Odd, Old and Oscars

I'm still on the fence about canceling my Vonage phone, but for now I'll keep it. Best times to call me are 11-1pm or 11pm-1am, EST... before or after my usual work times. All on that for now.


Feb 16 - Love those eyes...

Seems all that is on the news these days is doom and gloom about the economy. Yet it appears that some saw it coming... have a look at this video by a fellow named Peter Schiff. It dovetails nicely into some info I discovered about similarities between the current crisis and what happened in Japan in the late 90's... eerie similarities there, actually.

Having moved out to BC, then from Victoria to Langford in the West Communities, I've yet again struck a blow against expanding my social circles here. Not that I had a large one to begin with, after a year here, but being dependant on a vehicle or bus to 'ride into town' to socialize was not part of my original plan... but so be it. One never knows what the future will bring, even if you are Peter Schiff, yet we have to make plans and adjust as best we can. While I enjoyed riding my bike to work last year, this year since I'm not feeling so good, perhaps it's best to limit my rides to recreation for now. Of course, I could always sign up for one of these seminars...

Who knows? If I ever ran across someone with eyes like Tilda Swinton, who was the White Queen in The Chronicles of Narnia, I might just dive in and get lost. The future in an eyeblink...

Feb 17 - The End is in site...

A few years ago, I reprogrammed one of my routers to use OpenDNS, which is a simple way to surf the 'net faster - this bit explains it a little better than I could. I just reprogrammed one of my routers with OpenDNS this week, nothing like getting speedier 'net access... for free. Considering I've just upgraded to the fastest version of cable with Shaw.ca, things around here should be pretty speedy now.

Surprisingly, the economic slump has postponed the demise of dialup 'net access, whose budget price is very appealing when trying to figure out to save a buck.

This doesn't help those without internet access at work, like myself - the silicon highway doesn't exist for me, save for 'approved' sites such as 411.ca or other sites that make my job easier. Yet blocking sites like Facebook may not be such a good idea for businesses, overall, and while I admit that some people might abuse the privilege, not having 'net access at work these days is annoying to most.

Feb 18 - Growing up G33k...

Brian, this one is for you: Doctor Who... as an anime character. Animated, no less!

On the topic of Doctor Who, it brings back memories of the 70's, and all those TV shows that I grew up with. In addition to Doctor Who, there was The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica... and many more. There is an amazing picture here that one artist has created that immortalizes the best of these shows... I was impressed with the detail that was put into it!

Yet modern era technology has let us do things yet-unthought of back then.... take Google Earth, for example. Recently, they added seafloor data to the application... and one intrepid soul with FAR too much time on his hands was trawling through it when he made an amazing discovery. Is it true? We'll see.

Then again, we have some controversial ideas popping up regarding internet use, so who's to say things weren't better back when the quickest way to reach out and touch someone was a phone?

Feb 19 - Linkup at work?

Work is work, and of late is proving to be rather wearing. Tax season is ramping up, and being the only person at my branch means that my task-juggling skills are being stretched every day. While not physically taxing, the always-on all-day mental challenges have proven to be rather exhausting, though so far I've been up to the tasks at hand. I can say it's NOT boring, not that it ever was really...

Speaking of work, here's links to the sites for some of my friends, who put a LOT of hard work into 'em:

The Art of Brian Thomas Woods

Jinx The Black Cat - From Mike, plus Newt & John!

ImageryFusion.com - yay Pierre!

Also, thanks to Paulino for posting this link about credit balance scams... informative video, watch it and decide for yourself if you need it. Especially in this era of job insecurity.

Feb 20 - What are they thinking???

This week has been bacon-free, mainly because I blundered across this story... which while unrelated in terms of food still just plain old grossed me out. Though not as much as the receipies I found here, which should probably only be served around Halloween time. Except the brain food, of course!

Perhaps it falls under the category of Odd News, which I have always enjoyed, usually from the decades-old News of the Weird column that has appeared in many papers throughout the continent.

One little tidbit I picked up from a Mythbusters episode: just as helium can make your voice squeaky, other non-toxic gases can alter it the other way too. Neat!

Lastly, it seems I am not alone in changing my diet... Andy Walker recently had to remove coffee from his daily menu. Fortunately, I never took up the habit, along with drinking, smoking, or skydiving... so at least I can narrow down any health issues without those complicating factors.

Feb 21 - Waiting

I'm waiting for the Watchmen movie to come out March 6th, with bated breath. Until it does, I'll have to content myself with some amazing photo galleries, like this one. Plus, I just found out about this gem... the mini-comic from the Watchmen story, The Black Freighter, will be coming out as it's own DVD, voiced by Gerald Butler of 300 fame.

Having cable TV for the last few weeks has proved to be less of a temptation than I thought, overall. While I missed some shows like Mythbusters, or the Space Channel, in general I find myself flipping through the Shaw electronic Program Guide( love it, $2.99 a month! )for long minutes without finding anything I really want to give up my time in hour-long chunks for. I think what appeals to me about live TV is that I don't have to fiddle with loading a DVD... which says something about couch potato motivation. Still, watching Adam and Jamie test the ancient Chinese rocket-firing hwacha was amazing!

Feb 22 - Oscars

My first day off, and it's been most enjoyable though it's going far too fast. The sun came out for a few hours this afternoon, and that attracted a huge flock of robins to the front lawn in search of worms. Barely ten feet away through the windows of my living room, they were happily plucking wrigglers from the dirt before my eyes - I've never seen so many of them all at once. Tristan watched avidly too.

Watching the Oscars tonight as I wrote this blog, I was struck by how upbeat and non-ax-grinding they were compared to past years. With Hugh Jackman as an energetic host, plus various changes to the programs, the show tonight was a definite Feel Good Experience for the audience.


Well, another few hours whiled away whilst writing this web-blog... not too much happening this week, but I still hope you enjoyed it!

Weirdos, Writing and Weather

No mention of spiders in this week's blog... though there IS a new entry in my Nemster list...

Oct 13 - Humans... and not.

Newt and John, a webcomic by my good friend Mike, reached their 20th episode milestone today. I've greatly enjoyed their adventures so far, as their antics capture the hilarity of two roomies dealing with bizarre adventures. I should also mention that I have a great custom image of Newt, John and myself in a spaceship, that Mike made as a going-away gift for me last year when I left for B.C. - it hangs proudly by my door, so I can get a grin every time I arrive or leave my home.

Along the same vein, I give you: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. Not to be confused with Human Idiocy, or even the silly things people do when they think No-One Is Watching. One VERY early internet List I love is the Evil Overlord List, which manages to combine villainy, cliches and stupidity remarkably well... if you don't laugh, then you haven't thought hard enough about how to take over the world. You should watch a few episodes of Pinky and the Brain, just to see how NOT to go about it... especially if you're two lab mice.

Which brings up movies. Now, I've already posted about how I MUCH prefer to watch movies at home nowadays, so I won't go into that. Here, I will instead briefly blog about Things That Only Happen in the Movies... like every car explodes in a fireball when it crashes, or how locks magically vanish from doors with a few quick shots from a pistol. A show that has done its fair share of debunking movie myths is the much-loved Mythbusters, who by and large have managed credible experiments to test the accuracy of many a Myth. If you visit their site, you can see the many myths they have discussed but NOT brought to the show to test, for various reasons. I guess testing to see if humans mutate into anger-driven giant berserkers after massive gamma-ray exposure would be one of those off-air theories... darn.

Oct 14 - Hard work and gadgets

I had an interesting thought in the shower today, and it was entirely unrelated to hygiene. It occurred to me that everyone who achieves success always includes the phrase "it was a lot of hard work" - we hear it so much but it makes little visual impact. I had the image of a chain hoist pop into my head, like the ones mechanics use to hoist engine blocks. The analogy almost writes itself: the huge, complicated engine needs lots of work and know-how to run, but the initial process of GETTING to it is the hardest work. Each long pull on the chain hoist raises the massive engine a tiny bit, so long minutes of hard work are needed to raise the final product fractionally until one reaches the point where the detail work can begin. It is an analogy I like, and I hope to employ at a future date.

As for the future: I love gadgets, and one of the places I loved to go to FIND gadgets years ago was The Sharper Image, which had a store at the Walden Galleria mall in Buffalo NY. You could wander in, and on every shelf or floor display was a gadget you had never before imagined, or knew you needed, until that moment. Looking back, it is easy to see how most of it was overpriced and usually fufilled only a single, quasi-time-saving. That and Smithbooks were the two main reasons I liked to visit the Walden Galleria... as well as the fact that most of the food there seemed damned cheap compared to Canadian restaurants at the time. Lower standards or higher volume consumption? You decide.

Oct 15 - Writing, yep!

I have been plugging away at various writing projects, but progress has been slow of late - low energy and higher stress levels do not bode well for the creative spark. Still, I have been trying to keep various bits of writing advice in mind, including 'use your mood' to find different aspects of character and story that one would not find if you are feeling happy, energetic and relaxed... none of which relate to grim stories, villains or dire plot threads. So, with that in mind, I have been plugging away at outlined plot points, as well as tossing together little 'pastiche' bits to try and capture the mood at various points in my Novel Story.

One amusing place I have come across is How To Write a Best-Selling Fantasy Novel. Go see it.

Among all the great advice given, one common thread seems to be "You won't likely get rich from writing," which is fine by me... Fame, Fortune and Respect do not always go hand in hand, with J.K Rowling as the glaring platinum Ideal of Writing Success that everyone else has to try to follow. I figure if I can say what I want to say, in a way that other people want to read, and that brings in a little income, then all for the good. Like the other writers state, everyone is full of great ideas, so it is the few who learn to use the TOOLS of writing to HONE their skill, that will bring those with Talent to the top of the heap... with a little luck. *grin*

So if you cannot tell your adjectives from your adverbs, or what narrative perspective to use, or even notice why your page-long paragraphs seem to be boring people... then perhaps writing is not in your cards. So go be a professional poker player instead - from what I hear, your odds of success are much higher!

Oct 16 - Triad Thursday of Stress

Well, today COULD have been the day from hell, but it worked out nicely when all was said and done, despite a lot of unavoidable stress. Right after I opened the store, who showed up but... a company auditor! We had been warned that this week was a likely time for an audit, which they do quarterly( or more often )so I was not as dismayed as I could have been. Still, it meant I spent most of my day worrying that we had forgotten some detail that would crash our overall score - not having a manager at the branch will make you thing like that.

Adding to the joy was a visit by the head honcho for all of BC for our company, attended by our district manager. He was nice, but I got the impression of laser eyes noting every tiny flaw in the branch, and likely an unconscious urge to slip on a pair of dapper white gloves to run along the counters for dust. Still, I was busy enough that everyone stayed in the background doing their thing and not underfoot or looking over my shoulder, which was nice...

Did I mention yet that Crazy Lady came in today TOO? Yes, she managed to add to the Stress Triad today by coming in for NO reason other than to ask the most inane question I've heard YET. Apparently her sister, which she sent the money transfer to last week, is not in the UK but Zimbabwe... so she wants ME to call Western Union to ensure the transfer is 'held' ... and ALSO she did NOT want ANY calls made to HER residence about it! Apparently she is doing this on the sly... which I do not care a whit about, only that she vacate the branch and stop bothering me. Especially with inane questions and demands that I have NO ability( or desire )to fulfill, even if I wanted to. Amusingly, the Head Man from Head Office( heh )tried to break into the conversation, but backed off quickly as the Insane Gaze rolled in his direction... kind of like seeing that normal-looking dog in the park turn around to reveal the foam dripping from its jaws. Yeah.

Anyway, she left, the rest of them left... and then I left, to sprawl at home in a daze before relaxing with a few episodes of Atlantis. The second season has a commentary for almost EVERY episode, which is amazing - some of the details and directorial chatter is simply fascinating, as it shows how MUCH thought goes into every episode, and how you never catch some of it as it goes by so fast on-screen.

Oct 17 - Is it Day-ta or Dah-ta?

The morning vanished quickly getting the usual household doings done, then it was off to work. Fortunately, it was another nice day out; I have yet to run into the chill combination of very cool weather and rain, so cross yer fingers, as biking in that is no fun at all.

I found out today that the branch hours will be changing again in November, which will be for the better in several ways. Not the least of which is that I can sleep in EVERY day now, and manage to get home early enough to catch an hour or so of daylight around dinner - nice in the winter!

I've been looking at some storage options for my data for some time now, as I always like to have backups handy in case of disaster. Up to this point, that has always meant storage on an external hard drive, or putting critical files like family photos on DVD; annoying given their 'small' capacity, which meant a few years ago after a PC went wonky that I used THIRTY DVD's to back up and then restore my data. Impossible today, as I have ten times the data stored now as I did back then.

One solution may be a FREE service called aDrive.com, which gives ANYONE free online storage - 50 gigabytes worth! Their business model is based on duplication; they predict that among their entire userbase, many users will have copies of the same file, so all that aDrive has to do is determine that yes, two files ARE the same, and store just ONE copy while allowing both users to access it. In this way, the 'actual' space used by files such as MP3's or YouTube videos is greatly reduced. Nice, and if it keeps the service FREE, then I am all for it!

Oct 18 - Leafing Sunny

Cold this morning, not TOO bad at 7 degrees C, cold enough to see your breath though. The leaves are falling in small drifts along the roadside, though many trees are still quite green and leafy. I did see the most massive Canadian maple leaf today - the thing was as large as my two spread hands together! Wow! It could almost serve as a plate of sorts, though being dead and slight decayed might put a person off.

The sun is blazing outside, albeit without a lot of warmth... and people are smiling! I've always been fascinated by how people's moods and the weather are related, so today goes a long way towards adding data to that file. Without exception, every single customer today has been smiling, even the usually dour regulars, and all of them are busily scurrying about Doing Things.

It's amusing to see how quickly we get busy when the sun comes out... and odd how busy we remain when it is raining - my theory is that people don't like being 'trapped' at home on rainy days, but instead want to get out and shop or socialize at a mall or coffee shop. Group social dynamics is a fascinating field, which has elements of psychology and statisical analysis that combine in interesting and unusual ways.

Oct 19 - Sunday Harry

The third of my Month of Sundays today, and it was Not Too Bad. Relaxing, actually, as it was steady enough a flow of customers to make the clock move nicely towards closing time. I still love the fact that I have such a great view - the branch is located near a major intersection, and I have previously mentioned that a bus transfer point is next to the plaza too. Lots of activity to watch, which is great - no view of the mountains mind you, but it beats hell out of the backside of a building.

My neighbours are HUGE fans of Harry Potter, so when I ran into one of them on the stairs today, of course the topic ran to old Harry. Seems the latest film has been delayed until spring 2009, which still gives us( my neighbours )time to 'catch up' on all the previous films in HD - thanks for the sale, Amazon! I still find it odd that so many HD-DVD's are still so pricey, even six months after the annoucement that Blu-Ray had won the DVD War in early 2008. Which annoys me still, as Blu-Ray is still quite feature-sparse compared to HD-DVD; being able to pop up a scene menu WHILE still watching a movie is immensely liberating, as were other features of HD-DVD. Again, the Market Has Spoken, not the techs... too bad. My experience has always been that people will buy whatever's cheapest, and learn to live with it - hello, Dollar Stores.

Notice how the links tapered off towards the end, and the last entry had NO links at all? Ta!