A few radio concerts from my archives

As I was doing a bit of clean-up around my computer, I thought that some people might enjoy some of the music concerts that I have been recording on the radio and digitizing over the years. I have uploaded them to a site called esnips where you can listen to all of the songs. You will find the links to listen to each concert on the new Concerts page that is on the top menu bar. Each concert has been divided by tracks. I hope that you will enjoy (and that no one will ask me to take these down). These are not concerts that you can buy and they were broadcasted on public radio.

Santa was very generous this year ;)

I hope that you are all enjoying the holiday season. Personally, I am really enjoying my two weeks off from work. I have also greatly enjoyed Christmas last week, with Santa fulfilling my wish list and more.

After getting hooked on the Star Trek: Next Generation novel revival last year, I was really looking forward to getting the three novels of the Star Trek: Destiny series. These novels are a cross-over between Next Gen, Deep Space Nine and Titan where the Federation is confronted once again with the Borg.

Still in the Star Trek line, I got the Star Trek: New Frontier comic book collection that was recently released. This is giving me incentive to go back to the rest of my New Frontier novels and catch up.

Finally, I got The Dark Knight on Blu Ray. Just watched it last night and I was blown away by the non-stop action. A really great sequel!

A new look for the new year

I have been searching the web for a new look for my blog for the past few months. After finding TypeBased by WooThemes, I immediately saw that I had found what I was looking for. The lines are very slick and simple and the color scheme is very professional. I hope that you will enjoy. Of course, if you read my site through the RSS feed, then you won’t get to enjoy the new look.

Re-vamped Freeware Database

After taking a critical look at the freeware section that I have been maintaining on this site, I have changed its format to be a simpler column-based table that shows the names of my favorite freeware applications, along with a much shorter description and listed comparative commercial software, to make it easier to understand what these tools do and what applications they can replace. You can find the current freeware database here.

Presenting my first paper at a conference

After writing a few white papers on Human Machine Interface technologies, I recently wrote a paper that I presented as part of the 27th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC). The event was being held in St. Paul, Minnesota, a town I had never visited. After travelling the world in my field for 11 years, and often going back to visit the same cities that I have seen before, it is a nice change to get to go to a new place. Here are some pictures that I took during my visit.

Another new browser on the scene

After Firefox managed to create itself a nice niche amongst web browser, there is now a new kid on the block: Google Chrome. I think that it was inevitable to see Google release their own browser after seeing all of the great online applications that they have developed over the years.

I installed Chrome myself this afternoon and have been quite impressed with the fast page load times, the nice user interface thougths (my favorite so far is the bookmark toolbar that integrates itself to your start page and then disappears when you start navigating) and other little tidbits (loading messages appearing and disappearing in the corner of the browser, etc…).

Here is a quick snapshot so you can get an idea of what it looks like:

The ever-changing price of gas

As I was driving on the Indianapolis highway after visiting a customer, I saw a big electronic sign for a gas station and saw the price change as I was looking at the sign. While I first thought that it was odd for the price of gas to change in the middle of the day, I soon realized that the price was changing back and forth between the price that you would pay with a credit card and a lower price if you paid cash. The difference was 4 or 5 cents a gallon if I remember correctly.

I guess it makes sense since credit card companies take a percentage of any sale charged to the card, but it still looks very strange at first and I don’t think I had even seen something like that before the prices went so high. Maybe they’ll start offering specials if we bring big barrels every time and buy in bulk Only time will tell.

Airlines make our life easier once again… not

After a relatively calm travel summer, I started travelling again this week for a few days. As I was checking in through the self-service system in Montreal for US Airways, I was surprised not to be asked if I wanted to check any luggage. When I got to the counter, I was informed that this is because US Airways has a new policy where there is now a 15$ fee for the first piece of luggage you check in. Yes, you read that correctly. They are not charging you only for the second one or because your luggage is overweight. They are charging you for the very first piece of luggage that you want to check in!

Thankfully, my Elite status with the Star Alliance network waved these fees, but I can easily imagine how hectic it will get in the morning or at busy times when everyone is trying to get out on trips and have to stop to pay for this fee. Not only that, but a lot of people won’t want to pay the extra fee and will try to bring bigger and bigger items with them on the aircraft. From what I have seen in the six flights I took this week, this means more crowded overhead bins and people frustrated when there is no skycheck on some of the flights. If it does not fit on the plane, then they are stuck checking it.

US Airways is not the first airline doing this. I know that American started the festivities back in June, and now United and Continental joined, if not more airlines.

My next surprise came when they announced that beverages were no longer to be free on the plane. Not even water! So you need to pay 2$, cash only, if you want a regular drink, and 7$ for an alcoholic beverage. The lesson here is that you should now always bring something to drink on the plane. If we could at least bring our own water from home. But of course, as you know if you have traveled in the past two years, this is not allowed for security reasons. Therefore, you have no real choice but to put your money in someone’s pockets: the airline or the concession stands at the airport.

Personally, I wish they would just add 20$ to everyone’s airfare and just be done with it, let us check our luggage and give us something to drink on the darn plane. It would bring some order back into a situation that I feel will just get more and more chaotic.

Changed RSS Readers again

Finding the best RSS Reader application for my needs has been an ongoing search for the last couple of years. After using the desktop client RSS Bandit, then moving to Bloglines, I have tried the Google Reader web-based application a few times without being convinced that it was right for me… until now. What partly prompted my change is the fact that I really don’t like the new Bloglines interface and am not sure how soon they are going to phase out the old one.

I just reloaded all of my feed addresses in the new Google Reader page and find that it’s interface has become very slick and to the point to show me all of the news feeds that I love to read. It’s always great to see all of the improvements that the folks at the Google Labs add to their apps. Check it out if you like to keep up with news from multiple sites.

The one feature that I find that is missing is the ability to sort news items by site when viewing them all. However, I have found the chronological sorting to be adequate.

My travels

After keeping track of my travel on facebook for some time, I just decided to bring that information on my personal site. You will find a new map section that includes all of my travels around the world.