No Glove Love
August 01, 2004 // Link
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!
Double-Feature Creater
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.
Birthdays, Cards
August 03, 2004 // Link
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.
I tend to go on quests
August 04, 2004 // Link
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...
There are mirror-finish windows
August 04, 2004 // Link
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.
I went to Kimberley Sparks’ Networking Schmoozerama tonight
August 04, 2004 // Link
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.
I went to the “Taste Of The Danforth” on Friday
August 08, 2004 // Link
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.
Greyworld
August 08, 2004 // Link
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.
Apocalypse Then
August 09, 2004 // Link
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.
With a cry of “Apple II forever!”
August 09, 2004 // Link
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.
I’m a big fan of Jim Munroe
August 09, 2004 // Link
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.
Klara McLaren has written a great article
August 10, 2004 // Link
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.
A bug
August 11, 2004 // Link
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.”
Here’s something I hadn’t thought of:
August 11, 2004 // Link
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.
My latest pet peeve
August 11, 2004 // Link
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.
Oh Internet, you show me such interesting things
August 11, 2004 // Link
Oh Internet, you show me such interesting things, such as the Museum of Handwritten Signs](http://homepage.mac.com/danielturek/PhotoAlbum33.html). 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.
Feet Don’t Fail Me Now
August 11, 2004 // Link
A lot of shoe shops have recently opened just down the street from where I live. What’s unique about these shoe shops is that each one is run by a former web designer.
Coincidentally, I needed a new pair of shoes. I took a stroll down to Webshoe Lane to check out the stores.
I went into the first shop I saw, and a pleasant sales clerk came up to me and offered to place 3-D photos of their shoes into my animation scrapbook.
“I don’t have an animation scrapbook on me.”
The clerk just looked at my blankly. “Not even an old one?”
“No. I don’t bother lugging one around because, frankly, I found the only things anybody put in it anymore were advertisements.”
“But our catalog needs to go into your scrapbook. It’s a great catalog. It’s animated and in 3-D. It offers a better shopping experience than just shelves of shoes.”
“Well, I don’t have a scrapbook. Can’t I just look around at the shoes you have available?”
“Um, no. We don’t bother putting any shoes on our shelves because we have such a great animated 3-D musical catalog. You’ll like it. It has tiny versions of classic arcade games you can play.”
“So I’ve come all the way down the road and right into your shop, and you have nothing to show me because you assumed I’d carry around a scrapbook for your animated 3-D musical arcade game playing catalog?”
“Um...it’s a really great catalog, you know.”
I’m sure it was, but I walked on down the street to the next shoe shop anyway.
At least, I think it was a shoe shop. I didn’t actually get to see inside the store. When I tried to enter the doorman sniffed me, mumbled to himself something about not recognizing my tailor, then roughly shoved me back outside.
I asked him why he wouldn’t let me in.
“It’s my job to arrange the store shelves to best meet your individual needs as a unique and important customer. With a single sniff of your clothing labels I can determine your needs and customize our store for you. Our shop owner has paid a lot of money to have many different store layouts available to suit his customers’ individual preferences.”
“Okay, so let me in.”
“I don’t recognize your tailor.”
“So?”
“So I can’t arrange the store to suit your needs.”
“Let me in anyway. I don’t care what the shelves look like. I’m not here to buy shelves, I’m here to buy shoes.”
“But I don’t recognize your tailor. I have a list of all the tailors our shop owner had heard about, and yours isn’t on it.”
“Maybe it’s a new tailor. Maybe the list is incomplete. Why does it matter—just let me inside to buy shoes.”
“I can’t. It’s my job to arrange the store shelves to best meet your individual needs as a unique and important customer. With a single sniff...”
I walked away.
The next shop I encountered had a small, neatly printed sign on the door:
Our price tags can only be seen with Opticadabra brand eyeglasses.
I was wearing a different brand of glasses, so I asked the proprietor what I should do. He advised me to go home and change into Opticadabra glasses.
“But I don’t want to change glasses. Why not just write your price tags in normal ink so they are visible to anyone? If I can’t see your price tags with my own glasses, I’m not going home to change them—I’m going to another store to shop.”
“Ours are particularly great looking price tags. Wait until you see them. Very, very nice. I’m afraid there’s just no way I can show you my shoe prices unless you change into Opticadabra glasses.”
“Does Opticadabra pay you money to limit your customer base like that?”
“No, but I heard that most people wear Opticadabra glasses, so I designed my store to look best through their lenses. I don’t understand why you don’t just wear Opticadabra glasses like everyone else.”
“I don’t want to. I like my glasses. Besides, what if a new type of glasses become the big fad—you’ll have to pay your interior decorator to come back and redesign the whole store.”
He admitted he’d already paid his decorator three times in as many years to redesign the shop as newer glasses styles came into fashion. I left him thinking about wasted expenses and limited customer bases, and I walked on.
I had no better luck at the next shop I tried. It was a few blocks away, so I hailed a cab. I was looking for a store called “The Friendly Elf Shoe Cellar” but when I told the taxi driver to take me there he accidentally took me to “The Friendly Elf Shoe Seller” instead.
When I stepped out of the cab, the shop exploded.
It didn’t explode into flames, but into advertisements for adult video stores. Suddenly the air was thick with posters and flyers and buttons and badges and all manner of advertisements for porn shops.
I brushed them aside and shoveled them away. I finally spotted the shopkeeper high up a nearby ladder arranging a precarious pile of flyers in preparation for the avalanche he’d unleash on the next person to walk by.
“Why did you try to bury me in ads for adult video stores?”
“Have you got some kind of problem with naked people? This is a freedom of speech issue! I’m allowed to do this!”
“I don’t have a problem with adult videos. I have a problem with you advertising your place as The Friendly Elf Shoe Seller when (a) you don’t actually sell shoes, (b) you’re obviously targeting people who meant to visit the The Friendly Elf Shoe Cellar, and (c) you didn’t even look to see whether I was a child or a nun or something before you buried me in booby flyers.”
“Freedom of speech! Besides,” he said pointing to something on the ground, “I used that form there to ask if you were an adult.”
“But you wrote it on the back of a postcard of a naked 16 year old girl.”
“Freedom of speech!”
I tried to argue, but he started throwing pictures of penises at me. I walked on.
I crossed the street to visit a shop I’d heard good things about, but when I got there I couldn’t see inside. The shop’s door and windows were completely blocked by a stack of televisions playing a generic cartoon that described the company’s philosophy of shoemaking, the “emotional resonance” of its heel designs, and so forth.
The door wouldn’t unlock until the end of the show, or until I bent down to the floor and found some tiny little button labeled “skip.” I just rolled my eyes and walked on.
The next store was a catalog store, but it was experiencing some difficulty. The store was completely empty aside from a pedestal on which sat a catalog with blank page after blank page. Each page had a little place to describe the shoes I should’ve seen, but the proprietor hadn’t bothered to jot anything down. I walked on.
I came to another store. It seemed to have a nice selection of shoes but it was blaring music I didn’t like. Worst of all, it was playing the music through my own iPod’s headphones. I was too annoyed to look at the shoe prices, so I walked on.
Next I came to a small shop that at first appeared quite empty. But shortly a voice called from the back, “I’ll be right out.”
A few minutes later and fellow shuffled out of the stockroom clutching a massive display shoe he could barely move. He slowly dragged it across the store, placed it on a shelf, then moseyed his way back into the stock room. I watched for a few minutes as he brought one massive shoe after another from the back to assemble the store for me.
It was starting to look pretty nice, but he hadn’t even finished the first shelf by the time I gave up and walked on.
Next door was yet another shoe shop. It had a strange name: “C Colon Shoes”. Turning the doorknob was very difficult since it was too big for my hand. When I was finally inside, I tried to browse around but my feet kept slipping through holes in the floor, and I kept banging my head on low beams. Most of the shelves were empty (although the shopkeeper insisted he could see shoes on them), and the few shoes I could see had price tags so small it was as if they were written in Morse code.
The shopkeeper listened to me describe the problems I’d had shopping in his store, but he wasn’t receptive to change. “That door handle works fine for me, and I never bang my head on those beams. I wear these big thick glasses so I can read the price tags no problem, and the holes in the floor are a design choice. So you can’t blame the shop. The fault is clearly your own.”
“But I’m the customer. Shouldn’t the store fit me?”
“How could I know what you’d want. It fits me, so obviously the problem is with you.”
I solved the problem by walking away.
In fact, I just gave up and went home. Nobody needs shoes that badly. Besides, I had recorded a television documentary about how poor online sales at most sites can be blamed on people not trusting online credit card transactions even though they happily give out their credit card numbers over the phone all the time.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s just a security issue. What else could it be?
Acting is...
August 12, 2004 // Link
“Acting is nothing more than the ability to read and talk.”
—Dov Simens (attributed)
My top five
August 12, 2004 // Link
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.
At the communal New York blog
August 12, 2004 // Link
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.
Morbid and fun
August 12, 2004 // Link
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.
I stare and stare
August 12, 2004 // Link
I stare and stare at the little running men, and I cannot look away.
They’re Supreme Somethings, That’s For Sure
August 13, 2004 // Link
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?
Little Flash cartoons
August 14, 2004 // Link
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.
One of the coolest things
August 15, 2004 // Link
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.
The world’s most indulgent uncle
August 16, 2004 // Link
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:
On Sunday night I painted
August 16, 2004 // Link
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.
Plans to translate
August 16, 2004 // Link
“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.
The latest Eat My Words article
August 16, 2004 // Link
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.
A tent in my living room
August 16, 2004 // Link
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.
I don’t know about you
August 16, 2004 // Link
I don’t know about you, but I feel great!
Sometimes people who seek pleasure
August 22, 2004 // Link
“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.”
The blogs they are a-changin’
August 23, 2004 // Link
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.
I’m a die-hard Safari user
August 24, 2004 // Link
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. ;-)
Busy week, this last one
August 31, 2004 // Link
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.