COM0011 – Blog #6 – Snickers Chocolate Bar, and What It Would Be Called Today?

Snickers Logo © Mars Incorporated

Ok to begin this blog, I’ll admit it is kind of a silly topic but a fun one to end the course with! For fun I asked a friend what I should write about for my last blog post for the course, and she came up with “If the Snickers chocolate bar was named after a horse today, which one would it be and why?”. So here I am, writing about one of my favourite chocolate bars and horses. I will go into some reasons why I have chosen the names, and try to make this post as exciting as possible.

© Milky Way Farm

A little back story about the Snickers chocolate bar was named after a horse in the United Kingdom by the Mars family in 1930, but the candy was publicized as “Marathon” over seas until 1970 the company decided to stick with Snickers. The chocolate bar is made up of nougat , caramel, peanuts and a chocolate coating. The chocolate bar was named Snickers because of it’s colour and it offered a lot of energy for anyone who needs it when they are hungry like in the commercial posted below.

Best Mate © Edward Whitaker

If I were to choose a name of another famous race horse I would go with “Best Mate” for the name of a chocolate bar. The reason why I chose Best Mate for a name is because of his colouring. It resembles also the chocolatey coating with a hint of caramel colouring on his nose. The term Best Mate is the United Kingdom means over here to the equivalent of “Best Friend”.  So having a chocolate bar when you are hungry and when ever you need a pick me up, is almost like having a best friend to make you happy and have more energy.

Lottery and Jem Mason

For my last horse name I’m going to choose “Lottery“. Why I chose Lottery as my last name is because for one of the most obvious reasons, why not? When you are starving and need a quick snack and bite into a Snickers, it feels like you are winning a lottery.

So if you had the the choice of a name for the Snickers chocolate bar, what would you choose? And why?

 

COM0011 – Blog #5 – Long Distance Relationships , and Do They Work?

In this post I will be looking into if long distance relationships work, and why they do or do not. I will be providing personal experiences I have had, and other stories from friends and family. So I will not have to really have to do much research on the topic since it is all first hand information.

                           Twitter Logo

Over the years I have had the experience to jump into the online dating and meeting people through friends, but out of social media places, I met the love of my life on a site which only allows you to write only with 150 characters. Yup, you’ve guessed it. Twitter!

A lot of people are skeptical about dating people online because they’re afraid of not being able to trust the other person in most cases. I honestly think at the beginning of my relationships I have had trust issues, because you’re not always with that person and you don’t know how loyal they are. But after a while you figure out the kind of person and it is well worth it.

I have a couple of friends who met their husbands online through video games, out of all places you would think. One of my friends met her husband on World of Warcraft and my other friend met her husband over Halo. I was honored to be able to go to their weddings.

Rachel and I at my friends wedding.

I messaged Rachel one day after she posted a picture of her dressed up as a character from Archer (cartoon). I creeped her a little I guess you can say and took a look at her online portfolio (she’s a graphics designer). I messaged her the same evening after looking and when Twitter only allowed 150 characters being sent over private messages made things awkward, so she suggested we moved our conversation to Facebook messages. I think it was a day later she gave me her number and we were talking over iMessage, and then we talked over Facetime. The months flew by and in June we finally met when she came all the way from Iowa to come see me for my birthday. Since the first time in June, she has came back to see me every month in person and we talk on Facetime all the time. She’s coming back in less than a week, and I’m going to finally make my trip back with her to Iowa.

So my advice if you want to try a long distance relationship is to NEVER give up on it. Even when you miss talking to them, or seeing them in person, it will work out in the end! (Well for most of the time anyways)

COM0011 – Blog #4 – Playstation 4 vs Xbox One

Sony Playstation 4

So, being a avid now casual gamer the fight between Sony and Microsoft has been running around in my head for the past couple of years. Now after playing both consoles and now owning an Playstation 4, and reading a lot of different views I can now have a non-bias decision on which is better and why. I will be getting pretty technically and maybe boring to some, but it is very interesting if you’re into electronics and how the two companies use their systems to their potential, and the branding that they’re known for.

When the announcement of both consoles at E3 two years ago it was talked about the consoles having the similar system specifications. The Xbox One and PS4 had their system processors provided by AMD, which is an 8-Core Processor but with different clock speeds to both. The Xbox’s clocked at 1.75 Ghz while the PS4’s speed is a bit lower at 1.60 Ghz and based off of x86 architecture. The PS4 has a fair amount more when it comes to the graphics card which they put in it. The card both the PS4 and Xbox One was provided by AMD again and it was a Radeon based card which the PS4 clocked at 1.84 teraflop while the Xbox’s is only at 1.31 in the pipeline. The memory allocation on both system are identical at 8 gigabytes but for one important feature, which is the type of memory they both used. The Xbox uses DDR3 while the PS4 has GDDR5. Both consoles do not use all of the allocated RAM that they are given because some of the memory is saved for the systems operating system. So the developers have about 4.5-5 gigabytes of RAM to work with when making their games.

The Xbox and PS4 have different kind of gamers in my opinion. Usually loyal to their brands. I myself prefer the Playstation system because I have not have had any issues with any of Sony’s. That being said the Xbox aims more towards to first person shooters, sports game players, while the Playstation aims more towards the role playing gamers but lately have dipped their toe into the first person shooters. The Xbox One offers backwards compatibility with their older system which is the 360 while PS4 has a lot more exclusive games made for their console.

The experts would say the Playstation 4 would be the best bet for consoles since it has more to offer and has more powerful graphics and RAM. If you had a choice between the two. which would you buy and why?

COM0011 – Blog #3 Vinyl DJing vs Digital

Since the introduction digital DJing in the 90’s the argument of what is better: Digital or Vinyl DJing has been occurring. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages of either methods of DJing. I will go through the reasons given by the research I have found, and my personal opinion as I DJ from time to time.

Pioneer CDJ-2000 Nexus © Pioneer

I’ve been searching the internet looking at the opinion of DJ’s around the world using variety of methods example: vinyl with turntables, CDJ’s (compact disk players), Midi controllers and time encoded vinyl used with computer software. I personally use CDJ’s and vinyl. While doing my research I have come across many people saying that it is all up to the DJ and what they prefer.

Pioneer PLX-1000 Turntable © Pioneer

I did some questioning using Facebook asking fellow DJ’s what they thought of the argument of “Vinyl vs Digital”, and  I have compiled some comments which appeared the most often:

Pro Vinyl

• “Digital format makes it far too easy to arrange pre mixed sets which is happening everywhere, which, in my opinion isn’t dj’ing.”
• “Vinyl offers a much warmer, deeper sound, using vinyl puts the dj in closer contact with the music and takes more skill to master.”
• “Technically speaking sound quality is better with vinyl then with cd’s because there is no compression.”

Pro Digital

• “Digital provides all the benefits of analogue DJing; without any of the drawbacks.”
• “There is a reason why even the most dedicated group of vinyl purists, the scratchers, went digital. It’s because it’s better.”
• “Digital allows you to add things instantly and also if there are sudden songs or whatever you don’t have you can download rather than not use them because you don’t have them”

By the looks of how the survey went with the DJ’s and music enthusiasts, it seems to be seen as it all depends on what you prefer and it doesn’t matter on which method you use. I use vinyl and CDJ’s while I am at home and for the convenience when going to gigs, controllers and CDJ’s would be my choice.

Pioneer DDJ SX2 Controller © Pioneer

What format of music do you prefer? Listening to your music on a record player or would you prefer listening to it on a digital format ie. CD or MP3?

COM0011 – Blog #2 – Fall TV Premiere Week

This will be a a fun and exciting week with a lot of premiere’s and having the hard decision to figure out which show to tape and which one to watch. The few that are getting a lot of attention are: The Big Bang Theory, The Muppet’s and Bob’s Burgers.

             The Big Bang Theory

 

Out of all show premiering Tonight’s episode of The Big Bang Theory is entitled “The Matrimonial Momentum”. The show picks up from last episode of season 8 finished.  Penny (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) were heading to Las Vegas to elope,  Amy (Mayim Bialik)decides to put a pause on her relationship with Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Bernedette (Melissa Rauch) and Howard (Simon Helberg) have a hard decision to make when it comes to letting Stuart (Kevin Sussman) stay with the two at Howard’s mothers house. In the promotion video it shows Leonard and Penny are standing outside a door to a hotel room and we’re all assuming that the two got married. Not a whole lot has been “leaked” about the episode so all we can do is wait and watch the episode on Monday, September 21 2015 at 7:30 EST PM on CTV/CBS.

 

The Muppets

The Muppets is my favourite child hood television show of all time. When I found out that it was coming back to television I was excited to hear. In the pilot episode teaser you have all the Muppets sitting around a board room table discussing how to get back on to television. They all throw out  ideas on how , and they all finally decide on making it a documentary type show which would follow them around seeing what happens whenever they are not doing movies and their other shows. We find out that Fozzie bear has a human girlfriend which you see the in the trailer talking to her parents asking for his approval which I can imagine will be hilarious in its self. The show will air on Tuesday, September 22 2015 at 8:30 PM EST on CityTV/ABC.

 

Bob’s Burgers

Finally Bob’s Burgers is a cartoon about a family which consists of a father (Bob), mother (Linda) and three siblings (Gene, Tina and Louise) who own and run a burger restaurant. The summary which is written on IMDB says: “When Bob starts to lose his hair, Linda reminisces about his moustache and how it made her fall for him; the kids make up their own versions of how Bob and Linda met.” I think the episode will be funny and by the sounds of it and knowing his children, and how the season starts will end up to being a good one. Bob’s Burgers will air at September 27 2015 at 7:30 PM EST on CityTV/Fox.

 

What are some of your favourite television shows? Which shows are you looking forward to watching and why?

COM0011 – Blog #1 – Ottawa’s Airport Taxi Cab Strike How It Is Uneffective

The whole issue with the airport taxi cab service strike started back on August 1, 2015 when the new fees for pick up at the airport kicked in. The fee was $2.00, but was then brought up to $5 a ride. Another reason why they are striking is over Uber moving into the capital region and starting their “illegal” taxi service. While being on the strike, some of the cab drivers have taken to the streets of Ottawa to try to catch the Uber drivers working, has not been proven to be a good thing for them either. Through following this story for the past month, they have lost all sympathy from the residents of the city and are looking more and more to switching services to Uber.

Cab driver over heats during protest

Going to social media, some cab drivers posted video of Uber drivers and their passengers hoping that they would be charged by the by-law officers. But after countless attempts and it being an illegal act, the videos were taken down and the Ottawa Police service has told the cab drivers to discontinue the act. 

As the protests ramp up every day, the cab drivers are losing more and more customers to their main competition Uber. A lot of angry citizens and cab drivers have been posting through social media (facebook/twitter) that they’re fed up with the tactics that the drivers are using and switching to Uber. The drivers started their protesting by creating loud noises and screaming outside of the Ottawa International Airport. After the airport getting an injunction from the court, the cab drivers can only have 20 people protesting at a time in the sectioned off area near the arrivals. The drivers then moved to the airport parkway by driving 20 km/h during the peak times in the morning and evening hours when people who were not going to the airport were using the road.  As of lately, the cab drivers have been having a sit-in protest on the road which blocks the entry towards the airport.  The police will not do anything to them since they’re expressing their freedom to protest. But on Tuesday September 7. 2015  things got violent when a protesting cab drivers hit and smashed the back window of a Blueline Cab which had a passenger in it.

Cab drivers slow traffic

So my question is: Do you think the cab drivers are going too far with their protest? Especially when it has resulted in violence?