Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

Following in the footsteps of the 2009 and 2010 year in reviews I wanted to continue the year end ritual. I am surprised by how much has stayed consistent (top artists, quietest online search month) but there were a few new trends I didn’t expect.

Top 10 Google Queries
1. northlands park, edmonton
2. alberta downs race track, lacombe, ab
3. evergreen park, grande prairie
4. Rocky Mountain Turf Club, Lethbridge, Alberta
5. peggy’s footwerks
6. google analytics
7. peggysfootwerks
8. made in frame
9. peggys footwerks
10. peggy’sfootwerks

The top four results are work related for the Horse Racing Alberta website I managed. I have no idea why they were ranked so high amongst everything else. I also can’t explain why I needed to search for “northlands park, edmonton” as frequently as I did.

The rest of the search results were all related to a side business and seeing how high Peggy’s Footwerks was ranking on Google. In the end I was able to add the site to Google and have it hit on keywords so I no longer receive phone calls asking “why they can’t find the site in Google”.

I used my personal Gmail account to look at my Web History so the results are from searching while logged in with that account. My busiest month for searching was in August with 1,667 queries recorded, and my least active month was in June with 864. These numbers are up from last year but June returned as my least active search month, which is a bizarre trend.

Top 10 sites
1. en.wikipedia.org
2. www.google.com
3. www.imdb.com
4. answers.yahoo.com
5. www.amazon.com
6. www.ehow.com
7. androidforums.com
8. forum.xda-developers.com
9. market.android.com
10. twitter.com

Wikipedia dominates my top sites again. I honestly don’t think I go there that often but I guess every article about someone or something leads me to Wikipedia so I imagine that adds up over time. I like that Android sites appeared in this list, even though before September the notion of leaving iOS seemed crazy to me.

Top 10 Artists
1. The White Stripes (695 plays)
2. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard (631 plays)
3. The Beatles (542 plays)
4. Tegan and Sara (541 plays)
5. Michael Giacchino 482 plays)
6. U2 (411 plays)
7. Coldplay (357 plays)
8. Daft Punk (338 plays)
9. Rob Costlow (335 plays)
10. Ludovico Einaudi (329 plays)

Standard affair with this list: White Stripes, soundtrack or orchestral…plus a few other bands thrown in for good measure. Rob Costlow was a newcomer this year, but Daft Punk is stuck in there solely for the Tron Legacy soundtrack. I listened to the soundtrack for months before I saw the movie, and when I saw the movie all I focused on was the music.

What I don’t understand is how I listen to The Beatles that much. I like their music but I rarely say “Yes, I want to listen to all of The White Album”, but somehow they claimed the third most listened to artist this year. Sadly, there was no Bear McCreary. Battlestar Galactica is getting a lot of play time, especially the Solo Piano albums, but McCreary didn’t perform those songs so any plays for that were credited to Joohyun Park.

Top 10 Tracks
1. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – A Dark Knight (29 plays)
2. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – Bank Robbery (Prologue) (27 plays)
3. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – Buyer Beware (26 plays)
3. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – Halfway to Hong Kong (26 plays)
5. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – Decent Men In An Indecent Time (25 plays)
6. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – A Watchful Guardian (24 plays)
7. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – You’re Gonna Love Me (23 plays)
8. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – Chance (22 plays)
9. The White Stripes – Astro (21 plays)
9. Rob Costlow – Bliss (21 plays)
9. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – You Complete Me (21 plays)
9. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – We Are Tonight’s Entertainment (21 plays)
9. Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard – The Ferries (21 plays)

There are 13 songs listed here because of the five way tie for ninth spot. Last year “Inception” lead the way in music, and this year it was “The Dark Knight”. Odds are good that next year Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard will lead the way with “The Dark Knight Rises”.

With regards to air travel 2011 was the lowest in recent years with a pretty painless extended weekend trip to San Diego amassing 3200 miles covered. I drove my VW Jetta TDI over 13,000 kilometers and filled up the vehicle 17 times (the same number last year). I have gone two calendar years in a row without completing a police report, and I received no speeding tickets or anything incriminating like that against me.

My decline in blogging continued this year. Including this post there have been 23 entries made in 2011. The majority of those were reviewing my experience with Telus TV and my switch to Android. There hasn’t been much to report on, or anything worth updating about, which is apparent because I made a third less tweets this year with 188. I also made 41 posts on Tumblr. As expected there were no Facebook status updates either.

I like social networking but I also don’t want to bother people with hourly updates or useless tweets containing song lyrics or writing about how much food I ate. I think my decrease in Tweets was related to not posting every time I updated my Project 365. If people want to see the photos they know how to find them, and spamming them doesn’t do anything more than get a few more image views.

I sent roughly 407 emails from my @gmail.com and @seangursky.com email accounts and 52 from my @hotmail.com address. My @gmail.com and @seangursky.com usage increased a bit compared to last year but @hotmail.com dropped a bit. What I did write from @hotmail.com was mostly Kijiji related, so maybe the shift is related to using Gmail for more communication.

I made one order with amazon.ca, two with amazon.com, one with monoprice.com and none with Deal Extreme or amazon.co.uk.

Rough calculations are that I took nearly 5,200 photos with my Canon 5D this year. There was a few week period where the camera was in for repair but any photos I took with the iPhone or backup Pentax Optio were inconsequential. 5,200 is fewer photos than I took last year (7,850) but there was no two week long vacation to soak up a thousand odd photos.

All in all 2011 seems pretty quiet. Even when we tell people what we were up to the usual answer is “house stuff”. You add in a few months of Ice Dragons summer hockey, a couple trips to the cabin at Lac la Biche and you have the year in review.

2011 is in the books, I have a few things I’m looking forward to in 2012 and I’m sure the numbers will reflect that (I predict exceeding 9,000 photos taken) but we’ll see how it all shakes down in 366 days.

San Diego was the trip we didn’t expect to take, but when Jenna was presented with the opportunity to go there for a conference I was more than pleased to tag along. We arrived on a Thursday and left on Sunday, and we tried to pack as much time in for sight seeing as we had.

While planning for the trip we looked up Cafe 222, a restaurant featured on “The Best Thing I Ever Ate“, which had a breakfast that I loved so much I recreated it at home. It turned out that Cafe 222 was in San Diego and for all of those times you watch the Food Network you think “Man, if I could eat that it would be great” we finally had the opportunity. The restaurant wasn’t close to where we were staying but we made a point of getting there.

Cafe 222 had incredibly high expectations in my mind and it may have been the atmosphere of being in the birth place of the peanut butter banana stuffed French Toast that made my breakfast taste better but something did taste better. It may not have been the best meal we ate in San Diego but to have something I saw on TV crossed an item off my bucket list that I never knew existed.

While Jenna occupied for eight hours with her conference I spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo. I was worried about how much fun I would have looking at animals alone but it was a great way to pass time and I found it entertaining and enjoyable, even while solo.

Our only full day together in San Diego wasn’t actually spent in the city. We took a ferry across the bay and spent the afternoon in Coronado. We walked along the path, enjoyed clear blue skies in +22 weather and finished it off with a delicious meal looking across the bay at San Diego as the sun set and the lights came alive.

With the exception of a cab to and from the airport our primary mode of transportation was relying on buses and light rail transit. We planned our trips through Google Maps, and it worked to a point, but there were a few incorrect recommended stop’s so we just walked to the nearby transit center and took the bus we needed there.

An all day travel pass was $5.00, and for days where multiple transfers and buses were taken it was a pretty cost effective way of getting around. After London, Paris and Marseille transit in San Diego was pretty simple to figure out but the frequency of some routes could have bee increased as some wait times for buses in rush hour exceeded 30 minutes.

Some random observations from the trip:

• Christmas without snow feels weird. Christmas music and decorations were everywhere but I just didn’t feel it. I dislike being buried under snow in freezing temperatures but there is something about the snow that puts you into the Christmas spirit.
• People wore scarves, toques and mittens like it was below zero. When the sun set and a wind blew I wished I had a thicker coat but people still wore clothes and brands I normally associated with cold Canadian winters.
• Fahrenheit, I don’t understand you. 74? 50? Those are just numbers.

We found San Diego to be a very beautiful and clean city, two things I didn’t expect. As the second largest city in California I had low expectations and was pleased when they were met and exceeded. The few people we interacted with were friendly and pleasant, one guy on the LRT even commented on the fact that I was “drinking the fuck out of [my] coffee”.

The atmosphere in San Diego was very relaxed and if California shares even a little bit of that attitude I would gladly live there.

All in all it was a fun trip and I’m glad we had the opportunity to go and experience a new part of the continent.

For those curious, you can view the rest of the San Diego photo gallery here.

Several months have passed and if I wasn’t keeping track I would have thought it had been longer. My transition from iPhone/Rogers to Android/Wind came together in an abrupt fashion. The move consumed my thoughts for days and then it happened and that was it. The dust has long since settled and I’m still happily using my Wind device and loving Android.

I have been told that my previous posts didn’t have any jubilation over Android, almost as if there was some hesitancy but I can say that I really do love Android, maybe not to the way I loved the iPhone because there are the occasional hiccups that make me shake my head and wonder how green the grass was beyond that fence.

It didn’t take as long as I thought but I am completely used to my Android device. My muscle memory has stopped trying to click on the home button, and as I continue to use Android going forward I may love it the same way I did the phone from Cupertino.

Battery Life
This is more a problem with the LG Optimus 2X than Android but one leads to the other so a hardware problem affects my enjoyment of Android. I have a charger at home, at work and in the car in order to keep my phone fully powered. If I know I’m going to be away from an outlet for a long period of time I charge a spare battery and take that with me. It’s a minor inconvenience but it’s something I have had to deal with while on Android.

I will say that battery life has improved significantly over the last few months due to the Cyanogenmod 7 nightly builds I put on the phone. As I use the multiple batteries I have I find they are getting better life but it’s a marginal increase. These improvements are minor but going from a 50% charge by noon to a 75% charge by noon is good but I am still a ways off from going a few days without plugging in.

Force Close
Facebooooook ()! Or maybe Android 2.3.7! Or maybe my CyanogenMod is to blame but either way it’s always with the Force Close for the Facebook application. It feels like a daily occurrence. It is a minor annoyance to click a button on the phone, wait a few seconds and click on the application but it’s one of the few small problems I have that make me wish for the functional and slick iOS feel.

Potpourri
I can’t stop saying it but I miss the polish and integration of iOS, even after months of using Android I still like the feel of iOS. However, I will open up a setting that was previously disabled to me on iOS, or enable my phone to do something that non-jailbroken iPhone’s couldn’t do and feel in awe of the device.

I feel that CyanogenMod is something that makes my Android device better. I am not restricted to LG releasing a new version of Android 2.3 after months of delays, I don’t have to wait and wonder if Ice Cream Sandwich will be released for my device because CyanogenMod will make something that will run on my phone, provide more options than I would have otherwise and release builds faster than LG can release new phones.

Having a functional phone that allows you to do what you want when you want, free of corporate application approval policies, is a beautiful thing and giving up a bit of polish is a small price to pay for that.

Wind has been treating me fine. There are times where I’m surprised to be within the Wind Home network, and others the signal can’t penetrate. I don’t have to rely on my phone within tall buildings downtown so the times I am without a signal are few and far between.

There was a period where I wasn’t connected to the data network so this made surfing the Internet outside a WiFi connection difficult. This was due to the APN not being set, or not being configured correctly. My phone had the correct APN data for the Wind network but it wouldn’t connect.

After going a few weeks without mobile data usage I decided to look into it further. I cleared the APN data, re-entered it, added values and removed them, all to no avail. Then after another round of testing and fumbling with the settings it worked. I wasn’t going to ask any questions, so I left things as they were and went from using 0K on the mobile network to as high as 22MB a week later ().

All in all I’m still happy on Wind and happier on Android. I love the possibilities with Android, the realization that anything is possible, and when I look at a 50% decrease in my phone bill I’m all the happier I made this transition.

Sometimes I forget we’re going to Iceland next year. We booked the tickets in August, we have decided on a tour group to book the accommodation and car rental through and I am spending less time researching on Trip Advisor or reading Icelandic news articles.

Then Gizmodo posts a time lapse video someone just released from their trip in June and I get all sorts of excited again and wish that May would get here faster.

There is still a lot to take care of before we leave, and right now I’m looking into travel insurance, specifically trip cancellation. There has been a lot of seismic activity in Iceland this summer and with regards to an eruption from Katla it’s a matter of when, not if. It would be a really big disappointment if we couldn’t make our trip because of flight interruptions over Iceland but so far AMA and American Express Travel don’t have coverage for such events prior to departure.

There is no point booking travel insurance until we reserve the car and accommodation from our tour operator, but it’s good to know what insurance options there are.

I am also starting to see what conversion rates are for our credit cards. Most of Iceland accepts payment by plastic so it wouldn’t make sense to carry more than a few thousand Icelandic króna. My American Express, BMO and CIBC flavor of credit cards all have a foreign currency conversion of 2.5%, and if you live on the card for two weeks paying for gas, meals and souvenirs 2.5% could significantly add up.

Some Capital One cards do not have foreign currency conversion charges so it may be worth looking into one just for the sole purpose of vacationing.

Even though our airfare has been booked for several months now I still subscribe to daily emails from Kayak alerting me of airfare cost. When the amount increased over $200 what we paid I felt pretty confident in our decision to buy early, and then the cost decreased, and then it rose…and then it decreased again. I really should stop receiving these messages () but it’s like a surprise every morning to see if the cost is up or down.

I have been using Android for a few weeks now and feel pretty comfortable in it, but there are some habits from iOS I haven’t been able to shake, and surprisingly they are related to typing.

My first week with Android had ups and downs. After a few days of suffering with the atrocious battery life of the LG Optimus 2X I decided to install CyanogenMod and accidentally installed the wrong ROM version. I used “LG Optimus 2X” instead of “T-Mobile G2X” and the phone wouldn’t boot and I was not able to access the recovery console.

I struggled to resolve this on my Parallels installation of Windows through my MacBook Pro for the better part of a day. When I troubleshot the issue on a proper Windows machine I undid my mistake in less than 15 minutes and within 30 I had the correct version of CyanogenMod installed and was back to customizing and installing applications.

Wind Mobile sells the phone as a “LG Optimus 2X” but it’s actually a T-Mobile variety called the “G2X” and their software isn’t interchangeable. I came as close to making the phone as inoperable as I would like. With that mess behind me I am like a kid in an elevator pushing buttons with all of the customization tweaks available.

I used the stock Optimus 2X software for a few days, liked the ability to use Swype as my keyboard of choice but that is all I miss after upgrading to CyanogenMod. I signed up for the Swype beta and installed Swype within CM7 but ran into some issues switching the keyboard over. The application would force close and it would never launch properly. Like most things on Android, it is possible to install something, but it requires a bit of legwork that I have yet to look into yet. A week after experiencing my initial issue I tried installing it again and now everything is perfect and have no reason to ever return to the stock ROM that shipped on the phone.

Wind
I have not left the Edmonton or Sherwood Park Wind coverage region yet () so whenever I’ve looked at my phone I have had reception. Even in my basement I get reception, an area Rogers wasn’t able to adequately cover. I rarely download anything over the cell network but when I do it blazes (SpeedTest results ()). For the few calls I have made call quality has been good and Gord reported it sounded better than when he spoke to me over my iPhone.

Thus far I have no complaints with Wind, but the moment I spend a weekend at Lac la Biche or visit Dad in Millet I’ll lament not having coverage but for $29 a month it’s a sacrifice I can make.

I noticed I wasn’t receiving text messages on @gursky mentions via Twitter or SMS reminders for a Google Calendar event. I didn’t think much about this but under Mobile Setup for Google Calendar I noticed that Wind Mobile was missing from the drop down list (). None of the other carriers listed would work so for the time being I am left without SMS alerts.

As the Wind Mobile network expands I can only hope that they become recognized and appear in the same drop down list as the big telecom companies in Canada.

Android
The learning curve is starting to plateau and while all touch operating systems probably behave the same way the naming convention and knowing what icons control what is something I’m still learning. If I read an article or a forum post explaining how to do something I won’t know where the person is referring to unless the explicitly explain each touch press they made to get there. Simply saying “edit the Application Drawer settings…” loses me.

It’s the small accomplishments where I understand the Android OS a little more that feel like the biggest gains. It was only a few days ago I learned how to precisely move the cursor when editing text. I would keep finger pressing the paragraph of text hoping to get the cursor into position when all I had to do was click and drag the indicator that appeared (). With Apple I would hold down on the area of text I wanted to insert the cursor, wait for the Magnifying Glass () to appear, and then I would roll my finger left or right to place the cursor precisely. These are small accomplishments but slowly add up to being more comfortable with Android.

I think the biggest surprise I have encountered with Android is that if I don’t like how something operates I can modify the settings or install an alternate app that can achieve what I want. With the iPhone if I didn’t like the Calendar or Mail application I was at the mercy of Apple to release updates or venture into the Cydia aftermarket. In the Android Market the options are almost endless.

These infinite options have led to a few problems with the phone. Every application has a setting for notification and behavior, but those settings can be overridden elsewhere in Settings and figuring out which one is causing the application to not behave correctly can be a little annoying. Because I can have multiple applications for the same job I have found that this leads to the phone getting confused.

For instance, while listening to WinAmp I lock the phone but if I advance songs through the lock screen widget a different playlist begins playing and I have two songs going at the same time (and last.fm gets all sorts of confused ()).

These will all be resolved in time, it’s just a matter of taking the effort to isolate the issue and remove the application. Android gives you the power to get into trouble but also allows you complete control to undo your mistake.

I miss the simplicity of iTunes and iPhone, I liked having a desktop application that I could control all information on my phone from. This was a nuisance if I wanted to sync my phone with a new album or add a new video and had to wait until I was back at my main computer. With Android if I want to add a new song I can do so from anywhere and it works. It’s really as simple and dragging the file onto the phone when it’s plugged into a computer (or set up wireless syncing if I was so inclined).

I never realized how used I got to “swipe horizontally to bring up a ‘delete’ toggle” () with iOS but I find myself doing that frequently with Android in Messaging or Email. It’s easy enough to delete something within Android but swiping across was such an elegant way of taking a shortcut to delete something. This wasn’t a feature I immediately noticed in iOS and it’s funny how those little features end up making the biggest difference.

I find myself missing badges on the application icon () that shows the number of outstanding/unread messages. This was necessary for games or emails and I really miss it. You can download notification applications for the Launcher of your choice but I have not found them to work reliably, and paying for something that feels like it should be available by default is a little backwards.

Plus, there isn’t a notification for all the applications I use so it would be a little wasted. The Android notification bar () at the top of the screen is nice, but with iOS 5 getting badges and their own notification bar I feel like I’m one step behind here as far as software is concerned.

Another gripe I have is that I wish there was a little consistency between applications. In iOS I would tap near the top and the application would scroll back up. I have found this to not be common in all Android equivalent applications. I hope this is something that will become available in the future because it was incredibly handy for browsing my Twitter stream or a long webpage.

Being able to send applications from the online marketplace to the device is a great feature. This is such a brilliant concept it makes locating and installing a lot of applications a breeze. Even if the phone isn’t physically connected to the computer it can still receive application installations (), amazing!

Every few days I discover something else that I am missing from iOS and then I will Swype a message and forget all about it. I am surviving with Android and maybe in the distant future I’ll wonder how I ever survived without the little green robot.

I am no longer using an iPhone as my cellphone of choice.

Let that sink in for a moment. I have purchased an iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 on launch days, lining up several hours before the store opened and I give up the Apple device so close to the release of the iPhone 5? How did this happen?

For the last few months Gord has been touting the joys of cheap () and reliable phone service from Wind. After looking at my $70+/month phone bill with great disgust I thought it was time to become contract free and save some money. Wind and Mobilicity operate on the AWS network band and this means that all available versions of the iPhone are incompatible so if I was going to make the switch I would have to (1) wait until T-Mobile became a carrier of the iPhone 5 (who operate on the AWS band) or (2) go in the opposite direction and use an Android device.

T-Mobile announced they would not be receiving the iPhone 5 so if I was going to be contract free it would be without Apple. I have always been curious about Android but had no reason to switch so Hell froze over and I made the move.

Mobilicity did not have coverage in Sherwood Park so I was limited to look at Wind phones. There are new Android devices released every month but Wind only had a few available to purchase, and even fewer were in stock.

I went to five different Wind locations (two at Blockbuster and three kiosks) before finding one that had the LG Optimus 2X in stock. I tried to phone in advance but no one answered the listed numbers so I had to drive to each and ask about their inventory levels. Gord gave me some assistance from Calgary as to which stores had the LG in stock but I was still turned down at the City Center kiosk.

I was willing to drive a bit to switch from Rogers but my patience was growing a little thin locating kiosks inside a mall. Thankfully Kingsway Mall would be my last stop as they had the LG in stock. The annoyance of driving around has long been forgotten and in the end it all worked out. The phone may not be one of the HTC brands I lust over but the the important thing is that I am off Rogers and am a free agent.

I love iOS and find the Android OS very confusing so I am faced with a bit of a learning curve. Millions of other people figured out Android so I’m sure I will in time, it will just take some hands on experience.

I sold my iPhone 4 to a co-worker and the money earned nearly paid for terminating my Rogers contract so that’s it. I’m an Android user. Maybe for a year, maybe forever. I do know I won’t go near another long term contract when there is now some much needed competition in the market.

I’ll write another post on my thoughts about Wind and Android in a few weeks time.

Update: The post regarding my first two weeks with Wind and Android is here.

Between climbing a mountain and floating down a river last weekend Gord and I were talking about the Gallery software we use on our respective sites. He mentioned there was a new version of the software that featured some fancy upgrades. I thought the Gallery project was abandoned, but I guess development stopped on Gallery2 to make way for Gallery3.

On Monday I began the process of installing Gallery3 and configuring it to my server and preferences. There were several hurdles in the installation. Some were documented but I only accidentally stumbled across them while searching for another issue. I ran the migration module and slowly my Gallery3 library was filling up with photos from Gallery2 (). This was a several hour job but it had over 4000 items to move so I forgave the wait and was happy that it completed without issue.

I had Gallery3 running for a day and a half before deciding to downgrade back to Gallery2, and here are some reasons why.

Gallery3 worked well enough but I think I had been using Gallery2 for so long that if I couldn’t get it to look just like Gallery2 I got frustrated. I spent hours installing the available themes, customizing the options and then digging into the CSS to modify items I wasn’t satisfied with. There was a developer who was working on a “Classic” theme, but their demo site produced a server error and they hadn’t posted in months. That may have been all I needed to stay with Gallery3 but visuals aren’t enough to ignore missing features.

I appreciated the effort to have SEO friendly slugs but it didn’t work with my folder/file naming convention. Folders had an address of http://gallery.seangursky.com/index.php/Project-365-Year-5 and clicking on an individual file had an address of http://gallery.seangursky.com/index.php/Project-365-Year-5/20110910. This wasn’t so bad except some file names were long (look no further than something like http://gallery.seangursky.com/index.php/2011-Ice-Dragons/2011-08-12-Shredders_Castledowns_6430) and my compulsion to have things look good would have forced me to rename several thousand files so the URL’s look better.

For reasons unexplained it bothered me that “index.php” was present in all of the addresses. Gallery2 has a constant “main.php” but at least the album and photo are pulled through a query string, but the combination of “index.php” and long addresses pushed me over the edge.

I was able to look the other way for a few nuisances but then I found some potential deal breakers.

The two Gallery3 WordPress plugins I installed couldn’t recreate the current Project 365 Grid of photos I currently use (). I even used the WPG3 plugin (which was the predecessor to the one I was using in WPG2) and had no success. I was able to have the plugins communicate with Gallery3 using the REST API module but I couldn’t see a way to get what I wanted without making it myself.

The “Summary” title on my photos was merged into the “Description” text when the Gallery2 to Gallery3 migration was performed. This made my updated descriptions look something like “Fluid Hair Vandalism An ad campaign by an Old Strathcona company got people all riled up and some reacted by vandalizing their storefront.”, where “Fluid Hair Vandalism” was the original “Summary”. I could run some PHP/SQL to look for the upper case letters and remove the offending string but that would have been tedious and probably made a few errors along the way.

I had no problems with installing modules to open up functionality of themes but when I was recreating my workflow in Gallery2 there were problems starting to appear. I was no longer able to “Edit Captions” for all photos within an album (). Instead I had to click on the “Edit” (gearbox icon) () on each photo I wanted to edit, which added unnecessary clicks into my day.

The gearbox was a nice feature but it slowed me down when I wanted to rename multiple items or when I would accidentaly click on it. I am fine using the “Album/Item Actions” drop down () and it would have been nice if there was an option to change how the “Actions” menu was accessed.

I wanted to customize the metadata information that displayed on an album. Instead of showing the number of views on the thumbnail overlay I wanted to show the item count. This information was visible once you clicked into the album but I find album size more important than number of views. This should be possible to change in the template but it was just one more thing I’d have to manipulate myself.

I was no longer able to customize the thumbnail either, I had the “Square Thumbnails” module installed but I couldn’t focus in on a small part of the photo to generate the thumbnail. It was nice to have all of my images have a square thumbnail but I would prefer to customize the thumbnail over having uniformity in my older albums.

I like having my EXIF details visible for all photos but this required a click to open up a “Photo Details” modal which felt tedious and bothered me more than I thought.

It was around this time I debated if I could live with these problems. There were some incredible features of Gallery3 that I will miss, but they were more flash and not function so I decided to undo the steps I did only a day before by reverting the .htaccess file, 301 redirects and GoDaddy subdomain forwarding.

Some of the pros of Gallery3 were the ease of use and installation. The administration panel was well laid out and I didn’t have to go hunting to find a setting that I needed to update.

The ability to have a mobile theme was incredible (even if I would be the only one to view my gallery on a mobile device) and I like the implementation of some JavaScript libraries that brought new life to the photo gallery…but these were all aesthetics and weren’t enough to keep me around.

If you want to poke around the installation you can still find it here: http://seangursky.com/gallery3. I will leave the /gallery3 folder around for now so when the software has matured a bit it will make my transition a little easier.

At no time did I encounter a bug or error while using the software, modules or themes. Everything seemed rock solid and was nice to use, but I couldn’t switch until all of my Gallery2 needs are met. There is active development on Gallery3, coders are always checking in updates to templates and modules but it’s just wasn’t the ideal solution for me right now.

I bought my Canon EOS 5D in September 2010 with the knowledge that it did not have the mirror fix completed on it. Some 5D users never had the mirror fix performed and don’t bother sending it in for repairs while others had the mirror physically fall out. Not wanting to continue to risk the odds I decided to send the camera in.

After using the camera for 11 months I am using a pause in the action (between summer hockey and before the holiday season) to send the camera away for a few weeks to be fixed up. I was mostly concerned about having something happen to the camera while on vacation. The 5D survived our trip to England/France in 2010 but I was afraid of what would happen if it decided to break in Iceland 2012.

On August 15 I went to the Canon Repair website, created a profile and requested a repair of my camera. I asked that the mirror fix be performed and to get the body shutter count. The original cost estimate for the repair was $250, but after speaking to a member on the Photography on the Net boards, they assured me the same thing happened to them and they paid $0 for the mirror fix and shutter count.

I received a confirmation email that day from Canon and on August 17 I sent the camera to Mississauga, Ontario. I shipped only the camera body, I removed the memory card, strap, eye cup and battery. The only thing that was attached to it was the body cap cover. As per the instructions Canon sent me I had Canada Post send the package with a tracking number and insurance. To expedite the process I paid for two day shipping and on August 18 the camera was received by Canon.

On August 19 I received a repair estimate email () from Canon stating that the total charge would be $271.95. To see why I was being charged something that should be corrected for free I contacted Canon Customer Support. I spent a few minutes getting into the right department but once I arrived at the service area the phone agent (Mike, one of two I spoke to) confirmed the repair would be done for free and sent a revised email to me stating the repair had been acknowledged.

Shortly after my phone call the end user online repairs page was updated to reflect the $0 amount and that work was underway () . The camera was in their system and ready to be fixed, and now I just had to wait the estimated 15-20 business days for it to be completed.

On August 29 the repair status said completed ()! Later in the day the status changed to shipped (). Seven business days to perform the work on their end, thankfully this was well under the estimated time frame.

On August 30 the camera arrived in Edmonton and was delivered to me over lunch (). I appreciate that Canon rushed the delivery (as the Online Repair page said), after checking the Online Repair status daily for the last 10 days I didn’t want to have any delays with the shipment.

The camera came well packaged with paper and the body was inside a plastic bag with a print out of the work done. The technician’s notes were:

Adjusted shutter speed, AE, AF, cleaned sensor, mirror modification was already done last time.

Oh…that’s underwhelming.

Admittedly I felt like a putz for sending the camera in for something when it was already performed but I’m surprised the work was allowed to continue if there was nothing to do. I had hoped that if the mirror fix had already been performed it would have been something the Online Repairs system could determine before accepting the body in for work.

I read the Service Repair Form () several times but I didn’t see anything about my shutter count, which was listed in the “customer complaint” section. I guess it’s good to have the camera be given a once over, but without knowing the exact shutter count I won’t know how much life is left on the body.

Without the 5D I felt a little like a photography nomad. I had cameras available to use but none could perform the way I knew the 5D could. I would see a sprinkler creating a rainbow or a large spider web and knew that my Pentax Optio S55 or iPhone 4 wouldn’t capture it and I begrudgingly moved on. It was nice not to have to carry a second bag with me everywhere I went, but after having one around me for so long it was strange to not have it. I always felt like I was leaving the house and forgetting something.

In a rather anticlimactic fashion my experience with Canon Canada comes to an end and overall I’m satisfied with the process and how quickly it took to get the camera back. I hope this post will assist other Canadians who have a 5D to get their camera to Canon and back without problem.

Since our 16 hour layover in Iceland last October I have been thinking about returning. I always wanted to visit Iceland but being there for that brief moment made me want to return as soon as possible. A few months passed and I got a little more serious about planning a trip for 2012 at the start of this year. Traveling to Iceland isn’t easy or cheap so if we went there we had to do it right and see the entire country.

Before any serious plans could be made I had to determine the best time to fly there. I must have spent hours using Hipmunk, Kayak and Icelandair looking at flight paths, layover locations all in an attempt to determine the best day to fly on. From there I looked at weather, off season rates, sunrise and sunset times and settled on May 15-30, 2012 as our travel dates. This will give us optimal day light (18.5-20 hours of daylight), access to roads that are closed until the middle of May as well as the opportunity to take tours such as Jökulsárlón Glacier Lake boat tour.

After watching May 2012 airfare for the last month I noticed a trend in the cost increasing every day. I went to the Icelandair website and saw limited seats available for the dates I wanted. I was surprised that a flight would be filling up 10 months in advance but not wanting to have a kink in our plans we bought the airfare, thus solidifying our plans for travel.

Over the next few days airfare cost increased but the Icelandair website no longer showed the limited seat availability. Perhaps I was seeing things or there were additional seats released. No matter, we have our flight there and back and now the next step is planning how we spend our two weeks.

There is a DIY approach where you handle everything from car rental to accommodation, or you can reserve a self drive tour from one of many tour operators in Iceland. As in any situation, there is money saved by doing it yourself but the benefits of paying extra could prove to be invaluable.

After calculating numbers the additional cost of having a tour operator watching your back is helpful in a country where glacial floods from a semi-active volcano can wipe out the only bridge on the only road and you need to make quick alterations to your travel plans. Such things would be possible on your own but it’s reassuring that if the country changes your itinerary the tour group will assist you in dealing with it.

Volcanic activity is always a concern in Iceland and between Katla, Hekla and Grímsvötn it’s been a busy few months in Iceland and could be better or worse by next year so it will be nice to have someone to help us navigate the country if things do go awry.

What’s there to do in Iceland? You’d be surprised but it has it all. Glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, black beaches, barren dry lands with no soul in sight, beautiful and haunting scenery at every turn. As an added bonus, it’s an opportunity to see a place that many people pass over when flying between North America and Europe.

There is a 1300 km ring road that circles the island and it takes a week to do the majority of the county and another few days for the isolated Westfjords. Major attractions such as waterfalls, geysers, volcanic pools and fjords are accessible from the road so there will always be something to see when you pull over.

Plus Iceland has hot dogs, like really good hot dogs. I could be wrong but I’m sure a typical Icelandic lunch goes like: fermented shark, followed by a delicious hot dog and then a shot of Black Death.

The next step will be to reserve our self drive tour. I have been in contact with a few tour outfits and there is a lot of options available for visitors like Nordic Visitor, GrayLine, Discover the World and tour.is to name a few. I have a preference but I want to look over proposed itineraries a little bit longer before making the next major purchase in our trip in 2012.

The gloves are still drying from the final game of the Ice Dragons playoff game last night and the wound of this loss is going to take months to heal. For the second year in the row the Ice Dragons were ousted from the EMHL summer coed post season by the AMS Shredders in a shootout and the hatred we have for that team grows a little bit stronger.

How we got that far is a story onto itself and our season came to an end one week after one of the best memories I’ll have in my hockey career. On paper the Ice Dragons weren’t worth a second glance. We posted a 7-8-0-1 record for 15 points, one above the team at the bottom of the B division. After a stretch of losses the team was moved to C division where the victories came easier and the games had less meaning. After a few weeks of accumulating wins we were moved back to B division and were given a harsh wake up call.

It seemed that every team got exceptionally better in between seasons and we stayed the same. There was no middle ground for us, it was either an easy victory in C division or a lopsided affair in B division. Having nearly identical rosters to last year I can only assume everyone else stepped up their game, or played a little bit harder against us.

Our regular season ended with two victories in a row and we were slotted to face the Yellow Pencils in a first round matchup. The Pencils had a dominating record of 11-4-0-1 and with the exception of a few forfeits they were the best team in the division. We lost the first game, fielded a larger roster for the second game and staved off elimination.

A few days later we met for the third and deciding game. We had eight skaters and the odds stacked against us. It was a strong game on our end as we didn’t show signs of being short and had the Yellow Pencils number. With the seconds ticking down the Yellow Pencils tied the game and we were heading to a shootout.

After the first three skaters went we were tied at one apiece and it was my chance to go one on one with the goalie. I may not remember all of the goals I score but from the blue line to celebration I remember my position, where the puck was and what I was thinking. I came in on the left, cut across in front and hit top shelf. I thought about back hand, deke or something else but as I went left to right I knew what I was going to do and after that goal I had a grin on my face for hours.

Some controversy followed from the opposition as to who would shoot next, but it didn’t matter, they missed and we celebrated hard.

Next up were our arch rivals the AMS Shredders. We lost all of our regular season games against them this year but knew we they could be beaten. We had back to back games scheduled and the score card will show them winning both but not without a fight.

For the second Friday in a row the Ice Dragons were short benched with eight skaters and were in an elimination game. Sadly the outcome was different this time. It was a solid effort from everyone on the Dragons as we overcame an early deficit and killed off several penalties. The Shredders scored with 16 minutes left and we were heading to another shootout.

Instead of being a part of the celebration we watched these jerks celebrate a shootout victory over us for the second year in a row. With their top competition (Yellow Pencils) removed from the playoffs the B division is theirs for the taking in a second year in a row and we’ll be looking forward to the playoffs next year for revenge.

Pushing aside the bitterness of this loss it was still another fun year being a part of the Ice Dragons. My assist amount decreased this season from last, but I made up for it by scoring the most goals I had in any Ice Dragons uniform.

Our team had a lot of returning players from the 2010 season and it made for a tight knit group. The new players fit in well and I would be pleased to have everyone come back for a fourth Ice Dragons season. The team Gord started in 2009 has come a long way and hopefully one year we’ll get to know what the Finals taste like and have a chance at claiming a division championship.

Until then I will be thinking about this all summer long (again): stupid short bench, stupid Flyers Shredders.

Photos from this season can be found in my gallery here. Photos from the Shredders playoff games will be added this weekend.