Matt Netkow

Matt Netkow

Head of Developer Relations at ABBYY

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Traveling to Quebec City, Canada

Sep 8, 2014 · Comments

My wife and I love traveling and have decided to dedicate ourselves to seeing as many places as we can.  Up until now, I haven’t blogged about our travels, which is a real shame because it’s a great way to look back on the trip years later (hard to recall everything unless it’s written down!) and also to share the experience with friends and family.

This August we visited Quebec City, Canada for 6 days and loved it! Overall, it was an amazing destination and we highly recommend it for either a quick getaway vacation or a longer stay.  Canada is a beautiful country filled with very friendly French and English-speaking people.  The flight from Chicago was a quick 2 hours and only 1 hour ahead.  Some highlights from the trip:
The City
Quebec City is stunningly beautiful.  Tons of vegetation (trees, etc.) and flowers.  It’s the cleanest city I’ve seen thus far - not one speck of trash anywhere!  Coming from Chicago, this was immediately noticeable.  It’s said to be the closest thing to visiting Europe without actually going there.  I agree - the buildings, architecture and cobblestone streets all have a European feel to them.  This makes walking around even more fun since there’s something different to see around every corner.  We mostly stayed in a bed and breakfast, Marquise de Bassano, just a couple of blocks from the main town square:
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We had a great room: queen sized bed, private bathroom, and delicious breakfast each morning.  The owners were very friendly and accommodating.  One aspect we really like about staying in B&B’s over hotels is not only lesser cost, but the people you meet while staying there.  We had breakfast with couples from Colorado, Paris, Montreal, and Sweden.  Sharing stories about other trips and their lives in general is fascinating and really opens one up to appreciating other cultures.
Each day of the trip we explored different parts of the city.  It’s very hilly compared to Chicago but fortunately for me (haha), we had very cool weather for August (and lots of rain!) so that helped keep us comfortable.  There are lots of parks in the city - this is the main square:
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This is a cool alley:
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From there there were great views of the St. Lawrence river on one end that included a really neat type of elevator called a Funiculaire that you could ride to go between upper and lower Quebec (also walkable but very steep). Additionally there were lots of shops, art galleries, and restaurants.  Along the edges of the river, they’ve kept the old cannons used hundreds of years ago against invaders:
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It’s incredible to think about the history that has occurred in the city - America just doesn’t compare!  On our first full day, we went to the Museum of Civilization.  The two coolest exhibits were a permanent one showcasing the city’s history and one on Haiti’s culture and art.  Haiti’s was focused on their voodoo religion which is very dark, very sexual (lots of phallic symbols), and at times very creepy.  This piece was one of my favorites: the artist created a life-sized baby doll head that he wore around town, capturing himself amid ordinary scenes of daily life:

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My Setup when Recording Technical Presentation Videos

Sep 3, 2014 · Comments

After presenting on hybrid mobile apps a few weeks ago at That Conference, I wanted to make a video of the talk not only to share with others but also for posterity’s sake.  I don’t know much about video recording honestly (codecs, bitrates, etc.) but I managed decent settings that look great without producing a huge video size.  Here’s what I used:

CamStudio for audio/video screen recording.  It’s free and works well enough.  Note that there aren’t any editing features, though.  For video options, I chose the XVid Codec for recording a high quality (1080p) video that didn’t result in a huge file size. The default codec, Intel IYUV, produced a massive 125MB file for a 10 second video, whereas XVid’s was 8MB.  Big difference!  Here are the video settings:

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"Creating Hybrid Mobile Apps" Video Now Available

Sep 1, 2014 · Comments
PhoneGapCordova

If you missed my talk on Hybrid Mobile Apps a few weeks ago at That Conference, never fear! I’ve recorded a video of it, below.  Please feel free to provide feedback or ask questions.  I’m available to present this talk at other conferences and user groups; don’t hesitate to get in touch.  Enjoy!