My friend Erin got married on the weekend down in Vegas.? A big congrats to Erin & Matt! ...

Man, I gotta save some money to get a new digital body next year.. These things are getting pretty awesome. Here are some specs: 2700 shots, on a single battery charge! powers on in 0.18 seconds 3 frames per second for up to 100 consecutive shots 10.2 megapixels Here’s a link to some news on it –news ...

Well, I don’t know how I pulled it off, but somehow my cell phone got away from me the other day and plummetted 15 stories. Surprisingly, I managed to put most of it back together. It can still make calls, but the LCD is hooped, so I can’t use the contact list or get text messages or anything. I’m pretty amazed actually that it managed to survive at all. I calculated a few properties of the fall: height fallen: 40 meters speed at impact (assuming no air resistance): 28 m/s (101 km/h) total time taken to fall: 2.8 seconds g-force sustained during impact: 285 G’s I was thinking about having ...

Today is my sister’s birthday!? She’s 32 today.? Happy Birthday sis! ...

So there’s this buzz amongst photographers about this new technique called HDR (high dynamic range). The basic idea is that a camera isn’t capable of capturing nearly as much dynamic range as what our eyes can capture.? With HDR, you take multiple shots of the same scene using a digital camera on a tripod, and create a new photograph using the information from all the shots. That new image contains a much larger dynamic range than would be possible using any one shot. Here are some cool examples from flickr. I bought a new tripod and a remote shutter release for my 20D this weekend, so ...

There’s a little place in New Westminster called The Thirsty Duck (affectionately known to the locals as “The Duck”) which has some of the worst tasting beer known to man. Derek and I went there a few years ago, and I distinctly remember putting my second drink down, knowing I wouldn’t be able to finish it due to the horrid taste. So yesterday, Chris (aka The Kid) strolls up and starts bragging (a common occurrence in the office) about how he was going to go to the Duck and not leave until he had demolished ten beers. I told him it was a feat comparable to flying faster than a speeding ...

So, a few years ago, Des got me an iPod for my birthday. And while I really love having a MP3 player for when I want to listen to music, the novelty has worn off, and I find myself more frustrated with it with each passing day. The first thing I hate is that the battery is always dead. It doesn’t matter how often I charge it, or how much care I take in shutting it off when I’m not using it, it always seems to be almost dead whenever I pick it up to do anything. Part of my morning routine involves me plugging in my iPod before taking a shower so that there’s a hope it will make it to work ...

As reported on digg: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191601137&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All ...

Well, I walked in the door about an hour and a half ago, and man oh man, am I beat. Today was a pretty rough day. I woke up in a hotel in Invermere, BC, at around 9am, seriously hungover and in a hurry to get back to Vancouver. I really wasn’t looking forward to the nearly ten hour drive to get back, especially considering that I have to work again in the morning. I had a really cool time in the Rockies. I left Wednesday and made it as far as Golden BC the first night. Camping there wasn’t very restful since there was a train track right beside where my tent was pitched. In the morning, I ...

So on day 3, I had decided that I just needed to do something fairly relaxing to unwind. What better place for that than Central Park I thought. So, I grabbed a coffee, and made my way North a few blocks to Columbus Circle, which is at the south-east corner of Central Park. I can honestly say that Central Park was the one part of New York I wasn’t prepared to see. Here in Vancouver, we talk about Stanley Park like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. And don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful. But I think in Vancouver we take a lot of things for granted because they exist in nature. ...

Day four was a pretty short day, mainly because I had to head to the airport around 3pm to get ready for my flight. I spent most of the day shopping for souveneirs. While I didn’t spend too much money, I really wanted to shop somewhere on 5th avenue, just so I can say that I did. I really wasn’t prepared for how much money stuff is in these stores. When I walked into Sak’s on 5th Avenue, I figured I might be able to buy something for a hundred bucks or so. The first thing I passed was a table full of purses that had been marked down over 50% off. The cheapest of these was $1000 — that’s ...

Well, I just finished packing, and I’m heading out the door for the rockies. I’ll probably stop in Lake Louise tonight, maybe for two nights, and then do the Columbia Icefields highway to Jasper for another night. I should be back Sat night to see the fireworks. Apparently I’m heading to North Carolina next week with work, so my travelling isn’t over yet. ...

Unfortunately, the night before I left for New York City turned out to be a gong show. Mark, Donovan, Chris and myself went out to the bar for a few drinks, but we didn’t stop until around 2am. I figured, no problem right — I still have 4 hours to sleep and pack before leaving for the airport. Needless to say, Friday morning was really rough, and I was completely exhausted and hungover. What made it worse is that our plane was broken. After 30 minutes of waiting past of scheduled boarding time, finally the Harmony Airlines representative comes out and says “due to a minor technical problem, ...

When the humidity finally woke me up in the hostel, it was around 11am (I had to ask scary hostel-buddy #1, since I didn’t have a watch anymore at this point). I felt a little hungover, but nothing compared to the morning before back in YVR. I thought about showering, but my I-need-to-get-the-hell-out-of-the-hostel-as-soon-as-possible thought process eventually won. I strolled down the street in New York City, smiling as I walked into Ray’s Pizza, knowing full well I was about to destroy his little toilet in the back-room with my post-hangover blues. I read through my Lonely Planet for a few ...

I just got back an hour ago, and I’m pretty pooped. I quickly uploaded some of the shots I took to my flickr page, so take a look there. I plan to do a detailed write-up at some point. ...

Well, I made it. I’m sitting in the hostel near central park, trying to upload a few photos to flickr using this crazy setup they have here.. I got a few there, although the quality sucks. Lots of delays yesterday leaving Vancouver. Apparently our plane was busted, so they were frantically trying to replace some parts on it so we could take off – not a very good start to a trip, especially for someone that doesn’t like flying. We landed at JFK about 1.5 hours late. Thankfully I met a nice lady on the plane who offered to pay for my cab down to times square (she could expense it she said). ...

Well, it’s 2am, and I have to be at the airport at 7am, so now is probably a good time to stop drinking.. Hopefully 4 and a bit hours of sleep will be enough to keep me from having a headache 🙁 ...

I had one of those days where I just felt completely blah all day – I was tired, I had a migraine, and I didn’t feel like eating anything. By the evening, I could hardly think because of the pounding in my head. I eventually caved in and took a Tylenol-3 after the four of five regular tylenol didn’t do fuck all during the day. When I was a kid I used to get really bad headaches every few days.. Nobody really could figure it out, and thankfully they eventually died down. But as a kid, I spent lots of time in bed because of these crazy headaches. I think part of the reason I felt so crappy ...

I’ve been attending an IPTV conference here in Vancouver for the last day or so. Definitely some interesting stuff coming out of here. The main goal of this conference is to make sure everyone can work with each other’s equipment, but the devil is in the details. Lots of different approaches to Digital Rights Management (DRM), media transport, and session establishment. I went out for a while with Chris, Derek and Cisco last night, hopping between SoHo (Yaletown), Milestones and the Granville Room. Not a very late night by CounterPath standards, but fun anyways. I’ll post some photos later ...

Well, I finally managed to convince everyone at work that it was time for me to take a vacation and get rested up. It’s been a long year, and I’m definitely a bit burnt out and cranky lately. The last vacation I took was last summer, and I wasted all two weeks of it working 12 hour days on my thesis. Come to think of it, the last *real* vacation I had was probably camping down the Oregon coast for a week a few years ago. So, I made a conscious decision this morning to make the most of this vacation. Dustin and I spent some time yesterday walking around and checking out the travel deals. I ...