hexstatik

a few weeks back, crystal and i went down to the US to do a little shopping. while at the seattle premium outlets, i stopped off at a starbucks to enjoy a grande latte. apparently, while starbucks prides itself in consistency of it’s product, the branding and experience is slightly different in the two contries. when i ordered my coffee, i was asked my name and the barrista wrote it right on the cup. odd. also, the cup had a brown logo, whereas here, we have green. perhaps they are just changing their branding and it hasn’t moved up to canada yet.

the whole name thing though is a bit weird though - next time, i’m going to ask the barrista their name before i give mine.

firefox 3 was released today. i for one had started becoming annoyed with the instability of firefox 2, so i installed it earlier today. while i like safari’s speed and stablity more than firefox 2’s, there is no google toolbar available for safari, so i was pleased to see that upon installation of ff3, a new version of google toolbar was installed and working.

i have noticed it is quite a bit faster than ff2. it also looks MUCH better on my mac. only time will tell in the area of stability.

today is firefox’s “download day”, where they are trying to set a new world record for the most downloads in one 24 hour period, so if you have firefox 2, download it give it a try today.

today steve jobs unveiled the 3G iphone at WWDC ‘08 and made it official that the iphone will be arriving in canada on july 11th through rogers or fido. the last piece of the puzzle left to be revealed are the plans that rogers and fido will offer for the phone. I have high hopes that a decent data plan will be available so that i can take full advantage of the data features, but then again, this is canada and we seem to like to pay more for everything here.

while i am happy that the new iphone has better battery life (up to 300 hrs on standby, 5 hrs talk on 3G, 10  talk on 2G), GPS, automatic geotagging of photos and 3rd party apps, i was disappointed to find out that they neglected to upgrade the camera and instead stuck with the current 2MP still camera. granted, the photos from the iphone’s camera aren’t that bad, especially when you compare them to other camera phone pics.

either way, i am very excited to be finally getting my own iphone, especially after my experience in washington state this weekend with my bell prepaid phone.

last sunday, crystal and i were up early to meet some of her ex-coworkers for a hike up to petgill lake, just south of britannia on the sea-to-sky highway. while the weather was cool, it was also quite gray, so the views from the top didn’t stretch all that far.

it was a fairly good workout now that i rowing and hockey are done for the season, and took us about 4.5 hours with a quick lunch at the top.

have a look at the photos i took along the way in my petgill lake flickr set.

last friday, i met up with some friends at the vancouver art gallery to participate in my first critical mass.

Critical Mass is a grassroots reclamation of public space — a bike ride and skate — held the last Friday of every month. You are invited to enjoy the safety and comfort in the car-free space that we create by simply riding together! Bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, self propelled couches, and any other form of human powered locomotion are all welcomed!

although i’d seen a few critical mass rides before, this once was quite large, with several hundred people. we rode through much of the downtown core, around false creek, along broadway to burrard street, over the bridge and around downtown some more. i’m pretty certain we did an excellent job of clogging traffic and causing chaos on the streets of vancouver.

it was very interesting to see the reaction of some drivers. while most took it in stride, enjoying the show as the hundreds of bikers streamed past, a few drivers got quite irate, some even getting out of the vehicles to yell at the “corkers” blocking traffic. they were always outnumbered and soon retreated to their vehicles once they realized the scale of the mass and the futility of trying to move their vehicles.

all in all, it was a great experience and a lot of fun. i do wish however that drivers would turn off their engines while they wait for the mass to go by - it seems a little pointless to protest against oil and our dependency on it, but then cause drivers to burn even more while they idle in traffic.

anyway, you can find a few photos on andy’s flickr page.