Author: dale

My tech career started as an audio visual technician, setting up sound reinforcement and projection equipment at a convention facility, before I moved to electronics maintenance and repair at a community college. After obtaining a university degree in engineering, I designed integrated circuits for the first generation of 900 MHZ analog cellphones, the first generation of CA-code-phase tracking GPS receivers and digital pro-audio. I then progressed through a variety of leadership roles in product management, marketing, engineering product development and manufacturing, in fields such as industrial GPS-based positioning and navigation, pipeline integrity inspection and industrial process control.
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Maestro Trial Screencast

I’ve been experimenting with creating Maestro screencasts using Ubuntu GNU Linux on my ThinkPad T23. Here’s a short demo showing the Project Management component. It should play without issue using FireFox, but you will need to install the Ogg Theora codec if you use Internet Explorer (FireFox comes with it built-in).  Sorry there’s no audio.

 

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Yaa Hoo! It’s the Calgary Stampede!

The gosling arrived as usual this spring. Parents are always the same, wary as ever, and hissing and honking when anyone gets too close. Do you have children?

The deer in Fish Creek Provincial Park are friendly as usual…

Yaa Hoo! it’s a parade.

My friend Ian spent his day shuttling visitors to the parade route in his big white limo.

Like many Oil & Gas companies, Baker Hughes’ hosts a Stampede Breakfast. This year I pulled my old road bike out of retirement for the trip downtown. Not far from home I met James, who was making his regular commute from Canyon Meadows to his downtown office. Chatting as we rode, we made the 1-1/2 hr ride in what seemed like only minutes.

Yee Haa! Some young ladies two-stepping at the corporate breakfast.

Horses are everywhere during Stampede week. Here are some tenderfoot’s, touring the downtown from horse-drawn carriages.

After breakfast, it was time to head to work. I rode out of downtown on the pedestrian bridge just visible center-right, down the Bow River pathway a piece, and then onto the Irrigation Canal pathway the rest of the way to work. Just another commute in paradise! (~1hr from downtown to Foothills Industrial).

Keep the rubber side down!

Dale

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Tech Podcasts

Bicycle commuting weather has returned to Calgary. I commuted to work twice last week on my classic Miyata 1000, and plan to beat that record this week. This morning was a little chilly, but at least I didn’t have to scrape the frozen rain off the jeep windshield.

Back in the saddle also means having 2hrs a day again for podcasts. I’m using my daughter’s old iPod nano (also a classic), and its 1G memory just balances my consumption with new content being published.

So, fanfare please, here’s my current list:

  • FLOSS Weekly (twit.tv/FLOSS), an offering of interviews with free and open source project leaders.
  • The Changelog (thechangelog.com), presents interviews with free and open source project leaders, but tends to be geekier than FLOSS Weekly (but not always).
  • BSD Talk (bsdtalk.blogspot.com), provides periodic interviews with those active in the BSD (UNIX-like operating system) community (e.g., FreeBSD).
  • Lullabot Drupal Podcast and Drupal Voices (lullabot.com). A great way to get into Drupal CMS development. The Drupal Podcast is a theme-based group effort from the Lullabot development team; Drupal Voices is short inteviews with non-Lullabot Drupal developers.
  • CBC Spark (radio3.cbc.ca) a weekly tech program for the lay person, each episode consisting of a half-dozen topics or interviews (full interviews also available for more depth).
  • The World: Technology (http://www.theworld.org/technology-podcast). An interesting collection of tech-related stores from around the world (albeit with a western bias).
  • CBC The World This Week. Nice wrap-up of the previous week’s global news to catch up on while bicycling to work Monday morning.
  • CBC Radio 3 Podcast (radio3.cbc.ca), a theme-based weekly program of Canadian independent music. I keep a couple annual roadtrip mixtape episodes on the iPod, as well the Sweatin’ to the Indies episode, for when I just want to pedal.
  • CBC Radio 3 Top 30 (radio3.cbc.ca), a weekly review of Canadian independent music. This is the first year I watched the Canadian Juno awards (Canada’s equivalent of the US Grammy’s) and recognised most of the songs and artists.
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Pre-Un-Birthday Bike Ride

Winter is coming, which means it’s my birthday again. I’ve decided there will be no special milestone observation, introspection, or other significance attached to this birthday because there is too much left to do to spend time reflecting on the past (other than the standard warning that “those who do not understand it are doomed to repeat it”).

So, on the eve of having spent 50 years in this world, I went biking with my bike buddies. Where, you ask? Well, other than in a general sense, I don’t really know. Unfortunately, my ability to navigate has not gotten better with age. Downloading my gps this morning shed some clews, but unfortunately I didn’t have it turned on for the start of the ride, and there’s a bit missing in the middle (a bush jumped onto the trail, pulled me off the bike, and sent the gps flying airborne for a while, the landing from which turned it off).

2009-11-24_fcpp

Those that attempt to predict Mother Nature are saying it’s going to snow tonight, so after a short ride this afternoon it may be snow riding again until spring.

I tried a new process using only free software in order to create this map image:

  • GPSBabel downloaded the track data from my Garmin etrex Legend.
  • Notepad++ (set to XML language support) edited the 3-months of track data downloaded from the etrex to extract yesterday’s ride (with 20-20 hindsight, it would have been simpler to set a date/time filter in GPSBabel and only download yesterday’s data).
  • GPSVisualizer uploaded the edited track data and overlayed it on a map using the Google Maps service (again with 20-20 hindsight, I could have used the web-based GPSBabel available on the GPSVisualizer website without needing to install anything on my computer!).
  • IrfanView cropped a browser screenshot of GPSVisualizer down to just the map and saved it in JPEG format (which was then uploading to my blog for you to see).

Happy trails, and try to keep the tire-side down,

Dale

P.S. Isn’t free and open source software and the Web 2.0 wonderful?