ShinyPlasticBag

Holy crap, I can't believe it's been a week since my last blog entry. I've started writing a new one several times, only to get distracted or interrupted or just run out of steam. This is sad.

I've had a fairly busy week, with two fun-filled assignments and lots of reading. Yesterday was devoted entirely to a digital media assignment (implementing a simplification of the median-cut colour reduction algorithm). It went pretty well, considering that it was in Java, a language I haven't used in years. It sort of got better. I'm actually kind of surprised at how easily I was able to get back into the Java groove — I guess programming is a bit like riding a bike, except you learn how to ride a dozen different bikes (C++, PHP, C#, etc.), over the course of your life.

In other news, my mom has finally stepped into the modern world by getting herself a real cell phone, one just like mine. This is exciting, because she's just been using a pay-as-you-go phone for the past few years and going through phonecards at a ridiculous rate. Mom's phone has been passed on to Janet, who is the third keeper of the phone.

Anyway, I've got a crapload of laundry to do, so I should jet. Goodbye, cruel world. Or something like that.

• Written on 30 January 2006 & posted at 02:22 PM.
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For the past week or so, Chuck Norris has been everywhere I look. Everyone is laughing about Chuck Norris and his amazing roundhouse kick. He's involved in fictious battles to the death. Hell, Saturday Night Live is even singing songs about him. What gives? Is it just another instance of the Shitting Bear Effect, or is he really an Internet Phenom?

This is the biggest Internet meme I've seen since the “All Your Base” fiasco. There's no way to tell how long it will last, but for those who are interested, I thought I'd document all of the Chuck Norris-related things I've seen over the past two weeks, in roughly chronological order.

• It started with a thread on the Something Awful forums listing various Chuck Norris facts (“Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.”) I can't find a link to this thread, but it's generally regarded as the origin of all of this tomfoolery.
• Someone took these and compiled a best-of list. They then purchased chucknorrisfacts.com and started generating buzz. This has caused some controversy, of course, since they basically stole the facts from the SA folks.
• The Random Chuck Norris Fact site gives one of the famous facts to you at random (well-named). This site claims to be the originator of everything, but it's hard to know who to listen to.
• Joystiq dug up an old Atari game called Chuck Norris Superkicks.
• Tony Danza read a few choice items from the list to Chuck Norris when he was a guest on “The Tony Danza” show. He seemed a bit creeped out.
• Chuck Norris himself responded to the weird meme on his web site.
• A SNL Digital Short called “Young Chuck Norris” documented his early life as a roundhouse kicking machine, however, it has been pulled from YouTube for (I assume) copyright reasons.
• The infamous Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny video featured Chuck Norris descending from heaven and delivering a mighty kick to the crotch of Indiana Jones. After the Something Awful thread, this would seem to be the second oldest part of the Chuck Norris meme. It's also the catchiest.

Have I missed anything? Do share. Chuck Norris is awesome.

• Written on 23 January 2006 & posted at 04:04 PM.
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Well, folks, I'm finally doing it: I'm switching my blog from Nucleus to something better (not that Nucleus is bad, but it's definitely not flexible enough for the sorts of things I like to do). I've been using it since I started this blog almost three years ago, and it's served me well, but I've been planning to move to something else for ages. I just had to figure out what to move it to.

It's not an easy decision to make, you know — there are a lot of factors to consider. In the end, it basically boiled down to either Movable Type or WordPress. Both were significantly more powerful than Nucleus, but in the end (after much Googling), I decided on WordPress. Why?

• WordPress is totally free, whilst Movable Type has a series of versions with various restrictions.
• Movable Type and its plugins is written in Perl, the language of dragons. WordPress and its plugins (and its templates!) are all PHP — a language I know and love.
• WordPress creates beautiful, semantic code out of the box. Movable Type's isn't bad, but isn't nearly as good.
• WordPress is dynamic, whilst Movable Type is static. The idea of waiting for my poor, slow server to manually build hundreds of HTML files at once is not an appealing one.

Basically, it was a no brainer, although I did go through several hours worth of work to install Movable Type on Friday night just to see what it was like (this required installing Perl and mod_perl first, and then configuring Apache to work properly).

Anyway, I have a few more issues to sort of out with WordPress, but I've already written a converter that is able to move all of my entries and comments from Nucleus to WordPress, and works pretty well. I hope to make the move by February 1st. Now, wasn't this an exciting blog entry? Complain about my nerdiness below.

• Written on 22 January 2006 & posted at 07:41 PM.
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I'm sorry, but I have the idea of the snow couch stuck in my head. I guess you can blame Keddy for putting the idea in my head (see the comments in my previous entry), but you have to admit that it would be an awful lot of fun. I figure that if we strapped a few snowboards to the bottom of an old couch, we'd have a pretty awesome setup for “social sledding”. Anyone interested? It could be a fun project, um, if we ever get any freaking snow (it continues to be green outside).

Anyway, I'm all alone and yet I've repeatedly laughed out loud whilst reading Chuck Norris Facts. I'm a bit embarassed by how long I laughed at #7 — I love this site. It's things like this that really define the greatness of the Internet for me. I really love the humour factor. If you haven't seen the site before, take a look and then watch this (very low quality) video of Tony Danza — yes, the boss — reading the list to Chuck Norris himself. It's great.

Opinion poll: what do you like better for talking about two things: &, +, or and? For example, contrast “Rich & famous”, “Rich + famous”, and “Rich and famous”. Let me know what you think.

• Written on 18 January 2006 & posted at 04:26 PM.
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I figured it was about time that I made use of the camera in my phone. I hereby present my weekend, in photos.

Friday, Janet gave me the very cool coffee mug that she made for me at the Clay Cafe in Halifax. As you can see, it's a pretty accurate rendition of me, in mug form. I love it. It has a cover (my face) that keeps the contents warm for a very long time. The outside is decorated with a mouse. I took it to work and wooed my co-workers with it's awesomeness.

Continue reading “My Weekend”...

• Written on 15 January 2006 & posted at 10:34 PM.
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Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how sick do you think a maple syrup drinking contest would be? For the uninitiated, this idea was pioneered (to the best of my knowledge) by the movie “Supertroopers”, but (of course) lots of morons around the world have picked up on the idea.

Don't believe me? Fine. Check out these college students in Illinois, or random discussion board people, or the sexily-named 1Point21Gigawatts. It's practically a worldwide trend.

Why am I rambling about this, you ask? Well, Janet, Pugsley, Katie, David, and Adam had a maple syrup (table syrup, actually) drinking contest last night. Sick. The best part of it is that I have no idea how it turned out, since I'm at work and it happened after I had to leave. That means that there's an element of suspense in play — the answer will (hopefully) be revealed by one of them in the comments to this entry.

So, now that the syrup contest is over, what other great movie stunts can I encourage people I know to attempt? All ideas are welcome. And mark my words: I will trick someone into doing The Atomic Situp.

(Fun fact: some of the shots in the movie actually showed thickened iced tea, not syrup. Weird.)

• Written on 14 January 2006 & posted at 05:48 AM.
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I'm at school and so very bored I could just die. Days that start with “T” suck, due to this uninteresting three hour break between classes. I don't have anything school-related that I can work on, which means I'm just going to sit here and be unproductive. I'm currently messing with a copy of Lazy Sunday in Cool Edit to see if I can get it to sound a bit better. I've got it on my iPod to listen to in the car, but the sound is very flat and crappy. Between that and the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, I've got an awful lot of nerdy Internet tunes on there at the moment. Suits me, I guess.

It was all rainy and crappy outside this morning, but it seems to have cleared up. The weather has been very weird this winter, what with it being the middle of January and us having had only one snowstorm. I'm not sure if it's global warming or El Nino, but it's really a bummer. I wanna go sledding and skiing and build a giant snow edifice in the front yard, all of which are exceedingly difficult to do without snow (not impossible, mind you, just difficult). It's a real bummer.

Anyway, I'm going to go concentrate on making this not sound like ass. If anyone finds a good copy out there, let me know.

• Written on 12 January 2006 & posted at 12:21 PM.
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I'm busily working on my Graphics assignment, which, at this point in the venture, consists of lines. We're supposed to be drawing a face using a predefined list of points and lines, and eventually, a drawing package, but I'm still very near the beginning. I started about an hour and a half ago, and I can now draw arbitrary lines on screen. This is fun, because the only drawing function we were allowed to use is SetPixel (to make an individual pixel a particular colour). I got to delve back into the wonders of y=mx+b for the first time since grade eight. Bonus.

In other news, I finally went to the doctor (I've been sick since early December) and got a prescription for some sort of nose sniffy thingie that should hopefully make me better. I also picked up my U-Pass, which means that I can ride the buses for free. That means that today has been my most productive day in recent memory.

Anyway, I've got to go prepare for Janet's arrival, since the kitchen is a mess and I'm supposed to be making supper pretty soon. So, until next time, I bid you good day.

• Written on 11 January 2006 & posted at 04:51 PM.
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I can't believe it. I'm actually done the first week of my last semester of university. This is mind boggling. It seems like just yesterday I was going through the hell of applying to get in. Even high school doesn't seem that distant, actually. And yet here I am.

The semester itself is sort of a good news/bad news situation for me. I'm taking two very interesting courses (Graphics and Digital Media) that will give me some programming action (of which I have had very little for the past few years), but my schedule is awful. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I only have one class, and it's at 9:30 am. This is particularly awful on Fridays, since I have to work backshift. Today being such an occasion, I came home from the class and slept until four. On an unpopulated Friday, I'd usually sleep until about 1:30 or 2:00. Taking into account the two hours of class and driving, it makes sense.

In other news, one of my mom's New Year's Resolutions (I have none) is to make me eat healthier. She's been prodding me to do so forever, but recently kicked it into overdrive, so I'm finally going along with it. I actually cooked a proper meal last night for Janet and I (chicken quesadillas) that tasted like real human food. I'm shocked. So, wish me luck on that front.

Anyway, I've got to go do the dishes from that adventure, which I've been putting off, so I should go. How's everyone else?

• Written on 06 January 2006 & posted at 04:44 PM.
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