I’m sure almost every one of us has played with a Rubik’s cube at some point in our lives, and perhaps even some of us own one, mixed it up, tried to figure it out, and then just threw it into the back of the closet. A few years ago, I decided to get my first Rubik’s cube. At the time, it was it’s 25th anniversary, so I got one of those special edition ones (ooooh, a white sticker that says “25 years” on it!), and tried my hand at it. Ha. It sat on my desk for about a month before I decided to download one of those “solving” applications, where I entered in the colours of each face of the cube, and it walked me through the solution in 99 moves or less. Once solved, it went into my drawer where it sat until I moved into my own apartment, and from there it sat on my bookshelf, receiving no love.

That is, until recently. For the last few years I’d heard about speedcubing, and about six months ago I saw some dude on the subway doing it. Needless to say, I was impressed, but felt slightly thick in the head when I couldn’t figure out how he did it. Looking into this further, it turns out that some algorithms (or rather, turning patterns) are used to get all the colours lined up, and eventually, the solution. One of the more popular methods is known as the Fridrich method, named after Jessica Fridrich, who apparently placed second at the 2003 Rubik’s Cube World Championships. However, looking at her instuctions, I was quickly lost.

But, thanks to some dude named Dan Brown, and the magic of YouTube, I was able to get an idea of what was necessary. My unsolved Rubik’s cube, which had been this way for the last few weeks, is now back in proper order. You could ask me how I did it, but I honestly have no clue. I can’t even recall one of the algorithms at the moment either. It’ll take a bit of practice, but I’m sure I’ll eventually memorise them, and be able to solve a cube without looking up how to do it. If you want to get some pointers, check out the YouTube vids:

Part one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM

Part two – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW_BBp3FPMQ

Personally, I’m not interested in learning how to speedcube, but if I can solve them with a little thought, then I’m happy. Gotta find something to exercise the brain with, as video games don’t seem to cut it. 

I have always loved to cartoon.

Sure, I may not be as good as my brother (who is an awesome artist, BTW), but that’s never stopped me. Over the years, I’ve doodled the odd strip, but never really expanded upon this particular hobby. That is, until now.

This past Friday, I finally got a toy that I’ve had my eyes on for the last few weeks: a Wacom Cintiq 12WX. And, let me tell ya, this thing is SWEET! While it’ll take a bit for me to figure out how to really use it, and also remember how to use Photoshop, I can’t wait to start cartooning again. Here’s something I put together this evening, and I know it could be better, but I’ll get there (I’m obviously my worst critic). As they say, practice makes perfect.

Even though it’s a car commercial, it is quite well done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMzKGWw2Bk

I like how the cats were distracted by the moving light bulb. Awesome.

Thanks to Molly for sending this my way.

For those of you who didn’t know, Toronto has been going through a public worker’s strike since June 22nd. Unfortunately, this affects some of the taken-for-granted services, such as garbage pickup, social services (welfare, building permit issuing, etc), some emergency services, and even some transportation services.

While waiting for the bus yesterday, I looked over and saw this advert on an overflowing garbage and recycling bin. With the strike going on, and possibly not ending soon, I found the slogan of “Half the fun is getting there!” somewhat amusing, as it would be fun trying to figure out HOW to get over to the Toronto Island. Water taxis must be making a killing.

All in all, this strike is somewhat embarrassing, as you have the unions wanting more and more (they’ve been given a sweet offer yet don’t want to give up bankable sick days; who ELSE has those!?), and the city is twiddling it’s thumbs and not doing everything it can to end this strike (how about getting the government to ORDER them back to work, or firing the lot and hiring new non-union workers? I’m sure there are plenty of people looking for work). Who ends up suffering the most? The citizens of Toronto, and the businesses they run. Ironically, we’re all still expected to pay our taxes… which go towards the services that are unavailable at the moment due to mutual greed on both sides.

Personally, I think we should get a tax-break at the end of the year. It’d be the least they could do as an apology for what they’re putting us through, and ruining our summer.

1. Explain why you started to blog.

Originally, I started it in June of 2002 as a place for me to post news articles I found interesting and comment on them, post funny images or video clips, and it also doubled as an online journal. I wrote about everything on there, and often I would write about my day before going to bed. For a time, I updated it every day. In fact, I didn’t realise until quite some time later, that a lot of people went to my site for videos and images (this was before Boing Boing, eBaum’s World, etc).

After a bit, though, some of my friends started to question what I wrote, as I pretty much talked about what I did when we hung out (within reason), so there were obviously privacy concerns. This also came back to haunt me with one of my ex-girlfriends, and I lost interest in the site for a while. Ironically, my server suffered a hard drive failure a few weeks after that and I lost everything, so all I have of my old site is what can be found in internet caches, and also this image (which also gives you an idea of the awesome projector setup I had in Calgary).

2. Do people you interact with day to day or family members know about your blog? Why or why not?

For the most part, yes. However, I haven’t been updating site as of late, and I’m sure there are a LOT of more interesting things out there to read these days. Back when I started the site, blogs were still in their infancy. Currently, I use Wordpress, and it seems almost everyone has a blog now, but back in 2002, I had to hack the crap out of a CMS (content management system) called PostNuke, which was never really designed to be a blog, but it served my needs.

3. Do you have a theme for your blog?

This latest rendition of my blog was initially set up so I could track my eating habits and my weight, as I started out at 200lbs, and I hated being that big. I had the idea that if I posted my weight and eating habits for all to see, I would shame myself into losing weight, and you know what? It worked. I got all the way down to 169.2lbs. However, Autumn came around, and I became less active, and also some other things in my life happened, so I started to lose focus, gain back some weight, and forget to update the site. Who know, perhaps I can get back on track again, and make it less about my weight, and more about things I find interesting. Gotta give the people who visit my site something new, or it’s just boring. 

4. What direction would you like to have your blog go in over the next year?

I hope to add more content about what is going on in my life, be it in the form of text, or even YouTube videos. I think I’m an interesting person, and have a unique view of life, and I find that amusing or interesting things happen to me often. Besides, I’ll have a lot of shit going on in the next year or so to keep me busy with the blogging. Just gotta get back into the swing of things. I also want to customise my theme more, which I attempted to do with a complete theme change, but that failed. Most of you hated it, and I didn’t like the fact that different browsers on different platforms displayed it… differently.

5. Pimp five of your favourite blogs.

Blogs I check out with any regularity? Alrighty:

Sparky (needs to update it more often, and YES, I can say that in this case!)
Coaxial
Kimli
Jared McAteer
Jon Ross