I’d like to see Apple open a store here in Vancouver. I mean, Toronto is getting their third one. Reno, Nevada is getting one, so what about Vancouver?
There is no shortage of places to buy apple products, but when we were over in Kits a few weeks ago, they password protect the computers so you can’t play with them. It takes a lot to compare to an Apple Store. I haven’t been to Mac Station yet, but you can’t tell me that Vancouver wouldn’t be a great place for an Apple Store.
SNL did a sketch last night about a couple of guys who do a video podcast called “Joplin: Alive”. It was pretty okay, but it really could have been a lot funnier. The fact that they were doing the podcast live from Bennigan’s was enough to make me laugh. The only true gag here was the amount of people walking through the frame, but I’m not sure that the audience really caught what the joke was. There wasn’t much to distinguish the sketch from being too different from public access television, but I think that’s been done before. There was just so much more that you could have made fun of, but I’m not sure that people would understand unless you knew more about podcasting itself.
Oddly enough, the Vancouver Sun came out with quite the spread on podcasting this past Saturday in the arts section. Rebecca’s mom saved the paper edition and passed it off to me this morning. Tod Maffin had quite the feature in it as well as highlights on a lot of other things going on in and around Vancouver. The article is a really good read. There were a total of about five articles, but only the following two are available to non-subscribers of the online edition.
“Now hear this!: PODCASTS | Millions plug into downloaded audio files — to listen and communicate”
“Is podculture just a return to the past?”
Next week should have a follow up with more podcasting related content.
I’m not usually one to pass along things like this, but this video is pretty neat. At the same time, it pains me that I enjoyed an advertisement for highly, overpriced water in a bottle. Passed on to me from Rebecca, via Laura.
WOXY.com went to a member based operation as of Feb. 6, 2006, leaving their 24k stream open to non-subscribers. This might be old news to some, and with the wedding coming up as fast as it did, I didn’t get a chance to mentioned this. I tuned in today because sometimes I just get tired of listening to podcasts and want some music other than my own library.
WOXY used to be a great terrestial station in the Cincinnati/Dayton area until they were sold to some, big radio company that got the whole broadcast portion of the operation. Everything else WOXY was retained and put online once some investors stepped up to foot the bill. And yes, WOXY used to be 97X. And yes, this is the station Dustin Hoffman’s character quoted in Rain Man over and over.
“97X… BAM!… The future of rock and roll!”
If you dig independent, good music, check them out. Give them your support to help keep this wonderful internet radio station alive.
Already this year, five people have died in vehicle accidents on the Pattullo Bridge. This is a fact that is simply staggering to me as one of the first things I recall Rebecca teaching me about this structure was its history of being notorious for car collisions. And just yesterday, another person died in a head-on crash with an oncoming vehicle.
This takes the number of people who have lost their lives from similar accidents on the Pattullo to 15 since 2001. Further up the river, the Port Mann is about to be twinned in order to solve congestion issues with traffic. It’s obvious that people want to get to destinations faster than they can now, but at some point, I would think that you have to weigh the value of life over the value of time.
I mentioned this in a podcast with Rebecca some time ago, and today I released a video podcast that has a brief segment going over the Pattullo. The timing is erie, but perhaps you can see a little of this for yourself.
I’m learning more and more about the weather here in Vancouver. Yesterday when I went running through the park, I came home soaking wet. The strange thing is that during my route, I could have swore that snow was falling into my mouth on occasion. That’s just something that happens when it’s raining, but this was really cold and kinda solid on my lips. I thought I was imagining it, but it was confirmed when I got home, and even more so by the Volvo pulling onto the street with a healthy coat of snow on top, obviously someone who just came from the higher elevations.
So this morning, there’s more clouds and snow, turns back into rain, then blizzard like conditions for nearly a minute, back to clear and sunny skies, and now there are these snow pellets descending from the sky. All of this in the time span of about eight hours, none of the snow sticking to the ground here in the West End. Too crazy.
Three sports channels covering the last minute details of the NHL trade deadline. Some interesting moves so far, and the Canucks added Brown from New Jersey to their defensive line for 4th round draft pick. We woke up this morning to The Fox giving the news about Monteal sending Theodore to Colorado for Aebischer in an all out goalie swap. This is pretty exciting.
Today is a good day to be living in Canada. Rebecca made oatmeal peanut butter cookies last night. That makes today uber good. And now back to the couch to catch more.
Update: Check out Rebecca’s post from today to get the low down of how things ended for the Canucks.
Barry Bonds is a juicer. Does this really surprise anyone? The word is coming out with very hard evidence making it very difficult for Bonds to escape this one. Just listen to the guy. He wants to break that home run record. He wants to be the guy on top. He’s greedy enough to push the idea of being too old to play baseball aside to achive that one goal. To have his name in the record books. Hardly does he ever site sticking around this long with the purpose of putting the Giants into the playoffs. For him, that’s just an added bonus.
I’ve never been a fan of Bonds. His days with the Pirates put him up against the Cubs too many times that I developed a healthy disliking of anytime he set foot near the plate. I’m not saying he wasn’t a good player. I respected Bonds during those days for what he could do on the field. I just never liked him.
So what’s next? He has money and fame. Being the way things work in America, the formula is set for a long dispute over the final outcome. History tells us that the odds are in his favor. I’m more concerned over the implications this has for baseball in the future. More so, I hope Barry goes down.
Last Saturday, we ate at the Olympia Restaurant on Denman Street. After a long day of hiking, Rebecca tempted me with the thought of some greek food, and I was totally down for that, especially with my empty, fully hiked stomach yelling at me for nourishment.
The food was outstanding, but the restaurant itself has become a bit of a famous landmark due to it’s name. As 2010 approaches, the Canadian Olympic Committee has hit the Olympia with an order to take down their sign as it uses the olympic rings in their logo. They have used the name and logo this way for fifteen years, but with the games coming to Vancouver, the COC has deemed that the Olympia has no right to use the sign they have been all this time.
Check out 998denman.com and see for yourself. Oddly enough, we were searching the web before heading over for dinner only to have Mosi, the guy pictured on the front page, as our server. The place was pretty packed the night we were there. As far as I’m concerned, sign the petition because the meal was pretty freaking spectacular!
Maybe Rebecca and I have a warped sense of what a honeymoon should be, but the outdoors are something we both enjoy. Right now, we don’t have a lot of extra cash to spend on a trip to Mexico as we would like to do. We’re going to do our best to enjoy as much of life that we can, and that is exactly what we did this past Saturday.
Nearly five hours of wandering around Stanley Park, and we had a hell of a good time. For those of you not in the know, the park is roughly 15% larger than Central Park in New York. You cannot even compare the two beyond that. Central Park is surrounded by Manhatten and tall buildings. Stanley Park is surrounded by mostly water with mountains for a back drop. It’s unfair to compare the two as they both have their wonderful charms.
The hike, which might not be a hike to some, was something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long while. I’ve become familiar with less than a quarter of the interior of the park, so we took the opportunity to explore, have fun, and check out the scenery. With a variety of trails, it’s easy to get lost or turned around, but you’ll never lose all hope. The worst that will happen is that you get yourself further from where you wanted to end up.
One thing we discovered that was new to both of us, Rebecca having more experience wandering all over the park through her life, was the lookout above Siwash Rock. The sun was high in the sky, 12C, no clouds, and it was just beautiful. Turns out that this lookout is on top of a WWII defense bunker. I’m sure people were looking up at us trying to sort out how we got up there. It was truly an accident that we did. Hit the Siwash Rock Trail, head towards the rock, and check it out some time.
The most fun we had was off the trails. Mushy, rain soaked ground that was covered with fallen trees, leaves, moss, thorny plants, and all sorts of dirty stuff was a good, good time. There are lots of other places Rebecca kept bringing up that we have to check out and do more hiking at. I’m completely up for it and could hike through the mud all day long.
The tide was the furthest out I have ever seen it that day, so we had to hit the English Bay side of the seawall as well to see some of the inukshuks random folks have constructed. I have to add, some of them are truly impressive.
It’s strange to go from murky Beaver Lake to the smell of sea water down by Third Beach. Mud coated shoes to having sand inside them. Truly you are not having fun unless you are getting dirty.
