s h u b n a t i o n

Volunteer — the greater good

Ride in a bike race with my fixed gear — sport

Do a 360 on skis — sport

Give blood — the greater good

Get my weight down to 180lbs — health

Triple my RRSP contribution from 2009 — financial

As time goes on and these resolutions get completed, I will check them off.

Jared life

I am writing this blog post from Windows Live Writer, a newish, free & downloadable application from within Microsoft’s Live Essentials suite.  It’s interface gives the same feel of Wordpress + Office Word.  I’m not sure how much I will use this, but I thought I would at least give it a try. 

This application automatically loads all of my ‘tags’ which is nice, but it does not seem to be able to detect what images are loaded in to my Wordpress gallery which would have been impressive.  It also seems to be missing any kind of support for my 3rd party plugins that I have installed.

Looks like this would work for most blog posts though.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my extremely brief review

Jared geek

This is a how-to for allowing your new Vista or Windows 7 to connect to a networked printer shared from an older Windows XP computer.

1. Connect the printer to the Vista or Windows 7 PC, as though it were to be used with that computer, and let it install the drivers automatically.
2. Reconnect the printer to the computer you will be sharing the printer from (Windows XP computer) and in its Properties, set it as “shared”.  Make a note of both the XP’s “Computer Name” and the printer’s “shared-printer-name”.
3. In the Vista or Windows 7 PC, launch the “Add a Printer” wizard and select the “Add a local printer” option. This automatically opens a new dialog box in which to select the Port.
4. Click the “Create a new port” radio button and leave the drop-down menu options on the default of “Local Port”. Click Next.
5. A small box opens in which to enter the Port Name. Type in the path to the “shared” printer in the host PC using the format \\computername\shared-printer-name where computername and shared-printer-name are the details you noted in (2) above.
6. Select the Printer driver from the list provided, which should include the driver you originally installed, otherwise use the “Have Disk” button to install the correct Vista or Windows 7 driver if it is not in the list. It is essential that a Vista/7-compatible driver for your printer is used. Click Next.
7. Give the printer a name and choose whether to set it as the default. Click Next.
8. Print a test page to verify functionality and then click Finish.

Jared geek

Don’t you hate when you visit a site and just wish you could change a few things about it? Or how about when one of your favourite websites changes the way it looks & feels… for the worse?

For these occasions, you can make the changes to your favourite websites using a Firefox extension called Greasemonkey.

A friend of mine told me to try this after I complained to him that  a favourite website of mine had changed the way certain things work.  So I installed this and got to work, looking at the source code of the website, and inserting a bit of javascript to modify the way it worked, and wala!  Customized to my preference!

This Firefox extension is extremely powerful in a set of skilled hands, but if your knowledge of javascript and html is subpar, there is a library of pre-made scripts that allow you to enhance the majority of popular websites out there.  The site is called Userscripts.org.  Enjoy!

Jared geek

First you will need to sign up for an Unlimitel DID (a la carte).

Once signed up, Unlimitel will provide you with the following:

• SIP USERNAME: your unlimitel assigned phone number
• SIP PASSWORD: 123456
• SIP PROXY: sip02.unlimitel.ca
• SIP REALM: unlimitel.ca

Here is how to configure your built-in Nokia E71 sip client:

Go to Tools > Settings > Connection > SIP settings > Options > New SIP profile

• Profile Name: Unlimitel
• Service Profile: IETF
• Default Access point: (WLAN SSID, or even your 3G access point, such as Fido Internet)
• Public user name: SIP USERNAME@sip02.unlimitel.ca
• Use Compression: No
• Registration: When needed **See below for details
• Use Security: No

• Proxy Server address: sip02.unlimitel.ca
• Realm: unlimitel.ca
• User Name: SIP USERNAME
• Password: SIP PASSWORD
• Allow loose routing: Yes
• Transport Type: UDP
• Port: 5060

• Registrar Server address: sip02.unlimitel.ca
• Realm: unlimitel.ca
• User Name: SIP USERNAME
• Password: SIP PASSWORD
• Transport Type: UDP
• Port: 5060

Go to Tools > Settings > Connection > Internet tel. > New Profile

• Name: Unlimitel
• SIP profiles: Check ‘Unlimitel’

Once all this configuration has been completed, you should be ready to place a voip/internet call using your Unlimitel DID with your Nokia E71.

My favourite method to call someone in my address book is to start typing their name on the home screen then press up on the D-pad to select the name, then bring up the context menu by pressing the middle D-pad button and selecting ‘Internet call’.  If you have Registration set to ‘When needed’ then you will be prompted to register your phone.  Select yes.  This should take a few seconds and then it will begin placing the call.

**I prefer the ‘When needed’ registration method as I find this saves battery life greatly.  I only use my Unlimitel DID to avoid using my daytime cellular minutes so I am only using this for outbound calls.

If you are using your Unlimitel DID number 24/7 as a main number, I highly recommend you set the registration to ‘Always on’.

Notable Resources:
http://www.n95users.com/forum/connectivity/10612-voip-configuration-only-half-works.html
http://bulletproof-incorporation.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-setup-sip-voip-on-nokia-e.html

Jared geek

I’m a prime example that humans are creatures of habit. As in I’ve gotten in to the habit of not updating this blog. My apologies, but I have a couple of reasons why.

1. Camera malfunctioned, and during its repair period, I took no pictures
2. Put a change freeze on my blog/gallery as I built a new server and needed to migrate all the data over to it.  Less change = quicker/easier migration

Now that my camera is back, and my server is running on newer, faster hardware, as well as the new snazzy Ubuntu 8.04LTS the updates should be more frequent!

*Note:  There will be some blog updates pre-dated from today that are new to reflect their actual date

Jared life

With the purchase of a new lens, the Canon 70-200 f/4 L IS USM, I decided to venture out to the Toronto Distillery District, which is a historic part of Toronto which I have yet to visit at my time living in Toronto.

Thankfully it was beautiful weather and I was quite impressed with the location and quality of photo’s that I took.

Have a look at the pictures here.

Jared life

Today Winnie and I decided to venture out via TTC to the Toronto Zoo.

It was a long weekend, and the weather was super nice.  We walked approx 19km (tracked via GPS on my phone) through the entire Zoo and saw as many animals, mammals, insects, reptiles, etc as we could!  I took a ton of pics and they are uploaded for you to view here

Jared interesting, life, photography

From July 1st to July 7th, Jesse, Megan, Winnie, and myself took a road trip to visit our mom in South Carolina.

This involved a 2 hr train ride from Toronto to Kingston, and then a 15 hour drive from Kingston to Hartsville, SC.  We had great weather for the drive down, and did 3 hour driving stints between Megan, Winnie, and myself so it wasn’t too bad.

We spent the night at my moms in Hartsville, had some much needed dinner, hung out with the dogs, and visited with Bruce’s parents.

The next morning we all drove to Charleston, SC.  Downtown we enjoyed the sights, went on a muel drawn carraige ride, had lunch, and took lots of pictures.  That night Jesse, Megan, Winnie and I walked up the newly built Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge to take in the fresh ocean air.

The next morning, we packed up and drove to Myrtle Beach, and stayed at the Caribbean Resort & Villas.  We spent the rest of the trip here, enjoying the beach, mini putt golf, Sonic drive in’s, shopping, people watching, segway riding, 4th of July fireworks, all you can eat crab @ crabby mikes, etc etc etc!

We finished the trip with a very long 17-18 hour drive home up I-77 and I-81, but we made it home safe and sound.

Hope you enjoy the pics!

Jared life

Andrea, Henrich, Jared, Jason, Jeff, Kieron, Matt, Simon, and Winnie all spent 4 days at the Pinery provincial park near Grand Bend.

The weather was nice for camping, minus a little bit of rain at night and when we first arrived, but we were well prepared with massive tarps and mad skills on covering up key sitting and eating areas at our camp site.  I took a lot of photo’s so I hope you enjoy!

Check out the pics here

Jared life