August 31, 2000
Closure a word brought to me courtesy of tim hain. The yearbook proofs were approved by the principal today, other than the odd spelling mistake he said he was very impressed. I now feel closure, my highschool career has finally come to an end. I am done the yearbook and I am headed off to university next week. On the title page of the yearbook, we have an english proverb - a good beginning makes a good ending. I have to remember i am there for school next year, and the first year is just as important as the last year.
Conform has been updated. Usually doesn’t take that long between images, but the first guy who was going to do it had a lot of stuff come up, so he couldn’t get to it. So heather ended up doing it. That’s the last one in the series, there will be another one starting up soon.
New design, new location. Wanted to get off the ripnet server before i went away to school.
August 30, 2000
I watched Supernova tonite. It had some really cool special effects in it, but other than that there weren’t any redeeming qualities. A typical sci-fi movie with many holes in it. By my estimation, the supernova will reach earth in 51 years. Well ain’t that nice? If the explosion traveled at the speed of light it would place the star at 51 light years from earth. Considering the crew was traveling out in deep space and made a jump to the star that was 3000 some odd light years away, things just dont add up. Glad i didn’t pay to see it in a theatre. I might rent it on dvd, i’ve heard it’s better because they include a lot of deleted scenes and an alternate ending.
Got up late today, i’m still in my pyjamas. Started putting things in boxes, food and toiletries. Not much food though, I have a meal plan. Ben linens too, blankets and pillows. I’ll start packing up my clothes soon.
August 29, 2000
Almost all the posts for today over at SURVIVORblog deal with coffee and caffine addiction. Yah, that’s right.
Went up to kingston today, checked out my res. Looks like i’m going to have a decent room. Fairly big size, not too bad. It’s in a nice location too, waterfront.
Well, this one was obviously written by a woman. In an unrelated matter, there’s a simple test. It’s good.
August 28, 2000
Got the yearbook proofs back today. It’s great to be holding tangible proof of something you’ve put so much effort into. Manipulating images on screen is one thing, but holding them in your hands and knowing it’s finished is entirely different. I am done, woohoo. Now i have to give them to the principal, bastard better not find anything wrong with it or I might have to rip his head off.
Enjoying my first weekday in a long time that I haven’t had to do any work. No school, no work, yah! It’ll only last for a week though. I’m still in my pyjamas, not really a surprise. Conform won a yahoo pick of the week. Between that and the coolstop award, the hits have gone way up.
Watched Reindeer Games tonite. It was an ok movie. No over the top totally unbelievable action, although some it comes close. The movie had some decent plot twists in it. Overall, not the best action movie i’ve seen, but it wasn’t the worst.
August 27, 2000
One more week in brockville then i’m off to kingston to start all over again at the bottom level of a new school. Do it over and over again, start at the bottom, work your way to the top, do it again. Four or five years from now, i’ll start at the bottom of the corporate ladder, same story. I don’t think it will be a huge transition for me, i’ve been raised as an independent kid.
Go see mr cranky rates the movies if you’re looking for cynical and pessimistic movie reviews.
Hell i just finished linking to that damn slut test, i thought i’d try thebastard test while i was there. The result: 48% bastard, slightly above the average rating of 44%.
Watched Any Given Sunday tonite. It was a decent movie, deffinitely one of the better sports movies i’ve seen. Lots of in your face football action with an excellent sound track blended into it. You haven’t seen football this close yet.
Was hanging out with the gang of friends tonite. Everyone’s starting to head off to school. I’ll be one of the last one’s to leave, queen’s starts a bit later than other schools. Drink a few beers, smoke some cuban cigars we picked up in montreal last weekend. It was fun. Most of us took the slut test, even the guys. I scored 33%, higher than almost all the girls. Some of the other guys were higher. Are guys bigger sluts than girls?
I dyed my hair red tonite, it ended up turning more of an orange-red . It’s not as bright on camera. The dye smelled like play-doh.
Satallite internet access could be nice.
Went up to ottawa tonite and saw Art of War, a new movie out this weekend. Some of the action scenes were allright but overall the movie wasn’t great. Bad acting and over-used cliches, complete with a matrix rip-off. We have everything from the evil music when the bad guy walks in, the soft music when there’s potential romance and the climax taking place in the middle of a thunderstorm. On top of it all we have the predictiablity factor.
August 25, 2000
Anarchy-Online has started their second round of beta-testing. Should be a good game, nice to know it’s up and rolling.
Tom now claims he didn’t know about the other plasticbag. Yah sure, unoriginal bastard. Haha, i know what he’s talking about, it takes a long time to try and come up with a name you like. I’ve been trying for months. I’ll get some designing done soon, this is my last day at work. I think i’ll go up to ottawa tonite and see a movie.
Marissa will be putting up a new site design soon. I’m looking forward to it, she always does such a a great job.
I mentioned before that tom had moved to plasticbag.org. I knew i had seen that name around recently, then i remembered plasticbag.de, a design site. One of the seldom updated, eyecandy type ones.
August 24, 2000
One more day of work, then i get a week of holidays, then I go off to school. Here you go son, you’re living on your own now, enjoy. I have to start packing up my room and all my stuff. I guess it will probably be turned into a guest room. No purples and pinks though, please, leave the green. Seems like radiohead is doing what pearl jam has been doing for years.
Gmunk has some crazy shit.
August 23, 2000
I’ve been asleep all day, woke up when i got home. Found out my room assignment at queens. I will be in a single room in gordon house, room 366 i believe. The site for the mcrc is fucking useless. They address plastered all over the brochure and there’s nothing there, i wanted some info dammit.
mce2a is dead now, the site has been moved to yewknee. I will be moving soon too. I’m in a rut, i can’t come up with any designs that i like. Well, I like them for awhile anyway, then I don’t.
Another name i remember from swanky, damien correll, things like bloop and 50K.
Raz found through slrp. I’ve seen both of these sites before, of course i dont have my bookmarks at work, leave me alone.
Zeldman on style vs design. It’s an interesting article with a lot of good points. I can see many examples, from both sides of the argument. Some of it is the difference between high and low speed connections. On a highspeed connection, you think nothing of an 800kb flash download and if it sucks you close the window. On a modem, you’re sitting there thinking this thing better be worth the wait.
Barbelith is now located at plasticbag.org. The new site looks great.
Watched American Psycho tonite. Personally i thought it was boring. I enjoyed some parts of it, other’s i was falling asleep. I guess you’re never really supposed to know if the guy’s awake or dreaming. ‘Please Insert Stray Cat Here’. The movie ended it and I felt like i had wasted my time, not really what you’re supposed to feel after you watch a movie. Maybe the fact that our generation is desensitized towards violence and i didn’t find it that disturbing. In real life i guess it would scare the shit out of me, who knows.
August 22, 2000
I know a lot of people have linked to assembler recently, but i had too. The really have some amazing stuff over there. The bmx bike one with the ramps and stuff, i remember playing that game when i was a kid. I remember flying off some pretty crazy ramps, it was a great game.
I really didn’t feel like getting up this morning. One of those days when your eyelids don’t feel like opening. Can’t really tell if it’s lack of sleep or allergies or some combination of the two. I started work on a new layout last night. I’m going to be moving the site soon, I’ve been feeling the need to get my site of my account at home. I’m headed off to school in less than two weeks. I think i’ll get my room assignment in the mail tonite, a bunch of people found out yesterday. I’m hoping for single, preferably not west campus. They didn’t tell me my room yesterday, but the computer store at queen’s did tell me they were upgrading my processor.
I didn’t write down some of the more interesting moments in my life recently, some of them I just forgot, got sidetracked or something. The weekend before last there was some asshole outside of the burger king who wanted to fight us. He was drunk and not too brightm jubd if your typical small town hick. Hasn’t done much with his life since finishing high school. And then there was finding bubble stuff and a broom sitting on a ledge in chinatown. That and screaming really loud at 4 in the morning. And i wonder why i can’t wake up in the morning.
August 21, 2000
Conform was updated a day or two ago. Number nineteen in the series, created by adam.
Bradford Cox is around again. Haven’t seen any of his stuff around since the original swanky community folded. He and Jay came up with the sound of print. A very cool site with type and graphics influenced by music. Remember finding it through mills back when he had enterface going on. I think he did a design or something for them.
I taught the kids keystrokes this morning, how to navigate a computer without a mouse. Mice can be so damn slow and inefficient at times. Damn, saw one of those microsoft intellimouse explorers yesterday, pretty sweet. I need something with more precision. Go see thespot.
So does untickalock.
EvilPupil rocks.
August 20, 2000
Had a fun weekend wandering around downtown montreal. We stayed at a travelodge that was within easy walking distance of just about everything. We ate dinner at Dunn’s, it has great smoked meat (the waiter made an excellent sales pitch). Went to the stp/rhcp concert in the evening. I liked the stone temple pilots set better than the red hot chili peppers one but, I thought rhcp put on a better show. The chili’s had all the raw energy and just pumped up the crowd more that stp. We left the show about halfway through the rhcp encore. They never really played any song in particular, just jammed for 20 minutes.
After that we hit a stripclub and a bar on ste. catherine’s st. About half an hour after the concert was over the sky opened up and it rained. You end up sitting around inside soaking wet. Yah, I went to a stripclub; eighteen and nineteen year old guys, what do you expect? It was fun, but it’s kind of a waste of money, not something you want to do on a regular basis. The bar we went to was pretty cool, although you had to be frisked before going in. Dave and I followed it up by wandering around chinatown at four in the morning, really not a whole lot to do.
Some of the guys left around noon, Cam and I took the train home. Damn ViaRail isn’t efficient at all, we were delayed both ways and ended up having to take a bus part way home. Wandered around montreal, bought some cd’s: Grade - Triumph & Tragedy, Apartment 26 - Hallucinating, A - A vs Monkey Kong, Pavement - Spit on a Stranger, Jawbreaker - Bivouac, as well as a set of speakers for my new computer.
I’m off for the weekend, going to see the red hot chili peppers and stone temple pilots in montreal. It should be a lot of fun.
Finished watching The Day of the Jackal tonite. It’s a really good movie, I liked it better than the remake. The newer one was all action, this one is more of a thriller. The jackal is sly and cunning, always one step ahead of the detective. Although the detective does a great job tracking him, considering he was given almost nothing to work with. It’s worth watching.
August 18, 2000
Fun Toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Kids. Man, i love the onion. It’s all stuff that people are thinking about. I know you’ve thought about how stupid some kids can be. Toys are too safe these days, when kids encounter a slightly dangerous toy, they don’t know what the hell to do. I blame it all one little tikes and their toys with big rounded edges. How do you poke your eye out or get a nasty cut with a big round plastic edge?
Speaking of caffine addictions: riothero.
Today’s strip at userfriendly makes me laugh.
Just finished updating conform. Twice in one night, the first one by jeff barbier and the second one by justin fox.
August 17, 2000
My soccer team lost the championship game tonite. It’s too bad, they deffinitely had the potential to win tonite, but they gave up in the second half. Overall they did a great job, considering we were fifth out of six teams during regular season play. They end up going home with a second place medal, now they have something to remember.
I’m happy, just found out that i don’t have to rearrange all the yearbook pages. That’s a couple extra days work that i don’t have to worry about. The guy we’re working with now, is not the same person we’ve had all year. He was worried that our 16 page signatures were going to be too thick for the binding process. We were going to have to redo a bunch of stuff and put it all in 8 page signatures. Now we don’t, all is good. We’re using henderson, a local printer.
Who hasn’t seen the shit list before? It’s been hanging on the wall at my cousin’s house for years, i remember reading it when I was little.
I had never heard of ‘rabbits’ before calculus class last year. Heather knows about them too. She lives on the other side of the continent.
It’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow, i should really get him a present. Hopefully i’ll have time to pick something up tonite before/after soccer. Haven’t seen Antitext in a while.
August 16, 2000
Submethod has some awesome flash stuff. And State of Agenda has some cool stuff going on. I like it, some very original stuff.
Greg Melander had done a good job with his portfolio. Easy naviagtion, you can easily find what he’s done. I love finding great stuff i’ve never seen before like disassociated and mccoy.
Should be heading off to bed soon, have to wake up in the morning and go to work. Shaun just told me that he updated his site. It looks good, not the same as everyone else’s site, the design is original. Kottke’s most recent post looks like my high school reading list. Out of the books he’s listed, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger would have to be my favourite.
Just finished watching Natural Born Killers. Amazing movie, it’s an excellent portrayal of how fucked up the modern media can be. Shows that anyone can be turned into a celebrity, as well as how blurred the lines between right and wrong are when it comes to the media.
August 15, 2000
Deskmod is a cool site, lots of downloads. ‘ll probably explore it more when i get home, download stuff. Can’t really customize stuff too much at work because i’m going to have to clean it all up in a week and half anyway. Tclock is a pretty cool utility, check the site for more info.
More reality based television, kind of like hide and go seek for money. Wonder when people will get sick of reality tv. Maybe people won’t, perhaps it’s the direction television is headed. The problem will be when news shows start trying to make their own news. Witness a live murder and ensuing police investigation.
Metafilter had a post about the recently released reader by microsoft. One of the comments directed me to an archive of classic texts by various authors. Most of the books have a web version and some of them have an ebook version. Maybe i’ll download some books and read them.
I finish up the yearbook and then find designer.com, a site run by corel. Lots of tips and tricks for corel draw that probably would have been useful.
August 14, 2000
Spent the evening at a banquet dinner hosted by the Brockville Minor Soccer Club. It was a recognition thing for all the people who have helped coach a soccer team. I’m co-coaching an under-13 boys soccer team, so 11 and 12 year olds, the team is sponsored by digitronics. It’s kind of fitting that i’m sponsored by a local computer store. We ended up second place in the playoffs, so we play in the championship game on thursday.
McSweeney’s has got some great stuff if you’re up for some reading. Bare bones, mid-90’s webdesign, it works though.
Well, it’s been a fun afternoon. I added permanent links to my site, so i can link back to any other entry or other people can link to them. Also came across jack saturn’s site and through him, riothero. They are both great sites and i’m sure i’ll be back to visit them. I think i came across riothero a long time ago, maybe back when swanky used to be a different type of community.
Kind of cool, Ogg Vorbis a possible replacement for mp3. This one is going to be totally free, not owned by anyone. People don’t realize that the mp3 codec is actually owned by the fraunhofer group or institution or whatever it is. Apparently they want going to charge companies that make mp3 encoders a liscensing fee.
Poking around the web, approaching lunch time. See kitschbitch. I like it, simple design, effective for the content. I think the text on the right side could be a bit cleaner though. Other than that it was nice, i actually sat here and read through most of it. Now that’s unusual. And there’s iblog, not a bad weblog at all.
Back at work, two weeks left. Playing with netscape 6 again, unfortunately it doesn’t like my blogger form. Found sja from derek powazek’s site.
August 13, 2000
Watched Man Bites Dog last night. Another forign subtitled film. Not for the faint of heart, totally random violence. Basically, a film crew documents the crimes of a serial killer. They also manage to go through about 3 or 4 different sound men (they keep getting killed accidently). It has some really moments in it and you get to see how messed up some people’s minds can be.
You know those times when you just want to beat the crap out of your computer parts? Go for it.
August 12, 2000
Updated conform last night.
White House employees reprimanded for downloading porn. Makes it sound like working at any other place of business. Next in the news, bill clinton has succeeded in beating diablo II on hell mode. Analysts have concluded that this is a cause to counterproductivity.
August 11, 2000
Finally managed to get a hold of netscape 6 pr2, don’t bother using the setup file right now. I couldn’t download components with it, ended up just grabbing the 16mb full install file from their ftp site. Anyway, it’s a bit buggy, but so far it’s looking pretty cool. The sidebar thing is allright, the what’s related panel is useful. Found peterme using it, it’s another blog. Only downside for me right now is i’m an icq user not an aim user. They’ve only integrated aim, not icq, even thought aol/netscape owns both.
Another friday. Man, they’re so slow. The kids are wired, we’re tired. They basically work on presentations and play games all day, maybe an internet scavenger hunt later in the day. Allows for plenty of browsing time. Still can’t get netscape 6. The hair got bleached blond last night, there’s a pic in the bio right now, if i remember i’ll up some when i get home. Odds are it’ll end up being dyed bright red or blue tonite.
One thing about sitting in front of a computer doing work this summer is that my typing has improved. I was challenged to get over 80wpm on a typing test, which i just did. At the start of the summer i was around 50wpm, now i’m closer to 65, averaging between 65-75 on the tests.
The ultimate computer, built from parts that are fairly easy to get ahold of. Costs more than a lot of cars.
August 9, 2000
Got a haircut last night. Now that’s exciting news.
August 8, 2000
I bought a game today. Yes, i actually bought one: Diablo II. Haven’t bought a game in a long time. The next one i buy will probably be Anarchy Online, then again i mentioned that one allready.
Yah, i’m kinda pissed. There’s some sort of firewall or something here at work. It’s through the school board so they must not want people to be wasting school resources or something. It’s selective, i can get live radio streams from online stations but i can’t pick up streams from lve365 or shoutcast. Also can’t do direct file transfers over icq. I can download streams from my own my play locker though. Who knows.
August 7, 2000
Watched Mighty Peking Man tonite. One of Quentin Tarantino’s classic movies or something. Watched one his other classics awhile ago. A lot of this shit is just so bad that it’s funny. Hopefully how it was intended. It’s still worth watching though.
Came across mce2a in my travels this aft. Looks good, something a little bit different.
Spent a good chunk of the day browsing around the internet (while I wasn’t teaching). Updated my online bookmarks so i’d have a bit more stuff to play with. Found some great inspirational stuff at surfstation . Could also be found poking around zeldman, glish and design is kinky.
August 6, 2000
Just finished watching Romeo Must Die. Not a bad movie. Some really amazing action scenes. Martial arts rock.
Republic of Slovakia 7.375% 04-14-10. Aparently the slovakian government has released the combination to the sole lock that provides entrance into the country.
UN troops deployed on lesbian border, er lebanese rather. Uhh, yah.
Just finished updating conform. The latest image is by piero desopo, the man behind phoenix art.
August 5, 2000
Anarchy Online looks like it’s going to be a really cool game. Along the same lines as Everquest or Ultima Online, a massively multiplayer game.
Saw Space Cowboys up in ottawa tonite. It was an ok movie, it had it’s moments. I found the old geezer jokes get a bit stale by the end of it, no subtle humor to be found. The movie was entirely predictable, you could figure out everything that was going to happen before it happened, no surprises. Some of the spaces sequences are really cool. Donald Sutherland does a great job as a dirty old man, and Tommy Lee Jones is well cast as the hotshot pilot.
August 3, 2000
Added another desktop tonite, it’s called clean air.
I guess real news is hard to come by these days, the national post is running funny shit these days. Like the story about a strike at a chicken factory in the maritimes, where the strikers apparently wrung the neck of a live chicken. The plant manager said that it was cruelty to animals and that they don’t condone stuff like that. He kills chickens for a living. As well as the federal government encouraging young people to hunt. I guess young people just aren’t hunting enough.
August 2, 2000
Didn’t the simpson’s have an episode about dumping trash in an abandoned mine?
Nice and boring these days, haven’t been posting anything. How about tom’s hardware guide for all your hardcore geeks out there. Including how to get a socket 7 processor up over 600mhz.
All work and no play makes dave go something something. Not that I have a whole lot to do. It’s hard to come up with new stuff for the kids this week, they’ve all been to the computers camps before and know everything that we’re supposed to teach them.
August 1, 2000
Go check out farmclub.com. Yah, i’m sure you dirty bastards out there think that i’m into bestiality now. Haha, it’s a bunch of music videos and stuff, check out disturbed live - stupify.
Haven’t been updating as much the last couple days. Been doing a lot of work on the school yearbook, yah i know it’s the summer, but i’m the editor and have to get some shit finished up. Should be done in the next day or two. Also, as far as work goes, we’re in winchester this week, not brockville. The connection speed there blows, it’s basically eighteen computers hooked up to two phone lines, for a combined total of 48000 bps (the same speed i get off my 56k at home). Bah.