The first thing that a great film needs is a great script. Some studios will also use storyboards to plan out the films shots and scenes. It is a way of getting things done right while avoiding costly and time consuming reshoots.
A great script and a great plan require great actors, or if they aren’t in the budget, having great friends who are willing to try to act. Sell them with soda, pizza and the possibility of getting famous and have them sign talent contracts and the movie is ready to be shot.

Having a good digital video camera is preferable to using a digital camera that is really meant for photographs. However, when the film maker is on a budget, a point and shoot digital camera will do in a pinch. Using a tripod is essential regardless of the type of camera to keep the shot steady unless the film maker is going for that “Blair Witch Project” look.

If the film maker cannot afford either of those types of cameras, then it is important to choose a script from which everything can be shot on a web cam. Most Dell Computers, especially laptops, nowadays come with a web cam built into the computer. It makes it a little harder, but think of it like “Star Wars IV: A New Hope.” Before George Lucas made a bunch of money and was able to mess with one of the most beloved franchises in all of moviedom, he didn’t have a lot of money, so he had to use creativity to get the “Star Wars” franchise off the ground. That is what made them so great.

Films aren’t just about the script, actors and camera work. A majority of the work goes on behind the scenes in the editing bay or room. Parts get cut, stories get trimmed, and fortunes are won or loss based on the work of a good editor.

For a new film maker, it is this part of the process that will probably be most important. Editing can’t really make a bad story better, but it can make it seem better. This is the one place that a great investment can pay off. Getting the cheapest program may not be the best idea depending on the seriousness of the film maker to continue making movies.

Rather than settling for the cheapest, getting a great editing program can help the film maker overcome limitations in special effects and in the acting abilities of the players. It can also help him or her to learn what is the art of making a story better than the sum of its parts.

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I did go up a half size in this shoe for it to be perfect.  They definitely feel wide enough with my foot getting a good spread in the toe box.  I compared these against a wide pair of New Balance trainers and the width was comparable.  The Nike Flex Trainer II did feel more supportive though.  I like the colours in black and blue, nice while not being to flashy.  Hope my feet like them.

Update: First use was a 30 minute walk.  Shoes were great, very light and comfortable.  My feet don’t feel like they’re restricted at all, so far so good.

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Please update the tab order on your website: rogers.com.  It has been incorrect for years and bugs me every time I sign in.  If you place your cursor in the username field on the website and type in your username you can hit tab on your keyboard and it will go to the password field next which makes sense.  Once you type your password in again and hit tab it should tab to the “Go” button so you can hit “Enter” or “Spacebar” on your keyboard to log in.  Instead it tabs to the Rogers logo at the top left of the page which is just a home button and refreshes the page.  Why would the tab order go from username/password/rogers home button when it should go username/password/go?  Please fix.

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I had been thinking about moving away from the iPhone to an Android device for a while.  Rogers helped in this regard as getting an iPhone for cheap and flipping my old one for more money was out of the question.  I inquired to Rogers as to how much it would cost to upgrade to a Galaxy Nexus and was a bit shocked.  Rogers will charge you to pay out the remainder of your contract before allowing you to do an early upgrade.  So with being a year and a few months into a 3 year contract Rogers wanted $370 to pay out the contract, $170 for the Galaxy Nexus and $35 admin fee.  Well that comes to $575 plus tax and you can buy the Galaxy Nexus brand new, no contract for $599 or less.  Why on earth would I do an early upgrade with Rogers and lock myself into a contract?  The answer is, I wouldn’t, haven’t and never will.  Having said that waiting 3 years to upgrade your smart-phone these days is ridiculous, especially if you’re a power user that uses a smart-phone to it’s full capabilities.  A little wheeling and dealing can always get you some fresh hardware.

Looking into all of this really set me off and Rogers lost a lot of money from me.  I cancelled my home phone service as who really needs a home phone when you have a mobile.  I also cancelled cable as you can get everything online.  I moved my mobile lines under my company to get corporate discounts etc.  I used to pay Rogers over $420 a month for all my services.  Now I just pay them $87 total for Internet.

It was really interesting as well when I cancelled the cable service.  We were paying a total of $108 a month for Rogers cable and digital PVR etc.  When I called to cancel they try and get you to keep the service.  They offered me a deep discount of $73 less a month for cable if we kept everything the same for at least a year.  Now some people may jump at that and think that’s a good deal, it’s not.  If they’re willing to go that low and they’re still making money off you, how much do you think you’re getting ripped off normally?  Crazy.

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Hello Galaxy Nexus – Goodbye iPhone

Hello Galaxy Nexus and Goodby iPhone, it’s time I had an ice cream sandwich.  I’ve been waiting a while to say that.  Ever since I knew the Galaxy Nexus was coming out along with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) I realized it was time to switch.

I’ve been using an iPhone for 3.5 years now.  I started out with the iPhone 3G and then had the 3GS and finally the 4.  With how Rogers used to have their Hardware Upgrade Plan if you had an iPhone you could upgrade every year, pay the promotional price for the iPhone and tag another year onto your contract.  It was great as every year after the initial year we made money on our iPhones.  Buy a new one for $199 and sell the old one for $400+.  In the end we never really paid a dime for hardware but actually made money instead.

I should also add that I originally got an iPhone not because I’m an Apple Fanboy or someone who has lost touch with value for your dollar but because I needed a “smart-phone”.  At the time other options on the market seemed clunky both from a software and hardware standpoint.  Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy my iPhone right up until this year.  I saw the trend where Apple went from leading the industry to being surpassed by Android.  Things change fast and Apple isn’t moving fast enough when it comes to their iPhone, they may soon be as bad as RIM.

As we waited to see what would replace the iPhone 4 it was nothing but a disappointment. Of course by the time iPhone 5 or whatever is released there will be a multitude of Android phones on the market already that are better.  We already have the Galaxy Nexus, Note, and Samsung S3 coming out soon.  I’ll be getting the Samsung S3 once it’s out.

My first experience with Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus was setting up two of them for a client.  That sealed the deal and I knew I had to have one.  Luckily one of these clients just switched mobile providers and as part of the deal got all new phones.  I bought their one month old unlocked Galaxy Nexus for $210.  A pretty sweet deal if you ask me.  After fully geeking out on this phone for a few days I couldn’t be any happier.  Here’s all the things I love about it.

• Huge screen with amazing clarity
• Great resolution
• Way lighter than an iPhone
• Easier to hold and love the curved glass
• Power and speed
• Removable battery
• The glass is smoother than an iPhone
• The Oleophobic coating on the Nexus works really well
• Awesome panoramic feature
• You can truly unlock a Nexus without worrying about updates, baseband versions and all that crap.
• Face Unlock

NO MORE ITUNES, can’t stress this one enough.  Finally I can just plug my smart-phone via USB to my computer and drag and drop to my heart’s content.  I really do love mainstream standards instead of proprietary methods etc.  The simplicity of adding a ring tone, alarm, notification sound, movies etc. is outstanding.  I used to really hate all the conversion of video formats, ring-tones on the iPhone.

Switching from an iPhone and iOS you really notice how much control and customization you have.  Widgets are awesome and even within apps themselves there are so many more options.  I have all my apps and even better ones for free from Google Play.  Apps such as MX Video Player plays just about anything.  I hated that about iOS, all the converting and importing into iTunes aghh.  VNC viewer for free on Android, amazing.  On the iPhone you had to pay a lot for an app like that.

I know it’s mean to say so but these new Android phones really do make iPhones look like a dull child.  A small, heavy, limited, dull child.

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The impetus for moving out:

Buying a house is something my wife and I had been toying with the idea of for at least half a year.  We’ve been renting a house for close to 5 years now and a recent event made us really want to stop renting.  On Jan 16th, 2012 we discovered in the morning that the freezer above the fridge wasn’t working.  At the time it seemed like the fridge itself was still working but a little later in the day that stopped working as well.

As soon as we knew we attempted to contact our Landlord which is a middle aged couple who owns the house.  I tried calling their home and mobile numbers, left them voice-mails and sent them emails etc.  There was no response and no replies until late that night.  By that point the landlord wanted to proceed by having their “friend” come take a look to see if it could be fixed or would need replacing.  By the time it was all said and done and a replacement fridge was delivered it was five days later.  We had lost at least a couple hundred dollars worth of food with more spent on eating out.  It was frustrating not having a fridge for a week.  That combined with having a landlord who has a mobile phone for no apparent reason just sealed the deal.

Getting started:

So the two main points of our house shopping became, stop paying rent and move much closer to the (my) office.  We started looking around online to see what was out there and then randomly chose a mortgage broker from their website.  We contacted them and obtained a pre-approval on a mortgage.  Now that we had some real shopping power we need to actually start visiting some of these places.

Realtor or not:

We had booked one viewing with a private seller before we decided to go meet with a realtor.  I had a good conversation with a friend of mine regarding pros/cons of working with a realtor.  They had a really good experience with a realtor here in Ottawa a couple of years back and recommended them.  I decided I would at least give them a call and book a meeting and make my decision then.  The only real big con initially seemed to be that you have to sign an agreement with them that if you do purchase a house in the next six months you have to purchase it through them.  That can potentially eliminate the purchase of a brand new house or the purchase of a private sale whose owner is adamant about not dealing with an agent.  After discussing it over with my wife we decided that shouldn’t be a problem and signed up with them.

Looking at houses:

There are so many factors when looking at a house but the two main ones for us were location and then price.  If the location wasn’t right we weren’t even going to bother looking at it.  This also caused me to do a few trial runs after work to see what driving to a potential location would be like in rush hour traffic.  Let me tell you, those locations got eliminated fast after the test runs.  Currently I spend a minimum of 1.5 hours a day commuting from Kanata into the city and back.  When the weather is bad (this includes rain for Ottawa drivers), there’s a hockey game or concert that commute time goes up.  If you really think about that it’s equal to me sitting in my car 24/7 for over 16 days in a year.  Not exactly time well spent.  I love driving but only when I’m moving…fast.

Once we had the location locked down we went out viewing a variety of houses in our price range, even a couple that were out of our price range.  We looked at a total of 8 houses ranging from old to new and in between.  One of the first things that really stood out to us was functional space in a house.  Some of the houses we looked at, even new houses which were bigger and roomier had poor use of space and small kitchens.  We had seen some much smaller houses which had made such good use of space it made the house seem much bigger.

Of course a lot of the other factors to look at were windows, roof, furnace, cooling, appliances, foundation, flooring, bathrooms, size of rooms, backyard, south facing, driveway, garage etc.

Making an offer:

After looking at a particular house a second time on our second time out looking at houses we decided it really was the best deal in the location we wanted.  Being a good time to buy with the gloom of pending job losses and cutbacks in Ottawa we went in $15,000 lower than asking price.  The seller came back with a counter offer the next day that was $3,900 lower than asking.  We put in another offer of $10,000 below asking and they accepted.  Lucky for us, our realtor told us that a house like that in Feb of 2011 would have gone with multiple offers and sold for full price if not a little higher.

It was a very exciting couple of days with the back and forth.  We later found out that the wife had power of attorney for her husband and had a mandate to go as low as $10,000 below asking to sell the house.  Of course there was lot’s of paperwork to be signed for our conditional offer.

We put two conditions in our offer, a standard one of financing just until the mortgage gets approved and another based on the inspection of the house.  This way you leave yourself an out if something ends up being drastically wrong that no one knew about or you find out that you’re not going to get the money for the house.

Security Deposit:

Ahhh, I really wish I had known about this when we started out.  Somehow this little piece of information slipped through the cracks.  It wasn’t until we started going through the process of making an offer on the house that I found out a security deposit would be required.  It hurts a little when someone tells you out of the blue that: “hey, you’re going to need to write a cheque anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 to the listing realtor”.  Uhh, say what now???  Thankfully we had the cash or that would have put a damper on things just a little.  Ended up cutting a cheque for $2,000.  From what I’ve been told the security deposit is held in trust up until closing day.  At that point the money will be put towards either closing costs, lawyer fees etc.  It’s not that you lose the money, just helps to know ahead of time that you’ll need a chunk of cash up front.

Closing date:

The seller had wanted a closing date of May 10th but due to the way we were getting the money for our down payment on the house we needed a closing date of May 28th.  The seller didn’t have a problem with that but did need to obtain what’s called bridged financing from the bank for the time period between May 10th and May 28th.  Typically this isn’t an issue as the Bank knows your house has sold and they’re always happy to make a few more bucks off you.

Down payment:

I guess there’s a fair amount of lucky people out there who have money sitting around for a down payment but we don’t fit into that category.  Mortgage brokers also offer the advice of trying to get the money from friends and family.  That option was out as well which left two more options.  Obtain a cash-back mortgage which will cover the down payment as well.  To get a cash-back mortgage you have to have at least a beacon score of 650 and a positive net worth.  The down side of a cash back mortgage is that you will also pay 2% higher for the first 5 year term of your mortgage.  On a $300,000 home that’s $6,000 more a year gone in interest.  We opted to try and get a loan together that would cover the down payment and then split the money evenly into two respective RRSP temporary cash accounts.  We were successfully and it’s funny how fast the bank will give you a loan when they know you’re using it for investment, ie. buying funds.  We will let the money sit there and on day 91 withdraw it under the Home Buyers Program and voila, down payment with a big tax credit because we did it before Feb 29th.

Home Inspection:

$452, taxes included, 3 hours including full 25 page report and photos.  We were present for the whole thing and it was quite interesting.  Nothing but minor issues were noted with everything else in good order.

Mortgages:

Probably one of the most disheartening things you have to do when buying a new house is signing all the mortgage paperwork.  Once they pull out the amortization summary and you see how much money goes to interest it almost makes you want to cry.  Just reinforces how much society and our economy is structured around debt but I digress.  We ended up dealing with different mortgage broker than what we started out with, a connection I used within my business network.  They were being much more thorough than the original broker we originally contacted and were the ones that advised us of the RRSP scheme.  Because of getting a loan for a down payment and funneling it through RRSP’s we qualified for a regular mortgage.  The interest rate we received is 3.19% for the first 5 year term instead of 5.29%.  That saved us a huge chunk of money.  Of course on top of your mortgage payment you have CMHC insurance for the high ratio mortgage plus tax.  You have property taxes that the lender pays to mitigate their risk and they roll it up into your mortgage payment.  Then you have the RRSP loan to pay back in 108 months along with paying back the $20,000 back into your RRSP over the next 15 years.  All told that equates to just shy of $1,700 a month.  With what we’re renting right now which is a house just slightly smaller we pay $1410 a month.  Of course once the RRSP loan is paid off that number drops.

Hurry up and wait:

We have started weeding out our existing residence so to speak.  So much stuff collects over the years and needs to be donated etc.  We spent some time shopping around for the best deal on moving boxes.  Strangely the best deal we could find was at Home Depot.  Boxes were purchased and we’ve started packing up stuff we know we won’t need such as Winter clothing, books etc.

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Five Guys – Grant Crossing
5517 Hazeldean Rd Bldg C2 Unit 6
Stittsville, ON K2S 0P5
Phone: 613-836-1800
Hours: 11am-10pm Every Day

Five Guys – Barrhaven
1181 Greenbank Road
Nepean, ON K2J 4Y6
Phone: 613-823-0093
Hours: 11am-10pm Every Day

Five Guys – Trainyard
525 Industrial Blvd.
Ottawa, ON K1G 3S2
Phone: 613-562-8119
Hours: 11am-10pm Every Day

Five Guys – Orleans
Coming Soon!
3732 Innes Road
Orleans, ON K1W 0C8
Hours: 11am-10pm Every Day

I had originally gone to the Five Guys Trainyard location on a Thursday evening around 7:00 PM and I didn’t even go inside after looking in and seeing the place was packed with no room to sit.  A few days later, on a Sunday we went to the Five Guys location on Hazeldean.  This time we went early showing up 10 minutes after opening.  Luckily we were the first ones there although by the time we had sat down people starting flowing in.  We ordered 1 regular order of Cajun style fries.  One regular hamburger fully loaded.  One little cheeseburger and one regular drink.  There is free refills on drinks!

There are no trays for eating in, everything comes packed in a paper bag, ostensibly this practice originates from when they were only a take-out place.  The grease starts soaking through the bag the almost the second they pack the food in it.  This is mostly due to the fact that they place the burgers and container of fries in the bag and then dump more fries over everything.  My advice if you’re planning on picking up take-out at Five Guys is bring a plastic bag with you to put your food in or else it could get a little messy in the car.  The Five Guys burgers come tightly wrapped in tin foil which is good.  Be prepared for some finger licking goodness but beware, it’s going to be messy!  The Cajun style fries are super tasty, no extra salt required.  I’ve never tried the regular fries but after having the Five Guys Cajun style fries I don’t think I would bother trying the regular ones.  The Five Guys regular burger has two patties whereas the little Five Guys burger only has one patty.  Our order for 2 burgers, 1 fry, 1 drink came to roughly $18 which is only slighter higher than a combo at decent fast food burger joints like A&W.  Seating is cafeteria style and thankfully the Five Guys Hazeldean location is a bit larger and doesn’t have tables crammed quite as close together as at the Trainyard.

If you’re looking to go for a burger in Ottawa that still qualifies as fast food but better and you don’t mind a bit of a messy burger than I definitely recommend Five Guys!

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I had picked up a Vox for my wife at Futureshop while they were on sale for $179.99.  The rep I dealt with forewarned me that he had sold 9 of them and all 9 were returned.  I wasn’t too surprised given what I had read online but on the other hand it seemed that there were also a good number of people out there that were using the Vox without too many issues.

So I got the Kobo Vox home and handed it over to my wife and then the fun began.  Right out of the box upon powering it on you must connect it to a (your) wireless network.  If you do not have WiFi you will not be able to even use the Vox as an eReader, it will be useless to you.  Once we had connected the Vox to our WiFi it checked for updates and advised to download.  It didn’t give any other option so we proceeded.  The download failed after about 15 minutes and we couldn’t retry as it said it had ran out of storage space.  I suspect that the image it was downloading (firmware update) had taken up that space and the device wasn’t smart enough to overwrite it on retry.

We then connected the Vox to computer to see if we could access the data partition and delete that file but could not.  We performed a factory reset on the Vox and tried again.  The second attempt also failed with an error but this time we could retry and the third attempt was successful.  Once the update was installed we had to log into Kobo.  We kept getting a connection error and there was no way to skip the login.  We waited about half an hour and finally were able to login and then start using the Vox.  From the time my wife unboxed the Kobo Vox to actually being able to use it took 2 hours.

I can only imagine why so many people wouldn’t have bothered trying to get it to work and just returned it.  We really tested it out and installed flash and app managers, browsers, games, books, movies, music etc.  It’s performance is ok for the money you pay.  The speaker is not that loud, it’s kind of laggy when you’re typing or tapping the screen and requires tapping 2 or 3 times before it responds.  The status bar at the top of the screen would just stop working and the Kobo library application would error out and not display anything but errors.  From what I read online people who were experiencing the Library app issue were saying the only way to fix it was to perform a factory reset.  I actually figured out an easier way to fix that issue.  If you go to the getjar site and download/install the Kobo app it will resolve the issue.  You’ll then have two Kobo apps installed so just pick the one you installed and uninstall it.

After all the little issues and glitches we just decided to bring it back to Futureshop and exchange the Kobo Vox for the Acer Iconia 16GB 10.1 inch tablet which is an awesome device for $349.  Mind you our upgrade was almost twice the cost of the Vox but what you get for the money is outstanding.  The Iconia performs beautifully and right out of the box it’s fully functional and usable as fast as you can turn it on.

I’m pleasantly surprised at a couple of high end tablets that are now available in the $350 price range.  I’m sure they’ll give the higher priced tablets a run for their money.  IMHO if you’re going to start dropping $600 and up on a tablet you might as well buy a laptop which for the same amount of money is way more powerful has tons more storage and can do all the things a tablet can’t.

If you’re looking for just an eReader I would advise to get just an eReader.  If you’re looking for a tablet that you can also read on I recommend you get a real tablet.  For all that it appears to be, problems abound with the Kobo Vox.

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Of the very few online stores in the United States currently carrying the Salomon RX Core, a couple don’t ship to Canada or more specifically state that Salomon products can only be shipped in the United States.  Seems odd that some stores can ship to Canada and others can’t.  One online store would ship to Canada but the best priced shipping option was $42 USD.

The last online store with the RX Core available had the best option.  First of all they had the Salomon RX Core on sale for only $87.96 while everyone else is selling them for $110.00.  Second I received free shipping within the United States to a UPS store just across the border.  The UPS store only charges a nominal fee of $5 to hold a box for a week.  Crossing back over into Canada I declared the shoes and paid $11.61 in tax.  So in total along with the gas to drive down and back to get them I ended up paying a little less then $120.00 CAD for the Salomon RX Core.  I think that’s pretty good considering if they’re selling for regular $110.00 in the States I’m sure once they’re available in Canada they’ll be at least $129.99 if not more plus taxes of course.

The RX Core is very light being only 12 oz in weight.  They’re a D width which is perfect, nice and comfortable.  Here’s the specs along with some photos:

• Four-way stretch fabric upper promotes an enhanced fit
• Breathable and lightweight soft-shell.
• DWR (durable water repellent) coating offers lasting protection from the elements.
• Quicklace system allows for a secure, customized fit.  Lace pocket to tuck away laces.
• Protective rubber toe cap.
• Heel sling for stability.
• Plush 3D mesh lining, wicks moisture away.
• Leather footbed supplies a great step-in feel.
• Injected EVA midsole and OS Muscle technology provides lightweight cushioning and stability.
• Non-marking Contragrip® offers the ideal blend of grip and extended wear over mixed terrain.

It’ll take some time to see how well the RX Core wears, hopefully they’ll last at least a year.  Just based from what I know so far and the good price point I’d recommend the Salomon RX Core.

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