The Newsroom

Wacky! I love this show. ... although beer is in there twice...

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So if I'm going to make first world complaints, I should offer first world compliments. The Edmonton International Airport announced free unlimited wifi today. Good for them! I'm very happy to see them do this, and I'll take advantage of it on Tuesday when we're flying out.

It's July 29, and we've gone 5 (I think) straight days without rain - or at least, without significant rain during the day. This may actually be a record for 2010 since the snow melted. It's been wonderful!

Courtesy @TheTypingPanda in response to my Tweets about no free wifi at airports. Yup. Point taken. Particularly since I use the "first world problem" phrase a lot when talking about technology. And the song's pretty funny, too.

Yes, I broke down and bought the full version of HootSuite. It's funny, too, because in an email exchange with a friend earlier today, I said that I was perfectly happy using Twitter for iPhone on my iPod Touch because it's free and I'm too cheap to pay $2.99 for HootSuite, even though it's what I use as my main Twitter application. But I ended up breaking down and buying it out of the sheer convenience of being able to link up my entire family's Facebook accounts to it, enabling all of us to update Facebook from the road without having to log in and out of four different Facebook accounts all the time. So, congratulations, HootSuite. You managed to pry $2.99 out of my stingy hands.

I'm posting this at 9 pm on Tuesday. Wondering when Facebook will import it to my wall. I'm betting Thursday afternoon.

So, honestly, I have no idea whether by the time this get posted people will be able to read it or not, because my site's been down again today. Here's the particulars in terms of what happens when this site goes down: I can't access it at home on my Shaw Internet hookup, regardless of browser, wifi, etc. I also can't access it at work, which is notably NOT a Shaw Internet hookup. However, I can access my site through a proxy server. Which makes me think that it's some kind of bizarre Edmonton Internet glitch. And I can post to my site when it's "down" and the RSS shows up in Google Reader. The problem, of course, is that because I can access the site through a proxy server, my hosting company in Toronto also has no trouble bringing up this page and keeps blowing off my requests for assistance on why I can't access my own website. It's very frustrating.

Original size uploads. One of our cats. Please lock the door.

Don't mind me, I'm just playing with my ZoomIt and seeing how the different transfer sizes actually translate on the blog.

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I bought a ZoomIt from ZoomMediaPlus, which let's you transfer digital media from an SD card to an iPod Touch or IPhone without using a computer. And it works! The pictures in this blog entry were taken straight from the SD card from my digital camera onto my iPod Touch where they're available to be blogged of shared on Facebook or Twitter or whatnot. (And I should add for clarity that this entire post was done on my iPod Touch using ZoomIt and the Blogger app.) This is going to be so handy on vacation. Which is why I bought it, of course.

Then you're doing better than me. There's something wrong with my domain servers. I've put in a help request with my provider. Strangely, I'm able to post to the blog, and the RSS seems to work, I just can't physically bring it up on my computer. And judging from my sliding visitor stats, neither can a lot of other people. Thanks for your patience. EDIT: It's 3:10 p.m. and I can access my own site again. Phew. EDIT: It's 8:10 p.m. and I can't access my site again. Argh. (Not that anyone can read this.)

Seem to be having server troubles on the website. Been a bad week for technology.

For all the talk about how Facebook is supposedly becoming uncool and its growth has slowed, has anyone noticed that Facebook at least works 95% of the time, as opposed to Twitter, which seems to have 95% degraded service time lately? Indeed, despite the World Cup being over, Twitter's performance (which groaned under the weight of the soccer tournament) hasn't seemed to improve that much. Some combination of "Twitter" "API" and "busy" seem to be the three words that show up most in my Twitter apps these days. And my inability to even login to Twitter for BlackBerry today made me *this* close to swearing off Twitter entirely. Yes, it's a free service. Yes, it's growing tremendously. But it's also becoming increasingly unusable, unstable, and unreliable. How long until people decide, en masse, to abandon it? And, yes, I'm aware that this is a first world complaint . EDIT: The good news is that a reinstall of Twitter for Black...

So, a couple of days ago , it was the Google Mobile app that was flailing badly in the online world. For the last 12 hours or so, it's been Twitter for Blackberry that's struggling . I can't even login this morning. (In fact, I can't even login to the Mobile Twitter site on my BlackBerry.) All my other Twitter apps appear to be working fine.

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Our older girl is off in Mexico for two weeks with the youth group from our church on a missions trip. It's a very exciting time for her, and we're thrilled that she got the opportunity to participate in something like this. Our youth pastor and his wife are blogging the trip , so feel free to follow along.

For the past 24 or so hours, this screen has come up on my iPod Touch every time I try to use the Google Mobile App. Judging from this thread , it's not just me. Apparently, it's also affecting BlackBerries as well. Strangely, it doesn't happen when I use Safari to bring up the same sites, so there's something in the app itself that appears to be broken. EDIT: And on Saturday it's working!

Slight language warning.

I haven't purchased the album yet and I probably won't, but this review sums up my thoughts of what I heard based on the New Release Tuesday free album preview last week - it's fine, nothing special, and it's going to take a while before the new Newsboys really gel as a unit that has its own sound and style. Although, honestly, in context of the review - the band's version of Mighty to Save and the Jesus Freak remake are probably two of my favorite tracks on the album and songs that I may purchase separately in lieu of the rest of the album.

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Strikeforce has a problem. They wanted Fedor Emilianenko to fight for their heavyweight title against champion Alistair Overeem. And then Fedor lost in a minute to Fabricio Werdum in the title elimination fight. Fedor has 1 fight left on his contract. So what do you do? Strikeforce thinks this is their solution : Just give Fedor the title shot anyway (provided he signs the champion's clause). This has a lot of MMA fans up in arms. Why should the loser of the title elimination fight get the title shot? The real answer, of course, is that it's the only match that will sell on CBS. So, if that's the case, do it this way: Do Fedor vs. Overeem for Fedor's WAMMA title, not the Strikeforce title. Have the storyline be Overeem refuses to defend the Strikeforce title against a guy who lost in his last match, and Fedor then saying he'll put his title on the line instead to get the match. CBS gets their 5-round championship fight. So, if Fedor wins, Overeem didn...

RED - Ordinary World Music Video from S I K on Vimeo .

Blogger in Draft is testing built-in stats tools for its blogs. I was checking mine out today and noticed this sudden and inexplicable spike in my traffic at 5 a.m. local time today - 518 page views. That's about a week's worth all at once. Sadly, I couldn't find anything in Blogger's stats tools to identify what caused the sudden jump, nor did it register in my StatCounter stats, so maybe it was a glitch in the Matrix.

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We're sitting in the departure lounge of the Winnipeg airport waiting to head back to Edmonton after an exhilarating weekend. Yesterday included a 90th birthday party lunch for my grandmother at The Gates, which was delicious and lots of fun. We ended up at my brother's place for the UFC, which was a great card. In between we saw 2 funnel clouds, which was somewhere between "really cool" and "drive faster!" The day ended at just after midnight and I slept until almost 9 this morning. Currently nursing a cafe mocha, which is my third caffeine injection in the 5 hours I've been awake. Back in Edmonton soon.

We're in the midst of a whirlwind weekend tour of Winnipeg where the temps are hot enough to melt pavement. It's supposed to be 38 today with the humidex, which is topping even my standards of warm weather. It's almost as hot here as it is in Palm Springs and it's hotter than Hawaii. The Queen is here today, which is very neat. Our day doesn't allow us to get down to see her, however. Back in Edmonton tomorrow afternoon where it will be considerably cooler.

And Happy North American Wi–Fi Liberation Day !