ThisBoyIsToast V4 >> December 2006 Archives

Another of the old guard that I used to read was meish dot org but I am pretty sure she wasn't called that back then.

These snowglobes fascinate the morbid side of me as well as well as the person who loves little diaramics. It's just too bad the site that posted the Snowglobes didn't mention the source of the images.

Envy! Yes, I am jealous that Accordion Guy got quite the schwag deal from M$. He got a free decent-end laptop preinstalled with Windows Vista. But he works hard for his focus in the blogging world and deserves a little positive feedback.

When I was a kid I somehow ended up with a couple of issues of Omni Magazine and I remember it was specifically because of a scifi cover like this one on it. I ended up being addicted to the mag for the articles and the Stephen King short stories.

Yes, while I might not make any more covers (thinking of changing that in the new year, this coming year is designed for changes) and buying even fewer legit CDs I still love to stop at the credworthy CD stores on Bloor W and look at neat CD artwork.

Grindy grindy grindy !! I likes da girls wit da dice. (editor's note: I changed the original traditional 'hubba hubba' to the current in-joke; my life needs more in-jokes instead of being one)

This banner for the International Brotherhood of Sammichmen (hi floor, make me a sammich!) made me laugh out loud. I can hear PETA growling at me now.

Oooo another foodie blog i can eat called A Hamburger Today (also via serious eats as he is one of their contributers)

Skip the nuts in this pork flavoured version of peanut brittle and I might like it even more. But to be honest, I am one of those who does not put syrup on his bacon & cheese & mushroom crepes. (via serious eats)

I was pretty much blasé about the first movie, even if Ms Alba had a starring role, but for some reason the trailer for Rise of the Silver Surfer excites me.

Only a few people who know me well will know why I blew snot over the screen over finding this new City of Heroes emote. It was not what I thought it could be.

Hey People, don't get killed by Robot Santa and have a Happy Christmas whatever you be doing this day off. If you happen to be working... sucka !! December 25 06

Heh heh heh, I am not sure if the cat has a "I am cute!!" expression his or her face or an expression of, "Get this off me before I go Spanish Inquisition on you!!"

OK, these Bubs are cute, weird, familiar and well-done but I am not sure exactly why they exist.

I got this Gir Bubs
from TheLordNick.com/Bubs

Neat! Yes, category needed number two. Anywayz, and maybe i should only have three categories: Kewl, Neat, Anywayz. ANYWAYZ! When Fangirls Attack is a neat link collecting blog about Women in Comics.

Everyone is going on about the new Archie comics look but they don't realize that it is not ALL Archie comics but some of the titles or maybe some new ones. It's a comic for gawds sake, if you are not a 50 year old man who regularly takes the Montreal metro, you are going to be fine. Superman survived having 90s hair so B&V will survive looking more realistic. American boys should have something to masturbate to like the Japanese kids do.

G.I. Joe was called Action Man in the UK ? So what did they do during the Cobra Commander era of the american counterpart? Well, they didn't make him smaller for one...

Kewl, and yes I should make that phrase a category of it's own, it's a blog dedicated to those oh-so-collectible vinyl toys called Vinyl Abuse.

This is a neat idea that must require some forethought or at least alot of people (as well as yourself) taking photos of you. She has 28 pictures of herself through the ages.

I already have enough MP3 players; I don't need to make my own MP3 player. What I need to know is how to make my own 1gig+ USB thumb drive.

Imagine this, you have a website that reviews TV shows and gets a little fame. You write a review for a crappy piece of teen drama that focuses on the empty heads of malibu beach bunnies. A couple of months later you see an episide of Law & Order: SVU and the nasty, over the top baby raper has the same name as you and happens to write for a website that reviews TV shows. You watch the credits, a little confused, and you see the name of the same telewriter who wrote that crappy Malibu show. Or better yet, how about a bad review of a Michael Crichton novel.

So, if a movie production magnate decides to make a movie about a 12 year old baking wizard who gets on the wrong side of a competing company and they called "This Boy Is Toast", am I going to be sued over my domain name even if I had it first and it never had anything to do with their movie??

Someone has made a site that combines the rating system made popular with Hot or Not and a relationship matching service called LoveHappens. Though with the name, maybe I should have compared it to Rate My Poo.

I mentioned lightboxing items to be photographed the other day and part of it is choosing your background. You can go with white and have them float or you can choose a neat background for texture, like Rannie has done in the Flickr photos; just browse back for more.

Sheesh!! If the oldest blogger lives in Toronto and handwrites his posts, to be mailed to NB, why the heck aren't we, the GTABers, helping him out here?!?! If in the least we could get his posts from him and update his blog or in the furthest, put a PC in his house with a limited internet account. Sounds like he's a boon to the community.

While I will never own one of the beautiful beasties, today I got to touch a Apple MacBook Pro in order to place it into inventory. Droolable. Totally.

I used to love CD Cover design until I started listening primarily to MP3s and haven't seen many as of late. But I still read deadtree (as webbies are wont to call them) books and love love love the cover art and thus I link to a blog dedicated to book design.

Where will I be this friday night? Well, at the GTAB Christmas Party of course !! No can of rolo cookies this year though. Marmy is cookied out.

When someone attached to this amorphous extended blogging community passes away a number of people feel the need to blog it even if they really had no idea who she was. I knew who Leslie Harpold was, having been around the A thru C Listers during the 2000s but did not know her personally. Having read quite a few of the eulogies over the last few days, heather's is the only one that touched me.

The other day I built a cheapass DIY lightbox (i cannot find the link to the original but there are quite a few; editor's note: found it!), which allows me to do do decent "backgroundless" shots of my toys and such, but what I really want to know is about taking better pictures of food.

OK, go ahead and read these Time Friends comics and then go do your own with this image; post it somewhere and place the link in my comments.

I saw these melting snowmen and thought they would be the perfect gift for any of my friends. Then I saw the price; sorry folks I can't afford to melt away what money I am now making :)

While I really am drooling over the increase in popularity of eBooks (i saw an ad on TV for the Sony Reader) I don't think people who publish books have to resort to ads like this; but they sure are funny !!

So I am now sitting in an IT Dept eavesdropping on guys answering IT request phone calls and hearing, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Well, no not really but I want to say it when I hear them struggling with a user.

So you wanna go for a nice walk in the hills just outside of town, to get some fresh air, to enjoy the mild weather. But you are just too frickin' lazy. (thx martine :)

I like the idea of having a handy mini icon set when I need to design a website and have little links based around icons.

OK, I understand I now work in an area where internal IBM desktop speakers bleat out error message sounds all day and BlackBerry tell their users they have a new message every ten minutes (30 seconds?) but why am I hearing a distant default Windows error message (you know the basic two-note chime-like beep when you hit the wrong key) even when I nowhere near a Windows computer? I swear, I heard it on the subway the other day and on the street as I was walking home from the subway. And in the apartment while I was watching TV.... December 13 06

I love the idea of a building with talking bubbles as their logo. The last photo shows it best. I think anyone with access to this building should snap a photo & photoshop it with a message of the day.

Yah I knew I would love a website featuring a daily monster. Part of my brain says the inevitable, "I can do that!!" and I have done that. But I don't do that.

It's only a matter of time before there is an ap like Shelfari for every aspect of life, where you can share you interests and be part of a community that shares that interest... in sharing. The important thing is not the chosen interest but the accessible and enjoyable aspects of the community.

I really love when Maria posts her recipes from home ! All too often when you eat ethnic food, as my mother would say, you are eating the whitewashed or high cuisine of a particular country. Either that or the americanized choices. When I think of Mexico I either think of tacos or mole, which I am sure Maria makes as well, but I love the fact that I have never heard of these dishes and that they seem like the kind of meals moms would make for you.

OMG, I have no real pretensions that my blog is worth being in print but I soooo much love the idea of a Blurb Blog Book but then again it may just be saying it out loud.

I forgot to link to this "oh wow that is cool" link for the DB Fletcher 'capstan table', possibly the most fascinating extension table I have ever seen.

Yes, it is imaginable that the Fossilized Feces of Jesus Wreaks Havoc but really, you are digging in the ground and you come across ancient poo. What leads you to believe that your saviour may have had a dump there? Oh I guess if it IS christ poo, you might want it around your neck like a reliquary or an ABBA turd. What would John Constantine do with it? (yes i know this is a satire site)

For the first time in a long time I will be doing a job that allows me the temptation to blog while I should be working. Oh I imagine there will be times when I can be blogging but the idea is to stay focused on the tasks at hand so we offer 18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work. (via the aforementioned jish)

Yesterday, due to the presence of a commute once again, I finished the source book for the latest show I am DLing, "Dexter". I link to the IMDB because we in Canada are not allowed to see the website to the American Showtime show. Huh? It IS running here on The MovieNetwork so I find it assinine. Actually I find the idea of not allowing other countries to view promotional material as incredibly stupid but that is another story. As I said, I finished reading the book by Jeff Lindsay

I must say that I was incredibly disappointed. The book is relatively small, obviously one of those first mystery genre books that intends a long running series. But I found the writing incredibly lacking, so far as to be boring. While I am more interested in carrying forth a story these days, rather than endless exposition on character traits and backgrounds, I found the style just blasé.

But the series I am enjoying incredibly !! I love the character development, progression of the season long story (rather than quickly resolved book plot) and the focus shift from horrific crimes to the growing relationship between Dexter and Rita.

For those not knowing, Dexter is a psychopath who works for the Miami police department as a blood spatter expert. No one knows or knew, but for his dead adopted father who taught him how to blend into society, that he likes to kill and Dexter assists by only killing those who deserve it, such as other serial killers or plain mass murderers. Dexter is unemotional or more precisely, lacking in the normal emotional reactions of every day people. His father taught him to face this and fake it. Thus he makes friends with his coworkers and has got himself a girlfriend.

The series works for me on two levels. Yes, I have a macabre sense of humour and often giggle along with Dexter as he notices something about a murder scene that would have others retching. The writers understand that most of us find horror movies more funny than horrific. The horror of the series comes in watching Dexter react negatively to a situation where we are reminded that while he is an unemotional killing machine, he was also once a normal human baby made into this by a nasty nasty past. No one is born a monster, we are made. The other level is a show that wants you to like it's characters and develop some sympathy for them. No matter how much I live Law & Order: CI, I will never actually care for it's characters as they are presented faithfully but not with much sympathy. I like worrying about Dex as his past comes back to him, about Deb for the crash she is about to experience, about Rita and her ex-husband troubles and Angel with his ex-wife troubles.

I like the show and will continue to enjoy my downloaded, no commercial, watch when I want state of it. December 09 06

Is it just me or does this trailer for Halo 3 (prepare for a long DL) remind me of the base story for Titan A.E. ?

I love how they mention, in this article about a possibility of Firefly returning as MMORPG, that it was like Cowboy Bebop, which is something I thought when I saw Bebop for the first time, "Man, Whedon must have really been influenced by this..." Jer, THIS is the next anime you should watch.

A nice interview with Hannah Sung, Former MuchMusic VJ who like some of her bretheren has gone onto a better life than slugging bad videos. To be honest though, she was slugging the better music for the last number of years. I just remember her for bumping (literally) into her while walking down a hill in Montreal after buying tickets for FantAsia. And that she's darn cute.

I don't know why but I find the news that a Seminole nation company (band council?) bought the whole Hard Rock Cafe concept. I imagine it will lead to a scene on a Simpson's episode sometime soon.

Even if he didn't make millions and millions in a made-up Business Week story, Kevin Rose is kewl as shite when it comes to geeky types. Here he annoys his co-host, and the rest of the world, talking about the "It's Gonna Be Small as Shit" iPhone.

I first heard about the plight of the Kim family from blogs, and not from blogs re-posting the store but from blogs just commenting on someone they knew from their community. I checked the real news and there was not a peep. This morning CNN was running the "family found in car -- trapped for 9 days; husband still missing" story. I hoped the authorities listened before the news media did.

He bought expensive art, very expensiveCarved Crayons and then he left them in the sun. At least he didn't leave them with a toddler.

It scares me that a work related blog would have a category called 'The No Asshole Rule'. oh, it's his book. That is scarier.

Holy Fraggle, I get to avoid this kinda shite this year and in case you haven't already guessed, I did quit The Store and I will be working elsewhere. Last day is tomorrow. First day is Monday... maybe.

In times past I have unsuccessfully tried to explain to people why I love the notebooks written by serial killers in TV & movie fiction. Something about the no-margins scrawling from page to page with detailed drawings and the like, just attracts me. I am disappointed I cannot recreate such but also thankful I am not a serial killer. Perhaps it's not just the psycho that has creative talent so as to fill a moleskin with such loveliness? (via martine)

Is it possible to have Stockholm Syndrome for/from the workplace you just quit? December 01 06