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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!
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!
