ThisBoyIsToast V4 >> June 2007 Archives

Yeah, I want to be able to bake and take photos like this. Once Marmy starts in full force, I intend to actually attempt to try it with my meager photoography "equipment" and skills.

Ade, by proxy of Kent, dropped off a bag of cherries, from a cherry tree that fell victim to one of the recent wind storms. I must admit to my fruit quirk -- I am not much one for fresh fruit. It's a texture thing that is attached to unpleasant experiences from childhood when all fruit related encounters involved canned fruit. I still just don't like fruit that goes squoosh in my mouth... dunno why, really. Anywayz, I am trying to change even now decades after I abandoned my picky eating. Ask the twenty old me to try japanese or attend dim sum and he would have collapsed into a tight knot of embarrassment. Anywayz, i do like me some pie so with Marmy's creation last night, I may gain a respect for cherries.

Marmy introduced me to the tart tart taste of ~~rubard~~ rhubarb (sometimes I wonder where in my brain these mispellings come from) few weeks ago. Did I FoodFlickr that? Anywayz, I hadn't tried it before because it grew wild in my backyard and I thought of it as a weed, sort of like I am afraid to try fiddleheads. Anywayz, she made a delicious crumble but here's another from delicious:days.

So I start the reading the post entitled Why Firefly is not good Science Fiction with a shake of my head because the first point they make is, "Too much sex." Then they complain about the takes on religion, about the lack of FTL and the unrealistic teraforming. I wonder why sex & religion make or break scifi and then I read their "About." One should not base their opinions of good scifi or not good scifi on their own religious beliefs. As for the technical merits, it might not be good hard scifi but it definately made for good space opera. June 29 07

I got mine a little early with my connections to vendours.

P.S. I keeeeed. I joooooke. It's not even available in Canada yet. Please don't send me a C&D. June 29 07

I understand that she invented the lobster roll for New Yorkers, and then had it copied by an ex-coworker. But I am amused by the fact that those have been available at home for as long as there were hot dog buns & left over lobster in the fridge.

"I was made to hit in America !! " Not long after the canadian dubbed version finished running on Much, we just finished watching the lovingly subtitled version of BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad. I love how for the first handful of episodes, they were Mongorian Chop Squad. I loves me some Engrish.

I have my first repeatedly played hummable song for the summer. It's Little Lover's So Polite by Silversun Pickups. Realize, summer songs for me are not about when they are released but when I discover them, not having much traditional exposure to music, i.e no music TV, no radio listening, rarely browse the music blogs, etc.

Heh. It goes to show that no matter how long you are blogging, you can still miss massive amounts of the Blogosphere. For example, I didn't know I had missed the zombie apocalypse.

Frickin' annoying. This week I was about to write a nice long article on how it takes a Canadian to provide good customer service. My vendour made a boo-boo a couple of weeks ago and sent me Linux software instead of Windows. The vendour buys it from a re-distributer who buys it from a distributer who buys it from the publisher. That's 4 jumps to get to me.

Not knowing it was the Linux license key that was causing the problem, I called the publisher tech support because I couldn't install. After being transferred around for a bit, I was finally conferenced in with some sales people and licensing people who finally made a comment, "Ohhhh you didn't WANT Linux." They all realized I had the wrong keys and said, "Call your vendour and see if it goes easily. If it doesn't; call us back and we will get some forms sent to you to change the serials." It didn't go easy as the four jumps makes for some red tape. So I called back.

"Nope, cannot do anything." I was given the wrong (helpful) information. They don't care if it is their software; they didn't sell it to me so, "Boo-hoo waa-waa, don't bother us." Managers had seen the ticket information (most CSRs record issues in a management system that logs each support call as a 'ticket') and vetoed the CSRs being helpful. They have the ability to help me and even the process but because I didn't buy it from them, they don't wish to help me.

So, back to the vendour. CS sucks, even in Canada. June 26 07

Now this would be a fun contest to win and make use of. Vern Yip, of Trading Spaces fame, could provide a Microsoft Home Office Makeover. Honestly, it wouldn't be just the toys I would want but also the actual design. I would make it a dual-use office, a bit for me a bit for Marmy. Alas, it's only in the US. *pout*

I would say 5 out of the 7 days of the week, there is reading material in the bathroom. Usually it is a Dragon magazine or a book. I have either damaged books (bump, catch, tear cover) or dropped them in the tub but this will not stop me. I stop being concerned about mint condition years ago. That said, I have a habit of leaving with the comics I read in there, just in case they are not my comics.

Hadn't come across this before. It's TagBrowsr, an alternate way to browse Flickr photos by tag.

I have been thinking about ways of making my blog more focused, which is more of a reason to have another blog but make it like Twenty Sided and centered on geek culture. Hey I may be one or more steps removed from it these days, but it does give me the outsider looking in who was once one of the insiders perspective. Ohhhh they do DMing the Ring.

Hee !! Mocking surface or spending $10,000 on your next coffee table. (via daring fireball)

Hee !! It's called iPhoney and it's a way I can get back into the web design / web building subset of computer geeks -- i will design pages only fit for an iPhone!! (via airbag)

I think that it would be a ball to buy a ton of current geekculture tshirts, place them in the timecapsule (closet) for 10 years and then begin wearing them. I so want to make a "all your base is belong to us" shirt. (via wonderland)

Oh what ever happened to the hot-ass deziney world where the hotsites like K10K updated their look & feel with the latest trends & web techs. This site has looked like this since I got a tshirt from them.

I haven't seen Spiderman Vs Every Villain or Fantastic Four: Surf's Up. I really enjoyed PotC: Long Acronym and 28 Sober Weeks Later (with Sandra Bullock) but really, my favourite current summer blockbuster is Order of the Stick !! This is really one incredibly compelling mega-adventure. I think they he should get together with the Shaun of the Dead boys (re-watched last nite... BRILLIANT !!) and do the third D&D movie as a completely tongue-of-fire in cheek fantasy story, full of insider jokes. June 21 07

Kewl !! I am pretty damn sure I can make use of the Zombie Nirvana Games fantasy mapping tutorials. (thx to someone wasting buddha with a crossbow)

Everytime I see this Gamers vs Avatars article, it has changed slightly, with new people added and some gone away. This particular one seems to have an inordinate amount of people who (tried to) look like their character. I should do the same with some of my most recent chars. Even with my CoH account cancelled I am sure I have a few pics of TBIT and Bad Bad Boy around.

Talk about Old Skool Blogger, jason has his Webcam on. I used to have one that was linked by my photo in the top left hand corner of the blog. Remember that?

If there is nothing I appreciate, it's the monsters and exploding/farting creatures of Swellzombie's Lair of the Psychic Creature. (via drawn)

My head hurts. All I can say is that Microsoft Volume Licensing Services suck. Maybe if I had some background in document or lawyer-speak, I could wrap my head around administering this fucking thinga ma jiggy but right now, it's barely doing more than allowing me to download software. Really, I have seen gnome illusionists that couldn't obfuscate things as well as Microsoft does. June 19 07

My Vox account is for longer posts these days. For example, we watched some downloaded entertainment in the last few nights.

With cable TV cancelled we have been "acquiring" more TV not normally available in mainstream Canada. Though not a TV show, the new Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society movie is picking up where the last series ended. To the BitTorrent Machine !!

OK, this almost made giggle out loud. It's an unaired Mythbusters episode called Do Pretty Girls Fart ? Yes, yes they do.

For those of you into those NaNuNaNu type writing projects, the one I have been watching is the WoAdWriMo or World Adventure Writing Month. The first successful creation is The-Maze-of-Cherno .

Once again i am going to shout into the wind. As you all know, I am heatedly opinionated when it comes to Customer Service -- how to give it and the state of things in business today. Sympatico has always been a thorn in my side. For the last 24 hours I have been having constant stalls when browsing; regular and repeating. There are no groups talking about it, the stupid "stop light" icon on Sympatico says everything is ok and I am not going to call as that is horrendous. I decided to give their new service a call, a chat window to a call center. I got Praveen. I asked if, "there were any notices as to the stalls I was receiving." I understand all services have troubles but as long as they keep me apprised, I am happy. He asked for my account number and said he had to "check my records." Then he disconnected and ended the session. I could go back and yell (via ALL CAPS) but I know it's some guy in a Call Center in Cape Breton (lots of them there) or India or... Burlington (really top notch one there yesterday) and has no interest in my welfare. But WTF?!? Just disconnect without warning? Do nothing about the issue? I think it's just another one of Bell's internal stalling strategies as my experiences with them as a company in the past shows that they do not wish to solve customer service issues, just misdirect customers until they go away. Remember, in metering CS, it's the length of communication that matters, not the satisfaction of the customer. A short call matters more than an answer. I guess it's time to start checking out alternate DSL providers again --- I wonder if prices have become comparable yet without going to shady people like Ralphie. June 16 07

This Flickr SLW: Everyone's A Critic group makes me hungry for the food and for a decent camera and flash setup.

Wanna annoy the fuck out of a co-worker?? Play the N.Y.P.D. Sirens realllllly loud. Hee.

Kewl. A blog about strange and disturbing art ("...exploring the most sinister places, in search for the bloody heart of talent and creativity...") called who killed bambi?

Nice to know that my favourite D&D / Gaming illustrator Claudio Pozas is still around.

Really, can they just declare the judge an utter fucking nutcase and end the stupid 'lost pants' trial??? Seriously, why do obviously insane people get a free ride just because they have some authority and clarity behind them?

When I was younger, there was "underground music" and there was everything else. Underground culture no longer exists because as soon as it emerges, someone talks about it on the internet making it another aspect of pop culture. June 13 07

Imagine that, an Encyclopedia of Life. Will they get lost in the deleting of extinct species before they finish entering in the existing ones? Will they get to about 0.75 million and then get bored, placing entries like, "Another fucking ugly bug with long legs and antennae??"

Whoah. I had already thought about going to Toronto Can't Stop the Serenity but I didn't know it was around the corner from my place.

Hee!! The Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom) is a comic strip about our favourite (green) tentacled monster. Yum yum !!

I did something like I Only Need a Page! in the early days of websites. Back then they had no clue when you asked them, "What do you want on your website?" Most still don't. We did them for contruction companies and called them Internet Brochures and condensed all the company's advertising details onto one page that was indexed on a Construction Association's portal.

How is it that I have no money, already have a myriad of vehicles to play music on and yet I find myself browsing the Facebook Marketplace for a 1gb original black iPod Nano? P.S. Anyone offering more than $50 for it is nuts or hope others are. June 12 07

If I could get Tigger to not run in sheer terror from the sound of the vacuum, this would be a good way to keep her constant shedding hair to a minimum When I mean constant, I mean constant. You could brush her for an hour every day and still be able to get a Sobeys bag full of loose hair from her each day.

The cupcake shop across from The Store made a killing and was nice enough to drop a couple of dozen end-of-days (not apocalyptic but leftovers) once a week or so. They were nice enough but not really my thing. I like cookies. But people do seem to like cupcakes. We shall do cookies and we shall do them DAMN FINE. (via megnut)

Hee !! It's a calamari creature that even I could eat. Yes, our first attempt at doing fondant was a success, but I still must admit to being quickly sated on sweet sweet icing.

Hmmm, so RIM has come up with something to compete with the iPhone and they call it Curve. I wonder what video on it looks like? Speaking of, how DO they specify resolution on those lil screens?

This things is called a Grapple and it's the most horrifying frankenfood I have ever come across and it's not even full of genetically modified goodness.

GAWDSDAMMIT. I just found a lottery ticket, a free play, in my pocket after having gone through the wash. I hope I can at least check the numbers. June 11 07

I didn't have any desire to see the woman-hating Hostel until the anti-hype emerged. I want to see for myself what everybody else loves to hate.

Facebook will stay as my decidedly censored side of me on the web. Considering that possibility of ‘omg my mom joined facebook!!’ it's no wonder. But then again, my aunt reads my blog and can send back anything inappropriate to her AND my cousin & her mother are already on it.

I didn't understand his sadness when I read this Stargate Atlantis strip but then I realized that Space is still one season behind. Considering the Spacies last night, this is gonna confuse the viewers immensely when Jewel Staite doesn't appear anytime soon.

Woot !! Katee Sackhoff is going to be a new bionic woman on a new NBC show. But a news series instead of a new movie? You also have to wonder what the new "bionic sound" will be like.

There is a definate lack of skanktitude in The AfterEllen.com Hot 100 List but I find it a little silly that the entire cast of The L Word is included; silly as in cliche.

At the time I blog this, there is a couple of paragraphs written by Austin Grossman about Soon I Will Be Invincible. It's a really cool image of a world with superheroes. (via a wonderland)

I am interested in seeing how they handle the "last man on earth" aspect of the I Am Legend movie. I do not consider it a remake of The Omega Man but i doubt it will have as bleak an ending as the book.

What are you reading right now and in what format? I have a paperback in my bag: Hidden Warrior by Lynn Flewelling. It's a low magic fantasy about a prophesized Queen hidden in the body of a young boy. It has some fascinating opinions on gender issues, friendship bonds and homosexuality and does a grand job of depicting court life. Have Tech, Will Travel, a Star Trek: TNG novel on my Treo. It's a fun read about the Starfleet Corps of Engineers written as short stories. I like the idea of finding out what happens to the enemy's abandoned ship once the Enterprise goes on their merry way. Lastly, I am reading Monster Island, the web novel I mentioned down below. I am having a ball with this one as it's a fresh look at zombies and the nihilistic genre. Somali warlords being the world's last vestige of civilization and a doctor who makes himself anto an intelligent zombie is a lot of fun. The format is a bit wonky but I am open to it. June 08 07

Just for the record, I don't truly want to see Paris Hilton dead. But undead would really cool. June 08 07

What do I think about Paris Hilton out of jail? Well, I do think she shouldn't have been sent to a prison for a driving infraction, not that I think the prison was anymore than a strict dormroom. But now that she is out, it's not quite a punishment to be forced to stay home. You can imagine her home, right? Let's hope she witnesses a murder across the street and the psycho, who happens to be a star of some 80s dramedy, kills her.

I love this current trend of taking a blank slate (often a vinyl toy collectible) and letting designers/artists go wild. For example, The Vader Project is just fucking cool. My favs include the skullie and this disturbing one.

The act of locals fishing for valuable refuse from the world's most polluted river reminds me of when people used to walk along the edge of the Tar Ponds looking for old bottles and jars, to sell to tourists. Imagine the toxicity of a pond that was used to dump the detritus of steel production for over a hundred years. I believe it was once called the largest open toxic waste site in North America.

Photosynth is just a WOW product and that has nothing to do with Orcs and Dragons. Imagine mapping dozens (or thousands) of photos onto a three dimensional space and being able to fly through it.

I have been worked on about a dozen Fantasy RPG worlds in the past 20 years. I have abandoned all of them. I never got very far on any of them, beyond a large scale map and a few sketchy notes. With Mohr Vesik, I am telling myself I am creating this world because I want to create, not because a game with Marmy depends on it. I want to do my own Campaign Bible (often depicted as a three-ring binder full of notes) for my own creativity's sake.

I started by just writing notes everywhere, having a pink notebook beside the bed, a virtual folder on my traveldrive (mirrored on PC) and a small notebook in my bag -- they always say that you should take notes whenever they come to you. I looked at this scattered pile of notes and decided I needed some continuity, some thread of Law in the Chaos. I came up with the idea of Articles -- where I write a topic with a cohesive beginning and end, broken down with a basic outline. For example, the first article I am writing is the full description of the central breadbasket nation, Hyrmdaal. This will be an exercise in too much or too little. It's not about writing only what you need, as is often considered sacrosanct in campaign design, it's about being completionist. I want my world to have it all covered, not right at the beginning but as it progresses. Follow-up articles about Hyrmdaal might include focuses on the capital city of Genrovi or a breakdown of the two pantheons that make up religion in the country. I also get to play with layout & design by making it readable when printed.

More focused on the actual game that is playing out in Mohr Vesik, I am writing thoughts and ideas on my VoxBlog, over at passerby.vox.com. In fact, I will mirror this there. That is where I write out of context, where I write not with the Voice of the World in mind but with me in mind, as if to an audience -- most likely an audience of me. Marmy can choose to read or not too read; I doubt it will be very spoilerific.

Anywayz, the start of this post was to link to a couple of threads going on in the Game Design Forums. The original topic was, "What do you consider 'Traditional' GM prep?" and it led into "The Abyssal Guide: Create A Bog-Standard Dungeony Fantasy Campaign With Dungeons. My favourite comment was the reference to "fairly caveman stuff" which is basically saying, "This is the stuff that has existed for ages and everybody knows how to do it." But not everybody does and not everybody does it the same way. I like reading other people's methods because I don't really have any. It's nice to get basic hints and suggestions. June 05 07

A post about At World's End makes me think about the movies as a three.

Curse of the Black Pearl -- This was possibly a perfect summer movie. It combined a rolicking, ney swashbucking, adventure combined with grand special effects & stunts, engaging characters, meaty humour and a fun & full world to explore.

Dead Man's Chest -- This was the most disappointing of the three. I remember it as a "bigger and better" kind of sequel where the humour was more obvious, the stunts were more outrageous, where complications are tossed in purely because a sequel must be more complicated but the heart of the story is lost. Davey Jones was the best thing about it but his monster crew was lost in the gloom.

At World's End -- It really doesn't need to be called this, as the World's End subplot is merely that, a subplot, but I enjoyed this almost as much as the first. This one is bigger in scope, not just in special effects. This was no longer a movie set in the carribean but a movie set in a fantastical world of sea monsters, myths and magic. This was D&D Pirates. It is the kind of complicated I like, not just doing things to annoy the characters but actually doing things that effect the world and explore the characterization. It was paced nicely and I didn't mind the length at all as it was so much meatier than the second. Oh there were a few clunkers in it, like an island I cannot remember why they even stopped at and the maelstrom that appeared to no real purpose, but it's done so well this time, that I can forgive it. June 04 07

Oooo, until I get back to buying books, I could read Monster Island in bed on the LT. (via Wil) Updatish: Yes, most of his books are available at Chapters/Indigo but for $20 no less.

OK, since when did they start advertising vibrators on TV, let alone disposable ones?!?

In Katamari, it sounded yummy but despite my allergies for things from the sea, the idea of Takoyaki still grosses me out. But I love how much finger food Japan has to offer.

Instead of ending Battlestar Galactica, they should try a spinoff that actually takes place on earth where a couple of viper pilots take care of kids with superpowers while getting into hijinx with early 21st century culture. Really, it would be great !! (via warren ellis... i love writing that BTW)

Yeah I pretty much agree with Cat and Girl. Well, more with girl than cat. Stop picking on the assumed hipsters because it's beginning to encompass anyone who wears anything other than jeans and a Tshirt, anyone who listens music other than top40 and anyone who has facial hair. (via josh millard)

You know, I couldn't get into Guitar Hero, basically because if you missed notes the game sounded like a sqwawking tropical bird and ... well, i never wanted to be a classic rock god. But this little Jam Sessions game seems like it could be fun, and really does sound like playing a guitar. Then again, that sort of loses the point. Are we doing guitar sims or games?