nodeg's journal

Casino Royalle

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:20:20 GMT

My wife and I went to go see Casino Royalle on Monday. I was very impressed. Going into the movie I was curious how they would re-invent a franchise that has gone stale. This bond is a combination of the older movies with a bit of darkness thrown in. If there was anything I thought out of place, it was that the movie revolved around a No Limit Texas Hold'em game, instead of Baccarat(which is traditionally Bond's game of choice in both book and film). I imagine this is due to the popularity of the game, but it also suits the move away from Bond stereotypes in the movie. Another example of this is when a bartender asks Bond if he would like his martini shaken or stirred and he replies, "Do I look like I give a damn?"

The new Bond is compulsive and a bit arrogant. He doesn't quite have the light wit of Connery or Moore, but he still has a bit of charm. We get to see a bit of his human side this time round. I think that Daniel Craig did a great job, and has the potential to be the best bond of all time.

The action sequences were fantastic, but I was more impressed at the drama and build up that has been missing from the last 8 or so Bond movies. This Bond had very little in the way of gadgets, but a crap-load of product placement.

The movie was long(2h24m), and had some laggy parts in the second half, but it was a solid movie. I'm looking forward to Bond 22.

SPORE: A super new sim game from maxis

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 21:25:42 GMT

These days it's hard to get me excited about up-coming video games. The most exciting game I can think of that came out in the last 6 months is "shadow of the colossus," and I can't think of even one really new-concept title for the PC in the last year/year-and-a-half. This game looks amazing. I watched the entire movie in awe at the scope of it. Check it out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore

Frizzle Frazzle

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:26:06 GMT

Well, it's been quite a while since I wrote anything here. Too long even. So many things I wanted to put here and most of them have been forgotten. Sorry to the hundreds of posts that have gone by that I missed. Life seems endlessly busy at times.

I signed up for some art classes a couple of weeks ago. The guy who runs it is a master at doing still-life and landscape art. So far little of the stuff he's taught me is new, but it has been challenging. While I wasn't too interested in it walking in, I can't wait to get past the pencil/charcoal work and get into oil painting.

In other artsy news, I've ordered some armature wire and basic shaping tools for working with polymer clay. I already have a pasta maker for mixing the clay, and some tupanoid(non-toxic turpantine). After my order comes in all I'll need is a piece of wood with a hole in it, 1lb of super sculpey, and a cube of white and black sculpey. I'm still not sure what I'm going to try for my first sculpture. Here is an example of a polymer clay sculpture if you are curious.

I've also been hunting around the house for my copy of "Panel One: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers," so that I can start on a script idea for a four to six-issue story arc I came up with recently. I got inspired after reading "Transmetropolitan." Who knows how that will go. I have a couple short stories that I should probably put to paper soon too.

Ooh, I almost forgot! I got a new computer! Or a mostly new one anyway, I recycled a few components from my old rig. Here's the specs:

1 x Antec P180 ATX Advanced Mid Tower Aluminum Case 4X5.25 1X3.5 6X3.5INT No PS W/ USB & Audio Ports
1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core Processor S939 Manchester 2Ghz 512KBX2 90NM Retail Box
1 x ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ATX S939 NFORCE4 SLI DDR 2PCI-E16 2PCI-E 3PCI SATA RAID Sound GBLAN Motherboard
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300GB SATA W/ NCQ 7200RPM 8MB 8MS Hard Drive 5 Year MFR Warranty
1 x EVGA E-GEFORCE 7800GT CO 470MHZ PCI-E 256MB 256BIT GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDTV VIVO SLI Ready Video Card
1 x OCZ OCZ52012U-520W Modstream Power Supply PCI-E Ready W/ Ezmod Cable System & Blue LED Fan
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional X 64 Bit Edition OEM Single Licence W/ CD
1 x LG GSA-4167B 16X DVD+-RW 16X Dual Layer Writer IDE 2MB Black OEM W/ SW Burner

It was purchased partly out of necessity when my 9800pro fizzled along with a power-supply and a hard-drive in my other rig. Eventually I hope to upgrade the ram (I'm using the GB fm my old rig), and maybe I'll get a second 7800GT and go SLI. For now it's pretty fricken sweet though. I think this rig will last me a few years without any severe upgrades--especially now that I'm playing less and less video games (Counter-strike maybe 4 hours a week mostly).

A day in the life of a Smart Ass

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 13:49:19 GMT

A few days ago minxy_baby and I were having a discussion about these new East Side Mario's entre's that you can get at Loblaws.

Her: I've only eaten at Super Mario's a couple of times.

Me: Super Mario's? The only things I've ever eaten there are turtles and mushrooms...

Her: I meant East Side Mario's you ass!

Me (ignoring her): I tried eating the flowers there once, but they just gave me heartburn.

Being Koi

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:38:27 GMT

Here's a rough concept of the painting I'm doing will look like:

I coloured it quickly with dry pastels. The finished version will have some waves in front of the koi, and a bit of colour in the sky. I'm also debating putting a couple of flowers in the water. The koi colouring isn't final yet either. I may do orange instead, or white with big orange splotches. I'm leaning towards orange.

I'm glad I'm taking the time to work out the concept for this piece. It'll definitely be better for it. I would have just jumped in and did it, but the 5' wide canvas for this puppy costs a fair bit.

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Today I figured out how to enable hotlink protection on my web domain. This basically means that if you link to an image like the one above on another page it won't show up. Now if I host an image that everyone wants to steal, I don't have to worry about someone stealing my bandwidth too.

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The Optimus keyboard isn't coming out until late this year, instead of February as originally hoped. Have you checked this puppy out? It's a keyboard with LCD keys! You can program them for specific tasks, so if you are using photoshop the b key might show a brush, and if you are playing a game wasd will show arrows!

Pretty sci-fi keyboard. Not as sci-fi as artificial gills but still pretty cool.

P.S. I hate that spell check always picks out "colour" as a spelling error.

Down with ADMN233!!!

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:29:52 GMT

What a fricken boring course. This assignment is killing me, so I'm taking tomorrow off from it. I think I'll just answer one question a day so my brain doesn't turn to mush. I'll switch back to the COMP200 assignment I have to finish (database). There's another fun one.

I can't wait until I'm done all of these fricken snore-fest courses. I'm not even sure I'll have time to finish MATH209. Everyone loves finite math. If I manage to finish these ones, the next courses should be easier/less boring.

I took Vicki out for a long walk today to get her psyched for obedience training. She did ok, but she's still not the best at loose leash walking, and she likes to try and chase cars that drive by.

Body Pump was weird today. The instructor was totally out of sync with the music. He'd tell us to do a 2-count movement and then do it in 1 and a quarter count... if that makes sense. It really threw me off. His arms were shaking pretty bad for a couple of the exercises, and he kept "accidentally" ending before the songs. Gave a big "I'm not quite sure what I'm doing" vibe. He was all soup-sandwiched. Not that I could do better, but I'm not the one getting paid. I sometimes have to stop on some of the exercises, but I think it's understandable. To give the un-initiated an idea of how hard it can be, imagine having a barbell with 15kg of weight on it, and doing 150 squats. It can get pretty tough. My heart rate was 165bpm between tracks.

I'm wiring in under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen. I had to buy some wire to finish the job. I only needed 10' or so, but I ended up with 20 meters at a cost of $60. Hopefully I'll get that done soon.

Scaled down

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:19:48 GMT

I signed up for the Gym about 2 months ago. I started out at 255lbs, and somehow managed to gain 10 pounds. Today is the first day I've weighed myself and been lighter. I'm now 259lbs! I didn't really care too much about the weight gain, as I knew it was mostly muscle mass, but I know I have a lot of fat to burn.

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I read today that the Xbox firmware has been completely hacked. What this means is that you can play "back-up" games on your x-box without having to hardmod(use a mod chip), or softmod(a software hack), to do the same thing. The cool thing about it is that this may mean the ability to play pirated games on xbox live(though I don't know if that work). The cooler thing about it is that the xbox360 has similar firmware. This could be bad news for microsoft. For the record, I don't own either console, but I do want an x-box1 so that I can turn it into a linux box though (that and play the oddworld games).

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In Photography world, I just "Digged" up this software that uses algorithms to remove noise, and inpaint images. The coolest example of the inpaint images effect: taking a caged bird picture and removing the cage!

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Yesterday I finally fixed the washer downstairs. I didn't finish my homework though. God this assignment is boring and tedious. I also did 2 sketches for the painting that will go above the couch... it's looking good conceptually anyway.

Today:

- Finish Assignment 1, part 2.
- Get wire from the electrical store for my under-cabinet lighting.
- "Body Pump" class at the gym.

Later:

- Call for drivers test
- Find out how to deal with that fungus on the plum trees.
- Renew domain name.
- Install undercabinet lighting.

Raiders of the lost keys...

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:06:58 GMT

This is the moment every blogger dreams of. Writing about how they lost their keys. Thinking that I deserved a pleasant wake-up, I set my alarm to play music instead of the hermorhage causing klaxon I normally have it set to. Wouldn't you know it, I slept right through it. In fact I slept until 11:27, which gave me 13 minutes to get dressed, fill my gym bag, take the dog pee and feed her, and get to the gym. Being a fairly motivated individual, I decided to try.

When I got to the front door, puppy in tow, I didn't see my keys in their usual spot (A shelf above the T.V.). Vicki paced nervously as I searched every coat and pair of pants I own, and dumped minxybaby's purse onto the couch(just kidding hun). I had about 30 seconds left to leave at this point, so I just grabbed a spare key and took the puppy out to pee. Wouldn't you know it, the car had a half-inch of ice on it?

Of course I didn't make it to the gym. I'll go tonight with minxybaby instead. This has pretty much haymakered my plans for the day. Sleeping in 3 hours messes up any schedule. I did find the keys though... They had fallen off the shelf behind the TV.

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In other news, here is a new PSP homebrew hack that works on ALL firmware versions. Now I have to update tonight, before sony releases a new firmware.

Kevin Smith is releasing Clerks 2 without a rating, because he doesn't believe it deserves an R rating. Makes sense to me. No violence + no nudity = can't be that warping.

And, Harrison Ford wants to do Indiana Jones 4. Here's hoping.

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Yesterday I didn't finish assignment 1 part 2. I DID prime the canvas downstairs, and started some concept work. I didn't even look at the washer.

Today:

- Finish Assignment 1 part 2.
- Fix washer

Later:

- Call for drivers test
- Find out how to deal with that fungus on the plum trees.
- Renew domain name.

More firefly news, and stuff.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:03:10 GMT

I stumbled on this article on my daily digg.com browse this morning. Looks like the firefly season 2 thing is a long-shot at best. That's no suprise though. If nothing else I'm pretty sure all of the publicity Firefly is getting will guarantee Joss does another series in the same universe.

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A few months ago I was looking for good web-based organization software, and I found backpackit.com along the way. Not really an organizer, but you can use it to make checklists and mini-web pages. The feature that most interested me at the time was that you can have it e-mail you reminders. Now I use it for checklists for various projects. In fact I have one page titled "bloglist" that I use to remind myself of things I wanted to write about. It's free, easy to use, and worth checking out.

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Project Saturday was a big success for me. I got most of the stuff I wanted to complete done. I even got a quick colour concept for the megadeth contest up on my DA site HERE.

For today my goals are:

- Do a second coat on the canvas downstairs
- Do some concept work for the painting that will go over the couch.
- Do at least part 2 of my 1st writing assignment, and Part 3 if I can manage it.
- Try and fix the leaky washer downstairs if I can find the tools.
- Everything else is gravy.

Zip news.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 01:03:04 GMT

I got a notice from zip.ca the other day. They've changed their policy so that "heavy renters" have to pay for extra postage above a set number of rentals in a month. This doesn't bother me by itself, but I find what they consider "heavy" a bit stupid. I have a "four out" plan, which means I can have 4 movies out at any one time. On average I get 18 movies a month--which I consider a bit heavy. With the new policy, my plan is entitled to 11 rentals at no extra cost. Now, if you were taking out 4 movies at a time, wouldn't it be reasonable that you might go through that entitlement once a week? I think 14-16 would be more reasonable. It costs 2.50ish for every rental I get above 11.

These guys better hope Netflix or Blockbuster online don't come to town, or I might switch. It's still cheaper than renting at a store--and with 30,000+ titles there's always something I want to watch.

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Good news for all the brown coats out there. There's a group trying to produce season 2 of firefly for DVD- only release. They are conducting a survey on their website to assess the demand. Check it out:

http://www.fireflyseason2.com

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I also found a site that shows how commercial Japanese Origami has become... Sad really ;)

http://www.origamiboulder.com/

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Status of Mission Saturday:

- Finished Writing assignment Part 1. I'll save the quiz untill part 3--didn't realize how big the stupid assignment was.

- Primed Big canvas in basement.

- Went to gym, but didn't do beep test as the floor was booked. Did 10/10/8 pushups, on top of the usual regime of self-torture.

- Finished "vic" concept art http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/28315819/.

Mission Saturday

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:13:29 GMT

Last night I did a concept sketch for the 'Redesign Rattlehead Vic' contest on deviantart. Megadeth has commisioned DA to redesign their mascot. Vic Rattlehead is basically a guy with a skull head with two metal plugs for ears, and a metal visor bolted to his face--oh, and his mouth riveted shut. DA probably will get a killer check, and the sucker who wins will get a Dave Mustaine limited edition guitar. On the bright side though, the guitar will be worth some scratch.

Goals for tonight:

- Maybe some concept work for the art in the house.

Goals for tommorrow:

- Finish first writing assignment for my administrative writing class. Finish 4th quiz as well.

- Prime all the canvas in the basement so I can do the paintings for the livingroom and landing.

- Go to the gym and get better than 7 on the beep test. Do 3 sets of 10 pushups on top of usual weight training.

- Do a quick colour concept painting for the 'Vic' contest

Tentative goals for Sunday:

- A bit of photography.

- 5th and 6th quiz.

- painting.

- 'Body Pump' class at the gym.

FHWQGDS Everybody to the limit!!!

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:00:14 GMT

Today I got a heatsink in the mail from NCIX.com.

I love that site. I was checking out their site and I found this:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=15703&vpn=ML1610/XAA&manufacture=Samsung

It's a fricken Laser printer! Not only that but one that costs $93.29!! That's how much it costs to buy refills for my inkjet! If you print a lot of black and white stuff this thing could really save you some money. To give you an idea, the average ink-jet printer like my trusty inkjet gets about 200 prints out of an $80 ink cartridge. This printer gets 2000 prints out of an $80 toner cartridge that probably costs about $60 bucks to replace.

Personally I don't really need one, but if you print a lot this could get you 10 times the print jobs for the same cost.

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In other news, I just got the movie Real Genius, an old Val Kilmer flick, in the mail from zip.ca. I loved this movie when I was younger. I hope it is as good as I remember it. The plot involves a corrupt university official using genius students to make a military weapon. Pretty funny as I recall.

Minxy_baby and I watched Hide and seek the other night, which wasn't bad. Never thought that Dakota Fenning could pull off "creepy little girl," but she did a good job.

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minxy_baby was nice enough to make me a Halloween avatar. I think the brain-in-a-jar will come in handy. Love you baby!

Powered by Ebay

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:55:38 GMT

Well, I've been contemplating getting a second computer to mess around with. Nothing fancy, just something I can install linux on and use to browse the internet on my second monitor while I play Counter-strike:Source on the other. I've been meaning to use linux more, and I think a second system would be just the trick. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I turned to my old friend Ebay.

So far, here's what I've got:

C $51.19 Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino AGOGA stepping
C $63.73 MAXTOR 80GB ULTRA ATA 100/133 IDE HARD DRIVE
C $28.91 512mb ECC PC2100 ram INFINEON matched pair
C $38.00 Gigabyte GA7N400 Socket A motherboard.
Current Total: $134.09

My biggest regret is the hard-drive so far. I could have saved about 20 bucks if I had been paying attention. I have a cd-burner that isn't being used that I'm going to throw in, and an old GForce Ti4200. the board has onboard sound and lan. The only thing I have to get now is a case/psu(Which, oddly enough, will bet the most expensive component).

The funny thing is that the Gigabyte board I got for my "cheapie" computer is better than my main rig's board (Asus A7N8X). It has 1 more ram-slot, takes SATA.

So now I just have to buy a case/psu and wait for everything to come in the mail. I'm really torn between getting the cheapest case I can find or one that I can use forever that is easy to work inside of.

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren't mirrored though, because I'm not that good yet.

Nodeg Gift Guide 2005: Portable fun

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:31:51 GMT

That time of year is coming, so here's some stuff I think is worth buying:

1. The IPOD nano. I've never really been that interested in the IPod, but the nano may make a convert yet. My biggest problem with the IPod has always been the hard drive that it uses for storage. You see, one of the major appeals for me, as far as MP3 players go, is that they were originally solid-state with no moving parts. This feature was appealing to me because that meant no skipping songs, and no parts to wear out. The IPod HD was something destined to fail. With up to 4GB of storage, the nano can hold something like 3 days of music. Some people say that IPods are all over-priced. I think that the IPod interface, and the fact it auto-syncs with I-tunes make it worth it. I don't own one of these myself, but if I did I'd probably buy the Logitech Wireless Music system for it.

2. Now if you think that loved one will want more space, and don't mind the fact that it's a HD player, you should check out the iaudio X5. This beauty has a 14 hour battery life, a 20-30GB HD, and a reasonable price. It also has two things that the big IPOD doesn't:

-An FM tuner,
- And VIDEO!

Pretty cool I think. I've read some complaints about the interface, but most agree that if you take the time to learn it you can navigate pretty fast.

3. I got a Sony PSP on my birthday and loved it. Even though it is expensive compared to a Nintendo DS, it is definitely in a different league as well. I'd say that the PSP is targeting an older audience than Nintendo. I fell in love with the PSP when I was in Costco one day and saw them on display. I was very impressed with the screen. Even then, I wasn't completely taken by the PSP until I found out you can run homebrew. Since the 1.0 firmware got exploited and Wipeout Pure was used to access a web-browser, homebrew for the psp has only gotten stronger. There is a ton of information out there on running dozens of emulators on the PSP. These include emulators for SNES, Gameboy, MAME, Turbo Graphics 16, NES and a slew of others (including SCUMM the lucas-arts engine). On top of that there are dozens of other homebrew aps from e-book readers, to media players, to organizers.

Unfortunately if you want to get a lot of mods, you are going to need to buy a bigger Memory Stick Pro DUO. I have a 256MB card, which is starting to feel small. Even without all of the mods, hacks and homebrew software, the PSP is a very capably video player. I often bring an hour of TV with me on my PSP (I could bring more but my card is pretty small). This is the perfect toy for someone who loves playing with ROMS and tech toys. The best games out there for this puppy are Ridge Racer (racing), Lumines (Puzzle), Metal Gear (Turn based card game), and Burnout Legends (Racing).

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren't mirrored though, because I'm not that good yet.

Recipe: Salsa Chicken

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:54:30 GMT

I've decided to start posting some of my favourite recipes. I know that when I was a bachelor I didn't cook nearly as much as I should have. It's always handy to know how to cook. This simple recipe was given to me by a friend a number of years ago. I THINK it was the first thing I ever cooked for my wife. This recipe, like all recipes that I'll put up, is simple but effective. I keep my instructions as simple as possible.

Tools Needed:

- Skillet or deep frying pan
- cheese grater (not needed if you have grated cheese)
- Good knife for chopping (Optional)
- a big serving spoon
- A flipper

Ingredients:

- Tablespoon of vegi or olive oil
- 1 quart(4 cups) of salsa
- 4 boneless/skinless chicken breasts
- 1 onion(optional)
- 1 green pepper(optional)
- 3 or 4 cups of shredded mozzarella
- 2 Cups rice.

1. On a medium to high-medium element, add oil to skillet and add chicken breasts. Cook until cooked. If unsure, cut into a breast(juices should be clear, and inside shouldn't be pink).

2. Add salsa to skillet and simmer for a half hour. Chop onion and green pepper up if desired, and add to mix.

3. While simmering, prepare 2 Cups of rice as per directions. (Basically 2 cups water for every 1 cup rice. Bring water to boil/ Add rice/reduce to min and cover for 20 minutes/remove from element and let stand for 10 min).

4. Top skillet contents with mozzarella and let melt.

5. Serve skillet contents on a bed of rice. I recommend using a big spoon to serve the breasts so that they keep a layer of salsa and cheese on top of them, and then use the spoon to snag a portion of salsa for the uncovered rice.

Hope you enjoy it

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren't mirrored though, because I'm not that good yet.

Greed

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:47:45 GMT

Here's a small list of stuff I want. It's not really a christmas list, but I have it here so that people can use it as such if they want to. I'm planning on making a wishlist section on my new homepage

Books

The art of Oddworld Inhabitants

Art from my favourite series of video games. These games had both style and substance. I'm still amazed that they had to put out an old-school platformer when everyone else was doing 3d crap. Unfortunately not sold on Amazon. I want the hard cover--but not the overly expensive leather bound one.

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman Latest book by my favourite "new" author. I can't wait to get my claws on this puppy.

A Feast of Crows, By George R.R. Martin. An older "new" author. latest in his 'Game of Thrones' series. It's the only epic worth reading.

My Amazon wishlist.

Contains some of the books/dvds I have contemplated buying but not quite gotten to. A quirky list at best. I paired out about 20 listing recently because I'd either purchased them or didn't want them any more(more the latter).

Toys

The Xbox. I'm hoping it will sink to sub-100 dollar prices for the holidays. I just wanna mod the hell out of it. Xbox360 is for suckers with more money than sense.

Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC The next lense I want for my Canon 350d.

Intuos3 9x12 tablet. This isn't high up on my list as I just bought a fully functional Graphire3, but I really like it. I've promised myself that if I do enough digital art to justify it I'll get one.

That's it off of the top of my head. I'll update this post, and maybe throw in my holiday gift suggestions in the next little while.

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren't mirrored though, because I'm not that good yet.

Blatantly Stolen from Minxybaby

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:04:00 GMT

LJ Interests meme results

akira:
A very famous Anime movie that pretty much defines the genre.
canadian forces:
I'm in the CF. What do you expect?
counter strike:
My favourite on-line video game of all time.
digital art:
I draw with a wacom tablet and Photoshop CS. I have a deviantart account that displays all of my stuff. Http://nodeg.deviantart.com
doctor who:
One of the coolest sci-fi shows ever.
kyuss:
The best band ever. Now broken up, but they still exist in various incarnations like "Queens of the Stoneage", and "Mondo Generator".
matrix:
as in "The Matrix". Not 2 or 3 though. They don't exist in my world.
phillip k. dick:
Author of a crapload of sf stories. He could type at 120 Words per minute fueled on various narcotics. Famous for writing the stories that "Blade Runner," "Minority Report," and countless other movies were based on.
psp:
I love my Playstation Portable.
sarcasm:
Sure I'll explain this one...

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

P.S. I'll get to your "tag" soon Flydovefly. I just haven't felt like it lately.

Productivity

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 04:11:38 GMT

Well I've managed to work out both today and yesterday on the "Gazelle" in the basement. I did 45 minutes both days, and I took the puppy out for a 2km run afterwords. I'm toying with the idea of making one of these so that I have something else fun to do while burning calories.

I'm trying to be more productive. To many hours are wasted doing nothing. I mowed the back yard today too. That, combined with the PT, makes for a pretty productive day for a work day. I'm on midz now, and I'm going to dive into my Finite book soon.

Yesterday I posted a link on revenge against annoying mail advertisers. Today, I found a link to an even cooler invention. Tele-marketers are evil parasites in every-day life. This is the perfect way to waste their time. Funny results too. Check out this example of the telecrapper at work.

I wonder if this works in Canada?

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 03:46:34 GMT

http://www.vertical-visions.com/_temp/postagepaid/index2.html

This guy is a genius. I think I'm going to look up the regulations for the Canadian equivelent of those envelopes. There's a particular bank that sends junk to the house despite several mailing list removal requests. This is one of the first web-links to make me smile in a while.

Back to life, back to un-reality.

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 01:24:32 GMT

Well, for those that are interested I had a fun 7 days with no computer use. Here are my paper journal pages for the first week of August. In the margins are all the sites I wished I could visit or things I wished I could look up. Enjoy.

August 1/Page 1
August 1/Page 2
August 2
August 3/Page 1
August 3/Page 2
August 4/Page 1
August 5/Page 1
August 6/Page 1

Running

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:32:36 GMT

Well, I've been running with the puppy lately and it's starting to turn into a trend. I drove along my route to measure it yesterday, and I ran about 4km yesterday (two runs), and I ran about 2.7km this morning. I'm starving and sweaty now, so I think I'll shower and eat. I think I'll go for another 2k this evening. I'm hoping to get to 3.2 by the end of the week... 5k by the end of the month. Today is my last day with a computer for a week so I'm on a burning rampage, trying to get all my archived TV stuff like Naruto, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost ready for the inevitable tv marathon that will come due to not having a computer for 7 days.

SuPRisE!!!

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 03:39:12 GMT

Well, minxy_baby should have a nice suprise when she checks her LJ in the morning.

I haven't had much time/desire to post much lately, but I'm hoping to curb my laziness soon. I finally got my "Individualized Learning Plan" approval from work, so now I can go back to school pretty much free of charge. I'm going for a BS in Computing and Information Systems from Athabasca University via the internet(part time). I just have to pick my first three classes now. I start in September.

Poopy Puppy!!!

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 13:59:54 GMT

Well yesterday I woke up after my last mid-shift, and I was thinking to myself, "Damn the puppy has been so good during the last three days." I mean, Minxy has been working days, and I've been working mids, so the poor dear has spent an extra 5-6 hours in the crate(Actually, a super-crate made out of 2 crates so that she has an area for her business during these times when she has to stay locked up longer than normal). So I go down stairs, in my just-woke-up-from-mids haze, and as I'm looking over the banister I think, "that looks like a big poo in my living room," and then I look down the stairs and I see Vicki(the puppy for you just tuning in), looking up at me, so happy to see me. Somehow she managed to escape the super-crate, and peed and pooed(twice) in the living-room)... more amazingly, she managed to do it without leaving any sign as to how she escaped!

My poor Munchie(the white cat)had little cuts on his ear because Vicki had been using him as a chew toy, and has a tendency to drag him around by his ears/throat/collar. Needless to say, I wasn't very pleased.

Nodeg's top 10 Authors/Books/Series

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 16:09:53 GMT

Well, I saw that jacob_day had posted his top ten, so I figured I'd give it a go.

Piers Anthony - I find his newer stuff rather stale, and am tired of his 80-year-old male characters with 14-year-old mistresses. That being said, he still has some very good stuff. My favourite would be his Bio of a Space Tyrant series, but his Blue adept and Incarnations of Immortality are worth reading too.

Orson Scott Card - Enders Game is pretty much canon in sci-fi, and a much read. I prefer his short stories though. (Definitely read Enders Game, but Cruel Miracles is one of the best short story anthologies ever printed.)

Philip K. Dick - If you've never read Dick, you've definitely seen a movie based on his stuff. His novel Do Androids dream of electric sheep was turned into Bladerunner, and his short stories Impostor, Total Recall (We can dream it for you wholesale), Minority Report, and Pay check were all made into movies as well. I prefer his short stories, which were all bound into anthologies. Out of his novels Do Androids dream of electric sheep, and Deus Irae(which he did with Roger Zelazny), are my favourite.

Stephen R. Donaldson - Creater of the great anti-hero Thomas Covenent. Read Lord Foul's Bane. He has another series that's pretty good too... something about a mirror.

Alan Dean Foster - Most famous (to me anyway) for The last Starfighter, I'm a big fan of his recently ended Journey of the catechist series, which is a stylistic modern fairy tale.

Neil Gaiman - Most famous for his comic books (Sandman, Hellblazer--aka Constantine for you movie-lovers, Books of Magic), his novels are a real treat to read. (Start with Neverland, or American Gods.)

Katherine Kurtz - Author of the Deryni series. Check out Deryni Rising.

George R.R. Martin - His series, A song of ice and fire, is quickly becoming the best epic fantasy series I've ever read. A stranger tossed me a copy as I was getting ready to go to Africa with the UN. Start with A game of thrones.

John Wyndham - Everyone should read The Crysalids

Roger Zelazny - The sci-fi community took a big hit when Roger died several years ago. His Amber series is sci-fi canon. He is also the KING of 1st person/past tense writing.

meh

Wed, 01 Jun 2005 04:10:34 GMT

I haven't been in the mood to update this week, but....

The neighbors garbage bag has some new friends