February 28, 2001
Did some playing around in photoshop last night. A friend I went to highschool with is working on some sort of publication here at queens and asked me to make something because they were lacking in artistic type images. It’s not really that artsy, no real thought put into it or imagery behind it, more of a lets go through the hardrive and just put a bunch of stuff into it. I posted it up in random. There are two versions, the original was in , the other was desaturated and given a bit of an old school tinge.
February 27, 2001
I have the computer midterm in half an hour. All these java bits and pieces floating about in my head, various data structures and whatnot. At this point I think how I do really depends on what they put on the exam. Last night I finally started to grasp complexity and summation notation, so I’m hoping that knowledge has stuck in my head and will prove useful.
There’s a good read over at slashdot concerning RIAA quotes about losing money this year due to napster. It is pirated music and i guess it’s probably illegal, but how can they claim that music swapping is cutting into their profits when they’re total revenue is increasing every year?
The world is changing, the internet is changing, it’s quite the world that we live in these days. A constant state of flux. There’s talk of the dot-com collapse, internet start-up’s bombing out, making no money. The internet started out as a medium for communication and information sharing, maybe it’s heading back in that direction. Although I doubt corporations will shy away that easily. Currently, many of them don’t really have effective business models. A lot of the internet start-ups were using it as their sole source of income, and that income never appeared. It would be more effective if companies used the internet as an extension of their real world business or combined the two so they worked in tandem. Some of the companies that are pretending they have have a tandem business model are no longer using their real world company to it’s full extent, using it as a platform to draw attention to their internet business. Companies that are now seeing dwindling profits due to over-investment in the internet.
It seems like i’m painting a doom and gloom portrait of the internet, i’m not trying to do that, I love it. It’s more that if companies want to survive, they have some thinking to do. Many people have a social stance that’s very anti-corporate, myself included, but I think corporation are going to have to stay as part of the internet to help foster growth. They’re the ones that will be investing in the technology that makes the internet work. That’s enough, I have to get to bed and then wake up to write a bloody midterm.
And then there’s this that just confuses the hell out of me.
February 26, 2001
The joys of studying and procrastination. Java, the work of the devil. I have a computer mid-term tomorrow morning that I’m studying or not studying for at the moment. Hard to believe that i’ve already finished 75% of my first year of university.
Other things; i’ve been listening to a lot of older music the last few days and Apocalypse Now is going to be 53 minutes longer, a point of interest because I watched it recently. Been listening to things like Boston, The Rolling Stones, CCR, Simon and Garfunkel and the list goes on.
February 25, 2001
Settling back into the school life, trying to get some reading done. The floor is still kind of empty, people are gradually returning. I find the I don’t spend as much time in front of the computer here because the chair is no where near as comfortable. I find sitting here for extended lengths of time makes some part of the body sore. I found my love for irc again today, I never have been a huge napster fan. Napster has been terrible since the school limited it’s bandwith usage, it’s faster to get songs off it through my dial-up at home. On irc, downloading isn’t limited by the school, it’s only throttled by the people serving up the songs.
February 24, 2001
The people in the patent office have gone mad. It seems kind of stupid that someone would try and patent thought processes. It obviously won’t hold up, it’s kind of easy to prove that thought processes and flow charts existed before this patent.
February 22, 2001
Came accross bluishorange today. The layout is both simple and complex, visually appealing. She’s wellspoken too.
Steve Jobs indroduced a new line of imacs today that are tie-dyed, dubbed flower power. The thing is absolutely hideous. It says in the article that it could possibly be a wise decision, targeting the computers at the young girls and women who represent a large chunk of purchasing power. I don’t think i could stand that thing sitting on my desk, although i’d accept one if someone decided to give it to me.
50 things you never knew about the original star wars trilogy. Appealing to the geek in me i guess.
Keeping with the current trend of displaying hot people, john indroduces his gallery of everyday hotties. My guess is the majority of these people don’t know john and they never figured that someone like john would visit their personal page and download that picture someone took while they were drunk and pretending to be a prostitute. Oh the joys of the internet.
February 21, 2001
Been doing a bit of design work tonite. Some ideas for suffocate and some other ideas in my head. Not a hugely productive day, should have done some more reading than i did. Picked up a suit tonite, the first suit i’ve ever owned. It’s one of those things that’s important to have I guess.
Came accross freshfroot tonite. An eye candy site, with quite a bit of content. Bouncy liquid kind of stuff, really nice animation.
February 20, 2001
Watched Bringing Out the Dead last night. A somewhat depressing movie that leaves you empty after watching it. It doesn’t really end and isn’t supposed to, just kind of makes you happy it isn’t you.
February 19, 2001
All your base are belong to us, seems to be a new internet fad.
How to build a cheap router using old parts. Now I wish I hadn’t thrown out all those crappy computer parts i had kicking around.
Seen a few movies recently, just didn’t get around to writing them down. Apocalypse Now, American Movie and The Kid. A lot has been said about apocalypse now, it’s a great movie, a little bit different that what I was expecting. It’s my favourite movie of all time, but it ranks up there with some of the better ones i’ve seen. American movie had some damn funny moments, overall it was too long and kind of boring. I have a tolerance for indie movies, but it tried me. The kid was a disney movie, light language, happy ending, predictable, nice for one of those nights where you don’t want to have to think at all.
There’s a new version of suffocate up. It’s been in the works for quite awhile. Eventually, there will be a new version of conform too, but there’s a lot of work that has to be done for it.
February 18, 2001
A hotel just for women. That makes sense, you know, don’t want women to feel threatened by men or anything like that. I can’t see a brand new hotel for men opening up going over that well though. It would get feminists up in arms over equality issues and whatnot. Men are slowly but surely losing all power they have. Equality is one thing, but make it truely equal. I guess that’s a wish that probably won’t happen. We see women rising up the ranks into the upper echelons of power, and that’s great, I have no problem with it.
Men are starting to be victimized though, courts generally side with women in custody cases and matrimonial disputes. There’s still a whole lot of gender stereotyping out there, thoughts ingrained into the minds of society that will prevent equality from ever occuring. It won’t surprise me at all when women move from behind the scenes to the forefront of controlling our society. There is the old adage, behind every great man there is a woman.
That was one of those things were you start writing and really have no idea where you’re going with it or how to end it.
February 17, 2001
Computer pranks that you can experiment with yourself or put on other people’s computers. Stuff that would piss people off.
What a fun week that was. Being sick and trying to get a bunch of assignments and stuff done. I came home last night, wasn’t really sure when I’d get home. The original plan was to go to toronto for the weekend and hangout there. Sickness put a damper on that, i’ll try again in a few weeks. One of the advantages of going to school relatively close to home is that your parents can come and get you pretty quickly. I was home two hours after my dad phoned and said he could pick me up.
Apparently I have strep-throat, so I’ve been put on some penicillin which should clear it up in a week or so. The last couple days it hurt to swallow and I had a headache and so forth. I just ignored it all so I could get my work finished and catch up on my sleep. Now, I’m home in my room with heavy curtains and no clock, so I really have no idea what time it is when I wake up.
February 13, 2001
Ended up getting sick again yesterday or late sunday night, I basically spent the entire day sleeping. Today, it almost seems like i’m high or drunk, my brain isn’t really functioning up to par. It goes of on tangents easily and wants me to sleep some more. I have two assignments due on thursday and a quiz tomorrow so i can’t sleep too much.
Last friday, i went to a small concert at one of the pubs on campus, featuring sum41 and treble charger. It’s was a fun show, like a bunch of the punks shows I went to back home, good atmosphere. I picked up the sum41 cd, hour of power for 5 dollars. I figured even if the cd sucked, the cost wouldn’t be that much. The cd is pretty good. That’s about it, i have a whole lot of work i have to be doing.
February 10, 2001
Go see bonsaikitten, it’s a site that shows you how to modify the shape of your kittens by stuffing them into various jars, etc. It’s a fucking joke, sometime people take things way too seriously. Save the whales, save the fucking dolphins, save everything just to show that you really are a good person. Being trendy and politically correct has been taken a little bit too far in recent years, some people just don’t know how to have fun anymore.
In the same vein, while our society has a heighened awareness of cruelty towards animals, we have become desenitized regarding violence towards humans. Watch a movie like gladiator, there will be people who don’t say anything about the hundreds of people who get slaughtered, they won’t make a sound, but when a horse falls over or when he kills the tiger, they will say, “Ohhh… poor animal”. What mechanism in the brain has been twisted around that makes us feel nothing for the loss of human life? Animal rights activists are trying to put animal life on par with human life, that’s fine and dandy, but human’s are animals too.
February 8, 2001
The idea of messing around with human genetics is kind of scary. Control our destiny, blah blah blah, maybe contribute to our own demise.
There are two interesting articles over at salon about the fast food industry. The first one is talking more about the industry itself, and the second is more of an interview with the author of a book critizing the industry.
I watched the proffesional tonite. I enjoyed it, I’m pretty sure it was the european version i saw (also known as leon). An action movie with a love story. Gary Oldman portrays the bad guy really well, the psychotic type that makes you want to hate him. Also managed to get some reading out of the way, getting ready for another onslaught of assignments next week. They approach fast and tend to catch me off guard, not this time.
February 7, 2001
Haven’t written anything in a few days. I had a fairly productive weekend, went to goldenwords on sunday for the first time in a couple weekends. I’m going to have an article published today. It’s the early morning, the paper won’t arrive for a few hours still. Went out and played squash tonite with a few friends, it’s always fun, although you end up sporting a few injuries that you didn’t think were possible. I went out curling last night with a team we have here. We ended up winning, it was pretty good. I made a double take-out in the last end that I didn’t think I was going to be able to make. That’s it for now, time to head off to bed.
February 3, 2001
Spent the better chunk of the day getting caught up on the sleep i missed during the week. Sometimes it’s great to just not set the alarm and wake up when your body tells you it’s time to wake up. I watched Payback last night and shawshank redemption this afternoon. Payback’s an alright movie, it’s kind of funny how you want him to win, even though the guy is a complete asshole. Shawshank is a great movie, one of my favourites. They do an especially good job making the actors grow older. It’s not just the looks, gradually adding more wrinkles and grey hair, it’s also the way they walk and move.
February 1, 2001
Dolphins kill their prey with sonic booms, cute friendly killers. Sometimes people talk until you die, or at least fall asleep.
Someday I’ll learn that it’s really hard on you to do your assignments the day before they’re due. It’s a good way to fry your brain. Of the two assignments due tomorrow, one is complete but not entirely correct and the other one is eight percent complete but correct as far as i can tell. Time to do a bit more and then head off to bed.