Can you read this?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid, too.
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe tuo fo 100 anc.


i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.



If you can read this, your brain is 50% faster than those who can't.

Do you stop and notice great street performers?

Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?

read more | digg story

How much land to power the whole world with solar?

See this map that shows how much area of the planet we would need to power everything (including what we get from oil) with solar at 8% efficiency. Current panels are closer to 20%, so in fact that's even less.

read more | digg story

Ipod saves Soldier's Life -pictures and story

"his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound."

read more | digg story

Google releases "MY MAPS" for google maps

This is pretty cool. You can now create and share personalized, annotated maps of your world. Mark your favorite places on your map. Draw lines and shapes to highlight paths and areas. Add your own text, photos, and videos. Publish your map to the web. Share your map with friends and family. Check it out. http://maps.google.com/

read more | digg story

Long time no update!

If anybody is even reading this, it's been way too long since my last update. I plan on revamping this site with way more stuff, but I've had other priorities in the past 6 months or so. Anyway, I've just set up a Picassa web album for some new photos. It works great, is fully integrated with the Picassa client, so uploading photos is a cinch, not to mention I don't pay the bandwidth for hosting the photos on my website (which I why I shut off my gallery on here... some search engines were picking up all my trip photos, and I was getting thousands of hits, and when you're hosting large pictures, it gets $$ pretty fast.)

Have a look at my Picassa album:

The Best of 2006

Now living in Montréal

We are finally settled-in in Montréal. The move went pretty smoothly and we`re almost fully unpacked in our new condo. Jakob is adapting well and so far we`re having a blast. We`ll have some pics at some point soon!

Second trip to Brazil... this time even better!

Ok, first of all I know it's been way too long since my last update to the site. Anyway, we just arrived from our second trip to Brazil and once again, we had a blast. This time around we had our awesome brazilian friends to spend time with, and that's what made the trip so special this time around. So I guess you could say we didn't go to visit Brazil, we went to visit our awesome, warm and very kind brazilian friends. Have a look at the photos.

Back from Brazil.. We Are Speechless!

Well, I must say we just had the best vacation ever. We spent two weeks in Brazil, both on and off a resort. The resort in Costa de Sauipe (near Salvador) was very cool and we met a lot of awesome people there, mostly Brazilians. We spent most of our time learning how to surf, biking around, and drinking lots of cervejas. We also ended up going to a crazy outdoor concert. We then spent time in Rio de Janeiro which was very cool! Check out the pics!

We're Back from Kimberley, BC!

We just got back from a snowboarding trip to Kimberley, BC. Ren & I rented a car in Calgary and drove to Kimberley, around 4-5 hours away. It was a very nice drive. We met up with Matt & Chris and later we picked up John & Ginette at the Cranbrook airport. We later checked in to our condo, a very nice ski in/out condo just outside the slopes. We also hung out at Matt & Christine's new place in Kimberley. Check out the pics!

More Photos Added to Gallery!

I just added some more photos to the photo gallery. First there's some pics of our backpacking trip to Goose River.





There's also a few pics of Jakob and friends at Hallowe'en.

Need some tunes? Listen to my new Internet Radio Station!

I just setup a mp3 stream on my server. Have a listen! I'm still playing around with it so it may be down at times, but I'll try to keep it running as much as possible. I'm basically using ShoutCast on my linux server, with around 10 gigs of mp3s. I'm using DynDNS.org for the "kicks-ass.net" domain which allows me to host the stream from my DSL connection. Have a listen:



http://radiodan.kicks-ass.net:8000/listen.pls





Let me know if you have any problems with it!

Bon Voyage Ren!

Ren is on a 10 day tour of Chile and Argentina! I can't wait to see the pictures. Right now she's staying at the Hyatt Regency Santiago. She'll be heading to Buenos Aires soon. I'll keep you all posted!

Summer's almost over... time to update the website!

Ok, it's been way too long since the last update to the photo gallery. I've just uploaded a new album with highlights from summer 2004. There's more photos to come, I just haven't sorted them all out yet. More pics to come...

Photos from Ren at Canadian Idol in Toronto

I just posted some photos of Ren at the Canadian Idol top 100 auditions in Toronto. Ren doesn't know I posted these, so check 'em out while you can, before she deletes them! ;)


Have a look at the photo gallery.

We just got back from Montréal

Ren, Jakob & I just got back from a 4 day trip to Montréal to visit Yves & Wren. We had a great time. The weather was nice for the most part, and we spent the weekend strolling around different parts of the city. Check out a slideshow of the photos of our trip in our Gallery.

More photos added to gallery

I've added some more photos in the Gallery. They're mostly of Jakob & friends & family, taken between April & May 2004. I'll keep posting new photos on a regular basis now that we have a good digital camera.

On another note, Ren, Jakob & I are headed once again to Montreal for the weekend. We're going to visit Yves & Ren. It should be fun! We'll post some pics when we get back.

Slight changes to the website...

I'm playing around with the look of okweb.com these days. The site may change a little from day to day. Things should be back to normal at some point soon. You may notice an ad or 2 on the site.

Friends & family, just ignore the ads.

Google & other search engines index this site and as a result, all sorts of web surfers end up here. The ads are targetted to them. However, I'm only putting up ads that promote products & services that I find are actually cool and recommended such as the new zip.ca DVD rental store by mail, for canadians. I won't try to make a dime advertising crap.

We just got back from Punta Cana!

Ren & I just got back from a one week trip to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. It was an awesome trip! We were a group of 8 people, including John & Ginette Pineau, Dave Leger & Sophie Malenfant, Julie Malenfant and Alex Hahn. We stayed at Super Clubs Breezes in Punta Cana. It's a very nice 4 star resort, and we found that it offered a lot for what you pay for.

The beach was the highlight. Fine white sand, super warm aqua blue water, and some great waves for boogie boarding. Not the best for snorkeling (unless you go out on a boat), but great fun if you like powerful waves. The food was actually very good at all the restaurants (except the Italian, which we all found to be a little bland.) The bartenders made some great drinks and we found that the local Presidente cerveza (both on tap and in bottle) was surprisingly very good.

The nightly entertainment was only so-so; the house band and dancers were quite good, but only played on the main stage once during the entire week. Most other nights the entertainment consisted of karaoke, audience participation games, kid entertainment, etc. In comparisson, the entertainment at out last trip to Cuba was much better.

I will post some pictures in out gallery section as soon as I upload them.

Wow! What a weekend!

Ren & I just got back on sunday night (03/13) from a 4 day trip to Montreal to see Yves & Ren D. We had a blast! We did a lot of strolling & window shopping, had some Krispy Kreme's, and even ended up at the stereobar, which is now a favorite spot for the neighborhood drag queens... Not really what we expected, but the dj still spins some good tunes & the bar has a cool atmosphere. The highlight was definitely THE game Saturday night, Canadiens vs. Leafs! It was unreal! The Bell Centre was packed with almost as many Leafs fans as there were Habs fans! It was cool to see all the Leafs & Habs fans all intermixed throughout the arena, creating a pattern of alternating colors of the classic blue and red jerseys of this old rivalry. It was an intense game, and to top it off, the Habs won!! :)

Check out the news articles on
Google News.

Sunday was the St Patrick's Day parade, and we headed out to MEC for some more shopping. Can't wait to go back for another weekend visit to Montreal.

it's been a while since I updated the site...

ok, I know it's been way too long since my last post and since I added any new pictures to our gallery. Well I should get around to it sooner or later. The main problem is, I don't have a good digital camera. I know, I know, why not you ask? well, I do have a digital camcorder that does take stills, but the quality basically sucks ( it's VGA quality -- that's 640x480, less than 1/2 a megapixel). I'm in the process of shopping for a good digital camera, and will probably settle on the Canon PowerShot A70. Currently I'm scanning photos taken with our Minolta StSi 35mm SLR, which is a nice camera, but it takes long to scan pictures, especially with an old school Mac SCSI scanner. I've also tried the Canon "HyperPhoto" CD (costs an extra $5 to get a CD with scans of the negatives) from the photo processor. The CDs are ok, but the resolution is not high enough (and the photos are compressed JPEG format. Why not use the TIFF format? The 700MB CD-R CD is only 10% full of JPEGs), and the calibration is off. I had to manually process them in Photoshop before I posted them to the gallery.

On another note, Ren and I are going to Montreal to see Yves & Ren (a.k.a. Wren) in March, so that should be a good time. Hopefully we'll catch the Habs vs. Leafs game.

We're also going to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic in April. That should be a blast. We're going with friends: John & Ginette, Dave & Sophie, and Julie & Alex. It should be a fun time. The resort has a trapeze and a rock climbing wall... that should fun when we've had our share of the beach.

We're back from California

We just got back from spending 12 days in California. Our friends Deanna & Jimmy were awesome hosts, and took us practially all over the state in just over a week. We spent time in their hometown of Woodland (near Sacramento), in Davis, Merced (with Jim & Krista), Fresno (had some great sushi there), Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe (at an awesome condo), San Francisco (Chinatown was very cool), a 49ers game, Anaheim & Disneyland, etc. We did more things in a short period of time than ever! Check out the photos from our trip in our gallery section.

Welcome to the all new okweb.com! I'm in the process of transfering the website to a new server, and I'm also re-designing part of the site. Our gallery section is still fully functional at the URL: http://okweb.com/gallery.

More stuff to come soon!

Jakob's Birthday!

It's hard to believe that Jakob is now a year old! We will celebrate his birthday over the weekend with a big party in Cocagne! We'll post the pictures in the gallery section.