The first video is a time-lapse of Danny Askew‘s “summer” – which actually starts during the Olympics. It’s a little strange as it starts with Vancouver and the Olympics and suddenly jumps to Las Vegas for about 20 seconds, and then back to Vancouver and some lakes in the forest somewhere. It’s a great video though and the time-lapse is quite nice.

Summer 2010 Timelapse Reel from Danny Askew on Vimeo.

Next up is a sort of walking tour of downtown Vancouver. Brandon Moza was testing his Canon camera and got some amazing video. If it was only a matter of buying the same camera to get the same quality video, I’d be out shooting tomorrow.

Vancouver – Testing the Canon 7D from Brandon Moza on Vimeo.

What’s an infographic you ask? Basically a graphical (pictoral) representation of information. Like a subway map or historical timeline. Click the link you passed over to read about them on Wikipedia.

Being a lover of movies and such, this collection was amazing, so I thought I’d share a couple of them.

The Trilogy Meter

Click on it to get a better look at it, but here it is in a nutshell. MOST trilogies go down hill (quickly) after the first movie. Now like most “review” type things, it’s subjective opinion and this is one guy‘s opinion (not mine). Take a look at the The Matrix, Jurassic Park, Planet of the Apes, Terminator, Batman above.

Now think about Star Wars, Indiana Jones (before the refrigerator incident), Lord Of The Rings, Die Hard, Rocky etc. They held up pretty well through their lifetime.

Here’s a less subjective infographic for you. A comparison of movie monster sizes.

Movie Monsters

This chart shows everything from Chucky and the Wicked Witch (dots at the left end) to Clover (Cloverfield) at the right! Wow. Someone did a bunch of work on this one.

Here are some other posts with movie infographics in them:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/10-awesome-movie-infographics/

http://abduzeedo.com/movies-infographics-collection

http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/22754/1/LOOK-AT-THIS-NOW-MOVIE-AND-OSCAR-INFOGRAPHICS/Page1.html

Do you ever have moments where you’ve been working on a project/item/report/blog post for a while and you find yourself staring at the computer screen but nothing is happening?

Happens to me a lot. Just staring at a problem and not making any headway.

The experts tell you to think about something else, turn your attention away and distract yourself. Go for a walk, grab a glass of water etc. But if you’re like me, you find yourself inexplicably drawn right back in having made no progress, 30 seconds later.

So what I sometimes do is reboot my computer. Save your work first.

It’s a great way to force yourself away from the problem for 2 or 3 minutes (or more in some cases) and you can’t just jump back into it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it does force that tiny break which is good for you.

I’ll be right back in about 5 minutes…

This morning I went to Starbucks for my final hurrah, and because we lacked Splenda for homemade beverages and bought my usual drink and pastry for the first time since the HST went into effect. Not that I haven’t had it in the last 5 days, but we were in Ontario so the taxes were different, plus I usually was buying something for Chris and didn’t know the exact effect of the tax.

Well, let me tell you.

My beloved morning combo has gone from $5.88 to $6.27 with the new HST. That’s a $0.40 rise in the price. Way to much.

So, Starbucks, as much as I love you (and I do), there’s no way to justify this price for me. Even having it on just Saturday and Sunday (which I may still do) would amount to just over $650 per year! That’s an extra mortgage payment!

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be back to brewing coffee in my Tassimo, making cereal or toast for breakfast and drinking a lot more free coffee at work.

Unless the good folks at 6/49 or Lotto Max finally shine upon us, and then I’ll buy my own Starbucks. But I don’t believe that will happen.

Chris and I took a giant step recently. One that would make some of our friends weep openly and question their ability to cope. Many couples would break up in record time if they took this step. But we have faith.

What did we do that was so drastic?

We shut our cable off for the summer.

Yep. And Novus took us seriously. About 3 weeks after the first of the month we came home to static. Last year we cut it down to the basics for the summer and it took them 2 months to make the change.

Cable companies do this for 2 reasons as far as I can tell. One is they hope you change your mind before they get here, the other is that 9/10 cancel requests are place where tenants move and they hope the new occupants will subscribe. Either way a month or two of service costs less than dispatching a warm body, so they leave it on until x amount of time passes or they “have a guy in the area.”

With TV season drawing to a close and our ability to watch shows online increasing daily, plus the impending summer weather (you hear me mother nature?) we want to try to lessen our dependence on the tube.

How’s it going? Other than the 2 – 24 hour delay in watching the 3 or 4 critical shows on TV, it’s good. Rumble gets more playtime, more work gets done, more walks get taken and Chris and I get to spend more quality time together.

Which inevitably means sitting at opposite ends of the couch ignoring each other in favor of our laptops.

I joke. That’s the scary time some other couples would dread. What do you do to fill the time otherwise filled by TV?

I’ll let you know how it goes, but being released from the LCD bonds of the TV feels good so far. Now we watch it on our terms. We may never turn the cable back on.

PS: by never I mean until September.

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The subject (and author) is a blogger, author and quite the humorist – you can check out his site at http://www.andrewmcdonald.net.au

Ringo Star & Justin Bieber

In the past, Canada has put forward a lot of great musicians like Celine Dion, David Foster, Alanis Morrissette, Bryan Adams, k.d. lang, Luba, Leonard Cohen, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Tragically Hip, Neil Young, Ashley MacIsaac, Randy and Tal Bachman, and the list goes on and on. Click the link above to visit the Wikipedia list. It’s pretty amazing.

Today, we present the modern equivalent. Justin Bieber.

What’s a Justin Bieber? You ask? He’s a 16 year old kid from Stratford, Ontario (read: nowhere) and he taught himself how to play the piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet. In 2007 his mom started whoring him out posting videos on YouTube of him performing songs by Usher, Justin Timberlake and Stevie Wonder.

He’s a tiny little boy who’s talent will probably only last until he hits puberty, but for the time being he’s making teenage girls “swoon” (we’ll call it that for the sake of propriety) all over the place. Ok, I admit, I think he’s relatively adorable, but that swoop of hair across his face is annoyingly cutsie and I just find him generally annoying.

Sadly, this is the current state of Canadian musical talent export. Feel free to check him out at his official site if you wanna be “current” in Canadian “music.”

Dear America. Back-atcha. Canada.

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Unfortunately, and fortunately, that’s coming to an end. I say unfortunately because it’s so pretty to walk down the street and see hundreds of trees festooned in bright pink – a sure sign of spring here. It also means that we now get “pink snow” with sidewalks covered with millions of rotting pink petals as they drop from the trees making way for the green.

I say fortunately because it means that summer is fast approaching and the weather will stop being as unpredictable. Plus seeing Vancouver return to it’s lush forest-like state is the way we all want to see it.

It also means that Chris’ birthday is approaching. Early April and he’ll be, well let’s just say turning another year older. It always causes him stress and last year I didn’t exactly help alleviate that so I’m going to try to do something special this year. Not a big party, but something nice.

We’re also planning on a small mini-vacation either that weekend or the one after. Just a quick trip out of town for 2 nights to re-group and see someplace new. Technically it’ll be the first vacation we’ve taken as a couple. A few years ago we went to Calgary for a long weekend, but we stayed with my family the whole time and had a tight agenda of things we had to do. Not really a vacation.

This will be all about us – relaxing, no agenda (other than getting to the destination), no interruptions. The dog is coming with us, but he’s low maintenance generally.

Spring is in the air!

It wasn’t the best weekend, mostly because Chris was super sick all weekend. It didn’t entirely stop us but slowed us down. It’s now Monday and he’s not 100% better, but improving. Poor guy.

I spent the majority of the weekend working on my WordPress plugin. Standout Comments runs the comment system on this blog and many of my other personal blogs. My partners in this, Alex Shalman and local marketer John Chow hope to launch this to the public on March 25.

I’ve been struggling with Tweetbacks, a system for tracking tweets about your blog across the Twittersphere. I think I finally nailed it 100% this weekend, but it cost me about 8 hours of tracking, testing and coding to get it. The main problem was that it sent thousands of requests and Twitter would rate-limit me. When Twitter rate-limits you, they send back an error that says “Enhance your chill.” Cute, but not helpful.

We had to cancel some plans with friends and the weather wasn’t great for getting out or having the windows open too much either, it seemed like I was opening and closing windows every 5 minutes, or turning the heat on or off too.

Combine that with “Spring Forward” and the new early morning darkness and it was a little confusing. Oh well, now it’s Monday. Which can only mean one thing…

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Take a look at his latest creation over there —>

Nathan has created this Lego model of a BlackBerry for the BlackBerry developer conference coming up and this is just the latest example of his work.

Like I said, this is my kind of job. I’m sure it’s not easy and something like this one must be a technical challenge since it has to be vertical, support it’s own weight – oh, and contain a functioning television!

My brother, Brad, and I used to spend many, many hours in the basement playing building with Lego. We built entire cities, a fully functional and accurate football stadium and many abstract creations. The football stadium had concession stands on the outside and a store! It was huge and we were very proud of it. I won’t tell you how old we were at the time.

Unfortunately time moved on and we moved out of the house. Neither of us could afford to, nor had room to, take the Lego we had amassed with us and it was left behind. Eventually Brad managed to sell it but for a LOT less than it should have gone for. I miss it.

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