that canadian girl

Latest adventures…

  • Warm belly, happy Vero

    It’s official, we’re going to see LAL in Brighton on the 26th of February with Lisa and Stu!

    Makes me happy to support a Canadian group on tour! I bet they’ll love the Brighton crowd, they’re such a welcoming and warm bunch of people! I’m really excited that Andrew’s sister and her hubby are joining us since I think they’ll like the music a lot, and they’re always great to go out with.

    So good weekend in perspective! In the meantime, this weekend is a nice lazy bum relaxing one 🙂

    Now, the question is… Should I fill in the application form for Location, Location, Location or not? I’m wondering whether or not I fancy being on TV… Their help would be great, but ick being on telly!! What do you think?

  • London Underground

    London Underground: The funniest way to bitch about the Underground’s inability to offer decent service that I’ve seen in quite a while.

    WARNING: Contains explicit language — just like any journey on the Underground.

    “So I’m standing here in the pouring rain… Where the f*ck’s my f*cking train!?”

  • Looking back at January

    I was having a look at my January stats this morning, and I’ve got to say, this is a surprisingly good start to the year as far as site traffic goes. I mean, I never started this site planning on being the new Boing Boing or anything but I have to admit it’s flattering to know there are people other than your mother reading what you have to say.

    To give you an idea of how the blog has evolved from the handful of hits it was getting a year ago before becoming thatcanadiangirl in its current incarnation, here are some stats. Feel free to skip this if you find it’s a pile of rubbish, because it really is.

    • Over 2000 unique visitors;
    • Nearly 75,000 hits;
    • Visitors came from 73 countries in total;
    • 621 search engine queries landed people on my site;
    • … which were brought on by 350 different keyphrases searched.

    So… the spammers must count for a good handful of the countries in there, but the hits up there are only for viewed traffic, so shouldn’t include searchbots and spambots (they’re worth 10,000 hits on top of the 75k), but otherwise, that’s still a decent number of visits!

    Keep it comin’ and I’ll keep bloggin’!

  • The evolution of portable music

    With iPods all the rage at the moment, it’s interesting to take a look back at where portable music started. CBC remembers…

    Now, how sexy does that first CD player look? 😛

  • Ivan Noble (1967-2005)

    Ivan NobleI just read on the BBC that Ivan Noble, the BBC News journalist who has been writing about his treatment for a brain tumour for the past two years, has died aged 37.

    As Ivan’s last entry was posted on Sunday, a pre-written note thanking the people around him and saying final goodbyes, I knew it meant it wasn’t likely I would read him again.

    This is a man who chose to share the story of his battle with brain cancer for over two years. He demystified cancer and chemotherapy, touching people with his openness. Reading his column always helped me put things into perspective and remember to live every day as fully as possible. I often had a tear in my eye when I read his new entries, and after over two years of following the ups of remissions and the downs of new diagnoses, tonight, I must admit, my thoughts are with his family.

  • The Future for Bittorrent

    I was wondering the other day how a technology like Bittorrent could be used to do more than allow people all over the world transfer software, movies and music illegally. I mean, let’s be frank, what else is it used for at the moment?

    Seth Godin     is thinking about the same thing (ahh great minds think alike, they say!) saying this:

    So, the interesting part of the near future re to BitTorrent is this:

    When everyone can watch high resolution DVD quality video on their screen without breaking your server, what will you do about that?

    Is Volvo ready with a thirty minute test drive I can watch when I’m ready to buy a new car?

    Is Toshiba ready with a how-to manual for their new music server? A fifteen minute well-made video that actually explains what I should do to hook it up?

    How about publishers? Are they ready to do a video news release with complete interviews with all their important authors?

    This, folks, is the real 500 channel universe. It will probably turn out to be more boring than Seinfeld, but way more specific. A billion infomercials, all the time.

    The winners will be people who have the guts to make the interesting ones.

    I still don’t see what would motivate people to keep seeding after they’re done downloading clips * like Seth describes, but the overall idea of useful content being delivered using distributed systems like Bittorrent makes sense, especially for those in very high demand.

    Would take a gem of imagination to create clips of interest, but as Seth says, those who do create interesting ones will be the winners.

    Edited: But then, I never thought people using Bittorrent would leave files seeding when they’re done at all. The popularity of the system has now proved me wrong. I need to give people credit sometimes.

  • I can sing a rainbow

    I can’t help but like the Australian Tourism Board advert that has been on recently, showing Australia through Delta Goodrem’s eyes.

    Have a look for yourself, it’s so colourful and nice, especially when compared to the annoying unimaginative ads from the US and the Turkey ones that are played way too often. Just cute 🙂

    [Update: I’ve changed the link again! The video can’t run away from us!]

  • Feeling better // Conference photos

    I’m feeling soooo much better tonight! Four days, lots of sleep, 3-4lbs lost and a pack of super-soft Charmin toilet paper bought in desperation later, I feel a whole lot better!

    Andrew’s going to be away for a couple of days with work, which means I won’t get tempted into eating big meals like I did the first 2 nights of being sick (I’m convinced pizza can’t have helped my tummy, though it did help my mood for a bit!) and I’ll make myself some soups.

    Oh, on another note, the work conference photos are up finally. Below is my list of “highlights of the week” photos:

  • What a start to the year this month has been…

    I haven’t been posting much interesting stuff over the past few days, but I’ve been taking it easy as I wasn’t feeling great.

    At work, the wind has taken me over to a different department… Ok, it wasn’t the wind, but circumstances have landed me in a new department temporarily, but doing essentially the same job. It was unexpected but I chose to take it as a positive experience. It’ll give me a different perspective on what the company does as I’ve always worked with the same study area (computing, sciences, health, etc). This time I’ll be having a look at the business, economy, marketing, etc field, which means I’ll get a pretty good overall look at all our higher education books!

    Otherwise, I’m just recovering from the ultimate post-indulgence tummy bug. It was probably caused by all the rich meals, wine and lack of fruits and veggies from the conference last week, as well as being so tired after it. I think it’s reminded me that my stomach isn’t a trash can and that I should start eating reasonably well again. I might even get my butt in gear this week and start going to the gym again, whaddya think?

    Wow this is starting to look like a month-late new year’s resolution, isn’t it!?

  • QuĂ©bec-MontrĂ©al

    Je suis en train de regarder le film de Ricardo Trogi, un ancien de la Course Destination Monde. C’est Andrea, en Autriche, qui a spottĂ© le film sur TV5 y’a un bout de temps et finalement, cet aprĂšs-midi, j’Ă©tais su’l’dos et j’ai dĂ©cidĂ© de le regarder.

    J’arrive juste pas Ă  m’habituer aux sous-titres “français” sur un film quĂ©becois! C’est trop comique de voir la traduction des sacres… Mon bout prĂ©fĂ©rĂ© (Ă  date, pas encore tout regardĂ©) c’est quand le chum de Julie commence une conversation avec un panneau de traverse d’orignal aprĂšs avoir sniffĂ© un peu trop de gaz!

    Y sont mieux d’arrĂȘter pour une poutine quelque part en chemin, ou c’est pas un vrai voyage QuĂ©bec-MontrĂ©al!