Joginder Madra's Place on the Web

PHS pCSG meeting in Montreal

Sep 30 to Oct 5 - PHS pCSG Meeting in Montreal. Once again I get to visit one of my favourite cities in Canada. My itinerary:

• Sep 30 Air Canada Flt AC126 Dep Edmonton 11h20 Arr Toronto 16h59
• Sep 30 Air Canada Flt AC422 Dep Toronton 18h00 Arr Montreal 19h20
• Oct 5 Air Canada Flt AC439 Dep Montreal 18h30 Arr Toronto 19h45
• Oct 5 Air Canada Flt AC1157 Dep Toronto 20h40 Arr Edmonton 22h53

I'll be staying at the Hotel Omni - Mont Royal. Some highlights/random thoughts from the week:

• James Blunt at the Bell Centre was amazing. So amazing that I got tickets for his show in Edmonton
• Thanks to Scott Adams - snakes, spaghetti and hats have a whole new meaning to our project team
• Dining in the dark at Onoir was a real experience. I never knew I depended on my sight so much for getting food on my fork.
• It felt good to get the first couple of real presentations in front of this particular pCSG under my belt

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup...

Today, the Edmonton Journal published a very interesting (if somewhat disconcerting) article about restaurants and food inspections. They've also obtained access to the Capital Health database that contains inspection data on their website.

"How clean and safe is your favourite restaurant? The Journal fought for more than a year to obtain the Capital Health database that contains the inspection records for thousands of restaurants throughout the region. It is your information: it is collected on behalf of the public and paid for with taxpayer dollars. For the first time, The Journal is making it available to our readers. Check out edmontonjournal.com to see how your favourite restaurant fared during its most recent inspections. If you want detailed restaurant inspection records, you can submit a freedom of information request to Capital Health -- but you will have to pay $25 and wait up to 30 days for the inspection file."

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/features/restaurants/databaseintro.html

I made sure to check out a few eateries...I have to say, I'm surprised at some of the results.

War!!

Oh the humanity...I came across two excellent time wasters - Kitten War and Puppy War. At last check, Radar was 9-2.

A New Online Photo Album

I've been using Flickr as an online album for some time now. I really like the community aspect of it, but I do find the 200 photo limit (and not to mention the monthly upload bandwidth limit) somewhat annoying.

I'm now giving Picasa Web Albums a try. It's still in beta - like everything Google offers ;-) - so I suspect there will be improvements along the way. So far so good. I really like how the web album integrates with Picasa 2 (which I already use to organize my photos)...not to mention the 250 MB limit (which seems much more reasonable than the 200 photo limit that Flickr has).

My Flickr album

My Picasa album

Web Junk

The Music Genome Project

Jan 6 - The Music Genome Project. Came across this website and thought it was pretty cool. I would never have known that "In My Place" featured "electric rock instrumentation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centered aesthetic, major key tonality and prominent organ." I jus thought it was a good song.

Cats + Stuff = Awesome!

The coolest thing on Earth

Create your own South Park character

Things in my inbox

Updated thoughts on RSS Reader

Jul 12 - Updated thoughts on RSS Reader. After working with it over the last little while, I've decided I love the concept, but I'm not a bit fan of RSS Reader. It's a bit of a resource hog, kind of slow and the filters I use have to be re-set each time. I'm now using FeedDemon and it is much better...so far.

I am now also video enabled.

Stopping Spam

A few neat websites

Ray Patterson on "The Alberta Supernet - What's Next?"

RSS rocks!

Tired of telemarketers?

Checking out the inbox

Bitter Journalist?