Vancouver artist

I met Tiko in my rowing club. Extremely nice guy. Then I find out he's an amazing and prolific visual artist and HIV survivor with a long history as a national advocate of new drug therapies (as I am sure one is wont to be, in such a conditon). His work is absolutely stunning. Vancouver in all its glory, seen through the eyes of a man with (really) acute astigmatism.

www.tikokerr.com

__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
Hoto

Vancouver artist

PCs suck

So I made plans to skype with JVM on Friday night from my home PC. He's Lonely in Boston, you see. So I get home around 10pm on Friday, fire up my trusty logitech web cam (circa 1998) and ping him. Get on the call and he can't hear me barely at all, let alone see me. So i try him from my other PC, a screaming 3GHz Pentium IV with 2GB ram, and the fucking Skype client won't connect through McAfee, (which I only installed because Norton was such a catastrophically hopeless tool). No matter what I did, I could't get McAfee rules configured in a way that it would let skype work.

So with two entire PCs at my disposal, I left them idle and skyped with JVM for almost 2 hours on my lowly little s620 mobile phone, which I also used to send a picture of myself to him via email from the phone during the call.

Worked well over 802.11g although there are a couple of limitations:

1. The phone can only be used in speakerphone or wired headset mode. Skype hasn't sorted the bluetooth or regular audio paths yet.

2. His inbound audio stream would sometimes repeat certain words and phrases repeat words and phrases (just like that). It didn't jitter or stutter, just repeated whole 2 or 3 second chunks. JVM didn't hear anything like that on his end.

3. Sucked my battery dry in 1 hour. The phone had 2 bars of juice when I started but it ran down quite rapidly when I had the speakerphone on.

However kudos to Rogers wireless, for although they are the Great Evil, they are one of the few North American operators to ship a GSM/EDGE phone direct from their retail stores with wifi enabled.

Thumbs up for the little s620.

__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
Hoto

PCs suck

Favourite Windows Mobile apps

One of a string of posts about my favourite phone apps:

Fizz traveller.
--------------
Love this one. Although its not optimized for the landscape QVGA screen yet, it is incredibly useful. It features a multicity weather forecast display, with high/low temperatures, precipitation, great graphics and an easy way to display todays weather in 6 or 8 cities with the local times displayed, country dialling code, time zone difference, and a sun/cloud icon. In fact the icons show rain, snow, lightning and can be displayed on the homescreen of the phone too but I don't do this because it removes some homescreen features that I need, like the communications manager shortcut for flipping wifi and bluetooth on or off.

The forecast comes down wirelessly in tiny chunks or when you cable synch to your PC. I set up the Fizz "home" screen so that at a glance I can use it to monitor the weather here at home, in Calgary, where I have family and friends snowed in, Boston where the aforementioned JVM is lonely, London where sparx et famille are expanding, Munich where my lead customer seethes, and Seoul where my distributor lies silently awaiting product. I bought the app for the multiple time zone feature and currency converter, but really like the weather feature and wish that it had tide charts and sunset times for rowing and other outdoorsy purposes.

The currency converter is priceless (fnarr) especially when I'm submitting a three-currency expense report which I have to do every month or so (airline tickets, cab fare and breakfast in Canadian, lunch in US, and then a weeks worth of accommodations and meals in Euros or Korean Won) thanks to flight paths that force me to connect through the US, etc.

Like the weather forecast, the currency rates may be set to autodownload, or on demand from the IMF. They appear to agree with x-rates.com generally and are available for a bewildering array of currencies from Venezuelan Bolivars to Polish Zloty and Slovenian Tolars (what's the plural for zloty?). The converter also handily does length, area, weight, speed, temperature, volume, power, mens and womens shoe sizes and even shirt and dress sizes for the Uk, US and Europe. Truly brilliant for travelling. Even does torque for those moments when you desperately need newton metres converted to pound feet.

I have to say that I use this tool in some way every day. Today I checked my German customer's loc weather forecast so that on our weekly call this morning, I could distract him from the grim reality of more slippages by waxing lyrically about the coming thunderstorms and wild temperature swings expected for Munich this weekend (low of 4C and high of 23C today, for those readers itching to know). Then later in the morning I booked a trade show in Sweden for October, and converted the equipment rental charges from Swedish Krona into Canadian to cut the PO. Marvellously practical. It does need a built in calculator though.

Great app and the 5 day forecast is 100% reliable so far, beating even the local news

Love the well-rendered alarm clock manager, which easily allows multiple configurations for repeats and weekday/weekend behaviour, and easy audio capture (I have a WAV of my better half whispering gently:
"Hoto..Ho-To. It's time to get u-u-p.") and nice graphics. Much easier to get to than the default alarm clock.

I could go on but you get the picture (well, at least the words - more on my ongoing picture blogging fiasco later).

Fizz is a steal at about $20 from Handango.com.
__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
Hoto

Favourite Windows Mobile apps

189.5

This is for JVM who scoffed incredulously when I first claimed I'd got down to 188 and then stepped on his girlfriend's scale and weighed 196. Just wait, buddy.

189.5

skype

Downloaded the skype client for Windows mobile today, installed with no issues and had a successful call over our home Wifi network with Shell at her office. This means that I can use the phone when travelling to Korea where there's no GSM. Anywhere there's WiFi of course. Brilliant. Free. Huge bonus.

Unfortunately picoblogger appears to be toast and there's no other smartphone blogging tool that I can find to post pictures. Also, picture messaging isn't working and some troll at Rogers told me "it's never worked for Windows Mobile" and proceeded to tell me that I was mistaken in thinking that it ever worked. The blogs and forums confirm that others are having the same problem. Boo.

190.5 tonight. Lost my Bavarian bulge.

The software works like a dream and my mum could have installed it.

__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
Hoto

skype

yahoo

Talked Rogers into selling me the HTC s621 for $125. http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_s620.htm. Blogging on it now. Will test picoblogger on it tonight to see if I can get pics again. Rogers sucks. But i did get $1150 off my service charges over 3 years and $250 in up front discounts. We'll see if my bill reflects all the discounts properly.

This phone rocks. 97kbps over EDGE as tested today at www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest. Quad band phone, nice camera optics, WIFI b/g and tons of storage. Tiny too. Windows mobile 5.0. Excuse me while I wipe my ejaculate from it.

It's OK. Don't worry gentle readers. I know the female members of my audience won't have been offended by that remark since they stopped reading at "this phone rocks".

__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
Hoto

yahoo

Tunisian spiced meat dish was...

...Kibbeh Nayeh

Seasoned minced lamb with chopped onion, mint and oil.

(urrrp)

________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Tunisian spiced meat dish was...

Ausfahrt Row

Ja!

________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Ausfahrt Row

Blogging in der S-bahn

On the S8 heading for München Flughafen. Grey und köld. Missed früstuck zo am vaiting führ ze tee und bröt.

________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Blogging in der S-bahn

Wiener und fleischpflanzer

Mmmm, meat and bread. Nay, eine höt-dög for früstuck.

________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Wiener und fleischpflanzer

Vielen danke

Ok. All done here in Munich.
10-12 hours per day at the customer site means we have eaten in the hotel three out of five nights. The food is apalling and carb laden. I have manfully moved from the tightest mark in my new 'skinny' belt to the third tightest. I guess I'm up about 10lbs since I left. Had a good day at the customer site today and finished the week off with a relatively succesful
customer demo for Siemens Nokia. our hosts here are great but likely glad to see the back of us.

Managed to get into the centre of München two times. Actualy it is a 5 minute walk across the Isar river, past the Deutches museum, through Isartorplatz and into Marienplatz. Quite pretty. Went for dinner at Spatenhaus for a reasonable deer steak, across from the King's Palace. They gave us English menus which was a little lame, since its half the fun figuring out options like Ochsenfilet and Spargel. They had translated the harder German words, but they also translated non German words...badly. Thanks to a vaguely tantalizing description for one appetizer ("spicy meat with malt bread") I ended up with another plate of fucking raw meat. Germans should be aware that Steak Tartare is in fact an internationally known dish.

tonight however the sun came out and we hosted our hosts at the (apparently) famous Knockerberg in Hochstrasse, sitting outside in the biergarten. Nice enough but newish and soulless. Apparently the old building was torched and the new one is like Vegas does Brau-haus. Food was OK and we enjoyed the hefeweissen. However, I actually can't remember what I ate which gives you an idea of the lasting impression the place made.

Wasted one morning trying to find a replacement travel charger for my ipaq and learned that one is not to be found in downtown München. Kaufhof, Conrad and many other stores are useless. I was repeatedly referred to MediaMarkt but it proved too elusive in the 30 minutes I had available. Note: stores open at 9 or 10am and close at 8pm. Most are closed by 5pm on weekends.

Anyway back at my hotel room last night I carefully applied all my advanced electrical engineering skills to my broken charger. By employing a systematic and scientific method, (aimlessly wiggling the cable) I fixed it. Now I can watch movies on the plane tomorrow and stave off utter insanity on the 11 hours between me and Calgary.

My summary of München? The city is neat, pretty, clean and easy to navigate, befitting the capital city of such an orderly place as Bavaria. However this is based entirely upon my hopelessly inadequate forays to and from Siemens along Rosenheimstrasse, and into Marienplatz and back. A total of about 8km of streets. My magnificent photo essay of this 800 year old gem will be posted soon (an eyecatching array of stunningly wrought images snapped from my hotel room window: same view, different weather. What a twat.)

Nice bike paths, like The Hague with their own traffic lights.

Too tired to be glib. <i>Sheisse</i> I can't wait to be outta here.

As they say in Bavaria,

ciao.

(probably ciäö, actually)

________
(sent from my Vöq)
Hötö

Vielen danke

Die Holiday Inn München

Dropped off by the Hornungs in time for my dinner meeting. Munich is gray and chilly but the hotel is comfortable. Another fabulous day with hikes up hills to stunning views over the Danube this time, a pastoral walk through a forest to yet another ancient brauerei with fat hunks of pig washed down by the brau der mönsch with the mighty river flowing lazily by. Back to reality tomorrow with an upset customer a 2km walk away. Sleep now. hopefully no bier for a few days as the abs are receding further behind an encoaching layer of schweinfleisch. Thanks to the Hornungs for a literally spectacular 2 days.

________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Die Holiday Inn München

Ich bin müde

Arrived in munich after a frenzied race to Aerogare P. E. Trudeau in Montreal. I was still sitting at a lunch table in suburban Montreal 90 minutes before an international flight time at PET, which was 35 mins away in good traffic. finally arriving 45 mins prior to departure meant I was bolting through the terminal in enough time to just make the flight
but not in enough time to get anything but a middle seat, back of the bus, no recline. Luckily my seat mates were small, forgiving and ENL (English as a Non Language) so no distracting chatter and plenty of shoulder room. Unfortunately for them I had been dining with a colleague and prospect at La Poissonaire in Ste. Laurent which meant my clothes and I stank of fish and Tunisian cuisine (heavy on the garlic homous, onions and spiced meat). Apart from the fish, which I had declined to pick from a pile of slimy, unappetizing flesh, lunch was delish; but due in part to a particularly awesome menu feature (which I believe was named Kebbe Nayeh: raw minced beef, mint leaves, raw onion and oil) I was burping Tunisian air bombs like no tomorrow. I managed to grab two Dentyne Ice packs on my mad dash through the airport, put a whole 12-pack in my mouth, chewed it for 60 secs and swallowed it whole, adding a minty fresh overtone to my malaise d' gut, slicing the top edge off the foul stench rumbling from me every 5 minutes.

LH actually fed me reasonable fare, the service was unreal, and the first movie (Freedom Writers) bearable (except when Swank was virtually alone on screen at which points her equine grimace and one-dimensional fluster abraded like a belt sander).

Some woman went unconscious mid flight again, and this time every crew member in Econ responded, literally dragging her limp form back to the rear galley directly behind me. The call went out for docs and there was a polite skirmish beside me and my bemused row-mates as several SimuDocs who had wormed their way aft to us engaged in a lively game of EscalatingCredentials(tm):

"Are you a doc?"
"I'm a radiologist. You?"
"Endocrinologist. How about you, there?"
"Gynecologist. You?"
"Resident. You?"
"Yah, I'M a surgeon."

So AlphaDoc goes into action. AEDs, O2 tanks and various other kits are summoned and dutifully delivered. 30 mins later, relieved-looking cabin crew start emerging from behind the gray curtains and, leaving them pulled aside, expose those of us in the back row to an ebullient and honking doc's post-trauma bedside manner, consisting primarily of shouting at the vic and her bewildered spouse-unit to ask how they feel now, and about how insignificant their world travels must seem in compared to his.

I manage to pack the Shure ear buds in deep enough to block out most of his '97-98 world tour and interminable waxing on about St. Petersburg, and enjoy 90% of The Good Shepherd on my iPaq, and 95% of Timothy Taylor's Story House before touchdown.

Misty and cold in Munich. Alex was there to get me at 0630. A 1.25hr rainy drive to Erlangen put us in time for a large Euro breakfast with Hannes, Bea and Ben.

Its now 10:30pm by the bedside clock. By my reckoning I've been up for
32 hrs and have a delightfully bloodshot tale to tell of cool misty hikes to the top of Franconia's highest hill that (thanks to an indefatigueable Hannes) start, are bisected by, and end with a litre of beer. I have added a layer of smoked meat, cheese and whitebread breakfast, double bratwürst sausage lunch and killer asparagus/cheese casserole dinner from Bea over the simmering cauldron of La Poissonaire.

I can only say how utterly grateful I am to be nausea-free at this point given the civil unrest below the equator. More tomorrow.
________
(sent from my Voq)
Hoto

Ich bin müde

Ride, Hoto, Ride

Managed to do a 50km bicycle ride last weekend (on the flat seawalls) so Sunday I rode from our place out to our friend's (Mez and Cathy) for dinner. Only 30.1km but lots of hills with the last 4km being a 9% hill. Took me 1.1hrs to do the first 26km, with speeds up to 48km/h on the Barnet Highway, but then it took me 30 mins to do the last gruelling (for me) 4km. It was a great ride across Vancouver, Burnaby and into Port Moody, and I saw many of the cities' neighbourhoods that I've never seen before. My thighs are only slightly burning today which is likely bad news since tomorrow I will likely be in agony. Reward was a great steak dinner and the company of good friends.

________
(sent from my Voq)

Ride, Hoto, Ride

Abs: "Before"

Abs: "Before"

The Abs

OK. it has been a long time again. The sad loss of my beloved sp5m left me too bereft to even think of seriously blogging again.

But time marches on and I realize that I must persevere. Furthermore, those of you who gamely followed me through to my 21lb weight loss will remember that I failed to meet my goal of seeing my abs by my 40th birthday. Miserably failed, actually. And although I managed to drop two inches from my waist, my middle remains ringed with an unsatisfactory and definitely middle-aged bump of flab. So, I've decided to "re-up": I'm signing myself up to meet another goal. Instead of teaching myself conversational German by June, to coincide with our friends visiting from Germany (and to be able to converse with my German boss and our CEO in their Mutter tongue), I've resigned myself to the fact that it is
too unrealistic a goal without someone to practise with around the house (S has signed us up for signing classes [sign language, that is] so that we can converse with our niece).

So I come back to my abs. My drab flab un-fab abs.
Since I need to be bathing suit trim by July...time's ticking.

Standby for the first embarrassing 'before' picture.

If only my abs were improved as a result of thumbtyping...

H
________
(sent from my Voq)

The Abs

Cold and colder

B-r-r-r. It snows and blows here. I saw the Windspeed on the JerichoWind web site jump from 30 to 50 knots in under 30 minutes today.

My weight blows up to 197 and our best friends are in Maui watching a spectacular sunset as I write. Bastards.

Just finished M.Palin's Python Diaries which were a good light read and gave great insight into the early days of the troupe.

Desperately wishing that I had a photoblogging tool for PPC or my crap Sony T616. So many good shots are sitting on my camera and crap-phone.

(sigh)

The new I-phone may be the way to go http://www.apple.com/iphone if it synchs with Outlook and Exchange. Problem is that pure touch-screen phones are a challenge when you are in a hurry. My 2 weeks on business travel with the I-mate jam taught me that. But I expect Apple to have absolutely nailed the interface.

Dreaming of Kauai and Maui.

Those fuckers.

Hoto
(via email from my PocketPC)

Cold and colder

Wow

OK. Long Break. Turned 40 at 192. Phone is d-e-a-d and now in hands of mobile phone voodoo priest who is attempting resurrection via some evil and dark magic.

Had Christmas at Bragg Creek plus cool visit with Sis, Bro-in-Law and nephew at home. Survived but back up to 196. Mainly booze and chocolates and a fierce lack-of will to blame.

Shell bought me a trip to the Aerie resort (complete with a helicopter ride over) for my birthday, which then got snowed out. Killer storms in BC delayed us until 12/30. Came over today via ferry with D&D and are spa-ing tomorrow prior to a huge New Years eve dinner & dance.

Http://www.aerie.bc.ca

Wow.

Tonight: Drank lots of martinis, prosecco, champagne, La Frenz Montage and amazing Barbaresco Ovello wine (the latter courtesy of our friends James & Janet) and ate the best bread and cheeses that Granville Island's choucouterie (Oyama Sausage Co) could offer.

Now lying in our palatial Hummingbird suite #34 in the Aerie Residences with my iPaq camped on the Spa's wireless network staring out across Juan De Fuca strait at the distant lights of Port Angeles and drinking in the midnight mountain air.

It's all good. So incredibly good.

Hoto
(via email from my PocketPC)

Wow

FW: Workaround

OK: Retro time. Back to the two-body approach. For you non-wireless folks oot thar, that means using my PDA for my mobile computing device, and my old GPRS phone pretty much as a dumb modem for the PDA. Connect the two via bluetooth and it's pretty straightforward after that. My PPC has WiFi but that's still not ubiquitous.

However I can't post pics using email like this, so an alternative solution is required. Am now in search of a Blogger client for PPC2003. Should be easy to find.

Thanks for all your congratulatory notes on reaching 190. Still can't discern my abs but 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

Despite a debauched night to celebrate Don's birthday on Saturday night (SaltLik on Alberni; great steak; cartoonish wait staff; average martinis) followed by a staggering breakfast by Shell on Sunday, AND a self indulgent junk food pigout on Sunday (bag of Smartfood and a chocolate bar) l'm holding at 191.5.

Seven days to go.

Hoto
(via email from my PocketPC Via my Sony T616)

FW: Workaround

Moist

managed to break an oarlock rowing today. This means that with only one oar for balance, the boat becomes quite unstable. Thus I ended up dunked in the chilly waters of Coal Harbour. Coach Boat was along in
no time so I could pull myself out, but my phone was in my pocket, and is now Very Dead.

So no wireless posts with pics for sometime to come.

Hoto
(via email from my PockePC)

Moist

Cheating

Fucking PIcoblogger. I've had enough. OK, I'm breaking with tradition and posting manually.

Cheating

190. Made it

Last night I was 191 and this morning made it to 190. PicoBlogger.com bailed on me last night so I will post a proof pic once I can get it running.

I week early. 21 lbs since July 31.

(From my mobile)

190. Made it

New idea for losing weight

Drink the water in Vancouver. Instant emetic/diuretic.

http://www.gvrd.bc.camedia/2006/2006-11-16-Media-ReleaseResidentsAdvised
WaterQuality.pdf

New idea for losing weight

Not much lost during all the renovations but still headed in the right direction. Haven't been this light in a long time.

Moblog via Picoblogger

4th and last Day of Renos

Mad rush to try and get the 2nd layer of subfloor down. 3/8" plywood over the particle board sub-sub-floor. Easier since it's not tongue in groove, and the sheets were larger. Mum and I had to do some careful planning and scheming to use the largest bits of wood as possible. Still ended up making hundreds of cuts to get it to fit without wasting any wood. It's amazing how proud you can be of cutting a single 4'x8' piece of wood that wraps around a toilet, around a door frame and up an angled wall. Sad testament to one's self worth. Had to get up close and personal with the commode to squeak it into place. Seems like I spend a lot of my winters on my knees in this bathroom. This time, however, less retching involved.

Managed to shave off 1/2" from the bathroom and sauna door to ensure they'd clear both the floor and the carpet/tiling to come. Got finished in enough time to discover that there wasn't enough carpet or underlay to cover the area. M&D's friend Pierre will get them the flooring they need. He came by for a look-see tonight. Home tomorrow.

Hmph.

4th and last Day of Renos

End of Day 3: A Pile of Sawdust and cuttings to remove

Oy. Before and After.

End of Day 3: A Pile of Sawdust and cuttings to remove

3rd Day of Renos

Today was all about the subfloor. The first layer was 2'x2' particle board pre-glued with a plastic-rubber-compound moulded tile that creates airflow for warmth and a smooth surface. That's what went in today. Tongue-in-groove format meant cutting incredibly complex angles to fit around angled walls, toilets, door frames and casing. Hard on my small brain, but fun to figure it out. Got it done but not without an extra trip to Calgary to pick up more tiles and lots of sawing, sawing, sawing.

Moblog via Picoblogger

3rd Day of Renos

2nd Day of Renos

Ceiling Tile completed today. Did all the fiddly bits that we weren't able to finish with Colin and Johnny. Yesterday was 96 (almost all whole pieces) while today was 35 little bits of pressed-wood tile. Multiple angles and crooked beams now look smooth and clean. Mum plastered, painted and stained the walls. Managed to work around each other and each other's schedules. Managed not to get too much paint or stain on me either.

Moblog via Picoblogger

2nd Day of Renos

1st Day of Renos

Floor area cleaned out by Mum, Dad, Colin and Hoto. Johnny and Colin help with putting ceiling tiles up. Used Colin's compressor nail gun and stapled the lath to the ceiling across a cats cradle of joists, frame members, plumbing and crooked walls. Here, John's hard at work inspecting colin's efforts. Worth every penny we paid him. OK, he did carry all the wood and materials downstairs.

Couldn't have done it without them both.


Moblog via Picoblogger

1st Day of Renos

Alberta Gets All The Good Sunrises

Sunrise on the Marquis de Sade trail south of Calgary. (Well, it's something like that anyway.)

On the way to return Colin's saw. Blessed thing rattled all the way to High River in the back of the rental car. Drove me very slightly mad. But worth it.

Nice visit with Simpsons at their enormous house.

Good tea, too.

Moblog via Picoblogger

Alberta Gets All The Good Sunrises