Thoughts From My LifeThoughts From My LifeAdvice on Traveling, Photography, and Finance Articles
American Express Aeroplan Credit Cards
2011-07-29 06:30:00 I have recently discovered that you are able to get an Aeroplan credit card through American Express here in Canada. I do already own one of their Air Miles cards which worked out great as it had no fees. I would be tempted to switch to one of these, since they provide some decent looking cards. Unfortunately, I do not see any "no fee" cards, so for infrequent usage or if you do not want the added insurance benefits, you may want to stick the American Express Air Miles options. Card Options If you look at the American Express Aeroplan credit card options there are a few cards listed there starting at $60/year and up. If you are doing it to strictly collect the points, then you need to do the math on each one to see if you will recoup the annual fees. They do come with a few different travel insurance offerings which may more than make up for the fee if you travel a bit. How Much Money Should You Spend The big question with these cards is how much money do you need to put thro... More About: Credit Cards , Credit , Cards
Stupid to the Last Drop by William Marsden
2011-01-04 04:32:00 I just finished reading Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care). It is a very interesting look at the oil industry in Alberta and I would recommend it for anyone who lives in Canada or is from here to read. It covers a lot of history as to how the industry developed and is also very critical of the Alberta government and industry in general in terms of the environmental policy (or lack thereof). Be warned: it is very critical and does not portray a very positive image of the province in general. Regardless of your opinion though, it is a worthwhile read with a lot of interesting points to consider and debate. Published on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:32:01 MST. - 7 Comments
My Stock Trading Activities Thus Far - October Recap
2010-10-31 19:49:00 Another recap of what I was doing in October on my trading adventures. I had written a September Recap previously. FYI, I have gotten more involved in the past and this is just my latest attempt. I find this stuff really interesting, so it is easy to put an hour into it here and there. Super Trader - Van Tharp I read this book next. It has a number of short chapters about a variety of topics for people wanting to trade actively, techniques, controlling emotions, creating a plan, etc. Not a great book to start with, but a nice easy read if you already have some good background knowledge. The Complete Trading For A Living - Elder Another read recommended by someone. Quite interesting and discusses a lot of different strategies in depth. He also proposes his own strategies. Worth a read and you will find it quick to read if you already have read similar books first (like Van Tharp's). Continued Paper Trading Same as last month. Used a few techniques and the TradeScores w... More About: Stock , Activities
Paper Trading Results - End of October
2010-10-30 18:56:00 I wrote about starting to paper trade again in September. I had developed a good little system for myself and was using the sight TradeScores as the helpful tool to manage it all. I ended up creating my own spreadsheet to review numbers the way I wanted too. If it looks confusing, it is probably because I created it and I like a lot of numbers. Check out my Paper Trading Results . Note: This gets updated occasionally, so you may notice the figures change from what is stated below. The Quick Summary Anyways, as of the end of October, this is the quick review of how it went and what I noticed: I had 38 trades throughout September and October. Several factors get to this number. One being how often I took the time to sit down and look for trades. Second, I was using two simple strategies for filtering so was limited by what it was able to find. Third, I did try to not trade too much to simulate what I would be able to do with a real account size (only so much money to invest...
Amazon Kindle
2010-10-26 12:26:00 I have a hard time reading books the past number of years, but I have managed to get through 4 in the last month. One thing was landing on some really fun reads (for me), but secondly, I purchased an Amazon Kindle earlier in October that has made reading during the random 10 minutes of free time so much easier. FYI, I am talking about the Kindle 3 (the latest version). If you haven't heard of it yet, the Amazon Kindle is an electronic book reader (e-reader). It is a pretty neat piece of technology. You download books (either free ones from on-line somewhere or you purchase them from Amazon itself). After that, you sit down and read. It is a pretty amazing piece of technology. Some of your are probably asking why not just buy an iPad or use a laptop. Here are a few reasons why you may want to have a Kindle. Really easy on the eyes as the screen is not backlit and the LCD technology almost looks like ink on paper. Crazy battery life. They say around a month with the wir...
Escaping The Asterisk (*) in Excel
2010-10-15 01:02:00 I had a formula the other day that needed to see if an asterisk - * was present in a cell. So the formula included a comparison for "*" in the syntax. Anyhow, turns out some formulas (not all) will treat the * as a wildcard and match it to any number of letters or numbers. If you are a programmer, like myself, then you are used to escaping letters with a backslash (). However, Excel does not use this and the proper escape is a tilde (~). I was a bit surprised how difficult searching the internet for this solution was, so I'm posting it here too. Hopefully I have good enough keywords and explanation that it will be easier for others like me to find. So my formula that was giving me issues was a SUMIF. It looked like this: =SUMIF(A1:A500,"=*",B1:B500) My intention was to add up all the B column values that had a * in the A column, however it was adding up all the B column fields regardless. Once I changed it to the formula below, it worked just fine. =SUMIF(A1:A500,"=... More About: Asterisk
My Stock Trading Activities Thus Far - September Recap
2010-10-05 12:21:00 So I started learning more about stock trading again as of August 30th, 2010. I have done lots in the past, but have been more passive about the past few years (since 2006/07 maybe). What have I done so far? Well here is a list: Paper Trading (fake stock trading) using the TradeScores website to keep track of the trades. It is a good tool as it will execute stop losses automaticaly for you, provides comments section to write down information, and keeps the basic metrics that I am measuring my system on. I use Stock Scores website to filter stocks I want to trade and apply other strategies I have learned for when to exit on how big the trade should be. Read the book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom. Started to read Super Trader. Took Dr. Van K. Tharp's Trader Test to see what personality of trader I am and then read the free documentation he has to go along with it. It is a PDF with some links back to his website too. Did some reading on-line. In particular, there is a ... More About: Activities , Recap
Paper Trading Again
2010-10-01 12:42:00 I've started paper trading again. I'm always interested in the stock markets and I wanted to prove out if I could find a system that works for "me". My doubts are that I want to spend too little time on it so it may be too "lazy" a system and it isn't really possible to earn money off it consistently. Criteria Basically, I have a full-time job, but do have time in the evenings (as I find trading super interesting) to do a bit of reading and check up on things. My goal is to have a system that has the following objectives: No more than an hour a day of my time (once system is developed...will put in more effort for first few months). I cannot conflict with my employer. So do it after work so it would be looking at end of day data. With trades and stops being inputted in the off hours. Trading trends with a goal of not holding a stock for more than a month (unless that trend still looks good of course...but I want to see good movement within the month). Otherwise I consi... More About: Paper
Awk - Error - Unterminated String
2010-09-24 13:49:00 I was frustrated using awk recently. I had created a awk file to do some batch processing of text file information. Anyhow, I had a large text section to create an SQL statement from. It spanned multiple lines and I had used a backslash "" to indicate the string continued on the next line. I had a syntax problem however. It was saying I had an unterminated string. I googled for the answer and checked to make sure every line of my text section had a backslash (which it did) and I couldn't figure it out. Below is the error I had. awk: query.awk:2: print "SELECT awk: query.awk:2: ^ unterminated string Anyhow, last straw was to go to everyline that had the backslash at the end and remove any spaces at that came after the backslash (so between the slash and the true end of the line). This fixed my problem.Published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:49:27 MST. - 2 Comments
P90X
2009-09-22 05:45:00 If you haven't heard of P90X, it is the infomercial, workout program that is commonly seen on late night television or in fitness magazines. Basically, it is a DVD video workout program that involves lifting weights, pushups, chinups, cardio, yoga, and other workouts to get you in shape. I have been doing it for a couple weeks on a more casual basis, but have started today doing the official program. Basically 90 days of fitness routines and diet. I'm going to take it easy on the diet, but will follow the fitness routines as close as possible. I'm doing the classic routine, which is basically 1 strength routine followed by a cardio routine the next day. This is 6 days like this, one day off, and then repeat. After 3 weeks, it is a break week with 6 cardio, stretching, or yoga days and then back into another set of 3 weeks. After 90 days, presto. I did my before pictures and measurements and will keep you posted on the 30 day, 60 day, and 90 day status. Check out P90X on ...
Disable Away Mode in Windows Vista
2009-09-04 13:24:00 I had a really annoying situation with my Acer Extensa 5420 laptop recently. It would not sleep or go into sleep mode. I would press the sleep button, close the lid, and would even try to do it through the Windows Start menu's Shutdown section, but the laptop would still be powered on and usually just go back to the Windows login screen. The problem of it not sleeping came from setting up a Windows Media Extender (otherwise known as my Xbox 360). When you set up a Windows Media Extender as part of your Windows Multimedia Center, it will ask you if you want to enable or turn on Away Mode . This is what can disable your sleep functionality. It is probably more suitable for a PC than my laptop. At first, I remapped my lid closing action and sleep button to hibernate. Hibernate is where the laptop truly saves power because it saves the laptop's state to the hard disk. Sleep just puts the laptop into power save mode basically, but is still using a slight bit of power to keep th... More About: Windows Vista , Vista
Sorting Photos in Windows Photo Gallery
2009-08-21 09:08:00 I thought I would try out Windows Photo Gallery as a tool to work my photos. This application is included with Windows Vista. Basically you can import your photos into this application and then use it to tag, rate, filter, edit, and perform some other tasks to them. Anyhow, I uploaded all my trip photos as well as the photos from others on my trip and I have over 3,700 photos to go through. What I did was put them all into the same folder and import them into Windows Photo Gallery. Next, I sorted them by Date Taken so that I had all the photos in the correct order (you need to make sure everyone had the same date setting on their cameras). Once a double clicked on the first one, it opened up into full screen and it allows you to navigate through the photos one at a time. While looking at each photo, you can press the arrow keys to go forward or back. The other thing you can do is press the number keys 0-5 to rate the pictures with the corresponding number of stars. Check th... More About: Photos , Sorting
Recovering Pictures or Files on Flash Memory
2009-08-12 20:58:00 I had a scary moment on my most recent trip. My card appeared to fail after I had taken a week's worth of pictures in Nepal. My Nikon D70s started flashing "For", which indicates the compact flash card inside needs to be formatted. I was unable to view the pictures and if I put it into a card reader and tried to access it on Windows, it just wanted to format the card. I waited a month, until I arrived home, to try and recover the pictures. I tried 8 different programs and I found two that were able to do it. RescuePro was one of them. They let you download a trial of it and see if it will actually work before you have to buy. It will access the flash card and then scan it. After awhile, it shows you thumbnails and will let you recover a small number of the files for free. If you see your files and think it is worth it, then you can pay the US$40 for a license. Active File Recovery is the other one that worked. This program is a little more full-featured. It can reco... More About: Pictures , Flash , Memory , Flash Memory , Files
Traveling Right Now
2009-08-02 15:49:00 In case you were wondering, I am traveling right in southern Asia. Currently in Sri Lanka actually. It has been a blast and I'll be back to blogging soon. Not that I have written many articles lately anyways.Published on Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:49:27 MST. - 0 Comments More About: Traveling
Scrolling Horizontal Lines on Monitor
2009-06-02 07:25:00 Just to give you the run down. I recently purchased a different computer and in re-wiring everything, my monitor start to have fuzzy horizontal scrolling lines that would move slowly down the screen all the time. There were usually two on the screen at any given time and would takes several seconds to move to the bottom before another one would start at the top. It seemed intermittent and I tried moving the cables around, but eventually it settled into being permanently there. Solution Anyhow, a friend of mine suggested that it could be interference as I was using the old VGA cable to connect to my computer. This is an analog signal and is subject to interference that digital cables are not. So I hooked up a DVI cable, since my video card also had that output on it and my monitor also had that input. That completely cleared up the problem and with the DVI cable I have none of those fuzzy lines moving down my screen.Published on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:25:30 MST. - 0 Comments More About: Monitor , Lines
Dell Studio Slim Desktop
2009-05-19 17:05:00 I finally upgraded to a new computer. My last new desktop was purchased in November of 2002, which is a long time ago in the computer world. I have done a couple of upgrades, but for the most part it was pretty original. It was a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB video card, 160GB hard drive, DVDRW, and that was pretty much it. It didn't even have USB 2.0 on it. That being said, I could still photo edit with it, do some video editing, watch videos, and even play WoW. I sold it for $80 the first day I listed it in the Buy 'n' Sell. The New Machine I am quite impressed so far with my Studio Slim . I found it used in my city for only $400 so getting a bit of a deal was even a better find for me. Anyhow, here are the specs. Dell Studio Slim Specs Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4GHz) 4GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM (4 X 1GB) Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit ATI Radeon 3650 512MB DDR2 320 GB Hard Drive DVDRW 15 in 1 card reader Bluetooth USB2.0 jacks front and bac... More About: Desktop
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - Theatre Calgary
2009-04-30 07:21:00 My wife and I attended Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that was part of our play series with Theatre Calgary . I have to say it was probably the funniest musical I have seen to date and I have seen a few in New York and others as they tour through. As far as overall quality, I wouldn't say it was the best, but the humour was fantastic. Definitely more of an adult's performance with some low brow, crude humour. It is basically about 2 con artists who woo wealth women and take advantage of them for their money. The one con artist is your older suave gentlemen and the other is a young one wanting to learn the ropes. The whole experience is hilarious. I would recommend anyone to go see this sans your children.Published on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:21:04 MST. - 0 Comments
Cloning Your Hard Drive to Another Hard Drive
2008-06-06 14:15:00 A friend of mine the other day had their hard drive approaching death. It was grinding away and had a number of errors occurring. It was time to replace it. After picking up a hard drive that was almost double the size, he gave it to me as I offered to install it. There are two main things you need to do when upgrading or replacing your hard drive: Installing the drive. Copy over your data. Installing the drive is the easy part. Just open up the case, find a spot that is available and the data and power cables can reach the drive from there. Plug everything in, turn on the computer and make sure it can detect the drive. Duplicating Data From Hard Drive to Hard Drive I had done this a few times before with Norton Ghost, but I couldn't find a trial copy that would let me do it. It was time to look for something else. I ended up downloading the basic version of HDClone. A free piece of software that does the trick. Basically, you just download it and unzip it. There is ... More About: Cloning
Earn Revenue Online - May 2008 Recap
2008-06-04 13:28:00 May 2008 has come and past and another month of earnings is in the books. Another record for Adsense I might add. Thoughts From My Life Traffic Stats for May 2008 May's numbers and April's numbers are in brackets. Page Loads: 26,358 (21,802) Unique Visitors: 17,311 (14,086) Average Uniques/Day: 558 (469) Lowest Uniques/Day: 474 (384) Highest Uniques/Day: 637 (592) This month was a record for almost every metric. Way more traffic and it was very consistent across the month. Kind of strange as I didn't write as much this month but traffic picked up for my usual articles. May 2008 Traffic Thoughts From My Life Revenue Overall, my earnings for May 2008 were $290.09. Here is the breakdown with last month's numbers in brackets. PayU2Blog: $95.00 ($65.00) Adsense: $168.77 ($135.14) Kontera: $26.32 ($29.69) LinkWorth: $0 ($10.50) Azoogle: $0.00 ($0.00) Commission Junction: $0.00 ($0.00) My Adsense set a new record. It just keeps going up on the increased traffic to my... More About: Earn , Online , Recap
Basement Is Rented
2008-05-29 19:32:00 Well, the suite is rented so that is exciting! We are going to scramble and try to get a few renos done while we have the opportunity as well. One of the rooms doesn't have a closet and definitely has enough room for it, so I will see if I can get one done. Would also like a more durable coat rack and shelf in the entrance.Published on Thu, 29 May 2008 10:32:48 MST. - 0 Comments
Renting Out The Basement...Again
2008-05-21 21:26:00 Sorry for not posting in awhile. It has been busy and I have been lazy as well. The most recent turn of events is that our tenants downstairs are leaving so I have posted an ad to rent it out again. It is actually a pretty sweet little location. Bus stop out front, newly renovated, two bedroom, 1000 square feet, laundry, large backyard, tons of parking, utilities are included, and the internet is included as well. Don't really need to do anything other than hook up the phone. Hopefully it goes well. We just did some showings today and hopefully do more going into the weekend.Published on Wed, 21 May 2008 12:26:25 MST. - 0 Comments More About: The Basement , Renting
Credit Card Fees - Are They Worth It
2008-05-12 17:57:00 I have had a few people write me concerning my articles on Aeroplan and Airmiles, asking how I created my formulas for figuring out how much money you would need to put through your credit card to get back the annual fee for the credit card. This only works for cards that have a reward feature like airmiles, aeroplan points, or some other reward points. I will try and get a baseline value for each type of reward point on each card and keep it in a table on this page (see below). If you want me to look at a card, let me know the name of it and I will look up the details. This page will have 3 sections. Show how I create my formula for how much money you need to spend on a credit card to pay for the fees. List the formula for major cards. Use one of the reward items available for each card to figure out an exact value for how much money needs to go through the card to pay for itself for that reward item. I'll try to stick to gift cards since the value is fixed (i.e. $20 gift ca... More About: Card , Credit , Fees , Credit Card , Worth
Replacing The Tailpiece On My Mandolin
2008-05-07 14:29:00 I unfortunately broke a piece of the tailpiece off on my mandolin the other day. I was restringing it and was putting on some old strings (they hadn't been used) I purchased a few years ago. I don't know if that was the problem or not, but one the little pegs in the tailpiece that the eye of the string holds onto snapped off. I didn't know what to do, so I phoned around to a number of places in Calgary and no one wanted to deal with it. Replacement tailpieces were selling upwards of $100 on eBay so that didn't look very good either. I ended up phoning Long & McQuade here in Calgary (Calgary Long & McQuade) and they said to bring it by and they would take a look. Anyhow, I walked in and they have a replacement tailpiece of the exact same shape and size for $20. I couldn't believe my luck. It was the same size as my original so I could use my Kentucky tailpiece cover on it as well. It wasn't even stored in the back. It was a plastic wrapped item on a display shelf. I ...
Earn Revenue Online - April 2008 Recap
2008-05-05 14:21:00 April finished last week, but I was a bit slow in tallying the results this time. I did have a new record this month and it maintained the status quo overall, but I still need to work on improving the traffic. Thoughts From My Life Traffic Stats for April 2008 April's numbers and March's numbers are in brackets. Page Loads: 21,802 (21,599) Unique Visitors: 14,086 (14,029) Average Uniques/Day: 469 (452) Lowest Uniques/Day: 384 (299) Highest Uniques/Day: 592 (630) I had good traffic again across the whole month and set records just barely for a few of my metrics above. I am pleased with that as a few other bloggers have reported less earning for the month of April. April 2008 Traffic Thoughts From My Life Revenue Overall, my earnings for April 2008 were $240.33. Here is the breakdown with last month's numbers in brackets. PayU2Blog: $65.00 ($10.00) Adsense: $135.14 ($129.26) Kontera: $29.69 ($40.87) LinkWorth: $10.50 ($10.50) Azoogle: $0.00 ($0.00) Commission Junctio... More About: April , Earn , Online , Recap
File Reading On the DS In An Emulator and on the DS
2008-05-02 12:23:00 One of the biggest annoyances when developing a homebrew application for the Nintendo DS is when your application is using the FAT library to read files and you want to be run your application in an emulator like nocash (no$gba) and have it work on the DS with minimal changes. I have finally found a technique to do this that works very well. It lets you use FAT file access in an NDS emulator or another way to put it is libfat in an emulator. The only catch is that is only works for reading and not writing. The result is also in two separate NDS roms. One works in the emulator and one will work on your DS. However, this big plus is that your homebrew code does not need to change to work with both. It allows you to code, test, and repeat without any extra work. I found the information to solve this issue from two separate articles: FCSR Tutorial - I actually just found this so haven't used it myself, but it looks simpler and I think it should work too. http://forum.gbadev.org/... More About: Reading , File
Win32 Application and Logging To The Console
2008-05-01 13:22:00 I have been writing demo applications using OpenGL recently in C++. I documented how to set up the environment and create a project in my article OpenGL and Visual Studio Express 2008. I started out by writing the application as a Win32 application. This was a problem though. When you are doing it in a Win32 project instead of a Win32 Console project it makes it very hard to do simple debugging using print statements. If you are like me, I like to scatter prinf or cout statements through different parts of my code so I can trace the progress and examine variables during development. It makes it very easy. If you use these statements in a Win32 project however, this output does not get printed out to the console or anywhere for that matter. It is just eaten and no errors are incurred. My Solution to Logging On Win32 Projects The correct solution, which I didn't do, is to create a logging interface. Either create a separate dialog window that you can write your statements t... More About: Application
Largest Cruise Ship In The World Under Construction (pics)
2008-04-30 04:29:00 The world's largest cruise ship is under construction in Finland right now. My brother-in-law has been over to work on it a number of times and every time he shows us some pictures, but he is not allowed to give them out. Royal Caribbean, who is building the cruise ships, has finally released photos of its construction. The project is called Genesis and you can read more about it on the Genesis Wikipedia article. It is rather impressive as it will hold over 25% more passengers and has over 53% more gross tonnage than the Freedom of the Seas, in the current class of largest cruise ships (also owned by Royal Caribbean). Anyhow, there are a few pictures below, but you can check out the Royal Caribbean Genesis Gallery and the Genesis Renderings for more. Genesis Class Ship Construction Genesis Class Ship Construction Published on Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:29:21 MST. - 0 Comments More About: World , The World , Cruise
Nintendo DS Homebrew Bonanza
2008-04-25 17:22:00 I have tested out more homebrew in the past week than I ever have with my Nintendo DS. It has been quite refreshing really. Everything from animation drawing, flight games, video players, book readers, platform games, puzzles, emulators, and more. There are some neat ones out there and I will write some reviews on them in the future, but a lot of them are still in their infancy or have been abandoned anyways. If you are looking to try different kinds our yourself, they can be difficult to find and I just found a new site the other day that had tons that I have never been too. Here is a list of ones you can try out. NDS Homebrew - lots to download Nintendo DS Emulation News - news of current projects and releases Drunken Coders - great news and check out their Homebrew Catalog Dev Scene NDS Homebrew Repository - just explore in here. A lot of links from other sites might just go here. Published on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:22:38 MST. - 0 Comments More About: Nintendo Ds
Nintendo DS Homebrew Bonanza
2008-04-25 17:22:00 I have tested out more homebrew in the past week than I ever have with my Nintendo DS. It has been quite refreshing really. Everything from animation drawing, flight games, video players, book readers, platform games, puzzles, emulators, and more. There are some neat ones out there and I will write some reviews on them in the future, but a lot of them are still in their infancy or have been abandoned anyways. If you are looking to try different kinds our yourself, they can be difficult to find and I just found a new site the other day that had tons that I have never been too. Here is a list of ones you can try out. NDS Homebrew - lots to download Nintendo DS Emulation News - news of current projects and releases Drunken Coders - great news and check out their Homebrew Catalog Dev Scene NDS Homebrew Repository - just explore in here. A lot of links from other sites might just go here. Published on Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:22:38 MST. - 0 Comments More About: Nintendo Ds
Starcraft On The Nintendo DS
More articles from this author:2008-04-23 17:39:00 Unbelievable! This the game I would love to see come to the Nintendo DS. StarCraft is one of my favorite real time strategy (RTS) games of all time. There were rumours of it coming to the DS, but is has never been announced by Blizzard and I can't imagine them doing it now. Anyhow, a group of guys did a "proof of concept" for the game. I downloaded it from the StarLite download page. Unfortunately, they have already been shut down by Blizzard I have heard, so this will be as far as it goes I suppose. Watch the video, this is how the downloadable version plays exactly. Published on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:39:36 MST. - 0 Comments More About: Starcraft , Nintendo Ds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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