Category Archives: Tech

Some Stats (That I Really Don’t Watch… really…)

Distractions, Tech

I know that stat reporting to your readership is as exciting as an Annual General Meeting for Canadian Chartered Accountants. But the plugin WordPress.com Stats is like those new President Choice Blue Cheese and Hot Wings chips: So addictive, I will probably keel over from it.

Domain owners with WordPress and WP.com bloggers can install it as a Plugin (you’ll need your API Key). Best of all, it’s free! Instantly you can watch your incoming/outgoing stats bloom like a tense parent watching their sexually budding child go out on Prom Night.

It also does a great job logging Google searches that brought people to your site. For fun, here’s the last few searches:

restaurant makeover 4
killman zoo 3
dead robot pictures 3
hey ashley whatchoo playing 2
attack photos 2
amy good gorilla 1
restaurant makeover death watch 1
improv gas millage 1
jamaica labadee pot 1
grapefruit moon restaurant makeover sued 1
tony blair shirtless 1

Thirteen people came here from Sharkboy.ca alone yesterday. 5 from clicking on their Google Reader feeds. I average 188 unique page views per day. Since installing it 5 days ago, my Pride Tips For Out of Towners is my top post! I’m so helpful!

The Lord Giveth

Tech, You Stupid Dick

1998, GlaxoSmithKline introduces a breakthrough HIV drug, Abacavir, that greatly reduces the number of pills an HIV person needs to take a day and adds yet another option for treatment. Hooray!

2008, like most HIV drugs, it turns on it’s users and starts to kill them. GSK justifies the hefty cost of these drugs ($10-$21 retail per tablet) as going into a rainy day fund for the lawsuits that might come their way. Of course they downplay the study and assuredly inform Health Canada that there might be a problem (while fidgeting with their tie and doing their best Oliver Hardy face).

Congratulations GSK, you’ve made me add a category on my blog called “You Stupid Dick”

Firefox 3

Tech

Remember kids! Today at 1pm (EST) you can go grab your copy of Firefox 3 and join a mass of swirly internet folks in creating a world record. Yes, You too, Mac cult guyses!

If anything let’s try to crash the server.

What’s new in FF3? Lifehacker has a great list of old-to-new features here.

UPDATE: Finally got my copy, the install was without hiccup but a few of my extensions don’t work (FireFTP! Help!). For a while my “Gestures” wasn’t working and it left me waving my damn mouse around like Michael J Fox at Hogwarts.

Too Mad to Write

Tech

Go read this article:

Michael Geist – The Canadian DMCA bill. I started to sputter after the second provision – where converting DVDs, CDs and other medias to portable devices may become a crime if you use a device/program that circumvents the copyright protection. If we’re using these converted files for personal use and not for resale or distribution, why should it matter what we do with the movie/music we bought?

Because we have to buy these media files over and over again to play on various devices, making more money for distributors. Who had a major hand in crafting this bill. If I buy Iron Man on DVD, I would have to buy it from iTunes if I wanted to watch it on my iPod. Cha-ching!

While the law does update some outmoded digital rights, this goes too far into personal freedoms, methinks.

UPDATE: Michael Geist expands succinctly on what the new law would mean – invasion of privacy, a law that barely could be enforced and rights of consumers stripped away (shouldn’t Apple be coming in on a white horse right about now?). He also provides ways of contacting your local and federal reps to protest this flawed law. Write in today!

End of an Era

Personal Bits, Tech

…I’m speaking to a Mr Robot?

I’m back from the store. My roommates gather around as I reveal with a flourish: the four head VCR. It cost me close to $500 on special at Sears. Cheers and back slapping ensue for a solid minute. Quickly we hook it up to the TV and settle in for a marathon of movies.

Yes. Can you tell me that figure again?

I’m waiting in line at the College. I see a girl run out of the registrar’s office in tears. I’m worried that that will be me in a few minutes. After supplies and rent and a decent week’s worth of food, I’ve got enough to play a fist full of video games in the common area.

Certainly. After the three payments of $535, $410 and $437 made in the month of May…

I’m staring at my first computer in the dark cave of my living room. I’ve made my first piece of digital art on the tiny 15″ screen: a combination of a picture of myself that I’ve applied a Peter Max type filter and some warped text over my head. I found it easy to do.

…I guess you did your taxes in one go for three years, Mr Robot?

My first web page I did as a joke (much like all my web interactions). It was a hommage to Jon Erik Hexum: All the images I could find combined with a sad midi file; uncontrollably embedded into the page; animated GIFs of torches bookended a 20 second poem I had written. My teacher laughed at the tackiness of it, saying I “grokked” the Web. But he didn’t understand why Jon Erik.

Yes. I did. Which leaves me with…?

I’m standing in the student book shop, wondering if instead of paying the $10 for another pad of newsprint for life drawing class, I could flip all my drawings from the last month over and use the back, meanwhile I could eat cheap pork chops and still have enough to go to Katrinas and have at least two drinks with my friends (who all have paying jobs) this weekend.

Well it looks like we’re showing a balance of $411.05. I guess you’ll be paying this off within 30 days? Just add $3 for the interest.

And with that, the albatross that has been around my neck for the last 20 years flies away.

I have paid off my student loan.

What Looks Goregeous?

Hobbies, Tech

Spore, that’s what! Like millions others, I’m on the edge of my bum waiting for this since they announced it about a year (two?) ago. This video looks a lot less polygon-blocky since the first teaser release (and Matt Powers is a hottie):

And in a brilliant move, they’re releasing the Spore Creator as a freeware program 2 months before the game is released. Get prepped for the game by making the best possible microbe you can!

Yet Another Grand Theft Aut–

Hobbies, Tech

Uh oh… Looks like some people are getting the Ring of Death after some freezing issues on GTA IV. Most likely from hard core gamers overusing their consoles for hours on end, breaking the “cold solder” connections on their motherboard. Not that I’m surprised. On the weekend, I flipped on my XBox 360 after a few hours of Wii and had forgotten how loud the fan/HD operation is in comparison. WHAT? ARE YOU PLAYING HALO 3? I SAID “HALO”, NOT GAYLORD! I mean come on, how much power/heat does the console generate? How much does it need to generate?

Truly a testament to Japanese manufacturing compared to American. Cheaper, smaller, faster, less obtrusive and better designed. Curiously there are no entries for “Wii Technical Problems” on Wikipedia, but there was that whole “toss your Wiimote into your new flatscreen TV” thing. Oh sure, I hear you say “But the Wii is a lower processor/graphics intense game play than the Xbox!” I am sure if you were to make an equally graphic machine like the Xbox in Wii size, it would have a big wind tunnel sized fan on the back and heat sinks larger than the tubes coming out of the Alien’s back.

Regardless, I’m having fun will Bully still. I’m beating up Greaser kids over in Coventry!

Canada Doesn’t Deserve the iPhone

iPhone, Tech

What? I hear you say.

I’m dead serious. If the two main sites that report on iPhone news, applications and gadgets are to be the harbinger of the coming of the iPhone in the Great White North, then we can expect the news to be mis-informed and at least 24 hours too late.

Lets start with iPhoneworld.ca: other than the debilitating ads that clog it’s loading, or the mystery meat navigation, it’s fairly good. But slow on the reporting. Hackint0sh, TUAW and Gizmodo trump this site by hours (in some cases days). Let’s face it, the only thing this site will be good for is when Rogers announces the arrival of the phone and then it will wonder what to talk about next. But what made me cancel my RSS feed to it was their utterly lame attempt to get Rogers and Apple to shake hands: The “Great” Canadian iPhone Petition (quotes mine).

Very noble! That will make Rogers stand up and say “Hey! There are some disgruntle customers out there! We should do something about it!” I’ll stop with the sarcasm from here on in, you get my drift. But here’s the thing that made me pass morning tea through my nose:

We, the undersigned, pledge our support to Rogers Communications Inc., that we would support the launch of the iPhone in Canada.

Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? They want us to support a company that is going to monopolize this product with high connection costs? Uh… for how long? Forever? I’ll be honest, when (if?) Rogers brings the iPhone to Canada I’ll buy into their plan only because it’s the only kid on the block. As soon as someone else comes along: Sayonara! Pledging support to a company blindly is a bit too creepy for me. Sign me out. Expected signatures: 100,000. Since inception (March 28th): 790. Good luck with that.

And then there’s iPhoneinCanada.ca. Arguably a better site with product/accessory reviews but with the same amount of slow loading ads. Again, nothing really new here that hasn’t been scooped from the other Apple/iPhone sites, other than cases you can’t get in Canada unless you order them online. Worrisome were the reviews and links to “All-you-can-eat” download sites that I am pretty sure are hosting unlicensed media. Regardless, I hung out on the forums for a couple weeks and was really starting to get a sense of community until one of the moderators started to wildly recommend Ziphone blindly to all who would ask what was the best way to jailbreak, unlock, activate your phone.

Obviously he wasn’t doing his homework.

I mean, sure it works. But what is it doing to your iPhone?

When I asked if he had researched what exactly Ziphone does, he accused me of being biased towards a particular software. His final word on the matter was that the forum was there to offer many different solutions to unlocking your phone and that readers would have to make their own decisions.

So I decided that I wanted to be a part of something more informed and based on solid opinion, and I deleted that RSS feed too.

So I’m hoping that any Canadian who has an iPhone or is going to purchase one, has a little more sense to blindly trust these sites. My advice: Google deeper.