MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

Great electro-indie-pop band MGMT killer album from last year - Oracular Spectacular:

 

 

How did I miss these guys all year?

http://www.amazon.com/Oracular-Spectacular-MGMT/dp/B0010VD7EO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1230669760&sr=8-1

Aurora Barrel Aged

Good stuff. A gentle smoke, but rich. Smell is almost chocolate.

Brand: La Aurora Barrel Aged
Vitola: #4
Ring Gauge: 43
Length: 5.75
Wrapper: Dominican Corojo
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican and Nicaraguan
Origin: Dominican Republic

Brand:
The Barrel Aged by La Aurora is a creation of one Jose Blanco. The Corojo Oscuro wrapper of this cigar is sealed within an oak barrel, which once contained Dominican rum. Wanting to try something different Jose first placed the wrapper leaves in barrels and allowed them to age for one year. Upon opening, the aroma was heavenly and the decision was made to let them rest once again.

There is some confusion on the total age on these cigars. Some sources say four years while other say five. In either case these leaves have undergone some serious aging and are ready to be smoked.

While the barrel aging process isn’t something new for La Aurora, from what I understand the 1495 and Cien Anos both utilize barrel aged tobaccos. The aging of the wrapper is uncharted territory for the company, but it seems to have developed a bit of a following.

 

http://www.stogiereview.com/2008/08/29/la-aurora-barrel-aged/

Joy Division

 

 

I've been watching this great documentary on Joy Division (simply called "Joy Division") on the PVR.

My intro to Joy Division was of course New Order, the band that the remaining members formed after Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980. I have most of their music and always thought they were perhaps the most interesting post-punk sound to come out of the UK in the late '70s. What I'm most fascinated by now is how their kind of post-industrial sound and striking minimalistic design and writing style have held up.

To the centre of the city where all roads
meet looking for you
To the depths of the ocean
where all hopes sank searching for you
Moving through the silence without motion
waiting for you
In a room with no window in the corner,
I found truth

The band helped form the melancholy of The Cure, The Smiths, The Sisters of Mercy and went on to create a niche for the "intelligent electronica" bands like Depeche Mode.

And their design ethic still inspires. Check out the cover to "Unknown Pleasures" released in 1979:

 

 

And the later precursur to the seminal New Order's "Substance":

 

 

You can see this ethos reflected in the writing style and cover art of bands like Coldplay even today, 30 years later.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_division

Elanor Rigby

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

Father mckenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Eleanor rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father mckenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

This song was written in 1966. Times have not changed.

Knights of the Round Table

Boys and Girls Club Safe House

Had a eye opening time at the Boys and Girls Safe House in Calgary over the past several weeks. Every year as part of a United Way drive we pick a project to have the team work on to make a bit of a difference in the community. This year we chose the Safe House:

Safe House is a nine bed shelter facility that provides short term housing and basic needs for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The place was really run down when we found it. Old, moldy showers, stinky furniture, that kind of thing. We painted the entire house, replaced the couches and dining room chairs, put in two computers and a printer into the office so that the kids can work on their resumes, replaced much of the bathroom cabinets and fixtures, put in a TV... generally spruced up the place to make it more inviting.

Working with the kids were great. These are kids that go through more in a day than most of the bad stuff that we experience in a life time. Drugs, prostitution, poverty, homelessness, violence... you name it. And for the most part they are very sweet kids, but very suspicious of authority and rebellious. Shortsighted too -- it's hard to think of going back to school so your life can be better next year when you don't have enough to eat or a place to sleep.

One of the kids affected me deeply: a young girl, perhaps 15. She could have been Maya at 15. We gave all the kids blankets and she spent all day wrapped up in it huddled on the couch watching us work.

http://www.calgaryboysandgirlsclub.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=45&PHPSESSID=f9f189e2ab24df94fe6cb8c6ebf63d1e

New Trek Movie Trailer

The new Star Trek movie trailer is here. I have to say that I'm very disappointed.

They made Star Trek into a teen action movie. Complete with an angsty teen whiny Kirk. I'm trying very, very hard to keep an open mind on this one but given the shoddy job they've done on the Enterprise I have my doubts.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

Viva La Vida

Solid disc. "Lost" and"Violet Hill" are very good tracks and by no means are they the only ones. Good chill out tunes.

http://www.amazon.com/Viva-Vida-Coldplay/dp/B000RPTQ1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1225398893&sr=8-1

Brad Cooper Indicted for Murder

This is freaky.

Brad was a friend of mine. A friend of my ex's more but I did go through university with this guy. Spent many classes together, many late nights in the compsci bunker underneath math sciences.

Pissed him off more than a few times, and man was he a hot head. I remember one time we ordered pizza together at our place. The pizza was an hour late and of course it ended up being free. The pizza guy finally showed up and Brad freaked on him when he complained about it being free. Brad actually pushed the guy out of my apartment, throwing him into the wall across from the door.

Another time we were playing a video game together to blow off some stress from school. He was very competitive and had the very much upper hand in this round of playing command and conquer by virtue of where he started on the map. Knowing I couldn't beat him in a fair fight, I threw my meager troops against his front door while I snuck in a bunch of engineers through the back gate and took over his main buildings and immediatly sold him off -- so he couldn't win. The line went "click" (we were playing over a modem) and he didn't speak to me for days.

Another time he threw me off a project we were working on together -- not because I didn't deliver but because I didn't put in the same amount of time that he did. I was working full-time at the time writing C code, which we were using on the project which meant that I could bash it out pretty quickly and reasonably bug free and faster than he could. So of course, I got it wrapped up by myself anyway in a few hours and got an A, which pissed him off even more. We didn't hang out after that.

Now I find out that after he split with his girlfriend at the time, he got married and moved to the US. He cheated on his wife (just like he had cheated on his girlfriend repeatedly when I new him) and she was going to leave him with her two kids back to Canada.

So apparently he killed her. Remember this is a guy I've had in my home many times.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5e298fc7-cd30-449b-84d0-a2b5b21de9b3

Painless Upgrade to Mandriva 2009

Upgraded to Mandriva 2009 a week ago. Tried it on my EEEPC for a few days before I upgraded the main household PC/server.

Completely painless... new KDE 4.1 desktop , upgraded kernel, and a revamped Mandriva Control Center. Everything's a lot faster (see, with Linux upgrades things typically get faster not slower).

Only one issue: VMWare doesn't yet work with the new kernel (2.6.27) so I shifted over to Virtualbox for the one windows app I still use.

 

 

http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

Election 2008 - A Digital Policy Scorecard

Election 2008 - A Digital Policy Scorecard

from Michael Geist Blog by Michael Geist

As the national election campaign launched five weeks ago, I wrote that "the election presents an exceptional opportunity to raise the profile of digital issues."  While the economy unsurprisingly dominated much of the political discourse, each of the national parties unveiled platforms and positions that included some discussion of digital policy.  With Canadians headed to the polls today, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) offers a scorecard on each party's digital policy positions.

Conservatives.  The Conservatives were the last party to release their platform, but it included considerable discussion of digital policy issues, including telecommunications, spam, and copyright.  On the telecommunications front, the party committed to preventing companies from charging fees for unsolicited text messages.  It also promised to strengthen the powers of the new Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications with an emphasis on establishing a code of conduct for Canadian wireless carriers.

Several years after the National Task Force on Spam recommended introducing anti-spam legislation (I was a member of the task force), the Conservatives promised to follow-through with the long-delayed bill.  The party also pledged to wade back into contentious copyright reform, promising to reintroduce the legislation that sparked considerable concern from Canadians across the country, and to introduce tougher anti-counterfeiting measures, which may indicate continued support for the still-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Liberals.  The Liberal party used its platform to emphasize its commitment to universal access to high-speed Internet.  As part of its infrastructure investments, the party promised that it would "complete the job of making broadband Internet service available to rural communities." The platform also announces plans to develop a Canadian Digital Media Strategy.

The Liberal position on copyright remains somewhat unclear with much of the focus on the need for broader consultations before introducing a future bill.  Several candidates committed to protecting both creator and consumer rights, with the party's Bill C-60, which died on the order paper in 2005, serving as a likely starting point for new legislation.

New Democrats.  Consistent with their position before the election, the New Democrats were the most outspoken on digital rights issues.  Led by Charlie Angus, a Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay, the party promoted telecom and copyright as key concerns.  On the telecom front, it focused on net neutrality, arguing that the issue deserved greater prominence in the electoral debate.

On copyright, the party was highly critical of the Conservatives' copyright bill, arguing that it would "criminalize fans, leave artists on the sidelines and offer a windfall to corporate lawyers."  Dozens of party candidates committed to copyright consultations and protecting user rights, while suggesting that the legislative focus should be on commercial piracy rather targeting private users.

Greens.  While the Green party is associated primarily with environmental issues, the party presented a fairly robust digital policy position.  It rejected copyright legislation based on providing legal protection for digital locks, called for an end to crown copyright, and provided the most explicit support for net neutrality, noting in its platform that it would prohibit "Internet Service Providers from discriminating due to content while freeing them from liability for content transmitted through their systems."

The party was also the only one to focus on the emergence of open source software.  Its platform says that the party will "ensure that all new software developed for or by government is based on open standards" and that it would encourage and support transitions to open source software in government and education.

With all parties offering much food for thought, it is clear that digital issues will have a role to play regardless of who emerges victorious on Tuesday.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MichaelGeistsBlog/~3/420533403/

Sanctuary

Decent enough novel, however a bit long for it's content. Story revolves around an ancient alchemical substance that was discovered in the dark ages that will triple a man's lifespan. However, it doesn't work on girls -- so it was hidden so as not to enslave women in society.

Unknown to them, this problem had been overcome a couple of hundred years ago...and is now being persued by a middle easten mad scientist.

http://www.amazon.com/Sanctuary-Novel-Raymond-Khoury/dp/0451223195/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223567762&sr=8-3

My New Outdoor Office

 

I've caught some kind of bug and I'm working from home today.

Hiyat left Zach with me while she's running Gabe and Maya around. He's an outdoor kid and really wanted to go outside. This usually means climbing by himself to the top of the jungle gym, so I've relocated my "home office" to the top of it (to help him stay safe).

Wifi + EEE PC + Outlook Web Access + blackberry = home use goodness.  Especially on a beautiful fall day.

Caffè Artigiano

 

 

 

Don't go to this place if you want Starbucks to be ruined for you for life.

This place is for real hands down the best cappuccino I've ever had. Really, really good.

Google Map Link.

http://www.caffeartigiano.com/

US Economic Bailout

Kids Birthday Wish List

Both kids:

• socks
• hoodies
• scarves
• mittens
• hats
• stainless steel drinking cups
  

Gabe:

• lego (anything star wars but particularly the boba fett slave 1)

Maya:

• puzzles
• kids music cds
  

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

A fun read about one author's exploration into various popular mythologies about the afterlife. Unlike what it says on the cover though, it's not really a scientific take on it, just one author's year spent talking to scientists about it.

Fun and worth a read.

If author Mary Roach was a college professor, she'd have a zero drop-out rate. That's because when Roach tackles a subject--like the posthumous human body in her previous bestseller, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, or the soul in the winning Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife--she charges forth with such zeal, humor, and ingenuity that her students (er, readers) feel like they're witnessing the most interesting thing on Earth. Who the heck would skip that? As Roach informs us in her introduction, "This is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith. It's a giggly, random, utterly earthbound assault on our most ponderous unanswered question." Talk about truth in advertising. With that, Roach grabs us by the wrist and hauls butt to India, England, and various points in between in search of human spiritual ephemera, consulting an earnest bunch of scientists, mystics, psychics, and kooks along the way. It's a heck of a journey and Roach, with one eyebrow mischievously cocked, is a fantastically entertaining tour guide, at once respectful and hilarious, dubious yet probing. And brother, does she bring the facts. Indeed, Spook's myriad footnotes are nearly as riveting as the principal text. To wit: "In reality, an X-ray of the head could not show the brain, because the skull blocks the rays. What appeared to be an X-ray of the folds and convolutions of a human brain inside a skull--an image circulated widely in 1896--was in fact an X-ray of artfully arranged cat intestines." Or this: "Medical treatises were eminently more readable in Sanctorius's day. Medicina statica delved fearlessly into subjects of unprecedented medical eccentricity: 'Cucumbers, how prejudicial,' and the tantalizing 'Leaping, its consequences.' There's even a full-page, near-infomercial-quality plug for something called the Flesh-Brush." While rigid students of theology might take exception to Roach's conclusions (namely, we're just a bag of bones killing time before donning a soil blanket) it's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this impressively researched and immensely readable book. And since, as Roach suggests, each of us has only one go-round, we might as well waste downtime with something thoroughly fun. --Kim Hughes

 

http://www.amazon.com/Spook-Science-Afterlife-Mary-Roach/dp/0393329127/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220891292&sr=8-1

I Am Free

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/08/28/the-truest-graffiti-message-youll-see-all-day-view/

Flor De Copan

Strong but smooth. A real joy to smoke, especially in celebration (finally) of the stock options I've been waiting 5 years to vest.

Loaded with robust and peppery flavors, the Flor de Copán is one of the strongest cigars produced by the Altadis factory in Danli, Honduras. This cigar's taste and aroma will capture the attention of even the most experienced cigar connoisseur.

http://www.jrcigars.com/index.cfm?page=cigars&brand=FLOR%20DE%20COPAN

Ubiquity

Ubiquity In Depth

An experiment into connecting the Web with language.

Ubiquity is an experiment two parts. It’s both an interface and a development platform. Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects, while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser.

Read about the release here, or download it.

In this post, we’ll talk first about the interface, and then the platform. For those who are really impatient, and just want to see how the prototype version works, check out all of the pretty screenshots and use-cases in the Ubiquity Tutorial.

The Problem: The Web is Disconnected

You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to.  You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed.  This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task.  And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.

This kind of clunky, time-consuming interaction is common on the Web. Mashups help in some cases but they are static, require Web development skills, and are largely site-centric rather than user-centric.

It’s even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.

Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time.

A Solution: Universal Access

Ubiquity’s interface goal is to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do.

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Conan the Conquerer

The book is fast-paced, action packed, and carries the eerie atmopshere that so many Howard stories do (what is it about authors who shoot themselves that seems to tie them so closely to great story-telling?). Conna faces insurmountable odds in losing his kingdom, and naturally, he eventually overcomes them. The fun of the tale is in following his adventures as he travels the world to find the means to defeat his enemies.

Obviously, Howard isn't everyone's cup of tea. There is an air of fatality and finality looming over all of his best works, including this one. Despite Conan's ultimate victory, you almost sense that Howard knew, and by extension Conan knew, that all victories are short lived and would soon pass.

Regardless, if you have an interest in sword and sorcery, this is must reading and probably a good starting point for people new to the genre. Howard is essentially the father of the genre and is still the best in that area in my opinion.

Just looking at a lot of the deriviative junk that has grown around the whole Conan mythos, you really have to wish that Howard had lived longer and continued to write more about Conan, although at the time of his death, Howard was moving away from the genre to what he considered better paying markets.

I give it five stars because it is in many ways the peak of Howard's writing. And thirty-five years later, I still occassionally pick it up and re-read it, which may say a lot about how well-written it is, since I long ago left fantasy reading behind me.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Conquerer-9-Robert-Howard/dp/0441115888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219247540&sr=8-1

Homestar Ruiner

Downloaded and played Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner. Finished it in about 3 hours with help from Gabe.
Game was a lot of fun and worth playing. Check it out!

http://www.telltalegames.com/strongbad/

My Productivity System

We've had several shakeups at work lately due to the crazy labor market in calgary as well as the recent outsourcing at work. I've been given the work of 3-5 people in total to do, essentially to have oversight/governance of IT -- both operations and projects.

To achieve this, I've dramatically revamped my productivity system.

Job #1 was to revamp Outlook. I've never been an Outlook fan and one of the major piss-offs from using it is that there's no real "Dashboard" to allow you to work in any kind of coordinated fashion between your inbox, calendar, and task lists. I found the "Outlook Today" feature which worked great except that it didn't actually show you your fucking inbox, just the number of unread items in your inbox. Big help.

Then I discovered that you can hack outlook today. A few lines of code later, and what I came up with is below:

The left column is a full folder view of my inbox. The middle column is an agenda-style view of the meetings that I have scheduled for today and tomorrow. Top right is today's tasks, and bottom right is my inbox. This allows me to see my whole day at a glance.

Email

Email is the #1 productivity killer out there. I have 4 simple options to keep my inbox clear:

1. Scan and delete it. Immediately.
2. Respond and delete it. Immediately.
3. Create a task or meeting out of it. Clicking and dragging it into tasks or calendar works.
4. Archive it. I've got a simple folder in my inbox marked "Archive". Use sparingly.

Tasks

Decompose all of your projects into 1-2 hour tasks if possible. Whole days are the limit. Give each task a schedule and priority so it shows up on your dashboard for that day. 'Nuff said.

Calendar

If a meeting request comes in that you don't understand or doesn't have a clear agenda that is relevant to you, decline or send a delegate.

Daily Warm Up

Book yourself a half hour meeting first thing in the morning to do the following:

1. Review today & tomorrow's calendar -- are there any meetings coming up that I can cancel, defer, or need to prepare for?
2. Review today's tasks to confirm that the priority, timing, and need hasn't changed. 
3. Answer the question: What do I want to get done with my day?

Daily Cool Down

Book yourself a half hour to cool down from the day by:

1. Reviewing tomorrow's schedule and tasks, updating as required.
2. Review the tasks that got done today and the ones that didn't -- reschedule them as needed.
3. Clean out your inbox. No excuses. No emails belong in your inbox by the end of the day.

When to get your tasks done?

Between meetings. If you can't find the time, book time out of your calendar or cancel some meetings. Move from the top of your to-do list down. You'll find that some big tasks become quite short once you get into the zone and have clarity about what needs to get done.

Spare time

You might actually find you end up getting your stuff done with time left in your day. The odd day at least. Here's what I use the time for:

• Networking. Linkedin is great for this, but even better is hooking up with your workmates (present or past) and going for coffee, beer, or just a walk.
• R&D. Constantly better yourself.
• Tomorrow's tasks.
• Leave early! If you're done, you're done. A boxer doesn't stay in the ring after he's won the fight. Go home and relish the fact that you're done. This is something I've been very upfront with my boss about -- let me handle my own schedule and you'll be happy with the results. And he has been.
  

The Chessmen of Mars

Not Burrough's best work by far, however it functions as a servicible pulp adventure novel.

Book Description
1922. After a rambunctious youth and series of short-lived jobs including door-to-door salesman, accountant, a peddler for a quack alcoholism cure and finally pencil sharpener wholesaler, Burroughs found his calling as writer. As the story goes, one of Burroughs' duties was to verify the placement of advertisements for his sharpeners in various magazines. These were all-fiction pulp magazines, a prime source of escapist reading material for the expanding middle class. Burroughs spent time reading those magazines and decided he could write those stories just as well. He was lucky his first time out and sold Under the Moon of Mars. The Tarzan series followed this and Burroughs was now a full-fledged writer. In this volume of the Mars series, Helium, a spoiled princess and John Carter's daughter, rejects Gahan, Jed of Gathol, as a suitor and foolishly flies off into a great storm. Gahan gives chase. By the time he finally catches up to Tara, she has forgotten who he is, and he assumes the name Turjun, a panthan mercenary. Together they challenge the power of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, whose barbaric nation of Red Men have preyed upon Gathol for centuries. The Manatorians have elevated Jetan, Martian chess, to an unprecedented level of skill and excitement: they use live chessmen who fight for live princesses. Gahan finds himself fighting for Tara on the chessboard of Manator, and haunting O-Tar's palace.

http://www.amazon.com/Chessmen-Mars-Ace-Classic-F-170/dp/0441061702/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218661252&sr=8-12

PEI 2008 Images Up

Finally got around to putting up the pictures of our recent trip to PEI. We got very lucky and the weather was nearly perfect the entire time.

We stayed at Paul and Heidi's beachhouse which was a lot of fun. It's near the bridge in Summerside on the West side of the island. The only downside staying on this side is that it's a 30 minute drive to Cavendish -- but this way you get to see the entire island too. And the water on the West side is a lot warmer for some reason.

It was an interesting time -- Auntie Dee suprised us at the airport and joined us for the first four nights or so. And Uncle Duane joined us for a night the first weekend and for a couple of days the next weekend.

We spent a lot of time in Cavendish, on the beach, shopping, or going to Sandspit (the local amusement park). We also went into Charlottetown a couple of times to look around, shop, and see Wall-E (which was good).

The beachhouse was about 50 feet from the beach and at low tide you could walk out probably more than half a kilometer before your feet got wet. Lots of clams, crabs, and shrimp. The kids loved it.

Zack loved the water especially -- he would crawl directly into the water as soon as you put him down, only stopping when the waves splashed him in the face. Gabe & Maya would go in waist deep and that's about it. They loved the sand though, and making sand castles.

It was a great but exhausting trip. We'll have to think very carefully about how to lug the family around the globe next time.

Did bring along a couple new toys -- an Asus EEE PC 900 and a Nikon CoolPix camera. The EEE PC is the size of a large format paperback book and has a 9" screen. Great for travel. Also has an SD slot to download the pictures taken by the Nikon -- a 10.1 megapixel camera with an 18x zoom. Lots of fun and worked well. Even when I accidentally sent the SD card through the washing machine.

/images/PEI2008

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Is hollywood redeeming itself for my generation? First we get Transformers, which rocked. Then we get Iron Man which is out-and-out the best superhero/comic book movie ever made.

Then we get the new Indiana Jones. This movie, well, kicked ass.

True to form. Shows it's age. And just works.

Visually matches the first movie. Set in the 50's to allow Harrison Ford to actualy play a guy his age. Still kicking ass and taking names, but tiring out. The story line is compelling -- almost as compelling as Raiders but for sure better than Temple of Doom or Last Crusade. Even the ending which a lot of people didn't like, was true to form and in my opinion fit very well.

And it's freakin' entertaining. Did hollywood finally get the memo?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/

Fathers Day

 

 

 

This is my father. Scratch that, this is my biological father. My real father, Dale, has always been there for me and I cherish the relationship I now have with him.

This guy I don't know. I've spent most of my youth defined by him. I've tried to be everything I thought he wasn't. But I look at this face and I just don't know him. There's nothing there.

The anger and hurt I used to have is gone and I've forgiven him long ago. Now I'm fascinated by my past; the hurt is gone and only questions remain. I've got a bag full of old photos that I've never seen including this one. I've never seen a clear picture of him before.

I also have a lot of old photos of me that I've never seen before. I see a lot of Zack in them right now.

 

 

 

Iron Man

Iron Man is a good movie. For a comic book movie, it's a great movie. A breath of fresh air, really.

It's a grown up movie with grown up ideas and a kid's sense of perspective and possibilities, and that's why it works. There's no goody-goody heroes here or truly evil villains. Robert Downey jr is perfect in the role, playing billionaire military industrialist Tony Stark. Gwenneth Paltrow does a good job but the role doesn't really suit her, nor does her redhead wig.

The effects are gritty and realistic for the most part if you discount Iron Monger at the end. IM's suit looks real, and takes damage when hit. And surprisingly, the movies humor works.

It also helped me realize one major thing -- every guy needs his own private jet with a stripper pole.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/

Spring!

 

 

 

It's a very wet spring in Calgary. It's been an interesting time though.

For one thing, we finally opened our new dojo. Was a great time with Kaya sensei coming out from Japan to perform a Shinto ceremony - and I got to take part as one of the instructors. The new place is great and the stress in the dojo is a lot less.

On the home front, we finally got the yard pretty much sorted out and the kid's playground set built... just in time for it to rain so they can't use it. I haven't seen Calgary this green in years though.

We're prepping to head to PEI in a month or so on vacation. Should be a good time. 

Excellent Weekend

An excellent weekend. Spring is finally and firmly here in Calgary, the leaves are shooting out of the buds on the trees and the first lawn mow was required.

Aside from the rebellious neighbor's daughter having a big party Friday night, everything was great. Kicked back Friday night, had some massages on Saturday, went to Aikido, and had my family over for mother's day. Sunday was spent over at Jason & Sharon's for Forrest's 3rd birthday party. Monday Leeanne came over -- was good to see her after losing touch for a year or so. 

7 Fundamentals From Bruce Lee

Great stuff.

    1. What are you really thinking about today?

    “As you think, so shall you become.”

    2. Simplify.

    “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

    “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

    3. Learn about yourself in interactions.

    “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”

    4. Do not divide.

    “Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”

    5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.

    “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

    “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”

    6. Be proactive.

    “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”

    7. Be you.

    “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/03/07/bruce-lees-top-7-fundamentals-for-getting-your-life-in-shape/

Changes

Lots of changes going on... mostly for the better.

Driving

I've decided to start driving into work. For the moment, I've had enough of racing to catch trains that never come on any kind of schedule, and pack in tight coming home with the inevitible bums that want to hang out on the train during rush hour. Trains that get above 30 degrees in the summer and stink like urine and stale booze. So when one of my work compadres had a spot to sublet I jumped all over that. Besides, the city of Calgary is planning to start charging to park at the c-train, which will make it a big $40 difference to drive in rather than take the train.

Public transit is broken in Calgary big time. It's not a profit center guys -- it's to get people to stop driving into downtown and polluting so much! This means more trains, free parking, and get rid of the free downtown zone during rush hour. The homeless need lots of help but you're not going to get folks like me using the train as much when they're full of passed out drunks and stinky people looking for money.

Aikido

The new dojo started up this weekend. It's a great space and the time slots are much better. Classes start in the morning whenever you get there and end when you have to leave. Now that I'm driving, I don't have to race for the train and be 20 minutes late if I miss it. It's only a 10 minute drive away first thing in the morning so it work so it's also much faster.

Saturday morning classes also start at 10:30 rather than 8:00 so I get a chance to take the kids in the morning and let Hiyat sleep in. Works better all 'round.

Perhaps the best thing -- I only teach once every 3 weeks. Allows for greater flexability and a whole lot less stress from the dojo senpai.

Work

Everyone that was outsourced is now gone at work. It's sad but it also allows for some clarity and clearing out of some of the negative energy at work. It also means that everyone in the department will be on one floor for the first time and perhaps we can actually start working together.

Mandriva 2008.1 Upgrade Nearly Flawless

 

 

Did a nearly flawless upgrade from Mandriva 2008 to 2008.1 (spring) yesterday. Did it all on-lne, no cds needed. Simply pointed to the 2008.1 software repositories and told it to upgrade.

1770 software packages and a reboot later, and I have 2008.1 up and running. 3-D desktop works better than ever, and the whole system is snappier too. No issues with apache, mysql, amarok... in fact, nothing that I've found.

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Tour

Politics

Politics. Some say it's the essential nature of the human condition.

But I'm just tired of it. In my work life, in my extended family life, and definitely in aikido. It's funny but it seems that with people who are supposed to be without ego, ego becomes the most important thing.

I'm faced with a huge decision in my life. Give up something that used to bring me great joy and purpose, but now seems useless and only brings stress and pain as I see friends and mentors fight each other and myself for the perception of control.

What's the point? Aren't we supposed to be helping each other along our own paths? Isn't differing viewpoints the way ahead?

Juno

Good acting, great writing, but ultimately falls flat due to it's inner pretentiousness and consequence-free portrayal of teen pregnancy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/

Struck By Lightning: The Curious World Of Probabilities

Struck by lightning does for probability what Freakonomics did for economics. Packed full of real-world examples of how to properly think of and use probability.

One example is utility functions -- for example choosing between two options. Option A has a probability of 75% of giving you 500 (subjective) points of happiness or utility. Option B has a 25% chance of giving you 2000 points of happiness. Which one should you choose? Answer: .75 x 500 = a value of 375 for option A and .25 x 2000 = 500 for option B. So Option B is the best.

Another example -- should you undergo an intrusive and expensive lifestyle change to reduce your chance of a heart attack by 50%? On the face of it, yes. But if you look at the probabilities, if you have a 1 in 10000 chance of having a heart attack in the next year, the probability is .01 %. Undergoing the process would decrease your chance of having a heart attack to .005%. Is there a real difference in the two values when you look at them this way? Is it worth undergoing the change?

Recommended read. 

http://www.amazon.com/Struck-Lightning-Curious-World-Probabilities/dp/0309097347/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208959063&sr=8-1

sick

Kids sick. Hiyat sick. Me sick. Everybody sick. No fun.

Seriously. Zack just gets over having baby measels and everybody in the house comes down with the worst ass-kicking cold ever. Just in time to put up the new shed, the new playground set, and help finish the new dojo in time to open.

Ugh.

Beautiful: Hebes Chasma on Mars

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress/377-260208-2149-6-co-01-HebesChasma_H1.jpg

Go With Your Gut

I've spent the last dozen years of my life learning to trust my gut. It never lies, even when your eyes and mind don't want to see the truth. I don't regret a single thing that's happened in my life, but I would have avoided a bad marriage, a bad job, and some bad friends.

“People usually experience true intuition when they are under severe time pressure or in a situation of information overload or acute danger, where conscious analysis of the situation may be difficult or impossible,” says Prof Hodgkinson.

He cites the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why – and as a result avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, undoubtedly saving his life.

“The driver couldn’t explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race,” explains Professor Hodgkinson. “The driver underwent forensic analysis by psychologists afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight he realised that the crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn’t looking at him coming up to the bend but was looking the other way in a static, frozen way. That was the cue. He didn’t consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and stopped in time.”

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/go-your-gut-intuition-more-just-hunch-says-research-15620.html

I Am Legend

Decent enough rendition of of the 1954 novel with the same name. A little special effects heavy, but very well done. Worth a watch, even though the ending is a little too religious for me.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/

Entangled Minds

This is a very interesting read.

I wouldn't call myself a scientist by any means, however I do think that this book collates and describes that a statistically significant, yet very small, psychic effect has been repeatedly measured and verified.

By significant, how about odds in the neighborhood of 10^34:1 that it's real. But small, almost insubstantial. Like increasing your odds at guessing coin flips by .1%.

Dean Radin's done an excellent job presenting the findings, the arguements, and counterarguments for the reality of psi. And why this fits in with quantum mechanics.

Many people believe that such "psychic phenomena" are rare talents or divine gifts. Others don't believe they exist at all. But the latest scientific research shows that these phenomena are both real and widespread, and are an unavoidable consequence of the interconnected, entangled physical reality we live in.

Albert Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance" -- the way two objects remain connected through time and space, without communicating in any conventional way, long after their initial interaction has taken place. Could a similar entanglement of minds explain our apparent psychic abilities? Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, believes it might.

In this illuminating book, Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab tests. Radin surveys the origins of this research and explores, among many topics, the collective premonitions of 9/11. He reveals the physical reality behind our uncanny telepathic experiences and intuitive hunches, and he debunks the skeptical myths surrounding them. Entangled Minds sets the stage for a rational, scientific understanding of psychic experience.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Minds-Extrasensory-Experiences-Quantum/dp/1416516778/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206737062&sr=8-1

Have Scientists Discovered a Way of Peering Into the Future?

The Global Consciousness Project looks very cool. It's basically a set of true random number generators that keep logging "random" numbers all day, every day. Except sometimes, like on Sept 11 2001 the randomness becomes less random. In fact, a few hours before the planes hit.

Dr Nelson's Global Consciousness Project - originally hosted by Princeton University - is one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. It aims to ‘sense' whether all of humanity shares a single unconscious mind that we all tap into without realising it. Some might refer to it as the mind of God. But the machine has also thrown up another tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

http://www.newsmonster.co.uk/paranormal-unexplained/have-scientists-discovered-a-way-of-peering-into-the-future.html

RIP Arthur C Clarke

 

 

 

Arthur C Clarke meant a lot to me as a kid. Not just books like "Childhood's End" or "Rendezvous With Rama," but really cool stuff like his "Mysterious Universe" show.

The guy invented communications satellites. Enlightened the world with Kubrick with 2001. And showed a little kid in small town Alberta that there's a whole universe out there.

http://trekmovie.com/2008/03/18/rip-arthur-c-clarke/

Lego Discovery from 2001

 

 

This is awesome. Simply awesome.

http://www.truedimensions.com/lego/customs/2001/index.htm

Required Stuff

Got a new laptop at work today. The old T41 gasped it's last breath after only 18 months of use. I'm pretty hard on laptops I guess.

Got a newer T61 that's a little better. Weird screen aspect ratio but I can get used to it.

Here's a list of stuff I had to put on it to make it workable again:

1. Firefox (portable version for those of us without admin access) with these extensions:
   
1. Adblock Plus. Once you've gotten rid of the ads, you can't go back.
2. Google Notebook. Allows you to clip and save links. You have to use it to get it.
3. Google Gears. Lets you take Google Reader offline.
4. Stockticker. Unobtrusive little extension that shows Suncor's stock price in green when up and red when down.
5. Google Sync keeps all my machines lined up with the same bookmarks. Nice.
6. ForecastFox gives you real-time weather updates in a quiet way.
7. GSpace uses your gmail account as a 6+Gb file share.
2.  Launchy lets you run almost anything without having your hands leave the keyboard.
3. JDarkRoom is a really minimal text editor.
4. FreeMind is an open-source mind mapping tool.

Stochastic Resonance

My life is great. Seriously. I enjoy a life that I couldn't have imagined when I was young.

As a boy growing up without a father, in a trailer park in a small town, I just couldn't imagine my future. How could I? What point of reference could I have? I could never have imagined that the amount of effort put in by my family -- including all the aunts and uncles -- would have opened my eyes to moving to a big city, getting an education, and a good life.

I remember cleaning other people's floors as a child, something that may shock others, but helped formulate me as a person. You see, it taught me the value of work, and the value of thinking for a living rather than doing manual labor. And we were saving up to travel. How could I know then that seeing the world would open my eyes to the possibilities and potentialities outside our little rural oil patch town?

Who could've thought that mom would marry and the family would move to a bustling metropolis and that I would go to school. I remember being fascinated by technology as a child; now I make a living doing what I could've only dreamed of back then. And a good living too. Seriously, I make more than I ever dreamed, more than I ever thought possible. This doesn't mean much in and of itself, but it sure opens up possibilities for my family.

I couldn't have thought then, nor after my first failed marriage, that I could ever be this happy or have this family. Never in a million years would I have imagined having three kids or such an amazing partner. Who knows what life will bring? Am I just incredibly lucky?

This leads me back to the idea of "stochastic resonance." This is the idea that injecting specific kinds of noise into an ordered system will help generate desired results. Like how slightly mis tuning an AM radio sometimes results in richer sound. Imagine a pool table with one ball close to one of the pockets. The pool table is covered and you want to find out what pocket the ball is close to. How do you do it? Jiggle the table. Chances are, if you align things in the general direction you want to go, randomness over time will line up just right to achieve your goal. Maybe even in ways you couldn't have imagined.

So I think a powerful metaphor for life could be stochastic resonance. You can carefully set stuff up as best you can but life always makes other plans. You can try to act against this random noise or use it. I've been very lucky to have just the right kind of noise in my life.

Gabes Stitches

Gabe had to get four stitches put in Monday after hitting his head on a windowsill at preschool. Poor kid. He was very brave though and was good for the three hour wait at the emergency room and sat very still for the doctor while he put the stitches in.

Was tough too, the gel they put on for anasthetic kept running in his eyes so it didn't deaden the pain that much. They couldn't use the skin glue either, as the gash was too wide.

Go Home Productions

Absolutely killer mashups of stuff like U2, The Doors, Bowie, Blondie, and more. All available as .mp3's for downloading. My fave so far is the "Sixx Mixx"

 

http://www.gohomeproductions.co.uk/

Parapsychology researcher Dean Radin on ESP...

Interesting article on psi research with Dean Radin. I'm about to read one of his books and I happened to come by this article.

 

We've all probably had more than a few moments in our life where we spontaneously had strange premonitions about the future that came true. Certainly there's some "confirmation bias" happening here but Radin's work seems to be teasing out a very small, but significant effect here.

Do you think people can predict events that will occur in the future?

Predict is a little bit too strong. I think that sometimes people have experiences that turn out to be true, and they know it in advance, but prediction implies that I'm going to sit down and figure out what is going to happen. I don't think that the phenomenon is exactly like that. But the fact that people can gain information about future events, of that I'm nearly convinced.

What is the most compelling evidence, in your view, that people can sense what might happen?

I would say that the experiments that I've done which I call "presentiment experiments" are among the most compelling, primarily because the results are more robust than what you typically see in these kinds of experiments.

Can you describe what those are?

They're a class of experiments where you don't ask the participant to consciously try to do anything. You just measure their body's response as a way of detecting that something is happening. So we measure skin response, pupil dilation and things like that.

We ask a person to sit in front of a computer and look at a blank screen, then push a button. A few seconds go by, and then the screen makes a random decision to select a stimulus that is either calm or emotional, and then it goes away after maybe 10 or 15 seconds. And then this process is repeated again and again. The analysis looks at what's happening while you are waiting for the computer to make that random decision about which picture to show. We are wondering whether people would get an unconscious sense of what their future is about to bring them.

When you do this experiment with lots of people on lots of trials, what you end up with is evidence that people significantly show different physiological conditions or states just before emotional pictures are shown as compared to calm pictures, and in the direction that you can predict, as if in fact they were somehow aware of what their future was about to bring.

Do you think that we all have some extrasensory abilities?

I think we do in the same way that we can all play golf, but we are not all going to win the Masters.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/02/25/findrelig.DTL

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder

A Perfect Mess is a great book, and a counterpoint to the covey-esqe organization books and philosophy that I also love. Turns out there's a "perfect mess" where disorder and order balance off to the peak efficiency possible.

For example, I use what I call a surface organizational system. My computer desktop is clean. My desk is clean. All papers and documents are tucked away -- but in one spot where I can find it all. For paper, it all goes into a basket. When the basket gets full, I dump it all in the trash unless I need it. For my computer, everything goes in one folder, where "find" can find what I need. That's it.

There's also a good blog article on the book where the following is noted:

Messiness in Western society is associated with a lot of negative things. Clutter, disorder, messiness is associated with dirt, disease, and filth. Messiness is considered inhuman, uncivilized — remember Mom telling you your room was a “pig sty”?

It’s also associated with laziness, the greatest of sins in a Western mindset guided by the Protestant work ethic. While we might feel that our work takes priority over cleaning up, there’s a part of us that will always feel that we should be doing it all — that not cleaning up is a sign of sloth, no matter how much other work we’re getting done in the meantime.

Messiness is also a class issue. Middle-class reformers have always advocated lives of zen-like simplicity to their working-class charges. (In the 1910’s and ’20s, they would set up model homes in poor tenements showing workers and immigrants how a “proper” home should be kept — plain furniture, no curtains, open cupboards, hardwood floors, and bare walls were the norm, in contrast to the mish-mash of overstuffed furniture, cheap posters and wall calendars, heavy curtains, and multiple rugs the immigrants and workers preferred.) Wealthy people look down on the nouveau riche who stuff their homes with Baroque furniture, Persian rugs, and glod-trimmed everything. Non-clutter is the foundation of Apple’s success — among well-off, professional, upper-middle-class social elites (and their emulators).

But there’s a cost for this kind of neatness, a point of diminishing returns beyond which more time spent organizing and cleaning means less time spent getting work done. This is especially true when workers (and I’m including the work of family, home life, and hobbies here as well as the work we do for our jobs) “borrow” systems that are advocated by professionals as “gospel” but do not truly reflect the individual’s working life or personality. As it happens, a great many highly organized people are no more able — and even less able — to find the things they need, when they need them, than the chronically messy.

Key points:

• Organization is expensive. Use it sparingly.
  
• Allow for randomness to creep into your environment. It allows for the unexpected to happen.
• Messiness in some situations -- like brainstorming -- is extremely useful.
• Let organizational structures self-assemble if possible. For example, with a stack of paper, the most used page will always tend to drift to the top because it's most used. Many things in life are like that.

http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Disorder-How-Cluttered-Fly/dp/0316114758/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204835594&sr=8-2

JDarkRoom

Embrace the darkness. JDarkRoom is a great, very simple java-based text editor. Takes up the full screen with a default green-on-black color scheme. Reminds me of the old days hacking out code in the basement of the math sciences building.

Great for distraction-free writing or taking notes during meetings. Open source and multiplatform. 

http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/

Tron Sequel Alive Again?

 

 

Looks like the Tron 2.0 sequel may have been resurrected...

Men in day-glo body suits could battle in a virtual world again soon. Jeff Bridges says he's eager to do a Tron sequel. For a while, Disney was talking about a remake instead, but Bridges says he expects to be pitched a sequel in the near future. And he's excited to do Tron 2, because he's heard the special effects will be as "innovative" as the original's were in its day. It could be unbearably cheesy, or it could be the next Matrix.

http://io9.com/322998/tron-sequel-will-feature-cutting+edge-special-effects

9 Inch Asus Eee PC Available Soon

I've been holding out buying the 7 inch model for six months now, and I can't wait for this baby to come out.

ASUS tells us the screen is 1024 x 600, and it looks to be almost the exact same pixel density as the 7-inch version. The computer was being shown in both Linux and Windows XP versions, so it looks like you'll be able to have your choice of OS when the 9-incher is released later this year.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/04/asus-9-inch-eee-pc-now-with-living-pixels/

Letting Go

I've been having some angst lately about letting go of old friends. It seems that once you have kids, those that don't seem to drift away. Some in a spectacular explosive fashion, some just kind of... never call you back.

Well, no more. I miss you guys (you know who you are) and you are always welcome back into my life but I'm not chasing you down any more. I'm just too tired and have too much else that's really positive going on in my life that requires my full attention. Kids. Family. Friends that are like a part of your family.

As Hiyat often says to me, we have to focus our time and energy on positive aspects of our life. For everyone's sake. I'm sad to see you guys go, but I have to let go. 

Glenfiddich 18 Year

Hiyat got me this exquisite scotch for Valentine's day. It's a very thoughtful gift -- we toured this distillery together with Gabe while in Scotland.

Great stuff. Buttery, sweet, with a hint of the ocean.

Our master craftsmen have created a complex, mellow single malt Scotch whisky from years of patient maturation in casks of the finest Oloroso sherry and American bourbon. It is secreted away in our traditional warehouse, where the cool, thick stone walls and low ceilings mature the whisky to perfection. Years later what emerges is a Glenfiddich 18 Year Old with an elegant nose, faintly sweet, scented with apple and wood. It is robust and full-bodied, yet remarkably soft, rounded and long lasting.

http://shop.glenfiddich.com/shop/prod_ancient_reserve_18.html

Interface

Great book and a very fun read. I think Stephenson co-wrote this book before Snow Crash. For sure before the horrendously long Cryptonomicon and it's sequels.

The story follows US Governor William Cozzano, who suffers a stroke just before he runs for President. A loose consortium of financial interests called "The Network" come together with the aid of a biotechnologist and a spin doctor to embed a biochip in Cozzano's head to recover from the stroke. This it does, but it also allows the Network to control and manipulate Cozzano into becoming the perfect candidate, and one that will work in the Network's best interests.

Very good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Interface-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0553383434

The Science of the Dogon

The Dogon have always fascinated me since I was eight or nine, watching the Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World TV show. This show aired in 1980 or so and featured a short blurb on the Dogon if I remember right.

There's always been a mystery about the Dogon tribe in Africa -- how did they know about the star Sirius being a double star? Later, this mystery has been questionably debunked with the theory that there was some cultural contamination involved.

This book does not focus on this mystery. Instead it focuses on the cultural, mythological, and mystical linkages of the Dogon with Egypt and Christianity and how they link into modern ideas about quantum mechanics, cosmology, and human genetics. Some of these linkages are questionable to say the least, but some are downright odd. Laird Scranton, the author takes several liberties with his ideas but I was left in awe of some of the potential convergences of not only civilizations but modern thought. As the old saying goes, "There are many paths to the top of Mount Fuji but only one summit."

 

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Dogon-Decoding-African-Tradition/dp/1594771332/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203348981&sr=8-1

Cool Rockets

These look very, very sweet. For Gabe or Zack. Sure, for the boys. 

http://www.coolrockets.com/

Repackaged Google Gears For XP

 

 

Rather annoyingly to use Google Gears (Google's offline feature) in XP, you have to have admin privledges. This is because the installer, an .msi package, has a registry tweak so that it works in IE in addition to Firefox.

I don't have admin access but I want gears, so I downloaded GG onto a machine that I do have admin access to, grabbed the files that get deployed, zipped them up, and renamed it to an .xpi (Firefox installer file). And it works!

Here it is: google gears for xp .xpi

http://mitchellfamily.ca/blogimages/gears.xpi

Convert Any Video File To DVD

I wrote this quick shell script that will convert any video file that will play on your linux box to a NTSC-DVD that will play on your dvd player.

Save this to a file "convert.sh", stick a dvd into your burner, shell out, and type "sh convert.sh

rm -f dvd.mpg
rm -f DVD/VIDEO_TS/*.*
ffmpeg -i $1 -target ntsc-dvd -sameq dvd.mpg
dvdauthor --title -f dvd.mpg -o DVD
dvdauthor -T -o DVD
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd0 -dvd-video DVD
eject /dev/dvd0

Requirements: the codex for the video file you are trying to convert, ffmpeg, dvdauthor, and growisofs. 

Working From Home Today

Hiyat is very sick today -- Gabe and Zack kept her up all night last night so I decided to stay at home and work today.  Luckily I only have one meeting today, and that one is with IBM so it can be done over the phone no problem. I've been spending my time working on process and governance documentation anyway, so doing it from home is in many ways more efficient and productive anyway.

Plust it gives me time at home with the family and hopefully Hiyat can catch some Zs. I feel really bad for her. 

Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

 

Downloaded this on the Wii Virtual Console the other day. What a great game. Gabe and I can sit for a long time solving the puzzles and beating the bosses in this game. Truly one of the best RPGs ever made... In total 2-D 16-bit graphics. Great stuff. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_A_Link_to_the_Past

Six Million Dollar Man Season 1

I thank thee, o gods of bittorrent for delivering unto me Six Million Dollar Man Season One.

Most shows I loved as a kid -- like Knight Rider, The Hulk, Chips, etc are unwatchable by a non eight year old. But this one is better.

They actually took the time to develop character back in the 70's and this show is really, really, underrated. It's totally watchable even 20+ years later. The pace is almost relaxing. The plot lines are as full of holes as ever, but the imagination and characterization is great.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071054/

Stardust

This one was Hiyat's pick but it was actually pretty good. Was nice to watch a fantasy movie that didn't take it self so... seriously. It reminded me of watching stuff like Time Bandits and Willow which was really, really, fun. You listening, Peter Jackson? Lighten up and make a movie that's fun and under 6 hours to watch.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486655/

Letters From Iwo Jima

 

Very good movie. Told from the Japanese perspective on the US invasion of Iwo Jima, a small island off the coast of Japan that was of vital strategic importance. An airstrip located there could easily facilitate the bombing of Japan (which it did). 

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/

37th Birthday

I just turned 37. Had friends over on the weekend, and family over last night. Everyone was very generous!

It's hard to believe that statistically my life is half over... what have I learned last year?

• Have few vices, but cultivate the ones that you have. For example, if you are going to smoke, smoke a good cigar and relish the experience. Not only will this help to moderate the vice (good cigars are expensive) but you will enjoy them so much more.
• Nothing beats having kids. They're worth giving up anything for and they teach you so much about yourself that it's crazy.
• Everything good in life is messy. As Gabe says: "life is messy, we clean it up."
• After kids, being married is the next hardest and next best thing you can do.
• Do things on your time, not on someone else's. E.g. get a PVR and watch tv shows when you want, not when the channels want you to. Rent a bunch of movies and rip them so you can watch them when you want. This allows you to put your family and kids first, and do these things in your spare time.
• Living in quiet and close to nature is important and allows you to feel grounded and in touch with your community.
• Activity is important. Make sure everyone gets some exercise every once in a while.
• When your wife is cooking, shut up and stay out of the kitchen. Hang out nearby, though so she can talk to you if she wants you.

Sunshine

 

 

 

When you think of the word sunshine, it typicaly evokes warm, cozy feelings. Cats napping. Quiet, lazy afternoons.

Not so in Sunshine, the brilliant SF movie just out on DVD. It's played by a utterly convincing international group of actors in the movie, suggesting a truly international effort by mankind to "fix" something with the sun.  What that something is we never find out, but it's going out, and quickly. Earth is dying, and the only hope of saving it is to chuck a manhattan-sized cube of something exotic into the sun and re-ignite it, forming a "sun within the sun".

The sun is of course the star of the movie. Somehow it becomes a living, breathing character. Life sustaining yet so powerful that it can vaporize you if you're inside the orbit of Mercury, where the movie takes place.

The movie is not without it's problems. Artificial gravity is used, but all the other technology is just a decade or two ahead of our time. The spaceship seems quite conventional and convincing (great effects) but yet it can stop, orbit the sun, match orbits with another spaceship, and resume it's course.

But it doesn't distract you from this excellent movie. Well worth a look -- sci-fi at it's best. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/

2007 By The Numbers

I'm doing 2007 year end reports at work and in the spirit of that I thought I'd run the numbers for myself this year. With a lot of questionable math, here's what I've come up with: 

Children

• 3, up 1 from last year.
  
• 24 (Zack) + 12 (Maya) + 5 (Gabe) = 41lbs (or 410,000 calories retained - the equivalent of 760 big macs).

Wives

• Holding steady at 1.

Aikido

• 140 classes attended.
• 36 classes taught.
  

Travel

• # of countries = 1 (Canada).
• Toronto x3
• Ft Mac x1
• Distance travelled in the air = 8553.61km

Music

• #songs
• top artist: Bloc Party (371 tracks listened to)
• top album:
  
• top song: This Modern Love by Bloc Party

Books

• # read: 11
• # of pages: 3908
  

RSS Feeds

• # of subscriptions: 111
  
• # read: 58926
• Avg reads per month: 9821
  

Bottles of Scotch

• Purchased: 1, a decent Auchentoshan 10. I seem to have emptied my collection though.
• Consumed: unknown. Like I say, my collection is now empty.
  

Cigars

• Purchased: 30 (minis)
• Smoked: 4 

PSI Spies: The True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program

Interesting, crazy stuff... great Christmas reading though.

'Remote Viewing' is the term used to describe a psychic or paranormal ability to see places and events far removed from the normal line of physical sight. This would such psychically gifted men and women the perfect reconnaissance and information gatherers on an enemy's operations. In short, it would make them the perfect spy. What is not generally known is that the Russians during the height of the Cold War tried to develop a remote viewing program. When the American military discovered this, they embarked on a similar program. Award-winning journalist Jim Marrs lays out the entire story of this little known aspect to the Cold War confrontation between the Russians and the Americans in "Psi Spies: The True Story Of America's Psychic Warfare Program". He reveals how the U.S. Army trained men and women to try to psychically access secrets of Soviet command centers, missile complexes, biological warfare centers -- even the Kremlin itself. Also included are the stories of how skilled remote viewers learned about the fate of the Mars Observer that was 'lost' as it entered orbit around Mars; gained knowledge of a series of mysteries (the most prominent of which was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy); and even applying remote viewing to the legendary Loch Ness Monster. Of special note are the tips on how the reader can develop remote viewing abilities themselves! "Psi Spies" is a deftly written, thoroughly fascinating, informed and informative reading recommended for anyone with an interest in Metaphysical Studies and 20th Century American Military History.

- Midwest Book Review

http://www.amazon.com/PSI-Spies-Americas-Psychic-Warfare/dp/1564149609/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200084900&sr=1-1

2012: The War for Souls

Not a bad book, but doesn't end well.

The idea is that there are 3 earths in parallel dimensions: one where the American revolution never happened, one where the dinosaurs never died out, and ours.

In the mirror human earth, the reptilians have invaded using dimensional gates hidden under 14 sacred sites around the earth. They do this by stealing the human's "souls" -- the electromagnetic field around our bodies that contains our personality. Then the humans become docile and willing to be slaves.

Next they're coming for our earth, with only one half crazy writer that's plugged into all 3 earths through his writing to stop them. Worth a read.

Archaeologist Martin Winters gets out of the collapsing Great Pyramid of Khufu just in time to see a gigantic lens arise from the rubble. Simultaneously at equally ancient monument sites all over the world, other lenses emerge. What's happening is a kind of alien invasion, but the aliens, whose advance agents have been subverting human society for some time, aren't really another species. They're their world's degenerates, whose earlier incursions into human history inspired the way the evil beings of religious mythology have been represented. In short, they're demons, fortunately killable but possessed of awesome power by the standards of Martin's world, which is one of three parallel Earths. The others are the invaders' and ours, in which buff sf writer Wiley Dale is compulsively and automatically writing Martin's story, which is more transmission than story. Eventually the demonic aliens pop up in Wiley's as well as Martin's Kansas homeland. Each Earth has advantages over the others; one of those, in both Martin's and the aliens' worlds, is that the physical existence of the soul has been discovered. The implications of that discovery drive the action of Strieber's hyperactive cosmological thriller. Despite Wiley and his cop buddy's excruciating hardy-har-he-man palaver and the exposition turning to cardboard whenever love is mentioned, it's immensely entertaining, and it's optioned for a big, splashy, FX-laden movie. Oh boy!

- Booklist

http://www.amazon.com/2012-War-Souls-Whitley-Strieber/dp/0765318962/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200084669&sr=8-1

Tunnel In The Sky by Robert Heinlein

I'm almost done listening to Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky on my ipod. What a fabulous book -- I read this in my youth and it's great for one in their early teens.

The book was written in 1955 and it's age shows as part of it's charm. Everyone is witty in the 50's sense of the term, very intelligent, and very, very independent.

The gist of the story is that humanity has created "gateways" that open up the galaxy to humanity's burgeoning population for colonization. Rod Walker is part of a high school course on "colonial studies" or survival skills. His final exam is to be dropped on an uncolonized planet for a week or two and survive... the problem is that the return call never comes.

You follow Rod as he searches out the remnants of his classmates as they build a new society on their unknown world. Great stuff. The best part of this book is how people far in the future survive with hunting and camping skills right out of the wild west.

http://www.amazon.com/Tunnel-Sky-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1416505512/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200082407&sr=8-1

Super Mario Galaxy

 

 

I've never played any game like this. The physics are awesome -- you're out in space and pretty much every piece of rock has earth normal gravity of it's own. The playability is awesome too with the great use of the wii controls.

But what pushed it over the top for me is that fact that I can play it with Gabe. He can use his own controller, point it at the screen to pick up power-ups or grab enemies to hold them. So we play the game together, which is so cool. Great game! 

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/supermario128/review.html?sid=6182474

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Some words to describe this book: amazing, twisted, messianic, holistic, germane, and useless.

This book describes Pinchbeck's autobiographical journey through the underworld of his subconscious and the mytho-historic underpinnings of the human civilization with the Mayan 2012 end time as his focal point. Pinchbeck's use of psychodelics echoes Graham Handcock's work but in a more personal, germane sense. He seems to know that he's going a bit mad through this journey, but knows there's something there as well, some mysterious other that beckons to us all -- perhaps in 2012 if we can save ourselves from a economic/environmental apocalypse. An amazing work, but one that mysteriously doesn't seem to go anywhere.

From Publishers Weekly
Pinchbeck, journalist and author of the drug-riddled psychonaut investigation Breaking Open the Head, has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality. Intermittently fascinating, especially in his autobiographical interludes, Pinchbeck tackles Stonehenge and the Burning Man festival, crop circles and globalization, modern hallucinogens and the ancient prophesy of the Plumed Serpent featured in his subtitle. His description of difficult-to-translate experiences, like his experimentation with a little-known hallucinogenic drug called dripropyltryptamine (DPT), are striking for their lucidity: "For several weeks after taking DPT, I picked up flickering hypnagogic imagery when I closed my eyes at night ... In one scene, I entered a column of fire rising from the center of Stonehenge again and again, feeling myself pleasantly annihilated by the flames each time." Pinchbeck's teleological exploration can overwhelm, and his meandering focus can frustrate, but as a thought experiment, Pinchbeck's exotic epic is a paradigm-buster capable of forcing the most cynical reader outside her comfort zone.

http://www.amazon.com/2012-Return-Quetzalcoatl-Daniel-Pinchbeck/dp/B000ZJTRDM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199310462&sr=8-2