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Blu-Ray Hard On Battery Life
I guess this makes complete sense, given what I know about physics. Blue lasers were actually extremely difficult to make, and they didn't emerge until nearly a decade after red-lasers hit the market. Since the wavelength of light is inversely proportional to the energy of the photons, making blue light (which has a low wavelength) takes a lot of energy. In fact, most of the original blue lasers wouldn't last very long because they basically burned themselves out. Also, as Hesty pointed out, the computation requirements for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far greater than ... read more
Another Weekend Of Duane
It's that time again - the weekend. Last night I attended a preview party for Strutta's new product they've been working on for the last year. I'll write more about this when I have the coveted "Jordan Screenshot" that everyone was talking about. In essence Strutta has developed a pretty funky social network that appeals to the competitive nature of most people. I.e., "Think you're better than me? Go ahead and prove it. "
It's a neat concept, and it will be cool to see where it goes once they launch (which should be ... read more
Vancouver Technology Salaries
Given that I've been with my current company for the last four years, I haven't really had to think about salaries for quite some time. That being said, I'm actually curious how Vancouver is doing in terms of salaries in the high-tech department. I know it's fairly easy to acquire a +100k job in the Bay Area, and in New York you can easily approach 200k in some fields (Math+Programming in the stock market for example). By talking to various people over the last few months, I gather there's a pretty big spread amongst most companies ... read more
The Apple MacPro
This morning I had the pleasure of swinging by MacStation in Yaletown on my way to work and picking up a brand new MacPro computer for work. I could sit here and quote technical specs until the cows came home, but I'll just say that this sucker completely rocks. It basically has two of everything:
Two CPUs, each of which has four 2.8 GHz cores
A dual-head video card capable of doing 1080p video on each port
Two network cards, so in theory you could put one on a private network and one on a public one
I've spent the ... read more
Google Reaches Out To San Francisco
I'm a big believer in corporate responsibility. That is, I think big corporations should reach out and do more for people in their communities, or use whatever means they have to contribute positively towards society. Surprisingly, the Vancouver technology scene is fairly active in this area, and I've witnessed many technology-driven events in this city geared towards feeding people in the Lower East Side, helping acquire clothing, etc.
So today, I was rather pleased to see an announcement from one of the largest technology companies around. Google has just announced that they are going to give every homeless ... read more
Back To The Doctors
I'm just heading out the door to meet my fate - I get the results of my MRI back today, and should know whether or not I'm having surgery again on my eye socket. I meant to wake up today and do a humorous post about boxer shorts, but I probably won't have time until later tonight.
I've had my head down deep in work the last few days. Part of that has brought to my attention a PHP framework called Symfony. I've spent about 30 hours playing with it, and I can say that's fairly ... read more
New Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro Announced
Today Apple officially unveiled the new Apple MacBook and MacBook pro laptops. Not a whole lot of excitement with the announcements, since many people were expecting a new form factor, but it looks like there are a few small improvements. Of note is the addition of the multi-touch track pad that is part of the Apple MacBook Air Notebook, more video memory, and faster CPU speeds.
You can read more about it here. read more
Laptop Bag
I'm in the market for a new laptop bag. I currently have a backpack which holds my laptop and my camera gear, but when I don't carry my camera gear I find the bag is fairly big and bulky. So, I'd like to pick up a nice, slim laptop bag that goes over my shoulder.
I googled a bit this morning trying to find recommendations where to go, but most of those sites just talked about bags and didn't really point me in any useful directions. Rebecca gave me the name of a site on Robson, but ... read more
Post-Blogging Photowalk Through The City
Today was a good day. I woke up this morning fully refreshed thanks to the 10 or 11 hours of sleep I got last night. I basically had no plans upon waking up, but found a message on my cell phone this morning from Boris saying that people were meeting up on commercial drive for some brunch.
Scott Hadfield and Matt Mullenweg
I hopped in the car and headed down to Havanas on the Drive, which is a pretty funky restaurant/gallery that I've heard good things about. There I met up with about twelve or so ... read more
1600 Reasons To Love Northern Voice
Last night while lying in bed I had the crazy idea to try and make a mosaic out of all the photos from Northern Voice. Tonight, while sitting in front of the TV, I decided to make an attempt at it. So, here is the end result.
It's 40 tiles wide by 40 tiles tall, for a total of 1600 individual images. If you want to see it large, click on the image to download a huge version (approximate 9MB). read more