spot on

Change of Venue

2012-01-26T11:53:00.001-08:00

I am now blogging at blog.textureweb.com. See you there and not here anymore. [December 2011]

Banner Year for Community Wind Power Funds

2007-02-12T09:49:00.000-08:00

The following is information I am passing on from one of my clients whom I think is leading the way in the battle to reduce one's carbon footprint.

Recent announcements by the NS Government that Nova Scotia Power must purchase 20% of their power supply,some 600MW or 1 billion in investment, from green energy producers overthe next five years is a welcome announcement to the Scotian WindFields network of community investment funds.

Five community economic development investment funds focused on renewable energy and in particular wind power are currently available to investors. Investments are eligible as a RSP contribution as well as for a 30% tax credit against Nova Scotia Taxes payable.

The Simplified Offerings will be made available until March 01, 2007. Details on the five communities and access to their Offering Documents can be accessed through the links below or by
contacting info@scotianwindfields.org or calling 877.798.5085.

Available Funds: January 22nd, 2007

The Glooscap Wind Field (Hants East, Hants West
& Kings Counties)

The
Northumberland Wind Field (Pictou & Antigonish Counties)

The
Chebucto Wind Field (Halifax Regional Municipality)

The Sou’Wester Wind Field
(Shelburne, Lunenburg & Queens Counties)

The Colchester-Cumberland Wind
Field (Colchester & Cumberland Counties)

Down the Grade

2006-09-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

Screw the contest. Am down to 191 from 226 without the help of that "Fat Off" as I no longer work there.

Busy summer...am back in the posting mood, but tonight am satisfied by Old Sam and the Stones which I can hear from the Commons where they are playing.

Chally Bubba

Fat-Off

2006-02-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well with a new year brings new challenges. This year, my workplace is having a weight loss competition. In two months, if I loose the greatest percentage of weight I will be the winner. No easy task for the Pumplin King, but with diet and exercise it should be doable.

So here is the plan:

Breakfast: An apple
Lunch: Chicken Noodle Soup
Supper: Meat and vegetables

No extras in between but glasses of water.

Excercise: Stair treading, walking the dogs and riding my bike everynight for an hour.

Today's weight: 226.5

Lunch: Once can chicken noodle
Supper: turkey and greens

My coach Tracy Monaghan is going to keep tabs on me, as well I have an ongoing competition with my wife Marina on toning up as well.

This should help in my quest to be 180 by the summer.

MAX 2005 Wrap Up

2005-10-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, Anaheim
Sunny
The last day of the conference, like most, was pretty low key. Still lots was being talked about and great conference material still abound.

By the end of the day, I was pretty much ready to get to the plan and head on a long trip home.

Now comes the hard task of disseminating all I heard, thought and talked with others about. How do you analyse four 18hr days into one report? Mostly its going to have to be accessing the materials and putting together multiple threads on what went on. This conference covered a lot, so def worth it.

More as I get over jet lag.

MAX2005 Day Four

2005-10-18T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, Anaheim
Cloud and Showers. About 16C

The guy in the suit comes from the Meet Your Match campaign.

So the big thing today was the general session. I had a chance to talk to Macromedia's Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch today.

More good ideas and information on the Flash explosion on consumer devices, specifically cell phones.

AfterEffects 7 (yes Adobe) was launched or first pubic showing today. The product manager for AE and macromedia productmanger for Flash from Macromedia were on stage showing how the two work together.

Dreamweaver and Flash Video
Scott Fegette - Product Manager Developer Relations Macromedia

Got to understand the new flow for Flash Video or FLV handling inside either Dreamweaver - read no Flash required - and also in Flash authoring tool.

Two formats supported: Streaming and Progressive.

In Dreamweaver
Insert: Flash Video.
You can use different skins to allow for different views. Simple skin and controls best for small video.
Nice detect size to correct or also resize to constrain. Auto rewind and play also can be selected. To see you must preview in browser.

Right now I am in a sneek peek on pre alpha software.

Sneek Peek Notes

Captivate
Adding library, images and FLV.
Breakout on timeline that resembles visio inside powerpoint. Image chages jump to Fireworks to increase speed. Native export to Flash 8.

Flex
Bug accesses. Integrated with Mercury QuickTest Pro.
Record: records everything being done. This can be replayed and tested in MQTP. It is a script that is used.

If you compare two phones on a sales RIA, you may have 50. How do you remember what it is that you compared? Its is tagged.

Designers can change what they want and the scripts will work throughout the development lifecyle - negating any QA involvement.

The script of a run of choosing two phones to compare in the product can be re-run to compare.

Combining co-browing with custom collaboration button will all be automated. With the chat function two can shop together and chat back and forth on products being compared, put in baskets etc. Full collaboration tools based on simple application design paletts.

No code required to build this.

Online Seminars coming out of MAX2005

Studio
8 Online Live Seminar Series (Oct
26 - Dec 8)

Introduction
to Breeze Online Live Seminar Series (Oct
19)

See all events ›

Zorn

Zorn is the Flex 2 test name. More at labs.macromedia.com
Grab, use it, love it.

Dreamweaver Sneek Peek

Almagamation of CSS HTML and XML. Dreameaver is good at getting up to speed with new web technologies. New improved tools to better handle AJAX datasets.

MAX2005 Day Three

2005-10-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

Monday, Anaheim
Cloud and Showers. About 16C

First off it's actually day two of the conference. Day one if your a general registrant. Started numbering my days by day of the trip so will stick with it.

What I find after a couple of days away from home, I usually get a bit depressed. The weather is typical Halifax weather here, which sucks cause its Anaheim. Must be the clouds. In anycase this time it's a bit better as I am emailing home and the home front is being updated by the blog which is a more conversational format and not as short as an email (I usually am brief to the point of rude but so many emails come in to everyone's box it's usually best to get to the point in them).

Technology is great keeping you uptodate and connected to the hearth.

Anyway the home emails usually run like It's a wild windy night. The kids and I had a "Halloween" dinner, meaning we used the new Halloween napkins that we picked up at the Bulk Barn yesterday and illuminated the dining room with the kids new Halloween lights. This is the first time I've had to re-start the heater since you left. I will call Wilson's tomorrow and have them stop by to take a look at it.

This morning I went to the General Session. Great presentation and packed. I mean standing room in a place you could fit three rink surfaces in.

Monday Morning
General Session

1. ze frank
Ze was one of the early web icons..dancing to madonna and creating a hilarous loop in Flash 3.
See http://www.zefrank.com/invite/swfs/index2.html

The address was basically how Flash has changed lives, direction and experience through an ever increasingly rich delivery of content, though the delivery alone cannot sustain itself without content that is of value, even trivial things to make us smile.

2. Macromedia CEO Stephen Elop
Over 3000 were in the audience to hear Stephen relay that Macromedia has delivered on promises from New Orleans 04 that the company would be more involved and more responsive to the community.

His message to Bill Gates on a new vector authoring tool? Try Again

Since September 12, over 100M downloads of FlashPlayer 8 have been downloaded - at a rate of 5M/day.

3. Chief Architect Kevin Lynch
Where things are and where they are going outlined his address, interspersed by other presenters.

There was talk also of current ideas with the release today of Labs at labs.macromedia.com. This is where you will be able to participate in all alpha releases and respond through a wiki. The next release is of something called Appolo. Ok so you have to follow this closely. The Player is now on consumer devices in the form of Flash Player Lite. You have the browser with Flash Player 8. The next step is coined Flash/HTML integrated player for RIA's.

Think of being without access as I am while writing this. You can open up a file saved from a site (print to file) and there you can book online tickets for the next concert, review and update a shared calendar and keep all secure. The next time your online, your requests are handled automatically. Basically it makes offline saved contnet usable for time and personal management. But this is only part of what Apollo will do. One example.

Apollo breaks itself down into the following

Online office
Data sync
Desktop integration
one click installtion
update management
scripting and display integration
secure sandbox.

4. Flex.
Wow. In a space of minutes on the new Flex 2 platform I saw a swf made that calls a css (ok that was prepared) and allowed one to search Flickr photo gallery. Chat with someone else who had the swf, share the photos they searched and found. This is great for one to one sharing of stock art with others i think - and you can skin it with your own logo!

Again great idea, but the idea was made in front of me in minutes with the power of Flex Builder inside Flex2. So what else do you want to build today.

Lunch
Things ran late so I scooped down some type of rice thing with chicken. Mexican but not spicey. Not too warm but yummy.

This Afternoon
Two workshops I honestly don't have the time or energy today to deal with writing about. Suffice to say the following:

Advanced CSS
One Photo..how many words? Well the first one should be Multiple. For those who know me well I suck at spelling - always have.

Advanced workflow patterns with Photoshop and Flash.

Automate the process - Fireworks opens PSD excellently and from there you can save as fireworks file. Now its a layered png and can be brought into Flash.

Modify the pngs to own layers by selecting Modify to layers. Now you must agan reorder and text will come back to correct location if you have them out of composite. ^SHIFT E is the short cut. layers will also be named the same in photoshop. All is in sequence.

Next
Off to the 5:30 visibility event. Guess I do the whoop up with other managers to let people know that there are usergroups. And if your wondering, yes the CEO of Adobe did speak and told us bluntly that the community aspect of Macromedia is one of the prime reasons for the aquisition. Good news.

Edge Newsletter.
Serindipitous run in with Julia Campagna. Talked about what I did and didn't like about the newsletter and suggested they do a recap of this event. Something I can use as a tool, but also something they can refer back to when doing the sales ramp next year for MAX or whatever its called then (post Adobe).

Mentioned I have limited time to read it and decide if I am going to save/dump/return. Mentioned I wanted titles only, so if you see the table of contents finally arrive (back) in the Edge, your welcome.

MAX2005 Day Two

2005-10-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Anaheim
Sunny but with scattered Showers. About 20C

Got up early and farted around a bit since it as 7 am, but the old body clock is saying 11 am. Took a walk over to Disneyland but didn't go in. I guess they are taking the User Group managers to some sort of event there Tuesday night.

Walked around the town a bit and bought some strawberries from a market right by a field growing them. Nice to see they didn't pave all of Orange County.

Registered...very easy as it was still early and only a handful were there. The conference starts for most at four, but earlier today for me being a User Group manager.

This is the last post for today. I am going for a swim then off to the convention.

Today's Roster

Sunday, October 16th
Community College
Time: 1:45 pm - 5:00pm
Location: Anaheim Convention Center (Rooms 210A + 210B)
**You will need to check in at the registration desk before being allowed into the facility. Registration lines may be long, so please allow for that. If you are not attending MAX, but will be at Community College please email me to ensure that I have arranged a pass for you for Community College access. Full agenda below.

Welcome Reception
Time: 5pm - 7pm
Location: Exhibit Hall in Convention Center

Community Appreciation Dinner
Time: 7pm - 9pm
Location: Bus will leave from the Convention Center at 6:45pm and at 7:15

Wireless Mobile Devices

Supper update (or is it bedtime?)
Some quick notes regarding use of Flash Lite for mobile device market. This is mostly what was of interest to me but I tried to capture most things.

Last 12 months
-Kodak releases EasyOne camera that utilizes Flash Player (FP) for navigation interface. Wireless so images can be sent direct to server
-mm reaches deal with Nokia for interface platform using FP
-mm is working with Samsung for deployment in Korean market for FP as interface
-Today marks the first FlashCast through iChannel
-90 OEM phones shipping with FP

Next
-degrading of Walled Gardens to allow anyone to create Flash content for free/sale/download to phones - the service providers will not be able to control this.
-three types of FP delivery:
1. enhanced content and browsing
2. customized interface
3. converged data experience

Flash 8 has integrated templates for OEM. As new products come out, you can update through Flash to get latest interface template to build your Flash product for devices.

Flash Lite 2.0

-Built on F7, integrates AS2 and xml into swf.

Shape: simple shapes can be utilized or created from scratch for menu navigation or screensaver effects.
Text enhancement: create text msg interfaces with bold, italics, larger/smaller fonts etc.
Photo: gif, jpg, png with transparency support as well as integrated Flickr photo downloads and one can associate voice comments with photo.
Dynamic XML Date: news headlines or sports scores with links to more content.
Persistent Data: online gaming such as roulette etc.

Release in January. Update to authoring environment then as well.

Phones were demo'd. The best is a new phone in Korean market, 6x1x4 cm. Full Flash interface four button press to navigate. Full delivery: phone, video, camera, video camera, photo, text, makes my bed. Developed by iRiver.

MAX2005 Day One

2005-10-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday. 30,000 ft over Gulf of Maine.

Left Halifax today with the rain just starting to come in on departure. Nothing like waiting around in the airport to catch up on the news. Read how the new ipod may change the way network television delivers its material. If you don't want to watch last nights Housewives (can the press start using another analogy or is this the ONLY show available?) on a 2.5" screen think ahead to two minute soaps. Great something else to degrade content.

Another note. Readin the paper on the plane...Bill G. you are wrong. No the DVD is not dead. What Bill is saying that the DVD, or some other physical media, will be replaced by broadband delivered content. Well me old boy, you should maybe go to a farm in Nebraska or the family cottage in Pictou County and tell me how exactly that is going to happen with only dial-up. Not until there is ubiquitous access 98% over the major market's geographic area, will only content be available in direct feed. Even then, I gather Bill is not a collector or fine things such as old vinyl or even has a DVD collection, just to read the notes (think special edition DVD releases each year before and post xmas). Hollywood is not going to give up that gravy train. Then again Bill is one with art that comes on a screen rather than actual canvas in his house so what does he know anyway.

Update:
Glad I didn't have to use the public facilities at Newark..reminds me of the Palace on a Saturday night.
Anyway just in layover here at Newark. Sipping a cold soda and lookin at the New York Skyline.

More:
Arrived. Good thing I had a turkey sandwich and salad before I got on the plane. Turns out "dinner" is radiated dough and cheese with cookies and potato chips.

Met a few folks - had a discussion on the growth of flex (replaces generator).

Off to bed...its way to late for my body clock.

Max 2005

2005-10-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

Will be posting on the MAX2005 (the last macromedia conference?) next week.
Watch fer it.

Taking back my Thunderbird

2005-09-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

I recently cleaned out my mail. Funny how does 50-80 emails in my inbox without attachements become 500MB when looking at the Inbox file.

So opening Thunderbird again I created a new folder called inboxtemp. Then I moved all my inbox mail to this folder. This should show no mail in my inbox. (um no dont check mail til later).

Closed out Thunderbird. Windows showed the inboxtemp file at 1 MB, and the Inbox file at still over 500, but less 1 MB. Hmm...some hiding of my mail I thought deleted perhaps?

In anycase I deleted Inbox and Inbox.msf and inboxtemp.msf summary files and sent them to my windows trash. Renamed inboxtemp to Inbox.

Opened up Thunderbird again and viola, no visible change in my mail, but i saved over half a gig of space. Now I wonder what would happend to those who have large attachements they thing they are getting rid of.

In the end when I want mail deleted, I want it gone so I can save space. Not sure how Outlook handles this, but am sure its an easier process with Thunderbird than outlook.

As a side point, I opened the log file in my Dr Watson folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson" and since i have error handling turned off, had been accruing a rather large file on errors. 27MB in fact. So i deleted the error logs and have suffered no ill affects.

I did note however that the drwtsn32.log file had te following info in it - hmm now that has to flout PIPEDA (Canada's Privacy Act). XXX where you insert your computer name and etc...

Computer Name: XXX
User Name: XXX
Terminal Session Id: 0
Number of Processors: 2
Processor Type: x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 4
Windows Version: 5.1
Current Build: 2600
Service Pack: 1
Current Type: Multiprocessor Free
Registered Organization:
Registered Owner: Todd V. Yeadon

Thats it for today. Been a great and busy summer so time I got back on the posting trail to my throng of non readers.

Fort

2005-06-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

Got a chance to try out the new digital camera and capture some fun moments with my kids on their new fort.

Lobsters and Rain.

2005-05-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

Obviously I need to give my blog some more attention. I guess since its felt like March every friggin day since March here on the east coast, I lost track of the fact its going to be June in a week.
So much for Victoria Day. No fair weather in site.

This weekend I am taking Roan to his yearly Beaver Camp. The weather better improve or there will be a lot of chilly kids come Sunday.

Yesterday I finally ditched the analog world and got rid of my vhs-c camcorder which gave up the ghost. Figured it was time to get a new one last fall, but glad I waited as i got the new DVD Palmcorder from Panasonic. Sweet, but not sure yet of the picture quality...will update on that.
(http://www.panasonic.ca/english/audiovideo/video/palmcorder/VDRM55.asp)

Also had a great lobster feed on the weekend in Hubbards. Nothing like a 4 1/2 pounder to fill the yearly lobster feed quota.

Wet Seals and Jesus Hobos

2005-03-29T09:41:00.001-08:00

Rain today is heavy and hard. Can't see much past the windows. Reminds me of a few years ago and that let water in my basement. Will have to check on that tonight.

Roan's Beaver colony has a meeting tonight with the parents. Its called Hobo night. I am not impressed by a couple of burnt out volunteers who decide to have everyone dressup as homeless people as a fun event. For the boy's sake we will go but I am not into this type of thing where people who think all that is wrong with the world is that there is not enough of god's love in it. Hell that is whats wrong with it - too many friggin jesus freaks dictating who can wear a condom, or marry who, or be this or that and thinking "lets all just dress up as cute hobo's, cause we all know that teh homeless dont matter unless its time to dish out turkey dinner at the shelter."

On another point, for all the wool sock freaks who have hijacked the label "environmentalist" and think that we still club seals the answer is No. Though I am sure there woudl be a line up to club ignorant American protesters who come up to the east coast to educate us on how to not hurt fuzzy wuzzy animals. (wart hogs are ok then i guess).

Get a grip and go home. Too many people not thinking clearly about stuff, and thinking only with not what's in front of them, but what they want to see the world as.

This leads me to a great site that epitomizes this thought.

Net disaster is a great site that allows you to destroy others or your own website with a variety of methods - flood, fire, nuclear attack or even dinosaur attack.

http://www.netdisaster.com/go.php?url=http://www.textureweb.com/&mode=ufo&destruction=massive&lang=en

I don't think it likes asp or sites with includes, but works well on other sites.

St. Pat's and the Bush

2005-03-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

Ah St. Patricks Day. What is it about the emerald day that entices all to head out for a pint of solid dark stout or a clean glass of whisky. Maybe its the herald of spring and the excuse to just get out of the house after a winter of snow and cold. In anycase, last night turned out to be a banner one, meeting Pokey and his Dad for a pint at the SeaPig and hooking up with MikeMike and FunGina.

Band wasn't half bad, but moved on to Tribeca after 12 to finish the night at a couragous 4 am.

Guess I needed that after reading about the American plans to drill in the artic and NeoCon Wolfowitz leading the world bank. Thanks Dubya for screwing the rest of the world again with your right wing oil funded bullshit.

microcrap

2005-03-04T17:05:00.000-08:00

when i tried to to a windows update i got a number of failures that would not install oin my new install of xp. windows update kindly dislayed the list. when i clicked onthe first of the list, it showed thte following:

Critical Update for Windows XP (KB887822)
This update corrects an issue that prevents some updates from properly installing on your system.
How to UninstallThis software update can be removed via Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Now how is that exactly gonna help me? Sounds like when my brothers modem wouldnt work, he called US Robotics and allthey could tell hiom was "download a new version of the driver". Well DUH. If soultion resides on the other side of the barrier caused by the problem the soluion is pointless. Think keys locked in the car.

Sugar High?

2005-02-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

So the latest from England is that a new study claims that the levels of child obesity are overstated in that country. Instead of reported 30% something percent, the new study claims its more like 10%. The problem is that is was funded by the choco-sugar giant Cadbury Shwepes (sic).

I am no diet expert, but hey there has to be some level of biasness in that. Reminds me of when the tobacco giants claimed that their own studies in the 70s/80s claimed tobacco was not harmful.

Even at 10% does then the sugar purveyours think that is acceptable?

Craziness.

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=179772005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3749927.stm

what is it with these folks

2005-02-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

My good buddy msg's me to go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/krautboy/243291.html

I gotta tell ya although I love the movies and am a bit of an action figure collector, i dont get those who go to a star wars convention. I mean couldn't you spend your money in better ways? Form the looks of the pictures, most of them should have spent their evenings on the treadmill before trying to squeeze into lycra spandex jedi suits. Not being a non hefty myself, loosing weight is a challenge, but no you will never see me trying to be a jedi knight. there is just something wrong with that.

although i did put my religous affiliation on the last census down as jedi - just because the feds really dont need to know that from me.

power up.
cheers

February Never Ends

2005-02-04T05:02:00.000-08:00

Yeah its finally starting to get bright around the time i am ready to leave work, but it still is too dark to do anything when I get home.

Spring will be here before you know it, and I still wont have my task list done.

Well lets see if i can keep this blog going. First day, so will keep it short.

Two things

http://www.funpic.hu/swf/numanuma.html - nuf said

and

My prediction for the Patriots 24 Eagles 14