ShinyPlasticBag

Written on a wet floor sign somewhere in the depths of the Killam Library/Life Sciences tunnel: “Closed for cleaning: do not inter.” I find it absolutely shocking that someone could exist in modern society and yet be unable to spell the word “enter” correctly. “Inter” is a prefix, not a word.

That's not the only strange sign I've seen lately: there is a billboard on Main Street (right next to XXX-citement Video) that reads, and I quote “Inertia is evil.” That's right...inertia is...evil? Evil? This thing has managed to make my brain enter an infinite loop. It's been stuck in a thought process that goes something like this:
You can see the bind I'm in. This is mildly related to Lewis Black thing that Castro gave me — “things that bring your brain to a screeching halt”. His example was “If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college”, but I think “inertia is evil” is nearly as bad.

Anyway, moving on to real topics, how about school? Although I'm not nearly as screwed as Taylor seems to be, nonetheless I have a midterm today in political science and a networking assignment due on Friday, not to mention an essay about RFID tags for ethics (entitled Why Do My Underwear Know Where I Am?) which is due on Monday. The bonus of this situation is that by 10:30 am on Monday, I'm done everything for the semester. Then, all I have to worry about are my finals. I'm telling you, I will be sleeping in with a vengeance. Vengeance!!

(I've got to go feign interest in this lecture on firewalls. Whoopie.)

• Written on 31 March 2004 & posted at 11:47 AM.
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I was in the process of writing a pleasant entry about the new computers that have arrived in the computer science building, complimenting the attractive case and speedy performance, when Mozilla crashed and made me lose it. I'm placing the blame partly on the new computer and partly on Mozilla, which is (unfortunately) a gigantic lump of human feces. Yay, though Firefox is one of the most amazing pieces of software ever created by human hands, Mozilla itself is one of the worst. I'm not sure how this can be, but it is.

As you've probably surmised by this point, I'm at work (well, lunch, technically) and rather bored. There just isn't a lot to do at four o'clock in the morning, even when one works in an emergency room. Despite the excitement of a code blue happening in one of the lobbies, it's been pretty dead. I'm not really complaining...I really wanted it to be a slow night tonight. For some reason, it's just been an off day, which may be partly due to the fact that I forgot to turn off my electric blanket before I fell asleep last night/this morning/last-time-I-slept. For those of you who either don't have the pleasure of an electric blanket or live in a climate where one is not helpful, it should be noted that this is one of the fabled Worst Things Ever. Although a warm, crispy bed is a great thing to climb into, it's not so nice to wake up with your internal body temperature approximating that of the surface of the sun. It's really quite nauseating.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work. From the department of world news, Jehovah's Witnesses have been banned from practing in Moscow, and from the department of “people who invented stuff that nobody cares about”, the stethoscope was invented by Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec in the 19th century (here is my source for this information, and you might want to reflect on my revelation of who invented the stop sign).

Update: Yes, I should be asleep by now. But I just had to take this “What old school Nickelodeon show are you?” quiz. I, apparently, am “You Can't Do That on Television”. The funny thing is the description: Are these quizzes tracing my IP? Do they know where I am, or do I just have an excessive amount of Canadianism running through my veins? Anyway, I loved that show, and I didn't know it was Canadian (despite the fact that Alanis Morissette was on it). Go team.

• Written on 28 March 2004 & posted at 04:00 AM.
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Comprehensive? Yes. Coherent? No. Inspired by Brittany, I've decided to create a list of my favourite songs of all time. This entry contains the first half of the list (the second half is still being finalized).

Continue reading “50% of the Top Fifty”...

• Written on 26 March 2004 & posted at 12:17 AM.
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Well, I'm bored.

It's never a good sign when you see any number of my friends in a large group, because (a) volume and (b) stupid antics increase. A normal journey to, say, pick Janet up from work can turn into a strange screaming fest with two cameras. I'm confident that I will have some amusing photos to post within the next few days, but they're lying dormant for the time being.

Anyway, things have rolled to a stop, and we're now at Russell and Amanda's place. Everyone else is playing Halo, and I'm unfortunate enough to be of the (somewhat heretical) mindset that it's the worst game ever. Seriously. I have yet to spot anything redeeming in that game. Generally speaking, I'm happy whenever I'm planted in front of a computer, so here I am. Boobies.

At the moment, I'm busy being angry at PayPal. First of all, the money I transferred last week still hasn't shown up, even though the absolute final possible day it was supposed to show up was today — grr. Secondly, they're using ancient code to run the whole thing. They have spacer images. SPACER IMAGES! They might as well be banging two rocks together. Damn.

Well, I'm off to read up on all of the geeky wonderfulness on Slashdot. Care to join me?

• Written on 24 March 2004 & posted at 09:27 PM.
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From the “oddly humorous Internet debris” category, I have to recommend “Metropopular”, an animated short about an ongoing popularity contest between major American cities. They talk. I love it. I think that San Fransisco is the best, but the New Haven/Boston interaction is also quite nice. And anything that makes fun of the holy rollers is alright by me.

My one complaint relates to the Internet Archive itself. I think the entire idea of building a digital library of Alexandria is pretty noble, and Brewster Kahle, the founder, seems to have his head on straight (see the December 2003 issue Wired for a good article about digitizing books, which features a brief interview with him). However, there is no validator friendly way of accessing the files. Validate this page right now — I dare you. It's going to fail because the URI to access Metropopular has an & in it, and their server won't accept either of the alternative methods for accessing it (replacing the & with either %26 or &, which are its hexadecimal ASCII value and HTML entity, respectively). I think this is a bad move on their part, but I guess it's a pretty low priority. The Internet Archive rocks.

Anyway, life is rolling in the same direction as always. Since it's a Monday, I'm obligated to be tired, hungry, and ever-so-slightly out of it — gotta be consistant, I guess. I spent the weekend doing the normal routine, and work was absolutely insane on Friday. Ambulances, LifeFlights, and traumas, oh my! Needless to say, I'm actually kind of glad for it to be the week, and good news on the Group Project From Hell makes it a bit better. It turns out we're actually stupid — in a good way — and somehow ended up being one week ahead of schedule. Nice.

This week will generally be a mish-mash of working on assignments, catching up on some sleep if I can, and eagerly anticipating the end of this semester. Go me. Is anything interesting happening anywhere?

• Written on 22 March 2004 & posted at 11:14 AM.
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Yes, I realize that I'm not a nice person:

Well, it's been a long time since my last update. It's that hectic time of year whereby school is somehow managing to take up almost all of my mental power, but I'm not really doing much more than usual. The end of semester is always a bit stressful, however, and moreso when it's the winter semester that's coming to a close. I'm not sure if this is because (a) the nice weather simply won't come until I'm out of school, and I want the nice weather, or (b) I've got the summer ahead of me. Probably the latter.

Planning on my Scotland trip is starting to look good; I've secured a place to sleep whilst I am in Glasgow. My dream is to spend a few days in Glasgow, a night or two in Edinburgh, and hopefully get down to London for a few days. I'm not sure if I can navigate my way as far down as Stonehenge, but I'd love to see it again. Either way, I'm definitely going to check out some stone circles and a ley line or two. I love that crazy island — so many mysteries. I'm not sure if I'm intrigued by it because it's where my DNA originated, or because it's genuinely interesting. Maybe it's so fascinating because until maybe 800 years ago, the Celts were pretty much barbarians, so there isn't any information on any of the strange stuff there. I also find it amusing that this tiny little island managed to hold such a large chunk of the world in its grip for so long.

Speaking of the British influence, I've been wondering lately about accents/dialects. First of all, how far back in Canadian/American history would we have to go before we had the British accent again? Why did we lose it in the first place? You can point out (and be quite right) that the distance isolatng us was a major factor, but Australia and New Zealand are considerably more distant, and yet considerably more British. Yes, I know you Aussies/Kiwis hate being compared to the British, but your accent is much more British than Camerican. Also, a lot of phrases are too. I got an email from a Scottish relative asking me to look into how much it would cost to “hire” a car, and I had a flashback to talking to Simon about that last year. No, you can't hire a car, you can rent it. Don't argue with me: you hire people, you rent objects. Cars are not, as far as I know, human. Check a dictionary.

Either way, I know it's a losing battle. Every region has its nonsense ways of doing things; that's the only explanation for why you can tell a Canadian that they've got a really comfortable chesterfield and they'll know what the hell you're talking aboot.

• Written on 19 March 2004 & posted at 12:16 AM.
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Somehow, I managed to spend more than 24 straight hours in the company of Keddy. Life, assisted by his viewpoint, is a wacky and interesting place. As anyone who knows him can expect, this adventure led to some great quotes.


Overall, the weekend was a good one. I had both nights off of work, because I was originally planning on going to SXSW with Pugsley. We called this off, because neither of us could get the money in time, and it was also a very expensive trip — about $1200 Canadian for flight, accomodation, and entrance to the conference. I realized that, for twice as much money, I could spend two weeks in Scotland this summer. That, incidentally, is my new plan. Anyway, the original plan for the weekend was to go bar-hopping downtown, but the vast majority (read: everybody except for Steve) bailed on me due to lack of currency. Sigh. It was a good weekend though, because I got to stick to a normal sleeping schedule, and to see James and Leslie, who I haven't seen for about a month.

Continue reading “24 Hours with Keddy”...

• Written on 15 March 2004 & posted at 11:15 AM.
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Java makes me want to kill people. And Bash shell scripting is also quite annoying.

I absolutely cannot wait for this semester to be over. This sentiment is not exactly new for me.

To do list:

• Get a passport.
• Save up several thousand dollars.
• Recruit people willing to go to Europe this summer.
• Do it.

• Written on 13 March 2004 & posted at 05:37 PM.
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Ugh — I feel sick. This isn't cool. Last night, I had more sleep than I have had in a British aeon, and today I just feel totally drained. Not cool at all. I'd say something like “maybe it was something I ate,” but I had some half decent food last night (I took Janet out to Jungle Jim's for dinner). Oh well.

The good news is that ShinyPlasticBag.com (acting as a blog, versus a waste of DNS space) turns one year old tomorrow. Yay! Since my first blog entry on March 13th, 2003, I have posted 378 entries describing my adventures as I struggle to find the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. In addition to that, I've added 73 entries from previous journals and notes, and Keddy has posted 37 incoherent ramblings. I love my blog, and here's to n more years of it.

Anyway, the weather has cleared up a bit since yesterday — it was absolutely pouring last night. Weather in Halifax is weird, because after it had rained like there was no tomorrow for a few hours, it suddenly stopped and started to snow (huge snowflakes, no less). And as quickly as the snowing started, it switched over to freezing rain and did that for a while. I have no clue what is wrong with our climate up here; Canada is a strange place sometimes.

I'm getting really, really sick of the Miami real estate and limousine links that have been constantly appearing in Linkpool. Banning the IPs doesn't help, because the person is on dial-up, so I decided to take matters into my own hands a bit. I looked up their IP address and traced it back to BellSouth, an ISP in Atlanta, Georgia. I fired off an email to their abuse department, so let's see what happens there. Did I mention that the new version of Linkpool has IP masking, so I can block out entire ranges (ie 68.211.*.*)? This is yet another thing that will decrease the amount of crap that appears in Linkpool. Oh, and I think I'm going to discountinue iframe support. Any complaints there?

Random plug: Softnik Technologies has some good (and free) software, and the laptop they show on their main page happens to be identical to mine. I've just enjoyed the wonders of WhoisView, and they have a nice online version, too. Score.

• Written on 12 March 2004 & posted at 11:05 AM.
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So, I was walking from my first class in the Life Sciences Centres back towards the CS building, and I heard the sound of bagpipes. Or, rather, the sound of the bagpipe droning noise. I looked around — a bit perplexed — and found the answer: a high pressure water spraying truck was set up in front of the library and had some hoses running inside. I hear the sound of the bagpipe everywhere, it seems, and this incident reminds me of the Great Mystery of our youth: who was playing the bagpipes that you could always hear from Steve's house when we were sixteen? I'll bet those of you who were there have completely forgotten about it, but on a good day, you could hear those from my house, too. Once upon a time, all of Cole Harbour rung out with the sound of “Banks of Loch Lomond”, and it was good. Weird, yes, but good.

Anyway, I've been a busy code monkey, slaving away at Linkpool 3.0, which besides being (a) much easier to use (b) much nicer to look at and (c) much cooler overall, should alleviate the problem of all that spam it's been getting lately. Each link has two buttons next to it (+/-) which let people rate the link. By default, links start with 3 votes up and 1 vote down, for an overall rating of 7.5 (votes up divided by the total number of votes), and if a link falls below a rating of 3/10, it's toast. So, theoretically, spam and crap links should pretty much get cleaned automatically. Voting is open on each link for exactly one week, and any votes that survive seven days get to stay forever. It's worthy of noting that I came up with the idea of tracking link popularity way back at the beginning, long before Linkpool was even publicly available and lived on at my site. It's weird that it's taken me almost a year to finally do it. At any rate, I've really only got two things left to do: the code generator, which will automagically create code customized to a user's preferences (and tailored to their CMS, if they so choose), and the importer, which will take all of the existing links that have collected since, oh, last September, and shove them into the new system. Lovely. I need moderators, though, so let know if you're interested.

Well, it's almost class time, so I'm going to shoot on out of here. And by the way, whoever Googled for “you are holy” “free download” mp3 is an idiot, and it's Taylor's fault that they found me.

• Written on 10 March 2004 & posted at 11:05 AM.
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Hey kids, guess what kicks ass? Eurotrip! Easily the funniest movie I've seen in years, I highly recommend it to everyone involved. It's got all the elements of a great movie: random celebrity cameos, a catchy theme song, traditionally disgusting scenes, making fun of the Pope and Hitler, and an excessive amount of boobies. Wicked. Go see it. At the very least, pirate yourself a shiny new copy of Scotty Doesn't Know by Lustra, because it's ridiculously catchy. I want it as my ring tone.

The last 24 hours seem to have been about six months long, but I'll recap quickly. Yesterday, most of the group ended up at Chapters for coffee and book browsing. Startlingly, we spent three hours there before we really got bored. Russell, in particular, seemed to be happy there, trying to mess with their book look-up terminals. Around nine o'clock, I split off from everyone else to head home for a bit and go to work.

Today, after a day of post backshift recuperation, I woke up to Janet jumping towards me. She bought me The Morningside World of Stuart McLean, by Stuart McLean (duh), as well as a Chapter's iRewards membership. At supper time, Keddy and I went on the traditional Epic Road Trip and arrived back in time for a large proportion of the group to go see Eurotrip. Whilst Steve and Keddy piled into Steve's car, Janet, Pugsley, and I shot off with Mike in the Jesus-van for the 9:05 showing, making it in just as the lights dimmed, predictably late.

It's been a damn good weekend, and now I'm ready to go sleep it off and prepare myself mentally and physically for another week of school. And coincidentally, this time next month, I should theoretically be on summer break. Kick. Ass. So, with the image of me kicking your ass safely implanted in your head, I'm off. While this entry is relatively short, there was a lot of markup, and it's reached its maximum non-ridiculous length (I refuse to make w.bloggar scroll so I can see my entire entry).

Catchy music news: Emm Gryner has some weird tunes that I'm finding very interesting at this moment. Check out Hello Aquarius.

• Written on 08 March 2004 & posted at 12:06 AM.
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Ugh. Tired. After what was the easiest-to-stay-awake backshift ever, where I felt totally fine, I got home and couldn't get to sleep. And now, predictably, I'm tired. For one thing, I wish there was a way to set up telephones — especially home phones — to turn off ringers for periods of, say, eight hours. Nothing bugs me more than getting woken up by the phone, but that's how I always get woken up.

However, there's no use crying over spilt sleep. I have to get up and plan my day, and to that end, I think I'm going out for coffee at some point (that's fairly traditional for me). In the mean time, I'm reading a really weird book (The Prophet, by Kahil Gibran) and I'll probably end up finishing that this afternoon. Also, I'm quite excited to listen to Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? by Metric, which Pugsley bought. Combat Baby is a fantastic song and I'm curious to see if they're one hit wonders or something I could really get into. I really need a new band to be obsessed over — besides Alizée — and their stuff seems catchy enough. In other great music news, La Belle et Le Bad Boy by MC Solaar is catchy (although it is French hip hop), and No, Not Now by Hot Hot Heat is also great.

And by the way, the new Florida Grapefruit Juice commercial has a really hot chick in it.

• Written on 06 March 2004 & posted at 03:53 PM.
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• Written on 04 March 2004 & posted at 07:44 PM.
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I think a lamp that was shaped like an ampersand (&) would be pretty great. In fact, a whole range of keyboard-oriented lighting products would be nice — somebody should get right on that. And give me money, of course, but that goes without saying. (Give me money.)

Anyway, ShinyPlasticBag has become the top site in the Canadian category on Blog Hot or Not. Fan-bloody-tastic. I think it's weird that there aren't more blogs in the Canadian category — at least, I'm assuming there aren't many, if I'm at the top. Wacky stuff, and an interesting idea. Once people got sick of rating pictures, move to blogs — ingenious. Of course, one can't really judge a web site fairly in, like, five seconds, but what can you do?

In other news, I got my political science paper (on Pierre Trudeau) back, and I got an A. Score on that — I'm happy. I was concerned for a while, because I'm so bad at writing essays. I'm in computer science for a reason (no other marketable skills). The midterm was today as well, and I think I did alright. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I had enough time, but my answers were reasonably decent and I was suitably prepared. Regardless, I can't wait until I'm out of school for the year. It's been a long winter and I'm ready for some “chillaxing” — plus, thanks to the miracle of my blog archives, I can figure out what sucks and doesn't suck when it comes to random amusements. Ten more days until this blog turns a year old, but it's not like I can celebrate a great opening moment or anything, but some of the stuff from back there was interesting. I'll have to find something decent from roughly a year ago to link to on the officially one year mark.

Well, I'm going to stop blogging now. I've got to drive out to Bedford in a few minutes. Before I go, however, I'd like to point out that 69: A Love Story is pretty funny. I think it's the squeaking sound effects that do it, methinks.

Update: Check out the hardcore pingu! It kicks ass. :)

• Written on 03 March 2004 & posted at 07:33 PM.
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So, of all things, the Coca-Cola jingle is in my head. The blame for this one falls squarely on Keddy, because he was digging through some of my old CDs and put in “So Purple It Hurts,” which included the Coca-Cola jingle. Sure, you could put the blame on me for making that CD like 2 years ago, but Keddy was more recently involved, so I'll blame him.

It turns out that the two things I was freaking out most about over the weekend have sort of ironed themselves out naturally. The server fixed itself — which is creepy, but nice — and even my skins are back. Also, the political science midterm that I had completely forgotten about until about, oh, two o'clock Sunday morning turns out to be on Wednesday, not this afternoon, as I was assuming. I have spent the last day studying my ass off, but it's nice to have a bit of extra time on it.

I spent the evening in the fine company of Keddy, who watched me work on a neat new layout for this site, and Castro, who slept on the couch. Mike, Janet, and Mary Anne were in the kitchen with my mom, playing Pictionary. I am startling good at Pictionary, and I also hate it. Board games are very, very boring.

Anyway, I've got nothing but class tomorrow and more studying for that bastardly political science essay. I'm very sick of school at this point — I can't wait for summer to come. I'd even settle for spring, actually, and speaking of which, I heard the weirdest thing Sunday morning as I tried to get to sleep: birds. Birds.

BIRDS?

Yeah, I guess it's about that time again. Less than three weeks until winter is officially over, and it was actually above freezing today. If the wind manages to stay down, we might have a nice spring after all.

• Written on 02 March 2004 & posted at 01:38 AM.
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