Random observations, teachings and musings of a well trained cubicle superhero.
http://j1.ca
Friday, November 30, 2007
Google MyLocations on my BlackBerry WORKS!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Fwd: Rad Deals Sample Sale Flyer
Please see attached for the sample sale this weekend. Good timing for Christmas gifts. Feel free to pass it along.
Regards
Stef
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Dec1-madlib/pb wolf@opera house Dec1
|
And
1-DEC-07 | MADLIB / PEANUT BUTTER WOLF | OPERA HOUSE | 19+ | $25.00 |
Monday, November 26, 2007
Justice @ CiRCA vid (solid sound)
I kinda have the feeling that it would have looked the same had I been there that night..
IMG00213.jpg
Saturday, November 24, 2007
My top picks are below, based on the following highly technical categories; fun-osity, gadget value, and lastly, way down the list, necessity and day-to-day usefulness, a.k.a. "How did I ever live without this?"
Fun-osity
The Nintendo Wii is winning the console wars. Why? Because it's the most fun to play. I like video games, but I'm not really a gamer anymore. Video games kind of passed me by after the days of Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64. Any requirement for memorized weapon maneuvers or combo-punches leaves me totally uninterested. In fact, I think I peaked at "double-tap makes sonic spin-real-fast."
But at a party recently, a friend had Wii Sports and Wii Boxing hooked up their projector. I had a blast! To me, that's what video games should be. Okay, you hardcore gamers, ease off...there are some serious titles that should satisfy you too. Its wiilly a wiinner!
However, wiitail outlets are having trouble keeping wiis in stock. It's a wiil problem. Okay, I'm done. Sewiiously (now I'm really done).
Back over at Sony's camp, flagging sales have lead to a surprising $100 price drop for Playstation 3. If there's a Linux wunderkind or an aforementioned Frag Monster on your holiday shopping list, you may want to check it out. Guitar Hero 3 will play on the PS3 (and Wii), which I picked up for the (still popular) PS2. IT ROCKS!
Gadgety Goodness
If you ever watched The Jetsons, you have always wanted to own a robot to do your cleaning. Well, now you can. The Roomba won't provide witty conversation like Kit from Knight Rider, but it actually does a pretty good job. Even the stodgy New York Times loved the new version. Ruggedized parts and beefed up components make this little guy a treat to use.
We "lab-tested" a basic unit back at Cube-Headquarters and although a little noisy (it is a vacuum, mind you), it did an excellent job of meandering its way around the condo. I appreciated its utilitarian features, namely, its ability to navigate beneath a dining room table, and mind its boundaries using the provided fake wall modules. The better half loved how it "sings" when you turn it on, and how it returned to its "bed" when it got "sleepy." Humbug.
Back over at mission control, Logitech's gorgeous new MX Air Mouse is working double duty as my regular mouse for computer work, and as the mousey remote for my Media Centre. A long time user of the Gyration line of (you guessed it) gyroscopic in air mice, these little babies let you zip your pointer to the top or bottom of the screen by just tilting your arm. Mmmm...that's solid laziness!
How did I live without this?
The promise of ubiquitous downtown Toronto WiFi looked great on paper, I have to admit. I support Rogers’s services but I am totally unbiased when it comes to good tech. I would be the first to rave about it if it was convenient and reliable. From my trials though, service is very inconsistent.
Adding to the problem, depending on what building or conference centre you are in downtown, Onezone and other public hotspot services seem suspiciously unavailable, while the venue’s ludicrously priced but not-so-ludicrously fast WiFi beams brightly.
There are a number of wireless access point options where I work (downtown Toronto), most are pretty sketchy. I've tried many of them and have been double-charged, blocked out and generally dissatisfied. It's not an idea you haven't heard before, but Rogers Portable Internet fills that gap where public or hotspot access points fall short.
Although you'll need to carry a modem with you, as long as you have a plug available you are good to go. A clever man once said the essence of good technology is the user never having to “make it work” for them. That's what I get with this service; it's fast, reliable and just plain works. Tossing a small modem into my laptop bag isn't such a big deal when I know that I can get to the web whenever and wherever I need it.
Look for me at local restaurants looking under tables for electrical outlets. I'm happy to do it, too...now I can charge my laptop, get online and chow down on some cheap Chinatown fare all at the same time. Sweetness!
I know it was a quick tour, but if your wee (wii?) ones are at the age where they're reprogramming, rather than tickling Elmo, or if you're fishing for a "gift" that you can "both enjoy," look no further than the surefire winners listed here.
Printable View Send to a friend |
Friday, November 16, 2007
Slingbox, the company that makes everybody's favorite TV to computer accessory, announced a product that it calls SlingCatcher earlier this year. The company was showing one off last night at a CES press event, which is a pretty good sign that it plans to start selling the product soon
The SlingCatcher pretty much a reverse Slingbox: instead of sending media from your television to your PC, it sends media from your computer to the TV. Sounds kind of like the Apple TV, which was described using terms like "opposite" and "Slingbox" when it first hit the market. Of course, as the Slingbox representatives love to point out, unlike the Apple TV, SlingCatcher will let you send just about any kind of video file from your computer to your television.
The SlingCatcher can also send media remotely from one television to another local or remote television, with no need for an intervening computer. The company, which was recently acquired by EchoStar, will announce more details closer to launch, and is currently planning to sell the SlingCatcher for less than $200. — S.E. Kramer
from:http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/11/14/slingcatcher_is.html
Thursday, November 15, 2007
New spex: ic! berlin
Monday, November 12, 2007
Mr.Scruff Sat.Dec15 @ Revival
The Hard Sell - An educational primer
This is going to be sick.
Tickets still available for the Tue Jan 30th show
Sunday, November 11, 2007
OCAD Whodunit Sale
Here's the deal:
- Show up to one of the free 4 free preview days and note the art you like
- Previews: Noon to 8PM-TueNov20 & ThursNov22 & FriNov23
Noon to 6PM-WedNov21
- Show up freaking early on Sat Nov24 (open 9am-4pm) and buy what you want.
- Flip the piece over to reveal whether it's the work of a renown artist, celebrity or just some schmuck student.
Either way you'll have seen the work so you'll end up with art you like, and the cash goes to OCAD.
http://www.whodunit.ca
http://www.cfrb.com/contests/new/607660/whodunit%3F+ocad+mystery+art+sale
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Blade Runner - Directors Cut @ the Regent
Blade Runner: The Final Cut is the final Ridley Scott approved edit.
Now exclusively showing in full digital at the Regent Theatre 551 Mount Pleasant Road.
Wired: Well, let me ask you the obvious question, which is: You did a director's cut in 1992. Why wasn't that the final word?
Scott: The director's cut in 1992 was actually the removal of the voice-over and the ending. But data-wise it wasn't a very well put-together transition onto disc, honestly. It was represented on a disc, and the disc wasn't terribly good. Technically, it didn't look that great. And it should look great, because Blade Runner, at the time, was pretty formidable — is pretty formidable even now, actually.
Wired: I've read that there are wires and shadows in the earlier versions of the movie that you've eliminated.
Scott: Mm-hmm, yeah.
Wired: Given the design focus that you have, and you're famous for your attention to detail, I just wonder: How did wires and shadows get into the original print?
Because you can't make a spinner fly without a crank. That's why it was raining in the shot, because the rain would help to hide the cables. But when that spinner comes around the corner — we always say today, "Oh, that's digital." It's not. That's a real 2-ton spinner being hoisted out around the corner and brought around the corner by a large crank that literally brought it down, landed it, and took it off again. Bloody good crane driver, right? You have four points on the cable that keep it steady. Because those big cranes are incredibly technically accurate. So he could do that. But I always used to sit there staring at the cables. Then eventually one or two of the geeks spotted it. So we took those out.
Wired: I see.
Scott: I was tempted not to, because I thought it was quite charming that there were cables still in the shot, you know. And there was when Roy Batty came out of the phone booth, and for some bizarre reason we never noticed that somebody's thumb was in the bottom left-hand corner. The phone booth was automatic door and I couldn't de-automate it, and I was getting really beaten up because we were against the gun, so I just shot. I was, by then, getting a two-take Charlie. And there was the bloody thumb in the shot. We just left it in there for a while. It's things like that, the little mistakes like that, that you're tempted to leave them in actually. It's a signature saying, "Yes, it is fiction, it is fantastical moviemaking."
Read Wired Magazine's Interview with Ridley Scott here
Eye-Fi wireless SD cards
Eye-Fi, a new company that makes Wi-Fi camera-memory cards, was formed because of a broken promise.
Three years ago, Yuval Koren, Eye-Fi's CEO, traveled to New York from San Francisco for a wedding. You know, the kind you see in every single romantic comedy ever made? Long-lost friends were reunited, copious snapshots were taken, and everyone pledged to send them along soon after. "There were lots of good intentions," says Koren. "But it never happened."
We all know why: Booting-up your computer, plugging in your camera, uploading pics to the hard drive and finally choosing what to send to the web is universally annoying.
Koren came home and cornered his geeky friends -- some worked at Cisco, others at Wi-Fi vendor Atheros, and a few even labored away at Apple. He posed a question to them: Why do digital pictures so often end up trapped inside cameras?
And then they figured out a way to easily set them free.
Two-and-a-half years of intense work later, they produced a 2-GB SD memory card mated with a Wi-Fi chip. Just sync the card to a hard drive or Wi-Fi network, and plug it into a digital camera and start snapping away. Pics are then routed to the hard drive or to one of 17 photo vendors (like Facebook or Flickr.) The card's software deftly handles scaling and compression while privacy settings at the individual sites allow you to filter what gets published.
The Wi-Fi chip, though, was the technical breakthrough. Developed by Atheros, it uses 70 percent less power than competing products, allowing it to be comfortably nestled in a standard SD card. Atheros didn't realize how much its wunderchip could help Koren's fledgling project.
"They didn’t know about us at first," explains Koren. "The software and hardware were still in beta, but we begged for access." Atheros eventually agreed and granted Koren access in order to help prove their own technology.
A marriage of innovation and vision may have hatched the Eye-Fi, but something larger is also at work here. Next-gen Wi-Fi networking is finally allowing lowly hardware to be integrated with web apps and software.
"Businesses realize that device margins disappear quickly," says Jonathan Gaw, an IDC analyst who covers home networking. "One way to combat that is to integrate upwards with services via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. We’re going to see networking in all kinds of devices."
Eye-Fi was able to beat lumbering industry dinosaurs like Kodak and San Disk to the punch on a Wi-Fi-equipped memory card for a couple of reasons. First, it's rare for hardware companies to have cross-disciplinary chops in software, which the Eye-Fi development required. Second, camera makers like Nikon that have toyed with Wi-Fi seem intent on locking in consumers to one particular application or photo platform. Who cares if you can beam photos around wirelessly if you're shackled to the same device all the time?
Eye-Fi is instead laser-focused on a more technically savvy crowd. "We’re not talking about grandmas," says Koren. "Our customer knows how to get photos out of camera but would rather spend their time captioning and sharing."
Eye-Fi also goes the extra distance to listen to its customers. Even now, anyone can log on at eye.fi com to suggest what other photo platforms should be supported.
Koren is coy about what's next for the company, but says, "There’s a lot more that we have in mind. Keep following what we're doing."
From Wired.com
EyeFi Wireless: http://eye.fi
Friday, November 09, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
A Song for Ray, my Coffee Guy.
Memorized my order after 3 visits.
Spares me the chit-chat, service on the double.
Cut off this bitchy "I'm-only-here-to-tell-you-how-I-love-Starbucks" woman to hand me my brew.
Affordable danishes.
Dude, I love you.
I hope your name is Ray.
PS go see Juno when it comes out.
Best Cameo ever for the Chemistry teacher.....the actor is mentioned in a few posts below....
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Mos Def Wed Nov14@ Phoenix
MOS DEF
with special guests Drake, Diz Gibran & Basik, music by Mixtape Massacre
Regarded as one of hip-hop's most promising newcomers in the late '90s, Mos Def expanded his reach in the years to come, establishing himself as a serious actor. His artistic career began in the late '80s as a television actor, a profession he began directly out of high school. By the mid-'90s though, Mos Def turned to rap music as his new profession.
Mos Def began recording for the upstart Rawkus label. His first full-length album, Black Star (1998), a collaboration with Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek , shook the hip-hop community, which embraced the album and spoke of a Native Tongue revival. His solo debut, Black on Both Sides (1999), did much the same a year later. For the most part though, Mos Def maintained a low profile in successive years, rediscovering his passion for acting and forming the rap-rock supergroup Black Jack Johnson (featuring members of Parliament/Funkadelic, Bad Brains, Living Colour). In October 2004, he finally delivered a second solo album, The New Danger, which involved Black Jack Johnson on a few tracks.
Mos Def released his third solo album, True Magic late last year. A contract-fulfilling release for Geffen, which had absorbed Rawkus years prior, the album trickled out in a small run during the last week of 2006. Bizarrely, the disc came with no artwork and was sold in a clear plastic case -- though its single, "Undeniable," did manage to grab a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance. In October, Mos signed a deal with Downtown Records and appeared on a remix to the song " D.A.N.C.E." by Justice.
About TBG:
The TOO BLACK GUYS clothing line was founded in 1990, in Toronto. It was a pioneering brand in a market that would evolve to become known as streetwear. After a hiatus that saw its founder Adrian go on to award winning design positions at companies like Roots and Ecko, the line was re-launched in 2006 as simply TBG. TBG is presenting Mos Def to celebrate the opening of a "pop-up shop" on November 15th at 155 John St and to announce their collaborative arrangement with one of hip hop's most influential artists.
MOS DEF
with special guests Drake, Diz Gibran & Basik, music by Mixtape Massacre
Wednesday November 14, 2007
the Phoenix Concert Theatre (410 Sherbourne St.)
Tickets are $29.50 (plus any additional fees) in advance and available at Ticketmaster, 155 John St. (formerly Lounge Clothing),
Rotate This, Play De Record & Soundscapes ** TICKETS ON SALE SATURDAY NOVEMBER 3 @ 10AM **
19+ Event, Doors @ 8:00pm, Show @ 9:00pm
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Shadow&CutChemist WedJan30@Phoenix
DJ SHADOW & CUT CHEMIST:
THE HARD SELL
REMG & CKLN present the pairing of two of the worlds top DJs in an unforgettable evening of party rocking.
Following in the footsteps of their now-legendary Brainfreeze (1999) and Product Placement (2001) sets, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist have outdone themselves. Their new, all-45 show, entitled The Hard Sell, incorporates eight turntables and two guitar loop pedals, allowing tricks and complexity rarely attempted by a DJ duo. As with the two previous sets, the pair eschew their own material in favor of an amalgam of music from all eras and styles, providing for amusing and provocative mash-ups; rap mixes with fiddle music, doo-wop with new wave, and everything in between...all while avoiding the obvious, "been there, heard that" stuff you get from most DJs.
The last time The Hard Sell was performed in the United States was in front of 15,000 people at the world-famous Hollywood Bowl...so you know it's going to be special. In the words of Shadow himself, "we want to play something to make everyone smile...and then send them running for the exits!" Don't miss this rare appearance by two of California's most cutting-edge DJs.
Don't miss you chance to catch this legendary duo perform their new set Tuesday January 29, 2008 at The Phoenix Concert Theatre.
DJ SHADOW & CUT CHEMIST:
THE HARD SELL
Wednesday January 30, 2008
The Phoenix Concert Theatre (410 Sherbourne St.)
Tickets are $29.50 (plus any additional fees) in advance and available at Ticketmaster, Rotate This, Play De Record & Soundscapes
** TICKETS ON SALE THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8 **
19+ Event, Doors @ 8:00pm, Show @ 9:00pm
www.flickr.com |
Archives
- July 2003
- June 2004
- July 2004
- August 2004
- September 2004
- October 2004
- November 2004
- December 2004
- January 2005
- February 2005
- March 2005
- April 2005
- May 2005
- June 2005
- July 2005
- August 2005
- September 2005
- October 2005
- November 2005
- December 2005
- January 2006
- February 2006
- March 2006
- April 2006
- May 2006
- June 2006
- July 2006
- September 2006
- October 2006
- November 2006
- December 2006
- January 2007
- February 2007
- March 2007
- April 2007
- May 2007
- June 2007
- July 2007
- August 2007
- September 2007
- October 2007
- November 2007
- December 2007
- January 2008
- February 2008
- March 2008
- April 2008
- May 2008
- June 2008
- July 2008
- August 2008
- September 2008
- October 2008
- November 2008
- December 2008
- January 2009
- February 2009
- March 2009
- May 2009
- June 2009
- July 2009
- October 2009
- November 2009
- December 2009
- January 2010
- February 2010
- March 2010
- April 2010
- May 2010
- June 2010
- July 2010
- August 2010
- September 2010
- October 2010
- November 2010
- December 2010
- January 2011
- February 2011
- March 2011
- May 2011
- July 2011
- September 2011
- November 2011
- December 2011
- January 2012
- July 2012
- January 2013
- July 2014