Hi-fi Audio

So, after months and months of debating, googling, youtubing, and asking around I've finally picked up a pair of studio quality monitoring headsets and a portable DAC/AMP for my listening enjoyment. For the low low (for most people u_u) price of $300, you too can listen to FLAC and other lossless files with the same enjoyment I do. All you need is a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50S headphones and the portable Fiio e7 DAC/AMP. I ensure you the sound quality will blow your socks off. I'm listening to songs that I've heard hundreds of times before and I'm hearing things in them I didn't know were there and the way the song builds up and is put together is a lot more apparent. All that complex stuff aside, it's easier to enjoy your music and lose yourself in it with top notch equipment. I'm currently in the process of getting lossless versions of all the great albums I've listened to over the years. Wish me luck! 

Acme Klein Bottles

I'm not a very materialistic person so I'm not the kind of person to see a commercial or an ad, see something, and think to myself 'Oh my god! I want that!' but I'm not immune to wants of posession. Case and point, this thing!

Giantkleinbotandcliff2
Well not exactly this thing. This thing cost $18000...
But there are some reasonable, apple-sized ones for around $60. I know, I know it's a bit much but Möbius strips were the kind of thing that I'd draw in my notebook during especially boring classes of Instrumentations and Measurements for Biosystems Engineers. Oh, side note, the guy holding this thing is Clifford Stoll, a brilliant and enigmatic astronomer, teacher, anti-hacker, and klein bottle maker. It's actually his TED Talk on the future, kids, and many other things that got me on this topic.

Nah, I'm pulling the trigger. When I get my engineering job the first thing I'm buying is one of these little guys. 

The Million Mes

One of my best friends and I had a drunk conversation once (one of many, not solely) and somehow we started talking about relationships. We came to the epiphany that in every relationship there are actually four people going out - there's the person you are, the person you're interested, the person you are "pretending" to be, and the person that they are "pretending" to be. The word "pretending" is pretty terrible but it gets the point across rather quickly and easily. Of course, the interactions between the four people is even more complex. For example, the "pretend" me might do something out of the ordinary like cook a three course meal for the girl that I like and she might love it but the "pretend" version of her might pass it off as just okay, in a vane attempt to get me to improve or cook more often. This is an odd example but you get the point. There are a few different interactions going on all at the same time.

Well, all this his me really hard because I have the type of mind that tends to think in extremes and once it got a hold of this piece of information it ran with it. It decided that there are probaby a million of me running around in people's minds. There's nerdy me, cool me, party me, business me, hungry me, stuffed me, happy me, sad me, and probably even jerk me somewhere out there. These versions of me are numerous. People that've known me for a long time have a better understanding of what the "true" me is like and people that have known me for an instant are really just seeing a snap shot of me. I know for a fact some people that I've met only for an instant think that I'm smarter than I really am, or more well-behaved, or more of a drunkard...

This also got me thinking about the me that I see myself as. How accurate is that? I'd like to think that nobody knows me as well as I do but some people might be pretty close to understanding me better than I do, which is kind of cool and scary at the same time. Everyone's heard someone say that they feel "like they can be themselves" around certain people. You also meet people that are themselves all the time - unwavering and unwilling to change themselves for other people. Depending on the person it can either be really annoying are refreshing. I've met a fair share of both and they always get me thinking about this.

Anyways, this all gave me an interesting idea - it's something I think that everyone should strive for: condense or collapse yourself. If you can combine all of those selves into one person, if you can be yourself all the time, that'd be amazing. Obviously, there are going to be some situations where it really isn't all that feasible to be one-hundred percent yourself but shoot to be your true self as much as you can. Am I crazy? Is this a ramble? It's nothing if not a quick, unstructured idea but that's just the way I am.

See what I did there.

Clever, eh? 

Life Lesson from Big Brother

I consider my brother to be a giant influence in terms of the person that I am and he'll continue to be that way for as long as I have my way. At a very young age, my brother taught me an important lesson, totally unintentionally. I can't recall a specific example but my brother would be playing or using something be it the computer, the Gameboy, or a certain book and I'd pretty much just wait there patiently, or impatiently, until he was done. Then it'd be my turn. But he'd find something else to do to occupy his time and all of a sudden, I wanted to do that. People always want what they don't have or can't have - my older brother taught me to appreciate what I had and, what I think is more important, do things you like, regardless of what others are doing. It's a small but powerful lesson that I carry around with me all the time.

Drive

I just watched an amazing RSA Animate video which is a video that sketches out a lecture, usually in a comedic fashion, that talked about Drive. RSA Animate: Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is a talk I don't want to forget so I'm writing down these three factors that lead to a productive, healthy drive:

  • Atonomy - "Our desire to be self-directed"
  • Mastery - "Our urge to get better at stuff"
  • Making a Contribution

Rsaanimate

Don't Be Sorry

Does anyone else find it troubling when a close friend or relative apologizes for something that isn't a big deal or a deal at all? It makes me think - what kind of stuff do I do everyday that I don't think twice about that someone else thinks is annoying or inappropriate. I wonder what kind of little habits I have that drive people insane...

Youtube Favicon

If you're super anal like me, you've looked at the favicons in your neatly organized bookmarks toolbar and you've grown to hate the crappy favicon of youtube. While other awesome sites like 9gag, last.fm, and hypemachine have moved towards icons with style and transparency, youtube still has that ugly white background. Fear not! I have went through the painstaking process of making a png icon that I present to you in all its majesty:

Youtubefavicon
So. Much. Majesty.

You can add this to your toolbar by using favicon picker or any other similar firefox addon.

Anti-Procrastinating Post

I always tell myself that I'm going to write in this thing when I get the chance or when I'm going to get a new computer (since my old eee pc crapped out on me) but I figured that could take awhile so I better breath some new life into this thing before that point. So here it is, a post simply for the sage of posting. I really should have a lot to talk about since I've moved to a new province into a new place with my cousin, I have a new job, and my outlook on the next few years is a bit more clear, but nope, I don't really have all that much interesting to say. At least at the top of my head. I'm pumped that I got to go home for the holidays, even though it was only a few days. Being with the family again was amazing for a bunch of reasons. I just hope that next years I can be there longer and see everyone that I wanted to. Here's hoping.

Nanowrimo 2010

Nanowinchange
Well, with a helpful kick in the butt from my little sister I managed to finish my second nano, The Devil's Own, previously The Lies of Interesting People, previouslier still The Lives of Interesting People. It's an action adventure novel that revolves around a few different storylines. One involves two robots who play pranks on the misguided robot who killed them. Another revolves around a world where guilds to battle for legendary pieces of armour and glory. Another still is about a bunch of elite operatives who storm a base looking for a treasure that they never get because that storyline was kind of bunk and I just killed everyone off in it. Anyways... haza!

Westside!

Okay, so I moved from my roots of central Canada, Winnipeg to be exact, all the way to Surrey, British Columbia. Things have been going pretty swimmingly so far being out here with my cousin. I wouldn't say I've settled in yet - the fact that I don't have a mattress to sleep on seems to be adding to that. Also, the lack of a job kind of weighs heavily on my brain but other than that. Awesome times are awesome.

Five Stars

Finally!

After what seemed like an eternity, I have rated every single song on my computer. We're talking 2829 songs, running more than 175 hours. Now, I can finally start downloading new music. First two on the list - Garden State Soundtrack and B.o.B

Reach

This game has dominated my life so much in the past few months that I feel that I need to write something, anything on it. There were a few days where I'd check the Bungie.net set religiously along with IGN and Gamespot. I was, and still am, on the tip of spear in terms of new images, video, leaks, and general information. Aside from campaign, I looked for anything and everything I could feast my greedly little eyes on. Why am I such a Halo fanboy? The big thing in Reach, for me, is definitely the customization. I mean, the amount of combinations is ridiculous. I just did the math and not including Elites, the alien badies you can play as, there are roughly sixteen trillion, that's right trillion, different combinations. So pumped!

Reach_customization_concepts

Engineering?

Ever since I've graduated from Environmental Engineering I really haven't found too much use from the knowledge I've gained except for enlightening a friend here and getting a quiz show question there. But what I realized is that I understand people more. I came to this realization when I was at Tim Horton's with my family I can't of acted as kind of mediator between my family member in terms of gestures that require responses and even in what they mean. It was kind of freaky how I understood but there's always the factor that I've lived with them for some twenty-one years...

iSteal

I've taken the bus the bus enough times to know that every fifth twelve to fourty year old that you run into will have some sort of music playing device on them that also has some way of taking notes or messages and that's when I came up with the iSteal. I'm pretty sure the concept is illegal but what it is is an mp3 player that has absolutely no music on it - what it does is lift music from people around you. The player will obviously have a size limit but it takes a few songs from each playlist you get into a certain distance from and removes the oldest songs on the list so you have fresh new music all the time! Yeah!

So, I just told my sister about this idea and she said it was invasive. I said shut up. Then thought it over again. Still doing it. But now I'm a badass pirate.

Decibel Venn Diagram

So, I have a brother and a sister and we grew up with this other group of three children who were almost exactly the same in age. We still get together a few times in the year even though some of us have moved out and live in other provinces and when we do it tends to get pretty heated and pretty loud. Inspiration hit the nerd sector of my brain when I got the idea to do this venn diagram. I brainstormed with my sister approximate decimals of each group of kids then I went to work on Adobe Illustrator. I think it turned out pretty good for my first vector image project. Even though it took 8 hours plus...

Venn
The coloured venn diagram is my family and the grayscale is the girls (that family has all daughters) and every mini-venn is them again. This was the best way I came up with representing every interaction. For example, the very middle is everyone. The darkest section in the purple would be my older brother, younger sister, and the eldest girl from the other family. Nifty? Yeah. Nerdy. Oh, hell yeah! It was a hit when I showed my friends what I'd done - they're already talking about making prints and shirts. Even people I don't even know are commenting on it. It's actually pretty flattering.

Immortal Jelly is Immortal

So, I recently found out about a rare colony of freshwater medusa floating around my buddy's cabin and it totally reminded me of this nifty little creature that I found out about awhile back. Allow me to introduce you to the turritopsis nutricula more commonly known as the immortal jellyfish.

Immortal_jelly
You read that right. This little guy is immortal. How did lilltle 'cula pull it off? Simply put, instead of dying, it just turns back into a baby. More complexly, this little guy is a master of transdifferentiation, where the cells of one type can change into another. This is the same strategy some lizards use to regenerate tails. 'cula can do it with all the cells in it's body. So instead of dying it reverts to its immature polyp stage and just keeps on trucking. Theoretically, this little jelly can flip between these two stages indefinately. Unfortunately, nobody has ever complete a study to prove it...

Bloody Good Weekend

No, I'm not being British. There was a fair share of blood, sweat, and bruises yesterday when I went on a not so leisurely sailboat cruise with a group of friends from engineering. I'll spare you the details of the girl getting concussed by a swinging boom (which I thought only happened in the movies) other more subtle shenanigans and just explain the stupid things I ended up doing. For you pleasure, I will sort them by the physical injury that it caused:

Half-inch long cuts on right, ring and pinky fingers
So, after we finally unsunk our canoe (that's a whole other story) we were pulling it along after the sailboat and just drinking and snacking on the ship. At one point I was was sitting on the hatch holding a bag of potato chips when the the captain raised his open palms signalling that he wanted me to throw the bag his way. I miss judged the strength of the wind and the bag hopped up over his head. In my infinite wisdom, I whipped off my glasses and dived overboard. Lesson number one - never dive head first out of a sailboat. Why? It doesn't hurt if you can angle your entry into the water right, which I luckily did, but that sailboat is going a lot faster than you may think and it's a bitch and a half to get it around again. So, needless to say, the chip bag was whisked away pretty quickly and there I was in the middle of lake with my crew of friends laughing and zipping away. I see the cord holding the canoe whipping by and swim out of the way of this monster thing barreling at me. I get out of the way and position myself to grab it as it comes by. I should've know better, but it was a really old canoe and the frame work was starting to show some wear and tear. There was a quick sharp pain as I grabbed the side and my hand slid down the rail to the end which I luckily grabed with a tightened grip and tried to hold as much of my body out of the water to reduce the drag that was trying to pull me away. My friend started to reel me in and I eventually noticed some red drops of blood on the canoe. I looked down at my hand and saw the blood rushing down my forearms in victory.

Stiff neck
This was easily the stupidest and most painful of my injuries. When I say stiff I mean stiff, if I angle my head as little as thirty degrees I can feel it tightening up which is accompanied by a dull pain.How'd this happen? So, after we dropped anchor and crashed the house boat party (that's a whole other story) we starting contemplating jumps and dives off of the upper deck. Being the idiot that I am my first attempt was a dive. I concentrated on going out instead of down. Even with that mentality my hands and chest bumped the ground, but my neck was fine. After this my other friend decided to do a more suicidal jump over the lower deck and the prop. He managed a cannonball getting some of the locals pretty wet but not at all displeased. Now things are starting to heat up, it may have been the gin, so I try to do a suicide dive off the top deck - which means head first, no arms. You grab the wrist of one of your arms with the other behind you back. The dive is nice but I totally forget to go out, not down. I drop in the water so fast and I hit the sand. Hard. This is just conjecture, because nobody saw, but it felt like my head was twisted so hard to the right that my neck was near parallel with my shoulder. The first thing I thought was "I'm paralyzed. Oh my god. I'm paralyzed" I try to kick my feet and to my relief I started kick water swimming back. Funny thing is, I was intoxicated enough at the time that I didn't feel anything. Now that it's the next day I'm in a whole new world of aches and pain.

Deep gash on toe
As the day was winding down we started to attach the canoe to the top of my friends truck. I walk towards the canoe to help secure it and swing my foot directly into the combat knife stabbed into the ground (you guessed it, that's a whole other story) getting a nice clean but on the side of my right, ring toe. It didn't hurt at all but I knew I hit something. I looked a the knife slightly loose in the ground and I know that I'm cut up pretty bad. The three girls looked down at my feet and covered there mouths and started making typical worried girl noises. I decide that I won't look at it but it need to be taken care of - luckily, my good friend was down to take care of me and she pryed my pinky away from that toe and said "It's deep. It's really deep." After the obligatory, "that's what she said" we ripped up some undershirt, grabbed some Polysporin, and I was fixed up in no time. I took of the make shifts raps and bandaged it up once I got home but I still haven't seen that actual damage.

Well, there you have it. A typical adventure with yours truly. Next time, the day I tried to climb into my friends house while running away from the campus cowboys.

Funny Things My Family Say - Volume Three

During a discussion of Aristotle's Poetics

Me: What's the fourth one?
Gretchen: Hubris.
Me: Cool. They said that in 300.
Gretchen: Yeah, they would.
Me: I was like "Nobody knows what that means. Only I do"
See what I did there.
That was unintentional at first but then I realized.
Gretchen: That negates the coolness level - you saying that.
Me: I didn't want to be cool.
Now, it's cool again.

Self-Improvement a la Demetri Martin

After watching Demetri Martin's stage show "If I", I decided I could use a more structured method for evaluating my daily routine in a way to aid in my self-improvement. I decided to adopt a similar system with a few modifications. Thus, the Self-Improvement 35-Point System was reborn. In this system I have seven categories with five tasks in each. Some tasks are simple little things like making the bed, others are a little more out there like cooking a certain amount of meals, and some are kind of oddball like one a took straight from Demetri - demonstrate moral courage. Some tasks need to be completed every day and others just once or twice. I even added a bonus with more difficult tasks.

Thingiez

Every Sunday night, you tally up your score, jaught down some numbers, then start a new sheet. Revisions of the system might be needed if some tasks are too easy and the bonus should change. Well, let's see how long this phase starts. I'm also considering keeping this secret from everyone I know for as long as I can. I'm thinking 100 weeks of keeping them in the dark. Because it's kind of pretentious, right?

Well, that counts as a blog post for me. Three more to go.

Shadow Person

So, I finally got to see my very own shadow ghost on the weekend, it was a strange experience. I was staying at my friend's cabin and after a long night of drinks, messing around, and deep conversations I fell asleep an a coach facing a window. Just about as I fall asleep I catch something out of the corner of my eye. Something's opened the front door of the cabin. I glance over and see a friend stepping outside for a breather, but something else become apparent to me - something much closer. I shadowy figure wearing a scraggly mask is looming over me. Thinking it's one of my friends playing a prank on me I tell them to leave me alone and that I can see them. My friend looks towards me having my conversation. I reach a hand out to push the person away and they retract and stand upright and move backwards into the chair a few steps back with it's back to the window. My now confused friend leaves the room and heads outside and I stare at the figure on the chair. Not wanting to fall prey to a lame joke, I pretend to go back to sleep but I watch the figure closely to see if it moves. It doesn't. I wait for what must have been at least five minutes without saying a word then I make my way to the light switch without taking my eyes of the figure but when I switch the light on. It isn't any of my other friends. The chair is empty. I go closer to see if anyone is hiding behind any of the furniture around - maybe the snuck away without me noticing. Nothing.

I look outside and see my friend at the picnic bench. I close the lights and head outside. I ask him who was in the room with us. He says no one and I start getting a bit concerned. I know Laine likes to go along with pranks and such so I assume he's in on in it but he tells me that everyone else is asleep. I recount the story to him and he tries to offer up some explanations but none of them really stick. We both agree on one last point but not before the story takes on last strange turn. I tell him about how me and my other friend, the person sleeping across the cabin but within talking distance, were talking about my friend's dog snoring in his sleep and how I should have picked the sofa he was sleeping on. He agrees. But apparently, this other friend wasn't sleeping in the sofa. He had moved into the common sleeping area with some of the other people.

Spoiler alert: The friend I was talking to just didn't see him wrapped up in a little ball. But that still doesn't explained the mysterious masked shadow...

Five-Star Rating

So, recently I've been trying to rate every single song on my computer using Window Media Player. It's a back and forth battle because, sure I make good progress listening to albums I've ignored - this is a great way to find new gems hidden away on your own computer, by the way - but I find myself still downloading albums, probably even more often. For example, I saw heard Flight of the Conchords streaming from my sister's computer and thought to myself, why don't I have 'em?! So I just had to download their album then I realized they had another album that I hadn't heard of so I needed that one too. Bam! Two more albums to rate. Okay, time to get back to the grind; two more songs and I've listened to all of Veckatimest.

Thousand Song Cloud

1
One of the advantages of having a Last.fm account is that you can make these sweet tag and album clouds. It quickly, in under a second, takes all the artists you've listened too and puts them down in this sort of collage. The cloud is formatted so that the text size reflects how much you listen to that specific artist. Anyways, this is what my artist cloud looks like after a thousand songs. Neat, eh?

Ultimate Salad

Before the world steals my idea - I'm looking at you Inception - I'm going to post my recipe for the greatest salad ever on my blog that has a date and everything so it's super legit! Haha!

Goat Nuts Salad

  • 2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
  • 2 Tbs. honey
  • 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
  • 6 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
  • Dash of sea salt
  • Dash of pepper
  • Almonds
  • Pecan
  • Goat cheese
  • Maple syrup
  • Bacon
  • Romaine lettuce
  • Iceberg lettuce

Step 1. Mix all of the dressing ingredient together in a container (hereafter love juice)
Step 2. Chop up some romaine and iceberg letttuce (not equal parts! Romaine > Iceberg)
Step 3. Lightly glaze the bacon with maple syrup then cook for 15 - 20 min.
Step 4. Flip the bacon 2n - 1 times, where n is any positive integer
Step 5. Cut the bacon into small strips the width of a bacon slice.
Step 6. Crumble the goat cheese and mix with other non-love juice ingredients
Step 7. Little drizzle your love juice on the salad
Step 8. Enjoy your salad (at least one light-hearted story or joke must be told in the consumption of the salad or it's not really Goat Nuts Salad)

Serves four to five people or one really hungry person
If these instructions and ingredients aren't followed too a tee you have not made Goat Nuts Salad. You have made some travesty that I refuse to be a part of.

Note: salad was named after taking my sister's consideration - Why don't you name it after ingredients?

The Case of the Missing Spring

When I first moved to this house awhile back there was a long, cool-shaped, spring on the gate that leads to the backyard. That spring has been gone for a few years now and nobody has noticed or, at least, nobody has bothered to say anything about it. I, of course, know exactly where that spring is or, at least, where I put it last. In a robot. That's right. The spring that's sole purpose was to make sure that the front gate closed when people let go was put into a robot. Not just any robot either - Longshot. Longshot was my junior highschool's entry into a Canada wide robotic hockey competition back when I attended. After a motor pulled back on a wooden block that functioned with all the grace of a sledgehammer, this spring would pull it back into its starting position, sending the puck that dropped down from a shoot across the playing surface. A pretty snazzy upgrade in position in my humble opinion.

Personally, I think the spring was happier in that brief but glorious expedition but I'm pretty sure that now it misses the good ol' days of being back here being the curtious attended it was. I'm sure it hasn't been stretched to its full potential in a long time. Mister Spring - you are missed.

Oh, To Be Young And Naive

 I remember being young, not to young but younger, and thinking to myself. Man, I can't wait 'til I'm older and I have my own computer so I can have wallpapers of naked chicks or whatever and nobody could get mad at me because it's my computer. Now, I scan through some deviantart wallpapers and see half-naked girls and I think to myself. I remember being young, not to young but younger...

Dislike

Even though the new like/dislike button on Youtube is a blatant rip-off of Facebook, it's by and large better than the previous five star system. That being said, it has given rise to a new annoying comment akin to "first" and "fake." You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the "x people missed the like button." Please. God sir. Nobody thinks you are clever. Some people don't like the same thing as you, some to the point that they must show their dislike by hitting a little red thumbs down button on Youtube. Enough is enough.

Note: during the writing of this blog dislike has went into that weird phase of not looking like a word. I mean, look at it. Dislike. Oh wait - it's back. Nevermind.

Memory

Okay, so I just finished watching Inception for the second time and althought some mistakes were clearly made in the film it's still going on my all-time favourites list for a few reasons. The first two that come to mind is the blatant plagiarism of dream sharing from my 2008 NaNoWriMo entitled Oneironauts and the other being the heart-breakingly awesome Canuck, Ellen Page. Anyways, before watching the movie a second time I hit the debate boards a little and someone brought up the interesting point that the children don't age three years - which would be supporting the idea that the majority of the movie, if not all of it, was a dream. I didn't like this hypothesis but it would be a rather dumb blunder on the film-maker's part. I thought to myself that it's a blemish that I'll have to live with. But as I started watching the second time through I thought to myself that they do age. But I wasn't sure. I was so sure before that that online blogger was right. Which leads me to the tangent which is the topic of this post.

Memory is a funny thing and I think there would be a lot less arguing, bitching, complaining, and more understanding if people kept memory in the back of their mind. Sorry, let me clarify. Practically everyone in the world is familiar with having memories, it's impossible to not be. It's basically the history that we've written for ourselves up to the point of the present. Most of these people realize that people forget things and that some people forget things than most, and people have gotten used to this. But what far fewer people realize and need to is that some memories are falsified by our brains by mistake, sometimes subconsciously, and on the rare occasion intentionally by the truly deluded. This is usually the cause for debate as two parties both clearly remember a situation happening in different ways, or people saying different things. When it comes down to one word being against another, you might as well call it a stalemate for all intents and purposes. The only way to truly settle it is to have a hard, tangible evidence. Recollection isn't good enough.

Memory fades and warps and distorts our histories. We have to accept that and keep that very important fact in mind when dealing with other people. And ourselves.

Oh Canada!

My home and native land. Well, I just realized how awesome Canada is again. This image says a lot of things. I'm a little disappointed at our ecological footprint because I thought we were a lot more conscious of our evironment than others - that may be just because I was educated in the field along with like-minded people. What really blew me away was the last three circles. Canada pretty much has a quarter of the natural world in it's pocket. That's insane!

Awesomecanada

Wildbow Poaching

In an older post I talked about how I managed to squeeze the awesomeness that is Final Fantasy Tactics onto my not-so-awesome netbook in all it's glory. I've been playing it on and off ever since - in the past two days I've been playing it pretty much non-stop. Once you get passed the first few battles you're imagination when it comes to team building makes the game highly addictive. I wouldn't be surprised if I was reaching double-digits on my game completion count in this little gem but I still run into hiccups here and there. Today, I ran into a rather big one. If you're not some kind of Final Fantasy Tactics idiot savant you can ignore the next few paragraphs. If you are, kudos and weep with me brother.

It's important to note that I'm kind of a purist when it comes to this game. I want all the special characters (including Rad, Alicia, and Lavian), all the special abilities, and all the unique equipment. This leads to a lot of second-guessing and hair-pullery.

Problem the First: For whatever reason, I thought that you had an extra character slot in your roster for another generic. I attribute this to the fact that I was ignorant on how to obtain special characters in my young, foolish days. So, I did what any self-respecting tactian would do - I went strait to the Soldier Office and picked up the first 80+ Brave, Scorpio, renamed him after myself, and molded him into an amazing soldier who stole the Genji gear from the Silver Ogre, one of many amazing feats of awesomeness. I started to notice things getting a little cramped when I picked up Meliadoul after absolutely handing it to Zalera and his posse of undead warriors. I counted two, not one, two, characters yet to be added to my roster. Stupid Byblos. So long super king Secret Hunt / Steal ninja thief. You will be missed. This also ties into my second problem.

Problem the Second: I want all the rare items. All of them. Even the shitty ones. Even the ones that you'll never touch because a superior version exists. Even the FS Bag. What's the FS Bag you say? Never heard of it you say? Well, it's pretty much the holy grail of uselessness in Final Fantasy Tactics. There is a beast in this game that is so rare that you never, ever see one in a random battle or a story battle. The only way to see the majesty that is the Wildbow is to breed one of it's lesser siblings, Uribo or Porky. Unfortunately for me, in all my infinite wisdom, I forgot to pick one up in the one story battle and the one hidden battle before Deep Dungeon: END which is where you pig up the afformentioned stupid Byblos. This means that my asexual little Uribos won't have any room to do the dirty. The only solution is a random battle somewhere that has the little piggies.

I scowered the internet for this shread of information that I thought would be quite easy to get. Eventually, I stumbled onto a forum post that made me laugh. A person with the user name fahrenheit had the exact same problem as me, to the tee. What made me laugh was that it was me. I am fahrenheit. Or I was Fahrneheit. Two years ago I posted a message asking for help out of the very situation I'm in today. Unluckily for me, everyone in the forum was utterly useless. Luckily for me, I had responded to my post in that forum with a solution. There was a random battle with an Uribo.I'm just going to throw this information out there on the nets - maybe it'll help some lost fahrenheit one day.

In the late stages of the game, you can still get an Uribos by entering Dolbodar Swamp from the Bethla Garrison pass. This is only helpful for poaching Ribbons and FS Bags before you've gotten the Byblos or Cloud if you want to keep all special characters.

Update: It took me about two hours to get my hands on my first FS Bag ever. It's just as lame as I expected. On the other hand, I now have more ribbons than I will ever need. Here are some pictures I snapped during the ordeal.

This is a tale as old as time, a group of soldiers trying to stop needless blood shed run into a pig who walks on two legs and save him from a group of young squires accompanied by a bull demon. Needlees to say, lighting and holy light was used. Afterwards, the same team that saved the pig allowed it to asexually reproduce and evolve into a new species. This new species was slaughtered to make pretty ribbons and bags for women. And they lived happily ever after.

Rapid-fire Dreaming

The past two days I've been able to get to this sweet stage of dreaming that I find you can only get to buy reaching your natural sleep pattern. Yeah, you pretty much have to be a vagrant to do this but once you do it's awesome. What happens is you wake up after a vivid dream but manage to fall asleep again right away to have another, complete different, vivid dream. You can do this a lot of times - probably around a dozen. Some will be more vivid than others but you'll remember the majority. Now I just need to find out how to lucidify these dreams...

Theseus' Paradox

Also known as the Ship of Theseus is a famous paradox and one of my personal favourites. Here's the actual paradox straigth from wikipedia.

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
It may seem just like a little brain-scratcher at first but this paradox is almost diabolically important and significant. Humans are not exempt from being in the "things that grow" category. Our entire body regenerates every ten to twelve years (yes, even your brain cells.) So, are you same the same person?

Supermarket Shenanigans

So, awhile back I went to the supermarket with my ma and they had some fruit and vegetables outside of the store. Ever since I learned to juggle I've been an absolute pain to have in this section and today wasn't an exception. I grabbed the first produce that I could get my hands on - cantelopes. I started to juggle them but was thrown of balance an once came down rather hard into the pile. No damage was done but it wasn't very impressive. Then I hear an elderly chuckle behind me, "Well, nice try." I thank her for the encouragement and look at my mom who's half smiling half scolding me. I walk towards her to help her out but three peaches catch my eye and I plan to redeem myself. I pull off some quick little tricks then I hear another elderly voice beside me but this time not as pleasant. "I hope you plan on buying those." I lie, "Yes ma'am." And shoot my mom a trickster's grin and put them down. There's a lesson to be learned from this story: juggle watermelons.

Final Fantasy Tactics - Now for PC

So it took the better part of a day and a lot of patients, research, and messing around but I finally got the greatest game of all-time to work on my crappy little netbook. I'm especially proud because a lot of people seem to be having trouble running this game one even souped notebooks. I present to you: Final Fantasy Tactics.

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What is it that makes this game so insanely fun? I can brag about it's depth of gaming, strategy, and replayability. I could talk about the storyline that doesn't dumb itself down for the average gamer filled with twist, backstabs, and unsung heroes. I could even go on in great lengths of the customization in terms of job classes, abilities, and mix and matching. But when it comes down to it - you've got to experience this game for yourself.

Eating Time Along With Your Soul

So, awhile back I stumble upon a list of ten anime that didn't make it onto some prestigeous list of the decade and a few favourites of mine were on there (Full Metal Panic, Last Exile, Eureka 7, Samurai Champloo) so I decided to look into the ones that I hadn't seen yet. I immediately jumped at Sengoku Basara because it totally plays on my Dynasty Warriors heart string but the real hook was an anime called Soul Eater. At first I thought it was a chibi version of the other shinigami series Bleach but this anime puts a fresh spin on the death god genre.

Souleater
All of the characters are unique and fun to watch develop. In Soul Eater, the teams are comprised of meisters and weapons. It is the meister's job to help the weapon acquire 99 human souls and 1 witch's soul. I actually with the series played on this a bit more but other than that the pacing of this anime is superb - you never feel like it's going to fast or crawling. One noticable exception is the Excalibur episodes in which the plot pretty much hits a brick wall and you're treated to the antics of possibly the most annoying but oddly endearing anime character in any and all anime series.

Needless to say, this Soul Eater is an instant favourite. I mean, it's been two day and I'm already buffering the 42nd episode as we speak...

Ashleigh McIvor!

So, Winter Olympics at Vancouver just happened to coincide with a busy busy schedule at university and considering that it was my last year of engineering - it wasn't pretty. I would skip classes to watch events and even if I was in class I'd be streaming absolutely anything I could get during class. Many a Environmental Engineering Design class was spent cheering on the Canadian hopefuls. Needless to say, any gold we got was amazing but one gold in particular caught my attention. The womans snowboard cross was one by a Canadian, a mighty fine Canadian at that. Ashleigh McIvor tops out my list of most attractive Vancouver 2010 Olympians followed closely by Eve Muirhead, the young curling skip throwing stones for Great Britian.

Okay, so as a half-joke half-oh-god-please, I added Ashelgih McIvor as a friend on the popular social networking site we've all came to hate and love, facebook. I waited with baited breath (Animal Crossing FTW) for her to add me but she day after day went by with no response. Eventually, a close friend who was also a huge fan added her and waited and waited. But his waiting wasn't for nothing, within a few weeks he had a confirmed friend request from the Canadian goddess. I was stunned and thrilled. We thumbed through the awe-inspiring pictures of her ripping it with snowmobiles, bow hunting for big game, and being just hot in general. It was jaw-dropping but I was always super jealous. Until today.

Today, Ashleigh McIvor of the Canadian Snowboard Cross Team, the winner of the gold medal in Vancouver 2010, finally added me as a friend on facebook! I shouldn't be as pumped as I am but I am. It also might be the Gold Extra I've been drinking...

Ashleigh_saw7037
A million times yes.

Pirating Music

I remember being in highschool and going over to my friend's house who had high-speed internet - he bragged about being able to download songs in under a minute. We all went over to confirm his boast and we all tripped out when we saw the downloading speed.

Now when you here a song you like, you can stream it off the internet and have it in your own personal library with appropriate tagging and cover art before the stream ends. Oh, we've come a long way.

Oh Vista, I hardly knew you.

So, I recently got into the amazing global treasure hunt that is geocaching and I purchased my first GPSr - that's a Global Positioning System Receiver for you muggles out there. I got it for a steal at a liquidation sale and was quick to get used to it and load with all the caches in Winnipeg. I grabbed five caches with it before I ended it lossing it to my lousy, jacket pocket. Goodbye Silver.

Garmin_etrex_vista_hcx
I am the habitual loser of things...

On a sidenote, I promise to start blogging more consistently for a few reasons. Mainly being done school and not being a job. Unless being a vagrant counts. No. Okay, no job.

Handles & Monikers

For whatever reason, I think names are pretty important and I think there should always be at least a little story behind them. So, over the years I've had a ton that I thought were good at one point or another. Here's the list in no particular order.

  • zugzwang is a chess term meaning "compulsion to move" which describes a situation in which any legal move would result in an unfavourable position
  • haribon is the common name for the Philippines Eagle which comes from haring ibon meaning "King of Birds"
  • eurekaMachine stems a little bit from the Eureka7 series, machine was just for uniqueness
  • Hokuro Doukan is an unintentional typo on the Japanese words Dokuro and Houkan which mean skull and jester, respectively
  • fushigidane is the Japanese name for the very first pokemon, and my personal favourite, Bulbasaur
  • jester is the call sign of Casey Nolan - your wingman in MechWarrior 4 and your enemy in MechWarrior 4: Vengeance
  • ikigai is a Japanese term roughly translating to "the reason you get up in the morning" - no jokes
  • dumbLuck is a twist on my friends XBox live name dumbCrack
  • Fahrenheit this is in reference to the Queen song "Don't Stop Me Now" in which Freddie calls himself "Mister Fahrenheit"

My Life in 100 Songs

So, for a long time now I've been somewhat of an audiophile. I've found some amazing sites for discovering new music like last.fm and, more recently, hypemachine but I've always had a hole in my heart because of the loss of Pandora to Canadian denizens. That hole has been filled by an amazing site called Grooveshark. This site lets you look up songs, put them into playlists, and most importantly, it allows you to create a radio of streaming similar artists. It's also super easy to use. So easy infact that I managed to create this playlist of a hundred songs that would give you a good idea of the kind of music I have been and am into. If you knew the story behind everyone song I'd even go as far to say that you know me pretty damn well.

Sympathy & Empathy

I've spent the greater part of the last two days rewatching one of my all-time favourite animes, Last Exile. At one point a minor character says "I sympathize with your pain." Because of the context I understood that to sympathize was to understand how someone felt based on similar experiences. It also reminded me of how I always got sympathy and empathy mixed up but at this point I couldn't really remember what empathy was. Here it is so I, and maybe you single person who randomly comes across this blog in the interwebs, won't forget. As quickly...

Sympathy: 1 a : an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other b : mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it c : unity or harmony in action or effect

Empathy: 1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it 2 : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this

For any of those tldrers: to empathize is to be able to adopt another person's perspective in order to understand how they come to a particular conclusion or ended up feeling a certain way, while sympathizing involves empathizing and also coming to the same conclusions or feeling the same way.

The Shit

My engineering faculty is an amazing group of people and an amazing group of people deserves an amazing team logo. After much discussion we settle upon a few ideas and instead of doing homework and projects I decided to spend all night working on a mascot and logo. Here's what I came up with.

Theshitcolour

The design turned out pretty good considering I don't have any image editing software with the exception of MS Paint. I ended up using some fancy to-vector converters and an online image editor that could handled a lot like Paintshop.

Great White North

I've always liked beer commercials because of their use of humour but here's a beer commercial that instills nothing but Canadian pride. The Molson Canadian - Made in Canada commercial is airing right now, during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and it's awesome!

When you think about Canadians you might ask yourself, “Why are we the way we are?”
Well the answer is lying right under our feet - literally
Fact is, it’s this land that shapes us
There’s a reason why we run off the dock instead of tippy toe in
It’s because that water is frozen six months a year
And that frozen water brought on a sport that we can call our own
This land is unlike any other
We have more square feet of awesomeness per person than any other nation on earth
It’s why we flock towards lakes, mountains, forests, rivers, and streams
We know we have the best backyard in the world
And we get out there every chance we get
Because it’s not just the great outdoors we’re chasing - it’s freedom
And this place gives it to us at every turn
Here, we’re free to chill out, free to unwind and free to wind up
There’s a beer that comes from the same land we let loose on
And it’s brewed to be as clean, crisp, and fresh as the country it comes from
So here’s to everything this land gives us
Molson Canadian: Made from Canada

One of those Nights

You know the nights.

You've had a busy day - a busy week - a busy month. But at this very moment the house is silent and your mind begins to wander, not somberly into sleep, but instead it begins to race. And your mind decides that tonight's the night to sort it all out, to get all the ducks lined in a row. You can't seem to concentrate - can't focus - on one thing for more than a minute. It hops around:

The girl. Friends. Obligations. The girl. Secrets. Work. The girl. School. The same fucking girl.

You laugh at the fact that while your mind tries to sort and arrange the events of yesteryears and the goals for tomorrows you avoid precious slumber time that would help you accomplish those goals. Eventually you decide, carpe noctem, but you get up and suddenly feel drowsy. Usually, the sun hits the horizon and you hit the hay.

Some times you write down your thoughts.
And think about that girl.

Fuckin' Ishihara

I have trouble explaining red-green colourblindness to people so I usually results to showing them the Ishihara colourblindness tests with the bubbly numbers in the circles.  I've found that real world examples are the best way to get the point across. Here's a list of things that pop up when you're red-green colourblind.

  • The Canadian $5 and $10 bills look like they're the same colour, apparently they're blue and violet respectively
  • Clothes that I think match, certain shades of red especially, don't...
  • The particular shade of green and yellow used for some electronics (notable the Nintendo Wii) are indiscernible to me
  • Laser pointers just don't show up on projector screens, especially green

Epic Television

This year I managed to watch two of the best episodes of anything ever. If that made any sense at all to you - one hundred kudos. I hereby nominate these episodes for Official Lacanlale Awards.

Best Comedy Episode Ever:
30 Rock - S04E02 - Into the Crevasse

Why? I have never laughed so hard so steadily throughout the entire episode. From beginning to end they strike my funny bone with pin-point accuracy from the gavel that's brought from home to the lasor shield. There are two note worthy scenes: the argument in the office and the playful banter in Liz Lemon's apartment. This one's hands down the best much like the next award nominee.

Best Drama Episode Ever:
Bones - S02E09 - Aliens in a Spaceship

Why? Don't let the hoaky title mess with you, this episode is just filled with emotion. It could put rollercoasters to shame. I remember crying in sympathetically feeling Hodgins emotional and physical pain, dropping my jaw and contemplating heavily after hearing about the boy the slit his own throat to give his brother a chance to live, and being elated when they save Bones and Hodgy from the Grave Digger. Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Odd Talents

Here's a list of things that I've learned over the years. Some of them take no time at all to learn and some a great share:
  • solve a Rubik's Cube in less than 70 seconds consistently
  • no-handed kip up
  • ninja-tie my shoes, less than a tenth of a second
  • ninja-fold my shirt, less than a second
  • juggle
  • one handed card vanish

Favourite MMA Fighters

Some of these guys I've like ever since I began watching MMA others I've just recently heard about an am excited to see how they perform. I'll be the first to admit that these guys are pretty much just the cream of the crop. In no particular order here are my favourite fighters as of right now:
  • Fedor Emelianko
  • Forrest Griffin
  • Rampage Jackson
  • Lyoto Machida
  • Anderson Silva
  • George St. Pierre

Hail To The Busdriver

My university is pretty much on the other end of the city and I'm a poor student who can't afford a car. Therefore, I spend at total of three hours every day, fifteen hours every week, on transit buses. I've been doing this for a greater part of my university career so I've seen it all. Here's a list of people who can make your commute absolute hell. These enemies of peaceful travel include people that

  • are smelly
  • talk on their cellphones ridiculously loud
  • listen to their music ridiculously loud
  • are drunk (I admit, I'm being a bit hypocritical here)
  • don't understand what personal space is
  • take up two seats by themselves
  • sit on the outside seat
  • put a "blocker" on the seat beside them
  • read over your shoulder
  • try to get you to change your religion
  • are currently running from the law
  • are escaping from a hospital
  • litterbugs
  • curse like pirates (without the fun "aargs" and "scurvy dogs")
  • stare at you
  • are super sick
  • don't know how the doors work
  • don't know how the bell works
  • are just straight-up rude

I have met at least one of each of these people on the bus during my travels. Sometimes some people can collect two or even three of these traits at the same time. Now, that's a treat to say the least.

Eight Days Of Weltschmerz

It's official.

In my second last semester I have, easily, the worst final exam schedule I have ever seen. Six finals in the span of eight days. There is no lag between classes and final. My last class is on the ninth and my first exam is at nine in the morning the next day. The next final? Nine in the morning the day after that. What's that? Not enough time? Well, why don't you write your next exam the next day at, you guessed it, nine in the fucking morning. This is going to get just a tad bit - oh, what's the word - kooky. Yeah. Kooky.

Another Blog

Not mine. This blog belongs to someone named Mattias Mackler who is a graphic designer and illustrator. His blog Somethink Fun is the kind of stuff that I love for its simplicity and style. Quite often there's also a bit of inspiration in what's created. I stumbled upon this little gem when I saw a Venn diagram that relates zombies, vampires, frankenstein, and Jesus Christ but what I'm posting today is this image that reminds me of a motto that I came up with after I saw a man break his neck and nearly drown: Live life. Here's the same message from a lighter point of view.

Life-liveit

Microexpression

I was just reading an old Maxim, August 2000 if you were curious, which aside from predicting an attack by Osama bin Laden talks about this curious term in an article about spotting a liar.

I've read a book or two on readying body language and I really like this term. I always found that I had a knack for seeing behind what people do and say even before I read literature about it and I really like this term. It refers to the split-second change in facial features that shows the true thought pattern of a person. I think this is the kind of thing that I see subconsciously and it'll nag at me for awhile until I can figure out exactly what's going on.

Here's the formal expression given by good ol' wikipedia:
A microexpression is a brief, involuntary facial expression shown on the face of humans when one is trying to conceal an emotion. They consist of and completely resemble the six universal emotions: disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and surprise .

Kings / Sociables

Everybody has their own set of rules and here are what I consider my house rules and I've also included some good rules that you can implement if you get the oh-so-hilarious rule card.

Ace: Give + Take
Two: Give + Take

Red cards mean that you have to take the amount of sips on the card. Black cards mean you can give out that amount of drinks. When you draw a black two you may split 'em up or double-tap someone. I also distinctly remember a day where the one drink rule became the one shot rule. I don't remember the much of the rest of that day though...

Three: Rule Card
Time to be creative. Come up with a rule that can seriously change the game and seriously fuck people up. You can go with classics bans (no names, no swears, no pointing) which can work in tandem to absolutely annihilate people or you can let your imagination out. Another staple is the Little Green Man; he sits on your beer and you have to remove him and replace him before and after every drink in any means necessary. Bonus points for naming him. You can make the drink bitch bark like a dog and crawl on all fours, you can use the date rule in which every player has a partner and when one partner drinks they both drink. This card is what makes every game of Sociables something new.

Four: Shotgun
When you draw this card prepare yourself. When the last 4 is draw anyone in possession of a 4 will have to shotgun a beer. There aren't any double-barrel shotguns in this game though. If you draw a second 4 you have the privilege of giving out to anyone you want, or you can be a champ and do them both.

Five: Thumbs
This card is banked just like the shotgun card. At any point the person who has this card may put there thumb on the table and the last person to follow suit has to drink. The card is then discarded into the graveyard. In some cases this card is called the Thumb Master and if this is the case the card does not get discarded but there can only be one Thumb Master at a time.

Six: Rhyme Time
The person who draws this card says a word. In the direction of play, the next person has to say a word that rhymes. The person that can't come up with a rhyme in a reasonable amount of time or repeats a word has to consume. Please, don't be an ass and say words like silver, orange, or month, that's what the Ace is for.

Seven: Fuck You!
When this card is drawn the person says "one" and the person next to them says "two" and the numbers continue until you hit a number that (i) has the number 7 in it or (ii) is a multiple of seven. In this case, instead of saying the number you say "Fuck You!" and the direction of counting switches directions. Things to watch out for include the 27-28 double-fuck and the shouting match seventies.

Eight: Boxhead
A box of beer, dozens seem to work best, is either crafted into an amazing helmet of a shameful hat. When you draw this card you get to put it on your head thus becoming Boxhead. Make sure that the box still allows for downing alcohol though.

Nine: Drink Bitch
It's the drink bitches job to ensure that nobodies cup becomes empty. People kindly inform the drink bitch if they're running low or they can let them have it just for fun. Remember, be kind to your drink bitch because you may never know when you draw this card. Unless, they've all been drawn then fucking punish away.

Ten: Categories
Similar to Rhyme Time accept that instead of an initial word to start things off the drawer picks a category. Now people take turns listing things that fit under that category. Anyone that says one that's already been said or can't come up with something has to drink up.

Jack: Dicks/Gentlemen Drink
If you have a penis you drink. Simple as that.

Queen: Bitches/Ladies Drink

Girls' turns. If this card is called bitches drink it becomes perfectly legitimate to make the Drink Bitch drink too.

King: Sociables
Everybody drinks and is merry! Sociables!


I've put a lot more effort into this than I thought I would which is why I think I'm going to call these my own personal brand of house rules. If you see this exact set anywhere else you know that person that's posting is is a fucking thief! Unless I give them my written and/oral consent than it's all good.

Deathly Hallows

It took me awhile to come back to it but I finally read the entire Harry Potter series. I stopped reading partway through The Order of the Phoenix. I forget what made me start up again but I started from scratch and now, two or three months later, I've just completed the last one. All the books are pretty good even though Phoenix Harry kind of pissed me off a little and the epilogue reads, as my sister says time and again, "like bad fanfiction." Nevertheless, I'm happy that I read the entire thing. Now I can spend my life searching the internet for every bit of Harry Potter canon that I can get my grubby Muggle hands on.

The Name Of The Game Is Pedals Around The Rose

Well, let's see if this baby works.
I guess I could talk about the blog a bit while I'm already here.

This blog is intended to be just a quick place where I can post whatever and whenever I want. They'll probably be a huge assortment of random things in here that specific people will find pretty entertaining. They'll probably be some personal stuff on here when I just feel like venting anonymously. Oh, and I'm not really literarily inclined, I mean I just made that word up, so you aren't going to be reading anything really deep or particularly significant information - unless you're a stalker, then by all means have at 'er.