November 5, 2009 was the 15th anniversary of the film Hoop Dreams. Roger Ebert had this to say about the film: Today, fifteen years after I first saw it, I believe "Hoop Dreams" is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant. I've only seen the film once and found it fascinating. It's time to watch it again. Read Full Story

I'm trying to create an account on a website. It requires a password so I used 1Password's Strong Password Generator and entered these 10 characters: gis7ush8su. The website form didn't like my password and presented me with this beautifully formatted piece of prose: The password does not include enough variation to be secure. Try: Adding both upper and lowercase letters. Adding punctuation. I entered a new 24 character password: Fa6wrerd8ij2ac1yap9Nir1G. The website form rated my password st... Read Full Story

I don't get FarmVille, Bejeweled or any of the Facebook games. Who has the time? It's hard enough keeping up to date on RSS feeds, blog entries, news and a full-time job. I had to laugh when I read Fake Steve Jobs' take on Zynga which makes FarmVille and online scams: The issue was a company called Zynga, which makes online games, like FarmVille, that have become incredibly popular on Facebook among people who are missing parts of their brains. Okay, so I'm not alone here when it comes to Fac... Read Full Story

From November 2 - December 31, 2009, BookCloseouts is offering free shipping on all orders over $35. To take advantage of this offer use the following when you checkout: Coupon Number: freeshipping Coupon Password: bookcloseouts.com I picked up a copy of Sally Mann's Deep South for just $14.99 (normally priced at $60.00) and John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop for $13.99 (50% off). BookCloseouts sells bargain books that publishers sell off to reduce their excess inventor... Read Full Story

The programming geniuses at Bell TV announced that they are finally going to pick up AMC which produces what is arguably the best show on television, Mad Men. Finally! But wait! Season 3 of Mad Men is over next week! Rogers customers have been watching Mad Men all season in HD while Bell TV customers have been downloading it from bit torrent sites on Monday mornings. The Mad Men season finale is November 8 and Bell won't be broadcasting AMC until November 15. Brilliant! Just brilliant! If yo... Read Full Story

I had unlimited Internet Usage (bandwidth) with Bell Canada and I foolishly believed that I could get faster download speeds if I "upgraded" to their Bell Internet Max 12 package. I was wrong. In theory I have up to 12 Mbps downloads but I can't tell if my downloads are really any different. I have noticed that bit torrent traffic is getting throttled back from 4:30 PM - 2 AM. My unlimited downloads now have a cap of 50 GB/month. I don't really download/upload that much data, or so I thought.... Read Full Story

If you work at Starbucks or Tim Hortons then this post is for you. Is it too much for me to ask that you pass me that cup of coffee I just purchased from you? It doesn't matter if I go to Starbucks or Tim Hortons, the person behind the counter always puts my cup of coffee on the edge of the counter, closest to them. When did serving a customer become an olympic sport? Why do I have to hurl my body at the counter and lean forward as far as I can to reach my precious cup of black gold? If you w... Read Full Story

On Sunday October 18, 2009, Maximum 40 had their first concert. It took place in my garage and it consisted of two covers, 1 drum solo, and a guitar solo/duet/duel. The band, which got their name from a speed limit sign, played Green Day's Know Your Enemy and AC/DC's Thunderstruck to a standing room only crowd (of about 20 people). The band members, Daniel (age 10), Chris (age 11) and David (age 12) have been practicing for 4 weeks, which means they rehearsed about 4 times. My son plays drums... Read Full Story

Have a look at the Silicon Insider Alley's Chart of the Day which shows Microsoft losing millions for the last 5 years. In the last quarter they lost $480 million. Who said it was easy making money online. Read Full Story

I've been reading a lot of the press around Windows 7 and every article seems to say the same thing - Windows 7 is great because it works better and faster than Vista. Yesterday Steve Ballmer was in Toronto and said that "Vista was not a mistake. Vista was controversial". Steve, Vista was an abysmal failure! Softchoice did a sampling of 450,000 corporate PCs and found that only 3 per cent of them were running Vista. That doesn't sound like success. I'm sure that Windows 7 is a huge improvemen... Read Full Story