Welcome to my personal website.
Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea.
In an exclusive article, Gizmodo penned a powerful exposé about how Yahoo has bludgeoned Flickr. The title conveys the brutal reality of how the internet giant slowly ruined one of its best web properties. Eric Jackson frequently writes about Yahoo! and offers ideas on how it can turn the ship away […]
Source: Why Has Yahoo Killed Flickr? 5 Alternatives For Photo Sharing – Forbes
I want to congratulate Yahoo on a fine job of destroying an asset that was once something really great. I have two accounts with Flickr, my old Pro account which I have been paying for many years and a free account with the new 1TB limit. The option to purchase pro accounts is gone. One of the features in the pro account that was worth paying for was photo stats. In fact this was one of the few reasons I paid for a Flickr account. This feature is removed from all new accounts. And the community is worried that it will be retired from current accounts down the road. Additionally it seems the information from the stats is no longer accurate anyways. So with no reason for me to continue to use Flickr I might as well save my photos on Facebook. Again I want to congratulate Yahoos fine management of Flickr. Some might call it inept or incompetent but clearly those people fail to see Yahoo just wants to kill the service off.
It is getting harder and harder to justify the expense of using Brita water filtration. Looking for evidence and sources that conclude it makes any real difference on the quality of drinking water is non existent outside of company sources. Further more, I live in a city with some of, if not, the cleanest tape water in the world. I have decided to yank out the inner portion of the container which houses the filter and use just straight tap water. Doing it this way nets a lot more water to in the container. I have never had a problem with the taste of tap water in metro Vancouver. I do like very cold water. And suspending water in the fridge helps kill off what little chlorine is left from the water. What I do find amazing is how much information about how bad water is but from sources that all sell water filtration systems. I can’t help but notice the incredible biased point of view of these companies that claim
tap water is bad while selling products to “clean” tap water. Lastly I was totally disgusted with the bottom of the water container. I have not been tearing it apart cleaning it often enough. I suspect many people neglect that being its not easy to take apart the inner section that holds the filter. And may wrongly assume its just filtered water so you don’t have to clean it often. What ended up on the sponge was disgusting…. I can’t believe I have been drinking from that container with that kind of gross buildup of whatever it was. I only have myself to blame for not cleaning it more often. But still, I think I am going to just stick to tap water for now, save money and the environment because honestly those filters is just another consumable and disposable product that is added to waste disposal when we really don’t need to use it at all, at least not here.
Additional
There is some valid evidence that depending on age and construction of a building the water quality can suffer due to the pipes. In such cases maybe a filtration system can make a difference. Reverse osmosis would be my first choice in such a case. I still see little value in Brita which the basic filters only removes chlorine. I also live in a rather new building so the pipes are not a concern for me at this point either.
This is a good article on the issues of data privacy and the issues companies face protecting it. The good is that most companies really do want to protect personal data. The bad is most don’t have any ideas how to do it effectively
Article: A Deep Dive into Data Privacy: It’s Not Just Big Companies, Folks
Randy Bachman, the well-known Canadian musician, found himself embroiled in a public fight with Prime Minister Stephen Harper last year when Harper used his song “Takin’ Care of Business” as a theme song for a major speech. Bachman said he probably would not have granted permission to use the song, since “I don’t think he’s taking care of business for the right people or the right reasons.” Bachman was singing a different tune yesterday as the government released its budget and apparently took care of the right people – record companies. Despite no study, no public demands, and the potential cost to the public of millions of dollars, the government announced that it will extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performances from 50 to 70 years. For that giveaway, Bachman was quoted as saying “thanks for the term extension PM Harper, you really are taking care of business.”While the government lined up industry supporters to praise the term extension, the decision is unexpected and unnecessary (it also announced that it will accede to the Marrakesh copyright treaty for the blind, but that should not require significant domestic reforms). The music industry did not raise term extension as a key concern during either the 2012 copyright reform bill or the 2014 Canadian Heritage committee study on the industry. Experience elsewhere suggests that the extension is a windfall for record companies, with little benefit to artists or the public. In fact, many countries that have implemented the extension have been forced to do so through trade or political agreements, while signalling their opposition along the way.Canada will extend term without any public discussion or consultation, yet other studies have found that retroactive extension does not lead to increased creation and that the optimal term length should enable performers and record labels to recoup their investment, not extend into near-unlimited terms to the detriment of the public. For Canadian consumers, the extension could cost millions of dollars as works that were scheduled to come into the public domain will now remain locked down for decades.
Installing 32 bit Skype on a 64 bit Debian Box
Skype only comes in 32 bit so for any one that installs Debian 64 bit they will need to do a little work to get Skype up and running.
First thing you want to do is obtain Skype. You can do this at skype.com Go to Downloads and select “Choose your distribution” and pick from the drop down menu “Debian 7.0 (Multiarch)”
After you have it downloaded you need to open up Terminal
su (so you are root, you will need your root password)
dpkg –add-architeture i386 (You need to add support for i386 since skype is only a 32 bit application)
apt-get upgrade (This ensures everything is up to date)
dpkg -i “skype-debian…..” (hit tab to complete it. Or type the entire file name out that you downloaded. )
If you have a error about un-met dependencies which occurred for me then run this command
apt-get install -f
Now run
dpkg -i “skype-debian…..”
After it is done installing you will find it in the Internet Folder ready to use.
Microsoft will let the cat out of the bag today with new details about the next Windows operating system known as Windows 10 today.
Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 in September but is expected to share a lot more today which will be streamed at 9 am pacific time. Some of the expected speakers at the event include CEO Satya Nadella; Terry Myerson, Joe Belfiore and Phil Spencer.
Windows 10 will follow Windows 8 skipping the name Windows 9. We should be able to welcome back the missed and loved start menu which was torn away from Windows 8, which in my opinion lead to a lot of people not upgrading to Windows 8.
It is my hope Windows 10 will address many of the problems found and created in Windows 8.
http://news.microsoft.com/windows10story/
I start this post with a gripe. Mobile prices in Canada are to high. Actually, they are not in Manitoba and Saskatchewan which both have provincially owned mobile competition. You can get unlimited Canada wide calling and 5GB of data for under $60.00 in those provinces.
My second gripe, is with the phone manufacturers. Eight years ago when the iPhone came out, it was fat. Fat compared to today’s standards. Back then it was thin. Battery technology of the day gave you about 5 hours of heavy usage time vs today with super skinny, dare I say Anorexic phones which give you about 8 hours of heavy usage time. The thing is I would gladly accept an obese phone if it gave me at least a entire solid day of very heavy usage. Skinny isn’t always the most desirable thing, in people and in technology.
So here is the problem. I can pay nearly $100.00 a month in my province of British Columbia for a anorexic phone that puts out for half a day of heavy use. I can attempt to cheat the system by getting a phone originally intended for Manitoba and Saskatchewan and do a number change after the fact but still suffer from the terrible battery life of modern phones. Or I can kill two birds with two devices.
Recently I picked up a Chatr mobile phone and plan. I have had to find ways to live cheap and unlimited calling for $20.00 a month is about as cheap as it gets for calling. In addition I decided I was tired of bad battery life on a phone. And honestly smart phones have never been the best phone. They have not been the best internet device either. They are ok phones and ok internet devices. The form factor makes them convenient to carry. Have enough battery life for most of the day. Can do most internet things acceptably well with a small screen. And can preform as a phone acceptably well lacking tactile feedback and sometimes lag from forgetting to close apps or because you happened to be in the middle of something else like watching netflix or using GPS navigation. And this is all smart phones, blackberry, iPhone, Android and Windows alike.
So I bought a simple flip phone from back in the day with the plan. A ZTE Z222 to be exact. Its a nice phone that does exactly what it needs to do. It acts as a phone. It connects to my car via bluetooth for hands free calling. It has physical buttons for tactile feed back when you want to dial a number while driving in a province or state that allows it. Has built in short cuts that make it really quick to place a call. Like after partially dialling a number it auto fills the rest for the only possible number it could be in the address book. I forgot how wonderful purpose built phones are. Its designed to be a phone and thats all it is. Texting sucks but I will address that in a minute. And the battery life, well lets put it this way. I plug it in the charger every 3rd day.
So what about Facebook, iMessage, BBM, email, and millions of useless apps. This is where a cellular enabled tablet comes in handy. My flavour is a iPad because of the iOS ecosystem. Most of my friends are on iMessage and I prefer iOS. But regardless of if you use a iPad or Android tablet, as long as its in the 7″ form factor it is a great tool to carry around for all the internet needs. And more important the flex data plans start off as low as $10.00 a month and scale up to $35.00 a month for 5GB of data with Fido.
The larger screen makes a tablet a better internet device hands down for surfing the web and watching content. The bigger battery provides much more usable power for the device. I can go days with out plugging my iPad in just like my phone now. Every app you would have on a cell phone generally speaking works better on a larger screen anyways.
So I solved two problems with two devices. Each dedicated for its purpose built tasks making a great phone and a great internet device with great battery power for a great price. Instead of spending nearly $100.00 a month for a single device that can’t make it through a entire day on heavy usage I now spend between $30 to $55 a month with two devices that give me days of usage between charges.
For those that say well this isn’t a great plan, you have to carry more then one device. This is true. I actually carry 3 because I have a iPod for FM radio and music too. But I always travel by transit with my packsack. And when I drive the car can easily hold that extra device. So it has been no impact on me at all. The benefits of not worrying about battery life, and the better user experience has easily trumped any issues of carrying multiple devices. For the very light internet user a regular smart phone with a low data plan might make as much sense. For some one that only talks and avoids texting and does not use internet, I strongly advise a Chatr talk plan.
What about Wind Mobile and Mobilicity? Bluntly they suck. I can’t be any more blunt. The service coverage of mobilicity is lacking. I mean common, you don’t have coverage over Delta, parts of Richmond, parts of Surrey, a very narrow area of Langley is covered and forget Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Its just not viable of most people who live in the lower mainland. And while Wind has coverage the phone call quality is poor from very high compression used to save bandwidth and data speeds are so atrocious I almost had a nervous breakdown. Chatr is Rogers. Its a solid network, solid quality and solid coverage. Nuff said about that. I do have high hopes that Wind will become a viable option down the road. But in order for that to happen the company needs access to more spectrum to have the bandwidth it needs to offer a good service. Currently they don’t have that.
So to recap, pay $100 a month for unlimited calling and moderate data options on a single device that is ok at being a phone and ok at being a internet device with just acceptable battery life or pay $30 to $55 a month for 2 devices that excel at being a phone and being a internet device with exceptionally good battery life.
I’ve been scanning all my paperwork I have collected for YEARS so I could toss out the paper copies and go to digital copies for reference if I ever needed. I just looked up an old document I made on Google drive which happens to be the place I decided to store my scanned documents. Now these are PDFs but basically photos. No optical recognition used in the scan. Google parsed every PDF and used OCR on them because when I search for stuff some of those PDFs with matching words come up in the results. I tested a couple words that would only be in the PDFs scanned. Sure enough they came up. So that means Google is performing an index scan and using OCR technology to parse the files for relevant and useful information on anything you upload to Google Drive. In one way this concerns me, mostly because I didn’t know, though I should have assumed it. This as a side benefit that is really useful for me because I scanned over 2300 documents and didn’t title them or sort them (yet) so being able to search is very beneficial.