senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
waxing nostalgic
permalink Sunday, 05FEB2006:just goes to show how messed up you get when you skip an entire day (tuesday) due to sleeping. it took me sleeping an entire day today to realize that i had been off by one day in my head since the beginning of february. uggh.
i was supposed to head out with neil and crew to do some location scouting this morning, but having stayed up most of the early hours re-devouring 'snow crash', i was too bushwacked to even think about taking on an adventure outdoors. instead, i watched the beautiful sunrise and returned to my crypt.
here's a passage from snow crash that i never get tired of - it probably led me down my current career path. remember that this was written between 1988 and 1991 !
[p.22] He uploads it to the CIC database - the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word 'congress' means. And even the word 'library' is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering. Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. CIC's clients, mostly large corporations and Sovereigns, rifle through the Library looking for useful information, and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it, Hiro gets paid.in the evening, i did a bunch of chores to get ready for the week. laundry, dishes, sorting thru digital photos taken over a year ago - that sort of thing. i rewarded my efforts by cashing in my gift certificate at the nav for a supper of cantonese chow mein.
here's one of the pics that i took back in september of 2004 as i was wandering thru the galleries of grads at the engineering and geology buildings at the UofS. everyone looks so young and full of potential !
aur.oral exposures: the return !
permalink Monday, 06FEB2006:- link of the day: lifelong learning
a way to borrow from your RRSP for your *own* educational purposes. i don't even know when this measure was introduced, but it's definitely welcome. as there's no such thing as retirement anymore for people of my generation, without job stability, all we have to rely on are the transferable skills that we can take wherever we go. allowing us to draw upon the so-called 'retirement' kitty to fund lifelong learning is a surprisingly prescient and laudable tax policy.
Aur.Oral Exposures setlist for 06feb2006:
- Prairie Town - Randy Bachman
- slim pickins - Kim Barlow
- When Will This Heartache End - The Blue Shadows
- Break Your Heart (live) - Barenaked Ladies
- Outskirts - Blue Rodeo
- The Last Sensitive Cowboy - The Arrogant Worms
- Insensitive - Jann Arden
- Farmer's Daughter - Jerry Boudreau
- Good Luck Charm - Libbi Bosworth
- That Summer - Garth Brooks
- The 9 Horse - Charles Bukowski
- Honey You - Isao Bito
- Gracie's Relatives - George Burns and Gracie Allen
- Hold On - Bif Naked
- L'accord parfait - Autour de Lucie
- Spaceman - Artificial Joy Club
- Irene - The John Borra Band
- Melody - Boys Brigade
- Somebody's Baby - Jackson Browne
- Livin' in America (Bainbridge Ave. 2 a.m.) - Black 47
- Fields of Fire - Big Country
public good of the diffusion of knowledge
permalink Tuesday, 07FEB2006:gaby joins the growing iqalungmiut crowd of bloggers. check out southward bound for her reflections on her upcoming move back to the south from our arctic climes. lots of nice photos, including ones with this week's arrival of the airbus A380 in iqaluit - my fave is the 'baby' plane tagging along underneath the tail of the A380 :)
i swung by the AFN in the afternoon to make sure that i had left everything kosher the night before. also found out that JFre will be co-hosting a radio show on friday nites at 7, so tune in before you head out to the legion. i also dropped in at the arctic college to register for a week-long short documentary making / final cut pro course. i'm told that we'll get a chance to make 3 minute films and then hold a mini-film festival.
also, my monthly comic book and dvd shipment arrived today. i can't wait to re-visit my fave film of last year, 'kamikaze girls' !
- link of the day: the president of
the university of michigan
defends
their involvement with GoogleBook:
The University of Michigan’s partnership with Google offers three overarching qualities that help fulfill our mission: the preservation of books; worldwide access to information; and, most importantly, the public good of the diffusion of knowledge. ... we absolutely must think beyond today. We know that these digital copies may be the only versions of work that survive into the future. We also know that every book in our library, regardless of its copyright status today, will eventually fall into the public domain and be owned by society. As a public university, we have the unique task to preserve them all, and we will.
hurray ! another blizzard day !
permalink Wednesday, 08FEB2006:twas another morning with snow blowing thru the town helter-skelter. the city had ordered its vehicles off the road (meaning no snowplows) and it was just a matter of waiting for the official announcement on cbc. once the office closure was finally confirmed, i gladly rolled back into bed to sleep the rest of the day time away. somebody commented that it seems like i sleep a lot, but it's more that i don't go to sleep when i should. whatever i'm awake and doing always seems more interesting than sleeping it away, but then i have to overcompensate to catch up.
in the evening i played a bit of online poker, wrote up some liner notes to a mp3 mix of songs from my mix cd's for my sister in shanghai and watched the bill joy episode of cringeley's nerd t.v. he talked about designing a sailboat to be as self-contained as possible by minimizing its energy profile and how, by following up on the technologies required, this provides insights to his current day job as a venture capitalist. he also cites the lack of societal investment in education and an economy too reliant on consumption as problems that we should be concerned about.
history lesson double-header
permalink Thursday, 09FEB2006:spent most of the day working on a single project and was very glad to pull myself out of it at the close of the day. from the office, i went up to the astro to catch a doubleheader of 'munich' and 'water' since it was the last night for both films in iqaluit. a bonus was the fact that the price tonight was only 5 bucks a movie! i splurged at the consession in hopes of restraining the worst of bryan's ascerbic grumbling.
'munich' was intense and didn't try to paper over the brutality of the back-and-forth rounds of ambushes and assassinations. spielberg made the world of the 70's almost naive - the world that once seemed so black and white is today just overwhelmed by contradictions and compromises. the french fellow who played the retired spy figurine painter in 'ronin' appears here as a french patriarch who trades in covert information.
'water' was also an intense historical tale, but this time of 1930's india, when gandhi was promoting passive resistance. it's no wonder that deepa mehta's film caused so much controversy when they tried to film in india - the fact that there are still some 31 million widows who still live the same repressed life today, 70 years after the time period portrayed in this film, astounds me. however, that depressing thought was alleviated somewhat by the random injections of bollywood-style romance and bright infusions of colour. sarala, who played the young girl 'chuyia', was a joy to watch and john abraham sent many girls hearts a-flutter as 'narayana', the proto-feminist law student.
friday 5:01 in the quiet lounge
permalink Friday, 10FEB2006:went to the legion after work today to enjoy their usual friday steak supper special. we were there to celebrate kevin's birthday (a few days early). we kept extending tables on either side until we had almost the entire wall of the quiet lounge covered by the time stef and joanne joined us. joanne was meeting most of the people at the table for the first time and it was kind of neat to note where i how met them myself - broomball (mark, kevin, gavin, martha), press club (maria), banff mountain film festival (nikki, laura), plays (jeff, ellen), poker (jessica), co-workers (dan) etc.
i wandered off to the pool room for a couple of games with johnny cash playing on the jukebox and then cut out early since i knew i wouldn't be able to sleep in all day on saturday. of course, my efforts at trying to be a good boy failed miserably as the neighbours upstairs jammed until around 4:30 in the morning. i should have just gone up and joined them ... :(
are all the cool people connected somehow ?
permalink Saturday, 11FEB2006:showed up at the alianait arts festival meeting a couple of hours after it started (by design). in june, we'll be hosting a 2-week marathon of artsy events, including an arts and crafts fair, music festivals, storytelling events and a fringe festival. it looks like i'll be providing some technical support, but since i'll be down south for a few weeks in june, someone else may have to do some of the actual legwork.
iqaluit broomball chronicle:
players: dan, christian, me
honourable mentions: gavin, julian
with kevin likely hung over, mark moving, JFra preparing a latin supper and JFre showing up at the wrong time, saturday's broomball event was sparsely attended. dan, christian and i scored dozens of goals apiece, with dan nudging christian as the day's scoring champion by a hair. gavin and julian were shut out completely! ... well ... actually ... they decided not to suit up with so few people. this might be considered a wussy thing to do, except that they *did* show up to play, so slagging them just wouldn't be right.
in the early evening, i attended the latin supper at the francophone association. malcolm and chris were there as well, so we feasted on curried shrimp, pollo y arroz, spare ribs and a fruit platter. very yummy. yoan cornered me to persuade me to help him out with a kid's play at l'école des trois soleils at the end of march. i warned him that i wouldn't be able to make it for the actual show, as i would be in montreal that weekend, but that i would assist with arranging the lighting equipment that he would need if he found someone to run the board.
from the AFN, we headed over to the kamotiq at the four corners to meet up with sara and lee. a bit of conversation, a few carvings bought and then we went our separate ways - chris to work, malcolm and sara to the legion and me to the elks club where robert had invited folks over to help celebrate his birthday (a week in advance - gotta love payday).
when i got there around 9, tho, the place was pretty quiet. of course, this meant that i was able to pick up a ticket quite easily. the baffin blues band was playing their final show in town as mr. corbett will be departing. i met jamal's father and hung out with robert, jen and john and even danced a couple of times as helen dragged me out onto the dance floor, snow boots and all.
during a band break, i found out that nikki had some previous theatre experience, both onstage and behind the scenes, and was interested in getting back into the biz. amazingly enough, she didn't instantly flee when i suggested the idea of assisting me as an understudy for some of the events in the next couple of months - hurray ! so, we'll get her started on the banff mountain film festival in the booth on march 18th, then to the lighting board for yoan's play the week after and then to the wild and wooly alianait festival in june.
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