18 October 2004, evening time
I liked Dinu's definition of Guerilla bloging so much, I decided to dedicate a whole post to it. I wait patiently for Guerilla bloging to be discussed at some bloging conference as the next big thing. Guerilla bloging will be the Mobloging of my generation.
16 October 2004, mid-afternoon
Mandy Moore was actually quite entertaining to watch as the Christian nut job in Saved. The film is about a few kids at a Christian high school down in the states. I don’t want to say anymore about the plot because it’s pretty ridiculous. The movie has a pretty good cast of teenage actors who all played their respective parts quite well. I thought the film was quite funny, though at times sappy; can’t fault them for that. Watching the special features you can see they wanted to make the film slightly racier then they were allowed. The movie points out the flaws and hypocrisy of evangelical christianity (and I suppose any religion for that matter), and does so in a cute way. The film is definitely work checking out.
16 October 2004, terribly early in the morning
My Kiev 35 arrived with little fanfare a few weeks back. After a few missteps I finally got to try it out last Sunday; I moved a few things into my new apartment, and was going to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening with Shima. We began by heading down to Queen West, in search of some Pumas. Shima had little luck finding anything she wanted or that was in her size. We continued further west in search of furniture shops. They have a few nice places around Bathurst and Queen, though most of the stores sold stuff I simply couldn’t afford.
I documented the whole outing with my new camera, who’s electric shutter didn’t inspire much confidence in me. My parents and Shima both laughed at my camera because it seems so broken. Even I had my doubts it was working. However, I am glad to say that the pictures came out quite nice. You can see them at my flickr home page. I’ve created a set of the photos. Flickr is probably the best photo album site on the internet, hands down. I’ll probably fill up We Must Abuse The Broadband with a few of my favourites from the roll. I got two great pictures of Shima, and some other interesting shots that day.
Comment [4] Life | Photography
15 October 2004, the wee hours
I’ve seen her twice now. Both times we get pretty close to taking it to the next level, but I always back off at the last minute. I don’t know why I’m so hesitant. I guess I feel this urge for things to stay the same. I think change is good though. I think I really need a change. So I’ve decided that next time I go to Ikea, I will actually buy something.
This post is dedicated to Shima and Roshanak, who like to write stuff nobody understands.
13 October 2004, the wee hours
I’ve done the unthinkable, and moved to the West-end. I’ve lived in Scarborough ever since I moved to Canada. Scarborough is the East end of Toronto, and a very nice place to live. East Side!!
It is strange being out of the suburbs. I walked down to the Bloor West Village to get groceries today and was surrounded by people. There are joggers everywhere here. The streets were reasonably busy. Unlike Scarborough, I stick out like a sore thumb, and definitely feel like a minority again. Scarborough has to be the most diverse part of Toronto. One day I hope the rest of the city catches up.
My apartment is barren, and would be thoroughly boring if not for the hot spot somewhere in this building. I thank you who has given me internet access. I am slowly making a list of things to buy. If people can recommend furniture stores in the city, and perhaps tips on furnishing a studio, you know where to comment.
10 October 2004, early afternoon
We played Pit last night. Dave won by a good margin. The results were interesting and will be discussed in this post.
10 October 2004, terribly early in the morning
Rishi bought me two books for my birthday, Gun Monkeys and Super Flat Times. Super Flat Times is twisted science fiction. The book is a collection of short stories, which are supposed to be the last memories of people who were executed by being buried alive in a giant concrete mass grave. The book is at times funny, but in a very dark sort of way. The future the book presents is a straight up dystopia. Orwell would have been proud. I found the stories a bit hard to get through. Some are very hard to read and comprehend. I’ll probably have to go through the book another time and read it more carefully. Strand-out short stories in the Super Flat Times in my opinion are: The Sound Gun, The Father Helmet, Crutches Used as Weapons, Behaviour Pilot, Instructions (This is one is hilarious) and the Life Jacket. This is definitely an interesting book, worth checking out.
8 October 2004, the wee hours
Steph stopped by and we watched the Apprentice together. I’m not a big fan of the show really, but there was nothing else on. Incidentally, I thought the lady that got fired tonight, Pamela, looked a lot like Candice Bergen aka Murphy Brown. Steph came by on her new motorbike. She hasn’t really mastered the art of driving just yet, but it is cool to see her ride nevertheless. I think she’s wanted a bike for ages now. I started it, which is strangely satisfying. For such a small bike it is quite loud—and heavy. I can see the appeal of motorbikes. They really are cool.
7 October 2004, the wee hours
I take the HWY 27 ‘Rocket’ on my way to work, and back home in the evening. The bus is supposed to arrive frequently during rush hour. The TTC defines that as busses arriving in intervals of time less then 10 minutes. I can tell you the TTC are liars. I waited 45 minutes for one yesterday night, and about 20 minutes for one today. I hate that bus—it’s always packed in the morning to boot.
3 October 2004, terribly early in the morning
Elephant is a strange movie. The film is about school shootings. I can’t say I didn’t like the movie, I just can’t say I did like it either. The movie is incredibly slow, though I don’t think this is what I didn’t enjoy about the film. I think the slow start to the film is important, and works well. The final third of the movie is much more dramatic and compelling because of the relative calm of the first two thirds of the film. My major complaint with Elephant is that there are way too many long and drawn out shots of the backs of people’s heads as they are walking around. Also, the ending seemed abrupt. The way the story is pieced together is interesting, but not enough to redeem what I think are flaws in the movie.
1 October 2004, early evening
I finally saw Tina Fey’s Mean Girls. The movie is probably one of the better teen-comedies I have seen in many, many, years. The movie is about how teenage girls are all basically beeyotches to one another; in a nutshell anyway. The movie is quite funny. Each of the characters in the film plays their part quite well. The film features plenty of stereotypes to laugh at. I have been told by some of my friends that the brown Mathelete in the movie reminds them of me. To those friends I say, “Hardly!”
1 October 2004, late afternoon
I just finished watching series 2 of the Office, a thoroughly brilliant comedy by the BBC. Series 2 picks up where Series 1 left off, with the other branch merging with David Brent’s branch, and Tim and Dawn’s almost-a-relationship still in limbo. The infusion of new characters into the mix is really great, and livens the show up. The new head manager Neil Godwin is basically everything David is not, professional, funny and charming. This season seems to really focus on David’s inability to cope with the various changes that have taken place at the office; David is a lot more coarse and angry this season then in the last. The show ends on a very bleak note, and I can see why many people would be upset if the show ended with this series. I need to track down the Christmas Special and that will be that.
I don’t want to rehash what I said about the show earlier, but if you haven’t seen this series, you should definitely watch it. The show is so funny, the cast are absolutely amazing, and the writing is top-notch. I think this has to be one of the best series I have ever stumbled upon.
Comment [3] Television
30 September 2004, mid-morning
Threadless sells cool t-shirts. I found out about the place through either Dave or Mezan, though I can’t recall who now. I own one t-shirt from the store, titled Monkey Attack. You can see a picture of me wearing it in the gallery now. This picture earned me a “Threadless Point”, which translate into some store credit. If you frequent the site, it may be in your interest to submit photos of yourself in your t-shirts.
Threadless is an interesting idea for a online t-shirt store; essentially Threadless is community driven. People submit ideas for t-shirts, and the rest of the community votes on the designs. Popular t-shirts will be printed, and the creators win money and credit at Threadless for their submission.
I’m a fan of the t-shirts, if only because you probably won’t bump into someone else wearing the same t-shirt as you. Soon I will be the owner of Corporate Zombie and Mmm… Oranges. If you live in Toronto, don’t buy these two t-shirts. Well that is if you and I are prone to bumping into one another.
Other t-shirt sites of some note are: the controversial t-shirt hell, which is probably not safe for work, and the sometimes funny Busted Tees. Now and Zen make some great t-shirts, and I own several. You can buy their wares from Bluenotes if you live in Canada. Their t-shirts usually aren’t as interesting as those from Threadless, but are generally quite funny. My favourite simply has the phrase “I’m like a superhero with no powers or motivation”.
There is a world of interesting clothing out there, so stop shopping at the Gap already.
30 September 2004, mid-morning
Brian Wilson started work on the follow up to one of the best albums ever made, Pet Sounds, but promptly went crazy. Even today in interviews he doesn’t quite seem to be ‘all there’. That’s alright though, because perhaps he needed to be a little crazy to finally finish his follow up to Pet Sounds, Smile. The original Smile must exist on studio tapes somewhere; what has been put out is the version of the album that Brian Wilson has been touring with. This album doesn’t feature Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys, the album features Wilson and his new backing band. Fear not, unlike George Lucas, Wilson is not a giant hack. The album sounds great, a perfect follow up to Pet Sounds.
The album features some hits you may be familiar with, like Good Vibrations. Apparently the Beach Boys took some of the materiel they recorded and used it on their subsequent albums. The album is pretty solid through and through. I haven’t heard any songs that really stick out as spectacular, but I haven’t had a chance to listen through the album more then a couples time. I’m enjoying the album, and recommend you check it out.
27 September 2004, terribly early in the morning
When I was in high school I was over at Rishi’s house one day and he played me a song from the film 1942: A Love Story, a Hindi movie. The details of why he would play this particular song I don’t remember at all. I don’t even think I was at all interested in Hindi music at the time. Regardless, I thought the song was brilliant. I find that songs I don’t understand all end up in my head sounding melancholy. This song was no exception. To this day I listen to it when I am in a bad mood. Today, I decided to look up what the songs title meant in English. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga means “When I saw this girl, I felt…”.
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hold
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
—Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
26 September 2004, terribly early in the morning
I’m reposting my PGP key, so you can all send me encrypted email. The government does read your email, I’m not just talking shit. I guess in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter; most of us aren’t planning to blow stuff up. However, incase you ever want to plan a surprise birthday party for your friend in the NSA, here is my key.
You can use my public-key to send me encrypted email. People in shady government organizations like to read your email, so using a program like GnuPG or PGP makes it a little harder for them to get at your oh-so-interesting email message.
I have lots of keys floating around that I do not use and can not revoke. I’ve been using PGP on and off (mostly off) for a long time now, and it seems everytime I start to use it again, I’ve lost my old key. This key is the one I’m using now. So if you have another key, don’t use it anymore.
fingerprint : BBBC 136E 4036 5070 D219 AE3D 09B9 4D37 D8E6 9C6D
The fingerprint above should match the fingerprint your crypto-program says my public key has. If this isn’t the case then something is not quite right. Perhaps someone has tampered with my public key. Though If this were the case, you would like to think they would also tamper with the fingerprint above.
Update May 21 2008: I lost my old key god knows when, so I have a brand new one. This sort of thing might be an issue if anyone actually spoke to me using GPG.
Update Nov 8, 2011: I have a new GPG key.
Comment [8] Technology
25 September 2004, mid-afternoon
Today’s West Indies vs. England ICC Champions Trophy cricket match was absolutely brilliant. England were bowled out for 217, a low score for one day cricket. However, England’s bowlers came back and managed to keep the West Indies at bay, bowling out all their top batsmen. (Lara was out for 14!) By the 34th over, Chanderpaul was out for 47 runs, and it looked like there was no hope left for the West Indies. They had 9 wickets, so the only batsmen left to bat were the teams bowlers. The batsmen left to bat were Browne and Bradshaw. Bowlers usually don’t make for good batsmen, but the Browne and Bradshaw partnership ended up winning the game. I have never seen bowlers play so well. Generally bowlers whack away at the ball and try to score some big points. Browne and Bradshaw were both playing like seasoned batsmen. The West Indies team has apparently been rather weak in recent years. I wonder if their winning this championship game will signal a change for their team. It was a exciting match that could have been won by either team.
23 September 2004, late afternoon
Ahilan bitches to no end about the sorry state Smallville is in. I’m mid way through season 3 now. In fact, I am midway through episode 11, Delete, of season 3. In this episode some sexy yet geeky computer hacker chick is controlling people via email. If that wasn’t good enough, Lana and Chloe get in a cat fight that ends up in the girls locker room shower. I can’t make this shit up people. I actually paused the episode at the end of the fight to write this post. I kid you not.
On a more serious side note, the story arc that involves Lex going to the insane asylum was actually really good. Episode 8, Shattered, ended with a version of Hurt I haven’t heard before and was an all around great episode. Episode 9, Asylum, opens with Future Proof by Massive Attack. The episode featured a lot of the bad guys from the past that have ended up locked up in Belle Reve as well.
Just incase there is any confusion though, I am seriously enjoying episode 11. Smallville seems to be how I get my soap opera fix now.
Comment [11] Television
23 September 2004, the wee hours
I went downtown with Mezan and Carvill to try and find a broken-ass camera. I was originally interested in purchasing a Lomo LC-A. The problem here is that they’ve become so trendy they are being sold at boutique prices. For example, Pikto in Toronto sells the camera for $270 canadian. $270 dollars for a broken-ass camera is just not right. So, instead of getting a Lomo, I am thinking about getting a Kiev 35, Minox 35, Olympus XA-2 or a Cosina CX-1 or 2. The Lomo LC-A is a Soviet copy of the Japanese Cosina.
Toronto has an area at Church and Queen with a few camera stores and a lot of pawn shops. My hope was that in this area we would find some interesting cameras.
We started off in Henry’s, a popular Canadian camera store. They actually had a used Minox and Olympus for sale, but both were selling for around $180 dollars. That struck me as a bit excessive. To be fair, they didn’t have the stank model of either camera. The versions they were selling probably would take nice photos, which isn’t what I am really looking for. Nevertheless, the prices seemed rather inflated.
That was a bit disappointing, but the pawnshops in the area were a whole other kind of disappointment. Most carried very few cameras, and the few that did have cameras were selling them at exorbitant prices. And these are pawnshops—no warranties or money-back guarantees. A crazy Eastern European man who had a large selection of cameras was willing to sell me an Olympus XA-2 for $80 dollars and a Minox for something like $150. It seemed excessive. I would have tried to bargain the price down, but he scared me. He was so crazy.
Thankfully, eBay is full of people in Ukraine shipping out cameras on the cheap.
21 September 2004, late afternoon
I just finished reading Gun Monkeys a book Rishi bought me for my birthday. The book is pure pulp. I found it quite enjoyable to read, a very light and exciting adventure in the life of a professional hit man. The book reads and feels very much like a movie. Compared to everything else I read, this didn’t leave me feeling empty and depressed. If you are looking for something action-packed to read, check this out.
20 September 2004, early evening
So, for those of you who have been reading this site for sometime may recall, my copy of Apple’s email client stopped downloading my mail. I have been making due with Mailsmith, Thunderbird, and other clients all the while hoping one day my “Mail” would just start working again. Today I got sick of waiting. Well, I also only had 5 more days to demo Mailsmith.
After scouring the discussion boards at Apple’s web site, I came to the conclusion that perhaps one of the emails on 1and1’s servers was some how corrupt, and that this was causing Apple’s email client to choke. My solution was to download all the emails I had been saving on the 1and1 server. ( I had been keeping them there in the hope that when Mail started downloading email again, it could grab them all.) I used a clean copy of Mailsmith to do this, and when I grabbed all the mail, I exported it all into an mbox file. My 1and1 server was now empty of all email.
That was all I needed to do. Mail is now happily downloading my email. I imported all the mail that has been collecting all these months, and things are back to normal. I feel good.
20 September 2004, the wee hours
I redesigned Shima’s web site. I think it suits her character more now—at least in my opinion. Things aren’t as perfect as I would like just yet. The URLs for all her stuff bug me to no end, and the archive page needs to be made more informative. Nevertheless, the look of the whole site is more or less done, and I am quite happy with it. There are some quirks that sometimes creep up because I am displaying the ‘shimoticons’ as background images; sometimes they get cropped if the post for the particular day is short. Shima emailed me a picture of herself with her hair in buns some time ago, which were the inspiration for the whole site. Opinions and suggestions on her new site are more then welcome.
Comment [3] Web Design
19 September 2004, terribly early in the morning
Just got back from watching Big Fish. The film is about a man that talks a lot of shit. (It’s like they made it just for me.) The film was excellent. I think perhaps I say that too often, but this truly was a great film. Shima, Ju-lian and Steph all agree with me, I am quite sure. Go and watch this movie.
Update: I watched this film again today with Carvill, Rishi, and Steph. The movie is both touching and funny, a hard thing to pull off I would say. This movie is such a pleasure to watch. The various sequences and stories are so fantastic to see. Burton did a great job shooting this film.
17 September 2004, the wee hours
I watched Sabrina, Audrey Hepburn’s second film, yesterday with Shima. The film is directed by the brilliant Billy Wilder, of Some Like It Hot fame. The movie is funny and charming. I’m a big fan of Hepburn, and I think she is great in this film. It may have been the first film I ever saw her in. The movies plot is basically a simple love triangle. William Holden and Humphrey Bogart do great jobs playing the two millionaire brothers viewing for Sabrina’s affection. I think it is sometimes refreshing to watch a film as old as this one. I recomend you check it out.
