Good evening all, and Happy Father's Day to all those of you for whom that is applicable. I know I was going to try to write on Sunday afternoons, but I suppose it's better late than never.
We're less than two weeks out from our Canada Day camping trip and things are starting to come together. I'm taking a much more hands-on role in the preparation this time... can't count on Dad to just provide me with a list of everything I need. Of course, he's helped out with that; I just called him today and he reminded me of a few things that I would have forgotten about. It's funny how easy it is to forget something as simple as a camp chair, and it's also funny how big an impact that could have on your comfort at camp. In the end though this is a pretty stress-free camping prep since we're not going into the deep woods. Knowing that we'll have a vehicle handy for quick supply runs is pretty comforting.
It looks like we'll be getting an addition to our camping crew as well. Euphemia's friend Bing has expressed an interest in joining us, and since we've got a reservation for six people and only three of us scheduled to go it was no problem. Now we are four. The closer it gets to Canada Day the more excited I'm getting! This should be an easy, relaxing camp and I'm really looking forward to it.
In totally unrelated news I've purchased a new motorcycle! I went out today to visit my friend Mike and took his Kawasaki ZZR600 for a test drive. That was, without question, the most fun I've ever had on a motorcycle! I've really enjoyed my little CBR125, but the bigger bike was a whole different world. There was way more power on tap than I needed, but it was very comforting to know that the power was there when I needed it. We toured around for a couple hours and at the end of our run I made the purchase. Mike's going to hang on to the bike for me while I sell my current one and then I'll try to get some pictures up.
Well, that's all for now folks. I've got one more post to go up before the camp, so I'll provide details then. See you all next Sunday.
Sunday 19 June 2011
Monday 13 June 2011
Introducing Euphemia Zhang
Good evening ladies and gents! Big news for this particular post. I've been spreading the word through my various forms of social media for the last week, and I thought I might as well make things official on my blog for those of you who don't follow my merry adventures on Facebook.
Long time readers will recall that I've had reason to lament a lack of travelling companions in the past. My trip to Iceland in particular comes to mind as a fantastic trip that would have been elevated even further if I'd not been flying solo. This is not in anyway belittling the massive contributions made by Graydyn, Jay, and my parents in providing company on my travels, but still, I've found myself looking for a more constant form of travelling companion. I dedicated several lengthy years of research in trying to determine a viable and effective solution to my obvious problem. After countless months of browsing all the scientific literature I could come across I discovered a solution often employed by the Adult Human Male: if you stop playing video games and leave the house every now and then, maybe you'll find a girlfriend. I'm happy to announce that I've found a beautiful young lady who has expressed a keen interest in seeing this vast world of ours by my side, and I present to you, my loyal readers, Miss Euphemia Zhang!
Took that picture myself with my new phone! The lovely backdrop is the Rouge River Valley, which will be the subject of a post in the very near future.
Admittedly I think most of you know that Euphemia and I have been going out, but I know she's going to be coming up in this blog in the very near future, as she's already agreed to accompany me on my next camping trip (more on that very soon) and I felt that a formal introduction was important to maintaining a steady narrative in this blog. Also it gave me a terrific opportunity for that lengthy, self-deprecating introduction to this week's post.
Okay, I'll attempt to stop being a clown now and get into the details. Euphemia was born in Zhuhai, in the province of Guangdong, China, where she lived until moving to Canada at the age of 15. She's fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, and just recently graduated in Honours Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Those factors combine to make her much, much smarter than the humble author of this blog.
I'm going to refrain from getting into any more of my girlfriend's life story, but I just wanted to provide a brief introduction. She's likely to be a major contributing character in the story of my travels, and I wanted to make sure everyone knows who I'm talking about before I start dropping her name throughout the course of my blogging adventures.
I'm wrapping things up for the day here. Tune in later in the week when I plan on popping in a special report that I've been wanting to write about, and then keep updating every week as we're starting to get the details of a camping trip hammered out (as those of you who follow Jay's blog will already know) and I'm sure to be reporting on the preparations for that as we approach the July 1st departure date. Thanks for reading everyone, and I'll talk to you all again soon.
Long time readers will recall that I've had reason to lament a lack of travelling companions in the past. My trip to Iceland in particular comes to mind as a fantastic trip that would have been elevated even further if I'd not been flying solo. This is not in anyway belittling the massive contributions made by Graydyn, Jay, and my parents in providing company on my travels, but still, I've found myself looking for a more constant form of travelling companion. I dedicated several lengthy years of research in trying to determine a viable and effective solution to my obvious problem. After countless months of browsing all the scientific literature I could come across I discovered a solution often employed by the Adult Human Male: if you stop playing video games and leave the house every now and then, maybe you'll find a girlfriend. I'm happy to announce that I've found a beautiful young lady who has expressed a keen interest in seeing this vast world of ours by my side, and I present to you, my loyal readers, Miss Euphemia Zhang!
Took that picture myself with my new phone! The lovely backdrop is the Rouge River Valley, which will be the subject of a post in the very near future.
Admittedly I think most of you know that Euphemia and I have been going out, but I know she's going to be coming up in this blog in the very near future, as she's already agreed to accompany me on my next camping trip (more on that very soon) and I felt that a formal introduction was important to maintaining a steady narrative in this blog. Also it gave me a terrific opportunity for that lengthy, self-deprecating introduction to this week's post.
Okay, I'll attempt to stop being a clown now and get into the details. Euphemia was born in Zhuhai, in the province of Guangdong, China, where she lived until moving to Canada at the age of 15. She's fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, and just recently graduated in Honours Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Those factors combine to make her much, much smarter than the humble author of this blog.
I'm going to refrain from getting into any more of my girlfriend's life story, but I just wanted to provide a brief introduction. She's likely to be a major contributing character in the story of my travels, and I wanted to make sure everyone knows who I'm talking about before I start dropping her name throughout the course of my blogging adventures.
I'm wrapping things up for the day here. Tune in later in the week when I plan on popping in a special report that I've been wanting to write about, and then keep updating every week as we're starting to get the details of a camping trip hammered out (as those of you who follow Jay's blog will already know) and I'm sure to be reporting on the preparations for that as we approach the July 1st departure date. Thanks for reading everyone, and I'll talk to you all again soon.
Monday 6 June 2011
Nexus S
Hey, sorry to everyone who has been trying to get into my new routine of posting on Sunday! I guess I'm not 100% used to that routine yet! Oh well, hopefully this is better late than never...
I've wanted to do a quick product review on my new phone, just because I've mentioned it a couple times already, and also because I consider it to be an essential piece of my travel gear. I'll try not to dwell on the technical aspects too much... if I wanted to talk shop I'd be at work right now.
First of all, the reason for the switch: my BlackBerry was getting really, really old. I'd had it for almost three years, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it's an eternity in Cell Phone Years. The rate at which we are advancing it technology is staggering, and as someone who works in the industry I feel the need to keep up. Also, I love my gadgets, and I've been very excited by some of the new phones that have been coming out lately.
My new phone is a Google Nexus S, sometimes called a Samsung Nexus S because, while it was built for and marketed by Google, it was Samsung who provided the hardware. Google just requisitioned this piece because they wanted something to really show off Android, which is the mobile operating system that they've developed. Anyone familiar with Samsung's Galaxy S phone will notice a lot of similarities.
One of the many really cool features of this phone is that it's got a very slight concave curve to the screen, just subtle enough that you don't really notice when using it as a touch screen, but it fits against your face a little better when you're using it as a phone. Also it makes it look really cool. The screen itself is one of Samsung's new Super AMOLED screens; again, I won't get into the tech details, but just rest assured that it's bright, the colours are beautiful, and in my opinion it's the best screen on the market right now.
Something I've been having a lot of fun with is the multimedia capabilities of this phone. That big, beautiful touch screen allows for a really great display and interaction with games, and with social networking applications. I've found that I'm getting back into using Twitter, I'm on Facebook more, and I'm taking my phone out purely as an entertainment device now. All around it's just getting a lot more use than my old phone. It's also got a tight integration with GMail, so for those of you with my GMail address I'm still getting those e-mails as soon as you send them.
From a travelling perspective, this phone has quad-band GSM, as well as an HSPA radio, so just like my old phone I should be able to use it anywhere in the world.
One of my big concerns with this phone is that the entire front of the phone is one big touchscreen, and that's the only way to interact with it. That means that when I'm typing out messages I'm doing it by hitting buttons on a virtual keyboard displayed on the screen. Without the tactile sensation of a physical keyboard I wasn't sure if I'd be able to handle typing out some of the lengthy messages I've been known to pound out on my BlackBerry. Turns out that I'm adapting to it pretty quickly. I'm not sure if I'm at the same speed as I was on my BlackBerry, but I certainly feel like I'm close. The phone tries to guess what you're typing, and that can be really helpful sometimes too.
Anyone who read my Killarney wrap-up has already seen one phone from the camera built into this phone. I'll be the first to admit that when they started putting cameras in phones I thought it was ridiculous. Now I love it! In my defence, when they first started putting cameras in phones they were about 0.1 megapixels, which genuinely was ridiculous. I've got a 5MP camera in my new phone though, and sometimes it's just really convenient to be able to take a quick photo with your phone. I'm pretty sure that I left my photo that I took with my phone at its full size when I uploaded it to the blog, so if you click on it you'll see the full image in it's uncompressed glory. Honestly I'm pretty impressed with it for something that's not a dedicated camera! I'll try to get some more examples up later.
So that's my early thoughts on this new piece of hardware that I'm carrying around. I know it's not very travel oriented, but you know how excited I get about my gadgets, so I can hope you can all forgive the indulgence.
I've wanted to do a quick product review on my new phone, just because I've mentioned it a couple times already, and also because I consider it to be an essential piece of my travel gear. I'll try not to dwell on the technical aspects too much... if I wanted to talk shop I'd be at work right now.
First of all, the reason for the switch: my BlackBerry was getting really, really old. I'd had it for almost three years, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it's an eternity in Cell Phone Years. The rate at which we are advancing it technology is staggering, and as someone who works in the industry I feel the need to keep up. Also, I love my gadgets, and I've been very excited by some of the new phones that have been coming out lately.
My new phone is a Google Nexus S, sometimes called a Samsung Nexus S because, while it was built for and marketed by Google, it was Samsung who provided the hardware. Google just requisitioned this piece because they wanted something to really show off Android, which is the mobile operating system that they've developed. Anyone familiar with Samsung's Galaxy S phone will notice a lot of similarities.
One of the many really cool features of this phone is that it's got a very slight concave curve to the screen, just subtle enough that you don't really notice when using it as a touch screen, but it fits against your face a little better when you're using it as a phone. Also it makes it look really cool. The screen itself is one of Samsung's new Super AMOLED screens; again, I won't get into the tech details, but just rest assured that it's bright, the colours are beautiful, and in my opinion it's the best screen on the market right now.
Something I've been having a lot of fun with is the multimedia capabilities of this phone. That big, beautiful touch screen allows for a really great display and interaction with games, and with social networking applications. I've found that I'm getting back into using Twitter, I'm on Facebook more, and I'm taking my phone out purely as an entertainment device now. All around it's just getting a lot more use than my old phone. It's also got a tight integration with GMail, so for those of you with my GMail address I'm still getting those e-mails as soon as you send them.
From a travelling perspective, this phone has quad-band GSM, as well as an HSPA radio, so just like my old phone I should be able to use it anywhere in the world.
One of my big concerns with this phone is that the entire front of the phone is one big touchscreen, and that's the only way to interact with it. That means that when I'm typing out messages I'm doing it by hitting buttons on a virtual keyboard displayed on the screen. Without the tactile sensation of a physical keyboard I wasn't sure if I'd be able to handle typing out some of the lengthy messages I've been known to pound out on my BlackBerry. Turns out that I'm adapting to it pretty quickly. I'm not sure if I'm at the same speed as I was on my BlackBerry, but I certainly feel like I'm close. The phone tries to guess what you're typing, and that can be really helpful sometimes too.
Anyone who read my Killarney wrap-up has already seen one phone from the camera built into this phone. I'll be the first to admit that when they started putting cameras in phones I thought it was ridiculous. Now I love it! In my defence, when they first started putting cameras in phones they were about 0.1 megapixels, which genuinely was ridiculous. I've got a 5MP camera in my new phone though, and sometimes it's just really convenient to be able to take a quick photo with your phone. I'm pretty sure that I left my photo that I took with my phone at its full size when I uploaded it to the blog, so if you click on it you'll see the full image in it's uncompressed glory. Honestly I'm pretty impressed with it for something that's not a dedicated camera! I'll try to get some more examples up later.
So that's my early thoughts on this new piece of hardware that I'm carrying around. I know it's not very travel oriented, but you know how excited I get about my gadgets, so I can hope you can all forgive the indulgence.
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