Google Chrome recently decided to upgrade my Adobe Flash to version 10.1, which I asked it to do because I enjoy using up-to-date (not bleeding-edge technology, but close to it). Shortly thereafter, I noticed that every time I went to a webpage containing one or more audio-bearing flash elements, all the other audio on my system would be shushed to a near whisper, including Foobar2000. This is extremely aggravating for me, since I constantly listen ...More »

Up here in the Great White North, we have to sit by and watch in agony as other countries roll past us in mobile telephonic hardware. It takes a very long time for new phones to come to us, even when they are first released in our close neighbour, the United States. Well, today is a good day -- Telus has updated their website, listing the HTC Desire -- the non-Google-branded version of the Nexus One ...More »

This week's episode of Futurama, titled Proposition Infinity, made a reference to Clone High, a one-season animated series that aired in 2002-2003. "Cloney Island" is Principle Scudworth's plan for a clone-themed amusement park, and he is stealing resources from the Board of Shadowy Figures to accomplish his goal. I personally really like Clone High, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good laugh. It is a very short series at only 13 ...More »

I've been reading up on a lot of computer hardware recently in preparation for building my new system. Although I don't have the specifics pinned down yet, it will likely be based on an Intel Core i7 860 processor running on a P55-based motherboard with 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM. In this process, I have found a growing annoyance inside of me towards reviewers that omit simple, yet powerful, information from their reviews. I'm talking about ...More »

Hi everyone, I just wanted to give you a heads up that Matt's Live at the Concert Hall performance airs tonight on Bravo! at 10pm EST. My brother and I were at the recording for the show and it was a lot of fun; very different atmosphere than a traditional rock concert. It was particularly strange to see them record all of the interview-aspects first, and then have the band perform all the songs after. ...More »

I am in the process of trying to get hardware video acceleration working via VDPAU on my T61 laptop. Rather, I should say I was working on this, as I in fact succeeded (mostly) today. In the process, I had to upgrade my laptop from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) to 9.10 (Karmic Koala). On one hand, I had everything working on Jaunty nicely the way I like it; on the other hand, Karmic brings a ...More »

The past 24 hours have been.. well, interesting. Yesterday (which was a Friday, for those of you counting) I swung by my apartment to pick up my hockey gear. The elevators were not working, so I had to take the stairs. The emergency lights were on, however so were all of the main lights. My computer was still running, meaning there had been no power interruption. I shrugged, grabbed my gear, and went outside to ...More »

I need a new phone. I mean, I desperately need a new phone. My current phone, a Samsung SPH-A500, is many years past its prime and is flakey and unreliable at best. Lately, it seems to enjoy entering "safe-hold" mode and is unable to boot. My replacement phone will have certain characteristics, including but not limited to running the Android operating system, doubling as a portable media player to replace my aging iPod ...More »

Hi everyone, I just wanted to write you a quick note welcoming you (belatedly) to 2010; hopefully this year I will do a better job of regular posts (Ha!). More »

In the past, I have used dynamic IP services such as No-Ip.com and DynDNS.org to provide my home with a stable identifier on the internet. My router, a Linksys WRT-310N (running DD-WRT) is supposed to support running a daemon to update your IP at providers such as these, however I found that the scheduler ceased to call the update script after about a day. As a result, my IP address was usually out of date, ...More »