Ian Benedict

I finally got my invite for the web 2.0 application BrightKite, so here are my initial impressions.

BrightKite is very much like Twitter, where you can post little notes to people on your friends list as well as the general public. Its main feature is the ability to also encode ‘where’ your posts are coming from. For example, if I had a GPS-enabled phone and I sent an update to BrightKite, not only will my post show up on the site but it will also show where I posted it from. Of course there are several privacy issues here (beware the stalkers!), but the site does provide a good amount of privacy features. What’s also pretty neat is you can view the public stream based on where you are, so you can see recent posts that originated from your area. For those of us without GPS-enabled devices, the option to add places manually on the site is there so we’re not completely left in the dark.

I can definitely see the coolness of using an application like this, especially when a lot of your friends get into it (with this being a social networking site and all…). You can set it to automatically update your Twitter with your BrightKite posts as well as add locational information to it, so you won’t need to message two different places if you have Twitter account too. Unfortunately, you can’t text message updates yet if you’re not in the US, but I imagine this will be rectified when it comes out of beta. I guess I have even more motivation to upgrade my phone now…

Check out my BrightKite profile here.

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Just updated my Wordpress to 2.6. For those of you who run Wordpress blogs, I recommend the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. It makes life so much easier.

PS. I’m looking into changing my Wordpress theme, so if you know any good themes or theme sites, let me know.

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I’ve gotten a bit of time to try out Dropbox and so here’s my little review of it.

For the uninitiated, Dropbox is a web 2.0 application that lets you sync files between multiple computers quickly and painlessly. It also comes with a nifty web interface to organize your folders and content. Although this sort of technology isn’t exactly new (to those of us in computer science or just in the know with code repositories general), it certainly manages to be easy enough to use and maintains a good amount of flexibility.

Basically, after installing the Dropbox application, it creates a little folder where any file inside it will be automatically synced to folders on other computers that are linked to the same Dropbox account. The install process itself very straightforward and fast, and the application itself seems very lightweight and memory-friendly.

I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks now, mainly for keeping things like photos, documents and guitar tabs synced across both my laptops. It excels at syncing your content very quickly between all linked Dropbox folders and updating the web interface. Since the Dropbox application (which runs constantly in the background) is set to check your folder at very frequent intervals, dropping your file in the folder results in an almost instantaneous sync between the folders on other computers. A neat little feature I’ve used a bit is that any file you put into the public section of the folder gets a download link associated with it, so that you can share links directly with friends to the content in that folder.

One of the features I’ve yet to fully investigate is the “shared” folder, where you can share a folder between multiple Dropbox users and have it set to sync to all of their folders. As well, I haven’t played around too much with revisioning changes to files, but I imagine it works just fine.

Ultimately, it’s a very neat little application to have and is a godsend to those of us who find repositories such as Subversion a little too complicated to set up. Much like Twitter, I think it becomes much more handy to have around when more of your friends are using it, however it is very usable if you just want to share files across multiple computers. Dropbox is currently in private beta and is invite only.

PS. I’ve written this entire entry using the Qumana blog editor, which is a pretty neat free Mac blog editor. Here’s hoping it looks good on the site!

Filed under: Computer by Ian
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Wow, it’s been almost exactly a month since my last post. Many apologies, but I was/am really busy with work and school. Honest.

This past month flew by, with weekdays spent working during the day and sleeping in class at night, to weekends spent doing things like going to a cottage and visiting Quebec. I’m in the middle of exams right now with one down already and one more to go.

It’s getting late already so I’d better wrap up. Just wanted to let you all know that I’m still alive (barely).

Oh, and I just received an invite to Dropbox, an up and coming web 2.0 application. I’ll post up a review of it when I get the chance to play around with it.

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I haven’t really had much of a chance to write anything now with school and work in full force.

I did have my Kendo grading a couple of weeks ago. I was granted the rank of 4th kyu (Yay!). This rank is basically one of the beginner ranks in Kendo, so it’s nothing to be too proud of. I’m just happy I can finally wear the armour now. Wearing it for the first time, I was really disoriented because the headpiece was on really tight and it also cuts off peripheral vision. Additionally, the gloves provide almost no protection for the wrists, so I last left practice with my right wrist in a shade of purple.

The guitar playing is going well. I’ve been playing around a lot with my ZOOM console and have been getting tones very close to some of my favourite bands. My bassist friend and I have finally starting jamming again this year, and with a drummer coming soon, we’ll be able to get some good play time going in the summer.

But yeah, other than that, I haven’t been doing much besides school and work. The mental fatigue has been setting in for a while now, so I tend to leave my Sundays free to sleep in the entire day. At least I’ll catch a little break this upcoming weekend when I head up to a cottage with some friends.

Filed under: Guitar, Kendo by Ian
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Alright, so exams are finally over (YAY!), however I start my full-time job next week (….) so there’s not that much room for relaxation. As well, I start summer classes the week after next, so I’ll probably be even more swamped with work in the summer than the past semester. As for plans for this week, I have a bunch of things that have been on my to do/play/watch list for a long while now.

I picked up this neat little ZOOM G7.1ut multi-effects console to spice up my guitar playing a bit. It also has a built-in USB interface to make connectivity with the PC a breeze. I’ve played around a bit with some of the settings and parameters during exam week, but nothing too much into detail. I figure that once I can play fairly well, I’ll at least have an outlet to record my playing and post it online.

Other than that, not really much has been going on. Kendo’s going well, with my grading coming up this Saturday. I did happen to catch Harold & Kumar 2 last week. It was pretty good, but I’m not sold on whether it was better than the first one. On that note, I’ll leave you with the hilarious poem Kumar recited to the girl he likes (I guess this would be a spoiler, so read at your own risk):

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

- David Feinberg

Filed under: Guitar, Kendo by Ian
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Exam week has started. My first exam is this Wednesday, with the rest not far behind. Studying is going well, though I’ll admit I’ve had a lot on my mind and therefore the studying isn’t as efficient as it could be. As well, I have a Kendo grading coming up in a few weeks. If I pass, I’ll be granted the 5th kyu rank, which is the lowest one. Ah well, gotta start small I guess.

I finally got myself to create a Twitter account, which you can view here. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Basically, you can post really bite-sized blog posts fairly quickly from any cell phone or computer. Some of the common uses for this service are to post things you’ve been doing on a daily basis and to keep in frequent touch with people that you are following as well as your own followers. This is what I intend to use it for, so I hope I can keep at it. You may also notice that there’s now a Twitter widget on the sidebar of this site. If you happen to have an account, please feel free to follow me (don’t worry, it’s not as stalker-ish as it sounds). For those who don’t, try it out!

Filed under: Computer, Kendo by Ian
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I’m not normally one to post content more than once per day, but I wouldn’t exactly classify the previous post as “content”. Here’s a beautiful little video I found on Digg that holds some meaning for me.

Filed under: YouTube by Ian
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I was going to do it eventually… and I happened to find some time this morning. Nothing should be noticeably different on the main site, I think. Although I get treated to a pretty new interface when I log in now. Fun fun.

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The school semester is slowly drawing to a close. Sadly though, the snow isn’t.

I’m really happy with my guitar playing. All those days of chord progressions and scales are finally starting to pay off. I’ve been practicing this one particular song which happens to be from Megaman 2 (Yeah yeah I know, it’s a good lick though), and can pretty much play it thoroughly. In addition to the recommendation I made last time for beginner guitarists, I’d also recommend checking out the Metal Method series of instructional dvds. They’re made for the absolute beginner to around intermediate/advanced players. Here’s a video of the song I’ve been practicing (But it’s not me that’s playing, obviously).

In this next section, I’d like to take a bit to talk about a couple of web applications.

First up is Mozilla Firefox, a web browser. Yes I do realize this isn’t something new, however there was a beta released recently for the upcoming Firefox 3. I just installed this yesterday on my home Vista laptop, and so I wanted to talk about it a bit. The biggest feature here has to be the huge cut in memory usage. There have been reports that it uses around 60% less memory as you keep the browser open. This is a huge deal for me because I sometimes leave my browser on overnight and it can just be downright unusable in the morning. That and the fact that I haven’t had the need to use the task manager to kill its process yet is what sold me.

Finally, the other application I wanted to talk about is the not so well-known IM client known as Digsby. What makes it better than the standard MSN or Trillian clients? Well, not only does it support a plethora of IM protocols, it also can track your different email accounts as well as social networking applications! That’s right, this client offers a more connected experience to your social networking platforms like Facebook, for those of you who aren’t already addicted enough as it is. I’ve only just set this client up yesterday on my Vista laptop and it tracks my MSN, GMail, and Facebook accounts. So for example, if someone posts on my wall or sends me a message via Facebook, I’d get a little notification on the bottom right corner of my screen much in the same way as MSN. This client offers just about the closest experience I can get to Adium on OSX (Which I am in love with) while offering features that even Adium doesn’t have. It is currently in beta and only available on Windows so far, however Mac OSX and Linux versions are in the works.

Filed under: Computer, Guitar by Ian
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