jonandnic dot com

I never thought the day would come, but it has: The geek blog is outperforming this one.

I had originally assumed that spinning off the new blog would take maybe 15% of the readership away from this one — the folks who weren’t really interested in the latest baby pictures, or ramblings about things that bug me/make me happy. The actual number of total ship-jumpers was probably in the neighbourhood of 5%. Which means that most of my fellow geeks are also at least somewhat interested in our lives — not just the nerd talk.

So while we may have lost that 5% of my original site traffic to the new blog, about 10% were willing to at least check both blogs (these numbers are estimates, btw, I didn’t dig deep enough to get actual numbers) giving the new blog a little start-up traffic. That was in October. Blogging hasn’t been nearly as steady on the geek site, but when I’m working on a project, I usually try to capture my findings in case anyone else can use them. While this pattern probably hasn’t led to daily repeat visitors, apparently the content has been useful enough to make it fairly relevant for Google searches.

jonandnic.com usually has less traffic in the summer. We’re down from our usual average of about 180 hits a day, to about 135. Codepoetry is up to a steady average of 145. It took the main site years to get that kind of traffic, so I don’t know if its the fact that blogs are suddenly hip lately, the halo effect from jonandnic.com (although the cross-over numbers would seem to indicate that its not) or if geek content is simply in more demand. Nonetheless, its cool that very little effort (and not much SEO, given the lack of its own domain name) got such a nice result in less than a year.

I’m not really planning on refocusing my efforts on the blogs. I just thought it was interesting to observe. Summer traffic tends to be slow because our visitors, like us, would rather be outside. The fall brings a bit of a reboot for the Wise family, as we’ll finally get to start life again — in a real home, and at a new church. So I’m sure the blog posts will get more contemplative once September hits (and if they don’t, I’m going to need to find some more hobbies!) If you’re looking for something to read* until then, I’ve got a whole wack of new posts up on hacking an Apple TV over on Codepoetry

*I’d take this opportunity to link to some of your blogs, but most of you aren’t updating that much lately either. Come on, guys! I need something to read during breaks at work!

Posted on July 22nd, 2008 4:23 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | 3 Comments »

Haircut @Home

The boy needed a haircut. We’d wake him up from his naps, and even with the air conditioning on, his hair would be matted to his head with sweat.

But his last haircut (which was also his first) cost over $10. That’s a lot of money for a baby’s head — especially when he pretty much needs his hair cut every month.

So we figured it was time for a crash course in hair dressing.

The boy was pretty patient with us, and the only person who got cut by the scissors was me.

The results? Not bad for our first try. A little uneven in the back, but he’s not complaining about it…

Posted on July 21st, 2008 5:27 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Benjamin | 4 Comments »

Big Summer Weekend #2

So when events like these come and go, I like to try to capture my feelings, or some recording of the time on the blog, so that when I look back, it’ll remind me of what it was like.

As for Randy’s wedding… I don’t think I’ll have to write much. I doubt I’ll ever forget this particular event. Whether it was loosing two groomsmen at the last minute (one to a roundhouse punch), the creative and humorously appropriate groomsman outfits, having a serious thunderstorm roll in just before the bride was to walk through the garden for the outdoor ceremony, or the incredible fun we had, totally out-of-our-element at the reception, but totally belonging there because of the part we played in Randy’s story, all of it was incredibly memorable.

My speech, that I was so nervous about, required a pretty careful balance of reflection, encouragement, honesty, grace, humor, pride, spirituality and neutrality that both the intended recipient, and the gathered audience needed. A tall order, for sure, which is why it made me so nervous. But aside from opening by calling the groom a douchebag (he had it coming), I think I managed to avoid screwing it up too much. And I sure was honored to be asked to give it.

My other bestmanly duties for the weekend were a little different than what I imagine is the norm, but it was a lot of fun helping with the big day, and the celebration was hard-earned, and well-deserved.

Randy’s story is one I’ve long-since learned I can’t really tell here, but suffice it to say, he’s come a long way, and he’s found a good partner to share the rest of the journey with him. I doubt I’ll ever forget how proud I am of him right now.

Pictures in the sidebar, and more on Flickr…

Posted on July 20th, 2008 8:25 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | No Comments »

At the Movies…

So, I saw Dark Knight this afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for a long time, and its been hugely successful on this, its opening weekend, so I had to get to see it. My opinion?

Its ok, but not great. It left me feeling unsatisfied.

Don’t get me wrong, Christopher Nolan is a brilliant filmmaker, Christian Bale can do no wrong, and Heath Ledger was the Joker… it just offered nothing new.

It could be because Batman Begins was the best re-boot of a franchise ever, and the sequel had too much to live up to. It could be because the hype was too much for anything to satisfy. But it just felt like this movie had no style. There was nothing in it we haven’t seen before…

Batman was the same as the first movie, only his suit was a little sillier looking, and his gadgets a little less impressively derived from the plausible.
Gotham was too normal a city. In Batman Begins it looked like a normal city, but with just a hint of story-tale too it — a little bit of surreal.
And Heath Ledger really only offered a slightly more mature interpretation of Jack Nicholson’s Joker. He was adequate to the task, but brought very little that was new to the table. Certainly he doesn’t deserve an Oscar (posthumous, or otherwise) for the job.

And the story line was just… uninteresting. If you’re going to make people sit through two and a half hours of film, you should at least have a good reason. There seemed to be no reason here, except that Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to do yet another sequel. By the end of the movie it was clear that he’d lost interest in the franchise.

Which is fine. Its a passable follow-up to Batman Begins, but a third movie would likely sink the series right into mediocrity.

Oh, and I couldn’t escape this nagging feeling, that struck me about 1.5 hours in, that Nolan is a Republican, and he’s trying to draw some misguided parallel between Batman and George W. Bush. Watch it, and see if you don’t catch on (Hint: listen for the part about “A real hero is someone who isn’t afraid to be hated so that the terrorist doesn’t win!”)

In contrast, let me tell you about the other movie we saw in theatres recently: Wall-E. I know this may seem like comparing apples to oranges, but I can’t help it — I don’t get to go the movies that often these days, and its inevitable that I’ll have to decide which was a better waste of my time and money.

Wall-E is full of things we’ve never seen before. Its completely creative, beautifully presented, and loaded with characters who drawn you in emotionally (without even speaking a word.) If Batman is traditional tale of good vs. evil, where most of the characters (save for the “bad guy”) are drawn as essentially good, Wall-E is a non-traditional tale that more accurately depicts reality: most people are essentially stupid and self-absorbed. It doesn’t need a good guy and a bad guy to drive the narrative — in fact it suffers from almost none of the crutches of the simpler stories that Hollywood-produced drivel is usually hobbled by.

I’d like to go on about it longer, but I think you should just go see it yourself. If you have a choice between Batman and Wall-E at the theatres in the next couple weeks, go see Wall-E. Its altogether more satisfying, original and enjoyable than the half-hearted sequel to a good re-make of the decades-old Batman franchise…

The new Bond looks good, though!

Posted on July 20th, 2008 4:15 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Ravings | 5 Comments »

So we took our monkeys to see the kids at the zoo

Ben’s favourite New York babysitter came to Canada for her first international trip ever! We saw Toronto Island, the Toronto Zoo, and the GSTA (Greater St. Thomas Area) in all its mediocrity! More pictures in Flickr.

We’re burnt and tired, but at least we’re managing to pull off a few summer activities! Today’s Nicole’s birthday (happy birthday, babe!) and for one short week, she’s older than me. You can bet I’ll be rubbing that in!
Big Summer Weekend #2 comin up fast…

Posted on July 17th, 2008 10:57 am by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | 3 Comments »

Paradise…

Posted on July 14th, 2008 1:33 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | 2 Comments »

Take me out to the ball game

I know this isn’t the Blue Jays logo any more, but it was the last time I went to see them play. In fact, this was their logo the last time I watched any MLB at all.

Its not that I hate baseball. Its just that I don’t care. Baseball is no worse than any other professional sport — athletes are over-paid and over-worshipped for playing a game, while people in other parts of the world starve to death. Just seems kinda stupid to me. But I guess it doesn’t bother me enough to be passionate about it… I just don’t really get emotionally involved in sports at all.

It doesn’t help that the last baseball game I went to went into like 14 extra innings, and we were stuck in uncomfortable seats for 32 hours straight… or something like that.

Anyway, I’m going to a ball game tonite. And I’m actually kinda looking forward to it. Not the part about watching doped up, spoiled rich guys swinging a club and chasing a ball around a field. But the part about hanging out with my old friend Randy, doing something he enjoys, and celebrating the fact he’s grown-up to the point where he’s ready to commit to his girlfriend and to their son in marriage. And I guess it would be nice if the home team won (especially since they’re playing New York) but either way, tonight we’re celebrating a victory.

Here’s hoping there are no extra innings…

Posted on July 11th, 2008 12:07 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | 5 Comments »

This is Todd.

I don’t know Todd really well, but he (and his wife and their brood of children) are going to be missionaries in Turkey. In the short time I did know him, he taught me something very important, that I remembered tonight…

I have never seen Todd without a smile on his face. We worked together at our church in New York, where I was a part time production director for our weekend services, and Todd was our audio guy. The first time he came in on a Sunday, there was a mis-communication about times. He ended up there early, and I ended up there late.
When I arrived at the church, Todd was standing outside the front door. Since they were saving up for a missions trip, they only had one car for the whole family, so he’d been dropped off — an hour and a half before I got there. It was the dead of winter in New York, and the guy was standing there in the cold waiting for me.

With a smile on his face.

This guy was a professional audio engineer, well into his career, who’d given it up to get ready to go the missions field. And because of where God had called him to go, he had to make some money working for us. We were a bunch of 20-somethings pulling together an intensely fast-paced ministry by our shoestrings, some bubble gum (literally, on at least one occasion) and the seat of our pants. And we probably didn’t give him half the respect he deserved.

But I never once saw him without that smile on his face.

One time, stressed out about something or other that had probably gone wrong, or was about to go wrong, or might go wrong if the solution we’d patched together at midnight the night before fell apart, I asked him how he could always be happy. And he told me:

You get to choose your attitude.

And he was right. Right now, things aren’t terribly fantastic in our lives. For everything good we want to do, or give, or accomplish, something comes along and craps on it, or somehow screws us out of more time or money or resources than the little bit we could manage to share. And it looks to be continuing that way for at least another two months. But I was reminded tonight that I’m actually pretty spoiled. And that my idea of a rough week, or a rough month, or a rough summer… well, it would probably seem pretty good to a lot of other people in the world.

So I’m trying to choose a better attitude.

Posted on July 10th, 2008 9:31 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Faith & Ministry | 1 Comment »

Done with Cable

In what could be described as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” I decided yesterday to never, ever pay for cable TV again.
Unfortunately, Primus isn’t working out good enough as our telephone service, so, loathe to pay the phone company, we’re going with Rogers digital home phone service. Its marginally cheaper than a normal landline, and won’t mess with my dry-loop DSL. While on the phone with Rogers, I decided to inquire about getting PBS for Benjamin. He actually pays attention to the TV now, and our selection of kids movies may not be boring him, but Nic has all of Finding Nemo memorized, and if I have to watch Flushed Away one more time…

I was frustrated to find that you can’t select “basic cable” from the automated system, but was even more so when I got through to a person and found out that the cheapest cable you can buy (and remember we only want 1 channel) was $30 a month. Apparently basic cable has been abolished in Canada, and paying $9 for channels 1-20 isn’t something you can do.

So we bought an AppleTV.

It was a gamble, predicated on the knowledge that iTunes would let us buy U.S. content while in Canada, because our billing address and credit card are both U.S. This frees us from the crappily small Canadian catalogue of video, and means we don’t have to rely on any of the crippled-but-allowed-in-Canada digital distribution systems that over-charge for their tiny library of content.

Here’s a shot of the AppleTV at work, using only its manufacturer’s intended features:

Through the power of the Internets, and a bit of hacking by yours truly, it also does what the XBox 360 can do (and more elegantly) in allowing us to access our own library of content in various media types. All our digitally stored movies, TV series, music and 7 years worth of photos can be viewed on our TV. Our favortie TV Shows are downloaded over the Internet and available immediately on the AppleTV. And if there’s a show we want to check out, we just order it from our remote control.

We will be buying a couple shows as well. If we budget $10 a month for purchased TV, thats a third what we’d pay for cable, and it lets each of us (including Abi) subscribe to one full season of a show each year. Plus I can take my show with me on my iPhone, and watch it anywhere I want.

On top of that, there’s a wonderful array of free content on the store. National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, TEDTV, and many other educational shows are available in High Definition at the touch of a button. And if you want something a little more low-brow, there’s YouTube. You can spend hours “surfing” the TV, and not have to pay a cent to any monopolistic media conglomerate, or watch a single commercial — not even on fast forward.

It was not particularly easy to find an AppleTV in Canada, and for now, our set-up requires us to maintain a U.S. credit card, but that’s something we’d intended on doing anyway. Eventually the Canadian tech industry will be forced to grow up and catch up. Hopefully our little loop-hole remains open until then.

Posted on July 9th, 2008 12:23 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Digital Toys | 3 Comments »

Too much

In retrospect, going to a wedding reception with a toddler and a nursing baby, without having arranged a babysitter in advance, may not have been that great an idea to begin with.

Posted on July 6th, 2008 12:46 pm by Jonathan Wise
Filed under: Current News & Events | 4 Comments »