This is the awesome weather I’m seeing on the first day of our vacation to Eastern Canada. This was shot from the entrace to the Cambridge Suites hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on September 4th, 2010.

So true…so very true. Full comic at The Oatmeal. [NSFW - Language]

Wondering what happened to Varun “Vinny” Aurora, David Humeniuk, and Dave Jones? The Alberta Securities Commission has something to say. I quote:

“The Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) has issued a Notice of Hearing alleging Calgary residents Varun Vinny Aurora, David Humeniuk and David Jones breached Alberta securities laws by acting as dealers without being properly registered, making serious omissions and misrepresentations to investors and distributing various Concrete Equities Group entities’ securities using offering documents not in compliance with Alberta securities laws.

The appeatence to set a date for the hearing will be held on October 13th, 2010, at 1 p.m. in the ASC Hearing Room on the 6th Floor, 300 – 5th Avenue S.W., Calgary, Alberta. I’m pondering going myself – I wonder if it’s open to the public? The full notice of hearing document can be found on the ASC Web site, but I’ve also mirrored a copy of it here. Read the rest of this entry »

Being Canadian, and not American, there’s only so much right I have to speak to the issues I see happening to the south of me – but this issue of the “Ground Zero Mosque” has really gotten ridiculous. I’m a right-leaning, conservative Christian person, but the things I see the right doing in the US make me shake my head. I have less and less in common with the radical, polarizing crazies who try to turn everything they touch into something politically explosive. This video sums up my feelings on this issue quite nicely.

I whipped up a photo slideshow of the recent wedding photos I took of my friends Brent and Rowena, and it turned out pretty good (make sure to go full screen and click the HD button if you watch it – the regular version looks sorta’ bad). The music is “To Show You My Love” by Mike Schmidt from the album The High Cost of Living (A Love Story). Slideshow created in Proshow Producer.

Figure 1: What is this, 1994 all over again?

Whenever bandwidth is discussed, there’s always lots of finger pointing because there are so many variables, and players involved, that it’s rarely a simple issue. My particular bandwidth bugaboo this morning? I was ticked off that Dropbox [referral] was only uploading at 10 KB/s. I left a 900 MB transfer running all night and it wasn’t finished in the morning, and that’s when I discovered the awful speed. My first instinct was to point a finger at Dropbox, thinking there was some sort of bandwidth throttling going on. I did a speed test with a tool my ISP provides (speedtest.shaw.ca) and was shocked to see 1.7 Mbps downloads and 107 kbps uploads (Figure 1). It’s normally 20x that on downloads and 10x that on uploads, so I knew something was wrong beyond just Dropbox. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t understand a word of this video, but the visuals are hilarious! It’s fascinating watch some users turn on Apple – they’re a company that has specialized in giving users a specific, highly controlled experience that for the most part works really well. But it seems Apple has finally crossed the line with the iPhone 4 “Antennagate” in terms of being too pushy with their users (“You’re holding it wrong”), and some people are lashing back. It’s very interesting to watch this play out.

“Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers — and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.”

A very worthwhile talk that’s worth 18 minutes of your time.

There are no shortages of worthy causes to give money to in our world, because so many people need help – but I’ve always believed that before a developing nation can truly begin to grow, and its people take care of themselves, the basics need to be there. Laptops for every child and other initiatives can come later; first, they need clean water, shelter, and a reliable food supply. Giving someone access to clean drinking water has a ripple effect that reaches further than you might think. I think clean water is where it all starts; it saves lives by preventing disease, it improves the health of everyone that has access to it, kids can stay in school instead of walking for hours to get water, and helps people grow their own food in small gardens. I was extremely impacted by the video above, and I hope you will be too. Please consider donating to charity: water.