I had an opportunity to get out sea kayaking this summer in Mahone Bay. We took a couple days and did an overnighter on one of the many great islands in the bay, Bella Island.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was out kayaking, thinking it had to be at least 5+ years. I must admit that the workout I got from kayaking was one I hadn’t experienced in quite some time.

We left in the early morning after renting a kayak from East Coast Outfitters, a kayaking company based in Halifax and Mahone Bay. We made a pit stop for lunch and a swim before continuing to Bella. The paddle out took around four hours. Once on Bella, we fought with the mosquitoes to pitch our tent and enjoyed the rent of the beautiful day on the beach. Many boaters came and went as it seemed to be a popular spot for an afternoon and evening dip. After the sun went down we decided to paddle out to a neighbouring island - that in hindsight with the weather might not have been the best idea. The paddle out took us about 40 minutes with a strong head wind, and when we arrived there soaking wet, we decided to quickly head back. Luckily the paddle back only took about 15.

That night, we were forced to surrender our fire pit to the mosquitoes as they forced us into our tent early. On a side note, I did grow up in the country and have become somewhat used to the disturbing amounts of black flies and mosquitoes we can get in the late spring and early summer, but this was like nothing I’ve experienced before.

Our trip finished early as we left the island after we managed to pack the kayaks up. We took a different route home through Indian point, stopping once for breakfast.

The trip was a lot of fun, and if anyone was thinking of getting in some sea kayaking before the end of the summer, I would recommend checking out East Coast Outfitters for some great kayak rentals, lessons and more.

If you haven’t heard, Ellen DeGeneres got married to long time girl friend Portia de Rossi. Ellen announced she would get married after the California Supreme Court overturned a state ban on same-sex marriages in May.

More here.

Well if you were in the city within the last 10 days you likely found yourself down on the water front for at least some of it. The Halifax International Buskers Festival brought in 76 entertainers that put on more than 500 shows along the water front. I had a chance to make it down to the festival on a few occasions, each just as entertaining as the last.

People used to feel sorry for me for having a summer birthday - everyone’s out of town and no one gets to party. But being born in mid August definitely has its perks. Along with the warm weather, I get to spend the day down on the water front and take in some busker performances thanks to HRM’s planning of the dates that span 10 days almost always including my birthday.

This year was no different. Laura and I spent most of the day on the waterfront, taking in a couple of great performances. First was an Italian acrobat that among many great acts, finished his show by balancing with his head on a basketball, on top of tower about 3+ feet tall he made from 4 champaign classes, 8 champaign bottles, and 3 pieces of wood. Needless to say it was incredible, unfortunately there were no photos of it. The next performance we took in was an Australian couple that did acrobatics and juggling - they were a lot of fun to watch and were very entertaining, probably the most entertaining out of shows I watched.

If that’s not enough, I also get a personal meteor shower with lots of shooting stars, that’s usually on or a day off my birthday. Unfortunately this year didn’t bring the nicest weather and the skies were mainly cloudy.

With the buskers wrapping up, the next summer item to get excited about is Christensen’s corn on the cob! It’s sad how fast summer is coming to a close.

Today marks the last day of the Defcon 16 conference being held in Las Vegas. This annual conference held in the summer usually takes place after the other popular security conference - Black Hat, which was also located in L.A. this year.

The who’s who of security consultants, black hats, white hats, hackers, whatever other name you want to give to these security gurus would have been found in LA this week. Both conferences cover a wide array of topics including wireless security, radio frequencies, hardware hacking, SQL, network security, social networks, firewalls, even lock picking.

Needless to say it would have been cool to be in LA for these events. Hopefully we hear good stories from it this week coming.

is a term often used to describe software processing taking place on a distributed network, such as the internet. It’s been used commonly over the past few years in the IT industry.

The reason it’s been brought up recently in conversation is due to the fact that Dell is trying to trademark the term, “Cloud Computing.” Dell boasts a cloud computing service, and even owns the domain cloudcomputing.com. Regardless, the term has been used in news articles and other publications long before Dell applied for the trademark on March 23, 2007.

Considering NetCentric Corporation tried to trademark the term back in 1998 and had their application killed, leads me to assume that Dell may have a hard time getting this trademark approved. The application isn’t restricting the term to its own services or platform, instead it covers all potential use of the term. However, they were nice enough to note that the term “computing” on its own was not being trademarked.

For more info the trademark application serial number is 77139082. It was opposed April 15, 2007.

I won’t be surprised if it gets killed soon.