You may not have realised this, but, you live in an apartment. This means that as a courtesy to your surrounding neighbours, you try to keep your noisy activities to a minimum. I understand that people like to listen to loud music… so do I. It is also understood that to really experience that 7.1 surround sound system while watching a movie or playing video games, you need to have it at near deafening levels… hey, I’m not one to complain, since I do the same.

But… having a set of drums? At some point, the line MUST be drawn.

Not only is it loud when you play those drums, not only does the concrete between our units do nothing to block the noise those things make (even though I can barely hear any other sounds), but you… SUCK.

You REALLY do. I remember in Middle School and High School that some classmates learned to play the drums as part of band class, and THEY were better than you. Even when they had just picked up the sticks for the first time. Seriously.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have that much of a problem with you playing the drums in the early evening, when I get home from a possibly stressful day of work, wanting nothing else but to relax, perhaps play a video game, watching TV or a movie, maybe even have a bit of a nap… yet… you have no RHYTHM. It sounds like there’s a drunk monkey wailing away on those things instead of a human with the minimal sense of co-ordination needed to ensure the sticks connect with the drums. If you could keep a beat, I probably wouldn’t care all that much.

Please. Please take up another instrument. Maybe the xylophone. Perhaps the guitar. How about the bagpipes? Even if you couldn’t play the bagpipes worth a shit, it would sound better than your drumming. You are THAT BAD. They say that practice makes perfect… but really, I don’t think it’s going to happen for you. Best to just quit now.

So… could you do me a favour and consider it? Otherwise, I might have to toss your precious drums off your balcony.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Evan.

In my previous post about my tattoo, Frank asked for an explanation of the fascination some people have for tattoos, and also at the same time, my Mom asked about the significance of the one I’m having done on my arm. I started to write a REALLY LONG comment, and realised this would be better as a post!

First things first, I **HATE** needles. I can’t stand them. The sight of them makes me cringe, and when I have to have one stuck in my arm to have some blood taken, I have to look away. However, this is my second tattoo, and I can honestly say that the tattoo needle doesn’t irk me in the slightest. It’s actually kind of neat to watch the tattoo artist dip the end into the ink like a quill, and start drawing on your skin. At some point, you realise that this is permanent, and it just becomes fascinating.

As for pain, it doesn’t hurt all that much. I would play-fight with Coconut (my cat) once in a while, and he would claw my arm to shreds as he latched on and playfully nibbled on my fingers. I can’t do that anymore as he’d wreck my tattoo… but the process of having the tattoo inked on my arm felt like that. Slightly hurt, stung a bit afterwards, and an hour later, no pain.

When it comes to getting a tattoo, everyone is different. The main thing is that you realise that this isn’t going to wash off, so some thought needs to go into it. My first tattoo is half a red Maple Leaf, which represents my country, and beside it are the letters “OCP”, which represents my close friends growing up, and whom I am still friends with. My Father said I would regret getting it, but still, to this day, I don’t. Frank is right, I don’t NEED to have the tattoo to show my friendship with them, but seeing as how two of them have the same tattoo as well, I find that kinda cool.

I’ve wanted a design on my arm for a while, but I just didn’t know WHAT I wanted. I knew it was going to be tasteful, below the elbow but far enough up the wrist so I could wear a long sleeved shirt and not have it show (if I needed to look respectable), and something that wouldn’t age… for example, I’m not about to get a tattoo of an iPhone, as those won’t be around in 10 years, and if they are, they most certainly won’t look the same.

As for this one I’m getting on my arm, there are a mixture of reasons as to why I want it:

• I’ve always liked simple geometric shapes, designs with lines, and patterns.
• When I saw someone else with this tattoo, it really clicked for me, especially when I researched it further:
  • This is a Polynesian design, and one that has been around for hundreds of years.
  • It symbolizes shark teeth, and also represents a person’s “aumakua“, which is a family god.
• I have a love of the water (I’m sure my being a Pisces is a factor), and the shark is one of the fiercest creatures in the ocean. In fact, when I was younger, I heard about freshwater sharks, and it really freaked me out, especially when I was up at the cottage. I didn’t like swimming in the lake for a time because of this irrational fear. Now, I have a healthy respect for sharks.
• My Father loved scuba diving, and took a lot of pictures of sharks. In a way, this tattoo also reminds me of him.
• When looking at the triangles (when they’re coloured in), it can either look like black triangles pointing down my arm to my wrist, or white triangles point up my arm. I like that little illusion.

In the end, it all comes down to the individual. Some people want a small tattoo, others want a full body tattoo. Some will pick a design off a wall in the tattoo parlour, others will spend years designing theirs. A tattoo can have a special meaning to someone, or maybe they got it because it just looked neat.

I sometimes equate tattoos to other types of appearance modifications. Do you grow your hair long or keep it short? Colour it? Shave it all off? Have a beard? Mustache? Soul patch? Earring? Two earrings? What about your clothes? T-shirt? Collared shirt? Jeans? Slacks? Shorts? Shoes? Sneakers? Flip-flops? All of these things we choose to wear, and change according to the style we want. A tattoo, to me, isn’t too different, other than the fact that you’ll have it for the rest of your life… that is, unless you decide to later get it surgically removed.

I’m excited to finally have this tattoo completed. Should take about three hours, and I’ve got an appointment on the 17th to have it done. I’ll post more pictures then!

It’s amazing that even though through two separate crowbar parties, there is still a LOT of destruction that has to take place. Some non-load-bearing walls need to be removed, the both the upstairs and basement bathrooms need to be destroyed, and let’s not forget the kitchen.

Through all the renovations that took place during my youth at this house, the one constant has been the kitchen. The rest of the house was (poorly) modified, but the kitchen counter and cabinets were never touched. They were the original ones that were installed when the house was built in the 1950s, and for some reason we never got around to removing them and upgrading them. I’m actually glad this didn’t happen as the previous contractors we had renovating the place over 10 years ago did a poor job with the rest of the house, so I can only imagine what monstrosity they would have left us for a kitchen.

Now, we can finally get it all done perfectly. We have a great crew of guys working on the place, and if the work they’ve done in the past 24 hours is any indication, my house is going to look INCREDIBLE once it’s done.

Through out the process I’ll take some pictures to show the progress. Truly, this is an exciting time!

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.  

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

• 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.   

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. 

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.

How is this any different than cows being bred for the sole purpose of being later turned into the steak and burgers that I love to devour? I’m sure that there could be more humane methods to kill the seals, just as I’m sure there are more humane methods in killing the cows and other animals we eat. For example, that video of Sarah Palin at a turkey farm last year prior to the American Thanksgiving… that turkey was twitching for a while after it’s neck had been snapped… are we sure that it was fully dead as soon as the gruesome event took place? Maybe there was some extra seconds of it suffering, which wouldn’t be thought of for a second as you popped that sucker into the oven complete with breaded stuffing. Personally, I think it’s because the seals look oh-so-cute that people have a major issue with it. The culling process is just the icing on the cake.

The latest ballyhoo on this issue was the recent vote by the E.U. to ban the import of seal products from Canada, calling the seal hunt “inherently inhumane”. They may have a point, but it’s not like all members of the E.U. have clean hands, as noted in this editorial cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon (artizans.com) I happened across this morning:

Naturally, two wrongs don’t make a right, but before you start accusing a country of “inherently inhumane” animal practices, it might be best to ensure that you don’t have some of your own within your “union”.

In contrast, I’d say that bullfighting is much more barbaric, as the bull’s pain and suffering is part of the main event. Who would pay money to watch someone club a seal to death? There are certainly people who pay money to watch a bull be stabbed multiple times, mocked as it tries to kill those giving it pain, and in the end, be brutally murdered.

But let’s not think about that.