A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

I turned thirty nearly two years ago, and Curtis, one of my best friends, hit that milestone on July 29th. His family planned a big 30th birthday bash at their cottage in Turtle Lake this passed weekend which, as I understood it, was supposed to be a surprise party. Despite losing its secrecy early on, I managed to keep my attendance unknown until the last moment - when I actually arrived at the cottage. There were a ton of people who attended, including Curtis’s family, relatives, and closest friends.

The weekend was a blast and blew by as we took part in all sorts of games and activities. Bunnoc was a big hit, probably as much as it was when idle Russian soldiers played it in Siberia during the 1800s. Who would have thought that throwing horse bones could be so much fun? Cups was another favourite, a game which involves a Frisbee, four poles and four plastic cups. Even when we ran out of activities, new ones were invented. VolleyDisc was born when we couldn’t find a ball to play volleyball at the beach.

Since this was a Fenrich get-together, a grand feast was on the agenda. Being that thirty is such a monumental age, what could be more perfect than sacrificing a pig? Ok, we didn’t actually sacrifice a pig, but one was roasted in an underground fire pit concocted by Mr. Fenrich. It was quite the setup, and the final result was delicious. The night was capped off by a fireworks display at the beach put on by some of the boys. It was pretty cool.

I managed to take a fair amount of shots during the weekend, and have posted the better ones here so you can share in on the festivities.

As you browse the internet, you may come across little orange images with the text, ‘rss’, ‘xml’, etc. Those who are tech savy tend to know that these images refer to something called an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and can make the way you read news and articles on the internet a whole lot easier. Hopefully I haven’t lost any of my readers yet who think I’ve gotten too technical with this article. Believe me, I will keep this truly informative and keep the ‘techy geek talk’ to a minimum. The reason I’ve decided to post this article here, and not on ‘Let’s Get Technical’ (my technical blog) is that I hope it provides you with a new way of reading the articles you are interested on the internet.

I’m not going to get into its history, or the way RSS works, but I’m going to explain the way you can use it. Traditionally, users go from site to site with their web browser, looking for articles they find interesting. Over time, these user’s tend to return to the same sites looking for new articles to read as they are updated. These users will re-visit each of these sites, looking for updated articles, not knowing if the site has actually been updated.

This technique of getting your daily news fix works just fine, but can lead to you wasting your time looking for updates. Imagine if you ordered 3 books from 3 different stores, but didn’t know the exact date they were going to arrive. It wouldn’t make sense to go to each of these stores 3 times a day for 6 weeks until it arrived. It would be a lot easier if the bookstores would give you a call when each one arrived. RSS works the same way. You no longer need to keep going to each of your favourite sites to see if new articles have been added - With an RSS Aggregator (an application), your articles are ‘pulled’ from the sites who’s RSS ‘feed’ you subscribe to. So, all you need to do is open you Aggregator and all of your new articles will be there waiting for you. In fact, the new versions of web browsers have this functionality built right in. As you browse internet sites, a ’syndication’ button will light up, notifying you that you can subscribe to that site’s data feed.

It’s rare for a website to not offer an RSS feed (or ATOM, a similar type of technology). If you like to read a lot of blogs, RSS is a great way to keep informed as to when each blog is updated. For instance, if you wanted to subscribe to my blogs, you would add :

• http://naiduworks.blogspot.com/atom.xml
• http://hemantnaidu.blogspot.com/atom.xml

to you aggregator (for those who are interested, click on one of the above links to see what a syndication feed looks like under the hood). The next time I updated one of my blogs, you would be able to read it in your aggregator, without ever actually visiting my blog. This works great if you read a blog where the user doesn’t post on a regular schedule.

If you want to give it a try, install one of the aggregators below:

• FeedReader
• SharpReader
• Google Desktop Sidebar

Once you get the program installed, all you need to do is add the link associated with one of these little orange ‘xml’, ‘rss’, or ‘atom’ images you see all over the place (there’s one at the bottom right of this page). To copy the link, just right click on the image, and choose ‘Copy Shortcut’. I’m not going to get into detail of how add the link to your aggregator, since each one will differ slightly. Check out the documentation that comes with the aggregator, or just ask me for some help and I’ll gladly provide some assistance. I just hope this article will motivate you to take advantage of these data feeds. I really think it will increase your productivity on the internet, letting you spend more time reading what interests you.

For more information on RSS, visit www.whatisrss.com, or on www.faganfinder.com.

It’s old news for those from the Wilkie area that the local golf course has finally taken the next step and replaced their wretched ‘oil sand’ greens (if you can honestly call them greens with a straight face) with actual real-life, grass greens. Even though the greens have been ‘live’ for the entire season, I was never able to get a round in at the Wilkie course when I was in town visiting my folks. Circumstances such as weather, mosquitoes, or being just plain busy kept me from experiencing Wilkie’s new found glory.

At the last minute this week, I decided I could use a good country getaway, so I headed back to visit my parent’s. I had three things on my agenda:

1) I had a few photographic ideas that I wanted to work through.

2) Get my fill of mother’s cooking.

3) Finally get a round of golf in.

I’m happy to say that I managed to get get through my entire checklist. When I woke up Sunday morning, the sun was shining and there was a slight wind. I decided to head out to the course and take advantage of the weather. I was on the course by 10:00, and it was already getting really hot.

I could see the first green off about 380 yards from the tee-box. There was a father and his young son not too far ahead of me, and they let me play through. I had a decent drive and then played a 6 iron to within a foot of the green. When I was up to the green, I could see how good of shape they were actually in. It seems that my friends were telling the truth. Like they said, the size was also decent. It was by no means, huge, but it was a good size. I could also see that there seemed to be a hefty amount of slope to it as well. After my chip on, I had a reasonable putt for par. I read the green and fired away. It seems I didn’t really it very well. I finished with a bogey.

The first hole pretty much sums up my entire round. I was playing extremely well - driving straight, and chipping well. I can honesly say that I didn’t ‘duff’ one shot. I was hitting the ball solidly. The planets must have been aligned, or something. Out of the nine holes, I was putting for par, or birdy on all but one - yet I still managed to only convert on one of them. Frankly, the greens ate me up. I guess my friends were telling the truth on this front as well. No word of a lie, these are the toughest greens I have every played. As soon as I finished my round, I wanted to get out there and play again - to see if I could redeem myself on the putting front - but there was some delicious lunch waiting for me at home.

Overall, I am really impressed with what Wilkie has done to their course. My golf buddies in Guelph always used me as a punch line of jokes in regards to my hometowns’ sand greens. But now I invite any of them to come out here and try their luck with them - they’re difficult, almost to the point of being ridiculous.

Note: I went out for my round with the intention of taking some quick snapshots, but when I went to take my first one, it seems I forgot to carry a memory card. Boo!