jeffmilner.com

The Lethbridge Ultimate Club was in the news last week getting a little promotion for the idea of a full league here in town. It seems like a good idea and we’ve been getting a lot more people out to play. If you’re looking for a nice easy going sport in Lethbridge, come over to Gyro Park on Monday and Wednesday evenings at 6pm.

Frisbee Lovers Toss Around League Idea.

During my “Music of Quebec” workshop at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres in the Explore program, together with almost 100 students, we created this “lipdub” music video. Students from the Summer 2010 session of the workshop participated in the video singing along to the song “J’taime comme un fou” [I love you like a fool] by Robert Charlebois.

I swam a new personal best time for 1000m this afternoon. I did the whole thing in just 16:00. I never swam this fast (for long distances) even when I was with the Pronghorns. I can hardly wait for the alumni meet.

I wish I could say as much for my improvement in French. I’m learning, but it’s been tough.

Yesterday at 3am, a bomb went off at the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Centre Ville, Trois-Rivières. Nobody was hurt. Catch the CBC’s coverage here.

I am in Trois-Rivières this month studying French.

When I heard about Flickr’s new layout changes, I was excited to see what improvements they were making. (For scale, the images below are 500px wide — that is the actual width of the photo in the old view.)

The old view:

The new view:

Things I dislike about the new Flickr preview.

• They removed the helpful url links when viewing “all sizes”.
• They no longer have a “browse” link to take you to the flickr stream page where that photo appears Looks like they fixed this, the photostream link now takes you to a specific page.
• The map on the side is way to prominent. Seriously, is the map more important than the other photos?
• They removed speed options, viewing of descriptions, and ability to see what’s coming up in their new lightbox mode (instead of slideshow – I don’t love flash, but I liked the slideshow feature.).
• They turned the quick links above a photo into pull down menus. One more click to get what you want is never preferable.
• The spacing between photos on the photostream view is too wide. Just because some people have large monitors, doesn’t mean that the photos should look unbalanced to fill up the space.
• Titles need to go above photos, not below them.
• “Click here to add a title” no longer disappears, but sits there cluttering untitled images. (At least for my own photos when I’m logged in.)
• The column width for comments is now wider making comments harder to read.
• The commenter’s icon is smaller and doesn’t look as nice. Ironic considering they could have used the icon to fill up the space so that the text column wouldn’t need to be quite as wide.

Things I like:

• I like the new 640px default size, though things load a bit slower.

I admit, when viewing the small images above, I like the look of the new version because the bigger photo is nicer. However, all the other concerns make me feel like this one positive is not worth all the other negatives.

In my opinion, Flickr should hire the type of people that started the company: people passionate about photography and user interfaces.

My “pro” account is expiring next week. I am thinking about migrating my photos to Picasa before then. That doesn’t leave me much time.

On Friday I took a little trip to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When we noticed the sign warning us of a police barricade ahead, we thought we might have to wait for an accident to be cleared.

It turns out that due to all the rain, the highway was “washed out”. It ended up not really affecting our trip, we just turned north sooner than we had planned, but I understand the flood waters have been very terrible for the people in Maple Creek and Irvine (among other places).

Here’s some footage of the “wash out” on the highway. I had no idea.

(Thx, Kim)

My friend Kim Seiver and his wife, Mary, reflected long and hard about what they are passionate about and decided to start a home school supplies company.

Their website just launched, and today only, they’re offering 10% off orders over $100 and 20% off orders over $200.

We created Southern Alberta Home Schooling Supplies out of a desire to help homeschoolers find curriculum and resources on a more local level.

Having been involved in the homeschooling community in southern Alberta since 2004 has helped the Sievers understand what homeschoolers need and want in curriculum and supplies.

http://www.sahss.com/

Update: They’ve extended their sale until Saturday.

Over the long weekend my friend, Andy, and I went to the Castle River Rodeo Grounds to take part in the biggest whitewater festival in Canada, the Three River Rendezvous. My decision to go wavered when I read that the weather forecast predicted cool temperatures, variable cloudiness, and sprinkled showers. Luckily we pressed on and, as it turns out, the weather wasn’t actually that bad, and for most of the time, it was actually sunny — I even got a little burned on my face.

Unfortunately tragedy struck on Sunday night. After we had returned from our trip running the Five-Alive feature on Carbondale River a couple of times, Chuck Lee, the organiser of the event broke the news that one of the participants had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He explained that a group of kayakers were going over Lundbreck Falls and that on this particular run the boater was held under the falls for several minutes. He was revived once or twice but that’s all he let us know at the time. He emphasized again the need to always be vigilant and to remember that these kinds of things don’t just happen in other places, they can happen here too. We held a moment of silence in respect for the victim.

It was a sobering thought because I had never heard of anyone getting caught in the flow of water under the falls, and to think I, myself, have braved the 12 meter drop and walked away without so much as a scratch.

Jeff Milner going over Lundbreck Falls in June 2008.

I found out later that night who was involved in the accident. I had hoped that it would be someone that I didn’t know but that’s not how it turned out. His name is Jaron and I had bumped into him just the morning before at the put-in for the Upper Castle run. I have paddled with him and his twin brother Dave a couple of times over the last two years.

I looked up some old paddling footage and found some with him in it:

He’s the one in the yellow and orange boat, yellow jacket, and blue helmet. His twin brother is also in the video.

I didn’t know him that well, but it was obvious that he had a passion for kayaking. Both he and Dave are the kind of enthusiastic friendly people that you want to spend a sunny day with floating down the river and enjoying nature. I remember talking to Dave for a long time about his decision to become a teacher and although I have many other influences for my decision to go back to school, it was that conversation that tipped me over the edge.

Kayaking isn’t always considered an extreme sport where you expect to hear about someone dying but every year there are a few news stories where someone drowns in a river. Almost always they are inexperienced or not wearing PFDs, or there is alcohol involved somehow so Jaron’s death comes as a great shock to the paddling community.

For Christmas 2004 my girlfriend at the time bought me a $500 iPod Photo (40GB). If she had given me Apple stock instead it would now be worth $5,633. That’s an expensive trade off.

Kyle Conroy runs the numbers and shows how much money you could have made if you bought Apple stock instead of an Apple product.

Some people don’t love the experience at the Grand Canyon Skywalk. The folks at travelonthedollar go so far as to call it a sham. They have a list of reasons why it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Here are a couple:

2. Parking at The Skywalk is provided but access to the Skywalk is only permitted by supplied coach buses. The cost of the coach ride $30, which will take you the Skywalk and two other viewing areas. There is also an additional fee of $45 for being on Hualapai land making the total cost $75 per person.

3. No personal equipment is allowed on the Skywalk and lockers are provided. No photographs may be taken by visitors on the Skywalk! However, up to three photography stations are installed. Photographs taken may be purchased in the gift shop at $29 each.

No photos is a deal breaker for me.

(previously)