Gno Schitt

The lovely lady and I went to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday and I have to say that I found the experience to be 90% enjoyable. And that's not to say that any part of the show was bad, but there were a few parts where I found myself not just shifting in my seat but the best way to put it would be writhing.

Having not read the books before hand, I found much of the story-line to be twisted and unexpected. My fiance absolutely loved the show despite knowing the entire plot beforehand. I attribute this to the movie being a very accurate portrayal of the book itself, as attested by her, and from a stellar performance from both of the lead characters Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

Another big thing I noticed during this show that I haven't seen in any movie for quite some time is pace change and not just between scenes. I've been shown the graph of what makes a good story. You may have seen it being discussed on Extra Credits and I found, when examining the movie afterwards that it was very similar to this. That may be an over-evaluation but here's the bottom line. I was never bored once. I refuse to say anything specific about the show in case you, like me, haven't read the books(I plan to now). I was worried that they would ruin the story by making it 'Hollywood' and the inclusion of Daniel Craig, I'll admit, was initially a worry for me. Thankfully, it appears as if Mr. Bond can convincingly play a helpless down on his luck victim just as well as an untouchable secret agent. And I won't spoil a thing about Rooney Mara's performance.

This one is definitely a theater watch recommend. A warning though, the sex/violence in this one is well balanced but extremely graphic at times. By balanced, I mean there are many opportunities for it to be gratuitous, but it only is when it needs to be. I praise the director, David Fincher for deciding that it was enough to hear teeth hitting the ground rather than showing them(in slow motion or something foolish like that). Great respect for the material and the overall tone.

for shit like this


I'm a little sick that this exists.

you understand all these references. :)

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

If you have been talking to me lately, you know I'm looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Well Launch day approaches and I would like to invite all those that are wanting to play this join up on the same server.

I am a part of Midnight Squadron. You can sign up and become part of our gaming clan at : http://www.midnightsquadron.com

We will be launching into the game on the server: Port Nowhere
It is a PvP server.

I haven't picked a character name yet, but contact me and we can all join up. Playing with Friends is the best option in an MMO.

Looking foward to seeing you in game!

This is a very interesting article about a tech firm called Atos that is banning internal emails by the end of 2012. I really like the logic that they are using for why they are doing it. I am not sure how it is going to work out for them, but best of luck to them.

There are still cool things coming out of Star Wars fan stuff. I know you are thinking Cello's are lame, but you really should check out the video, the sound is great, and the video is clever.



This might be old, but it is new to me.

Checkout this great post on a blog I follow, "The Reaction".

From the above, I am Aragorn, an Intrepid-Class Scout ship,  and then the rest is pure gobble-de-gook!

I have often wondered the connection between mustaches and prostate cancer. Penny Arcade here has offered up the reason, though I am not sure how sound the argument is. Comments!!!

(lifted in part from www.computerandvideogames.com)

TIMESPLITTERS 4
The last game in this series was TimeSplitters: Future Perfect which released in 2005. Six years is a long time to be waiting for a sequel so we reckon the gaming world is ready for the series to make a return on the current generation of consoles. We loved TimeSplitters for its fast-paced, arcade style action and really just the fact that it didn't take itself too seriously, which is a nice contrast to the current crop of realistic, modern shooters.

We particularly liked additions such as 'Robo-pussy' - a remote control cat that you could drive around. More fun and crazy ideas like this would be welcome in the sequel. Another great thing about TimeSplitters it that because it's not constrained to one time, it allows the player to wield a large variety of weapons from many different time periods, making the gun-play certainly more interesting.

It is rumoured that Crytek is currently working on a new game in TimeSplitters series, with the intention of releasing it on next-generation consoles. Supposedly the title will take advantage of CryEngine 3 and DirectX 11 tech. We're not sure if it will actually be TimeSplitters 4 or just a spin-off, however. Still, it's exciting to hear of any news regarding TimeSplitters and the sooner a new one comes out, the better.

Also - HD monkeys. That is all!

In the day to day tedium, frustration and excitement it is easy to forget that all of it occurs within the domain of a freedom that others paid for with their lives. Here on GnoSchitt we have the grandest of personal luxuries: the right to say and think whatever we want*.

* within the limits of human rights and decency



On Remembrance Day, I find I'm often moved to tears. I'm not crying because I have stories of great personal loss from the Great Wars (or conflicts thereafter). From what I understand one of my grandfathers drove a supply or equipment truck in the second world war. I didn't know him very well and he died before I was old enough to understand what the whole thing meant. I never had a chance to talk to him about it. I'm moved to tears by the realization that I have so much to be utterly thankful for because of the great selfless sacrifice of thousands of people who's names I'll never know.

For the last three or four years I have watched the CBC Rememberance Service from Ottawa. The first time I watched that service I was surprised at the age of the remaining veterans. Has it been that long? During the service they spoke of the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier".



So the story goes, when this new memorial was unveiled in 2000, the crowd in attendance spontaneously began leaving their poppies behind on the tomb as they left the service that cold November morning. This has become a bona fide tradition now with thousand upon thousands of poppies left on the memorial site as the crowds in attendance pay their respects to the men and women of those wars. As I've gotten older, I've come to understand what their motivations might be. Indeed in many ways I think I feel the same. I feel gloriously Canadian: deep sadness that we have need to go to war mixed with thankfulness that we have fought so valiantly.

This had led me to add a few important things to my personal bucket list, I genuinely hope I'm able to plan the following two excursions before it's been too long:

A Trip to Vimy Ridge
Attendance at the Ottawa Remembrance Service with an option to be standing here in the Canadian War Museum at 11am if we cannot get onto the grounds for the outdoor service.

I would gladly plan either of these events with others if they feel similarly inclined.

           Lest we forget

I am sure all of you have at least half of these checked off...

If you have a sec, go read this - angry now? good!

This really bothers the shit out of me that Spielberg is so flippantly dismissing the way he totally (and permanently) fucked up this series. There is really nowhere to go from here on this series, and it's likely dead ended.

I can't imagine a future Indiana Jones film STARRING no-talent, starts-fights-in-canada-and-gets-thumped, LaBeouf and NO Harrison Ford selling more than a few thousand tickets. The franchise isn't strong enough to bring those indifferent to the character out, and Shia isn't strong enough to convince us old-school Indy loyalists to give a shit.

Blaming it on George Lucas is trendy and convenient.

While I found this really funny, I'm not sure I was totally okay with it, given my family makeup.

We're ready to believe you!



I'm going to the 7:00 pm show of the original Ghostbusters movie at Galaxy Cinema. After that, if I'm feeling squirrely, I might stay and watch Paranormal Activity 3. Who's with me?

To quote the article:

Variety also reported that production on the live-action film adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira manga is set to begin in late February or early March. According to the magazine, the film's current story goes as follows: "Set in New Manhattan, the cyberpunk sci-fi epic follows the leader of a biker gang who must save his friend, discovered with potentially destructive psychokinetic abilities, from government medical experiments."

I'm glad to hear Gary Oldman and/or Helena Bonham-Carter might be involved in the project now, but I'm concerned about the use of Garret Hedlund, especially in a young person role like Kaneda. He's not getting any younger and it was already a stretch in TRON:Legacy. Are there no good actual teen actors anywhere anymore?

I'm probably going to end up going to see the live action Akira no matter what, as I have immensely fond memories of the first time I watched the 1982 animated film when I was just starting to grok cyberpunk themes in high school.

(but God help us if they do)

You can't ignore him anymore. First they ridiculed him, then they tried to ignore him, but people wanted to hear what Dr. Paul had to say, and now the other Presidential hopefuls are clamoring to shake his hand at the end of the debate.



I went to Ron Paul's Facebook page, and LIKED it. You should too.

Bout damn time too!

In the run-up to Halloween, I thought this video would be worth a re-watch.



"Only vistas, eh?"

Classic

Oooo!! Bonus video:

P.A.: Short for Post Apocalyptic calendar.  The P.A. dating system started in North America about 109 years ago and marks the end of the Dark Age that followed the Great Cataclysm.  The Dark Ages lasted for nearly 200 years.

December 22, 2098 A.D. marks the Coming ofthe Rifts and the beginning of the Great Cataclysm.  Note: Most people in the world of Rifts do not know exactly when the Great Cataclysm began nor how it began or how long the Dark Age lasted.  Conventional wisdom is that the Dark Age continued for roughly 200 years.  Some believe it was as long as three hundred.

2099 A.D. to 2286 A.D. is the actual 188 year long Dark Age that engulfed North America and most of the planet following the Great Cataclysm.

1 P.A. (2287A.D.): Human civilization emerges from the long Dark Age in North America with the rise of Chi-Town and other notable "civilized" city-states, kingdoms and communities.  Human civilization also rises from barbarism and begins to make its presence known around this point in other parts of the world.  However, many parts of the world remain in barbarism or have been taken over by D-Bees (other dimensional beings) or mutants and monsters common to the day.  Chi-Town created the Apocalyptic calendar, but it was quickly adopted throughout the continent, and later, in other parts of the world.

Sorry in advance for the lame commercials you're forced to watch on TeamCoCo clips, but I assure you it's worth it if you haven't seen it.

GENIUS!
Meet Tunnelbear, your new online best friend.
This brilliant little Canadian designed app creates a VPN allowing to you view country specific online content that you couldn't watch before. It's stupidly simple to sue, with two buttons: on/off and UK/US. Now you can watch BBC videos, or Hulu or Spotify as if you were in the states or the UK.

The free version only gives you 500MB, but if you are needing more the paid version is only $5/month for unlimited content. What a fantastic idea! These guys are going to be millionaires soon!

Does anybody use a good iPhone / online tracking tool for keeping track of what videogames they've got, beaten, given up on, lent out, wrapped, sold, beat a second time, etc...?

Also, these pages have been recently updated:

PSThreexperience
RRoD Survivors

Anybody out there got games they are willing to lend/trade?  I've still got a couple of Screwloose's games to return to him and I think a few people still have a game or two of mine.  I'm happy to trade/lend PS3 or XBox360 games.


Peace!

It was bound to happen, as I continued to experiment with ambient music I knew I wouldn't be happy releasing it under the name "Kyro". Then one day in a fit of twitter nonsense I arrived at the following equation:

möbius loop + double entendre = möbius entendre

Möbius Entendre - Return to Neptune (ver.3) by möbius entendre

I liked it so much, I decided to use it as my ambient pseudonym. As DKellowz pointed out in a hashtag followup - #justifiedUmlautFTW - which only served to make me think of the KLF and the Justified Ancients of MuMu (otherwise known as "The Jams") and I was sold on it.

Feels good to finish a track even if it's not related to any current on-going projects (all of which need real attention soon, and I'm aware of that). But right now, the question is: what's for lunch?

.... you don't have Portal already. But here's your chance to get it. It's absolutely free on Steam until the 20th supposedly. Just so everyone knows, Portal is worth making a Steam account for if you don't have one. It's also worth paying the full price of the orange box just for it alone. So go do it. And tell everyone who hasn't done it who knows how to use a mouse to go do it too. I love Valve. Create hype for a current product by giving away it's "old" version. Now if they'd just stop fucking around and make my hl2 episode 3 or even just jump straight into hl3 that'd be much gooder.

I'm not sure if I heard about this tool from this blog or one of you folks to begin with, but ListenToYouTube.com has been my only source for mp3 music, comedy etc for about a year now and I still can't get over how easy it is. If you aren't using it, do it. Now!

Maybe they could promote whoever wins The Call of Duty tournaments to run the armed forces in the future. Kinda scary how out of control it is getting. Not sure how far it will...

I hope this works. This is my first post so we will see. :D Heya bloggers!!!

What you say?!?

Orgasm Button - A spinal implant designed to alleviate chronic pain has a happy side-effect for some women: it gives them orgasms. The doctor that invented it has patented the design and is trying to convince Medtronic to develop a dedicated remote-control orgasm machine: you’d just push a button or activate an app on your phone and bam, orgasm. The device has also worked for men, and FDA approval is in the works. Expect to pay about $12,000 for one of these on-demand orgasm implants, which are called (seriously) Orgasmatrons.

I saw this come across my twitterfeed the other day from Gabe @ Penny-Arcade. I immediately thought of Ryan and our discussion on his art the other day. I thought I would share:

http://gizmodo.com/5835739/wacom-inkling-may-become-my-favorite-gadget-of-all-time

The Wacom Inkling is a Pen you can use that will store each line as a layer for you to scan as Vector art. Essentially turning your paper into Computer art!

This live action portal video is pretty sweet, if this was expanded to a feature film I would sure as hell go see it.

Silly video but put smile on my face..

Never in the history of games have I heard that "We are capping Preorder sales" before a launch. But apparently this game has sold so abundantly well that the initial sales will be capped for Preorders.

I've preordered my digital copy already when it was announced, but I keep a lookout for my boys who may want to join us in the future.

A link to Gamespot

I'm sitting here at my desk at work and can't seem to get it out of my head just how good Lost Odyssey was, not for it's characters, combat and story (which were all great) but one lasting connection I feel. While not forgettable, it's rare that I think of any characters or plot elements from the actual game. I've always thought that the voice work in Lost Odyssey is some of the best to date in any video game but the content holds it back from having a strong impact except in a few scenes that they just nailed in terms of context as well as acting. (Lirum's death for example) But what I find myself constantly thinking back on are Kaim's dreams.

You know you're fucked when the skies are dark with spaceships that poop Sith warriors.

What's this?  An interesting poll where I can once again see how common sense and good taste will prevail yes?

The clear winner from this list is going to be Sherlock Holmes right?  Happy Feet 2 should be dead last with The Twilight Saga down there somewhere.
Ghast!

What the fuck is wrong with people? At least they would rather see the new MI:Ghost Protocol than Happy Feet 2 (seriously), but Twilight? Really?

Who gives a fuck about sparkly vampires when you can see Robert Downey Jr. mix it up with Professor Moriarty!

I'm going to give this new expansion two thumbs up. What's great about this expansion is the focus on carrying a wide array of cards in your hand instead of just piling into whichever supply decks are perceived to be the best in descending order.  Games focusing on this expansion are almost always ended by purchase of the last province.

For people who have all things Dominion, we recommend the following deck that was loads of fun and wealth heavy.  We all managed pretty good scores even with the Jester bringing Curse cards into play.  We built this deck using Cornucopia, Intrigue and Prosperity (because Intrigue has all the base cards you don't need the original Dominion for this build).

Here is our recommended deck:

Treasure and Victory

Copper, Silver, Gold and Platinum (Prosperity)
Estate, Duchy, Province


Supply Piles
Secret Chamber (Intrigue)
Hamlet (Cornucopia)
Menagerie (Cornucopia)
Tournament and the 5 Prize cards (Cornucopia)
Horse Traders (Cornucopia)
Jester (Cornucopia)
Harvest (Cornucopia)
Grand Market (Prosperity)
Harem (Intrigue)
Hoard (Prosperity)

Came across a really interesting thread on the use of story in board games (the linked thread).  Since I know a ton of us play games quite frequently I figured I'd put it to the people for a discussion here.

Q: Does immerssive story in boardgames add or detract from the experience?
JPM: I like the amount of story in Betrayal at House on the Hill and Arkham Horror.  I enjoy reading the flavor text on the cards with a little verve to spruce up the game play.

Q: Does a game feel lacking if the theme doesn't have any flavor text?
JPM: hmm.. it always feel to me like Settlers of Catan is a little light on content, being a pure game mechanic style game.  That said, it's an amazing concept mechanic style game that broke us out of the Parker Brothers/Monopoly/Pay Day/Risk mold.  But it seems like it's not required.

There is this game called Tales of the Arabian Nights which I've played once, and it was almost pure narrative mixed in with some pretty basic adventure game elements.  I quite enjoyed it and would like to play it some more but it was quite long.

There are also games like Dominion which allude to having story elements but really contain none and I love that game too.  What do people prefer?  Do people get annoyed by the presence of heavy story elements in what would normally be a "board" game?

so i'm abit of a fanatic and am waiting and waiting for this game. It is now available for preorders.

You get a headstart time if you preorder. So I preordered.

Preorders now available at www.swtor.com/preorder

This sums this up pretty nicely. However, it unlike facebook doesn't seem to crash on me.

I can only hope that we get something like this in north america. Too bad all the asian countries have the cool tech...

NUFF SAID

Through a series of events I traded my partially dead PS3 for a working xbox 360. (I also picked up another used PS3). For anyone that cares to add me my new gamertag is Technoplunk.

Time to enjoy running through the various xbox exclusives.

God, this is funny. I could watch these two forever, they are hilarious.

This excerpt from the entry on Mulholand Drive (one of my ALL TIME favorite films) should give you some idea WTF the title link sends you to.  Well worth the read, and I also strongly encourage us to watch a couple movies from this list soon.

Pretty much any film by David Lynch belongs on this list, but lets bundle most of them up in with Mulholland Drive, which is possibly his most acclaimed work. Lets face it, barring maybe Elephant Man and Dune, Lynch’s work is uniquely surrealist, and hard to follow regardless of how well you understand his corpus of productions. Lynch has specifically avoided offering explanations of the goings on in Mulholland Drive, instead intentionally wanting viewers and critics to create their own opinions. Non-linear, bewildering, and inter-cut with seemingly unrelated chunks, it’s hard to follow even at the best of times, yet remains a powerful and influential film.

I'm going to Australia...

So I was randomly going through Youtube from E3 coverage. Watched Assassin's Creed Revelations trailer with Tobuscus. And this popped up on related media.

So, I stopped using my iPod touch a few months ago because the battery life was getting depressingly short. As it turns out, I was just constantly adding battery sapping apps to the list of currently open apps. I'm sure you savy kool-aid folks know about this already but I discovered how to shut down a running app today, thereby saving precious battery life.

ONE PART Magnum P.I. (may replace "Private Investigator" with "Politically Incorrect" - either will work for this recipe)
ONE PART Enter the Ninja

Shake sparingly.

RESULT: a WTF'tacular taste sensation.

...a romantic comedy I actually want to see:



No really, you should watch the trailer. All of it.

The incomparable Macho Man has died. Apparently he suffered a heart attack while driving and crashed into a tree.

Dead at 58, but will his legacy live on? Oh YEAH!

... if I was a citizen of Alderaan.

The planet features pretty prominently in the novel "Deceived" which I'm almost finished.  Then onto the audio book for "Fatal Alliance" followed by a bunch of Warhammer 40k material.  Talk about your sci-fi explodogasmas!

I died a little inside after watching this video:



Good thing "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," unless of course there's a cell phone with a video camera nearby...

"When was the last time you actually finished a game of Monopoly?"

The Sacramento State Jazz Singers perform Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower, as arranged by Bear McCleary in Battlestar Galactica. Better to listen to than actually watch, but really neat none-the-less!

This made me tear up, godam advertising.

Found this fun little video on Gizmodo this morning and it made me laugh.

It also made me want a box of six foot balloons, a slo-mo camera and a cunning plan to drop said balloons onto passerby's. Hopefully without killing and/or maiming them.

About 17 years ago, or so, I did a bunch of music journalism for newspapers in Calgary and here at the U of S and I was given some minor insights into the modern music industry. One of the things that has stuck with me is the record label's insistence on a band being pretty and marketable first, and then being good musicians second. I think Ben Folds nailed it when he sang in Rockin the Suburbs, "Some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks."
This all came leaping to my mind when I came across the following old video from waaaaay back in the 70's, where the very ugly and obviously stoned/drunk boys from Dr. Hook do a live set on Shel Silverstein's houseboat. These guys are glued, and at points I'm not sure that anything other than dumb luck and sheer willpower are keeping them upright, yet they stay on their feet, and more importantly they nail the live take!



Wouldn't it be nice if we could get back to the music first, and the brand second, or third, or not-much-at-all?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Now this is just mean. Some FX dude decided to create a real-life Bert, from Sesame Street.

Now all I can do is imagine him lurking in the alley next to Oscar's garbage can, asking children if they'd like some candy.
Ugh, I think I need to go shower...

This is all of the Royal Wedding that I saw. And it's also the best Royal Wedding video you will see!



"Y'all right geezer?"  LOL

Ever wonder how they get that 'swing' sound into music?



How do those external MIDI keyboards work with a modern DAW like Presonus Studio One?

Hey everyone. I was listening to CBC news and they were talking about this website that they developed through the news section called "Vote Compass". The short of what it is is a quick questionnaire of your views on certain topics, then shows which party you are aligned too. By no means is it showing you how to vote, but if you are unsure on which way you are leaning, this might help. It only takes about 5 minutes.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, even if you don't do this, get out there and vote on Monday if you haven't already.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/votecompass/

I counter your political post with BOOBIES!

Actually this is from a fun little article on Gizmodo counting down 14 Thingamabobs for Your Boobs. Worth a watch and chuckle. Then you can go back to the political boobs.

.. he makes some really valid points.

When did Trump become such a fucking clown? I can't wait to see him get torn apart in the real political arena. 2012 is shaping up to be one fuckuva year, you can take that to the bank (assuming there ARE any banks by the end of 2012).

Interesting Un-Factoid: If you look up all the synonyms for "Obama Administration" you find:
disappointment, dissatisfaction, disaffected, failure, lost cause, hopeless, dismay, dismal

(did I miss any?)

This thing is completely nuts. And awesome. And would totally complement my ninja arsenal!

You can send FLAMING mini-bolts!!!!!

Oh wait, no it's not. It's some show called The Change-Up. It stars Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, and while I'm not sure if I'll ever actually watch the film, I sure am glad I watched the following red-band trailer, cuz there are some classic lines in there, including one about taint that I'm sure will live in infamy for quite some time.

As noted above, this is a Red-Band trailer so if you're watching at work, wear headphones.

Now this is how you do My Little Ponies!

So for those of you are not aware of the pitch that was made to relaunch the Mortal Kombat series, a year ago someone made this short.




The result was the following web series. There have only been two episodes thus far, but they are pretty good. Here are the first two, and well worth the time to watch.

Episode 1


Episode 2

"We were launching hypersonic bricks at Mach 5."
Time to meet the newest entry into the Rail Gun game, a hot topic among defense contractors the world over. This video features the testing of a new gun and dear god the power of the thing is utterly terrifying! You can shoot through an inch of steel AND THEN kill a target up to 7 miles away!!!
I want one...

Via Defense Tech

GUITAR SOLO!!!!
Puns are the lowest form of funny stuff.

Just wanted to share in the celebration of the unveiling of the first public instance of the use of my term 100%ing. I'm a bit disappointed, obviously, with the fact that the subject matter of the article is Pokemon and people who play Pokemon being insane but.... On the plus side, it's in an article (the title no less) by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw so in my mind it's still a win.

Suddenly I feel slightly less geeky...

Mildly NSFW for some suggestive language. So, like, use headphones.

This should be great, assuming that you like the group...

Someone made these and stuck them up everywhere one day. Best conversation ender ever.

I love audiobooks. Thanks to audiobooks I still manage to get through an average of 4 - 6 books each month. Both me and the Mrs. fall asleep to audiobooks every night. They make a walk go by quicker and mindless work more enjoyable.
I know that there are a few Schitt-heds out there who also enjoy audiobooks on their iDevice which is why I thought I'd share this awesome piece of FREE software I recently discovered.
It's called Chapter and Verse and it's the audiobook software you've been looking for.

Using this great little program you can take a downloaded audiobook (usually in mp3), merge the files, convert them to m4b (for iDevices), add chapters, add all the metadata you could want, and merge it all into one nice file ready to be enjoyed.
As an alternate, you may also like the piece of software I used to use before discovering Chapter and Verse. It's called Mp3 to Ipod and while not as feature filled, it is an excellent tool for creating audiobooks.
More questions about audiobooks and related resources? Chuck em into the comments and I'll answer what I can for everybody.
Happy listening!

Oh hell yes!
If you haven't heard yet there is a Spiderman Broadway musical, with music by Bono and the Edge, and apparently it sucks ass. What a shock...
The production has had numerous problems with injuries, the director being fired, the debut being continuously pushed back, and as previously mentioned, a high level of suckage.
How to solve the problem? That's easy, hire George Takei! Here's his audition tape.

He has great insurance!

...You will be after taking the Pierley/Redford Dissociative Affect Diagnostic. It's an odd test with a bunch of glowy, throbbing shapes and seemingly random questions.

I'm not entirely sure that I haven't been reprogrammed into the perfect assassin, so if I off someone important you all now know that it wasn't me doing the killing. Unless it was one of my clients, then yeah, it was totally me.

I love that Bill gets the last word...

I came across these in my internet journeys, they are from a graphic artist that was just playing around with a friend. Originally they had the logo and name of the Smithsonian Museum on them, but then the Smithsonian asked her to remove their name. Too bad real institutes don't have the balls to do ads like these.

I didn't know Weird Al did a parody of American Idiot until today (the day I scared the new Scottish guy by playing Dare To Be Stupid at him Ninja Style from 3 inches away).
But Al did indeed parody the Green Day song, and it's probably one of the better pokin-fun-at-the-canucks songs I've ever heard.

The least common denominator

Journalist H.L. Mencken was a fierce critic of democrazy, arguing that it prevented the better sort of man from reshaping society. In 1920, he wrote:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men.

As democrazy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

This guy has probably been shot by the time you see this video, so enjoy it for posterity.

TVTrigger is the program that all us TV downloaders have been waiting for. Essentially, the program is a Bittorrent client that specializes in TV shows. The slick interface makes it easy for you to track down your favourite shows from over 3000 options. It provides detailed info on the show, trailers, soundtracks, cast, episode guide and more. Even better, when you choose your favourite shows you can quickly and easily have the program automatically download new episodes for you when they air, so that the show is ready to watch when you are.

I'm still in the process of testing the software out, but first impressions are quite good. I had it downloaded and set-up with 5 different shows within 10 minutes, and it was downloading the episode of Survivor about 30 seconds after I put Survivor into my list of favourites.

Easy-to-use and so-far effective, TVTrigger gets your shows to you when you want them!

This is bloody amazing. Some resourceful dude mashed up a bunch of YouTube videos to create this catchy, jazzy tune. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

I found this conversation between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath to be extremely interesting about the state of the publishing industry. Some highlights include:

• One of them turning down a half million dollar contract from a publisher to instead self publish


• Monkey/frog rape


• 27 of the top 100 books on Amazon are self published


• New York Times list ignores self published books despite some of them being the highest sellers


• Inability for publishers to release digital copies of older books

Note: this is a long long conversation but well worth the read

There's the age old argument about whether what kids see on TV (or play in video games, yada, yada) will have an adverse effect on them - or not. Well I've long been a proponent of the YES vote. This makes my point nicely, I think.

A worthy song for a worthy actor

Some demented genius took the original Super Mario Brothers and reimagined it as a shooter.



The guy gets bonus points for giving my wife motion sickness.

As i go through my days, Itry to find stuff to bring a smile to my face and others. This one was shared by a friend of mine, and then I saw it on G4.

Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity -- and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.



(Nigel Marsh is the author of "Fat, Forty and Fired" and "Overworked and Underlaid.")

I just wanted to make sure Pseudorequiem knew this ;)

Catchy song. Fun video. Quotable lines: "Lord Voldemort greeted Vader with a fist pound."



Now dance bitches!!

I've just started to get into QR codes a bit.  In case you don't know what they are, they are a visual hyperlink emblem that can be scanned by any modern smart phone/device equipped with a camera and a program for scanning.

I use ScanLife, but I hear that QuickMark is also a good one, as is the one made by Kaywa (they have a service that let's you create your own QR codes, should you need them for marketing material).  All of these apps are readily available from the application store of choice for your device.

I think this is the way of the future.  Soon, URLs won't be used on marketing publication materials, instead the ubiquitous QR code will begin to appear on all media be it print, TV or billboard style.  I even heard that they've been used successfully on the sides of buildings to advertise the commercial space as available with all of the terms/costs.

Grab an app for BlackBerry, any android device, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and give it a try:



How fucking sweet was that?

What indeed? Enjoy this odd, well-edited little video...

Last night I had a great experience. I was working on campus and was to set up one of the lecture halls for a guest speaker. I work on campus in the Media Access department (yes, I am the A/V guy). I went to the lecture hall to meet the speaker and set it up to how they wanted it. To my surprise the guest speaker was Bob McDonald from Quirks and Quarks. After setting it up we ended up sitting for about 10 minutes just chatting. It was a slow night and I stayed to watch his presentation which was highly entertaining. After the presentation I felt a bit star struck and got my picture taken with him (notice the shit eating grin I have).



I know that many of you are going to either comment on the fact that he isn't a celebrity (or a large one at that) so why were you star struck, but he had a huge impact on my decision to want to be a highschool biology teacher. It is because of him and one other TV personality, John Acorn, that my passion for science and nature grew when I was a kid. Meeting him made me feel like a kid again, and listening to his lecture really affirmed my decision on education. The short take home from his lecture I would like to share with you, and you can really apply it to all facets. No matter how much we know, or think we know, there is always more to learn. Don't stop questioning or learning.

Thanks for reading, just felt like sharing that with you all.

I've recently been forced to face the truth that it's not the starting of something that is so hard.  Nor is the process of brainstorming good ideas significantly difficult.

The challenge is in the finishing of things.

One of the by products of our fast-food, disposable culture is the unrelenting flood of human waste caused by the unceasingly incomplete.  Time and time again, a great idea or kernel of a fantastic project, is set aside because the creator does not have the discipline (or enough disciples natch) to see it across the finish line.  Some projects suffer death by committee where the creator cannot overcome the resistance thrown up by others.

I'm not pointing any fingers here, I'm probably one of the worst offenders.

After receiving a low disk space warning on my high performance audio project drive, I was forced to take a look at what the fuck was on there.  What I uncovered was pretty fucking terrifying.  Aside from almost 4GB I recovered by removing all of Ruxpin's* older stuff, I was able to dump almost 18GB of project data that I could see now was NEVER going to be completed.

What was all that shit?  Well, a number of the projects were ideas that I had in a flash and thought I better record it, jot it down, or make an audible note so that I could return to it and finish it up later.  Some of them were bare bones re-mix attempts that I lost interest in and decided to abandon, but a very scary number of them (about 30) were songs that were 80% done, or worse, were 98% done (i.e. complete, but with some obvious lazy mistakes in it I had not bothered to fix) and then  poorly mixed down to a master that I then used once or twice in a rush either DJ'ing or burning to CD to give away.  In retrospect, embarrassing.

The decade of 2000 - 2010 is littered with the remnants of my incomplete projects (audio, and otherwise).

Now, many an artist will tell you that no work is truly finished, only abandoned.  I'm starting to think that's a pile of whining narcissistic self-indulgent horse shit.  It's the kind of marshmallow garbage you would expect from people who complain about deadlines, lament the fact that their work doesn't sell**, and flit from obligation to obligation looking for the 'right fit' for their creative talents.  I think it's fair to say that I'm guilty of subscribing to this view when it was convenient (recheck that second asterisk point below to verify this admission).

What I submit to you is this: a public declaration of commitment to complete forces a person to change their view of their work.  I'm back in my studio again, quite a lot actually, because of changes that started before Christmas.  Two things conspired to get me back in here: a deterioration of my general baseline health status (I believe the laypeople call it 'mortality', I was as shocked as you are that I'm so afflicted), and an opportunity to work with a junior film creator in Prague.

I told that person that I would have a couple of pieces of sound work completed for his short film by a certain date, and by god I had to make good on the commitment because HE in turn had a deadline.  I had to wrap my head around the fact that one way or another, this 'product' had to 'ship' (at this point I'll refer you to Seth Godin).  It was energizing.  It was strangely, counter intuitively, liberating.  I didn't obsess about reaching "when it's perfect", nothing ever is, and this is probably where that artist mantra above comes from.  Instead, I concentrated on "when it's done".

So, for the rest of this year, I'm going to try to think about new projects differently.   Instead of enumerating all of the possibilities each project can entail, I'll frame it in terms of the deliverables I can complete in order to call the project done.

On that note, I would like to re-start the conversation regarding Project Unknown, as proposed by LordJim earlier this year.  I believe the best place to start is to get the interested parties together in a room early on a weekday evening, add a few pints and some munchies, and talk about ideas (we will still need one after all).  Very soon after we have put ideas on the table, I think we will need to make a commitment to some kind of deliverable - a point when we can call the project done.  I am uncertain what the shape of the commitment will be, just as I have no clarity yet about the project we will pursue.  Commitment is scary, I'm scared just thinking about being committed to the completion of this because it means work, but I think it's okay to be scared and I want to participate anyway.

I know we have a bunch of creative, hard working, loving, dedicated people around us.  I know we can get something going, and if we get started I'm going to stay committed to figuring out how we can get that something finished.

Of course, I'm also a sometimes douche-nozzle.

* we had just been lazy about moving his old projects off of my machine, he has been working in Logic on his laptop for almost 2 years now, this transition from one place to another is yet another incomplete project in itself, we wrapped this one up now though
** my work isn't selling right now either, and I do complain about it, so I can fairly be called a hypocrite