Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

There is little to report, but like a presentation being better with PowerPoint, I decided to dress up this entry with some images to assist in my story.

Extreme Prize

I completed an online survery for Value Drug Mart and was quite intruiged by the prize they were offering me if my entry was selected.

I guess this could be an interesting prize.

Tube Steak Challenge

Canada Day marked our nations 142nd birthday, but it was the official end to my innagural Tube Steak Challenge. We celebrated this years holiday at work but enjoyed a BBQ for our troubles of working July 1. It was here that hot dog number 54 was consumed.

Of course when the Coney Island hot dog eating contest from July 4th has a record breaking 68 hot dogs eaten in ten minutes it puts my ’1.03846′ hot dogs a week to shame.

Still, I am proud of it all the same.

Months of Waiting

In March I lost everything to 1and1.com. In addition to losing blog posts and photos my domain was held for ransom by 1and1. I had to wait for my registration of the domain to expire, then wait the month for the redemption period to run out. Following that I entered an auction to purchase the domain.

After winning the auction I had to wait 60 days to move the domain over to GoDaddy, and now seagurs.com is rightfully mine.

This could fall under the tag of ‘eye surgery‘ but it was more of a casual joke than anything that turned into a joke on me.

Last week I was speaking with Gord and jested that I would buy CanSeanSeeYet.com and have it similar to IsItChristmas.com or IsMacTFired.com. Gord talked common sense into me, got me off the ledge and basically said that registering a domain for a joke “3 people will get” was a waste. I thought it was a fair argument and that it was impulsive on my part. I gave up my quest for this joke site and did not think about it after that.

Wednesday morning I was renewing another joke domain, IReallyLoveTheMcRib.com. I selected the domain and went through the checkout process for renewal. I must have been too busy making sure no other GoDaddy ‘upgrades’ made their way into my cart to really see what I was buying.

I completed the purchase without error, however when I received an email notice thanking me for purchasing a new domain I realized something was wrong. I went back to my domain manager and saw the horror! I had purchased CanSeanSeeYet.com without realizing it.

CanSeanSeeYet.com was still in my cart from last week and I purchased that instead of renewing my intended domain. I had already paid a years domain registration for it so I might as well make the most of it.

I present to you: CanSeanSeeYet.com, in all of its blurry glory.

I am now one step closer to having seagurs.com back in my possession.

I have debated a lot about what I would do to regain seagurs.com. I contemplated spending the $50USD to 1and1 to retrieve the domain out of the Redemption Period, or just forgetting about it completely. Ultimately I decided to ‘back ordered’ the domain through GoDaddy and see what would happen.

However, when I suspected that GoDaddy wasn’t going to successful secure my domain I found a domain auction and entered a bid into that. I felt kind of odd bidding on a domain I had owned for years, but seeing the advertisement parking on the site made me realize how much I would hate it if someone else had control of my former identity and the least I could do was try to secure it through another method.

I won the domain auction without hassle, and to my surprise ‘back order’ from GoDaddy did not help in the process. I paid my $9.00 for the domain bid and now with the WhoIs updated to show that I control seagurs.com I can rest a little easier. Unfortunately I am still not out of the woods yet.

Now I began the steps of transferring the domain over to GoDaddy and then maintaining it from there. Until I can complete the domain transfer, which may require me to wait 60 days because I just bought the domain, the advertisements on the site will stay. Even doing a domain redirect with my temporary registrar would set me back $25USD which is too much for that 60 day period.

It has been a long road back to recovery but I can see that the end is in sight.

I have been a member of Twitter for nearly a year. My tweet output may have dropped off in recent months but that doesn’t mean I am using the service any less. I think I am more connected to Twitter than I was when I started.

I like to think I have a healthy variety of technology, news, friends, locals and people that I have a common interest with on my Follow list but that doesn’t give me the full story. I follow any discussions marked with the Edmonton “#yeg” hashtag and routinely go into Trends to see what is making news on Twitter. I am often informed of news from Twitter before it comes up on my RSS reader.

However keeping tabs on all of that at once can be trying and I have recently become addicted to Twitter desktop applications. I have tried several clients and will talk about them below. Notably missing from this list is Twhirl. I have used it but it was no comparison to my favorite application and removed it immediately and I could not be bothered to install it again for screenshots.

Desktop
Seesmic Desktop launched in April to a lot of praise and publicity on Twitter. It had an immediate market share penetration. I could no longer hide from it so I tried it out to see what all of the fuss was about. The application is straightforward and fairly robust. It wasn’t what it did that caught my attention, it was what it didn’t. I immediately noticed I could not filter columns (from my timeline or searches) and this is something I have come to rely heavily on. Since this program is still in its infant stages I may be persuaded to return to it once they improve some of their features.

The popular iPhone application Tweetie now has a Mac desktop application. On the surface it is very simple and clean, and if I primarily used a Mac at work I may consider switching over to it full time.

Still, it is my primary application on MacBook Pro because I like to keep tabs on my timeline but do not require the extensive functionality of other applications. For long term usage I would like to have saved searches that I find useful when I have a Twitter application open for 9-10 hours a day. I have not investigated what the full version of Tweetie is capable of, but it would have to be really impressive to persuade me from the free version of Tweetdeck.

I have saved the best for last with Tweetdeck. There really was no competition here, Tweetdeck may occupy more memory than I would like but it has changed the way I get information on Twitter forever. At first I was overwhelmed with this application but it is now clearly my favorite.

It can do everything previous clients can but also has Facebook integration for status updates, TwitScoop, multiple URL shortening services available (compared to others applications that would have just a few) and the ability to filter results in a column. This is something I recently discovered and it has cleaned up duplicate data between my main timeline and my “#yeg” column.

My primary Tweetdeck view gives me everything I need to know immediately and it fits perfectly in the corner of my monitor and requires no switching between tabs or scrolling to see more. The program is not without its shortcomings, such as not being able to save filters on a column and its demand on system resources. However those are small grievances to an otherwise robust and great program.

Mobile
When I am not in front of a computer I rely on my iPhone to keep me up to date with Twitter and there are just as many applications for that as there are for desktop use. It seems applications for Twitter are a dime a dozen but one notable application missing from this list is Twitterific. I tried the free version, liked it, but it had nothing to keep me coming back and I could not justify the $9.99 price point of the full version.

Unlike the desktop programs I do not have a clear favorite for iPhone applications. This is a tale of two clients: Tweetie vs. Twitterfon.

When comparing the differences between Tweetie and Twitterfon I was hard pressed to offer a compelling argument. I found Twitterfon to be as capable as the pay program of Tweetie. They provide the same information such as Trends, GPS capabilities and images are uploaded to TwitPic. There is only so much you can include an a mobile application before it becomes difficult to use and the features they do have are perfect.

Comparing the Tweetie interface to the Twitterfon interface reveals they are nearly identical. Even the Tweetie new message and Twitterfon new message are similar. I will concede that Twitterfon did something I loved with the “person” icon when you make a new tweet. That will show your entire follow list and you can select who you want to direct the message to, which saves embarrassing tweets because you spelt someone’s name incorrectly.

If they are nearly the same application then why would I pay $2.99 for Tweetie? I was able to justify it because of the subtle differences like speed at which the application loads my timeline, it doesn’t have hideous colors for unread tweets on my main timeline and replies, the ability to save searches and finally I thought the developer at least deserved that much for their work on the iPhone and Mac client.

It seems excessive to have two Twitter applications on my iPhone but that’s how even these two programs are.

Time for an update on a few things occupying my time.

The seagurs domain is still in ‘redemption period’. A few weeks ago I began the process of trying to reclaim it, but the account information did not match the domain registration so I had to provide government issued identification for Dad and myself. Since I had been waiting over a week for a response from 1and1, and the ‘redemption period’ was about to expire I decided I had enough with 1and1 and would just forget it and wait it out.

1and1 canceled my previous hosting on March 16, so I am nearing the time where I can buy the domain back. I have read that the ‘redemption period’ time varies so I have been checking GoDaddy for the purchase of my domain several times a day to no avail.

The Las Vegas U2 tickets have been purchased, and my excitement level about the show has increased dramatically. I have seen plenty of photos from Sam Boyd Stadium and it looks like such a cozy and tight arena that no seat will be a bad spot. However, my mission to get a lower level seat close to the stage was successful but there were many who were not so fortunate.

There was plenty of ticket drama surrounding this event as Ticketmaster wasn’t responsible for the fan presale. A smaller site for the venue handled everything and things like presale codes being counted as used when they weren’t, the site buckling under the pressure of presale purchases and a confusing delivery method of the tickets lead to a lot of confusion and grief.

The ticket cost was a bit much for my taste but U2 in Las Vegas sounds like a once in a lifetime experience and after seeing the sights in and around Vegas seeing U2 will be a perfect ending to a trip in Nevada. I am in the process of comparing flights and hotels. I am searching Hotwire, Travelocity, Expedia, WestJet, Air Canada, Yapta and Farecast for the best deals, trends and will hopefully have the flight booked first and then I can focus on hotels and all of the fun stuff to do while in Sin City.

It’s playoff time for the Canucks, and without getting ahead of myself, I am hoping the team can escape the first round and make a solid effort in the second. I am sure their highs and lows will be documented thoroughly here. With that said, I have decided to grow a ‘beard’ in honor of this playoff run.

I use the term ‘beard’ loosely as I have the patchiest, sorriest excuse for a beard that people may confuse me as a double in the “Don’t Be a Tosser” commercials.

In the last week I have read The Watchmen and The Time Traveler’s Wife. While reading these books it dawned on me why don’t I think about reading digital books? It makes sense, everything else around me has converted from a physical copy of something to its digital cousin, so books would be a logical change.

Assuming a device like the Kindle 2 was available in Canada and had all of the books I would be interested in reading I still wouldn’t take it. For as digital as I am there is something very satisfying about reading a book. A well read book shows its age while reading a brand new book is engaging because everything about the book (the cover, font, page thickness) is fresh and it is immensely satisfying seeing the bookmark progress along the spine.

It would be the physical qualities of a book I would miss. There is a certain pride with seeing all seven Harry Potter novels lined up on the bookshelf that could not be had if all seven books were digital in your hand. This feels like a weird argument for me to make, seeing as album art and liner notes of a CD are something I don’t miss but others claim that make the CD a little more personal.

What makes flipping through lyrics of a new album different than skimming the pages of a new book?

I was going to write one of two posts. This is the one I didn’t plan out, nor ever want to write.

Three and a half years of seagurs blogs, photo gallery updates, hosted audio files have all been deleted. Everything that the Internet knew of me was erased.

I have no one to blame but myself. All of this started when Dad canceled 1and1 payments for the domain and hosting for his business. Unbeknownst to him he took out everything I had because I was piggybacking on his account. I should have done regular backups, I should have been on my own hosting plan, I should have been more proactive…I should have done a lot of things.

When seagurs was inaccessible I was torn. Was this my chance to start fresh or walk away from it all together? I have recently wondered what it would be like to shut down the blog, but in that story I could always return to it with my files intact. However, not having it accessible was forcing my decision to face a cold truth: it could all be lost.

I realize that what I lost wasn’t important. I lost 1′s and 0′s, non-physical things. Still, I lost years of memories. I have spent countless hours going through old blog posts, reading about the experiences I have had, the highs and lows of my life as it was an in depth journal into my life.

Since I started seagurs I changed jobs, moved into a condo, got engaged, got married, been to Cuba and Mexico, traveled from BC to Saskatchewan for concerts and many other memories and allowed me to grow as a person.

Can seagurs be the same or is the archive what defined the site?

Learn more about the battle here and join your comrades in our fight against the flyer revolution.

Back in the day I was a huge fan of AudioGalaxy. Actually, it was my only source of downloading MP3″s. I used Napster but AudioGalaxy was everything and then some. AudioGalaxy was actually the first place I downloaded U2 bootlegs, and if you check out my trading list (albeit in need of an update) you can see what it ultimately lead to.

What is all this about then? Well, there is a new site called eMusic that looks to pick up where AudioGalaxy has left off. Or you can consider this an alternative to the other pay per song download places such as Pure Tracks or iTunes. You can sign up now and get a free download trial account or you can spend the $10/month for 40 song downloads’which works out to �25/song. The downloads are high-quality unrestricted VBR MP3, which is a leg up over the CBR quality you may get from other sites.

This site organized by the wizards at All Music.com so they know a thing or two about music. And you can jump from one artist to another via genre and style tags, or go off of user reviews and locate music that would fit your style. So while you are enjoying your free stream on Pandora you can buy that song you just heard.

In other news, I checked my “Most Played” songs on my iPod and guess what topped them all with nine listens’? Give up or just as ashamed at knowing the answer as I? Yes, that’s what I thought too. Well, you guessed it, What Are You Waiting For by Ms. Stefani was most played in the last week. My teeth are rotting with such sweet goodness and I’m loving it. I guess it’s a good thing I now have a new Sonicare Elite 7800 toothbrush then, so my teeth can survive my pop addiction right now. The toothbrush was a gift to Dad as thanks for opening the new dental office in town, you can’t even buy the Elite 7800, it’s only available to dentists so let’s hope it works twice as hard then.

Update: Umm’you better make that ten listens, on my way back from Tim Horton’s I had to listen to it again.