A1Great! From Ottawa, Ontario

A1 Great! Part lies, part heart, part truth, part garbage.

five twats from twitter

Heh RT @hodgman: Instead of football, going to have a second martini and teach my wife to play little big planet. EAT IT, JOCKS. 2010/02/08
Seriously - 'A More Accurate Name' http://bit.ly/bl4bwO thx @kylehodgson 2010/02/08
Implemented a custom font for the first time on the ol' http://www.a1great.com/ tonight. Too easy! 2010/02/06
A good stiff drink before a skate on the Canal is considered proper form, isn't it? 2010/02/04
@AskAroundOttawa I like the Tzan Wagon at Bank & Laurier, but it's usually only there for the gov't crowd, M-F lunchtime 2010/02/04

If short attention span stuff is your thing, my Twitter page is probably where you want to be.

some freebies

It is in the interest of the public good that I pass on three free things I noticed today, two of which I am taking advantage of myself.

Coldplay recorded nine songs during their last tour and bundled ‘em as a digital EP of sorts. Download it here, no charge.
The National Post is offering sixty days of free delivery in exchange for your not at all bogus or made up answers to their survey. Nothing fixes a bankruptcy problem like giving away your product in exchange for dubious market research results!
And lastly (and mostly), the Demonoid torrent tracker is offering open registrations. This is usually a somewhat semi-public site that does not offer full functionality without being a member, and membership is usually invite-only, so this is A Good Thing™. Another free TV source for me, thank you very much.

All are probably available for a limited time only, subject to terms and conditions, please see back of package for more details, your mileage may vary, IANAL, tl;dr, please and thank you.

posted here on February 7th, 2010 | Permalink | 2 Comments »

two hours with the jabra halo

As a computer user, I do think it’s high time I started using online calling as a tool to help me talk to people (loathsome though they can sometimes be). I have heard that other computer users have been actively doing this for some time – that it is, in fact, No Big Deal. Fine! I will join.

But I want to do it wireless. Bluetooth, A2DP that is, “stereo” to you country folk – and it’d be nice to also use the headset with my iPod Touch. It’d be a feature! And my computer is Bluetooth-enabled, so, you know, should be no problem, right?

My first foray into this exciting world of telecommunications was to come via the Jabra Halo, a rather nice-looking headset that was on sale at the local Future Slut for about $40 off the usual price – worth a try, according to me.

Turns out me is an idiot.

Brought the Halo home. Cut my left index finger opening the packaging. This is mainly my fault – I was so young then, so excited to get started!
Plugged the headset in, as is typically the ritual with anything new and wireless. Noticed the blinking green battery light and thought it a good sign.
Perused the instruction manual over lunch. Noted that a solid red battery light meant charging, while a solid green meant battery full. No mention of blinking green. Thought maybe I had unlocked a special feature that would allow me to, I dunno, be more awesome than usual, or something. If over-the-ear headphones don’t announce your awesomeness, what does, right?
Examine the headset, noting that it must be fully opened to be turned ‘on’ and that it will apparantly only charge if ‘on’. Set the swivel pieces to various positions, assuming that one of them must be ‘on’. Blinking green persists throughout.
Google the thing a bit. Read many complaints about the charging, blinking problem. Also: the hinges, when adjusted inadvertently, will cause the headset to unpair, hanging up or dropping your call, or losing your music, or whatever. Third: the default lowest volume setting is ‘too loud’ for most reviewers – or perhaps ‘too loud’ is too kind, as one writer suggests ‘ear splitting’ instead. Oh, and the Jabra website failed to load in Chrome most of the time, and the URL suggested to consult in the manual in case of problems… yeah, 404.
Observe more green light blinking for a moment.
Bundle up my new Jabra Halo, grab my receipt, and take it back to Future Slut.

So, those were my two hours spent with the Jabra Halo. Thumbs down, in case you’re just skimming for a conclusion. I haven’t had such an unsatisfying experience with a piece of electronics like that in quite some time. Felt great to bring it back to the store, though.

My first foray into wireless Skype-type calling was a dud. Are you using an A2DP-type device to Skype, or Google Talk, or whatever? Tell me all about it.

posted here on February 3rd, 2010 | Permalink | 1 Comment »

freelance is a strange word

Two recent pieces from the occasionally-useful Lifehacker: Why you should think twice about freelancing, and Top 10 tips and tools for freelancers. Here’s something more: when isolated from humanity because you’re working in your basement all the time, you may occasionally forget that it’s socially unacceptable to multi-task by brushing your teeth while you stroll out to get the mail.

Not that that’s happened to me personally, but I’ve heard about it. So, you know, important to remember.

posted here on February 1st, 2010 | Permalink | Comment here »

community-based social blogging

I find myself shackled with a bit of writer’s block. Both personally and professionally, I can’t seem to make words come out in an effective and interesting manner. I’d even take just effective, really – interesting can be a lot to ask, and I don’t know that I’m my own best judge of what people want of me, especially as it relates to my own personal schedule and lifestyle:

cleaning up a lot of vomit for a while there
sitting in my basement working all day
seriously considering spending money I don’t have right now on this
trying not to drink beer all the time, but it’s good, so why not?

And so on.

Professionally, I’ve been doing a lot of design for the past week or so, timely considering my lack of brain for writing. Making other people’s stuff look nicer takes care of a different kind of itch, I guess. I’ve also been participating in some interesting talk about the broad topic of online marketing and where to go next with one company’s particular product. We have been working specifically on the name of their man in charge, trying to make the internet believe that his name is synonymous with the business, and that’s worked well. Now it’s time to tackle something more broad, and I’m developing at least one mini-site for them, taking a PDF and making the keywords pop, as it were.

What I didn’t do was attend that anti-prorogation rally on Parliament Hill last weekend, or whenever it was. I guess I should have, but with absolutely no evidence to suggest that Stephen Harper and his gaggle of inert fucks can even hear the public voice, let alone give a shit about what that voice is saying, well… it just didn’t seem like a good use of my time. So I went swimming instead. That’s another one:

occasionally hitting the gym or other physical activity facility

The Plant Bath pool is nothing special. That’s not a very popular white-middle-class thing to say, but I’m saying it. Dirty in there. Old guy showering for a solid thirty minutes, maybe more. Ew.

What was I saying? Right, the government – I’ve been so into Ignoreland by R.E.M. recently, and there are parallels here, I think. Listen:

R.E.M. - Ignoreland

“The bastards stole their power from the victims of the Us v. Them years,
Wrecking all things virtuous and true
The undermining social democratic downhill slide into abysmal
Lost lamb off the precipice into the trickle down runoff pool

They hypnotised the summer, 1979
Marched into the capital brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready,
Heartless, and labeled. Super US citizen, super achiever,
Mega ultra power doesn’t relax.
Defense, defense, defense, defense. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland
Yeah, yeah, yeah

The information nation took their clues from all the sound-bite gluttons
1980, 84, 88, 92 too, too
How to be what you can be, junk, damn junk in your energy
How to walk in dignity with throw up on your shoes

They amplified the autumn, 1979
Calculate the capital, offer the public my skinny ass
TV tells a million lies. The paper’s terrified to report
Anything that isn’t handed on a presidential spoon,
I’m just profoundly frustrated by all this. So, fuck you, man (fuck ‘em)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland

If it wasn’t them, we would have created them. Maybe, it’s true,
But I’m resentful all the same. Someone’s got to take the blame
I know that this is vitriol. No solution, spleen venting,
But I feel better having screamed. Don’t you?

They desecrate the winter, 1979
Capital collateral. Brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready,
Heartless, and labeled. Super US citizen, super achiever,
Mega ultra power doesn’t relax.
Defense, defense, defense, defense. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah
I did not do the revolution
Thank you”

What writer’s block?

posted here on January 29th, 2010 | Permalink | 2 Comments »

uh oh

With New Client, ICQ (Finally) Enters The Realtime Era. Remember ICQ? Probably not!

Of course, in my role as internet geezer, I am obligated to say that I remember ICQ, the first instant messaging service I ever registered with. I was an IRC loser at the time, chatting away for hours in the glory days of online ‘rooms’ where like-minded computer users gathered to talk about stuff (in my case, HTML! What a nerd).

ICQ removed the ‘room’ from this scenario and allowed direct, one-to-one chat via a little program that sat there in your taskbar, letting your similiarly-equipped friends know that you were online, or offline, or ‘away’, or whatever. Believe it or not, kids, ICQ was popular before Yahoo Messenger, and before MSN, and definitely before AIM and Google Talk and all the rest. And the pithy status updates now found on your Facebook and Twitter pages have been a long time coming, well-worn and practiced hard in these chat programs.

(I am particularly fond of my latest ‘away’ message, ‘extended lunch break remix’. Nerd again! Are you on Google Talk too? Leave me a message in the comments, I’ll add you.)

Anyway, ICQ itself started to look old pretty quickly, as flashy alternatives took its place, with their sensible registration processes that allowed users to identify themselves with their e-mail addresses or usernames that they chose, instead of ICQ’s numbered handles. Another thing internet geezers like me take pride in is having been there first, and my seven-digit ICQ number signals that I was a pretty early adopter – they give out eleven- and twelve-digit numbers now, I think. (Other prideful early website registrant: Metafilter, user 594 of today’s 65,000+. The t-shirt still wasn’t free.)

No one I know is still hanging out on ICQ – it’s been considered a dead network for forever, eight or nine years at a minimum. But I’m always looking for an excuse to try new online services, which is why I’ve set up at IMO, a web-based catch-all chat software that allows me to log into all of my old, dead instant messenger accounts, in the vain hope that someone I used to know will appear online for five seconds, only to have no recollection of who the hell I am and delete me from their user list.

I’m signed into ICQ from IMO, so should this latest update to their chat software stir some nostalgia for any of my fellow internet geezers who read the mighty A1 Great, look for me – I’m 2789931. Catchy handle, amirite? I’ll be looking for you, first favorite web designer Michelle, first co-op student ever Dave Ashford, domain derelict and world traveller Jody, brothers phildo and Reklaw, guy I never really knew who the hell you were ‘the Ombudsman’, new boss Uncle Jaeson, and yes, even Kyle, who you all met last week.

Am I the only one who remembers Sissyfight, too? I am so fucking OLD.

posted here on January 19th, 2010 | Permalink | 1 Comment »

"Just what our apartment does when we're not around does not concern us." - Apartment Song, the Tragically Hip