July 4, 2008
So I’ve been kind of quiet as I was moving. For a young couple we have a lot of stuff but we are now basically moved into our new place. Minus a few boxes of books that I do not have a shelf for at the moment. Here’s some pics because I took them and wouldn’t want to just not share them (har)
We’re going to get some more things filled up, like the walls .. too bare for now, and I got a few more things to hang up and all but there is no rush. Also a TV right beside my desk. That is coming in a few weeks once I am ready to buy it (Instead of putting it on credit I’m waiting for my auto savings account to hit the price of the TV, which then I’ll go get it)
Bonus: Blinky did NOT approve of the move. He was a bit grumpy early on but after a few days he’s been settling in and being his playful young self.
And that’s that!
I really want to start up my online video podcast of my cooking show and I should be able to start it soon. It will be focusing on alternative cooking for people who have to be on different diets (Vegan, Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Diabetes, etc ..) I am not a master chef but I think it’ll be a fun learning experience for myself and hopefully enjoyable to people who are watching it!
June 22, 2008
Online video is exploding. I’ve been watching quality videos online for awhile now and am looking for more in an effort to basically never have to purchase cable.
Todays mission for myself was to find some shows online all about Food. Tips & Tricks, Science of Food, Recipes, and whatever else.
Unfortunately, the internet is plauged with boring and un-imaginative videos from people all over the world telling you how to cook something awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I thank you for trying and being different but seriously, yawn.
However! There is good news. There are many interesting and well produced cooking shows out there that only took me a bit of looking around to find.
First, I found the best sources of quality online food shows to be from: blip.tv, iTunes directory, and vimeo.com. I recommend you check out those sites and do your own looking around for what interests you, but here’s some of my top picks from what I found. Since there is no direct url for these shows, I will put in brackets where I found them:
Epicurious: Food & Drink: (iTunes) These are small 2-3 minutes tips and tricks and simple recipes. Epicurious is a great site for recipes and the guys from there have done some high quality, well produced and enjoyable videos. If you’re looking to learn some neat tricks or need to figure out how to make a sauce or syrup, searching through it’s massive episode directory will help you out.
Food Science: (iTunes) Neat show that has 5-8 minute clips about how food and science go together. Let’s you truly understand why bread rises, why sauces thicken, and so on.
Le Gourmet TV: (iTunes) Fancy! A nice show with quality hosts that is not as snobby as the title may percieve. They do a mix of recipes, reviews, and tips/tricks.
Restaurant Food Fast: (blip.tv) Not the highest quality in terms of playback but pretty good. From what I have seen, he purely does recipes and they are generally very simple. Good if you’re looking for something basic and fun to do
Hands on Food: (blip.tv) Only a few episodes in but looks promising. Well done videos and very simple recipes. The host seems like an enjoyable guy to hang out with and is usually pretty excited when doing his videos. I like this, as it’s not common in the videos I’ve seen.
That covers a few unique and interesting cooking shows I’ve found online so far. I’m still looking, but the free stuff is very limited in quantity and quality!
Online video intrigues me greatly and I’ve been contemplating doing it myself. With my allergies, I have to expirement constantly with different recipes and I may try my hand on some videos to hopefully help people out. But that won’t be for another month or so until I settle down in my new place later this month.
June 13, 2008
I love RSS feeds. They have totally changed the way I do things. I used to have tons of bookmarks and visit a huge bunch of sites everyday and it took up so much time. With RSS, I have it all centralized and I get content from all my sites with ease.
As my feeds have grown, I went from using news aggreagators like Digg, Google News, Reddit, and so on t get down to specific blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, Signal vs. Noise, and so on. I subscribe to over 70 blogs now.
One problem with this is, that I still trudge through a lot of unwanted content. I will use Mashable in this example. I subcribe to Mashable and love it, but they constantly promote and announce new events across the country.
Unfortunately for me, I simply can’t go to these as I am not anywhere near the proposed locations. I wish I simply didn’t get these in my feed as all they do is make me a sad panda for not being able to attend.
The solution? Allow me to have some form of middleware, that will read through my feeds and simply dump anything that matches specific filters (Similar to what you would do for email setup).
Push all my filtered stuff into a hidden category that I could check up if I really wanted to, but most of the time I wont. A good, but not quite there yet example of this is what FriendFeed does. They allow me to hide entries based on a few specifications and then they show a “Hidden entries” link on the bottom of each page. I rarely check the hidden entries as I know what’s there is stuff I really don’t care for.
So basically, that is my proposal. Create something like this that I could plug right into Google Reader without slowing me down and I, and I’m sure others will be very happy.
June 8, 2008
You have heard this time and time again from writers much more well-versed then I. Don’t settle for second best, get out of your lousy career, and do what you want in life
Well guess what, you’re now going to hear it from a guy who isn’t rich off his own workings, or has traveled the world and is now working 4 hours a week from his hammock. I am average Joe!
Week after week, I encounter people who say the same thing
“I’m sick of my job. I can’t wait to quit”
“It’s Wednesday. Only 3 more days till the weekend!”
“Fuck this shit.”
I am surrounded by people who just can’t be pleased. These aren’t single moms trying to take car of a baby (And even that can be done without much stress, thanks Mom!), these are young friends fresh out of college and university. We all went to school for 3-4 years, spending thousands of dollars so we could get these awesome jobs and now all we do is complain about them? Shit, that whole school thing must not have been a very good deal!
So why don’t people get out of these horrid careers and work towards something better? Job security and “easy money” is nice. (Although with all that bitching and stress I’m not sure how easy that money is for your health) Opening up Word and writing out an updated resume then sending it out to dozens of jobs is just no fun. It’s boring, tedious and probably more mind-numbing then your current job!
Perhaps I do not see the full picture. My job isn’t the greatest paying, but it’s an amazing job in which I am doing exactly what I want. I wake up everyday and am excited to get to work and start on what needs to be done. One day, I may wake up and realize “Goddamn, I don’t want to work today, or well, ever again at this place.”
When that day comes, I will open up my resume, update it and send it out to the 20 other companies that I think would be cool to work at. Why is it so hard for people to do this? I can choose to spend every day 9-5 working a mundane or stressful job for years to come or I can spend ONE DAY of hard work getting my resume out there and looking for a new life.
Essentially, my point is simple. The same motivational scoop you’ve heard from everyone else. Don’t settle for second best. Work towards what you want and eventually it will come to you. The amount of swearing you’ll save on a daily basis can be used later in your life when you are a grumpy old man.
June 4, 2008
This morning marks the aftermath of StartupCampWaterloo #3. I stumble out of my bed, dazed and confused as to what happened last night, panties hanging from the fan. Then I actually wake up and realize none of that happened and I simply went to StartupCampWaterloo with Corey!
Last night’s question was a simple one: Why Start a Startup? We were met with different answers from the panel which included a mix of experienced names as well as newer kids on the block. Essentially, you should start a startup if you want freedom of creativity but at the (early, or more depending on how successful you are) loss of money, sleep, and job benefits. Would many people give up all that just to enjoy their jobs and be creative? Hell yeah! Why the hell do you think I work where I currently work, for the money? No. For the joy of coming into the office and not dreading the next 8 hours. For the cool bonuses, for the creative freedom, for an environment where everyone is my friend, for my own push in the company. That my friends, is what being in a startup is all about. Spaetzel, an attendee actually took some audio of the panel which you can listen here.
The presentations we got to see last night had a good variation from overly ambitious to just plain out cool. I don’t want to give a detailed analysis on each one as that would take ages so here’s a few words for each of them:
- ClutterMe: Sorry guys but the idea is ok, but the execution was poor. Trying to make a “customized” home page but it’s been done very well already
- Let’s Cube: An interesting concept that was mostly mocked (HEY GUYS EVER HEARD OF DELICIOUS?) but they are taking a slightly different route. I talked to the dude running it and they plan to launch in a week. If they fix some design issues I will definitely give them a look.
- Ubigraph: Freakin’ cool man. Now, think of a business model and you got yourself something. Make it more easy to use (fun version?) and I’ll pay $10 to just play with this thing.
- InvigoFire: I think that was the name. His idea was an ambitious one to basically do what some of the multi-billion dollar companies like Google and Yahoo are doing now. Mix of OpenID, DataPortability and OpenSocial. Sorry bud, but you need to keep up more.
- AdvertisingShowDown.com: No website, no slides, just a guy talking about his idea. Idea’s are nice but execution is what matters. Also, I have a print ad that I’m almost done for work and you didn’t convince me that your service would be interesting for me to use.
- Semacode: Very cool, and has potential to be useful. Would like to see some more real-world, useful applications of this though.
That about covers all the ones I could remember. StartupCamp was definitely something neat to check out and it’s cool to see some people with ideas that could become huge. The next one is in Guelph and is a DemoCamp which should provide some more fleshed out ideas!
To end this summary, my favourite word of the night is “Obsession“. That’s what being part of creating a startup is all about. The obsession to create and grow something unique. Best of luck to all who presented last night, I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on all of them.
June 2, 2008
Hello Monday! Taking a quick break from all the work duties to share my VIM config file.
I’ve only been using VIM for a few months and am still learning the tricks of the trade but I’ve setup a configuration file that works well for me. It has custom color scheme/font, essential tab and line setups, some backup configuration as well as some mappers.
The color scheme is based off of this one.
Check out my .gvimrc and if you have any cool tips or ways to improve it some more for sure let me know!
June 1, 2008
(Do you have a pet or more? Write about it and post a link in the comments! I love hearing about other peoples pets.)
It’s Sunday, but today I am going to write a bit about my two cats because everyone loves cats, and they are oh-so adorable.
I have two cats. They are named Dapper and Blinky. They love to sleep.
The sofa is their favourite place to sleep, not counting my bed which I no longer am allowed to put them on because Miranda sneezes lots and lots and that’s just no good! Dapper and Blinky will spend most of their day sleeping and decide it’s best to be wide awake during 5-7 when I am trying to make dinner and 12am-7am when I am trying to sleep and get ready for the day.
Dapper and Blinky are best buds. They are brothers afterall! Born on the same day they’ve known each other for quite some time (About 8 months as of this writing!)
Owning cats is not for everyone, because just like most animals, every cat has its own personality and sometimes that may just be a bit too much!
Dapper. He is the special one of the family. When we first picked him up in his younger months (Well, weeks!) he was much slower, and cross eyed but very adorable and fluffy for his young age.
Dapper has grown over the past few months to be faster, more playful and less cross-eyed. He used to have a hard time jumping down things and would usually kind of splat on the floor but that is no more! He even beats Blinky sometimes to the laser pointer.
Dapper loves going into the bathroom sink every morning after my shower when it has warmed up and generated some moisture from the shower. He enjoys relaxing by the balcony side and watching the out doors for hours on end and loves letting me know when he wants his belly rubbed by rolling over and awaiting my action.
We have been told by our vet that Dapper will grow to be even more fluffy and large and I cannot wait to see him grow up into a cuter furball.
Blinky. What can I say about my favourite cat? Blinky is agile, a spaz, and a suck all in one. He is part-Siamese and shows it pretty well.
When we received Blinky, he was tiny and very skinny. We thought possibly he would be the runt of the litter. In a few weeks time he grew very fast and we learned that was definitely not the case! With growth, Blinky showed off his agility and speed; The laser pointer and any toys have nothing on Blinky as he chases them at lightning speeds and jumps really, really high to try and catch them.
Blinky has recently taken up climbing and can jump up and slowly crawl up brick walls, screen meshes, and … I definitely need to buy him a huge ten foot scratching pole.
Apart from being one of the most agile cats I’ve ever witnessed, Blinky is simply a suck. At night, he will meow at my bedroom wanting me to play with him some more and in the mornings he’s ready and waiting sharp at 7:05am for me to get out. If I don’t get out by then, I hear the meows come as I tussle around in my bed. Blinky enjoys rubbing his face over everything and loves going inside pretty much anything (Hampers, Pants, Bags) in an attempt to rub his face and entire body in them.
I love my cats, and I couldn’t ask for two more interesting and unique guys to be part of my humble household. Their personalities grow with you and it’s amazing to see how cats, and any pet will grow up and change and end up having very specific habits that we normally could not imagine such simpler creatures to have.
As we grow up and become useful people in society we go out for dinner, see movies, and party. We do it in all sorts of venues and locations. We shop at the large Walmart, the Zellers, go see movies at the large Empire Cinema, and so on.
But many cities have a not-so-hidden culture that just shines with awesome.
A huge part of our society is drilled to shop for food at the big stores. Walmart in many cities now carries food of many varieties as well as pretty much everything else. We have several large super market chains in my (somewhat) small city of 200,000 people. Don’t get me wrong; Shopping at these stores is not wrong, infact I do it all the time but there is so much out there that many people do not use!
I’m talking about local farmers markets, small european deli’s, coffee shops and so on. Of course, these stores are fine as many in my area have been around for years so bringing in the cash is no problem. However, what I’ve found is for the extra “hassle” of traveling to another deli or market for other goods I need is very much worth it! Perhaps it is my Polish/European bias but I simply find deli from my local European deli much, much more enjoyable (and usually somewhat cheaper) then big chain stores.
In many cities, you will also find your more smaller, independent theaters. These theaters generally play great movies from Festivals like Sundance, Toronto, and many more that simply did not make it into the larger chained theaters. Although I do enjoy many movies that have made it into the mainstream, you are missing out on a good chunk of really amazing movies and acting. (Some of these movies, like Little Miss Sunshine make it big as well!)
It doesn’t stop there. Where have I found my coolest furniture, and neatest gifts, kitchen accessories and oh so much more? Well you guessed it, small independent stores in my area that specialize in getting neat stuff from all around the world!
Basically, my point is: If you have not taken a deeper look at your city and tried to see what it has to offer then get out there. Park your car or other mobile unit downtown or uptown and begin exploring! Many flourishing and growing cities have a downtown that is either very nice, or being renovated right at this moment. Besides, it makes a great date! Go explore, find out what’s new, and get some ice-cream that isn’t from Baskin Robbins 
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