When people think of beloved family pets, typically what comes to mind is the family dog, or possibly a cat, but rarely do they think of chickens. Mostly due to the fact that most people don’t get the opportunity to have them as pets, but if they had one like our beloved “Boots” that opinion would certainly have been changed.  Sadly, she has left this world and moved onto greener pastures.

We got Boots and she was already well into her senior years, past her egg-laying years for sure, although she did manage to lay one once in a while.  For those who don’t know, once mature, chickens will lay nearly daily for the first few years and then it slows down to every few days, then maybe once a week or so, to the point where they are just “used up” as I’ve heard it called.  This is when we got Boots.  She was a layer, retired.  We don’t know her age since she had already had a few owners prior to us.  A beautiful buff Cochin that just seemed so friendly we had to take her from “our chicken guy” when we were first looking for layers even though she was past her egg-laying prime.

Boots and Liza

the ever protective old mother hen

Once home, she immediately became the matriarch of our little brood of chickens, literally taking the new younger chickens under her wing for protection and warmth. Even standing up to the dogs if they got too close to the new arrivals.  She stood on the drive with the kids awaiting the school bus on the first day of school.  It would seem her brood was not limited to just chickens but also our kids.  How many chickens do you know that answer to their name? Heck we’ve had cats that wouldn’t even do that, but boots did.  Anytime you called her name, you were ensured a verbal response, and if the weather was good and she was outside she would wander slowly over to you even as her eyesight failed, she was always willing to come close and be petted.

Anyone who ever tells you that a chicken is just a dumb bird is wrong.  They have personalities, they are curious, they like to be around people and contrary to what you might think, are smart enough not to try to cross the road, regardless of what is on the other side.  As people tell us all the time when they see our chickens on the unfenced lawn near the side of the road grazing, watching the traffic but never venturing onto the busy highway out front.

Boots was a beloved pet and as strange as that may sound to all the city dwellers, our feathered friend will be missed dearly.  As James Herriot so eloquently put it… “If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”

Times like these I’m often reminded of the words of the great children’s author, Dr Seuss, who put it best “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

tcg

A friend of mine was having issues setting up his Christmas gift: a 32gb BlackBerry Playbook. So I offered to help out.

Having always been one to enjoy fiddling with new(ish) tech, I looked at it as an opportunity to explore the world of BlackBerry that I had left behind many, many years ago when I fell in love with what an iPhone could do and my BB Curve got tossed into our electronic junk drawer.


First off, if you are going to compare it to an iPad2 then forget it, it loses hands down.  But if you judge it for what it is then it has its merits and uses.

If you are a BB user (I know there are still some of you out there who swear by them and not just at them) then you will probably like the way it works.  It just feels BlackBerry-ish.  Be prepared for a large download as soon as you start the wi-fi setup process.  You can’t avoid it either, it has to be installed, but from what I understand its replacing the OS and it makes the PlayBook much better to use.  Be forewarned, it’s just over 360 mb and you need a good clean connection, so don’t think you’re going to set it up at the local coffee shop.  In fact it stopped a couple of times for me, but after kicking everything and everyone off the home wi-fi, it managed to chug on thru and finish.

its a fair sized download, be patient

tutorial gives you all the basics

Once you are done the setup, which can only be done using wi-fi which kinda sucks IMO, then the rest of the setup is dead easy.  The tutorials are short and sweet and show you the basics in just a few minutes.  The screen is clear and bright, and the sample video in HD that is pre-installed looks so realistic you’d almost think it was 3D, at least according to my youngest daughter.

The multitasking is impressive and try as I might, opening tons of apps all at once didn’t seem to cause any trouble.  Even the pre-installed racing game that uses the built-in gyroscope worked flawlessly when flipping between it and any of the other apps I had open.

smaller than most other tablets

good clean interface

The PlayBook has almost all the features you’d expect of a tablet, including access to a music store and an app store, its just that they are not iTunes – the unchallenged king of media.  I flipped thru the store quickly and it seemed to have a lot of current media with comparable prices to the iTunes store.  Speaking of price, the PlayBook itself is about half the price of an iPad, and if you are looking for a smaller form factor then it might be just the thing for small hands.  Kids for instance would appreciate that when it comes to holding and typing on it.

There are front and back cameras for stills and video, which according to the specs should be better than that of my iPhone4, or the iPad2 but in side by said comparison it just didn’t measure up.  The photos looked flat and needed much brighter lighting to capture a good image. No flash either.  Not the flash that Apple hates, the type that lights up your subject is what I am referring to.  This little tablet does support Adobe Flash when you are on the web, but doesn’t have one for photographs.  Why can’t we have both?

taken from "BlackBerry_PlayBook_Specs_ENv4.pdf"

One thing that does annoy me though, is the lack of an email app.  Without bridging your PlayBook to your BlackBerry smartphone there is no calendar, email, or contacts.  This may be something that is about to change if you read the PDF specs of the PlayBook.  One little word “will” makes me think there are newer versions on the not-so-distant horizon.  Who knows, maybe the $299 price tag is to try to clear out the older models and make way for the next one.

If this product had come out without needing an update right out of the box, or hadn’t tried to come off as an iPad alternative, then maybe it would have been received better.  Also with all the uncertainty about Research In Motion (RIM) many people who might have welcomed BlackBerry’s first foray into the tablet market have held off, and that trepidation seems to be keeping people’s wallets closed .  Even at the lower prices, they are not exactly flying off the shelves the way you’d expect.  Hopefully with the right publicity and advertising RIM can increase their user-base and get back some of the huge investment they put into development.

Bottom line, would I buy one?  Yes.  Heck I’d like to buy a couple of them as travel-sized media players.  They are perfect for that.  Is it a full-blown tablet?  No, at least not yet.  Maybe after the next OS update (version 2.0 is close to release and hopefully won’t require new hardware), because it seems like there are still too many features missing that I want in a tablet.   You are not going to replace your laptop with this, but it will make a welcome addition to your electronic family whether or not you are a BlackBerry smartphone user.

tcg

A while back I got this email from Apple about the Apple Nano replacement program and in checking into it found out we did indeed have one of these 1st gen Nanos in our house, buried in a desk drawer unused for years, thankfully not bursting into flames.

The process was simple.  Check the serial number on Apple’s website (here if you want) and if you do indeed have one of these wee beasties, fill out the necessary info to get a shipment box sent to you.  As I said, we did, so we did, and low and behold within a few days an empty box arrived to ship the “defective” Nano back to Apple in.

I’d almost forgotten about the poor little firestarter until an email hit my inbox telling me a replacement had been shipped, and gave me a serial number.  I of course popped over to Apple’s support website and pasted that serial number in to see what they were sending back.  (https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do) As it turned out, they were replacing the 6-year-old Nano with a brand new 6th generation model.  Sweet!

the serial number showed me what was being sent back

Within days the box arrived with the new Nano in it, no fancy packaging, just a simple plastic bag and foam packing inside the same box I had sent in a few weeks earlier.  I’d seen the latest Nano before of course, but never really thought much about them.  I mean, we all either have iPod touches or iPhones in our house, what do we need a tiny little iPod for as well?  I couldn’t be more wrong.

First impression of this little easily misplaced idevice? Two words:  I want.

The clock function of this thing is the part that made me go “ooohh” at first, thinking that with one of the numerous optional wristbands it would be cool to have a watch with so many different faces that you could change on a whim to match your mood, but once I spent a couple of minutes playing with it and seeing what else it could do, it was quickly evident this wasn’t a one-trick pony.

8 gig of storage for music and apps (you can also get a 16 gig version, but the replacement we got was an 8), a handy and very sturdy clip to let you take this thing with you anywhere without the worry of it falling out of your pocket (again, sorry iPhone, i didn’t mean to drop you so many times) and a battery life that should last you all day.  The cool little feature of being able to change the audio to mono for those times you want to listen with only one ear (like when jogging for instance, maybe even while using the Nike Fitness app that comes standard on it), and the built-in radio tuner so you won’t miss hearing some of the new music you will want to buy later from iTunes, the list goes on and on.  Quite an impressive list of features built into something the size of a pack of matches.

All in all, I think Apple stepped up and did the right thing, and in doing so got a lot of good karma from it.  Not to mention potentially driving up sales of the latest iPod Nano.  My guess is that there will be a few of these things floating around our house in the next couple of months. For birthdays, Mother’s day, heck even Father’s day if i can hold out that long.  Come to think of it they are made in China, so maybe it would be a good thing to buy myself for Chinese New year since that’s only a couple of weeks away.

Now if only I could get my 9-year-old car replaced with a new model for free.  Of course, it would need a really, really, large RMA box.

tcg

Now that the celebrating is done with only the empties and mess to remind us of the passing of another year, it’s time to look forward to the upcoming year with all it has to offer.
Funny how the changing of a calendar, can bring forth a moment of reflection of the past year and have us making promises to ourselves in the form of resolutions that may or may not make it past the first month, or for some, maybe not even the first week.

The trick is to not make your resolutions so unattainable as to be thwarted by them too early on.  Keep them to something simple and doable that you actually have it in you to complete.

Instead of saying we are going to exercise everyday, or lose 25 lbs or stop smoking, how about you make an effort to be a better version of yourself, be happier, be healthier, and above all, be nicer to all those around you.  That is a resolution we can all achieve and commit to without fear of failing, and if we do, imagine how much better this coming year can be.

Happy New Year,

tcg

Routines.  In day-to-day life they can be good. Taking away some of the stresses by getting into routines can make life easier.  I always put my wallet, iPhone and keys in the same place at night for instance, that way they are easy to find in the always-in-a-rush-why-didn’t-i-get-up-earlier mornings.

But routines can also be dangerous in that we sometimes become lazy when it comes to our maintenance of our computers and devices when it comes to security.  Which can be especially bad this time of year as we find ourselves with a bit more time on our hands to spend with family and friends, the last thing you want is to find your trusty computer bogged down with nasty malware, adware, or the latest threat, Scareware.

What is scareware you may ask.  It’s those popups and emails you get telling you that you may already be infected and need to update or install a new program to protect yourself.  Always with a cost involved.  These warnings are coming at you from every side now it seems, social networking sites warning you, emails, website popups, etc. all trying to get you to drop your guard and install the problem that you are being warned you already have.  Another strain of these is fake antivirus.  Fake antivirus is fake security software which pretends to find dangerous security threats—such as viruses—on your computer. The initial scan is free, but if you want to clean up the fraudulently- reported “threats,” you need to pay.  Don’t be thinking if you run a Mac you are free of this threat either.  Its a growing market and Macs are becoming a lucrative part of it, possibly because most Mac users have gotten used to thinking they are immune.

Maybe it’s not the intended purpose, but I’ve used @NatalieMacLean ‘s wine app  (check it out here) a few times this week to check prices on bottles of wine when in a restaurant to see the crazy markup they charge. A $12 bottle of wine in the LCBO costs about $40 in a restaurant? That’s a little ridiculous, there should be some sort of governing body that allows a certain maximum markup on a bottle of vino that you can buy at the LCBO when resold in a restaurant.  Probably not going to happen though, since I’m sure the argument would be that if you don’t like the prices, don’t buy the wine.

Getting back to the app (which is available for iPhones, iPods, Blackberrys and Android devices), another maybe not intended usage although I’m sure she doesn’t mind, is checking to see what Nat says about certain bottles of wine we have in our cupboard (sorry no cellar here, we’re just not that classy) to see which is suitable as a gift.  We typically have a few bottles on hand as last-minute gifts, or just in case gifts, or sometimes “its been a rough week” bottles.  Her app proves especially handy at Christmas time since its always nice to give a well suited bottle of wine rather than just guessing, or even to prevent you from giving someone a cheap bottle of wine thinking it was better than it is.  The LCBO prices listed for the bottles in her app come in very handy to help prevent that.  You can also pop over to her website and see what she says about the bottle in question http://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks/ in her reviews.

Like I said, maybe it’s not the intended use, and the app does so much more than I mentioned here, but  having a pocket sommelier to help you select a bottle of wine at a restaurant, or as a gift, or to bring to a party is a great thing to have any time of year but especially useful during the holiday season, which always seems so busy and so short.

As Simon Fowler put it  ”Get up and dance, get up and smile, get up and drink to the days that are gone in the shortest while“.

tcg.

Fans at the London Knights game at the JLC set a new record last night with the latest Teddy Bear Toss.  The crowd helped out with 9851 stuffed animals thrown on the ice after the first goal was scored by the Knights, which was also the first goal of the game.

It was something to see, with the tossing of the stuffed animals lasting almost as long as the cleanup of them. Boxes full of the stuffed toys being gathered, a truck and van on the ice packed full with bags full of the donated stuffed toys, as the crowds kept tossing them onto the ice, volunteers scrambling trying to pick them up, skating off the ice with bags full of the toys.  The game stopped dead it its tracks for about 10 minutes.

It was one of those moments that  make you proud to be from London (or London area).  Being able to help out by giving a stuffed animal so that many kids who wouldn’t have gotten a toy at Christmas have something to open on Christmas morning, and doing it in such a fun way. I tried to capture it on my iPhone, but the video doesn’t really do it justice, you kinda need to be there to really feel the outpouring of spirit.

(click image to play video)

Kudos Knights fans, everyone at the JLC, and all their sponsors for making this happen.

tcg