Steve Dinn's Blog

My Jackets! You want to buy them!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:52:56 PDT

I have some jackets that you want to buy. Well, you may want to buy them if you're a guy that wears this type of clothing. Check them out on Ebay:

Danier 3XL short collared leather jacket.

Tommy Hilfiger 3XL leather jacket

Kenneth Cole 2XL Wool pea coat

Firefox in Chrome's clothing

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:53:02 PDT

I am a fan of the look and feel of Google Chrome, but I found it didn't display some web pages properly, and I had problems with it caching images in mid-download so that the full image wouldn't display. Anyway, I found that the following set of plug-ins makes Firefox look and feel pretty close to Chrome.

Addons:
Chromifox Theme
Hide Menubar (hides the menu bar until you press ALT)
Show Go (Always show the go button at the end of the address bar)

SappyFest '08

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:50:56 PDT

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending SappyFest for the third year running. I got to see bands ranging from Miracle Fortress to Old Man Luedecke, and of course, the venerable Eric's Trip, re-uniting once again to grace the crowds with their noise and melodies. Good times, great bands, and an awesome festival. How can you beat a festival that brings in a micro-brewer and sells beer for only $3? It's not even worth trying to smuggle it in at that price.

The photo is one I took while behind the stage in the main tent set up on Bridge Street in Sackville, New Brunswick. Check out the rest of my SappyFest photos on Flickr.

The only bad part of the entire weekend was on Sunday morning. I walked to my car in the morning (well, in reality it was more like the afternoon) to find that somebody had hit it while it was parked. My radiator had been punctured, its contents evacuated, and I wouldn't be able to drive the car home; I had it towed to a garage. I ended up getting a ride home with a friend and leaving my car in Sackville because I was unable to contact an insurance adjuster from TD Meloche Monnex. I thought they always had people on call for situations like this.

May 1st is RSS Awareness Day

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:38:27 PDT

May 1st is RSS Awareness day. I feel it's my duty to share the love of RSS that I have with the rest of the world. Of course, many people that are reading my blog probably already know about RSS; maybe you're reading this via RSS right now! How exciting is that? But if you are reading this through RSS, you're in the extreme minority. According to some made-up statistics, 94% of internet users don't know about RSS, or just don't use it for some ungodly reason.

Here's a great video that can help you bring the joy of RSS to your RSS-impoverished friends, courtesy of the Common Craft Show.

Renovations

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:33:41 PDT

I've finally decided to actually do some of the things that I have always talked about doing to my home. After all, I bought it nearly 10 years ago, and I have barely touched it since then, save my theatre room in the basement. It was a hard decision to come by; it's definitely a lot of money, but I have to look at it as an investment in my home, rather than an expense; otherwise, I may never do it :)

Kent Building Supplies had a big sale this weekend; buy one can of paint, get one free, so Julie and I spent last night picking out colours. This was perhaps a bit hasty and a bit ambitious, but I think it's going to work out well. We hit the store as early as we could this morning, and I had a chat with one of the "designers" in the paint department. A new colour was picked for the upstairs bathroom, but for the most part, she thought the choices were pretty good.

Coming home with 11 cans of paint, 18 packages of bamboo flooring, a new fibreglass step-ladder, and a bunch of other crap in the back of my Element was pretty interesting. When the flooring was being loaded in, I wasn't sure if it could handle it all. The boxes of flooring were just barely too long for the tailgate to be closed, but everything remained intact during the drive. Unloading all those boxes was way more fun :) 18 boxes, about 40 or 50 pounds each -- you do the math. Not to mention that they're long and skinny, and hard to get around tight corners such as those on the way into my basement from my front door.

The flooring is going to wait until we finish painting, which I think just makes good sense, but I can't wait to get it down. I am sick of the carpet that's down right now. I'm sick of carpet in general. You can't keep it clean, it gets stained, it looks like crap. It sucks. Carpet sucks. I've seen hardwood floors change the entire look of a place. That and with new paint I could have a whole new home.

I'm excited.

Arm rests in movie theatres can be put up

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:50:07 PST

I tend to rarely hit the theatre anymore now that I have one in my home, but when I do, I like to try and be as comfortable as I am on my couch at home. Unfortunately, that's not always possible: The arms on the chairs are awkwardly placed, the seats in front of you are too close to sensibly position your legs (well, if you're tall like me anyway), not to mention the other people around you who can annoy the crap out of you.

This is basically a public service announcement to everyone out there who regularly goes to the theatre to see a movie. I just learned that in some theatres, you can put the arms up. They fit back in the slots between the seats and end up flush with the backs. I thought this was the best development in movies at the theatre since I invented throwing Skittles at people in the dark.

Next time you go to the movies, try to put up the arms. My girlfriend and I were lounging on a 6-seat-wide section of seats, right in the middle of the theatre while we watched National Treature 2 last night. It was fantastic. Sometimes you just can't beat a big, big, big screen.

Pandora is back!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:51:32 PST

If you were like me, rather than listen to your own (stolen) music, or subscribe to some satellite radio service, you'd head over to pandora.com and set up a station of your favourite music and rock out like you were excreting boulders. That happy fantasy came to an end in 2007 when they were force to limit their streaming to only American IP addresses.

I'm happy to report that GlobalPandora.com is back (at least for Canadian IPs), as good or better than ever, and even works with your old Pandora.com accounts! Looks like the box is open again.

W00t!

I type 89 words per minute

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:49:56 PST

89 words

Touch Typing

Zunior.com's Boxing Day Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:11:40 PST

Zunior.com, for whom I work producing the Zunior.com Podcast, is starting what I hope becomes a tradition for them: The Boxing Day Sale. I know Boxing Day may be a new and unfamiliar concept to those of you south of the border, but the Canadian Boxing Day sale is like the American Black Friday.

The long and the short of it is that on December 26th, 2007, you can pick up selected albums on Zunior for only $4.44. That's half price, w00t!

20% Off Cordless Power Towels

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:57:57 PST

20% Off Cordless Power Towels
Originally uploaded by Steve Dinn.

Score two for big box customer service

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:08:25 PST

I'm sure that enough people write daily in their blogs about the horrible experiences they've had with various customer service organizations. I'm going to tell you about two great experiences I had just today. Two "big box" stores even. Aren't we supposed to be going to smaller, mom & pop shops to receive better service? I don't know if I could have received better service than I got today from Staples and Home Depot.

Part 1: Staples

Recently, I've been purging. Purging junk. Purging junk from my life that I've held onto for whatever reason; probably because I just had space to do it. Currently in my hallway, there are about 8 garbage bags full of crap that I'm throwing away. Don't worry, I gave all the clothes that were fit to give away to Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and I'm recycling all my cardboard boxes, so all you hippies don't give me any grief. During this process, I've come across various personal documents that I felt should be shredded rather than just thrown away. Well, yesterday my shredder decided to give up the ghost. There was an audible pop, the lights dimmed for a split second, and my shredder had ceased to shred. And it would shred no more. I had owned it for almost a year, I thought, but I wasn't positive. I had shredded the receipt to test it when I first got it, so I knew that was out of the question. Luckily, it was a Staples branded appliance, so I thought I would take my chances in seeing if they'd exchange it or replace it.

Today, I carted it back over to the store in Bayers Lake, fully expecting to have to argue about this in order to get it exchanged. I walked over to the customer service desk and explained the situation, my shredder had simply stopped working. The manager of the store happened to be nearby when I was talking to the girl serving me, and I thought he was going to start making things more difficult, but he didn't even ask for my receipt or credit card or anything, he just walked over, grabbed a brand new one, and I was out of the store within 5 minutes of walking in. It was one of the most pleasant customer service experiences I have ever had.

Part 2: Home Depot

One of the other ways I'm trying to improve things is by using CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs wherever possible. The light fixture in the middle of my stairwell had 4 out of 5 bulbs burnt out, and finally it was time to replace them, lest I be left literally in the dark. I went to Home Depot and bought 5 of what I thought were the most appropriate CFL bulbs for the job, and came home to install them. I found that although the screw part was the right size for the fixture, the narrow shades affixed to where each light is supposed to go prevented me from fully installing the CFL bulbs. I would have to take them back.

I drove back to Home Depot to pick up the identical incandescent bulbs that had just burnt out...At least I know that they fit. Unfortunately, I had managed to lose my receipt in the nominal amount of time I had actually spent with these bulbs outside the store. I decided to try to take them back anyway. After all, the cashier who sold them to me was probably still working there, and at least she could vouch that I wasn't trying to rip anybody off. But I needn't have worried: The returns desk at Home Depot was able to look up my purchase based on my credit card number and no receipt was necessary. Why don't more stores do that? I walked out with bulbs that I knew would fit my light, and all was well.

Anyway, I hope I have brightened somebody's day with the notion that customer service can actually be had in this day and age, even in big box stores. Oh, and did I mention that I didn't wait in any line ups whatsoever at either customer service desk? Crazy, I know.

The Med is Closed?!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 08:11:49 PST

Halifax Pop Explosion 2007 schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:02:33 PDT

Holy kick-ass, Batman. A cursory glance at the Halifax Pop Explosion's schedule lets the casual observer know that this year's HPX is gonna blow the doors off you.

In addition to Polaris Prize nominee bands the Besnard Lakes and Miracle Fortress, Eric's Trip have confirmed to play at the Pop Explosion. The Moncton-based SubPop signees will be headlining the finale show on Saturday night at the Marquee Club. We can also look forward to shows by the Apostle of Hustle, Windom Earle, and two already-sold-out performances by Tegan and Sara. I hope you got your tickets.

With shows at 13 separate venues over 5 days, even the most curmudgeonly show-goer can find something to suit his or her tastes. I know I'll be running between bars like a crazy person trying to catch all my favourites. It's happened every year so far, and there's no reason to assume it won't happen again this time.

See you there!

Arrrr...It be talk like a pirate day!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:48:08 PDT

Avast, ye landlubbers, for it be Talk Like a Pirate Day! Yarrrr, September the 19th every year be designated the one where ye can let out yer inner pirate. Shiver me timbers, blow me down, and hopefully you don't have to walk the plank ;)

Now I must be off because those damn kids be after me buried treasure.

Yarrrrr!

How do you use a bag?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:08:34 PDT

I picked up a courier-style bag from a friend, and it had a weird clip on it. I wrote to MEC to figure out how to use it. They have very courteous and friendly customer service.

Me:

I recently picked up the Brenta Courier Bag (used) from a friend of mine. I like the bag, but I think I need an instruction manual for this crazy buckle on the side. I would like to take full advantage of all this bag has to offer, but I am no courier and I can't figure out how it works.

Is there any kind of literature for this bag? Like a PDF that I can download or something? Anything would help.

Thanks,
Steve Dinn

MEC:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the email.

I have a Brenta bag and a few others that use that crazy buckle. I think by that you mean the large one that adjusts the length of the main carry strap.

I don't have a PDF or other documentation on it but don't find it that hard to use. Usually you simply lift the large plastic tab (sort of like very old school car or airplane seat buckles) and simply slide the strap up or down to make the overall length adjustment. This creates a loop below the buckle (especially when the strap length is fairly short), but is very secure for carrying heavy loads and produces not long trailing end of excess strap that can get caught in things.

There is also of course the cross body strap that needs adjustment. Essentially the smaller strap just triangulates the other strap keeping the bag stable, but can be undone easily so that the bag can be slung down to the side or front of your body to access the contents or just to wear at your side, not on your back. This strap should meet the other strap at your sternum, roughly.

The defacto standard in Courier bags is the Timbuk2 brand, and I have found a link on their site that shows how to wear their bags which are very similar to ours and use the same buckle type.

http://www.timbuk2.com/tb2/cms/popup/howToWear.htm

Please let me know if you have more questions.

An open letter to the Firefox developers

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:09:43 PDT

Dear Firefox developers:

I get the feeling I'm probably alone in my criticism on this particular issue, but bear with me :)

In order to maintain a super-human level of productivity, I typically use a combination of right-hand mouse and left-hand keyboard when I browse the web. (Please, no jokes about one-handed typing.) So, if I right-click, I'll usually hit the hotkey for an item rather than moving the mouse down to click on it. Click, key-press is almost always faster than right-click, move mouse, left-click.

My problem, or rather my annoyance, is this: Why are the hotkeys for the right-click menu on a link not the same as the hotkeys for the right-click menu on a bookmark? My most common action when right-clicking is to open the link (or bookmark) in a new tab. For a link, the hotkey for "Open in New Tab" is T. Guess what T is when you right-click on a bookmark. CUT. So instead of opening my bookmark, I've removed it. Wow, that's awesome :)

Now, I understand that T is the time-honoured, traditional hotkey for the cut action, but couldn't we have the same key for both menus? The bookmark menu's "Open in New Tab" hotkey is W. That seems like a nice letter. Honestly, I don't care what keys they are, as long as they're consistent across all the right-click menus.

I hope I haven't bored you.

Thanks for reading this,
Steve.

Eric's Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:40:07 PDT

Eric's Trip
Originally uploaded by Steve Dinn.

SappyFest: Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:39:18 PDT

The third and final day at SappyFest 2007 was a whirlwind of activity. It started off with a breakfast show put on at Struts Gallery. I had a curry wrap and a grilled cheese sandwich. I stayed for a couple of hours, but the sun was brutal, and as the afternoon wore on, there was less and less shade to cower in. Regrettably, I made my way back to the dorm.

After trying for the third time to get Chris to rip the CDs I had bought (because I didn't remember the CD-ROM for my laptop) so I could get the music on my iPod, I remembered that the last show for the trapeze artist, Poisson D'Avril, was going on at 1400h, and I hadn't yet seen her. I rushed over there and just made it as the show was starting. It was pretty amazing.

Now it was time to relax a little bit. I didn't really feel like going back to the afternoon show because of the sun, and besides the Singing Saws performing at 1700h, there was nothing going on until 1800h. I went back to the dorm, finally got my new music onto my iPod and played around on the internet a bit. Chris and I went to this family restaurant for supper that gave you the choice of "frozen french fries, or homemade ones that we cut fresh here." Well, that's not much of a choice, is it? I took the homemade ones.

Six o'clock rolled around and we headed down to the final show of the festival. It was gonna be a monster 9 hours, and I think just as many bands. I got a great interview with Julie Doiron, and saw some fantastic sets from B.A. Jonston, The Stance, the Memories Attack, the Monoxides, and of course Eric's Trip. It is always amazing to see a band play live when you have an extreme intimate familiarity with the music. Especially when you're right at the front of the stage, and they're basically playing directly in front of you. I had an amazing time, and I'll definitely be on the lookout for SappyFest 2008 :) I would have taken more pictures, but my camera started flashing the battery light at me, so I decided to save the juice for when Eric's Trip played.

Back at the dorm, I got my pictures posted, and I was in bed by 0400h or so. I decided to take the scenic route home (through P.E.I....I had never been across Confederation Bridge before), so if you're interested, you can check out the pics from my whirlwind three-province tour.

SappyFest: Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 22:38:15 PDT

Day two of SappyFest had a late start for me. Like I said in the last podcast, I was starving and I went looking for a diner at which I could get some breakfast. I found Mel's Tearoom on Main Street in downtown Sackville and grabbed a booth. The place wasn't even that crowded, but it seemed to take forever for me to get served. On the upside, ham and eggs and coffee only cost me $4.35.

I don't think I described my room very well...it's a typical dorm room: single bed, desk, shelves, small closet, and a mini fridge. The only real problem I had was getting network connectivity. The wireless network here at Mount Allison goes through a gateway where you have to enter a username & password, but the wired network just lets you get online. Unfortunately, the network drop is not under the desk, where you think it'd be, but rather across the room, by the mini-fridge. The cable that I brought wasn't long enough to reach the desk while still being plugged in so I had to basically sit at the fridge in order to be online. I took my chance this morning while nothing was going on to drive up to Moncton (about 35 minutes away) to Futureshop to get an SD card reader and a 25' cat-5 cable. So, the upshot of that was that I was able to get some of my photos online and I'm now sitting at the desk :)

I missed two shows from Poisson D'Avril, the trapeze artist, but luckily she's putting on one more show tomorrow. I have heard nothing but rave reviews from those who have seen her show.

The weather in Moncton was something you just had to see. As I drove into town, there were numerous strikes of lightning in the sky, but no thunder, and no rain. On my way back to Sackville, I drove through some of the worst rain I have ever seen, but it stopped about 10 minutes before I got to the Sackville exit.

At 1700h, there was a show from Sappy's sister festival, Ok, Quoi? going on at the Sackville United Church. There was some wacky shit going down in there. The various classical-style instruments in the 'Motion Ensemble' were dishing out some experimental (and I mean ex-per-i-mental) sounds that I'm not sure were music, but they were certainly interesting. Certainly a break from the norm of even the fare from SappyFest. As I left this show, the rain finally caught up to Sackville.

As there was last night, there was an outdoor show scheduled for 1900h outside of Struts Gallery, and there was supposed to be a barbecue. If it was raining, I wasn't going to go, because as attendees of that Summer Rush concert know, watching music in the rain quickly becomes not much fun. Around 1930h, the rain let up and I ventured out. I'm glad I did, because I got to see the Superfantastics.

After the outdoor show, we migrated to the Vogue Theatre about two blocks away. This was fantastic because being located on a marsh, Sackville has more than its share of flies, and I am apparently fine dining for them. However, karma being what it is, it was hotter than hell's armpit in that theatre. I was sweating like it was going out of style and I ended up leaving after Rick White played, and I missed Ohbijou and Chad van Gaalen, who I really would have liked to see, but I just wasn't prepared to torture myself to see them.

I managed to get a great interview with Paul Henderson, one of the three main people behind SappyFest, but I forgot my microphone in the car, so the audio will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Maynards

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:03:45 PDT

The Maynards
Originally uploaded by Steve Dinn.

SappyFest: Day One

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 08:53:28 PDT

I'm going to try to make some short audio posts for the time I'm at SappyFest, hopefully with some music each time. Here's my first installment.

Check out the song at the end. It's the Maynards with 'Break Out the Make out'.

Download Podcast

Arrived in Sackville, N.B. for the Sappy Music Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:23:28 PDT

I know it's been a long time since I've written anything on here...just about a month, but I figured that now that I'm actually doing something that it might be fun to post about it :) I have just made the slightly more than two hour drive to Sackville, New Brunswick from Halifax, and checked into my room at the Mount Allison University dorm (Windsor Hall, to be precise). It's hotter than an armpit in the sauna in here. But there's a dorm-sized fridge, so I've just plugged it in and left the door open. We'll see how good of an air conditioner it is. I have my doubts.

Anyway, I'm here in order to see various shows associated with the Sappy Records Music Festival. They even have "Sappy Fest" tacked on the bottom of the big sign on the highway that says "Welcome to Sackville". I managed to forget my SD card reader, but I am going to try downloading the drivers for my camera to see if I can get the photos off of it directly. Here's hoping I can pull it off.

Salmon Sushi

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:22:28 PDT

From 'Scott Pilgrim'

Twitter is dead

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Wed, 02 May 2007 19:15:25 PDT

It was going to happen sooner or later, but for me, Twitter is now dead. Facebook can now do everything that Twitter does, and more; not to mention that there are orders of magnitude more people on Facebook.

For those of us in Canada, Facebook just added Canadian cell carriers to their Mobile section. Bell Mobility, Aliant Mobility, Fido, and Rogers (Telus was curiously absent) are now able to be selected. Once you activate Facebook Mobile, you can post status updates to Facebook using your mobile phone, and you can specify which of your friends' status updates you want to receive as text messages. That's pretty much Twitter in a nutshell. The only things lacking are the IM integration, which was flaky at best anyway, and the third party app support, i.e., Twitterific.

Since Twitter couldn't manage to set up a Canadian short code, and I don't really feel like paying for international charges for using the UK number, I don't know how much I'm really going to be using Twitter anymore. You're on Facebook already anyway, right?

Right?

I'm on shakey moral ground here

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dinn) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 08:56:08 PDT

Last week, I was grocery shopping. When I'm grocery shopping, I often avoid grabbing a cart when I enter the store in order to limit myself to only what I can carry. I find that I'll often buy more groceries than I can really eat before they go bad, given my proclivity for eating out, and not filling up a cart is a great way to stop myself from spending money on food that's just going to spoil.

On the day in question, I started grabbing a little too much stuff to hold in my arms, so I stuffed a bulb of garlic into my pocket, just so I wouldn't have to carry it. When I got to the check-out, I completely forgot about the garlic. I inadvertently shop-lifted produce.

Every day I have that garlic, I feel like somebody's going to squeal to the cops. Gil Grissom and his team are going to serve me with a search warrant and test my garlic's DNA and match it to the garlic that was at the scene of the crime. I'm going down. It's only a matter of time.

On the plus side, stolen garlic is delicious.