January 30th – I can’t feel half of my face

I went to the dentist this morning to get a cavity filled. Now my face feels funny.

It was my first time getting a cavity filled in about 10 years (wow, I’m getting old), and so it was a little unnverving, but it really wasn’t a big deal, and the dentist was really good and got it all done in about half an hour.

In other news, the friend I had mentioned yesterday who was staying over at out place this weekend found an apartment: in our building! So now we have our very own Kramer (well, she is 9 floors above us, but still). It should be fun, like living in residence all over again. Or something like that.

Jess’s parents are here this weekend as well, so we are going out for dinner with them tonight and probably tomorrow as well. It was suppose to be a surprise for Jess’s bday (which is next week, and I need to get on present buying) but through hilarious circumstances the surprise was ruined and she found out they were coming.

Also, I need to send a short questionaire back to Capilano University, and then I will get an interview scheduled for the Interactive Design program. It’s all falling into place…

Filed under: Everyday, capilano university, cavity, dentist, Everyday, Friday, friends

How to make FriendFeed 174% more useful in 4 clicks

I’ve been using FriendFeed for awhile now, mainly as a way to import all the content I’m creating and sharing all over the internet into my Facebook so my friend can see it. It’s been working very well. Recently though, I’ve been trying to actually “use” FriendFeed; I’ve subscribed to a few other feeds, and want to start reading and commenting on other people’s content.

The problem is that everyone I subscribe to on FriendFeed I also follow on Twitter.

This means that when I log into FF, all I see is a wall of twitter messages that I’ve already read from Twitter. I don’t see all the other cool stuff people are importing, because I get bored after reading the same things over again. Luckily, FriendFeed created a way to solve this problem: the Hide button.

With Hide, you can remove all of a certain type of content from your feed (obviously). So, what I have done now is hid all twitter post from everyone of FriendFeed, and now I can focus on the other stuff. Here’s how you hide Twitter:

Click 1: Find a post from twitter and press “Hide

Click 2: Now you’ve hidden that one post, click “hide other items like this one” to bring up more options.

Click 3: Select “Hide Everyone’s Twitter entries” and then,

Click 4: Click “Hide Entries”

Ta-da! No more redundant information.

Filed under: How-to

January 29th – Please book in advance

I’ve really gotten out of the habit of writing here, I’m working on improving that.

For the past few days we’ve had a friend staying over at our place while she looks for a new apartment in Halifax. It’s fun having people over, Jess and I are like B&B owners 🙂 But I don’t think we’ll go any further down that road…

The plan yesterday was to go over to a friends place for dinner, but there was a massive snow storm going on so we decided to stay at home and make dinner by ourselves. It kind of sucks because one of the friends is going to be shipping out with the Navy in the next couple days (I was going to say where he was going, but then I realized that might be a national security breach).

Other than that, I’ve just been working. I’m now a pretty proficient barista; you want a double non-fat, sugar-free vanilla latte no foam, extra hot? No problem. But the foam is the best part.

Filed under: Everyday

January 25th – Podcamp Halifax Awesomeness

I haven’t really posted this week, in part due to laziness, and in part because I was spending the morning times I usually use for blogging for preparing my presentation for Podcamp Halifax, which was a Social Media unconference that happened today.

In a nutshell, it was 200 geeks getting together to talk about all things web and social media. And by geeks, I dont just mean balding middle aged men who see the light of day several times a year, but a whole range of men and women, some who were younger than me, and some who were probably in their 70’s. It was a fantastic experience, I got to meet a ton of people who I had been following on twitter, and a bunch of new people as well.

Anyways, my presentation: I signed up to give the introductory “What is Social Media” talk to people who were interested in this stuff, but really didn’t know what it was all about. Basically, I figured all the really smart professional people were giving presentations on their specific areas of expertise, and so someone like me was a perfect match for this kind of presentation that just involved talking about things generally. Oh and look, here’s the presentation:

When I gave it in person, all the slides were linked together, so I didn’t have to go through each thing one by one, but rather could just jump to the topic people were interested in and asking questions about. It seemed to work well. I got through about 1/5th of the content I prepared, mainly becuase we talked about twitter for 20 minutes. It’s all good though, people wanted to learn about Twitter, so that’s what they learned about. After presenting in the morning, I spent the rest of the day going to other’s presentations, taking pictures, and posting on twitter a lot. Here’s a panoramic photo I took during one of the sessions:

So yeah, it isn’t like well merged or anything, but it’s kinda cool anyways.

And now I am off to bed, I have to work tomorrow morning at 6:30am. Not fun.

Filed under: Uncategorized

January 20th – Inauguration Day

Well today is the big day; Obama is getting sworn in as President of the USA. Good stuff. It won’t be much different than any other day for me though.

I didn’t do too much yesterday, after work Jess and I made dinner, and watched 24. This season of 24 has been alright, not too great, but not too bad. I guess it is only 5 episodes in so I can’t expect too much.

I didn’t think I would be able to watch the inauguration while I was at work, but if all goes right, I will now be able to watch it over the new Ustream iPhone app [iTunes Link]. I think it will work, I guess we’ll see at 2 (I think that’s when it’s on…).

I think it’s pretty cool how excited people are for the inauguration, and for President Obama, but I worry that he will never be able to live up to the astronomically high expectations people are placing on him. We’ll see though, I think he’ll do a good job.

Filed under: Everyday, 24, inauguration, Obama, tuesday

January 19th – Social weekend, dentist visit

So this weekend involved a lot more social interaction with friends than an average weekend.

First, on Friday we went out to see Slumdog Millionaire at the Oxford with a couple friends. The movie was absolutely fantastic. If you haven’t seen it yet I would highly advise you to do so. It definitely deserved the Best Picture Golden Globe. I also downloaded the soundtrack and have been enjoying the Indian music (and the remix of Paper Planes).

Then on Saturday we went out for lunch with a friend who just got back from 6 months in Belize, and is now starting working in Halifax today. She is going to stay at our place for a couple days later this week too, which will be cool. She showed us pictures from Belize and we caught up, it was pretty cool.

Later on Saturday another friend who I hadn’t seen in a while (who lives near Toronto) came into town with his girlfriend and we went out to see The Wrestler with them and another couple friends. It was pretty good. I didn’t like the ending though. I won’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it though, except to say I wish they had done it differently. And it was ridiculously gruesome, I am glad I don’t watch wrestling. So then my friend Cory (the one from Toronto) and his girlfriend stayed over at our place that night (and last night). We don’t have too much space, but they pulled all the cushions from our couch on the floor and made a little bed. It works.

On Sunday we went out to Bedford to visit some of Jess’s family friends. They had just gotten a new dog, so we went to see it and play with their kids and hang out with them. The dog was pretty cute, its a vizsclah (viszlah? vichla? i don’t know how to spell dog breeds). They also got a Wii for their kids for Xmas, so we played that for a little bit. Jess is vehemently against video games, but she really enjoyed playing the tennis. This can only end well. I have told her we should get a Wii and get Wii Fit so we can excercise at home, but she isn’t quite buying that yet. We’ll see…

And then this morning I had a dentist appointment, which was good except I have 3 cavities. Shit. I guess I need to start flossing. At least I’m covered by Jess’s insurance 🙂 And now I am about to start work, I don’t think it will be too busy, it is kind of ridiculously cold and dangerous outside.

Filed under: Everyday, bedford, cavity, dentist, Everyday, friends, monday, movie, slumdog millionaire, The Wrestler, wii

January 16th – Flashing

Well, it’s been another good week here in Halifax. Apparently it’s like -bajillion degrees outside right now though.

Last night I finally went over to my friend Mike’s place to help him out with his new flash (camera flash that is). He had just bought one but couldn’t figure out how to get it to work so I showed him how it works and lent him my copy of Light: Science and Magic, which is a pretty fantastic physics textbook about lighting. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how light works as it relates to photography. It was fun, especially since my flash broke a while ago, so I haven’t played with one in awhile. I should really buy a new one…

Let’s see, other than that, work has been good, I am now making one mean cappuccino. I’m also making a busload of tips, like $15 a day. I’ve been tossing all the tips into an envelope in my filing cabinet and I’m going to tally it up tomorrow (end of two weeks) and then deposit it into the bank. I’m such a responsible 20 something, it’s kinda disgusting.

And tonight we are going to see Slumdog Millionaire, cause I’ve heard it’s suppose to be pretty good.

Filed under: Everyday, cappuccino, coffee, Everyday, flash, Friday, movie, photography, slumdog millionaire, weather

January 14th – Redesigned, feeling fine

I love almost rhymes. They are good all the time. I’ll stop.

So yeah, I changed the theme for this blog again, I’m now using the new Grid Focus theme WordPress just released. I like it because it’s very similar to the idea I’ve had in my head about how I want this place to look. So now instead of completely writing the CSS from scratch to get it looking the way I want, I can just make some edits and it will be perfect.

I also wanted to mention that yesterday I started a Daily Mugshot project. It’s a similar idea to the 365 project I very shortly experimented with, except where the 365 project was about taking an interesting, creative photo of myself everyday, the daily mugshots are suppose to be an almost identical photo every day, with the interestingness coming by seeing how you change over time. Essentially, it’s a lot easier to do, so I think I’ll give it a shot.

Oh also, tonight I am going to start my regular exercise regime. Jess and I are going to go running together at least twice a week (she goes more often), on Wednesday and Thursday nights. If we go both times this week, I will have matched my exercise record for the past year, so that’s probably good.

Filed under: Everyday

January 12th – Still sore from snowboarding

Ok, so I am not very good at posting everyday. Sometimes I just don’t feel like it.

In any case, on Saturday I went out snowboarding at Wentworth with some friends. It was a lot of fun, but I’m not very good so it was also quite painful. I spent most of the time lying in the snow. One of our friends is from Italy and he is quite a good snowboarder so he was trying to teach me how to do it properly, which was awesome. He also helped me to learn that I should be riding “goofy” instead of regular, as soon as I switched I felt a lot more comfortable on the board, so that’s probably good. I ended up boarding in the morning and then hanging out in the ski lodge for the afternoon, watching people try out the jumps and rails they have there. Twas fun.

Then yesterday there was a big storm here in Halifax so I spent the whole day inside. First thing in the morning we called up our friends in the UK to discuss the trip we are planning for the end of March, and then we booked our tickets. So I am now officially going to Europe on March 27th. We are going to go to London and also to Edinburgh. I have a good friend who lives outside of London and so that is where we are staying for most of the time, and we have a hotel booked for our time in Edinburgh. It’s going to be awesome. I’ve never been to Europe before so I’m really looking forward to it.

Last night also I watched the Golden Globes, which was pretty good. It did seem more low key this year, presumably because of that whole recession thing. I really need to go see Slumdog Millionaire now, I had been thinking of going to see it, but considering it won like 4 awards, I think I should definitely check it out.

Filed under: Everyday, europe, Everyday, golden globes, monday, snowboarding, weather

January 8th – Inclement weather, more Naxx, and snowboarding plans

I can’t believe it’s Thursday already…it seems like Tuesday was only yesterday.

Yesterday after work I had been planning on going over to a friends house to play around with a new flash kit he got, but the freezing rain kinda put a damper on those plans. So I ended up just hanging out at home. Still fun though. Jess and I made dinner (spagetti), watched Seinfield (we’re halfway through season 7 now) and then I played some WoW.

My guild made another foray into Naxx last night, and this time we got the first boss down.   Not that impressive for hardcore players, but I was happy because I hadn’t downed him yet. We then wiped twice on the second boss before one of the raid members had to leave and we called it for the night. One of the people with us has decided to start recording videos of all our raid boss fights, and he posted the video up this morning:

We’re like, internet famous now. If you look carefully, you can see me to the right of the dude filming, right in front of the tree. At around the minute mark I get wings on my back, so thats when I’m easy to spot. If you’re interested…

Tonight we are going to go out shopping to get snowpants and stuff like that because we are going snowboarding at Wentworth this weekend. This will be my… 4th time snowboarding. I’m not very good, but it’s still fun to get out and fall down a lot.

Filed under: Everyday, Everyday, flash, freezing rain, guild, naxx, naxxramas, snowboarding, thursday, video, weather, wentworth, wow