May 31, 2001
Go and read Conan O’Brien’s speech to the Harvard class of 2000. It’s damn funny, i wish all those crappy speeches you have to listen to over the years were like this.
I just finished up my first winamp skin. I posted it in the download section, it’s available in both .zip and .wsz (the winamp skin format).
Yet another study that you have to wonder how scientists managed to get funding for. They have proved that buttered toast lands butter side down more often than not.
I watched eXistenZ yesterday, i think it was the first cronenberg movie I had watched in entirety. It was pretty good, it messes with your perceptions of the characters reality. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on, but that’s the point.
May 29, 2001
Drinking has been linked to high dropout rates in Irish universities. Read the last paragraph of the article, it’s pure gold.
Another uneventful day draws to a close. I performed a couple exciting tasks that included cleaning the bathroom and cleaning the kitchen. I also cashed my paycheck and picked up a few groceries. Holy shit, this is boring. I just finished watching platoon, which is a damned good movie and I can’t really explain why I hadn’t seen all of it yet. I had seen a few select clips from in in high school english, but that’s about it.
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I watched The Untouchables on television tonight. I hadn’t seen it before and thought that it was a decent movie. I found that it almost seemed short to me, they probably could have done more with it. I found the scene on the stairs in the train station, with the baby carriage, to be a tad on the over-dramatic side of things. I also finished reading Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbons tonight. It took me a little while to get into it, but I found myself drawn to it as I got further in. I haven’t read anything else by the author, so I can’t really compare it with any of his other works. Parts of it are deffinitely abstract and make you think.
May 28, 2001
Japanese doctors have discovered that it’s healthy for men to stare at women’s breasts. I want to know how people get funding to study these things.
Stephen Ambrose, the author of a new world war ii history book aimed at kids, is lambasted in this article. It’s essentially pointing out inaccuracies in his coverage and his pro-American attitude. It’s kind of nice to see a protest against some of the excessive flag waiving that occurs in the US.
Another interesting read is an article written by a war correspondant shortly after world war ii. It was linked from within the previous article.
Halogen has some damn cool stuff going on. I really like the look and feel of it.
Well I have a part time job as a carney in the amusement section of a local park. Ohh, the fun. I had my second day of work there this afternoon, I ended up with a mild sunburn. It was a bright sunny day until about 5:30 and then a crazy wind whipped up accoss the lake bringing with it lots of rain. They ended up closing the park down a little on the early side. And for some reason I have resorted to talking about the weather.
May 26, 2001
The sky is yellow outside, it looks like someone stuck some sort of filter over my window. It’s hard to say if this will turn into a saturday night in front of the computer, odds are now. But it happens. It’s staying light outside for longer with the summer soltice approaching quickly.
I just finished watching Ben Hur this afternoon. It was on television and for the most part without commercials. There was just one bank of commercials at the scheduled intermission in the movie, it was nice. The movie was one of those ones that I had been meaning to see for awhile and it just happened to be on television. I thought it was pretty good, especially considering that it was made in 1959 with the absence of computers.
May 25, 2001
I’ve read a couple of reviews (salon, variety, ny post) of Pearl Harbour and none of them point to a movie of great quality. I thought it might have some potential, even though it’s being released as a summer blockbuster. Other films like Saving Private Ryan have been released during the summer and been pretty good. From the sounds of it, the movie is a Disney-fied romance story than runs around 3 hours in length. I remember seeing trailers for the movie last year, they mainly showed portions of the battle and some of the CGI and it looked pretty amazing, there wasn’t really any mention of a love story. General rule of thumb is play to as many possible dynamics as you can, an R rated movie will leave out the purchasing power of kids with disposable income.
Freeman has some pretty cool photography, go check it out.
I started working on a wimamp skin tonite, it’s a little bit more involved than I thought it would be. Working with small little graphics and nitpicky details, stuff that won’t look right if it’s off by one pixel. I have most of the main window finished (except for the buttons), which mean I still have to do the equalizer and the playlist (and maybe the minibrowser and advanced visualization studio if i feel like it). I think the main window is the hardest to do, I could be wrong though.
May 24, 2001
Starting to get back into the swing of things, doing more design and stuff on the web. I’ve got a couple of projects that I’m going to be helping out with, stuff I have to get started on. I’m trying to write a bit more and read a bit more. I also have to decide what courses I want to take next year. I believe that a good number of them are predetermined by my program but I still have some choices for electives.
Chris Cornell has hooked up with the three remaining members of rage against the machine. They’re going to be renaming the band, it’s something to follow at any rate. Whatever zach de la rocha is coming up with, it sounds cool. He’s going to have ?uestlove from the roots for a couple tracks and some stuff with dj shadow. It should be good. I don’t feel tired at the moment but I really should go to bed.
I remember devouring a number of roald dahl books when i was a kid. I came accross the website tonite, it uses flash effectively, creating a nice dynamic site. I’m on cable right now, it’s possible that it would choke on a modem.
May 23, 2001
I haven’t really spent much time on the internet the last couple of days. I’ve had some other things to do and never really got around to updating the site. I finished up the redesign of conform a couple of days ago, i’m still waiting on an image in the series so I can take it live.
The weather here has been dismal the last couple of days and our power has been kind of sketchy. It went out a couple of times last night.
May 19, 2001
Hmm, no posts so far today, this day being friday night although techincally saturday morning. I watched the basketball game tonite, raptors vs sixers, the raptors won. It’s all good. I consumed a number of beers while watching the game and i’m a tad inebriated at the moment. I picked up a book I ordered online today, and a cd from a local merchant. I’ll mention them later. Some business cards also arived today, featuring the members of my house and other various slogans. All good.
May 17, 2001
The music companies have unveiled some new music downloading services. I have to say that the people behind these ideas are complete idiots, it won’t work. Why would someone pay to have low-quality music streamed to them (if it was high quality, you would need a high-speed connection, which a lot of people don’t have). Right now we can listened to streamed music on this new fangled electronic gizmo called a radio for free! Either offer free streamed music with ads (like radio) or offer unconditional downloads (like cd’s, if you buy one, you own the music on the cd outright).
I’m back in kingston now, with clean laundry and a bunch of stuff from the freezer. Cable internet is so much nicer then dial-up, the internet connection at home wasn’t playing nicely and kept disconnecting me.
I watched Pay It Forward last night. The movie had it’s good moments and overall, you won’t feel like you’ve wasted two hours of your life sitting there watching it. I found the ending a little bit on the cheesy side, i think it could have been done better.
Today is essentially birthdate of the web, well the day it was released to the public. To celebrate, maybe i’ll go back and look at some old magazines to see what predictions never came true. I remember the big things in a couple issues i have from around 1996, 1997 were 56k modems and the future of push technology, an integral part of netscape communicator. It never really panned out, oh darn.
May 16, 2001
Proof that girls are evil. It’s damn funny, well in a math geek type of humour anyway.
I’m back at home for a couple of days. Just took it easy and went out to a bar with a friend i hadn’t seen in awhile. We couldn’t really get a hold of many people, a good chunk of them had to work today.
The concert that weezer is having in toronto is being moved to june 8 and the only way to get tickets is through the edge. I put my email into the contest, but it doesn’t seem likely that i’ll win. It would be nice to go. I made a cd yesterday afternoon, one of the first i’ve made in quite awhile. I was experimenting with a program called nero. It has some features that allow you to do things like crossfading. So, I’ve got a nice 21 song cd with crossfaded tracks. Although I was in a rush and didn’t notice that one of the tracks didn’t rip well and cut off part way through (blimps go 90 - guided by voices). Update: at this point I hadn’t listened to much gbv, so it seemed really abrupt with the crossfade. The track is in fact less than two minutes, but it’s still a damn good song
May 15, 2001
Yet another day. The new weezer album comes out today, although i have had my hands on it for awhile. It’s pretty good. They’re going to be playing in Toronto on the 27th, but I don’t know where or how to get tickets. Odds are good that it’ll be some sort of contest give away thing. It would be nice to see em live though. I’ve also been listening to the upcoming gorillaz album as well. It’s some funky stuff, get a hold of clint eastwood, it’s a good tune.
I think I’m going to head home for a couple days tomorrow, see the family, see some friends and get some laundry done. I think i am supposed to help my brother write a cover letter for the job I had last year teaching computers. He probably has enough skills to handle it. I think i’ll through in an application for lead counsellor. If I got it, i might take it. I have a job for now, but it’s minimum wage and i’m not really sure whether it’s full time or not. The lead counsellor position pays $15/hr which is pretty damn good. I am having fun here and would hate to saddle my housemate with the flat monthly rates of telephone and cable, so it’s all kind of a tossup.
May 13, 2001
I’ve haven’t posted anything in the last day or two because I’ve been plugging away at a redesign of conform. It’s coming along, pretty much finished. I have to get the next series started up (shaun’s going to be helping me out with that) and perhaps tweak the contact page. Right now, it doesn’t work with the database to add people to the conform or suffocate mailing lists.
May 10, 2001
The US is holding back money that they owe the UN until they are reinstated onto commissions that they lost seats in last week. I have to say that it’s akin to blackmail and will most likely only further serve to alienate world opinions of americans.
Wow, just looked at my site in netscape 4.08 and my site works fine. Yes, i hav netscape 4.08 kicking around, I have to. I’m working as the webmonkey for golden words next year, since it’s a Queen’s site, it’s supposed to be compliant with that version of netscape. Most of the computers in the various lab’s around campus and a default installation on the computers that they sell has netscape 4.08. Rather than upgrade to a good browser, they just force all the websites to be shittier.
May 9, 2001
I had a fun evening. I ate dinner with one of my housemate’s (who’s staying the summer) and two girls from our floor last year at their apartment. We had a good time. The made us some pasta with feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, peppers and chicken. We brought over a couple bottles of wine. My housemate (dave) and I watched some of the leafs game while the two girls were cooking. The leafs started out alright, but the game degenerated into a blowout. Oh well, maybe the raptors will beat the sixers and it will gives us someone else to cheer for.
Apparently the Americans For Purity think masturbation is a bad thing. Personally, i want to know how the police in San Antonio and Austin are aggressively enforcing laws against masturbatory devices.
Redid the layout this evening. Clean and simple. I started keeping a weblog one year ago today. The only page I don’t have up at the moment is the links page. The reason would be that it’s not a carry over from the past layouts. I’m not sure if i’ll get around to making it tonite or not.
May 8, 2001
Man, I thought I had a good lead on a job until this afternoon. I was told about the job last friday afternoon, it had just been posted on their website. It was doing some webmaster work for the facutly of arts and science. I sent in a resume and cover letter to the email address listed, because it was around 5 in the afternoon and the office was closed. The posting said they would be taking in applications until the 11th. I figured that I got in early, i have the skills, how many web geeks are left here over the summer. I called back this aft and they had filled the post. Surprised me. I’ll find something eventually.
May 6, 2001
The raptors beat the sixers tonite. I couldn’t watch the game. For some reason, i never really envisioned myself saying that. I never was a huge basketball fan. I remember watching the NCAA tournament and every once in awhile an NBA game, but i never actively followed a team. It’s a side-effect of living in res this year and having rabid raptors fans on the floor.
My reason for missing the game would be a little job i’m doing on sunday nights. It’s 2-3 hours, cleaning up a building. It’s not really too hard to do, but it’ll bring in a little cash and it gives me something to do. It feels too odd not having any school work to do and not having a job. I’m at that stage where I feel the need to be doing something. I remember being younger and perfectly content doing absolutely nothing, especially on summer holidays. It may be having a much earlier start at the holidays or growing up, i’m not really sure. I deffinitely want to be doing something.
I have had the opportunity to finish off a couple books already and watch a couple movies. Reading for pleasure is one thing i tend to miss during the school year. I do some, but just enough. With the courses i’ve taken, I don’t have any novel reading to do either. Everything is fairly technical and not always easy to read. Economic theory, psychology, math, how to program java, it’s not quite the same.
The internet is now up to speed for me. In res we couldn’t stream audio, well, at least not audio at higher bit rates. Things were obviously throttled down. It’s nice to be able to listen to streaming mp3’s, sort of like radio.
May 5, 2001
Back once again. Our internet/cable was hooked up yesterday afternoon. The job hunt is as of yet rather fruitless, although i have found some leads. I’m deffinitely looking forward to doing some work, it feels to weird having nothing to do. I think i’ll try and get back into the swing of things over the summer, I havne’t really done much design work over the last year. There should be a new issue of suffocate coming out in the next day or two. I want to get something in for that. It sounds like the second period of the leafs game has started, time to go watch.
May 1, 2001
I moved into my house in kingston on sunday, we’ve been getting set up the last couple days. At the moment I have no internet and no phone, but it should all by set up by friday. I’m busy typing away and responding to a few emails on a computer in one of the campus buildings. That and spending the afternoon looking for a job.