Oahu, Photo By John Biehler I have to admit, this weather has been getting me down. Other than a few days of sun on Vancouver Island last week, I haven’t really seen much in the way of warmth or sunshine since returning from South America. When I looked at the forecast this morning and saw 7 days of rain in the long term forecast, I decided to do something about it. I spent about 15 minutes bouncing around Expedia and Travelocity, and eventually honed in on a flight to Hawaii for a little over $400 out of Bellingham. Given that it’s not amazingly far away and that I’ve always wanted to see Hawaii, ...

While the weather in Vancouver hasn’t exactly been stellar lately, I’ve still managed to get out for a bike ride from time to time. Given that I envisioned myself wanting to take my bike to Stanley Park from time to time or out to Chilliwack, I decided a while ago that I would need some type of bike rack. The easiest option for my Mazda 3 was a roof rack. The Mazda 3 already has a built in header that allows a rack to easily be mounted onto it. But truth be told, the idea of having a bike floating way above my car has never really sat easy with me. First, it means I would really have to be careful ...

Packing for Storage When I left my apartment back in November of 2010, I put the majority of items into a 8x9x10 storage locker. I spent about a week selling off most of the big furniture (which would have been harder to store), and basically just ended up with a pile of boxes. I didn’t hesitate at the time to put all my belongings into storage. I knew I would be gone at least four months, and likely more. But it’s now July, which means my belongings have been in storage for seven months. At a price of roughly $100 per month for the storage locker, that means I’m up to $700 to store a bunch of ...

Prior to setting out on my last adventure, I went down to Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) here in Vancouver and tried to find a backpack to take with me on my trip. I was looking for a backpack with the following qualities: Should fit as carry-on for most airlines Should have room for a laptop and my iPad Should be large enough to carry basic necessities like a few changes of clothes and toiletries With these criteria in mind, I eventually settled on purchasing the MEC Pangea 40, which is a 40 litre travel backpack that’s constructed so it will fit as carry-on for most airlines. How It Stood ...

I was downtown a few weeks ago and parked my car in a parking garage. Somehow over the course of the day though I accidentally misplaced my key chain, which has of course my car keys, my house keys, and several other keys. While I’ve misplaced my keys for a few hours before, I’ve never outright lost a set in my life. Prior to going traveling I always had a spare set around, usually over at my sister’s house, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But my current set of spare keys is actually either in my storage locker back or over at my dad’s house. Given that the storage locker key was on the ring, ...

One of the main reasons I came back from my last trip was to take a bit of a breather in BC for a few months, and also to enjoy a bit of time camping in the outdoors. I’ve managed to do both since arriving back at the end of April, and so it’s time to start thinking about moving on again. I quite liked escaping some of Vancouver’s dreary rainy/cold season last year in Argentina, and I thought I would head to the southern hemisphere again this year. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about New Zealand for almost a year as a place I’d like to visit during North American fall/winter. Around the ...

I’m sure most of us have some story about a friend of ours who got dinged several hundred dollars or more in roaming charges while out of the country. My friend Chris has a $6,000 bill in Australia, something that unfortunately still happens quite often due to amazingly high roaming rates in some countries. I’ve been fortunate in that I haven’t been exposed to any high fees, and have in fact often spent less in other countries than back in Canada. I spent some time speaking to Gillian Shaw on the phone yesterday regarding some of my experiences with my cell-phone abroad, and the article is now ...

I’m currently out on Vancouver Island, enjoying some R & R with my dad and step-mom. I was looking for a book to read yesterday, and had the idea to re-read The Hobbit, a book I haven’t read in about 20 years. It’s the predecessor of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a lot of the mythology that appears in that series was started in The Hobbit. As many people know, Peter Jackson (the director of the three Lord of the Rings movies) is currently making a two-movie version of The Hobbit. It’s not due to be out for over a year, but already the anticipation of growing for it. That said, having ...

This last weekend my friend Dave and I made a hasty escape from the city and headed towards Pemberton. I ad a pretty rough prior week, as did Dave, so we were both looking to get away for a few days and simply enjoy some time in the outdoors. The place we ended up going to is called Owl Creek, and it’s a small campground about 15 minutes past Pemberton, BC. Usually when I’m up in that neck of the woods I head on up to Birkenhead Lake, but Owl Creek is about 40 minutes closer from Vancouver, and offers a nice bit of seclusion. The Birken River near Owl Creek Despite forecasts calling for heavy ...

I’m down at Driven Audio down in Abbotsford right now getting some new speakers, an amplifier and a subwoofer put into my Mazda 3 sport. I’ve been meaning to upgrade the audio system for years, but have never gotten around to it. Considering I’m heading off on a bit of a road trip next weekend, I thought now would be a good time. Driven Audio Mostly Disassembled Mazda 3 Sport 10:45am – speakers in the doors are being removed Mazda 3 Sport Audio Makeover 1pm – Installing tweeters and 5x7s in the doors, along with the crossover Speaker and Crossover Installation 2:30pm – I wasn’t going to replace ...

One thing I’m getting consistently more and more frustrated with is how supporters of the HST keep telling me, via blog posts and interviews, that the HST results in me paying less money as a consumer. The problem is it hasn’t so far, nor do I think that it will for me personally. Other than rebates for low-income families, the HST results in a tax increase on about 20% of purchases, most notably for me in restaurants and pubs. It’s a substantial increase of 7%, and I notice how much more expensive it is to eat out each and every time I go out to eat. I also don’t really buy the argument that ...

I’ve been alluding to it for a few weeks now, but I’m pretty close to buying my plane tickets for the fall. I was originally planning on going to New Zealand, but a few friends convinced me to add Thailand to my list as well. Milford Sound, Photo from Wikipedia New Zealand As everyone knows, Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand, and the geography shown in the movies is absolutely breathtaking. Since seeing Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, I’ve been dreaming of someday being able to visit the country and do some exploration. As an added bonus, filming for the The Hobbit movies is currently ...

Update: Here are the slides from the presentation – enjoy! I’m giving a talk in a few hours down at The Network Hub, and wanted to start a post here for some of the information. For those of you who can’t make it or are stuck on the waitlist, I’ll be talking about the following items: Creative Commons Licensing WordPress and Social Media Stats Plugin: Copyrighted Posts (Licensing Content) Plugin: Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share (Sharing) Plugin: ShareThis (Sharing) Plugin: Sociable (Sharing) Plugin: Flickr RSS (Flickr) Plugin: MudSlideShow (Flickr/Picassa) Post From Flickr to WordPress (Flickr) Plugin: ...

I pulled about 6 GB worth of photos from my phone the other day, most of which were taken from my four month adventure in South America, New York City and Europe. The photos aren’t as high quality as the ones from my SLR or my EPL-2, but they still represent a portion of my trip that brings back fond memories. Here’s the slideshow for your viewing pleasure. I recommended clicking the fullscreen button in the bottom right and then clicking “Show Info” in the top right to view the captions. {EAV_BLOG_VER:4983f1ef5390f8c8} ...

Funny. The last post I did in the photography section of this site was titled “SLR Owner, No More.” That was written in New York City back in March right after I sold my Canon SLR and purchased my micro four-thirds system. Nikon D7000 That said, it’s always been my intention of buying some new higher-end camera gear when I had a chance. The Canon 40D I had was quite old when I sold it, and while it was still a decent camera, many advances have been made since I purchased it almost two years ago. I’ve also hinted many times about switching to Nikon, and I finally got around to doing that a few ...

Voted the #1 most unsanitary tourist attraction in the world several times, I managed to visit the Blarney Stone back in March and give it a little smooch. Me Kissing The Blarney Stone - Photo by Andy Peatling Apparently I now have “The Gift Of Gab”. So if I talk your ear off with eloquent speech, you now know why. It’s actually kind of awkward to kiss it as you have to learn all the back and lower yourself down. But, I somehow managed to pull it off. ...

A friend of mine on Twitter posted a question today asking if anyone had done any world travel, and if so, what they thought of taking a laptop with them. Since I just got back from four months of world travel, I thought I would write an entry detailing my experiences with backpacking with a laptop. I spent the majority of my time in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. I brought along my 13″ Macbook Pro, which is valued at around $1,500 in Canada. There is actually a lot of petty theft in Buenos Aires, so I avoided taking my laptop out for the first six weeks or so. But eventually that became ...

It seems that no very long ago I was writing about some looting and rioting with regards to the winter olympics. By comparison to what happened here in Vancouver two nights ago, those acts were relatively minor and forgettable. An officer in Riot Gear during the Vancouver Riots, 2011 By this time everyone knows what happened after game 7. A few drunken idiots decided to cause trouble, and other idiots got on the bandwagon. The media has tried to label most of these people as individuals from out of town, but not all of them were. They have also tried to scapegoat the entire group, saying they ...

A few weeks ago I made an impromptu decision to escape some of the rain here in BC and head down to California to visit a few friends for this upcoming weekend. Back when I used to work in the Voice Over IP field, I probably made at least 2 or 3 trips a year down to the Bay Area to work with some Yahoo! people and also to attend various functions at Google. Now the weekend is approaching, I need to decide just what it is I want to do in San Francisco. My friends live near Palo Alto (home of Apple store #1), so I plan to spend an afternoon there. Outside of that I’m actually thinking I may rent ...

Yesterday I went up to Golden Ears park to scope out some campgrounds for the summer. I was actually surprised just how pretty it is up there, and am regretting that I only just discovered the area now. From the front door of where I live to the entrance of Golden Ears is only about a 30 minute drive, so it’s quite conceivable I can be camping in about an hour after I decide to go camping. Alouette Lake, Near Golden Ears Park It sounds weird, but I still get surprised when I realize that I can simply get in the car or on a plane and go somewhere new whenever I want. I spent the morning today getting ...