Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

SUV Prices

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I bought a Toyota RAV4 in December, and after living with the RAV4 for the last 7 months, we decided we wanted to go back to a minivan. So I started looking around. I found a particular used Chrysler Town & Country I wanted. It’s about the equivalent of the 2001 Grand Caravan ES but […]

What happened to Size 13?

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I wear size 13 shoes, and I can’t find ones that fit. For my life up till now, buying shoes was relatively easy. Walk into a store, see what they had in size 13, and then pick which of those I dislike least. But now that technique no longer works. I’ve been to at least […]

Popcorn Makers

Friday, July 4th, 2008

We had an old cheapie hot air popcorn maker that we bought for around $15, and it was okay. It would throw a lot of un-popped kernels out of the machine and into the bowl, and blow popped popcorn all over the place, but there was some fun novelty to popping popcorn this way compared […]

iPhone Data Speed

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

According to Apple.com: That site is about 740k (as of right now, I assume it was about the same when Apple tested it) so that works out to about 37k/second. If that’s how fast the iPhone can download data, then to use the 400mb/month allocated in the cheapest $60/month Rogers plan, you’d have to be […]

Global Download Speeds

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

While testing out my cable modem speeds at home (10mbps down, 1mbps up), I ran across the Global Stats page at speedtest.net. There are some eye-opening results there. The #1 ISP in the world is giving out almost 60mbps! Even #10 in the top 10 is offering over 30mbps. Neither Canada nor the US is […]

Component Video Capture

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Finally! Hauppauge has a video capture device that can capture HD component video that’s priced near consumer level. Here’s a review. It’s the HD PVR Model 1212, and it’s a USB device that you plug into your cable box through the YPbPr (component video). This is an unencrypted HD analog video signal that the device […]

802.11n, 5ghz

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

The couch in my living room is a bit of a WiFi black hole for me for some reason, which is unfortunate because it’s also one of the places I most want to use it. The signal is weak, and occasionally disappears. 802.11n can run at 2.4ghz and be compatible with 802.11b/g, or can run […]

Big Companies

Saturday, June 14th, 2008

One of the drawbacks of your small company turning into a big company is it becomes hard to do fun things.

Bill C-61 Spin Control

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

I just received this email from Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s office: The Government of Canada has introduced Bill C-61, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act. The proposed legislation is a made-in-Canada approach that balances the needs of Canadian consumers and copyright owners, promoting culture, innovation and competition in the digital age. What does Bill […]

DivX, PS3 and Xbox 360

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

How is it that DivX files that play on the Xbox 360 don’t play on the PS3? Isn’t DivX DivX? I converted some files using ffmpegX, and they play fine on the Xbox 360. The PS3 says it’s an unsupported format. Looks like both platforms play WMV (surprisingly enough) but I can’t find a WMV […]