Beens' Blog

Went on a great ride with my fellow Stromtroopers yesterday. Met up in Nobleton, headed up towards Owen Sound on Georgian Bay, over to Sauble Beach on Lake Huron, then took the long way home. 810 km total. Here's a slideshow of my pictures: View Album Get your own

Here in Niagara Falls we have been following the Seven Canadian Wonders competition at CBC rather closely. Well, the votes are now in, and Niagara Falls has a total of about 82,000 votes, which works out to about 1 vote per resident, perhaps a reasonable number. But Niagara Falls did not place first -- Sleeping Giant did -- with 177,000 votes! (Most people I talked to hadn't even heard of Sleeping Giant...) Give me a break! Does anyone really think that each of those 177,000 votes is legit? If CBC accepts this vote as "real", it is doing a real disservice to Canada and to Canadian history. This competition will be recorded on websites and in Canadian encyclopedias to be read for all eternity, and the vote is a fraud! The web page CBC designed for the votes easily allowed multiple votes to be cast, either by manually hitting the <Back> button and resubmitting the form, or by downloading a macro recorder that replays mouse strokes repeatedly (which no doubt is what

What a great idea! If you move the operating system to flash memory your computer will boot up much faster. Another bonus is that flash memory is much more energy efficient than hard drives (no moving parts), so laptop batteries would last longer.   If you also move the swap file to flash memory you'll realize the same benefits -- increased speed and longer battery life.   The major obstacle to this is price. Flash memory is very expensive. One other obstacle is capacity. Flash is currently limited to about 8 GB.   See http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18420/  for more details.

I'm making a long distance motorcycle trip in the summer to a conference, and I've received offers from total strangers on a mail list I'm on to stay at their homes during my travels. The only thing I have in common with these people is that we have the same model of motorcycle. I have never met them, and in one case, I don't even know his name (only his email nickname). I am truly touched by the kindness of these people. Most people would look at them as "biker" types and assume the worst. Well, in my experience so far, the "bikers" I've met are really decent people who would do almost anything for you. I am lucky to be amongst this group of people.

Corel has released a free online/offline word processor called WordPerfect Lightning. It comes with 200 MB of free online storage space and allows online collaboration similar to Google Docs. Learn more here . A quick demo video is available here . Download it here . News articles are here . Unfortunately, no Mac or Linux versions yet. Perhaps this is the software Google needs to buy to make their Google Docs work offline. Let's hope... (Or a better idea -- wouldn't it be great if Google bought Corel? That would be perfect. [pardon the pun])

So, I was talking on the phone to a Customer Service rep at Sandisk in California (my new 4 GB thumb drive died) and I told her my address. She asked me to spell "Niagara Falls". (!!!) I asked her if she had ever even heard of Niagara Falls. She told me "No". "You've never heard of the Honeymoon Capital of the World?". "No", she answered. Am I so conceited to think that most people in the educated world should have at least heard of Niagara Falls? What kind of a hole do these people live in?

Microsoft has release an add-in for Windows XP and Vista that allows you to view and modify picture metadata. More information is available at http://www.dcviews.com/press/Microsoft-Photo-Info.htm .

Vista vs OS X? Get a Mac... http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/16555680.htm I am. Correction: I did.

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?" Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, You want to know what I make? (She paused for a second, then began...) "Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor. I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 without an I Pod, Game Cube or movie rental... You want to know what I make?" (She paused again and looked at each and every person at t

I'm not an expert on giving interviews, but I don't think it's wise to do interviews when you're DRUNK! I love the part where she says that all publicity is good publicity; let's see if that's true for her...

I attended the Toronto International Motorcycle Show on Saturday and took a few pictures. They can be seen at http://www3.flickr.com/photos/pbeens/sets/72157594465004179/