Welcome To Canuckistan

So, to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of implanting a RFID chip (or is it an RFID chip?) inside a human being, Tommy Thompson is getting one stuck under his skin. Now, I’m not all that familiar with Mr. Thompson’s record as a politician, but I think that if these things could be rigged to deliver a small electric shock whenever the politician does something stupid, then many, many more people would get behind the technology.

I might add, does anyone else find it curious that Mr. Thompson has joined the board of the company that manufactures the chips?

The fact that I’m even considering building my own wind turbine suggests that I have too much free time right now.

Long live the king!! How cool is this? I can’t believe that someone did this. I am just blown away. I’m not a HUGE Evlis fan, but I enjoy his music enough to think that this is one of the niftiest things I’ve seen in quite some time.

Every year (well, nearly every year) I go camping with some friends from high school. This year, I finally decided to take some photos. You’ll find a few from the campsite, a few from the beach, and a few from the drive home. Enjoy.

So I decided that it’s finally time to add some visual content. I dug up a CD with some photos from last year’s vacation, tweaked them a wee bit (they were taken with one of those disposable cameras and had some problems with overexposure and contrast and such), and uploaded them to flickr. You can see the whole set by clicking on the title of this post.

I’ve been trying to figure out what, if anything, I wanted to say about what happened in London yesterday morning. I initially thought about posting some sort of rant, or a rather generic post offering sympathy to the people of Britain, but it seemed to me like it might come across as disingenuous.

However, I read a wonderful column by Christie Blatchford in this morning’s Globe and Mail in which she praised the people of London (and Britain) for the way they’ve handled themselves in the aftermath of the events of yesterday morning.

I, too, would like to take the opportunity to sing the praises of all Londonders for the class, grace, dignity and resilience they’ve shown in the past twenty-four hours. It would have been easy (and excusable) if they had panicked, or went into hiding. But they didn’t. The tube is (for the most part) back in operation, people are going back to work, the tourists are out seeing the sights. Heck, as early as yesterday evening, people were in the pubs, enjoying a pint of bitters. Life is almost back to normal, and that is just fantastic.

I’ve spent the past few weeks exploring the hip & cool world of podcasts. If you don’t know what a podcast is, it’s like an online radio show. However, the key difference is that, instead of having to ‘tune in’ at a specific time to listen to said show, you can subscribe to the show, have it delivered to your computer, and listen to it at your leisure (either using a media player on your computer, on a portable audio player – not necessarily an iPod – or perhaps even by burning the files as audio CDs).

The whole thing took a huge leap forward when Apple decided to include support for podcasts in the latest version of iTunes. It’s now so much easier than before to find, subscribe to, download, and listen to podcasts.

So, if you’re interested in checking things out, here’s a few links to get you started ….

First, download iTunes. Of course, you could use another podcast client, such as iPodder, Doppler, iPodderX (for those of you using Macs), or a neat little web-based client called Odeo

Now, since it’s my blog and I can do what I want, it’s time to recommend some podcasts.

My favourite – This Week In Tech – a weekly roundtable discussion about all things tech (and some things notTech)

Adam Curry’s (some may remember him as a former MTV veejay [or is it VJ]) Daily Source Code and PodFinder

The Dawn & Drew Show – “now with 20% more ego” – a husband and wife rambling about anything and everything from their Wisconsin farmhouse

Fly With Me – a pilot for a “major U.S. airline” brings his digital recorder with him on flights, and this is the result

Diggnation – one of my favourite websites now has a podcast – how cool is that?