Top Down View

The Torch Relay came through Delta today.
Helen’s selling soap at a cart in a mall down in White Rock so wasn’t going to be able to see the parade as it passed near home but the day’s relay actually started (at a rather hideous 6:30am) down in White Rock just opposite her mall. So we [...]

We had our Table Topics debate last night… and it rocked.
I was pretty depressed about it going into our meeting… I’d only had replies from two of our members and they’d both said “put me on whichever side you see fit”. They were just trying to make life easier for me but it rather short-circuited [...]

I know it’s going to be a big success but at first glance it’s confusing as to where its market is.
It’s not a replacement for a laptop:

it has no USB ports for peripherals
no multi-tasking (we think)
limited opportunity to develop applications for it (developers have to work within the walled garden of the AppStore and users [...]

I am Table Topics Master at my Toastmasters club this week.
It’s a role I’ve done a dozen times before and the format is always the same: the Table Topics Master poses questions and invites members to come up and talk, spontaneously, on the topic for 1-2 minutes. Stuff like “my favorite vacation” or “how would [...]

Here’s a little easter egg for you on the Google search page.
Don’t type anything into the search box and click “I’m Feeling Lucky”
Up pops a large number… counting down in seconds. A quick conversation with a calculator says that this is counting down to the end of the world year.

I HAVE to tell you about the coolest thing I’ve seen for a long time. I’m just bursting with excitement about this! It’s kinda scary really!
If you run a blog then people are copying stuff off your page. Guaranteed. It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s malicious (take a look at http://ecommercesolutionnews.com/ and compare it [...]

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been watching with interest Raul’s tweets about Preventable (‘The Community Against Preventable Injuries’ – a non-profit aimed at reducing the number of preventable injuries in BC).
I love what they’re doing… the idea that so many injuries are ‘accidents’ that just happen is rubbish and has annoyed me for [...]

(OK, a bit of sensationalism here, but…)
Last weekend’s Vancouver Barcamp was my second and I enjoyed it even more than the previous year’s event. I know I’m not alone – all the comments I’ve seen have been positive. But what has it achieved? I’m intrigued to find out about things that people learnt during Barcamp [...]

A good term at BCIT this Spring. A very good term, both in terms (oh dear!) of course enjoyment and in terms of marks.
I took the 12 week ‘XML For Web Applications’ COMP2899 course downtown. My first course at the downtown campus – it’s really nice there: very modern and shiny. Course was also excellent [...]

My friend Erica was asking me today about video editing in Ubuntu. First she was asking about tools to use for editing.
I’ve toyed with ‘Open Movie Editor’ in the past. If you’re familiar with Adobe Premiere then you’ll be familiar with the general layout here… a timeline of multiple video and audio tracks, a preview [...]