CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

As I discovered on Michael Geist's blog, the CRTC is offering Canadians the opportunity speak out on Net Neutrality in advance of their hearings on ISP network management practices.

I had this to say, in the Impact on User Experience section:

To me the internet is an infrastructure service. I don't expect my provider to give preferential treatment to any type of traffic based on the source, content, or destination. Just as I don't expect the city to regulate my water pressure based on whether I'm watering the lawn or taking a shower.

But to continue the water analogy I understand there's a difference when I run a bath (i.e.: bit torrent) and when I wash my hands (i.e.: e-mail). The bandwidth consumed by bit torrent can have a negative impact on my internet neighbours unless the total bandwidth is sufficiently high. Especially if we're all torrenting at the same time.

I'd love to see over-building of the network, but it's only a short-term solution until more people get on the net and use up all the over-capacity. Traffic management is unfortunately a necessary tool to ensure consistent service for all subscribers as-is continuous re-building of the network.

But the management should not require deep packet inspection - a simple high level valve that adjusts the pressure regardless of what is going through should be sufficient and would keep the ISPs neutral regarding how we use the internet.

It certainly is a concern to me that some ISPs have conflicting interests (they run multiple distribution channels, ex.: Cable-TV vs. Internet) and might specifically block or limit my access to their competitors in order to artificially increase the viewership of their material.

It would be like the water company cutting of my water if I didn't use their brand of soap!

See the full thread of my discussion...

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at CRTC Launches Online Consultation on Net Neutrality

GMail cheat sheet is now on CheatSheets.org

Inspired by the vi/vim graphical cheat sheet I wrote a GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet for Google's GMail (using Google Docs of course).

A few days ago a stumbled across CheatSheets.org and I submitted it to their directory. It's now listed in the GMail section!

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at GMail cheat sheet is now on CheatSheets.org

Bonuses for AIG

Rex Murphy did a bit on AIG last night after the news. I can't find it online though - I guess the internet is slacking off.

Rex made a couple interesting points:

• The AIG chairman only gets paid $1 a year (no mention of other forms of compensation though, besides the bonus)
• The rescue bill that's paying the bonuses explicitly allows for bonuses
• The larger stimulus bill has over 200 "special" projects targeted specifically by the congressmen who are so furious about the AIG bonuses

So basically it comes down the AIG "fiasco" being a cover-up for how much the congress (and the senate I suppose) are taking advantage of Great Depression II to dole out the thank-you money for the lobby groups who supported them during the election.

I am normally in favour of market solutions, but JMK taught us the reactions to a system shock take longer to actually happen than when we graph them in our Econ 101 class. So I accept the government has to intervene, but there needs to be some pain, there needs to be a lesson for history to teach us. And I believe less in "innocent by-standers" than I do in gov't intervention, so I think all those poor investors who believed it was true even though it was so good need to suffer as well as the people in AIG, etc. whose job it was to see this coming and yet ignored the warning signs.

Here's a bit of a humorous take on the subject: In New Terror Video, AIG Demands Huge Ransom from U.S. (thanks to Brian for the link)

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at Bonuses for AIG

Another trip to Valois Park in the Snow

It was another beautiful day with the temperature just around zero and the sun shining bright. As soon as story time was over we threw (ok, struggled) on the snow suit and headed for the park. Lindsay's friend Madeleine brought her dad and two brothers along too.

From Valois Park in the Snow

Of course the swings were a big hit, but enough snow had melted by now that sand was starting to show. That meant it was time to get dirty and they spent most of the outing underneath the play structure building sand piles!

NOT Getting Things Done

As many of you surely know, I'm a big fan of David Allen's time/task management principles known as Getting Things Done. Well, I've fallen off the wagon somewhat a while back and, being a geek, I've been looking for something new and shiny to motivate me to get back on the horse. But a post from a GTD coach Kelly Forester got me going, however...

Kelly's post discussed how some people implemented GTD on their Mac's, PC's and on the web. Since my PC is company issue (and I can't really use Outlook because of the way our network is setup) I tend to put a lot of stuff on the web (in the cloud as Web 3.0 people put it).

The two most popular choices seemed to be Remember the Milk and Nozbe.

We all know Remember the Milk because it has such a cool name it must be good and deserves a lot viral publicity. There's three problems with RTM as far as I'm concerned:

One: Their tabby-looking interface doesn't survive as you increase the number of lists (or contexts in GTD terms). It pretty quickly looks butt-ugly (sorry, RTM, but that's how I feel). And if it doesn't look as cool or cooler than the competition it better make up for it somewhere else!

Two: Their Overview page is based purely on when a Task is due. There's no way to filter by list (Context) or by Next Actions (a GTD term identifying the next task required to move a more complex objective forward).

And finally three: Their iGoogle gadget suffers from similar short-comings: you can't limit the list to the context you're currently in (so I can't hide my At home tasks while I'm At work and vice-versa) - which is a major part of GTD.

Nozbe has two major short-comings although it is designed from the start to be used by people for GTD so it's a great solution otherwise.

One: The free account is severely limited and the web is about getting things for free!!!

and Two: The iGoogle gadget doesn't work in Google's Chrome browser!!!

Finally, that leaves Google's recently added Task manager. There's an iGoogle version and integration with GMail so it's available where I spend a lot of time online. It's free (as in beer, but not yet as in speech). And I can view my tasks by list so I can narrow them down to my current Context.

All-in-all I'd say it's almost perfect, except that I can't synchronize it with Blackberry - yet, I hope Google is working on it though!

Cross-posted on 2FatDads at NOT Getting things Done

Valois Park in the Snow

The weather was so nice and Lindsay loves the park so much we couldn't resist a walk to the park and playing on the equipment. Along the way we ran into her friends Chloe and Madeleine out for a walk with their grand parents and new baby brothers.

From Valois Park in the Snow

Of course the swings were a big hit but we did the tour of all the slides and structures several times. Lots of other families were out enjoying the blue skies and warm sun, a first taste of spring and a beautiful summer to come.

Soaking my butt at Sunnyside

What a winter weekend be like if I didn't struggle into my ski suit and head for the hills with my daughter and the toboggan?!

From Sunnyside Park Sledding

The weather was pretty warm this weekend and a lot of snow had already melted but we threw good sense to the wind, joined forces with the neighbour and her grandkids, and headed over to Sunnyside for a few runs.

Thankfully the joy of seeing kids have fun outweighs the misery of sitting in a puddle of slightly above freezing slush. Of course the princesses insisted on being pulled back up the hill by their faithful (grand)parent, but that's all part of the fun.

We finished the day off with a picnic in the basement while watching Beverly Hills Chichuahua.

Thomas meets people

Thomas is getting lots of attention these days, as the throngs of spectators drop by for an audience.

From Thomas meets people

Seriously, thanks to everyone who has come by to welcome Thomas or has stopped us on the street to say hello. We really appreciate your happy thoughts. And thanks to those who gave him gifts and brought us food.

And special thanks to those who remembered Lindsay!

He is born

Our second child is (finally) born! We had a busy day on Sunday and finally that night shortly before 9pm out he came and joined his family!

From Thomas is born

He was born on February 22nd 2009 at 20:48, weighed 3,825g (8lbs 6.7oz) and was 55cm (21.65 inches) tall

We're all really happy that Thomas decided to come out and play, especially his big sister who wants nothing more than to dote on her little brother.

Hiding under Maureen's Tree

It was still nice out when we got home from daycare so I broke out the big sled and we played around in the front yard. At one point Lindsay discovered the neighbour's pine tree. All the branches had drooped down and become frozen in the snow like a giant tent.

From Hiding Under Maureen's Tree

Of course I was instructed to follow her in and we had fun going around the tree trunk (a big stick) and going in and out.

Trying the new carrier at Cap St-Jacques

It was a beautiful and I've wanted to go cross-country skiing with Lindsay since X-mas, but there was always something that stopped me (pneumonia, cast on the arm, etc.). Finally today was the day, we set out after story time to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather and give the new carrier we got as a baby-shower gift a try.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the temperature was a comfortable minus seven degrees Celsius. In short-order we had the skis waxed and in a pile at the trailhead.

Now the fun began. Did I mention this was my first time out of the season and I had to dig my gear out from beneath all the summer stuff that got dumped there in the fall?

The carrier was also new to me and I probably should have played with it some more at home. In other words, caved in to Lindsay's demands to get into the carrier while in the comfort of my living room.

I did finally manage to get Lindsay strapped in and the carrier on my back. It's much more comfortable than the old we have. And I'm sure it's much more comfortable for Lindsay.

From Cap St-Jacques Skiing

And then JF pointed out I had throughly messed up the straps around Lindsay's arms - no wonder she was tilted to one side and couldn't turn her head to follow Chloe!!!

Other than that little strap mix-up though we had a great time. Lindsay really likes the new carrier and so do I. Thanks JF for driving. And thanks to all the quilting girls for such a wonderful gift.

Playing in the front yard

At daycare our daughter likes to sit in the sled and be pulled around by the older kids. So I figured when the funk hit at home I'd sit her on the "big" sled and pull her around our yard.

From Playing Outside

That did the trick. Until I tripped in the knee deep snow and kicked some up in her face. Then she wanted to go inside and see mommy!!!

Sandra's birthday party

Kevin got things together and organized a pot luck birthday party for Sandra on Sunday. Almost all of us were there and we had a great time.

From Sandra's birthday

The food was excellent and we had a great time.

GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet

I've updated my GMail Keyboard Shortcut graphical cheat sheet to reflect GMail latest changes. Four new keystrokes are now available: v Move, l Label, T Tasks, and gW Docs.

Rest of post goes here...

Wounded little warrior

We got a call on Tuesday from the daycare saying our daughter was complaining of a pain in her arm. We brought her home but other than avoiding that arm she was in good spirits so we took the next available doctor's appointment which was on Wednesday evening. Fortunately the clinic had a cancellation and bumped us up to Wednesday after lunch because it turns out our daughter had dislocated her elbow.

The doctor wasn't able to reduce it in his office since we'd waited so long and we ended up at the Childern's Hospital. And kudos to them because they were amazing. So now our daughter's running around, happy as a clam albeit with a cast on her arm for the next ten days!

Hopefully everything turns out okay when they take the cast off and there's nothing more to worry about.

Blogspot vs Wordpress

So, will I really do it? Will I really give-up on my beloved Google and move some of my content over to WordPress.com?! Of course I have to pay to get is free from Google but if the end result is more to my liking it might be worth it (and it's not really that much more than free).

Of course the ultimate solution is to roll my own using the hosting services of my registrar (netfirms.ca) but I have an issue their with their e-mail management tools (it's pretty much just inboxes - no domain aliasing, no lists, etc. that I have using Google Apps for my Domain).

Giant Ant on my iGoogle Theme!!!

I just noticed this, maybe it's the lack of sleep, maybe there's something to it, but it seems like there's a giant ant lurking in the back on my iGoogle Winter village Theme?!?!



Maybe this isn't new but now I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something evil lurking within Google afterall!!!!

Lindsay's first Advent calendar

Lindsay got an Advent Calendar from her Oma (and Opa) filled with chocolate last weekend and today she opened the first "window" to find her surprise.



Thanks Oma!

I remember when I was a kid my mother had a big Santa pinned to the closet at the end of the hall. And every morning through December until X-mas we would rush to find the surprise in today's pocket (eventually we figured out it was the one with the bulge).

Now it's my daughter's turn.

Pownce shuts down

Pownce announced today that they were closing their doors and taking their technology to Six Apart. I had an account there, but rarely used it - it was essentially like Twitter for file sharing.

It's tempting to say this the recession affecting the web. And it's probably true that the usual rationalization and consolidation is happening now that valuations are down and some people think they can make some good investments and others think they should take the money and get out before things get worse.

On the other hand, there's a lot of duplicate services out there - for alternatives to Twitter checkout Jaiku or Identi.ca to name others where I'm a lurker. It's not surprising that some of the minds behind ideas (business and technology) want to opening cooperate (and compete internally) rather than compete openly.

And the consolidation is good for the end-users too. Platform developers can concentrate their efforts and there will be a lot less jumping around trying to follow friends on one web site or another.

Who made VB the language of macros anyways?!

I've recently gotten onto the kick of moving a lot of my documents and spreadsheets into the cloud - Google Docs in particular.

The basic motivation is the failure of my portable hard drive. A NetGear ReadyNAS Duo solved the storage problems for things like digital photos and videos. But sometimes you just want to make a quick update to a spreadsheet and you don't feel like waiting until you get home.

My NAS is turned off, as is my router and modem, when I'm not using it so remote access is not option. Windows sync is a pain in the butt that makes shutting down take forever. So my solution was to put some of those documents in the cloud - accessible from any internet connection.

But why-oh-why won't Google support JavaScript macros in their documents and spreadsheets (presentations too but I don't use those).

Having the macros stored with the document (and with the template) would avoid any cross-site scripting issues, would harness the power of the browser, and would make all the world's javascript libraries accessible!

I know Zoho spreadsheets support VB macros but not in the same way that Excel does - I can't add in references to other libraries to extend the power of the native system.

And who made VB the language of macros anyways!? If you want to program in VB then fine - use Excel (or Zoho). If you want to live in the cloud then use JavaScript!!!