Category: McQ

Well, actually, they “classics!”, but that’s not so catchy. 🙂

Two more successful concerts under our belts. Friday was a better space to play in, but Saturday seemed to have better sound (despite my early misgivings about the hall having too much reverb). In particular, it was easier to hear how good the choir was on Saturday. Walter Babiak attended both performances, which was quite an honour. His Movin’ in My Heart was received well, given its complexity, and I do believe we may end up with a CD’s worth of music worth listening to. Well done everyone! As usual, I am in awe of the skills that our players have, and continuously surprised that they haven’t kicked me out for being such a duffer. <g>

The next concert will be a “Pops” concert, Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11, 2006. The program is still being discussed, but there should be lots of nice stuff, just in time for Valentines Day. 😉

After that, we’re playing Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6, 2006. I’ve already got the music for that show. On the program is:

• Wolfgang Mozart – Overture to the opera “The Magic Flute”
• Johannes Brahms – Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn
• César Franck – Symphony in D minor

Time to start practicing!

Just a reminder to everyone that the Divertimento Orchestra of Ottawa and the Kanata Choral Society are playing two joint concerts this weekend. The program is:

1. Franz Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
2. Antonín Dvorák – “Largo” from the New World Symphony
3. Wolfgang Mozart – Regina Coeli K.108
4. Walter Babiak – Movin’ in My Heart

The Babiak is a world premier. It has never been recorded or publicly performed, so it should be quite exciting. Here’s where we will be playing:

Friday, November 25, 2005
Orleans United Church
1111 Orléans Blvd., Orléans
8 p.m.

Saturday, November 26, 2005
St. Paul’s Anglican Church
20 Young Rd., Kanata
7:30 p.m.

Note that the Friday concert is at 8pm, but the Saturday concert is at 7:30. Also, there’s a hockey game at the Corel Center on Saturday night, so you might want to factor in a little extra travel time.

Tickets are available at the door: Adults: $15.00. Students/Seniors: $12.00. Children 12 and under: Free. I hope to see you there. (Look for me on the third cello desk.)

Well, I paid my 7.50 $CAN to get connected to the net at the local Starbucks. The good news is that it worked, it was relatively easy, and I can post to the blog. The bad news is that 7.50 for 1 hour of connection time is bloody highway robbery. I know I could have paid just less than double that for a whole day’s use, but I’m only here ’till Deb and Dennis get out of church, so…

Here’s the thing though: The service routes through a standard wireless connection. We all know what the limits are on that technology: the bottom line is that the total bandwidth that I can push through this is exactly the same as I can do at home. And in case you’re saying, “But there could be more people there”, no, we all share the bandwidth. More people just means slower transfers for me.

So the real question is, why am I being charged so much for this? Like everything else in our society, the answer is, because they can (currently) get away with it. The incremental cost to get their service set up at this Starbucks was almost certainly less than $500 over what it cost to do it at home. But for some reason, they think it makes sense to charge me, what, 5 orders of magnitude more or so. It’s insane. Bell, in case you’re listening, I would have happily payed $7.50 for a month of connection time.

It’s exactly the same problem that we currently have with data plans on cell phones.

I can tell you though, the first coffee shop that comes up with a fixed monthly usage rate, will get all my business. Think about it guys.

I just sent the following note to CBC Radio (on their website):

I have been a loyal CBC Radio 1 listener for years. Like countless other listeners, I have been patiently waiting for the labour dispute to end, but thanks to Apple Computer, I have realized I no longer need you: The wealth of Podcasts that are available via iTunes now *perfectly* fill my need for intelligent talk radio when I commute.

Good luck getting back on the air. I won’t be around when you do.

The thing is, it’s true: I can get current information on the subjects I care about, and never miss a show (or have to stop listening part way through one), in the same “talk radio” format I used to get from CBC. What shows do you listen to?

Below find the posting I made to the Oie Jedoonee mailing list…

Effective immediately, I am canceling my WoW account.

I have had fun playing WoW, and I still enjoy hanging out with you guys on Sunday nights, but lately I feel like we have lost focus. I honestly believe that the game mechanics are most of the problem here: I hate the group size limit. I think it’s too easy to solo (or pickup group) your way through the game. I find too many of the quests at our level are common between alliance and horde (and so I’ve done them with Bais)…

I also think that the thing which I thought would help us — playing Alliance during the week and Horde on the weekend — has actually hurt instead: I just don’t have any emotional attachment to my horde character. Every Sunday night I think “Too bad I can’t play Bais instead.”

Basically though it’s just that I’ve seen enough of WoW to realize that I know the mechanics. Did I do a large scale raid? No, but I know that it will just be more of the same, except for having more rigid constraints on your roles and less margin for error. Honestly, I’m not in it for that. I have seen almost every zone (gotta love rogues), and I’ve played both sides far enough to know most of the quests. That’s enough for me.

I also have a number of other constraints on my time:
– It’s orchestra season again. I completely failed to practice over the summer, and am struggling with the music. I *need* to make cello a priority again.
– I’m starting a new project at home: I’m going to work with my dad to do a genealogy of our family.
– Dennis is back in school, and I suspect that I am going to have to spend even more time working with him on his homework this year.

And lastly, I took a look at our finances after putting in new carpets and new living room furniture and going on vacation, and it became clear that we need to spend less. Given the other arguments above, this seemed like an obvious way to save some money.

As usual, I’m sure I will get involved with “the next big thing” when it comes along, but for now, I’m done.

Thanks for all the awesome times,
McQ.

FAQ #1: Can I have your stuff?
A: No. Canceling the account means I won’t be playing for a while. Giving up my stuff means that I would *never* play again.

Does anyone else think that this is silly:

And that doesn’t include the laptop, the digital still camera, the dv camera, the…

Like most Mac users, I’m a zealot. I love my Macs, so when I find something that they can’t do well, I’m frustrated. GPS software seems to be one of those areas.

All I wanted was a nice, simple piece of Canadian, street navigation software that supported GPS and would do voice directions. Well, I’ve been searching for several weeks now, and the only software I’ve found that might do it is Route 66.

I haven’t tried it because I haven’t been able to get a copy in Ottawa. [Of course, you basically can’t get any mac software in Ottawa, but that’s the subject of another rant.] Given the rather negative comments I have read about Route 66 (terrible ui, buggy, the cheapest possible port of the windows version, etc.) I’m not willing to buy it before trying it, and there didn’t seem to be a demo version available.

I did buy MacGPS Pro which claims to be “the ultimate Macintosh mapping software for GPS communication”. This may actually be true, given the state of the industry, but it certainly wasn’t what I was looking for: manual waypoints, maps cost extra, no route planning. Basically, it was a total bust. This might be useful if you were doing marine navigation, or some such, but it’s not for road travellers.

I haven’t found anything else for the Mac that looked promising. Part of that is because I am looking for Canadian mapping info. There seemed to be a couple of other choices if you were going to be U.S. only.

So, I tried looking for palm software instead.

I wanted to get TomTom, but it doesn’t look like they sell the “software only” version any more, or if they do, it wasn’t clear from their web site. I asked a question on their tech support pages, but haven’t gotten a response.

After much googling, I found Mapopolis, which is close to being exactly what I wanted. I find the map display to be somewhat ugly, but it has all the features I want. There are two issues with it, however:

1. As soon as I connect the GPS to it, the HD light on my LifeDrive starts flickering constantly. This continues as long as the GPS is connected. Given that the intended use would be for 8..10 hours of continuous driving, I don’t imagine my drive would last very long. The guys at Mapopolis are aware of the problem, and are looking at fixes (before you write to me: yes, I am running the latest version).
2. One of the tech guys at Mapopolis claims that there are very few BT GPS solutions that work well with the Palm.
   

   Most do NOT work reliably with the new Palm architecture. Only the MC BTGPS we sell from our website and the Globalsat 338 have new microcode that handles the Palm LOOKAWAY.

   Needless to say, I don’t have either of those, but an MG668 instead.

So where does that leave us? I found a copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips for Windows, and I’m running it on VirtualPC. It still doesn’t do voice navigation, but it has maps of everywhere I wanted to go in Canada, reasonably good route planning, and a professional looking GUI. Connecting it to the GPS was trivial, and I have proven that it all works together well. Given that we’re leaving this week, that’s likely to be the best I can do, but man is it frustrating.

Oh, well.

Update (14:46): TomTom got back to me. Apparently, you can order just the software by calling them directly. Unfortunately, it’s $150 (probably US), so I guess I’ll have to see if anybody in Ottawa stocks TomTom gear; that’s too much money to just buy it based on reputation alone.

I just finished reading it. Yes, it was good. No, I’m not going to tell you anything more about it.

Eclipse R3.1 is out the door. Actually, it went yesterday at around noon. I just checked the downloads page and we’ve gone past the 200,000 mark. Wow.

Update (August 8, 2005): We crossed the million download mark last weekend. Forty days. Wow!

Well. I picked up the LifeDrive yesterday. It has a very nice screen, and is reasonably fast when it wants to be. I am definitely seeing the issue that others have described: frequent pauses as it accesses the HD. I don’t think this will bother me in the longer term, but it will take some getting used to.

I also bought one of the Universal Keyboards. I honestly think this is the nicest of the Palm keyboards yet. Very usable, with a full 4 rows of keys. The only issue is it’s quite heavy. Probably not enough to stop me from keeping it in my bag, however.