Last night Robyn and I took a walk to the Whiterock Pier. What some of you might not know, is that we moved from the WestEnd to Whiterock last week. The place we’ve got is actually being renovated and we are getting very close to having it finished. Which means we can finish our move. Right now all of our stuff sits in a room in boxes and whatknot. Not very comfortable, but hopefully soon phase 2 of our intial move will comense!

We’ve ripped up the carpets and putting down new flooring. The kitchen has been completely gutted and there are new cabinets and cupboards, the counter top actually went in yesterday. There is new paint throughout too!
Next thing to do is get the baseboards back on and then to clean up all the reno dust that has settled everywhere. I am also replacing the light fixtures and all the lightswitches and outlets.

After that is all done, then it is time to tackle the backyard! Can’t wait till we can utilize the space and the patios. I hear Summer is supposed to be around the corner.

Suburbia Living

Now, I guess technically Whiterock is a suburb, although to me it doesn’t feel that way. I’m used to the burbs being Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Coquitlam and such. Perhaps it is because of the water being so close. Who knows, but it will be a nice change. To me the WestEnd has been getting busier, and I don’t mean because of the Summer crowd, just in general it seems noisier and more bodies are venturing in.

It will be fun exploring the area. Learning what is where and how to get here and there. For those who want to know exactly where Whiterock is, it is south of 16th avenue or North Bluff road. There are a bunch of small shops along Marine drive and then up Johnston road and 152nd street. There is also the Crecsent Beach area to explore too!

We’re excited to start a new chapter in adventures in life together.

My Commute

When we lived in the WestEnd I could easily walk to work. In fact, it was a nice 30 minute stroll to and from the office. Now, my commute is a bit longer, but it’s not as bad as people think it is. Currently I catch the #351 in Whiterock (3 blocks from the house) to Bridgeport Station, Richmond. I pop over to the Canada Line and take it all the way down to Waterfront station. It takes roughly 1 hour and 10 minutes there, it can be a bit longer on the way back due to vehicle traffic.

When school starts back up in September, my commute will be a wee bit longer. I would take the #394 to King George Skytrain Station, the Skytrain to either Patterson or Metrotown Centre and then a quick 5 minute bus ride to the Burnaby Campus. Roughly the trip will be 1 hour 40 minutes. There is also a route via Richmond, Canadaline and Burnaby which is about the same time. Guess we’ll see which is more convient for me. I perfer the Express buses, but it seems after 6pm, they stop running between King George Station and Whiterock.

Yesterday morning, during my typical checking the ‘Net routine, I noticed something was amiss. When I tried going to my site (www.tyleringram.com) it was coming up at 404. Bah! I jumped over to IsItDownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com and it was reported that it was indeed down for everyone. Something, for sure was wrong. I popped over to my webhost (BlueFur.com) and their server status was green, so it wasn’t a problem with them. I jumped into their Online Technical Support chat where a quick-to-respond fellow by the name of Kyle was there ready to assist me.

My question: I cannot seem to get to my site, did something change with the DNS?

Kyle: Let me take a moment and check.

A few moments later, he got back to me.

Kyle: It seems that your registrar changed their DNS so your site isn’t pointing to anything.

Me: Ah crap.

After Kyle sent me the DNS names, I then noticed that this domain was handled through a different registrar. I updated the DNS to reflect that which Kyle sent me. Typically I’ve pointed the CNAME to the IP address of the servers, so I guess adding the proper DNS would be a bit better. Still nothing, though technically it can take up to 48 hrs for DNS changes to propagate. This morning I checked again, and TylerIngram.com was still MIA. I went back into my admin panel of my registrar and noticed something silly; my domain expired!

Yup, I had forgotten to renew my domain name and that is why my site was missing on the 14th and 15th. If you did notice, I do apologize. If you did not notice, well that’s alright too! This has happened to me before, I some how forget that a domain is set to expire and I accidentally let it expire. Glad that when a domain does expire, the registrars typically lock them so only the previous owner can renew them for a certain period of time. I guess that helps stop people from stealing domains the moment they expire if the owner is occasional not on the ball.

I could have set the domain to auto-renew, or I could buy domain names for multiple years, but I don’t seem to do that. If I buy a domain and decide later to let it down, auto-renew tends to not let that happen (as in the case of a couple sites that accidentally renewed).

Have I Learned My Lesson?

I probably haven’t learned my lesson on having domain names expire. I will though change the email address associated with this domain’s registrar so I am properly notified of expiry time though. I could transfer this domain to another registrar (one that I use for all my other domains) but the $8 cost is a bit steep for me. Yea, $8 is a bit steep for me to spend on something like this. I have also heard that transferring a domain from one registrar to another can be a bit of a pain too, which I don’t really want to go through right now. It would be nice to keep all my domains in the same spot though.

Have you ever accidentally let a domain expire? One that was important etc?

Remember how I mentioned way back in the day about Facebook Owning Your Photos? Well it seems they have decided to step up their sharing of photos a notch. They now allow people to download “high resolution” photos that they see on Facebook!

How is this a problem?

This might not be a problem for many people who use Facebook. Sure, Facebook is about sharing your photos with your friends and family. If you’re a professional (or even amateur) photographer and use Facebook as one of your marketing channels, then perhaps you have some samples of your photography you might not want people to take without permission, especially if you are in the habit of uploading full-resolution photos to Facebook. Perhaps even uploading proofs for friends and family to see?

Currently, I do not see a way to disable the “Download in high resolution” link among photos on Facebook. You do have some options or some Best Practices if you do upload your work to share with people.

A few things you can do to ensure people have a harder time trying to take your photographic work without your permission include

• Watermark your photos – Yea, place some sort of watermark can help deter people from downloading your photos and passing them off as their own. Granted, if you do use a watermark, don’t make it so that you cannot see the underlying photo!
• Limit the size and quality of the photos – Try and upload smaller versions of your photos, such as 600×480 or at most 800×600. Check to ensure you are using 72dpi, JPEGs as well. This will hopefully limit people from trying to print out your work. If they do, then the quality will be pretty low and pixelated.
• Stop uploading photos – This might seem extreme or perhaps odd, but if you don’t want people taking your work without compensation, then don’t put it online.

If you’re totally okay with Facebook having a “Download in high resolution” link, then you obviously don’t need to pay attention to any of this. I just believe, that if Facebook releases a feature like this to the masses, they should at least a) notify their users they are doing this and b) allow them to disable the option.

Yes, people can still right-click, save-as if they really want the photo, but Facebook has made it so that lazy or not-so-computer-savvy-people can download your work even easier.

Currently, I don’t upload photos larger than 800×600, though 640×480 is something I typically do for Facebook. I don’t watermark because it’s just not in my editing process. Will I change this? Perhaps, but I also upload a lot of my photos to Flickr (at 800×600) too . Then on Flickr, I do have the option of not showing a “Download This Photo” link, and people typically email me if they do wish to use a photo of mine.

What do you think about Facebook making it easier for people to download your photos? Do you currently limit the resolution size of your Facebook photos or watermark whatever you upload?

Robyn and I just got home from a wicked weekend in Whistler, that included luxury accommodations, ski and boarding in 9-inches of fresh powder to even some bobsled action. I will be writing about our adventures over the next couples days and also have something in store that a few of you might be quite interested in.

Typically when we come down from Whistler, I always try and stop off at the Tantalus Range View Point along the Sea-2-Sky highway. The clouds were making their way up from Vancouver, and the photos of the Tantalus range just were not as impressive as I thought they might, so I took another photo of the Squamish area (above).  If we were to move somewhere (if we ever leave the West End) we thought of the possibility of moving to Squamish. Squamish is only 40 minutes away from Vancouver, and roughly 40 minutes away from Whistler; best of both worlds! We’ll see what happens after I am done school though, another 1.5 years to go!

Update on Schooling

That does remind me, we’re coming down to the home stretch of my first term at BCIT. I quick look over my next term’s schedule and we’re in for a doozy it seems. We not only have 9 courses this term (had 8 for first term) but we also have our hardest course of the program too; Computer Architecture. What will my second term at BCIT’s Computer System Technology program include?

• Business Communication 2
• Physical Education
• Portfolio Development*
• Discrete Mathematics
• Procedural Programming in C
• Object-Orientated Programming with Java
• Relational Database Systems
• Computer Organization/Architecture
• Projects**

* – 5-week course which I think is an alternate if I were not to get into the Co-Op Program I’ve applied for

** – Optional if I successfully complete 1 term of Co-Op program.

School is just going to get harder and more involved. I’m looking forward to more challenging courses and I know once I get through this 2-year program, I’ll have more options for future employment.

When I woke up this morning I had a feeling that snow had accumulated on the ground here in the city, the light was different. Anyway, Robyn and I got ourselves up and out of the house for a bit of a walk around the Stanley Park seawall. Unfortunately the clouds were blanketing the North Shore Mountains, but the ground was layered with about an inch of fresh snow.

I took a bunch of other photos but thought the above photo turned out pretty good. It’s a single photo HDR which helps bring out a bit more detail in the photo. I’ll have to get a few of the other photos online. It’s feeling like winter for sure now! Are you as excited about the snow as I am?

Today, before Robyn headed to work we sat down and went through her photos of her recent trip to Nicaragua. A lot of them caught my eye and I’m envious of her recent travels with Kathleen, but I wanted to share one of the impressive volcano photos she took while they were there. This is also the volcano that Lonely Planet uses on the cover of the Nicaragua book and probably has also shown up on the recent season of Survivor.

The above photo is of Volcán Concepción, or Conception Volcano. Granted, I know nothing about the Spanish language so I could be completely wrong with the English translation Volcán Concepción is located on Isla de Ometepe which is located in Lago de Nicaragua (or Lake Nicaragua).

Robyn also mentioned they went volcano boarding (near León) which was also the same volcano that the contestants of this season’s Survivor were recently at. I guess it isn’t really boarding, but more like tobogganing down the face of a volcano. Robyn mentioned that Kathleen got up to 44 km/hr going down! Crazy! The hike up the side of the volcano was another story though.

Robyn would love to go back to Nicaragua and take me, which I definitely look forward to.

As I sit here working on some code (PHP, MySQL stuff) the wind has picked up and there has been a couple of lightning flashes. I quickly set up the camera on the tripod and started doing 10 second exposures of the various area in hopes of capturing any of the lightning. Unfortunately as fast as the lightning came it was gone so I did not manage to capture any of it.

Something I do like is the various windows among the apartments. The lights on, lights off and various colours you can see in the above photo sort of thing.

On my way home from Cypress Mountain, I stopped off at the Cypress lookout. Luckily the rain stopped enough for me to try and do some long exposures. The downside was I didn’t plan ahead and left the tripod at home. I managed to prop my Canon XSi with the EF 17-40 F4L on the stone wall that over looks West Vancouver, Stanley Park and Vancouver.

It’s not the sharpest but I think it looks cool. The view from atop the Cypress lookout always looks pretty good actually.  Perhaps I’ll get more opportunities to take more photos from this view point.  I will be trying to get in some more snow and snow sport photos this winter as well.

Now there are hundreds and hundreds of games out there so I am sure there are a bunch of other great games (Angry Birds, Oregon Trail, Pocket God, SimCity etc) but recently I have been looking at any free games I can download from Apple’s iTunes store. Free because I can’t afford to pay $0.99 for them anymore.

The two most recent free games I have downloaded are Trade Nations and Mini Tycoon Casino.

Trade Nations

Trade Nations is made by Amplified Games, Inc. and is the resource collecting and building sort of game. You start out with a single villager and start collecting resources such as wood, wheat, stone and others. The more resources you obtain the larger village you can create.

As with most games of this genre on the iPhone, you give tasks to the villagers to collect things or produce items over a period of time. This means you do not need to constantly play the game in order to collect or build things. The games makes it appear as if the little villagers continue to do their set tasks even when you’re not playing.

Mini Tycoon Casino

I love the building simulator games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon. Mini Tycoon Casino (by SGN or Social Gaming Network) is a neat little game in which you slowly build up a casino where the little computer people come to spend their money on the slot machines, crap tables and other money sucking games.

You can purchase various games such as slots, craps, blackjack. As you gain levels, you can also expand the floor space of the casino and decorate it till your hearts content.

Similar to that of Trade Nations, you can play the game for a little bit, set up your slots and crap tables etc then leave the game alone. When you come back to the game, 2 or 4, or 12 or even 24 hours later you can then collect the money that the various items generate. With this particular game you don’t really need to bring in people. The machines just generate the money after x amount of time anyway. Right now crap tables make me about 24,000 every 24-hours. Not bad return for not having to really pay attention to the game.

I have found at most times it seems to fail at connecting to whatever server it tries to communicate with but after a retry or two it seems to be fine.

Two Fun Games and for Free!

The great thing that I like about these two games is you can play them for a bit and if you get bored you can turn them off and come back later. They tend to ‘continue’ on what they were set to do so you don’t have to worry about them. Another feature I noticed with these two particular games is that you can have them connect to other people around the world to interact with you. In Trade Nations you can trade with resources with other iPhones and in Mini Tycoon Casino you can have it connect to Facebook and have your Facebook friends work at your casino. Don’t know if that is really a good thing, but I am sure some people might like that.

I do notice more and more these days the iPhone games offer the chance to increase your game cash or receive special tokens for real money. Something that I would not do, but it seems there are lots of people out there that believe buying in-game items is worth real life money. I hope that these game companies continue to allow those who do not wish to spend real money on in-game items the opportunity to continue playing. I have read recently there is one (somewhat) new game out on iTunes that is free to download, but to do anything costs you real money. I just skipped over that game and will skip over any game that is set up like that.

On a side note, I did notice a lot of the time while playing these two games is that they do need to be connected to the Internet, whether or not it’s through WiFi or your cellular network doesn’t seem to matter. Though WiFi would be easier as without my 6 Gb data plan now, I would hate to see how much data these little games actually pull. Not entirely sure why they cannot just store the game’s information on the iPhone itself is a mystery to me, but perhaps I’ll find out more about how the iPhone and Games work the further I get into my program here at BCIT.

Anyway….

If you’re looking for some little fun games to waste some time while you wait for things, I do recommend checking out Trade Nations and Mini Tycoon Casino. Both are free (as of this post) and seem to keep me entertained pretty well. After you download these games, they don’t cost you money to play either so that’s a big bonus. Lets hope that never changes!

Did you know that they are building a new float plane area at the new Vancouver Convention Centre? I was wondering what the cement work was all about but it looks like Harbour Air, WestCoast Air and Salt Spring Air will be relocating closer to the cruise ships. I should have taken a photo of the layout. It looks pretty cool. The sign even said it will be a state-of-the-art facility! Think of the YVR Airport, but over the water! Alright, so we won’t be seeing any 747-300′s landing in the water, but people who take the various float planes will have upgraded facilities to use while they wait for their flights! Perhaps then the residents of Coal Harbour will stop complaining about their noise and such of the temporary location?

I really dislike my iPhone 3g’s phone capabilities, or at least the lack of photo quality.I can’t really complain, can I? Would you think that at least the iPhone 3G would have something decent, guess I’ll have to update to the iPhone 4 if I want better photo quality. Granted, more mega-pixels doesn’t necessarily mean better quality.  I can’t carry my school stuff (books, laptop) with me as well as my regular photo gear so I try and make use of my iPhone. It tends to disappoint.  I guess the phone has to have the PERFECT lighting conditions to work properly, even then I don’t think it does that great of a job.

Now, an iPhone (or any smartphone) with an optical zoom! That would be cool! I wonder if it would be possible? One can dream!

What sort of photos does your camera phone produce? Good, bad? Care to share?