The Soundtrack of my Office

Listening to music while you work is tough. You can't just listen to top 40 songs... they cause you to spend too many cycles actually listening to the music. You need something a bit more unobtrusive. Something in the background, mellow... but not too easy, we're not trying to buy a new shirt or riding an elevator here.

Here's a list of SHOUTcasts or MP3/MOD archives that I like to listen to while working:

• Groove Salad at SomaFM
• Washington University aminet mod archive (huge)
• Kosmic Free Music Foundation (KFMF)

I'll update this as I think of more... later

Canadian Music Creators Coalition

The Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Billy Talent and many more understand that what matters most to them is the fans. Without the fans, they are nothing. Well, they formed the Canadian Music Creators Coalition to speak out against the labels for suing the fans in the name of the artists when the artists don't want to sue in the first place.

They have even published their first white paper!

If you don't like to read, you can watch Steven Page from the Barenaked Ladies on Canada AM.

Down with DRM. It's about time.

Are you ready for a Revolution?

As the release of the Nintendo Revolution gets closer, ads and possible game ideas are popping up. This is certainly going to be a very interesting game console with almost endless possibilities!

Check out this ad, Star Wars anybody?

I really wish it was high def though... that would clinch it for me.

My Golf Record

I've been using a free handicap tracker for the last year. It's not great, but it was free. Located over at the Canadian Golf Guide, it kept track of your last 20 rounds, which is required for calculating your handicap.

However, this morning I found a new site that offers pretty much the same functionality, but has more features for free. Surf on over to My Golf Record and check out their expansive site. Obviously there are growing pains on this new site and you might see the odd ad for Taylor Made, Ping or Nike, but it gets what you need done.

The only additional calculator that they don't offer is a Course Handicap calculator. This should be integrated and included for free. At the moment, I'm stuck having to surf on over to the USGA Course Handicap Calculator. I'm not complaining much, at least I don't have to do it by hand!

Oh, one more thing. Make sure that when you are entering your scores into your handicap tracker that you use the USGA Equitable Score Control. Basically it saves you from trashing your handicap on those disaster holes you have every once in a while.

Your intrepid golfer... Lennox

Canadian Football Cleats

Summer is in the air. The grass is greening up, thunderstorms threaten, and Ultimate discs are dusted off and thrown again for the first time. It's time to break out your dirty old cleats!

That is, until you notice a big rip down one side and fondly remember that last fall you were stuck with wet feet and swore that you would purchase a new pair as soon as you got home. So, now it's spring and you've got to buy some new cleats. Where do you turn?

Well, it's summer, so it should be really easy to head to your local sports store and buy some football or soccer cleats. Browsing through the shoes, you realize that the last pair that you had were football cleats, and you really liked the cleat pattern. Soccer cleats? Not so much. You see, here lies the difference. Soccer cleats are made for ball control, kicking and lateral movements. Football cleats are made for grip. In Ultimate, we don't need to kick a ball, so there are lots of people who want the extra grip that soccer shoes can't provide (wouldn't want your cleats to dig in when you are trying to kick, would you?).

So, you're trying to find a pair of football cleats, at a reasonable price (you still need to save some money for Advil, sport tape and new sport socks... might I recommend Thorlos?). You find 4 pairs of football cleats at the local sports stores, $40-$70. All bottom of the line from Adidas or Nike. What can you do now?

See, the problem is that A) in Canada we don't support football well in the school system, so we don't get a lot of football cleats and B) football is a fall sport, it's now springtime, there are none in stock. So where does a Canadian Ultimate player turn for cheap football cleats?

GAIA Ultimate offers a great pair of shoes made for Ultimate players. Unfortunately, they retail for $130 CDN. Another source might be Niketown, and if you can find a pair of Nike Speed TDs you'll end up forking out $130. You can call up New Balance and get them to order a pair of 890s or 790s. It'll take 3 weeks to order them and will cost you north of $100 per. Even UnderArmor is coming out with their own line of football cleats, but they won't be here until June. Adidas and Reebok have football cleats that we can't get here in Canada yet, only in the USA.

So, why don't you just get them from the States? eBay and Eastbay are great places to look for cleats. FootLocker, Champs, etc. are all the same company, so you could try there as well. Quite often you can find a pair on sale, and if you do, tag on $30 shipping to get them across the border.

The point here is that for well under local retail prices you can get a pair of football cleats, shipped up from the states into Canada. Why can't we get these from a Canadian supplier? Is the market really that thin?

I just finished completing a deal with an eBay Store where I got two pairs of cleats for under $100. Wouldn't it make sense for Canadian retailers to stock cheaper football cleats?

Off to play with my new cleats...