The Newsroom

It was another good month in the exercising department as I clocked 248 km worth of cardio in May and acquired a set of dumbbells and some weights so I can do some upper body workouts at home. But what I'm most happy about is that I passed the halfway mark of my goal to bike 2,000 km in 2012 - currently 1,018 km. That should increase tremendously in June as I start cycling to work.

see more Failbook

Dear Facebook: I know it's been a rough couple of weeks, what with the IPO not turning out like you wanted. But you're acting like an insecure child who, having been chastised by your parents, redoubles your efforts to impress and try harder. And you're not impressing us, you're just annoying us. A Camera app ? Really? Like the one thing missing from the average iPhone user's experience was camera app #1,894,882? The App Store is littered with camera apps. Yes, yes, we know you just bought Instagram for All The Money In The World and you feel you need to play with your new toy, and that's fine. And, yes, the Facebook Camera app does let you upload multiple photos at once ... unlike your existing iOS app. Ah, yes, the Facebook app. See, Facebook, here's my real problem with the Camera App: why isn't that extra functionality built into your main app? I'm tempted to answer that rhetorical question by saying, "Because your main app is so bu...

Chalk this one up to a serious case of First World Problems, but I have a fun little dilemma now about the best way to (legally) acquire movies after they leave the theatre. Take a movie like Hunger Games or Avengers - both films I enjoyed very much and both I want to purchase after they come out. But what format do I really want to buy? Oh, the choices: 1) DVD:  Still the most versatile format for my circumstances. Can play on my BluRay player. Can play on the still functioning DVD player on the old TV. Can be ripped to play on family's iPhones/iPads/iPod Touch. So, can be watched almost anywhere but anyone in the family. Least expensive option. But not HD picture quality. 2) BluRay: Fully HD picture. But least compatible with everything else. Won't play in the DVD player. We don't own a BluRay ripping drive or software, so can't be played on iPhones/iPads. Buying a movie on BluRay means it's a sit down in front of the HDTV experience only. 3) Apple iTun...

see more Failbook

It's the exciting finale to Survivor: One World, which, considering the final five are all women, maybe "Survivor: One Gender" works better. Either way, the men messed this one up big time. The first immunity challenge of the night was one of those meta-challenges: knots, tight-rope style maze, rope net, puzzle pieces, clues, combination locks, brain surgery.... Kim won immunity, narrowly edging out Alicia and Chelsea. Kim was trying to decide whether to get rid of Chelsea or Alicia. The best part of this was watching both of them tell the camera that it couldn't possibly be them being voted off. Kim chose Alicia for elimination. From the jury, Kat muttered bad things. My wife declared that Chelsea is going to win the entire thing now. We got the usual 20-minute retrospective for the voted-off Survivors. Yawn. I mean, seriously. I almost nodded off there. The final immunity challenge involved balancing bowls on a teetering structure with an extension arm. Kim won the ...

see more Failbook

Considering he's been a Christian music icon since I was a teenager, last night was only the second time I'd ever seen Michael W. Smith in concert (with the first being at Break Forth a couple of years ago). Our seats were 10 feet from the stage with Smitty right in front of us. The concert was tremendous. Smitty did a combination of his greatest hits along with his favorite songs from his vast collection of music, and a couple of new instrumental tunes from his recent "Glory" album. He's an amazingly talented and gifted performer and man of God. This was a giant thumbs up. The highlight of the night, though, was Smitty's backup band - a group called L'Angelus (as noted on their website, "say Lawn-Jay-Loose") who got to play a four-song sub-set during Michael's time on stage. They're a Cajun hoe-down, two-step, fiddle music band - and that's a sentence that contains pretty much ever word I have never associated with musi...

It's the penultimate episode of this season's Survivor. And if you put me on the spot and asked me to recap the season in four words, it would be "the men were dumb." Frankly, the only drama left at this point is whether Tarzan makes it farther than the next Tribal Council, or whether the women finally gang up on Kim and get rid of the ringleader. Chelsea won the reward challenge - a yacht trip. She took Sabrina and Kim with her. I didn't pay too much attention, to be honest, as I had some work stuff to do. The immunity challenge was building a fish puzzle with one hand. Alicia edged out Kim for immunity. At Tribal Council, Tarzan put on quite the show, talking about wearing Kat's panties on his head. Kat, on the jury, shed a tear or two. But it didn't work - Tarzan is gone, and it's all women left to battle for the million bucks. Next episode: Sunday's finale. Approximately 7 hours of television leading up to exactly 30 seconds of interesting TV.

The finale kicked off with the traditional 10 minute recap of the entire season's highlights - but the weirdest part was the promotional bit for the Amazing Race on DVD - Season 5 and Season 6. And this is Season 20. Yeah. So the teams are off to Hiroshima, Japan. Team Big Brother had trouble buying bus tickets from a vending machine and the other teams made fun of them for it. They missed the bus and had to take another bus. Rachel casually did her makeup and yelled at Brendon on the bus. From there is was onto the subway and then a ferry. Geez, I can't even get around Edmonton this well, nevermind watch these people navigate a foreign country in another language and alphabet. Team America (Rachel and Dave) didn't make it onto the the last ferry of the night that the other teams were on, and had an eight hour weight for the first ferry of the morning. Dave handled it with his usual calm demeano-HAHAHAHAHAHAH! No, he basically lectured Rachel on everything that went wrong. ...

see more Failbook

It's product placement time, as a Name Brand Smart Phone appeared in tree mail, so it's going to be video messages from home and probably loved one visits. Actually, no probably about it. The video messages basically said that the relatives are all on the island and that their loved one better win to get the visit. It was all sweet and teary-eyed. The Loved Ones came out at the reward challenge and it was even more teary-eyed. Except Kat. Who had a stroke, I think, when her cousin came out. It was odd. The Survivors and Loved Ones had to compete in the reward challenge together. Kat and her weird cousin won. Kat chose Kim and her sister and Alicia and her sister to go along, making several other Survivors sad, as the general feeling was that Tarzan and his wife and Christina and her ailing father should have been taken instead. Kat declared he was going to the reward challenge and get drunk. The immunity challenge involved hanging on to what appeared to be a water ski kind of r...