Howdy,

I'm pleased to say that my first experience with Vimeo was not typical. I have created and uploaded a video just under 20 minutes and just under 30 minutes, and there was of course some processing time (this is expected) and they didn't take seven hours to process a four second clip! I created the videos with a very low quality as proofs of concept, and the concept worked great! It really looks like Vimeo will allow you to have any length as long as the file size comes within the restrictions.

I've deleted the videos since they were only for me to test, so don't go looking for them.

My Vimeo page is here: http://www.vimeo.com/troydolyniuk

* Updated! *

Hi folks,

This post is just me testing different video hosting sites - nothing new to see here. If you like, send me an email with which one you think looks best. Also, please tell me what OS and browser you're using.

Thanks!

Facebook:


YouTube:


Vimeo:
(video uploaded, waiting for encoding...)
Update - it's been just under six hours since uploading the video and I'm still waiting in line for it to be converted. Really?!?
Update 2 - It took almost SEVEN HOURS before Vimeo had my video up. That's insane!

My first Blender animation - Yellow Submarine from Troy Dolyniuk on Vimeo.

Okay, now that all three are up, it looks like they are all about the same quality. This is good, because YouTube used to be much worse than the others, but it's really come a long way. I guess I should fill you in on the background - the reason I'm even considering another provider than YouTube is because of YouTube's ridiculous 10 minute limit for mere mortals like you and me. I haven't bumped into the 10 minute limit with any of my videos yet, but I just put one together for some friends of mine from their baby's baptism and it ran just under 15 minutes. If that was for my event, I'd want to put it up on the web, but YouTube would reject it.

Facebook has a 20 minute limit which is much better, and I'd jump there in a heartbeat except that the player window is only 400 pixels wide, not configurable. Sure, I can edit the code to make it 480 pixels wide (and I did but then undid), but the video is scaled up from 400 to the new size and fuzzy, not scaled down and crisp from the 1280 pixels wide I uploaded to the service in the first place.

Vimeo's free service lets me upload 500MB per week, but no word on length. My next test will be to use some or all of my remaining 498.3MB in this week's quota to upload a low quality but long video. I'll try for 20 minutes first, and if I still have room in my quota I'll try a 30 minute video too.

That's it for updates to this post. Any new information will go on a new post.

Hi,

Today was the grand opening of Winnipeg's first Apple Store in Polo Park. Yes, I went down early and stood in line... But, the first 1000 people (I figure I was somewhere between 200 and 250) got a free T-shirt, and a Winnipegger will do just about *anything* for a freebie. It is a very nice store. I've only been to an Apple store once before; it was on our trip to Las Vegas. The Winnipeg store is bigger than I thought it would be, comparable to the one in Vegas.

If you go to YouTube and search for "apple store winnipeg", you'll see some videos of what the lineup was like. I won't link to them all here, but you can see me in this video below. I'm just to the left of the pillar to the left of the Virgin Mobile kiosk. You can see my head pretty clearly around the 0:32 mark and again when he pans back later on.



And here is a funny clip from The Simpsons about Lisa's first trip to the Mapple store.


Now to figure out how I can justify picking up a 13" MacBook Pro... yummy!

Good evening,

I just wanted to do a quick follow-up on my last blog posting with some new information. Since the last post was a novel, this one will be brief.

Battery life
Under Windows 7 and Boot Camp 3.0, battery life is now on par with what I am seeing under the Mac OS. In my testing, I was on track for about 4.5 hours. Drastically improved from Boot Camp 2.1 (almost double).

Horizontal scrolling
I tried opening one of my wide spreadsheets in Excel 2007, but alas no horizontal scrolling. As I mentioned, IE8 didn't either, and neither does anything else with a horizontal scroll bar.

Final verdict
After using Windows 7 exclusively for a few days, I must say it is definitely the best version of Windows ever made. It is fast, stable, and slick, and if I wasn't a Mac guy, I'd be in love. Please don't take that to mean that I've imbibed of the Apple Kool-Aid and am a Mac fanboy, because I'm not. I was very much prepared to make the switch back to Windows if that turned out to be the best operating system for me. However, it still isn't.

Features like the new task bar and how Aero Peek has been integrated make finding the window you want to get to very convenient. I was quite enamoured with it, but it's still no Exposé. Yes, even though Exposé is all chunky now, it's still the fastest and most efficient way of all to navigate to my desired open (and now minimized) window. How can it get any better than seeing *all* of your open windows scaled down and spread out to pick the one you like?

There are other things too, little things that don't seem significant, but when you get used to them find they really make a difference in your productivity. One such thing in particular that comes to mind is that I had gotten used to the fact that if I want to scroll something, I'd put my mouse pointer over it and then scroll. It didn't matter if its window was in focus or not, it just worked. In Windows 7, I found I still had to click inside the scrolling component before that would scroll, and then it would scroll no matter where my mouse pointer was. This really aggravated me when I was tweaking the power settings. The default focus was on a drop down that switched between the power modes (Best performance, best battery life, balanced [or something to that effect]), and right below that was a long scrollable list with the details of that profile. Well, I wanted to scroll down to see what was down there, but scrolling down just caused the profiles to flip through the drop down list items above, not the list I was pointing at. Whereas now, I can scroll up to review earlier parts of this post, go to the pane above to scroll the list of all my blog posts, and point to my email program in another window that is still visible but not in focus and scroll through an open email message (suppose I was referring to it while writing a post) all by pointing at it and scrolling but not having to click to change focus.

To wrap this up, Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and by far the best Redmond has ever put out. I definitely encourage all Windows users to upgrade - it is a significant step forward. Boot Camp 3.0 is probably the best thing to come out of Snow Leopard, at least today. In the future, as application programmers write their applications to take full advantage of the vast new power and features that Snow Leopard provides, then we'll finally get to see Snow Leopard shine. But overall, I must say that while it came close (very close), it wasn't enough to sway me from Mac OS X, and I still encourage everybody to research and at least consider it when it comes time to upgrade to a new computer.

So much for a brief post.

Today's blog posting talks about my experiences with the updated Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade as well as the updated Boot Camp 3.0 drivers under Windows 7 64-bit RTM. It ended up being quite long, so instead of clogging up the front page with the entire article, please click the link below to see the full post. Read More...

Woo hoo! The rumours were true!! Apple has officially announced today that the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, version 10.6 Snow Leopard, will be released Friday August 28, 2009. This is a little ahead of schedule, since the official release date set by Apple before this was "September 2009". No date, no indication of early, mid, or late September either. However, the rumour mill recently pegged August 28th as a likely date.

I’ve already pre-ordered the software on Apple’s site. $35CDN plus taxes for the upgrade from Leopard (i.e. Mac OS X 10.5) with free shipping. I’m really looking forward to it getting here; not sure when that will be though.

Why am I so excited when I posted on the 14th how stoked I was over Windows 7? Well, it quickly became apparent to me that I was excited over it because it was new. My opinion of it hasn’t changed - it still is a terrific upgrade to Windows and a MAJOR improvement from my Vista experience, but once the newness started to wear off I could see that it wasn’t enough to keep me from my Mac. That and the Apple touchpad drivers for Windows are really sub-par which makes interacting with Windows frustrating without an external mouse.

Some of you know that after a life of being a Mac hater, I became a Mac switcher in February 2008. For some of you, this will be news even today. I have to tell you, coming out of the Mac closet was very hard because of the reputation I’d built over the last 20 years of using computers. But at any rate, when I made the switch to my MacBook thanks in very large part to a problematic HP laptop and Windows Vista (pre SP1), one very important security blanket was there for me - Macs for the last few years have been built on an Intel platform and can be configured to dual boot into Windows. This means that if the Mac experiment failed (which it didn’t), I could still go back to Windows and not have the whole thing a waste of money. I could also dual boot to Windows XP to play Age of Empires III (which I haven’t actually played in quite a while - I should pick it up again).

With that background aside, have any of you tried Windows 7 yet? In May, Microsoft started offering the release candidate (i.e. still a beta version but feature complete) for Windows 7 (also referred to as RC1) for free. The catch is that March 1, 2010 it will start shutting down on you every 2 hours, and June 1, 2010 it will expire altogether. (in unison: “It will expire” )

I downloaded and installed the 64-bit version for two reasons. I have 4GB of RAM in my laptop, and I believe that the world needs to make the jump to 64-bit computing. It’s going to happen sooner or later, so we might as well do it now and get the pain over with. It ran very well on my MacBook, very fast, and I really liked the improvements in Windows 7 from Windows Vista. Then I thought I should actually install something. Of course the first thing to do on a Windows computer is install anti-virus. Once I did that, all that glorious speed disappeared in a puff of smoke. I tried the free AVG Anti-Virus, then uninstalled that and tried Avast. Neither gave me a good result. I didn’t know if it was because of Windows 7 itself, being on a 64-bit platform and not fully supported, or because I was running Windows on a Mac. Either way, my user experience was going downhill. I then tried to see if Age of Empires III would run. It wouldn’t, although this again could have been because of the 64-bit environment (although it is supposed to support most 32-bit apps too). Things weren’t looking good. It went further downhill when the included Internet Explorer 8 started causing the OS to blue screen on me. Huh? Really?!? I could reproduce it, too. After a few minutes of surfing, it would blue screen. That was really lame. The Windows partition was promptly deleted and back to Mac OS X I went!

Fast forward now to a week ago. August 6 was my Dad’s birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!), and it was also the birthday of the final Windows 7 release to manufacturer (RTM). Fortunately, I have legitimate access to the RTM. The whole world wanted to get at it though, so downloading was a pain. It finally completed downloading on Friday the 7th, and because of a weekend at the cabin I didn’t get to start trying it until late Sunday the 9th. After repartitioning my MacBook using Boot Camp, I was ready to give Windows 7 (this time the final release) another go. Once again I opted for the 64-bit version for the same reasons as above. After installation (and it is more of a headache to get it installed on a Mac due to changes to the bootable DVD and some driver issues), the first thing I noticed was the wallpaper had changed from RC1. Other than that, it looked about the same.

It was fast, very fast, although I hadn’t installed anything yet at this point. However, a lot more software has been updated with Windows 7 and even 64-bit support between the time RC1 and RTM were released. With this in mind, I gave the free Avast anti-virus a whirl. Wow, this time the computer didn’t slow down at all. As visitors to my site can obviously see, I like to work on video editing. How will that go here?

I’ve been using Final Cut Express 4 (FCE) for Mac, but Adobe has Premiere Elements 7 (PE7) for the Windows environment with a free 30 day trial that I downloaded to take for a spin. I haven’t put anything up on my website here from PE7 (Sean and Karen’s wedding video was in FCE on the Mac), but over the past week I took some of the raw footage and put something together. Very nice! I had some output quality issues at first, but it was just a matter of the settings being a little different than I was used to in Final Cut.

FCE on the Mac doesn’t have Blu-Ray support, which isn’t a big deal for me now but could be nice down the road. Also, exporting to DVD on the Mac means using a separate program, iDVD, which has some very nice menus but very limited video compression settings, low and high. What this means is that the output DVD doesn’t always look as good as it could. If your video is too long for the high quality setting to fit on a DVD, then you go to the low quality setting, potentially leaving up to 2GB free on the disc and compressing your movie way more than it needs to be thus reducing the quality significantly. That is silly - why not use a more dynamic compression setting such that your video is compressed only as much as it needs to be in order to fill the entire disc?

PE7 has DVD and Blu-Ray support built-in and appears to have dynamic compression (i.e. compress only as much as necessary to fill the entire disc to get the best result possible). PE7 also fully utilizes the Intel Core 2 Duo processor when rendering whereas Final Cut Express doesn’t, thus significantly speeding up render times in my observations. There are other things about Premiere Elements 7 that I find myself liking over Final Cut Express 4, but that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that I have found a very capable equivalent for my video projects.

Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t blue screen on me anymore, which is very nice. Neither do Firefox or Google Chrome. The next thing on my list was Age of Empires III. I pretty much wrote it off as incompatible with 64-bit operating systems based on some research I had done at the time, but since everything else was so much improved since the beta version of Windows 7 I gave it a try last night. I still got the warnings when I tried to install that the game has a known incompatibility with Windows 7, but I pushed on anyway. I downloaded and installed the latest patch for the game as I had done before, but this time there was a newer patch available. I downloaded 1.12 when I was testing the beta OS in May, but now they are up to 1.13 released June 10th. This is a good sign. After the patch updating was complete, I then nervously started the game. Hey, the intro screen showed up. Okay, let’s click Play. Here are the intro videos... and I’m in! Woo hoo! I spent a bit of time tweaking the graphics settings for the best results, and it looks great on my MacBook! Okay, let’s actually play a game instead of looking at the main menu screen. I just played the short beginner’s tutorial game, but it all worked great. Yipee!

So now I can get the best of both worlds, which is great. But I have to admit that I’m really impressed with Microsoft - they really made Windows 7 a lot better than Vista was. I was so happy to get away from Vista, and Mac welcomed me with open arms. But now that Windows has improved so drastically, I’m finding myself wondering if I should switch back. Dual booting does tend to be a pain, which is likely why I eventually stopped playing Age of Empires. I’m in Mac OS X right now as I’m writing this because my website is built using Rapid Weaver (a Mac program), but when I’m done here I might just go back into Windows, play a round of Age of Empires, and not rush back into Mac OS X like I used to do in the past. Fortunately the next Mac OS X upgrade (version 10.6, called Snow Leopard) is due out in September, so I won’t have too long to wait before I can (pardon the pun) compare apples to apples and then decide.

It’s official - this morning we officially and publicly announced that MTS will be working with Rogers Wireless to build up our HSPA network. I still can’t speak to anything that wasn’t in the press release, but at least I can say this much.

Yes, we are making the move from CDMA to HSPA (i.e. the next revision of GSM). We’re still keeping CDMA around; we’ve got a great CDMA network with almost half a million customers, and we’re not going to drop them or make them all switch. I believe it will be more of a gradual phasing over from CDMA to HSPA as people’s contracts are over and they go in for hardware upgrades. The time will come when we stop selling CDMA phones and everybody will get HSPA hardware. When will that be? When will we start the cutover? Sorry folks - I don’t have all the details, and even if I did I can’t tell.

Here is the news release as publicly presented on the MTS website here.

MTS Allstream Announces Strategic Wireless Agreement with Rogers

Agreement Allows Cost Effective Deployment of HSPA Wireless Network; Allstream Gains Access to National Wireless Business Offering

Highlights of the agreements include:

• MTS Allstream and Rogers to share costs for deployment and operation of regional HSPA network
• Company gains access to Rogers' purchasing power for HSPA handsets and network equipment
• Joins the most extensive GSM/HSPA roaming coverage offered in Canada and extensive roaming relationships internationally
• Ability to add national Allstream-branded wireless service to business product portfolio

WINNIPEG, MB, July 28, 2009 - Manitoba Telecom Services Inc., including its principal operating subsidiary, MTS Allstream Inc. ("MTS Allstream") today announced an innovative agreement with Rogers Wireless Partnership ("Rogers") that will see both companies share the cost to deploy a Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems/High Speed Packet Access ("HSPA") wireless network across the existing MTS Allstream regional wireless footprint. The agreement also allows MTS Allstream to leverage Rogers' purchasing scope and scale to gain cost effective access to new network technology and HSPA handsets. MTS Allstream's HSPA customers will have access to the best national and international roaming capabilities as a Rogers roaming partner. The agreement also provides MTS Allstream with the opportunity to launch a national wireless business offering under the Allstream brand through a competitive wholesale arrangement.
"This announcement is a win for wireless customers in Manitoba, who will benefit from this innovative approach to investment in next generation wireless services and access to the best available national and international roaming ," said Pierre Blouin, Chief Executive Officer, MTS Allstream. "This plan was developed following a careful evaluation of our different options. Our agreement with Rogers will allow us to deploy the HSPA network in Manitoba in a cost effective manner, allowing us to maximize the effectiveness of our capital spending and accelerate plans to launch a new integrated billing platform."
Once complete the HSPA network will provide the widest available coverage in Manitoba and deliver next-generation broadband mobile services to 97% of the population. We expect the majority of the population to be covered by the end of 2010. MTS Allstream HSPA customers will roam on Rogers' national GSM/HSPA network outside of Manitoba, and have access to Rogers' international roaming arrangements. The cost to MTS Allstream for this extensive and unmatched regional HSPA network build will be up to $70 million ending in early 2011, a portion of which will be funded by our existing capital program.
In conjunction with the HSPA rollout, MTS Allstream will implement a new integrated billing platform with capability for multiple services, creating the opportunity for significant future cost savings. Wireless customers will be the first to be served over this new platform, and the cost to bring wireless customers to this platform will be approximately $40 million over the next three years.
"Wireless has been a strong growth engine for MTS Allstream, and this plan will reinforce our strength by providing our customers in Manitoba with access to enhanced wireless services in an environment where we will continue to compete vigorously with all market participants, including Rogers," said Mr. Blouin. "We are excited to be in a position to add a national wireless business service to Allstream's robust product offering in a very disciplined manner. We will be providing more details to stakeholders as we finalize our plans."
MTS Allstream plans to continue to operate its existing CDMA wireless network in Manitoba to support existing CDMA services and roaming traffic.
We believe the agreement with Rogers preserves the Company's flexibility to pursue strategic options in the future.
The agreement is subject to approval by the appropriate regulatory authorities. A Material Change Report describing all material details of the agreement has been filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators. This report will be available at www.sedar.com today
Conference Call with Investment Community MTS Allstream will be holding a conference call with the investment community to discuss its agreement with Rogers on July 28, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Investors are invited to listen to the conference call. The dial-in number is 1-800-732-0232. A live audio Webcast of the investor conference call can be accessed by visiting the Investors section of the MTS Allstream Web site (www.mtsallstream.com). A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight (Eastern time) on August 7, 2009 and can be accessed by dialing 1-877-289-8525 and enter the pass code 21312065#.
About MTS Allstream MTS Allstream is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. As one of Canada's leading national communication solutions companies, MTS Allstream provides innovative communications for the way Canadians want to live and work today. The Company has more than 100 years of experience, with 6,000 employees across Canada dedicated to a mission of delivering true value as seen through the eyes of our customers. In 2008, MTS Allstream had nearly two million total customer connections spanning business customers across Canada and residential consumers throughout the province of Manitoba. The Company's extensive national broadband and fibre optic network spans almost 30,000 kilometres. MTS Allstream is a proud sponsor of Cindy Klassen, 2006 World Champion and Canada's greatest Olympian, and a proud contributor to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.'s common shares are listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange (trading symbol: MBT). Customers, stakeholders and investors who want to learn more about MTS Allstream services, markets, community commitments and record of creating shareholder value are encouraged to visit: www.mtsallstream.com.
Forward-looking Statements Disclaimer This news release includes forward-looking statements and information (collectively, the "statements") about the transactions announced herein that are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and importantly regulatory approvals. As a consequence, actual results in the future may differ materially from any conclusion, forecast or projection in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect our expectations as at July 28, 2009. Examples of statements that constitute forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "project", "should", "anticipate", "could", "target", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "outlook", "see", "set", "pending", and other similar terms. Many factors could cause anticipated opportunities and actual results to differ materially from those expected, and several material factors and assumptions were applied in drawing conclusions or making a forecast or projection set out in such forward looking statements. Except as required by law, we disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
For more information, please contact:
Media:
Greg Burch
MTS Allstream Corporate Communications
(204) 941-8576
media.relations@mtsallstream.com
Investors:
Paul Peters
MTS Allstream Investor Relations
(204) 941-6178
investor.relations@mtsallstream.com

Good evening,

A couple of days ago I decided to sign up for a Twitter account. It’s not that I feel the world wants to follow my every move, not by any means! However, I needed to create an account for work because we need to start testing Twitter on the cell phones. Since it’s best if there is some activity on the account to make it more realistic I need to use it and even update it once in a while. I’m following two other Twitterers (Tweeters, Twits?) right now - Tony Robbins and Power 97 (the Winnipeg radio station). If you’d like to follow me, you can reach me at http://twitter.com/TroyDolyniuk.

It is true, I love my MTS BlackBerry Curve 8330 very much.  I'm not sure if it's something I would have originally paid for on my own, but since I get one free from work it allowed me to try it out and incorporate it into my life.  Now I'm completely hooked and if I left MTS tomorrow, I'd have to go out and buy one for myself.  Which is really high praise since I really love the iPhone and want one of those too, but I think I love the BlackBerry just a little bit more.   Read More...