As an all-around nerd and typical techie geek, I thought it was a safe bet that I'd never end up wearing a pair of gloves like these:
Note the scuffed-away knuckles on those gloves. Now imagine my scuffed-away knuckles underneath.
Ouch!
2004 Aug 01 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Whiskey Tango" by Tanya Donelly
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I went to a double-feature down at the Royal cinema tonight (tough to beat $8 for two movies!). I saw Ham & Cheese followed by Love Me If You Dare.
Ham & Cheese was dreadfully dull and unfunny for a supposed comedy.
On the other hand, Love Me If You Dare was fantastic. I absolutely loved the cinematography, and the story was quite unlike any “love story” I can recall. It's about the on-and-off relationship between a pair of (borderline?) sociopaths and emotional thrill seekers who meet as children and never really grow up. It nicely captures both the draw and repulsion of a fiery, codependent relationship.
Walking back, I got caught in a thunderstorm. Nothing beats a warm downpour when you've got a shaved head. Loved it.
Unfortunately, I had both a book and my notebook on me. The book was The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, which I decided to revisit this week; I'd picked up the Penguin trade paperback edition (always a safe bet, those). The notebook was my current moleskin.
I had to pick one to save by covering it with the other against the rain. It was an easy choice. I now have an expanding, wavy copy of The Razor's Edge.
2004 Aug 02 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Plexiglass Toilet" by Styx
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As the clock ticked over midnight it occurred to me it's the birthday of someone I haven't seen in forever, and am not likely to see again. Funny how my brain works. Or doesn't, as the case may be.
Speaking of birthdays, I've decided to give up buying greeting cards. They're inevitably trite, and not even remotely close to being worth their price tag. They're approaching ten bucks a piece now, and that's ridiculous. At a buck a card they'd be profitable. At almost ten times that, they're insulting. Worst of all, they'd begun to feel like an obligatory part of gift-giving when they're actually quite superfluous. I feel like the victim of a dubious guilt-markting campaign, like the (evil evil evil!) De Beers nonsense about spending two months' salary on a terrorist-funding, child-killing, slave-endorsing blood-rock … um, I mean, a diamond.
As for greeting cards, I'd rather throw an extra sawbuck into the gift, or if the occasion really calls for a note I'll write it myself.
Suck on that, Hallmark.
2004 Aug 03 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Command" by Sing Sing
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I tend to go on quests. I don't mean Holy Grail type quests, but rather twee quests for slight things. It's a way of turning something simple like buying milk into an adventure.
Or I may be insane. I'm not ruling that out.
Back in high school I fell into the habit of “questing” as a way to spice up mundane tasks, and as mental exercises in the cases where I am, for instance, looking to buy a CD from a music shop with a street number that's over 1000 but also a prime number.
These aren't compulsions, mind you. I do these things for fun. I'm not neurotic nor obsessive-compulsive about them. I might, as another example, need a new measuring tape and give myself the quest of buying one from the first hardware store where the salesperson's greeting does not include more than a single use of any one letter—but if something else comes up I'll just pop into any ol' shop and buy it. You're winsome, you lose some.
Sometimes these quests are intricate, sometimes very simple. And they often involve snacks for some reason. While I'll occasionally drive 1,000 KM for an iced tea, most of the time my quests are more locally situated, such as going for milk but deciding to buy it at the 100th convenience store I pass as I head north on Yonge street (the world's longest street, and conveniently chock-a-block full of convenience stores).
The point isn't the finding, it's the looking. I've had a few juicy quests undercut by “helpful” people supplying the object I sought. For instance, after I first heard about Walter Swan's One Book Bookstore in Brisbee, Arizona, (with every shelf piled high with the same book, Swan's autobiography) I knew I needed to go there to buy a (I mean “the”) book. But then my parents took a trip to Arizona and drove out of their way to find the shop and buy me the book. They meant well, of course, but with the book already in hand a quest to Arizona was pointless (which is also probably the reason I haven't seen the Grand Canyon yet).
The point of this post is I thought I'd start sharing my quests with you, dear bloggee. To that end I'm adding a new Quests section to this site. I'm testing it right now, and I think it should be up sometime this evening or perhaps tomorrow.
My current quest is to try Wine Gums for the first time, somewhere interesting and outside of Toronto. It's been tougher than you'd think. I've got photos to share of my efforts so far. Stay tuned…
2004 Aug 04 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Angels Tonight" by Gin Blossoms
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There are mirror-finish windows on the offices of the metal fabrication shop where I'm currently helping out.
Sure, that's great for Clothing Optional Fridays, but it's also great for bird watching. The building is ringed with bushes and some small trees that have become favored by a handful of birds. Because of the one-way windows, I can walk right up to birds resting on the sills or in the adjacent trees without startling them into flight.
This morning a bird perched on the sill right in front of me, and I was able to position my camera just a couple of inches away from it to take some pictures:
I would've taken more, but I started getting the feeling it was posing.
I switched to the camera's movie mode. That was fortunately timed as I caught the mother bird in action feeding the chick. You can really get a sense of what a great director I am from this clip: check out that dramatic pull back to reveal the mom with the worm. That's filmmaking gold, baby. The birds both hit their marks perfectly, but the mom looks at the camera and the chick gave me no end of trouble with her "I'll be in my trailer!" diva attitude:
Bird On A Sill [312KB, Quicktime]
A good day to be an ornithologist. Not such a good day to be a worm.
2004 Aug 04 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "The House That Jack Built" by Aretha Franklin
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I went to Kimberley Sparks' Networking Schmoozerama tonight. It's a monthly get-together for people in film, tv, and other media (or who would like to be). A much fun event that Kim throws monthly, and she throws it well.
I only caught the end of tonight's schmoozing fun, but my Big Woo Films buddy Colin was there earlier so he can fill me in on anything I missed.
I did get to take part in my favorite bit of the schmooze, though: the gathering afterwards for midnight munching at Amato's on Queen St., one of my favorite pizza joints. The best part of the post schmooze is Kate, the funnest server in the world. Not only can she remember what anybody orders even after months apart, she has a habit of making us “fruit art” with the lemon and lime slices on our drinks.
She didn't make us fruit art tonight, though (sob), so I took the liberty of arranging a little something myself. Here's an aerial shot, and another of funster Roger Fredericks holding it hand model style.
I called it “The Camel's Back” because it was one straw short of being totally symmetrical, and I am very witty.
2004 Aug 04 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Torch Song" by Lima Sugar
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I went to the “Taste Of The Danforth” on Friday. It was my first time at the crowded street party/dinner. I enjoyed it, and will definitely go again.
The best part was trying a new taste: Loukoumathes. They are Greek donuts, small and sweet balls of sugar and grease. Yummy, but very sweet. I suspect they were invented by somebody who tried a Krispy Kreme donut and thought to himself, “Hmm … needs more sugar.”
Saturday I house-sat Linda and Audra's brand spankin' new pad to await the arrival of a representative of The World's Worst Painting Co so he could do a poor job slowly. Nice.
Surprisingly, I was very productive sitting on their couch and writing while I waited for Mr. Crappypainter. I wrote two count 'em two poems that morning. I guess the change of venue was inspiring. Normally I'm lucky to pound out a single stanza that I'm happy with after a few hours of writing, so to write two poems that need (I think) only a bit of polish was a joy.
Along with my now overdue Quests section to this site, I'm rearranging this site to add a Writing section where I can post things like poems, stories, and scripts. Provided I get some free time tomorrow or Tuesday the new sections should be up very shortly. (Yeah yeah, you've heard it before.)
Later I helped Linda assemble her very first chest of drawers, courtesy of Ikea. I'm one of those people who quite likes assembling Ikea furniture. It's like playing with Lego, only bigger. I was surprised that there was no allen key required: this was a hammer and screwdriver task.
At one point I was trying to fit a rail incorrectly, and while I could screw it together it didn't have the just-right fit I expected. A catch-phrase came out of the task, describing something that's not up to the exacting standards of engineering one might expect: “That shit's not Swedish.” Use it, love it, pass it on.
I thought I was getting a blister by the end of the assembly, a sign that I'm a lazy member of the bourgeoisie who oils his capitalist machinery with the blood of the worker. But no blister appeared, so maybe I can avoid Madame Guillotine after all.
2004 Aug 08 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Horses In The City" by Nina Gordon
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An art collective called Greyworld built a pretty keen eight story high kinetic sculpture called The Source at the new London Stock Exchange.
It's comprised of a grid of cables arranged in a square, with nine spheres on each cable. The spheres slide freely up and down their cables to arrange images such as a sunrise, the names and values of stocks, and up- or down-pointing arrows to show market trends.
The Greyworld site imposes on you elevator music and the sound of waves on shore. Because Greyworld knows better than you what music you'd like your computer to play right now.
2004 Aug 08 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Under The Rotunda" by The Lucksmiths
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I like post-apocalyptic fiction. I realize it might be a little strange to enjoy tales of radiation ravaged lands and wandering bands of mutants, but there you go.
One of my favorite books, in fact, is a bit of after-blast storytelling called Battle Circle by Piers Anthony. It was originally published as three separate books: Sos The Rope, Var The Stick, and Neq The Sword. I read it in a compiled volume, one I still re-read on occasion, and so I think of them as a single book with three distinct sections.
I recently found two very useful lists of post-apocalyptic fiction. The first is the online bibliography for an essay by Washington State University professor Paul Brians. I don't agree with all the qualitative comments Brians makes, but the list itself contains a number of works that I haven't read but which sound very interesting. I've started compiling a list to bring with me when I scour the many used book shops in Toronto that feature decent sci-fi collections.
The second handy post-apocalyptic fiction list is the one at The Science Fiction and Fantasy Database. This SFandF.com list even has cover shots for many of the items on the list, which makes it much more pleasant to browse than the bibliographical list above.
I actually just stumbled across the SFandF.com site right now by Googling for for a link to include for Battle Circle, so huzzah for blogs.
2004 Aug 09 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett
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With a cry of “Apple II forever!” I have added “Attend Kansasfest to my list of things to do before I die.
There are few more nerdly nerds than I, alas.
2004 Aug 09 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey
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I'm a big fan of Jim Munroe (author and self-publishing evangelist), so I thought something akin to “hooray” when I read that he has a new book available.
It's called An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil and it takes the form of a blog:
When Kate discovers that her roommate identifies as a demoness, she figures it's too sacrilicious a secret to keep to herself: she tells all on her blog, roommatefromhell.com.
—From nomediakings.org
He's also making the entire thing available online in a series of blog posts on the faux roommatefromhell.com site.
Go indie author go.
2004 Aug 09 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Sweet Ones" by Sarah Slean
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Klara McLaren has written a great article for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. For those who know her books (which I'll admit I didn't) that may come as a surprise. After all, what are the odds that somebody who pens titles like Your Aura and Your Chakras and Becoming an Empath: How to Develop the Power of Your Emotional Intuition would write something suitable for a magazine dedicated to critical thinking and the application of the scientific method? I would've taken that bet.
And I would've lost. Because she did, and it's terrific. The article is called “Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures” and it's a fascinating read.
McLaren makes some excellent points about why advocates of critical thinking have difficulty communicating with those in the New Age culture, and vice versa. The article summarizes what she learned during her transition to skepticism, and suggestions how to communicate the benefits of scientific and critical thinking to New Age devotees.
Along the way, McLaren also brings up something interesting and a bit counterintuitive: that for all their supposed embracing of the mystery and wonder of the universe, the New Age culture actually has no room for mystery at all:
One of the biggest falsehoods I've encountered is that skeptics can't tolerate mystery, while New Age people can. This is completely wrong, because it is actually the people in my culture who can't handle mystery - not even a tiny bit of it. Everything in my New Age culture comes complete with an answer, a reason, and a source. Every action, emotion, health symptom, dream, accident, birth, death, or idea here has a direct link to the influence of the stars, chi, past lives, ancestors, energy fields, interdimensional beings, enneagrams, devas, fairies, spirit guides, angels, aliens, karma, God, or the Goddess.
We love to say that we embrace mystery in the New Age culture, but that's a cultural conceit and it's utterly wrong. In actual fact, we have no tolerance whatsoever for mystery. Everything from the smallest individual action to the largest movements in the evolution of the planet has a specific metaphysical or mystical cause. In my opinion, this incapacity to tolerate mystery is a direct result of my culture's disavowal of the intellect. One of the most frightening things about attaining the capacity to think skeptically and critically is that so many things don't have clear answers. Critical thinkers and skeptics don't create answers just to manage their anxiety.
I think the article is a great jumping-off point for discussing the cultural gap (and similarities, too) between critical thinkers and New Age community. Very highly recommended.
2004 Aug 10 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Hoof" by Mary's Danish
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A bug on the window at work:
That's one big, ugly bug. It's the kind of bug that stars in movies with titles that end with “… That Ate Chicago.”
2004 Aug 11 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Sugar In Your Gas Tank" by Mitch Clem
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Here's something I hadn't thought of: can the president hide behind copyright?
The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise. The president, in this sense, is “free.” But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show appearances? Who controls his words and images then?
That's from an interesting article by Lawrence Lessig in Wired Magazine that asks which takes precedence, the public's right to criticize the president or the copyright notices at the end of talk shows?
What's best for the public and for democracy is obvious, but which side will the courts take?
I'd love to be able to vote for a president who'd come out and say “No matter the forum or the form, you may always reprint my words and my image to discuss how I'm doing and how our country is doing. Democracy requires that, in fact it insists upon it, and frankly I'm a big fan of freedom.”
But those sort of people don't get elected any more. We just want people who look good on television.
2004 Aug 11 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Broken" by Belly
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My latest pet peeve is the use of “should of” and “would of” in sentences like “I should of learned to write” or “I would of appeared literate if only I understood contractions.”
It's “should've” and “would've,” my dear Internet kids, or even the oh so long and burdensome phrases “should have” and “would have.” I realize that such phrasing calls for a lot of extra typing, but think of how much time you'll save me when you free me from the need to throw things at my computer screen.
Besides, having to respond to e-mail that contains “should of” makes me sic.
2004 Aug 11 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Santeria" by Sublime
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Oh Internet, you show me such interesting things, such as the Museum of Handwritten Signs. Be sure to check out the other galleries of handwritten signs, linked at the top of the page.
On that same site I also enjoyed the song and video for “Give It Up Baby” by Leslie Nuss, along with the other Nuss-ly videos.
2004 Aug 11 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Give It Up Baby" by Leslie Nuss
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“Acting is nothing more than the ability to read and talk.”
—Dov Simens (attributed)
2004 Aug 12 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Angie" by Rolling Stones
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My top five desert island classic arcade coin-op games I'd love to own:
- Disks of Tron
- Elevator Action
- Space Invaders
- Sinistar
- Defender
If I had my own arcade, I'd name it Fynn's.
2004 Aug 12 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "These Arms Of Mine" by Otis Redding
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At the communal New York blog Verbose Coma, Hamish Robertson has posted a great list of “funnies” by comic Peter Kay.
“The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.”
So true, so true.
2004 Aug 12 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Requiem for the Punters Club" by The Lucksmiths
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Morbid and fun is a great combination, and so took an instant liking to the tombstone generator. My first three:
If you come up with something particularly funny, send it along.
2004 Aug 12 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Arrested for Driving While Blind" by ZZ Top
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I stare and stare at the little running men, and I cannot look away.
2004 Aug 12 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Every Devil" by Tanya Donelly
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The California supreme court has nullified the 3,995 same-sex marriages sanctioned by San Francisco.
We're going to be made fun of in future high school history classes, people. You do realize that, right?
2004 Aug 13 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Mushaboom" by Feist
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Little Flash cartoons don't usually do it for me, but I loved playing “name that game” when watching the very well done MAME Jump animation.
2004 Aug 14 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Jump" by Van Halen
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One of the coolest things about creating my own code for running this blog site, as opposed to using something like Blogger or Movable Type, is that I can add features as I need them in whatever way I want.
For instance, I just changed the way thumbnail images are created so that clicking on them now opens the full size photo in a pop-up window (if javascript is enabled). Thus:
I like that photo because it shows off how nicely my tiny little digital camera can take night shots.
2004 Aug 15 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "The Irony Of It All" by The Streets
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The world's most indulgent uncle (that's me) got to babysit the world's cutest nephew (that's Jack, age 7) on Saturday.
I set up my tent in my living room so we could do a bit of indoor camping. Here's a photo of the just erected tent and another taken about two hours after Jack arrived. Clearly, this was not an event that involved gals:
Nope, this was an event that involved only boys and pizza and video games. Good times at the camp-in.
We spent the afternoon out on the town enjoying the wonders of science experiments, exploration, rock climbing, giant Imax movie screens, indoor rain forests, and rubber crocodiles (can you spot it?):
And if you don't think he's the cutest nephew in the world, he might have to open a can of Fake Kung Fu whup-ass on you:
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "The Outdoor Type" by Lemonheads
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On Sunday night I painted a few strange metal shapes (stands? racks? clothes dryers? I honestly don't know what they were) for work. They were small enough that instead of setting up the Big Whammy Paint Gun That Takes An Hour To Clean Afterward, I “cheated” and picked up a few cans of spray paint from Canadian Tire.
The paint may have cost twice as much that way, but when the total expenditure is an additional $10 I can't see any valid argument in favor of an extra hour's worth of my (at least moderately) valuable (to me) time.
Okay, there's the anti-aerosol environmental argument, and that's a good one. In fact, it's a very good one. But the point of this blog entry isn't the price of paint nor my destruction of the Earth as we know it. The point is my numb finger.
I have a numb finger.
The tip of the index finger of my right hand feels like it has been anesthetized. It seems that an hour of pushing down on rigid and ridged plastic nozzles has deadened my pointer. I wonder if it's bruised? It doesn't look bruised, but maybe bruises don't show up on the tough fingerprinted tips of our digits.
Maybe it's permanent nerve damage and because of those paint cans I'll never play the piano again.
Not that I could play it before, but it would've been nice, you know?
Damn you, cans. Damn you to can hell.
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Chick Singers" by Dan Bern
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“Plans to translate this game into another languages?
No, not. It seems not to be worth the candle (in wordly meaning).”
— From the Read Me for a Mac OS X remake of the classic Apple II game Mystery House.
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Shades of 45" by Gary 0
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The latest Eat My Words article has generated the most e-mail of any of them so far. It's been very interesting reading reactions to the “if shoe shops were run like web sites” idea. Many people have written in with great ideas for other annoying shops that might exist down there on Webshoe Lane. I may revisit the idea with another article some day—ripping off all your best ideas shamelessly. ;-)
The other big e-mail news is that I'm actually caught up on my correspondence. This is a rare and delightful position for me to be in. I'm often many weeks, if not months, behind on my e-mail. My nigh empty in-box makes my eyes happy.
As usual, now that I'm up to date I'm vowing to stay current by responding to e-mail at basically the same rate as I receive it.
As usual, I'm probably kidding myself.
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Kick Start" by Lisa Loeb
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I slept in a tent in my living room again last night. It was still pitched there as a leftover from my recent adventures in babysitting, and I was too lazy to take it down last night before going to sleep.
Camping-in was more comfortable than you might think. I'd taken the mattress off my bed and pitched the tent over top of it, making for a very spongy tent floor.
It was very late and I was a little overtired. I knew I had to get up early in the morning, so instead of reassembling my bed I headed tentward. What sealed the deal in favor of a second camp-in was my still unopened DVDs of the first season of The Outer Limits. I cracked the wrapper and popped a shiny disc of twist-ending goodness into my DVD player before settling into my sleeping bag for the night.
It was like junior high all over again, except for the tent. And for the fact that I was in my own digs instead of my parents' basement. And for the lack of Dungeons & Dragons manuals scattered about (as far as you know). But you get the idea.
I first watched The Outer Limits back in junior high, many hundreds of years ago. I knew about The Twilight Zone, but this other show was new to me. I'd heard was it was a longer and scarier version of the twist-ending story format, and that sounded great to Young Carrington The Ubernerd.
My exposure to The Outer Limits came courtesy of Chuck the Security Guard (a.k.a. Chas Lawther). Lawther had an eclectic, quasi-improv all-night show on local Toronto television station CFMT in the early 80s. I've always been a late night fellow, and even back then I was delighted to stay up until dawn to be introduced to shows like The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, and The Prisoner. “Chuck” also played vintage comedy shows like Car 54, Where Are You?, music videos and band promo clips (the first time I'd ever seen a music video, I think), classic cartoons, and lots of eclectic stuff from people I'd never heard of.
I ate it up.
It's funny that a bunch of grainy black and white shows could be more exciting and new to me than anything I'd seen before, particularly for a tech-oriented kid like me.
Staying up to watch The Outer Limits last night was a remarkably nostalgic experience. My mind was filled with pre-high school memories of all those times I'd stayed up much too late on a school night so I could guess at twist endings and watch alien plots unfold.
Lawther's show was the closest thing to a “DJ for TV” I've ever seen, and I've not come across anything like it since. Television and I parted ways a couple of years ago, but if it still offered experiences like that then I never would have left. As it is, I'll just have to make due with my DVDs, my tent, and my memories of the security guard who introduced me to so many new things.
You know, that didn't sound nearly as strange in my head.
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Molly's Chambers" by Kings of Leon
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I don't know about you, but I feel great!
2004 Aug 16 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Letter From An Occupant" by The New Pornographers
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“Sometimes people who seek pleasure are dishonest with themselves because they won’t admit to themselves where they find pleasure. They think you only find pleasure in places where you are supposed to, like parties, sex and drugs. Sometimes if they’re honest with themselves they can get pleasure from a walk in the country or from anything but they think it’s too bourgeois. If you’re going to be a real pleasure seeker you’ve got to be ruthlessly honest about where you find pleasure. Sometimes it’s ok to say that you are bored at a party. You just don’t care that there is a vodka fountain, an enormous penis carved out of ice and girls sliding down it. That is ok to say.”
—Stephen Fry, from an interview on suicidegirls.com
2004 Aug 22 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Winona" by Drop Nineteens
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The blogs they are a-changin'. As you've probably noticed, things are a little more colorful around here than they were yesterday. It's a brand spankin' new blog design. (Yes, this design spanks brands.)
There are still a number of kinks to work out, but it's mostly functional at the moment. I still have to add features to the sidebar in the blog section (over there to the right), including a search function and links to an RSS feed. I should also shortly be able to enable the other three sections (“filmmaking,” “quests,” and a surprise—ooh, how exciting). The writing section will soon contain more than just articles to chew on; I'll be adding short stories, poems, and scripts. Hope you're hungry.
This design will be a tiny bit slower to load than the previous one since I've included graphics as part of the interface (the previous design was an all-text interface: even the fancy stacked-word titles were created with CSS alone). I've carefully optimized the graphics, however, so they should load fast even for modem users. That's important, as is adhering to web standards.
The little colored bars above the menu items actually reflect the time when that section was last updated, which I think is pretty keen.
Since this is a complete ground-up redesign, there will no doubt be bugs to squish and incompatibilities to recompatibilitize over the next week. Please pardon the mess in the meantime.
2004 Aug 23 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Work For Food" by Dramarama
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I'm a die-hard Safari user when it comes to my web browser of choice. I use that because of its speed, its standards compliance, and its fantastic rendering engine. Pages just look better in Safari.
I've shied away from Firefox, for instance, because it has very poor text handling. By that I don't mean it renders text positionally incorrect; rather, its kerning and leading are almost invariably inaccurate, and it often fails to anti-alias text (I suspect it can't anti-alias text in fractional point sizes, which comes up increasingly as sites adopt “em” sizes). Firefox renders text the way other operating systems do—which along with its flat X-Windows GUI feel just screams “port” to me—and avoiding such inconsistent, inelegant lettering is supposed to be one of the benefits of Mac OS X.
What I'm getting at is Firefox is very fast and nicely standards compliant, but I spend too much time on the net to put up with ugly pages when Safari offers me the same speed and layout quality plus superior text rendering. (On the other hand, I'm seriously evaluating Opera 5 at the moment because of how polished its rendering is even though its use of Webcore instead of Web Kit means it lags behind Safari in other ways.)
But I've just now found a great use for Firefox.
After using Firefox to check for errors (on its part or mine) in the display of my new blog design, I had an idea. A really good idea, if I do say so myself. I'm so happy with it, in fact, I've added Firefox permanently to my dock right beside Safari. Firefox has suddenly become a great web browsing option, because of one little change:
I disabled everything.
I opened up the preferences, and I turned off Java. And I turned off Javascript. And I even turned off images.
Then I ducked into the “Fonts & Colors” settings, and I set the “serif” font choice to Monaco 12pt. And I set the “sans-serif” font choice to Monaco 12pt, too. And I set the “monospace” font choice to that as well. And I set the minimum font size to 12pt. Basically, I picked a font and put my foot down.
And then I checked both the buttons for “Always use my fonts and colors” and I set the text to black and the background to white.
Bingo, I had myself a wicked-fast, standards compliant, CSS-understanding browser that disregards everything except the raw text and layout instructions for sites. It ignores Flash ads, splash pages, and the flocks of tiny birds that follow my cursor around the screen. It turns up its nose at thoughtful choices like dark yellow text on a slightly darker yellow background. It bites its thumb at attempts to make text so small I'm fooled into thinking it's Braille.
Say hello to “Firefaux.” Hell, say hello to 1992 while you're at it.
What I did with Firefox is the exact opposite of how I use Internet Explorer. I've long kept a copy of IE around with everything enabled (including Java, which I keep disabled in Safari) to use exclusively to test site designs. It's handy to have such buggy, unpredictable, and inaccurate browser around for testing the “worst case scenario” for web sites. Explorer is the “special” (as in “helmet wearing”) member of my web design toolkit.
But Firefox is now my lean, mean, Wayback machine. I can't believe how fast it loads pages now, and unlike Linx or other text browsers this is a tabbed browser that understands stylesheets, tables, forms, and frames.
It's not perfect (e.g. no spellcheck) but it's damn good. Definitely my choice for what I'd use if I was stuck with dial-up access at a hotel, for instance, and if you're in a hurry it'd be hard to beat for rapidly checking sites before rushing out the door.
Basically, it's become the world's greatest Gopher application. ;-)
2004 Aug 24 // Link // E-mail
Song in my head: "Rollin' With My Blues" by Elvin Bishop
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Busy week, this last one. Much working, little writing, even less filmmaking. A poorly balanced equation, methinks.
Some highlights from the last few days:
Helping my nephew try on his very first ever set of hockey equipment in a parking lot, kneeling down to show him how to tell the right shin pad from the left. Could there possibly be a more Canadian moment? (I'll save him the embarrassment—and the need for future retribution on his own blog site—by not posting photographs.)
Noticing that working with metal is beautiful to watch. The welders at my family's shop produce waterfalls of fire that are mesmerizing. This is somebody cutting with plasma (“pure juice” as they call it 'round the shop):
Reading the trivia question printed on a Pringles chip about the number of face-off spots in a hockey rink, and thinking smugly the chip had the wrong answer (“6”) until I realized the answer was printed upside down. And only later thinking, “There was a trivia question on my chip?”
Redesigning my blog site. Again. While the last, short-lived design was nice I didn't actually like it more than the previous one. I think this latest design is a step forward. It's not quite finished yet, but good enough to set free for testing. Give me a week for tweaking, then if anything is still broken in your browser of choice let me know and I'll correct the site.
