another sam chan: the student blogger

Every morning, millions of people are delivered a newspaper and inside, there are countless stories about car thefts, acts of violence, homicide, and suicide. Then, when you turn on the television, you’re welcomed with C.S.I and 24 – shows where death occurs more times in one episode than the amount of meals the main character has had. Sick of fiction? Turn on the sports channel for some U.F.C. In many ways, our society has become accustomed and perhaps even immune to violence. Still, things like shootings and stabbings only happen overseas, or in the projects, or when people hang with the “wrong crowd”. But right in the middle of day on a Friday in the the biggest mall in BC? Nah. That can’t be right.

But that’s exactly what happened today around 5:30pm right in the heart of Metrotown by Off-the-Wall and the escalator. A multi-person fight that started with belts ended with knife wounds. ‘Luckily’ (using the term very loosely), both men who were stabbed have been reported to be in stable condition. It was an extremely graphic scene for mall traffic, and despite security and police claiming there was nothing to see, a crowd naturally gathered as rumors boiled up from store to store. It really hit home to be near such a violent event up close. Even though I did not witness the stabbing personally, it was still shocking to hear about it. A distant acquaintance of mine was stabbed to death this summer and this incident reminded me of it once more. Are there really issues that simply cannot be resolved with peace and calmness? It makes me wonder once more about the relationship of violent media we consume and our levels of aggression. We are fed this because “bad news is good news”. That’s pretty sad.

From when I initially threw up a posterous online to see if what happened, many have responded by to offer their point of views on what happened. You can go ahead and take a look but be forewarned that the language is at least 14a and there is a graphic photograph at the scene. I would recommend that anybody that has any information about the stabbings to step up and give the authorities a call so appropriate action can be taken. The number for the Burnaby RCMP is 604.294.7922. Also, if you are experiencing shock from first hand imagery, I recommend you talk to your family members as well.

If you want to know more about the situation you can take a look at these sites:
Metrotown rush-hour stabbing ends with two in hospital
Metrotown Stabbing (warning: graphic image)
Fight at Metrotown ends in double stabbing

I will update as more information arises. What can we do to lower violence within our cities? Seems like a question usually only comes up in a politicians speech, but with news like this, it ought to be on everyone’s mind. Another reason to vote.

ps – I know I usually post about all things tech, sports, and the ‘life’ of a student and this is more of a news item, but I couldn’t ignore this: guess its the mini-reporter in me.

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Rogers’ foster child Fido re branded itself yesterday, shedding the passive turquoise and brown to a brighter neon-highlighter-written-on-a-post-it yellow. The logo itself is a doghouse drawn by a sharpie. But I digress. Tons of logos, companies, and even presidents change everyday but I can’t blog about everything. However, this goes further than just logos because it signifies that Rogers has finally decided to place Fido officially in the lightweight provider category.

A bit of boring Canadian provider history points:
– Once upon a time there were four major players in the Canadian provider market (at least to the common eye on the west coast): Fido (owned by Microcell), Rogers Communication, Telus Mobility, & Bell Mobility.
- Rogers buys Fido
- The big four becomes the big 3.5.
- Bell creates Solo Mobile: a subbrand focused on a younger market, with cheap, simple, and easy to calculate plans with minimal contracts.
- Telus creates Koodo: similar to Solo, although Koodo does not publicly affiliate itself with Telus.

With this change, Fido has officially placed itself head to head with Koodo Mobile and Solo Mobile. So what does that have anything to do with us, the consumer? Take a quick look at the site and you’ll see that a lot more was changed than just colors.

That’s right, they’ve gone away with the horrid system access fee! This means that 15 dollar plans may actually be what they say they are and not a mysterious 30 when the skies clear.

In addition, text message plans have been lowered a great deal. All their base plans now offer at least 50 text messages, with the base $25 dollar plan giving you 100 daytime minutes, evenings and weekends starting at 7pm, and unlimited text messaging. Not 1000, not 2500, unlimited. On top of that, you have the option of adding unlimited text messaging to any plan for an affordable $10. How about that?

It may not be giggles for everybody though because here has what they have discreetly taken out while distracting you with the blinding yellow:

-unlimited fido to fido / fido to rogers call and text
- unlimited incoming calls
- my5 (or anything of the sort)
- any sort of couples or family plans

*EDIT: Correction, unlimited incoming and fido to fido can be added on as options for $10 each. Early 5pm calling can also be had for an extra $5 Apologies.

So there it is. There’s a lot of speculation to whether or not this will actually end up hurting Rogers/Fido instead. “Mr. Krstajic, a former executive at both Bell Mobility and Rogers, described the new plans as “reactionary” and said moves like Fido’s risk irritating the firm’s existing customers” as reported by the Globe and Mail. I suppose he meant reactionary in reference to Solo and Kodoo’s success. If you want to keep your current Fido plan, you’re more than welcome to do some – just know that there will continue to be a system access fee until you throw yourself into the new doghouse with a nice three two year contract. I’m a Rogers user and will have to keep paying the SAF anyways but it’s nice to see Fido users have the option.

I have my fair share of Fido friends, and it’ll be interesting to see what they will do. What are you going to do? Is this good news or bad news or it doesn’t matter because you’re a happy Virgin Mobile user?

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It’s been well over a month since I did my first Video Blog, and I’ve decided to make some reflections. If any student wants a pointer to do better, here’s a huge tip I’ve learned in my 16+ years of school: teachers, professors, and T.A’s love reflection. Just like employees love asking their interviewees what they think their weaknesses are, teachers love knowing what you think you did wrong and what you can do to improve. Any educators out there concur?

Regardless, here’s a couple of things I noticed after watching it a few times:

Actually: I lost count after 20 but I think it was actually on-screen jitters. I don’t actually say ‘actually’ that much in real life. Actually, I barely say it at all. In blog and in real life. Absolutely came in at a distant second for most annoying words used in the video.

Compression City: At a ridiculous 400mb and 4 hours of upload time, the ‘quality’ was definitely not worth it. I filmed with a Sony T9 digital camera with the highest quality. I noticed no such quality benefits. Next time, I’m going to stick to the low quality and go for a quick upload so that I can actually get some sleep.

I’ve Got a Cramp Voice: Apparently my voice is actually lower in real life according to some, but I guess my own ears are out of wack. Besides having a ridiculously low tone, I also noticed that I sounded like I was having a cramp or constipated the entire video, what with my slurring and use of tones.

Overall though, I was satisfied with the way it turned out in one shot, and will be doing some more video work in the near future. You’ll have to keep checking my Tweet to see when though. Any recommendations on editing programs and video recorders? I’ve been looking at the Flip Mino but I’m not ready to splurge out 200 + a trip down to the states to get VGA quality.

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