Posts by Dan Misener - 2/54 - misener.org

The joy of setting up a French bank account

I’ll begin by saying we were warned. Several people made it very plain to us: setting up a French bank account is complicated, and takes longer than you’d think. So then, the point of this blog post is a) to verify that setting up a French bank account is indeed complicated and time-consuming, and b) [...]

Vendredi XIII

Earlier this week, I found myself in Lyon’s 7th arrondissement, at a bar called l’Antisèche. I was there for L’UkeDunum, a new-ish monthly gathering of Lyonnais ukulele players (or, as they call themselves, ukulélistes). I’d been in touch with the organizers, Cécile and Guillaume, earlier in the week via email. In broken French, I told them I wanted [...]

How to avoid paying for 30 days of service when porting a Rogers/Fido mobile number in Canada

TL;DR: When you port a mobile number from Rogers or Fido, they try to charge you for 30 days of service beyond your port date. Here’s how I avoided paying this “port fee.” This is a longish post, but I’m hoping it’ll be helpful for anyone who’s planning to port their number from Fido/Rogers, and [...]

The Gap

PRX’s Jake Shapiro, on what he calls the public media developer gap: I look around our public media field and beyond and see a worrisome gap. As public broadcasting goes through its own turbulent transition to a new Internet and mobile world, the technology talent gap is a risk that looms large. Yes, there are [...]

Alternative for alternative’s sake

Back in the early part of the last decade, when I was studying at Dalhousie and King’s, I spent a big chunk of my time at the small but mighty CKDU, our (then) 50-watt campus/community radio station. My time there was, in a word, formational. I knew I wanted to make radio, but the thing [...]

The value of Google’s post-earthquake Person Finder

This week’s CBC tech column is all about online tools that are being used in the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey. I interviewed Google Person Finder‘s technical lead, Ka-Ping Yee: The value of Google’s post-earthquake Person Finder by misener The cbc.ca/tech/ version is up now, too.

The Golden Age of Complaining?

This week’s CBC tech column (I know, I know, I haven’t been vigilant in posting them here — that’s what the podcast is for) is all about small business and social media. According to David-Michel Davies, we live in a “golden age of complaining.” Davies, who is the executive director of Webby Awards, attributes this [...]

A love story, told through beer, now on our wall

The day Jenna and I met, we drank 50. When we flew to the other side of the world to get married, we drank Steigl. And when we got back, we drank PBR with our friends and family in her parents’ backyard. I’m thankful that Dave Murray makes prints, that Tom visited us so they’d catch [...]