Wayne D's Blog

(updated July 22nd 4:20) http://www.veetle.com/index.php/channel/view#489e78e9b8936 is offering free live streaming of the Golf Channels coverage of the 2010 Canadian Open. Thanks to the guys at http://www.torontogolfnuts.com/showthread.php?p=636106 for pointing the way.

It looked like Canadian golf fans are out of luck when it comes to live streaming of the 2010 RBC Canadian Open from St. Georges in Toronto.

I checked TSN's broadcast schedule and there in no mention of live streaming of this year's Canadian Open. That really sucks, come on TSN, why no live streaming of our own tournament? A quick Google search and all I found was ads for Watchlivegolf.com which I mentioned in http://wdawe.com/index.php/british-open-live-streaming-in-canada?blog=1 and other suspicious looking live golf streaming sites. No one has provided my with any information that would reduce my suspicion that Watchlivegolf.com may be a scam. There is also no mention of live streaming on http://www.pgatour.com/.

I couldn't find any mention of live streaming outside Canada so my usual advice to use a service like http://hotspotshield.com/ (free) or www.witopia.net (paid) to access foreign golf streams doesn't even apply.

If I find out any new information I'll update this post so check back tomorrow and Saturday.

Canadian golf fans don't despair, www.TSN.ca has published their broadcast schedule for the 2010 British Open and so far has only announced live streaming coverage of holes 9, 10 and 11 from the Old Course at St. Andrew's. The streaming will start when groups arrive at the ninth, TSN has said more details will follow.now says live streaming will start at approximately 3:30am est/12:30am pst. TSN's live streams are available at http://www.tsn.ca/live/golf/BritishOpen2010/.

The Brits are big golf fans and as one would expect the BBC is streaming live coverage of all four rounds of the Open on the BBC Sport website for British golf nuts http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/sport/golf/?sort=dateavailable. The BBC is offering wall to wall 2010 Open golf coverage with live streaming running 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. BST (British Summer Time) on Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. BST on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. BST on Sunday. BBC Sports will not only stream their live TV coverage they will also live stream holes nine, ten and eleven each day. Canadian's will need to use a service like http://hotspotshield.com/ (free) or www.witopia.net (paid) to access the BBC Sports British Open live golf streams. BST is currently 5 hours ahead of EST.

Watchlivegolf.com offers a 1 year package of live golf streaming for $12.95 but after reading through their FAQ I'm not so sure I'd be willing to gamble with my money. Their FAQ says
"We at watchlivegolf.com do not provide streams of any live golf coverage from our website. Nor do we provide links to download software from any illegal sites. Instead, we provide links to the best live golf streaming available online. These links come courtesy or third party providers where the streaming live golf videos are legal practice." I found one review at http://judgespot.com/review/watchlivegolf.com that said the site was a scam so be prepared to kiss your $12.95 goodbye. If anybody tries please come back and leave a comment.

While you are waiting for the Open to begin TSN has a video flyover of each hole of The Old Course at St. Andrews to whet your appetite here http://watch.tsn.ca/2010-british-open-on-demand/2010-british-open-hole-by-hole-flyover/#clip323782

Thanks to Anosmia for releasing the picture that graces this article under a Creative Commons license http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferboyer/180863929/

After showing this completed video to people I know the most common response has been "My furnace filter doesn't look like your furnace filter". The hardest part of shooting this video was cleaning up the basement so that I had a nice clean background for the shooting. My film makers creed is "If it isn't in the shot it isn't there". Shooting angles and positions were carefully selected to prevent you from seeing how messy my basement is around the furnace. Luckily the furnace area of my basement is alrge enough that I could get back far enough to get a nicely composed shot.

It has been my custom that after I completed a video for www.howcast.com I write a blog post about the trials and tribulations of my latest shot. In the past that has included missing footage, lighting problems and various software issues. I am happy to report that the technical production process on my latest video other than one minor editing misstep that was caught by the able producers at Howcast. Now that I have mastered the mechanical shooting and editing process I want to work on the artistic side of the process, making the video more dynamic and interesting, mixing up the shots and angles. In this video I am particularly happy with how the water shots turned out. I'm still trying to decide what my next video will be, unfortunately my star actor fractured his arm in a schoolyard water balloon battle and is unavailable for the next 6 weeks,

I had been getting a bit depressed lately. No one has been commenting on my blog posts even though I get more than 500 visitors a week. I know that lots of people don't comment on blogs but nothing?

When I was poking around setting up www.imetwayne.com I realized that there was no "add comment" link at the end of the posts. I checked that comments were enabled. I was mystified. While I was poking around I logged out of the blog admin interface and was horrified to find that there was no "Leave a comment" link on my main blog here either. No wonder I haven't been getting any blog comments. Instead there was a stark "Comments are not allowed from anonymous visitors." at the end of each post. Ever since I installed the b2evolution Turing Test plugin to artfully quiz commenters to ensure they weren't bots I had enabled anonymous comments. I know that comments worked fine at least until the beginning of January 2010, because I had some.

After some Googling and poking around in the nooks and crannies of b2evolution I found that the "Allow anonymous comments" checkbox was not selected in the basic antispam plugin on the plugins tab of Global Settings. I can only surmise that somewhere along the line one of the upgrades I did to the b2evolution software turned that setting off. I've learned my lesson, I'll be checking the blog after upgrades when I am logged out of the admin interface.

Feel free to comment, now that you can.

Kudos to CBC for giving Canadian Linux users a usable live stream of all the World Cup matches at http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifaworldcup/live/. Now CBC needs to fix their video viewer for shows which is still broken. Come on CBC if you can get it working for the World Cup why not for your regular shows? There are enough Linux users in Canada to make it worth your while. You are the people's network after all and Canadian Linux users are an under serviced minority. Ok, enough of that time to go watch some World Cup soccer, or should I call it football? I'm so confused.