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  Please support me in the 2010 Ride to Conquer Cancer - last year we were able to raise $6.9 million for the Alberta Cancer Foundation - hopefully we can raise even more in 2010!

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Inspired by this commute video I saw this morning, I was curious what it would look like if I recorded my full commute. I’ve tried it before with a helmet cam, but hadn’t tried it with a fixed quasi-steady camera.

I took my cheap little Flip Ultra video camera, stuck it on the rear rack of my bike, and fastened it in place with a pair of bungee cords. It wasn’t ideal, but should have been good enough, as long as I didn’t wipe out or hit anything big.

I took the longer route home, climbing the big fracking hill at the south end of my home community. And Patrick Kelly joined me for the first part of the ride (you’ll see him a minute or so into the video). The video is sped up – it was a 45 minute ride, compressed into under 9 and a half minutes. I gave up on fancy titles and music, so you get the raw (but time-compressed) version here:

Thanks to a tip from David Esrati (who I’m not going to link to from this post because I’m taunting spammers and don’t want to inflict collateral damage on him), I’m testing out WP-SpamFree which is a really interesting antispam plugin for WordPress. I’ve used Akismet and Mollom before, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with externally hosted antispam systems. For some reason, I’m just not completely comfortable with relying on another server for this. I’d used Spam Karma 2 with great success, but since that went defunct I abandoned it as well.

Now, WP-SpamFree seems to offer an intelligent antispam system without relying on external servers or blacklists. I’m giving it a shot. So far, it’s been pretty successful.

Let’s see how well it does. Bring it.

I just upgraded a bunch of tracks to iTunes+ DRM-free files. At the bottom of my “Purchased” album, I noticed the stats:

So that’s why she complains about the stream of iTunes charges on the Visa… Oops.

a wonderful way to celebrate earth day.

Now, please excuse me while I go warm up the Hummer and crank up the furnace…

They just (vaguely) announced the route for this year’s Ride to Conquer Cancer event. Looks like we’ll be leaving from the south end of Calgary (I’m guessing the parking lot at Spruce Meadows, but I could be wrong), heading briefly west then south along the Cowboy Trail on highway 22. The overnight camp is at Bar U Ranch near Longview. On day 2, we go another 100km (or so) south – finishing the ride at the Sierra West Ranch near Pincher Creek.

This part of the country is famous for the flat topology and calm wind conditions. You may have seen it in such films as Unforgiven, Brokeback Mountain, and Open Range. Hrm. Now I’m not so sure what to expect at the tent city.

Wait. What? It’s the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and consistently insanely windy? That’s where they build the wind-electric farms? I’m exhausted just looking at this route.

I just spent a few minutes updating my podcast subscriptions – I haven’t really listened to podcasts for several months, and want to get back into more curated audio presentations, as opposed to the relentless randomness of Shuffle Mode music playlists.

I decided my previous set of subscriptions were essentially a self constructed echo chamber. I had subscribed to several edu-podcasts, all talking about various interpretations of the same issues. I need to break out of the echo chamber, so I unsubscribed from most of them (sorry – nothing personal). I added several music related podcasts, and a couple talk radio shows.

I’m not sure when I’ll have a chance to listen to them all, but I’m going to try. Perhaps as good background distraction while writing…

I’ll happily put up with a bit of snow, when the forecast for the rest of the week looks like this

It’s been awhile since I logged into SecondLife. I updated my app and fired it up today, after talking with Patti about possibly holding a TLC session in SecondLife to help expose faculty to the concept. I don’t want to be championing it, but many faculty are curious, and a guided tour might be helpful. I decided my previous avatars – a Cylon Centurion and a Dark Wraith – were maybe a bit far from what I need to look like when talking with faculty. So I updated my avatar to something I can relate to.

I can’t seem to get the clothes to be a bit looser, so it’s a good thing I’m in such awesome shape.

I’ll be gathering location landmarks to build a tool of some interesting (and not interesting) things in SecondLife. So far, I want to start with the NOAA island, the NASA museum, and a handful of other places. Any recommendations?

it’s pretty easy to compare messages sent by various mass media outlets via twitter. it’s also pretty surprising how they spin the same information in different ways.

update: mainstream media never fails to disappoint. an hour after posting this, CBC went live with the actual story, in line with how the Herald spun it on their first try. sigh.

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