Rik's Ramblings

Friday, March 26, 2010

Worst Google Voice translation yet!


Hi
Lee stiffy. Sharon from. Not the the motive you got me on my face. All I you want to coming fall you all a looking it does. So NickTuesday. Dusty both okay. He's open for you. P Let me know which day you pizza phone number that is 4xxxxxxxx7. Thank you. Byebye.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Got me a Roku box

Roku Netflix Player

Someone at work got this for free with the last TV they bought. As they're not a Netflix customer they were happy to offload it on me for $50, and I was happy to get it for half price.

I've been a big fan of the Netflix streaming since they first started - though I'm less pleased with the quality since they switched over to Silverlight. Up until now, I've had to plug the laptop into the TV if I wanted to watch streaming videos in comfort. Now I have a dedicated box under the TV so I can tune into Netflix more easily whenever I want.

It's also nice that the Roku box supports MediaFly, so I can get to any of my podcasts and play them through the TV too. I've had some issues with video streaming for some podcasts (not all) but audio streaming works great (BBC Newspod, KQED, etc.). I suspect the issue is really to do with my low bandwidth DSL internet connection. I don't think the Roku has much in the way of buffering.

My only disappointment is the lack of Youtube streaming. I've found rather a lot of good content on YouTube these past 12 months, while testing my Palm Pre's streaming capability, so I'd like to have access to all the channels I've subscribed to through YouTube (ITN news, Diggnation, Makezine, infoMedia, ...).

Roku on Amazon.com

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Great gig at the Truewinds Folk night

Paul Kamm and Eleanore MacDonald did a great gig at the folk night on Friday, at Mission City Coffee Roasters.

They harmonize really well.  Not heard good, on key, (live!) singing like that for a long time.

Yes, they have a website, but not sure if there's any music downloads there.  Just going to check it out myself.

http://kammmac.com/

No more FTP after May 1!

What am I going to do ?!  Blogger will stop supporting FTP posting on May.

I don't want to put my blog on one of their "clever domains".  I don't trust them!  I like to have my bits in my own bucket!




Sunday, March 21, 2010

Busy weekend for the Sagar boys

Certainly been a fun weekend for the Sagars and a long one!

Ben had his PADI Seal Team program this weekend, so both Sat and Sunday we had to be up early and out of the house before 8.30 to get to Diver Dans. Ben had three hours of dive training each day, similar to the open water diver cert., but simplified a little for the under 10 market.

Saturday afternoon we had a fun "St Patricks Day" party with friends; barbequing and lots of guinness.

Sunday afternoon we went to the movies to see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", which was a pretty good, funny kids movie. Had to hit "Johnny Rockets" and "Yoguart Land" during the course of the afternoon.

Feeling shattered now. Don't know if it's the two mornings in the pool or all the guinness and food!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

St. Paddy's Day



Always a good excuse to dust off some old Cranberries & Pogues playlists!

Pity I can't find any of my CDs these days. I just had to drop about $100 at Amazon.com to (re)buy the albums.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Coffeeshop wifi

... is really flakey these days.

What's going on?

Can hardly ever get online anymore.

I smell a conspiracy.

Friday, March 05, 2010

high carbon footprint

As muders go, this one has a pretty high carbon footprint!

A woman is stabbed to death by her ex-lover who flew from Trinidad after seeing a picture of her with her new boyfriend on Facebook.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8552740.stm

Fuck you fucking Dell

Why did you put the MUTE button right next to the POWER button on my laptop.  It's fucking retarded.

Rebooting ... Gives me time to rant from my Palm Pre.


Ah those poor Christian Conservatives ...

You got to give it to those religious right-wing conservatives, they sure know how to par-tay!

http://m.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100305/NEWS01/3050322/1002&template=wapart

Not only caught sodomizing, but driving away drunk too.  He must have been very uncomfortable sat in the back of the police car, with that ample application of lube squelching around in his knickers.


Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Skiing at Northstar

Went skiing at Northstar last weekend (Feb 19). Had some great skiing, bit of fresh snow overnight Saturday, meant I could Carve up some powder on my snowboard on Sunday.

Ben's getting really good (for a nine year old who only skis two/three times per year). He did some black runs this year and was having a great time going between trees and doing jumps. I was worried he might hit a tree, but parents are supposed to worry about those types of things ... when they're not hitting trees themselves at least.

Here's some footage of Ben. I'm doing the camera work, sorry it's a bit jerky. Hard to watch the screen and board at the same time.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Beer Wars - the movie

Wow! I suppose I should have known it, but I didn't realize! The US beer market is just as perverted and corrupt as every other sector of the economy.

Let's get that three tier system working for us again and bring choice back to the consumer.


buy at amazon.com or watch on netflix streaming



This movie is a bit like Supersize me or Who killed the electric car, but for the beer industry.

Down with Busch!