Ryan J. Allen

Happy Canada Day!

I am a big fan of Canada Day–especially since moving to Ottawa. This year it’s a little different, not being in Canada and being at work. I miss it; I would love to be in Ottawa today. It’s too bad I didn’t decide to go back just for 3 days and not tell anyone.

If anyone asks nicely I’ll post the video of Adam J. dancing, drunk out of his mind, on Parliament Hill at Canada Day a few years ago.

Update: You can find the aforementioned video here.

BBC News Magazine has an article written by a 13-year-old comparing his father’s Walkman to his iPod.

I am now registered for three classes for the next school year.

In the fall I will be taking Social Context of Business (ADM1301); Adam J. is also signed up for this class. “The course situates business within its changing socio-economic, political and technological environments. Managers must learn to both distinguish between and properly utilize the more confrontational world of lobbying, as well as the collaborative governance mechanisms that join private, public and civic organizations. Students will address real-world predicaments of ethical management and stategic governance that arise within the social context of business. (Open exclusively to students currently enrolled in a baccalaureate program of the Telfer School of Management and in the M.I.S. option of the Computer Science Program; other students should refer to ADM 1101. Cannot be combined for credits with ADM 1101.)”

And in the Winter I will be spending my Tuesday and Wednesday nights studying Managerial Accounting (ADM2341) and Financial Management (ADM2350). Managerial Accounting, as described, “introduces students to the role of management accounting, as distinct from financial accounting, in the decision-making process. Major topics include: the determination of the costs of products and services, cost behaviour, relevant costs, standard costs, budgeting, responsibility accounting and cost allocation. All topics are approached in a management context in order to give the student an appreciation of the value of the various techniques available for the analysis and solution of problems faced by managers.” Financial Management is simply, “financial environment and markets, concepts of valuation, risk and return, cost of capital, capital budgeting under certainty, long-term financing, working capital management, and short-term financing.”

Unfortunately the second-year classes I will be doing sans-Adam. However, I am hopeful that 1301 will not be our only class together. Overall, I am very excited about resuming my studies.

A couple of years ago I wrote a lot about milk. Now I feel like I am writing a lot about cycling. But never am i writing anything useful about cycling, just “I went cycling” or “I like cycling”.

I went cycling last night after work. We did a trip to Dobel, followed by a a trip through the course for my portion of the naked run set for Saturday. (This run is an 80 km relay, 4x 20 km, with my part being the last.) In the end we cut our tour short, which I thought was fine, though when I got home I noticed that we had still been out for 3 hours. So, 3 hours of cycling feels like a short trip now. Crazy.

I am really looking forward to drinking a glass of milk this morning.

I haven’t written much about work lately, but it has been very busy which makes things exciting. I’m quite pleased with that. Though I could do with fewer trips to Ulm. There is a possibility of one other trip just before the Alpencross, but I hope this will be it for July.

I am going to be honest with you: I am feeling a heavy balance between being happy to be here in Germany, and being excited about returning to Canada. What I mean is, rather than living in today my mind is thinking about the future. Given the option of going back to Canada today, I just might go.

But it is, as I said, a balance; I am really excited about a lot of stuff I have planned in the next 3 months. While I’m sure I could fill the days in Ottawa as easily as I can fill the days here, there isn’t a lot that I feel like I’m missing. This leads me to believe that it isn’t necessarily that I want to be in Canada now, but rather I am excited about everything that will be going on after I return in October.

This week Adam and I are signing up for a fall semester class at uOttawa, and I am unimaginably excited about this. I am sure that anyone who has ever taken a year off of school knows how exhilarating it is to get back to it. I’m so excited that I am thinking about signing up for a second class, even though I will miss the first month of lectures.

The Yo-Yo Ma gig is pretty exciting, too. It’s even more exciting after having paid the VISA bill that resulted from the purchase of those tickets. I believe the plan is to go for a delicious meal beforehand which will, undoubtedly, renew the VISA bill uneasiness.

Returning to regular church service will be great. At Parkdale the Sunday School often focused on the Old Testament, because many worship services discussed the New Testament. I miss both, and the singing.

I think even shopping at the Superstore, getting my hair cut at W, and riding the bus around the city will be awesome. Of course, in four months time I’ll be missing things like this about Germany, but one never appreciates what one has until its gone.

Maybe I’ll also look forward to seeing some people? Yeah, probably.

Today I had a little bikescapade to the famous Hornisgrinde. Hornisgrinde is the name of the tallest mountain in the Northern Black Forest. Hornisgrinde’s height is 1164 metres, shorter than the legendary Schrofenpass that we will cross on the first day of the Alpencross, but still tall enough to present a challenge.

Verena and I took the train (after I cycled to Ettlingen) to Achern, arriving at 9:30 a.m. This means I left my flat at 7:30 a.m.; Adam J. was still awake! In Achern we met Alex and his brother and we started on our ride from a lowly 142 metres above sea level.

I am really unsure of the way that we went, but I know it was not the most direct way. Hornisgrinde has a very noticeable radio tower at its top; this tower was facing my back for some time after we left Achern. We passed through Ulm (Baden) on the way. Around Oberberg Alex and his brother took us up and down a small hill a few times, and through some real mountain biking trails. The trails were a lot of fun, with some nice exposed tree roots, no room to go off the trail, sudden drops and rises–you really had to pay attention.

Sometime around 1:30 p.m. we stopped in Ruhestein to have our lunches. What is really cool about this is that Evan, MK, Zout, and I stopped in the very same place to have lunch when we were driving through the black forest. You can see it in one of the photos I posted to flickr. It was unreal to me that I had bicycled to this location.

I’m not sure what time we reached the summit–probably about an hour after we left. At Hornisgrinde there was a little “coffee and cake” spot so we had a piece of cake and enjoyed our victory. The majority of the work was done and all that was left was getting down.

Remember the real mountain bike trails I mentioned above? They had nothing on some of the trails we took down. We went across these really rocky pathways that were obviously man-made only to make our way to really rocky pathways that were not so artificial. I found the ride really challenging, requiring a great deal of focus. It also stressed my hands–especially the two fingers at the end of my hand that aren’t used for breaking. I used the shock adjustment on the fork to soften the blows, but ended up having to stand to save my butt. But, to save the back end you have to straddle the seat, keeping it between your thighs. Even with all that there were still a couple of scary moments, but we all came out safe.

Sometime after 4 p.m. we hopped on the train back to Karlsruhe, then biked home from the Hauptbahnhof. That part was really great because I had no water remaining and about 40 minutes of riding. I was quick to get some energy and some water when I got home (at 5:45 p.m.) and I noticed that Adam was back online, having slept the whole time I was gone.

It sure has made me really excited for the Alpencross. Italy is also a pretty good incentive. It’s hard to believe that this is less than three weeks away now.

If I may take a few moments of your day to get your opinion on the following two songs: Our Song by Yes, and the Final Countdown by Europe. (I have linked to a Live version of TFC because the original recording is not available in my country.) They are both fantastic and lasting songs, but which song is better? Comment below, being as concise or verbose as you would like.

This week marks two big events for Apple’s iPhone: the release of iPhone OS 3.0, and the release of the iPhone 3GS. While both are exciting in their own regards I think the iPhone OS 3.0 software is the more exciting of the two. With iPhone OS 3.0 Apple has finally helped iPhone live up to its name.

The two most important features of iPhone 3.0 with respect to being a good mobile phone are: MMS, and Internet tethering. MMS is the messaging with pictures, sounds, and videos. MMS has existed for years: my SE T616 had this in 2003; my Treo 650 had this in 2005; now, finally, iPhone has this in 2009. MMS will not be available to first generation iPhone owners, but will be available to iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS owners. I presume that MMS is not available to first generation iPhones due to the slow speeds that EDGE offers.

Internet tethering allows you to use your mobile phone as a data modem, often used with a computer. This feature predates MMS. In fact, I was using a Nokia 6360 (circa 2002) on the Rogers TDMA network as a dialup modem at 9600 baud. We are fortunate enough to now have very reasonable download speeds available over the wireless network, making tethering on the iPhone long overdue.

iPhone 3.0 resolves a number of other long-standing complaints of others, but these are less critical in my opinion. Cut, copy, and paste are now supported through iPhone. Notes are now synced when iPhone is synced. Landscape mode is supported in more apps (Mail, Messages, and Notes). There is now a voice memos application. And, finally, bluetooth audio is supported (iPhone 3G and 3GS only).

There are some new features that are quite cool. I think Spotlight search on the iPhone is a great addition. This allows you to search all of contacts, e-mail, apps, your calendar, and more from one location. I didn’t look into whether this is extensible with application plug-ins (for example, if you had a recipe management application could it install a search plug-in on iPhone?), but this would be a great and welcome feature.

On top of the features that are listed on the iPhone software update page there are many minor tweaks that make using the device much more comfortable. You can now share contacts (e-mail a .vcf card); the home button is more configurable; the recent calls menu is greatly improved, showing more information in the list and listing call times and durations(!); lists in the iPod application include more information; the interface for moving, deleting, and forwarding multiple messages in Mail and Messages is much nicer. All of this among other minor OS and application improvements.

And these features only touch what you as a user will see. The OS upgrade will also offer developers much greater possibilities than before, including dock-connector access, PAN access to nearby users, and in-app purchases. I dare not leave out the long-awaited push notifications–Apple’s answer to background applications.

In all, iPhone OS 3.0 is very exciting. iPhone 3GS is a nice bump forward in internal hardware, but its significance is eclipsed by the software update. iPhone OS 3.0 finally brings the iPhone to where all other phones have been for the past 5 years and makes it a seriously good option for those really looking to tie their life up in one device.

Life is full of choices. I think someone said that, but I don’t think there is a famous example to go with it. Here is one such example.

Imminently, I will leave for a “grillparty” (barbecue). I was asked to bring the Internationally acclaimed Feta Pate. On Friday I went to the grocery store and picked up the items for the pate. As you might imagine, feta is a key and crucial ingredient in the pate. My preference is to use feta in a brine, rather than feta that has been vacuum packed.

At the Edeka–the grocery store I went to–there were a few feta choices but only one was in a brine. The choice seems obvious, right? Well, the one in the brine was also a Bio product, which is Europe’s “certified organic”. I was forced to choose between feta in a brine, or a non-certified organic choice.

I won’t tell you which I chose but use it as a practical example for the sort of choices we all make every day, where two values that are important to us collide and we have to choose which is most important to us. It usually isn’t easy, but the difficulty is commensurate with importance. The only thing we can hope for is that we always make the best choice at the time.

Have you ever added cover art to a song using Windows Media Player? How about multiple files at the same time? Give it a try.

I had the misfortune of having to do this yesterday. Windows Media Player has this smart functionality built in that will allow you to update metadata, including cover art, from the Internet. This requires sending data over the Internet to Microsoft, which I had disabled in my privacy settings. Even after temporarily enabling it I couldn’t use the feature because access was blocked via the proxy/firewall.

I clicked all around with multiple files selected and couldn’t get anywhere that looked like I could update cover art. I looked at file properties. I finally had to resort to searching the Internet for details on how to accomplish this. Even then the first results were to use the automatic update feature mentioned above.

I read that you have to right click on a single file, go to the Advanced Tag Editor, select the Images tab, browse to a file, and select the image type from a drop down list. This must be repeated for every file. And to be honest, It didn’t reliably save the images for me: I was pressing Apply before OK and then re-checking the file just to make sure the image was saved in it. I would guess I had a < 50% success rate.

Have you ever done the same in iTunes? You drag an image to the Cover Art area for a selected/playing file. Multiple files? Select them and select Get Info from the File or context menu; drag an image to the metadata info window and click OK. Pretty darn simple. And iTunes has the “auto get album artwork” feature as well, to get the artwork from the iTunes Store.

I think I’m done. Thanks.