Karen Ruby

How Cool Is Canada?

Very cool, as a matter of fact! :-)

The Globe and Mail has an interesting poll asking its reader to rate "Is Canada Cool?"

RIM's Blackberry, same-sex marriage, indie flick stars like Michael Cera, Ellen Page and Jasin Reitman, Nobel Prize winners, the Banks that defied the Great Recession, the list goes on and on.

Yes, we are pretty darn cool!

The True North Strong and Free!

Happy New Year!

Well, the clock is ticking down to the final moments of 2009. It's time to say Goodbye to last year and invite the new 2010 into our lives. I have a lot of hope for this next decade of my life and I hope you do, too.

I hope you have a very Happy New Year!

See you in 2010!

Proof That It's Never Too Late To Change Careers

I'm enjoyed reading the Globe's article on the prior CEO of Circuit City's The Source, Brian Levy. Brian worked at The Source for over 30 years, until he decided in 2006 to quit his CEO job and become a doctor.

Yes, a doctor. With all the extra schooling that entails. At 50 years old. And, he's loving it.

I'm love this story because it just goes to show you that it's never too late to change careers. Can you imagine how someone who started at the bottom rung and then after 30 years became it's CEO, just decided to chuck it all to pursue his childhood dream?

For those people who thik that entering med school at 50 years old is taking the spot of someone in their 20s who can be a doctor for much longer than a 50-year old, I say this - who's to say that the 20-something will remain a doctor? No one can predict what anyone else will do in their lives. The 20-something may become a doctor, then decide it's not for them, and default on all those student loans. Did you know what you wanted to do for the next 50 years of your life when you were in your 20s? I sure didn't. I think the 50 year old man has a better shot at sticking to the profession and deserves to be in the program, just as much as the younger person does.

What are you putting off because of your age? If Brian can do it, then so can you!

Google Street View Has Come to Winnipeg

Finally! The other Canadian cities have had Google Street View since October, but Google in their infinte wisdom has rolled out the functionality to 9 more Canadian cities. Now, Canada has 20 cities that are enabled for 360-degree street view. Check it out at http://maps.google.ca

Along with Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, street view is now available for Victoria, Nanaimo, B.C., Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Sudbury, Ont., London, Ont., Sherbrooke, Que., and St. John's.

Well, wouldn't you know it? I was checking where I work and found myself looking at a picture of me walking along Osbourne Street in downtown Winnipeg. I must have been going home for lunch that day.

Good thing Google has taken the Canadian Privacy Commissioner's advice and blurred people's faces. Unfortunately, I know me and my friends know me so they can tell that it's me. But you can't, so that's okay :-)

Google Street View for Winnipeg.

Pretty cool!

The great thing about Google Street View is that you can see places from around the world, just as if you were walking down the street in Paris to the Louvre. When I went to Paris and Rome in September, we checked Google Street View for the apartments that were were staying in. It was very cool to walk around the neighbourhoods and it was almost like deja vu when we finally arrived there because everything felt so familiar.

Of course it did, we saw it on Google!

It will very cool when Google captures the street view for Vancouver for the Olympics Games for January 2010. I can hardly wait. It will feel like we're there in person. Almost :-)

Cool iPod Touch Apps

I finally joined the rest of mankind and bought an iPod Touch. I don't know why I waited so long to get one, but I am absolutely loving it! I should have realized that Apple wouldn't disappont, after all, I have at least 3 other iPod products.

I've been busy filling up this amazing new gadget with the best apps that I could find, both free and relatively inexpensive.

In no particularl order, here are some great apps that I found and recommend:

Games:

• PopGroup

Utilities:

• AppsBox Pro
• Reader - an RSS reader
• eReader - read ebooks
• Google Mobile
• Evernote
• WikiTap
• Dictionary
• Flashlight
• iTranslate
• Tap&Track

Social:

• Facebook
• TweetDeck
• LearnSpanish
• Translator
• Globe & Mail

I'm loving the Maps, Mail, Weather, Safari, and Music apps that it comes with. This thing is really cool!

I need some new games to load up on, any suggestions? Feel free to leave a comment. Thanks.

It's been a long road, but I'm back...

It's been a long while since I last posted, I know. My life circumstances changed a few years ago and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to post anything but awful, depression-sounding, why-bother posts. That wasn't what I wanted to have out on the internet under my name.

Now. I'm in a better place in my life and feel the need to reach out again and contribute to the blogosphere.

I've developed a new blog called, A Meaningful Existence, where I am writing more personal development posts.

If you want to continue reading about interesting, cool or thoughtful articles, stay on this blog.

If you want to be inspired, please join me over at www.ameaningfulexistence.com .

Either way, it's nice to be back :-)

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

Happy Canada Day!

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

Picasa Web Albums

Google came out with their latest foray into taking over the entire internet by releasing a beta, limited release of Picasa Web Albums last week. I received my *special* invite to check out the new feature today.

I've uploaded to "My Public Gallery" over a 100 pictures of my first trip to Montreal that I took last month.

Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/Karen.Ruby

So far, I'm quite impressed with how easy it was to download and install the new Picasa2 application so that I can use the Picasa Web Albums feature. Uploading my first album only took a couple of minutes.

Picasa Web Albums allows you to share your albums or keep them private. You can choose who gets to view your albums and you're also able to bookmark "My Favourites" albums.

I've always resisted opening a Flickr account for some reason, although I do enjoy viewing my friend's albums on the site. There's no tagging in Picasa Web Albums (yet), but this is a very easy way to share my photos with friends and family (and my blog readers). I'll continue to upload selected photos on this blog (check out my numerous photo albums to the left), but since I don't want to over-load my blog storage limits, and since I take a lot of pictures, I'm very happy to be now using Picasa Web Albums to share my photos.

You can also view other people's Public albums and download all their photos to your computer. Not sure why someone would allow this, though. I've turned off this feature on my Montreal album.

I love using Picasa, and now that they have added this Web Album feature, I can see myself using it more and more to share my photos. With 250MB worth of storage space, I can really share my photos now.

Check back often to "My Public Gallery" as I'll be uploading more albums soon.

You should definitely sign up and check out the new Picasa with its Web Albums.

Tags: Google Picasa Picasa Web Albums Flickr

Netvibes

I've been using Netvibes every day for about three weeks now and I must say that it's a very cool and useful homepage. I am totally impressed with the customization and features offerred.

This Web 2.0 app provides you with your own totally customized homepage. You can add almost anything you want to your homepage, including mail services like Gmail and Yahoo, any RSS feed you want - including Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, (even my own blog). You can add podcasts, Google search, to do lists, notes, bookmarks, eBay, Flickr photos, Writely documents (which I'm still waiting for my invite so that I can use that cool web word processor). I'm sure that Picasa Albums will be added too, once that app out of limited test release (hopefully soon).

I love that my home page has the ability to add multiple tabs and I can drag 'n drop (very cool!) any module that I want to any tab that I want. It's totally customizable! You can even title your page to whatever your heart's desire.

Developers are adding modules all the time to Netvibes web services, including the FIFA World Cup 2006, games, local weather, map mashups, calendars, Soduku, and so many other very useful services that I keep finding and adding to my home page.

This is pretty darn cool. I can see something like this definitely hanging around as it's so useful. Why go to tons of other sites when all the information you want is on one customized site? 

Check it out.

Tags: Netvibes Google Writely Digg

Review: The Alchemist

I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho yesterday. Right from page one, I started underlining sentences and I think I must have underlined something on every single page. I got so much out of this book and I really recommend it if you are looking for a purpose and a reason to pursue your dreams.

I can't remember where I read that this book was a must-read (probably Oprah magazine or one of my daily RSS feeds that I read), but I'm really glad that I ordered this book from Amazon. I had never heard of Paulo Coelho, but apparently he is a very famous Brazilian author with many influential books.

From the jacket cover:

"This story, dazzing in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest.. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way."

The story is very simple, but the lessons imparted in the book are timeless: that everyone has a purpose in life or a dream when they were young that came from their heart, but as they grew up they listened less and less to their hearts and allowed their dreams to die. The universe is waiting to help you fulfil that dream, if you would only listen and pay attention to the omens in your life which are leading to what your heart really desires.

Some more pearls of wisdom from the book:

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."

"...that a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

"It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything that they would like to see happen to them in their lives."

"...people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

"It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years."

"Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."

There's not anything really new and earth-shattering in this book, but the writings and story speaks so well and sometimes we have to be in the mood to hear and pay attention to universal truths. I won't reveal what happens to Santiago along his journey for his personal treasure, but this book has a lot to say in its simple story and I would recommend that you read it if you are interested in listening to your heart and following your dream. It's never too late.

Tags: The Alchemist Paulo Coelho