Gecko Bloggle

Was watching a commercial tonight for Disney, and it opens with two Dumbo cart things flying through the city.  As they swing past us in that opening flight shot, there’s a lens flare, and…

…and I start thinking about lens flare, and I was thinking that Ripley and Tate don’t know what lens flare is, as they haven’t yet seen movies that uses gigantic lenses for the, for the glass of it, y’know?  Lens flare is an artifact of using glass lenses, and is something that’s become a cliche for computer-generated film folks, as it’s one of the first tools that people started playing with in Photoshop while making the pamphlets for their illegal rave, or their new Business Improvement Project, or whatever.

But it’s supposed to invoke the reality of an actual camera filming something, to make you think you’re watching film of Dumbo flying over the city.  That’s all well and fine for ME, ’cause I know what a camera looks like from the shoooter’s side, but do my kids know?  They have always known digital cameras, with framing your shot by looking at the little 1.5 inch screen on the back of the unit, and not looking through the lens, but only at what the result will be.

But with 3d movies and IMAX and jumbo televisions, I wonder if lens flare makes sense for kids’ films any more.  If I’m watching something like A Bug’s Life, and I’m pulled in.  When I watch Final Fantasy – Spirits Within, I’m in there, ’cause it’s so pretty, and the motion is so well done.  I’m good.  I’m there.

Lens flare though?  It puts a camera between me and the story.  I’m not IN the story, I’m watching a movie of the story.  I’m outside, at arm’s length, watching from my seat, not even looking through the lens.  I wonder why that is, (for me, at least).

Oddly, the opposite happened in Surf’s Up, when they rigged out the action in virtual space, and then put a real camera operator in a room, and captured his “filming” of the action, ’cause that’s what he was seeing through the eyepiece of the camera.  Somehow, that made us feel more like what we were seeing was immediate and real.  We were there, even though it was totally fake.  Our eyes know real camera work when we see it, I guess.

Neat.

Weird.  I just watched 8 minutes of utterly scripted material with Henry Winkler on Craig Ferguson.  I don’t even know why he was on as a guest, ’cause it was just a string of premise/joke non-stop the whole time.

Arwen’s been pointing something out to me over the last few months (maybe longer, and it’s only sinking in now) and it’s about violence.  In specific, it’s about me having violence as the go-to when it comes to why certain things just shouldn’t be done.

I was talking about something I saw on the Skytrain last night: The train was crammed on a rainy Vancouver evening, and at one of the stations, a few people tried to squeeze in, and managed to just make it in, and then there was this one last guy who came running across the platform like a linebacker, and crashed into the half-dozen folks in the doorway.  There were shouts of “Hey” and “What the hell?” and a moment later, a transit greenjacket pulled the guy off the train, and the doors closed.  The train pulled away without further incident.

So I told this story to Arwen, and was saying that it was probably a good thing they pulled the guy off the train, ’cause I thought things might’ve actually gotten violent on that train if he’d stayed.  Arwen suggested in no uncertain terms that this was the least likely thing to happen on a transit car full of commuters on a rainy Wednesday evening in Vancouver.  Dirty looks.  Rolled eyes, maybe, but then everyone would go back to their iPhones, Blackberries, and newspapers, and generally forget about Mr. Shove.

This is something Arwen has pointed out to me before: To hear me tell it, it would seem that in my day-to-day life, I’m generally a pretty easy-going and “no-no, after you” kinda guy ONLY because my primary reason for not being a pushy line-cutting* butthead (at least when storytelling) is to avoid getting my teeth punched out.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t walk around out there thinking I’m going to need to duck a punch if I step on someone’s shoes, nor do I think I’m going to partake in fisticuffs if someone steps on my toes.

Let’s face it, there’s a fair amount of truth in the joke “How do you make a Canadian say sorry?  Bump into them.” so I wonder why my first thought is often that you need to avoid the violence inherent in the system.

Two of my male friends have also said things to me over the years that make me wonder.  One of them was more about the strength of my hands, as in “Holy geez, look at those meat hammers – I’d hate to be on the wrong end of that.” and the other friend (who has waaay too much Aikido training) was just referring to my internal violent imagery, as in “You’re a nice guy and everything, but I can see you’ve got that crazy demon in there, and you need to get back into training to get that thing under control.”

So now I wonder if it’s been in that head-patting “Yeah, yeah, you’re rill rill scary.” sort of way.  I wonder what I think the point of those stories spun that particular way is supposed to be?  That I’m the Defender of Justice, so I wish people wouldn’t be assholes so I wouldn’t have to hold back the mob of angry villagers with the pitchforks and torches?

Huh.  Interesting.

Maybe it’s time for me to get into karate again.

Either that, or stop talking about people being pushy buttheads out in the world.  Just let it go, y’know?  There’s the studies that say that people build up stress and then have explosive rants because it releases all sorts of cool something-amine into your brain, which feels good.  So feeling stress is bad, but having stress but then freaking OUT is good.  At least, it feels good to do, but then leaves everyone around you with the impression that you’re this dramafest, when actually, you’ve let it go in the moment (at least in the instance of who/whatever was making you crazy).

…and now, I sleep.  Don’t wanna be a grump tomorrow, or I’ll uh… I’ll what?

Yeah, I’ll probably… nothing.  WooOOoo, scary stuff, eh kids?

*Queuing is Canada’s secret National pastime.

I didn’t go to last night’s AGM at Mole Hill.  Not only did I not run for re-election, but I didn’t even go to vote.  Show’s how little faith I have left in whether or not the board is still a functioning part of the Society.

I don’t feel like I’ve given everything I can, but I do feel like I tried to fight the good fight, and that (most of) the folks on the board I was really in direct opposition to are now gone.  Initially it was because the Executive Director was really sketchy, and had a really suspicious background that had obviously not been checked.

I went in swinging, and fought for four months straight before the ED left citing health reasons that made it impossible to fulfill his duties.  Funny that it didn’t stop him from finding a new job two weeks later somewhere else.  The treasurer quit shortly thereafter (or was it just before?) after a heated flamewar in which he told me that “living at Mole Hill, and having cheap rent was a privilege, not a right.”  Lovely.  Just freakin’ lovely.

Been a long two years.  Been a lot of sleepless nights.  A lot of pretty atrocious things said in person and in email.  Some of them to my face, and some of them said by me.  The time approximately half of the board met with BCHousing to discuss the “extraordinary rent increase” (the first of two annual ones they were planning), I was  not invited (nor told about the meeting), but found out about it while walking down the lane, and bumped into another board member (one somewhat infamous for lurking around the block.  Another tenant noticed that there was a meeting happening, but I wasn’t in it, and so it became public that I wasn’t attending this meeting, due to exclusion by the “Executive” members of the board.

The next time I went to a meeting, and someone had sent in a letter asking why not all members were invited to all meetings, the room was told that we were not doing our duty by keeping the inner machinations of the board secret…

Ugly stuff…

Glad there’s a new board coming, and I wish them well, I really do.

Oddly, I haven’t been able to receive emails from the board list since I told them I was no longer seeking re-election.  I guess the Chair took it upon himself to remove me from the list before another “outburst.”

So yeah, I’m done.

This stuff is just too gross to even think about, still, so I’m going to bed.

Most people can make their eyes pop out, but can you make your GLASSES do it?

HelLO, and welcome to another episode of “I’ve Reflanged the Barkolounger” with your host, Rupture Q. Throngboggle PhD, PTSD, NPC.

Tonight to change thing up not at all, I’m going to tell you about some surfing I did.  One of those things I do all the time is try to figure out how to get things to connect to stuff they’re not already connected to, and this often leads me to wondering how I get popular communications device A into protractive retrogrunion B.

This evening, when I was in transit home, it occurred to me that my Blackberry has Bluetooth, and my Netbook has Bluetooth, and I’ve heard about people using their Blackberry to connect to the Internet when they’re in the middle of a field or something, so I thought to myself “Are we home yet?  Did I miss my stop?  Have my ears popped from coming out of the underground tube of Canada Line yet?  Florence and the Machine is better than you think it’s going to be in the first four bars of any song.  I wonder if I can get my Blackberry to use my Netbook’s wireless connection to get onto the ‘Net instead of the other way ’round?”

“Wait.  Dude.  What?”

“Yeah, no, really.  Remember the Nokia N-Gage, with the totally ludicrous phone functionality?  It had software that gave it a Bluetooth Internet Gateway thing, so it stands to reason that TCP/IP over the Bluetooth stack should be possible.  For free.  Also, I want pizza pops.  Red Eyed Treefrogs are the perfect fridge magnet shape when they’re all tucked in.”

“You’re right, I should try that when I get home tonight.  Or maybe Briggs would know.”

“Shh. Can’t talk.  Pizza pops.”

About 45 minutes of Googling, installing, reconfiguring, de-un-re-anti-con-platifguring, and just plain looking it up in field repair guides and stuff came up snake eyes.  Not even snake eyes.  No dice, no table, no casino, you’re voted off the island, and Pluto sends its regards.

Probably because any of the Blackberry devices that are worth having have built-in wifi, so trying to bridge via Bluetooth across another device would be extra steps, and would mean the BB would be dependent on another device in the immediate vicinity.  Goes against the grain.  Causes seizures in succulents.  May lead to thoughts of super-suede.

So, what else?

Stumbled across Percussion Lab tonight while looking for some information about JDilla and the mind-blowing Wonk Funk mix by KPER.  They have it, but they also have not only a whole schwack of other stuff that I’ve never heard of, but lots of other world-class DJs and set that might have been around for the last ten years, but I wouldn’t know it.

Sad that radio in Vancouver just doesn’t play anything like this.  Of course, if my ability to make anything I like at Body Shop be instantly removed from the shelves (they had a liquid soap that smelled EXACTLY like fresh-cut grass, and after I bought my second bottle, it was gone) applies to music, it’s probably good that I don’t hear much that I can stomach on radio.

I think this is the first shot I've had that actually show's the 'stache.

So yeah, ignore the double chin (I come by it honestly, I assure you) but take note of the little Lemmy going on down there.  That’s not a goatee, that’s my mo.  It’s getting hi-…

What the hell’s going on with my hair?  I know I’m shooting through my wide-angle lens at a 90°, so that’ll make weird “tall angle” shots, but still.  Th’hell?

When I had long hair, it was always kinda sticky-outy on the sides, and that’d make me insane, but this little “wisp of hair at the tip of my egg-shaped noggin” is a bit much.

Everybody but me got the H1N1 shot today.  Tate was asking where the “bugs” were in his arm.  I’m not sure whether or not he was asking where the shot was administered, or where the pre-defeated virus was in his body now.

Wake. Work. Food. Clean. CDW5. Kids to bed. TV. Tea. Here.

Hi.

Remember when Avril Lavigne was a singer?  At least, that was her listed profession?  When will she get back to that, instead of doing dippy digital camera ads.

While we’re at it, can all the comedians who are still doing the “I hate my wife” routines?  Just. Leave. Her.  It’s not funny.  Move on.  It’s 2009, and that stuff stopped being funny right after it stopped being shocking that not all couples are happy.  Shortly before television started broadcasting in colour.

Tonight, I’m going to play with Google Wave, ’cause I don’t get it yet.

That’s all I have to say about that.

I want the sun to come back now.  I wanna start cycling again.

Also, Facebook on my Blackberry has lost its tiny mind.  It’s sorta funny to watch.  Reminds me of when Tate used to start telling a story and then get lost in the weeds and have to finish with “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

• Up at 7:00am… well, to be honest, up at 7:07, 7:15, 7:23, and finally up and out of bed at 7:30
• Finished reading a short story by Stephen King last night about a guy who has OCD because he’s guarding the world from destruction, and because I always read in bed right before falling asleep, it took me a few nights to get through the story, and every night I’d take about a page to remember what the story was about.
• Went to Quaker meeting today.  Sat in silence for 45 minutes with a group of people who are also sitting and thinking (or not thinking) about whatever comes to them.  Sometimes people talk about what they’re thinking, but mostly it’s just silence.  It’s interesting, can be meditative, but can also be surprisingly… what is it?  Apt.  Apropos. From outta nowhere, yet outta somewhere.  I described it today as hearing a song you don’t quite know, and when the 3rd verse starts, having someone else say that first word, and suddenly you’re clicking into it too.  Interesting.  No pressure.  Very little “Lord Christ Jesus” vibe.  Very unlike my experiences in Chilliwack.
• Lunch at WhiteSpot,with Pirate Packs for the kids, and theywere out of something for the sundaes, so they used Gummy Penguins instead.  Awesome.
• Saw “500 Days of Summer” tonight.  It was good.  Quite good.  Sweet.  I felt like I’ve come a long way baby when I could see the point when the “boy” in this boys-meets-girl movie makes the mistake of asking her where they were going in the relationship, but does NOT say specifically why he wants to know.  What it is exactly that he’s afraid of.  20 years ago, I would have equated this guy with Ducky and thought “girl” was being deeply unfair, and that he was doing everything right.  Now, I see him pushing.  Interesting.
• Totally unrelated, but why does the Media-Center thing that pushes data to my XBox360 have more problems and worse performance than the 3rd party Vuze/Azureus, which is a torrent download/search client?  It’s open source, so you’d think Microsoft could figure out what Vuze does right, and do THAT.
• Tonight, we had home-made caramel corn for dinner.  With grapes, to there was nutrition in there.  Peanuts in the popcorn count too, right?
• 1am, my Blackberry’s freaking out, ’cause every system starts yammering about what kinda day it had.  Bing bing bing bing (go to bed).
• Night all.
• Today’s pic is on the Movember (Mo’09) page.  Go look, and donate a few bucks, if you have ’em.  I don’t think the stache is gonna get any better though, sadly.  I think Emma’s comment wins, but mostly ’cause I think it’s the ONLY comment.

Low-key day. Made breakfast for the kids, which included a smoothie. We opened up the fridge, crammed banana, blueberries, an orange, some baby carrots, two icecubes, and some milk* into the cup thing for our brand new immersion blender we picked up at the Supastow yesternight.  Time to fire that baby up, and see what it can do, yeah?

Oh great and powerful OZ was it loud at 8am. Milk with bits of blueberry was flying everywhere, it was making a huge mess, Tate started yelling “WoooOOOOOOooooOoOoOo” in tune with the blender (are kids trying to do some sorta noise canceling when they yell in harmony like that?)

So yeah, after I cleaned up the cutting block thing, and poured it into cups for the kids, Ripley scarfed his down, but Tate (who’d wanted the smoothies in the first place) wasn’t convinced after maaaaybe one sip.

*Didja spot the mistake I made there?

Watched TV with the kids and alternated between telling them they couldn’t have candy at 9:30 NOR could they play with the computer.  I’m the meanest dad in the whole wild world.  Ignored my Saturday Blackberry calendar item that’s been there for about a year and a half that says simply “GO DO SOMETHING” at 10.  Was probably a bad idea.  Rubber boots and big puddles would probably have been a good idea for the kids.

Lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches with ham in ’em, but the little tiny sandwich griller iron thing must’ve not been entirely cleaned from the last time I’d made french toast, ’cause lunch had a distinctly cinnamon-y vibe.  Just… odd.

Also.  When was the last time I made french toast?  Couldn’t have been too TOO long ago, ’cause I think I’ve only used it about six times, ever.  Still, ew.

After lunch, Arwen took the kids out to Richmond mall, and I slept.  Well, I washed a load of laundry, and put it in the dryer first, but once THAT was done, I lay on the couch “watching” Aliens.  Seems that I’ve programmed my brain to knock me out cold if anything directed by Ridley Scott is on, ’cause I made it to the landing where the eggs were before I was out, and woke up for a bit just in time to catch the chest buster scene (kept hearing “Hello My Baby, Hello My Darlin” in my head) and then crashed out again until the very VERY end of the movie.

Kids home, I made spaghetti with tofu chunks (Tate’s fave) and Arwen headed out into the night to go visit with the ladies, and do ladies things.  Good for her.  Glad she’s out for an evening to have some fun.

9 is a very cool movie.  Looking forward to whatever Tim Burton’s doing next.  There wasn’t a huge amount of emotional impact for me, but I was so busy being sucked into the world they’d created, I didn’t have time to feel much of anything in the post-apocalyptic world populated by Matrix-esque badguy machines, and Little Big Planet-like main characters.  So pretty, but so sad an environment.  It was like HDR film meets videogame action, with a nicely “but what does that mean?” story.  Didn’t suck.  Style for the win.

Alien Resurrection is on.  Arwen and I saw this as a date in 1997 when it came out, and I remember the gootastic ending, and both Arwen and I walking outta there feeling like we needed a shower.  Geiger was missing from this one, let me tell ya.

Oh, and Shaw Cable Systems?  Quit putting editorial content in the first ten words of your synopsis for the Guide for movies and TV shows.  I’m tired of almost always having to push the Info button to get more plot than “Sigourney Weaver returns as tormented…” or seeing Daily described as “Irreverent skewering of…” while leaving out who the guests are.

With some of the movies, they also will say things like “This deeply terrible film…” or “Unintentionally funny cheese…” and similar things.  Look, if my job was to write that stuff up, I’d probably start putting in my own editorial comments too, but I’d put them at the end.  Maybe even a spoiler or a warning “Don’t bother…” “People over 14 will hate this…” but I’d put it at the END of the descriptions.

While I’m providing an irreverent skewering of Shaw, why is the volume on their OWN AD for their own 30 year anniversary set at slightly below 10% of everything else?  It’s like one of those screamer things on YouTube you see once in while, when then try to get you to turn up your speakers really loud, and then suddenly have  really loud scream, and put a monster picture on the screen.

So yeah, whoever’s in charge of the volume, way to go there, cowboy.  Doing a heck of a job.

Oh wait, gotta go.  Dave Matthews is on SNL tonight.  It’s like Tom Hanks lost his mind and stole Sting’s voice after swallowing Kermit the frog.

While angry.

Retro Encabulate THAT...

The Large Hadron Collider is this most amazingly technical thing, and yet I have absolutely no idea what it does.  I mean, I get that it’s a thing that catches particles and whips them around in a gigantic circle (27 kms or something, right?) and then they… uh… measure the… trails… um… with the uh… doohickey…

But hegoly sheggit is it pretty.  Reminds me of the tunnels the Canada Line, only with about a billion times the technology.  I’ve been taking transit more often than I’d like lately, but the weather’s been rainy and cold, and I promised myself and my wife that I wouldn’t ride my bicycle if there’s a chance of ice, and as I found of today, it doesn’t have to be icy for people to lose control of their vehicle…

Another five feet, and it would've landed in our boardroom.

What you’re looking at there is a parked car turned almost 90 degrees onto the sidewalk, the front passenger tire is torn almost completely off the rim.  Behind that is the car that hit it as it came out of the underground parking lot across the street.  That tree is crowded by our building, so it’s quite lucky nobody was hurt.

What strikes me is that over the course of my lunch with a friend, they cleaned up everything, and as the grey car was being towed away, someone was putting the mailbox back where it belonged.  It was badly beaten.  Dented.  Paint scraped off.  Looking like it lost a fight with car, which it did.  Two cars, in fact.

I want to see the look on the postie’s face at the crack of dawn on Monday morning.

Friday came and went, and for the most part, has felt pretty good.  I think we’re going to play some Rock Band Beatles, or watch a PPV movie (there’s no video store anywhere near here, I don’t think, but at least we don’t have to worry about paying late fees on rented DVDs that end up costing more than just buying the damned thing).

Annnnnnnd the digital cable box just asplode so… Rock Band it is then.

Speaking of DJ Hero (we were? when?) I wonder if the folks at EA who make Skate are laughing about this comic, cringing, or just glad they still have a job at all…

Hadn't thought of that really, you have to have a table for the... turner.

I got nothing for ya today folks, so I’ll just say a couple really quick things:

• My half brother in law is back in hospital – think happy thoughts.
• My dad’s in Mexico so I ended up doing a long distance support call
  • Last month, I did the same thing (remote connect) for my mom, in Juba
  • So then I had to try to troubleshoot the video camera of my half-sister in-law, too.
    • While THAT was happening, the emergency number called me, Vancouver studio was “off the map”
• Had to zip into the office tonight to apply the technician proximity effect
  • Worked like a charm.  Everything was running again by the time I sat down at my desk.  Disaster averted.  Fire fought.  Action taken?  None.
• Looks like my buddy Nilo might be heading home to LA in the near future.
  • I’m going to miss him a lot, he’s been a good friend, and I don’t have many.
  • Not sure if that’s because I lose them, or just don’t make them very quickly.
• Ghost Whisperer is officially my guilty pleasure.  Stupid show, but entertaining, and Jay Mohr cracks me up.
• Jonny Vancouver called tonight with a “humline” request, and I had no idea, Arwen was pretty sure she recognized it.  Told Jon to phone Delilah, ’cause she’d know something like that.  She heard the Chocolate Song by Buddy Whatshisname and the Other Fellers (true band name) ONCE, and a year later sang it verbatim, complete with odd key changes in the third verse.
  • For Real.
    • I don’t have many friends, but stuff like that is why I love the few I have.
    • PS: Duncan got the song title together before anyone else.

This evening I was bombing around Hintertubes looking for clues about a new album by Burial, and was reminded of how I found this weird little bubble of sound in the first place.  Rather, I was reminded how I did NOT find this artist.  I didn’t find them on the radio, or a magazine, or even through a friend, it was something I faceplanted into during a dig in the databases of a record label I knew nothing about.

I think it took me about ten minutes to figure out whether Burial was the name of the song or the name of the band, ’cause there was so little information about this song (it was Archangel, from the album Untrue).  What was really fun was that the person who is Burial doesn’t do interviews, and doesn’t really talk about the process, and probably doesn’t perform live very often (and if he did, I dunno if it would work).

I tend to become loyal to labels, which is odd for me, considering how I’m not really crazy about large corporations when it comes to their treatment of their lesser-known musicians.  Maybe it’s the whole sellout effect.  As soon as they become big, I’m like “ew, too commercial” or something, maybe.

Or maybe I just happen to like this one artist, and don’t know what I’m talking about.

I’m wandering around trying to find a way to get me from A to B, and instead of having some slick way to get me to what I really wanna talk about, I came off slightly snobby and pulled some data (or lack thereof) outta my butt.

Sorry about that.

Ignore the stuff about Burial, I have no idea what I’m talking about.  Burial’s good though, and there *IS* a new album coming, so I’ll be checking that out when it drops.

Here’s what I wanted to say.

About a year ago, Duncan tipped me off to an hour-long mixed set called GlitchBitch, and I was floored.  I’d never heard music like this.  It was different, it was broken, it was funky, and it often had strings in it.  All good things to cram into one set.  After a little digging, I found a playlist, and found out that about half of this amazing set was by edIT.  More digging turned up the album Certified Air Raid Material, which is a stellar piece of audio.  Not quite “all killer, no filler,” but about 75% of the tracks blew the top of my head clean off.

Turned out it was something being called Glitch-Hop, and that edIT was a member of the GlitchMob in California.  Crazy.  That album set up camp on both my iPod and my Blackberry so I was never without those tracks.  Around the same time I started trying to find more of this stuff, and found the wonderfully bent mix “Wonk Funk” by Kper, which had some edIT on it, but also had some interview talky stuff, mentioning J-Dilla, who I’d never heard of.

It’s been about four months of listening to Wonk Funk while cycling and commuting, and I’m still not sick of it, but I can feel it *finally* starting to become a little too comfortable, so it’s time to start digging into this mix, and see what bubbles to the surface.

It’s like finding the food of a new country, which at first is shocking, but once you get used to the flavours, you find that there’s one spice that you don’t recognize, so you figure out what that was, or at least what it might be, and then you try to figure out whether or not you enjoy a lot of it, or just a little.  Then one day, you meet a person who knows all about that sorta food, and they whip up a whole meal of stuff you’ve never heard of, and it’s delicious.

But after a while, you start wondering what else that spice might be in, where else in the world that spice might be used, and that leads to the next step.

I think I stumbled across what’s moving me on to the next step tonight.

I’m pretty sure I’m moving backwards in the timeline on this musician, but I enjoy doing that.  Figuring out how they fit into the audio cosmos is part of what’s so enjoyable for me, ’cause it means I get to find out what “country” that spice is used in, and that’ll take me to wherever’s next.

Next stop: Flying Lotus.  Maybe not new to you, but certainly new to me.  There’s a few albums out, but what caught my ear first was the EP “Reset.”

I’m getting on that bus.  Whee!