Ryan Trembath (dot) Information

Again I get caught up in the flash-bang of summer and forget about my old friend the internet. The last three and a half weeks have been a little hectic, here’s a run down.

August 1 - 3
Team manlab and I hit the road for Ottawa to try our hand at human powered flight in the Red Bull Flugtag. We had spent countless evenings and weekends preparing our craft, Operation Red Bull, and it was time to see if it would fly.

Check out the Manlab Flugtag Site to read about how it went, see some pictures and watch the video. I also suggest that you try your hand at our Flugtag related games.

You can also see my interview with the local A-channel crew here.

August 8-10
I had the honor of being the emcee at a good friends’ wedding out in Brandon. It went pretty smooth. I didn’t say the ‘f-word’ into the mic and I got a few laughs out of the crowd. A little different audience than what I’m used too, but I had fun all the same. Congratulations Shawn and Jen!

August 15 - 16th

DEAFWISH Grand prix of Eating Event - Pancakes. If you weren’t there…well…sucks to be you. It was a rock/rap/loud party complete with a pancake eating competition that ended in the chugging of ranch dressing. Pictures to come.

And to end this on a musical note:
Go listen to the New Employee of the Month tracks. The brother is back.
Schugg Nite Production of course.

Toooo much shi~ on the go for this cowboy.!` OR too much personal pressure? F*cK if I know!`

Making rap music, trying to ‘run a label’ - maintaining 7 myspace accounts, recording/mixing the music, learning/doing PHP, sending press kits, paying for promo, playing shows - running a day job, maintaining a clean space, staying fit, planning a bachelor party, eating well, saving money & still being a good friend who you can have a beer with;:-> is burning my dumb a$s out.

Though, now that I’ve put the b!tch down to the internet I am feeling a little better. While I’m on the ‘cry about the good life’ stint;;;;; Some bullets. that suck:

• the washing machine in my building went up $0.19. It is now impossible to clear the cash off your card completely. smoooth move SmartCard:::>> Card abandonment $crilla on the incline.
• Jumbo Pizza Winnipeg - sent us vegetarians an all meat pizza then refused to admit a mistake.
• The little button on my phone has started to work 68% of time => Cool; if it wasn’t essential to almost every function@!#$%^!
• I’m 26 => talented => and not rich!

These r m@ t3arz. One tidbit of real information 4 u:

One thing that I have noticed about both my sense of humor;; and the DEAFWISH style communique;; is that no one realizes that it is based heavily on the principles of text messaging culture;:> & Neoism?! duh!#

I promise the next post will be more coherent. Thanks for reading.

I went and saw the White Stripes Monday night. I’m unsure who opened the show, a branding battle between two local stations brought the opportunity to see American Flamewhip play on a rooftop across from the arena.

Apparently FREQ 107 wanted to sponsor the show and didn’t get the chance, so they put their own band on and said FREQ 107 into the mic a lot. Sock it to ‘em!

The White Stripes rocked! I surprised how well their songs come off with so little instrumentation. There were microphones all over the stage so Jack to run around and never miss a cue.

Why should you ride the bus when the White Stripes are your town? Check out this clip from right here in Winnipeg, Monday afternoon.

There aren’t too many “big” bands that would take the time to do this. True to how rock shows should be, I’m a bigger fan having seen them play live.

So …we’re going through an identity crisis at work. It seems people don’t quite understand what it is manlab does.

In our quest to find out who we are, we got web 2.0 with a survey, I’ve re-read my responses (from my sent box) and decided to post them, as I didn’t write anything for the blog today. Judge me as you will, here’s the Q &:

In 5 words or less…what is Manlab?

Good people doing great work.

As a company, what would you say Manlab values?
- quality work – intuitive answers through technology

- relationship with our clients – we bring them into the ‘family’. It’s not all business, we care about the people as much as we care about their projects.

If Manlab has the potential to be the greatest in the world at something what would that something be?

Geekery worth using. Or ski jumping. We might be versatile enough to be good at both.

When friends ask, you tell them you work at Manlab because….?
Most of my friends quit asking me about my job when I couldn’t answer their “Hey…you work on computers, right?” questions.

But I’m good at the internet I was lucky enough to be asked to work here.

Fill in the blanks. If Manlab were a guy at a party he would talk incessantly about [blank]. He would drink [blank]. He would be the guy that [blank]. You can elaborate if you like.

First off, why is Manlab a guy? But “if” he was…

He would have enough knowledge to talk incessantly about a lot of things so it would depend on the party’s crowd. He would also step back and listen to what you had to say.

He would probably drink light beer or white wine if it was a good night to socialize and he had a designated driver. Otherwise we’d be looking at bottled water or maybe a juice.

He’d be that guy that made you laugh and told you something you didn’t know before you talked to him. He might even give you his card and ask for your number, but it wouldn’t be creepy, you’d hope he called.

What is the best part about your job?
The people I work with and the flexibility to do my own thing while working towards greater internet goodness. The coffee is usually pretty good too!

What are you most passionate about at work?
Search marketing, web stats, automation, what’s gonna happen’ next on the wild web and how we can harness it for practical use.

Enforcing Try New Things Thursday’s.

What are your most passionate about outside of work?
Music. All types from all people happening everywhere.

If I gave you $10,000 tomorrow and you had to spend it on something fun what would you buy?

I wouldn’t buy anything.

I would throw a party.

Location depending on the time of year, theme devised and bands I wanted to play. It would be an eclectic bill and there would be free drinks and vegetarian food. It might be good to have it on a Thursday to ease the terror in the cold cut crowd.

Though I’m thinking that would take care of the cash pretty quick any remaining money could be used for fireworks.

Tell me about your best day you remember at work. What made it great?

I haven’t had my best day at work yet. I hope to never have it or might quit coming.

However, good days have been known to include some good laughs and ice cream. Seeing things we’ve never done before come to fruition is always satisfying. Even if I wasn’t directly involved with a project it’s nice to see the company push out into new territory.

What are you most proud of?

I’ve felt proud when hosting dinners for friends or playing music the way it was intended to be played but to carry those feelings through a day to day routine would probably result in me being conceited. I have a tendency to get lost in things.

Actually let’s simplify.

My kids.

Ryan Trembath
Web Developer

Manlab Internet
http://www.manlab.com

1. I would have abandon my shopping cart (3 times!)
2. I would have seen one of my 120 friends
3. There would have been a lot more “ooooh” services to enrich my experience

YouTube, Joost, Google….c’mon i know there’s more! think catchy web 2.0 services for the twenty somethings. antisooocial.com?

In Sound Guy News
Great Aunt Ida threw down some tight unplugged poppiness last night and Chords of Canada (where’ the music link?) masterminded the acoustic loop station.

Sure I spend all day working online, feasting on the latest Yahoo purchase or Google gossip …Microsoft? hello? are ya gonna do something?

Anyways, I also moonlight as a sound guy (or sound technician if you want to get fancy about it). I did my time at Recording Arts Canada and have been lucky enough to find work filling in at the various venues Winnipeg offers up for bands to blast out rock ‘n roll.

I promised myself I would keep this blog on topic (internet, SEO, blah) but tonight I had the pleasure of working with Choke on their final Canadian tour. My history with this band goes all the way back to 11th grade when I listened to Needless to Say on headphones instead of paying attention in class.

They played a full set, complete with encore, and they didn’t shy away from the songs that brought them to where they are. The whole catalog was there.

They are not rock superstar’s, but they’re wicked brand of technical, at times spacey, “proto-punk” brought an enthusiasm to the venue that might (if I were them) make one rethink retiring the band.

Anyway…if you’re in Winnipeg and you weren’t there you missed out. If you’re between Winnipeg and Halifax go see them, they’re coming to your town and they’re gonna rock.

I’m still trying to get my new soft phone up and running. The firewall built in to my DSL modem causes it to lag, drop calls and, in one instance, call me back 30 minutes later to freeze my computer.

Collin, my tech support friend at the VOIP company established that I need to open a port on my connection for the phone to use. Unfortunately “the instant help pages” MTS supplies are almost completely useless and the information I did finally manage to find didn’t solve my problem.

I tried calling this one in, but the customer service is worse than the ad campaigns.

After waiting 30 minutes on hold I was questioning if my call really was as important as the robot voice kept telling me it was. Of course, it was prime time, and since I’m not a bundled subscriber I was paying for every minute.

On side note: What’s the deal with talking animals pushing wireless service?

Telus - bunny’s and birds
MTS - bison
Fido - Dogs

If anyone can point me to the market report these guys are sharing I’d like to read it.

Out here on the edge we don’t have landlines. I’m 100% mobile. This affords me the luxuries of breaking reception, dropped calls and unbelievably high long distance rates when calling my family.

As much as I want to say it, “Sorry Dad, we’re in prime time here, gotta go” isn’t acceptable. Here comes my savior, VOIP!

Out here in Manitoba, your VOIP options aren’t great (unless someone knows something I don’t?). There’s Vonage and Shaw, neither of which provides a significant savings vs. the good ol’ landline phone. Using my best net research techniques I managed to find this voip company out of Vancouver.

For $25 I’ll get unlimited local calling and 500 long distance minutes to use from the soft phone on my laptop.

Although I’m a bit skeptical of a company that will give you free service if you sign up 3 other people, I figure why not. We used IAXcomm VOIP for asterix at my previous job and it worked good from everywhere, so let’s do it.

VOIP ME!

Credit card out, account set up. It’s going to take 24-48 hours to get set up…the waiting begins.