Who doesn’t love a good tease at the awesome Scottish accent? Hmm… I wonder how such an elevator would handle Newfie?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you know that multitasking is addictive? I didn’t until I read this article by the Seattle Times which I cheaply framed yesterday and posted next to my work computer.

When I look back on it I can definitely recall how good it felt whenever I was successfully juggling a number of tasks. I can only describe the feeling as pleasurable squeeze of my mind, a rush of pleasure… what I now understand may be the dopamine being released by my brain. That said, perhaps it was all in my head and I was just feeling the incredible satisfaction of being challenged. All I know, is I am trying to crack my addiction to multitasking and create a more focused work environment. I am also trying not to do so in a claustrophobic way because I have to have some freedom to switch gears without beating myself up for not “sticking to the plan”.

Anyway, I mainly wrote this post to share the article that changed my perspective on multitasking; a work ethic that I knew was not the most effective (50% less so – in fact) but I had no idea it was physically addictive.

So go ahead and read Multitasking hurts brain’s ability to focus, scientists say and let me know your thoughts.

Now, back to my other 6 ongoing tasks…

On May 6th, 2010, I joined my brother Mark, my dad Tom, and our family friend Bob Forrester on a guided fishing adventure with Beasley’s Fishing Charters based out of Victoria, BC, Canada.

The trip began with some Halibut fishing but we didn’t have the patience (which you need for Halibut in this area) and so we headed off to do some salmon fishing which Darren Beasley (our guide and the owner of the charting business) really excelled at; just 3 weeks before he helped us catch our limit of salmon in just 40 min! (that is 2 salmon per person!).

Once we got to the fishing spot, it took some time, perhaps 30 min before the first and largest salmon was caught by my brother. Soon after, we lost one, my dad caught one  and then not long after, Bob had one on and was reeling it in when my rod came to life and it was time for the battle you see below.

Before you watch the video below (or click here for the YouTube video), there are a couple of points you should read that might help you enjoy it more:

1. At the beginning of the video, I am reeling in the salmon rather effortlessly as it swam toward our boat. What you missed, however, was that I had just finished a fairly decent battle which wasn’t captured on this video.
2. Darren, our guide, grabs the net early on to grab Bob’s salmon as it gets close to the boat – it isn’t my fish in case that is confusing at the beginning.
3. After Darren gets the fish in the boat you will hear it slapping around and you will see the flasher on the fishing line from the other rod that had just landed the fish get very close to my head… it was a bit chaotic!
4. The audio is rather bad – sorry about that.
5. I have been told my bald spot is not NEARLY that bad… which is only slightly comforting after watching this video  Apparently, the sun enhances it… or maybe video enhances bald spots by a few inches just like it adds 10 lbs?

Click here to view the embedded video.

To top all of this off, here is my wonderful mug holding my trophy fish of the day  I have a lot of respect for that salmon… he really put on a show.

If you want to see an even bigger catch, and compare it to the fight I faced here, there is a 25lb Chinook that I caught 3 years before this on a fishing trip in Port Hardy, BC, Canada.

As many who know me know, I have been slobbering over the idea of the Nikon D300 for a very long time; the incessant drool was quite comical – I am sure. Well, when I barely missed getting a used (meticulously cared for) D300 for just $750 I couldn’t stand the loss. It was then that my droolish desire became an obsession!!!

As a result, I used my considerable search skills to hunt and hunt and hunt for bargains while becoming intimately familiar with all of the upsides and downsides of the D300. Well, it didn’t take long before I realized that I could no longer get the D300 new and used versions were simply not a good enough bargain (which further increased my disappointment at my previous loss)… only the newer D300s.

It took some getting used to – that I would have to buy a product that was so new there were practically ZERO price drops anywhere (bare minimums in many cases). I even got close to buying the extremely nice D90… I just couldn’t get past the build quality and the other sweet differences that made the D300s a glory to behold (51 AF points, 7 frames/sec continuous shooting, magnesium-alloy body with “some” weather sealing, dual card slots…)

Anyway, I finally grew too restless and yesterday I came across a sweet deal for a newly opened Demo at Futureshop (I know, I know, I am not a huge fan either) which they were willing to give me for what amounted to $267 off MSRP (or in this case $100 off a matched sale price) and it has all of the warranties intact just as though it came out of the box. That was it… I let the whole idea settle over night and leapt for the deal today….which leads me to the specs for my new beauty, the D300s  :-D

• 13.1 megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor (effective pixels: 12.3 million)
• New 720p HD movie mode records video at 1280 x 720 (24 fps) for up to 5 minutes
• 3.0? LCD monitor (920,000 pixels)
• Dust reduction system
• 51 AF points with 3D tracking (faster and more accurate)
• IS0 200-3200 range (6400 expanded)
• 7 frames per second continuous shooting (buffer: 17 RAW, 44 JPEG fine, 100 JPEG Normal)
• Same EN-EL3e battery as D300 (950 shots per charge )
• 72 thumbnail view in playback
• Supports all Nikkor F-Mount lenses
• Sturdy magnesium alloy body with some weather-sealing; shutter rated at 150,000 cycles
• Live view supported (now with dedicated button)
• Contrast and phase detection AF modes
• Face detection available
• Optical viewfinder has 100% coverage and magnification of 0.94X
• Full manual controls
• ISO range of 100 – 6400 (when fully expanded)
• Shutter speed range of 30 – 1/8000 sec (there’s a bulb mode too)
• RAW and TIFF formats supported
• Quiet Shutter Release feature reduces sound of mirror action
• User now has the ability to bracket for Active D-Lighting, which restores shadow and highlight detail
• Hot shoe and flash sync port plus the ability to control up to 2 sets of wireless flashes
• Stereo microphone input and HDMI port
• Dual memory card slots: CompactFlash and SD/SDHC, with backup and overflow features
• Optional battery grip gives you even greater battery life and faster continuous shooting (8 fps)

I suppose it is needless to say but I am a very very happy photographer… I feel renewed and look forward to getting out and shooting again like a man possessed. See you out there!

PS. thanks to www.d300s.com for the excellent photos and the specs. Great site!

Okay, I am a huge Black Eyed Peas fan which is no surprise to many of you especially with my son loving it so much   That said, this video ROCKS. It is a live performance that the Black Eyed Peas did for Oprah and it involves a massive crowd who just might surprise you!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Toddlers beware! I am now schooled in disarming you!!!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wish all commercials were this funny… I might actually watch them, tell everyone about it, and even post it on my blog!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I saw this Hummus recipe on TV yesterday morning while watching Foodies. I am intrigued and decided to post it – if just for the sake of knowing where it is If you have tried one like this let me know what you thought.

To my wife, Sara, this is not even remotely called Hummus because of all the additions but we both agreed it would be a fun recipe to try. I will let you know how it tastes when we finally get around to trying it.

Hummus Ingredients

• 1 can – 310 mL (18 oz)     Chick peas, drained and rinsed of its liquid
• 180 mL (6 oz)  Tomato salsa
• 1 pc  Avocado
• 30 g (1 oz)  Green olives, pits removed
• 2 cloves  Garlic
• 30 mL (2 tbsp)  Louianna Estates Olive Oil
• 45 mL (3 tbsp)  Gay Lea Sour Cream
• 10 mL (2 tsp)  Lemon juice
• To taste: Salt and pepper

Instructions: Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until puréed. Season to taste.

So I am a huge Hulu fan. Ever since I experienced this free TV service in the States I have been unreasonably jealous of my American brethren. I am also hurt that Hulu shirked its polite neighbor nation (I mock, since I know it is actually just stupid copyright laws getting in the way).

Anyways, I found out from a great article that if you use Identity Cloaker’s Secure Shell program (that comes with the paid service) you can get access to Hulu without any problem at all. VERY cool. I figure this can come as great news to anyone who wants to drop cable in favor of online TV with fewer commercials.

Anyway, go to Identity Cloaker and setup an account or sign up for the 10 day trial and see if you like it. So far as I can tell it is the only service that has been proven to work with Hulu in Canada!

Here is the most important section of the tutorial I found:

… Identity Cloaker comes bundled with a customised version of OpenVPN. From the Identity Cloaker console screen you can start up OpenVPN and select one of the US Proxy Servers to connect to, I chose an East Coast server for testing as I was in the UK at the time of testing.

Important – You’ll notice that there are lots of servers you can connect to (new servers get added all the time), but for watching Hulu and any video streaming it’s best to use UDP (User datagram Protocol) rather than TCP. Don’t worry it’s quite simple, make sure you choose one of the MAC compatible servers (even if you’re using a PC) to connect to as they all work in UDP, it’s a much quicker protocol for streaming video than TCP – so you’ll get better results.

Just sign in here with your Identity Cloaked account and then your entire connection is streamed via that server, and of course compressed and encrypted to make you completely anonymous as well.

This should make me look completely indistinguishable from a US Internet Surfer, so I dashed off to Hulu to try again. This time I thought I’d try and watch a new episode of Family Guy to test my connection. So I made sure my OpenVPN connection was working (you’ll see two little computer icons in the task bar – green when connected)

This was the result of using Identity Cloakers Open VPN connections -

As you can see it works, and it worked very well, Identity Cloakers US Servers seemed very quick and if you were trying to watch Hulu from Canada they would be even quicker. I generally get one little pause to buffer the video stream per episode but that will vary depending on your connection. Open VPN connections can sometimes be sensitive to upload speeds but I didn’t get a problem with that at all.

I saw this Microsoft advertisement and just had to add it to my website because I find it highly amusing that the now CEO of Microsoft was once a cheesy pitch-man. It is also kind of funny to see the old features on the computer he is pitching. Awesome

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is Ballmer now in a couple of business interviews: Ballmer laughs at the iPhone and Ballmer discussing the new 10 year search agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo

Oh and check out this clever spoof of Ballmer’s Microsoft advertisement.