Winnipeg Free Press - February 9th

Facebook Still Not Deleting Your Photos

LOVING Facebook’s new Timeline feature? Eager to upload hundreds of pictures to fill in the social story of your life? Wondering if you should delete those photos from your week-long bender in Vegas?

You may want to think twice about what photos you put online, as it appears that Facebook still isn’t as keen to delete photos as users may be. This isn’t anything new: for the past three years, users have been upset that deleted photos can still remain online, despite the user wanting the photos removed. It’s just become a hot topic again as the push towards moving users to the new Timeline page is underway.

Facebook claims that deleting a photos is like emptying the recycle box on your computer. Even though the company claims no one else will be able to view the photos, that hasn’t always been the case and there have been numerous reports of photos still being available through direct links, even after they were apparently deleted.

Until the social media giant sorts this out and has a more clear policy on content uploaded to the site, think twice about the type of photos you want online.

My Oscar Picks: Anthony Bourdain

FORMER chef (Les Halles), author (Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw) and TV host Anthony Bourdain has never been afraid to share his opinion, whether it be about other celebrity chefs, cities he has visited, places he has worked and now the Oscars.

While the sharp-tongued New Yorker is known as a punk-rock-loving foodie, he is also a diehard film junkie and comes from a family of “huge, huge, huge film nerds.” From a young age, Bourdain was exposed to a wide range of cinema. His father worked at Willoughby’s Camera Emporium and would hold private 16mm screenings for his family.

“I grew up in a house with lush picture books about films; my parents were both very serious about them. Foreign, art, everything,” explains Bourdain.

On a break from his Travel Channel show The Layover (which is pretty similar to his other show, No Reservations), Bourdain is scheduled to appear as a guest programmer for Turner Classic Movies in April. He also sat down to discuss the Oscar contenders this year and give his picks for the annual awards show.

Change Your Password

MORE and more of our lives are being lived online, but how secure is the information we have stored in the cloud?

From banking and email to photos and social networks, pretty much every site we frequent online is only as secure as the passwords we use. You can complain all you want about online services when they screw up and are hacked (see Sony Playstation network), but sometimes when sites are breached, it’s because the users were sloppy with their passwords or decided to use something like straightforward like 123456 on all the sites they visit. Sure, passwords like that are easy to remember, but they are about as secure as leaving your front door wide open when you go away for a week of holidays.

Feb. 1 was Change Your Password Day. If you haven’t changed your passwords in a long time — or in some cases, ever — it might be time to take a look at Lifehacker’s password guide. From creating secure passwords, to using centralized lockers to keep all your passwords secure, spending a few minutes today could save you headaches down the road.

Deleted scene from The Simpsons  - The Food Wife

Deleted scene from The Simpsons  - The Food Wife

Winnipeg Free Press - August 25th

Anthony Bourdain’s Celebrity Chef Smackdown

It seems like a couple of times a year, opinionated writer/chef/TV host Anthony Bourdain takes some well-placed shots at a handful of celebrity chefs. This time, Paula Deen, Guy Fieri, Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee fall into Bourdain’s crosshairs. While Bourdain isn’t one to pull punches, he may anger some of Deen’s dedicated fans with his recent comments about the southern chef known for her comfort food.

“The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she’s proud of the fact that her food is f—-ing bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers Are Back

lat.ms/RHCP_vid

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are back (at least some of them). After an extended hiatus, the band’s on-again, off-again guitarist, John Frusciante, has quit and is pursuing his solo career, including a project with local noisemaker Venetian Snares (Aaron Funk).

The California-based band has brought in Josh Klinghoffer to take his place on their 10th studio album. This will be the first album in 15 years without the troubled guitarist, who has struggled with addiction and health problems for much of his career. While bassist Flea was worried about the direction of the band when Frusciante quit again, lead singer Anthony Kiedis felt they still had some life in them.

“I never had the feeling we were done,” he says. “Flea’s biggest concern, that he shared with me, was that he didn’t want to continue if it wasn’t as good as it had ever been, at it’s best: We’ve accomplished too much to do anything half-assed.”

Set for release on Aug. 30, 2011, I’m With You is the followup to 2006’s Stadium Arcadium. Pulling a familiar page from a few other bands, the Chili Peppers set up on a rooftop in Venice Beach to shoot the new video for the first single from the album, The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie.

Secret Society (Extras)

Everyone has secrets, but for the past six years, PostSecret’s Frank Warren has had more than his fair share. Since 2005, Warren has collected anonymous postcards filled with secrets from people around the world. A new 30-minute mini documentary looks at PostSecret and three other ways people keep secrets in our society.

Warren’s crowdsourced site continues to flourish, posting new submissions weekly and allowing people to relate to strangers and get things off their chest in ways only the Internet can provide.