Blog of Boredom

Upright and smiling

Fri, 04 May 2012 12:07:10 -0400

I survived.

It seems I forgot just how unyielding the stress of an engineering course can be, let alone a whole school year’s worth. I won’t miss this when I’m done, but I’m glad to be here. Since I love it so much, I’ve also decided to do summer classes. While a break would be nice, so is getting some of the next year’s courses out of the way, ahead of time.

Peering into the future, I wonder if a thesis proposal on bell curve adjustment would be approved? It may end up being the most esoteric form of mathematics I’ll ever encounter.

How to create an F1 Prodigy?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 17:27:00 -0500

I’m not sure how young too young is, but Ferrari signed an 11 year old kid to a development contract. Talk about a long term bet. Even if you aren’t a fan of F1 (or motor racing in general), this article is a great read.

Link Bomb.

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:21:00 -0500

-Do you like the muppets? Personally, I like calling people muppets, but either way, they’re back in theatres this weekend and with a 97% fresh rating and average of 8.1/10, I may have to have to revisit the scene of my childhood.

Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Trailers on Apple/trailers (trailer 1 is awesome)
Muppet Battle Royale @ The National Post

-While I was into my double-digits at the start of the Liberal reign, I may not have had Paul Martin on my mind at that age, so it was nice to get a reminder of the goings-on, with the benefit of hindsight:

-Ever heard of Lieutenant John Pike? Check this link out and see him casually pepper spray everything.

-Is Android my favourite? Nope, but I’m loving this commercial from Samsung. It’s set to start airing this weekend:

The Great Tech War of 2012

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:25:55 -0400

The Great Tech War of 2012:

Amazon, Apple, Facebook & Google. This article breaks it all down and makes an interesting attempt to show you what’s about to happen in 2012. A great read for anyone interested in technology.

Master of my own domain - sort of

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:42:00 -0400

Technology has changed our lives and I’m still not quite over it. A perfect example would be today, while I was in line to collect my passport. I was watching a television show on my phone, when it rang. Dearest mother was calling from Jamaica, to say hello. As a perpetually broke student, I immediately pitched her on an incredible investment opportunity and let her know that it was a limited time (until my credit disintegrated) offer. As always, she jumped at the chance to invest in her biological money pit and said she would send a little something along. I was able to log in to her account on my phone’s internet browser, while she was still talking to me and e-mail myself the funds.

Realistically, just a few years ago, that scenario would have seemed like science fiction, but today it’s completely normal. Well, everything except the part where a 32 year old grown man harasses his retired mother for money. Importantly though, it’s the relative ease with which I was able to harangue the poor woman, that’s notable here.

Everything took place so quickly, that five minutes later I’m still in the line to collect my passport and now pecking out this blog post. Technology - enabler of boredom-related drivel publishing and facilitator of money transfers to career students. Isn’t it wonderful?

A small update

Fri, 20 May 2011 20:07:00 -0400

My blog of boredom clearly hasn’t been updated in some time. That may be apparent to any of my formerly regular visitors.

That pseudo-Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times…” was definitely hovering around for a brief moment, but I’ve landed on my feet and it’s time to get working on the new normal.

What is the new normal? Well, it’s living in the city, for starters.

I’ve had to stop my ‘beloved’ P90X, due to a 3 week-long illness. It could be worse - I can always restart the routine and once the living situation has some permanence, I will. Right now, I’m just planning on keeping active-ish and enjoying the summer.

I’ve added a grey hair (that’s five now), but for all that’s happened in the last 90 days, I’d say I got the better end of the deal by far.

I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend. If you happen to take some pictures, this holiday weekend, then this link may interest you.

Whoops... Day 21, pt.2

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 22:27:55 -0400

I kinda messed up on the schedule. Instead of taking a ‘recovery week’, I did the regular workout. On the plus side, I haven’t destroyed the program. On the negative, I’m now doing P97X.

As always, you can catch my exploits via the running commentary I’ve set up on the P90X Challenge page.

"You think he’s an idiot, don’t you? No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West..."

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:00:06 -0400

“You think he’s an idiot, don’t you? No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!”

- -Mark McKinnon
Longtime senior media adviser to George W. Bush

Day 21...

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 06:38:07 -0400

I’m on day 21 of my personal P90X challenge and things are humming along nicely. I’d like to take you back to a simpler time… a fatter time. I had reached a new low in my personal fitness and was down to the last notch in my belt. Fast forward to today and I’m back up to the 4th notch and going for number 5.

I’ve updated the P90X Challenge page, so check it out and see what else is new.

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 08:00:00 -0400

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

- Archimedes

Change is in the air

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:39:29 -0400

It’s been a strange week. Why? I can’t say, but it was certainly memorable.

A busy month lays ahead for me, as there are only two weeks left until exams and until my program-ending project is due. That’s would normally be plenty thanks, but the icing on the cake is the move to a new home that will come on the heels of semester end. The closing date on my house is May 4th, which leaves three days to pack and sort everything out. There will also be a wedding to attend during the move, just to complicate matters.

Reality began to set in when I had to change my address. I’ve had the same permanent address for 21 years. Sure the mailing address changed numerous times, but through it all there was always that permanence of having the same home address.

Anyway, nostalgia aside, a month from now I’ll be settling in to a new place and be ready to enjoy some time off.

The weekly challenge update

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:48:38 -0400

I’m on day 14 of my personal P90X challenge and it’s actually okay so far. When we last spoke, I was complaining about well… everything. This week was much better and my muscles have stopped their little insurrection and resigned themselves to being confused for the next 90 days.

Check out the P90X Challenge page to see where I’m at.

Video

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:25:52 -0400

My good friend Neil just did this commercial for Maxwell House...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:34:00 -0400

My good friend Neil just did this commercial for Maxwell House and I thought you should take a look.

The Book of (Even More) Awesome is coming out in less than a month and you can pre-order it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Chapters-Indigo.ca, or any other reputable book seller (and perhaps some disreputable ones as well).

Finally, if you have no clue who this guy or his book are, then check out the 1000 Awesome Things blog and prepare to smile a bit more than usual.

Explore a bit

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:32:00 -0400

ee those two links up there under the header? One of them leads to an ongoing journey of personal embarrassment. The other leads nowhere. Those round buttons to the right of the header are all about me and allow you the opportunity to feed my ego.

Also, have you tried out the comments system? That’s a rhetorical question, because I know you haven’t. Disqus is integrated with Facebook, Twitter and a whole load of other authentication systems, so you have no excuse not to leave a disparaging comment at your earliest convenience.

9:30pm Bored. 9:35pm Downloading Scott Pilgrim vs. The...

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:02:00 -0400

9:30pm Bored.

9:35pm Downloading Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

10:00pm Watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

12:00am …

12:05am Ordering Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

A Fresh Coat of Paint

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:23:00 -0400

So as you can see I spruced up the blog a tiny bit. I’m going add photo galleries to the flickr link at the top. Let me know what you think of the new look in the comments, or give me a thumbs up.

Video

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:00:00 -0400

UBB... Really?

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 09:00:00 -0500

If you aren’t familiar with usage based billing (UBB), then I encourage you to check out the CRTC website for more information on the subject, as well as doing a search for newspaper articles and blog postings.

To sum it up briefly, UBB is designed to charge the user based on the amount of data downloaded. This is roughly the same as the kind of data plan that many of you may have with your mobile phone service provider. You get a set amount of data per month and if you exceed it, you will get charged by the megabyte. Up until now, some internet service providers listed a monthly cap, but they didn’t enforce overages. Other ISPs - like Rogers - have been enforcing these caps for a couple of years now, so their users have grown used to UBB, even if they don’t like it and find the overage fees entirely arbitrary (myself among them). Why the big stink now, if it’s been around for so long? Well, Bell called up the CRTC a year or two back and mentioned how it would be great if all ISPs had to incorporate UBB into their billing schemes since Bell was being forced to lease it’s bandwidth at a 15% discount to small ISPs. Unfortunately, the CRTC agreed to this, forcing companies like Primus and TekSavvy to charge their users these fees. With regards to internet service, Bell has managed to make sure that the small ISP can’t differentiate themselves as much on price - problem number one.

Problem number two is a really big one. Let’s look at Bell’s upper mid-range internet plan (Fibe 12 - $36.95). This seems like a great price for the level of service that the customer is being promised, but there’s one detail in the plan that should give you pause: the monthly data limit of 50GB. Now I know what you’re saying: “Dude, 50 geebees is a ton. How could I ever go over that?” Well, imaginary reader, I’m glad you asked, because I’m about to tell you.

If you’re a family of four and you’re doing a moderate amount of video streaming via services like YouTube, iTunes and Netflix, then there’s an excellent chance you’re going to exceed that 50GB limit before the month is up. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the US as an example. Internet traffic monitoring firm Sandvine recently stated that Netflix is averaging 20% of all internet traffic in the US. Just take a second and think about that: Out of every 100MB of data that travels down US pipes, 20MB of that is just for Netflix on average. Breaking down the numbers by hour, between 9pm and 10pm, that number rises to 45%. That is a mind boggling statistic and it rightly scares companies like Bell and Rogers. They’re scared because while Netflix only launched a few months ago in Canada, they forsee a future where all of those people aren’t watching television via their offerings. Sure, the customer is paying to use the internet through them, but it’s a flat rate so they can’t take advantage of it. If you’re Rogers, Bell & Telus (Robelus), you can clearly see that as services like Netflix and iTunes mature and get better by offering more content, users are going to ask why they’re paying for a monthly cable/satellite subscription and move to cancel those services. If you’re Robelus you need to figure out a way to monetize your internet services like never before so what’s the solution? UBB.

The elegance of their deception is that they’ve found a way to make more money either way. By setting the monthly caps at an arbitrarily lowered amount and then charging you anywhere from $1 to $5 per gigabyte for going over your plan, you will be paying an artificially high price for your internet service. According to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (admittedly a biased source), it costs less than 2 cents to route each extra gigabyte of data, but the ISP is turning around and charging you $1 - $5. Going back to problem number one, since they’ve successfully lobbied the CRTC to force small ISPs to also implement UBB, they are forcing everyone to use an internet where moderate to heavy video streaming is discouraged..End result? The customer is forced to stick with Robelus when it comes to using their cable/satellite services. Want to rent a movie? Sure, not a problem. That’ll be $8 if you get it on your Rogers set top box. Contrast that with Netflix which charges $8 a month for unlimited everything. Watch any movie, any television show, at any time, for $8.

Which service would you rather use?

Right now the selection on services like Netflix is far from extensive, but this too shall pass. The writing is on the wall and the major telecoms want to make sure that they get out in front of the problem. Down in the US, there are more services available and competing for your money. It’s a much more palatable option to completely abandon your cable television subscription and move strictly to internet services to enjoy television and movies. To combat this problem, US cable companies like Comcast are successfully making moves to take control of the content. By purchasing NBC Universal, Comcast now owns a major chunk of content as well as a 30 percent interest in one of the dominant video streaming services (Hulu). It’s like the wolf being left in charge of the chicken coop. If they own the content and the internet bandwidth, then they get the complete control that they desire. Similar to Comcast, Bell Canada is about to close its own deal to buy a controlling interest in CTV Globemedia. If I can go to the CTV website and watch all my favourite shows streamed for free, what incentive do I have to pay Bell for a monthly service? If I’m Bell,Canada, then I know that I need to control the content completely so that I can force the customer to watch my content on my terms. Translation, it’s going to cost you more.

With situations like Comcast in the US and Bell in Canada, where the deals have been approved, it comes down to the government to ensure that the consumer isn’t hurt by these deals. In the case of the FCC, they have implemented a vague set of stipulations that critics argue will allow Comcast to do whatever it wants. The FCC clearly recognizes the danger, but they don’t seem to be willing or able to pay much more than lip service to the problem. This is scary because the current FCC is far more consumer-friendly than it has been in the past and compared to the CRTC, it’s the most progressive organization in the world. What I’m trying to say is that the restrictions that the CRTC imposes on Bell will be little to none, based on what we know and hate about the CRTC.

So it’s all doom and gloom, right? I mean everything I’ve talked about is either happening or has been set in motion, so what can we do about it? Well last week I would have said “not much”, but that was before the Openmedia.ca petition caught fire and provided the lightning rod that drew attention to UBB. 360000 signatures (and counting) later, people have sent a clear message to the CRTC. The Liberal and NDP parties have officially come out against UBB and there are going to be hearings in parliament, where the CRTC chair is going to have to defend the decision to implement Bell’s proposals. Prime Minister Harper and Industry Minister Tony Clement are two surprising voices that are adding to the chorus that are already against this, so hopefully the CRTC does the right thing and revisits their decision. Regardless of what the CRTC does, it seems that UBB may not be around for too much longer. Tony Clement just let loose on Twitter that the CRTC will be forced to revist UBB.Fingers Crossed…

Links:

Online Activities of Home Internet Users - Statistics CanadaOpen Media website - Open Media

Technology Shifts

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:00:00 -0500

So clearly I’ve been neglecting the old blog… It’s been almost two and a half months since my last post. I think the website has lost a bit of market share to the immediacy of a well connected phone. It turns out I ended up becoming what I feared - someone who owns a smart phone. I use it for a lot of the things I would normally use my laptop for and as such, the only time my laptop is on is when I need to use my office suite and even then, the phone takes care of a lot of the small edits or document reviews that I need to do since it has a native Office installation.

There’s still no substitute for the larger screen of a laptop though, which is why I’m so interested in a device that’s going to be released in about a month, called the Atrix 4G. It’s an Android device that also comes with a few interesting accessories. One of them is a dumb terminal, which the phone plugs into. At first when I saw it, my immediate reaction was “that’s not very practical”, but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a remarkable idea. Your phone is already a computer, but you don’t take advantage of the horsepower inside, because you’re limited by the relatively small screen and the input interface. If you plug it into a dumb terminal, you’ve got all the benefits of a larger display and keyboard with the ultra portability of a cell phone. Since the phone has all the processing power, the terminal can be ultra thin as it’s literally just a keyboard attached to a screen. Imagine leaving work and instead of taking a laptop with you, simply slipping a cell phone in your pocket.

Right now, the Atrix only gives you the bare essentials when you plug it in. You get the Android interface, a full-featured Firefox browser, a basic open-source office suite and a Citrix client so you can remote in to your Windows or Mac desktop. Still, I think the iPad has proved that people don’t want much more than that and they’ll grossly over pay for it. What I’m waiting for is the day where the phone has a mobile OS when undocked and a desktop-style OS when plugged in. The best of both worlds and the elimination of the need for a desktop or a laptop computer for individuals.

The new PC looks like it really will be pocket-sized.