Jason Dyok

Hand In My Pocket

Jason — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:37:46 +0000

Today the Ontario Provincial Government has approved the increase of natural gas prices for home heating. Add this to the insane price of gasoline and the inflated prices of just about everything else, I give this a 9 on the BULLSHIT Meter.

Three Brazilian Soldiers

Jason — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:18:35 +0000

What Would I Be Without You

Jason — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:31:07 +0000

To all my readers

Mark Goffeney Rocks On So Many Levels

Jason — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:46:27 +0000

Ok, for all you Princesses, Pansies and Candy Asses out there who think that this world owes you something and want everything without working for it…I present to you Mark Goffeney and his band “Big Toe”. This guy rocks and is a true inspiration. Check out some of their music here.

Let this be a lesson to you.

Mark…you ROCK dude.

Tags: Rockspirit, Mark Goffeney, no arm guitarist

Yeesh…No Wonder Some Drink To Forget

Jason — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:44:31 +0000

My brother sent me this photo…thought I would share.

It is a poster from approx. 1919, just before prohibition. Seriously…if you saw this, would you want to quit drinking?

Tags: uglywomen, progibition

To Live Or Die In The “Blogosphere”

Jason — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:12:10 +0000

Am at a crossroads in my blogging life. Do I carry on with my two blogs, jasondyok.bizriver.com and tech.bizriver.com, or do I let them fade away like has happened to so many blogs. Blogging is not easy. Making a blog successful amongst the millions out there…almost impossible unless you whore yourself out.

Here’s a cute video that illustrates the state of blogging today. The coke box represents the “latest news story” and the kittens are all the big bloggers out there.

Kittens-Coca Cola Box - A funny movie is a click away

What do you think? If you blog, why do you do it? What makes yours different? Why do you care? I’d sure love to hear about your experiences.

Tags: Blogging, blogs, blog

Oh Glorious Day

Jason — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:10:29 +0000

Is a good day today… An article written for my other site Technology # BizRiver and featured on technology blog PCMech.com has actually made it to the front page of Digg and currently today’s 6th top story with 1079 diggs and 529 digg comments left. I have thus far trippled PCMech’s average daily traffic rates and it’s just past noon.

All I can say is that this has far exceeded my expectations.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Diggit

High Gas Prices Driving Us To The Poor House

Jason — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:20:02 +0000

I woke up this morning and the price of gasoline in Toronto was around $1.14 a liter which, for you American readers, works out to about $4.32/gallon. The current price for oil was $110 per barrel. These are very high prices and truth be told, don’t expect them to drop much.

Despite the high prices, people still want their big cars and big SUVs. They will still drive everywhere, even if it is only a few blocks. Consumers, in general just don’t seem to get the message. However, I do not really believe that consumer driving and gasoline consumption really makes that much difference. There are other, larger factors at play.

Manufacturing uses the vast majority of oil resources and there is little to no pressure placed on them to look for alternatives. With developing nations like China and India, which have no concern about natural resources or pollution, consuming literally shiploads daily, the problem is not going to go away.

Corporate and government greed is another huge influencer on oil prices. Oil companies are making record profits at the expense of your pocketbook. Government is ok with driving (literally and figuratively) it’s citizens to the poor house. Why? Politicians need money to be politicians and oil companies “donate” (kickback) billions to ensure things stay just the way they are.

Resource shortage may be the biggest reason why gas prices are, and will remain, high. Periodicly you will hear how OPEC will not be increasing oil production. What people don’t know is that they CAN’T increase production. OPEC is already at capacity. These announcements are just smoke and mirrors to hide the ugly truth. Another ugly truth is that Saudi Arabia, that mystical source of never ending oil supplies is, well, running out of oil. It is a desert above ground and now below ground as well. At the end of the day, gasoline prices are driven mainly by the laws of supply and demand…the demand is high and there is no supply anymore.

Switching from Microsoft Windows to Linux: Now We’re Talking

Jason — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:34:17 +0000

This past Thursday I made another attempt at switching to Linux. This time, being a bit more adventurous, I tried the 64bit version of Ubuntu. I must say, I am impressed.

Now I know most of you would never consider a beta Operating System…and for the most part, the fear is somewhat justified. They can be buggy and prone to crashing. However, I was not too worried for a couple reasons. First, this is not Windows. Even a beta version of Linux can be rather stable…even more stable than a release version of Windows. Secondly, this is Beta 4, rather far along in the beta line so I was pretty sure it would be alright. Lastly, I fully support the Open Source and GNU/Linux community and wanted to help in bug testing and improving the product.

Install went flawless. It is the ONLY distro I have tried that detected and configured my nVidia 8300 GS video card straight away. This has been a major sticking point and has been wahat was preventing me from making the switch sooner. This time, not an issue.

After using it for a few days now, I have had no real issues. Nothing that is the fault of Ubuntu anyway. Being a Beta release coming close to final release…updates are coming fast and furious. I like an active development community…it’s a good thing

The only complaint I have is the lack of a good WYSIWYG blog client. There seems to be nothing in the vein of MS Live Writer or Qumana for Linux (two of my favs from the Windows world), and the one’s that are available seem to have problems with Wordpress blogs. Reasons for this escape me… I will likely be using Drivel which seems to be the best of breed for Linux bloggers…we’ll see how it gord.

Am looking forward to this foray into the “open”. I will be sure to post anything I find interesting along the way.

The Launching Of A New Site

Jason — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 12:09:44 +0000

I am pleased to announce that today is the beta launch of a new collection of lifestyle blogs at http://www.bizriver.com. You may be asking yourself, “Why do we need more blogs?”. This is a good question and the answer is simple. Unlike most blogs that are a single voice telling the world what they think, BizRiver is a blog site “of the people, for the people”. We encourage as many people as possible to contribute their voices in a diverse chorus of opinion and thought.

“I already have a blog so why post again on BizRiver?”. At BizRiver.com, we don’t own the content…you do. As a result, we encourage you to include links back to your own blogs, podcasts or other resources. We want to help drive eyeballs to you in return for posting with us. In addition, for those that post frequent and quality articles, we offer a Google Ad sharing program that will place YOUR Google AdSense ads on our site. When a reader clicks on YOUR ad, YOU get paid.

Seems like a pretty sweet deal…and all this comes at a cost to you of $0. So come visit us today at http://www.bizriver.com and let’s build something special.

Tags: blogging, Google AdSense, contribute, lifestyle