Archive for July, 2009

WordCamp Fraser Valley 2009

John / July 30, 2009 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Tomorrow is the last day for early bird registration for WordCamp Fraser Valley taking place on August 22, 2009. The registration prices go up as of August 1st.

I’m going to be there speaking in the development track about using MAMP/WAMP for WordPress development. MAMP is the version of the software that runs on Apple computers and surprise, WAMP is the Windows version…but what is it?

While it’s in the dev track, it could easily be in the beginner or intermedate tracks as it (MAMP/WAMP) is meant to be a fast, somewhat non-geeky way to get a web and database servers up and running with all the tools you need so that you can create and install WordPress (among other things) on your local laptop or desktop.

This is a big benefit to (theme & graphic) designers who need a quick way to get their laptop running WordPress for local design and development, client demos, etc where they don’t need or necessarily want the site to be online in any way (at least not yet).

I’ll go through the steps of getting the (free, open source) software, installing and configuring it to the point that WordPress is running on your computer and discuss a number of options for the setup and install.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Hottest day in history at Playland

John / July 30, 2009 / Video / 2 Comments

My sister came to town with her kids this week and wanted to do something fun so we all headed to Playland. It happened to be the hottest day on record in Vancouver…so needless to say, it was freakin’ hot.

Here’s a quick little video I quickly slapped together about our day in the sun:

Special thanks to Phil @ Virgin 95.3 for hooking us all up with some passes for the day….a totally awesome random act of kindness that we really appreciated.

Watch out Roland – the BikeCam lives

John / July 28, 2009 / Hardware, Photography / 12 Comments

The camera mount for my bike arrived from Hong Kong (via eBay) today….pretty sweet setup for $8 delivered!

It’s way too hot out right now for a proper ride so I did a quick spin around the block with my Kodak Zi6 attached to a mini-ballhead attached to the bike via the new mount.

For an added bonus, I threw the fisheye lens on the Zi6 too.

Here’s the resulting video:

As you can see, it was pretty bumpy…I blame the Zi6 mostly since it has no stabilization. I’ll try some other camera gear and see what the results are…a timelapse ride might be cool too.

Much more to come soon!

UPDATE: You may want to refrain from using too heavy a camera, like say the Nikon P6000 on this mount and then ride on a bumpy gravel trail…unless you like to watch your camera tumble off the bike. Clearly it was too heavy for the mount combined with a very bumpy road. See the gory details here.

Fin whale hit by cruise ship

John / July 26, 2009 / Media, Photography / 5 Comments

Yesterday, while hanging out with the bloggers as part of Blogathon, we heard that a cruise ship docked nearby had a hit a baby whale while at sea.

Crews had discovered it that morning while docking the ship at Canada Place in Vancouver.

Tyler and I headed over to check things out and got there just as crews were trying to remove the whale carcass with a number of boats, two tugboats and a diver.

Here’s some video of the whale actually being pulled away from the cruise ship by two tugboats:

My Flickr set of images from the accident are here…which was also picked up by the Globe & Mail over the weekend.

My photo view stats are through the roof (over 41,000 views of this set alone and rising as I type this), I just would have preferred it was because of the quality of my other photos, rather than the ones of the untimely demise of a baby whale on the bow of a cruise ship.

Makes you wonder how many other whales and sea life get hit each year that don’t get stuck to the boat.

Update: my views topped out at just over 56,000 in a 24 hour period….it would seem that lots of people were interested in this tragic accident.

Update 2: The necropsy has been completed on the dead whale. It was 70 tonnes, approximately 22 metres long and presumed to be middle aged, not a baby as originally thought.

Griffin PowerJolt Reserve for iPhone [Review]

John / July 24, 2009 / Hardware, Reviews, Technology / 5 Comments

Just a quick review of this handy gadget I picked up for my iPhone. Battery power is always an issue for iPhone users that use their phones alot. I had looked at things like the Mophie Juice Pack and the InCase Power Slider but found these to be too bulky. I rarely need to double my battery life, usually just give it another 20-40% to last all day and into the night.

That’s when I stumbled across the Griffin PowerJolt Reserve ($45 @ Future Shop) which seemed to be the perfect thing. It’s a small little battery pack that ‘lives’ on a dock that you leave in your car which also has a pass-thru USB port in case you want to actually charge your iPhone while driving too which is a nice touch. Even cooler is the dock actually uses inductive charging to top up the battery pack – it literally just sits on the dock – no cables or pins to line up and it magnetically stays put while charging it up.

It charges while you drive and then when you get to that night time outing after a day of work, you just grab the battery pack and take it with you. If you run low on juice, plug it in…no bulky case to weigh you down.

I actually mentioned this item when I was on Couch Beers with Jordan…I had actually just bought it minutes before being on the show and hadn’t even opened the package or tried it yet so this is the follow up review.

The battery pack has a single button on it which lights up the five leds on it to let you know how much juice is left in the battery pack. On my iPhone 3GS it seemed to charge it up at a rate of about 1% per minute – while still using it. I’ve used it a couple of times now when my iPhone is down to about 20% and a fully charged battery pack will easily get me beyond 50% in no time while I’m still using the device.

It has a kind of strange shape when not in the dock but easily goes into your pocket while charging it up without too much trouble.

Another added bonus of this pack being small and not a full sized case – you can easily share it with your iPhone toting friends. I was out for drinks with a bunch of folks and we were all running low on juice and we just passed the pack around each grabbing a few minutes of charge each….not a full charge but certainly enough to finish out the night or to make it through the bus ride home.

Griffin also makes a wall plug version, called the PowerBlock Reserve as well as a Powerduo Reserve which includes both the car charger dock and the wall plug dock. Had I seen the Duo first, I would have probably bought that instead.

I’m pretty happy with this item and I don’t have to worry about charging my iPhone on the go after a long day of use. I bought mine at Future Shop but it seems you can find these anywhere that sells iPhone stuff – I’ve seen them at the Apple Store, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.

My 2010 SXSWi Panel Submission

John / July 22, 2009 / Photography / 2 Comments

This year I decided (at practically the last minute) to submit a panel idea for SXSW Interactive 2010 that will be held in March next year. Regular viewers of this site know that I attend and love SXSW and 2010 will mark my fifth year heading down to Texas.

So what’s the panel called?
“Do cool kids leave when the suits arrive?”

What’s the topic? (50 word synopsis, as originally submitted)
What happens when business models get in the way of being social
online? How can the social web evolve and meet the needs of all users
rather then the loudest? Join this important panel discussion on
co-creating fun and valuable experiences with your users from a
design, business and user perspective.

Who else will be on the panel?
I’ll be moderating the panel with a pretty awesome lineup of folks including Chris Heuer, Chris Messina, Eddie Codel and Amanda Rose.

When can I vote for it?
~~August 10th the voting site will open…I’ll update this post (and probably do another one or three) to point you there when it’s live.~~
You can vote for it right now until September 4th. Registration takes less than a minute. Thanks!

We’ll be tweaking the submission over the coming weeks to highlight the things the panel will cover as it’s a lot of ground to cover in a 60 minute session. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to moderate this topic and attend once again in 2010!

Summer of Photography fun

John / July 22, 2009 / Photography / 1 Comment

Been super busy with a lot of photography projects this summer and it’s been an absolute blast so far.

First up (and most recently) was Worldwide Photowalk day, last Saturday, July 18th. This was a hugely organized event happening all over the world with local photowalks submitting their best photos up to the main site and the best get in on some pretty cool prizes. I chose to participate in the Vancouver walk around the Seawall from English Bay to 3rd Beach. Here’s a couple of my favorite shots from the day:

Unlike a traditional photowalk, the Vancouver organizers took it up a few notches and planted models and sets along our route as waypoints to get even more creative. It truly made the event and we’ve all talked about doing something like this again, real soon as it was a lot of fun and was a great way to collaborate with the other photogs.

Next up is shooting a group shot for the Union Gospel Mission’s Little Slugger’s Day at the Nat event. This was a fun event where over 60 kids from downtown Vancouver got to spend a day at Nat Bailey Stadium:

As you can imagine, one of the challenges of this shoot was getting the kids organized and looking at the camera…think herding cats. Yeah, just like that. Still a lot of fun and they were all really excited to be there.

After the shoot, we got to roam around the stadium and get up to the press box on the roof and get some fun shots of the field.

Lots more fun things planned this summer so keep an eye on my Flickr stream to see what I’m up to.

CupCakeCamp YVR

John / July 14, 2009 / Photography / Comments Off

Last week, Vancouver hosted it’s first CupCakeCamp at WorkSpace. It helped to raise $540 for the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. I brought my camera along and skipped dinner:

Organized by the @awesome (that’s right) Stephanie and helped out by a bunch of great volunteers, it was a huge success.

Check out my full set of photos on Flickr.

Who is John Biehler?

John / July 5, 2009 / Video / 7 Comments

Robert Lee, the ‘Voice’ of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel made a custom voicemail greeting for me after I mentioned on Twitter about how cool it would be if he did…as if I needed any more reasons why the internet is awesome!

I added the theme music and title card….Robert even sent me a couple of different takes of the message with different pronunciations of my last name because he wasn’t sure how to say it. I’m still in shock over how awesome this is…and thank Robert profusely for being so cool.

Purplera1n is coming down

John / July 5, 2009 / Hacking, Mobile / 3 Comments

George Hotz is at it again…this time he’s brought the purplera1n down on the iPhone hacking community with his super simple jailbreak tool that is now out for Mac and PC users running the 3.0 firmware.

Running this app with a connected iPhone (3G, 3GS, 2G) will jailbreak it and after a reboot, drop an app called ‘Freeze’ on your iPhone. Run this app, wait for it to finish and then reboot again and you’ll have Cydia installed. Run Cydia and then follow the instructions at iClarified.com to install Ultrasn0w on your iPhone and then reboot again. You should now have an unlocked, and jailbroken iPhone 3GS.

Modmyi.com has a Mac tutorial already up for the new Purplera1n.

As with all these types of things, use caution and expect things to go sideways. Worse case is you do a restore via iTunes in most cases….but proceed with caution and at your own risk.