Vitaluna.net -- Crazy Life in Emo, Ontario » Tech Bytes

Awesome ad placement

Lincoln — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:47:48 +0000

I have a picture of the sign for one of the local country roads as my desktop at home — 404 Road.
(Since I know KMac will read this, and not understand it: HTTP 404)

Best. Video. Ever.

Lincoln — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:58:53 +0000

Meme-city. I totally, totally love it, even if the song is pretty vanilla:

Why doesn’t Virgin fly in Canada?

Lincoln — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:00:42 +0000

As part of one of my final seven (w00t!) courses to complete for my BComm in Marketing, I had to do an exhaustive brand audit and rehabilitation strategy paper for Air Canada. (Read it here if you’re really, really bored) The extent to which Air Canada has pissed away the brand value in one of the most recognized brands in Canada is astounding — all through massively-awful customer service at pretty much every touchpoint. Service across the industry is pretty much the same, with the exception of the JetBlue/Southwest/Westjet types of airlines, where you may not get any significant service features, but they’re at least funny and friendly.
But man, I want to fly on Virgin America. Here’s what customer service — at least for geeks — is all about. I’m not going to steal their copy — go read what Artur Bergman had to say.
Okay, maybe they’re selling the same cramped flying on an AirBus A319 as anyone else, but the on-board tech toys are a must-have. The bar just got raised a notch……

So….cool…..

Lincoln — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:59:45 +0000

Oh, I need a 360 before September:

One-deal-a-day sites

Lincoln — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:48:24 +0000

I was checking out The Tyee, a BC-based online mag, and noticed an ad in the sidebar for “Hammer Drop. One Product. One Deal. Every Day.” It turns out that Hammer Drop is a product of Home Depot, but is virtually identical to the offbeat one-deal-a-day site and (I think) the originator of the idea, Woot.com. Woot.com has more interactivity — for instance, a comment board for each product, where insta-reviews and commentary on the product, previous products, your dog, etc. are posted.
I also recently found Jellyfish, which offers a Smack of the Day, a pretty slick Flash-based variant of the deal-a-day concept, modelled on a game show concept. I know, I know, it’s Flash. But it’s one of the first examples of useful flash I’ve seen in a while. The interactivity is cool. Their idea is that the price of the item keeps dropping until enough people have purchased to exhaust the supply. It’s mostly gamer-focused, but cool nonetheless.

One Hip Bullfrog

Lincoln — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:28:02 +0000

My source for most that is intellectual and not computer-related is, of course, CBC Radio, one of the few non-Christian-rock stations available in the Rainy River District. This morning, the day after the Tragically Hip played in Thunder Bay, there was a brief piece on their sponsor for the Ontario leg of their tour

Ghost in the Shell

Lincoln — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 06:46:08 +0000

I just finished watching Ghost in the Shell, a film that many said was a significant influence on the Wachowski brothers in their creation of the Matrix trilogy.
I’m a geek. I get geek stuff. I don’t get this film.
I see the references as noted in the wikipedia article on the film, and their impact on the development of the Matrix trilogy. What I don’t get is the “massive significance” that has been noted by many in the manga/cyberpunk/tech groups who revere this film.
It’s kind of embarassing for me as someone who, if given the opportunity, would wholeheartedly support the embedding of camera and recording equipment in my body

Simple text entry with PHP

Lincoln — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:58:43 +0000

I’m on a new path to get better at PHP/MySQL, now that we’ve got a new programmer on staff, and I can abuse him as a resource. A cool snipped for poor-man’s content management is what I came up with today. If you have a text file that a user wants to edit, but also wants to strip the pesky slashes from, and interpret carriage returns when writing the file, here’s what I came up with. It also prints the file’s modification date as an “Updated last” line:

//Declare the session variable value
session_start();
//declare the report variable
if(isset($_POST['report']))
{
$report = str_replace("\r\n", "
", $_POST['report']);

//declare and open the file for writing
$myfile = "myfile.txt";
$fh = fopen($myfile, ‘w’) or die("can’t open file");

//write the form data to the report
fwrite($fh, (stripslashes($report)));
fclose($fh);
}
?>

Then we have the printed text, as well as the form, rolled into one file:

Write the daily report:

PHP kicks bum.

Wireless network taking shape

Lincoln — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 04:36:13 +0000

2.5 miles, 6.5 mph, 2.5 degree incline
A few friends and I have been working on a point-to-multipoint wireless network since (feels like forever) April. We’ve run into a number of bumps in the road, which have resulted in spending of cash, pulling of hair, yelling at each other, climbing on rooftops in the dark, and cutting down large trees.
Tonight, we had major success — three-player Halo 2 via xbox with voice mics, and no lag. (yes, we’ve been testing with something other than game consoles. We’re not *completely* stupid

Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

Lincoln — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:42:57 +0000

From the Apple Server list, someone posted a link to this article. Great piece of you’re interested in computer (specifically server-related) security at all. Any article that can legitimately use the word “badness” gets a thumbs-up in my book.
We’re off to Vermilion Bay this weekend for the annual meeting of Cambrian Presbytery (church stuff). Gorgeous location that I’m looking forward to exploring. We’re hooking up with our usual group of teens from across NW Ontario for the annual fall youth retreat.