Thanks to Kevin Rose for tweeting this!

Quick post, but worth the time! Just purely amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEnI6yhBMp0&feature=youtu.be

So it has been a while since I did this, but, CardStar is the second must have iPhone app!

With CardStar you can leave all those membership, reward, and club cards at home. It makes your wallet much lighter and thinner. So far all of the cards that I had, Save On Foods, Aeroplan, Scene Card, and some others work just great. No longer do I have carry all those extra cards with me. Makes things so much simpler. Now I just hope that Starbucks will add barcodes to their cards and I'll be set :)

From their web site:

"Leave those bulky plastic "reward cards" and "club cards" at home! CardStar lets you easily store, manage and quickly retrieve your reward, club, and loyalty cards on your smart phone, where they can be scanned directly from your screen at most merchants."

So yeah... I am still around for those wondering. This year, as you probably read my 2010 resolutions, I am managing time differently. Making the most use out of the time I allocate for each task. This unfortunately takes my focus elsewhere, away from this blog. So far that one little resolution is making good progress, so I am very happy with it. But with that success, this blog is lacking updates. No, I will not be taking it offline, I will have to find some time, at least once a week or two, to write something informative, beneficial, or plainly fun or stupid on here..

So don't give up on my blogging just yet ;)

So, the New Year is fast approaching. Just under 12 hours for 2010 to hit the calendar over here. Not sure why now, not earlier or later, but it just hit me that 2010 should be a year of change. It will be the year I turn 30, yey, and a year that I'd like to shape the next decade of my life.

So I only have 3 goals for next year

1. Get active. Really active. I want to feel great, have lots of energy, and the body of an underwear model.
2. Spend more time with my wife, do more fun stuff, and hopefully go from travelling twice to three times a year.
3. Work less, make more

So there. These goals aren't that far off, but goals that will require a lot of focus and dedication.

Best of luck and success in 2010 to all of you!

- Rafal

PS. What are your top three goals for 2010?

It's been a while since I posted here.. my very bad... Will have more time to keep everybody up to date with news, photos, and videos coming in the New Year.

Here's something that I came across a while back and thought it was quite interesting. It has actually been sitting as a draft posting for couple months now, so here it is ;)

;

IKEA wall unit for sale. You can configure this wall unit to your liking. Move shelves to the height you require, split into multiple free standing units, you can set it up to your liking/needs. Asking $200.00 or best offer.

You may contact me by e-mail, rafald@gmail.com, or by phone, those of you that have it.

GeniePad. A magical being that will be taking care of certain things. That is your second hint on what / who GeniePad is. He is growing up slowly but surely, peaking his head out of his magic lamp every time he gets, but it will still take some time before he can do his magic... For that my friends, you will have to stay tuned a little bit longer. For the time being, here's a teaser www.geniepad.com.

So Windows is finally releasing its newest operating system, Windows 7. Windows Vista was a joke, same joke as Windows ME back in the day. So for Windows' sake, I am really hoping that they made the improvements they were talking about and made the operating system more user friendly as well as more stable. Hey, I moved to a Mac about 3 years ago, and I haven't had any operating system issues since. Just some hardware problems due to travel.

So, as one of the commercial shows, should people really buy new computers, which most will have to if they want to move to Windows 7, or should they perhaps get a Mac and be worry free?

Well it hasn't even been more than two weeks and I am already slacking off with the workout. During the first week I started off strong, attending the gym 4 days altogether. Second week I got a really bad cold / flu / swine flu / some sort of bug that took me out for a week, so had to take a break.

Now another week started and well, work is taking precedence, plus GeniePad, which is coming along slowly but surely, plus some other stuff all equals to going to bed late, therefore resulting in not being able to get out of bed early in the morning. So, time to get my ass into gear again and get the hell up in the morning! Plan is to get up tomorrow bright and early, well, dark and early at 6am and somehow manage to put one foot in front of the other and stumble to the gym.

Hopefully someone else decides to add their progress, by either e-mailing me or just adding in the comments, and will make this a challenge. With the initial post about the Fitness Challenge I received quite a bit of interests, but now, nothing.. So come on fellow slackers, get your asses into gear too! Details about the challenge can be read in the Fitness Challenge Details post

GeniePad, what is this thing you are talking about? A few people have asked this question in the past few days. All I can say for the time being is that it will be something to help certain people in their daily lives. The people that know what GeniePad is seemed pretty excited about it. Groups of people want it, like yesterday, but tomorrow will be nice too. Well, GeniePad has to be grown from the ground up in his magical lamp.  It is something that will help certain individuals and groups collaborate, share, and maintain various information.

Those that know what GeniePad is, you better keep your mouths shut! Especially the BETA testers!

Surprisingly I received quite a bit of interest about my little challenge. Quite a few people have asked me if we all do the same challenge, do we track progress the same way, workout the same amount of days in a week, etc etc etc. Simple answer is NO.

What I found in the past is if you try to get a group of people doing the exact same thing, regardless if you are working out, going on a trip, whatever the case is, sooner or later you will get into disagreements, some will get offended, and the fun ends right there.

So, with this challenge, challenge yourself. Nobody else. If you want to run for 10 hours a day, even though I don't recommend it, and no fitness trainer would recommend it, if that's something you want to do, stick with it and do it. If you want to bench press 600 pounds, well, next time I see you and you can't shake my hand because you'll be sore, I'll punch you in the gut and laugh out loud. You know - LOL!

So challenge yourself. Track your own progress. If your goal is to run up and down stairs 10 times by the end of the week, that is your goal. If your goal is to lose X amount of weight, that is your goal. If you want a nice build and try to get your six pack back, like me, so be it. Make it happen. What I wanted to do with this challenge is gather everybody's weekly results, updates on how they feel, what they have accomplished, whatever the case is in a single location. That way, it will keep all of us motivated to continue on with OUR CHALLENGE. Because you'll see that everybody else is continuing on with their challenge. So, start recording your progress, and if you are up for it, next week I will have another blog post asking you to send in your updates and I'll compile them all into one big post which I'll share with everybody.

If you would like to participate, add a comment below so I can plan this out a bit.

You heard me. Time for change. For the past week I have been stuffing myself like crazy with fast food, delicious, sweet, greasy, juicy food, alcohol; oh beer, will I miss you, chocolates, chips, cookies, ice cream, danish, all the goodness that your taste buds are thankful for. But, the time has come to change everything around. I have been talking about this for a long ass time, but never got to it. Well, today, Monday October 5th, 2009 is the time. Mark it in your calendars if you have them!

I am taking my body into my own hands! Yes, into my own hands! And to all you sick minded bastards, no, I am not thinking of what you are thinking! Or am I???? Time to get my body into a sexy ass shape in which it was 10 years ago. Can it be done? Time will tell. It will be a long experiment and a test for my mind. Will I be able to do it for longer than a week or two? Hopefully longer! That is why I am bloggin about it. To keep me going, motivated, and on track!

Starting Monday, the 5th of October, I will keep track of my progress and try my best to blog about it every week. I'll write about the progress on a weekly basis. I thought of posting photos of the changes, but my wife advised me not to. Hey! She found me pretty damn hot and sexy when she met me. And, long story short, she said it wouldn't be a good idea if I posted pics of my progress on my blog. Something about crazy zombies chasing me down the street or something. I'll take her word, after all, she is my wife ;)

Well... Stay tuned, read up on the progress and all. Maybe I'll post a photo once in a while, to keep me motivated to keep on going with this challenge.

If you ever wanted to get in shape but never had anybody to do it with, nobody to challenge, nobody to join you on this journey, now is the time to do it! Hopefully we can form a group of people trying to get into shape, to lose some fat, gain a six pack, or a two pack - whatever your goal is, maybe lose some ankle fat, whatever the case is, join me and my challenge, add your progress to my blog, email me so I add it to my blog, whatever, as long as you stay on track, we can all achieve our goal together...

Today a good friend of mine, Colin Stasiuk from Benchmark IT Consulting, had his third SQL Server Edmonton Pass meeting. It is a free seminar hosted once a month currently held at the Edmonton Public Library.

This month's topic was titled; Hit The Ground Running with SQL Server 2008. It was about new features in SQL Server 2008 in regards to database administration. It covered topics such as the Central Management Server, Policy-Based Management, Group Query Execute and Resource Governor.

The session was presented over Live Meeting by Brent Ozar. Personally, I haven't heard of Brent before, but he seemed like a Master Jedi, or Mr Miyagi as Colin likes to call him when it came to SQL. He was pretty knowledgeable and seemed very passionate about this topic.

If you are a SQL junkie such as Colin, then I highly recommend that you visit the EDMPass.com website and subscribe to the RSS feed, follow Colin on Twitter - @BenchmarkIT, or just check out the site for updates on the next meeting. If you are interested in today's session, Colin informed me that he will try to post the slides, or a link to the recorded Live Meeting on the edmpass.com web site as well.

OH! And did I mention, the prizes are well, pretty fucken awesome! Check this pic! I won 100 minutes at Fabutan! The free pizza is pretty darn good too :)

Once again, great job Colin!

If you are one of the lucky owners of an iPhone or iPod Touch, most likely you wonder what app's, or applications, to get for your awesome toy. Well, there are many out there, thousands to choose from, but which one should you download and install on your iPhone? On this blog I will be sharing the one's I like most, or one's that I find helpful in my day to day life.

Today you will learn about the Bump app. Yes, your iPhone likes to bump another iPhone. I bet you didn't know that did you? Well now you do!

Bump is a great tool. It makes life so much easier by saving quite a bit of time. This application allows you to share your contact information, or files, with other iPhone or iPod Touch users. Once you have all your contact information set up in your iPhone, you just start up the Bump app, the other user does the same, and then you, well, let your iPhone's bump each other :)

Once bumping is complete, you will have exchanged contact information, or files, ranging from just your phone, to your e-mail, photo, and address.

I had this app installed on my iPhone when it came out, but not many people were aware of it, so I deleted it. Then one day, a friend of mine mentioned it to me, and now I am spreading the bumping love whenever I can.

So, if you have an iPhone, get this app, set it up, and perhaps next time we can bump our phone ;o)

Do you have an iPhone app that is a must? If so, leave a comment and share with the rest of the readers!

It was the day after Bartek's stag and after Piotrek's name day (imieniny - a Polish thing...) party which lasted until early morning. I was supposed to be heading over to visit my grandparents that day but missed my train. So, we have decided to take a boat cruise on the Wisła river in Kraków. As none of us were in the shape to get behind the wheel of a vehicle we decided to take a taxi to the dock. Well, when the taxi came, we thought a grandma was driving the taxi... So.. we decided to record a short video and Piotrek decided to do some singing along the way...

Why sing? Well it was couple days after Michael Jackson has passed away, and that Sunday, there was a channel that played all his music video's, interviews, etc. So, after watching Michael's life story, Piotrek got into his music, and decided to remember the pop star by singing. The rest is history...

Wróbel! Jesteś de besciak!

Here's the video :)

Wrobel from Rafal on Vimeo.

The year was 2006, or maybe 2007, or perhaps even earlier, when I took down the third and last version of the e-rafal.com web site. Some of you might still remember it. The white and orange feel, a little bit of photo's, lots of text. The place where I pulled couple pranks on many friends, or was it many pranks on couple friends? It's been too long. Don't remember anymore...

So here I am once again. Why am I starting this again you may ask? Well, I am a web designer, a web developer, I run my own Edmonton web design and software development company, Flame360 Inc., so it is only natural that I, as a professional should have my own web presence. A place to share idea's, finding's, recommendations, travel journey's, photo's, video's and anything else that is on my mind.

Soon enough, I will also be starting a blog for my software development company Flame360 Inc. The company blog will consist of more professional posts and resources for clients, tutorials for newbies, as well as professional advice for other web designers and software developers in the industry. So stay tuned.

In the meantime I will continue updating the look of this site when time permits. If you freelance than you know how it is with time these days.. Not much of it!

And now to celebrate the launch, time for some good old fashioned Caesar's! Cheers!

- Rafal Dyrda