Le Tour

I got hooked on the Tour de France 3 years ago. I was living in Amsterdam at the time, and my after-work routine during most of July consisted of flipping through channels in 5 different languages (only 3 of which I understood) covering the race.

It's harder to follow here in North America, since the racing is completed in early-to-mid morning, our time. Still, I do the best I can.

Ricardo Ricco, an Italian rider who calls himself "the Cobra", and his entire Saunier Duval have been kicked out of the race for doping. Good riddance. The race looks good this year, with a close yellow jersey chase, and even a Canadian in the field for the first time in 11 years.

Shutters

I've been helping out my parents with some home renovations over the past week, and it is hard work. The big project has been re-habbing hundreds of interlocking bricks (chiseling off hardened mortar, etc.) from an old patio to lay down a new one. Let me tell you, it's not fun!

One of the products my folks had installed on their house was a new set of shutters. They had to look long and hard to find the right exterior shutters for the job. It turns out it would have been much easier if they had first consulted the excellent website of the Larson Shutter Company.

Besides offering a great price, Larson also promises quality and an excellent selection far beyond what you'll likely find at your local Home Depot or other big box home renovations store. If you will be buying shutters for your house in the near future, I highly recommend the Larson product line.

Euro 2008 Predictions

No time for explanations really, but here is how it will shake down:

1st and 2nd place group finishers:

Group A: Portugal, Turkey (talk about a cupcake of a group)
Group B: Germany, Croatia
Group C: Italy, Netherlands (the group of death, France and Romania miss out)
Group D: Spain, Greece

QF #1: Portugal beats Croatia
QF #2: Germany beats Turkey
QF #3: Italy beats Greece
QF #4: Netherlands beats Spain

SF #1: Germany beats Portugal
SF #2: Italy beats Netherlands

FINAL: GERMANY 2 - 1 ITALY

You read it here first.

Optics Planet

Summer is here and that means camping season is upon us as well. I love the outdoors, and I find myself more and more enjoying some of the lower intensity pursuits like bird watching and star gazing. Maybe I'm getting old.

Those hobbies require a few toys, like binoculars and telescopes, and the best place to shop for those items online is Optics Planet. Since it caters to a specific market, unlike a big box behemoth like Walmart, or and online equivalent like Amazon, there is a great deal of product knowledge and expertise. Deals abound as well, with free shipping available on most purchases over $30.

One of the neatest product offerings are the laser sights the store has for sale. These can be mounted to sport rifles or used for a variety of other purposes. These high-tech gadgets might be beyond my budget for now, but not by as much as you would think.

Stanley Cup finals

I'd love for there to be two more weeks of edge-of-your-seat, white-knuckle NHL action. But if yesterday's first match of the Stanley Cup finals is any indication, the series won't be close, and it won't be long.

The beginning for Pittsburgh was inauspicious; Marc-Andre Fleury faceplanted as he ran on to the ice for player introductions. Fleury ended up being one of the few Penguins that played well in their 4-0 loss to Detroit.

I earlier thought that this would be a tight battle, but now I am convinced otherwise. Crosby doesn't appear ready quite yet to handle this level of pressure, Malkin seems to have given up, and players like Max Talbot and Brooks Orpik who had overachieved throughout much of the season are falling back to earth.

Wings in 5, write it down!

Shopping.com UK

I'll admit to being not much of an online shopper. If I need to buy something online, I typically have a plan to get what I need and place an order quickly.

However, great shopping sites have the potential to change my habits. One such is the Shopping.com UK store. The range of products they offer is available at different stores online, but rarely all in one place, and never in such a convenient way.

The most useful feature of the site is how searchable it is. Whether you are looking for clothing, iPods, furniture, or computers, great deals on a range of products are only a search or a few clicks away. Besides offering great prices, the site also provides product reviews that are informative and interesting at the same time.

I'll be sure to check in with this site first any time I'm looking to shop online.

Cycling maps

I was checking in with some online coverage of the Giro Italia the other day (think the Tour de France, but smaller and pinker) when I came across a like an awesome site.

Google Maps is more or less the coolest, but MapMyRide, which piggybacks on the Google Maps API, is even better. After loads of playing with the Google version to find the exact distance of my regular cycling routes, I was able to pinpoint that my route from home to former home is 10.9 km. It's important because I'm anal about numbers.

By the way, it's two months away, but I'm exciting about the Tour already.

Make custom invitations, win friends

Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to send out invitations when I'm going to have a big party. The kids these days would probably just send out an invite over facebook or something, but that lacks the personal touch that I prefer.

The unfortunate thing is that a lot of the pre-fab cards out there are boring or worse. Often you're faced with a choice between a card with a picture you like, but the words printed aren't quite what you'd like to say, or the right message with the wrong picture.

What I've found online is a great resource to customize your own Photo Card Invitations. For example, if I was planning a killer pool party to help my friends beat the summer heat, I might want to choose the art from the 3 Wisemen Card. Here's the picture:

I might want to include a caption like "Looking for an Oasis from the summer heat? Just follow the star to my Poolside Bash!". A bit sacrilegious, perhaps, but my friends all have a pretty decent sense of humor about stuff like that.

The best thing about this website is the selection. There are a variety of themed cards, whether they are for birthdays, weddings, religious holidays, and the like. And the creative way that the service is offered allows you to select a picture and provide the text so that it sends exactly the message that you want.

Football feeding frenzy

In the world of international soccer, Canada is a relative minnow. Because of this, the national teams don't often get the chance to line up against the best in the world. The month of May, however, provides two notable exceptions.

On May 31st, the senior national team will take on Brazil in Seattle, a match that should make for excellent preparation for the beginning of qualifying for World Cup 2010.

And yesterday, the U20 side that will attempt to qualify for the U20 World Cup in 2009 in Egypt played against Argentina, the champions of the 2007 tournament. There was no TV for this one, and not many fans in the stands at BMO Field in Toronto either, but there were enough witnesses to confirm that Canada earned a respectable 1-1 result.

Reality

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I do enjoy a fair bit of reality TV. I've been a fan of Survivor since it started, and I'd list reality shows shows like The Bachelor and America's Next Top Model among my guilty pleasures.

Often, just watching the shows isn't quite enough. To keep on top of things, you need a good source of Reality TV News. That link will take you to the motherlode, where all things reality-tv are reported, discussed and analyzed almost to death. It's a great site.