I have written about my opinions on the F-35 before (F-35s Scrapped and Government and Military: Bad Decisions) and my opinion hasn’t really changed: I still think the F-35 is potentially the wrong plane for Canada.

Now, there is an article on the Toronto Sun talking about the potential of the Taranis unmanned drone platform.

I have always thought that a mix of drones and real fighter planes is the future of most modern air force systems in the world, and Canada is no exception.

I think the Taranis could be a great first line defender of Canada’s arctic airspace, and support during our overseas missions.

Of course, the abilities of the Taranis is such that it can’t compete with the F-35 in abilities or weapons payload, but it is still much better than the current Predator and Reaper drones that are running missions for the U.S. and its allies.

The British are leading the way on the development of the Taranis and have left the F-35 behind. They are only a few weeks from flight testing their new UCAV, and I wish them success. I would still like to see what the U.S. military complex could do with some serious funding towards this kind of weapons platform.

Reducing the human capital risk is one of the most important things a modern military can do, and a large part of why governments spend a great deal of money developing weapons systems.

There will always be a need for smart men and women to lead the way on the battlefield, and I can’t say the Taranis is the right platform for Canada, but I am intrigued and I’m looking forward to hearing more about it and its soon to be developed kin.

At work today, we started what will hopefully be a weekly scheduled meeting where we will organize the direction of the company, and keep track of the progress on various projects.

Being that it was the first one, it went for twice as long as what some people expected, but I got to learn about what was happening in the company, and where we are heading. I even got the inside scoop on projects being developed, and as one of the original fanboys, I can’t help but get excited about what the team are doing.

I wish I could write all about what was discussed. There were more projects being worked on than I had heard about previously, and I am super excited to see them released. We didn’t focus too much on timelines because they are still potentially changed by external factors.

One of the big developments I’m hoping to spend more of my time on is screencasts and tutorials. I want to help with documentation and creating things to help reduce the barrier to entry and learning curve with regards to Gravity Forms.

One of my old favourite WordPress community blogs, the WordPress Tavern, is potentially back from mothballs with its original author, Jeff Chandler.

Some of you might know that Jeff had me as his co-host for his WordPress Tavern audio podcast a few years back, called WordPress Weekly. I’ve always hoped to see him be able to find a way to make writing about WordPress a viable career option, as Jeff is an amazing guy. Unfortunately, upon selling the site, it looked like that dream had ended.

Then, just a few days ago, the blog sprang to life, and the few connections I had in the WordPress world let me know it was back. I can’t express how happy I am to see this blog back, and I hope that Jeff is given the financial opportunities to really build up the community once again. I don’t know of any sites that run a community the same way that Jeff had done, and I’m saying that as someone that had written about WordPress on various blogs for nearly five years.

We still don’t know who bought the WordPress Tavern website, though we’ve been told we will find out soon.

I hope you’ll all check out the WordPress Tavern, and welcome Jeff back.

For those of you that don’t know about Kickstarter, it is a site where you help back projects with your money, and based on how much you invest, you get different rewards. If the project doesn’t get enough investment to meet its goal, no money is charged.

I have invested in a number of projects previously (check out my previously backed projects), and hope to be able to continue to in the future when my finances are a bit better. But in looking around on Kickstarter, I found that there are some projects currently, with more than a week left that are super interesting to me, and I figured I’d profile them here in case any of my readers are interested in backing such things.

Ghost – Just a Blogging Platform – Originally going to be a fork or modification of WordPress, Ghost looks pretty neat. While I don’t like that they are going to be using a markdown system rather than just normal HTML to craft blog posts, I do think that the focus on blogging and a slick user interface is something needed in a modern publishing platform.

From the Kickstarter page:

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It’s beautifully designed, completely customiseable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even (gasp) fun to do. It’s simple, elegant, and designed so that you can spend less time messing with making your blog work – and more time blogging.

It has already exceeded its funding goal and is going to go forward. They also have some heavy hitters on its board of advisors, which will help market the software in ways that they couldn’t have done otherwise.

Lightpack – I showed Annie this and she found the idea distracting. I found it rather interesting. Lightpack is a system you attach to the back of a computer monitor or LCD television and using LED’s it backlights the display and adapts to what is being shown on screen.

Lightpack is an open-source device, which lightens your computer or TV screen to strengthen the presence effect. The device needs to be mounted on your TV or computer screen and to be connected to your PC, Mac or HTPC via USB. The software analyzes what you currently have on the screen, be it a movie, a game, or anything else, and sends this information to the Lightpack device which in turn lightens the surface behind the screen with matching colors using the RGB-LEDs available within the Lightpack device.

It has also already exceeded its funding goal, and being that it seems like the technology behind this is relatively easy to develop, I am confident people will receive their hardware.

Limeade – Battery Pack – I think it is best for them to explain why this would be cool to have around:

The Limeade Blast 18000mAh provides enough juice to charge an iPhone 5 twelve times without having to recharge the external battery.

The idea of having extra battery power on me for my phone when travelling or just being forgetful could be really useful, and the price is pretty decent too. I could go camping for a week with one of these fully charged, and never have to worry about finding an outlet.

It has also already exceeded its funding goal, but I can’t speak for this project in terms of deliveries. Seems a little “too good to be true”, but I hope to see more things like this coming down the production pipeline, as cell phone batteries can die in half a day of heavy use, and this would allow potentially for two days straight of super heavy use, or between five and eight days of my normal usage (which is still heavy) on my Samsung Galaxy S3.

So, the other day Annie and I were out and about and she asked me if I wanted to go look at more open houses, or go on an adventure. I quickly responded that I’d rather go on an adventure.

She had hinted recently that she wanted to do something for me, but she was worried it would stress me out. I didn’t really know what it meant at the time, but when we were driving outside of town, I started to try to guess what was going on.

I started by trying to figure out if it was a purchase or an experience, as it had to be one of the two if it was going to stress me out. She let me know it was a purchase.

Through some deduction, and some more questions, which we both seemed to enjoy, I narrowed it down to two things: either a computer or a camera. Both of which are expensive purchases when you are talking about the kind of equipment I like. Continue reading →

With my cousin, Mark, and I having a server to ourselves to play the Direwolf20 pack of Feed the Beast, we have been playing for several months, and have gotten to the point where we can do anything and everything and so the game has, once again, lost some of its appeal.

The mod pack gave us many hours of enjoyment, and even until recently, I was optimizing machines in the game to improve how things were set-up.

Here’s a quick video of just some of what we’ve done on the server. We’ve pretty much gotten all the end game items for both the vanilla game, and all of the high tier mod items.

Now that we’ve done all this though, there is little reason to keep playing. Eventually, I’m sure the mods will update with new features and ideas that will bring me back around to playing, but with my cousin, Mark, too busy to play, and Kyle not interested, I am probably going to shut down the server.

Note: The following is a transcript of a forty minute session Annie and I had recording our engagement story. I will be posting the audio later today, but it will only be for family and friends, as it mentions many names, and people don’t feel comfortable with their names out on the Internet and I don’t have permission to post them. I have edited the names, so if you see a single capital letter other than the letter “I”, it is probably in reference to someone.

David: I had received the ring not too long beforehand and I really wanted to make a big deal of it after work one evening. I knew our weekend was going to be full and we had just gone mall walking the previous night and I had told Annie that it would be at least another week, maybe more, before I proposed. I did that a little bit to throw her off the trail. When Friday came around I had a bunch of candles… Continue reading →

I have been thinking about smartphone applications for people that are a bit up in years, and have come to the conclusion that there isn’t enough designed specifically for the older crowd.

Of course, this does make sense, as the key demographic for an Android smartphone user is probably nineteen to thirty-five, but I want my grandmother’s new purchase to be as useful as possible.

Here are a few applications I have found and what I think they’d be useful for:

Note: before starting to look through these Grandma, log into Play.Google.com with the same Gmail account we set on your phone. Then you can easily install these applications from your web browser instead of from your phone.

Big Launcher – This application is specifically for seniors. It changes the user interface of the phone to something more simplistic. In some ways, it reminds me of Windows Phone tiles, but the important part is that it makes everything larger.

The downsides of this application is that it is $10USD, but it might be worth it if it makes using a smartphone easier on the eyes.

Side note: I have to admit, the robot voice for narration is pretty annoying!

Smart Voice Recorder – A free, simple voice recorder for Android phones. This isn’t the one I currently use, but it is highly rated and has a nifty feature: skip silence. This means if my grandmother needs to just pause in silence to reflect before continuing to record, there won’t be a long, drawn-out blank point in the recording.

She could record stories for her memoires, or just quick things she wants to reflect on later. The hard part is that she’ll have to remember to listen to the recordings or transfer them somewhere to be transcribed.

The Weather Network – An easy way to see the weather with this free application, it isn’t as pretty as some, but it comes from a source that my grandmother already knows and trusts and the UI looks reasonably easy to use.

Now she won’t have to keep it on the Weather Network channel for half an hour to get an update on the hourly, daily and weekly forecast.

Facebook – With almost all of her grandchildren on Facebook, it would be nice to share updates and information with her faster. Currently, things like e-mail and Facebook are pull things, where she has to remember to go and visit them to see updates.

With an application like this, we could push updates and information to her. One of the easiest ways to organize family events is to do so on Facebook, and now we won’t have to hunt her down through other methods to have her see an invitation.

Tiny Flashlight – I don’t know if I had a chance to install a flashlight application on her phone before it powered down, from its tiny “starter” charge, but I can’t even count the number of times it has been useful to have a flashlight wherever I am. It turns on the LED flash for taking pictures to use as a flashlight. It can be useful for my grandmother to increase the contrast on something like a pill bottle for easier reading, or just searching for that thing she’s dropped.

I used to think it was silly to have, but now I couldn’t imagine life without it. And it is another free application, so there isn’t any point to not have it.

Cineplex – A free application to check out what movies are playing nearby without going onto your computer or checking the newspaper? Why not just add this. You can even add your Scene card to track your points.

Barcode Scanner – Want information about a barcode or QR code that you’ve seen in the world, you can use this application to scan that barcode or QR code and search the Internet or bring up a webpage about what you’ve found.

This isn’t always as useful as you think it would be as it doesn’t have a built-in database of barcodes, but because it is free and easy to use, it might be handy.

Yahoo Mail – I think my grandmother is one of the last Gmail holdouts, and so she needs to install this application to receive her e-mail on her cell phone. Usually, or at least it was the case with Gmail, the native application is better than the built-in mail client that ships with Android.

Configure this, and you’ll receive notifications of e-mails while you are out an about. No more having to remember to go to your computer, unless you find them too uncomfortable to read on your cellphone screen.

Checkout 51 – I haven’t tried this application myself, but the concept is cool. Instead of bringing coupons to the store, you just check their directory of coupons, buy the product, scan your receipt, and they’ll credit your account the difference. Once you have twenty dollars in your account, they cut you a cheque. Plenty of good reviews, and no more holding up the line. Could be neat to try out.

Color Note – A free, easy to use notepad to take notes on your phone. Need I say more? This is the one I use, and I find it sufficient. It does some weird things like putting your cursor where you touch, no matter what, but that’s okay. Great for quick note taking.

Where’s My Droid – Lost your phone in your house, or purse? Don’t know where it went? Install this, and then go through and set it up. You can then use another cell phone or web browser to text your phone and get it to make noise or respond back with where the phone is, even if you have the phone muted, or the GPS turned off. The free version works well enough, and I’ve used this on my phone before to figure out where it is. I just go to Bell’s web text messaging site and send myself the pre-configured message and my phone begins to ring.

Yelp – Need to look at food options? What’s local and what’s good? Maybe you want to try something new? This is a great way to find out what restaurants are like locally. A free application, includes reviews of all kinds of places, making decisions easier.

Doubly helpful if you travel outside your home town.

My Data Manager – You don’t really need this because you are using Wind Mobile and will probably never leave one of their home zones, but it doesn’t hurt to have your own application to track how much data you are sending over your cellular connection. Hopefully, by now, you’ve hooked up your phone to your home Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to solely use cellular data to send and receive web pages and whatnot.

My Digital Clock Widget – Simple, big and looks decent. I don’t remember if your phone had a clock widget on it, but it would be much easier to read than the little on in the top corner. Get this if you don’t already have one.

Dropbox – Get a free 2GB account on their website, and then get this application and attach it to your phone. It will make it easy for you to both get things off of and onto your phone. Want to share a picture? Don’t e-mail it to everyone, upload it from your phone to dropbox and share the link.

Magnifying Glass – You don’t really need an application for this. You can take a picture of something and then zoom in on the picture, but if you are having issues doing that, this might make it easy. A free application that is all about magnifying things for you.

Days Left – Need a bold reminder of an event coming up? Lose track of days sometimes? This is a great little app for your phone to help you remember. And again, free to install, so why not?

Pill Reminder – I was going to suggest a pill reminder application, but they all looked overly complex, and most of them didn’t even have the control that the built-in alarm application has. Hopefully, my grandmother will take the time to set-up some alarms.

If anyone else has suggestions on applications that might be useful to my grandmother, please let me know. She’s rocking a Motorola Razr V Android device.

My fiancé, Annie, has started a blog for herself. It will mostly be password protected because despite not talking about her job, she works with the public and as such, she doesn’t want most of her posts, even those about her life to be open to everyone.

From time to time, I hope to get her to post some public stuff though, so if you’d like, check it out: Ananee.

I have been so fortunate to have this blog as a place to reflect, record and reminisce, and so I am excited at the idea that she could have the same.

We spent time last night setting it up on WordPress.com. Once the blog was created, we changed the theme, I showed her how to craft a post, and then we installed the WordPress app on her iPad, so she could write her posts on it.

One interesting thing is the idea that she will be posting things that I can’t read. She wants to discuss wedding stuff with her bridesmaids and friends, and then, after we are married, she said she’ll give me the password so I can read all of her perspective and get caught up on what this experience has been like for her, something I’m super excited about.

I hope she enjoys having a blog, and finds it useful. So far, my efforts to get others blogging has been a bit of a failure. If you don’t find it enjoyable, helpful or interesting, then of course you won’t spend time on it, but it has been a bit disappointing for me as I’ve gotten so much out of doing it.

Annie and I haven’t even chosen a date yet, but one of the most important things for me is making sure we have pictures of our big day. My memory isn’t very good, so having images I can look back on are key to my happiness and memory.

I’ve been looking at photographers in the Georgetown, Acton, Guelph, Milton area, and most of them want between one and five thousand dollars to do photography for a wedding. Some include two photographers, most include large size, edited, digital copies of photos taken, and all of them are kind of expensive…

When you are looking at an overall wedding budget of around five or six thousand dollars (this is just a guesstimate based on discussions with Annie, and not necessarily our true budget), and know that the bride’s dress will take up a little over one fifth of that, it is hard to swallow that photography will take up another fifth of the budget.

In many ways, I wish I knew more people around here interested in photography. If it was up to me, I would have a recent graduate that showed good understanding of composition come out and take some shots for three or four hours at fifty to eighty dollars an hour. I would rent him or her some photography gear if they needed some, and then just take a DVD of the RAW files from them and edit them myself.

In an ideal world, where money wasn’t an issue, I would hire two photographers, for half a day with good equipment and lots of experience. Maybe even throw in a videographer to get everything covered.

It is just so amazing how cost prohibitive everything is. I understand that weddings are where many photographers make most of their yearly income, and that it is hard work capturing an important moment in someone’s life, but I just can’t justify the incredible expense right now.

I am considering contacting some of the local colleges and universities in hopes of find a recent graduate, or even a student that shows great promise. Spending two or three hundred for someone’s time that has a good eye and understanding of how to take pictures, plus another three hundred renting equipment is still costly, but a far shot away from the cheapest of the wedding packages offered by most local professional photographers.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and a Georgetown photographer will see this post, and want to work, in part, for trade. I’m a WordPress expert!