i@m.fm

Wow, it’s been such a long time since I blogged here. Things sure have changed over the past years with that social media hype etc. Let’s give this a try – is this thing on?

Feu Vert Program in Montreal

The house in the burbs in Montreal that we’ve now been living in for quite a while came with a fireplace. It’s been the source of many misteries so far and we’ve never really felt too comfortable using it.

So recently the “Feu Vert” program (should probably be seplt programme, consider where I reside, no?) was established in order to reduce winter smog in our city, often caused by wood burning fireplaces, which are quite popular as an alternative to the ever present electric baseboard heating during our flash freezes in winter. The program allows for replacement or removal of any oldschool non-certified fireplaces.

Since the website for the program had an email address, I had tried emailing the team there before, but basically I was told to call – which I did today. From what I understand is that the program is meant to run until the end of 2012, but basically will end when the funding runs out. From what it sounded like from the agent I talked to today, it appears there’s no huge run on the program yet. I was also told that our fireplace would qualify for the program and it would have to be exchanged for an electrical heather, gas fireplace or a wood pellet stove. I believe that there’s no natural gas in our area, but I’ll double check that again. However we do have a gas tank on the property which is being used for the pool heater – or rather meant for it, as we haven’t really been using it either.

So now is the time to shop around to see how much the rebate would help us when buying and installing something else… We’ll see if it’s worth it. i think I’d rather have a refund for a solar pool heater, but there’s no such program in sight – so far.

Apparently any fireplace built before 1990 is eligible. I’m not exactly sure when ours was built, but the model doesn’t appear to be certified. Also notably enough it appears the manufacturer has long been out of business and there’s no manual to find. The only related search result I can find is a technician who is looking for more information on the same model

Time to activate this blog again, no? For our domain name sales reports over at DNN I needed a spreadsheet function that separates the TLD from a domain name. I’m using OpenOffice and am planning on switching to LibreOffice, but I think this should work in Excel as well.

So if the cell that contains the domain name is “A1″, this is my formula:

=RIGHT(A1;(LEN(A1)-SEARCH(“\.”;A1)))

The search statement determines the location of the first Dot counting from the left. This number is then deducted from the total length of the text in A1 and then separated from the rest of the string by using the “RIGHT” function.

Finally this blog is off of Tucows’ BlogWare and on wordpress my own server. By now the few broken outdated links for pictures probably do not matter any more It’s about time I have a personal blog again, and I’m almost ready to go. Maybe a few more tweaks to this installation (plugins etc) and I’m ready to go This 15 minutes to switch over wasn’t so bad, was it? It only took three years to find those 15 minutes.

Hmm, just noticed that the permalinks to individual posts don’t work yet, will have to work on that later.

I used to use Google Alerts extensively in order to help me stay on top of certain companies and topics – amongst other reason to help me fuel my blogs. Well, I am not sure what is happening, but the alerts keep on disappearing. I have changed the email address (and Google) account I use to point to my Gmail account, to make sure that there are no bounces, but still keep on disappearing. I had re-added about 20 alerts and after 2 days I was down to 5 – 3 days later all of them were gone.

Since there’s barely any chance that my support email to Google will be answered, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar. I wasn’t able to find anything. Am I the only one encountering this problem?

Shame on me, I forgot to let my readers here know that I started a new blog together with Adam Strong: Domain Name News. DomainEditorial will be integrated into that blog. So if you are only finding about this now, go and read, you have lots to catch up with

Germany, my country of birth. You have come a long way during my life-time. Berlin has finally developed to be the international metropolis I was longing for. So nice to see. But what the heck is happening the last years.

With horror I see the country is making everybody a suspect by default. Now they are even discussing a database of fingerprints for all foreigners (German). Everyone is a threat, everyone is a suspect. I know that some within the country are very aware of those changes and are trying to work against what is happening. Unfortunately with little success.

I would be happy to say that it is only one paranoid Minister of the Interior, who’s gone through attacks himself. Unfortunately this is not the case. During the G8-meeting in Germany, basic human rights disappeared with hesitant, but nevertheless with approval of the highest German court. The German military (by law only permitted to act in order to defend the country) has been used to spy on the people demonstrating against the G8 even with military planes.

While my friends’ site TradeBit has been around for a while, I just realized that I never wrote about his site before. It allows you to upload your own files and sell them as downloads. So if you are looking to sell downloads, take a look at his site. You can even set up your own affiliate program.

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to, check out what we (Peter, the rest of the team, and I) have created, as the first part of our new site launched today: SharedReviews.com, a product review website that shares the revenue with the community. Also Peter posted a nice introduction to the site.

For those of you asking me about my DomainEditorial.com Blog – yes, it’s down, I am aware of it and trying to get it back up as quickly as possible. On top of a move of the physical location of the server on Wednesday we are now facing some hardware issues on that server. Hopefully it will be back online today.

[Update]: It’s back up – but it’s running off one hard drive instead of two.

This seems to unfortunately still to be largely a sign of our times – whenver you have an ill, pop a pill. Just to make sure you can still function and work for society. You might get everyone else in your office sick as well, but hey

Check out Licensed To Pill, a flash animation about this topic, surprisingly this is one flash animation I like.