Month: May 2007 Posts

When I first started my current job, the COO and one of the founders was a guy named Erik Lagerway. During the time he was at our company, we shared many a beer and even a plane ride or two together (the most memorable being the one to Phillidelphia where we got to witness first-hand drunken broomball in Horsham and Whatchamachukinchunk). His current brainchild is a service called Gaboogie which was designed in an attempt to simplify conference calls in the enterprise environment. Most conference calls today are setup via email, and involve participants calling into a conference bridge at a specified time, entering a six to ten digit conference code followed by a password, and then sitting around for ten minutes waiting for all the late comers to show up. Gaboogie attempts to circumvent some of these problems by having the conference system call the participants itself at the […]

Monday is typically the crappiest day of my week. A big contributing factor to that is the lack of sleep I usually get on Sunday nights, partially because of the coffee I usually end up drinking during the day, and also because I tend to stay up late working on something I’ve been meaning to accomplish all week. Last night I had my second big battle with Garageband, and I’m starting to learn more about the inner workings of it. The one problem I already see is that most of the recordings tend to be slightly noisy and echoey. The echo is obviously due to the fact that I’m recording in my bedroom, but I’m not really sure where the noise is coming from (could be the microphone, could be the fan noise from the computer). Either way, if I cared enough to do anything about it, I could easily […]

I’ve finally set up a del.icio.us account. You can add me by visiting my page at http://del.icio.us/duanestorey.

A few days ago, Flickr gave me the not-so-subtle warning that my account was about to expire. Since I’ve had a pro-Flickr account for a full year now, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the service so far. Flickr sort of came to the limelight about 18-24 months ago as one of the leading websites that had real Web 2.0 technology. If you haven’t been there you should definitely check it out. Most of the website utilizes Ajax and as you use it, sometimes it feels more like an application than a mere website, and that was really one of their original selling points. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that they were once a Vancouver company. I actually popped by their office before (located in a small Yaletown room, next to UBVideo) they were acquired by Yahoo. I’m honestly not too sure […]

I wanted to pen this entry really quick before bed. A few days ago, one of the main encryption keys for the HD-DVD platform was leaked, apparently by an insider within the video industry. Basically, having this key will allow anyone with access to the hardware the full ability to decode and decrypt every HD-DVD that has been manufactured so far. Oops. The key, which amounts to no more than a 128 bit string, has been circling the internet, pulling a string of cease and desist orders along with it. Many a webowner has tried to publish the key online, only to be given a legal letter demanding they take it down. How in the world you can assume ownership of a unique sequence of numbers is beyond me, but apparently that’s what they are attempting to do. Many users on Digg.com have created top stories with the HD-DVD key […]

Tonight I went down to Tom Lee music in Vancouver and picked up a new microphone. Originally I was going to get something that would simply allow me to record a few guitar tracks into GarageBand, but I think it’s pretty decent for Podcasting as well. Check out the audio here. The microphone discussed is the Samson C01U.

When I left Ottawa years ago, I was a pretty chubby guy. Two years of working crazy hours, drinking tons of beer, and eating primarily in restaurants had taken its toll, and my old university self had been replaced with your stereotypical software engineering stature. As soon as I got settled in Vancouver and started classes again at UBC, I decided to undo all the damage of my Ottawa experience — I started watching what I ate, getting a bit more exercise (mostly by rollerblading and hiking), and even sleeping in a bit more. In about six months, I had dropped 40 lbs, and ended up being substantially lighter than I was in university. I would even say that when I started working at my current job I was a bit underweight for my frame. That being said, ever since my last break up, and with everything that happened in […]