Purity, Politics and Perfection

The word of the week is assuage.

September 14 – Pure FBook!

At last: I can customize my FBook experience safely!

Ever since I first started using FBook in the mid-2000’s, the interface has bothered me, in that there’s many ‘features’ that I’d like to just turn off… but can’t: FBook won’t let you.

Heck, you can’t even change the colour of the titlebar!

Before you say anything: yes, I know there are various apps / software scripts that will purportedly allow you to do what you want with the way FBook is presented over the web, but almost every one of those is malware or spyware some kind.

The only one that isn't is FBook Purity.

Now, I am as skeptical as the next person, but I've thoroughly checked out FBook Purity and it's legit, safe as houses, etc. I downloaded and installed it as a plug-in today on my web browser, which is how FBook Purity was designed from the outset: it doesn’t operate in any malicious way, just works as a small plugin in your browser that takes all the annoying things about FBook’s website and lets you customize them as you see fit.

You can read user reviews of the product - which is free – here, as well as check out forums discussing its safety rating. Better yet: go find out for yourself.

Me, I'm just going to bask in the novelty of a green FBook title bar for a while…

September 15 – Scifi Air Show!

Well, colour me embarrassed.

Last week, I showed my girlfriend this image of a life-sized Tie Fighter cockpit:

This isn't real, sadly

… which turned out to be a Photoshopped image, albeit a damn good one.

It was an image from ScifiAirshow.com, a small and lovely site which houses all sorts of wondrous pictures of ships that don't actually exist in the real world, presented as though they were on tour at your standard airshow where the public can poke and prod them or even kicked the tires, so to speak.

Pretty cool idea, eh?

Sadly, this is real - most ppl can't visit it. Hence: sad.

An interesting note is that while most of the images on the site are completely digital fabrications, one section is not. The Space 1999 ships housed at the Eagle Boneyard are completely real, castoffs from the show after it was canceled in the late 1970s. All the ships shown are full-sized mockups, built for filming the TV series from all angles.

This is a similar idea to the Hollywood Scifi Museum, a Kickstarter project whose initial phase should open in 2016 - it's assuredly someplace that I want to go sooner rather than later and I'll talk more about it in detail in another blog post.

For now I just want to think about climing into an X-wing’s cockpit…

September 16 – Caffeine

Cutting back on caffeine seems to be doing me some good, in odd ways.

In the last month, I've reduced my daily intake of tea from the equivalent of three XL cups at Tim Horton’s to less than one. Even that isn't quite true, as I'm not even finishing the single thermos mug of tea I bring with me in a day.

I think that's a good thing.

My stomach has certainly decided it doesn't like more than one moderately sized cup of tea in a day. When I was working midnights at MMart, I would drink up to two full pots of tea in order to keep myself awake and that did not do my stomach any good whatsoever. For several years after I had returned to the day shift, I developed an acidic stomach if I drank any more than a single XL cup of tea from Timmy’s – yuck and ouchie.

I'm no longer as groggy in the mornings when I wake up, I get tired of the same time in the afternoon every day( about 2pm ) and again around 10pm at night. Not bad at all.

However, I am waking up around 6 AM, whether I like it or not and that's proving to be a bit of the bugaboo: while I'm tired, I'm not actually falling asleep until nearly midnight most nights.

I think in the short term all just have to go to bed earlier, whether I feel like it or not and see if sleep finds me more easily. My nights in the last few weeks have been interrupted by various noises and the dark circles under my eyes - which completely vanished while I was recuperating in August - have returned with a vengeance.

Ironically, one cure for those is to hold used tea bags under your eyes for a few minutes a day…

September 17 – Voting Tools

Are you certain you want to vote for this coming federal election in Canada?

Before I go, I make sure that I know where all the parties stand on major issues and who their candidates are, in terms of political history. I'll be the first to say that I don't know nearly enough about politics in Canada to make a perfect choice, but I do know enough not to just vote blindly based on hearsay or because I liked a particular party previously.

I've often wished for some kind of tool to help this process, and this year my wish has been granted!

Isidewith.com is a free, anonymous Canadian site that quizzes you on all the current political issues, asking you to weight your answers in order of priority. The site then tells you which Canadian political party your views most lean towards. So useful!

I was quite amused to find how much I agreed with my chosen political party. After asking me dozens of questions, the site stated that I had a 94% match with one of the major political parties, not unsurprisingly the one that I plan to vote for.

One can only hope that a majority of Canadians decide to show up this year to oust Harper, to stop the sweeping stupidity and greed he has shown in his time in office.

September 18 – Nerf!

My Nerf arrived today!

A few weeks ago, I found a pair of Nerf guns on eBay that were exactly what I needed for the cosplay my girlfriend and I are planning for spring of the coming year. Today I picked up the package from the post office and this is what I found inside:

As you can see, the guns disassemble quite handily, meaning that their components can be easily adjusted to fit our cosplay needs. While I still had to order several components from other guns from eBay this week in order to fully flesh out the required parts list, I anticipate that the overall cost will be far less than buying a pair of resin kits of the pulse rifles. Here’s what I hope our end result will resemble:

After the guns had arrived, I took a little time to check out various Nerf auctions both locally and across Canada. Toronto and Vancouver had a fair bit, but overall very few Nerf guns are for sale currently, which I find puzzling as they are quite popular.

However, that popularity also means that there's a steady supply of cheap Nerf guns out there and that put the bug in my head about perhaps starting a local Nerf gaming league here. I spent a while thinking about that as I browsed this wonderful Best Of Nerf Guns list...

But, more on all that in a later post!

September 19 – Discoveries!

Today was pretty productive: I sorted, organized and condensed a whole lot of things in the apartment over the course of the afternoon, tossing out a lot of boxes and…

Wait, what's that I’ve found here?

*unrolls the poster from the back of his closet*

Whoa! I had totally forgotten that I have this:

After I had carefully unrolled the poster, I realized that it was an original theatrical print and not a reproduction! While not exceedingly rare, vintage posters of The Dark Crystal are not easy to come by nowadays, 30 years after its release. This one, if you look at the picture closely, has a release number in the bottom right corner, indicating its one of a series printed for the natural release. As well, the colors on the poster are still quite vivid, indicating that it's is likely a product of the stone lithography method of poster printing, which gives lasting results and would explain why the colors are vibrant after all these years.

I'm quite excited to have found this sitting in my closet and I do believe I recall some of the details where I got it from before moving to BC. At the time I didn't fully appreciate what a find it was, as I do now, and I'll be thinking of how best to display it here inside a protective frame.

Now I just have to find some wall space…

September 20 – DVD Captures!

At last, it works! It works!!!

For years now, I've been trying to find a digitizing solution for my somewhat sizable collection of movies and TV series on DVD and Blu-ray. It's a pain to haul out the DVD case, pop it into the player and navigate the menus, as well as fact that you can't take those same movies or TV episodes on the road to watch them wherever or whenever you want to. Given my current time restraints, it would be nice to be able to watch something in stages from both home and work. I do have that capability with my Plex media software package, but it can only play media that has already been digitized onto my home server.

Enter the result of one last Google search for a solution...

Having given up trying to find a solution for my main computer, I had the brilliant idea( if I do say so myself )of putting my somewhat-idle Windows Home Server( WHS, used mainly for backing up my other computers )to use. And… presto! A solution!

As you can see, I've been BUSY today...!

Using MyMovies on my WHS, as well as an external DVD drive, I can simply pop in a desk and walk away: the software will cleanly rip the entire disc in the space of about 30 minutes. When it's done, the disc is ejected automatically, I load another and the process repeats, saving all the data onto my WHS server neat-as-you-please and allowing me to use my main PC without interruption.

I can't emphasize enough what an incredible time-saver this is!

Seeing as I have approximately 4TB( 4,000 gigabytes ) of free space on my WHS, there's enough  for me to digitize my entire video collection with room to spare, not to mention any future additions that I might wish to make available from my server. The video quality isn't superb, but it's eminently watchable and I can always do a few things to compress the file size further or otherwise modify the video data to clean it up, if necessary.

For now, I have 21 days in the no-limit Free Trial of MyMovies to digitize much my collection as possible. Seeing as it's a completely hands-off process, I can do whatever else I like or need to while waiting for the disc to eject.

Perfection.

In spending most of my Saturday afternoon tidying things up, I managed to make both my arms ache abominably, which matched the headache which has dogged me since Friday due to the weather change. Thankfully, both problems will abate with time, so I'm hoping that by the end of the workday tomorrow - if I don't abuse my wrists, that is - I'll be back to my normal don’t-pick-up-heavy-objects-or-strain-your-arms self again. I am inordinately pleased with all the things I did get accomplished this week and while not a lot of them were writing related, enough added up to bring me a feeling of satisfaction by the time the weekend was finished.

Scifi, Shiftings and Syria

The word of the week is perfidy.

September 7 – Refuge

What a world we live in; I say that with mixed feelings.

The plight of Syrian noncombatants has been known for several years now, ever since there country was plunged into civil war. Yet only the recent photos of a small ground Syrian refugee boy galvanize the world unity into paying attention to this huge crisis that too few people know the story behind.

I myself was unaware of exactly why so many Syrians were fleeing their country, people who had jobs and stability no longer. War’s a complicated thing and it's no less the case in Syria, so I was grateful to find this eloquent webcomic that explained the situation simply:

Neil Gaiman has given much of his time in the last year to making the plight of the Syrian refugees known to the world. While I have seen many countries treat the refugees with distain and fear, Gaiman rises above this to show us that such attitudes are selfish in the face of such suffering on a massive scale as it taking place right now:

Fear will always be with us, as it’s natural to the human condition. Not every refugee is a terrorist in disguise; far from it. Millions of people have been driven from their homes, the scale of refugee movement not seen since the Second World War. The world today seems indifferent to suffering, much more inclined to bury their heads in Facebook or Instagram or whatever else makes their world a rosy-tinted color. I have to ask myself as well, knowing my own limitations and finances: what can I do?

Better yet: what will I do?

September 8 – Night Lights!

Talk about all-day anticipation!

After work( and dinner, I might add )today, I prepped our gear for later on this evening, because: Tonight was the night to test our creations: buoys, that is, and we would end up spending about an hour on the water overall tonight.

There was a surprising amount of gear to bring, in addition to the boat, remote control and buoys. Flashlights, the comfy porta-couch, a lantern, bug spray, washcloth for drying the buoys after their immersion, digital camera plus various other odds and ends. We packed all into the back of my lady's car and drove down to the yacht pond at 8:30 PM, well after the sun had set and full dark had settled on the shoreline.

As expected, we were the only ones there and as the pond is unlit, we had to watch our step as we made our way down the slight slope to the water’s edge, which is bordered by an asphalt walkway. Unpacking everything, we laid out the buoys, clipping them to the line and ensuring the lights were lit. We immersed them one by one while ensuring the line wasn't tangled and that each floated properly in the water.

The problem of getting the line across the pond in the dark was quickly solved by my girlfriend, who suggested the Haulin’ Trawler live up to its name by towing the bobbing line of buoys across to the other side. Brilliant – this is how it looked:

Once the line of buoys was secured, we had a grand old time sailing the fully-lit Trawler around in the dark, as it looked magnificent. We had about a half an hour of smooth sailing, then the winds off the ocean picked up, cooling temperatures considerably.

Still, it all worked wonderfully well - here's a brief video of the action:

I should mention that for the last half-hour we had an unforeseen companion: a young  wayward duck! He followed our boat around, quacking, likely unsure as to what exactly the shiny apparition of light was, wandering around on his pond after hours. It was amusing in that we couldn't see him at all and I had to flash the occasional light onto the pond in order to locate the duck so as not to run the boat into him. Silly bird!

All in all, it was a very successful evening. My girlfriend and I had a ton of fun and although we were somewhat chilled once everything was all packed up the car - which by then was covered in dew - it's deftly something that were going to do again, weather permitting.

I've no idea if the duck will be there next time, though.

September 9 – Shiftings

Perfectionism? Not my style – at least, not any more.

It’s a form of ‘Perfectionist Poison’ to want to be in control of everything in your life. While I’m not technically a control freak, I am more like such than I care to admit, sometimes. Knowing what's going on in my life, what I need to do in the short-term versus long-term, how I'm doing on my personal goals, small things like grocery lists… all those and hundred other things are always on my mind, for better or worse.

I realize that I can't being in control of every single detail of my life; that's not how it works. We do what we can with what comes our way, handling it with grace were with heavy-handedness: whatever method suits our style at the time were seems best for the situation.

For me, I'm a planner. I look at facts, add data accumulated over years, things I've accomplished and skills I've developed to help me deal with whatever gets thrown my way. This can be both a blessing and a curse, in that carefully assembled plans can be scattered to the winds when something completely unexpected comes your way - often the case with life. As I've mentioned before, I'm the sort of person who deals well with the big crises that come along but it's bogged down in the details that consequently drive me bonkers week to week. Not to mention it being a big part of my psyche, where I need to be highly knowledgeable about both subjects that I talk of and conversant even in those I don't regularly think about – my self-image is strange that way, but at least I recognize that about myself and have worked to ensure that it's not a pillar of my persona anymore.

I'm getting better at balancing things, however. Having more points of stability in my life now, I can better judge what's important in the short term or the long and adjust accordingly. It sounds simple but you really have to look at the attitude with which you deal with whatever gets tossed out you. Mine, for the most part in the last year, has been positive and progressive towards the goals that I want to achieve.

On a similar note, I realized this week that I still had a recurring daily event on my Google Calendar that has been redundant for nearly a year now: my work-shift for my day job. I’d originally put it into the calendar to remind myself of when I’d be working when there was lots of overtime early in 2015, but now that I’m out of Invoices, it’s no longer necessary.

It’s the first time in my working that I’ve ever had a weekly calendar that didn’t list my work shifts on it… and it’s profoundly pleasing to me. At long last, I’ve realized that I no longer have to check the calendar to plan my week, wondering where I can fit things in depending on what I’m working each day – I know what I’ll be working now, until I decide to change things up.

It’s a wonderful feeling, that.

September 10 – SciFi and Me

After work today, I gave a presentation on science fiction for my writing group.

It’s nights like this that make me glad I’m able to do what I do, writing-wise. I was excited to give the presentation tonight, having prepared all week for it, editing and revising my handout after giving a fair amount of thought as to what I wanted to talk about.

By that, I mean that I can give a presentation to a group of like-minded people( writers! )who not only want to hear what I have to say, but add to the conversation as we go along.

Also, tonight’s topic is near and dear to my heart, so that helped.

In putting together the research for the presentation tonight, I came across a curious discovery: nobody can agree on what exactly science fiction is, not even acknowledged Masters of the genre. Here's a few of the quotations I used from famous sci-fi authors:

It's a curious thing, trying to define something that by its nature is so flexible and often times deliberately obscure in its tenets. Science fiction is to me the genre with the broadest canvas to work with, allowing authors to write practically anything they wish in terms of fiction without any hue and cry being raised by readers as to a story solidity in belonging to the genre.

In any case, it was a splendid night, where I was able to present great amounts of information, relevantly assembled, to a group of attentive writers. Quite a few people expressed their gratitude to me afterwards for putting together such a solid evening and I went home smiling, happy that once again I had not only increase my own knowledge but that of others as well.

September 11 – Thrice Dazed

A few problems reared their head today and well, it kinda made the day off move from pleasant to problematic and stinky. Unexpected expenses tend to do that to me, especially when they throw my carefully-tended hopes of short-term financial solvency all askew.

Bummer.

Still, how one deals with problems is really the key to solving them. I did various tasks all day in a frowning funk, then pulled myself out of it to meet a co-worker for beers after work for a few hours. It’s strange how problems can be: some are better for being shared, and others shrink to their proper, not-so-bad-after-all size when you’re faced with either being a grumpy jerk over beers or just letting things go after a proper day-long think-up.

For the most part, I was over what was eating me by late afternoon. I did so by reminding myself that what had to be done was necessary and that in the current scheme of things, I wasn't any worse off.

That sort of thinking is really what it takes. I was surprised, thinking about things later in the evening, to realize that the one big unexpected problem had attracted all sorts of other negativity along with it - all unintentional. The phrase “misery loves company” applies to one's thoughts and feelings as readily as any other situation and when I was feeling down today, all the other little problems and failures in my life crowded in to keep the new problem company without being asked.

Once I realized that, I could look at things objectively and from there I could see that while I wasn't exactly happy with how my finances would be over the next few months, they were disastrous by any means. So I could get back to enjoying my first-ever 3-day EDO weekend.

It’s also important noting that 14 years ago today, the Twin Towers fell. Nobody alive and aware of the event at the time will ever forget it.

Yet now, almost a decade and a half later, this massive act of terrorism( despite the conspiracy theorists, I’m going with Occam’s Razor on this one )remains a scar on North American psyche. A reminder that the Western World is vulnerable, that there are monsters in the world who will stop at nothing to ensure their ideology prevails, as I mentioned last week with IS and the destruction of world cultural heritage sites.

Evil is out there, waiting for chances to strut its stuff, and it makes my own problems dust in the wind by comparison.

September 12 – Un-a-Musing Visits

After a pleasant patio breakfast with my lady, we parted ways to go about our day. I managed to get a few things done that I hadn’t yesterday, due to my frustrated state.

In the afternoon, I got out of the house. I was determined to enjoy the fantastic weather in some manner that didn’t involve me sweating like crazy or being among a noisy crowd.

So I chose to be in a park.

As it happens, I still lugged a chair, laptop, jacket, water bottle and other minor gear with me on a twenty-minute stroll to Beacon Hill Park. Shorts and sandals were the order of the day, since it was so nice out, with hints of a cool breeze from the ocean drifting now and then through the trees.

I picked a perfect spot by the duck pond, out of the way of most people, right next to the stream and shaded by a tree from the sun.

Nothing came to mind. Nada.

You can’t force the Muse to visit, if it’s not ready.

Once I was back home, I spent a while looking deeper into how to use my copy of Scrivener to plot out the second half of my book. It’s a flexible, capable program, but it’s not for novice users; one has to work at eking the most out of its powerful tools, step by step.

I think that’s got to be the key to making progress on Book 2: using Scrivener’s plot tools. My book’s too complex to properly juggle it all in my head at this point, and I think that’s what’s confusing my Muse, why I get so frustrated trying to set down scene summaries of late.

September 13 – Visits Of Other Sorts

Today was a double-header of fun!

My girlfriend's parents were visiting the Island this weekend, so we met up with them for breakfast this morning over at Willie’s Bakery – somewhat of a misnomer, as the place is a fantastic restaurant with a small bakery inside.

It turned out to be a lovely day today after all, with warnings of rain turning out to be nothing more than that. We enjoyed our breakfast on the patio at Willie's immensely, the food as always more than satisfying and quick to the table.

After that, we walked only a block down the street to see the Victoria International Chalk Art Festival, in its third year here. Government Street was closed for two blocks so that the artists could ply their chalky trade, some of them having been up since the very early hours of the morning at work on the cordoned-off roadway. Here's a few sample pictures:

You can find the rest here - some really good art this year I have to say!

Towards noon, we decided to go and visit Oak Bay, possibly to drive around and see the gardens. We actually ended up just walking around under the sunny blue skies, poking our heads into the shops and seeing what we discovered. I ended up with a boardgame that I hadn't known existed. It’s simple, 2-player and involves castles – sweet! Here it is:

Lunch was a lovely low-key affair at the Penny Farthing Pub, on the back patio that has quickly become one of my favorite spots in Victoria. While the wind blew leaves all around outside, my girlfriend, her parents and I were happily ensconced in the protected( yet still outdoors )patio, enjoying our lunch. Her parents are wonderful people and I enjoy chatting with them whenever we see each other.

Then it was home and blog writing time, with various household tasks interspersed as per usual for Sunday evenings.

Except for the fact that last-minute I was invited out to meet up with my sister’s group of friends at the Beagle, which I hadn't done in probably six months or more. Seeing as I hadn't had dinner yet, it made sense and so after another hour of writing my blog, I headed out down the road for a quick 10-minute walk down Cook St.

It was good to just get out and relax with people I only know someone well, though they're all really nice folks. As it turns out, one of them is a writer who is determined to create her own fantasy trilogy, so we ended up chatting about that for good part of my time there.

Once I was back home after a pleasant few hours, I dove right into the blog and finished it off in record time, well before my now rather-early 11pm bedtime – that being the time when my eyes start drooping and I can’t do much more than read a bit before dozing off.

It's been an odd week, I have to say. Periods of stress interspersed among much longer periods of contentment and bliss: that about sums it up. My shoulders and neck are far tenser than they've been in some time and while I know it's an anomaly, it still uncomfortable to think that it's pure stress that has done that to them so easily. This coming week, I'll be focusing every day on things I can accomplish and not dwelling on those factors that I can't do anything about in the short term. I think that's a pretty healthy mode of thinking to take on for myself this fall.

Nerf, Nimrods and No TV

The word of the week is plenipotent.

August 31 – Evil is Stupid

What is it with humans?

For all the great things that we've accomplished, there always seems to be too many of us willing to toss it all of the window for no good reason.

The destruction this week of the Temple of Palmyra all too clearly illustrates my point. In an exercise of power thinly disguised as the ‘elimination of idolatry’ IS completely destroyed an ancient site, forever erasing it from the planet so that it now exists only in photographs.

They did this to create their own version of the world, physically removing evidence that contradicts their limited worldview. Creating their own history from the rubble of the true.

Top: Before IS - Below: After IS

It is willful acts of destruction like this that make me wonder about our civilization. About future generations knowing nothing about the consequence of the past because of the actions of a few, of history intentionally lost, distorted or even destroyed.

Of stupidity winning, all the name of 'true' belief.

September 1 – Cable’s Cut!

Well, that’s it: no more cable as of today.

A month ago, I finally located an Internet company that can provide service to Victoria BC. Last year, I became extremely frustrated when after searching through every single Internet provider in Canada, not a single one of them could offer their service as an alternative locally here to Shaw or Telus.

However, about three months ago, I learned about a local start up here in Victoria called Juce – finally! Their prices are perfect: $39.99 / month for the same speed as Shaw's mid-range Internet package, with the added benefit of no throttling at peak periods which is an issue with very crowded service providers like Shaw in larger cities.

Considering I've been paying a package price of $138.00 + tax / month with Shaw for phone, Internet and cable TV, it's long past the time when I should have downgraded but the lack of an alternative here in Victoria had stymied that move.

No longer. In giving up cable TV( the phone isn't really an issue, as I have a cell )there's going to be a lot less temptation to simply ‘relax’ in front of the boob tube, as I'll have to go looking for things to watch. It's fascinating how much less I want to watch a show if I have to go searching for episodes rather than simply seeing what's on TV at the moment and deciding if I want to spend the time to watch it.

Time is what it's all about, really. The fact that I'm paying over 70% less per month for Internet service is icing on the cake, but really what it's doing is making my daily choices simpler in terms of what I want to spend my time on.

September 2 – Cosplay Project 2016

I have a new project for the spring: a costume!

Not a Halloween costume, however, but rather a con costume, one that will probably take me at least four months to complete working a few hours here and there every week.

My girlfriend and I have decided that, budget pending, were going to attend Emerald City Con in Seattle in April 2016. As part of that somewhat short trip( Seattle's not that far away )we're going to do a pair of themed costumes from one of our favorite sci-fi movies: Aliens.

I'm going to be a Colonial Marine and she's going to be Ellen Ripley:

Key to both costumes will be the M41A pulse rifle props: the guns that the Marines and Ripley used to battle the aliens in the movie. I've decided that I'm not going to do half-assed flimsy props made out of paper or cardboard, nor am I going to spend many hundreds of dollars on a screen-accurate prop unnecessarily

Instead, I've lucked into a pair of Nerf Elite Retaliator toys on eBay, which according to my research can be fairly easily modified into almost perfect replicas of the M41-a guns. If I do it right, we'll even still shoot Nerf darts! Here's a video of someone who did a rough job of a conversion for almost no money; I'll be doing a much neater job on ours, possibly with working lights and sounds to simulate sound-accurate weapons fire:

In addition to the guns, will each have to work up our costumes. I'm still determining the most cost effective way to do my armor, which will probably involve paper templates and layers of a safe, fiberglass-like substance that I can work with inside the apartment with minimal ventilation. If worse comes to worse, I can simply create a one-use painted cardboard costume, knowing that the guns themselves will be the real stars of the show.

September 3 – MOTU was OK

Sometimes, despite our best effort, things don't work out.

Such was the case in 1987, when the live-action version of Masters of The Universe hit theaters. Having grown up with the animated TV series, I was extremely excited to see what MOTU would turn into on the big screen.

As I discovered, it was mostly a stinky disappointment.

Underwhelmed at the time, I have never bothered to watch the film again in all years since. However, now and again I will run across articles singing the praises of the film in terms of its pieces rather than the overall whole. In particular, Frank Langella as Skeletor and Meg Foster as Evil-Lynn rise above the material to deliver solid, memorable performances:

It's funny, there's quite a few films sire ever seen when I was younger that I wouldn't bother with ever viewing again, but taking about it today, MOTU doesn't fall under this category. As this recent article’s author observes, all the cast in the movie were sincere in their performances and that's came across quite clearly. For that reason alone, I think I'll give it another viewing soon, when I feel the need for some good old-fashioned 80s film love.

September 4 – Weighing In

Are people in BC healthier than other Canadians?

That seems to be the case in recent study that examined the health levels of Canadians living in Vancouver versus other cities in Canada.

The study concluded that if all Canadians were as healthy as those in the larger cities in BC, billions could be saved by the health industry. Interestingly, it appears that declining rates of tobacco use has meant that health problems due to obesity have overtaken those issues caused by smoking for the first time:

While cancers, heart disease and respiratory ailments from smoking once accounted for the biggest single chunk of avoidable costs, falling rates of tobacco use have changed that. Instead, the rising number of overweight Canadians has made diabetes and joint problems a greater burden.
"From an economic perspective, the impact of excess weight in Canada is now more substantial than that of tobacco smoking," says the report. "Our updated model suggests that in 2013, the annual economic burden attributable to excess weight in Canada was 25 per cent higher than that attributable to tobacco smoking ($23.3 billion versus $18.7 billion)."

I find it interesting that the study dovetails into my own long-held impression of the West Coast lifestyle of being more healthy in general than living in the eastern provinces or even the prairies. My few visits to Vancouver also confirm the impression of the city that puts great value on access to healthy lifestyle venues and general exercise. How ironic that my own bike riding days have fallen behind me, in that I can now walk to work in 15 minutes.

Meaning that I have to make more time to exercise in and of itself, rather than having it as a side benefit of simply getting to work and back on a daily basis.

September 5 – Sans Cable, Day 4

I thought I'd provide a short update to my first week.

It's really amusing to me how often in the last few days that I'd be sitting at home, thinking that a need to relax and I immediately reach for the TV remote. Not a book, or my computer, but the television was always the first thing I thought of.

Now that I can't do that, it's kind of scary how often it happened this week.

How much of my time was spent each week watching television that didn't really matter? Shows that, while certainly entertaining, did nothing to help me as a person or two further my desire to create a career for myself as a writer.

I still have a Netflix account, as well as accounts at several different streaming media sites such as Crackle.com, so I can get more than a few shows fairly quickly if I so wish.

More difficult part is finding shows that arch on these services. I may explore using a VPN to surf around the web based in the USA, but that's a bit tricky and to be honest I don't want to spend too much time looking for distractions, which is what watching TV is for me this year. I have a novel and a half left to complete, so whatever time I managed to gain in the day that's not being spent on television needs to go directly into that.

Now I just have to find the energy that I had from a few months ago…

September 6 – Buoyed By Success!

Today we finally got to test our creations!

Over a month ago, my girlfriend and I decided to create some ‘extras’ to use in the ceiling pond along with our Haulin’ Trawler RC boat. A few weeks ago, I posted pictures of the completed buoys, which were still awaiting our final decisions on how to string them out in the pond - important because we wanted to ensure they didn't foul any propellers while remaining stationary in the water and still allowing easy placement / retrieval.

Heading down to the pond today, we were amused to see that we were the only ones there, likely because of the overcast conditions( which cleared up just as we left several hours later, around noon ). We strung our initial 4-buoy string on plastic weed-whacker refill line( 30m of it, which won’t rot )along with some weights and put them into the water.

Everything worked perfectly!

The buoys floated at exactly the right height, while the line remained submerged well below any propellers thanks to the weights we had tied off to the suspension ropes attaching the buoys to the plastic refill line. The spacing between the buoys was also perfect, which I had judged by eye alone – go me!

We had a great time maneuvering are both around the buoys, which bobbled quite realistically in the ways we made and really stood out against the water in their fluorescent colours. The only downside was when another RC boater showed up with a speed boat and managed to smash directly into one of the boys, knocking off all three of the decorative tops we had glued on. Fortunately, they can be easily reattached with some hot glue, so really no harm done, though the other boater was quite embarrassed about the accident.

My lady and I are having fun being creative like this, enjoying the activities we're discovering together. RC boating is something we both thoroughly enjoy, as it's relaxing and, as a hobby, can be expanded any number of ways. We can even think about getting things like RC planes, though we’d have to drive out to designated RC airfields in the area if we end up getting a serious air vehicle. Myself, I might just pick up this little gem:

All in all, it was a really good day, with lots accomplished. Even the weather cooperated almost to the minute by not raining on us while we were sailing and the sun coming out for most of the afternoon. Even when we were out having dinner on the patio, the sun stayed out of the clouds until almost exactly when we were ready to settle the bill.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Yes indeedy, it was a better week than I'd though. Work was steady to slow, with no stress to speak of and I sailed right into the weekend with a smile. While I'm still working on a regular wake / sleep cycle, things are improving and I hope my energy levels will return to what they were shortly.