Tag: Vancouver

A Week in August

It seems that August is con­fer­ence sea­son, at least for me. More pre­cisely, one week in August. First Bal­is­age in Mon­tréal (for which the online regis­tra­tion is clos­ing next Fri­day) August 12–15, and then Vinocamp here in Van­couver, at the UBC Botan­ic­al Garden, on August 16th. I’m speak­ing at the former, and help­ing organ­ise the lat­ter (for which num­bers are lim­ited to 120, so don’t wait too long to register). The premise for Vinocamp is a friendly con­fer­ence about wine, put on by a bunch of tech­ies; this is its first year. Both con­fer­ences should be fun! Enter­tain­ing as well as edu­ca­tion­al, and a cer­tain amount of good food and wine in both loc­a­tions. I can cer­tainly think of worse ways to spend a week in August.

Mastering the Digital World

Yes­ter­day I went to the stu­dent show­case at the mas­ters of digit­al media pro­gram, a gradu­ate degree in digit­al media put on by Van­couver­’s major post-sec­ond­ary insti­tu­tions. Unfor­tu­nately I had to leave early, but I was impressed at what I saw. The centre is run by Dr. Gerri Sin­clair, whom I’ve known for some time, and she’s obvi­ously had a lot of fun put­ting togeth­er a pro­gram that not only teaches about digit­al media, but teaches worth­while pro­ject tech­niques such as per­so­nas and agile development.

I’m curi­ous as to what sorts of jobs the stu­dents will end up in, par­tic­u­larly for those who go to what one could call less cut­ting-edge com­pan­ies, and how they will fare. The pro­gram is still new, but I think it has the poten­tial to do a lot of good in com­pan­ies, giv­en the focus that I saw on mak­ing the tech­no­lo­gies appeal to the ulti­mate users. They are run­ning an Open House in a couple of weeks; if you’re inter­ested in what these stu­dents are doing with digit­al media, that would be the place to go to check it out.

Good Support

In the online and soft­ware world, there’s “sup­port”, and then there’s sup­port. I’ve dis­covered my host­ing sup­pli­er for this blog, Cana­dian Web Host­ing, offers the real type of sup­port. And at a decent price, too. 

I run two Word­Press blogs, this one and a craft­ing blog, and had a prob­lem that showed up on one and not the oth­er. They dug around, sent sug­ges­tions to try things out, and gen­er­ally made a great effort to help fig­ure out what was going on (I’ll post the gory details once I have a bit more time to make them under­stand­able). That sup­port coupled with a decent price ($8.95 per month if you pay upfront for 1 TB band­width per month, 125 GB stor­age, lots of add-on domains, and SSH access) means I recom­mend them to any­one who needs host­ing. If you’re in the mar­ket for a new host­ing sup­pli­er, you could do a lot worse.

Blossoming in the Sun

In a city like Van­couver in the depths of winter, when we’re so used to rain, rain, and more rain, to the extent that even the loc­al paper prints “this is get­ting bor­ing” as the weath­er fore­cast, any sun is appre­ci­ated. So today’s glor­i­ous sun­shine, even though accom­pan­ied by cold frosts in the morn­ing, was extremely wel­come. Every­one is out walk­ing, people are vis­ibly relax­ing and enjoy­ing the sun, their faces remin­is­cent of blos­som­ing flowers, rather than scur­ry­ing along under umbrel­las scowl­ing at the grey skies. Many are delib­er­ately not look­ing at the weath­er fore­cast, pre­fer­ring to enjoy the weath­er as it is rather than be cast into des­pond­ency over the rain that is undoubtedly just over the hori­zon. Even the trees seem to be smil­ing, and the cats are out­side cat­ting around rather than hibernating.

Some­how even work­ing in the base­ment seems easi­er when the sun is shining.

Yearly Rethink

One of the reas­ons I like going to North­ern Voice is that it always gives me lots to think about, in terms of what to write about on my blog, what tech­nic­al tricks to try out, and how to write bet­ter. Oth­er people choose their blo­giversary, or maybe New Year’s Day, but I find North­ern Voice to be bet­ter. One reas­on of course is the num­ber of enthu­si­ast­ic people there talk­ing about blog­ging and social media and how they use them.

All of which is a long way of say­ing that this year I’ll be look­ing for more of that spark, that enthu­si­asm in the speak­er sub­mis­sions. What talks will make me happy to be blog­ging, will give me incent­ive to make my blog bet­ter, will tell me of inter­est­ing things to try? What talks would make me want to start blog­ging, if I wer­en’t already? The dead­line is Monday, Decem­ber 10th, so you don’t have long to pol­ish those ideas (and we can­’t take late sub­mis­sions as we’re select­ing talks that same week and we do need to read them first). For oth­er views on what we’re look­ing for, check out Dar­ren’s post­ing, or Bri­an’s. Bri­an also has some pho­tos of the party spot for the Thursday even­ing as an added incent­ive to go there and read what he has to say. Once you’re ready, sub­mit your idea while it’s fresh and before you forget.

Vancouver Bits of News

I’m still fight­ing off a bad cold, so blog­ging has been light and will be over the next couple of days. Things have still been hap­pen­ing in the world though… or at least in the part of it I inhabit.

Rain­city Stu­di­os bought Bryght — the Bryght guys (Bor­is, Roland, Kris, Richard) have been major con­trib­ut­ors to the North­ern Voice blog­ging con­fer­ence I’m involved with. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how the merged com­pany evolves. More details here.

Sup­posedly the dis­aster that’s Cam­bie St south of the Broad­way will be open for traffic again on Decem­ber 9; giv­en the past track record I must admit I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m not going to touch on the cur­rent police/RCMP stor­ies as there are enough people talk­ing about those and I doubt that I can add any­thing that oth­ers haven’t already said.

The sun is shin­ing, for a change. Fore­cast is for rain over the week­end, of course, but it’s nice to see blue skies and sun­shine even if only for a couple of days (maybe espe­cially if it’s only for a couple of days).