Time, Talking and Trade-ins

This week's blog was delayed due to family - my sister is visiting this week, and darn it if I just did not have time yesterday to finish things up. So there. :)


April 20 - Wheel of Time(-lieness)

The news back in 2007 that Robert Jordan( nee James Oliver Rigney, Jr. )had died shocked a lot of Wheel of Time fans. The massive series, which I have been following since its inception back in 1990( wow, has it been THAT long? )has had some exciting news last month: the announcement that the final book A Memory of Light will be broken up into THREE books, totalling nearly 1 million words. Finally, an end is in sight, and it looks like one that will satisfy the many WOT fans out there. Well, most of them, anyway... those who haven't become dazed and confused somewhere along the massive journey that is the WOT series.

Thankfully, legions of fans out there have managed to create concise Plot Summaries for every chapter of every book, which you can peruse in case you haven't read any of the books in recent years. Another good place is the WOT FAQ, which has sections on almost every question you can think of regarding plot or character. You can also visit the official DragonMount Forums, where quite a few ideas are posted and being chewed over on a daily basis. The best place to go for following plot threads is Encyclopaedia WOT, where a visual 'plot thread tree' at the bottom of each book chapter list shows WHICH chapter in each book touches on a particular thread. This amazing feature means you can follow a particular plot thread through EACH chapter from book to book, start to finish... which is damned handy considering the sheer size and scope of the series.

April 21 - Mucho MMO's

Those of you who peruse this blog on a regular basis( love ya folks! Stay the course! )know that I am a fan of MMORPG's... but that I do not subscribe to any. Which is odd, as subscriptions are the basis for any successful online gaming community to succeed, making money for the company releasing it. Many an MMO has fallen by the wayside over the years, while a few such as WoW have continued to remain successful - it's a numbers game, and there aren't THAT many people out there with tons of free time to kill every week playing an elf running around collecting l00t.

MMORPG.com is a good place to go to get an idea of what's already out there and what's slated to come down the pipe in the near future. It also has a ton of info about less mainstream MMO's, of which of course I love any that are free to play. The site also contains some good blogs concerning MMO's, like Vicarious Existence, which has recently looked at how hype helps sell new MMO's. One little game I may jump into is Galaxy Online, which looks to be in the style of the old Star Control series of games for the PC, with the added strategic depth of an MMO - looks cool, may stink, in other words. Ever since the days of Tradewars( which is still online in various forms adapted for the internet )there has been a deluge of space strategy games - the most recent contenders for the crown are Jumpgate: Evolution and Eve: Online... neither of which is big on actually stepping OUT of your cool spaceship to get your feet dirty. In fact, despite its popularity, Eve is NOT a game for those who enjoy space combat - it is more about corporate trading, as this great little article explains.

April 22 - Red Versus Blue... bacon?

All right, all right... I chose the losing side in the HD-DVD( red box )vs Blue-Ray( blue box )war, I admit it. While I still believe HD-DVD was the better technology, the market decided otherwise and I have to live with my decision... and my collection that cost me some fair change. Now, there comes news that Warner has started a trade-in program for HD-DVD owners who want to go Blue-Ray - great news for people who want to jump the fence to the 'winning' side.

Not to be confused with Red Vs. Blue, which is a long-running machinima series based on a dysfunctional squad of troopers from the Halo universe. Damned funny too - you can find almost all the episodes here at Machima.com, all of which can be viewed full-screen.

Speaking of good ideas, how about this one: wrapping your iPhone in bacon. No, it's not real bacon, but a very realistic facsimile of our Fave Food in case form. Perhaps if you combined it with Bacon Spray, you could get a little closer to a non-greasy, preservative-free non-organic bacon case. Yum!

Can you tell I like bacon? *grin*

April 23 - On Blogging

Previously, I have written in this blog about, well... blogs. Coming up with new and timely postings every week is not easy without falling into a retreading rut. Unless you live a life on the run, Twittering your way though your day, getting new material for your blog is not all that easy.

ProBlogger.com has an article on how to come up with new material for your blog, so you can aspire to appearing on the Top 100 Blog List. While you may not be as popular as Neil Gaimon's blog, you can perhaps steal some eyeballs from Icanhazcheeseburger.com... and in the process give a few of them grammar lessons.

Myself, I am writing for my friends who might want to know what I am up to way out here, as well as my thoughts on various subjects near and dear to my daily life. When nothing much comes up in regards to Daily Life, I put in some Near and Dear. Which has worked fairly well, so far!

April 24 - Yo Joe!

Something of note today though: the creators of Bacon Salt appeared on Oprah today, via Skype. Talk about major celebrity endorsements... Oprah's audience of millions are already shooting the sales of Bacon Salt through the roof. I wonder if those millions know they ALSO make Baconaise?

Towards midnight, I watched G.I. Joe: Resolute on Teletoon, which was a totally new take on the much-beloved toy-driven Hasbro series from the 80's. This was not for kids however: the guns in this version missed a lot less, and the blood was front and center when they hit. I imagine it was aimed squarely at the grown-up kids from the 80's, such as myself... and I liked what I saw. Considering the long history of G.I. Joe, I hope that Resolute brings things to a new level and keeps the theme alive - considering that almost every north american male has at one time owned a G.I. Joe toy, it's a huge market.

April 25 - Ubuntu!

Another Not-Much-Save-Working Saturday, most of which I spent working the evening shift at the Colwood branch. Despite some annoyances, it was a good shift, especially since I had no last-minute doorcrashers like last week to delay me.

It seems that my old PC is not quite up to the task of running a NWN server within the parameters my project group is setting. So I spent a little time tonight putting in a spare hard drive and installing the latest version of Ubuntu, which in case you were not aware is a very popular easy-to-use version of the Linux operating system. Linux, besides being free( and open-source, meaning thousands of people around the world work on improving it on their own time )makes far better use of computer resources than any other OS, including Windows. Hopefully that extra 'leanness' will make the difference in getting things going for the project in the next few months, once it is all set up. And once I learn how to run Ubuntu... which won't be TOO long, thanks to this excellent FREE guide!

April 26 - Yard Talkin'

More yardwork today, in the lovely sunny weather. The lawn had been begging to be cut the last few weeks, but the weather had not co-operated until today. I despaired of using the massive gas-powered mower in the garage, as the fumes and noise from those things really bother me. So I went down to the local Canadian Tire and bought a reel mower, after doing some research at the LawnMowerGuide.com about some other alternatives. The mower( by Yardworks )was inexpensive and it was assembled in only a few minutes. It took me only a few passes to get the hang of it, so from there it went rather smoothly despite the bumpy nature of the lawn and was no harder to push than a regular heavy cordless or gas-powered mower. The cut was excellent too: the scissoring action is kinder to the grass tips than a duller powered blade would be, keeping the grass healthier.

I used the new version of Dragon Naturally Speaking again tonight, and really enjoyed it - it runs VERY well on my new laptop, compared to the old Blue Frankenstein of a PC I had run the previous version on. The speed is incredible, though the accuracy is still around 98% but training and correction will improve that considerably. There are a ton of other things you can do with it as well, depending on the application - I like the voice commands the best: tell your PC what to do, and off it goes! I love new tech. :-)


Well, my sister is visiting us this week all the way from Banff, AB, so I should really finish this off and close down the laptop for the evening. TTYL all!

Memories, Movies and Morals

Last year at this time, I was incredibly busy with settling into our temporary home over on Douglas St. So much so, that I had to catch up the blog some weeks later, based on my notes and what I could recall. How useful then, that the first thing I set up was my PC, to record such things... *grin* As it is, we broke 500 hits this week for the blog... wowsa!

Nov 10 - Spam and Urban Legends

All of us dislike spam email, and I daresay most of us dislike chain-letter emails. Myself, I find those various warnings 'passed on to your friends' to be VERY annoying, as I have often received the same warning year after year after year... about the same fictional topic, like Bill Gates giving away free money. One way to cut down on this waste of 'net bandwidth is to check with places like Snopes.com first, before forwarding something onwards... a common theme among these Urban Legend emails is to tug at emotional heartstrings or religious beliefs, like the 'Professor and the Dropped Chalk' legend. Which is why I like Snopes; it debunks a LOT of common urban legends, along the lines of the great Mythbusters show... one of the few things I miss about cable TV of late.

Bonus: What YOU can do to help Kill Spam Dead.

Nov 11 - Remember



Ninety years.

Nine decades since the end of the First World War, called the Great War, the War to End All Wars.

Yet it was followed only twenty years later by the Second World War. Did we learn anything?

Both wars saw horrific loss of life. Great evil was performed by mankind, in ways that still shock in the telling today.

The Veteran's Affairs website has simple, touching information about all the reasons we should never forget the sacrifices of the few, for the many. How the world came to be the way it is today, when ordinary men and women stood against tyrrany, often giving their lives so that we future generations could live in peace and never know the horrors of gobal war.

Here you can read about an American woman's visit to Belgium during the war, in 1916, with photos.

Perhaps this is why I am so fascinated with post-apocolyptic themes; I see the world as it could have been if history had taken a different turn... as it could have at any point in both wars, or before.

I am pleased to see television taking a less-glorious view of war in the last few decades; shows like Tour of Duty and even Space: Above and Beyond pulled no punches when it came to looking at the moral and visual horrors war brings to the human condition.

Never forget.

Nov 12 - Watch the Movies

Though it has been some time since I last saw a movie, I sill enjoy looking at what is coming out soon. Plus, there are some things that all of us can relate to when it comes to movies. For example, movie endings. Some movies end in ways that leave a lot of questions unanswered, or in a way that the viewer thinks is odd compared to the rest of the film. One place that looks at how movies SHOULD have ended is, well.. How It Should Have Ended.com - check out how Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars should have ended.

Speaking of Star Wars... being the cultural icon that it is, for the last thirty years, much has been made about it, by many people. Some of it funny, some of it bad... some of it just silly. For your viewing pleasure: Darth Vader does the Muppet's Mahanamahana song. And here is the original too. Heck, if you remember Cops from the early Fox Network days, then you'll love... Star Wars Cops!

As for movies coming up... check out The Watchmen, based on the famous graphical novel of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons some twenty years ago. Amazing stuff... as is the new Terminator movie concept art.

Nov 13 - Who is Harlan?

I have a lot of books on the shelves here, too many according to some people - I try not to listen to those folks. Other than living in an actual library, I cannot imagine any home of mine without a few shelves full of books. I remember reading an article a few years back about illiteracy in America, written by a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman who wrote that in 9 out of 10 homes he went to, the most 'literary' thing he saw in terms of reading materials were a few scattered magazines, in all the homes he was invited into over the years. He said it amazed him how few books he saw, in homes from all walks of life, which disturbed me, especially when he said that the TV was always in a prominent spot.

In a roundabout way then, this brings me to one of my favourite authors: Harlan Ellison. Famous not only for his works but also his acerbic attitude, I recently stumbled across a piece about Harlan's creative process. This article talks about how Harlan and a Polish surrealist artist combined their talents in a unique book; have a look at the article, as the paintings are incredible in their detail. Incidentally, he was the technical consultant on Babylon 5... another feather in that show's cap, in my opinion. Damn good writing.

Nov 14 - Wasted Tech

Ahem: GeekSpeak warning for those of you who avoid such... skip the below paragraph, and instead bemuse yourself with: CrazyThoughts.com - lots there to cogitate on!

Before I left Ontario, I had to divest myself of many old pieces of electronic and computer hardware that I had kept for various reasons. Mostly, I wanted to see if I could save or recycle moot of it instead of consigning it to the dump for the simple crime of being obsolete. In fact, I managed to salvage three PC systems which I gave to friends, after reformatting them with Ubuntu, a simple form of Linux that makes even old PC's run like new again... at least as basic email, media and web terminals. Thanks to Arthur for putting me onto Ubuntu; he was( and likely still is )a big Debian Linux fan. I like Linux for its flexibility and low overhead, but it still does not like to play with Windows...

Back to the old tech: a recent C|Net article tells how 60Minutes examines the awful human suffering that is behind a lot of the current efforts to recycle high-tech garbage, a lot of it going on in China. While some North American programs are in place, they are small and find it hard to turn any sort of profit with the current tech sector slump - not good news for my tech career aspirations for that matter either.

Nov 15 - My company is doing what?

A busy day at work, which is good; no customers means hours get cut, and too much of that would mean serious consideration put towards closing the branch. Not that it is anywhere close to that, but traffic this month has been light, given the economic downturn and the pre-holiday lull.

Along the lines of last week's cubicle blogging, anyone who has worked for a large company knows of the inevitable charts, graphs and other organizational clutter that evolves as management from many levels try to justify their salaries. A thought-provoking website, City of Work, looks at this with unique charts of their own, like this Productivity chart that makes sense to me in a very cynical way.

A somewhat dated Report on the 14 most Evil Corporations is an educating read. I remember hearing about some of this back in my first year of university, when I attended a world conference on corporate crimes held at McMaster University, as a reporter for The Brock Press. For me, it was eye-opening to learn about all the evil things that were being done by companies on a global scale, those same companies who sold their products in Canada with a squeaky-clean image that is blissfully unattached to their other activities.

Nov 16 - Fall Leaving

Yet another Sunday spent working, earning a wage instead of idling playing XboxLive games with my friends. Hardly fair, really, but I suppose we all cannot have every Sunday off... being the Day of Rest and all that. At least today was less busy than yesterday, so I had rest of a sort... and as an added plus, Crazy Lady was absent all week - something I was heartily grateful for. My last day of six in a row is tomorrow, a Monday( of course ); working all week by myself has been educational, in some ways. I've realized I work well on my own, don't need all that much company, and I don't have to close the door to the washroom when I feel the nature call. The last bit is nice, but unnecessary.

Cycling to work in the fall weather here is a change from what I am used to as well. There are tons of leaves on the roadside, literally piles and piles of them. What with all the trees around here, I am surprised that we are not knee-deep in leaves by now - rakes must be as common as dirt here to keep the piles in check. Which makes cycling around corners a little tricky in spots, as the windblown leaves tend to get smeared in a slippery layer sometimes. Yet the visuals here are spectacular... and me without my camera to get my own pictures, of course.



Fall in Victoria, B.C.

Coming home today, I could really smell the sea's salt tang in the air, as a light fog had rolled in. Just enough to flavour the air and give a tiny halo to each passing light, as well as bring out the rich, damp smell of the masses of leaves piled all along the roads... the smell brought back memories of times from my youth, when I would adventure in the ravine that ran along behind Westgate Park Drive in St. Catharines. The rich, damp earth and tall trees still echo with me today, in my love of forests and wild places... but not so much with the unpleasant aspects of camping and hiking. More of an abstract, wanna-hug-a-tree but don't want the mess of the bark, or the long trek to get there...


Damn, it's hot in here - ten degrees outside at 11pmPST, and twenty-five inside with the heat off. Great for the gas bill, though TerasenGas must hate me. Until next week folks, take care...