Introducing the New ActiveSteve.com

Well, since many of you may also follow Kev’s blog, you’d already be aware that he made the jump and actually stood in line to buy a new iPhone. Of course, he’s already written up a post about that, and you can read it in all its glory, should you be inclined. I myself chose not to make that leap. I’ll be holding off on either buying an iPhone or a BlackBerry until my employer opts to make it part of my everyday life. This may surprise some of you, and it was indeed a conscious decision and thought, but I just can’t justify spending $1000+ a year on that kind of service. Why? Well, I’ve got lots of computers already. I have a couple iPods already. I have a cell phone, a work phone, and a home phone. I have several GPS devices (car, wrist, computer, handheld). Do I need to bring them all together just so that I can use them on a whim while walking or in the bus or car? Nope. I decided I don’t. As exciting as the new tech may be, I think I still ascribe to the belief that dedicated units are better. Surely Kev will disagree, and I respect that, but I decided it isn’t for me. However, that didn’t stop me from jumping on a bandwagon just the same, and forking over the same amount of money. What did I get? Well, the XBOX 360 of course! When the price for the 20Gb model dropped to $299, I couldn’t resist any longer. Read on for a little story about that if you’d care to.

You know, for all the complaining people do about how cold and miserable the winters are around here, I must disagree with them. Take for instance a great weekend that I had on Jan 21-22nd. That weekend had all the trappings of a classic Canadian winter outing. A group of 13 of us guys got together to snowshoe out to Jim Doucette’s property out by Calabogie Peaks for a night of Poker, Cigars, beans and booze. What could possibly make for a better outing I ask you? The cabin, although not completed yet, was plenty comfortable for us. I hauled out a proper poker table, and Jim brought out a ton of food. To make the outing even better, Mother Nature blessed us with a dump of like 25cm of fresh snow. Were it not for that, it might have been a slush-fest. Instead, however, we were treated to a nice peaceful trek in the snow (and of course an associated shovelling of a path to the outhouse!). When we got out there, Jim put Darcy, Kevin and myself to work getting things ready for the rest of the crew. Once 3 other people showed up, I declared a shift change, and the 3 of us went out for a great little snowshoe around the area. Kev took a bunch of pictures throughout the weekend, and you can check them all out in his Calabogie Poker Night set.

Hello out there. as many of you know, I’m curretnly trying to save all my pennies for an extended trip to New Zealand for a biking / racing adventure. As such, I’ve had to seriously curtail my extravagant ways. That’s hard for me to do, since I’m a serious gadget guy. Well, for some unknown reason, this morning I got to thinking about a little gadget of Kev’s, the Squeezebox. Mind you, he does have a slightly older model (not nearly as cool looking ;-), but still equally as cool a little device. Kev got his a while ago, and blogged about it in the past. He even mentioned me, but I never took the bait on it. Basically, this thing can allow me to hook up to my music library on my PC, and play it back through my stereo. That’s where things get a little trickier for me. You see, I’ve already got a whole-house sound system, integrated with my computer. I can currently play music on iTunes, and have it routed to the computer room, the rec room, the living room, the kitchen, and even the outdoor speakers all at once (can you tell I dig music?). This has been great for parties. But my big beef about that is that I have no ability to control the music unless I’m at the computer in the basement, which isn’t fun when you’re entertaining. So essentially, I’m thinking of getting this thing simply as a moveable head-end for the PC-based music. Basically, I could move the unit wherever I wanted (provided there’s a plug), and then use the supplied remote to change music on a whim. The key to making this work is that I’d use a wireless router (dirt cheap at about $70), which can talk to the head end, and then use a 3rd party application known as SoftSqueeze, which allows synchronizing the PC playback to the Squeezebox playback (not to mention the ability to stream my library over the web and such if I’m at a party elsewhere and wanted to call up a tune I own!)