Photo of the day: A blue christmas by Kyle

Web site of the day: www.vimeo.com

Here's a great site I recently discovered similar to youtube but has some really great quality videos.

I urge you to check it out for some great content at:

http://www.vimeo.com/

Song of the day: Champions of Nothing(Live)

Matthew Good is one of the greatest Canadian musicians and grossly underrated. Recently I purchased a live version of a song named 'Champions of Nothing' which was recorded at Massey Hall. A great version of this tune from an outstanding performer.

"Avalanche" is my favorite Matthew Good album followed by "Hospital Music".

Feel free to drop me a line of your favorite Mat Good songs, or other artists similar to his style and talent.

My trip to Campabello this past summer

I had a wonderful day trip this past summer with Lisa, Michiah, and Pam to Campabello for my first time. It was a very different type of place giving very much a feeling of little true fishing villages along the way.

A great experience and day well spent with loved ones.

Software of the Day: Google Earth

For all of you who haven't heard of, or haven't tried Google Earth software, please do it now... It is a fantastic piece of software allowing you to travel a 3d globe of earth and zooming right into your own backyard if you like. Google Earth has many great features with many layers of information such as roads, weather, photos and videos submitted by users, etc. The list just seems to continue expanding from this terrific software which is free by the way.

So go get it at:

http://earth.google.com/index.html

Software of the day: iTunes

In the last year, I've come to learn that Apple is an outstanding company delivering amazing products, services, commercials, hardware and software, etc.

iTunes is a great piece of software I've been using for quite some time and on a daily basis. It is great for managing and playing all sorts of media as well as free and purchasable content from Apple directly via iTunes.

I listen to tens of podcasts each day and iTunes makes it very easy to locate, subscribe, listen, and update them.

Another great feature I use is for listening to all of the free online streaming radio stations.

Try iTunes out, you will find lots of great free content.

Web site of the day: Virtual Stock Exchange

Recently I discovered this great free web site where your can create and/or join stock exchange games based on the real stock market. Each game has criteria such as how much money you start with, and how long the game lasts(days, months, years, etc.). With my interest in the stock market starting recently, this seems to be a great way to play without losing your shirt.

Site is at: http://vse.marketwatch.com/Game/Homepage.aspx

Word of the day: bailout

A rescue from financial difficulties.



This just seemed appropriate...

Stock Market 2008

Well this year is my first entry into purchasing my own stocks on the market. Brings me lots of excitement and things to learn, especially with such radical changes in the market each day in these troubling times.

Stocks I'm watching out of my own interest are:
- FRE - Freddie Mac
- BNS - Bank of Nova Scotia
- NVDA - Nvidia
- BMO - Bank of Montreal
- COKE - Coca Cola
- MFC - Manulife
- AAPL - Apple

I'm primarily searching for good blue chip stocks producing high dividends. If you have any winners, please drop me a line.

Free Visual Disk Usage and Cleanup Tool for Windows

Hey

Ever wonder what is consuming all your drive space on your Windows PC? Well, today I was informed of a great free product call 'WinDirStat'. You can find it at : http://fr.ugal.it/windirstat-free-visual-disk-usage-and-cleanup-tool-for-windows/

I've used this software and cannot tell you just how useful this was to me in trying to find where all my space was being consumed.

Try it out and tell me what you think. This is instantly one of my favorite apps for Windows.

Word or Site of the Day

This morning I found a great HOWTO site for source control management for all you developers out there:

http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html

Word or Site of the Day

Word of the day today is:

capacious \kuh-PAY-shuhs\, adjective:
Able to contain much; roomy; spacious.

Word or Site of the Day

Wikipedia is a great site that I use on a weekly and almost daily basis. It is full of great content and updated daily. When there is a subject you want more information on, check it out at:

http://wikipedia.org/

Word or Site of the Day

cogent \KOH-juhnt\, adjective:
Having the power to compel conviction; appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.

Podcasts

In the last year podcasts have quickly become one of my favorite things to listen to. There are podcasts on many subjects and the average joe seems to be getting quite good at these.

If you are new to podcasts, I encourage you to download itunes software and use it to browse, download, and listen to the piles of free podcasts available.

Podcasts to me bring free content from everyday people who share your same interests and they often have resources/access to people for great interviews. For example I listen to many photography podcasts of which they interview all kinds of famous professional photographers. What a great way to gain insight instead of just reading books.

Currently I listen to many podcasts on photography, Mac OS, and computer programming. The vast number of them keep me more than entertained even with this small number of interests listed.

So if you haven't tried listening to podcasts, give a try, they have lots to offer. Who knows maybe someday you'll be hosting your own show...

Word or Site of the Day

For any of you out there considering the purchase of an iMac or Macbook, the Apple site listed below has two very good videos that strongly convinced me that I was buying an excellent product. Also on the Apple site are many videos and tutorials on how to quickly and easily use your Mac or iLife08. These videos are well done and urge any of you on the fence to watch them, or even if you haven't put much thought into a Mac before, check them out anyway, you might just start thinking of your next purchase...

Site: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/guidedtours/leopard.html

iEverything

The short...        If you don't own a Mac, get one!   As a long experienced computer programmer and user I can tell you these machines are outstanding.  Their feature list is amazing, ease of use just as good, performance is quite something, beauty and elegance are to be noted, quickly growing community, developers, and applications, ability to run Windows and software via virtualization, etc.

It is truly just an awesome experience with these machines, they work much more the way you'd expect things to work, they're stable, they're quick, they're secure, and they're fun.

Amazing work Apple...

PersonalBrain 4 - free mind mapping software

Today I thought I'd share with you quickly a terrific piece of free software both for Mac OS and Windows.  It is called PersonalBrain 4 and is free.  I've been using this software for about a month on both platforms and am very impressed with how well it works, how easy and flexible it is, and how easily you can navigate and search.

The basics of it is creating thoughts and then attaching other thoughts as you see them related.  A great feature is that you can attach many things from your computer such as: files, emails, application shortcuts, web site addresses by dragging and dropping them onto a 'thought'.  

I encourage all of you to try this great piece of software as it is so flexible and open-ended for you to store information and very quickly find it.  I use both for personal and work things in my life I want to remember or keep track of.

Word or Site of the day

As a test to see if this drives traffic to my site as well as a way to keep me more active, I'm going to try making blog posts of either words or sites, etc. that may draw traffic from search engines.

The site today is: http://www.pbase.com