21 December 2007, early morning
I’ve been looking for boots recently. Actually, I was willing to settle for anything remotely suitable for winter weather. This shopping has complicated by the fact I am also spending most of my time wearing some skinny jeans I bought a couple months back. It’s hard to find shoes that go with skinny jeans.
I hopped off the subway at Dundas West station, early for a dentist appointment. I’m not a skater, but since the Junction Skateshop sells shoes and is right next to the station I thought i’d pop in. It’s a cool shop: they have a lot of unique and limited run stuff. I tried on a couple different pairs of Vans, but had to run off before I could buy anything. The dude I was chatting with about shoes was nice enough, so I told him I’d be back.
There is a brief interlude here where I learn my appointment has been delayed. Rather than go back to the shop I decide to go buy a giant tub of detergent that I am way too skinny and weak to carry back to my apartment. Somehow I manage.
After getting my teeth cleaned I was back at the skate shop. This time I thought I’d try on some high top shoes. I’m almost certain I haven’t worn high tops since high school. I was torn between two pairs. The first was a pair of The Quiet Army / Telfords. The second were the ones I bought: the every so slightly more practical all-weather MJ-3 Highs. I am one step closer to my dream of becoming a skateboarder. I’m still undecided if I like the way they look with my jeans. I guess I’ll have to get used to it either way.
As you can see my life is very simple and uncomplicated.
[3] Life
19 December 2007, early morning
I just had the most awesome chocolate croissants from Ma Maison. My coworker brought some in on her way to work. I think I might like them more than the ones from Clafouti. Damn that was a good croissant.
[1] Life
18 December 2007, mid-morning
My friend Linh’s birthday was this Saturday. I made it out to XO Karaoke Bar to celebrate around midnight. The snowstorm was just getting underway, but I didn’t want to miss the party. Linh took lots of pictures, which I’ll never get to see because they are probably on Facebook. God damn fucking Facebook. I think of all the stupid things on the Internet that I’ve signed up for — twitter, flickr, etc — Facebook has the greatest penetration amongst everyone I know. It’s pretty much the only service I can think of that would actually be useful because everyone I know uses it. It kind of sucks I hate it so much. Fuck you Facebook.
[6] Life
18 December 2007, early morning
I know there are some people out there that think snow is a magical beautiful thing: you need to ignore those people. Snow sucks. Next to the arctic temperature, snow is the worse thing about Canadian winters. In the city snow is white for a few moments, and then transforms into slush and ice and slushy ice. It is just a vector for salt and dirt to get on your shoes and clothes. Maybe if Toronto had the infrastructure in place to clear the sidewalks of snow I wouldn’t mind it so much. Perhaps snow would be something I’d look at fondly while walking down clear sidewalks. Sadly, Toronto doesn’t know what to do with all its snow, and I have to navigate through the ice and slush my fellow Torontonians have trudged through before me. Snow sucks.
[1] Life
16 December 2007, late afternoon
I’ve spent the day inside today. The city has been blanketed with snow. I can’t remember the last time we had a storm like this. I think it’s been a while since we’ve had this much snow before January. It doesn’t seem as apocalyptic as they were making it out to be yesterday, but it has been snowing non-stop since last night. The only good thing about the winter is watching the snow from the comfort of your home; also, coming in from the cold: nothing beats that.
[2] Life
We gonna kill all you mother fuckers.
Now when I came out I told you it was just about Biggie.
Then everybody had to open their mouth with a mother fucking opinion.
Well this is how we gon’ do this: Fuck Mobb Deep, Fuck Biggie, Fuck Bad Boy as a staff, record label, and as a mother fucking crew.
And if you want to be down with Bad Boy then fuck you too.
Chino XL, fuck you too.
All you mother fuckers, fuck you too.
— Tupac Shakur, Hit ‘Em Up
3 December 2007, early morning
It was my destiny to finish watching Heroes without Shima, so I spent most of the weekend finishing up the first season. When Shima and I watched the first episode a few weeks back we had no desire whatsoever to keep watching: the acting was bad, the dialog was bad, and the story went nowhere. Everyone else on the planet seemed obsessed with how awesome the show was, so Shima and I watched another episode: the second episode is much cooler and the ending is great. If the premier of the show was the first two episodes, then the pacing of the first episode would make a lot more sense. By the 4th or 5th episode the show starts to feel pretty solid. By then the actors all seem to have a good grasp of what their characters are about, so there are fewer awkward scenes to watch. The first season on the whole is very entertaining. By the last episode the overall story for the season is nicely resolved, with enough loose ends to start off the next season. (This is in contrast to a similar show like Lost, where the finales are exciting, but each season hasn’t resolved much of anything.) Heroes is good, contrary to what Mezan might tell you.
[7] Television
30 November 2007, late at night
My friend Haruka attends a musical school here in the city. The last time I recall her singing was at a karaoke bar downtown; she was singing Rhapsody in Blue by Da Pump (Tomo was rapping). She’s come a long way since then, now attending a school where everyone seems to be some sort of freaky musical prodigy. Shima, Yang, and I went to a little show put on by some of the students at the school and it was stunning. I really don’t know where to start I was so very impressed. Really, the only thing disappointing about the whole night was that they didn’t have any CDs for sale. (At least they have some music up on MySpace.) I’m not sure when their next show will be, but it is well worth checking out. There aren’t too many venues to hear indie R&B in the city — let alone j-pop.
[6] Music | Life
29 November 2007, late morning
If some Muslims have their way, it will soon be illegal to say Muslim immigration is bad for the West. 9-11 be damned.
Michael apparently still holds onto the notion that too much immigration into the US is what caused 9/11. If you are ever so unlucky as to read through an articles on Vdare you will find that a lot of people think immigration policy is the root cause of all the ills in the West. If you suffer with high taxes you can blame immigration. Unemployed? Blame immigration. High blood pressure? You’re worrying about immigration too much. Can’t get all the stars in Super Mario DS? That sounds like an immigration issue to me. No date to the prom? Damn those sexy immigrant boys and girls. And 9/11? Well that is obviously an immigration issue: if the attackers weren’t here how could they fly planes into the Twin Towers? (You know, because planes from abroad never ever enter the US.) You may also recall that for similar reasons immigration was the root cause of the Virginia Tech massacre.
Michael is upset with the Canadian Islamic Congress who are upset with Mark Steyn. Steyn wrote an article MacLeans, The Future Belongs to Islam, they have issues with. A part of me likes reading articles like The Future Belongs to Islam just to sit in awe of the ignorance and arrogance it takes to write something like that. Some people really need to read A Discourse on Colonialism.
Steyn and his ilk look at the Middle East and see a place where people hate the West because they apparently have nothing better to hate on. For people like him there is no history or context to anything. Steyn mentions, “in the same three decades as Ulster’s ‘Troubles,’ the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam,” but doesn’t stop to consider why that may be. When did the US decide that propping up a regime in Saudi Arabia was a good idea? When did they decide that maybe Eygpt wasn’t so bad after all? (Wait: who was flying those planes again?) And was it really Islam that radicalized them? I imagine if you are young and your life is shit it won’t take an Imam to make you angry. So yeah, I don’t think Steyn’s article is exceptional or interesting or even well thought out. It rehashes arguments bandied about all the time: it’s all demographics and “oh-no what will White people do?”.
Now I can see why Muslims would find the article offensive, as apparently Muslims are the future architects of the destruction of civilization as we know it. At the very least Steyn acknowledges half-assedly that not all Muslims are terrorists. I’m sure the Human Rights commission will give him points for that.
[10] Current Events | Politics
28 November 2007, late evening
Today I discovered MobileScrobbler, which I have to say is a very cool application. It’s a Last.FM client for the iPhone or iPod Touch. It works like the desktop scrobblers that integrates with iTunes, pinging the Last.FM servers whenever you play a new song on your iPod. This is actually a good use of the network connectivity of the iPhone. It’s neat watching your Last.FM page update while out and about with your iPod. (The only thing I don’t like about the program is how it’s poorly written. Not that I can really fault a program someone is giving away for free.) Programs like this make me want to learn Objective-C.
Code | iPhone
26 November 2007, early morning
Shima and I watched the last two episodes of Firefly last night, and then stayed up a bit late to watch Serenity. I still can’t believe Fox canceled that show. (Well no, I can, but it still bugs me.) Firefly is so kick ass it’s such a shame it ends so abruptly. (That the last episode is particularly good is all the more painful.) Serenity does a reasonably good job of tying up some loose ends, but still leaves so many questions unanswered. I wish someone would give Josh Weadon a buck of money so he could make a couple more films. Or a mini-series. Anything really. There is so much good material in that show, and so many good characters, it’s a shame its all left untapped. Saffron? Early the Bounty Hunter? It’s such a classic show. If you haven’t seen Firefly you really need to.
Television | Movies
25 November 2007, lunch time
My friends and I watched Fay Grim last night. What a strange film. Parker Posey plays a lady tasked by the CIA to retrieve her fugitive husband’s rambling notebook confessions, which apparently contain national security secrets. The story moves forward from there, and is entertaining for the most part. Every shot in the film is at an angle. Everything is skewed, which makes for a weird viewing experience. Related to this would be the acting, which also seems a bit off. The film feels a bit surreal, but it really isn’t a surreal film. It’s hard to describe I suppose. We discovered after watching the movie that it’s a sort-of sequel to another film, Henry Fool. So, if you do plan on watching this film, you might want to watch that one first. Also, Parkey Posey is cute, and she looks awesome in that dress she wears when she arrives in Paris.
The Fay Grim web site.
Movies
23 November 2007, mid-afternoon
I’ve been reading up on Ruby in my spare time, while writing some C code at work. The differences between the languages is so stark. Here is a little problem I had at work recently.
Read the rest of this post. (333 words)
[2] Code | Nerd Alert
23 November 2007, early morning
My friends and I were at Ethiopian House last night. It’s a nice little place between Welesley and Bloor on Yonge. It looks like a house they converted into a restaurant. I had never had Ethiopian food before; it reminded me very much of Tamil food. The dishes are all served on a large piece of bread called Injera, which is reminiscent of a fleshier dosa crossed with appam. (It’s basically a crepe like bread.) We asked them to pick a mix of stuff for us: half meat half vegetarian. The meat dishes were a bit spicy, though I imagine they could have made it crazy hot had we asked them. The vegetarian dishes were mild, and were straight out of Sri Lanka. It’s strange how similar the food was. Everything was very tasty; we all enjoyed it. (If you’re a vegetarian it is definitely worth checking out, because the vegetarian dishes aren’t an afterthought.) We had Ethiopian coffee after our meal, which was excellent. You need to order it before your meal because it takes them a good while to prepare it. There is a bit of ceremony involved in the whole process, with them bringing you the beans as they roast them for you to smell, and bringing everything out with some burning frankincense. Ethiopian House was quite nice. The staff are friendly, and the food is good.
[2] Restaurants and Bars
22 November 2007, early morning
I was up later than I should have been last night playing Portal. It’s a new sort-of-puzzle game from Valve that uses their Source Engine — that’s the same engine that powers Half-Life 2. The game is simple enough: you walk around with a gun that can shoot portals on to certain surfaces; you can then jump through these portals to travel from one point to another. There are 19 levels, each with puzzles that involves doing something funky with portals and your environment. The trailer basically sums up the game better than I can with text. The story is also simple enough: you wake up in a lab and are tasked with doing stuff with the portal gun; a computerized voice basically explains your situation, and is there talking to you throughout the game. You’re basically a lab rat for the Aperture company, testing out their portal gun. The game is funny; far funnier than I would have thought it would be. The computerized voice is constantly saying the sorts of things you hear at the end of a drug commercial. The game is fairly short. I went to bed after getting to level 18, just shy of finishing the game. I think there are bonus levels and other things to do once you’ve finished the core game. I imagine people will start making their own levels as well. Portal is selling via Steam for $20 right now. I bought it as part of Valve’s Orange Box, which also nets you Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episodes 1, Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2. (Games you already own you can give to friends, so Dave is now the proud owner of Half-Life 2.) Portal is a lot of fun and I can’t recommend it enough.
(Aside: Playing the game reminded me somewhat of the sorts of nonsensical levels you could build in Marathon Infinity. The way you built levels in Forge let you do things that didn’t make any sense in the physical world. You could have tunnels that only existed if you viewed them from the front, that led to invisible rooms inside other rooms, and all sorts of other strange stuff. You could basically construct levels with fixed portals: lots of fun in multiplayer games.)
Update: I just finished the game. The last level is really something else. It’s like you’re playing a whole other game. I can’t wait to try the advanced levels. The ending was kick ass.
[4] Video Games
20 November 2007, early morning
I miss my Dragon Beard shoes. They were easily the best pair of shoes I’ve ever owned, true works of art you could walk around on. My pair are more or less unwearable, they’re so beat up, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I feel like flying to Tokyo just to buy a new pair.
[2] Life
19 November 2007, early morning
Jonnie To makes cool Hong Kong triad films. Election is no exception. The movie is about an election taking place in a particular triad to elect its new chairman. Of course, since this is a triad, there is some corruption, and some anger, and a little bit of drama. The movie has a strange pace to it, and the story drags on near the end. Every time you think the movie is done, there is more to the story. I don’t think it’s one of To’s better films, but it is an interesting enough movie. It actually feels very much like the introduction to a much longer series of triad films. There are a ton of characters, each given just enough screen time that you develop a sense of what they are about. There are some really great shots and scenes, which I suppose is true of all his films. To has a great style, and if you are looking for a different take on a triad movie, this one is worth checking out.
Election reviewed at Rotten Tomatoes. (Fixed link)
[3] Movies
19 November 2007, early morning
Steph, Rishi and I went to check out the Media Reform screening of History of Oil. The movie is basically a film adaptation of the original one-man play — powered by bicycles — that looks at the recent history of oil. It’s incredibly funny and thoughtful. Comedian Robert Newman does a good job of pointing out a lot of the hypocrisy and double-speak coming from the media and are text books on the West’s relationship to the Middle East. I don’t think any description I give of the movie will do it justice. Lucky for you, you can catch the whole thing on Google Video.
Robert Newman’s home page.
Movies
15 November 2007, early morning
I watched No Country for Old Men last night with Mahi. The story is simple enough: a fellow finds some money at a drug-deal gone wrong, takes it, and is chased down by a lunatic trying to get it back. The local sheriff is always a step behind the pair. I can’t stress how good this film is. It has to be the best film the Coen brothers have done yet. Each actor does a great job, there isn’t any dead weight. The script is solid. It’s shot beautifully. What I found most interesting was the total lack of music: there is none till the ending credits — and even those don’t start right away. Tension in the film is built solely by the actors, the situations, and the way things are shot; it’s quite impressive. I really think people need to see this film.
The official No Country for Old Men web site.
[4] Movies
14 November 2007, late morning
I emailed Adam’s office about the ugly billboard up on the municipal housing just west of Bloor and Lansdowne. His office got in touch with MLS, and passed on a response to me:
The sign is a third party fascia sign that has no permit. Charges have already been initiated against the property owner and the matter is now before the courts. As for your last question I suggest you direct your enquiry to the sign company and or property owner for it is of no concern to MLS.
Foolishly, I thought I had made a difference. Several weeks passed and I noticed the sign was still up. I thought I’d email the fellow behind Illegal Signs with the information the councilor’s office gave me to see what his take on things was:
What they didn’t tell you is they are asking for a $1000 fine and that the City can take down the sign if it wants. … The city has decided not to enforce the law.
Now, clearly ugly billboards aren’t the biggest problem facing Toronto, and they certainly aren’t the biggest problem in my area, but this really does speak to just how lame the city is. Unlike Toronto’s other problems, this one is incredibly easy to solve: the city can take down illegal signs. More so, they can probably fine the companies the cost of doing so. This isn’t the sort of problem that requires creative thinking to sort out.
(By strange coincidence, this sign I emailed Rami Tebello about was discussed on his site just yesterday.)
Update May 6th 2009: The sign is still up. Go City Hall! Go!
[4] Bloor and Lansdowne | Toronto
14 November 2007, early morning
I took the 26W to Mississauga yesterday. Mississauga is a strange city. Unlike most cities, where the city centre is tight and quite walkable, Mississauga’s is sparse and sprawling. I got off at the Square One bus terminal, and started walking to the mall. The terminal and the mall aren’t connected; I had to trek through some parking lots. I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then left the mall to go to the Living Arts Centre. It all felt like a real journey. I’m not a big fan of Mississauga. It’s all sub-divisions or office parks separated by 6 lane roads. If you don’t have a car it’s not a very friendly city to be in. I try and avoid the city when I can.
Shima and I were there last night as part of the conversation21 lecture series. Shima wanted to hear Jan Gehl speak. He talked about how modern cities, those that came to life after the 50s, are designed at a 60km/h scale: they are meant to be lived in while zooming around in a car. You have big billboards, big buildings, big everything, scattered through out a sprawling city. The city becomes a series of private venues connected by roads. Real interaction between people gets lost in such a city. He had some great aerial shots of some cities that were totally devoid of people: it was just buildings and cars. Gehl advocates designing at the 5km/h scale, which is a more human scale. Cities should be designed to bring people together. I’m probably not doing his talk justice. He is an excellent speaker.
There is apparently some serious interest in the city of Mississauga to make the city more livable. I’m not sure it’s possible to accomplish such a goal, but the city certainly seems enthusiastic about trying. Toronto really does seem old and busted in comparison. I can’t recall the last time I heard something — anything really — positive coming from city hall.
[2] Toronto | Current Events
13 November 2007, early morning
I’m barely a third of the way through Naomi Klein’s last essay for Harper’s, Disaster Capitalism, and I’m already seething with rage. I suspect the last two-thirds will be equally as good and as frustrating to read. I love Harper’s.
After each new disaster, it’s tempting to imagine that the loss of life and productivity will finally serve as a wake-up call, provoking the political class to launch some kind of “new New Deal.” In fact, the opposite is taking place: disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of a public sphere has no place at all. Call it disaster capitalism. Every time a new crisis hits — even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free-market ideology — the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic re-engineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned, that is on display in Baghdad.
Consider the instant reactions to last summer’s various infrastructure disasters. Four days after the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, a Wall Street Journal editorial had the solution: “tapping private investors to build and operate public roads and bridges,” with the cost made up from ever-escalating tolls. After heavy rain caused the shutdown of New York City’s subway lines, the New Yark Sun ran an editorial under the headline “Sell the Subways.” It called for individual train lines to compete against one another, luring customers with the safest, driest service — and “charging higher fares when the competing lines, stingier on their investments, were shut down with tracks under water.”[It’s not hard to imagine what this free market in subways would look like: high-speed lines ferrying commuters from the Upper West Side to Wall Street, while the trains serving the South Bronx wouldn’t just continue their long decay-they would simply drown.
It’s a very good read so far. I imagine her book The Shock Doctrine on the same topic will be an interesting read. (It inspired Alfonso Cuarón to create a short film of the same name.) The October Harper’s is particularly good; this months not so much, though I did enjoy the Mitt Romney article very much.
(Also, Harper’s new web site continues to amaze me. I’m so impressed with what they’ve done.)
[2] Current Events | Politics
11 November 2007, late morning
It took a refresh of my profile, whatever that means, but my phone is now connected to the Internet via Fido and EDGE. I think the trick with Fido is to keep calling till you get a customer service rep that knows what they are doing, and isn’t afraid when you have a non-Fido phone. I’ll post about Fido’s EDGE speeds once I have used it more. EDGE isn’t slow as molasses, but it is certainly reminiscent of the internet via dial-up. Fido actually has proper 3G service in Toronto, so I’m going to have to see if I can find someone with a 3G phone so I can compare what the difference really is. For now I did want to say that browsing a handful of sites over the last couple of minutes has ate up a half a meg of bandwidth. Fido charges 5 cents per kilobyte if you aren’t on an internet plan, and 1 cent per kilobyte once you go over your bandwidth when you do have a plan. Their standard internet plans are lame. (And really, their 3G options aren’t much better.) I can see why Apple isn’t keen on releasing an iPhone here in Canada without a matching data plan to go with it: stories about people being bankrupt by their iPhones can’t be good for business.
iPhone | Life
8 November 2007, mid-afternoon
I called Fido twice to see if I can get my phone upgraded. The first time they said their computer systems were down and they couldn’t see what was up with my account. The second time, the lady on the phone couldn’t hear me. She said their was something wrong with their phones. Sometimes I feel like Fido is slowly crashing and burning.
Update: The story continues…
Ram: Can I sign up for your new 3G data plans if I am using a phone that uses EDGE?
Fido Lady: What’s Edge?
I shouldn’t be mean. She sounded like a sweet girl, and she did get me all set up after all was said and done. I have unlimited internet for the next 4 months, starting tomorrow it seems.
[11] Life
8 November 2007, mid-morning
I installed Git on a couple servers here at work and on my machine at home in order to give it a whirl. Git is a distributed version control system, famous for being developed by Linus Torvalds. It is currently in use to manage to Linux Kernel. Git is quite different than CVS and its successor SVN in that there aren’t any central repositories you pull your work from and submit your work back to. With Git, you can clone an existing repository and it becomes your own sandbox to play in; you can create branches and tags and do all sorts of stuff in your own repository, which no other developer needs to worry about. To actually share your changes, the work flow suggested is that you set up a ‘public’ clone of your repository which you submit your final changes to, and which other developers pull changes from. (You could also just share your actual repository.) Although the system is distributed, a group could still maintain a single ‘main’ repository that everyone pushes their changes to, and pulls from when they want a final build of a product. The big plus I’ve noticed so far is that since you don’t need to talk to a server all the actions you perform on your repository are very fast.
Apparently Git was tricky to use when it first came out. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Setting up a repository is dead easy — far easier than the same task in SVN — and adding files, changing them, and committing your changes is also dead simple. Perhaps things get trickier when you move onto the more esoteric features in Git, but I suspect for most of the work a developer does it works well enough.
Linus gave a talk on Git at Google a little while back. I had never heard him speak at length before. It’s actually an entertaining talk, though he’s a bit of a jerk-ass. And by “a bit” I mean he’s a serious jerk-ass. (It’s been a good while since i’ve been around that sort of arrogance: high school was a long time ago.) I do have to say I find his style of talking kind of refreshing. Presumably he’s waiting for someone else to come along, call him a moron, and show him how he should be doing things.
Code
