senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
sundays are just way too short ...
permalink Sunday, 12MAR2006:slept from 6 in the morning until around 4 in the afternoon. the sunlight was just fading into a golden shimmer over the horizon. i started by making a list of all the things that i needed to do - and then promptly disregarded it completely to do a bunch of other things, beginning with another hours-long session of diablo II.
this was followed by doing the dishes, cooking supper and re-watching my favourite movie of last year, 'shimotsuma monogatari' (kamikaze girls). the mish-mash of teenage friendship, outrageous fashion, motorcycle gangs, pachinko parlours and manga, all wrapped up in an excellent soundtrack, was just as good the second time around. plus did i mention hot young japanese babes ?!
then it was laundry duty and a round of online poker to try to recover some of the coin that i dumped into 2 overnight tourneys online. at the same time, i previewed the tracklist for tomorrow night's radio show to see if i could put together some thematic sets.
ego exposed
permalink Monday, 13MAR2006:aur.oral exposures setlist for 13mar2006:
- may it be - enya
- outlaws - luke doucet
- shadowland - steve earle
- double life - jack de keyzer
- if love was a gun - divinyls
- scream - echobelly
- precious pain - melissa etheridge
- frying pan - evan dando
- how can our love be gone - joe dolce featuring lyn van hecke
- learning how to smile - everclear
- everybody come down - the delgados
- how i came to love my vagina - eve ensler
- i'm on fire - electrelane
- here with me - dido
- mr. blue sky - electric light orchestra
- love grows (where my rosemary goes) - edison lighthouse
- all around me - educated guess
- good for nothin' - dance hall crashers
- play me the waltz of an angel - the derailers
- hey suburbia - even in blackouts
here's the link to the show, good for one week or 25 downloads, whichever comes first.
pressed for time
permalink Tuesday, 14MAR2006:anna's book club in town is talking about reading 'anna karenina' (no relation) next month. i'm not sure that i'm up for reading a 'long' novel, neal stephenson doorstops notwithstanding. my current style is more along the lines of a book a minute.
- ip idiocy link of the day:
terry mcbride details
why he is funding a file-sharer
against the RIAA lawsuit.
The music market is down not due to P2P "piracy," but for four simple reasons: a) stiff competition for the entertainment dollar with formats like video games and movies, both have much larger marketing spends; b) the replacement cycle is over - digital music does not scratch or wear out like past formats; c) one now has the ability to purchase and listen only to the great songs without filler; and d) mass-merchant retailers today carry only the current hits, with little to no catalog.
a hat trick of hat tricks
permalink Wednesday, 15MAR2006:iqaluit broomball chronicle
team white: mark, marco, christian, me, JFra (1st half)
team black: dan, jacques, JFre, julian, JFra (2d half)
team black went ahead first with a couple of goals by JFre. however, team white struck back as marco assisted goals by both christian and JFra. mark popped one in as well, to put team white ahead. it was all downhill from there, tho.
first dan scored a single and then jacques got one to make it 4-3. it was then that JFra switched sides, to the woe of team white. JFra completed his hat trick, with 2 goals for team black, jacques rounded off his own hat trick and JFre finally notched his as well. the final score ended up 9-3 - a deluge of goals that kind of makes up for the dearth of goals in the last game.
search for the alien inside
permalink Thursday, 16MAR2006:- link of the day: the
nanobiobot
future will demonstrate the
triumph of chemical imperialism
over human-centric concepts of
life:
- 3 laws of nanobotics:
- nanobiotechnology will result in the complete elimination of the [carbon] barrier between living and nonliving materials
- it is not possible to ensure that devices created using the techniques of nanobiotechnology will only transmit molecular information [in one direction] to the target system
- the carbon barrier will be eliminated when humans create the first synthetic molecular device capable of changing the state of a living system via direct, intentional transfer of specific chemical information from one to the other
the article is a disjointed mess but does discuss some ideas that i think will become increasingly significant. you just have to use your own imagination instead of the author's. :)
searching for symmetry
permalink Friday, 17MAR2006:joined a few BMFF volunteers for lunch at wizard's with demetri, the BMFF host flown up for our show. the curry chicken wrap that i had was fine except that they didn't leave out the onions as i had asked. from there, i walked down the block to the motor vehicles office to pick up a copy of my drivers' abstract from wade so i can be added to the list of folks approved to drive the truck at work.
after work, i joined laura at the BMFF ticket table at the northmart. there was one couple that were very keen on buying tickets, but admitted that they had only been in town for a few hours. however, i knew that i had seen the fellow before. turns out he had been in iqaluit for a short stint in the summer, and had been called out the same night i was after the museum break-in.
after that, i grabbed a cab to head over to andrew's for a poker tourney. while we were waiting for more people to show up, 7 of us played a quick preliminary game. i busted out in 3d when cyndi caught a flush after both of us matched hole cards with K-10's. this was even more astonishing seeing as we had just split a pot with A-7's each.
for the main tourney, there were 15 of us to start with and cyndi and i again rose towards the top of the heap. i was a bit choked when the payout regime changed partway thru the tourney without any notification or debate. however, i did finish in the money in 3d place after getting tired of facing off against cyndi and jeff, who was actually sitting in to play lena's hand. my 3d place finish basically just returned my buy-ins to me.
however, in the 5-hander side game right afterwards, i took down the top prize, so my wallet ended the night at least a few bills thicker than it had started. of course, i lost most of it again online :(
- link of the day:
ok cupid test
thanks (?) to wrenagade i stumbled across this personal info hoover disguised as a romantic personality profile quiz. of course, it's not an earth-shattering realization that the results merely tell you what you want to hear - if it were otherwise, you would have answered the questions differently, right ? here's what popped up for me:
The Slow Dancer Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer (DGLDm) Steady, reliable, and cradling her tenderly. Take a deep breath, and let it out real easy...you are The Slow Dancer. Your focus is love, not sex, and for your age, you have average experience. But you're a great, thoughtful guy, and your love life improves every year. There's also a powerful elimination process working in your favor: most Playboy types get stuck raising unwanted kids before you even begin settling down. The women left over will be hot and yours. Your ideal woman is someone intimate, intelligent, and very supportive. While you're not exactly the life of the party, you do thrive in small groups of smart people. Your circle of friends is extra tight and it's HIGHLY likely they're just like you. You appreciate symmetry in relationships.
sadly, this profile was not comforting at all - what came to mind was an old rich codger who stumbles around a retirement home dance floor, still vainly searching for 'the one' ...
banff mountain film festival returns to iqaluit
permalink Saturday, 18MAR2006:after staying up late playing poker, it was quite a task to get up for an AGM that started before noon. however, the prospect of being fed on-site did make the concept more palatable to body, if not mind. after surviving over 3 hours with no end in sight, i gave up my chair to head down the hall to the astro.
demetri was already waiting for me by the door and we lingered there until mauricio came by with the keys to let us in. poesie showed up a few minutes later and we began to prepare for the technical run-thru to make sure all the equipment worked together properly. after the pain of last year, this year's prep went much more smoothly.
my fave film was actually one that our group didn't select for the program. since we had to test out the colour saturation and subtitles anyway, we grabbed a disc at random to put in the machine and poesie picked 'off road to athens'.
'off road to athens' followed a group of top u.s. mountain cyclists as they competed with each other for the limited number of open positions on the u.s. olympic team. only 3 men and 1 woman would be named to represent their country. at our film selection meeting, we were worried that it would be 'rah-rah america' and that was enough for it to be overlooked. however, the film mostly featured personal stories of the cyclists, and all of the races shown were world cup races set outside of the u.s. - madrid, houffalize (where trailside spectators would pat riders on the bum as they went by), mont-saint-anne in quebec and calgary. a summer rainstorm kicked in partway thru the calgary race and it was gruesome to watch the trail turn to muck. only 30 some cyclists from a field of over 100 actually finished the race.
'person as projectile' was an audience hit as the film featured a skier who took leaps off of very high ridges, landing flat on his back in the snow before sliding down onto his skis. we were amazed to see him get up from some of the dives.
'becoming a man in siberia' was also a crowd favourite as it featured 3 young men attempting to show that they are capable of living the traditional nomadic animal breeding lifestyle passed down to them by their ancestors.
'balancing point' was a very fun film, and involved filming a bunch of sequences of rock sculpture destruction with the intention of reversing the film and playing it backwards. a very neat effect.
'baffin island b.a.s.e. jump adventure' featured some of the world's most experienced BASE jumpers, taking off from cliffs outside of clyde river. these guys were *crazy*, with one even commemorating his 200th dive by going in the buff. the music in this film was the best of the evening.
'the lost people of mountain village' was a brilliant satire of both the excesses of mountain ski lodges and the overly-breathy docs that attempt to sensationalize anthropology.
after the films, we went down the hall to the frob to take in the reception sponsored by northwestel. unlike last year, the food just kept coming and i was glad to gorge myself after my day's exertions. i didn't win anything in the raffle draw this year, but quite a few of my co-workers will receive congratulatory calls come monday :)
- ip idiocy link of the day:
CRIA study
results contradicts its position
on P2P:
... the survey also asked why people bought less. Only 10% of respondents cited the availability of music downloads. Instead, people cited a long list of alternatives that have nothing to do with downloading including - price (16%), - nothing of interest (14%), - lack of time (13%), - collection is big enough (9%), - don't buy (7%), - listen to radio (7%), - change in tastes (6%), - no CD player (3%), - have an MP3 player (2%), - lack of opportunity to buy (2%), - watch more tv (2%), - age (1%), - only buy what I like (1%). Simply put, P2P simply is not a major factor behind decisions to buy less music.
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