Wayne D's Blog

The weather is almost too nice to be cranky but I'm going to crank a little bit anyways. I have noticed a disturbing trend among people to be detached from their present physically reality. On Flickr's day of Flickr I went into the dollar store to buy some batteries for my digital camera. I got in line behind a woman who was talking on her cell phone. She paid for her purchase and left the store without ever making eye contact with the clerk. As I left the store I saw her going to her car still talking on the phone. I wished I had brought my camera because she passed another woman who was almost yelling in her phone and it would have made a great Day of Flickr photo. It illustrates how many people aren't mentally present where they are. That's why people are always talking on their cellphones in the cars. They really don't want to be there. The clerk in the dollar store was just another car on the road that had to be passed. It must be quite a dehumanizing experience to be serving someone in a store and they don't even look you in the eye. I prefer to engage with the people around me, I talk to store clerks. I ask the name of the wait staff at the bar.

An update on my inability to stream Global TV shows because they think I'm not in Canada. No response from Canada.com yet and it's still broken for me.

I was clicking around last night and made my way to the Global TV web page. Well actually I was checking to see if they were going to show Bones and noticed that they offered streaming episodes of Heroes. I have been pretty hard on Canadian rights holders because they were slow to offer streaming TV shows because the U.S. network websites block Canadian users. I clicked on one of the Heroes episodes to see what the quality was and received the message Sorry, this video is unavailable outside of Canada. When did they move Richmond Hill outside of Canada? What kind of idiot geolocation service are they using? My IP address is in the rogers.com domain, when did Rogers start offering cable service outside of Canada? I decided to complain, clicked on the contact us link and was presented with a list of Global locations across the country. There was no option to comment about the website. Sigh. I guess it's off to the bit torrent network for Global TV shows if you are a Rogers customer. I sent feedback to webmaster@canada.com but I'm not holding my breath.

Yahoo TV still sucks. I went to the Yahoo TV listings last night and saw that Global was showing a repeat of House so I clicked on the episode to see the synopsis to check whether I had seen the episode and here's what came up: House treats a teenage supermodel who gets into a catfight on the catwalk and then passes out. When her tox-screen shows heroin, she's treated for addiction. Unfortunately, her symptoms continue after she's weened off the drugs. It turns out that she's actually a "he" with undescended testes. House fights off increasingly bad leg pains. Cuddy helps him with what she later confesses was a placebo. They spoiled the whole episode, both story lines. House is about solving medical mysteries and Yahoo gave the mystery away. Compare Yahoo's synposis with the episode info from TV.com: House uncovers a startling secret when he treats a teenage supermodel for heroin addiction. Meanwhile, Wilson hopes the increased leg pain in House's leg is an indication his leg nerves are regenerating. I know the episode is over a year old but why spoil the show for someone who hasn't seen it?



I ran across a couple of new podcasts this week. Geekbrief.tv offers fast talking Cali Lewis in a three minute video podcast on the tech issues of the day. She's cute, funny and at more than three hundred words per minute packs a tonne of content into a short podcast. Even though the show often covers the same territory as Buzz Out Loud it worth watching for entertainment value alone or if you don't want to devote thirty minutes to listening to all of Buzz Out Loud. I'm also sampling Tiki Bar TV. Tiki Bar TV is too hard to explain, it's entertainment not information and the best thign to do is to go to the webiste and watch an episode and decide for yourself if you like it or not. Episodes are five minutes long so worst case is you lose five minutes. Geekbrief TV can also be viewed on the web, no iPod required.

www.flickr.com w_d's May 5 photoset

Flickr is going to publish a book of pictures taken by their members on May 5th. For those who don't know Flickr is a social networking website that facilitates picture sharing. The trouble is that each member can only submit one picture. Now i need help deciding which picture to submit. Click on the upside down eye and pick out your favourite then click here to communicate your favourite if you aren't a Flickr or Yahoo 360 member. Flickr members can leave comments on the Flickr site and Yahoo 360 members can leave comments here. I wanted to create a poll but Yahoo 360 doesn't allow 24 choices in their polls. I know it's kludgy but it's the best I could come up with using the available tools.

Wow, long gap between entries. Well it seems long to me. Spent the weekend in the woods with the Explorers. Now my jacket smells of wood smoke. We managed to get stuck with a big pile of wood with a slightly red centre that was very hard and burned very poorly until it got really hot.

I have really got to start writing my ideas down, I had something brilliant to write for this post but it has fled my overactive mind. I do know it was a gripe about something. I am getting quite curmudgeonly in my old age. I'm about ready to heave my car radio out the window. It has refused to work with my iPod to cassette adaptor. The same adaptor works fine in my wife's car but in my car it trys to change direction every 30 seconds or so. Very irritating. I was reduced to listening to the radio this evening and it was beastly. I couldn't find anything I wanted to listen to and ended up pushing the scan button and listening to 15 seconds of every station on the FM dial multiple times. By the end of the trip I had decided that I was going to crawl under the dash and figure out a way to get the iPod line output into my radio or else. Why would anyone listen to the radio when they can program there own station with their iPod?

My upgrade to Centos 5 was mostly successful except that I haven't managed to get Firewire working yet and my printing is totally screwed. I had installed a number of wonky fonts before the upgrade and now whenever I print I get mostly blank pages. I guess I should dig into it and figure it out. They upstream provider did recommend a fresh install, now I know why. The good news is that it the webcam driver I couldn't get working in Centos 4 does work in Centos 5. Three steps forward, one step back.

I feel less guilty about not blogging so now I can go to bed.

A warm breeze is blowing through the window as I sit here enjoying the first nice day of this year. My hands are stained with oil from the boy's bicycles. We dug them out, tuned them up and off they went riding today. The cushion for the porch swing is installed, the chairs are down from the garage loft along with the patio umbrella and we ate outside on the deck for the first time this year. Its been a long winter but I'm pretty sure we have seen the last of the snow for the year. When I retire I'm moving someplace without winter, not tropical necessarily, just someplace where I don't have to shovel snow.

I mentioned my infatuation with National Geographic's video podcasts and how I had subscribed through the website. I guess I'm used to instant response because I was worried when I didn't receive an immediate confirmation of my subscription. I worried all for nought, National G confirmed my subscription on the 13th which was about 2 weeks after I went to their website.

In the past I have opined on how social networking was a fad and didn't hold much interest for me. One of the younger women in my office talked me into joining Facebook even though I didn't think it would be any good for an old guy like me. Late last week one of the RHHS class of '80 alumni looked me up on Facebook and sent me an email. It was nice to hear from her and I realised that I have lost touch with all of my high school and university friends. Today I joined the alumni group for my high school and came across a message about my old music teacher Bud Hill. He was quite a character and a great teacher. He was a fan of whole wheat bread before it was fashionable to eat fibre and can take partial credit for me preferring whole wheat bread. Sites like Facebook make it easier to stay in touch with the people you know and remain connected. I originally thought Facebook was only for kids and I was wrong.

I picked up my new glasses today. I decided a needed new glasses because the ones I was wearing were a pair of safety glasses that ATS bought me a 4 or 5 years ago. They were OK but I think my head must be getting fat because they felt like they were squeezing my temples and they were pretty big and clunky. After I had my eye test I went to Lenscrafters and was overwhelmed with the selection. The sales staff left me to flounder on my own, maybe I should have called them over to help but after looking around the store for 10 or 15 minutes I expected them to check in with me. I'm getting crotchety on my old age and have a fairly short attention span, descended into despair and went home. I went cruising on the Internet and found a new company called Great Glasses who offer a 3 for 1 deal. I didn't want 3 pairs so they gave me a discounted price on 1 pair. They got just the right balance of leaving me alone to look and helping guide me in my selection. Mumtaz was very patient with me and put the pair I liked in a box and took my number when I told her I wanted to show them to my wife to get her opinion. The problem with picking out glasses is that when I take off my glasses to try on a new pair my vision isn't really good enough to see what I look like in the mirror. That was Saturday. Just as my wife and I were getting ready to go look at them my sister called up and wanted to come by for a visit. Monday night we were tied up so we didn't make it in that day. Tuesday Mumtaz called and left a message asking if I was still interested. Wednesday night we made it in and even though Mumtaz wasn't there we were treated very well by the staff who were working. When I picked up my glasses they gave me five gift packs of a lens cleaner along with a bottle of cleaning solution to give to my friends. If you need new glasses you should check out Great Glasses. If you do be sure to mention my name, if I refer ten people I get a free pair of glasses. Please note that even I didn't get a referral bonus I'd still recommend them.