Gear Review: KEEN Alamosa WP Hiking Boots

I'm really impressed with KEEN's waterproof Alamosa hiking boot.  You can watch my short video review here and/or read the text below:



This is a review of the KEEN Alamosa hiking boot that you see right here in front of you.  I've owned this boot for about 6 months now.  I've done a number of mid-length hikes in them: Grand Canyon (down and up) Mount Baldy in the San Antonio range in California, and some shorter ones in cooler weather up in Ontario and the Canadian Shield, which is where I live.

The construction of this boot is all very soft, very pliable leather.  Very lightweight.  I want to emphasize that... it's a lightweight hiking boot.  It's probably not going to give you the support of a full, heavier hiking boot.  But for what you're getting it's amazing.  Amazing support for this lightweight hiking boot.

Together they weigh less than 1 kg.  About 990 g, that's about 2.2 or 2.3 lbs for he pair, together.  So, nice and lightweight.

Being a KEEN, it's got the nice toe-stop here, and a very generous toebox, which is what I like.  This is a size 11, which is a European 44.5.  It fits me perfectly, my first pair of KEEN's actually but probably not my last.  Lots of room in the toebox which is what I like and then you can cinch up the ankle with the lacing.

One lace, lots of little pulls that are adjustable.  So if you see here, this will give if you want.  It's connected down here and around the back and it comes out again on the other side. So you can alce it up and get a really snug feeling all the way around your heel and that's really handy when you're going downhill, or encountering some difficult terrain, or carrying a heavy backpack.

IT's got the quick lace-up here, all plastic, no metal on this boot.  Nice plastic quick lace.  They've got a really nice eye in there so the lace grabs right in there and holds it really well, really tight.

It's a waterproof boot, and I can attest to that.  I've hiked through water that's probably up to about here.  At least ankle-deep water, and my feet have remained largely dry.  Maybe a little bit, you know, where it's crept in around the tongue, a little bit wet there.  But that's just a function of the water going too high.  It's got the KEENDry system.  What you can see is that it's brown up here and inside it gets a little silver lining.  The lining goes all the way around and that's what they call the KeenDry lining.  I'm not sure if it's a GoreTex or something like that but basically from this point all the way around it's covering down, so you stay nice and dry in there.

Good ventilation.  All of this is mesh, so very pliable, very breathable in the hot weather.  It was about maybe 30 C in the Grand Canyon and my feet didn't sweat too much.  And then the hikes I've done around here I've gone down to about 10 C below 0, in the snow and they've been nice and toasty, as long as I'm moving.  Great hiking boot as far as I'm concerned.

On the bottom, not amazing traction but you've got at least 4-5 mm in the tread depth.  I don't know how they come up with these patterns but it feels pretty good.  It's a little slippery on ice or frozen rock as you would expect.  But if you have any kind of dirt or wood on a hiking trail it feels really nice, really good.

Maybe I'll just show you here, you can see on the left foot there's a little fold on the leather, a compression.  No one's two feet are the same, so when you cinch it up you can really, you just gotta pull on the top and the whole thing, even down here ill really nicely cinch up.  You can bring the soft leather in and it really feels like it conforms around your foot.  Your heel really stays back here very nicely.

So, I don't know if they sell them any more actually.  I was looking online, I got these at Atmosphere, which is a Sport Expert knockoff.  But they're also on OutdoorGear, Amazon, etc. but I can't seem to find any recently.  So I'm not sure if they stopped manufacturing them.

But if you want a lightweight hiking boot that gives amazing waterproof and amazing support, this KEEN Alamosa is the one.

Thanks for watching, Subscribe if you liked the video and we'll see you soon with more gear reviews and how-to's!

Why I'm Not Applying for the Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card

When Tangerine bank launched it's new Money-Back Credit Card earlier this fall the blogosphere was abuzz as everyone drooled over how much cashback they would make with a zero-fee credit card!   And it's true, at first glance the concept seems like a no-brainer.... plenty of cashback categories, free additional cards, and no fees.  I even signed up for the sneak preview and got my approval email yesterday.

But I'm not applying for Tangerine's new card.   Instead I will stick with my Scotiabank Momentum Visa Infinite that made its way into my wallet a year and a half ago.  Why?  Because the Scotia Visa gives me more cashback!

The Comparison

Assuming you want a credit card that will maximize your cashback (and I hope you do), you need to consider a few items:

1. The total value of your annual credit card purchases
2. How many people will use the account
3. What types of purchases you charge to your credit card (which stores/merchants/etc.)
4. How and when you want to receive your cashback
5. What other benefits are important

Total Purchases and Users (items 1-2)

My wife and I both use the same card (on the same account), and charge a combined dollar value of just over $30,000 per year.  Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite splits that up into 3 categories:

• Gas/Groceries  (4% cashback)
• Recurring Payments/Drugstore  (2% cashback)
• Everything Else  (1% cashback)

By contrast, Tangerine's new Money Back Mastercard has 10 spending categories, and allows you to pick 3 of them for 2% cashback.  Spending in any of the remaining 7 categories yields only 1% cashback:

• Grocery
• Eating Places
• Gas
• Drugstore
• Entertainment
• Furniture
• Hotel/motel
• Recurring Payments
• Home Improvement
• Public Transportation and Parking

Types of Purchases

The key to this whole process is understanding your spending patterns.  A financial budgeting and analysis tool like Mint.com really helps with this process (although I ended up sorting a lot of the raw data in a spreadsheet).  Our family's top 3 credit card spending categories are Recurring Bills (about 15%), Groceries (11%) and Gas (10%).  Eating Places is a close 4th at around 10%.  So obviously I would select those 3 categories as my 2% cashback options, electing to receive only 1% for remaining categories.   If you're paying attention you may have noticed that all those 3 categories fall in the Scotia Visa 4% or 2% cashback.  So instantly we see that I'm losing 2% in the Groceries and Gas bucket.  

The million-dollar question: is 2% enough to cover the fees associated with Scotia's Visa? Turns out in my case, it is.   I ran all the numbers in all 10 categories and my net cash back (that is, total cashback minus any fees associated with the credit card) was within $3 of each other, in Scotia Visa's favour!

Note Your numbers could be completely different, which is why you must run them and understand your spending habits to make an informed decision.  If your largest spending is in Hotels and Home Improvement, you would likely get better benefit from Tangerine's Mastercard.

The Rest of the Story (items 4-5)

Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite credits your cashback amount to your credit card statement each year in November no matter when you signed up (my Amazon.ca Rewards Visa, on the other hand, automatically provides a statement credit each time your cashback amounts to $20).  Scotia charges me $99 for the first card, and an additional $30 for a secondary card.  My total annual fees are $129, which were factored into the comparison earlier.  These fees are charged to the credit card every January.

I looked on the Tangerine site but didn't see the method or frequency of Tangerine's cashback procedure.  It is important to note that, for this card to make sense, you should deposit your cashback in aTangerine Savings account (if you elect not to do this, the amount of 2% cashback categories allowed drops from 3 to 2).  

Both cards provide some standard Purchase Assurance and Extended Warranty, but Scotia's Visa gives me a number of insurance products, including: Travel Medical Insurance, Trip Interruption Insurance, Flight Delay, Lost Baggage, Travel Accident Insurance, and Collision/Loss Damage Insurance for rental cars!  The Scotia Visa has a high (but standard) foreign currency exchange rate of 2.5%... Tangerine's Mastercard is only 1.5%.  This category isn't important to me as I use the Amazon.ca Rewards Visa for all foreign currency transactions (it doesn't charge any exchange fee!).

The Winner

The winner for me is clearly the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card.  It gives me the most net cashback (though only by a little), and it provides the highest cashback return on spending categories I know I will always have: Gas/Groceries, and Recurring Bills.  It also gives me a number of insurance benefits that I use regularly when travelling.  

That said, even though I won't be using Tangerine's Money Back Mastercard, it might be the right fit for you.  If you spend substantially less on a credit card in any given year, or if your spending categories are not mostly Gas, Groceries,and Recurring Bills, the Tangerine Mastercard may be a better overall choice.  Running the numbers is really the only way to tell!

HJC CL-17 Motorcycle Helmet Review

Here's a little review of HJC's CL-17 motorcycle helmet.  I picked this up from Royal Distributing early this riding season (also check out Canada's Motorcycle in Canada or Revzilla in the USA) and have been using it for 1-2 months.

The helmet review is mostly positive with really only a couple shortfalls.  Here's a link to the manufacturer page as well.

How to Install Netflix on Wii (softmodded)

I just signed up for a 30 day Netflix.ca free trial... $8/mo thereafter.  I'm not at all sold on Netflix yet as it doesn't appear to have any of the movies or shows I want to watch.  As a case in point, check out these search terms I ran this afternoon:  Big Bang Theory [any season] (not available), Inception (not available), Sgt. Bilko (not available), The Social Network (not available), House MD (not available) and so on.  Don't get me wrong, Netflix does have a fair collection of titles.  But an ongoing subscription does not seem useful if their collection does not include new releases on film or current tv shows.

But enough about that.  I want to watch Netflix via my 4.2u softmodded Nintendo Wii.  There used to be a Netflix disc which one would insert, load, and log in to Netflix.  The first thing I tried was downloading the disc image and loading on the wii.  Loads fine, but an error message pops up saying the disc application is unsupported and the newer version must be downloaded from the wii Shopping Channel.

Enter problem two: my softmodded wii won't load the Shopping Channel because it's out of date.  I'm prompted to perform a wii system update to get the new Shopping Channel.  Bad idea.  Doing so would render my softmod (and all applications, games, etc.) useless.  The solution to this problem is to manually update only the Shopping Channel.  Below are two methods, though only method 2 worked for me:

*Note: These methods assume your wii is softmodded a la homebrew channel.  If not, see this guide.*

Method 1 - Internet Update (Easier)

This method uses the Multi Mod Manager to perform a network update of the shopping channel.  Your wii must be connected to the internet for this to work.  I tried this method first as it seems easier, but in the end it didn't work for me (not sure why).  A quick internet search shows hundreds of other happy customers.

Open Multi Mod Manager from the Homebrew Channel.  If you don't have it, download from link below and copy the MMM folder inside your /apps directory on SD card or USB stick:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?l6r9y96rh9y6c2e

In MMM, select "Load another IOS" and choose 249.  Now go to "Manage Wii Channels" and ensure the Shopping Channel and your wii's region are selected properly.  Install, and return to MMM main menu.

From "IOS Manager" install IOS56, and say no to all patches.  Then, load IOS56-64--v5662 from the Nintendo Servers.  After everything has installed, exit MMM and restart wii.

Method 2 - Manual Offline Update

For this method you will need a WAD manager such as WAD-Manager_v1.7.

First, download these files and place them in the /wad directory on your SD card or USB stick:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4zxhye4xh46y3gw

Load your WAD manager from the homebrew channel and use IOS249 for a new install.  Say no to NAND emulation and select the source for your /wad directory.  Install IOS56-64-v5662 and then Shopping Channel-NUS-v20.  [EDIT: Shopping Channel is now v21.  See here for instructions]

After either of these methods, exit the installer, reboot the wii and look for the new Shopping Channel icon in place of your old one.  Load, search for Netflix and download!

Guayadeque: Great Linux Music Player

Yeah, we all know about Rhythmbox, Banshee, Exaile and Amarok... some may even be familiar with Helix, MPlayer, and VLC as music players.  None of them quite had what I was looking for in a music player.  In fact, I've been on a mini-quest for a good gnome music player for some time now.  I believe that quest has ended with Guayadeque.

Guayadeque is a simple, well-organised GUI music player for gnome.  It's performs well with large libraries (30,000+ files) and satisfies all my music playing criteria.  Anonbeat, the developer of Guayadeque, is a Gran Canaria native and I believe the project is named for a nature reserve valley on the island.  Features include:

• Support for mp3, flac, ogg, wma, aac and other common formats
• Auto-lyrics pull from lyricwiki.org or 5 or 6 other sites
• AudioScrobble compatibility (last.fm and/or libre.fm)
• Internet radio station support (e.g. Shoutcast)
• Static/Dynamic playlist
• Custom label support (in addition to normal tags)
• Musicbrainz tags
•  Smart Playlist mode (suggests music based on your style)
• Minimize to tray/song change alert
• Automatic album art cover fetching
• Search functionality
• Overall easy-to-use gui

You can see more screenshots of Guayadeque here.


Installing Guayadeque

You can install the stable .deb installer package from the Guayadeque homepage (v0.2.5), but there are a few cool features that only exist in the 0.2.6 builds.  To install...

Add the Guayadeque repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:anonbeat/guayadeque
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install guayadeque-svn

Launch from Applications > Sound & Video > Guayadeque!  You can update to new builds using:

cd guayadeque
svn update
sudo make install

Happy listening!

19 Great Movies

This blog entry has been written purely to save a list I made some months ago.  I'm cleaning the home this afternoon and want to throw out all my scraps of paper...including this one.  These lists are American, so I'm not sure how well they rank in terms of great movies.

10 Top Sports Movies
10 - Jerry Maguire
09 - National Velvet
08 - Breaking Away
07 - Caddyshack
06 - The Hustler
05 - Bull Durham
04 - Hoosiers
03 - Pride of Yankees
02 - Rudy
01 - Raging Bull

9 Gangster Movies
9 - Little Caesar
8 - The Public Enemy
7 - Pulp Fiction
6 - Scarface
5 - Bonnie & Clyde
4 - White Heat
3 - The Godfather II
2 - Goodfellas
1 - The Godfather

5 plugins that will change your outlook on Outlook

My love affair with Outlook only started when our company upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007. Before the 2007 suite I really disliked Outlook. Heck, I disliked most of the Office suite (I was a big OpenOffice + Thunderbird user for a time). But the cool integration and new layout started to grow on me. I became more and more involved in customising my experience with Outlook.

Now, I've compiled a list of the 5 "must-have" plugins for Outlook 2007. If you're a business user and you work out of Outlook, get these 5 plugins now (they're all FREE). They'll change the way you work.

1. SpamBayes - Do you work from an Exchange Server? Yeah, me too. Does your network admin have non-cutomisable spam filtering rules? Yeah, mine too. Do you still get spam? ....Yeah, me too! SpamBayes is a semi-intelligent plugin that filters your spam. It moves suspected spam into a Junk Suspects folder and allows you to mark it Spam/Not Spam. Based on your characterisation, the program learns what sort of email you get and adapts its spam-filtering rules accordingly. The downside? This only filters spam once it reaches Outlook, which means anything that you access off of say, a BlackBerry, is still plagued.
   
2. RSS Popper - This tool allows for absolute control of RSS feeds. I have more than a dozen RSS feeds that are updated constantly throughout the workday. RSS Popper allows me to receive these posts in custom Outlook folders according to a customised schedule. *note: our network admin has disabled the native Outlook RSS client, so I have no idea how it compares
   
3. LinkedIn Toolbar - If you use LinkedIn (and really, who doesn't these days?), the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook will cut the time you spend on LinkedIn in half while still providing you with the same results. Before this toolbar, I would have to take a contact's name, open a web browser, hit linkedin.com and do a search. The toolbar allows me to do this directly in Outlook! It also allows for automatic creation of Outlook contacts from your LinkedIn contacts (and vice versa) and displays an icon on every email that you may mouse-over to see the sender's LinkedIn profile.
   
4. WebEx Integration - The only tool I use more than Outlook is WebEx (maybe Excel...). WebEx is an online meeting tool that I use daily. It allows me to hold virtual meetings with teleconferencing & screensharing. The problem is, many people use Outlook for their scheduling (myself included). The WebEx Integration plugin allows you to seamlessly add a WebEx meeting to an Outlook Meeting Request. The Meeting Request goes out, WebEx auto-adds the virtual meeting info, and you're good to go! All done from your Outlook Calendar.
   
5. Xobni - Xobni is an all-in-one contact manager and email search tool. It gives you detailed stats on every sender in your inbox, and can pull up past conversations, files exchanged, or contact info with the greatest of ease. It even pulls the sender's photo from Facebook/LinkedIn so you can see who's emailing you! BUT, there is a downside with Xobni: all the contact information it gathers does not sync with Outlook contacts. This means that if you use a portable device (like a BlackBerry), you need to also create all of your contacts in Outlook (and add photos, etc.)

There you have it! The 5 plugins that will change your outlook on Outlook.

blackberry user community

Sooner or later you'll find that you can't figure out all the things you want to know about your BlackBerry on your own. Well, at least not in a timely fashion. I also figured out that my carrier's (Rogers') tech support isn't half as knowledgeable as they claim to be. For this reason, I recommend finding a good online forum to learn the tricks of the trade (and to help others with your newfound knowledge).

The best I've found is CrackBerry.com. They have over 13,000 users and almost 2.5 million posts. The forums are cleverly divided into General discussion, Device-Specific discussion, Software discussion, a media corner (themes, wallpapers, ringtones, etc.) and even a spot for talking about North American carriers. Of course, there's also an area for social discussion, etc. but you'll probably never get that far :-)

Oh, and I should explain the name. CrackBerry.com termed so to reflect the actions of BlackBerry users. The argument is that a BlackBerry is as addictive as crack, and you'll never be able to give it up.... I'm not sure about that, but it's a great forum!

going mobile with the BlackBerry 8120

I was already pretty mobile. I have a work laptop, a work cellphone and I feel comfortable working pretty much everywhere. However, last week I took my mobility a step further with the BlackBerry 8120. Now, keep in mind that I'm not an experienced BB user. I've never had a BB before, nor any other SmartPhone device with email functionality. I've been a fairly avid cellphone user for the past who-knows-how-many years...but this is my first look at email on the go.
I knew that I didn't want to pay for some ridiculous data plan. I also can't stand being locked down to one specific carrier because I have big plans to travel the world and want to be able to swap out my SIM card. So, I went online to ebay and purchased the unlocked 8120 from ready2call's store. I looked at a bunch of other phones, but settled on the 8120 because of its slim design and 802.11 b/g wifi functionality. Within a few days the item had arrived (no customs duties!) and I was tearing open the packaging to play with my new toy. More on this in subsequent posts...

First Look at OpenOffice 3

Like many others, I downloaded the new v3.0 OpenOffice recently. There are some things I like....some I don't like but all in all it doesn't seem that different than v2.4. For example, there are newer, more modern icon sets - but I thought the old ones were fine. Looking at the configuration panel, I can change my icons back to the old sets. In fact, there are 4 old sets and only 1 new set. Other minor changes include modern highlighting in Calc, a better looking progress bar during "Save." All in all, not much is different.

I like the fact that v3 has MS Office 2007 support. I can't begin to describe how many files I am sent in Open XML 2007 format (.docx .xlsx .pptx etc.) and now I can finally get rid of that 3^rd party converter tool. It would, however, be nice to save in this format...though I suppose it is not necessary.

I really dislike that my custom settings did not transfer to the new update. My name, company name, address etc. all went over fine, as did my updated memory settings. But, ALL of my keyboard shortcuts, toolbar configurations and custom styles did NOT transfer! This was extremely annoying, especially since OpenOffice and the open-source community in general are strong proponents of customisation. They should most definitely have been transferred to the new application.

All in all, nothing to write home about, they could have called this v2.5 or something comparable. It probably didn't even deserve a blog entry :)

Google Chrome

Like everyone else in the IT world, I downloaded a copy of Chrome -- Google's slick new browser -- earlier this week. After some fairly surface-level testing (just putting it through my rigorous everyday use really) I believe I can sum up my feelings in one short phrase...... Google ain't got nothing on Firefox!!!

Apart from Chrome's load time, which was INCREDIBLY fast, and its memory consumption, which is quite low compared to other browsers, I can't see what all the fuss is about. I fell in love with Firefox a couple of years ago when it dazzled me with its incredible customisation. I have added numerous plug-ins and extensions....the browser is at my beck and call. It has come to the point where I've customised Firefox so much that it's painful to use another browser (i.e. Chrome) where my shortcuts, key commands, and other andrew-isms are missing.

Chrome is nice..it's fast and responsive. It may be good as on a terminal or browsing-only workstation. But when it comes to a browser that works for its living, Chrome does not measure up. Not to mention Section 11 of the EULA (yikes!).