Archive for July, 2006


October came early this year

Monday, July 31st, 2006

I knew the season wasn’t going well for the Cubs, but this is the nail in the coffin. Declare the season over and get ready for next season. Maybe Maddux[wiki] and Normar[wiki] can compile notes to write a book on the black hole that seems to hover over Wrigley Field[wiki].

The Chicago Cubs dealt Maddux to the Los Angeles Dodgers for infielder Cesar Izturis ahead of the 4 p.m. ET deadline, agent Scott Boras said.

Maddux waived his no-trade clause to join the Dodgers.

Maddux began the season with a 5-0 record but the 40-year-old has won just four games since. He is 9-11 with a 4.69 earned-run average in 22 starts.

Maddux started his career with the Cubs before leaving after the 1992 season as a free agent to join the Atlanta Braves. He spent 11 years with Atlanta, where he won four Cy Young Awards as the National League’s best pitcher, before rejoining the Cubs in 2004. [cbc]

Start warming up your chops now. Ready? Now say it with me… Next year is- ah just forget it.

Edit: I missed the news of Todd Walker being traded to the San Diego Padres[tsn] in exchange for a minor league pitcher.  Good luck, Todd.  You served us well, but why a minor league guy?  Rumor had it, we almost got Morgan Ensberg from Houston for Walker.

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Filed under: Cubs

Bring back the old because the new bites

Monday, July 31st, 2006

The recently leaked, new Buffalo Sabres logoI realize that the statement that I am about to make might make me seem incredibly judgemental and like one of those people who are against change so much that I should just relax and take it like a man. I really don’t care. I don’t like this new logo.

The Buffalo Sabres are apparently ditching the threads they have been wearing since about 1996. The original colors are making a come back, which I’m not totally against. I also think it’s great that they are bringing back the original blue and gold digs for their third jersey for the coming season.

This logo, to me, stinks. I like the one they’ve had for the past ten years, but perhaps change isn’t the worst thing to happen after that long of time. But Reebok designed this, and it’s the best they could come up with? It makes me think, “Wooosh!! Buffalo!!” I might toss in some spirit fingers and glitter, too.

I’m not the only one kinda depressed by the design. Fix The Logo is a website devoted to getting it changed. Sign the petition if you please. I can’t say I’m a Sabres fan by any means, but their fans deserve something better than… that.

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Filed under: Hockey

Proper pet etiquette in Vancouver

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Aside from pigeons and seagulls, which are mutated forms of rats with wings, I’m generally an animal person. I’d almost lump crows into the disliked category, but I have this hope that one day they will rise up against the already mentioned varmits and destroy their empire. Perhaps it would be going too far to say that I’d like to see this happen in a West Side Story[imdb] battle to end all battles, but I digress.

When I see some one walking down the street with a dog that’s about the size of me, I have an overwhelming, child-inside-me urge to run up and pet it. This is after I have the thought that the person who owns this beast is probably living in an apartment that is in the 600 square foot range, give or take a hundred or two. Animals of this size need room to roam. That why they have four legs, right?

chiuaua = three pointsI don’t get as excited by little lap dogs. Rebecca and I like to call them “puntables”. Rude, I know, but if you are not watching where you are going while walking along a busy, downtown sidewalk, you can give one of those things the boot.

The struggle I have is the correct and incorrect thing to do when it comes to interacting with these creatures. They’re not mine, and for the most part, I try not to try. There are some owners who are visibly ok with anyone coming into contact with their pet. Others give you a scowl. I’m sure that old lady walking her chiuaua couldn’t kick my ass as much as I could send her little doggy through the uprights from fifty yards out. Of course, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

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Filed under: Vancouver

Apple recalls batteries to certain Mac Book Pros

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Just passing on the word for those who might not pay attention to news like this like I do.

Apple has initiated a worldwide battery exchange program for certain rechargeable batteries that were sold for use with 15-inch MacBook Pro computer systems from February 2006 through May 2006.

We recently discovered that some 15-inch MacBook Pro batteries supplied to Apple do not meet our high standards for battery performance. To give our users the best experience possible, we will replace these batteries for customers free of charge. [apple]

These exchange programs are relatively painless. Go to the Apple page, find out if you have a battery within the serial number range they are recalling, and fill out the form on the web. Apple ships you the replacement, and all you have to do is put the recalled battery in a prepaid, preaddressed shipping package of some sort. Usually this is done through FedEx, so the final step is tossing it into your nearest drop box or arranging for pick up.

I had a buddy who got bit by this once, not knowing that his power adapter was recalled until it over heated and died. It only took a few days to get the replacement, but if he would have been aware of it before hand, the lack of power for his laptop could have been avoided.

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Filed under: Apple, Technology

Dealing with long term effects of change

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

Snippet of code from the RadioZoom RSS feedAs of today at noon, I have made a change to my podcast feed that could have some hefty impact. Allow me to further explain.

When I first started out with my adventures into podcasting, I did my RSS feed[wiki] by hand. Well, not literally, but I wrote the code myself in the way that I have learned to do things most of my life. I surfed all over the web to find tutorials and hints, looked at the code of what other people were doing, and then applied that to my stuff until it worked. Doing all the audio was a piece of cake. This part, on the other hand, took some learning.

In the history of RadioZoom, there have been three different feed addresses, the one that I currently run through FeedBurner being the last[http://feeds.feedburner.com/radiozoom]. The first version was rough, to say the least. But was it Feed Validator compliant? Not at all. That brought on the second version, which brought it up to standards and changed the address slightly, but was still hand coded. FeedBurner was the end solution that took the blog feed for the podcast and turned it into something podcatchers could fully understand, all being done automatically.

I stopped doing all manual updates around sometime in early 2005. I sent out alerts to subscribers to those feeds around that time, feeling pretty good about the switch working out in the end. About the time that I moved to Vancouver, I noticed that I was still getting errors from some one or some thing trying to get to those feeds. I decided to try redirects, but heard from fellow podcasters that this solution was working for about half of the services people were using to subscribe to podcasts.

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Filed under: Podcasting

Let’s just remember, Ubercaster is still in beta

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

I love the idea of using this program to do podcasts. The moment I launched the beta version of Ubercaster, I got it. It didn’t take me too long to start figuring out the ins and outs of the program. However, the major downside to being in beta, there are no help files yet. If anything, I just wanted a quick tutorial on the keyboard shortcuts, if there are many to speak of, but the maiden voyage went along pretty well.

My only, major complaint right now is quality. In the experiments that I did before actually producing a regular episode of the podcast, I found the MP3s that Ubercaster would encode itself to not be on par with the results I got from using GarageBand in conjunction with iTunes. The 96kbps/44.1kHz MP3 sounded more like a 64kbps/22.050kHz encoding, at least to my ears.

In episode #429 of the Daily Source Code, Adam Curry mentioned the development of Ubercaster in relation to the recently released Podshow+ and how no one had sent in any feedback to him about the program as of that time. So I took the opportunity to record a two minute audio feedback to send to him, using the built-in setting of Ubercaster of creating an 128kbps/44.1kHz MP3. Sadly, the quality was on par with the previous encoding that I described. We’ll see if Curry puts it into a future podcast, but this just kinda bummed me a little more.

Another issue that I found was with playing long sound clips, such as songs or bed music. When the clip would end, there would be a slight gap in the recording, causing my vocals to cut out. In my broadcast engineer mind, I’d compare it to hitting the dump button on a seven second delay. You might not notice it while listening to the episode itself, but it would sound like I would stop talking in the middle of a word or sentence, almost comparable to a vocal stutter.

I have been on the Ubercaster forums to post feedback on some of these observations. Like I said, this is a beta. I’m just trying to offer some more observations on those wondering more about the program at this time.

On the positive side, I love this program. There’s too much to list, but I’ll try to cover some of my favorite aspects that I discovered with this initial use. And don’t leave me a comment saying, “yeah, yeah, CastBlaster already has all that.” I’ll be honest to say that I’ve been long jealous of that program and crossing my fingers for a Mac version for quite sometime.
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Filed under: Podcasting, Ubercaster

Oh boy, I can’t wait to go to camp

Friday, July 28th, 2006

Via Kris Krug[post], I’ve signed myself up for BarCampVancouver.

Who?
Tech creatives: Local technologists, geeks, innovators, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, tech writers, tech managers, bloggers, podcasters, video bloggers and hangers-on. We can only accept ninety people, so register early.

What?
A 24-hour ad-hoc, all-play unconference where everyone who attends participates by presenting or helping out.

Where?
Bryght Offices, 1 Alexander St. (suite TBD); Gastown, Vancouver: Map

When?
Friday, August 25, 6:00pm to Saturday, August 26, 6:00pm

Why?
Because it’ll be a fun party and totally informative, all at the same time. Here’s the full rundown: https://barcamp.org/BarCampVancouver

[barcamp]

I think this takes me into a whole, new classification of geek, but that might not be the most horrible thing. There are a lot of really interesting people in the Vancouver that are going to be at this event. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to contribute, but once you get me talking about podcasting, it can get difficult to make me stop. Just ask Rebecca, who will be in attendance as well.

I’ll have to think about doing something with making a recording while I’m there. maybe even a few. With hope, Ubercaster will improve to make it more efficient to do it on the spot. That would be sweet, but more on that program another time.

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Filed under: Podcasting, Technology, Vancouver

RadioZoom Episode #104 – Celebration of Light; Podcast News; Metroblogging Vancouver; Feedback; Ubercaster

Friday, July 28th, 2006

Episode #104 is ready for download, but be gentle. I’m testing a beta version of a new program called Ubercaster, and the quality didn’t turn out so hot. The rest of the program is outstanding. Hope to use it more in the future, but only if the quality gets better.

Tackling the podcast again after the last few mobile episodes, we’re back in the studio in this much more relaxed edition. Lots of news about what’s been happening with the podcast, and you can see some of that in the links here in the show notes. I also take a moment to mention feedback that seemed to have been accumulating, but I feel like I missed some of your comments. This is also my maiden voyage of using Ubercaster to do a podcast. Please give me feedback about how it turned out, especially the quality. The program is in beta testing, so your feedback will go to the guy’s making the program in order to make it better.

41:59 minutes
radiozoom.net

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Filed under: Podcasting, RadioZoom

Clerks 2: I’m happy with the sequal

Friday, July 28th, 2006

Cast of Clerks 2Last weekend, we headed down to catch the bizzarely awaited sequal to a movie that I will also lay blame to the demise of my childhood innocence, also known as those years spent in high school. It’s tough to really pinpoint that exact moment, but I’m fairly sure when the name of Kevin Smith[wiki] entered my memory banks, that had something to do with it. Not all of it. It just aided the whole process.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I became aware that Smith was even making Clerks 2.  It makes me feel some slight shame being that one of my favorite things to do between classes during college was to cruise into the computer labs and scan the web for the latest rumors on projects coming up.  Then I took some film courses.  Suddenly movies lost their flare, but that was probably the Russian, expressionist movies from the 1920′s that I fell asleep during…  er, watched intently while taking spectacular notes in class.  Yeah…

I have to thank that time spent trying to appreciate that art.  It makes me appreciate movies like this so much more.  That’s not because you might think I have no artistic flavor in the things that I enjoy.  It’s just the simple fact that this is a funny as hell flick.  I almost go as far as to say “in it’s own way”, but if you have been paying attention to any of the previous stuff from Kevin Smith, then you know I don’t have to.

I read some reviews about the camera work, and in hindsight, I have to agree.  There is one scene where the steady-cam circles constantly during dialog, and I remember thinking how cool of a scene it was.  Give credit to smith for being subtle to break out of a mold so many people consider him to be stuck in.

The best thing to remember is to is not remember anything you’ve heard about the movie and just relax.  Enjoy it.  Movies, believe it or not, are expensively made to entertain you.  Screw what Joel Seigal or anyone else said about Clerks 2.  I just hope that there are more people willing to see this than the Waynes brothers’ flick.  Yikes.

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Filed under: Movies

The fireworks are loud, but the people are worse

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

This is my first experience with the Celebration of Light. I had heard about them and Rebecca had told me plenty of stories as to what to expect. I think I was pretty well prepared for the crowds, but the display by Italy last night was pretty impressive.

I’d often heard about fireworks displays that are coordinated with a musical soundtrack, but the chance to catch on never came up until last night. I think I picked a good one to see, even if they did use… dare I say her name here… Celine Dion.

With any mass gathering of an event like this spectacle, you should expect people to be a little nuts. It doesn’t matter if last night was the middle of the week. A bunch of stuff blowing up in the sky makes it the right time to party, and I can asure you that alcohol wasn’t the only thing being enjoyed last night. Audibly, evidence of intoxication could be heard all over the city.

I think what is more amazing about the fireworks last night was the mess that people left behind. For as long as I knew that Vancouver existed, this city was always portrayed as being very, enviromentally friendly. For the most part, this is so true, but the garbage left behind all over English Bay is a lot like hard night of partying and you drank way too much the night before. Damn, that was a lot of fun, but you pay the price when the sun comes up the next morning.

I’m not sure about our plans to catch the entries for China and the Czech Republic, but Mexico’s display is one we don’t want to miss.

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Filed under: Neat, Vancouver
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