Monthly archives: April 2006

I just thought that I’d post a pseudo-update to a post I made last week regarding obesity. In fact, this post will more closely resemble the antithesis of obesity. Last week, on Thursday, I had the good fortune of taking a day off the daily grind to contribute something to society as a whole. I volunteered at the Ottawa Food Bank. In case you are wondering, one of the elements in my union contract (yup, that’s right, I’m unionized, not by choice, but it has certain benefits) is that I am entitled to a paid day of leave for volunteer work. Personally, I think it’s a great idea, and rather than just pretend I took a volunteer day, I really did volunteer. Some people (okay, probably a lot), just take the day off claiming volunteer work, but don’t do anything, since technically, no one is allowed to question what you did! Actually, come to think of it, I think this is a government-endorsed thing, not a union thing, but I digress. My tasks for the day were quite menial, which was actually fine by me. People that are there frequently complained about how slow 8 hours goes by when you’re sorting food. Personally, I found the opposite. I found it quite enjoyable to do something manual for a change. Turns out I’m quite adept at mindless physical labour. Of course, I knew that from my two years doing shift work at Michelin Tires at the Granton plant close to my home in N.S.

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!)