most amount of hours and picking to work overtime while the cheaper and more junior workers go home. This is such bull! As taxpayers we pay more than half their salaries and as a transit rider I pay the other half too! It’s my money and you bet your ass I want the ‘cheaper’ worker getting time-and-a-half instead of the top of the pay scale guy, that’s just common sense! Geez!

And Mayor Larry, I know I’ve said bad stuff about you in the past but on this you and I both agree - keep up the good fight. Oh, and for the new Light Rail system you may want to consider automated (as in unmanned) trains. They use them in Europe and they work well. (It’s on rails, where’s it going to go?!) Automated trains man, that way if the dooshbag union goes on strike again at least the main rail arteries of the city will continue to function.

More New Stuff

2009-01-15T01:54:00.001-05:00

Continuing the train of thought of the previous post about new stuff, today I will be talking about a cool new PC that I would love to own someday but can’t justify quite yet and a new keyboard that I’ve ordered but has yet to arrive and I also want to tout CBC Radio 3.

The cool new PC is called the Firebird and it’s built by HP. It is a gorgeous machine that costs $1,799.99 – well that’s the less expensive one. The expensive one costs $2,099.99. The less expensive one comes with a Intel Core 2 Quad (as in 4 processors) that’s clocked at 2.66GHz. It comes with Vista Home Premium 64, has 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, an nVidia GeForce 9800S with 512MB of its own RAM and 2 250GB Harddrives giving it 500GB of storage. Oh, and it’s liquid cooled too. The more expensive one has a 2.83GHz processor, 640GB of RAM, a Blu-Ray drive with HDMI, Wireless N and Bluetooth and well everything else is the same. Needless to say that if I had the money I’d get the cheaper one. Why? Because I have a Bluetooth dongle, I’m planning on putting a Blu-Ray drive in my old PC (and HDMI) which will become my media center PC and I probably won’t miss the extra 0.17GHz or the extra 140GB since I have network attached storage already. So $1,800 bucks eh? What’s so special about this particular PC, well I think a picture tells the story…

I know, sexy right?!? Ya ok, I’m a geek, get over it! Anyway, that’s the new PC I’d like to get someday when I have 2 grand to burn but it probably won’t ship to Canada although I should probably check that. I also wouldn’t even think of buying it before July 1st as that is the date that Microsoft has given as being the start of providing free upgrades to Windows 7 on new PC sales – manufacturers setting their own dates after that point of course. What I was able to buy is this:

This is the aptly named ‘Logitech Illuminated Keyboard’. It measures an incredible 9.3mm at its thickest point, has backlit keys and only costs $81 CAD! (Other backlit keyboards are bulkier and more expensive, go figure!) I look forward to getting it Monday – according to Canada Post. It just shipped from Burnaby BC yesterday. I’ll let you know how it turns out - for those of you that are interested.

Finally I’d like to give a shout out to CBC Radio 3. It’s a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation online/satellite radio station that focuses on Canadian Indie music. I know what you’re thinking, ‘blah, indie music!’ but I have to say that as someone who doesn’t normally listen to indie music it’s really quite good! Some of the songs you’ll recognize from the mainstream radio and you’ll definitely have heard of some of the bands if you are a regular alternative listener but the songs are great, the hosts are interesting and it rarely if ever has commercials save for the occasional self-promo. I think everyone should definitely check it out, you won’t be sorry!! (Click on the picture for a link to the site.)

Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-11T21:23:00.001-05:00

I’ve downloaded and successfully installed the new version of Windows, Windows 7 Beta. While I wasn’t expecting it to be smooth sailing it was surprisingly easy to install and runs very well. There are a few bugs mind you, which I’ve diligently reported of course. Google Chrome is giving me a bit of grief but that’s more Google’s problem than Windows. Skype was reported to give other people issues but Skype has since released a newer Beta version which works perfectly. I’ve been playing with Live Sync, which I was hoping would sync my Chrome bookmark files between my two computers, but because Chrome uses these files all the time if I leave the browser open it won’t sync properly and live sync freaks out. As it stands now I’ve resigned myself to not syncing, maybe I’ll do it once in a while but because Google makes the bookmark files so damn hard to find it’s a real pain to set up a sync. Does anyone out there have any suggestions? As I said, I have two computers, a desktop and a laptop that I would like to have Chrome’s bookmarks synced as close to real time as I can get. I’m open to ideas, please leave me a comment.

I’ll continue to post stuff about the Beta for those of you who are curious. For now here’s are a couple of cool screenshots of my setup.

New Year, New Stuff

2009-01-06T22:01:00.001-05:00

Well, there are a few new developments that have me a little excited in the new year. The first is that I found a limited supply of laptop GelaSkins of various sizes at Future Shop last week which is cool but for more selection (i.e. GelaSkins for iPods, cell phones etc.) as well as more art images click the link in the right-hand column.

In other news I got my Palm GPS unit in the mail, it came rather quickly which is nice and best of all it actually works quite well!! What it includes is a separate Palm branded Bluetooth GPS receiver which I’ve attached to the top of the windshield above my rear-view mirror in my car with some double sided tape so it’s both out of my line of sight but still has a clear view of the sky. The GPS software is actually just TomTom software designed to work on the Palm OS and is compatible with my LifeDrive. I loaded all of the maps that I’ll be most likely to need in the foreseeable future onto the LifeDrive’s harddrive which has about 4GB’s of space. While I don’t expect it to have all the new suburbs etc it does have all major roads and anything older than 4 years which is most everything. I can change the voice, map colours and lots of other neat stuff. For about $80 I’ve converted my LifeDrive into a top-notch GPS unit without compromising any of it’s previous usefulness as an almost-but-not-quite laptop replacement. As a comparison, a stand-alone GPS unit would cost about $200 and provide pretty much the same functionality as my $80 GPS but without the added usefulness that comes with being a Palm like being able to write Word documents, surf the web, and play movies and mp3’s. The only problem that I can see right away is that my TomTom software is no longer supported and thus I won’t be able to get updated maps but for $80 it’s not that big a deal especially since there’s a chance I can download Garmin software that may or may not work with the GPS receiver but will at least have newer maps. Anyway, that will be a future project.

Also in the news is Windows 7 whose Beta is apparently set to drop this Friday so us ‘normal folk’ can start playing with it. If that doesn’t happen then it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll get our grubby little hands on it next week. After all, Microsoft has been stating since October that the Public Beta of 7 will be available in “early 2008” which I interpret to be the first couple of weeks of this month. Since we are currently in the first full week of January and the Consumer Electronics Show is starting up, it is reasonable to believe that the Beta will show up on Friday as that is indeed ‘early’ 2009. Next week also qualifies as ‘early’ but by that point we’ll be getting to the halfway mark of the month and halfway is hardly early, it’s halfway through January – mid-January even, but I digress.

I plan to install it on my desktop machine and ultimately dump Ubuntu Linux and Win XP. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with Ubuntu and it has become a much better OS since I first started using it full time in 2006 but I miss my PC games (which don’t run on Linux) and I’m tired of having to dual-boot and having to play a very active role in my system management and maintenance (I must be getting old if that's now the case, I used to love that sort of stuff!). The novelty of the whiz-bang effects found in Ubuntu’s Compiz Fusion like the ‘desktop cube’ have simply worn off to the point where I’m prepared to give them up for quick access to my games and other Windows-only software. I just want to be a lowly user now, mostly because I don’t have the time to tinker with software until it works just the way I want it to and mostly because I don’t want to hunt for clones of Windows software so that I can do the same stuff in Linux that I can do much more easily in Windows.

I realise this contrasts with my imminent adoption of Win7 Beta a little bit, after all Betas are hardly for ‘average users’, but at least with Windows – even in Beta form - most of the software that I want to use works right out of the box and I don’t have to go hunting for special drivers to get my hardware working properly – although I may need to hunt a little bit.

The thing with Linux is that no matter what they say it always feels like you’re a Beta tester because that’s pretty much exactly what you are. In fact, bug reporting has been institutionalized in the Linux world with programs like Bugzilla built right in in many cases which tell you a little something about the software environment doesn’t it? Programs never quite seem to be finished and even the ones that mostly are finished (version 1.0 etc.)always have a few bugs and a few quirks left in them. Not enough to consider the program unstable or unusable but just enough to piss you off at times. I’m not saying that Windows software, or Mac software for that matter, is perfect – far from it – but there is something to be said about commercial considerations being motivators to clean up software, something that the Linux world lacks. The other problem is that there are certain things I want to do with my computer but can’t because of Linux. I want to use programs that connect me to the ‘cloud’ like Live Sync, Live Mesh and others. There is software that I prefer to use, like Google Chrome that simply isn’t available in Linux (yet anyway). And there are things like being able to easily use our network attached harddrive to backup my files which I can do simply with the provided Windows software but not so much with Linux (I’d have to hunt for software that may or may not exist and is not guaranteed to work even if it can be found - usually without many of the features found in the commercial software).

All of these things alone may not be big deals in and of themselves but combined they are irritating to the point that I want to go back to Windows and get on with life. Mac may be seen as another alternative by some people but I like to have control over my computer and Macs are simply too draconian to let me tweak and customize things the way I want them or to use the software I want to use. It’s a scale of sorts; Linux lets you customize absolutely everything – to the point where you can do some serious damage if you don’t know what you’re doing. Mac lets you change almost nothing – rather like Big Brother. Windows is the happy medium – I can change what I want and do what I want to but it’s still user-friendly enough to not be a headache and I can’t do any real damage unless I try really really hard.

Wow, this is becoming a really long post! I was going to talk about more stuff but I think I’ll save that for a future post. Happy New Year everyone! (What? I’m only 6 days late!)

Good for Me, Good for Google…

2008-12-27T00:25:00.001-05:00

Well you’ve done it Google, you’ve gotten me to delete my beloved Firefox. How, you might ask? Well it’s all thanks to Chrome. I know Chrome and I haven’t gotten along in the past, with a few crashes here and a couple of bugs there, but I and thousands like me sent you the telemetry of the crashes and the reports of the bugs like good little beta-testers and you’ve gone and made a pretty damn good internet browser out of it. (Congrats on the official release of Chrome btw.) Now Chrome works so well that it’s become my browser of choice. So much so that just now I’ve gone and deleted Firefox to clean up my PC a little – something I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing just a few months ago. Chrome has managed to seduce me with its elegant but simple interface and it’s speedy yet stable design. So here’s to my new favourite browser, Chrome, you’ve done it. You’ve managed to take me away from my Firefox. Congrats!

(…And the Google monster grows and learns even more about me than it did before…)

Palm LifeDrive

2008-12-21T23:59:00.001-05:00

For the eight other people in the world who have the Palm LifeDrive, hopefully this post will be useful to you. I recently reanimated my LifeDrive after not having used it for a long time. I used to use it daily to take notes at school as it was much more convenient than a laptop since I could just put it in my pocket but since I graduated I’ve had very little use for it. That is until I realized that because Palm has discontinued the LifeDrive chances are third party suppliers will stop making stuff for the LifeDrive soon too! I decided that it is still a useful device and that I should buy as much useful stuff for it as I can before it was all discontinued as well.

The Palm LifeDrive is a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) on steroids. It has a 4GB hard drive, touch screen, wi-fi, Bluetooth, and an SD card slot which can accept up to 2 more GBs of memory. This may not seem all that impressive now with iPod Touches laying around but 3-4 years ago this sort of device was unheard of. The first thing I bought for it was a Bluetooth keyboard which allowed me to take notes on a full-sized keyboard that folded up like a clamshell into something not much bigger than the Palm itself. With the included “Documents to Go” office software I could save my work in .doc format and do almost everything on my Palm that I could do on my PC. While at school I could check my email over the internet and listen to mp3s. I then downloaded a program called TCP/MP which allows you to play DivX video files on your palm – no conversion required. It’s actually quite a good little player and with headphones it’s not too bad if you’re indoors with some time to kill and want to watch a TV show or something. Right now, 3 years after buying my LifeDrive I use only 40% of my battery watching 2 hours of video – even my laptop can’t do that!

I just bought a GPS unit to go with my Palm which should be arriving soon in the mail. It took a lot of research to figure out which device to buy but eventually I learned that two devices should work. The one that is absolutely guaranteed to work is the Palm 3207na GPS device. (Which is the cheapest and the one I bought.) As is the case with most LifeDrive peripherals this unit is discontinued but you can still find it here. It uses old TomTom software which unfortunately cannot be upgraded but is should be alright if you don’t live in a brand-new suburb and don’t plan on going to one. There is also the chance that you can download Garmin software (found here and additional software for it here) which you might be able to use with the Palm GPS unit (I’ll let you know in a later post if this actually works) but will definitely work with a Garmin GPS 10 (and for laptops here, also available here as well) or GPS 20 unit which I found on eBay but not in any online store. Both of these systems claim to work with the LifeDrive making your Mobile Manager into something more than just a little palm-sized laptop.

So, we’ve done movies, we’ve done GPS, what else can the little Palm do? Well it would make a good little Skype phone (it has all the right technology) but I have yet to find software that will let you do this. For now that’s looks to be pretty much it for the venerable little LifeDrive. You can find other peripherals here and perhaps the most important thing is that you MUST NOT USE THE ORIGINAL PALM SOFTWARE WITH VISTA!! Palm has always been crappy on the software side and with Vista they made no exceptions. If you use the original Palm software, or even their recommended software, with Vista it will give you no end in grief. Instead, you must use a newer updated version which is supposed to be compatible but I can’t that find out for sure because I installed the older stuff on my Vista laptop (which Palm recommended that I do by-the-way!) and now that it’s all screwed up and I can’t install the new stuff. The software you need is Palm Desktop Win62. I found it on the Palm site but you have to look for it using another device because if you look for it under LifeDrive it will lead you to version 4.14 which is supposed to work with Vista but doesn’t and is why my laptop is now screwed up and won’t uninstall the stupid software. Anyway the Win62 version is supposed to work and can be found here. If anybody else out there has a LifeDrive please feel free to leave a comment, I’d be very interested in any ideas or software you might be using – especially Skype-type stuff.

Finally, news you can actually trust!

2008-12-20T10:41:00.001-05:00

…if you don’t mind waiting a little bit for them to do a proper investigation to establish the truth behind an issue that is…

That’s right folks, publicintegrity.org has been brought to my attention and it is an excellent place to get detailed information on current events. It is a non-profit organization established in the 1990s by a former ABC news anchorman and is tasked with getting to the facts behind current event issues. The articles are well researched, interesting, relevant and thorough. Since this site does “real” journalism you won’t find the usual fluff that you would on more conventional news sites. Unfortunately you won’t find “Breaking News” stuff either but I find most of that is junk as well anyway. What you will find however is truth. No spin, no cheap quotes, no ‘unnamed sources’ that are really just PR people, no news stories about dogs jumping out their cages or parrots imitating buzz-saws and especially no stupid YouTube clips of the sort CNN has become fond of recently. No, what you will find instead are detailed stories on a number of fascinating and important issues that impact the lives of us all.

You really should check it out, it’s well worth the read and it is updated regularly. publicintegrity.org

Snowmaggedon

2008-12-18T22:19:00.002-05:00

That’s right, “snow” and “armaggedon” in one word. Those of you living in Canada will have no-doubt heard this term already but if you’re living in the States or elsewhere you heard it here first! Did I make this hybrid word up myself? Of course not. Environment Canada made it up. It’s not surprising to Canadians really that our national environmental and meteorological service coined such a term. After all, Environment Canada also invented the word “humidex” which is a hybrid of “humidity index” or what every Canadian knows as the “real” temperature in the summer when you account for humidity, like wind-chill, only for summer. (The humidex usually shows that its much hotter than what the thermometer says). So what is a snowpocalypse? Well, according to our lovable senior climatologist David Phillips we’re in for a wallop of snow this weekend. So much snow that it could be up to 50cm in some parts of Ontario when it’s all done. For American readers that’s about 2 feet or so over a couple of days. In reality it’s not that much snow - we’ve had 30cm in a single night before - but because the storm will hit Toronto hardest (according to most predictions) it qualifies as a snowmaggedon because last time something like this happened the Army was called in to help them dig out. (For shame Toronto…for shame!!) So that’s a snowmaggedon, a perfect snow storm.

Mike’s Xmas list

2008-12-15T18:47:00.001-05:00

A number of people have asked me what I want for Xmas so I’ve decided to put it on my blog for easy reference. Here’s the list.

- Book: How To Break A Terrorist
- Inexpensive cordless drill
- Kiwi Fuel Saver
- A GPS attachment for my Palm LifeDrive
- Hovering Globe
- Self-illuminating keyboard
- Wii with Wii Fit
- Nintendo DS
- toolbox for my tools

I may update this list in the future and this list is of course not inclusive.

New Live Services!!

2008-12-14T11:35:00.003-05:00

As a bit of a follow up post my series on Windows Live an iLife today I’m writing to inform you all that Microsoft has made a lot of progress releasing it’s “Live Wave 3” software and services. It started unveiling its online services a couple of weeks ago and soon it will release its supplementary software “Windows Live Essentials” which are currently in Beta testing form but still downloadable. So here’s a quick rundown of what’s up.

If you have a Windows Live ID (the thing you use to login to Hotmail or MSN) then you have access to the new Windows Live experience. To access it simply go to home.live.com, login and start playing. As I mentioned before, Microsoft offers a number of Live services and you can always check out my series using the links in the right-hand column of this page. Today I will just point out the major changes to those services.

One major change is that they’ve increased the storage of SkyDrive from 5GB to 25GB and moved Live Photos to the SkyDrive so everything online is stored there. They’ve integrated with Facebook, Flickr and many other online services so you can view updates from those services on your Live Homepage which is very similar in nature to your Facebook homepage. There are more customization options now available but as all things Microsoft the new Live online services are numerous and a little bit complex. Once you are familiar with the services though they turn out to be very useful so you should definitely check them out. For more detailed information check out Paul Thurrott’s post here.

GelaSkins!!!!

2008-12-10T22:43:00.001-05:00

Seeing as how it’s Xmas again, I thought some people may be looking for that ‘unique’ and thoughtful gift. I may have stumbled upon just the thing for you. Almost everyone I know has some sort of technological device from the ubiquitous iPod, to a laptop, to a cell phone. Of course since most people have one or more of these devices standing out in a crowed can be tough. How can you set yourself apart from the mindless masses all buying black laptops and white iPods? I know, it’s hard to be an individual in this brave new technological world. It’s hard to make a statement, to go against the grain even just a little bit. That is until you discover GelaSkins.

GelaSkins is a company based in Toronto that commissions world-class artists to create unique ‘skins’ that can be stuck to your iPod, laptop or cell phone. These are not your ordinary skins however, these are literally works of art that also serve as a protective layer for your device. There are a tonne of designs and they keep adding new ones all the time. There is bound to be a design to suit your individual tastes and they’re actually quite inexpensive. An iPod skin will run you about $15 bucks while a laptop skin is about $30 bucks for an average sized laptop (they have a number of sizes to choose from). You can show your individuality in a subtle or not-so-subtle way and if you get bored of a particular design you can always remove the old one and get a new one. The skins are completely removable and don’t leave a residue behind. Now obviously if you’re thinking of getting this for a technophile on your list it may be difficult to pick something they would like – after all this is all about individual tastes. To solve this minor dilemma GelaSkins offer gift certificates which you can order online in a number of denominations starting at $25. $25 will give you a couple of iPod skins or one small laptop skin and of course there are larger denominations like $50 and so one so depending on the device they have you can “give” them a couple different skins so they can change it up if they get bored with one or their tastes change.

These are really cool and I think you should definitely check them out. They have all kinds of art from graffiti to Monet. Just click the banner at the top of the in the right-hand panel or farther down to see just how cool your device can look!! Trust me, you’ll like at least one of them!

HP Magic Giveaway

2008-12-06T15:49:00.001-05:00

As you may have heard, HP is having a huge giveaway and I’m hoping to win!! More information on the giveaway can be found here. The particular site I’m hoping to win from is aimed women so the female readers of my blog will like it although male readers may find a lot of the stuff there interesting as well. Techie Diva is a tech site that offers reviews and news on tech that you might not see anywhere else; like the Bellysonic Speaker Pouch for example that lets you play music to your unborn baby. Anyway, what would I do if I won you ask?

Well, the idea behind the giveaway is to be charitable so...if I win I would spread the love to my friends and family as follows. My fiancée and I would give the Pavilion dv4 notebook away to our good friend who’s been looking for something more environmentally friendly than his current big old desktop. My Dad desperately needs a new printer so he’d get the Photosmart and my brother could really use the Mini 1000 because he’s a teacher and his old laptop is just too big to use in class. Kung Fu Panda would be great for family movie nights and you can never have enough photo printer ink (which would go with the printer of course). The TouchSmart we'd keep in our bedroom and use it as our TV. Being recent grads we have virtually no money so winning such a prize pack would be amazing! We’d also keep the MediaSmart Connect and add it to the home network for access our media from the living room. Finally, the HDX and MS Office would go to my fiancée since she’s still using Office 2000 (ick) and would probably appreciate and upgrade.

Songbird Takes Flight

2008-12-04T01:20:00.001-05:00

Songbird has finally been released as a final version (1.0). That means that the latest version of Songbird is no longer a test version but a real version!! I suggest that everyone who has the previous versions (I had beta 7.0) update now. To update just open Songbird, go to ‘Help’ and select ‘Check for updates…’ and Songbird will do the rest. I’m also happy to report that most Songbird add-ons appear to have been updated as well including my favourite, ‘MediaFlow’…Yay! (Some still haven’t been updated though.) The Songbird people have even updated the icon which is now a little yellow bird as opposed to the hatching egg it used to be.

For those of you not in the know, Songbird is an excellent iTunes replacement for Mac, PC and Linux. While it doesn’t let you shop at the iTunes store, you can shop everywhere else with it and it will still plug into your iPod and let you update your music library. In fact, your iPod probably won’t even know the difference. Don’t have an iPod? no worries, Songbird will talk to most other players too and it has some wicked internet radio. Personally I use it for the radio more than anything else although it’s really good at sorting through my 11 GB or so of music. I recommend CBC Radio 3, it’s a great internet radio station that plays mostly Indie tracks. I never even liked Indie until I listened to this station, that’s how good it is!

Check out the Songbird blog here.

Google Chrome

2008-12-02T01:23:00.001-05:00

So a installed Google Chrome about a week or so ago on a lark. I’ve been hearing a lot about it over the past couple months since it launched earlier this fall so I decided to give a try. I was expecting it to be a trimmed down version of Firefox or another IE rip-off but instead, and much to my delight, it is quite an amazing browser so I’ve been very impressed. It’s difficult to explain why it’s so amazing without showing you the features because a lot of them sound rather lame or uninteresting but are in fact quite useful and cool. This is not to say that I have not had some difficulty with Chrome however. Chrome crashes at least once a day and for all of Google’s talk about how if one page hangs the whole browser won’t crash…well, when I say it crashes I’m talking about the whole browser. Like Firefox however, Chrome has the nice recovery thing that brings all your open tabs back but it’s still rather annoying. I half expected this with Chrome of course because as with many things Google, Chrome is still only in Beta testing which means crashes are to be expected. And, like all good Beta testers, I occasionally submit feedback and provide anonymous usage statistics so when the browser does crash Google gets a report and they hopefully can fix it. In fact, I discovered a week ago that my Mozaik MasterCard website was not rendering properly, headers weren’t in the right place and the site was just a mess. I reported it to Google (without any of my MasterCard info of course) and low-and-behold the rendering problem was fixed the very next day! Now I don’t know if this is a normal response time for such things but it was one hell of a coincidence.

Google likes to keep things in Beta for insanely long amounts of time. I don’t know why they do this but they do. Gmail is a perfect example. I’m not sure when they came out with the beta exactly but I know that I was an early adopter because I joined it when you still needed to be invited. That was at least 4 or 5 years ago and Gmail only recently (and quietly I might add) emerged from Beta. As a comparison most companies only do the Beta thing for a year or so then release the final version. Since this is Google we’re talking about though Chrome will probably be in Beta for the next couple of years at least but that shouldn’t stop you from checking it out – like Gmail is and was a great email application, Chrome is and will be a great browser and the nice thing about Betas is that they update them frequently as they fix stuff. Unfortunately for the 7% of the market that are Mac users out there there is no Chrome for you, but for the remaining 93ish% of users (sorry Linux folks you’re less than 1% and no, there’s no Chrome for you either) I would definitely recommend you check it out. I suggest you try it for a week, minimum. If after a week you still don’t like it then by all means delete it but keep it for a week. It does take some getting used to as it’s not very much like a conventional browser. I do think though that it’s for the better – it’s about time we brought browsing into the 21st century.

Download Chrome here.

Happy surfing!!

Budgeting

2008-12-01T00:41:00.001-05:00

With today being the start of December and a new year in four short weeks I thought I’d share an awesome budget macro that a friend of mine, Katherine, introduced me to a while back. It’s called the “Pear Budget” and the version I’m talking about is free. (There’s an online version that you have to pay for). I’ve modified it a little to include a change in net worth because I feel that debt repayment isn’t really an expense but it still kind of is. In my budget I found that my expenses were artificially high because of my debt repayment which normally would be a good thing but according to the budget it showed my variable expenses as being in the red even though my spending was less than income (which is how it should be). So at the bottom of each month I added something that tracks the change in net worth because as debt goes down your net worth should go up (and savings also increases net worth too). What I did was take the expenses, subtract debt repayment and savings from it and then subtract the new (corrected) expenses amount from income. As long as it’s a positive number you’re doing well even if your variable expenses show you’re over spending a bit. You can find my modified budget on my SkyDrive.

Also, if you see a flaw in my logic then definitely feel free to leave a comment explaining your rationale and why I’m wrong and the original setup was actually right. I have a copy of the original and I’m open to arguments saying that debt repayment is an expense and that the net worth thing doesn’t work but right now keep coming to the conclusion that my modified budget works although I’ve never really been stellar at math. The budget is below and it’s in Microsoft Excel format.

HP Giveaway!!!

2008-11-29T00:26:00.001-05:00

Check out www.gearlive.com for a totally awesome HP contest where they’re giving away a ton of free HP gear!!!

CUSA stupidity comes out again!!

2008-11-26T18:58:00.001-05:00

So according to this news release in Carleton U's The Charlatan, and nationally on CTV, as well as others, the Council of the Carleton University Students Association (CUSA) has dropped Shinerama as it's annual fundraiser because of Shinerama's support for Cystic Fibrosis - a disease that CUSA believes only affects white men and is therefore not inclusive enough. Of course Cystic Fibrosis actually affects both men and women almost equally and not only white people but all races (although especially Caucasians which incidentally includes people from South Asia, North Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East - i.e. "olive" skinned and "brown" people). Since CUSA believes that it's a disease that only affects white males (even if it's not true) however, it follows that CF doesn't need CUSA's fundraising support. Would even be having this debate if it was a charity that supported fundraising for a disease that only affected black males (like sickle-cell disease)? Not likely as that would be racist but since it “only” affects white men it’s ok to debate this.

This is typical of CUSA's political correctness run amok and is but the latest example of a long string of wrong-headed decisions. This motion was of course passed by CUSA because as I'm sure everyone knows, white men cannot possibly be discriminated against no matter how hard you try - it's impossible! (It’s not being racist it’s just some people are more equal than others.) Obviously CUSA's motion is similar to how modern Canadian society doesn't really support Breast Cancer (because it only affects women), or Juvenile Diabetes (because it only affects “fat” kids) or Alzheimer's because it only affects old people. As with CF, none of these diseases are inclusive enough so - by CUSA's logic - we shouldn't support fundraising for any of them either, right? Makes sense to me! Way to go CUSA for paving the way to a new world of political correctness where even diseases can be considered racist and sexist!! (except sickle-cell because that’s a black-person’s disease and we can’t discriminate now can we because that would be racist.)

Of course I'm being sarcastic. As a Carleton Grad I am appalled that such a public display of ignorance was even allowed to come to the public’s attention. CUSA has made Carleton look ridiculous and by extension cheapened a degree that I worked hard to get and was proud of. One would expect that motions put forth in a University would be subjected to at least a cursory amount research - you know - just to make sure they got all the basic facts right and stuff before they ask for a decision on a given topic. I have often wondered what exactly CUSA was for. Like most other students I assumed it had some kind of useful purpose. While I still have no real idea of what they actually do they do seem to waste lots of money bitching about fees and handing out agendas full of related propaganda. I have seen CUSA reps at Starbucks using CUSA-provided Blackberry's for personal use (no doubt on the student body's tab of course - why do they need Blackberry's anyway? Wouldn't a normal cell do just fine? It's not like they have an important job that requires constant email access. I mean come on...student government?!? Really?!?) and I know they support a few minority groups on campus (which is great) but they do seem to gather a lot of money from everyone and needlessly waste it on very select few people. (hmm....rather like the Soviets did eh? - enrich themselves and their friends while letting the rest go neglected and ignored…interesting…) Of course there are probably many people who will disagree with me on this and argue that CUSA does something for everyone but when I flipped through the agenda (which is probably the only useful thing they do for everyone as far as I'm concerned – except for the ridiculous amount of propaganda in it) to the pages conveniently titled "What does CUSA do for you" I could not find a single thing they did for me. Why is this? Well I figure it has something to do with the fact that I'm a white male. You see CUSA doesn't really like white males, not because CUSA is racist or sexist (although I have my doubts about the sexist bit) but because in the world of Political Correctness white males simply do not exist - especially English speaking white males. To the uber-PC crowd, supporting white males is practically criminal. This is because to them white males do not have problems like the rest of society, they do not get sick or have genetic disorders, they don't get cancer and they certainly don't get discriminated against. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or some kind of white supremacist.

I am by no means a white supremacist of course, in fact detest such people as they are small minded thugs, nor am I a sexist as I see such people as being supremely ignorant but I am simply blunt. All I am trying to do is pointing out that while there was a time when white men did shamelessly and wrongly discriminate against different races and genders, those times have long since passed in our society. Unfortunately the pendulum of social change and political correctness now appears to be swinging – alarmingly - in the opposite direction where discrimination against men, especially white men and is not only acceptable on the grounds of past transgressions but is sometimes encouraged by the uber-PC crowd (like CUSA). How can you check whether this is happening? The process is simple; just substitute a black person or, person of any other minority, instead of a white person in a given situation and see if we would be having the same conversation. If not be then chances are you’re looking at reverse discrimination. Of course this only applies in situations like the above CUSA charity scandal but it makes the point nicely.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking...boo hoo the white guy is complaining about discrimination...but this is not about wanting more rights or anything like that. This is about saying that if we’re going to be fair then let’s be fair. This is about equality. We are either equal or we are not. It is true that if we favour some groups over others we aren't being equal but we should not discriminate against a particular group just because helping them isn't seen as helping a given minority group or because it won’t be seen as being ‘inclusive’ enough. Even if CF was just a white male disease, why would that preclude it from financial support by CUSA? Lots of other diseases (like breast cancer) that affect far more exclusive groups of people and are supported buy numerous other charities but support for them is not being challenged by CUSA. Are we somehow punishing another minority group by helping those affected by CF? No. If CUSA wants to change charities fine, but don’t shroud the decision in some PC BS. To their credit CUSA has now decided to review its decision but I sincerely doubt that would be the case if it weren’t for the national media coverage and bad press.

In light of this rant, and seeing as how ignoring the needs of white males or even males in general is apparently socially acceptable now (at least at CUSA), I propose the creation of the "Brown Ribbon Campaign" which will support and promote awareness of Prostate and Colon cancer. Just because it's a disease that only affects men doesn't mean it's not important!

Spam!

2008-11-19T21:25:00.001-05:00

I have a few email accounts with different providers (Gmail, Yahoo! MSN) that I use for different things. I use a Yahoo account that I never check as my 'throw-away' address that I reserve for 'high risk' or sketchy places that ask for your email addy but that will probably send you spam. Places like magazines and contests and other random stuff. I also have a Hotmail account which I plan on using more in the future but for now it’s just there to let me use Microsoft stuff. I have two Gmail accounts - one for everyday use and one I only use for important stuff like resumes and other business contacts. I don't check the business one very often as I only use it for important stuff like job applications and I almost never (ie once a month) look at the Junk mail folder in any of my accounts but today I decided to tackle junk mail for both Gmail accounts and to my surprise the account that I use for just about everything - my everyday account - has only a couple of pieces of junk mail (almost inevitable these days) while my business account (as I like to call it) had 112 pieces of junk mail. I always clean them out together and I do it about once a month (if I remember) so it's interesting that the address that I almost never give out had far more junk mail than the one I give out regularly to everyone and to all my non-sketchy online transactions. hmm...looks like some employers or other reputable institutions for which I reserve only my most official looking email address seem to sell the addresses they get to the Nigerian princes and Viagra people. Interesting...I hate to think what is lurking in my Yahoo! account but whatever, that company is going down the tubes anyway!

Today I Watched History on TV

2008-11-05T00:15:00.003-05:00

I'm sure all of you know by now that the United States has elected Barack Obama as President. He is an excellent orator and an inspirational figure and I sincerely hope that he lives up to his considerable promise. I hope this not just for Americans, but for the world as well. Barack represents a type of leadership for which we should all seek out and aspire to: grounded; intellectual; calm; and inspirational. I hope that he will be able to live up to the expectations we have of him but I suspect he won't given the amount of hype surrounding him and the fact that he is only human. Should he make a misstep or two along the way however, I for one won't hold it against him. I also hope that he is able to survive through his first term in office because sadly, in the United States, there remains an alarming amount of racism especially in the so-called Bible Belt. It would be truely sad for such an inspirational President, the most inspirational in my lifetime at least, to meet the same untimely fate as the last great inspirational leader to hold that office - JFK. Alas I hope that it will not come to that and I am saddened that such a possibilty even exists this day in age. Despite all that I am happy for you America, I think you've made the right choice.

So here's to you America! I'm sure I speak for many when I say that you have renewed our hope, if not trust, in the American Government and the American people. Thanks and congrats!

Green PC Part 6 – Conclusion & What I Would Build

2008-10-28T22:23:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the last part of my Green PC series. I’ll start by mentioning a few things that you should keep in mind while looking at either building a green pc or retrofitting your current pc. I’ll then go through what I would build if I had $800 bucks to spend on a new computer, the parts, the prices, and the rationale behind the choices. Use it as a guide or use it as a starting point…

Things to keep in mind.

It seems that you should try and match your power supply with your actual power usage as much as possible as some report that efficiency drops if you use a large power supply with a very efficient or low power system.

Don't use a screen saver either, unlike old CRT monitors LCD displays derive no benefits from screen savers and screen savers may even shorten the life of LCD displays. Instead get your computer to turn off your computer screen when not in use.

I said earlier that it looked like HP achieved a lot of its power savings from software tweaks and although the do-it-yourselfers out there probably won't have access to this software many of the component drivers come with software of their own and Windows Vista offers some pretty neat stuff when it comes to power consumption tweaks. I'm pretty sure the HP stuff won't provide too many advantages over the stuff you get from the parts manufacturers since it probably just puts the programs you get anyway in a nice HP wrapper.

Mike’s energy-conscious computer (eco-PC):

So if I were to go out today and build my ideal computer how much would it cost and what would I put in it? The first influence to note here in my decision making process is that I do play PC games so I’ll be looking for a computer that can stand up to the task – not top of the line mind you but not a slough either. Also, since I don’t believe it necessary, or prudent, to totally dump a computer after only a couple years of use I’ll be including upgradability in my design as much as possible to keep this PC relevant for 5 or more years at least.

What I would build:

I'd start with the Asus P5Q Pro from NCIX for $167 CDN or the P5Q-E from PCV Online for $182.95.

Both are up to the task here and I’ve narrowed it down to Intel boards for reasons that will be explained in a moment. In this case I'd pick the second one, the P5Q-E, as it has more features but doesn't cost that much more.

As for the processor, I'm looking for something over 2 GHz (so World in Conflict will run properly) but cheap. Since this board is so versatile I'll go with one of the cheaper chips for now with a view to upgrade at some point in the future once prices fall some more. NCIX is sell the Core 2 Duo E7200 at 2.53GHz for $153.09 and PCV Online sells the slightly faster E8400 3GHz chip for $189.95.

In this case I'll go with the cheaper NCIX model, the E7200, to keep costs down for now.

Now we need a case to put all this stuff in. I'm thinking the NSK4480 from Antec would be a good bet. It's 80Plus rated and ATX compliant (as in not microATX – make sure you note the difference when getting a motherboard). The price of this case is $109.95. CoolerMaster also offers a number of power supplies that are 80Plus compliant and can be paired with any number of cases but to keep things simple I'll stick with the NSK4480.

All we need now is a video card, ram and a hard drive.

For the video card I'll go with an ATI card since selection of an efficient card is easier than nVidia's complex system. (If you do go the nVidia route you’ll get much better performance but I recommend you start with the card choice then decide the motherboard and cpu later) As I said before, I'd like to be looking for a 4800 series card as it's the most efficient right now but for time being I'll settle with the Diamond Viper Radeon HD 3650 NCIX is selling for $112.45 to save money and then I’ll upgrade sometime in the future when the 4800s are a little cheaper. This way I’m saving money while not sacrificing performance all that much since the 3650 is still a very capable video card (unlike the one in those HP machines).

RAM doesn't really matter too much. I'll pick something relatively cheap because again, I can upgrade to better later. I pick the G.Skill F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ. It's 2, 2GB chips which make 4GB and runs at 1000 MHz and costs $74.99Cdn. Later it would be nice to go to a single 4GB chip but for now that's still too expensive right now.

The last piece of the puzzle is the hard drive. For this I choose the Hitachi P7K500, a 500GB SATA 2 hard drive that powers down when not in use and costs $85.99 compared with the Western Digital Caviar GP (for Green Power) which is almost exactly the same but costs $88.74

And the grand total?!?

$719.42 Cdn before tax and shipping. Obviously that's a bit more than the two HP models that come in at $579 and $659 US respectively (also before tax and shipping) but not by much and the result is a much more power yet still energy-efficient machine that will have no trouble running games like World in Conflict. Also it is entirely upgradable (future-proof) and gives great bang for the buck. As you can see there are many more options to tweak to get this PC exactly how you need it while continuing to be energy efficient.

Of course if you'd rather just buy a prebuilt computer from a store, check out these EnergyStar qualified computers but all bets are off as far as performance goes.

Green PC Part 5 – Hard Drives

2008-10-27T23:29:00.001-04:00

Hard Drives:
The next important part that we’ll need is the hard drive. This information is good not only for building a brand new eco-pc but also if you are looking to keep your current pc and expand your storage or retrofit your current machine to be more energy-conscious.

Hitachi:

Hitachi offers the Deskstar series of hard drives. The Deskstar P7K500 series are energy efficient drives ranging in size from 250GB to 500GB. Hitachi also offers the Deskstar 7K1000.B ranging in size from 160GB to 1TB. As a point of reference, the drives less than 320GB use only 3.6W of energy while the 500-750GB drives use 4.4W and the 1TB drive uses 5.2W at idle power. Even at these power ratings, they’re still more efficient most other drives and you sacrifice nothing. Both the capacities and the speeds are equal to almost any other drives on the market.

Western Digital:

WD offers its Caviar Green line of drives which range in sizes between 500GB to 1TB. Their power usage is 2.8W idle and 5.4W when its Read/Writing so very similar to the Hitachi drives. Again you can’t go wrong here, you aren’t sacrificing speed or storage capacity so these two drives just make sense. As with the RAM, it’s probably better to go with a single, high-capacity drive like 1TB, rather than two smaller drives (i.e.. 2x500GB). Both of these drives use the latest SATA standard so if your computer is a dinosaur and still uses IDE you’ll need to either buy a new motherboard etc. or get a SATA PCI adaptor card which itself will draw some extra power basically nullifying any power savings but enabling you to keep your old machine going while future-proofing your data.

Next up is the last instalment of my little series where I build (virtually of course) my own version of a Green PC.

Green PC Part 4 – Video Cards

2008-10-26T23:08:00.001-04:00

Video Card:
Today’s topic is the video card. The video card can sometimes be the most important piece of the puzzle. It can radically influence both your power consumption and computer performance. It can also factor in to which motherboard you should buy because some motherboards are more ATI friendly while others already have nVidia components. As you will see nVidia especially plays a big role in your motherboard purchase decision as its entire energy saving plan depends on which motherboard you get.

nVidia Chips:

Unfortunately nVidia isn't that big on energy efficiency. It is mostly focused on performance and who can blame them, they make some of the best gaming video cards on the market. As a result it is difficult to find anything relating to power consumption on the nVidia website. I did however stumble upon something that they call "HybridPower Technology" or "Hybrid SLI" which allows you to switch from your high-performance nVidia video card to your motherboard’s lower performance built-in nVidia GeForce video card to save energy when you don't need the extra power. This technology looks cool but it's a bit more complicated than simply buying a more efficient card. Although it does address the performance vs. power consumption problem nicely for people like me it requires that you pick both your video card and motherboard together as a pair. To take full advantage of the nVidia system you need to buy and nVidia based motherboard and pair is with and appropriate nVidia based video card ensuring that both support the Hybrid SLI technology. You'll also probably need to buy a Hybrid SLI enabled power supply or else you may find it won’t switch properly. Obviously this is a lot more technical as there is also some software tweaking that needs to be done but for the more technically inclined and performance minded people out there this solution offers the best of both worlds. This technology is also only available through Windows Vista (sorry Apple fans...but really, how many Apple gamers have you ever heard of anyway!??!)

The list of compatible motherboards is: GeForce 8100, 8200, and 8300; nForce 720a, 730a, 750a SLI, and 780a SLI on the AMD side; and unfortunately nothing on the Intel side. For the video cards; you can get the GeForce 9800 GT, GTX and GTX+, the GTX 260, 9800 GX2, and finally the GTX 280. The power supply list can be found here. Keep in mind that most power supplies are around 75% efficient (as opposed to the 80% efficient EarthWatts) so that is something to consider. Check the nVidia website for the latest information on card and board pairing.

ATI Chips:

ATI has made it a bit easier to go green. It has come out with what it calls "ATI Power Play" technology which is supposed to increase the energy efficiency of its video cards. The idea is that the card will give you all the power you want when you need it, but when you don't need it (which is most of the time) it will conserve energy. The technology was first introduced on the ATI Mobility Radeon laptop video cards and has now made its way over to desktops. The primary cards with this technology are the ATI Radeon 3800 Series which support DirectX 10.1, the newest graphics standard from Microsoft, along with PCI-Express 2.0 - stuff you'd expect from any half-decent video card. My money would be on the better and apparently more efficient ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series cards. These cards support all of the above but also supports HD video and HDMI – so you can hook it up to your new plasma TV is you want. Notably this particular card consumes less than 75Ws of power and delivers up to 3 times more performance per watt. It also uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process which won’t effect how much power you use but is nice to consider.

Next up…Hard drives.

Green PC Part 3 – Processor, Motherboard, RAM

2008-10-26T00:17:00.001-04:00

Now we’re getting to the guts of the computer.

Processor:

AMD:

As noted in the article about the new HPs, AMD offers at least a couple of energy efficient processors including the Athlon X2 4850e Dual-Core Processor clocked at 2.5 GHz and the Phenom X4 9150e Quad-Core Processor running at about 1.8GHz. A deeper look at AMD products reveals that the chips to look for are the ones that advertise AMD's "Cool 'N' Quiet" technology. Two chip families fall into this category including the AMD 64 Athlon X2 45W processors and the newer AMD Phenom X3 and X4 processor families. The clock frequencies range from 1.9GHz to 2.5GHz for the X2 and 2.1GHz to 2.4GHz for the X3s. For simplicity's sake and for cost we'll look at only the dual-core chips (X2s). Within the X2s there are five chips to choose from that are above the magic 2.0 GHz. Their model numbers are important as there are many other less-efficient Athlon X2s out there. The efficient ones draw about 45 watts. The chips to look for are the BE-2350 and 4050e both at 2.1GHz; the BE-2400 and 4450e both at 2.3GHz; and the 4850e at 2.5GHz. These chips are all Socket AM2 which is important information to have when we're shopping for a motherboard.

Intel:

Intel's offerings lie in what it calls the "Core" family, namely the Core 2 processors. There are three types of Core 2 processors starting with the 'slowest' Core 2 Duo, the mid-range Core 2 Quad, and the powerful Core 2 Extreme. While all three chip families are more efficient than their predecessors the trade-off between power and performance still exists so we'll focus on the most efficient Core 2 Duo. These chips run at speeds anywhere between 1.8 GHz and 3.33 GHz. I don't like anything less than 2GHz because I know of at least one game that I play (World in Conflict) that can't run on anything under 2GHz...trust me, I’ve tried. So if you were to buy an eco-friendly Intel chip I would suggest chips from E6400 to E8600 - Socket 775. As usual the bigger the number the better the chip and the more expensive it is. Don’t forget, like AMD you can get energy efficient quad core chips as well but I’m not covering them here.

Motherboards:

Asus is making a new line of energy efficient motherboards which actively detects power loading and adjusts accordingly. It supports the Core 2 series of Intel Chips including the newer Quad and Extreme while also supporting the older Core 2 Duo. These energy efficient motherboards are called the P5Q series.

Asus also includes some of the same technology in it's AMD boards although more subtly. The thing to look for when shopping for an AMD board are "Phase Power Design". The higher the number the better. To go with your energy efficient chips you're looking for an M3N series board that supports AM2+/AM2. As usual with PCs there are a number of other motherboard manufacturers out there but you’re on your own for researching them – I’m just covering the big name stuff here.

RAM:

RAM isn't a big power consumer. They supposedly use about 5 watts per stick regardless of capacity so it would be better to have a single high capacity stick than two or more smaller sticks. Unlike the other computer bits, brand-name RAM manufacturers (if there is such a thing) are less important although they’ll probably tell you otherwise. I have yet to notice any differences at all between brands although some brands try to make their chips look ‘cooler’ than others and some make outlandish claims that their RAM runs cooler too. Hogwash! I say go with the cheapest sticks you can find with the biggest capacities you can get. If anything craps out, chances are that it won’t be your RAM but that’s just my opinion.

Next up, video cards…

Green PC Part 2 – Power Supply and Chassis

2008-10-25T01:41:00.001-04:00

The following will help you either build an all-new eco-PC from scratch or retrofit your current PC to be more energy conscious.

Perhaps the biggest thing you can do to reduce your energy consumption is trade in you behemoth/el-cheapo power supply in your current desktop with a more efficient one. This doesn't mean you need to compromise on wattage, it just means there's a more efficient stuff out there. Introducing the Antec Earthwatts power supplies.

Power Supply:

Antec:

The Antec Earthwatts is perhaps the fastest and easiest thing you can do to make your desktop PC more efficient. It comes in a number of Watt categories depending on your power usage and all are rated "80 Plus" meaning that 80 percent of their energy goes to powering your computer rather than heat and noise which makes them some of the most efficient power supplies on the market. (normal ones are between 60-75% efficient) For most machines you can probably get away with the EA 380 which theoretically provides about 380Watts of power (depending on what you do with your PC) but be careful because some video cards require that you have at least a 400w power supply. The safest one to get is the EA 430 ($79.95) which should give you enough power for most hardware found in a decent gaming system but won't be as inefficient as other power supplies on the market. The EA 500 ($89.95) and EA 650 are also available for higher powered machines while still offering some energy efficiency. Also, keep in mind that the power supply is only part of the equation, there are many other things you can do to lower your energy consumption and I’ll cover those in future posts.

Antec also offers a variety of computer cases that come with Earthwatts power supplies built in….you know…if you want to change your computer box too! I admit they aren’t as snazzy as the HP ones but they are still pretty slick.

For a complete list of 80 Plus power supplies look at the 80 Plus website and here too. Also check out the Energy Star website because they have a long list of other vendors that sell both efficient power supplies and cases, I just don’t have time to cover all of them.

Next up; Motherboards, RAM, and CPUs…

Green PC Part 1 – HP’s new ‘Green Machines’

2008-10-24T00:44:00.001-04:00

Welcome to my new series on building a more energy-efficient yet still powerful PC. Conventional wisdom states that laptops are more energy efficient than desktops. For the most part this claim is true but in a recent press release HP unveiled its new line of ‘eco-friendly’ desktop PCs which got me thinking - 'I should blog about this!' and then - 'would it be possible to build my own?'. This isn't really all that surprising since many computer makers including 'Brand-name' builders have been using more efficient laptop parts in desktop PCs for a few years now. What is interesting is that these HP machines are specifically being marketed as 'eco-friendly'. So far there are but two offerings in HP's eco-friendly desktop line. The first is called the HP Pavillion Verde - Latin for green of course - Special Edition (a6645f) which the company plans to sell starting Nov. 9th through Circuit City (apparently in the US only) for around $579 USD. Pretty reasonable pricing I suppose. The second is the HP Pavillion Phoenix Special Edition (a6655f) available on the same date and only from Best Buy which hopefully will also be for sale in Canada but probably not (we're too far north I guess). It's price is expected to be around $659 USD. They are also selling a new 'eco-friendly' monitor but since most modern LCD monitors are already eco-friendly I won't bother covering it here.

For the more technology minded readers out there I'll briefly cover the specs of both machines then in later posts I’ll source parts for my own version of an eco-friendly PC and help identify things that can make your home PCs more efficient without compromising speed.

Starting with the Verde the specs are quite impressive at first glance considering the price and 'eco' nature of it. The Verde uses an AMD Athlon X2 4850e Dual-Core Processor clocked at 2.5 GHz. It has 5GBs of PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM which is expandable to 8GB. It runs 64-bit Vista Home Premium to take advantage of the RAM and has a comfortably-sized 500GB hard drive. The video card is interesting. It's a rather weak nVidia GeForce 6150 SE card with 128MB of dedicated graphics memory. I used to have this exact same card and found it very lacking, especially when gaming. Vista can allocate the card some more memory from the system RAM up to 1343 MBs but that doesn’t make the card all that much better since it’s a couple of generations old by now anyway. The video card is probably why HP can sell this PC for under $700. The Verde of course also has the usual stuff you'd expect on a modern PC including a card reader, optical drive, and Ethernet card.

The Phoenix is similar with some parts - like the processor - being slower and other parts - like the RAM – being marginally faster. The processor is an AMD Phenom X4 9150e Quad-Core Processor running at about 1.8GHz. It also has 5GB of PC2-6400 DDR3 RAM. (expandable to 8GB). It runs 64-bit Vista Home Premium to take advantage of all that RAM and includes an SATA3 650GB hard drive running at the standard 7200RPMs. It has the usual HP optical drive that does everything but read Blu-ray discs and the usual built in network adapter and sound stuff. The video card again is the same rather weak nVidia GeForce 6150 SE card with 128MB of dedicated graphics memory. Vista can of course allocate the card further memory from the system RAM but again that eats in to what is available for the rest of the system and not a compromise worth making IMHO. It has all the usual ports and keyboard/optical mouse combo but it's the guts of the machines that concern me.

Nowhere does HP mention anything about the power supply which is typically an important part of the power-consumption picture. HP claims that it's "power management technology" provides up to 45% energy savings which suggests to me that the bulk of the savings are provided by software tweaks rather than the sub-optimum hardware. It also cites "100% recyclable packaging" which is nice but has nothing to do with the on-going energy use of a desktop PC. The important points of note here are the processors HP chose and the video card. Some more astute readers may have noticed a complete lack of Intel chips. I find this odd as Intel makes some pretty efficient-yet-powerful chips - by which of course I mean the Core-2 series that has its roots in laptop processors. Laptops have traditionally been the source of energy efficiency innovation as they depend on a relatively small battery to provide power at least some of the time and maximizing battery life is a very good way to set oneself apart from competitors. Unfortunately for laptops, due to size and energy constraints they have also traditionally been somewhat slower and less powerful machines as compared to similarly priced desktop models. It is possible however to build your own Eco-friendly yet powerful desktop PC, and you don’t need to use laptop parts or buy one of these surprisingly weak HP machines either. In my next post I’ll tell you how...

iTunes and QuickTime & Zune and Media Player

2008-10-23T14:02:00.001-04:00

In this, the final instalment of my iLife and Windows Live comparison we look at iTunes and QuickTime as compared with Zune and Media Player.

iTunes and QuickTime

iTunes and QuickTime are Apple’s offerings when it comes to the world of digital entertainment. iTunes allows you to download music, buy movies or TV shows, and organize your digital entertainment all in one place.

QuickTime is Apple’s movie player which is primarily used for playing QuickTime movies formatted (.mov) files but can also play most other types except DivX – the popular and very common movie/tv show file format. Unfortunately both iTunes and Quicktime have tended to be very slow and buggy on Windows machines while reportedly run quite well on Macs.

Microsoft offers the Zune and Media player as its counter-software. The Zune software is very much like iTunes in that it talks to its own portable MP3 players (Zunes) and acts as both organizational software for all of your media as well as an online store where you can purchase songs and videos. It too can play a number of formats although I’m not sure if it can play DivX files either. The software is relatively new and it online music library from which to buy stuff is small in comparison to iTunes.

Media Player is Microsoft’s…well…media player. It plays videos, mp3s and with the right codecs it can play DivX files as well. Pervious versions of Media Player were slow and buggy but the latest version seems pretty good and quite reliable as well.

Finally, I think it is important to mention Songbird. Songbird is a phenomenal media player based on the Firefox platform. It can run on both Macs and Windows PCs as well as Linux machines. For those of you who like iTunes but hate the instability or slowness I definitely recommend that you check out Songbird. If you’re a Windows user I would strongly suggest that you install Songbird rather than iTunes. It is a near perfect iTunes replacement and it includes the ability to talk to iPods and iPhones so you can continue to upload/download your music and videos to them. There are also a number of plug-ins that you can download for free that give Songbird even more features. I personally use Songbird and I recommend that you do to!

This concludes my pairing of Apple and Microsoft offerings. I hope it was informative and perhaps even useful. Come back in the future for updated information including stuff on the yet to be released Windows Live Wave 3 programs. Thanks for reading.

iChat & Live Messenger

2008-10-09T21:03:00.002-04:00

Today we’re looking at the web-chat offerings of both Apple and Microsoft. It should be little surprise to anyone that the dominant force in this pairing is Microsoft’s MSN (now Live) Messenger. Nearly everyone I know either has or has had an MSN account and used MSN Messenger with it. Although it seems to have fallen out of style more recently, the vast majority of people still seem to check it at least once-in-a-while. With that being the case there are many new reasons to re-examine Messenger. But first let’s look at what Apple has to offer.

iChat is Apple’s aptly named chat program. It’s no doubt that iChat has some pretty cool effects and can do some pretty neat things. For example, you can add video backdrops to your video chat to make it look like you’re some place that you’re not and you can make your own backdrops using your own pictures. You can make yourself look like you’re in a comic book and you show slideshow presentations. Plus there’s the usual stuff like SMS forwarding and Invisibility mode. Unfortunately iChat only works with either Macs or PCs using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) which Apple claims is the biggest messaging community in the US. That may be but it certainly isn’t elsewhere in the world (like Canada) and since less than 10% of computers worldwide are Macs (last I heard Macs were at 8% or so) it leaves you with a relatively small pool of potential ‘buddies’. Since only two of my friends currently use Mac and the rest are on PCs I’m certainly not about to switch over to AIM – or Mac for that matter.

Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) on the other hand works on both Macs and PCs. If you use a Mac and didn’t know this, you can reconnect with all the people you’ve left behind by downloading Messenger for Mac from the Microsoft website here (download the Windows Live one). As noted earlier, most people I know use Live Messenger and it’s a great way to communicate. The newest iteration of Messenger, Live Messenger 8 Beta for PCs (Macs are still on version 7) is available for download here. It has a number of new features including a totally new and customizable look, the ability to segregate contact lists, animated icons, the ability to change the size of icons, and the ability to override your friends’ names so that even when they use stupid names you can figure out who they are. (You know who I’m talking about.) Other features include the ability to use “scenes” which can include pictures that you drag and drop into the title bar to give your Messenger it’s own unique look as well as give you your own personal appearance online. (When your friends chat with you your window on their computer will look like what you choose.) There’s a ton of other stuff but if you want more details check out Paul Thurott’s site about it.

iCal & Live Calendar

2008-10-08T21:59:00.002-04:00

Today we’re taking a quick look at the Calendar offerings from both Apple and Microsoft. As usual, first up is Apple with it’s iCal.

iCal, short of course for ‘iCalendar’, has become a kind of standard in the cloud calendar world. In fact, the name of the standard link used by many calendar services like Google Calendar to syndicate (or share) calendars is indeed ‘ical’. iCal allows you to place events on a virtual calendar and share them between computers and iPhone/iPod Touch devices over the internet. Details of the event can be added including location, times and who’s attending. You can have a number of calendars for any number of different activities like work or TV schedules. (At least those are my main two…yes yes I know it’s pretty sad.) iCal is of course integrated with MobileMe which is how the information is shared between platforms.

Live Calendar is pretty much the exact same thing, so is Google Calendar for that matter although Google Calendar isn’t accessible without a web browser. As with iCal you can create, manage and share multiple calendars across a number of platforms – a major difference being that Live Calendar is free and can be accessed through a web browser on almost any device. (iCal uses MobileMe which has an annual fee of $99 and can only be accessed by Mac, PC, or iPhone/iPod Touch). Live Calendar can be downloaded separately or as part of Live Mail. Windows Calendar and with the newer Live Calendar is fully compatible with the iCal standard.

GarageBand & Songsmith

2008-10-07T21:30:00.002-04:00

Today we will be looking at ways of making music on your computer. It has long been that Apple cornered this market with the best way for average users to make their own funky tunes. Times are a-changin’ however as Microsoft is getting ready to introduce some software of its own.

GarageBand is Apple’s much-praised (and for good reason) program that let’s Joe Average make some pretty impressive sounding tracks right there on his Mac. GarageBand is a well-refined, easy to use, powerful music making program that lets you record, edit and mix all kinds of music. You pick the instruments, you set the arrangements and add the vocals and off you go. There are a number of expansion packs called JamPack’s that you can buy to enhance your music making abilities and you can record your stuff in CD quality. Pretty neat and probably fun although I’m not sure how long you’ll be able to maintain interest in pre-mixed instruments sounds that you add together to make music. Whether or not GarageBand provides hours of fun, it is a major selling point for the iLife suite.

Songsmith is the new Microsoft entry into this field. Fresh and not even out of Microsoft Research, it has yet to hit the Beta download scene. From what I understand, Songsmith is derived from a Microsoft Research project called “MySong” which allows users of “no musical training to rapidly create accompanied music.” MySong was a partnership between Microsoft and the University of Washington and its site can be found here. According to istartedsomething.com, Microsoft has recently filed a trademark application for “Songsmith” that is supposed to be a computer program that generates background music to accompany singers – hence its assumed association with MySong. Keep an eye out for Songsmith in the near future.

MobileMe & Live Spaces

2008-10-06T21:48:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I talked a little about MobileMe and Windows Live Spaces in the last post as being webspace where you can post blogs and stuff but they are oh-so-much-more than that!

MobileMe is Apple’s internet offering that allows subscribers to post content online. Note that I used the word subscribers and not users as Apple makes you pay an annual fee to use MobileMe ($99 USD/year). It, and Windows Live, are part of an increasing trend to migrate personal content to cyber-space or the ‘cloud’ and is more commonly known in the industry. The generic term for the trend is ‘cloud computing’. MobileMe stores email, contact, calendars, your files, and blogs online so that they are accessible wherever you have an internet connection and can be accessed by devices like an iPod Touch or iPhone, Mac or PC. (not-so-much other internet capable devices tho). MobileMe also offers up to 20GB of online storage for pictures or files or whatever you want. For a more detailed explanation of MobileMe take a look at Paul Thurrott’s excellent feature article on it.

Live Spaces is just one part of Microsoft’s cloud computing world. Like MobileMe, Microsoft offers cloud computing services for email, contacts, calenders, blogs and storage – the main differences being that they work well on PCs (MobileMe software doesn’t) and other internet-capable devices like iPhones and Palm Pilots/PDAs. Perhaps more importantly however is that all of the Live services are also free of charge! Live Spaces specifically refers to Microsoft’s online blog space (to which I also post) but most readers will be more familiar with Microsoft’s online email service Hotmail. Presently Hotmail is in the process of a mild rebranding to fall under the ‘Live’ brand although I have a feeling the name Hotmail will be around forever - it’s an icon of internet email after all! Be that as it may you can now get email addresses with @live.com or @live.ca as well as the legacy @hotmail.com accounts. Furthermore, as is the case with Apple and MobileMe, Microsoft has introduced downloadable software to more seamlessly introduce your cloud computing experience to your everyday life. You can now download Windows Live Mail which is a program that integrates email via hotmail or livemail account with your MSN contacts and your Windows Live Calendar. Of course the downloadable software is not critical to access all of this online content - any web browser will do the trick albeit not quite as smoothly. The online services can be accessed from Windows Live Home.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, Microsoft also offers online storage. While there is no downloadable interface for it yet, Windows Live SkyDrive is a free online storage solution that allows you to store up 5GB of stuff online and is accessible anywhere you want and by anyone on your MSN contact list that you authorise to access it. I agree that 5GB is much less than the 20GB offered by Apple but then again you don’t have to pay 100 bucks a year for it. If the 5GB limit is really a problem for you then there is also another Microsoft online storage solution currently being tested called Live Mesh which does have a downloadable interface but it is yet unclear exactly how Microsoft plans to integrate Live Mesh with the rest of its Live services and whether it will be rolled into SkyDrive or not. Live Mesh is a pretty neat system and you can check it out here. If you already have an MSN or Hotmail ID then you already have access to Live Mesh. Live Mesh also gives you another 5GB of online storage and a “Live Desktop” to access it with. The Live Desktop looks like a Windows Vista desktop but is accessible through any web browser as well as through the downloadable software. The really neat thing is that if you want to share more than 5GB of stuff you can add it to your mesh anyway and download it to other devices via peer-to-peer download. That means that if I want to have my 11 GBs of music available on a computer other than my desktop, I can add the folder to my Mesh and as long as the desktop is running I can access it over the internet on another computer. Pretty cool eh!? Thought so. For more info on all of the Windows Live services see Paul Thurrott’s excellent site.

iWeb & Live Writer

2008-10-04T23:58:00.002-04:00

Live Writer is perhaps my favourite Windows Live program and if you haven't checked it out you definitely should! Keeping with the format of my previous posts however, I will start with Apple's offering - iWeb.

iWeb allows users to create their own 'websites' (blogs) on MobileMe - of course you have to get Apple-designed themes which you can customize a little bit but are still very Apple (ie. 'Big Brother' - in typical Apple style of course!). iWeb has a couple of features that one would expect from such a program including 'Web widgets' which stream live content to your blog like RSS feeds and YouTube videos, 'Live previews' which let you look at your page before you publish, Google Maps, and Google AdSense which allow you to post map content and track your visitors, 'My Album pages' which lets you show pictures and movies, and finally 'Theme switching'. These features seem to be pretty standard to most blog sites so there's nothing that really stands out. Of course with iWeb you are limited to the much maligned MobileMe service which charges an annual fee to be a member of.

Live Writer is a sleek little program that helps you post content to your blog - on any blog site. Unlike iWeb, Live Writer doesn't limit you to one webpage hosting service. Of course the default blog service is Windows Live Spaces (duh, it's a Microsoft product) but you can just as easily add other popular blogging sites including Blogspot or Livejournal which then become the default blog. A really nice feature is that you can download plug-ins for Live Writer to make it even more powerful than the basic version...for free! These plug-ins match and better any of the features offered by iWeb while giving you ultimate control over your space. You can add YouTube videos, user statistics, modify the look of pictures (I like the Polaroid effect) and a myriad of other features to your blog like RSS feeds.
I use Live Writer every time I post to this blog. Not only can you use any blog on almost any blog site but you can use almost any number of blogs all from the same interface. For example, I maintain a blog on Blogspot as well as one in Live Journal and Windows Live Spaces and I can post different articles to each without ever leaving the program and with just a few clicks. If you change the theme on one of your blogs, Live Writer will update to reflect the change and of course you can preview your work before you post at any time to check and see if your content will display as you intended.

If you don't have Live Writer yet I suggest you download it! You can get the beta for the newest version of all Windows Live services here: http://download.live.com/

French-Language Leadership Debate

2008-10-02T00:57:00.003-04:00

So I'm watching the French-language leadership debate here (in Canada) tonight and it's striking how naive our leadership thinks we (the voting public) are. And maybe they are right. Maybe the vast majority of the public is that dumb, it wouldn't surprise me one bit, but I still find it insulting and I'm sure others do as well. All of them, and I mean all of the leaders, are spouting the untruths about the economy, and just about everything else, that most people seem to think are fact - possibly because many trust what their leaders say. These leaders aren't debating concrete positions, they are pandering to the ignorant masses while completely ignoring actual economic and other principles and thus wasting my time by not really debating anything of actual substance. Is this surprising? Not really, it's just depressing (since I have to watch this crap).

For example, all of the leaders were hammering Harper on how, thanks to two years of his government, the economy that was arguably running well under the Liberals, is now going down the tubes. Like it's entirely the Conservative's fault. Not only is that completely BS (governments exercise precious little control over the economy and their actions are only reflected years and years after a given policy was implemented) but Harper didn't even bother to address that basic untruths, rather he droned on about how his government has insulated Canada as best it could by cutting taxes etc. Perhaps, but the underlying assumption is that the Conservative government has somehow screwed up the economy and that's nonsense. It would be great if a government could determine whether this year is a boom or bust year, that way every year would be a boom year! (What government would want a recession?) Unfortunately the economy doesn't work that way. The economy will do what the economy will do. Today it is crapping out not from anything the Conservatives or any other politicians have done but from stupidity and greed in the United States lending market. Whether taxes go up or down by a percent or two will barely make a ripple in the real economy, regardless of what the leaders tell us. (Seriously, did YOU notice the drop in GST?!? Yay! I saved a penny, I'm going to be rich someday!!) Sure there may be some minor short term changes of spending behaviour and blips on the stock market but in the grand scheme of things I defy any statistician to show me definitively that a phased-in 2% GST cut spurred-on or somehow injured consumer spending and ruined the economy. I defy them to show me how an 'evil' corporate tax cut ruined the economy somehow. Whether you agree or not, Harper's tax cuts haven't really done much and neither would their restoration back to how they were - as the Liberals say they will do. (Of course the introduction of an entirely new tax may have some medium term impact while people adjust - like the introduction of the GST or Income tax or a carbon tax - but not the tinkering of a couple percentage points.) The economy goes up and down based on countless factors none of which can be controlled by any single entity. How retarded do the leaders think we are?!? They flatter each other pretending they exercise that much control on the economy. Is there an economic control room at Parliament Hill I haven't heard about? Does it have levers and buttons and can I push one?!?!

And the environment! OMFG! Talk about pandering to ignorance! Don't talk to us about cutting carbon emissions Mr. Dion, it was your party that signed and then ignored the Kyoto accord. Like we'll believe you when you say oh, that was an 'oopsy' and won't happen again! Not that you could have really done anything about it anyway since it's basically stupid to assume that the Liberals could somehow tell everyone to stop heating their homes or driving their cars but please don't take the moral high ground by pretending that the Conservatives are totally ignoring Kyoto, they're just doing what you did. Nothing, because none of these people can really do much about global warming anyway.

And what the hell is a "Green Mortgage" anyway!?!?

What a load of crap! Let's face it, if Canada disappeared from the planet, the environment wouldn't even notice the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Let's not pretend we're important greenhouse players because we're not - unless you count our clout on the international stage to make treaties and stuff but thanks to a decade of the Liberals we don't really have much of that anymore either. But don’t speak poorly of the church of environmentalism or they (mostly the Greens) will smite you! Look-out, I think an eco-thunderbolt is headed my way!!

The best part of the debate by far was when leaders had to say something nice about the person next to them. Oh the hilarity!! Elizabeth May REALLY despises Harper doesn't she!?!? "You're a good father." What the hell is that?!?!? Yah, don't talk about policies or anything that matters to the country or even try to find common ground...he's a good dad...that's nice...should make working together much easier now. She later explained that it was because she could never get to really know him and that it’s all his fault for being so shy. Right, it couldn’t possibly be because of her crazy and irritating enviro-rantings and the fact that if you don’t believe what she does she’ll shout you down in public until you submit. Real team-building qualities those are!

And Comrade Layton...love your narratives and stories bud. Other politicians and commentators make points by using stuff like facts and principles but you make points with little anecdotes about your father...kinda like the parables Jesus used...Hey, do you think it's because his theories aren't based in reality and he's just making stuff up? *cough* Like Jesus did? *cough* Maybe the best thing about Layton is that he'll whore himself for votes (that’s right, he’s a vote-whore) no matter how crazy the position he has to take is. (Sikh extremist parade in Vancouver after the Air India bombing anyone?! Yep, Jack was there!)

And just to be clear Mr. Dion, semi-automatic weapons ARE used for hunting. What your (and May's) position tells me is that you're making policy on stuff you simply don't understand and haven't bothered to research but instead are once again playing to the ignorant masses who’ve never hunted or seen a real rifle and won’t be affected by any kind of ban no matter how ill-conceived. That’s what’s really dangerous, not licensed and locked semi-automatic weapons – but un-researched, poorly conceived policies. The term semi-automatic only means that after you fire a round from your rifle it will reload a round by itself. (And there's a limit of 5 rounds per magazine.) We're not talking military weapons here, those are automatic weapons with semi-auto modes and are already illegal, we're talking hunting rifles with a 200 year old invention built in. Eff'n Tards. Ever heard of Google?!? And why is semi-auto good to have hunting? For the same reason power steering in your car is good to have while parking. It doesn't make you go any faster, you just don't have to struggle with the machine. Because it reloads itself, if you miss your dear/moose/whatever animal you want to eat, you can try again without loosing your sight picture. Still don’t understand? Read a book. Research and innovation, ain't it grand?!?

And don't think you're getting off easy Harper, your stance on crime is retarded. Yah, just throw more people in jail, that'll make it all better! Hey better yet, let's build a penal colony in the Arctic and you can solve the Arctic sovereignty issue at the same time! BAH I HATE POLITICS! And don't even get me started on what they said about Afghanistan! May is a hippie-moron that wants our troops to put out forest fires rather than be soldiers. Duceppe made a good point at first about committing more resources to the mission but then he equated Harper to Bush and said we should just give up. (Cop out!) Layton is the same tool he's always been and wants to convert the military to rent-a-cops or some-damn-thing and Harper, you waffle!! I've not even talking to you anymore. You make Dion sound reasonable! And Dion! You didn't even answer the damn question! Yah, let's just negotiate with people who put axes through the heads of the people they disagree with...good plan! Would you like to be the negotiator Taliban Jack? I volunteer you, you're a nice guy, maybe they'll let you keep your skull in one piece for a little while longer than most! (BTW, for those of you interested, the soldier that had the axe put through his head is doing much better now but still struggling according to the media. Poor guy, I wish him all the best.)

Back to the rant tho, did you know that war causes death?!? Good catch May!! You get a gold star! (She said it like it was news.) And Layton, face it, you will NEVER become Prime Minister, but keep livin' the dream man - whatever helps you sleep at night.

To wrap it up, basically all of our politicians are idiots and for the first time in my adult life I wish I could participate in the US election just so I can vote for someone that seems worthwhile. (And by that I am referring to Obama of course although to be honest McCain isn't that bad, it's just Palin that scares me...and the religulousness) I understand now why more than half of all eligible voters decide not to vote in Canada, maybe they're the smart ones? I certainly feel dumber for watching our politicians debate – and not because they dazzled me with their brilliance, more like killed my brain cells with their contagious stupidity. And what will our politicians do when Bush leaves office? They will have no one to make fun of anymore! To whom will they compare Harper?!?

Hey, look at that!! The bailout passed, the world won't end after all I guess....take that CNN! (Remind me to do a rant on the media some day, it'll be fun!)

Autumn Has Arrived

2008-09-22T19:05:00.001-04:00

Today, I fell asleep in the summer and woke up in the fall. Fall officially started at 11:45am EDT this morning and yes I slept past 11 because I’m on nights this week.

As for my on-going saga of Windows Live and iLife comparisons, I will continue them but I have to finish moving into my new place first before I can devote some more time to the project. Also, Microsoft is rolling out it’s “Wave 3” of Windows Live services making them better than before and fixing many of the shortfalls I’ve noted in the posts I’ve already made here. Needless to say those posts will need updating.

iDVD & DVD Maker

2008-08-28T20:53:00.001-04:00

And we continue the little overview of Mac and PC applications with iDVD and Windows DVD Maker. Mac and PC…I’ve always wondered why Apple has chosen to differentiate itself from Microsoft machines by calling Windows machines “PC”s and Apple machines “Mac”s. Perhaps it’s because Apple feels it’s machines are not merely computers or something? Afterall, PC stands for Personal Computer – a term which Apple itself coined I believe - which means that both brands are, in fact, PCs. From what I understand of Apple commercials isn’t that what Macs are striving to be? Personal Computers? Computers for every person? Whatever. Here’s what I’ve found out about iDVD and Windows DVD Maker, programs for both flavours of Personal Computer.

iDVD

Despite what the picture shows, iDVD does not only do black and white. That’s just what turned up when I did a photo search for iDVD. iDVD lets you make DVDs out of QuickTime (big surprise) videos, mp3’s, and pictures. It comes as part of Apple’s iLife suite and includes a number of themes into which you can drop content like movies or pictures. It comes with both widescreen and standard aspect ratios and if you use iMovie it will automatically create scene selection menus and chapters.

Windows DVD Maker

Windows DVD Maker has 20 built in menu styles and you should be able to download more soon or, if you prefer, you can make your own. Windows DVD maker comes with Vista – just do a search for it and it’ll show up. DVD Maker will take your Movie Maker videos and turn them into DVDs just like iDVD does with iMovie videos. Also like iDVD, DVD Maker works with related photo software, in this case Photo Gallery. DVD Maker lets you customize just about anything about your DVD including menus, text, notes, and aspect ratio. DVD Maker also automatically makes its own chapters.

So, basically the two programs seem to do pretty much the same things in almost the same ways…yet again. Where is all the differentness of Apple stuff that makes Macs so much different than PCs to warrant a new category of computers? They both look like Personal Computers to me.

Starbucks has free Wi-fi!!!

2008-08-26T21:00:00.001-04:00

Sorry to break up my uber-long series on iLife & Live but I’ve got some really important news to share!!!!! That’s right, as the above title proclaims, Starbucks is now offering two hours of free high-speed Wi-fi Internet access in Canada through its Bell Wi-fi Hotspots! (I’m using it right now and it even comes with a handy little countdown window!!!) All you need is a registered Starbucks gift card and you can use it to get 2 hours of free Wi-Fi access, each and every day of the month. It’s not unlimited access like you find at Bridgehead mind you, but 2 hours should be enough for most people and it’s certainly enough for me. If you don’t yet have a registered Starbucks card then buy one, register it online (at home of course) and away you go! The only caveat is that you need to actually use your Starbucks card once a month for more than just free Internet but that’s no biggie, just load it with the amount of your next purchase and use it to pay for that purchase and you’re good to go! If you want more time online get two cards, or three!! I’m pretty sure just about anyone can figure out how to use each card at least once a month to keep the Internet coming! Unfortunately it doesn’t work with my Starbucks Duetto Visa card yet even though it doubles as a gift card but I’m hoping they’ll get that working soon. Until then I’ll just use the gift card I got for a birthday present, or Claude’s card like I am right now since I forgot my gift card at home.

iMovie & Movie Maker

2008-08-21T18:14:00.001-04:00

iMovie

Another part of the iLife suite is iMovie which helps you, as the name suggests, make movies. Since I generally don’t have access to a Mac I’ll be giving you an overview of the different features that have been published online rather than a comparison or critique (hence the title has ‘&’ rather than ‘vs’). From what I understand, iMovie allows users to import video footage that you can then split, edit, reorganize and manage your videos to help you make professional looking movies. You can add music, adjust timing of different video segments, add transitions, add credits, and add video effects like slow motion or still frames. iMovie lets you publish your movies as QuickTime movies (.mov) or you can publish them online on YouTube, or presumably, iWeb. iMovie 08 has High Definition support and via iDVD you can also burn your movies to disc. iMovie uses a similar interface to iPhoto but there is a restriction on the type of codecs iMovie can use which means that iMovie limits the types of movies it can produce probably meaning that it can’t make popular formats like DivX or .mpg although I could be wrong.

Movie Maker

Windows has a similar program built into the Windows operating system called Windows Movie Maker. It lets you do all of the same stuff as iMovie when it comes to video manipulation and with DVD Maker you can burn your movies to DVD as well. Movie Maker lets you publish your movies in multiple formats including .wmv as well as .avi and several HD formats too. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can publish the movies directly to the Internet although there is an option to publish to email. This isn’t necessarily a huge drawback since you can upload them manually to almost any website like YouTube but it would be nice to publish to YouTube directly. Overall both programs seem to be about the same with the exception of the YouTube thing and the different formats thing. Personally I find QuickTime movies harder to work with because of the proprietary nature of the files. You can always convert wmv and avi files to DivX with the DivX converter program but not so with .mov files.

iPhoto vs. Live Photo Gallery

2008-08-21T00:46:00.002-04:00

iPhoto

For the first part of my little series about Mac and PC capabilities I will be examining iPhoto and Windows Live Photo Gallery. First up, iPhoto. iPhoto is part of Apple’s iLife software suite and from what I can see it is a pretty powerful little program. Of course iPhoto and Live Photo Gallery are not nearly as powerful – or as complicated – as more professional photo software like Adobe’s Photoshop but unlike Photoshop both iPhoto and Live Photo Gallery are free. iPhoto of course is only available on the Mac but it is included with the purchase of a new computer system which is nice. It boasts a nice graphical user interface (GUI – pronounced ‘gooey’) and it lets you upload pictures to the web (iWeb), order prints online and, something that I think is really neat, it lets you create your own personal coffee table book which you then order online and have delivered right to your home.

One thing that I don’t like about iPhoto is that it takes over where your pictures are stored which could be bad if you have an established folder hierarchy. It also does not allow you to rename your picture files, only the pictures names you see in the program. In addition to this does not overwrite the original picture file when you edit the photos which could be annoying if you edit a picture you like then go to open it and find that the edited one is stored in another location on your computer - of Apple’s choosing of course. Because iPhoto stores pictures where iPhoto wants it could lead to the duplication of your photo collection if you like to save your pictures in a folder of your own choosing - like My Pictures – rather than surrendering control to almighty Apple. Such a set up could lead to a needless waste of space unless you do everything in iPhoto but personally I prefer to keep my pictures where I choose and not where a piece of software tells me to keep them.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is an improvement over the Windows Photo Gallery that comes as default with Windows Vista. Live Photo can be downloaded for free from Microsoft and works on both Vista and XP. Like iPhoto, Live Photo also has a nice GUI and can upload pictures to the web to either MS Live Spaces or Flickr. You can order prints online and make slide shows etc. just like with iPhoto but unfortunately you can’t make a coffee table book. It also has some pretty decent photo editing capabilities but like I said earlier neither of the programs beat the commercial stuff and really, who would want them to? What is very nice about Live Photo is that it maintains your folder hierarchy and ‘monitors’ the folders you tell it to thus leaving all your pictures where they are and updating itself if you move or delete photos, or change their file names. Another nice feature is that when you edit is photo it changes the original file and creates a backup of the unedited version should you need it later. This is nice because most of the time I find that I edit pictures to make them better (ie removing redeye) and the picture I want to use afterward is the one I’ve fixed so it’s nice to have the fixed picture where the original one used to be. Of course if I decided later that I don’t like the edits I can always get out the backup. One final neat feature is that you can tag your photos, noting a place or people that are in the pic to make searching for them easier in the future. This is a nice feature but I think that more-often-than-not people won’t take the time to tag their photos, but it’s nice to have the option anyway.

What I don’t like is the fact that Microsoft doesn’t simply ship Windows Live Photo Gallery with Windows Vista by default, you have to download it. I think this is a bad move because it forces consumers to be proactive which most are not and are thus left with an inferior program and a bad notion of what Windows can do vs a Mac. The GUI is nice but perhaps not quite as polished as iPhoto although rumour has it that Microsoft is planning a visual refresh of its Live services in the near future so we’ll have to wait and see. Other than that, Live Photo and iPhoto seem to be fairly evenly matched and neither Mac users nor Windows users are, on the whole, missing out from anything in the Photo world (commercial software notwithstanding).

Apple’s iLife vs. Windows’ Live

2008-08-16T01:43:00.001-04:00

For the next little while I’ve decided to compare iLife to Windows Live (along with a few other bits of software as well). Recently, I was curious about what iLife actually included and what I found looked pretty neat which got me to thinking that the ‘iCabal’ (Mac groupies) may actually be justified in making claims that Mac’s are so much better than PC’s. As a Linux/Windows guy I decided to look online for some comparisons between the offerings of both Apple and Microsoft to see if there are any similarities and perhaps any major differences. To my surprise I didn’t find anything that really did a side-by-side comparison between what Apple offers with iLife and what Microsoft offers with Windows Live. Since I can’t seem to find it online then, I have decided to put it online myself. (Like the saying goes…’ If you want something done write you’d better do it yourself’)

I will try to be as even handed as I can be but I am a PC user with mostly Windows experience although I do find Macs to be very pretty. Here goes….!

First I will start with some definitions of sorts. For those of you who don’t know, iLife is a software suite (group of programs) that Apple seems to think are the ‘cat’s meow’ and a major reason you, the consumer, should dump Windows and switch to Mac. According to the Apple website, iLife includes:
- iPhoto
- iMovie
- iDVD
- iWeb
- MobileMe
- GarageBand

Although not strictly part of iLife, the following programs do help complete the software bundle you need to get the most out of your computer and come free with the Mac. For the purposes of this review then I will also throw in the following programs:
- iCal
- iChat
- iTunes

These programs supposedly make Macs ‘more fun’ than PC’s, at least according to the TV commercials anyway. They let you play with your music, pictures, movies, and friends. (Though they don’t let you play with your friends using actual games on your computer. Those only come out on the PC. Ever hear of a big Halo gamer using a Mac? Didn’t think so.)

Microsoft, while perhaps not as good as Apple at marketing, also has a group of programs that perform similar functions to those you find on a Mac with iLife. Those programs are:
- Live Photo Gallery
- Movie Maker
- DVD Maker
- Live Writer
- Live Spaces
- Live Calendar
- Live Messenger
- Windows Media Player

You’ll notice just by the names that Microsoft has just about managed to match every program offered by Apple except one – GarageBand. Microsoft does not seem to offer anything similar but I have some ideas as to why that might be (more on this later). Apart from GarageBand, Microsoft and Apple appear to be pretty evenly matched leading me to think that maybe Mac’s don’t have a monopoly on ‘fun’ after all (obviously games not withstanding). In subsequent posts will give you an overview of each of the offerings and let you decide for yourself which you like best. For now however, if you’re a Windows user use the above lists to check out what Microsoft has on offer. All of the above mentioned programs are free to download and install – you might be surprised what they can do!! You can find all the Live stuff here and all the Movie stuff here (set the ‘category’ to “entertainment” to see the rest).

Roomba Roomba!!!!

2008-07-22T14:02:00.001-04:00

It’s here!! Yay!!!

RAM

2008-07-15T11:20:00.001-04:00

When I bought my laptop a year ago this August, you could say that I was less than impressed with it's performance. I don't expect laptops to perform as well as desktops of course, that would be foolish since laptops are by definition a compromise between power and size due to the required miniaturization that must be done to cram all that stuff into a such a small package. That said, I was expecting it to at least play mp3's without problems and be mostly responsive. Unfortunately just after I bought the computer it was much slower than I would have ever guessed. I attributed most of that to Vista which, as it turns out, wasn't entirely correct. The mp3 glitch was in fact a driver problem which has since been corrected, as have a few others. That said, although the computer is a little faster thanks to new drivers now, Vista still requires a significant amount of resources just to exist.

The laptop I bought is a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion TX1220Ca "Entertainment" PC. It is also a tablet PC which I find surprisingly handy! Unfortunately it only comes with 2GB of factory installed RAM. According to HP this is the maximum amount of ram that one can install in this machine. I even called their tech support line to confirm that this was indeed the case as I noticed that HP has since released a newer version of my laptop with identical specs but with 4GB of ram. The new model also has an updated BIOS (F.11). A quick check of my BIOS said that I actually now have version F.12 - newer and presumably better than the F.11 version. Armed with this information I went on the Internet determined to see if I can upgrade the RAM in my machine despite what the "official" HP specs say. Some sites I found said yes, others said no. It was this confusion that precipitated the call to tech support who also said no I can't. Of course to me this made no sense since I have identical hardware and with the upgrades since release, identical software and drivers as the newer (and more expensive) version of my trusty old tablet. Why can't mine take as much RAM as the new one?

Then I got an idea, I went to a RAM manufacturer's website and did a search. The first one I tried also said no but I'm persistent (just ask my GF) and finally I came upon Kingston's website where I did a search by computer make and model. It said that I could!! (yay) So, figuring I could always return it if their website lied, I bought two 2GB sticks for a total of 4GB of RAM. (The new version of my laptop has a stated max of 4GB). Sure enough, I popped out the 'old' ram, popped in the new RAM and what do you know?!? It works!! There is one caveat however. Because the installed version of Windows Vista is a 32-bit version, Vista is only able to recognize about 3.5GB of RAM for itself. This is due to some physical addressing limit that I don't fully understand but if the installed version of Vista were 64-bit it would recognize the entire 4Gigs. This isn't a huge problem however because the video card also uses the system RAM too since it doesn't have any RAM of it's own (like most Desktop video cards do) and as it turns out it need about 500 MBs which is about 0.5GB so it all works out in the end. Now my laptop is much better, it's faster, more responsive, and Vista seems to be a bit happier (it's only using 32% of the RAM now as opposed to something like 55-60% before).

All hail more RAM!!!

Today we remember…

2008-07-14T12:06:00.001-04:00

…André Hamel. He was a homeless person by choice here in Ottawa and had been for many many years. I remember as a kid when I would go with my mom to pick up or drop off my dad from work, André would be sitting at the corner of Sussex and Rideau next to what is now the Chapters with his black dog “Buff”. They would eat dog food together but would never really beg like most homeless people do. André was even interviewed once by CBC Radio because they used to broadcast from the Chateau Laurier and had no doubt seen him every day on their way to and from work. They asked him why he was on the street and such. He told his story and explained that dog food wasn’t so bad to eat and that this way he only had to buy one type of food. This was back sometime around 1989 or so. It was a very long time ago but I remember listening to the radio and hearing the interview and saying “I know the guy they’re talking about!!” since I’d seen him almost every day as well. Now it is possible that the interview was with an entirely different homeless person, after all it was almost 20 years ago, but I’m fairly sure it was indeed André that was interviewed. Assuming it is the same person then, years ago André must have moved his “office” from its Sussex and Rideau location to somewhere on Queen Street. As a result I haven’t seen him since - until today when his story made the front page of the City section of the Ottawa Citizen. He died last Friday of a heart attack leaving behind his black dog “Buff”. Judging by the article, he will be missed as he was one of the city’s unofficial “information centres”, giving out tourist advice and news. He was perhaps something of an institution in Ottawa.

RIP.

Roomba!!

2008-07-13T15:37:00.001-04:00

I've just finished putting enough money away so that when we move into our own place Claude and I can get a Roomba to vacuum for us! Yay Roomba! Aren't they cute?!?

Case in Point

2008-07-09T00:42:00.001-04:00

First, I'd like to than Jessica - of Capital Capital blog fame - for her kind words about my blog. You can view her blog by either clicking the hyperlinked-text above or in the column on the right-hand side of this page.

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks because I've been pretty busy at work lately but this post is a long one (and a good one if you as me! which seeing as how you're reading my blog you implicitly did...) so I hope it was worth the wait. Enjoy!

As if to prove my point in my recent post on gas prices, the CBC obliged - that very same day - with exactly the sort of story I was talking about. (I know I said I wouldn’t bother to research because I’m lazy and stuff but as luck would have it the research came to me - via the television of course!) The segment I will be critiquing aired on June 25th at 21:45 hrs on CBC’s The National. It is a stellar example of all the fearmongering I was talking about in the previous post. Here’s the transcript I grabbed off the closed captioning that came in.

Peter Mansbridge: Kelly Crowe again. She has one man’s vision of the future, and it isn’t funny.

Kelly Crowe: Remove oil from the tapestry of modern life, and something disturbing happens because oil is built into almost everything from critical medical equipment to everyday objects. If a reliable supply of cheap oil vanishes, our way of life will begin to blink out.

Interview: We’ve already entered the zone of what I call the long emergency, a period of turbulence and hardship and economic distress that’s going to go on for quite a while.

Kelly: Meet James Howard-Kunzler, author, futurist, working on his backyard gardening skills because, he says, we’re going to need them. The era of cheap oil is almost over. In the beginning, the energy in agriculture came from animals and men. Then there was oil to fuel the machines to make the fertilizers and chemicals. Meaning bigger farms, further from markets so that now the food on our plates depends entirely on cheap oil.

Sounds pretty grim but there are a couple of things I'd like to point out before we get too deeply into the piece. First, the not-so-unspoken assumption in this report is that oil supplies will somehow run out rather quickly once they start to go, or at least in such an abrupt way that people and society will not have time to adapt to the new reality which will cause a sudden end to the way of life we've become accustomed to. This underlying assumption is false for two important reasons. The first is that oil cannot simply stop flowing one day. There are hundreds if not thousands of oil fields and millions of wells, all of which will not run dry at the exact same time or even close– it’s simply impossible. Adding to that impossibility is the fact that oil is not only pumped from the ground. As anyone in Alberta is aware, Canada often claims to have more oil than the majority of the Middle East in Alberta’s Oilsands. While it's a bit harder to get at, and more expensive, it's a ready supply that can last us many years to come at current and predicted global levels of consumption if required. We also can (and do) create oil from other sources. Virtually any source of biomass (plants, food, and anything organic) can produce things like ethanol. Most ethanol today is made from corn (which is admittedly a bad idea but I won't get into that right now). Ethanol, however, can also be made from any other carbon based biomass including sugarcane (Brazil makes this), wood scraps (left over from the lumber and paper industries), algae (like the stuff that cleans the poop from our sewage water), or even garbage (like from the dump and yes there are companies already working on that which have recently produced usable fuel!) All of these sources have ever increasing potential to provide us with a secure and reliable source of ‘oil’ should the wells ever begin to dry up. That coupled with emerging alternative energy sources and the 'no-oil no-future' assumption becomes even weaker.

The second reason the underlying assumptions in the report are wrong is because humans are clever little buggers and we always seem to find a way out of a jam. (The guy might be defeatist though so maybe that’s why he has discounted human ingenuity?) In fact, humans have a proven and amazing track record at finding the next best thing, which usually turns out to be far better than the thing it replaced. (This gives me, at least, a sense of hope for the future.) Society never goes backwards. We will not return to horse buggies (sorry horse-lovers out there!) and we will not “turn off” the Internet because we will not run out of energy. As noted above, smart people are working on clever ways of getting around high oil prices and the higher they get the faster they work – and they already have some astonishing results. (Do your own damn research on this one though, the Economist had a good special on that - look it up!) I won’t go into the details too much but many places are already “off oil” like Brazil which, while still technically using oil, derives its oil from domestically-grown sugarcane. It has so much of it "sugar-oil" that it exports the stuff which is a ‘drop-in’ substitute for gasoline and diesel to other countries. Anyway back to the report;

James: Remember, you can state categorically everything organized at the giant scale is going to get in trouble in the post-cheap oil era, including the 3,000-acre farms in the Midwest and Saskatchewan, the giant scale things. We got a lot of fertilizers made from natural gas, which is a hydrocarbon oil-related product, and a lot of herbicides and pesticides made from oil, and a lot of diesel fuel to run enormous machines on enormous tracts of land. We grow the tomatoes and the lettuce in California, and we truck them across the continent, and that’s been a luxury of the cheap oil age where, you know, the truckers can’t afford to take these loads. You know, I think as time goes on, it’s going to become just prohibitively expensive to do this. We’re going to have to grow food on a more modest scale, probably on smaller farms, and probably in a way that will require more human attention. A lot of the best farmland that is approximate to our cities has been turned over to suburbs. We’re not going to get that land back anytime soon if at all.

While all perhaps technically true - the food supply does use more oil products now than before, our intrepid "futurist” friend is overlooking some pretty important facts. Solutions already exist for pretty much every ‘problem’ he highlights here. For example, although natural gas can and does come from oil, it also comes from decomposing biomass and even cow butts. While it may be hard to capture cow farts, it is possible to capture much of the natural gas emitted from landfills. Some cities in fact do this already although sadly I don’t think Ottawa is one of those cities. (I could be wrong however so if you know that Ottawa does this or not feel free to comment.) Most cities don’t bother because it’s not worth it. Natural gas is still relatively cheap so there is little incentive to produce more of it or invest in the infrastructure required to capture it (although that may now be changing). Some companies also produce natural gas from coal which, like oil, was at one time the backbone of our society until it started to ‘run-out’ in the late 19th century and caused much angst at the time (society would crumble without coal, industrial revolution would cease, what will we do!?!? – sound familiar?). Incidentally coal is now cheaper and more abundant than ever. If worst comes to worst and we simply can’t find ANYTHING to replace natural gas, we’ll just turn coal into natural gas, or any biomass for that matter because we can but I doubt it will come to that, we're a pretty clever bunch.

Furthermore, as organic-food eaters (*cough* hippies *cough*) already know, we have alternatives to conventional pesticides so we won’t all starve because bugs are eating our crops. Ever hear of ‘organic chemistry'? Yeah, enough said. If trucks are too expensive, we’ll just use electric trains. The the Europeans have been doing it for years. (Trucking stuff long distance is inefficient and stupid anyway, North Americans only do it because it’s cheap and easy and because we suck at trains - for now, the rest of the world relies on trains more though – go figure.) So we’ll still have California lettuce - and Ontario lettuce for that matter. We’ll also still have Florida oranges which might even be fresher because they’ll take a high-speed train up from Florida now instead of a bouncy-slow truck...maybe...(or they could just take a big boat that runs on Brazilian 'sugar oil'). We can also still have big farms. If we can make plugin-electric cars then why not plugin-electric tractors? Just because no one has done it yet doesn't mean it's impossible. No problem is insurmountable. Back to the report;

Kelly: Oil built the suburbs. In the '50's, the car made it possible to live outside the city, and so began the suburban building boom that continues to this day, vast expanses of homes that face an uncertain future if it becomes too expensive to drive a car.

James: The suburban project is over, and we'll see our cities contracting substantially, and the suburbs around the big cities getting into a lot of trouble, losing value, losing their usefulness, and I think we will see people coming back to the smaller towns, to the smaller cities that are scaled appropriately to the energy diet of the future, and places that have a meaningful relations with a productive agricultural hinterland.

Oh dear! Someone had better tell General Motors about this because they're working on a car that is coming out in a year called the Chevy Volt and if suburbs vanish then who will buy the new car!??! Oh wait that's right...GM already thought of that so the new car doesn't need gas (although it can still use it) because it has a 40 Mile (65 km) electric range (1000 km gas/electric range) and can be recharged by either an onboard generator or by plugging it in at home or in the parking lot at work. That's right, it's an electric car and it exists today (but you can't buy it quite yet. It can still use gas for the generator but it's the first step toward being "gas free" like the add says - checkout the Volt blog in the links on the right ===>) According to GM-Volt.com, it will be revealed this coming September. Notionally you can plug it into a solar array and drive it 'off grid' if you wish and I'm sure some people will do just that! For a self-proclaimed 'futurist' this guy is really stuck in the past!

Kelly: Transportation in the industrial age started with railways, trains powered by steam [actually coal since you have to make steam first - Mike] and then by coal [actually diesel since steam/coal was already mentioned...nevermind - Mike]. Later, the landscape was carved up for highways, and airplanes filled the skies. Take away cheap oil and everything will change. Waterways could be the highways of the future.

James: The basic equation is it's absolutely the cheapest way to move large quantities of stuff. Far and away even more efficient and economic than rail,although I personally have hopes that we are going to revive our railroad system. [Here Here! - Mike] There is another project that we could do right away that would have a bigger impact on our oil use than restoring passenger railroad service in North America. [...which actually still uses oil because we don't have electric trains here... - Mike] It's imperative that we do this because we may not have a way to get around long distances in a couple of years without it. [...except for cars like the Volt and the new Prius plug-ins that is...a couple of years?! really?! - Mike] The airlines are not making it on the current equation of fuel costs and there's no way that they can make it and pass on the costs to the users and still have a middle class ridership base. [...except of course those airlines that are, like Southwest and Westjet, and if they change to a fuel like synthetic jet fuel made from algae which is fast on the way to becoming cheaper than oil then who knows...! - Mike] I imagine that air travel is going to be a much more elite activity, at least for a while, and then it may disappear altogether. [Like going backwards through time!! First everyone can fly, then only the rich and the no one! Like history, only backwards! Good one futurist!!] What happens when a large fraction of the population can no longer participate in the happy motoring system, you know, they can't afford the gas for the vehicles [unless of course they drive Plugin Electric Vehicles or "PHEV's" like the new Volt and Prius - Mike], they can't afford to buy the vehicles [so normal car prices are out of reach for the middle class?], and they're sort of foreclosed from the whole thing, does that generate a lot of grievance and resentment against the people who are still motoring? [Ummm yes?...I suppose...if it were true which it isn't...but good rhetorical question man! not!] And are the people who are not motoring going to pay for the road maintenance and the improvements and the tremendous costs of maintaining the infrastructure for the happy motoring? I'm not convinced that they will.

The more astute readers will have noticed that I've resigned myself to giving a running commentary. This is because I've largely made the points that I want to make and that if I don't do a running commentary this post will take forever. From now on the stuff in square brackets '[]' is mine! On we go! Almost done!!

Kelly: What about solar power, wind power? Trouble is it takes cheap oil to build the machines for alternative fuel. [Ah the balanced reporter finally playing devil's advocate! (weakly I might add) *sigh* Too bad she forgot to mention that turbines aren't made out of oil, they're only made with the help of oil - for which there are numerous viable alternatives substitutes as previously noted.]

James: Many of the alternative energy systems that we have invested our hopes in actually depend on an underlying oil economy to be able to even make them happen. You know, I think that the solar and wind industries are examples of that. Without an underlying oil economy or fossil fuel economy, it's very hard to produce the components for these giant wind turbines and for solar arrays. [Ah the chicken and the egg problem, how will you build alternative energy sources without alternatives to oil? If only I could figure out how the first tool-making machine was built if they didn't have the tools to build it...hmmm] I think that we should use alternative energies and we're going to use alternative energies, but we're probably going to be disappointed in what they can do for us. [Um....why?] We're probably going to have to make other arrangements for all the major activities of everyday life. [No, wait!! I want to know why!?!? Bah!]

Kelly: Life after cheap oil will be slower, shaped by whatever takes the least amount of energy. [Note to self: must make remote control for fridge-to-couch food delivering robot so I don't have to get up...oh...you mean like energy energy not my energy...got it.] There could be fighting over remaining resources. Wood and coal will be burned creating pollution and hastening global warming. [Alas, the mention of GW - can't talk about oil without paying homage to the GW gods. That would a sin you know!]

James: So many people assume that we're entitled to a smooth segue, [what ever happened to Segways anyway? I hear they were pretty smooth...not so good on snow though I bet eh?] a smooth transition between where we're at not and where we're headed in the post-oil period, and I wouldn't assume that at all. You know, I think that what we're going to see is a lot of political trouble and quite a lot of economic and social distress as incomes are lost and jobs are lost and ways of life become untenable, and we're going to see a politics of resentment and grievance on the part of a large new former middle class people who, you know, had expectations about a certain kind of life. I worry, I suppose, most about social disorder and the potential for, um, the great losses that people experience mounting in to anger and grievance and violence and criminal behaviour and a law enforcement system that will not be able to keep up with this, and really, an unravelling social contract in the face of absolutely extraordinary circumstances. [ Holy doom and gloom batman! Maybe I should just buy a gun, build a bunker and learn hydroponics! - If you need cheering up after that, the Economist magazine featured a more happy picture of the 'post-oil' future based on historical precedent, current and foreseeable technological innovations, and anticipated market forces driving companies to innovate and improve efficiency. I like their ideas better because they are both happier and they can back up their claims with actual...you know...facts.]

Kelly: It's an extreme view, [oh goody, finally some critical commentary!!!] but for those who try to imagine a world without cheap oil, the entire tapestry of modern life begins to unravel. [What?! That's it!? That's your critical commentary?!?! So close...] Kelly Crowe, CBC News.

So much for the 'skeptical journalist' concept...maybe I'm expecting too much from our publicly funded national news service by seeking neutral and largely unbiased reports based on factual evidence and rigorous research. It's probably easier just interviewing some American crackpot who thinks the world is going to end and that he'll be able to survive it with his backyard garden and a hunting knife.

You're probably tired of reading this by now, and I'm tired of writing it so I will let the issue rest. I've made my point - for now. If you'd like to oppose my views or discuss the issue further feel free to leave comments!!! I will reply, I promise!

Air(ish) Show!!!

2008-06-29T21:41:00.001-04:00

So as I’ve mentioned previously, Ottawa had an air show in town this weekend. We went both days because my grandfather got tickets for Saturday since he’s a veteran. Unfortunately it rained the entire time so it wasn’t much of an air show. That said, a couple of flights got to go when the rain let up enough. The Aurora made a couple of low passes as did the Hornet plus a crazy guy in a Cadet (tiny plane like a Piper Cub). We also got to see the static displays which was cool. An American Herc was the biggest plane there but there was also a bunch of war birds too.

Today was much better. It was sunny and most of the acts got up although they had to cut the snowbirds short due to a thunderstorm (for those of you reading Jessica’s “Capital Capital” blog it was the same storm). Anyway, the hornet came back for a much better performance and it was all caught on HD video by my dad's camera. Good times and next year I bring better sunscreen and a bigger umbrella, even if it's sunny.

Jets are cool.

Free Wi-Fi, how about it Starbucks??

2008-06-26T01:19:00.001-04:00

On another blog I frequently read, the author - Paul Thurott - recently wrote a piece about what he feels is wrong with Starbucks. As a frequent and regular patron of at least two local Starbucks shops here in Ottawa, I was naturally interested in what he had to say. You can find a link to his post here. What he basically said is that Starbucks has begun to lose its charm – and I have to say that I tend to agree with him. For me Starbucks is not just about coffee, it’s about atmosphere as well. While I agree with Paul that the coffee is a little on the expensive side I would not trade it for the fast-food style coffee of Tim Horton’s as he so readily does with Dunkin’ Donuts, nor would I necessarily trade the Starbucks experience with Second Cup or Bridgehead – Starbucks’ more immediate Canadian competitors. What Starbucks offers has been traditionally different from these other chains. There is something to be said about curling up on living-room furniture with a nice warm cup of chocolate-filled coffee and a good book on a rainy autumn evening with soft Jazz music playing in the background while being surrounded by other people chatting and doing much the same thing. It is more than just coffee, it is an experience - which recently has been eroded and somewhat cheapened by Starbucks’ drive to improve their profit margins. Starbucks has replaced some of its furniture with less comfortable, more designer stuff which in itself to me wouldn’t be all that bad and I have in fact become almost used to it now. Such changes wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t for the blatant marketing of non-coffee related products, most notably music, which practically hits you in the face on the way to the coffee pick-up counter. In this I fully agree with Paul, dump the whole CD thing Starbucks, who buys CD’s nowadays anyway? To further ruin the Starbucks experience however is the occasionally poor choice of ambient music. Usually the music at Starbucks is pretty good but often enough what is playing is not so much suitable for a coffee shop as it is a bar.

The worst thing though is the Wi-Fi issue. As Paul puts it:

They don't get wireless at all. Though Starbucks was arguably a wireless pioneer, offering Wi-Fi access long before it was common, they haven't grown with the times at all. Why is this? Because Starbucks actually charges you for Wi-Fi access, rather than using that as an incentive to get people to hang out there and buy their actual product (which, remember, was coffee). Meanwhile, virtually every other coffee shop on earth offers free Wi-Fi. Guess which I prefer?

This is true, the one thing at annoys me most about Starbucks is its lack of free Wi-Fi. It has bothered me to the point where I even tried going to Bridgehead (which offers free Wi-Fi) instead of Starbucks for a while. That switch with short lived however due to the unfortunate smell of hemp, hippies or some other combination of organic materials (mould maybe?) which has turned me off of that particular chain. (Their coffee also isn’t that great even for people like me who put chocolate in it and it costs about the same. I’m also very against the logic of fair-trade coffee – which is a huge thing for Bridgehead and might make an interesting post topic someday but not right now.) Other people however, are not so discriminating and will not mind switching to competitors like Second Cup or even Tim Horton’s. Indeed I myself have been going to Second Cup more frequently of late because some of their drinks are actually much better than the Starbucks offerings. So if you change nothing else Starbucks, why not let us enjoy free Wi-Fi? I know for sure that I would certainly go to Starbucks far more often that I probably should if that were indeed the case.

Why Gas Prices Don’t Worry Me (…too much…)

2008-06-25T01:11:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of talk lately about high gas prices. (If you don't believe me watch the news sometime) Much of the talk is speculation about how high the prices will go (usually up indefinitely) and the impact those ever increasing prices will have on our society (usually cataclysmic). Some people feel that what we are witnessing is the slow destruction of modern civilisation as we know it. They say, or imply, that oil prices will continue to rise forever and that we will all eventually face the prospect of not being able to fill our cars or heat our homes - that regular consumers will simply be priced out of the energy market. Others offer a less pessimistic view of the future but their tone is similar and while their predictions are less dire the message is the same - that we're basically screwed. You may have noticed that I have not cited any sources for these predictions there are two reasons for that. First I don't feel it necessary since turning to almost any media outlet (especially American ones) will confirm the existence of these views. Second, there are simply two many stories on the current 'energy crisis' to choose from and I'm both too lazy to pick a source and restricted by the length of post you folks are willing to read to cite and engage a particular source in depth. If you really need proof of the doomsday claims just watch CNN for a while and you'll understand what I'm talking about, they have an entire segment now called Out of Gas: We Were Warned or something to that effect.

Anyway, I don't buy any of the doom and gloom stuff and here's why; prices cannot and will not rise indefinitely and; even if they continue to rise for the foreseeable future I (and the 'West') will still be ok.

Prices will not continue to rise forever thanks to the nature of the market system. Prices will always eventually reach an equilibrium with the level demand - this is known as the equilibrium price. As the price goes up demand goes down. There may be a tipping point, where demand will fall precipitously after a certain price, but such points depend on a number of factors. If such a tipping point exists we may be approaching it but we (the 'West') haven't reached it yet. The developing world however has perhaps already been reached a tipping point of sorts which I will talk about in a moment. In North America people have begun reacting to higher gas prices by trading in their SUV's and Trucks for smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles. This is good not only for the environment but for consumers as well. As more and more people begin to each use less and less oil, prices will either stabilize or may even fall. (Prices may fall but probably not back to where they were a few years ago). A major component of the gas price increase is the fact that demand in recent years has climbed incredibly fast while production has more or less stayed the same. This is thanks in large part to new demand coming from China, India and other developing countries where common citizens are beginning to buy their very-own cars for the first time and thus consume more fuel. Thanks largely to the nature of my job, I have been made keenly aware of how consumers in the developing world are reacting to the price of fuel. Many people in those countries spend proportionately larger amounts of their income on transportation costs than we do in North America or even Europe. What this means is that it won't be long before many of the 'new' oil consumers are priced out of the oil market - they will simply be unable to afford the cost of fuel. In fact, right now there are lines building at gas stations in China while other developing countries are having riots over to the high cost fuel. Oil demand from the poor countries will fall first and most quickly - which is good for us since it is their demand that has largely raised global prices. I'm not passing a value judgement here on the right of rest of the world to enjoy our standard of living, I'm simply pointing out a market reality. Oil production hasn't increased very much lately largely because I suspect we have already reached peak oil production and because I think the Saudis are lying about how much oil they have left. Of course even if prices rise more than they have already, demand from the developing world will not disappear entirely. This means that the prices we see at the pump will not likely return to the levels they were a few years ago but at least they won't rise as quickly as they have been doing of late. Another factor reducing global demand for oil is a reduction in demand from the rich countries as we also start to decrease our oil consumption and switch to new and better technologies which use oil more efficiently. Lower demand means a downward pressure on the price of oil although it will equalize at some price level which is likely within reach of Western countries but out of reach for most developing countries. (Basically returning us to a point similar to where we were before the Chinese middle class was able to buy cars.)

As for my own situation, I'm not too worried. I already drive a pretty fuel efficient car and I can always change my habits. I am also fortunate enough to be among the small percentile of people on Earth who live in the developed world and thus can afford to pay slightly higher prices for gas than those in poorer nations. As those consumers are priced out of the oil market we will likely be able to still afford a tank of gas for our cars. Furthermore, if the price continues to rise - perhaps even double or triple, I can always adjust my habits to live more like the Europeans already do. (What the Europeans will do however, I have no idea but they are a pretty clever bunch, any thoughts?) European prices are already double what Canada's prices are and have been for many many years and yet they continue to function and thrive as a society. Our prices are only reaching now what Europeans were paying for fuel in the 90's and they were doing pretty well back then so there's no reason we can't emulate their successful standard of living. North Americans, it seems, have always been a little behind the Europeans in the area of efficiency. Anyway it would be easier, of course, to live more like the Europeans if our batman-villain-for-a-mayor hadn't cancelled the Light Rail Project but I've already covered that at length in other posts so I won't get into that right now. (link?)

Basically I don't buy the doom and gloom predictions of high oil prices. The Europeans have been living with $1.50/L and even $2.00/L fuel for years now and they've managed just fine. Sure we'll have to change our habits a bit, perhaps invest in some efficient public transit infrastructure and the like, but we as a society will be okay. It's unfortunate that the developing world has come to the oil party too late to benefit from it but as we develop new sources of energy there is no reason why they can't come along with us. There was an economist at MIT named Julian Simon who once noted that at the turn of the previous century some believed that the UK and even the world would run out of coal, much like those who today believe that we will run out of oil. What ended up happening is that coal not only became cheaper but also more abundant. The reason for this was simple, as the price of coal - and it scarcity - increased people began to switch to relatively less expensive alternatives (ie to oil). As long-term demand for coal dropped so did the price of coal. The one common mistake that people made, and are still making today, is the discounting of human ingenuity. People will always find alternative when something becomes too expensive. Society always moves forward, never backward. Because of this fact I don't see us going back to simpler times when we all rode around on horses, I see us finding the next big source of energy that will be more efficient and cleaner than the previous one. What that source is exactly remains to be determined but chances are it already exists and could be a combination of several sources. We in the West will be okay, we have the money and the ability to find the next source of energy - I just feel bad for the emerging middle class in the developing world who have come to the party late and may have to wait a little longer to get in.

Air Show!!!!

2008-06-24T14:52:00.001-04:00

For those of you who haven’t heard, there’s an air show on in Ottawa this weekend!! YAY!!! There wasn’t one last year because it was rained out but this year the forecast looks good. The air show will of course feature the Snowbirds and an example of almost all of the Canadian Forces military aircraft. The only aircraft that will be missing, it seems, will be Canada’s new C-17 Globemaster III’s. I received an e-mail today from the air show people saying that although they had hoped a C-17 would come this year it is now “doubtful” that one will show up as they have been deployed - likely to Afghanistan. For more information about the Air Show visit their website: Air Show Ottawa

Keeping to the flying theme, I have recently been checked out for night flying again. I had let it lapse for the past four years but now I’m legal again to carry passengers so I’ll be taking a few friends of mine up on Canada Day to watch the fireworks. Fireworks from the air a pretty cool. I’ve seen them once before, a few years ago near Carp and they were pretty neat – like 3 dimensional orbs!