November 26: The Atari Obsession & Sold Out Movies

I just love this time of year! It's fantastic, and I think I'm sort of sad that this is my last one. Sure, I've complained in the past, but I guess I'm just in a savoury mood. The Discovery Centre web site is, for all intents and purposes, complete. The prof is reviewing the documentation I've prepared to make sure it's not too geeky, and all I have left is a few more pages of content to post online. I do have some stress for my English class, however, since my essay is due on Thursday and I haven't started it yet. Fortunately, it's not a long one (6 - 7 pages, double-spaced, so about 3.5 pages). I really just have to sit down and do it (my topic is unexciting; I'll be contrasting the earlier explorer's/settler's mindsets on the natives, as detailed in two of the pieces we've reviewed this term...woooooooo).

Anyway, Dad and I made an attempt to go see Harry Potter tonight, but it was not meant to be — we were both late and got there in time for a staff person to announce to the surprisingly large crowd that the 7:00 show was sold out. I guess we'll have to try next week. We ended up watching a heap of old Simpson's episodes, which isn't such a bad way to spend an evening, I suppose.

In other news, I'm in love with the Ataris again (Greenday is there too, but not so much). I have Another Night Alone stuck in my head, which always reminds me of untangling rafts of thick, purple speaker wire with “The Gang” back in high school. It's definitely a classic — sometimes I really feel like music follows some sort of elliptical orbit with me. What's up with that?

November 22: Trevor the Trilobite

So, Mom is back from her exciting trip to Alberta, and things in the house are returning to normal. Amonst the many interesting items she brought back (such as skiis, for some reason), she got me the coolest thing ever: a trilobite fossil! It's awesome, and I have decided to name him Trevor. I've thought trilobites were nifty ever since I installd The 7th Guest on our 486 ages ago and saw the “Trilobyte” logo. Definitely interesting looking little creatures. It's pretty amazing to have something in my possession that is more than 250 million years old.

In other news, my beloved cell phone may well be on it's way to the cellphone recycling graveyard. An accident on Saturday night led to the front screen getting broken, and the inside screen getting splotchy. That being said, it's not awful, and it's death isn't imminent: although I miss the caller id/clock capability of the front screen, it's not a real deal breaker. I'm actually lucky that it still works, period.

Anyway, I'm busily killing time until my English class starts. Philosophy today was a special lecture about the other realms of logic, each less interesting than the last. I respect logic, and I appreciate logic, but I can't stand listening to lectures about it. Funny, huh? On that note, I should get a move on. Ciao, planet.

November 19: The Goblet of Fire

Things that make me happy include: new Harry Potter movies! After the steaming pile of crap that was The Prisoner of Azkaban, I was a bit cautious (and it was my favourite book — what a bummer). That being said, I'm pleased to announce that The Goblet of Fire was faaantastic. Seriously. Although a book the size of that one can't really accurately make the transition to the big screen, they did a reasonably good job of it.

Janet and I arrived way too late, however. I bought our tickets over the phone on Wednesday, but that does nothing to guarantee a seat. We got there about 20 minutes before the movie started and entered an absolutely packed theatre. The only seats we could find were front row, first seats on the far left. Ick. The brain is an impressive device, though, and it didn't take too long to get used to the skewed angle.

Things of note: Cho, Harry's love interest, has a Scottish accent. I'm sorry, it's just very disconcerting to see an Asian person with a Scottish accent. I have no idea why. Also, Voldemort (who I was impressed with) bore a bit of a resemblence to The Mummy. Also very disconcerting. (Neither of these things impacted my enjoyment of the movie, but I do think they're of note.)

Anyway, that's about it. I've got exciting geek things to blog about, but I'll save them for another day (yes, I'm random lately...sorry). Later.

November 14: Semantic Entailment

I'd apologize for the delay between blog entries, but the conversation has been lively and hilarious. Nothing can beat the pissing contest between Keddy and Pugs:

Keddy: You are in the same shape as me physically! We would keep up with eachother.
Pugs: I replaced your asthma medication, with pez. run now bitch.

That line had me laughing all night at work on Saturday. You can really tell that they love each other, can't you? Anyway, in terms of things that actually matter*
(I'm not saying that you don't matter as people, guys, I'm saying that your online arguments don't matter. Suckas.)
, I just finished doing the second quiz for my philosophy class. I got a 90% on this one, too, so there's still hope for me passing the class. Maybe I'll be able to turn that horrible midterm grade into a statistical blip...wish me luck on that.

In other news, my mom is in Alberta for the week. She's in Calgary right now, but she'll soon be off to Banff. (Ostensibly, she's there for a conference at work, but she's also getting to connect with Devin, Mary Ann's offspring, who moved out there a few years back. Mary Ann loaded Mom up with several kilograms of cookies prior to departure). So, for the week, I'm responsible for keeping the pets (ie, kitty and Mary Ann) alive and well. So far, so good.

Anyhoo, I'm off to go tend to the sick and weary. The flu seems to be hitting everyone pretty hard this year, which I guess we deserved (it's been awhile — we had it coming). With apologies for the disjointed randomness of this particular entry, I'll see you later. Ciao.

November 09: The Incredible Spit Sucking Machine

I just got back from the dentist's office — what a fun excursion that was. There's nothing quite as unsettling as sitting in a chair with your mouth wide open while someone scrapes at your teeth with a little metal pick. Gah. That being said, my teeth are now squeaky clean — bonus.

I'm currently going through a rough spot in my philosophy class (logic and deduction). Like quite a few other people in the class, I failed the midterm (41%) despite doing quite well on the first assignment (90%). I'm a bit stressed out about it, but the only thing to be done is more studying. That's been hard, however, since I am just getting over a small bout of being sick with the flu.

For the past few days, I've been wicked tired and overheated. I called in sick for work on Sunday and only dragged myself to school yesterday because I had to do a presentation in Community Outreach about the Discovery Centre web site (which went fairly smoothly). I think I'm over the worst of it now, having slept for about 14 hours last night. One thing I will give the flu credit for: it sure makes you appreciate feeling healthy and normal when it's all over with.

Anyway, I've got to go be productive. Later.

November 05: The Idea: Google Metro

Last Thursday, whilst busily working away on the our Discovery Centre project, Jamie (one of the guys in my group) came up with a nifty idea for a Google Maps mash-up: what if you could superimpose all of the bus stops in Halifax for a particular route number onto a map? It'd be fantastic — maybe you could enter a starting point and destination and get a list of what buses to take, or just enter your address and see all of the bus stops within a certain distance. It could be very neat.

So, I emailed Metro Transit's generic email address on Thursday, and actually got an interesting response: the bus stops exist somewhere in a Lotus spreadsheet*
(Wow, party like it's 1993!)
and, if we have a good enough reason, we might be able to get our hands on it. I'm not sure what sort of format they'd be in (like, would it just say “Arklow drive: 3 bus stops”, or would they be more precise somehow?), but it's promising. They gave me the phone number of someone to call, but thus far, I haven't had any luck in getting ahold of him. Seriously, though, how cool would that be?

In other news, Steve and I are looking into the prospect of making our own flux capacitors. Seriously. There are a few pages out there with instructions, but most of them aren't particularly faithful to the original [via].

So, yes, I realize that I'm a huge nerd, but...well, I'm not the only one am I?

November 02: Five Years Later

Woohoo, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 has hit the airwaves (webwaves?). Tony, in particular, I can imagine being very excited about this, since he's been a 1.5 fanboy for the past month or so. I'm pretty excited.

I think Firefox is pretty much the most exciting thing happening on the Internet right now. Although it's been a year since 1.0 came out, things have been developing nicely in the background. The huge library of extensions continues to boggle the mind — when I think back to my browsing experience of only three years ago, it seems so primitive and unpersonal. Firefox is shaped exactly the way I want it to be.

Although I have some worries about their blossoming memory usage, the new features are pretty nifty: you can finally re-order your tabs (by dragging them around) a la the horrid/buggy TabBrowser Extensions, and they're claiming that the pop-up blocking has been improved. I'm excited.

So, viva los Firefox. Let the nightlies roll (again).