2009 – Page 5 – Daleisphere

January 18, 2009February 28, 2017

Use Glass Marbles to Save Open Bottles of Wine

Last evening I attended a Spanish wine tasting event at Café Taste (1330 Queen St. Toronto). I was participating in a single’s event put on by Toronto’s Meet Market Adventures.

As a single person, I frequently open a bottle of wine and drink just a glass or two. Over the years, I’ve experimented with different ways of saving the wine in open bottles. For the last couple years I’ve used the vacu vin stainless steel wine saver pump to remove air from the bottle to store it for another day. Unfortunately this method only keeps the wine for a day or two max. And, the emptier the bottle the less well it works.

I asked our Café Taste host, Jeremy Day (pictured below), if he had any other suggestions to preserve an open bottle of wine. He came up with the remarkably sensible suggestion of putting sterilized marbles into the bottle and then recorking. What a clever idea!

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January 16, 2009February 28, 2017

Windows 7 Beta – First Impressions, Problems, Bugs, Likes and Dislikes

On Sunday January 11, 2009, I upgraded my 64 bit Windows Vista production PC to the 64 bit Windows 7 Beta (‘’W7B’) (available here until ~~Jan 24~~ February 10, 2009).

The installation was straight forward. It took about two hours to complete on my system (I understand clean installs can be done in about 20 minutes). After answering a few questions, the upgrade took care of itself.

[Update: On Sunday January 18, installed W7B on my Lenovo x41 Tablet in dual-boot mode. So far so good. I hope to write a separate post about my tablet experiences with it soon.’]

Below I describe the problems, bugs, likes, dislikes and other observations I’ve made after constantly using the beta in a production environment for five days.

1. Upgrade Problems, Issues, Bugs

The upgrade went smoothly for the most part. But, I did experience the following problems, issues and bugs:

Windows Desktop Gadgets Do Not Work When UAC is Shut Off: This bug took me several days to isolate. As you’ll read below, I shut off UAC because, among other reasons, Woopra wouldn’t start automatically with it turned on. Isolation was tricky because when you first turn off UAC, the gadgets don’t immediately disappear. But they will be gone after your next reboot. In my case the next reboot came after I installed a sound card driver (see below). For days I though my sound card driver was knocking out my gadgets … until I found this article explaining the bug. Suffice it to say, in Windows 7 Beta, if you turn off UAC, your gadgets will disappear. For now I’ve set UAC on the lowest settings to keep my gadgets going. This means Woopra won’t auto-start any more (see below) and I have to manually bypass the UAC warnings each time I manually start it up.
Multi-monitor & Screen Resolution Setup Issue: I have four monitors connected to my Dell XPS rig. Both: (i) the relative positioning settings (ie: where monitors sit next to each other); and (ii) the screen resolution settings s (ie: 1900 x 1200); used in Vista were futzed up after the upgrade. Plus, the procedure used to adjust the relative monitor positioning has changed in W7B. It took me some time to figure that out. To adjust each of these settings in W7B, right click on the desktop and select ‘Screen Resolution’ (click image for larger view). From there you can position your monitors and set the screen resolutions back to where they should be.

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January 14, 2009February 28, 2017

Yes Man (2008)

(3/5) romantic comedy

Reference: |

Reviews: Roger Ebert (2/4) | IMDb External Reviews | Rotten Tomatoes 42% | Metacritic 46%

Yes Man (2008) is a story about taking chances, trying new things and getting the most out of life. After attending a motivational seminar, Carl decides to say ‘Yes’ to every ‘opportunity’ thrown his way. The story that follows is eminently predictable, but still enjoyable and rather uplifting.

Jim Carrey plays Carl with ‘a little less’ than his normal whacky shtick. That is a good thing. Carrey, best suited for this type of role, does a fine job.

yes man (2008) - jim carrey and zooey deschanel
Zooey Deschanel is another of my favourite contemporary comedic/romantic actresses. She is, once again, type-cast as a quirky, yet adorable, eccentric. For that reason, she was the only thing I enjoyed about the otherwise disappointing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005). As always, I enjoyed her performance here. I would like to see her stretch a bit in future films. She is, I believe, an actress capable of so much more than her film choices do date have allowed her.

Yes Man is a touching, romantic comedy, suitable for the entire family.

January 13, 2009February 28, 2017

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

slumdog millionaire poster (5/5) drama, romance

Reference: |

Reviews: Roger Ebert (4/4)| IMDb External Reviews | Rotten Tomatoes 94% | Metacritic 86%

This is a beautiful movie. It has an engaging story. The terrific cinematography captures India in a beautiful, yet realistic, way that I’ve never seen before. Slumdog Millionaire (2008) won Best Picture at the 2008 Golden Globes (see video). It deserved the win.

The casting was impeccable. Each of the three main characters age over the film. Three distinct actors played each of the three main characters (for a total of 9 actors) in childhood, youth and young adulthood. While obviously impossible, I really felt I was watching the same actor playing each character, aging through each stage of their respective lives. This was the first movie for all of them. All were very good.

I’m glad I didn’t know much about the plot before I entered the cinema. I don’t want to ruin it for you beyond what is revealed in the trailers. An unlikely boy (Jamel) from the Indian slums becomes a contestant on India’s version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’. The story – how a boy from the slums got to where he is, how his devotion to a girl, as she grew into a young woman, propelled him through life – is revealed through flash-backs. The story is lovely.

If you enjoy shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, you’ll want to hang around for the entertaining credits. I highly recommend this movie.

January 9, 2009February 28, 2017

Windows 7 Beta Available Today

windows 7 logo Starting today, anyone can download the Windows 7 beta (W7B) here. Microsoft’s promotional W7B page is here. The definitive WB7 blog post (by Brandon LeBlanc) explaining how it all works is here. The W7B FAQ is here. Paul Thurrott’s W7B info is here.

[Jan 10, 2009 – 2:30 pm EST Update: Official Microsoft Servers are back up! Get it here now! Microsoft has removed the 2.5 download cap. Anyone can download beta ~~for two full weeks (ending Jan 24~~ until February 10, 2009).]

~~[Jan 10, 2009 – 1:34 pm EST Update: Get it now! Click~~ ~~here~~ for instructions on how you can easily bypass the official download channels and get official Microsoft beta keys and links to the download. I just did this and got two keys – one for each of the 32 bit and for64 bit versions.]

~~[Jan 9, 2009 5:49pm EST Update: Warning: As you can see~~ ~~here, the Microsoft servers were slammed. Check back at~~ ~~the windows blog~~ ~~from time to time to be notified when download servers are back up.]~~

Warning: From this download instructions page:

The Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. You won’t be able to upgrade from the Beta to the final retail version of Windows 7.

You’ll know you are starting to get through when you get to this sign-up screen (click for larger view):

You’ll be all set with the key and ready to download when you see this screen:

The beta ~~is limited to the first 2.5 million downloads~~ will be available to all until January 24, 2009. Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are available. You will need a Windows Live ID (such as a Hotmail, MSN, Xbox Live account etc.). The beta will only upgrade computers with Vista SP1 installed. You can, however do a clean install from an XP machine (wiping out the OS and starting from scratch).

[Update: Sunday January 11: I have installed it. There’s been a few hiccups. It’s certainly faster than Vista. I intend to write a complete post about my experiences soon].

The download is an iso file. You’ll have to burn an .iso to a DVD in order to install. You can burn it to a DVD with Roxio or Nero. If you don’t have those, the free ImgBurn software will do the job.

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January 8, 2009February 28, 2017

Scoble Convinced me to Join friendfeed

Since joining Twitter a few months back, I have wanted to understand how it overlapped/interacted with the web-content aggregator friendfeed. I looked at friendfeed at least two or three times and never quite ‘got it’ – until today.

Robert Scoble was a guest on the recent episode 81 of net@night. This guy is quite the friendfeed evangelist (Arrington suggests he’s addicted to it). So much so that the net@nite discussion made me want to take another look. Leo mentioned that Scoble had done a ‘how to’ type video on friendfeed. A quick Google search lead me to this very informative 26 minute video: ‘Robert Scoble: 20 Things About Friendfeed”:

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January 7, 2009February 28, 2017

GRAN Torino (2008)

(4/5) drama

Reference: |

Reviews: Roger Ebert (3.5/4) | IMDb External Reviews | Rotten Tomatoes 73% | Metacritic 73%

Clint Eastwood hits another home run. I agree with my friend Don Bennett who said on exiting the movie: “I was expecting a good movie and I got a very good movie.”

In Gran Torino (2008) Eastwood plays an aging and grizzled Korean War veteran coming to terms with the death of his wife, a changing neighbourhood, disappointing children and grand children, an Asian family that has moved in next door and, most importantly, his life.

In his sunset years, this aging Dirty Harry’esque character unexpectedly becomes friends with the young boy next store. The boy, competently played by Bee Vang is torn between gang-life and the straight and narrow. More impressive is the performance of Ahney Her, his smart and feisty sister, who makes an effort to bridge the cultural divide.

Terrific movie. Probably not suitable for young children.

January 6, 2009February 28, 2017

How To Install IntenseDebate in WordPress 2.7

Since listening to this net@night podcast back in May 2008, where Amber and Leo interviewed Daniel Ha, the founder of the Disqus, I have been interested in implementing this kind of a community-oriented, commenting/discussion system on my blogs.

Early on, I had compared the feature set of Disqus and its competitor, IntenseDebate (“ID”), and Disqus’s feature set and looks won. Concerns surrounding the ability to import, export, sync and otherwise control my comments, held me back. I was not going to join any system where I lost ownership/control of my users’ comments.

In the interim, both Disqus and ID have added dynamic comment importing, exporting and synchronization features. I became comfortable that I would not be locked into any commenting system if/when I chose to leave. Scot Jangro’s December 30, 2008 post, ‘Comment System Review Redux’, compared the the two systems afresh and gave me substantial comfort that ID’s feature set had evolved to near parity with Disqus (see other comparisons: inquisitr.com | Mashable).

But the clincher came on Sept 23, 2008 when Automattic, the owner of WordPress, purchased IntenseDebate. (See: Matt Mullenweg’s comment – IntenseDebate’s comment – Disqus’s comment). I expect Automattic to integrate IntenseDebate’s community comment / discussion system into the WordPress core at some point. So, as a WordPress user, it seemed a no brainer to go with IntenseDebate.

[January 23, 2009 Update: Despite what I wrote above, I ultimately switched to Disqus not long after implementing Intense Debate. In my ‘Why I switched from IntenseDebate to Disqus’ post [coming soon] I describe why I made the switch.]

IntenseDebate’s WordPress Plugin features are discussed here. The newest WordPress Plugin (v 2.0.18) has been completely overhauled, making the installation and comment import/export/sync process much easier than it was.

Below I describe why I installed ID. I then walk you, step-by-step, through the IntenseDebate installation process in WordPress 2.7.

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