ThisBoyIsToast V4 >> January 2007 Archives

OK, I can see the fun with Gelli Baff, an additive for bath water that turns it into coloured goo, but what if you put too much in? Would the child be sealed in goo like Han Solo in carbonite?

There are never enough personal updates here.

I am in pain. Last tuesday I took a long drink of cold water and my back responded with a TWOING TWOING. My back spasmed because I drank cold water? Ok, whatever.

Later on at work it was reacting quite nastily impairing movement and breathing. But by that evening it was fine. Not fine but mysteriously transferring itself somewhere else.

When I awoke the next morning I noticed it hurt to sit up and the pain came from under my ribcage on the right side. I did not connect it to the back spasms and was kind of weirded out by the pain. I have never had muscle pain that I could trigger by actually poking the muscle. I compared the firmness of the muscles there and yeah, the whole area under my ribs is swollen and firm. And by jaysus it hurts.

A week later and things have only gotten worse. The pain is now apparent all the time, a dull ache like working out too hard. But that is not where the fun begins. If I sit down a twinge can cause me to grunt or grimace. If I stand up, the same. If I lay down in cannot help but do both the grunt and grimace. Getting up from laying down is a nightmare. Then there is breathing. Short gasps are OK but long steady breathing hurts, never mind taking a deep breath. And then there is the subway ride. I swear, some of the jostling is putting me inches away from crying out. Usually I have to catch myself squinting in pain.

So, the muscle ache remedy of a good night sleep with a Tylenol for pain and a Ibuprofen for swelling works naught. Tylenol 3 makes me sleepy but if I roll over in my sleep I wimper. I am thinking of going the three Advil and a shot of whiskey route just to get one night's sleep.

Now the other though is that the muscle pain is a symptom. I did some hypochondriac-ial Googling and found the two top responses on those medical "i have this pain, what do you think it is?" message boards. One is a muscle strain -- once again, from drinking a glass of COLD WATER? Secondly is kidney stones but most of those self diagnoses involve fevers. I don't have one.

But mommy, IT HURTS. January 31 07

Holey moley, it's The Day After Tomorrow come to real life with a Frozen Tidal Wave. It might be just me but the ice looks delicious.

Just because I don't listen to it anymore, doesn't mean I want Brave New Waves to be cancelled. This was the show that allowed the lonely teenager me find music I had never heard of before and the kind of music i wasn't supposed to be listening to, let alone be able to buy. I caught it some unremembered evening while turning the dial of the portable radio i took from my dad's garage & workshop. I believe the first spotlight I was hearing was Tom Waits and I remember being amazed that that smoky voice and anachronistic music could be considered cool music. I knew even then that there was music out there that few people had heard of, except the kids in The Big City, and that even fewer understood.

Over the years I found it on and off, as it's time slot didn't lend itself to regular listening and I must admit that alot of the music was beyond me. I find it weird that I remember Augusta La Paix was only there a year as it is her voice that dominates memories of the show. I can remember thinking snottily that Brent Bambury was making it too mainstream I haven't listened to it enough lately to tell you what Patti Schmidt's voice leaves with me.

I will miss it, more like missing the option of listening to it. January 30 07

This guy has quite the Apple collection in his basement. It begs the questions of, "How?!?!" A similar PC one would not be so pretty and muuuuuch more chaotic.

I do like my veggies covered in cheese but now I realize I need an au gratin pan. Well I don't need one but I do like the excuse to add something to the kitchen. But what I really need for the kitchen is will power.

Another nominee is An American Professor Teaching in Guangzhou China and he likes Star Wars. As to the translations, I would giggle more at them if they didn't make my head ache so.

Exploring the Bloggie Nominees. In the world of "seeking a book deal" blogs, the best posts are the well written versions of "what I ate today" such as Chicken which is not about eating chicken but being chicken.

Did you hear? It was decided that Living With Ed, reality show about Ed Begley Jr, is the first in a series where each and every network will slowly go through each and every celebrity and create a show about them. My favourite season will be the Life With Dead Celebrities. So, who would YOU like to see with their own celebrity reality show?

"On the other hand, even though I consider myself pretty good at washing pots and pans, I wouldn’t hesitate to hand that chore over to an advanced scullery system." Thus speaks the car parking expert about the Lexus self-parking car. They have car parking experts??

Continuing our 24 hours of Boll Coverage (i kid) we have a picture of Burt Reynolds in the coming movie of Dungeon Siege.

Speaking of my buddy Boll (now THAT is the name for a blog), this article has a nice idea of why his failures are still being made. Every one of his movies suck but they still keep on funding him. Now what is stranger is how we all still go to see him.

A couple of nights ago we finished watching the first season of Torchwood. If you do not want to know anything about the show or are intending to watch, you probably should stop watching... er, reading, now.

For those of you that didn't catch my first post, Torchwood is the spin-off of the current series of Doctor Who. Somewhere inside many of the episodes of the current romps of the Doctor were references to characters and an agency that deals with the same marauding aliens and monsters as the Doctor did. It was originally created by Queen Victoria after a run-in with a werewolf and the cult associated with it. Of course, the werewolf is of alien origin. Torchwood the agency has an office in Cardiff, Wales, and that is where our series takes place. Capt Jack, no not Sparrow, is their leader and he is very familiar with the Doctor and the circumstances of time and the universe. His team is not.

It's the first attempt at a more "adult" themed Doctor Who style series. And by adult, yes I do mean sex. The themes of the series are very clear and very intentional and include homo & bi-sexuality, the ramifications of having a life that interacts with often violent monsters & alien civilizations and the age old theme of Life & Death.

The sex is blatant and at first glance, you might think it's a ratings grab. It sort of is. It doesn't shirk away from a bit of titilation. But it is there for anyone's interest, not just the heterosexual majority audience. Capt Jack is essentially a gay character -- that is not the focus of his character but it is very important to his makeup. But he also has feelings for Gwen and keeps a relationship with a woman he loved in the 40s. And throughout the season, every character has a sexual relationship with the same sex. Sometimes it's via alien influence, sometimes it's seduction but it does happen to them all. Well all but Dead Suzie. And Owen's is only passing -- he definately likes being a standup hetero guy.

I like that the series was able to cover the full gamut of sexuality without being a show about the full gamut of sexuality. This is not the annoying sluttiness of Lexx or the usual sexual tension of every other scifi series. The tensions are there but usually our characters give into them and not with the best consequences. We lose respect for Gwen went she cheats on her BF but people have affairs with co-workers and that is life. Jack is a sexual being but we see a very tender side of him in one episode when he meets his namesake. It's a very sweet and sad episode.

In other adventurous scifi series, the characters run about from situation to situation watching guest stars and unamed extras get killed by the dozens. And as long as the central story arc is solved and our main characters survive, we are not supposed to care much about the rest of the people. This show smacks us in the face with that idea having Gwen react to every body they put into their morgue. It also covers the idea of what a shadowy organization would have to do in order to cover up alien abuctions, monster killings, etc. -- they have a morgue full of bodies at their disposal. Sure people are going to die when a nasty alien attacks but those people have families and it is a shadowy agency's responsibility to answer to these families. Why? Because if they don't, who will? Someone has to factor the human side to all these happenstances.

Death? Well I am hoping it was just a story arc but Death does not seem like a good thing in this world. There is nothing on the other side but a Darkness and now that the creature in the Darkness has been destroyed, there is nothing. Jack is immortal but still fears what is out there. They have a glove that ressurects people for less than a few minutes and they don't bring back good stories. In a world that takes into account a million alien cultures all with their own idea of religion and afterlife, I imagine there has to be some connective tissue. That there is possibly nothing after you die scares the daylights out of me. I mean there is nothing but you are still sentient. You are aware there is nothing.

It was a good season one, possibly the best collection of single episodes I have seen in a series. You do not like all the characters, are not happy with the way they deal with alot of things and wished other choices have been made. But they do work their hardest to make sure the right thing happens in the end, the grand story, not the little "i won't cheat on my BF" kind of stuff. They are stuck making sure that Cybermen don't take over the planet. It deals with the stuff that I usually think about when I watch the other series.

Bring on season 2 !! January 26 07

Klmit was surprisingly not popular until the last few decades. This article asks, "How did the Viennese painter’s prices rise so high so fast?" Easy answer -- all those prints sold to students in the spring time. Man, those print sales were the closest most people got to going to a gallery. I am sure many of them grew up to be wealthy people who wanted to replace the old ratty one from their dorm room.

Yumping Yimminy, I am going to bring a box of wooden matches and a candle to work for our floor's washroom. January 25 07

Overheard at work from a guy on his BlackBerry, "iPhone coming to Canada." The funny thing is that we order our work smart phones via Rogers. The funnier thing is that this contract might be over by the time they are available and the execs are requesting them.

Back when I first starting to create CD Covers, I would scan in favourite photographs from books I found at the library. The original to this legomogrification was one of my first.

Something about this Your Blog, Your To-Do List Manager rings true with me. My major concern with ToDo Lists is visually they have to compell me to interact with them. Spreadsheet like lists make me gloss over the actual tasks. But I am already familiar with the webloggy format so... Could be an idea.

You know, I like the work done at Way Cool Uptown , a tattoo shop up north on Yonge St, but what really makes me smile is that George has his personal description done like a D&D character.

Every so often I come across another notebook art project that reminds my users (users? where did that come from? i don't feel used) that I love notebooks done in that all too familiar artsy, deziney, collagey nature.

I imagine this Abortion and d20, for d20 Modern gaming, is a cheap ploy to draw attention to a gaming company? It's nice to know that at least one company is creating d20 Modern products, even if I won't be buying them.

Lured to google him by a mention of his book being, "IT Geeks meet Cthulhu," I connect with Charles Stross, a UK specfic writer who turns out to be the guy who created the Githyanki for D&D. And he has some free stories online, which I have to get onto my Treo.

LOL. I had to stifle snickers as I read blork's toboggan run story. That sounds like tooooo much fun. Hey Gushie, remember using cardboard boxes and wearing nylons (was that just me?) and going down Citadel Hill?

Of course, I read this Top 10 Worst Best Actress winners as "worst dressed actress winners" which makes no sense. But what made even less sense was reading the blurbs and not getting how it connected to clothing. Dang cotton ball on my head again.

Oh, this Kottke Komments is hillarious. It's all Jason Kottke's blog posts but with the ability to leave comments. I wonder how long before it fills up with jason-hate? And what happens during those posts where he actually does allow comments?

Yep, I knew it would happen. I realized another thing lost with that dead harddrive. This time I found that all the CD Covers I used to do are gone. Doofus. January 22 07

The first thing I thought of when I saw this Wii Laptop was, "Can it be ported to a TV ?" Of course I am always self defeating.

A neat little article that is less about addiction to Warcraft and more about the playtime grind vs fun received. I understand The Grind and it has essentially ended the gaming relationships I had, the whole thing that started me on MMOs, where the majority of people I played with have quit due to the boredom of The Grind, as well as other committments.

I still play two MMOs on the average of 5-10 hours a week. Both these games are already saturated in The Grind, the point at which the play actions of the game do not give reward as much as they do chew up the hours. Surprisingly enough, WoW fell into this much quicker than CoH. In CoH, I have never maxed out characters but the enjoyment out of a new level is not as high as it was in the first 6 months of the game. But I still enjoy the fast paced romps. This is assisted by the breakneck pace from mission to mission, superspeed and flight assisting Marmy and I. In WoW we are still in our first 30 levels and things are so... much... slower. Running in WoW is a pain, a downright molasses speed event. We are awaiting lvl 40 for a horse. That is forever away. But the fantasy based enjoyment ran out pretty quickly and I cannot imagine playing for more than a couple of hours straight before my eyes fall out. But why do I play? Because the basic elements of gaming with my GF are there. I do like the escapism that is coupled with us interacting together. And that's about it. I could quit tomorrow and not miss it all that much but based on my lack of addiction and the lack of damage it does, I don't see a reason to quit. Well, beyond being poorer. January 22 07

Yes these are Things My Boyfriend Says and I guess that means I have something to tell you all. Kidding kidding !! Sheesh...

This International Shooting All The Time Day Contest contest would be fun but how the heck can you shoot all day long?? There are certain activities that might take more than the alloted 1 hour of personal time. And it's not like you could squeeze them into that 5 mins. I guess there would be a lot of cheating ---- dinner time, just place the cam down and click the same thing over and over until food is eaten.

There are times when I feel like I have a large cotton ball stapled to my forehead. The cotton ball is hard to see through, making me squint, stretch, strain and finally just let my eyes relax and see everything slightly... soft. It is also hard to think through. I don't know why my brain likes to build an analogy of sending thoughts out through my forehead, having them bounce like sonar waves off the tasks they are to perform and then return to my brain with the required information... but this is the analogy I have. And that annoying cotton ball, which is about the size of a bowling ball in case you were wondering, just gets in the way of speedy thoughts. So, thinking can be done but it ends being delayed and diluted with fuzz. I think this can be summed up with a real world description of "finding it hard to concentrate".

Now, what contributes to fuzz ball growth? Initially caffeine shrinks the thing but too much caffeine on an empty stomach does more to it, like adding density as opposed to size. Sugar also helps at times but once again, too much can increase the fuzziness. This time it definately is size as I find it hard to think around the now soccer ball sized fuzz. Negative thoughts such as stress, unhelpful customer service people, rude commuters and bills to be paid contribute to it's definate stability. They don't change size or density but they do help it to stay around a lot longer. A nourishing meal will help shrink it as well as a good night of 10 hours sleep. Drinking lots of water will saturate the thing causing it to droop on my nose but most places indoors dry it out so much. January 19 07

I like my distopias in the near future, not a nasty distant future where apes rule the planet or Sean Connery runs around in an orange outfit. And I am surprised at how many distopias I have seen.

Unless your manager is really kinky, this is NSFW but I really had to link to all these witches. Burn them at the stake man, a really hip stake.

I had never heard of High dynamic range imaging or HDR. I was brought here by a photo on Flickr of Tokyo at night. It intrigued me.

As you can tell by my interest in panography, the idea of manipulating photos digitally, after the fact, interests me. I guess, coming from a place where I can never take exactly the shot I want with crappy eyes, skill and cameras, I want to create a shot that emotionally captures what I see instead of just the pixels recorded by the camera.

The HDR pool starts me into exploring this style which I can probably do with the tools I already have. With my GorillaPod I could have fun capturing the 6am mornings I now experience, hoping that my lil Canon can do multiple exposures over a timed range. Or I can just click it on a time of my own devising. And by playing with exposure methods by even manually masking areas of light (put my hand in front of the cam and seal the exposure with a "click up", I can also do interesting shots.

Definately something to try over the next few weeks. And I do have some more panographs to put up as well. Nothing like adding projects before I finish any. January 18 07

Is the tune played in "Bestest Friend" a common tune or just something they did for the episode? If the latter then IT has a fan cuz they just whistled it again. January 18 07

D'Oh !! Having suffered from tummy woes of late, which includes looking down at my biggest ever tummy flab and going oh-woe-is-me, I decided to cut down on eating for a week, focusing on soups and light fare. I go out at lunch with wandering in mind, end up down Queen W and see a burrito place, New York. By the time I remember what I intended I was half way back up Queen W with a jumbo grilled chicken burrito. Now I am bloated and bleah. January 18 07

I sometimes don't bring my bag with me but I usually have my phone with me so I should grab this TL-PDB (not a great name) for converting and creating Palm eBooks for the Treo650.

Cut down on the coffee intake, increase on the liquid intake. Get some energy back. Grab a mini notebook for quick written notes and stuffing post-its & scrap notes into. Clean up the new mess I made in the computer room. Make more soups to take to work. gather notes into actual coherent writing. finish the photoblog/site thingy changes. January 18 07

OK, we cannot see the angle of the hills in this video of icey road conditions but really, don't these people know when to just stop trying to drive??? I don't drive but at least I have sat next to my mother, during days like that, enough times and she knew when to take her feet off the gas and let the car come to a rest. Doofusi.

Finally. Waking. Up. One more gallon of coffee should have me ready for the day. January 17 07

I saw this mentioned a while ago but never saw the actual source page. I understand that most charities state symbolic actions in their drive to get funds. But the details on this page are extremely misleading. Why say, "Give a Water Buffalo," when you mean, "a contribution to the entire mission of Heifer International" ?? At this point my distrust of most charity agencies rises again. I remember talking to the board member of a well known charity and how they paid her quite a hefty salary for "administrative costs" when I felt that should go to the people in need instead of her already comfortable ass.

This interview with possibly the first Burning Crusader to reach level 70 outlines a different game from the one I play. I understand that most people are about mins & maxes and team PvP but really, can the game be mainly about that? Wouldn't that waste all the backstory they create for the game?

I am always fascinated where the Internet sends me. I went to Technorati seeking any popular blogs who might be talking about The Burning Crusade. I wandered by the "Top Blogs" and came across the link to Michelle Malkin's blog. Why was she popular? Because she was in Iraq supporting the troops? She's a strong right wing conservative. What does that mean in the US these days? Well after reading a bit, I see it still means being more about being alarmist and exclusive than it is about supporting your country. These people scare me.

The closest I got to the new WoW expansion (this is the first, right?) was walking into FutureShop last night and seeing their haphazard display of everything WoW. So, instead of playing it I am reading other people s experiences with it.

Neat!! Wil Wheaton talks about Next Generation episodes. What is also neat is the mass of self referential links at the bottom of the page; self referential to the Weblogs Inc network, which sort of seems to be an Acme Inc of the blogging world. I wonder if there is a blogging Wile E Coyote getting link fodder from them? (via milo)

I played with guns with a kid and by guns I mean pieces of wood that I hammered together, attached clothespins and rubber bands to and shot my friends for shit and giggles. But imagine the fun I could have had with this !! (thx joe)

Really, sometimes you are reading a post somewhere and it's worth blogging but really, why blog it? I am not going to be eating in NYC anytime soon. But nood is so maybe this will be of interest to him. And really, what other reason do you need to blog?

Even if the movie is canned, even if I need a new xBox 360 to play the latest edition, even if he was created as an anti-insurgent soldier, I still like the world of Master Chief and the Halo universe.

Y'know, I am not sure what to say about the site and trailer for Black Snake Moan. It is on MySpace which as a promotion tool, pretty much lowers any cred an indie movie has. The movie smacks of the movies my Dad loved to watch, often late night rentals when we first got the VCR or the ones in those fliers from the DriveIn. But Ricci does put the skank on well.

I have a box of casettes in the closet, the closet that I am in the midst of an attempt to empty & clean out, and I am loathe to get rid of them. But I co-oooooo-uld rip them to MP3. Its obviously not for quality sake but for posterity.

Hmmm, I love my new job but I hate the fact that my desk is directly above the staff cafe kitchen. I loathe the smell of cooking eggs; they smell like spiced poo. January 15 07

I knew it was only time before comics went from making series with not direct but obvious connections to D&D to making series with not spoken out loud but obvious connections to WoW.

So I read this comic at Full Frontal Nerdity and I am thinking, "I know one person who gets this," and I also thinking, "What? My d20 shirt doesn't get the ladies hawt?"

ZOMG (to quote marmy) !!!! It's the ducky girl from the old dayz of blogging !! (found via the comments in chelle's post on rannie's site)

OMG, that is one kick-ass Kusanagi Motoko statuette !! I have a couple of "figures" of her (one of which recently took a header from the standing place and spilled feet and head in 3 different directions.. CRACK) but none compare to the detail on this one. Plus, its kind of demure for the Major which makes it more likely to be on display. (thanks Nood!!)

Quite a while ago, a member of the Church of the SubGenius (a not so serious religious organization with very bizarre rituals) lost her custody rights to her son. The legal battle continued with the support of the web & subgenius community. I am not going to argue that the subgenius folks are freaky but since when does being strange considered grounds for being a bad parent? I sure as heck might not want to put rubber ears on my child but I am sure there are some LotR geeks who would. And think about furries, trekkies, goths, body-modders, bikers, etc. and they things they might expose their kids to. But is that bad parenting? I don't think so.

I often forget, basing my exposure to legal systems on TV shows such as Law & Order and CSI, that not every judge in the US (or probably Canada) is unbiased and may taint procedings with their own personal and religious views. Call me idealistic but I am still astounded when a ruling can be based on a flagrant personal bias. Imagine the judge in a custody screaming at a mother losing her child, "I cannot believe you still play that blasphemous game D&D and you let your child SEE you rolling dice and talking in funny voices!!" It sounds silly but this case didn't seem so far away.

I am glad that the judge finally left the case and the new one was more sane. I still think the subgenius folks are freaky but the kind of freaky I like. January 12 07

OK, so now it's not really their right to use iPhone. So what are we gonna call it? iMobile? Nope. iCell? Nope. iTalk? Nope. iGab? Maybe. iWhatever... (more at Blork)

Warning: This entry has the graphic images I dreamed last night. Graphic nasty, not graphic sexy.

I should have blogged this dream when it woke me up this morning (2am) with enough "freak out" juice in my system to find myself in the living room watching Marmy play CoH (welcome back nood) before I even knew I was awake. But weirdly I didn't even know what the dream was until I had gone back to bed mumbling, "Why do I feel so freaky??"

As soon as I closed my eyes the dream came back in full force. As the usual state of dreams is fuzzy there are few clear images about this dream but the plot is. I was an agent of some sort and we were on a training exercise. Whatever we did, we knew the kinds of training they did was consider quite heinous and disturbing to say the least. I believe we must have been involved in not so nice activities. Our little group knew we had an exercise the next morning and it involved the "fake house" in the valley. I was curious as to why this exercise had such a reputation amongst trained agents so I did something I wasn't supposed to do -- I explored the house ahead of time.

What I found in the house was disturbing to say the least. The situations this exercise was to prepare us for were the worst case scenario. And somehow the worst case scenario for us agents was to encounter a countless number of destroyed bodies. The house was full of animals chopped, torn, stripped, flayed and severed. Heads, torsos, legs and feet and innards were everywhere. As I waded through the mess I noticed the dominant factor was an emotional reaction to the smell. I knew if I could survive that I could survive the exercise.

What I didn't know was that they would amp up the exercise because of my exploration. The bodies of animals were used to prepare us in encounters where death had been wholesale, where slaughter had been the ending of a case. But much more than just the death of a civilian but death on a scale that would people would blanch just thinking about it. When my fellow agents and I walked into the scene it had a faint familiarity. The stench was real, the scene was disgusting -- a full day's heat on the body parts and entrails. But I had seen this before and steeled myself. And then I noticed the additions, first seeing the severed head of a man who had bright red hair. It was the middle third of his head, his skull lopped off and all below his nose gone. Bits of his moustache were clinging. And as I looked around, to the sounds of my fellow agents gagging, retching and passing out, I saw more. I saw a little girl rotting in a corner, her intestine curled around her feet, all gray and deflated. Arms, legs and heads were scattered about but not in long decay but recent decay -- all VERY human. It was a messy, smelly, nasty scene that was somehow lacking in much blood seperating it so far from the horror movies that so often depicted such gross massacres. All my steely nature seeped out of me and I woke very suddenly.

And that was what I dreamed last night. Luckily the very very strong images of each dead person have begun to fade from my mind's eye. January 11 07

This is the sort of retcon I love. Star Wars IV-VI explained with episodes i to III in mind. It's thoughtful but I am not sure if I like Chewie's role in it all.

To continue our plethora of iPhone posting here (no i am not considering becoming all iPhone, all theTime) I give you 30 Things the iPhone Could Do That You Haven't Thought of Yet of which my favourite was, "Bring you to tears when it falls and skids face-down across a parking lot."

It's the Book Meme: Fantasy/Sci-Fi Edition.

The instructions were: Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

Despite the drop in RIM's stock price yesterday, I agree that iPhone is No Blackberry Killer. It's a personal device, not a business messaging device. But I cannot wait until the summer when I start getting requests for it. Unless it's from The Top, the answer will be, "Ummm... no." I wish it could be, "Yes but only if you let me play with it."

LMAO. I realized it's only going to be a few days before I start shouting, "It's only a phone !!" But until then I still understand Brent's sentiment.

Ohhhhhhh *whine* ... it's not actually a TV. I guess you will have to settle connecting it to one of those mega apple monitors. Addendum: I had assumed it was a DVR, apple style, but it turns out just to be a pipe for the media on your apple computer into your TV. To emphasize what Ed said, l-aaaaaaa-me.

My favourite part of this article about Building a Smarter To-Do List is the follow-up links section called "Hand waving about lists and systems". Too much about being productive often becomes the evangelical nature of one system or another.

I remember once thinking at The Store that I would love to be more organized given the time and the tools. Even if I had come across the perfect paper-based (i had no PC at The Store) productivity tool, I would never be given the time to put it into place. Here, I can. And I should. Thus I am hunting a good ToDo lister, one that can handle sub-lists. First stop, 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive.

When I was living in Ottawa a number of my friends and ex-classmates were working for Bell Northern Research, or BNR. We called it the Big Nerd Ranch as it was full of programmers with few social skills. I wonder how this b n r came about?

What I like about this 20 Different Ways to Manage Your To Dos, is how it contains even the most basic like, "Fancy notebook with a fancy pen".

Marmy, who is this actor? We have seen him in some movies. And rhetorically I ask, "Why is he the face in a MS website image?"

Badger passes Mal a piece of magic paper, with images and videos being updated automatically, at the beginning of "The Train Job" episode of Firefly. Could this Plastic Logic be soon in coming?

When I see the waiter at this Dark Resto in Asia, I cannot help but imagine him creeping about in a Splinter Cell / Sam Fisher fashion.

Yes, linking to the same comic twice in a row. It takes a comic that previously mentioned WoW to explain to me something about cooking.

I once said that I would not be interested in cell phones until their designs became something I could desire. Unfortunately, practicality required me to buy one just before then but they have reached that state now. For example, the possible Apple iPhone. Or all the beasties in this video.

When categorizing the previous link fodder, 'sex' just seemed too blatant. 'Movies' seemed too broad. Thus a new category has been created, the ever popular in-joke from Montreal: 'Grindy Grindy Grindy'. January 05 07

Hey, this is not quite the meme yet but it's a neat idea. The Year in Posts or, "the first sentence from the first post for each of the twelve previous months." Mine should be interesting (or not) as many will be just the link fodder. In each case, the first word links to the original post.

Back in my penner (pretentious for PenPal) days I used to Make Your Own Envelopes. Well, make mine actually. I would do exactly what they say and for large enevelopes, I would use the movie posters being given away by my local video store.

My list of personal things to do and projects is simply massive, some being useful and practical to some being pipe dreams. This Getting Things Started: The Brain Dump at Dethroner article takes all of that into account.

I like this Death City alot. It's a fictional blog set in a city beset by a plague that the government is denying is happening. Think of it as Toronto's SARS summer gone all wrong. I just hope the writing is up to the task.

Even though I am sorely behind in watching the new Dr. Who, I still want to start watching Torchwood. Once again, if it wasn't for stealing TV, I would barely watch TV. OK ok, I still would watch too much TV.

It's times like these that I love that I have a Japan category/tag. Yes, they are Candy That Makes You Horny, not that I need any.

So I was popping by Uninstalled and I saw this neat CSS popup attached to the link. At first I thought this was a clever guy (he may still be) but then I noticed the logo to Snap. Neat! I am amazed at how much I like the concept but I am sure someone will not like it on my site, so I am enabling it only for the links where i think it might assist people, which may be most.

My own particular adolescent & disturbing plot (don't steal it!!) is about a man alone on a massive world ship, a singular continent sized spaceship on an unknown mission but probably doing an Ark-style delivery of the last human beings to a hospitable planet. I don't know why the man is alone (and why or how he happens to be immortal) but he does not have access to any real humans to help him. He is left to crew the ship, which mostly does it all by itself, with manufactured clones of people who existed on Earth in times past. At first he just created random people to work with but a hundred years later or so he seems to have ended up with only a crew of recreated pop culture stars, beautiful actresses and singers. Some are mere playthings while others he has allowed (yes, allowed) to have free will and gain identities of their own. Most often this happens when he is bored with someone and just lets them go perform a task somewhere on the ship where he hasn't journeyed in some time.

So the subplots end up being not about spaceships and beautiful space babes but thought-provoking elements such as: slavery, freewill, what it is to be human, sanity, etc. Our protaganist has much time on his hands, has access to Star Trek like holodecks, recreates planetary conditions whenever he likes, has new star systems to explore, etc. But when it comes down to it the story would be about him and the girls around him.

As I said, adolescent and somewhat disturbing. Which sort of goes hand in hand. Adolescents often have clear access to thoughts that would be blocked out by an adult who has been told for decades not to think a certain way. January 03 07

I haven't blogged this topic in quite some time and I guess it's because I don't often read about books I might want to read. This time it's Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches. I read The Fermata, which deals with stopping time and fondling women, in a completely adolescent & if-you-are-an-adult disturbing depiction.

The number one result for a donair Google Search is a Halifax chain. That's only appropriate cuz the east coast donairs are the best ones. Western ones are pretty decent as well but these central canada ones suck. The Halifax ones even have their own section in The Entry.

Speaking of Zune TV commercials, has anyone even seen them on TV? I am sooooo tired of the "viral marketing" commercials that are out there. The whole point of viral marketing is that it is subtle, not over the top without any connection to the product. And the fucking concept is all over the news without most of the news writers even understanding what it is all about. It's like they all read the Time magazine article and felt they missed something. Bleah! January 03 07

It's a walking penis, no it's a schmoo, and that's a gibbering mouther but has no mouths and that's kinda rude and it's all more than a little weird. It's a Microsoft Zune 2006 TV commercial ?!?!?!

Most people barely know my fascination for pens, that grew from buying my father so many as a kid (he LOVES them), and therefore can understand why I love the idea of this inkless pen. It's sort of like a pencil but it's not. Oh, and look at their entire (3 only actually) pen collection -- all unique examples of pen design.

Tee hee !! It's The Post-It Note Jaguar. I have always been fond of elaborate pranks pulled on friends and co-workers from the shaving cream filled cars to the "glue every stick of furniture to the cieling" efforts. This one is pretty.

Uisce Beatha was a gaelic drinking band I have seen at some time in my past, probably Halifax or Ottawa. They are not this band of the same name. The name, pronounced "ishka baha" is the origin of the word Whiskey, which sounds better pronounced intoxicated as "wush-kee".

Despite what I thought, a Shibboleth is an element of language usage that identifies your origin, as opposed to a nasty green & gelatinous monster of Cthulhu mythos origins.

I really have no idea who Ruhlman is but I know who Bourdain is and I love this post on Ruhlman's blog where he baits Bourdain to come to Cleveland. I like when blogging can still be personal enough for "big names" to tease each other.

For once in blue decade I am actually considering that it is a New Year and thinking about changes. It is helped by the last few weeks of 2006 actually being about change and the new year actually starting with new horizons instead of stagnation. I don't have any grand plans but I now have no excuses not to do the things I should be doing and wanted to be doing. The major change will be to re-establish good habits in productivity or... actually getting some things done.

I have a few basic ideas like cleaning out the computer room, not just shuffling things around. It has too long been the dumping ground of my life instead of the refuge it should be. It's current state of chaos reflects my mind for the last few years and I have to clean that out.

Another thing is to get some work done on the sites I run and yes that means another redesign and reworking of this blog. I want to blog again for the reasons I did originally -- to enjoy the internet and to learn more about the technologies involved with it. I don't expect ever to be a Web Monkey again but I wouldn't mind again being able to be comfortably involved in the process. I want to once again be that guy amongst my friends who knows how to build websites. And the changes on the photoblog have already started; a 365 day project that is bare bones -- one pic a day, no glitz, no massive amount of photoshopping and no focus on how perfect the image is. But to do that I also have to clean up the old archives and make them available. It's there now but only barely.

Other things involve homesense: cooking more often, cleaning a hell of a lot more often, finalizing the decorating and also planning on moving downtown. We have always wanted to be downtown and things may be progressing where it is more advantageous for us to be near there. Plans...

It is a new year and I should act like it. January 02 07