justing gill dot com slash blog

With camera and backpack in hand I spent today with some friends hiking along the coast of Duncans Cove located a short drive outside of Halifax. The day started off overcast gradually becoming sunny. This definitely changed the exposure of some of my photo shots. As the sun came out my shots were more balanced.

There are many hidden locations in or around the Halifax area for hiking or exploring! The natural sublime beauty of nature around Halifax is astounding! Many of the places are better than Peggy’s Cove. Peggy’s cove is overcrowded and over covered as far as media goes. It’s the hidden away little places (like Duncans Cove) that interest me!

Please feel free to leave any comments on my blog or on the Flickr page Enjoy!

It’s the spring time and fuel prices are at an all time high. Currently I own a car (92 Saturn) in need of repair and two motorcycles. One motorcycle requires I take out a second mortgage to afford the insurance (Harley 883 Sportster). The second (50cc Suzuki Scooter/limited edition North American model/old Pepsi taste patrol scooter) needs an imported special order engine part from Japan. I am planning on keeping my car roadworthy for practicality sake. If my dog needs to go to the Vet or I need to transport groceries it’s the only practical way. For the past four months I’ve been relying on public transportation - but it’s a huge inconvenience compared with driving my own vehicle. For my day to day city commuting my option is clear - it’s time for a new vehicle. This time a new scooter!

The options around Halifax for purchasing motorcycles in general are small, let alone a scooter dealer. However, I discovered a gem in Dartmouth. Vespa Halifax has been around since 2004 selling more than just Vespa scooters. From their online showroom they sell Piaagio, Derbi, and Aprilia, in addition to Vespa. All great Italian scooter makes.

Looking at their lineup I noticed a few very different eye catching models. More than your standard (sometimes considered boring) 50cc models.

First up, MP3 250i.e.

“It’s not double vision, it’ s two wheels up front. Better braking, more stable, easier to balance and handle. Ride bigger, easier. This one really is for everyone; from the novice to the expert rider, it’s fun for the whole family!” (source: Vespa Halifax)

I didn’t even know scooters came with two front tires! The only other time I’ve seen anything remotely close to this is a Harley Trike specially built used to ride around Halifax. I’ve also seen a number of trike models at Toad’s Motorcycle in Dartmouth.

Second model to catch my eye is the Sr50 Ditech.

This baby screams crotch rocket meets dumb and dumber (they drove a scooter). Who says a scooter can’t look like it is a bat out of hell.

My favorite memory of driving the Suzuki 50cc scooter is the look on a 1200cc Harley riders face when my little scooter would tear away faster than his monster of a machine. I found the below video of a 50cc scooter destroying the competition of motorcycles in a race. Great entertainment value if nothing else!

I’ll be dropping by Vespa Halifax within the upcoming days and deciding on what I want to buy. I’m thinking something 150cc. It would be nice to have something that can hit highway speed.

A great night of interesting and talented people in the Halifax Social Media scene. We had a great turn out it and it looks like this will be a monthly event!

Check out the Flickr photos:

Mine
Jon’s

Enjoy!

It’s been a week and I’ve had a chance to go through the list of 20+ websites that have streaming video content. By far, the best site is http://www.surfthechannel.com

As much as I love my high definition content - sometimes it’s nice to “click” and “watch” regardless of bit rate/resolution. After a long day I don’t want to play with getting the right 5.1 audio configuration or getting the best codec / player combination. Many of the shows I enjoy to watch are well before the time of high definition. It doesn’t matter if “Power Rangers” or “Cheers” is in high definition. The storyline makes the NTSC video more than sufficient.

Hey Everyone

It’s been brought to my attention by Lauren there will be a social media meet up at The Argyle (1575 Argyle Street) at 6:00 p.m on Thursday, April 24. Special thanks to Ben for setting a date and time.

There should be both industry professionals and students in attendance. A great place to meet and share ideas with the “web wizards” of Halifax. If there is a great response for this upcoming social media meet up it may become a monthly thing! Very cool!

As more and more old school/traditional media companies fight to stave off piracy, said companies are scrambling to get legitimate/legal media consumption sites online (ie hulu). I came across a great list of online “television” sites that will stream some unique content to your PC for your viewing pleasure. Guaranteed to to help get through a boring day at work, or help procrastination just a little longer on that term paper that is due tomorrow. This list definitely offers more than your typical skate boarding/piano playing Youtube cats!

Click here to see list! (source: Astalavista)

After reading numerous web usability articles and cleaning up the look of the site I think it looks much better. The colors are easier are on the eyes and the navigation has been updated to reflect best web usability practices. I’ve also implemented a few local cache plugins to allow external media sources (IE Flickr/Twitter) to load much faster.

Let me know in the comments what you all think!

The latest release of Mandriva 2008.1RC2 has been out for a few weeks. I’ve had a chance to hammer away on it. Many other users of varying technical expertises have also had time to work with it. In general, everyone is impressed with the most recent release (on the Asus eee PC). It has been my full time operating system (on the eee PC) for the past three weeks. I think it’s here to stay.

As with any release the more we hammer on the kinks the better the overall end product will be. Here is a summary of findings/feedback about the current Mandriva 2008.1RC2.

I think this one is ready to go gold!

START QUOTE:
1) Can be installed on the SSD (replacing Xandros), a USB key, or an SDHC card. 4GB min required for install, can be compressed (see below).
2) Kernel recognizes up to 4GB RAM.
3) User-friendly installer, multi-language.
4) Correctly installs video, sound card, webcam, Ethernet and post-install correctly installs Wi-Fi. USB peripherals are all correctly recognized. Touchscreen module compiled in the kernel.
5) Suspend-to-RAM (Sleep) works, needs a single extra line in rc.local if Mandriva is installed on removable medium.
6) Overclocking works, needs eee.ko module and single extra line in rc.local + simple bash script.
7) KDE 3.5.9 and 4.02, Gnome 2.22, Xfce 4.4.2, IceWM, FluxBox, etc. Take your pick!
8 ) Complete development environment included. OpenOffice 2.4 included. Mplayer included. VLC included. Kitchen sink included.
9) Post-install /usr compression of everything-including-the-kitchen-sink install results in < 1.8 GB install, leaving > 2GB free space for user files and upgrades on 4GB storage device.
10) Compiz-fusion available and easily installed. Metisse 3D desktop also available (imho not production ready yet).
11) Skype 2.x (with webcam) works with small workaround for sound (Skype hogs the sound interface while in use, so you can’t have Skype and e.g. Amarok playing an MP3 file simultaneously).
12) No Easy Mode interface.
13) Power-management is very good, comparable to what is available under Xandros.
14) Mature, stable distribution with simple upgrade/updates management.
15) Boot and shutdown are slow compared to Xandros. Boot: 1min40s; shutdown 35s. However as noted by Adam, a Mandriva box rarely needs rebooting. Suspend-to-RAM and resume are quite fast (10~15 seconds).
16) Bluetooth works, instantly recognized a $5 generic USB Bluetooth key.
17) Responsive interface (KDE 3.5.9 tested without compositing) if correctly configured.
18) As secure as you’ll want to make it. “Normal” security level (set during installation) provides sufficient security for normal online usage. Top-notch firewall provided (Shorewall, default configuration is excellent).
19) Flash can be post-installed very easily. PDF reader and printer provided.
20) Windows games can be installed through wine. But don’t expect stellar or even reasonable performance, the hardware is just not up to it…

:END QUOTE

(source: eee User Forum / dd99)

When I saw this movie trailer released I thought it was a April Fool’s Day prank (as many online thought). Turns out this is real. The story of Zelda holds a place in my heart. I remember being seven years old and getting “Zelda: A Link to the Past” with the Super Nintendo. From that point on hundreds of hours were spent over the next few years beating this game over and over. Never losing interest or getting tired of it regardless how much it was played. I then went on to play and eventually beat “Zelda” for the original Nintendo. I tried my hand at “Zelda two” entitled “Link” on the NES, but never did manage to beat it. From time to time I still haul out the old SNES and play “Zelda: A Link to the Past” and reminise back to a time when games were simple in graphics (compared to nowadays), but big on story. This Zelda series captured the imagination of an entire generation (mine) and from what I hear, is still doing so on the Wii and more recent consoles.

I think it’s time to go digging through my closet and take a walk down memory lane (again).

Does anyone else remember the Zelda Animation Series? I bought series this on DVD two years ago. Great series for a Zelda fan.

Update 2 April 2008: It turns out this REALLY is an April Fools Day gag. With all the video game to movie adaptations being done I’m honestly surprised Zelda has never been done. Maybe I’ll be surprised and someone will do it seeing the response from this April Fools Day Gag.