Despite what we’ve been reading the past couple of days, producers of The Bachelor say the finale wasn’t staged.

Meh, who cares - our girl JILLIAN is the next Bachelorette! They’re shooting right away and the show will premier on May 18.

Tina Fey was on Jimmy Fallon last night telling funny stories about her daughter Alice. Which led us to the question: “You know you’re a parent when …”

The Chris Brown / Rihanna drama continues. She’s not going to press charges, while others say the couple has secretly married.

No Doubt are touring this summer, but there’s no new album to support. So to thank fans who buy tickets this weekend, they’re offering they’re ENTIRE catalog for free.

The Octomom has reportedly said no to the $1M porn offer, however she’s still trying to make a million from a movie - the birth video. Rumours are it’s for sale on the streets.

If you missed it, here’s Judge Judy’s verdict on Nadya Suleman.

The 25 Things Facebook meme has turned .. check out 25 Things I Hate About Facebook.

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Tourism Queensland has announced 7 Canadians among the finalists from 22 countries in their “Best Job In The World” competition which will see the winner caretake an island off the Great Barrier Reef.

Queensland Tourism Minister Desley Boyle said staffers had a tough time sifting through the 34,684 entries and selecting the best of the best.

“I understand it was a robust discussion, but what it boiled down to was the motivation and professionalism of the applicants and their fit with the job and Tourism Queensland,” Boyle said.

The job is part of a $1.7-million Australian campaign to publicize the charms of northeastern Queensland state, and tourism officials say it has already generated more than $70-million Australian worth of publicity for the region.
[Globe and Mail]

Vancouver’s Anny Chih is one of three local finalists. (Erik Rolfsen and Marcella Moser are the other 2)

We grabbed her on Virgin Radio Vancouver just minutes after she was announced on the short list.

Here’s her audition video:

She’s got great energy, fantastic enthusiasm and is very easy to cheer for. Anny now needs your help to move to the next round.

Please vote for Anny Chih at IslandReefJob.com/Anny! Voting ends March 24, you can vote once every 24hrs.

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Local guy Adam Woodall has been kicking around the local scene for years, he’s a self confessed gig pig… he LOVES playing live. So even though he released an independant album, Silver Ring, 4 years ago nothing has really happened with it at radio .. until now.

You can catch Adam Woodall live every Thursday night at The Ocean Club in West Vancouver.

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Want to get in to the 2010 Opening Ceremonies for free??? They’re looking for 4500 volunteers to be a part of the show!

Don’t get that spring feeling just yet, there’s a chance of snow this weekend.

We had a great visit from local troubador Adam Woodall this afternoon. Here’s his website, look him up on MySpace, Facebook and make sure to see him every Thursday at The Ocean Club.

The drama continues for Nadya Suleman. Continues, because she’s had it for a while. 911 records have been released that show they’ve been called to her residence more than a few times. Now it’s been revealed she has a video blogging deal with RadarOnline and it is tragic.

Tragic, just like last night’s finale for The Bachelor. Finally we got to see “the most dramatic rose ceremony ever” when Jason flip flopped between the two finalists. What a wuss. What a waste. Part 2 of After The Rose is tonight where, apparently, our girl Jillian is unveiled as the new Bachelorette.

Jimmy Fallon debuted last night. He was meh, Justin Timberlake was KILLER!

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It’s show time. Britney Spears starts her comeback Circus tour in Lousiana and these are the songs she’ll be lip synching on stage:

Circus
Circus
Piece of Me
Radar

House of Fun (Anything Goes)
Ooh Ooh Baby / Hot As Ice
Boys
If You Seek Amy
Me Against the Music

Freakshow / Peepshow
Freakshow
Get Naked
Breathe On Me / Touch of My Hand

Electro Circ
Do Something
I’m A Slave 4 U
Toxic
…Baby One More Time

Encore
Womanizer
Circus - reprise

It seems like a rather short show with only 16 numbers and many of her hits missing. The other thing of note is in the instant traction Slumdog Millionaire is having on pop culture. Already the Pussycat Dolls have re-recorded Jai Ho and now Britney has a Bollywood inspired remix of Me Against the Music.

Despite being an instant sell out in Vancouver, the tour is receiving a luke warm response in the US.

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First Twitter had the Fail Whale.

This image of a huge whale being carried away by little birds has become very familiar to heavy Twitter users. It’s what we see whenever there’s a service interruption.

Now, say hello to Hootie.

Hootie popped up on my screen last week when I was trying to find the Twitter account for the NYNY hotel in Las Vegas. I tried http://www.twitter.com/nyny and found the site for suspended accounts.

I like to call them Hootie and the Blowfish of Twitter.

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We had Marianas Trench stop by The Virgin Radio Factory on Friday and as is the rule when you come to visit us, the band has to perform a cover.

The guys chose Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys.

Here’s the rest of the interview, including the broadcast of Good Vibrations, and an acoustic performance of Beside You.

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Scott Bourne is a frequent guest on MacBreak Weekly, one of my favourite podcasts to listen to in the roster offered by Leo Laporte at TWiT. He also co-hosts TWiP (This Week in Photography), a podcast about photography.

It’s through these podcasts I heard Scott talking about his new website, ScottCritiques.com, a place where he picks images submitted by readers and discusses how a) you can take better images with your camera b) fix your images in post using simple retouching techniques in photoshop.

This week Scott critiqued a portrait of a woman. Here’s the before and after.

Here’s some of what Scott did:

I copied some of the background on the right side of the photo, added some canvas and pasted that copied background onto the left side of the photo to give the subject someplace to go.
I cropped the photo so it shifted from the right to the left.
[ScottCritiques]

I already know about the Rule of Thirds when it comes to photography and how you want your subjects to be moving through the frame, but taking rapid fire snaps of a running toddler doesn’t always lend itself to proper framing of an image before you take it.

This morning we took Zacharie to watch the planes land at YVR. There’s a great spot along Templeton St for the North Runway that has the planes screaming over head just a few hundred metres before the runway starts.

With each new arrival Zacharie would leap and cheer and wave and point. Here’s one of the pictures I managed to snag of him pointing. I love it except he’s too far to the right, Jen’s in the image and it’s too long of a shot.

So I remembered what Scott Bourne said to do and I dropped the image into photoshop to change things up.

First I cropped Jennifer out of the image and removed the light sky from behind. leaving me just Zacharie and the road and gravel.

At first I was trying to make it be a full body shot, but it was just too difficult to add road on the right side of the image to give me room for his gaze to move through. (I’m not as good at Photoshop as Scott)

So instead I cropped him at the chest, enlarged the image and then grabbed a more dramatic square of sky from a different image to put behind Zacharie.

This is the result.

I’m sure it’s not perfect and Scott would have some critiques to give me, but I’m pretty proud of the image.

Scott’s method of explanation at ScottCritiques is simple, brief and easy to follow. In addition to text explanations, he does screencasts as well.

I highly recommend you add it to your feeds.

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It’s Roll Up The Rim to Win season at Timmy’s. A time when millions of Canadians will be enticed to stop in for some “Always Fresh” coffee - in a disposable cup.

Never mind that the rest of the year you are smart and use your stainless steel BPA Free travel mug to get your morning jolt, if you wanna play Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim to Win, you have to do it with a disposable cup. There’s no other way.

Sure, the rules say “no purchase necessary,” but that just means you can walk up to the counter and get a game piece without playing. A game piece that is a perfectly good cup that you simply chew on the rim of and then toss.

To say Tim Hortons cups are unrecyclable is a little bit of a detour. They are recyclable, but it’s a difficult and expensive process that is not available in every jurisdiction in Canada. So for the next number of weeks millions, perhaps billions of coffee cups will be tossed into landfills and garbage piles all with the hope of winning another free coffee, that will come in a similar cup - and, well, you see the cycle that starts.

There is a chance to play the game online this year .. an advent calendar of rims to virtually roll that will do nothing more than kill a few seconds from work.

But honestly, how difficult would it be to create a pull tab sort of system for this game? Something that would create considerably less waste, waste that would at least be recyclable and would still offer those a chance to play in the store with their travel mugs, or porcelain cups from the counter.

So if you wanna be greem, roll up the rim with your mouse, take your travel mug to Tim’s and help make Mother Nature happy.

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Beyonce’s tix are on sale to the general public tomorrow. You can buy them today if you have the presale password code!

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the police photo of Rihanna that has been heating up gossips all day.

The Oscars go on Sunday. What you need to know is Hugh Jackman is the host. The red carpet starts at 3p. The Awards show portion starts at 5p. It won’t be over til about 9p. But they promise it will be better than last year.

If you win the $48M in Saturday’s Lotto 649, you could buy Angelina Jolie’s Oscar necklace and have $28M left over.

One of the gifts in the nominee’s bag this year is Starbucks new VIA instant coffee. Yup. INSTANT COFFEE. Times are tough.

If you don’t want to throw your own Oscar party, you can crash a rather cool one at the Planetarium.

We talked to Shaun, one of the lighting designers responsible for Illuminate Yaletown on Saturday. Starting at 530, there will be interactive light displays up and down the docks of Yaletown. Sounds like a cool twist on a cool evening and a nice excuse to throw a community party.

U2’s new album wont come out til next month, but they’re streaming the whole thing right now on their MySpace page.

You will probably want to watch Oprah on Tuesday. The Octomom’s dad is a guest.

Got nothing to do tomorrow afternoon? Check out the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery at 3p for a Flash Mob. The crowd will gather and then board the SkyTrain to dance in silence. More info on the Facebook Group.

Here’s a previous silent dancing flash mob.

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