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Updates from November, 2004

  • For those of you who have been following Ken Jennings and his march to victory after victory on Jeopardy, it’s all come to an end today. Missing both of his Daily Doubles in the Double Jeopardy round and the Final Jeopardy question was what did him in. He leaves the show after 75 consecutive appearances (74 consecutive wins) with over $2.5 million dollars.

    I thought Ken was great fun to watch since to me, he dominated Jeopardy much like Tiger Woods dominated golf in the year 2000. You always wondered just how much money Ken would win the next day and when someone would finally challenge him. In the end though, it was somewhat sad to see him beat himself rather than have a really strong challenger outplay him, but it was still good while it lasted.

    Thanks Ken! For those of you wanting to see all the quirky facts about Ken’s winning streak and his earnings, click here.


    Andy 6:30 pm on 11/30/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     


  • I’m very excited to announce that Matt and I are working on a new project called The Skinny on Sports. It’s a 10 minute audio show or Podcast about the latest issues and stories in the sports world. Our first show is now posted at http://www.andyskinn.com/skinny. Podcasting is the term given to these shows because using a program like iPodder these shows can be downloaded automatically when new shows become available, and you can even have them automatically transferred to your iPod.

    Our first show looks at the fight from the NBA the other night, Vince Carter and the trade rumors, Maria Sharapova, and Tiger Woods. Plus, in the overtime segment, Matt reviews his picks for the five biggest idiots to ever play basketball.

    We would love feedback from everyone and hopefully you’ll all enjoy the show! Pass on the word to any sports fans you know.

    UPDATE: The second episode of the show is now posted – check it out!


    Andy 6:09 pm on 11/21/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • I’ve been working on a website lately for the University of Calgary Dinos Men’s Basketball team. For those of you who don’t know, my brother Matt is an assistant coach with the Dinos this year as he is starting his Masters degree in Sports Psychology. The site isn’t completely finished yet, but the main design is there (probably still some work on the header after Matt gives me some action shots). The Dinos lost in the semi-finals at the Canadian championships last year, therefore, they are hoping for a big year again this time around. You can follow their progress by heading over to dinosbasketball.com.


    Andy 6:55 pm on 11/19/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • I am very happy to say that over the past weekend, I asked Amanda, my girlfriend of nine years, to marry me. Her response was “Of course” and we are very excited to be taking this next step of our lives together.

    For those of you who like details of this sort of thing, I surprised Amanda by taking her to Canmore on the weekend and we stayed in a nice Bed & Breakfast that we’ve stayed at before. I proposed mid-day on Saturday as were walking along the Bow River in the valley enjoying the wonderful mountain scenery. We then had dinner that night in Banff at one of our favourite restaurants, The Grizzly House. All in all, it was a great weekend and it was great to finally ask her as I had been planning this weekend since September.

    We are aiming for our wedding to take place in early July of next year before I start medical school. We’ll try and keep everyone posted of the news and planning. Keep checking back here as well as I’ll try and use this website as another way of keeping people in the loop. We’re very excited about everything and hope everyone else will be too!


    Andy 9:34 pm on 11/15/2004 | 4 Permalink | Reply

     

  • When reading through my feeds in Bloglines today, there was an unusually high number of interesting stories that I wanted to post about. Rather than make a lot of long posts, I decided to do a list of “teaser posts” that may peak your interest.

    Winamp, the once dominant MP3 player for desktop computers has officially shut its doors. Minor updates are expected but no more major versions. Speculation is that this is largely due to the emerging dominance of the easy to use iTunes making its way over to the PC.

    Google’s search page is now showing that they have doubled their index from 4 billion sites to 8 billion sites. This is most likely their answer to Microsoft’s new search engine that is currently in beta testing.

    Can’t decide when the best time is to upgrade your computer. Check out this link for some general thoughts about when to wait and when to lay down your money.

    Some Gmail users are now being given the option to read and send email using a POP3 client. It sounds as though this will become a permanent feature of Gmail and speculation is that IMAP might not be that far away either. Two words: This Rocks!

    Want a TV in your bathroom but have it be invisible when not in use? Check out the Mirror TV.

    Socks for your iPod? Apple is now taking orders for the iPod Socks – they come in a pack of six colours and should ship before Christmas.

    If you haven’t seen the Nintendo DS yet, it’s worth a look. For only $199.99 at Futureshop, seems like awesome value and it appears as though Nintendo will continue to dominate the handheld video game market. It’s available November 21st.

    USB thumb drives are everywhere now. I guess it was only time until someone made one actually look like…. a thumb? Kind of creepy looking if you ask me.

    Wired is running a story about the debut of Firefox 1.0. Might be a good article to pass on to anyone still not using Firefox.

    Rumors have been picking up that the next iPod could be a flashed based player despite Apple denying that they would ever want to enter that market. This story makes some good points about why the idea might not be that far off.


    Andy 5:53 pm on 11/11/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • November 9th is finally here meaning Firefox 1.0 is released. As many of you that frequently read the site know, I’m a big supporter of Firefox and feel that it is the best way to experience the web. If you haven’t already tried Firefox, now is the time. The Firefox site will be busy throughout the day, but keep trying – it’s worth it. I was able to get through to their FTP server by following this link. Enjoy!


    Andy 9:08 am on 11/9/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • If you’re seeing this message, it means that the transfer to the new web server has been completed. I decided it was time to move the site to a real server (as opposed to the old computer sitting in my living room and taking up space). Keep your fingers crossed that it will remain reliable and hopefully you’ll notice a bit of a speed increase since it’s now hosted on an actual server with better bandwidth than my cable modem.

    Since I had to move all the files over, something may still look a bit weird or maybe missing. If you do notice anything, please feel free to email me so that I can try and fix it.


    Andy 6:32 pm on 11/6/2004 | 1 Permalink | Reply

     

  • There’s a new version of Thunderbird available today – version 0.9. It’s a great email client from Mozilla and is the perfect compliment to Firefox. Give it a try!


    Andy 6:32 pm on 11/4/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • A while back, I posted about a great Firefox extension called Sage. I’ve since moved on to a much more powerful way of organizing my RSS feeds and it’s a totally FREE web-based system called Bloglines (like Headlines, but for blogs and other pages with syndicated content). Since it’s web-based, it means that you can access it from any computer so you can always be up to date on your news. You can even have it notify you of new posts and group different feeds into folders so that everything about a particular subject all comes up together. For instance, I have a Tech folder so all the different posts on all the different Tech sites that I like to read will appear in one place – Fantastic! Plus, since it only shows new feeds, I don’t waste my time checking sites that don’t have updated content.

    One other great feature is the ability to create email addresses from within your account to give out to mailing lists. This way, instead of getting emailed from a mailing list, it shows up in Bloglines in whatever related folder you sort it in. Then, if you ever start getting spam from that mailing list, you simply cancel that Bloglines address and create another one. You get a different address for each mailing list making it really easy to keep organized.

    I think this service is great and I definetely think that RSS is the next big thing for the internet (if it’s not already). Once you start using Bloglines you’ll wonder how you ever surfed the web without it. You can check out my previous post for some ideas of RSS feeds to get you started. Bloglines also has a list of their top picks and can even make recommendations for you based on your current feeds.

    There’s so much more that I could write about this great service, but the best thing will be for you to try it yourself. It’s very easy to use, but if you have any questions at all, feel free to post them here!


    Andy 9:31 pm on 11/3/2004 | 0 Permalink | Reply

     

  • Sorry for the lack in posts this week. For those of you that don’t know, I had to redo the oral part of my candidacy exam that I initially took last June. To make a long story short, I did much better this time and passed! That’s another step along the road to this MD/PhD degree that will keep me in school for the rest of my life! (Just kidding… sort of.)

    Thanks to everyone that’s been supportive throughout all of this. Hopefully we’ll all be able to tackle the bumps that life throws at us.


    Andy 9:47 pm on 11/1/2004 | 3 Permalink | Reply