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The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon
Viewing blogs posted in August, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 30/08/2007 13:02:45Updated by Joel Dixon at 29/01/2008 16:49:33
Well I've been here for a while now, and starting to regret my decision a little less. My workmates are nice and as more essentials items are bought for my apartment I'm getting a little more comfortable. I thought I'd take the time to discuss the transportation options available to me in Edmonton.
I chose the location of my apartment because it is very close to most of the clients of my new company. Unfortunately, I happen to be working for a client for whom the work is done out of the main office - a 30 minute drive from my place (and me without a car). Thankfully, I live very close to a work colleague that has been giving me a lift to and from work each day. Also fortunately, it has given me an insight into what the commuters of Edmonton deal with each day.
First thing I noticed, was that my work friend's windshield had a very large spiderweb-shaped crack all through it. I had figured it was recently in an accident and just not repaired yet, until I noticed that about 1 in 20 of the cars on the road have similar cracks in their windshields.
I found out that the roads in Edmonton can only be repaired during a few months of each year (when they aren't covered in snow), and as Edmonton is in the middle of a boom right now there is a lot of roadwork required. It basically equates to poorly maintained roads, which means more stones are shot into your windshields. What begins as small stars evolve into large cracks by the constant bumping around through dodgy potholes and other such annoyances. I was also surprised at the number of people breaking the road rules by speaking on their telephones while driving - until I found out it's still legal here. I think I might get myself a "learn to drive" booklet before I attempt to cruise the streets.
Another phenomenon around here is the number of "pickup trucks" on the roads. A pickup is basically a four-door ute, but the whole thing is huge. I guess a four-wheel drive vehicle would be useful in the Winter months, but it looks odd seeing so many of them driving around in the nice weather. Edmonton also allows a driver to start learning at 14 years of age, and have a full licence at 16. There's no "P-plates" here for probationary drivers, but you do see an occasional home-made sign indicating a "new driver" resting against the back window. Reassuring.
One of the many pickups on Edmonton's roads. To be honest - I wouldn't mind driving a bad-boy like this
Edmonton doesn't have an extensive train system, which makes getting around much harder. There does seem to be a lot of different bus routes, but almost anywhere I want to go will require a change at three different bus stops. Edmonton also do not have trams, but they do have "trolley buses". They're basically a normal bus (wheels and all) driving on the left lane of regular roads, attached to an electric cable running over head for power. They run smoothly and don't emit greenhouse gases - but man they look funny!
An artists rendition of a trolley bus
There's also a number of taxi's driving around the city - a lot less than in Melbourne. It's difficult to catch a cab without actually phone ordering it. There's three main taxi companies (and many smaller ones) - but legislation states that they all need to charge the same fares. So even though the dodgy "barrel" brand of taxis are not maintained as well as the nicer "Checker" cabs - they both charge the same fare. You can guess which cab company I'm going to call.
After living in Edmonton for a short time, I'm thinking more and more about leasing / renting a car while I'm here. It's just too hard to get around the city without one, and my place of work offers free parking. Until I finally make that decision, I'm walking a shit-load more than I'm used to!
# Posted in the Travel section and tagged as: Edmonton
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Saturday, August 25, 2007
Salsa Chicken
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 25/08/2007 15:24:18Updated by Joel Dixon at 23/09/2007 10:03:06
As I no longer have my world famous chef with me (Bell) I've needed to make my own meals. Even with my extensive and award winning McDonald's career, I'm a complete novice in the kitchen (except for lots of Iron Chef watching).
So when you start at the absolute beginning of cooking - you do a google search for the simplest recipe possible. Enter Salsa Chicken:
Salsa Chicken with Veggies
Extremely nice and resembling a chicken parma - it really couldn't be easier to make:
Chicken Breast - As much as you want to eat
Salsa - Enough to cover the chicken
Your favourite cheese (I like a Tex-Mex mix) - Enough to cover chicken and salsa
Put chicken in a baking dish and cover with salsa. Place in a moderate oven (180 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit) for 35 minutes. Sprinkle cheese on top and cook for another 5 minutes, or until cheese has melted.
Simple - but mexi-good!
# Posted in the General section and tagged as: Recipe
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Saturday, August 18, 2007
Welcome to joeldixon.com - it's the web 0.9
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 18/08/2007 05:19:16As I stated way back when, I had always figured I would have a blog eventually - but I had originally assumed I would have coded the blog website myself as a programming exercise (being, at that point, new to PHP and MySQL). I originally signed up to Blogger to comment on a few people's blogs, and I started making posts while developing my own Blog website. As is common with other "coding for fun" projects of mine, the process dragged on a lot longer than I had originally thought. It's funny, part of the reason I didn't want to "settle" for Blogger's software was the lack of a few key features I wanted (such as tags, image uploads etc). Sure enough - by the time I had completed my site, Blogger gained most of my wanted features, and more.
But anyway - it's finally finished - and hopefully it will convince me to blog more often while in Edmonton. Some of the key features that I wanted include:
- - URLs for my blog entries include the date of publication and title of the blog post (i.e. http://www.joeldixon.com/blog/entry/2007/08/09/day-1-in-edmo nton). I'm often reluctant to click an anonymous blog post when the url is something like http://example.com/blog?entry_id=12 or http://example.com/blog/12). I also wanted, as much as possible, for the URLs to make sense - like http://www.joeldixon.com/blog/archive/2005/page/2.
- - I personally like HTML, so I wanted commenters to be allowed to use (limited) HTML tags, as well as the common BBCode rip-off that most sites provide. This includes image linking for comments, and image uploads for blog posts. Oh - and you gotsa have smilies
- - Originally Blogger only allowed members to post with an email or website address. I wanted to provide an option to register to the site (manage your profile, keep track of post count etc) for commenting - but also allow anonymous comments provide a name, email address and home page. Sure, spammers may eventually enjoy this feature - but I can set individual blog posts to require a captcha (generally only 1 in 50 of my old blog posts generated any spam).
- - A pretty neat feature I blatantly stole from my little brother (though his is much fancier in terms of animation), I wanted the ability to allow quick comments on blog posts from the main page of the site. Also, I wanted to allow a "Preview" button - mainly because of the number of times I've stuffed up the formatting one one of my blog comments.
- - (oh my!) Blog tags are pretty cool, but I also wanted a way to keep my geeky technical and gaming posts separate from the suave travelings of a jetsetter (because, like, there's so much more to me). The home page still shows all sections combined, but I will probably provide an RSS feed for each section if demand requires.
- - Another piece of website thievery, I wanted to be able to see the last five comments or so on my homepage with ease. The blog search is also something that helps when when I think "I know I've typed this before" - though as it was the last feature implemented, it's really dodgy at present.
- - Most coded-at-home blog sites have a dynamically generated RSS feed that gets created each time it is requested (i.e. I go to the RSS feed's page, it goes to the database to get the last 20 posts then outputs the results as XML). The problem with this approach is that some RSS clients request the XML feed in great frequency to check if anything's been updated. Even with as limited a readership as mine, these requests can add up and really slow down the database. Instead, I've made it so a physical XML file is saved to my website each time a blog post is updated, or a future-dated blog post is made active. This file generation is slower than a simple database request being returned as XML, but if history is anything to go by, my post frequency is nothing to worry about!
I'm probably leaving out heaps of features that took plenty of time and heaps of head scratching, but I'm sure you get the idea.
So register to comment, sign up to the RSS feed and stay a while!
# Posted in the Technical section and tagged as: Web
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Thursday, August 09, 2007
Day 1 in Edmonton
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 09/08/2007 10:03:51Updated by Joel Dixon at 23/09/2007 10:00:36
Don't worry - I won't be doing an Edmonton travel log for the whole year I'm here
I woke up on Tuesday morning surprisingly chipper, and eager to start the day. My boss took me to Denny's for breakfast, and filled me in on the company I was going to be working for and he caught up on all the Melbourne happenings. I ordered a small orange juice and one of the cheapest breakfasts on the menu - and started to get an understanding of the "larger portions" prevalent in North America.
The orange juice would definitely be classified as "large" in any Melbourne eatery, and the breakfast certainly filled me up. Two standouts were the hash browns (just grated potato fried up - not the McDonald's perfectly rectangle reconstituted goop) and some grape jelly on my toast. I got a taste for grape and cherry jelly during my previous visit to New York - and I'm glad it's back! After a very satisfying breakfast, it was off to work.
Work was work, nice people and they actually had my computer setup for my start date (although no user account). I was asking my immediate manager whether I would need to let him know when I started working more than 40 hours a week (as I'm currently a contractor) and he just looked at me funny. Apparently everyone here works their 40 hours, then goes home. They actually lockup the building at 5:30, overtime is rarely required - it was a welcomed change! Working hours are 8 am to 5 pm with a lunch break, and pretty much noone turns up after 8:30. Guess I need to buy an alarm clock.
I stopped into Wendy's for lunch, which again reminded me of old times. After work I went back to my apartment to view it for the first time. Thankfully it isn't that bad.
My Edmonton Apartment
The building also has a pool table room, gym, spa and sauna as well as a big screen TV room. But walking in to a completely empty apartment did shock me a little bit. Thankfully, someone at work was able to lend me a single bed allowing me somewhere to sleep - al biet without a pillow. Although I was missing Belinda terribly, putting my bags away in room did feel a little nice. As soon as internet, cable tv and a phone line are installed - I will be feeling a lot nicer!
# Posted in the Travel section and tagged as: Edmonton
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Flying to Edmonton
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 08/08/2007 08:23:28The last time I flew across the Pacific it was all new and exciting, and while it was difficult I was excited to get over to the US. This time, I knew what to expect, I was doing it on my own, and I was leaving my wife in Australia. It was tough!
Belinda took me to the airport so she could wish me farewell. At the risk of damage to my incredibly masculine image, it was sad with a few tears shed. When I went through the security checkpoint and waited alone at the departure gate, I shed a lot more tears. It had finally hit me, I wouldn't be able to see my wife for at least 100 days (I plan on coming back for a visit in November), and I started blubbering. When my plane was called, I managed to clean myself up and stem the flow of tears until I sat down in my seat, and had a little cry at the fact that this was the first International flight that I won't share with Bell.
The plane took off without incident and I started watching one of the movies on offer. Whenever something sad happened in the film, or a point where two characters displayed love for each other I could feel the tears well up. Even the silhouette of the girl on the plane's toilet lights made me all sad.
Now, I know I'm a bit of a girly man. Ever since I was a young lad I was very quick to tears. I've gotten better as time's gone on - but must admit that I did have a tear in my eye at the end of Adam Sandler's movie Click. Even though I know I'm a very emotional person, I had no idea I would turn to tears so easily when I got on that plane. I think it might have been because I was trying to ignore my emotions during the preparations for the trip, and they just kept building up inside. I also realised that I rely on Belinda's friendship more than I had thought. As I've been with here for the past 10 years, she's become a big part of my life. At this point of the flight, I was questioning my decision about working in Canada, and wondering how upset my new boss would be if I got on the first plane back to Melbourne.
Knowing I needed something to keep my mind cheery, I put on my iPod earphones and started listening to podcasts. I've been podcasting a few of my favourite radio shows for a while now which is going to help when I'm living in Edmonton. Thankfully, Tony Martin's Get This helped me keep my mind off the sad things and got me through the rest of the flight.
Towards the end of the flight I started talking to the girl sitting next to me, she was going home to Ottawa (Canada) after an extended stay in Melbourne. Laura was fun to talk to - and I started learning about the differences between Australia and Canada that I hadn't thought through. The 14 hours had gone by fairly quickly, and we finally landed in Los Angeles.
It felt good to be on my feet again, and we made the trek through American customs. As soon as I joined the long line I noticed a guy about 10 people a head of me that looked very familiar. Sure enough the girl that was two seats away from me during the flight asked "Is he from Australian Idol"? Yes, it was Dean Guyer. Almost straight after that, some middle-aged Aussie dude went up and asked for an autograph. I didn't feel like annoying the guy, so took a sneaky snap with my mobile camera.
Looks a bit like that old Bigfoot film, but believe me, it's him
After a phone call to Belinda (more tears) I hung around Los Angeles airport with Laura for a few hours, waiting for our flights (she was transferring through Chicago, I was heading to Denver). I eventually got onto that plane and soon enough we were in the air again. The Denver flight was much more manageable (only 2 or 3 hours) and I got through a few more podcasts (and no more tears thankfully). With the seat-belt sign on we started our landing - but I was a little worried. Looking out the window all I could see was farmland, and we were pretty close to the ground! Just before landing I finally saw the corner of a runway, but it was still a very rough landing.
I had around three hours to wait in Denver, which was very boring. I did notice that when I bought some food at a Mexican place the change was dispensed to me automatically by a change machine - very cool! I also went to a few gift stores in search of Colorado Avalanche gear for my wife - but for some reason they weren't selling any (probably making way for some upcoming Penguins gear).
The final flight from Denver to Edmonton went by in a breeze, as I spent most of it asleep. I was trying to stay awake so I didn't disrupt my sleeping patterns, but it was no use! When I got off the plane I mentally prepared myself for the immigration interview that was coming.
At each stop in America, whenever I went through immigration or tried to get my flight's boarding pass I had at least 10 minutes waiting while the clerk checked all of my work permit details. Because of all of this attention, I had figured it was going to be hell getting through the Canadian immigration. Sure enough, I only spent about 5 minutes waiting for the very efficient Canadian immigration people to complete my documentation. I probably would have been more impressed if I wasn't asleep on my feet!
My old boss picked me up from the baggage claim, and I went back to his place to crash in the spare room. After 30 hours in the air or in an airport, sleep came very easily!
# Posted in the Travel section and tagged as: Edmonton
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