B.C. Beginnings

Scams, Subs and Santa

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Dec 21 – It's in the blood

Today is the winter solstice, the longest day of the year. Little light, lots of dark and a whole lot of looking at your watch while grumbling about where the sun has gone. Ironic how the longest day of the year is also a Monday, no?

Just ten days to go until the new year – does anyone out there have any special plans? Myself, I've decided to make it a quiet one at home; so far all my friends here have not finalized any plans, and I dislike last-minute car trips on busy nights with the heightened possibility of drunk drivers – I've already had two close calls over the years avoiding drunks trying to kill me, so that's enough incentive there to stay in.

I'm still astounded at my doctor's news last week that I don't appear to have Thalassemia Minor – I'll be making another appointment to confirm the results, which will mean a change in my diet. I'll be able to add iron back in, along with some other things( more bacon! )and that means I may actually feel more energetic day to day. I'd like that.

Dec 22 – Scam Artists

Looks like I'd better get out and take more pictures of the trees around here while I can. A report today from the Sierra Club states that BC's old growth forests are disappearing at an alarming rate – must be all that moss buildup that gets people confusing the old with the new trees.

This is really amazing: a sketch that a co-worker made of me a few months ago. I've only now been able to get a picture of it and post it. I just love when people do sketches of me, for some reason – I don't mind pictures, but there's something about an artist taking time to render an image that speaks to me. Plus, somehow I always manage to look cool – go figure!

Here's a show about sketchy people you might want to catch, either on a local channel or on YouTube: The Real Hustle. This is a British import, where three hosts expose some of the most popular scams and hustles that the public is likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis. I was shocked by one scam, where a woman poses as a homeowner who has lost her keys. She gets a locksmith to open a non-alarmed house so she can loot it at her leisure – yikes!

Dec 23 – Blue Screen of Sexy?

It's been 2 months since Windows 7 was released into the wild, and I've been using it for about as long. So far, it's been a mixed bag: faster than Vista, hogging less resources and with a lot of features added or refined since the release of Vista. On the bad side, it has numerous small glitches, like programs refusing to start and an annoying penchant for refusing to come back from Sleep Mode. I hope these small things will be ironed out in the inevitable future patches from Microsoft...

If it's the holidays( and not Windows )having you feeling blue( from the cold, or a lack of holiday spirit )then check out this survey over at io9.com: Who is the Sexiest Blue Woman In the Universe? Heck, even Smurfette made the list!

I suppose it all depends on what level of seriousness you have – today, for example, we lost our 134^th Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. His name was Andrew Richard Nuttall, a Lieutenant in on patrol who was killed along with An Afghani soldier while on foot patrol. He was born here in Victoria, and kept a blog with updates from the front, including mention of IED's. Brings things into a bit of perspective.

Dec 24 – T'was the Night Before...

Ah, Christmas Eve... stockings hung by the fireplace with care, cookies and milk left out for Santa, and all that. But what about... Santa Traps?

Looking at the many different possibilities of Christmas gifts, I've wondered what the most popular items of the decade have been – the lists go year by year, but nothing stands out overall. I think if you went simply by the Cool Factor, then you'd end up with... the iPhone. Which I've decided against getting for the time being, for myself – it just costs too much, and I don't want to get locked into another contract just for a phone. I mean, the things are $799.00 CAN by themselves –for a freakin' phone! It's not a laptop.

Speaking of Christmas gifts, I've always loved toy submarines – I wanted to get one when I lived in Port and had a pool, but they were just too expensive and I'd have got little use out of it overall. This guy has turned it into quite a hobby – he's made models of famous spaceships and turned them into remote-control submarines: what a great idea!

Dec 25 – Happy Xmas

This Christmas was a very, very quiet one for myself and my family. We had a turkey dinner... for lunch, as my dad was working in the afternoon. It was quite a sunny day, with no snow and a lovely lack of traffic everywhere. I enjoying spending a good part of the day online with my friends playing MW2 – everyone was in a good mood and the gaming was good.

On the gift side, we've been pretty minimal for a few years now, given that we got rid of a lot of stuff before moving out west. This year, I purchased a simple digital picture frame for my parents, loading it with a few thousand photos – the resolution is a decent 800x600 pixels, so by downsizing individual folders of photos to that scale, I managed to fit every digital photo they have onto a single 2gb mem card – with room to spare for more. Sweet!

Another thing I love about Christmas: cookies! You can check out the best cookie recipes of the last 50 years to see if any tickle your fancy; my faves were always the ones with holiday shapes – of any flavour.

Dec 26 – Boxing Day! No Gloves!

Up at 5am today, to stand outside BestBuy for when they opened at 6am. The lineup was about 100 people long when I got there, and tripled by the time the doors opened. It was quite cold, but people were in a good mood as there was no snow – unlike last year. Once in, I easily found the 2 things I had lined up for and headed to the cashiers – Batman: Arkham Asylum and a Turtle Beach X1 headset for the Xbox.

In case you wonder where Boxing Day had its origins, look no further than here – you may be surprised at what you don't know. I always am.

On a totally different note, I'm pleased to say that there's almost a total lack of spiders here in the winter. When I lived on Westgate near the ravine there, the spiders were present year-round in the corners and crannies of the house. Here, despite the mild climate, the house has had almost no noticeable spiders make appearances. For which I'm grateful; the huge mothers who came to visit at my May St. place were more than enough to make me keep my windows closed at night, thanks.

Dec 27 – Not Boxing Day

Yep, you guessed it: I spent most of today playing MW2. Badly. My stats are slowly sliding downwards, millions of other people are playing the game better than I am... but there is hope: the new X1 headset! Yes, now that I am no longer distracted by the cramping pain of two headsets on my head, I can finally concentrate on the game and not crackling cartilage!

A good thing that the new X1 headphones cover my ears completely – the renovation racket from downstairs today was louder than usual. They're making massive changes, and the sounds of power tools at work reverberate throughout the entire house, leaving nothing to do but leave or try to block it all out. Thankfully MW2 does a fine job of distracting me. J

I'm pleased to see some folks making use of the Comments for the blog, latching onto some of my words and bandying them about. Well, beating me about the head with some, but that's why I put the phrases online, for people to ... enjoy? Make use of? Barbeque? Keep it up! Plus, did you know you can use the Search Tool on the top left of the blog to scan back through for keywords? I bet you didn't...

That's all. This week's blog was a tiring one, but flowed fairly well once I left it to it's own devices. So there!

Renos, Redheads and Rainchecks

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:50:00 +0000

Dec 14 – Bailing Tools

Let's start out with something very cool. Until now, only humans and their related simian cousins have been known to use tools in the animal kingdom. Today a video was posted about a sea creature that uses discarded coconut shells as a mobile home – can you guess what kind of creature? Watch the video and find out!

From cool to whew! The world's markets stabilized significantly today with news that Abu Dhabi is footing a $10 billion bailout for Dubai. Weird to see that though, as the oil money isn't supposed to run out for a few decades yet.

Too bad this guy didn't learn to bail out... but it's funny all the same.

Dec 15 – Doozers!

Fraggle Rock was( and still is )a fave show of mine from when I was growing up – as was most everything Jim Henson did, in fact. Strange that I don't have any episodes of The Muppet Show on DVD; I'll have to look for that in the new year. Fozzie, Kermit, Miss Piggy - good times.

Another thing I really enjoy is cutaway art – that is, drawings akin to technical blueprints that show the insides of vehicles, buildings etc like this one. I most enjoy fictional topics, especially the Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections series of which I have a few books – the foldout Star Destroyer is especially magnificent, and captures the imagination just as it did on the screen when I saw it for the first time. This selection of cutaway drawings isn't quite the same thing though... but they MIGHT glow in the dark! Finally, this one is my favourite from when I was but ten years old – can you guess why?

A third thing I enjoy: bacon. Since the Bacon Mushroom Melt has yet to make it's appearance this year at Wendy's, I've debated trying out the new Applewood Smoked Bacon Deluxe. Fortunately, there's already a review of it from BaconToday.com – and they love it! Time to head down to Wendy's this week or next, I think, and chow down.

Dec 16 – Seeing Red

Sacrilege! Shocking news today for redhead fans around the world: a British ad was banned today for suggesting that redheads are unattractive! Incredibly, it was from Virgin Media... flabbergasting that redheads, the rarest of beauties, should be so shamed by such a large company. I'm swearing off anything Virgin from now on.

My Christmas shopping has been finished for quite some time now, but if you're still looking for a few more gifts, it can't hurt to check out DealNews.com – the place reports the best deals to be found from all around the internet. It's US-based though, in case you're wondering when your order( from whatever site you check out the deals from )will arrive.

The rain came today, in copious amounts which washed away all the snow – what little there was, actually. All that was left was... this.

Dec 17 – Surf's Up!

Hurray! I received an email today informing me that a NEW episode of Stoked was available for download from iTunes – just goes to show you have to make mention of something to get one's wheels greased, or somesuch. Now where's my elephant?!?!

Form large to small: who doesn't like hobbits? A while back I ran across this rather nice design for a model hobbit house, though it was obviously made with a smaller budget than the movies had. Today I ran across a rather larger version – it's in Switzerland! Built into the side of a hill, it's just darn amazing to think that someone lives there... very, very cool, even if it doesn't look much like Bilbo's place does.

Sweet – some Left4Dead2 news from the co-project lead himself! It's a brief interview, where among other things the possibility of vehicles is mentioned – how much more sweet would that be? Driving over zombies... the heart flutters!

Dec 18 – Feeling Blue?

Avatar opened in theatres today, with ten-foot-tall blue aliens prancing about the screen to draw your eye to the incredibly expensive special effects – word is the movie cost close to $400 million USD. Staggering! I can't deny that what I've seen from the trailers is mind-blowing, and the reviews at RottenTomatoes.com look quite favourable. I'll have to make the effort to get out and see it, as I haven't been going to the movies much these last few years – the last one I made an effort to go see was the new Star Trek, and I missed the latest Transformers release. Ah well – that's what DVD is for.

Today on EP Daily, I saw this: Hard Drive, an online comic that looks rather cool. Digging into a bit of the background, a lot of the art is created in interesting ways, including heavy use of 3D models – unusual for a 2D comic medium, even an online one. Worth checking out.

Some major health news today: while I was at the doctor's today to get my regular flu shot, we discussed some blood work results from a few weeks ago. I had asked him to retest me for Thalassemia, and today I got the news back: I do NOT have Thalassemia. In fact, my blood work came back as normal – how's that for a kick in the pants after 30+ years of thinking you have defective platelets?

Dec 19 – Nuclear Tongues

Strange how my days off tend to vanish if I don't pay close attention, much like today. In between catching up on household tasks, talking to a few friends online, watching episodes of Stargate: Atlantis and playing Left4Dead2, it was evening before I knew it. Lucas called with a heads-up for MW2, so I hopped on after dinner and blasted away merrily for a few hours – didn't do too badly either.

Still no sign of Fallout3: Game of the Year Edition, it's sold out all across the area. I stopped in at F.Shop across the road after work today just to check: the last shipment was supposed to be in Dec. 11^th, a week ago. So there's going to be a few disappointed people this Christmas when it doesn't come in. Not me though – I have a raincheck( or is that raincheque? )so I can wait for the stock, as the price is right.

Have a mutant tongue? Why not wreck a nice beach and check out these tongue twisters. There's some real mandible-manglers in there!

Dec 20 – Well, shoot...

The new landlords were busy from 9am this morning, noisily redoing the downstairs again today. They've moved the main entry door, added a steel fire door at the bottom of the stairs, cut away walls... it's quite the reno downstairs. I've had a few peeks in there while they've been working, as well as when they've done some work on the rest of the place – it's MUCH improved, and they're not even half begun yet!

MW2 today was hit and miss... aw heck, who am I kidding? It was mostly miss. I was lucky to have two or three games where I had more kills than deaths – those ones weren't half bad. For the rest, I struggled not to snap my controller in half in some games where I'd barely get a few steps before getting mowed down by players I'd never even see. It was a rather frustrating experience.

Still, it can't be as frustrating as this guy's marriage... to a video game character? Only in Japan, I guess – I just hope he signed a pre-nup.

That's about it – I hope you found this interesting, as I work hard to ensure that I don't repeat myself. For over 2 years, every week, I've kept that promise to myself... and to my readers. Ta!

Stoked, Swiss and Space

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:41:00 +0000

Dec 6 – Stoked?

Have you ever wondered about what's happened previously today, in history? Check out today's date at Brainy History.com – sadly, today is the 20^th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, but I'm sure there are far more happier events lurking in the lists than that. Though if we fail to learn the lessons of history, we're screwed – to paraphrase things a bit.

Last week was a long, long week at work getting my new employee up to speed with things – three days clocked in around 11 hours on average, with phone calls off-shift adding to the total. Still, I'm pleased with their progress – I am confident the details will follow as they get more experience with the open-concept branch operations. Tiring though - very tiring.

I'm still waiting for the rest of Stoked to become available on iTunes... my Season's Pass seems rather worthless to me, with only TWO episodes available for the ENTIRE 'season' for download. Very, very frustrating. For now, I'm going to cruise through all the shows that MetaCafe.com has to offer( for free! )since they're not US-based and so don't deny most everything to people outside of their borders.

Dec 7 – Northward Travel

Today I worked a shift at our Duncan store, which is less than an hour away( on a good day )from Langford on the Trans-Canada Highway. It was a nice drive up during the day... on dry roads( and signs are up now stating cars in winter on the Malahat MUST have snow tires or chains ). It was a different story on the way home: the scenic Malahat is a twisting, curving ribbon of road that is extremely hazardous to your health in bad weather, or at night in good weather. Here in BC there are far fewer guardrails on major roadways – as I've mentioned before, it seems that all these trees are meant to subsitutute for said safety features. It's still not nearly as dangerous as the Yungas Road in Brazil – I saw a TV special on that earlier this year that made my hair stand on end.

Tm Horton's was in the news again today, this time in the town of Kingston ON, which has it in for the franchise's drive-thrus. Seems that Kingston doesn't want all those idling cars polluting, and is battling Timmy's over it. Weird, eh?

Maybe they should flip a coin to settle the matter – or not! Today a study was released that showed the traditional coin-toss is far less impartial than you might think. According to researchers, only a few minutes of training with a person was necessary to adversely affect the results of coin tosses, so much so that some people could achieve incredibly skewed results. Darn it.

Dec 8 – Spaceship 'splosions!

What's with all the rebooting? According to io9.com, these last ten years could very well be called the Decade of the Reboot, with the huge number of old shows and movies that were mined to create new profit and further the franchises therein.

Space battles... ever since the days of colour television, they've steadily improved along with visual effects technology. Io9.com has a great article( with video examples! )of some of the best space battles of all time, and why we love them so. I've been playing Gratuitous Space Battles on and off a few times a week, as new ship design ideas come to me – so far I've beaten most of the battles and am concentrating now on the 'infinite' scenarios to try and get my fleet to survive a little longer each time.

With my recent discovery that my eyes are changing focus( again ), I found my thoughts turning to other aspects of the inevitable aging process, including memory. Ironically, I remembered a site I bookmarked a long while back, called MindTools.com, which has a great set of articles on how to improve your memory. Worth a look, so don't forget to check them out – you can also try this interesting flash game designed to test your ability to separate words from colours; it's harder than you think.

Dec 9 – Touch The Apple
News came down the pipe today that Apple is launching a handheld touchscreen computer in Spring 2010, looking to compete with the recent e-book readers that have come out from Amazon and Sony. So instead of an iPhone, you will get a much more functional machine... that is less portable. Kind of like an Apple Netbook, but with a touchscreen instead.

Here's something else that is quite portable: the Swiss Bike. Over the years, I've often wished I could just toss my bike into the back of the car some days, whenever the situation warranted my needing to use the car and not the bicycle – like driving to a great park for an afternoon of trail riding, for example. With the Swiss Bike, the whole thing folds up to stow neatly away in the trunk... and for a not-unreasonable price, compared to quality bikes costing thousands that are frankly more than I'll ever need.

This one's for you Mike: collectable fast-food glass sets from yesteryear. Ah, the glory days of Star Wars, when Vader was evil AND cool, and not a whiny teenager gone bad...

Dec 10 – Mechs? Bricks? Aliens?

Who doesn't like giant robots? I mean, they're just... cool. Nothing But Mech is a great blog that has lots of amazing mech / robot material posted on it all the time – check out some of the designs there! Those robots may be running on batteries though, as to date nobody's been able to figure out a way to power them. For about ten years now, I've been using rechargeable batteries for most of my electronic gear, starting with Pure Energy AA and AAA's from Walmart. Unfortunately, Pure Energy products tended to fizzle, fade and even explode messily after a few years, so after moving to BC I switched to the Hybrid Rechargable batteries from Rayovac. These Hybrids are unique in several ways: they can be recharged in any battery charger, can be charged thousands of times, have no memory effect and most importantly retain their charge over periods of 6 months or more between charges! So far, the last claim has proven to be quite true, as I have flashlights that I use once every few weeks or so that take many months before needing to be charged again.

A blast from the past today too: it seems that an old Amiga gaming favourite of mine, Alien Breed, is being brought to Xbox Live Arcade on Dec 16^th. Called Alien Breed: Evolution, the game is from the same folks who made the original back in 1991: Team 17. Check out this short video comparing the two – the quantum leaps video game technology have made in twenty years are quite apparent.

And what's with this? Apparently someone stole a brick from an art gallery in the UK ... an ordinary brick that's worth thousands of pounds, accoding to the artist. Reminds me of the hubbub about Voice of Fire back in 1989, when the National Gallery of Canada bought it for $1.8 million... your tax dollars at work.

Dec 11 – Mall Fallout

This wouldn't fit into the news from yesterday, so I'll mention it here: Natalie Portman( a fave actress of mine )will be starring in, and producing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is exactly what it sounds like. I mean, Portman and zombies? Excellent... too bad I had to hear about it from Variety magazine – I feel like I was standing in line at the grocery store for too long and picked over the mags on the rack at the checkout. Ick.

Fallout3: Game of the Year Edition went on sale today at Future Shop for $29.99 – an incredible price! Which explains why they were immediately sold out, offline and on... of course. I'll see if I can pick it up later in the week, which means I'll have to check daily to see if any stock comes in – no rainchecks and no competitors will price-match if there's none in stock. Of course.

Part of the apocalyptic theme today: Ghost Malls of America. Yes, you read it right... creepy, and they'd make a zombie feel right at home.

Dec 12 – To the Moon, Alice!

Tonight I finally got around to watching Stargate: Continuum, which was the second of the Stargate SG-1 made-for-DVD movies to come out( the first being The Ark of Truth ). Overall, I thought the special effects were good, the story so-so, and the acting excellent.

Closer to reality: the first commercial space flight service was announced yesterday by Virgin Galactic. Slated to start in 2011, the one-hour flight has a ticket cost of $200,000 USD, which is incredibly cheap compared to the millions previously paid to date by private citizens to get into space. I'll add it to my 'Things to Do When I Win The Lottery' list.

Christmas this year is going to be a quiet affair; my sister is unable to visit and we are not going anywhere ourselves as all our relatives and friends are back east. WE're not big on gift-giving, and if anything have scaled down even more after moving out west. Still, a few small somethings will change hands, and I've been looking at digital picture frames as one of the things to get for my parents – they have literally thousands of pictures that they don't look at as often as they'd like to. What better way than to have a digital display? My own television can display pictures via a USB key, but it's wasteful of power to leave it on all day displaying images in a room they don't usually go into. Some of those frames are rather pricey, and the cheaper ones have so-so resolution, so I'll have to shop carefully to avoid getting a dud... not to mention TEST it first to find out of there are any stuck pixels.

Dec 13 – Let the Renovations... continue!

The new landlords got to work early today, getting the renovations running downstairs at 8:45am. On their list today? Knocking a hole in the east foundation wall to make room for a window, allowing a second bedroom to be added in the apartment. According to local bylaws, bedrooms in any addition HAVE to have a window, or cannot be used as such. So for most of the day, there was banging, jackhammering and generally loud goings-on down there, which drove my parents out of the house. As for me, I was too busy all day playing MW2 to really notice, save for the jackhammer vibrations every so often, and the few times that power had to be shut off while they checked connections in the wall.

On the weather side, it snowed here for the first time today – until now, it's only been a layer of frost on the coldest mornings for the last few weeks that's vanished as the morning warmed up. Today it took until noon for the snow to say goodbye, and the skies remained leaden grey all day long – a sign that we may have a white Christmas here after all. I hope that we don't get as much as we did last year around this time as I mentioned in my blog then – we'll see. It might mean I'll be spending more time indoors – but not as much as today, when I spent around 12 hours sitting on my couch overall – yikes!

Overall? This week was over before I noticed – quite a few days had me going solid from sunup to snooze-time and everywhere in between. My energy levels have held fairly steady, though I've noticed that my lack of cycling( it's cold out there! )has brought things down a bit for me. I'm still exploring various food options, and may even look into a more balanced alkai diet, depending on my consultations with my doctor. For now, it's sleep, de-stressing and some sunlamp time for the winter.

zzzzZZZzzzZzzz

Meat, Maps and MW2

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:16:00 +0000

Nov 30 – Cool Math

Most of you know I am not a mathematician, but a wordsmith instead. So when I saw that a few mathematicians had put together a study on how bad a zombie outbreak would be, I did feel a little twinge of regret that my numbers game isn't better. I suppose that's some of what math geeks do for fun?

The rain has abated here, to be replaced with sunny skies and low temperatures. Coming from Ontario, the cold here isn't really all that bad, as I'm used to lake effect snow and temperatures. To hear people talk around here though is to expect things to stay around ten degrees all winter, and for this 'cold spell' of low single-digit days to dissipate fairly soon. Depending on how quickly the arctic air mass that's slamming the Prairies decides to move on, the frost may soon leave the flowers here alone once more.

Work on my NWN project has slowed to a crawl, which is sad but not at all unexpected. Everyone involved is massively busy, with one friend now in China – with his new bride! We're all still passing messages back and forth, but for those who are still in school the workload is quite heavy – both for the ones who are students and the ones who are teachers. Still, nothing is forever, so I am hopeful that the New Year will see an easing of time constraints

Dec 1 – Meat Jars

Another month, another reason to avoid the Christmas Craze. As I mentioned a few blog entries ago, I don't step foot in a shopping mall as of today, Dec 1^st – I can't stand it. Used to be when I was a lot younger( and the malls thusly seemed bigger )that I loved Christmastime, heading to the Big Malls of Hamilton or Toronto on special shopping trips to see all the holiday store displays at Eaton's or Simpsons. My favourites were the Lego displays, vast and fanciful creations that for a few years made me itch to return for the next one, bigger and grander than the last. Reminds me now of the FAO Schwarz Toy Store in New York city, that I had wanted to visit when I was there in the early 90's for a school trip but just couldn't manage to fit it in.

Being a new month we also have the I09 December SciFi Guide, which has shows like V and FlashForward on it – neither of which I've found time to follow. Since I don't have a PVR anymore( it's keeping my parents quite happy )it's harder to catch up on shows. I'm tempted to dust off the VCR and wire it back into my setup, which would work as the Shaw digital cable box has the ability to change channels on a timer to allow a VCR( or computer? )to record properly. Since I have a ton of old tapes, that may be an idea – I'll try it out when I have some time.

Closer to reality: scientists have succeeded in growing live pork in a jar. Why is this important, you ask? Well, aside from eliminating the slaughter of animals for meat( insert cheering vegans here )it means that resources will be saved from the rather inefficient process of raising animals for the table. And of course it means you could also grow all the bacon you want!

Which may also be important if you are planning to survive a disaster / apocalypse / world-ending event. I recently read "Not Your Ordinary Survival Checklist" in the Oct. 2009 Popular Mechanics issue, which is by no means a comprehensive guide – instead, you can find one here, courtesy of FEMA.

Dec 2 - Technology

Nowadays, you can buy computers with as many as 8 CPU cores inside – eight processors packed onto a single chip. Mind-boggling. Yet we've not begun to see the limits of this tech... for news of a 48-core chip has come down the pipe. Issues with rising heat and power consumption has forced companies like Intel to move down the parallel computing path, inevitably leading to computers in the near future having thousands of processing cores inside. Whoa.

Still, no matter how many cores you have inside a PC, there's still the operating system to contend with. So far, Windows 7 has been fairly decent, but it's still quirky in some ways. Aside from programs not wanting to start, the only major glitch I've experienced is the so –called "Black Screen of Death." Twice so far, the laptop has simply turned into a black screen with a blinking cursor, reminding me of the old DOS days when that meant it was time to search for your data on those backup floppy disks you made last month... you DID remember to make them, right? Hopefully it's a patch or two away from being fixed, but since it's Microsoft, we may never know just how prevalent the problem actually is – much like the Xbox360's Red Ring Of Death issue. Which is often fixable by wrapping it in a towel – go figure!

Sometimes technology has the capacity to some real good, for fairly low cost. I've just learned that it may soon be possible to detect depression over the phone via software. Very cool and very useful; imagine if a warning light started flashing when someone was calling a HelpLine( or even a doctor's or police phone )that the person on the other end was in need of depression assistance? Vital clues that may soon be part of our ever-changing social fabric. But we do still have to worry about technology being used for evil...

Dec 3 – The Third Dimension

This week has been a heavy one at work, as one of our employees has returned after a two-month absence due to an injury. I've been easing them back into the routine, as well as introducing them to several major products that have come online since they left. It's meant ten or eleven hour days for the most part this week, but I've also been impressed with the way they've picked things up again so quickly after several months off. So much so that I am hopeful that they'll be totally back into the swing of things by the end of January... just in time for tax season to start.

Google StreetView came to my area recently, which led to mixed reception per the norm from locals. For those of you who are interested, fire up Google Maps and have a look. My address should be in most of your hands by now, so you can take a browse around my neighbourhood – I've already checked, and my house is plainly visible, as the Google StreetView Van passed right by on my road. It's pretty cool, overall – I went for a virtual tour of my town of Langford, along with a few of the other places I've been, and I like the concept.

3D scanning with ordinary webcam is another thing altogether – this is pretty cool stuff, folks. Up until now, 3d object scanners have been horrifically expensive, clumsy or both. Now you can do it with a simple webcam and an ordinary PC. While not quite at the commercially viable stage yet, the video on this website is really impressive. I'd love to be able to scan in objects for use in game design, saving hours of design time – to be sure, details would still need to be refined and tweaked, but it would sure save time over building things from scratch.

Dec 4 – Lego and Left4Dead2

Though I haven't dragged out the old suitcase full of Lego in years, I still credit the little plastic blocks with firing my imagination as a child. I've posted before in this blog about the various levels of Legomania that people retain over the years, but so far it's all been benign. Now that's changed: a man in Toronto was recently taken down( unhurt )by a SWAT team as he showed off the Lego gun he had just received by mail order... at the office. Kinda dumb, but then it's nice to know that Canadian Police forces are on the ball... this sort of thing might have gone unnoticed south of the border.

I've been getting into playing Left 4 Dead 2 on and off all this week, which I've really enjoyed. The game is a really enjoyable experience, which brings you into the whole survival-horror experience: fighting against hopeless odds, blasting zombie hordes with your comrades at your side. Unlike a lot of other online games, the whole experience depends on how well everyone works as a team. I've never had as satisfying team experience as I have with L4D2 when pulling pals back from the brink of death and stumbling along with them towards the safety of the end of the level. The same goes when I am incapacitated, and the warm glow when your buddies come back for you and drag you to safety is hard to describe, other than it's lacking in so many other multiplayer games.

I've been back driving on the streets for about a week now, having renewed my licence after being on hiatus since my birthday last summer – what can I say? I'm cheap: between riding my bike, getting dropped off and taking the occasional bus, I haven't needed to drive much this year, at all. Sure, it's nice to have the freedom to just hop in the car and go, but I've made a conscious decision since moving to Victoria to minimize my 'fooprint' so to speak – maybe some of the West Coast environmental mindset has rubbed off on me? Hopefully not too much; I don't want to start wearing wooden shoes or clothes made from seaweed.

Dec 5 – Cardboard Clashing

This morning I headed into Victoria for a few reasons, but we stopped first for breakfast at Kitty's Hideaway. The portions were generous, the price was right and the decor was perfect: it hadn't been updated in at least a decade, which means the money was being spent on the food, not the paint. After checking out most of the places to eat breakfast at in Niagara with Brian years ago, I've become somewhat of an authority on the matter. Good food, unpretentious surroundings and a great price are the three things to look for, anywhere you decide to eat.

Years ago, I was part of the SCA, which had within it's ranks those who fought in armour, with rattan swords. While I didn't end up taking that path( I went for the archery instead )there was always the thought in my head to pursue it at a later date – and here it is closing on fifteen years later when I discovered BoxWars. Now don't take this the wrong way: I enjoyed my time in the SCA, but a lot of folks there took things a little too seriously... whereas it's obvious that those people who are involved in BoxWars take nothing seriously. Take a look at the Toronto chapter's website and you'll see what I mean – looks like fun in those videos!

Shockingly, I hopped onto XboxLive and found a few friends playing MW2... so I joined in. There went the evening, which wasn't half-bad, though I faded towards the end. We had some really enjoyable games in there, where everyone on both sides were in good moods – no griefers, goof-offs or general 'neer-do-wells to be found. It was a thoroughly enjoyable four-to-five hours. Woof! I've enjoyed unlocking some of the perks as I play – my fave to date is Cold-Blooded, which helps enormously in remaining undetected by enemy players, and fits right in with my low-profile playing style.

Dec 6 – New Landlords

Today started out slowly enough: we had the new landlords over at 11am to discuss a few things, do a walkthrough and sign a new lease for the year... which ended up taking over three hours! The new couple( who have a young son )are great, worlds better than the previous landwitch – every issue we discussed looks to be resolved positively. They plan on doing renovations to the lower apartment to improve the space in several ways, making it far more sound-isolative as well as improving the property in other ways. By the end of the meeting, we could tell that everyone was feeling very good about the change.

Once the power was back on. I unsurprisingly spent the remainder of the day playing MW2 – when so many of your friends are on at the same time each week, it's great to be able to game with them. I do miss the LAN-party Halo Days we had at Simon's, but this is better in some ways, apart from the need to haul Xboxes, wires, TV's and sundry food supplies over to his place once a week. Yet though I spent the same amount of time back then gaming, my eyes didn't hurt after eight solid hours – I must be getting older, or need to take more breaks.

Also, it was Lucas' birthday today, so I was happy to 'see' him online( and very happy )later in the evening in MW2. One of the things that's been hard about moving out west is not being able to celebrate events like birthdays in person, and sending gifts just isn't my style – I'd rather be there in person. Moreso for the company, less for the beer – but both are good in combination, as well as moderation. So happy birthday, Lucas... one of these days I'll be @ the Kilt at the right time to hoist a cold one to ye.

Monday updates seem to be a trend of late, with my being busy. Or tired. Or something.

Credit, Canvas and Consumerism

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:12:00 +0000

Word of the week? Nihilistic - just try to say it five times fast!

Nov 23 - Cool( or geeky? )news

Some great news from JMS, creator of Babylon5: he's drafting a screenplay to reboot Forbidden Planet, that 1956 scifi classic that laid the foundation for so much of today's works. It's mechanical star, Robby The Robot, came in at Spot #4 on Wired's Top Fifty Robots Of All Time List – not bad for a robot over fifty! JMS is also working on an adaptation of World War Z, which I have yet to pick up. Robots and zombies both – keep it going, JMS!

Even better news: Samurai Jack is becoming a movie! Thanks Brian – can't wait for that to hit the big screen! This link to World of Warcraft papercraft is also cool.

But not as cool as this – too bad it costs so much. And is only available in the USA. Maybe I should wait for the Nerf version and cross-border shop?

Concrete canvas? What the heck is that? Check out these seven amazing materials – you can build a bunker with just a garden hose!

Nov 24 - Sizable ships

As some of you know, I like Free Things – especially games. Which is why I enjoy browsing this massive list of free online games – they bill themselves as the largest list in the world, in fact, but I always take that with a grain of salt. But... yowza... that's a BIG list!

I also like ships... well, more the design aspect than any other. Show me a good comparison chart, and my brain goes all a-whirl. This one is especially cool – the largest ships in the world compared. You'll never guess how much real estate the biggest one on there takes up.

It's been a while since I last checked, but the Earth & Beyond Emulator Project is still going, which is great to see. I still miss that game – there's still no decent scifi MMO out there. Sometimes playing in a beta can be a bad thing, if it doesn't make it to the big time.

Nov 25 - New Landlords

There's been lots of hoopla about the forthcoming 'Smart Grid' from south of border, where energy costs vary by the hour in many a state. I've enjoyed reading about how things are developing, especially in light( pun intended )of the massive summer Blackout of 2003 – cascading failures of 'dumb' power grids, in effect.

If there's one thing I'm terrible at( insert mile-long joke list here )it's making models. I've tried my hand it at over the years, and the results have been... deplorable. The best was a model of Airwolf, and that had a tragic early accident with flammable substances – the world is better off, believe me. The opposite is true of this guy's talent – models are obviously his thing. Nice work!

We've talked to the new owners of the place we're in, and it's like night and day from the old landlord. The people downstairs are moving out by the end of the month, which means the new owners will be renovating the place, adding sound insulation, among other things. So far, I'm impressed with how well they've listened to what we've had to say, as it bodes well for the near future. First thing on the to-do list? Fixing the hottub – they're in my good books already!

Nov 26 - Raising Dead Tech

If you haven't dropped by lately, you should head on over to Instructables.com – you can find instructions for doing almost anything, with pictures! I just found one today about replacing the CMOS battery in the same laptop model as my parent's old unit that's been dead for 2 years now. I'll give it a try after Christmas and see if I can't resurrect the thing as an alternative to taking along my cherished GatewayFX unit – now that it's out of warranty, I don't want to expose it to danger outside the house, at least not on a daily basis. Hence the Dell X50v PDA comes back into the picture as a lovely little handheld media player... must resist .... getting... iPhone...

I've had no reaction to the H1N1 vaccine, which means that within a week I'll have built up enough antibodies to not worry about it anymore. I still have to get my regular flu shot, which I think will be available to the general public in quantity by early December

For now, I am not going to be bidding on Swoopo.ca until the holidays are over as it's getting crazy there. People are bidding incredible amounts in very stupid ways just to get items before Christmas, so I'm bowing out of that irrational game until things calm down in the new year.

Nov 27 - Ready, Set... Consume!

Today is Black Friday in the USA, the day when most companies' accounts go from the red into the black – hence the name. It's become an important economic indicator for the holiday season, rising in importance year after year for the last decade. This year, NPD Group released their first-ever study that gathered Black Friday results – take a look, and you may plan a cross-border trip next year.!

How many credit cards should you have? I was surprised at the answer here – given that most people have at least two, and some far more than that, you may be surprised too.

Work today was a busy, busy time – the evenings are MUCH busier now due to changes with our payday product. That's good in some ways, bad in others, and I'm hoping it means that we'll be getting busier over the next while. My schedule for December is rather full, and I'm sure the workload isn't going to lighten up anytime soon.

Nov 28 - Um, is that spam?

I like a good pancake, especially with a snack-size cup of apple sauce mixed in – yum! Some people take making pancakes to the next level though, creating works of art from the simple combination of batter and a frying pan. Check some of them out here – now that is good eating!

New Year's Eve is almost upon us, and before that we have the many, many gatherings of friends, family and co-workers at holiday parties ad nauseum. Which is why you should have iDrink.com bookmarked, as it will let you enter the ingredients you have on hand to instantly list every possible drink you can create from said bar stock. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?

Well, that was effective – I sent off an email today to an e-commerce site informing them that their database had been compromised by a hacker. My mother received an email purporting to be from Scotiabank, but the html link led back to the e-commerce site. Wouldn't you know that an hour after I sent the email this morning, the site was offline, and still is 24 hours later?

Nov 29 - Birthday 4 Dad

It was my dad's birthday today, and I managed to surprise him with a new PS2 Slim: that thing is just tiny compared to the original! He was thrilled, and I've added a wireless controller so he can sit back and relax on the couch whilst gaming. We went out to celebrate by having lunch at the local WhiteSpot, which was excellent save for a very soupy chicken/broccoli/cheese dish I ordered. Apparently the blanched broocoli was too watery and the chef couldn't do anything, so I packed it up for some tweaking at home later, as it was otherwise delicious. We had a nice time there, helped by the very attentive waitress Larissa - we just won't order the broccoli when we come back next time.

Today was a decent MW2 day, with a 14-2 kill streak as a result of not moving around too much and staying stealthy. Seems to work, and I enjoy that aspect of the game far more than the run-and-gun-and-die-quickly style. I'm used to playing with a mouse( or trackball )and I just can't fine-tune the Xbox controller to dial in the shots.

I'm feeling a lot less stressed this week, which is good in many ways. The knots in my back have loosened their grip for the most part, enough so that I've gotten though the last few days without having to resort to calling on massage therapy. I also found that I've lost about 10 pounds in the last few months, which is not a good thing. I don't weigh myself all that often, so it was a bit of a shock to see where I'm at – I can only surmise the stress has been taking its toll, as I've not been feeling unwell otherwise, getting my exercise, etc.

Ah, television... it can display so many things, and what better to cheer oneself with on long winter nights than a holiday fireplace? Shaw's ch.17 is carrying the warm, flickering image of fireplace flames 24/7, which I have to say looks great on the big screen. For added authenticity, you can plunk down a small space heater in front of the TV to toast your toes to the crackle of the logs. Sweet! Now I can write up my Christmas list and mail it off to Santa in a bacon-flavoured envelope... ah, good times.

The rain here is tapering off for this week, according to forecasts – we'll see how right the weatherfolk are by week's end: sun or scudding cloud?

Games, Geeks and Guns

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Thanks for the editing tips Lucas! The word of the week is 'observant' just for that!

Nov 16 - Castle Battles

Yes, I know... I mentioned it last week, and I'll plug it good here again: Go watch Duncebucket, and vote! Crazy, crude and creepy all at the same time, this is comedic fun at the frenzied level of Jim Carey just after he's downed a dozen Super Slurpees and a package of PopRocks. Zowee!!!

I'm also watching Castle on Monday nights, which has Nathan Fillion at his best with a great dynamic playing off the other cast. Quite a few people like it, which is good to see as it means there may even be a third season after this one's done it's run.

Ah, Gratuitous Space Battles... how you taunt me. I've managed to win most of the battles on all three levels of difficulty, but I keep going back with new designs to see if I can do better. Plus, there's quite a few people on the GSB Forums who are modding the game, adding improvements to it and even creating total conversions to make it possible to battle with ships from the Stargate or Babylon 5. Check out this great( and brief )video review of GSB here – it's now available as of today on the Steam Network, from the same folks who brought us great games like Defence Grid and of course, Half-Life. Valve, we luv ya! I have yet to try the multiplayer aspect, as I want to tune some of my designs still...

Shhh.... I'm going to tell you a secret about online gaming, one that seems to be most prevalent in the massively popular shooter games like MW2: racism, predudice and worse. As the article link will tell you, if you've played online long enough, chances are you've experienced it firsthand. People are very quick to become emotional over voice chat, far more so than they would when face to face... and it's far easier for people to be nasty when hiding behind a video screen-name. I'm not talking about the squeaky-voiced teenager who disses yer' mama or calls you names that wouldn't make a nun blush; no, it's the hardcore jerks, whose foul mouths spout racist epithets like there's no tomorrow. Sure, you can mute them, report them and the like... but does that really solve the problem? How little effort does it take to be courteous to people, to have a modicum of sportsmanship or even just respect for other people? I find it fascinating that if you give some people the chance to be anonymous, it brings out the worst parts of their nature, rather quickly. Mayhaps it is a sign that the nEt PoLiCe are not all that far away from becoming reality; the thin edge is how it begins.

Nov 17 - What the frell were they thinking?

Hooray! Today is the day that Farscape: The Complete Series Megaset is released! For years I've had to content myself with the shows I've managed to hoard on VHS or my PC taped from on-air broadcasts, but no longer. I'll be watching for the series to come on sale in the new year, as I have a thing about rushing out to buy things, even things I really like, at full price right off the bat. Future Shop's "Get it First" slogan is an anathema to me, as I've come to like the "Get it for a bargain price" a lot more.

Speaking of cool TV series, I watched my first episode of the new 'V' series tonight, which stars Morena Baccarin of Firefly fame. The show had some interesting vibes to it, and the tech was definitely more 'real ' in its look, rather than the sanitized look of the 80's original. I still have all the novels I collected from the same time period, and just found out that there's a few more out there that I wasn't aware of. Time for a 'net search and a bit of eBay checking, I think.

I went into the BCAA for my local merchant meeting tonight, which was fairly well attended. It was a lively meeting too, with quite a few ideas flying around about how to make the open-air shopping centre more attractive to shoppers for the holidays. I'm really enjoying meeting with the other merchants in the plaza, as they're all very savvy folks and have quite a lot to share about the business world. Sure beats some of the dull reading I've done over the years from business texts – doing my research on various topics that way was like trying a game demo: great start, but I was left wanting more.

Nov 18 - Google gathering

I have a thing for bunkers, perhaps due to my love of all things apocalyptic. Which is why when I heard about the city-sized superbunker that Chairman Mao built under the city of Beijing starting back in 1969, I was intrigued. Check out some of the pictures here – there's not much left in use now, but just imagine the effort of housing nearly six million people underground . Also be sure to check out this great series of disaster-inspired works of art here – the artist has quite a range of topics, all of them rather spooky.

Did you know that Google Books is back on track? They've drafted a new version of their copyright agreement with various trade associations of publishers and authors. It's interesting in that it deals with orphan works, which include books that are out of print and whose authors are dead, leaving them in limbo. But until Google takes over the publishing world, you can get a free book fix at the places on this list of free online book resources, including Tor and Baen Books, two of my fave publishing houses.

One book I still have to get around to er, getting is the latest Robert Jordan novel, The Gathering Storm which was written by Brandon Sanderson based on the huge amount of material left by the late author. As it's the first of three parts, there's still quite a lot of reading ahead... and I hope they tie up the thousands of loose threads that Jordan's world ballooned into. Too... many... characters! To Jordan's credit, most of them were quite distinct and fairly memorable, but the sheer number made recalling who was doing what and when rather onerous. Anything over two dozen and they starts to blur...

As for my own work, here's a link to a few of the short stories I've written, at the archives over at FanFiction.com. For those who haven't been to my Nichneve n site either, there's quite a few stories with her character there too. I don't like to post all my stories "in the wild" as there's too many Copy/Paste Bandits out there, but what's there is more than enough for me to say I have a presence online.

Nov 19 - Thursdaze

Looks like the Christmas shopping season is starting off with a whimper, not a bang. Hence the news that retailers are chalking up deep discounts already in the hope of luring in shoppers. Not me though; I have a solid Shopping Season Rule: I do not set foot in any shopping mall after Dec. 1^st. I'll pop into the big bo retailers or the local plaza, but no incentive could lure me into the crazed insanity and parking lot mayhem that is a shopping mall in December. I remember driving by the Pen Centre some years ago about a week before Christmas, heading northbound on the 406 – the cars were lined up back onto the 406 southbound, past the train bridge overpass to exit at the mall. That's just crazy!!

Tonight I saw an episode of Flash Forward finally, and it wasn't bad. I'll have to catch up with the series as I can over the next few months, as the concept is rather intriguing: everyone in the world blacks out for 2 mins 17 seconds. When they wake up, they've had a vision of their future for that same amount of time. I had high hopes for Heroes too, but that show really jumped the shark and got away from it's original concept: ordinary people gaining superpowers and trying to discover why.

I'm a little put out that I haven't been able to fix my Vonage phone after rewiring my network a few weeks ago. It's a case of fix one thing and another breaks - my Xbox Live and the wireless connections are all working great, but not the my Vonage: there's no dial tone. When I get a chance next week I may phone tech support, though I doubt there's much they can do over the phone. Most places won't support home network troubleshooting, as there's too many variables and network techs don't come cheap.

Nov 20 - I Got The Shot

I was at the local flu clinic first thing this morning to get my H1N1 shot, as today was the first day they opened the immunizations to the general public without restriction here in BC. It was a surprisingly short wait, with only a few hundred people in total to be processed. I was in and out within half an hour, a far cry from the hours-long wait I had predicted – nice to be wrong in the right way sometimes.

It's also a good thing that I live in the southernmost part of Vancouver Island, as the heavy rains for the last 24 hours have caused severe flooding just an hour north of here. The cities of Duncan and North Cowichan were declared disaster areas today, as hundreds were evacuated in the wake of the rising waters compounded by the local tides backing up rivers. While not a disaster on a massive scale like New Orleans and Katrina was, it is still scary to think that here I sit, watching the lake waters rise to entirely cover the dock in the park next door and that only a few minutes north, people have had their homes flooded out. For an island about the size of Holland, it's surprisingly small some days.

The evening saw me play a fair bit of Borderlands, which I'd put down this week in favour of MW2 – obviously. I've yet to play co-operatively with anyone for any period of time, which is where a lot of the fun of the game is said to reside.

Nov 21 - Smatterday

Video on demand these days is still not up to snuff; I've tried out the Zune service on Xbox Live, and the bargain hunter in me cringes to 'rent' a movie for close to ten dollars, especially as the video quality is not consistent. While Zune boasts of having '1080p content' it tends to stagger, go jaggy or pause at times, which is in no way superior to a DVD. I'm the first person to propose going totally digital and to scrap the need to physically load media, but I'd much rather see things go onto a 'Home Media Server' than stream over flaky connections from a server thousands of miles away. I've got a fair number of network drives here already, albeit still without having a dedicated PC server to run them, so it's a little ad-hoc of a setup for the moment. But it's still better than Zune in 2 ways: it's free, and it works perfectly.

One show I may pick up on DVD is Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law. It's got rapid-fire quips and jokes, with a great retro visual style. I like a show that doesn't lead you by the hand, and the advantage of DVD( or video on demand! )is that you can go back with that PVR and catch the quip you thought you heard but weren't sure about. Sure beats rewinding the VHS tape until it snaps. By then I'll have probably turned my old PC into a media server thanks to guides like this. Sweet!

After work, the evening saw me play a fair bit of Borderlands, which I'd put down this week in favour of MW2 – obviously. I've yet to play co-operatively with anyone for any period of time, which is where a lot of the fun of the game is said to reside.

Nov 22 - Online Day Off

While I was at Best Buy this morning to get a copy of Left4Dead2, I also managed to finally pick up SG: Atlantis Season 5, which I've been waiting a year now to drop in price enough to be worth it. I'm pleased to see that the show made it to five seasons, and I'll have to try to check out the new Stargate: Universe that's currently playing on the airwaves in the USA. Apparently it's quite a dark show, but it's been having writing problems that see it's episodes yo-yo-ing from great to garbage. Find the middle!

How smart is a cat? Apparently researchers have created a computer model of a cat brain in order to better study how living creatures deal with reality, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Though I could have given them a few pointers: just have it ignore you when you call, sleep a lot, and scratch the furniture at every opportunity.

I played a fair bit of MW2 today until the early evening, and it wasn't half bad. We had a group of five or six for most of the day, as guys left or arrived and our overall game was pretty good. I managed to rack up a score of 15 kills one game, which is a fair bit for me – must mean I'm getting the hang of things at the faster pace the game goes at compared to COD4. I've found that I do better sneaking from cover to cover and keeping low, as it means more folk pass me by or miss me long enough to let me get in a shot.

Gold prices topped $1173.00 today on Nov. 23, which is good for many reasons. Too bad I don't have any hiding in my couch...

Rain, Pain and Gain

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:44:00 +0000

This week's word: exacerbate. Try to spell it, use it AND pronounce it properly!

Nov 9 - It's in the blood...

No good news in sight for H1N1: no signs that things have peaked yet. So we're still in the running for one of the more difficult flu seasons yet.

While I was at my doctor's today for a general check-up( all is well internally, by the by, though we're still working on the nausea thing )we also talked about my Thalassemia Minor. As I've yet to have any of my doctors give me a solid rundown on do's and don'ts, I have hopes that my current doctor is made of better mettle. I've done a lot of research over the years, and I have to say that the internet has allowed sufferers of all sorts of maladies the ability to connect and share their experiences far more easily. I've stumbled across quite a few forums in the last few years dedicated to Thalassemia, and I've learned a few things I'd not known before from browsing the posts. Interestingly, I discovered that people with the disorder are immune to malaria, which is perhaps a by-product of it being a Mediterranean-based disease. Neat, and more to learn as I go along.

Nov 10 - Toon Progress!

What the heck is Duncebucket, you ask? It's a show on TeleToon, one that my friends Brian and Mike put together – how cool is that? Go have a look, and if you can figure out how to vote on TeleToon.com drop me a line – I just keep going in circles.

The Grey Season is well underway here in B.C. with large grey cloudbanks playing tag across the sky night and day. Unlike in ON, the clouds here in the West come and go, with the sun making an almost daily appearance most weeks – sometimes for hours at a time! The rain is gentle, generally falling from above as though reluctantly parting from the great wide open. It rarely pours or pounds it's way down, which is remarkable; I've yet to be caught in a rainstorm here that the flick of an umbrella won't solve in a steady hand – rare is the gusty day here to whisk said umbrella away.

It's been hard to focus at work this week, as my back's been knotting up – from stress, I believe. Once I dig up the benefits booklet I'll be able to confirm that massage therapy is covered, and then I'll be a happier camper. For now my back massager is letting me sleep at night, but it's a daily thing. I'm sure a few of you can relate.

Oh, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out at midnight tonight. Lots of people went out to get it, mine's in the mail... so I get a good night's sleep( -ish )whilst others play.

Nov 11 - 60 Seconds

Remembrance Day – one minute of your year to remember, is it too much to ask? I've hear comments from people that they are "sick of seeing WWII specials" and other such drek. I'll also not repeat my own rebuttals, save that if WWII had gone the other way, we'd all be in a much different world. One minute: not too much to ask. Not at all.

On a lighter point, here's a different flash from the( more recent )past: Clash of the Titans is being remade! Check out the trailer here – lots of boom, but where is Bubo the Owl?

One reason I've never bothered with a wireless connection for the Xbox is the cost, with Microsoft never budging an inch on the $129.99 pricetag. Now, news has come that the new 'N' speed adaptor is here, which has finally lowered the price on the old adaptors. Who's going to want them though, as most people HAVE the 'N' routers by now? Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.

Today I watched other people play MW2 online all day, and wasn't bothered much. I didn't feel the burning need to be among the first to get the game, as that feeling passes soon enough once you begin playing.

Nov 12 - Fry who?

Ah, Futurama: the show with a fan following that won't die. Which is good, as it got the show renewed recently! Message boards like this one show how intelligent, chatty and fun fans can be.

Ever since seeing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I've always felt the urge to stay until the movie's final post credits are run – just in case there's something 'after' tucked in there! Much like the often lively end credits of The Simpsons TV series, more and more shows and movies these days have extras tucked in. Plus with the advent of the DVD, 'extras' take on the form of easter eggs beyond the regular trappings usually packed onto the disc. Even games are part and parcel of the fold now, including MW2. A good place to check out if your fave media has anything hidden in it is WhatsAfterTheCredits.com.

Not much else going on here. Work, sleep, eat and repeat seems the order of the day of late. I'm keeping the lights on and the bills paid, so aside from that it's status quo for the most part. I am worried about the new owners of the place, as we've had little contact and it's only a few weeks until the end of the month. Who gets paid the rent, and when, still have yet to be revealed...

Nov 13 - Lucky

Has anyone seen The Navigator? It came out in 1988, and is rated rather highly over at RottenTomatoes.com.

Today was lucky Friday the 13^th for me, as my copy of MW2 arrived in the mail. I wasted no time when getting home from work in unpacking it and popping it into the Xbox. There went the evening, revelling in the glorious gameplay... which seems to be geared to dying a LOT faster than in the COD4. More later – have to play now.

Unlucky for Microsoft today: an article on C|net today broke the news that hackers have managed to bypass the Windows7 activation system. This should come as no surprise to people these days, as it seems the pirates and hackers have the upper hand compared to business. Bummer.

Thank goodness I don't suffer from Paraskevidekatriaphobia! Maybe Bruce Springsteen suffers from this malady? He had a rather oops-worthy slip today...

Nov 14 - Bravo, Kim!

A friend of mine was featured on Bravo! tonight: Kim Van Stygeren Medland, whose artwork is becoming known worldwide. Plus she also has a few videos on YouTube, which I hadn't known about until Lucas told me about her Bravo debut. Kim's website is well worth checking out too – lots of great art and articles there!

What the heck is this? A Guide to Appearing More Attractive? Where do people come up with these things? I like the Roomba Pac-Man video on the same site though!

Today was split between games: MW2 and Borderlands. That about covers things for the day, timewise – great for stress relief. Also happily I managed to reconnect with a few of my online NWN friends, whom I had not managed to talk to for some weeks( and in one case, months )due to all of us being busy. Tonight the stars were aligned, or something, for everyone kept popping in and out of MSN. It was great to catch up in real-time, something that email just can't manage to capture.

Nov 15 - MW2, pretty much.

The hours spent playing MW2 today were amazingly fun, even though our team struggled to make even a few wins. The maps in MW2 are huge and varied, so much so that just finding the other team can be a challenge, and sticking close while supporting your teammates just as difficult. There is a larger variety of maps and environments, as well as a greater degree of game types. And the massive number of perks, weapons and other unlockables shows that the design team put a lot of effort into the playability and flexibility of the game. From what I can see, the long-term prospects of MW2 will hold it in good stead... as long as the patches for the little technical glitches keep coming down the pipe quickly.

Later in the evening, I had a soak in the hottub which had been heating all day. It did my back some good, relaxing in the steamy waters. Unfortunately it looks like a valve has cracked, and the landlord has stated that since our use of the tub was 'optional' in the lease, she's not going to fix it. Which only confirms that she's a rotten human being, and that quite a few nasty euphamisms I have thought up apply quite aptly to her. Dealing with people whose moral and personal goals are so divergent from my own makes me see red, in only that for the most part these same people end up with a disproportionate amount of the wealth and power in society. How does one live a 'good life' knowing that the rewards are few and intangible?

Oh, that's right – become a monk. How could I have forgotten from my D&D days...

That's it - I'm feeling tired, grumpy and stressed this week so I've been hard-pressed to do naught but talk about such in the blog. Next week I'll have had more time under my sunlamp...

Gunpowder, Google and Godzilla

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:09:00 +0000

The clocks are back, the sun is less apparent and the winter blahs begin...

Nov 2 – Flu Terminations

Here’s a good opener: it seems the Terminator franchise is in trouble... and Joss Whedon is offering to save it! How wow would that be? Terminators... Buffy... Serenity... all in one mind. Mind you, since the owner Halcyon Entertainment wants $60-million for it, Whedon’s $11K offer is a little... low.

Now this is a scary thought: the internet we all know and love, brought down by the flu bug? I'm serious. The internet, which was designed to survive even a limited nuclear exchange( if there can ever be such a thing )intact, may be humbled by massive numbers of flu victims. Weird!

Why do banks need assets? Have a look at that link, there are some very interesting points. Especially in the light of the recent upswing of the gold market, which has led some to speculate that economies may swing back towards a gold standard. Which would be the wrong thing to do in today's world. There’s an interesting video over at IOUSAtheMovie.com, which is 30 minutes of great insight and hard questions about the current economic crisis. Well worth watching!

Nov 3 - Zombies vs Godzilla

At last! Someone at Forbes.com, of all places, has hit the nail on the head: Zombies are (North)America's Godzilla! Incredibly, we may share a social bug with the Japanese, who are crazed about all things to do with the giant atomic lizard. Really cool, and it explains a lot.

Is anyone out there even a little excited about the upcoming MMO Star Trek: Online? I’m not a fan, though I do like some aspects of Trek, but we’ll see how long the franchise can keep going after the Feb 2010 launch date for ST:O – monthly subscriptions are what it’s all about, and I’m not sure that one can keep up an ‘authentic’ Star Trek experience online for very long. I mean, how often can you chase down Tribbles or phaser a few Klingons before it gets old?

With MMO’s, you’re also lacking physical human contact – much like those who play WOW too much and never leave their house, or in years past they played ‘EverCrack’ too much. Now along comes ‘Funktionide’ to take care of that missing human contact... with a computerized huggable white blob. Shades of The Prisoner, anyone? Creepy!

Nov 4 - Character

I’ve discovered the BBC remake series Survivors on BBCCA channel here, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a series about a post-apocalyptic world where a virus kills millions, leaving survivors scattered around the world. Nice idea for human drama. On the other hand, it’s your typical low-budget BBC drama, with shiny-clean homes and vehicles looking out of place in a world gone crazy. At least there’s been a few good TV series and movies on the topic – this list showcases some of the better ones, including The Stand from a few years ago – the literal Hand Of God notwithstanding. I much prefer to browse this massive list of movies dealing with the end of the world – it has reviews attached, always a good thing! I just wish I could recall the name of the miniseries from the 80’s that BBC had, it had the most depressing ending I’ve ever seen, and that’s all that stuck with me. More on that next week, if I can find it!

As a writer, designing characters can be a task sometimes, especially making them both memorable and unique. When working with just the written word, you have to keep every aspect of a character in mind, especially the way they speak. With dialogue being a weak part of my portfolio, I was thrilled to find this article on io9.com about how to give your characters unique voices.

I had my usual 6-month dental appointment this morning, with a new hygienist... who was old-school, and never stopped talking during the entire 45-minute checkup. Which wasn’t so bad, as I learned a few things that hadn’t been brought to my attention in all the past years of visits. She also gave me some cool dental floss( yes, I just said that... )which is made out of GoreTex, allowing it to be a flat, tape-like strip that fits better for people with tight teeth like myself.

Nov 5 – Gunpowder and Google

“Remember, remember, the 5^th of November...” begins the famous rhyme, which saw Guy Fawkes and his treason immortalized in infamy on this day, for over 3400 years now – a remarkable thing to celebrate for such a long period of time. I meant to watch my HD copy of V for Vendetta today, but I was too busy in the evening playing Borderlands to remember, it arrived today in the mail. Oops...

For almost 8 years now, I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. I mention this because I've used quite a few email programs as they came onto the scene, but once I had Thunderbird in my hands I never looked back. This month should see the release of Thunderbird 3, which has a few features I am excited to use, including an improved search function. I don’t like entrusting my email to servers outside of my control, hence my great attachment( heh )to Thunderbird.

On that same topic of software, C|Net has a great article today: 7 Great Freeware Utilities. They have a few of my faves in there, like CCleaner, as well as 7zip - who needs WinZip any more? I’m all about the freeware, as most of you will know by now... my experience with buggy, PAID software has somewhat soured me on utilities in general. Games are another matter... patches for those are inevitable, but they won’t usually kill your PC if they muck up.

Big Brother is out there.... and it's name is Google. But he's friendly! Google today announced public access to the Google Dashboard, where you can look at all the information that the massive info conglomerate has gathered on you. Scary?

Nov 6 – Aim for the sky!

Whoa... how big is the biggest picture of the sky that’s out there, do you think? 100 megapixels? 500? Nope – try a 648 megapixel one on for size! The work of years, this thing is amazing... which means that any current video monitor cannot do it justice. Still, nice to be able to see the entire sky at once, as well as have the data for use by various scientific projects the world over. And it’d make a killer t-shirt!

How about a spot of afternoon tea on a lovely Saturday? Why not serve it in a really cool-looking teapot? My fave is the Sorapot, it's rather chic. Though I wonder: does anyone have a list of teapots that don't dribble when you pour? Anyone?

Maybe take that spot of tea... in space? It was announced today that the first space hotel is on track to open in 2012. For only $200K US a pop, you can spend a few days in a cramped rocket and a cramped, no-frills pod in orbit. Thanks, but I’ll wait for the first Super8 to open up there before I book my ticket – right after my lottery win, that is.

In the evening, I watched Bender’s Game, the Futurama movie about RPG’s that has a lot of Gary Gygax references alluded to in the movie. Seems the creators of Futurama are long-time D&D players, which makes me like them all the more. Smart folks, they be – verily!

Nov 7 - Scatterday

Ah, the Seventh Day.... actually, over a week now since I’ve been using Windows 7. So far, it’s been a fun experience, though some things aren’t working perfectly – hence my need to get the ‘XP Mode’ up and running in the new year. Hopefully, the new processor won’t strain my laptop with too much heat – the FX is designed to be a gaming laptop, so with proper cooling it should be able to keep things within tolerances.

Boy, did it rain here today. When it rains in BC, it really rains – a lot like Florida in that regard, but more frequent and with better breaks. Unlike rain in Ontario which can last for a week or longer before the sun shines, BC can go from rain, to sun, to rain again here on Vancouver Island several times an hour. Which is hell on drivers, as the sun is blinding on wet roads.

Better that than snow, though. We’ll see how much we get here in Langford in the West Shore; we’re not in Victoria itself, where snow is very rare and magically disappears the next day. Here, it may stay a while, but that’s still fine in small quantities – I don’t plan on any snow days outside.

So I’m happy I didn’t have to work today – I needed the decompression time, and thankfully I had a brand-spanking-new copy of Borderlands to play with. I spent a good part of the day checking the game out, taking breaks to get a few things done around the house. It was a good day to relax, and I even managed to fit in the rare afternoon nap, despite the noise of the rain as it waxed and waned. It was... nice.

Nov 8 – Not-so-Sun-day

After a few unsuccessful auction attempts on Swoopo, I gave up and made myself a pancake breakfast before diving into playing Borderlands. The rich visuals are lovely to watch, the gameplay is simple and there is a ton to do and see. I actually had to tear myself away from it in the early afternoon to take a break. It’s odd too, in that three great games are all coming out within the space of the last few weeks: Borderlands first, then Dragon Age last week and COD: MW2 on Nov. 10^th – this Tuesday!

A few hours of COD4 showed that my successes in Borderlands had not translated to online play, where the human opponents don’t stay in the same spot... or shoot you from across the map with a pistol. Or knife you from behind. Or get you with a randomly-tossed grenade... you get the picture. While AI opponents may make you grind your teeth sometimes with the “That’s not fair!” caught in your throat, it will always be the human opponent who makes you really howl and throw things. Some things never change, really.

I've edited this week's blog post with MS Word 2007, as I've managed to get the blog posting function working. The text seems a little large and the spacing's off, but I'll work on that for next week. Ta'!

Paper, Plagues and Puns

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:56:00 +0000

And the word of the week is: jackass. Glad I could help educate! ;-)

Oct 26 - Monday Madness

Ah, boardgames - they're becoming a somewhat lost pasttime, what with the advent of home video game systems. Remember the classics you played as a kid, and perhaps still do? Well, here's a twist on some of those games: the original box art, with the titles changed to perfectly sum up the game in only a few words. I think the one at the end for the game of 'Diplomacy' is totally apt...

Ye gods! What are people thinking when it comes to custom collectables these days? I like a good sci-fi spaceship model as much as the next person, even moreso when it is one of Serenity.... but this takes the cake! Who out there can even afford one of those things?

Work today saw us launch a new payday loan product, which has been a pain to prepare for. Overall, I think it's a good thing for the business as it levels the playing field for everyone in the business, but the transition is going to be a bumpy one for a little while. Which means longer hours and more stress at work - what else is new? I don't find it depressing though: I'm too tired.

Oct 27 - Windows 7 arrives!

Guess what arrived in the mail today? Windows 7! Considering I was expecting it by Friday at the earliest, I was thrilled - as today was my day off, I spent most of the afternoon and evening getting it installed on my laptop. It went really, really smoothly - the most time spent was copying files and re-installing programs after Win7 was done. Which highlights the need for a fast file system not hampered by slow wireless speeds or sluggish USB cords - next on my upgrade list is an eSATA drive and connector card, both of which I should be able to get on the cheap nowadays from various sources, being fairly common current tech out there. I hate waiting... for... things... to... copy!

So far, it's been a joy to use. My laptop performs like it should have back when I first bought it with Vista on it: fast, responsive and zippy! My 'Windows Experience' scores have all gone up by a point each, which means that the new Win7 OS is a LOT faster than Vista ever was - it's what Vista should have been, instead of ending up as a bloated design made by committee.

And: what would be a blog post without some mention of Neil Gaiman? How about this for a change: an audiobook of Good Omens by Mr. Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - for free! Go have a listen, and try not to let the narrator's voice pull you under, never to return....

Which brings me to some JMS( J. Michael Straczynski )news: the creator of Babylon 5 is currently involved in adapting a video game about a future civil war in the United States - how cool is that? Shattered Union sounds like it will be quite the commentary about life in the near future, probably with a healthy dose of commentary on the human condition and politics tossed in, if JMS is true to form. Can't wait to find out more about this update to an old classic game!

Oct 28 - Paper and People

Now THIS is just incredible: an entire miniature city... made out of paper! Turns out it is the work of an art student in Tokyo, which is just incredible - it has electric lights and even a working train built-in!

I picked up a book called Plague Year a while back, which was a good yarn about what might happen should nanotech get loose in the world and wreak it's sub-micronic havoc on people and living things. Jeff Carlson, he author of the book, posted a great article on io9.com on why he likes to write about things apocalyptic, which I found really good reading - it's all about the human condition and what we make of it. Which brings Tolkien to mind: he recently made the Forbes List of Richest Dead Celebs - though if you're dead, it's probably no biggie as you're beyond caring. But if it's nice to be remembered, is it even better to be rich on paper too?

What's with Stoked on iTunes? I've been waiting... and waiting... and waiting for the newer episodes to come out( hurry up, Apple! )as I've purchased the entire first season - nada. Two episodes, then nothing since. What gives?

Oct 29 - How DID I get so punny?

Of late, I have been giving thought as to where my... eclectic... sense of humour arose from. After extensive thought, familial interviews and some lengthly research, I believe I have come to a conclusive origin: Asterix.

Filled with puns, satire and running gags along with stereotypes and allusions, the books are a joy to read for someone like myself... which begs the question of the chicken and the egg, really.

Seeing as today also happens to be the 50th anniversary of Asterix & Obelix, there's got to be some conspiracy or collusion at work here. The tales of the indomitable Gauls holding out against the Roman invaders captivated me as a child, especially as the stories unfolded with each new book purchased from trips to the Big City of Toronto. Classic Bookshop( now long gone )at the Eaton Centre was the source for many of my still-immaculate copies of Asterix & Obelix. As shown by the Google banner above, there are many millions of people out there who have come to love the characters created a half century ago, myself among them. Without Asterix, I don't think my sense of humour would have been nearly as sharp, and I recommend to anyone that they read a few of the Asterix books - you'll laugh out loud and always find something new that you didn't notice before. They're that good.

Also make sure you check out the November Guide to SciFi, courtesy of our friends at io9.com - lots of good things to check out.

Oct 30 - Torches and Borderlands

This morning was a busy one: I was in Victoria early today, down by the Parliment buildings to watch the lighting of the Olympic Torch... as well as hand out freebies from work in the crowd, which was as good an excuse as any to be there. The rain held off, which was great for the crowd that had gathered - you can get a sense of it all in this video here, except for the ten minutes it took to actually light the torch. Seems the flame burns continually, but not hot enough to ignite a stubborn transfer cauldron. Go figure... plus, the extreme low-altitude flight of 3 CF-18 Hornets woke up the entire city - I've never seen an entire street full of people clap their hands to their ears so fast in unison!

And YAY ME! In the interim from returning from Victoria and heading to work, I managed to win a Swoopo auction, in only 4 bids! Instead of paying $69.99 for the hot Xbox game Borderlands( which is sold out everywhere here ), I got it for... $3.24. Yep... total of just $10.22 with taxes and shipping. I'll be checking the mail all next week for it! Huzzah! Too bad it takes far more effort( and deep pockets )to win auctions most of the time on that site - when people start to bid-fight, I sit back and usually just walk away, not worth the pain to my wallet. Timing is everything!

Have you ever had the feeling when watching a TV show or movie, that you've seen someone from it before, somewhere else? IMDB.com is a great place to search for links between shows for actors, and this week I came up with a find linking The Fifth Element and new new Star Trek reboot: Sonita Henry. I suppose if you watch something often enough, eventually your subconscious brain starts to put things together and you notice details, like noticing a particular model of car that you like and suddenly picking it out of the background of vehicles passing you by in a day. In Sonita's case, her exotic looks apparently lent themselves to making her look particularly alien in Star Trek...

Has it really been 30 years since Mad Max first hit the big screen in a blast of blaring horns and burning rubber? For those fans who still watch Max take on post-apocolyptic punks, some good news: Max Max 4 is in production!

Oct 31 - Tricky Treats!

Costumes... there's something about dressing up as What You Aren't that is key to the appeal of Halloween, I think. Much like the rise of Cosplay in recent years, being able to go out on the town in a skin other than your own is very liberating. Plus, it's just plain fun - especially when you see all the creativity that's gone into people's costumes! This year however, I did not go out, as all my plans fell through... and I didn't feel like being a lone barfly all dressed up with nobody to talk to.

One costume meme that I hope never dies out is from Return of the Jedi: what else but the Slave Leia outfit? It's been twenty years, but every year there are still a bountiful number of Leia's out here in bikinis, searching for their Jabba to deal with. What's not to like?

And what the heck? I had no idea that the economic crisis had hit Iceland so hard - apparently today was the last day to get a Big Mac there, as every McDonald's in the country is closing up shop! Whoulda thunkit? Not that I mourn the loss, as I've not eaten at a McD's in over a decade now... makes my stomach turn just to think about it, really.

Nov 1 - Two Years already? Wow...

Oh, the humanity! It seems half the Island was in my lobby today as I worked at our Colwood branch. I spent the entire 7 hours we were open standing at the counter, serving people as fast as I could... because MORE were piling through the door. By the end of the insanity, I had averaged one customer every 3.5 minutes, with no break, no lunch and no energy - I was totally knacked by day's end and had to spend even more time putting things in order. I can honestly say that it was the hardest shift since I started working here, especially since it was just me there -even the SA days were more bearable with a few co-workers to allow breaks every few hours. But I don't think anyone else there could have handled it, so that's a feather in my cap... but I do NOT want to do that again ANY time soon! Gawds...

Today marks two years that I've been living in Victoria. No pithy words today, not fond reminisences about Niagara shall you find in today's entry: I'm here to stay, barring lottery wins - even then I may simply get a nice cozy place here on the Island. As I wrote on this day last year, it's been different and though I am currently not in a place of my own, I don't see that situation lasting longer than the current economic crisis - when things start moving again, I will too. For now, I have my hands more than full dealing with incredible work stress, family stress and financial stress... I'm finding new depths of willpower to deal with such, but it's wearing. Having friends around to relax with would be fantastic, but right now the closest I get to that are COD4 days online... shooter games are VERY good for stress relief!

I do get this a lot: "Move back to Niagara..." people say to me. Right now, that's not in the cards, though from what I'm reading apartments are getting bigger, while houses are getting smaller - check it out here. Smaller IS better!

Overall, I think the choice to move to Victoria has been the right one for me despite some unforseen bumps along the way - which is almost always the case anyway.

Well, it's actually Tuesday AM now, but the blog's done and I'm a-bed. Cyas!

And now...

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:43:00 +0000

Totally exhausted - blog update will be late Monday night. Welcome to November: Xmas Shopping Season.

Costumes, Collectables and Close Calls

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:44:00 +0000

What is a famous split infinitive?

Oct 19 - Neverwhere, not Never-When!

Can you juggle? If you can, your brain may have been.... rewired. Take a look here to find out more... cool stuff.

Today I had a bit of 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' while watching TV... leading me from Heath Ledger's A Knight's Tale all the way to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere! As it turns out, the blacksmith 'Kate' in the film on TV tonight is one Laura Fraser, whom I always liked in the film. Checking things on IMDB.com, I discovered that she had also starred in the BBC production of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere way back in 1996, which I've since discovered on YouTube.com ... amazing!

I've started to turn on a sunlamp that I bought a few years ago, to better keep my energy levels up in the darker winter months. I'm only using it during 'regular' daylight hours, and I hope that after a few weeks I'll be less tired early in the evenings than I am. According to my doctor and a few sources, a few hours of light therapy a day should do the trick.

Oct 20 - Audio Books

Brian sent me a link today to an audio novel of note: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. I enjoyed it immensely, for quite a few reasons - not the least of which is that it has given me ideas about how to release my own work into the wide world. It is similar to the author's current work-in-progress, a novel based on pledges from the world at large - you can check it out here. Looks like it may be the wave of the future for publishing: find someone you like as a writer, and pay them to write a book for you. Nice idea, eh? There's a lot more to discover at Audible.com... thanks again, Brian!

Though my skill resides more towards the written art forms, I have to say I really, really wish I could carve pumpkins like these guys. Wow!!!

Today was frustrating in some ways, annoying in others and only occasionally relaxing. I spent the morning trying to win a few things on Swoopo, but apparently a lot of other people with today off were also interested in the items I wanted, so nothing jelled - but I didn't lose more than a few dollars, as it was so very crowded. The afternoon was spent trying to get my Xbox Live account to work properly: the Xbox360 just doesn't want to connect in less than ten tries on a good day. I've discovered that if I 'Test Connection' then go back to the login screen, it sometimes works more quickly. Posts on the 'net indicate this may be a function of my 'Lite' internet connection, so come the new year I'm thinking I'll have to go back to the 'Standard' monthly rate, despite the extra cost.

Oct 21 - 12 hours of stress

I was late for an early start today, thanks to forgetting to charge my organizer battery - the downside of tech. Fortunately things went very well, and the store was open only 30 minutes late after the audit was complete. I'm certain I didn't impress my district manager while she waited for me in the rain, but live and learn. In the evening I took the bus into Victoria( with some colourful company in the surrounding seats )to attend a business conference, which turned out to be a bust for marketing work. Still, I had some company from the company, so my co-worker and I traded pointers about the finer things of being professional until it was time to leave. Again, live and learn.

So, I'm fairly stressed out about work - moreso this morning than the rest of the day. I found this link where 5 tips for de-stressing at work are given - I liked the one about using company resources, as many of us pay for health services we never use, myself included. I'm still not sure about massage therapy, but since acumpuncture worked well on my leg( and improved my circulation to boot! )then I am willing to give it a try.

At least the night ended well: I received a call from Pierre tonight, who is interested in having me lend my skills to help him with his web business. Huzzah!

Oct 22 - Handy Halloween

For some reason, I can't stop staring at my hands today. A while back, friends of mine( you know who you are )told me that my thumbs are rather on the short side. Looking at my hands, I see them as perfectly proportioned... yet today I found myself sneaking looks at people's hands. It was weird, but I managed to stop by the end of the day, though a few looks were made at TV hands in the evening. That's genetics for you.

Ten days until Halloween, and I still just don't know if I am going out or not. So why not have a look at some of the incredibly cool costumes out there! One great place to go is WTFcostumes.com, which categorizes all the entries - check out the Transformers Bumblebee costume!

Neat! Collectables of various kinds dot my shelves, though few of any real monetary worth( maybe to posterity in future years? )so when something out there catches my eye, I have to mention it. Today, it is the head prop from the short-lived TV series The Tick. Cool, huh? I mean, it's blue!

And: a black hole... in your pocket?

Oct 23 - How I got my sense of humour...

Windows 7 was released today... anyone else out there non-plused by the ads so far? They make me want to take a step back, not to join these people in their purchses... in the meantime, I am backing things up. I'm also going to be trying out a few backup progames, like Macrium Reflect - Free Edition... it's free!

On the subject of Zombies: today was also Zombie Fest in Monroeville USA, site of the film that started it all at the Monroeville Mall: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. 2,000 walking 'corpses' took to the halls and walkways of the mall to celebrate today - I wonder if deoderant was banned, for a more 'authentic' experience? Maybe there were a few superhero fans in the crowd - surely someone has to be buying copies of this kind of zombie comic lately.

Last but not least: today it was also announced that there will be a live-action version of Ghost in the Shell... huzzah!

Oct 24 - Yikes! Deer me!

Almost a tragedy today: on the way home from work, my dad hit a deer with the car. In actual fact, the deer was hit first by another car and tossed into my dad's path. Fortunately, the only damage was to the car: my dad managed to keep control and move out of traffic to stop safely by the side of the road. The car was able to be driven home, but needs extensive repairs - from what I can tell, only the hood and the front right quarter panel / headlight need replacement, but internal damage has been done to the engine and components. Check out the picture... there's still some fur from the deer in there, sadly. But better it than my dad. One more bullet dodged, of many over the years...

Borderlands seems to be the game-de-jour right now, with an interesting mix of constant combat and co-op online multiplayer mahem. It has some good reviews, and the price is right at Wal-Mart at the moment, though 'Limited Quantities' means they keep selling out... the same at the local Best Buy, unfortunately.

Yet the game lacks a critical component that is among my Top Five for apocalyptic video games: vehicular combat! Thankfully, an old favourite game of mine has bee released once again into the wild: Death Rally. Back in 1996, this was insanely popular... and it's back, but just for the PC, again validating the need for more than just a console in your media arsenal.

Oct 25 - Sunday slips away...

Just your usual Sunday: sleep in, a solid breakfast and then some COD4 until mid-afternoon - yesterday I managed to get a 15-kill streak for the first time in, what, a year? And I did it solo, no team-mate friends by my side... which made for a lack of conversation and jokes, let me tell you. Maybe that was the ticket? If so, I'd rather talk to my friends.

I've also been assisting the downstairs neighbours, who though nice people keep reminding me why I've chosen never, ever to be a tech support call rep. I may still consider giving lessons, seeing as I don't mind one-on-one teaching, but it's still something I'm thinking about for my ever-rare spare time. Geeks and retirees?

On a Niagara news note, I saw today on Facebook( hi Shawna! )that there was a large fire in NOTL - sad news for the historical buildings now lost, and for the folks who are now homeless, without any insurance to boot. Bummer.

And still no sign that these are shipping soon... one more week until the end of October, and they're still on pre-order.

Ah well. It seemed like such a good week on paper to start with... but it ended with me wanting very much for the next 2 months to be over with.

Groo, Games and Grand Openings

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:47:00 +0000

This week's word: enervated. It's not what you think.

Oct 12 - Searchables

Ah'm feeling rather beat this week, hence the lack of "This is what I did" info here... to be honest, what I wanted to do most days was take a nap when the day was only half-done. I'm glad I picked up a nice 'sunlamp' before I moved out here, as I think the lack of sunshine is putting me to sleep of late.

While I missed seeing the new Star Trek on the IMAX, I did come across this gag reel from the film... and not a tribble in sight. That's about it; thoughts of Tribble Bacon danced through my head...

Here's a test of your internet search skills: try to find out the name of the brunette model from the latest Special K commercials. With the internet being what it is these days, I'm sure we'll be seeing more of here. Candy commercials gave a big boost to the TicTac girl's career, whose name turned out to be Kate Kelton - though I haven't seen her anywhere around lately, but she does have a nice website. Things have come a long way since 1993, when the Osbourne Complete Internet Reference was selling like hotcakes - now it's available for a penny on Amazon.com. Who knew my copy would be so worthless now?

Oct 13 - Zombie TV

While I was off today, I spent a few hours in Victoria looking around a few places for some bargains... I managed to pick up a small portable B&W TV for $4.99 at the Value Village downtown. It was lacking a power supply, but handily I had a universal one squirreled away for just such occasions. Powered up, it will serve as a 'monitor' for when I'm recording shows while using the big flatscreen for other purposes... because most TV's these day's don't come with Picture in Picture. I miss that feature... so handy, but cost-savings mean that TV's are cheaper to make without it by a few dollars.

What do you get when you combine Lego and Zombies? Why, Zombie Apocafest of course! Check out the massive amounts of work and creativity that has gone into this display of plastic and the living dead. Or, if cakes are your thing, this picture gallery has a ton of great creative cakes, a lot of them are sci-fi!

Tonight I sent around my 6-month update for my NWN Project, which was both upbeat and truthful about the current state of the whole thing. I am hopeful that we will have a working system running by the new year, but with everyone so busy it's going to be a task to keep things on track.

Oct 14 - Sandman

Today I read Neil Gaiman's first Sandman comic Preludes and Nocturnes( collecting issues 1-8 )and it was stellar - of course! Odd as it may seem, I never got around to reading them when they first came out back in early 1989. I'll be checking out the whole series from the local library as time permits; they have a great selection of sci-fi and fantasy there, quite impressive and not too far away - most days. Not as close as the Port Dalhousie branch library was ,but nothing's perfect.

A long while ago, a few of my good friends put together a site for me, called Ctrl-Alt-Pete. It was meant to accompany my articles I was writing at the time for Cyberwalker.com, but that didn't pan out. Neither did Ctrl-Alt-Pete, though I still have hopes of reviving it in the near future. Ironically, C|net.com just posted an article about Five Great Tech sites... popping the thought into my head "Hey, mine could have been on there..." Something to think about, on top of all the other stuff.

New tech still catches my eye, especially if it adds value to some tech I already have. Such seems to be the case with this item, which lets you copy files to and from your Xbox360 drive a lot more easily than you might think. For those folk who use their Xbox360 as their main media player, it makes sense to have all their media files on it, especially as Microsoft doesn't make it too easy to hook up any old drive as a storage device - 'Plug and Pray' all over again.

Oct 15 - Lucky Windows

One week from now and Windows 7 will hit the streets. Considering that the majority of computers out there running windows are still using XP and Vista was a sales flop, there's high hopes that W7 will be a hit. As always, there are misunderstandings when something new for Windows hits the market, and in W7's case one of these is a thing called virtualization - a really neat thing, too. Remember I mentioned XP a moment ago? Well, Windows 7 Business Edition has a feature that allows it to run a perfect copy of XP inside itself, to allow older programs to run flawlessly. All the while, your new laptop / PC / whatever is running Windows 7 on the outside - WinXP is just another program within it. The confusing part? Quite a lot of CPU's, even new ones, don't support virtualization. Fortunately, my laptop is upgradable, and the X9000 CPU that's on my Xmas wishlist does support virtualization, according to this handy site. So that's made me a happy guy today.

On the way home from work I stopped in at Future Shop( as it's just across the street along with an EB Games - how tempting each day! )for my usual game of "What's on sale that I don't need?" Today I found something: a networkable external hard drive case that someone had returned, so it was 1/2 price. I'd seen it before, but didn't spring as the price was more than I thought it was worth. For 50% off though, I decided it was time. I was amazed that the setup went as easily as it did, as my experience with networkable drives is that they generally just... don't... work. For whatever reason, it liked my network layout, and I soon had it copying files willy-nilly - great to have an easy way to back things up without tripping over wires from the laptop. Falling's bad for tech, in general.

More good news today for Star Wars fans: the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag is one step closer to reality! Soon... and hopefully there are both small and adult sizes in the works.

Oct 16 - I'm moving... later.

I got a call at work today with some startling news: the house we're in has been sold. So that means that the not-so-nice landlord is out, and the unknown landlords are taking over by the end of November. This doesn't affect us due to our lease until early 2011, but it also means that my days in this lakeside house are numbered. I have one more summer to take my ease by its gentle shores, then I'll have to pack things up... again. I'm rather tired of moving, and I hope that when the time comes next year I'll be able to find the energy again that got me through the last 2 moves.

Homes as one's castle: I haven't seen more than one episode of Castle, which stars Nathan Fillion of Serenity fame, but from the little I've seen it's quite good. As it's getting rave reviews, I've put it on my 'See Later' list... and not just for the fact that they keep doing cool things like this. Anyone out there have any good shows they're watching right now?

On the topic of space, I'm still debating on buying a beta copy of Gratuitous Space Battles... which would give the developer more cash to finish the game. Seeing as there's just the one guy coding it, I think I may treat myself next paycheque. We'll see if I can find... space... in my budget.

Oct 17 - Mulch!

The arbutus trees in the backyard have shed most of their bark, which has left them looking oddly bare, with a soft olive colour that's in stark contrast to the dark bronze colour that the old bark had. All in all, I like the effect - it's as though Mama Nature decided to go all designer-style with the Arbutus, and I heartily approve.

Ah, Groo. The tales of the Bumbling Barbarian are the antithesis of his peer Conan, whom the character was created to mock. I found the first issue of Groo at an Avondale store( now a drycleaner )on Geneva St. back in May of 1985... I was hooked. For those of you unfamiliar with Groo and his world, have a browse through his Wiki entry here. Groo appeals to me for many reasons: aside from the humour, he knows where his skills are( his swords ), he is honest, has a good heart and he has interesting things happen to him. Crazy, zany, laugh-out-loud things. If you can find a copy of Groo The Wanderer at your local comic shop, pick it up - it's work the read!

It was busy, busy day at work: the sun was fleeting, but it seemed that anytime it stayed out for more than a few minutes, people scrambled to get things done. After I closed up, I had more than a dozen people pull at the door before I left myself - far more than usual, which I attribute to the sun. Strange, but that's people for you.

Oct 18 - Lineups

Up and out the door in the mid-morning today to line up at the local Best Buy for day three of their Grand Opening celebrations, for which the weather co-operated for a pleasantly sunny experience. Once I was in the door, I was disappointed to find out that the two Xbox360 games I had lined up for had sold out... yesterday. Apparently they were one of the items that they didn't 'limit daily quantities' on. Ah well, money saved and only my free time was spent.

News close to home: a ship full of potential refugees sailed into local waters early today. It was escorted into a Victoria berth while the 76 men aboard were offloaded for processing and possible refugee status. Things like that never happen on the Great Lakes back east, eh?

While playing COD4 today, I was impressed all over again by the LG TV I purchased almost 2 years ago now. It's performed almost flawlessly for nearly 24 months straight of daily use. For an LCD TV, it's gone the distance and more... though it and its rival plasma have a new contender on the market now: LED TV's. There's a nice guide on C|net called 10 Things You Need to Know about LED TV's which is worth reading, as the new tech will inevitably show up in stores very soon. Unlike the oft-promised but rarely seen OLED TV, the new LED TV's are cheaper to make and so easier on the wallet - plus they'll be in stores sooner rather than later.

In case anyone's noticed, I try to put at least 3 things in each day's entry. So that's 21 things a week that I come up with that are interesting to me... and hopefully to you. Until next entry then...

Bikes, Blue Bridges and Brains

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:02:00 +0000

The word of the week is... parsimony. So there!

Oct 5 - More on Renting

Further on the subject of Renting vs. Owning one's home: there's an excellent article here on the topic, albeit from a US-based viewpoint. The links included at the bottom of the article are also worthwhile checking out, as they include a graphical Rent vs Buy Calculator, courtesy of the NY Times, who are well known for their financial reporting prowess. Or stop by the GetRichSlowly.org site, which has a ton of good advice - for free, similar to CanadianBusiness.com but with less ads. Be sure to stop by DealHunting.ca, where you can browse through various coupons... much like RedFlagDeals.com, which lists all sorts of deals for many Canadian retailers, including a lot of online-only sales and deals, which can save you a fair bit depending on what you're in the market for. Canada's Economic Action Plan doesn't mention anything on the topic, but that doesn't surprise me.

Alternatives to home ownership? There are quite a few ways to go about it, including subsidized programs, ( I like that one). A good place to check out about alternatives to owning a home is at Ezine Articles, which might be a good place to send people from Ireland - apparently they have a home-ownership obsession. Weird, huh?

Like we're obsessed with cell phones in Canada. Three weeks from now, the ban on using cell phones while driving takes effect in Ontario - not including hands-free units or calls made to 911, that is. Having seen so many drivers pulling bonehead moves with only one hand on the wheel and half their mind( or more )taken with yakking on the phone, I'm all for it. Heck, I miss photo radar too, for that matter... though that was rather more unpopular - and it's started up again in Quebec this summer. I imagine there will be a rush on speakerphone accessories in stores in the next few weeks.

Oct 6 - Smoking Gold

It's about time: Quebec announced that it is joining several other provinces in suing tobacco companies to recover health-related costs pegged in the billions. Similar to other suits filed in the USA, it is surprising to me that it has taken this long for Canada to get is act together about taking action against the companies responsible for such a deadly product, which the WHO estimates has killed 100 million people in the 20th century. I hope that Ontario is successful in its suit, which seeks 50 Billion Dollars in damages, atop other suits from BC, NB and now Quebec. There's more about the health effects of tobacco here, but I would hope that most people reading this would already know that it kills you - slowly, or as it is better put "not quickly enough to scare people away."

Nice to see this: trading today made gold hit an all-time high, which is a bright spot in the current floppy-mushy market. Now that we are buying gold at MMart, it should help to drive even more business our way. Cash for gold is proving very popular of late, with people looking for ways to make ends meet - selling old jewelery for a decent price in an easy manner should help more than a few of them.

Privacy these days is a hot topic, given the proliferation of social networking sites right alongside reports of Identity Theft. Now there's a new twist for those of you who use Twitter, Facebook and MySpace: don't use any apps that generate your 'Porn Name.' Seems that ID thieves are using the data to better enable them to crack into people's personal accounts, as pet names and street names( as used by the apps )are prime candidates as passwords for bank accounts and the like.

Oct 7 - Pedal Power

Today is World Bike-To-Work Day... though I was feeling so tired, I got dropped off instead of walking my bike to work. Ironic, eh? Normally I enjoy the commute, but this morning the thought of tacking the hill in the middle was just too much for me. If I lived in Victoria, I could just take a bus( though it'd most likely get stuck in the Colwood Crawl )which is a cheap way of commuting. To solve the traffic woes here on the Island, the last few years have seen various transit proposals made and scrapped, with the current round asking for public input. Me, I'm for the giant-catapult-and-net idea... I never thought I'd come to appreciate the uninterrupted ribbon of asphalt that comprises the QEW and its sundry highways, which never has regular twice-daily traffic jams for its entire length.

If you plan on taking the personal pedal-powered route to work, here's 6 tips for you to follow to make your commute easier. Another great read is this blog article, about the joys that biking to work each day brings... as well as the dangers. A recent bike blitz by police here in Victoria resulted in a score of tickets, mostly for things that I've seen over and over for years: no helmet, no lights, and riding on the sidewalk( something that I've been guilty of on occasion, when traffic's nasty ). It still amazes me that so many cyclists survive with stupid things they pull, in addition to total idiocy like riding at night in dark clothes... yet there's no entry on DarwinAwards.com for anything cycle-related.

On the other hand, if you feel safer with a layer of steel and glass between you and the open road, then you should check out the Top Ten Vehicles for Urban Warfare. As one commenter mentioned, it was disappointing that the Marine APC from Aliens didn't make the list, but I thought it was a great selection of vehicles all the same. Perhaps with the exception of the Mazda GTX... and that they actually put a bicycle on there. No contest when it comes to a fight between 2 wheels and four. Though you may still have trouble parking your wheels of carnage... unless you reserve a parking spot online beforehand. Whoda thought?

In a related bit of news, the big blue Johnson Street Lift Bridge here in Victoria is nearing the end of its useful lifetime, and needs to be replaced. When recent government funding fell through, proponents of the bridge were still hopeful that the bridge can be saved. Having grown up near the giant lift bridges of the Welland Canal, I can say that Big Blue is in their class... plus, it's blue. I'd hate to see it scrapped, though all 3 of the now-unfunded design proposals looked pretty cool.

Oct 8 - Windows 7 and Ewe

Have a sweet tooth that you can't easily satisfy? Good news! The world's largest candy store is going to be opening in the Dubai Mall, so apart from the plane ticket, all you'll need to do is find a way to get all those sweets back home... the carry-on and checked luggage limit probably won't do for more than a few month's supply, at best. I myself have a penchant for chocolate chip cookies, which isn't so bad really... my teeth will last that much longer. With moderation, of course... though the thought of Bacon Cookies does set my mouth to watering!

Like candy from babies: Laptop theft happens all the time around the world( the stats are alarming! )ruining people's days as well as their insurance premiums. As a laptop owner, I'm very aware of how easily my machine and I might part ways, apart from the usual dangers such as spilled liquids and deadly drops onto hard surfaces. If a laptop is stolen, there is still hope these days thanks to software like the freebie Adeonia that allows a missing laptop to report its whereabouts to its owners - bad news for thieves, good news for owners.

Perhaps not so sweet, but still drool-inducing to g33ks is the imminent release of Windows 7 two weeks from today. My copy is already on order, so I hope it arrives by the end of October. I've been busy backing up data, just in case... always a good idea when installing a new OS. Considering all the 'fun' I've had over the years with installing various versions of Windows, perhaps I'd better make TWO backups of everything. Sheepish.

Oct 9 - Niagara, O Roar Again!

Whew, today was one long day... I started in the early morning after 8am, and didn't get home again until after 7, well into the dusk. I was getting things finished from the week so that I wouldn't have to come in on the weekend - with four days off in a row, it was worth spending most of a day ensuring I could enjoy all of them. Mighty tired by the end of it all, having been through my second wind... but it was a good feeling that I'd accomplished everything I needed to by the time I was done.

Today was kind of like a palindrome, in a way... it started off almost like it ended: with me at work. Palindromes are fun to refer to, as they can be hidden almost anywhere at all - even in this sentence. One of my first internet handles was a palindrome, and they've grown on me since - you can find a huge archive of them here, plus a smaller surplus here. I like them because you never know if you're reading one or not...

Today was not a good day for travelers heading out for the long weekend: as I mentioned earlier, we live on an island... and that means ferries. So when one of them catches fire( slightly )and is thus out of service, it has a domino effect on the entire Island traffic scene. Ouch. Glad I don't have to travel this weekend... not that I've been to the mainland yet, but one day soon. Maybe.

Oct 10 - Why bother bidding?

Up way, way too early today at 5am, to try to get some bids in for a nice Belkin network USB-sharing device on Swoopo. Unfortunately, too many other people were of the same mind, and I gave up once bidding went past $35.00 ... at that point, people were out to win, not to save money. In the end, the unit went for close to $50.00 ... ( half of its retail cost )and meaning that all the bidders involved spent over $500.00 in their 'bidding war' ... which is how Swoopo makes their money from the unwise with deep pockets.

Here's a bit of trivia for you: in the first X-men film, several actresses auditioned for the role of Rogue, one of my favourite X-men characters. Perhaps you didn't know it, but one of them was Laura Bertram, who later starred in the 5-year run of the TV series Andromeda where she played Trance Gemini - who was also one of my favourites on TV, developing from a purple-skinned airhead into a very interesting and layered character. Good writing there, a pleasure to watch her character develop from a bit of fluff into someone intriguing, and wonderful that she was given the time and care to develop her as such.

Today was gaming day for me. I downloaded some new Xbox360 demos, and had some good sessions of COD4, CivRev and even played some Hexic. I didn't get too far with Defense Grid though, as I got hooked by Sid Meier's Pirates - the game looks gorgeous on my laptop, and is incredible fun to play. Who wouldn't want to be a pirate in this version of digital reality? Pretty good for a game that originally came out in 1987 and was re-released with updated code in 2005... it's still damn good fun!

Oct 11 - World Zombie Day

Mmmm.... brains. Today is World Zombie Day, where the undead can parade around in public and not get shot in the head for it. Most places in the world, anyway. Things zombie have been becoming more popular and mainstream in the last few years, as WZD shows - the upcoming World War Z movie looks to be particularly interesting, as does this Zombie Warning Sign gallery. Heck, even the University of Florida recently posted a plan to deal with zombie outbreaks - how's that for getting your educational money's worth?

I felt like a zombie today, getting up at 6am to try again for an auction on Swoopo... but again too much action put the kybosh on that idea. I've collected a few month's worth of data on various auctions( for free, on my own )which supported this time of day being the best chance... but a few flies in the ointment and all the best plans go for naught. Since I'm not willing to waste bids doing a throwdown against more than a couple of people, that was it for me - back to bed, then up in the hopes of COD4... but everyone was playing NHL10, so there went that idea.

Instead, I spent the day recording shows off the DVR( and onto DVD )to clear space, while perusing a few more auctions and working on my NWN project. Which is going somewhat slowly now that some members of the Dev Team are back to school( some learning, some teaching )and others are equally busy. We're all in it for the long haul though, so I'm hopeful that we'll see a turnaround early in the new year. As the saying goes: we've come too far to stop now. Though after watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer tonight, I wish they hadn't finished it at all...

On that note - good night! Mmm.... braaiiiins...

Downloads, Disney and Dissent

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:08:00 +0000

Vad gjorde jag denna vecka, frågar du? Läst på!

Sept 28 - Old and New

Today started out typically enough, with me trying to relax and getting sidetracked. The downstairs neighbours had had a successful weekend with the yard sale and the swap meet on Sunday, but their remaining belongings were still outside under tarps on the front drive... and the rain was coming in fast this morning. So I helped them lug all of the remainder into the garage and some downstairs, which took a fair while - I couldn't sit back and watch while they struggled, as one of them is over seventy. We made it just in time too, as it started to come down rather heavily only ten minutes after the last box was safely under cover. Nice timing.

Are you feeling old lately? Aches, pains, weight gain and grey hairs got you down? You should check out some of the pictures at World's Oldest Living Things and make yourself feel younger - that creosote bush is over 12,000 years old!

Also amazing( in case you missed it last week ): this gallery of Twisted Disney Princesses. Great work; I hope the artist is going to make more along those lines!

Sept 29 - Cycles

Has anyone seen the movie Coraline yet? I've been meaning to pick it up on DVD but it's still a little pricey for my tastes... but the folks over at RottenTomatoes.com have given it an 88% fresh rating, which is pretty high. It is, after all, a Neil Gaiman film, which I thought would at least bring it into the 90% range...

Last week, Fallen Earth went online to little fanfare... it's a post-apocalyptic MMO along the lines of Fallout3, which is fantastic for the solo player but whose design has no capacity for more than one person to play in at a time. Fallen Earth looks interesting, but as with all new MMO's I reccomend holding off until the first month or two are over to see how well the development team manages to shape their design under real-world conditions.

I'm enjoying riding my bike to work, as it's good exercise twice a day, especially with the large hill smack in the middle of the route. With the cooler weather, it's easier on me as well... I arrive slightly soaked, instead of in a sweaty puddle from the heat. With the shorter days though, even my early evening shifts see me arrive home in the dark, which is why I appreciate my new(-ish )CatEye LED light - it flashes brightly enough to be seen a kilometer away. It doesn't do the best job as a headlight in total darkness away from the streetlights though, which is why I'm looking for a local replacement for my old halogen CatEye which was perfect. It lit up the ground ahead far enough for me to react to potholes, but didn't blind oncoming traffic. Too bad it didn't survive a fall several years ago, and my attempts to repair it haven't proven solid enough to last for more than a few trips on the road.

Sept 30 - Cheap games!!!

I downloaded 6 full-featured games today for the PC... for $5.00 each! That's right: games like Defense Grid and Riddick: Dark Athena, solid software that I've had my eye on for a while, for five bucks a pop! Direct2Drive.com has been running a special each week for the last few weeks, and a few of them are still going on - how can you go wrong if you get BioShock for $5.00? Not quite the same thing as GoodOldGames.com, where older games can be had for nearly the same price. These are only for the PC, mind you, but the price is definitely right, especially for my skinflint budget.

In years past, I enjoyed playing Risk... not nearly as often as Axis & Allies, but Risk was simpler in scope if still complex enough to be challenging. I used to play it online in various forms on BBS's in the early dialup days of the 'net - you remember, one step up from tin cans and string, right? There's quite a few variants out there now, some of which are pretty good - Invade Earth is a Risk clone that can be played on any Java-enabled machine.

Swoopo is another form of game, albeit one that costs you money to play... but it's not gambling like poker. In an odd twist on auctions, the site charges you to place a bid on brand-new consumer goods like high-end flat-screen TV's, PS3's and the like. While some people think it's a scam and the site bills itself as 'Entertainment Shopping' the truth is that some incredible deals can be had... if you're smart and careful about what you do. I'm watching and learning as I see various auctions take place, seeing the mistakes people make and wondering at the sums that Swoopo is making from the incautious bidder. I've seen quite a few fantastic deals take place, given good timing and proper use of bids, so I have hope that I'll be able to score a deal or two in the next few months, cautiously.

Oct 1 - Fictionally yours

Welcome to a new month... when Fall's arrival means people start colouring everything in shades of brown and orange, and stores start stocking up on turkey fixings and stockpiling candy for the end of the month. Here in BC, it means things get cool and wet; not the greatest of combos for romping around outdoors. The trees are slowly changing colour, and now that the dry summer season is over on the Island, people are burning yard waste like crazy. Ironic that in a province that fears forest fires for half the season that the air stinks of burning wood for the months following the summer, once everything's too wet again to catch fire.

Fall science fiction is taking many forms this year, from books to movies to comics. io9.com has a nice visual guide here, listing everything worth seeing that's coming out in October - today, for example, is the release day for FlashForward, which is a series where everyone in the world experiences a glimpse of the future, for good or bad. Sounds like a case of the Mondays to me, on a global scale. And in case science fiction isn't your thing, how about... just science, with Mythbusters? Yep, Adam and Jamie will be back for a new season this fall, with a ton of things to prove or disprove... including a duct-tape special! C|net has all you need to know about it.

Several DVD's arrived in the mail today from Amazon.ca, including the second season of Batman Beyond which I've been trying to find for a good price for years. It's a great series, in case you haven't seen it, with all the dark moody angst that a Batman property should have, plus some pretty decent character design and writing. I especially like the future city of Gotham that has been conjured up; it's hard to come up with near-future extrapolations of current technology, in case you've never tried.

Oct 2 - A Rental Surprise

A bit of a humdinger today: the landlord told us that they are entertaining a serious offer to purchase the property, which really didn't make my day easier. Thankfully, we have a 2-year lease that we're not even halfway through yet, so that helps. According to the folks over at TRAC, leases have to be respected regardless of a change of ownership and can't be ended unless both parties agree in writing to do so. I also combed through the postings over at ApartmentGuide.ca, where quite a few questions were posted on the same subject. After combing through a few answers there, I felt a little better.

I've often thought about the benefits of renting versus home ownership, and mentioned them in previous blogs. I'm curious as to what other people think on the topic, as I've heard from a few people that I should "stop throwing my money away on rent and get a house." Now that the US sub-prime crisis has taught us all a lesson about owning homes we can't pay for, I'm wondering if anyone out there has changed their tune on subject? My own feeling is that banks and lenders want people to saddle themselves with a home and all its related expenses, in order to provide a steady stream of revenue for the various upkeep expenses it requires over its lifetime - no thanks.

Aaaaaannd.... what would this blog be without bacon? Not just any bacon link this week either! No, this week we bring you: The Bacon Institute! I was going to add in something else, a website that would 'baconize' any other website... but it kept crashing my browsers, so I left it out. Seems that modern code can handle Java, cookies and other food-related programming... but not the wondrous complexities of bacon. Soon, I hope... soon.

Oct 3 - Where'd my day go? Bender?

Saturday vanished; between the typical solid stream of people and the paperwork, it was closing time before I knew it... which meant I still had a ton of work left to do come Monday. Never seems to end, but that's why it's called work, and not vacation. Which I have a lot of saved up, come to think of it. We just have to get the staff in place so the rest of us can catch up on our downtime...

I spent a good deal of the evening trying to set up an FTP server on my old PC, to let members of my gaming project more easily upload their work and in the future download the finished project components. You think it'd be fairly easy to set up, what with all the online FAQ's, manuals and forums on the topic out there, but it proved rather tricky - routers are picky beasts, it seems. Eventually I managed to sort it all out, but it seemed to be a lesson in frustration for a little while.

After that was set up, I settled in and watched Into The Wild Green Yonder, which was the last of the four Futurama direct-to-dvd movies to be released earlier this year. It was a great romp, with the well-voiced crazy cast of characters up to their usual hijinks - Simpsons creator Matt Groening obviously has a blast making these, and it shows. There's still hope that Futurama will return to TV, with word back in June that the entire cast has been assembled for the new 13 episodes on order for Comedy Central. Sweet!

Oct 4 - No Day Off after all

Today was my one day off this week, which started out fairly well: I managed to sleep in until well past 8am, a new record for the past few months. I breakfasted on some lovely large pancakes whilst watching some TMNT on the TV, then played a bit of Civ:Rev while waiting online on XboxLive! The guys all showed up well after 10am, so we hopped into COD4 for some mayhem... until my phone rang a little before 11am. Seems the girl at our Colwood branch had food poisoning, making for a miserable night and a worse day today, so I said my goodbyes to the guys and headed over there; some of them had to leave early about then anyway, sadly.

Today at work wasn't so bad, overall, apart from it being a fantastically beautiful day outside - the usual, which people kept commenting on. It was a steady Sunday, nothing out of the ordinary; even the rush in the last hour came as no surprise. What is it about human beings that makes them put things off until the last minute? I had some long stretches today of little-to-no activity, but then wham: five o'clock hits and the lobby is packed. Why, I don't know... most businesses close Sundays after 5pm, so why people feel the sudden need for cash now and can't wait until Monday morning to do their business is beyond me.

I worked on the blog sporadically in the late evening, as the internet was down until almost midnight - Shaw Cable must have had someone asleep at the switch. I also managed to wipe out several hour's work with a misclick in ScribeFire, which annoyed the hell out of me, so I hit the hay rather ticked and reconstructed the blog in the AM. All too easy to do when you're tired.

That's all. Go on with your day now... scoot!

Servers, Salt and Scary Soviets

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:22:00 +0000

Ever have one of those weeks? Maybe this wasn't it, but it felt like a close second...!

Sept 21 - Dead Things

Today was a series of frustrating events at work that scotched the whole day’s plan I had, to help train a newer employee from another store – that just didn’t happen. The main disruption was our server, which has been painfully slow since I took over the store in the spring. A simple call to our HelpDesk turned into an all-day odyssey of techs trying to make sense of the mess that is our server – to no avail. By day’s end they had us back& running again( after 4 hours without being able to efficiently serve customers )with an appointment to have the thing totally replaced( finally!!! )tomorrow morning.

Dead-ish: has anyone seen the new movie Zombieland, with Woody Harrelson in it? Although reviewers compare it to the much-loved Shaun of the Dead, I also hear it's got its own flair. I'd love to see a TV series set in a zombie-infested world, and word has it that the comic series The Walking Dead is close to being picked up by AMC for development. Mmm.... brains! No, wait... that was a TV executive! Spit it out!

In the meantime I leave you with: Twisted Disney Princesses - some are zombies, some aren't... but all are brilliantly twisted. Great job by the artist, especially Ariel!

Sept 22 - Serving Coffee and Dragons

A long, long day Part 2... I was @ work an hour early, to let the tech in carrying our new server to be installed. Things thankfully went without a hitch, though we did open five minutes late; big whoop. As I had said for the last 6 months, the old server didn't have what it took to run things quickly; in fact, we never used it for anything, even just internet searches, as it was far far too pokey. Turns out that it was simply a workstation-level PC that had had a 'Server' label stuck on it as it was put in service, which was then overlooked as other stores were upgraded. The new PC is zippy, far faster and now makes it possible to serve 2 people at once in-branch - finally. It bodes well for when business picks up again.

After work, I spent a few hours a few doors down at the Millstream Merchant's meeting at Serious Coffee. Every month a group of us get together to plot and scheme to improve our business revenue, tossing ideas on the table and seeing what we can do to help each other. Tonight's meeting was somewhat subdued, as a lot of us have had quite the busy month, but those of us who started the group back in June were pleased to see quite a few new faces tonight.

Dragon Age: the next big RPG from BioWare, talked about by the folks at MMORPG.com here, even though the multiplayer part is still in development alongside the single-player game. Looks to be another huge hit from the folks who brought us Baldur's Gate... which I never played, come to think of it. I should really download a copy from Good Old Games for a few bucks... but first I need to find a site I can buy the time to play it from!

Sept 23 - You broke what...?

Ack! Today went all wacky in mid-afternoon, as my CSR from the other store put themselves out of commission with a broken hand; so much for their training this week. While I'm not sure they can work with a serious fracture, I'm pretty certain they're going to take 4-6 weeks off to recover properly, which leaves us short-staffed for the area again. At least they'll get some much-needed time off.

Seeing as I worked the morning shift, I had to stay on and close the store as well - the CSR was supposed to close, but obviously wasn't able to with only one functional appendage. That worked out to a little over twelve hours in-branch, which was nice for the O/T but not so good for the endurance, as yesterday ALSO clocked in at 12 hours of solid work-time with the MMA meeting added in. Lucky thing I'd packed some spare soup in the store cupboards for just such an event( not to mention in case of an earthquake )so I wasn't hungry when I finally made it home, but I sacked out soon after - quite the day, all in all, along with the usual work crises needing solving.

Here's a looming crisis for you( hi, Brian! ): sodium. I've checked on my own intake levels for years, but never to the extent of lowering it to what the recommended levels are - this article from the Vancouver Sun talks about the problem more in depth, worth a read. Salt - who knew something so precious could be so dangerous?

Sept 24 - Beep... beep... gold!

I managed to sleep in today, for a change, and spent a good hour of the morning on the deck enjoying the weather with a good book. Then it was off to work for the closing shift. Today turned out to be a good day overall, just being busy - which is good for revenue, which keeps me employed. Simple logic there! We've had a run of large cheques the last few weeks, so that's a bright spot indicating that the economy is slowing turning around... but we're not out of the woods yet.

Talk about luck: by now you've probably heard about the man in England who discovered a vast hoard of ancient gold in a farmer's field. Just him and a metal detector; makes you want to run around Europe to see what else may be buried and awaiting your chance discovery. But I wonder: why are we only hearing about this now, when the discovery was made months ago back in July? I wonder sometimes... but gold is pretty popular nowadays, with ads all over TV about digging in your couch for spare gold - like that ever turns up anything save a few pennies and too many stale popcorn kernels.

Maybe you could spend some of your new-found wealth on movie memorabilia... like some props from the Transformers films! Next week, over 100 items from the films are going up for auction, including the 16-foot-tall replica of Bumblebee, which is expected to fetch close to $100K in Canadian dollars - he'd make one helluva lawn ornament!

Sept 25 - Nuke Fridays!

Split shifts stink, but we've no choice today; I both opened and closed the store, with a 3-hour break in the middle that had me cycle home and back again. Which was nice, in that I spent a solid hour outside enjoying the( relative )peace and quiet. I read a good chunk of Malevil, which is slow going... good on the part of the author, who gets paid by the word, and bad for the reader, who has to slog through minute details of fictional post-apocalyptic daily life that could be done without.

Getting home in the late evening, I paused briefly then went back out to put up signs at all the nearby street-corners for tomorrow's yard sale. Yep, the neighbours downstairs were getting rid of a lot of extra material, and since the weekend weather is supposed to be superb I volunteered to help in a few small ways. Which included putting up the signs to direct early-morning( and all-day )yard-sale sniffers to the property from various major nearby roads.

What do sunglasses, the end of the world and martial arts have in common? Yes, The Matrix... but also The Book Of Eli, an upcoming film starring Denzel Washington. Looks to be very Fallout-3-esque, with a lot of great blasted-to-bits scenery as background to some crazy fight scenes. In a similar vein, there's a group of Russians who got together recently for a live-action weekend of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. which is a fairly popular post-apocalyptic RPG. Back to reality, there's a creepy picture gallery of the city of Chernnobyl 20 years after the nuclear disaster of 1989 - stark reminders of how things would look if nukes did fall; anyone seen my sunglasses...?

This disturbed me: word is, the Soviets built( and are still running! )a doomsday device... it's called Perimeter. Scary, scary stuff!!!!

Sept 26 - Yard Sale

Up before seven today to help with the yard sale on the front driveway: the downstairs neighbours had a ton( more than a few tons, actually )of stuff to sell, more than I had thought at brief glance last night. I put out a small selection of my own things in a corner, just for kicks; most of what I have is still worth keeping for future use in a place of my own. And a good thing that I put up signs last night: the local papers had misspelled the street name in the ad, so most of the people that showed up were drive-bys who had spotted the signs; kudos to me. Overall we had over a hundred people browse during the day, I was told, which was a very successful one.

What a gorgeous day for a yard sale too: brilliant sunshine, not a cloud in the sky - it looked great from inside the Colwood branch, which I was at before noon to help out at( seeing as they were short a person now, see the entry for the 23rd above )which was a steady day. I even bought a few pieces of gold, which made a few people happy at what they received back for their baubles.

Saturdays around these parts are a mixed bag for events, including cars burning up the track at the Western Speedway which is in earshot of my backyard. Much akin to the similarly-named Merritville Speedway back in Ontario, it's a rip-roaring night out full of high-octane chills, spills and thrills. Which I have no interest in, not being a NASCAR junkie, though I do like cars; I have fond memories of spending hours at car shows, as well as even more hours designing ultimate fighting vehicles for the too-few Car Wars game sessions I played in high school. Ironic that I cycle most places now...

Sept 27 - Not a day of rest

Today was my 7th day of work, and thankfully the least eventful. I was at our Colwood store on my ownsome( sic. ), which is not so good on a Friday but fine for a Sunday. Especially a lovely, sunny Sunday outside - the usual weather when I work, but nice all the same for a late September date.

Regular readers will recall that I canceled my subscription to High-Def TV channels back in the spring, as I found their content to be... lacking - especially given their cost. Which looks to have spawned a resurgance in antenna sales, as people are discovering they can pull in a few dozen free HD channels from the airwaves - what's old is new again, as they say. Unfortunately my house is in a low-lying area surrounded by hills, so I doubt I'll get more than a handful of channels - but I'm still going to give it a shot in the new year, once I find an HD-capable antenna on sale after the holidays. I'm cheap, so why not?

I'll leave you with a 'fun' little flash game: Pandemic II, which has you trying to destroy the world by creating a plague. Creepy, cartoony fun... and a lot better than some of the games I've seen out lately, like this one - now that's creepy!

A day late for this week's blog... read about why next week!

Battles, Bueller and Blockbuster

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:59:00 +0000

A busy, busy week at work... which is really boring to relate, so I've refrained. Mail in your thanks!

Sept 13 - Mondaze

A part of today was relaxing, another part stressful... the third part was busy, as I clambered carefully up onto to the roof today to clean off a lot of the accumulated crap that had built up in the gutters. Annoying, as it caused water to flow into places not intended, despite the excellent gutter-covers that the place has installed - when those are themselves covered in crap, the water just sluices off the roof willy-nilly. It was surprisingly hot up there with the sun today, leading me again to respect the many roofers who come in to cash their cheques every week at work, burned brown by the sun and wrinkled by the wind. Those shingles were scorching!

Ah, progress... sometimes good, sometimes bad. In the case of the Wheel of Time series, the next book is still being written, but in the meantime a large resource has shut down: WOTmania.com has closed as of Aug. 31st of this year. Thankfully, DragonMount.com has taken over the link and has news that some of the data will be integrated into their site, but for those looking to backtrack all the nooks and crannies of the series, it's a setback. Which means that it's time to re-read the thing again... but not until after Christmas, I think. I'm just too busy with other projects, and it requires a fair commitment of time.

io9.com has been running a great series called Future Metro, which examines cities of the future in all their glory. Lots of good reading there, I mean it: there's at least 2 dozen articles about all the aspects of what it will be like to be living urban in the future... both good and bad, most of them quite solidly scifi.

Sept 14 - Golden Showers

Did I mention that we're now buying gold at MMart? Yep... haul in your old jewelery or whatnot made of real gold, and we'll hand over cash for it - a competitive amount, believe it or not. Today I had tangible proof of that: a guy came in to sell a heavy gold-link bracelet he'd bought in Korea years ago, and after all was said and done he got back nearly $600.0 CAN. Now THAT is a solid bit of change in your pocket... and it also gives me an idea on how I might be able to turn the current market for gold to my advantage, if I can determine how a few other bits might fit into a - puzzle. More on that next week.

This is kind of useful: you can look up just about anyone on the 'net using 123people.com, but I found it more entertaining to look myself up and see how many more people out there shared my name. What they do, where they are, that sort of thing - kind of like tracking down a few clones you didn't know about.

Other things you may not know about: shower heads harbouring germs? Yep, that's just one more thing to worry about... I still remember from when I was a little kid being irrationally worried about spiders in the shower head( no idea why )but now it's apparently true that showers MAY be bad for you. Only if you're not in the greatest of health, mind you, but sometimes I get a little sick of hearing how many things are bad for you these days. Maybe hermits had it right: live simply, live away from civilization, and be happy?

Sept 15 - Games and Books

In the world of videogames, there are quite a lot of tried-and-true formulas... which is good, as most work fairly well, but after a while people tend to yawn and go "Sure, it LOOKS nice, but it's the same ol' shooter/side-scroller/rpg that's been done to death already." Which is why when a game like Scribblenauts comes along, gamers sit up and take notice, because, well... it's fun! Like BrainAge and similar games for the DS, it's the unique style of gameplay that sets Scibblenauts apart: it's text-based action. While that may seem like a misnomer, it sounds like a blast and promises hours of entertainment; if you have a DS, I'd check it out... as for me, I'll have to wait for it to come out for another platform, if that happens. Darn the luck. I'm still waiting for the re-release of Mechwarrior4, which has had a recent bit of news assuring people that it IS coming... can't wait!

Oh, and this is one game I have to get: Gratuitous Space Battle s, which "aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness( sic. )back into space games" - how cool is that? Stuff all that hours-long resource-gathering, the tedious buildup and the too-brief battles - this one is all about Big Explosions, as that's where all the fun is, right? I can't wait 'till it's out! Though I still miss Earth & Beyond... thankfully, a Canadian site has kept hope alive.

My bedtime reading this last week has been to dig into the rare book I found at Booksmart in Niagara, the oft-sought( and recently available on Amazon )Malevil. Originally published in 1972, the book is rather a slow-starter, as it often dives into the intricacies of French cultural mores or describing the rather indelicate familial relations of the main characters. Which in themselves are fine, for the author( Robert Merle )plainly has great knowledge of such matters - being French. Still, it is slow going; I am already 243 pages in, while finding the survivors just starting to get about the business of thinking about the necessities of such survival - no Hollywood-style action novel, this one. It is along the lines of what I find fascinating about the post-apocalyptic genre though( akin to the survival-horror zombie genre too ): what would you do if it happened to you?

Sept 16 - No More Songs

Woof, a long day. Hopped onto the bus( at the new terminal 10 minutes walk from my house )running to Victoria at 9am, and arrived a mere 20 minutes later. Plenty of time to grab a coffee and settle in for the manager's meeting, which zoomed along nicely until about 4pm... then it was back to Millstream to work the remainder of the shift. Which was deja-vu all over again, as I got a call whilst on the bus in the AM that the water cooler had leaked AGAIN, so the place was soaked. The cleanup guys had been there already, so I walked into a roaring den of noise as high-flow fans blasted air across the soaked carpets while a fridge-sized dehumidifier pulled gallons of water from the air.

I was saddened to learn today that the lady third of the popular trio Peter, Paul and Mary has passed away due to cancer today. All my life, people usually made one joke or another whenever a Paul or a Mary was around, asking where the 'third person' of the trio was hiding. How sad that now there are only 2 of those 3 singers left.

News today as well about the emergence of the internet as a movie medium: Blockbuster is closing over 1500 stores. Which isn't news to me, as it's probably been ten years since I last rented a movie - seriously. I'd rather buy the movie( on sale of course ) and take the time to enjoy it at my leisure more than a few times. While I'm not the person to talk about buying instead of renting per se in most things, I don't think that there's much of a difference between renting a new movie twice and buying it on sale at a later date. It all depends on when you want to see it( apart from the theater )and in my case, I can usually wait for some time without issue.

Going out to a movie is a nice way to spend the evening... especially if you had someone like Natalie Portman on your arm. Wow, talk about dressed to die for! Though from what I hear, the G.I.Joe movie is NOT one you want to take a date to... or see by yourself. Or rent on DVD. Maybe they should have made it an animated feature? If so, they should have done it in this style - very similar to one of my favourite animated shows, Samurai Jack, which tore down quite a few walls in animation when it came out - brilliant.

Sept 17 - Breaking the Wall

Going out to a movie is a nice way to spend the evening... especially if you had someone like Natalie Portman on your arm. Wow, talk about dressed to die for! Though from what I hear, the G.I.Joe movie is NOT one you want to take a date to... or see by yourself. Or rent on DVD. Maybe they should have made it an animated feature? If so, they should have done it in this style - very similar to one of my favourite animated shows, Samurai Jack, which tore down quite a few walls in animation when it came out - brilliant.

On walls: what the heck? I know I've made a few jokes about the Berlin Wall construction zone in St. Catharines( QEW work cutting the city in half )but get this: 1 in 7 Germans WANT the Berlin Wall BACK. How crazy is that? They'd probably say so in Copenhagen, where the car is NOT king, but the bicycle is: more than half the population rides a bicycle every day. The city has just announced plans to create a network of 'bike highways' where commuters can ride from the suburbs to the city core without crossing paths with cars in dangerous ways. Fantastic - check it out here, another victory for the two-wheeled pedal commuter, of which I'm one.

Everyone likes to think that their works will live on beyond them, that their memory will linger in the minds of those who have known of them or even their work. But what happens when tragedy or disaster strikes, leaving things undone or unsaid to those who matter most to us? I've wondered about this myself, having just begun to fill out a will( all those DVD's have to go somewhere, right? )and made out a few words for everyone who matters in my life. Yet what if I don't have a chance to leave those words in the right location? Thanks to FromBeyond2U.com, this no longer has to worry some folk - but you still have to set those words down in the first place, or they will go unsaid.

Sept 18 - Bill Me, don't Salt Me

Ah, payday at last - that day when you breathe a sigh of relief, pay some( or most, if you're lucky )of your current bills, then grab what money remains on either end and try to stretch it until the next payday. I was surprised to learn from a recent article that close to 3 in 5 Canadians live paycheque to paycheque these days, having little in the way of savings, even RRSP's. That's a lot of people with no safety net, which these days is a stinky way to live... not that most( if not all )of those 3 in 5 people would rather put away money, but living beyond our means seems to be the name of the game in modern society.

Reduction would seem to be in order, as I did( somewhat )when I divested myself of a portion of my poesessions in moving out here. Not enough, mind you, and I'm not living in a one-room basement bachelor pad either - which seems to be the problem, more or less. How can you enjoy a huge home of your own with a massive mortgage( and taxes, and utilities )which is filled with a lot of expensive things that you likely got on credit and are now slowly paying back at ruinous rates? Makes you want to change a few things, including your diet - 1 in 6 people worldwide have hypertension, of which up to 1/3 of those can be related to too much salt in their diet. Yep, that's right: too much time at McDonald's or eating pre-made meals, all loaded with sodium for 'taste and preservation' purposes. Ick.

Bacon Salt is something I have to try though - I mean, it's bacon. And salt. In moderation, it's probably part of some corner of a food group, somewhere, if you squint at it correctly. Plus, they have a great blog entry on how to start a food company for less than 5K - worth the read, as I had no idea of the ins and outs involved in getting a product to market, despite my extensive reading on entrepranuership in the last few years.

Sept 19 - Aaarrrrr, Matey! Thar be monsters in that lake!

It was International Talk Like A Pirate Day today, but I'd forgotten... so I could have spent a good portion of today Talking Pirate to people, which would have been cool. Here's a nice piratical pictoral summary from the fine folks at SuperPunch - I especially like the Pirate Squirrels, very tasteful.

Tasty fish too: a local woman spotted some kind of unusual creature in Cameron Lake, which isn't too far from here on Vancouver Island. Local mystery - I love it!

Unlike work, which was an exercise in futility where one unusual problem after another cropped up needing immediate solutions. I managed to find one each time, but before I knew it closing time had arrived and all the things I had wanted to accomplish today were only half-done. We are redoing all of our office paperwork, reorganizing it to standardize all systems across canada so that every branch has the exact same setup - a great idea, but a ton of work to enable if there's just one person doing it.

Late in the evening, I watched an interesting documentary called 'Gun Nation' about the proliferation of guns in American and its effect on their society. The cuplrit is their Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which enshrines as an unalterable right the ability of any US citizen to bear arms. What they do with those arms is the focus of the documentary, which did a credible job of looking at both the pros and cons of living in a nation with millions of guns in the hands of criminals and honest citizens alike. A good site for further information about the gun control issue in the US is GunCite.com, which has a lot of excellent material and further links.

Sept 20 - Call of TV

A beautiful day, if a bit cold in the morning( heck, that's the fall, who cares? )but it warmed up nicely by the afternoon. I spent most of the hours around lunch gaming online with Dave, Simon and later on Matt, in COD4 - with a few good games and more than a few stinkers by session's end. There was even a Griefer in one of the later games, who delighted in teamkilling people - myself and a few others reported his behaviour, but sadly there's no specific category for rampant teamkilling or just being a jackass. I just don't understand people who delight in making life miserable for others, though perhaps it arises from some twisted need for attention of any kind, even derision and scorn.

There's the usual assortment of new shows premiering this fall on TV, mostly bad, but some good. One of the more unexpected ones is The Cleveland Show, which has the character of the same name being spun off from The Family Guy into his own sitcom - different, and possible interesting. Other series I'm going to try to catch are Flash Forward( based on the novel by fave Robert Sawyer )and the remake of 'V' with those lizardly aliens we love to hate. Even Fringe is starting to grow on me, though I've not caught more than a few episodes.

After a few pleasant hours out on the deck( the sun was brillant on the lake )I finished the evening working on the blog whilst watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off, quite appropriate for today, all in all. The parade scene is one of my faves( Twist and Shout! )as is the scene where Ferris and Cameron are trying to reverse the mileage on the Ferrari...

We broke 2800 hits on the 19th - Tah-rah!

TV, Terror and Terry

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:18:00 +0000

A perfect weekend of weather here - close to 30C, no rain and only a little wind. Sweet!

Sept 7 - Labour Day

Some of you( though perhaps not even close to all )may be aware that Labour Day started right here in Canada, way back in 1872 in Toronto. From there it spread across the globe, culminating here in the West with the reduction of the work week from over 60 hours standard to 40 hours here in BC - nice, eh? Something else we can be proud of as Canadians... though the tendency to work MORE these days and take less breaks is still a problem.

Still, I worked today instead of taking the time off - I let my employee have a 4-day weekend instead, as she's been doing VERY well( thanks to some fine training, I might add! )and deserves the break. I didn't anticipate it being busy, and aside from a few hours of steady business when I opened, the day tailed off such that I was able to get a fair deal of paperwork done by closing time.

Some cool stuff from the past: I used to get the occasional Popular Mechanics or Popular Science mags, as they were the best way to see the newest gadgets and tech news in the pre-internet days. Now, via the internet, I've discovered that quite a few back issues of both magazines are available via Google Books - another way the info mega-giant is slowly taking over the world. Or, you could saunter on over to Lifehacker.com, which has a ton of great things you can make, similar to what's over at Instructables.com, but a lot g33kier.

Sept 8 - Sleep Cycling

Science Fiction - there's a lot of it coming this Fall, so much so that you might want a guide to check it all out. Thankfully, someone over at i09.com has made one up, and it's quite comprehensive in that it includes TV, books and other media. I especially like the show Fringe, though I've only seen a few episodes, and the upcoming FlashForward, which was mentioned on the previous io9.com Guide to Fall Television: the premise of FF is that everyone in the world blacks out for 2 mins 17 secs and gets a vision of their personal future - some good, some bad, and none at all of the same time frame( that'd be boring ).

I didn't sleep very well last night - for some reason I just couldn't shut my brain off, and it was churning on about all sorts of things such that I resorted to channel-flipping at 2am just to gloss over things mentally so I could fall asleep. These days, that's a fairly rare thing as I'm usually tired enough at midnight to put down my book and snooze until the alarm in the AM. Even a ten-minute nap usually suffices to recharge me during the day; just close my eyes and I snap awake after a short time, which is a good thing as otherwise I'd snooze away useful hours of time.

Cycling to work is great, given the good weather we're having( still )at the start of the Fall season - being a leisurely 20 minutes from work( less if I decide to arrive in a sweat by biking uphill part of the way )is great, and it's only a 35 minute walk at a good clip. Cycling is my preferred method though, as I can get a good bit of exercise in while not spending too long on the commute and leaving more time for rides around the Langford Lake trail, even to nearby Goldstream Park. I get the occasional odd look though, as I have a white bike, blue rain slicker( on cooler days )and a black backpack with my cell prominent on the strap - from afar I think some people believe I'm a policeman, as I can't come up with any other reason for the odd looks I get. And yes, I've checked my fly: it was up each time. Maybe I should ride one of these?

Sept 9 - The Road to TV Repayment

The upcoming film The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a father trying to guide his son to safety in a post-apocalyptic world - obviously something I will be checking out. While I didn't manage to see 9 in a theater on opening night tonight( 9/9/9 )I am eagerly awaiting its arrival at my local Langford cinema.

A few more months and I'll have my LG TV( and my Xbox360 )paid off, which will be nice... one less monthly bill coming in, though it's been nice not paying any interest on the combo for almost 2 years now. A good deal that's provided me with many hours of entertainment since that first heady month I arrived in BC, and certainly a heckuva lot easier to move than the old( and much-beloved )27" CRT televisions I left behind. Though I do miss my JVC, which had picture-in-picture and more menu options than I've ever seen on any TV, anywhere - I kept the remote just to remind me. If you are lucky enough to have a large-screen TV of your own, you should ensure it is properly adjusted - it can save you money! While I've spent a good deal of time learning all the secrets of my TV, every model is different and you can find all the info you'll need with some careful web searches.

On the plus side, if you do end up upgrading, make sure you don't just toss your old TV - FreeCycle it. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who would be perfectly happy to have a new(er)TV for free, rather than go without - even 2 years ago, when I was selling things off, people wouldn't pay for those CRT TV's, so I ended up donating them to a few good homes. Ditto for the computers I had: I installed Ubuntu, got them working slick and off they went to good homes... I hope.

Sept 10 - Smoking Networks

Looks like a setback in Croatia for non-smokers, as the government has repealed a ban on smoking in cafes after only 4 months. I'm saddened by this, as it means that the 3 million other residents of the country are at the mercy of the 1 million who choose to poison themselves... and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. Like the guy across the fence whose smoke drifts thickly across with the wind into my bedroom, forcing me to slam the window closed each time or suck in his poison - I'll bet he doesn't care, as I've loudly but politely said "That's blowing with the wind right into my room, thanks." several times. Who knows? Maybe he enjoys it more than he cares about how others suffer from it - maybe that's the reason that smokers keep puffing, playing right into the addictive side of the cancer sticks. I'll never understand - if you haven't heard my donut horror story from working at Timmy's back in the day, ask me sometime.

I fiddled with my home network today, managing at last to wring proper speeds from my laptop by separating my parent's connection to a separate router( their old one, actually ). I got it all working, and the speed increase is dramatic: I can download close to a gigabyte of data in less than 10 minutes which is about a 5-fold increase over the shared connection. No thanks to Gateway though, as their Tech Support guys couldn't solve the speed issue( nor give me any advice on it either )or the previous connection issues with it - I had to solve both problems myself. Ah well - my year's warranty is up tomorrow, so I expect the Warranty Chip( first mentioned here in 1991 )to activate and start counting down to a Major Malfunction soon enough.

So far, no joy in the writing department: after the closure of Cyberwalker.com to new work of mine, the economic downturn has seen none of my articles accepted at the sites I've shopped them around at. I've been perusing places like GetAFreelancer.com to see what's available( a LOT of $1.00-an-aricle jobs! )but so far, zilch on that front. I'm considering again trying to get into voice acting, but my range so far is rather limited - the trend now is for an actor to be able to have a very flexible voice so as to enable multiple parts to be played for one fee. Ouch.

Sept 11 - Remembering

Yes, I have to mention it: eight years ago today, we were all shocked out of our own realities by the vicious attacks on the USA by terrorists. I'm sure most of us can remember what we were doing that day, in some part, as those sorts of world-shaking events tend to etch things in our brains. Myself, I was off for the day, and when I heard the news my first thought was "What the hell is happening?" followed by "Geez, I hope they're not going to attack Niagara Falls for the power plant." Which is odd, as slamming a plane into a hydroelectric dam made of millions of tons of concrete won't do much, nor will splashing it into the raging Falls itself, other than providing thousands of tourists an opportunity to document terrorist stupidity and the horror of helpless hundreds along for the ride. Some felt that the tragedy was an inside job, but I don't hold to that idea.

After thousands died with the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, what's happened since then to try to learn from the tragedy and save lives in the future? Precious little: talk of skyscraper escape methods has been bandied about blindly, but nothing concrete has been agreed upon or even installed, apart from a few prototype systems. Though one company was making brisk sales right after 9/11 - selling parachutes. In 2006, the City of New York even rejected the idea of 'escape pods' for buildings, without actually coming up with anything better instead.

On a lighter note, someone has discovered a way to fool photo speeding tickets in the US: wear a mask. Apparently close to a hundred speeding tickets have been issued to a monkey-masked speeder in Phoenix AZ, but due to the laws there more than half have been thrown out. I remember when Photo Radar was in use on the QEW, and I loved it - why, you ask? Because it ACTUALLY WORKED - people SLOWED DOWN every time they even thought they saw a GMC van parked on the shoulder of the highway. The difference between that and the AZ laws? The ON photo tickets were charged to the owner of the car, which put the onus on them to ensure their vehicle wasn't being misused. Which makes you wonder how smart the lawmakers in AZ are, to let some guy in a mask make a monkey out of them...

Sept 12 - Single Daleks

Sometimes, one wonders, as a single person, just how other Single Guys are handling it... and what 'it' is, exactly? Unlike Steve Martin's The Lonely Guy, where a lonely writer leads a bleak existence in New York surrounded by millions of women, Single Life these days can be a pretty mixed bag. In my own case, I've been single for well... what decade is it now? Nothing serious has sprouted, despite various dates and the usual - even my move to BC, land of the Leggy Runner and Svelte She-cyclist hasn't proven very fruitful. Some guys would feel pressured at my age to 'be in a relationship' but I feel differently; the recent news that perennial bachelor George Clooney has hooked up with a lovely lady this month, this coming years after he regularly made the Top 10 Bachelors in Hollywood - I'm not sure that's a good thing, really.

Which dovetails nicely into dangerous celebrities of the internet: yes, there are some folks that will drag you into dangerous places if you search for them on the 'net. How so? Well... those scummy Evil People out there who want to( promote their website / hack your PC / amuse themselves / pick a reason )have figured out which celebs have the highest number of search requests, then employ methods to hijack your searches through misspelled names and other means. So it pays to have a good UP-TO-DATE virus checker( I use AVG Free )and malware program installed and running while you surf these days. I also employ a plugin for FireFox( which I'm using less and less in favour of Opera or Chrome )called Web Of Trust, which uses a user-based reporting system that puts a green( good ), yellow( questionable )or red( yes, it's BAD )circle next to EACH search result from a search engine like Google - you can instantly see which sites are harmful and so avoid them. My parents love it.

What about last week, you ask? How could I forget it was International Bacon Day on Sept 5th? Well... I didn't know, actually. But it's on the calendar now - check next year! Oh, and I finally got my talking Dalek working... turns out that the reason I couldn't find the 'talk' button is that it was cleverly disguised as one of the 56 small bump-domes on the lower half of the thing. "You will obey the Daleks or you will be exterminated!" - Dalek and Borg, anyone?

Sept 13 - All About Money?

Everyone has that fantasy( well, one among many anyway )about what they would do if they Won Big Money. Yet for a surprising number if people who HAVE won it big, happiness has not followed - at least not the lasting kind. It's interesting to read about how people's lives have changed thanks to a big lottery win - and everyone's life WILL change if they win, there's no question of that. Me? I'll just start with the massive pancakes I made for breakfast today and go from there, making sure I check out the advice at CanadianBusiness.com from time to time - s'free!

Raising money for good causes is another thing: today is the 29th Annual Terry Fox Run around the globe. Hard to believe that close to 30 years ago, Terry almost made it across the country while cancer ate him away from the inside. Amazing that his legacy lives on in so many people, raising millions for cancer cure research every year. Rick Hanson made it across the country in a wheelchair, following Terry's footsteps( as it were )to raise funds to a cure for spinal cord research.

I spent a good part of today playing COD4 with my pals - though I only really had one good game of the whole day, I had a ton of fun trading quips and tripping claymores... ouch. I took a few breaks of a few hours, sitting out on the deck and enjoying the QUIET: no noisy idiots in the park next door, which astounded me. Usually the good weather( it was 30°C outside in the early afternoon )brings them out in droves, but not today - bliss! In the evening, I was mesmerized by CBC's Passionate Eye presentation '102 Minutes Which Changed the World' which follows the WTC disaster on 9/11 in a minute-by-minute compilation, using rare footage - it felt like I was watching it happen again on TV as events unfolded, which I found very creepy and intensely involving. Especially as it showed quite a bit of amateur videos with the incredibly emotional reactions of ordinary people to extraordinary events - the horror and the agony of those 1.5 hours was palpable, especially the scenes showing people falling from the buildings, waving helplessly from the upper floors, or the thousands of people running in the streets to escape the collapse of the twin towers.

In the eight years since then, has our world changed for the better?

If anyone remembers a colour editorial depicting a firefighter with a 'Superman S' on his back, please send me the image - it's stuck in my head. 'night.

Marvel, Mickey and Muttering

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:35:00 +0000

A week ahead of... rain? Clouds? Sun? Who can tell?

Aug 31 - Four Billion for Marvel?

The entertainment news of the day: Marvel Comics is being purchased by Disney! Yes, you heard it right... Wolverine and Daffy Duck are going to be roommates. The news has spawned a legion of crossover ideas, but I think the most exciting of these are not related to the news at all. Instead, recently released dystopian visions of Disney icons make you brain spin in new directions - the Zombie Clockwork Goofy is especially chilling with its trademark smile. The folks over at Topless Robot have thoughtfully compiled a Top 5 Best and Worst of the Marvel/Disney merger, with some valid points.

Ouch... seems I overdid things this weekend playing COD4 for so long yesterday: my underarms are sore in ways I've not experienced since spending time on crutches when I broke my leg at 8 years of age. It's weird, but apparently not unheard of( especially Wii owners ) - trust me to find a way to injure myself doing nothing more strenuous than blasting away online with my friends. Dang... feels like I spent a few hours leaning on the ends of broomsticks, very uncomfortable.

What do do today when you're done your work? Why, check out IamBored.com - they have tons of things to do, and not a one of them work-related!

Sept 1st - Not a Holiday

Up early today to head to the walk-in clinic... of which I ended up at the third choice, as the 1st was not( as listed online )a clinic but a doctor's practice and the second choice was closed today due to a doctor shortage - go figure. Anyway, after a nicely brief wait at the third place, the doctor told me that the swellings were most likely irritations from keeping my arms at my side all day Sunday - again, just as I had surmised. It was good to get a professional opinion, especially as he said they'd likely go away in a few day's time and had nothing to do with lymph nodes or other health worries - phew!

I've had cats for all my life, so discovering that being scratched by one can cause a disease is news to me - I can't recall how many scratches I've had over the years. But, like the song of the same name, Cat Scratch Fever is a real disease and one that you don't want to get; creepy, eh?

What's even creepier is the commercialization of MMO's: no longer are people safe from exploitation inside the fantasy world of places like World of Warcraft. Teams of spammers are now trying to make a buck within these worlds by trying to entice players to buy virtual goods or property using real cash. Strange or not, this is apparently a big enough problem that detective teams have been formed, closing hundreds of thousands of accounts - this article is rather surprising, and disappointing in that yet another venue has been found to exploit the public while they are trying to relax and have fun.

Sept 2 - 7 days until 9 - Borg?

In one week's time, the movie 9 opens, and I hope it's around long enough for me to find time to see it locally. As a matter of fact, since there's an IMAX theater in Victoria, I hope it makes it big and therefore translates to the IMAX screen - heck, if the recent Star Trek release can do it, why not an even cooler tale about creatures made of string, canvas and buttons?

While I haven't had the chance to talk to Telus yet about the extra charges on my bill, I did find this bit of interesting news courtesy of Pierre about cell phone contracts. I don't have one myself, but apparently Canadian cell phone users now have the right to refuse any changes to their contracts. Which I like, as they charge FAR too much if you decide that things aren't to your liking.

Work today was fairly long, as we switched over some parts of the computer system that runs our TCR machine - not that exciting really, but it means more work for us at the front counter and less for those at Head Office; not a great trade. Fortunately it doesn't seem to be that hard to grasp, so as we get used to it things should become second nature. Just one more thing to remember during what have become some very busy and very complicated days of late.

I also watched what will be the last broadcast of the local TV station, CHEK TV - they are being shut down by the money-losing CanWest owners, and tonight was a long farewell by staff on-screen, in the form of recalling their favourite stories. I really enjoyed watching them talk about all of the wonderful human tales they covered over the years, especially the one about the 86-year-old water skier who lives just down the road; inspiring! I hope that the employees of the CHEK station can make good on their plan to buy the station instead of having it closed, as it would leave quite a gap for local news on the Island.

Sept 3 - Comics and Books

I like comics... especially webcomics. From Angels 2200 to Dr. McNinja, there's a TON of talent out there that now has the 'net available as a distribution medium - you never know what you'll find. I'm still going to be headed down to the local comic shop to collect a few things this fall though, among them the new Farscape comic series, which purports to continue the storyline thanks to the talents of series writer Rourke O'Bannon - sweet! November 1st, baby!

Which neatly brings me to: Neil Gaiman's library! Finally we can see what the inside of a top writer's library looks like - and I cannot imagine any top writer in the world not having a library of some kind at least worthy of the name. I love that even the one chair visible in the room is covered in books; a classic sign of a true book collector.

Tick... tick... tick. No, that's not the sound of a clock in Neil's library, but you're half right. News that men's biological clocks are ticking too is not really news to me, as I've suspected as much for years. Which means that if you're really paranoid about mutations to your man-juice, then you'd better go see these guys - fast. And bring some cash... or you may end up with offspring like this. I wouldn't complain though.

Sept 4 - Lego my Ego!

Today was a busy day at work, which was very gratifying to see as it means that our branch's business is picking up: a sign of better times ahead? I hope so - we did double our projected business today, which was fantastic as there's no calendar reason for people to be jamming themselves into the lobby. I also received a performance review today that was very favorable, so that made me perk up somewhat under the mountains of paperwork that keep ambushing me at my desk.

From work to play: where would a lot of us be today without Lego? Well, aside from the folks employed by LegoLands the world over, that is. For two guys whose fascination with coloured plastic building bricks never really ended, the answer is simple: build some really cool stuff and put it online on their website! The Brothers Brick have a gallery of some amazing things they've built, helped no doubt in a large part by all the specialized bits and parts that Lego has released in the last 20 years, a far cry from the simpler bricks I remember having at my disposal as a kid. They're still with me, though they've not seen the light of day in many years unfortunately... and from what I've seen, the sets have only become more expensive over the years. Especially if you want one of these! Or you could just build an 11-foot long Lego version of the Space Battleship Yamato...

But on the other hand, it seems Mega Blocks got the rights to Halo... two years ago, I was looking at this nice list of toy stores for cube dwellers, whose limited space means they can't spare the space for a decent collection of building bricks, or a 1/6 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Sept 5 - Windy Weekend Weather

Today was a fairly steady day at work, enough so that by the time the afternoon was well on its way to evening, I was feeling rather tuckered. Which was the perfect time for my DM to show up for an audit; she must have heard my eyelids scraping closer to being closed. Thankfully I run a tight ship, and we fairly well flew through the audit in a few hour's time. I was tired enough that when I headed home, I walked my bike up the hill to the halfway point, grateful that the rain had paused and the winds had died down completely - it was howling up to 65 kph here at times but thankfully little in the way of debris or branches were loosened due to the brevity of the gusts.

In the evening I played a little of the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo, and I liked what I saw. It was dark, moody and atmospheric - everything that a Batman game should be. Yet there are always dissenters, as this guy seems to be - is he being critical just to write an article, or does he have some good points? Have a look.

Saturday night: traditionally, it's the evening where you go out and enjoy yourself, free to entertain and imbibe until the beer goggles give the world around you a much more pleasing glow... and fuzzy outline. Along the same lines, there is also The Beer Goggler, which focuses more on curvy outlines attributed to imbibing - any night of the week.

Sept 6 - Feeling Slow, friend?

I spent the earlier part of the day trying to resolve some network issues( insert yawn here )at home. Seems that I didn't notice when I first set things up here, that I hadn't thought out how things would work to get the best speed out of my hardware... oops. So my parent's PC was happily connecting using a slower speed... which meant that my nice super-fast router was slowing itself down to accommodate them - doh! Today I dug out their 'old' router( brand new in mid-2008 )to hook it up and configure things better. Once I get the bugs out, it should mean that they connect to their router at their own pace, while my own hardware should sing along at a faster pace - we'll see how it works this week, after I run some daily tests. Here's hoping... at least the soreness under my arms has gone away, like the doctor said it would.

It rained on and off for most of today, whilst I divided my time between COD4 and writing, as well as a little Halo3 with the downstairs neighbour( he's extremely skill3d, by the way ). It was heartening to hear the rain coming down steadily; although it likely spoiled a few people's long weekend plans, the area around here has been so extremely dry that even people's discarded cigarettes had been worrisome in some rural areas. Soon enough, lawns around here may be green again, instead of the bright, dead brown that they have been all summer long thanks to the heat and water restrictions. Still, Australia's apparently had it worse than anyone this year.

To finish off the blog for the week, here's... the Oracle of Bacon! You can probably figure out how it works.

See the above link for Bacon-related goodness, and good-bye for now!

Lunchables, Looking Back and Letting Go

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:28:00 +0000

Huzzah, huzzah...

Aug 24 - Health A-Z

Darn it, I wish I’d remembered the A-Z of Awesomeness about a month ago, when they finally got to the letter Z ... can you guess what they used? Think beards, sunglasses and classic cars – funny, since I was talking about them just this week. Goes to show you that coincidence has good comedic timing, or something.

On the health side of things, I’m back to eating normally, though I’m still not partial to beef or really fatty foods like deep-fried or whatnot. I’m finding my digestion tends to vary from day to day, so I’m really watching my intake of fibre and the like to ensure I’m not ‘skipping’ a few days in a row – William Shatner had the right of it. Plus, I am still not sure what sets off the nausea: it could be lactose solids, gluten, or some other as-yet undiscovered thing... all I know is that some meals are perfectly fine, while others cause discomfort. So I’m writing down exactly what does what, and slowly building an idea of what may be causing problems... it will take time.

Which means I won’t be eating from vending machines in the foreseeable future... but it seems that now you can get almost anything from a vending machine. Especially in Japan, where they’re so numerous that someone has developed vending camouflage to help people avoid being mugged.

Aug 25 - Old Shows and PS2

I spent most of my day off writing things for my NWN project, in between recording episodes of Shadow Raiders from my parent’s DVR to clear some space. Made by the same people who created ReBoot, the show rose above its origins as a selling point for some rather shoddy toys and developed some great characters along with stellar storytelling. Numerous fan sites dot the ‘net, as do even more for ReBoot – I enjoyed watching the episodes again, especially because just like ReBoot, the show is impossible to find on DVD. A rarity these days, as companies will release almost anything on DVD to make a buck. In such cases, I don’t feel bad about searching for Torrents online of the show, since it’s been close to 10 years now and still no sign of a DVD release...

Also worth looking at is my revamped PS2( actually Rene’s, thanks bud! )which thanks to Nigel’s kind donation of a Composite cable connection( and many free games too! )looks just stellar on my big screen – I’ve watched a few more episodes of Alias on it this week, and the detail is super-crisp. I’m still dubious on getting a PS3: I worry that only some versions of the thing are backward-compatible with PS2 games. I have enough consoles stuffed under the TV as it is, without trying to find room for another... plus I just love the PS2, which I have been impressed with ever since my friend Andy P. showed me his then brand-new PS2 way back in the day. Too bad its online multiplayer games are just so hard to set up, as I loved playing Ratchet & Clank with Brian and Mike... ah well, I’ll have to ‘settle’ for the Xbox360 Arcade games. Anyone for a game of Bomberman Live?

How I so love io9.com... they brought me this bit of news! Can’t wait until November... but again, they’re right about letting go of the things, as mentioned last week. Sometimes it’s so hard, when you’ve enjoyed it so much...

Aug 26 - Scotch that TV

After searching in vain today for a Scottish-English translator, I did stumble across this little gem: a Scottish Vernacular Dictionary. Now you can forget years of associating with those of Scottish descent in order to understand the brogue from the more stereotypical fantasy-novel dwarves – simple pop up the SVD and there you go! In case you want to explore the world, including Scotland, from the comfort of your own couch, you can click on GoogleSightseeing.com, which although not associated with the Info Monster does use a lot of said technology in its pages. Worth a look.... unlike a lot of what’s on TV these days. Yet...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years from TV, is that it’s hard to get info about how shows are made – such tidbits of knowledge are doled out in miserly ways by a show’s producers. Especially since they can pad their DVD releases with such things, though it’s worth noting that the producers of Stargate: Atlantis did a fantastic job of stuffing each season’s disc set with tons of great behind-the-scenes features. But before all that, it was Levar Burton and Reading Rainbow that brought the house down for going on-set with Star Trek: TNG – hard to believe that a kid’s show back in the day did more in less than 20 minutes than any contemporary on-air special of the time. Go have a look at it, and try to forgive the poor-quality VHS tape video.

Along those lines, may I present: 8-bit Trip, which is some retro video-game goodness... done in Lego. Amazing that it only took the creator 2 years to put together! I know I mentioned it last week, but it's too cool to talk about just once.

Aug 27 – Flu and You

Does anyone out there remember Lunchables from Schnieders, which got their start in the early 90’s? I remember trying them a few times and being disgusted by the awful processed meat and dry, crumbly crackers. They tasted as cheap as they were, and kinda put me off buying Schnieders products for a while. Someone has twigged to the new Lunchables that are on the market being a whole lot better than the ones from a decade past, and has posted a rather readable blog here... I wonder though, what’s next for the Lunchables line? Sushi? Or... bacon?

I downloaded Shadow Complex on the Xbox360 today, which is a 3D take on the old side-scrolling platformer games of the 80’s. Everything in the game is 3D, though the paths you can take are predetermined – I like that, as it still allows for a lot of exploration without that “Oops, I just got lost again” feeling that too-large 3D game worlds can engender. Along with the “Geez, this place is TOO big... I’m getting bored running continuously from place to place, why can’t they make things closer together?” feeling, among others. The brief trial I played was very enjoyable, though the cutscenes were... cumbersome, to be kind – believable human emotion from 3D avatars is still something game companies are struggling with, though BioWare seems to lead the pack with games like Mass Effect. Next up is Arkham Asylum, which has been getting rave reviews... not to mention having the voice talents of Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamil as the Joker – both reprising their roles from the animated TV series beloved by millions, myself included.

This week has seen me work a lot, again... we’re short-staffed, and it just seems like it will be that way until well into the new year – there’s just not enough people to go around if anyone gets sick. And since the Cold & Flu Season is almost upon us, we have that to worry about... not to mention the fact that the H1N1 virus is spreading far more rapidly that predicted. The most eye-popping fact from that article: 40% of those who contract Swine Flu are healthy young adults, who die from a viral fever within a week – yikes! So wash your hands, sanitize your countertops and hope that the production of vaccine will eventually catch up to demand... right now, they’re saying five years until 2/3 of the planet is inoculated. Ouch – better read this Special H1N1 Edition of the Ottawa Citizen, its got a ton of useful info you can use to protect yourself and those you care about.

Aug 28 - Top TV

Today was another long day – opened the store, did a lot of paperwork, yadda yadda. I was all set to go & catch the bus into Victoria at 3pm... but when I tried to cash out, I discovered our computer had conveniently lost a transaction to the tune of $800.00 ... so I had to find & fix that before I could leave. Took me 30 mins more, making me miss one bus but I was on the road finally at 4pm, heading to our Cloverdale location to host an ‘open house’ for any Head Office employees to drop in & learn about our new Gold service... and there was but a single person there today. So I got some more practice in, checking on the 6 gold rings that she brought in to test. All told: all were gold, so in the end she received nearly $200.00 for her trouble, plus we discussed some of the more amusing points of branch-level vs Head Office experiences with the company.

The ever-enjoyable io9.com released a great list today: The Top 100 SciFi Shows of All Time. Included on the list are many of my favourites, such as B5, Futurama and Firefly, along with choices like Transformers and Airwolf – even ALF made the list! A corollary to that story is the Top 20 Shows Fox Cancelled before their time ... topped by the live-action Tick, of course. And who could ignore the Top 10 Memorable Monsters from Red Dwarf, which challenged its writers by decreeing from the start that NO aliens would ever make an appearance on the show, to make it more ‘realistic’ for viewers. I have high hopes for this fall’s SciFi offerings, though I just heard that the new ‘V’ series has been put on hold... not, I hope, in order to cast someone to play Elizabeth the Starchild. Seeing as I just picked up the entire 80’s series of ‘V’ on sale from F.Schlock this week, I may have time before the new one comes out to re-watch it... though I may have to get through Season 3 of Alias first. We’ll see; for now, I’m just tickled that someone else has mentioned how cool Space: Above & Beyond was for its day, back in the 90’s...

Aug 29 - Grumpy Sunday

I did some writing, on and off, today – mostly for my game development project for NWN. I was still feeling tired today, and that made me grumpy... which meant that when my COD4 games today stank, I got even grumpier. So I took a break for a while, sat on the back deck and soaked up some end-of-summer weather with the laptop humming away... that helped. It was also nice that the( inevitable )people in the park next door were, for a wonder, quiet and consider – actually enjoying the peace and quiet of nature, go figure!

Not much else to say today – I suppose if my brain wasn’t buzzing with a zillion things, I could have put myself down for a nap to see if that helped. Funny how you can drop off at a moment’s notice when you’re younger( or much older )but the skill seems lost in the middle years. Too many things to worry about, most likely... not like a toddler’s simple needs, and not like an elder’s acceptance that some things just don’t matter as much anymore.

Well, we passed 2700 hits today, and I’m still figuring out how I’m going to convert this blog from weekly to semi-daily( if such a thing exists )... supposedly that will attract more readers, though I’m still fuzzy on the details.

Working, Weaponizers and WoW

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:38:00 +0000

This week's been brutally busy for me at work... the only normally scheduled day was Monday. Tuesday, I had my meeting after work with the various plaza merchants, which went very well - the brouchures were a big hit. Wednesday I worked a 1/2 shift in the evening at our Cloverdale store... Friday I worked 12.5 hours between 2 stores, Saturday was an extra shift, Sunday was the same... very, very tiring. Not much going on blogwise.

Aug 17 - Watching Art

Holy artwork, Batman! There's a taste of things a-brewin' over at BrianThomasWoods.com, where his newest 'speed paintings' have a depth of intrigue and style that I am frankly in awe of - they remind of several 'concept art' books from years back that simply oozed style and alluded to Greater Things to come. Bravo, Brian! Check out DeviantArt.com if you've bever been there before either... tons of great images, plus they support CoolIris to browse all their images in 3D!

Which brings us to: watches. I haven't worn a watch in quite a few years, as their function( timekeeping )seems to have been steadily replaced by the ubiquitos cell phone in modern life. Why have a watch, when your cell keeps almost perfect time and you have it with you anyway? I've been waiting( and waiting, and waiting... )for the two to merge, but things seem to be taking their own sweet time, despite efforts by the Chinese to push things along... though they could use some lessons in miniturization( at least they got the waterproofing spot-on ). ChipChick.com( a rather nice place to visit! )has a brief article about the latest cell-watch fusion attempt, though again unlikely to catch on, despite retailers trying to create their own hype - Dick Tracy, where are you?

Aug 18 - Cheap Junk

As someone who loves to fix things on the cheap, using nothing but the semi-cannibalized remnants of other possibly-still-fixable things from around the house, I just love ThereIfixedIt.com. All those creative solutions you sometimes see passing you on the road, or in a friend's backyard, put up on display for the world. Reminds me a little of why I liked Junkyard Wars when it was on TV around the turn of the milennium - building cool things out of scrap is always entertaining...

Yet... does anyone out there have an actual basement workshop? The only person I ever knew with a complete setup is my grandfather, but he was an engineer by trade for 40+ years before retiring so you kind of expect that. The next best would be the Ultimate Guy's Garage, where you could work on the car, boat or your latest home renovation project with equal ease.

Neil Gaiman: one can never have too much of this writer in one's life, and not a word he's written is junk, IMHO. Fortunately, to feed that hunger for the heights of the written word comes an interview with Neil, where he talks about the art of storytelling. Having heard him tell one such story years ago, I can attest to the power this man has with both the written and the spoken word... quite a height to aspire to, but why not aim for the heights, instead of the more crowded middle?

Aug 19 - Cars are Cool Too

ThinkGeek.com has some really neat stuff, along the lines of The Sharper Image from decades past... but far more easily accessed via the web instead of a silly shopping mall - which some people apparently will geek out over too when they open a new one. I particularly like this nifty( but expensive )handheld game emulator, that will run nigh unto every single older game ever produced - even Amiga games! Sometimes I just love tech... too bad it's not free, like this tribute to 8-bit games of yesteryear - done entirely in Lego!! And somehow I think this gadget's time has passed... it's good for a few stares at your local Starbuck's, but be prepared for that Pitying Look if you tell folk how much you paid for it!

Though if you pulled out one of these, it would instantly restore your Cool Factor. You may want to pre-order one... I'm still resisting, somehow.

Much like I'm resisting the urge to scour the 'net for actual watchable episodes of Weaponizers, a 3-part series from the producers of Mythbusters. Oh, the destruction: remote-controlled full-size vehicles set loose on each other with fully-functional weaponry in the middle the the southwestern US desert - check out the video teaser! My dreams of 80's Car Wars fandom brought to live in exploding glory, sans the silly frippery of Hollywood that made 2008's Death Race a bland, empty dry-firing flop - which is too bad, as it had Jason Statham of Transporter fame in it.

Aug 20 - Putting on the Moves

I just realized today that I still haven't seen Transformers2: Revenge of the Fallen, or quite a few other movies of late, come to think of it. Is it normal now to simply say "Oh, I'll wait for the DVD." and not even think about going to a theater? I mean, I am not one to answer, as I loathe sharing the aisles with people who seem to have everything except watching the movie on their mind... which is disappointing, as they're simply wasting their ticket money to annoy other people. So it goes... just looking at the upcoming releases at ComicBookMovie.com doesn't really get me all fired up to get out there to see an opening film, and the new trailer for Avatar has left a lot of people scratching their heads, wondering how the Blue Man Group managed to get so out of control with James Cameron's blessing...

This week, I've been playing COD4 for a little while each night, mainly to blow off some stress after working so much each day. Playing in Hardcore Mode is actually not too bad once you get used to it, and I've found that I'm dying less and playing smarter because of it. Still, there are exceptions, and tonight was one: I had to quit after a few games in a row where people were spawn camping( a hot topic )like crazy, though it wasn't as bad as what happened on the server this PC player played on!

Aug 21 - Cool Stuff Friday

Yow - what a combo! I've just learned the DC( formerly known as Detective Comics )is going to team up Batman and a Golden Age superhero known as the Man of Bronze... Doc Savage! I loved reading those old-school adventure books when I was young: gripping characters having memorable adventures in the far-flung corners of the world. Akin to the Tom Swift series of books, Doc Savage was a self-made superhero, much like Batman in his own origins... hence the perfect idea of teaming the two up to see what happens. I can hardly wait!

From the same era as Doc Savage there's this magazine cover, which somehow managed to survive 45+ years to amuse today's websurfers... with weasels!

Freebie Frustration: tonight I finally got around to installing MS Office... after much internal debate, as I really detest MS but their document format / editor is the prevailing champ on the market. Until now, I've been using Open Office 3.1 for about a year and while it's great... I'm not the only one who can't get the spellchecker to work. You can only cut and paste so many times to a web-based spellchecker like Orangoo before your frontal lobes begin to spasm. Much like what happened when I discovered that Hasbro and Norton have teamed up for a Gi-Joe version of Norton's Antivirus... I kid you not. Another sure sign that our world is warping way, way too far away from Reality Prime... yeesh! At least these figures from the Joe movie are cool - why didn't they get used in the movie instead of speed suits?

Cool Part Deux: Fridays are when I like to catch 2 shows later in the evening, convenient when I am working as I still get home in time to catch them. The first is World's Most Extreme Homes, followed by the Americanized version called Extreme Living. Both shows focus on unique homes the world over, some of which may be in your own backyard - like the Steel House tucked away in downtown Victoria BC! I've yet to actually see it, but I've driven by the block where it's located many times and one of these days I'll have to play tourist and snap some pictures. Some of the homes featured in both shows are not to my taste, but all are unconventional, unique and creative in their design.

Aug 22 - Writing What?

In keeping with that thought, I sat down to write up my blog entry for today... and was greeted by a blank page in ScribeFire from my browser. Noooo!

Also, nobody noticed that last week's blog had no bacon reference in it... the world managed to stagger on without realizing its lack though. So this week, I give you: 100 uses for a strip of bacon - with pictures! How's that for making up, eh?

No complaints about the teaser trailer for the fourth season of The Venture Bros... it looks crazy-good! Seeing as I only have the first two seasons, I will have to go hunting for the next two seasons - they're harder to find on the cheap than you'd think. Crazy goodness though; check it out if you haven't seen the show.

Yeah yeah, complaints at work... we've all had those days, like today when I cycled between the two branches( 20 mins either way )to fix our lovely TCR. While I didn't have a complaint today while at work, I had one afterwards - in a way. The branch had been closed for 1/2 an hour, I was all set to leave... then this guy in a pickup pulls up, trots out and starts pulling at the locked door, as though enough repetitions would unlock the Secret Door Device and let him in. He then stood there for 15 minutes, yelling though the door at me to "Call the boss!" so he could "Get in to cash his cheque." No matter that the hours are posted on the door he's pounding on... the open sign and lights are off, and I'm standing there staring at him with a bicycle helmet on my head. A few short words to the effect of "We're closed, come back tomorrow" later, he finally told me where to go( charming )and drove off... after spending 20 minutes delaying me from leaving while simultaeously entertaining the people but 20 feet away at Tim Horton's. Which is perhaps why we as Canadians like to hang out there: free Saturday Night shows!

Aug 23 - Workin' Sunday Thoughts

An interesting article from io9.com about why we can't let go of things. Which could explain how some fans( of any stripe or media-source )become too obesssed with the things they love best... like people's characters from their MMO such as World of Warcraft which was one of the main focuses of the recent BlizzCon 2009. A recent video about such things has gone viral on YouTube, with over 2 million hits - it's called Do You Want To Date My Avatar? and has a decently catchy tune, plus some decent visuals. Not up to Madonna-esque video standards though, but they are selling their tune already on Amazon.com - talk about cashing in. Good for them!

Today was a busy one at work - I did my usual imitation of a flair bartender for the first few hours, to keep up with the flow of people through the front door. Pretty typical for a sunny Sunday, really: people want to get out & do things ASAP, so they rattle on the door and flood through until it opens. Nothing like a lineup to spur one to move quickly... and at the end of the day, I still balanced to the penny - nice! Tired though; my own branch is not nearly as busy, so today was a reminder of how crazy things can get, especially when you're working solo.

Well, that's better... I recalled most of what I had written, with the added bonus of doing things again better the second time - the joy of editing! I really have fun surfing around during the week, putting ideas down in the entries and linking them around to various things I've discovered of late( and not so late ). Hope you've enjoyed this week's Double Edited Blog!

Superkids, Skeksis and Spinal Cords

noreply@blogger.com (Soronos) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Well, I'm still working on a daily blog post; I think to start I'll try to update a few times a week and see how well Blogger.com functions with that...

Aug 10 - Space Opera and Writing

This is cool to me: a gallery of famous writer's spaces at WhereIwrite.org - images of where some of today's most creative minds do their work. I think that Joe Haldeman's space wins, if only for the fact that he writes things longhand by candlelight! How cool is that in today's age of laptops? Maybe I should take a picture of my space here on the deck, overlooking Langford Lake - after all, it's year-round that I can write there, even if it's raining as I have a nice little overhang over the hottub. Which is also great for relaxing in to break those nasty writer's block days when nothing else works.

Which brings me to Space Opera - yes, the genre that Star Wars catapulted to the forefront of popular culture from its origins in mainstream scifi's Golden Era in the pre-WWII era. While series books like The New Space Opera have been hit or miss, some other works have been coming to the market lately, including Federations, which focus on a more human perspective than other works have to date. Sharing the same spirit as video games like Homeworld, these stories take you to new worlds, new peoples... letting you Boldly Go where no couch-potato has gone before( though there's still no new B5-themed books on the horizon, darn it! ). Next thing you know, Star Trek's transparent aluminum will be available at your local Home Depot, making broken windows a thing of the past - oh wait: it almost is now!

My first day back to work... and I spent it all at the back workstation, catching up on paperwork. I was thrilled to no end to have a trainee handling things up front, so that I could plow through emails, reports and whatnot to get myself back in gear. Luckily some things were taken care of by a visiting store manager while I was away, or I would have had even more to do...

Aug 11 - Medical Superheros

This is so cool too: a real-life superman... who is only 2 years old. Liam Hoekstra has been blessed( and some say cursed )with an ultra-rare muscular condition that has given him 40% more muscle mass than the average person. Which means that he's burning a ton more energy just sitting there, as muscles use 3 times more energy than fat... and also means the kid has to eat 6 full meals a day. Luckily, he was adopted into a family that has the means to provide the food and care he needs... kinda reminds me of the Marvel Comics origin story for Colossus, whose poor Russian parents agreed to allow their son to participate in 'research' that caused him to mutate and grow into a superhero - with a massive appetite. Strange how reality starts to reflect fiction some days...

Plus, wonderful news on two separate medical fronts! Firstly for those who have been afflicted with injuries to their spines, new hope: a common blue food dye may hold the cure - can you believe it? Read the article... the discovery seems to have come out of left field, which seems to be like most major discoveries - take penicillin for example, which was just a failed experiment that resulted in millions of saved lives over the decades. The other bit of fantastic medical news? Canadian researchers have succeeded in creating stems cells from normal skin cell samples, eliminating the moral questions of using embryonic stem cells from foetuses to treat patients. As a bonus, their method does not have a high possibility of inducing additional types of cancers that previous methods risked - and to think I've only just heard about it now, when it was announced back in March 2009... seems to have flown under the radar. Great news, indeed!

I spent a good part of the day fiddling with my old workhorse colour printer, theKonica-Minolta Magicolor 2200. My laser toner refills had arrived last week while I was away, so I popped out the toner cartridges one at a time from the printer and refilled them - not as easy as it sounds. While the process was less messy than I had thought, it turns out that one critical step was omitted from the rather nice instructors packed from the eBay seller: how to properly re-seal the toner cartridges once you've refilled them. I opened the laser printer after a few hundred pages had been run, to discover the ultra-fine yellow toner coating the insides of the printer - seems the plug wasn't all that well sealed. The solution? The handy-dandy hot glue gun that everyone should keep in their crafts cupboard. A few large helpings of that around the toner plugs, and all was well. I've been printing off about 1500 colour brochures for Millstream Village, as our newly-formed Merchants Association needs them to get a leg up on getting shoppers to perceive it as a one-stop shopping solution instead of heading into Victoria. The group provided the paper supply( not cheap )and I provided the toner for the first run - seems to be working out well, though I had not counted on the fumes from the laser printer being so potent. Whew! Open those windows and crack out the fans again... because a recent study shows that prolonged exposure to toner particles may be bad for your health!

Aug 12 - Two year old Tax Troubles?

After reading this article about how Canada has the third-highest cell phone rates in the world, I've decided to put my own cell phone on 'vacation disconnect' for a few months - enough is enough. Seeing as I already have a store cell phone to use for work-related matters, plus a home phone and a Vonage 'net phone( for all those Niagara folks who never call...? )it just makes sense. I don't get out much any more, so the thing mainly gets used for calling into work and the like - a waste of the $50.00-plus a month I've managed to 'reduce' my bill to. So take that, Telus... I'll be away from the phone when you call. *grins*

I spent most of my morning gathering paperwork for the CRA, going through old bills to find those related to my moving expenses in late 2007, almost 2 years ago. I found most of them, and even managed to get WestJet to email me a copy of my ticket purchase for the flight out here - THAT was a triumph! However, I have the sinking feeling that the CRA are going to be jerks and disallow some things, though I have no idea what - their website is frustratingly vague, and when I filed with QuickTax.ca there was no disclaimer or context-help that popped up to break down what I could and couldn't claim, so I used common sense as best I could.

Bonus: for no particular reason: here is a size comparison of various movie monsters. Just because we all love monsters, except when they're corporations...

Aug 13 - Gold!

Yes, it's true... MMart is ramping up to start buying gold by the end of the month. Jumping on the same bandwagon those low-production-value TV ads blare at you about, we're going to be buying people's scrap gold. Watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings... even broken jewelery are all accepted. But first we have to learn how to tell if it's real gold or not, so that's why I was in for training today at 9:30am in Victoria. It was mostly a pleasant experience, though I was a little wary of some of the procedures and ended up needing some more practice on a few of them - other parts I grasped quite easily, I was pleased to discover. Though I had to train today, my store won't be buying gold immediately as we're an Open Concept store, meaning no glass. So no gold being handled for security reasons in-store - yet.

Also, it doesn't help that my laptop's wireless connection has been flaking out all this week, losing its grip on the DIR-655 router a few times an hour and necessitating my physically resetting the wireless each time. Very, Very Frustrating... and Gateway has been little help, as their second response to my email told me to check to see if there was a problem with my internet provider - idiots. I had told them my parent's laptop was working flawlessly on the same router and ISP connection, yet they tell me that? My third email got a response to go through this checklist to solve the problem... which annoyed me so much that I sat down and brainstormed all the things that I myself thought might be the problem... and fixed it!

And who the heck is Roger M. Wilcox? You tell me...

Aug 14 - Gaming Goes Bust

Sadly, it seems the gold rush is over for the video game industry: sales are in freefall right now, so I guess it's a good thing I didn't decide to move to Edmonton in 2007 to try to get a job with BioWare Inc. - who incidentally were recently purchased by Electronic Arts, one of the biggest companies in the industry. Perhaps more people are finding out about sites like Good Ol' Gaming.com and buying the 'better' games of yesteryear, rather than the high-amperage low-value cheap shots that they call games today. Though I am partial to some flash-based games out there, like this one: Defense Fleet makes shooting spaceships fun again!

The big moneymakers these days are MMO's... apart from World Of Warcraft and Second Life, there's not many of them that can boast over a million members. At least, not yet. Star Trek Online should become one of the Big MMO's when it's released... whenever that is, as no date has been set even tentatively. Until that happens, Trek fans will have to content themselves with things like this glorious gallery of screenshots from the developer. Myself, I just want to see how well put-together the thing is, as the franchise has millions upon millions of fans the world over - I got a kick out of playing Klingon Academy back in the day( circa 2000 A.D. )on my old PC, simply because the ships were so beautfiully rendered... and blew up Real Nice.

News has reached me from my friends at io9.com that the sequel to The Dark Crystal has entered the pre-production stage! One of my favourite films of all time, the epic fantasy without a single live recognizably-human actor still stands as one of the landmark works of imagination put to film. I own the AnniversaryEdition DVD, and some of the extras show what an incredible amount of hard work was poured into making every detail of the film unique according to the vision of Jim Henson, may he R.I.P. - we miss ya, Jim.

Aug 15 - MS Office at long last

I stopped by Future Shop before work this morning to pick up a copy of MS Office 2007: Home & Student, which was $50.00 off this week - quite a bargain, though still not as cheap as I'd like. While I've enjoyed using OpenOffice for some time now, I haven't been able to get the spellchecker to work - at all. Cutting and pasting things to online services like Orangoo.com is cheap, sure... but time-consuming and that's something I find myself having less and less of as the summer winds to a close. So with the Legal Copy of MS:Office, I can actually install it on 3 different machines, as it comes with a 3-unit lisence - nice! I also finally scored a copy of the fifth season of Alias, which I've been wanting for some time but been unwilling to pay up to $42.99 CAN for - that's damned closed to robbery, in my books. So I've waited for a few years now, patiently, until I spotted it on sale... and thus, it was mine. Now that I can't recall what's gone on since I last watched the show, I've begun again from Season 2's midpoint... but now I can finish the run!

Work today was rather steady, which was nice to see, as my bonus as a manager only kicks in if we actually start making decent progress towards our revenue targets... things for the last while have been hard to predict and thus stressful as I try to figure out ways to get people in the door on a more regular basis. Plus, my trainee was sick today, so I didn't get much Manager Stuff done at all, as the door kept summoning me back to the front counter - it is always better to get a rush of customers, then a steady... plodding... pace... of one every 10 minutes or so. You can't get anything done: you are sitting for about a minute at the back work area when the door rings again - sigh and repeat.

Aug 16 - Call of Duty day off

Ah, at last... my weekly day off. So nice to relax... and do everything I couldn't during the week. First off: install 2 grab-bar handles by the hottub, so that my mom can actually use the thing once the weather starts cooling off. Or anytime really, when you think about it. Nice to get them @ 40% off too, a large and a small one, stainless steel both. Which made the installation harder, as the screws had rather soft heads on them, meaning it took longer to carefully get them seated in the wall and resulted in some rather impressive blisters from doing it all manually - nice start to the day.

So I took some hours off and gamed, playing COD4 with Matt, then later joined by Dave and a new friend, Steve... who also brought in some friends. I played 'Hardcore Deathmatch' for the first time... meaning no radar and much more damage per shot. So I died. A lot. I called it quits in the early afternoon for a bit, after a game where I scored 2 kills... and died 18 times - how's that for feeling frustrated, eh? I've been spending the other parts of my day recording things off my parent's DVR to make room; I managed to clear about 8 hours worth of movies like Shrek2 outta there onto recordable DVD's - those things never really caught on as much as the DVR's did, as the DVR's are so much easier to use for the average person.

The evening saw me head back to COD4 with Lucas, Dave, Bill, Steve and others... and it wasn't too bad. I put in a solid showing, though I faded towards the end - I managed to run up a few kill streaks, including several Air Strikes - not too bad considering the more difficult nature of Hardcore Mode in COD4. I still miss my Halo days though, truth be told - I guess that's why I've never traded in my copies of Halo2 or Halo3, despite the limitations of the 'outdated' gameplay modes. Hard to believe that something that was so much fun is now considered 'unplayable' by so many people, but that's technology for you: always advancing and leaving things in the dust.

I have to say, I feel much better after the vacation, though I'm still a bit tired. Seeing as I managed to 'beat the heat' by leaving Niagara when I did to head back to BC( and the weather here is going to be cool for the next long while too! )makes me all the happier - sorry folks, try to keep cool back there!