Craig Atkinson

Take over a struggling airline and turn its fleet of aircraft into a cargo and express delivery service to compete against FedEx, UPS, and DHL. It will be cheaper to start a new service with the bankrupt proceeds of a failed airline than from nothing.

Derek and I just had a quick talk about Google and their reluctance to adopt RSS in everything they do. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to subscribe to a feed that shows you the top results for a frequently searched term? Think of what Feedster is doing by allowing you to subscribe to a keyword search topic that aggregates all the blogs out there.

We quickly realized that this could be an achilles heel for Google. If users start to subscribe to frequent search queries via a Google Alert kind of RSS feed, then there would be no reason for them to visit Google’s website to do their search. Your aggregator would not include Google ads and their advertising revenue would drop due to a likely drop in eyeballs.

Just something to think about.

Today I was suprised to see a related link come up while viewing an e-mail in Gmail. It was a bizarre connection to say the least. Actually I find frequently that the articles suggested by Google are not very related to the topic of the e-mail.

In this case, I was reading the weekly e-mail update from Junchiro Koizumi. He happens to be the Prime Minister of Japan and is gracious enough to fill my inbox once a week with an report on his activities! Now if only we could get him podcasting too!

The related link to his e-mail was from the Borneo Times newspaper. If you can’t read it above, click on it for a larger image. Now check out the red box in the picture! Here is the link to the newspaper for the full story. I can’t believe Borneo is that small that they don’t have anything else going on to report about!!!

On the map when you search for Boreno it appears pretty big! But if you look deeper, this little newspaper is only for the tiny country of Brunei!

Now I love pizza! But I’m pretty happy not to have it regularly featured in my local newspaper as a story of interest!

A story I heard on the CBC radio about Australia complaining about imported pigeons from Canada having Bird Flu antibodies got me thinking about another story I saw on TV fairly recently.

The TV story was about the massive losses that hobbyists were experiencing this year in their flock of homing pigeons. Apparently this year a massive number of birds have gone out and never returned to their home. People do not have any idea where the birds are ending up or why their internal homing instincts are not working.

It could be that Global Warming is causing it, that their internal magnetic compass suddenly points to a new magnetic pole, or that they are infected with Avian Flu. I wonder what is going on?

I am finally up to date on processing all the pictures I took this summer and fall. The best ones are all put up on my flickr account. Here are a few from a weekend on the North Island. We left Vancouver friday afternoon and drove to Qualicum Beach where we spent the night sleeping in the tiny rental car. It was a nice wake-up to the sound of the ocean and the rising sun. Then it was off to Port McNeill, Port Hardy and Cape Scott Provincial Park. We spent only Saturday night camped on the beach and drove back Sunday night. A long drive but a magical place well worth it!

Map of the North Island

Waking up in the car

Enjoying Sunrise on the Beach

Our Tentsite on the Beach

The Rugged Coast

Smokey the Bear!

More pictures from Cape Scott on Flickr

Mizue and I went to Seattle one weekend in July. We visited Pike Place market, took the Underground Tour, went into the Seattle Aquarium (my favourite!) and ate some amazing Seafood Bisque!

Seattle Aquarium

Starfish and Friend

Mizue-chan

River Otter dozing..

More photos from Seattle on flickr

I’ve been watching the USD/CAD chart a lot recently. I think because I live in Canada, I don’t feel as comfortable taking on a position in this cross, as I have a longer history of watching the exchange rates.

It is especially poignant to recall the summer I spent working in Maine and getting paid in US dollars. I had a thick wad of cash stuffed in a envelope in the glove compartment of my car as I sped back across the border into Montreal. Suddenly my money was worth 50% more. However the experience also turned me into a exchange rate watcher and I continued over the years to monitor that important aspect of Canadian commerce.

As I have a good familiarity with the USD/CAD historical rates, I can second guess myself out of believing that a particular technical chart setup will work. For example in the past week I started watching a down channel on the daily USDCAD chart. It seemed to say to me that there was a high probability of further weakness in the USD against the CAD. The high Gold, Oil and commodity prices all seemed to have pushed the CAD to multi-year highs and now the markets are getting excited about the Bank of Canada raising interest rates. However, I just didn’t want to believe that a 13 year price high could occur so rapidly without retracement or some congested ranging or even a major trend reverses such as oil oil sinking back to $45.

Well today it happened. Very swiftly and effeciently. It happened during the New York session and continued 150 pips down which is more than the usual 98 pips average daily volatility. I can honestly say that I’m not suprised that the markets got the best of me. Now if I can just train myself to commit to a position when I believe the odds are in my favour. You can’t win all of them but you can limit your losses and win big when you are right.

Well I’ve put the summer to good use. Yes I wasn’t posting but I have been working hard and planning new ventures and new ideas. Many of these business ideas are online and I’m very encouraged to see opportunities just exploding with advertising and affilliate models raking in the money. The revolution of the internet has finally come and the dot-coms have already fled the building so it is a great time for me to get into it.

I’ve decided to focus a little on search engine optimization (SEO) and have challenged Derek Wallace to a contest to see who can raise their public Google Page Rank higher in the next few months until the next update. Both of us are hitting a public PR of 3 and it needs to go higher. Hopefully in the process I can reclaim the top spot for my name search No offense to Craig in Southport!!

Let the games begin!

Sorry to all my legions of fans that I’ve been away for so long. Well I’m back and I’m bigger in China than ever before! Thanks to one of my mentors, I’ve been quoted in Chinese! Stephen Ibaraki wrote an article about media business models on the internet. You can read it online and find my name in English right near the quote about how Slashdot operates.

Now this is the kind of thinking that may save the world:

From Science Daily
Using a new electrically-assisted microbial fuel cell (MFC) that does not require oxygen, Penn State environmental engineers and a scientist at Ion Power Inc. have developed the first process that enables bacteria to coax four times as much hydrogen directly out of biomass than can be generated typically by fermentation alone.

If we could harness biological processes for treating human produced waste products AND for producing energy at the same time, the world would be in a far better position than we are today. This is amazing news!

Big huge congrats to Roi and his team at AIESEC Canada, including all the LCs that do the real hard work across the country for the growth they are achieving this year. Just a few days ago he was telling me on MSN about matching the previous two years high of 130 exchanges, now they are announcing they have become a global top 10 country again and have already hit 150 exchanges with 41 days left in their term!

In an e-mail just released:

AIESEC CANADA HAS REALIZED 150 EXCHANGES

Not only is this the first growth in exchanges for AIESEC Canada since 1999, this is the HIGHEST EXCHANGES RESULTS SINCE 2000-01 and we are only 6 exchanges away from surpassing that year’s results of 156!

GO GO GO!

In a recent comment, Matt exposes some NDP/Canadian Federation of Students election propaganda that has been looping around College and University campuses in recent weeks. Check out the full story in the Martlet (a UVic campus rag).

I wish there was some way I could get all the money back that I wasted on the UVSS and CFS during my 5 years in university.

I know who I’m voting for! John Nuraney, BC Liberals I’ve never hide my appreciation for what the BC Liberals did to turn around this province from middle of the road to first (in my humble opinion). I may even look into volunteering with John just to deepen my understanding of the political process. Another alternative is to volunteer with Virgina Greene in Vancouver-Fairview. Her campaign office is just beside my work.

Plus I certainly couldn’t stand seeing the NDP regain power despite all the push that the unions are giving them. Check out this waste of union dues run by the hospital employees union called DeceiveBC. Actually I did take the time to write in about a broken promise to remind the HEU of what a disaster it was when the NDP ran the province for 10 years and nearly bankrupted our universities by imposing a tuition freeze that left them unable to cope with rising enrollment and rising costs.

Hey there,

Are you linked in ? Why don’t you add me. Use craigatk with one of those funky gmail accounts!

Speaking of GMail. Did you know it can do Japanese now? I have mine set to it. I actually understand half of it, and the other half is just memorization of where things are from frequent use!

Wanted a summertime thirst quencher!

Glass of Water à la Craig

Craig’s glass of water recipe has been delighting parched palates for decades in Europe. With some experimentation, I was able to recreate that special taste for the well-equipped kitchen. Try adding a teaspoon each of cadmium and selenium for a delightful ruby tint!

Give it a go. It gets progressively more difficult from there!

I understand how light can be slowed down and even how light can be frozen but what I am thinking of is the reverse. Wouldn’t it be possible to reverse what these scientists are doing, by sending light through an environment of high energy particles and actually make light go faster than it does in a vacuum?

Apparently somebody smarter than me is investigating part of this idea and ensuring that we don’t violate the rules of relativity.

With that relief, I can sleep soundly tonight…

Sweet! Improvements for my Tablet. I’ve just installed it and already am digging the new theme, pen optimizations and applications! More info later…

You should read this!

You can help put an end to global poverty. The time to act is now.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “If everyone who wants to see an end to poverty, hunger and suffering speaks out, then the noise will be deafening. Politicians will have to listen.”

Here’s what we want in 14 words: More and Better Aid. Make Trade Fair. Cancel the Debt and End Child Poverty in Canada. Your voice when added to millions of others can help Make Poverty History.