These past few weeks have been spent sorting through my Granny’s apartment and getting rid of the old stuff we know she wouldn’t want, keeping the family stuff for future generations, and putting other things she needs into a pile to take over to her new home. Without my Mom’s extensive help, Molly and I certainly would NOT have finished in time for the end of the month… which is tomorrow. Mom, a thousand “thank you”s!!!

One of the items we found was a fake fur coat that resembles mink. I don’t think I seen my Granny wear this more than twice in the last 15 years, so it is obviously something she doesn’t need anymore, and we were going to give it to one of Molly’s friends. I opted to put it on and model it, and quickly realised that I looked almost like a pimp. The only hat we had on hand was my Father’s leather hat he got years back, so the resulting image is a mix of hilarious and disturbing. Check it out:

Yeah man, that's the shiznit.

I took it off pretty quickly afterwards because I was roasting in that thing… and also because I didn’t really think it suited me. I mean, come on… it TOTALLY doesn’t go with that hat.

Last night, Seth, Molly, and I went to see Zombieland at the Scotiabank Theatre (the old Paramount), and it was a frikkin’ blast… and yes, pun intended. I had heard next to nothing about this movie, and the few times I did see a commercial about it, it was while at the pub and so the sound was off. All I knew was at it had zombies, and Woody Harrelson in it, and that was good enough for me. Thankfully, it didn’t disappoint.

If you’re on the fence about seeing this movie, yet loved “Shaun Of The Dead”, then you MUST see this movie. There are funny moments, scary moments, and WTF moments. I haven’t been this in to a movie in quite some time, where I was rooting for the characters and wondering what was going to happen next. I kept waiting for the next smart-ass line, and was rewarded often.

Honestly, I would see this movie in the theatres again, and that is a rarity for me. I am most definitely getting it when it comes out on Blu-ray.

I’m not one to try and give a movie five stars out of five, or ten out of ten; I loved it, and if you have the same sense of twisted humour as me, you’ll love it to.  

Wow… Microsoft is pushing the marketing machine to it’s maximum for their upcoming Windows 7 operating system. I’m sure we’ve all heard how it’s supposed to be the next best thing, how it’s leaps and bounds better than Vista, and that it will be the OS to upgrade your tired (and soon to be unsupported) install of XP.

But, that’s just not enough for those behind the propaganda machine. No. They’re suggesting that people throw their own launch party. And, as if that wasn’t laughable as it is, Microsoft has even gone so far as to create some videos with handy hints to help you make your Window 7 launch party a successful one.

I kid you not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ

I made it exactly two minutes and 37 seconds through that video before I reached my limit and thought I was going to barf. Talk about FAKE. The best line out of the (thankfully) minimal amount of that video that I saw?

“When everyone was there and settled, I led an overview of some of my favourite Windows 7 features … and it took, like, 10 minutes.”

If I was somehow conned into going to one of those “parties”, upon someone starting to show everyone their favourite Windows 7 features, I’d pocket as much booze as possible and get the fuck outta there.

Good on ya, Microsoft. That video seems like you’re suggesting people create their own Heaven’s Gate group in honour of your next OS.

A word to the wise: don’t drink the punch.

Update (2009-09-24): Seems I’m not the only one to find that “Hosting Your Party” video a wee bit strange. While reading Gizmodo and their take on it, one of the comments included a link to this edited version. I bet it’s only a matter of time before it’s taken down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyas7BrbUFY

Now that I have the iPhone 3GS, and it has the awesome ability to record video (finally) and upload it to YouTube, I wondered if I would be able to have those videos automatically post to my site. Looking around, I couldn’t find a plug in that did exactly what I wanted:

• Check to see if there are any new YouTube posts within my YouTube channel every 10 minutes or so.
• If there are, grab the YouTube video identifier, modify the URL so it works with ShadowBox, download the video avatar for use in my post, link the URL for the video to the image, and place the blurb of text detailing what the video is about to the right of the image.
• Post the video on my site with the title of the video being the title of my post.
• Automatically set the avatar for the post to a video camera or video reel, whatever.

In the end, I had to do it all myself.

Not a big task, but looking at the RSS feed from YouTube, it initially seemed a little daunting. Parsing the data would naturally be the key, and as I’m not an expert in Perl, I had to rely on a simple shell script. As such, in the future if the folks at YouTube decide to change their RSS feed format, it will break everything, but no more so than it would for any other plug in, I would assume.

It took a bit, but I got it all working, and thanks to a bit of direction from “ablereach.com“, I also figured out how to add the film reel avatar for my video blog category automatically. The first example of everything working properly was this post.

All in all, I think this is awesome. I can be anywhere with my iPhone 3GS, record a short video of what it going on, or talk about my day, or whatever, then upload it to YouTube, and within 10 minutes my site will snag it from YouTube and generate a post.

I love it when I can automate simple tasks.   

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.