It’s been a particularly trying week for me, in terms of dealing with the Internets, so today, I wrote this;

Zod, give us Int+2 to accept the fanboys we cannot change, Cha+5 to change the ones we can, and the Wis+1d4 to tell them apart online.

It made me feel better.

A friend sent me a link to an entry for Radiohead’s remix contest – they guy turned a bunch of old computer equipment into instruments, like a scanner doing bass, and old harddrives acting as terrible speakers. The results were unique and kind of catchy, if you like strange, found electronic music.

What caught my eye is that one of the remix entries on the official site is by Toronto pseuper-group, Holy Fuck. I saw them open at Richard’s on Richards and they are a sight to behold. Drums, bass guitar, and tables filled with random electronics, which are plugged into other electronics, and not a single laptop to be seen. They find old Casio keyboards and wah-wah pedals and fuzz boxes, wire them up, and play them manually. The result is the most organic electronic music you’ll ever hear.

Now, granted, they wear their artistic credibility on their sleeves (you don’t pick Holy Fuck as a band name if you’re looking for typical fame and fortune in the music world), but that’s ok – they’ve got a good thing going, letting various musicians from other bands cycle in and out, sometimes for a single show, just to see what happens – the beep-boop version of a Grateful Dead jam session.

Thanks to a plug-in for Firefox making it impossible to play their entry on the official website, I’m going to have to embed it here – which is fine, I would have done that anyhow, but it means that I’m listening to this for the first time here. I have no feedback to write in this space.

So, fingers crossed that they don’t suck…

So I’ve been a little busy lately – between work and allergies, my stamina for taking care of side projects has been very reduced. However, in the last month, a few things did get done.

For starters, this very blog has been upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, and it didn’t explode. Yet.

Alert Nerd got a much needed overhaul, design-wise, thanks to yours truely – everybody seems pretty happy with it. Plus, we got our first magazine issue out – Grok #1, taking a look at all things Pon Farr. The second one is in the works, called Secret Origins. We’re looking for writers and artists. Hint hint.

I made a bunch of buttons – more on them later. Handled merch at a thickets show (early prep for the Penny Arcade Expo – getting close now.)

I got Twitter up and running for myself and for Proton Charging. And along the way, I got interviewed on the radi-adi-o.

I was pondering the other day – probably in the shower, maybe on the toilet, slim chance I was cleaning the patio which always leaves a portion of my brain unattended and mischievous – why people don’t talk about TV the way they talk about books. As in, why does someone proudly proclaim that they’ve read all of Wodehouse, but not that they’ve seem every season of M*A*S*H? I’m thinking it’s residual snobbishness, that the novel is somehow superior to the tube, but c’mon… there’s just as much shit on paper out there as there is on the telly. The point is, if you’ve slogged through Moby Dick, why isn’t that just as clever of you as having slogged through The Paperchase?

I think part of the problem is that what constitutes strong, if not outright classic literature is well laid out, and by comparison to those standards, new fiction and non-fiction can be measured. TV isn’t as well defined, so nobody knows what it means if you’ve watched every episode of LA Law. In the long run, is LA Law important, or even good TV? It was probably at least good TV, but it takes decades before an academic stamp is given to anything creative, so…

In the meantime, I think I’m going to start listing my TV chops the same as my reading chops. But that list will have to wait, for tonight, I must sleep (that’s when I’m a viking.)

I’m now up to four current generation gaming systems at home (not counting my PC) – it comes in handy, given my line of work. The downside is that meant I now have four systems, each wanting net access.

For a time I ran a network cable from the office to the living room (just around the corner), but it was annoying and in the way. Tripping hazard was high. I could have gotten a wireless router, but then that’s an additional cost of the router and the recievers for the two computers in the house. Not an economical solution.

Then a friend introduced me to a website out of Hong Kong that deals in cheap electronics and accessories. THE place to get cheap light guns for your Wii or HDTV sets and cables or little sticker skins for your DS that has dogs on it. Everything. And shipping is free. Whee!

So, I bought myself the EDUP wireless USB adapter – it looks like a sizable USB thumbstick with an antennae. Under $30. It can do two things – you can plug it into a PC or laptop and use it as a method of connecting to existing wireless networks.

OR

You can plug it into a PC already plugged into the net, and it will act as an access point. And it worked like a charm, or at least 3/4 of a charm, last night. Within 15 minutes of installing, I was able to connect my Wii, my Xbox, and my DS, no problems. The only hold out was the PSP. Bummer.

Then a quick read tonight and I had the solution (thank you infinite internet monkeys doing infinite combinations of fuck-ups with the same equipment I own.) The adapter is an 802.11b&g whatchamawhoozit. Pretty standard, except that the oldest of the four systems is my PSP, which is one of the earlier models (not one of the newer, thin models) and it only accepts 802.11b, whereas the access point was set to mixed. By setting it to b only, it worked. I’m assuming that the other three will be alright with the b only – if not, it’ll mean a little switching now and then, but not often. The PSP isn’t the main surfer system these days.

How? You may well as. You don’t have any spare time.

I totally don’t, but writing and graphical tinkering continues to be my sanity saver of choice. In this case, some super-talented pals in the States and myself, the sole Canadian, put together a PDF zine. The theme was Pon farr (the Vulcan urge to hump ever seven years, for those of you not familiar with Star Trek.) I’m very happy with the results, even if the style-guide needs some work (which would be my fault.)

Check it out, won’t you?

I love my iPod nano (first gen, thanks much.) Oh sure, the touchwheel crapped out once ($75 repair) and after traveling to Jamaica, the gel sleeve (slime green – need to re-do the gum wrapper sleeve) has a film on the inside, making me think water got in. But it’s solid and it’s hours of fun. I expect I will upgrade soon, but for now…

However, every once and awhile it needs a rescue. Here’s a little something I just learned today (the hard way.)

1) When the iPod says do not disconnect, really. Don’t. I thought I had “ejected” the pod and yanked out the cord, only to discover it was still thinking about it. End result? All my music data was now regarded as “other” (I have my pod set to act like a removable drive – more manual control… oh, and it can then act like a removable drive.) This means that all .mp4 tracks appear, but won’t play. Sucktastic.

2) When this happens, you’re not screwed yet. Plug it in and explore to the pod – open the iPod_Control directory and then open Music. Inside are all your music folders – Apple randomly scatters your music in these folders (and gives them generic file names to boot) BUT that’s not important. What is important is that you can copy all these off your pod. Then, use iTunes to restore the pod to its factory settings (it resets the pod, but the firmware updates will remain.)

Once you’ve done that, just copy all the files back into iTunes, then back onto your iPod. It’s like they never had a problem.

Whew.

This happened to me before, and I thought I had to reformat and lose all my music, which was a pain to dig up and replace (stuff was scattered over a couple of machines.)

Don’t let this happen to you!

“We’re either about to enter terminator times or a second peace corps era. i hope it goes well. i really really do.” mc chris

This is for Matt, who didn’t want to be a lonely music nerd. Here you go, Matt!

(For the purposes of this quiz, I’m using my iPod Nano 1st gen, a 4GB edition (3.74GB in truth), with 2.6 GB of its memory full.)

Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

How many songs total: 534

How many hours or days of music: 2.5 days

Most recently played: No Luck Club, “Rock Guitar”

Most played: Daft Punk, “Robot Rock/Oh Yeah”

Most recently added: Justice, “D.A.N.C.E (MSTRKRFT Remix)”

Sort by song title:

First Song: a-dee-puss complex (a mix tape I made for a buddy in University – years later he ripped the tapes I’d made and gave the copies back to me for my birthday – awesome.)

Last Song: Joe Rogan, “72 Virgins”

Sort by time:

Shortest Song: Limerick, by Anonymous, read by Hugh Grant

Longest Song: “The Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music (03 of 23) – 1551”, Stephen Fry

Sort by album:

First album: Escape from the Pigeon Hole, Abdominal

Last album: Wolfmother, Wolfmother

First song that comes up on Shuffle: Billy Talent, “Fallen Leaves”

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death – 1
Life – 2
Love – 8
Hate – 0 (yeaaaaah)
You – 37
Sex – 1

Without even getting into the three weeks of heavy crunch, getting ready for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the week of GDC was pretty jam packed – I didn’t get time to see the expo until the last day. But it’s not exactly an E3-class expo, so while interesting, it was easy to take it all in, in an hour or so. I got to meet a friend;

Then it was home Friday (missing WonderCon, which was right after GDC – booo!), turn around and fly to Calgary. Spent the day doing last minute prep for Andy’s stag party, which included a struggle to get my Xbox talking to Live via a Telus ADSL line, printing and laminating a dozen fake backstage passes, setting up a full Rock Band rig, and then keeping everything running smooth while consuming more and more Strongbow.

Overall, it was a success, though Andy was a little worse for wear the next day. Which could also be regarded as a sign of success.

…like if they are possessed or zombies or children of the corn and they have knives and sickles and bats.

I discovered today, that if you apply chapstick with peppermint (most of the beeswax ones have peppermint), and drink chocolate milk, you get the sensation of drinking milk that tastes like an After Eight mint (without all the super-sweetness.)

If Southern racists are going to use “Canadian” as a euphemism for African-Americans, I’m going back to euphemistically calling Southern racists “pricks.”

Oh wait. I never stopped.

That’s 66% less than the average Canadian household, apparently.

So, how about you?

Out of curiosity, the exact same stats if I lived in America would equal double the carbon footprint (8 tonnes), apparently because electrically heated homes in Canada are drawn from hydro and nuclear plants more than anything, whereas the US is coal plants. And that still beats the US average footprint of nearly 19 tonnes per year.

In China, my footprint would be the same (4 tonnes), but be more than double the national average (presumably because my average Canadian living stats would equal the same as a small fraction of the Chinese population. Not a lot of small villages have double glazed windows I guess.

A couple of years back I went to see the Aristocrats – it is, simultaneously and unavoidably, the funniest and filthiest documentary ever. Actually, that’s not strictly true – I’m sure there are some out there on actual perversions instead of comedic tellings of perversions, but to the mainstream and their mores, this movie is teh devil’s work.

In the days that followed there was some discussion about how each of us that had attended would tell the story, if we were to do so – Taylor, being a stand-up comic, would have no problem, it was quickly decided. I on the other hand, while an accomplished salty sailor mouth, couldn’t fathom adding the viscera to the telling. Actually, I could fathom it, I just couldn’t picture myself being able to actually tell it to a crowd – strangers or otherwise.

Then a few days ago, leading up to Taylor’s birthday, I was listening to the soundtrack for the film (I’d recently uncovered it and so loaded it onto the pod) and I figured it out. I can only hope some part of my brain isn’t recalling something from the film and imagining it as new, but I’m pretty sure it’s fresh.

And so I told Taylor – it’s not complex and it’s not long, but it maintains a certain amount of the comedy (and certainly mimics my own comedy pacing.) Here goes;

A man bursts into the office of a famous talent agent, startling him.

“Don’t get up!” says the excited intruder, “Have I got a family act for you!”

The talent agent puts down his pen, “Well, you have my attention, so… tell me about this act. What do you call yourselves?”

“We are… The Aristocrats!” says the man, throwing open his arms in a classic flourish.

The talent agent’s eyes bug out. “Stop right there! I’ve heard of you sick fucks. Get the hell out of my office!”

Ba-dum. tish.

Actually, it’s probably only funny if you know me.

Well tough – I’m not giving you back your two minutes.

I dedicate it to Bryan, as well as Taylor, as he just had a birthday too. I’ll send something more substantial soon, honest.

Goodbye Martin.

As an explanation for my current quote in the blog banner;

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/basil-rathbones-mysterious-message/

I wish I could find out more. Maybe I should try and find a biography for Rathbone as one of my non-fiction resolutions.

What’s the difference between resolutions and a to-do list, really? I have a running to-do list with some items that have been there for years. And I’ve never resolved to complete them in any sort of time frame, mostly because I’ve learned from experience that my list is longer than my puny human concept of linear time, so stuff gets shuffled as need be.

And everything else happens like breathing. “Watch x classic movies” doesn’t work, because I absorb movies. Without even trying, I change the channel to Dirty Jobs and realize I’ve just watched The Thin Man, or whatever.

However, this year I’ve had a couple of thoughts which I think are doable;

- Cook a stew in the new crock pot. Maria has been for months, I haven’t. Once Toren started, I was determined to try. And mom swears stew is stupid simple, so…

- Find and read The War Magician and any biography of Dashiel Hammett I can find (all are out of print, as is War Magician.)

- Read five non-fiction books. This may happen automatically – I think I did at least five last year, but I find myself reading for escapism often, and it never feels like I’m reading-up on anything real-world. Suggestions welcome. I have a pile already to work on, but I love suggestions.

- Read one classic. As above, I NEVER read classics. I did in grade school, I did in high-school, and I did in university, and then I stopped. Now I read Nero Wolf books, and the fat bastard is always reading classics, leading me to wonder why my fictional heroes read more classics than I do (the obvious answer being, they’re fictional.) It is impossible to read everything before you die, something that wakes me up some nights, but I should at least try. I’m thinking Catcher in the Rye, just to see what’s up with all the assassins.

- Paint. This is one of those floating to-dos, but I’m right on the edge. I have canvases, I have some paint, I have a couple of ideas. I even have an art projector to help my untrained eye. So, dammit, time to finish one or two.

- Sing more. What’s the point of having big-guy lung power and pitch-perfect hearing if I don’t belt a tune out from time to time? Oh sure, chronic stage fright, but c’mon… I’m 35. Any day now, I’ll be old enough that no shame will remain, regardless of what I do (next up, no pants in public!)

That’s it for now. There may be more.

[UPDATE]

I knew there were more;

- Paint a skateboard. I’ve wanted to do this one for awhile, and in the last couple of years, it’s gotten more and more popular, so I figure I’d better do one before it’s, like, totally, like, not cool. Don’t want a repeat of the whole buying-a-razor-scooter thing.

After wrapping up business and taking the office to go see I Am Legend (quick review – rent it. And even then, it’s not the book, and I mean that in a bad way. Overall, didn’t like it) Maria and I packed up to fly. I stayed up all night (like I often do before flying – not flying anxiety, but general change of pace excitement) packing, organizing, and watching Soap, season one. In the morning, I opened the door to meet the arriving cab, only to find that the rain had turned to snow. As you’d expect, this turned into a two hour flight delay.

Calgary however was bone dry and cold, neither of which Maria and I were perfectly dressed for. Calgarians, who for years derided the driving skills of the rest of Canada, are officially insane. There wasn’t a speedlimit any where that I wasn’t exceeding by ten clicks per, while a steady stream of trucks and SUVs blew past me. And yet they still refuse to acknowledge that an ever expanding city diameter is why they are always so far away from where they need to go.

Thanks to the delayed flight, I missed out on a mini-highschool reunion, which sucked, as I actually like most everyone I went to highschool with, and those I didn’t like have typically become more likable.

The next day was a quick trip to Heritage Park for some super cheap, entirely non-authentic, old-timey Christmas fun. The niece was there, which made it alright though.

Christmas eve day was some errands followed by the annual hang-out with the Gibbins family, which included boardgames, Buzz trivia game on the PS2, lots of food, and Pomegranate martinis. This last bit is a tragedy, as they were yummy at the time, but…

…in short, gastroenteritis. Not flu (that’s a misconception – Influenza is nasty, cold-like symptoms. Nausea and diarrhea are something else, and if it’s over in roughly 24 hours, it’s gastroenteritis), but something worse. I’m not a puker. Not when I’m drunk. Not when I’m hungover. Not when I have food poisoning (last, worst food poisoning, by body opted for massive fever over puking.) Not ever, unless I’m really sick. I can’t actually even remember the last time I threw up – I can remember two different times in grade school. One on the road with Dad, poor soul, and once in Holland, watching the making of The Princess Bride, with Dutch subtitles (Rob Rhiner ist ook, apparently.) And since then, nothing.

Until Christmas eve. After getting home from the Gibbins’ and everyone went to sleep, I proceeded to get more and more uncomfortable. By 4AM I was starting to entertain the idea that I might actually have to throw-up, and by 5AM, I was. And lets just say it put me off of pomegranates very quickly.

The end result was pretty cathartic, as I was now comfortable to sleep, and the body gave no hint that a follow-up might be required. In fact, as I spent all of Christmas day lying on the couch (while not urpy, I was incredibly sore – partly from general ill joint aches and partly from abs that were bruised from violently contracting) I was convinced it might have been something I ate…

…until Maria got sick on Boxing Day. Which made me feel worse, as I had apparently given it to her, and was only marginally able to be a compassionate boyfriend, as other people puking makes me want to puke. I am not squeamish. I have no squeams. Other than vomit. Sensed individually, I can do alright. Smell – not great, but buckle down and walk away, I’m ok. Sight – hey, I watched Jackass and made it out alive. Sound – unpleasant, but do-able. You start combining them, I’m in trouble. I will say, I did manage to find a spot on the ceiling to stare at hard enough that I could contribute some sympathetic back rubbing. If her hair hadn’t been tied back, I would have been in trouble.

In spite of all this, we managed to get a yummy turkey dinner in, plus an awesome fondue dinner (cooking meats in butter and oil is, like, the best thing ever.) Add in some post-holiday sale shopping (Airwalk Gumbies, $20. A huge pile of books, cheap!) and some Guitar Hero 3, and it was an all-round relaxing holiday.

Minus the puking.