NEd-itorializing

Windows 7 Install

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:40:11 GMT

Moving from the RC to release version today.

8:30 AM Step 1: backup everything, twice.
I have a 1TB external drive. First I ran the regular sync of my music files. I do this every Saturday anyways.
Next, windows backup. If it goes wrong, at least I can get back where I started with user info bakups and a system image. I've had this running every Monday, just doing it today to have everything up to date and make sure the image is recent. I've been clearing old files off the external drive all week to make room.
Guess I'll shower while that runs.

12:28 AM So, 4 hours and one new router later... The router problem is unrelated, we just got tired of having the internet drop out every saturday morning. Now I'll run Windows Easy Transfer. Also rooting around to find my XP licence, which I'm going to need during the upgrade. It's probably about time I actually stuck that sticker on the case. I notice that for 7 the product key is just in the packaging.

1:46 PM OK, time to put in the disc and let 'er rip.

2:35 PM I'm back online, firefox is installed and i imported back my favourites. I notice that the installation process, rather than formatting the harddrive, just put my old files in folder windows.old, which is interesting. It's nice that I didn't have to reformat, but I would prefer that it had actually asked. Now there are updates to run, and then I'll use ninite.com to get alot of the programs I want installed (thanks Lifehacker!) First, I have to reboot for updates.

4:20 PM My files and settings have been transferred back by Easy-Transfer, and everything seems to be working. I still have some minor programs that will need reinstalling, but all the majors are taken care of.

The American Presidential debates...

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:35:21 GMT

Brought to you by Coal and Natural Gas.

No really, those are the sponsors.

Nice try, telus

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:36:31 GMT

So, my 3 year contract with Telus finished a few months ago. I've been thinking about changing providers, especially since I currently pay about $40, to talk for about 5 mins a month. But, one of their pleas for me to come get a new phone from them included the offer of a $20 package that seems to be everything I get now. Just when I was considering that, their little scheme for text messaging hit the papers. So long, jerks!

He'll rue the day he crossed him.

Mon, 05 May 2008 03:51:38 GMT

Guess who my worst enemy is. I will give you a hint, he looks just like me.

Tomorrow: audition for the opera chorus!
Today: First serious practice of my music for said audition!

Not my first occasion of poor preparation, by far. But hey, the bruises are nearly gone from the last one, and you can hardly see the scar.

aeronautical punnury

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:18:39 GMT

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipOne uses a "hybrid rocket", meaning it has both liquid and solid propellants. The solid is rubber. So you could say that space tourists will get to "really burn rubber" getting into space!

If that doesn't get any laughs out of you, try a hit of the liquid propellant, NO2, aka laughing gas.

Campaign trail

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:57:35 GMT

In Alberta, the writ has just dropped for a March 3 election. My dad is standing as the local NDP candidate again.

The PC party has governed Alberta for 37 years now, 4 premiers. Historically speaking, in Alberta, that means we're due for a new party in power. We started with 3 Liberal premiers, then 3 United Farmers premiers, and then 3 Social Credit premiers.

Having a life sure is tiring, part 2

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 05:50:33 GMT

Sooo, back in September, maybe it was still late August, Mom points out to me an add in Swerve, a (monthly?) magazine suplement in the Calgary Herald. The Calgary Opera Chorus needs Tenors. Eventually, I overcome my fear of telephones enough to actually call and ask to audition. Just in time, since the auditions are, I learn, two days away.

I don't take voice lessons, as many of the other members of the chorus do. So I had nothing in particular prepared. Also, my other choirs break over the summer, so I hadn't sung for four months. As you can imagine, Best Audition Ever!

Not.

I havn't sung any Opera music in about 8 years, so I don't know any arias. I looked through my other music to see what i have and know that is remotely suitable, and settle on Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, since it's in a foreign language and classical. As it turned out, something that's not all p to mp would proabably have been better in this case, but I don't know these things.

Anyway, two days later, I get a call, and I'm told they don't think my voice has enough power. Which, considering my audition, was a reasonable assesment. And they suggest I start taking voice lessons and tryout again next year. Which is fine by me, hey, I'll just stick to two choirs, working part time, studying part time, and being my chill self. Then two days after that, I get another call, someone else dropped out, am I still interested? "No!" Screams sensible inner voice, "Save Yourself!" But I've just spent a boring summer playing World of Warcraft all the time, so what I say is "Absolutely!".

That's when my schedule turns into singing four days a week. Here's a side note, singing Opera is to singing normal choral music in an amateur choir as Governor Schwartzeneger's workout is to my situps and bicep curls, the later of which I no longer had time to do. Rigoletto is a great one to be in the chorus in, though. First, it has an all male chorus. Second, it's Verdi, so the music is really good. Third, the chorus gets some great songs and bits. Finally, I came to realise that Italian really is a wonderful language. A c is a "ch" as in "chair". A ch is a "K" as in "Kirk". Everything else is pronounced exactly as it is written. Always. Every vowel is always the same vowel sound: to make other sounds, vowels are just strung together. So easy, once you get that.

Even with two or sometimes three rehersals a week, it was still a challenge to get all the music memorized before staging rehersals started, but somehow we all managed. What's that? Cue cards with the lyrics on them? I don't know what you're talking about. Next question!

At this point, I started to get very excited about the production, because the ideas for the staging, costuming, concept etcetera were very creative and interesting. I also started being very slightly nervous after about two weeks of staging when we hadn't actually finished act one yet. As staging went on, I also started becoming tired of Wendies and Subway, and forgetting what my family looks like. And at some point in there, I had a day where I only ate about 300 calories, from which my stomach has only just now fully recovered. I EM SMART! S-M-R-T! Rehersals were usually from 7-10pm, so I was also getting less sleep than usual. It all came together, but when the dress rehersal finally came around, I was puting base makeup over the dark circles around my eyes so the makeup artists could paint dark circles over it. Fortunately, the performances were all a few days apart, so I did get to rest up.

Well, this is already pretty long, so I think I'll make a part three.

Vendetta!

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:00:24 GMT

Well, although it's officially a few more days away, Autumn is well upon Calgary this week. That is, it's horribly cold. My summer days of occasionally going out of doors for leisure, wasting the rest of my time on WoW, are at an end. However, work, school (taking 2 courses now) and 2 choirs just didn't seem like enough. Surely I could cram in something more. And boy did I ever! I auditioned for, and somehow conned my way into, the Calgary Opera Chorus. Fortunately, I'm not finding singing in Italian as much a pain in the ass as I used to, triphthongs be damned. Rigoletto: lust, cross dressing, vendettas, murder. Great stuff. Now I have a whole month to memorize it completely. Not crazy or impossible at all. Noooo.

Oop, no more time, off to choir.

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:42:18 GMT

When you realise the world is full of nails, you begin to reconise all the different kinds of hammer.

Bioshock and Steam

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:37:46 GMT

So, Bioshock: I have never played the System Shock games, but this one had me right off the bat. Why? It's set in the 60's, in a civil war, in an underwater city built to be an objectivist utopia. Sure, it has other cool features like plasmids to give you various powers, but really, it's a fictional examination of Ayn Rand's terrbile philosophy where I get to light things on fire. I should be playing right now. Why aren't I? because on Sunday i thought it would be a good idea to buy it using Steam. "Hey, i'll get home on Tuesday, and it'll be ready to play!" I thought.
Wrong.
8 hours of downloading on the weekend.
20 minutes of decrypting, and now more than an hour and a half of waiting while it updates.
If I can remember this, I won't be buying any non-Valve product over Steam again. Because I could have driven to the store and had a shiny box and manuals and disk by now, and start playing at about the same time. BAH!

Boy, is my face red.

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:03:05 GMT

Literally red. The back of my hands, to. I kinda thought my cowboy hat was shading my face at the Stampede today, but aparently not. I'm glad i was wearing long sleeves.

I saw some very impressive jumps at a BMX demonstration, but i don' think anyone went as high as the one unlucky cowboy at the rodeo, whose bull caught up to him, and tossed him a good 15ft in the air.
I also got myself some minidonuts. So good.

It's funny, but i noticed that walking through the crowded midway, gave me a feeling pretty similiar to when I walk through Fish Creek Provincial park.

failed to burn down house

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 03:30:48 GMT

Did you know, that if you leave canned corn on the stove for 2 hours, it will not pop? It will, in fact, set fire. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle!

The other half is getting the pot clean.

time marches on

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 23:09:03 GMT

Well, it's summer, even in Calgary. We are still getting quite a lot of rain, after a very wet spring. The plants are green, when they haven't been ripped up by hail, and the roof of a WalMart collapsed, so it's not all bad. I've been part time at work for a few weeks now, and both of my choirs break for the summer, which means I've actually been getting some schoolwork done. Today, unfortunately, has been mostly procrastination.

Long over-due update

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 02:42:38 GMT

I can't even remember when I last wrote anything. (Ed. Note: November. Yeesh) I've been a bit busy the last few months. Right now, and for the next month, I have choir rehearsels three nights a week. I havn't taken any time off since before the fall, when I took afternoon to go write an exam. That's why next week, I'm taking a vacation, and heading out to Ontario! I went out for Gryphcon last year, and i'm doin it agian now, but this time i've got a little more time to, say, see my friends. Crazy, I know. Of course, it would probably be good if I tell any of them I'm coming, you know, soonish. But Communicating is not my style!

Just the other day I recieved the evaluation by Athabasca of my transfer credits, and although the forms are a bit obtuse, it looks like i've got about half a degree, and should be able to finish in 2-3 years depending on how fast i manage to go. And today I got a raise at work!

Oh yeah, I guess I turned 24 on Saturday. I got a novel, a new monitor, and some sort of mild intestinal illness. On a related note, i'm not going to eat Vietnamese or Thai food ever again.

i'm going to stop procrastinating. next month.

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:34:20 GMT

I always say to myself, "time to update the old journal". And then I don't. Trying to right good will just make it harder, so I'm goin to try and jsut spit it out.

I finished my first course from Athabasaca. I passed. I did really well on the first essay, but with the second, longer, one, I took way to long to get to it, and to get it done. It stareted out well, but the second half was crap. I still don't write good concluding paragraphs, and I basically called it done when it was long enough, and had all the requisite parts. I barely wrote the exam on time, and didn't remeber enough details of the material to get a good mark. Still, %73 isn't te worst grade i've ever gotten, and i know how to improve. My next course starts in December, and in the mean time, I'm reading "Shaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays", which seems like it could be very helpful, and I've got the Oxford Guide to Library Research. Athabasca opened up a Political Science major in September, so that's what i've applied for.the requiments are more flexible than Canadian Studies, PoliSci is my interest anyways, and I won't have to try and learn French by correspondence.

I'm now in two choirs, the Unitarian Church of Calgary Choir, and VocaLatitudes, a community world music choir. With the later, we performed on Sunday, singing during intermission for a concert called Make a Joyful Noise, in the lobby of Jack singer Concert Hall. For those who don't know it, the lobby is alot nicer than it sounds. I got to watch the concert, too, showcasing the music of multiple faiths. It was great, really well staged, but seemed a little narrow to me. They started with an American Indian singer and drummer, and had a buddhist chanter, and representatives of the Sihk, Hindu, and Sufi community, all of whom performed in what I would call East Indian style music, although the Sufi music was probably closer to pakistan or the middle east in origin, but still, lots of tabla and sitar.The Christian choir was impressively massive, being the combination of 4 churches and I think two high schools, and they sang "All Thing Bright and Beautiful", a lovely song. Having a (white) pianist and (white) soprano soloist singing European classical music seems like kind a of copout for Baha'i, even if they do acknowledge all prophets. The Bahá'u'lláh came from Iran, and I'm sure the Baha'is must have some original music of their own.

I've started trying to learn to play the guitar, but won't be getting a MySpace page anytime soon. I still can't switch between the four chords I know without breaking rythym.

I haven't done much mini painting lately, first because I was to busy with my course, and now mostly because painting without sunlight kinda sucks, and it's dark at quarter after five around here now.

Comic books are gradually taking over my limited shelf space. I'm going to have to do something about that.

Right, well, that worked pretty well. Ned out.

never are words so hard fought for, as when they must come from my pen

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 04:50:40 GMT

Finally done the first assignment for my history course. I really need to work on not procrastinating, and writing more easily.

I'm heading out to Seattle on thursday for my cousins wedding this weekend. I'm glad of the opurtunity to see the relatives out there this summer, I probably wouldn't be getting down ther this year otherwise. I think it really shows how contemporary society differs from the past, that at 23 years old, this will be the first wedding I have attended.

I've made some progress on my painting project. The spearmen just need skin and shoes (lots.. and lots... of green.) and I've got five wolves waiting for riders. Also finished the Night Smurf standard bearer. I'm overall happy, i just wish I could do a better job on the banner. Hopefully, my freehand painting of a decapitated Smurf head will at least be recognisable. I'll do some pictures next week.

I saw Talledega Nights on Saturday. Completely hilarious, I laughed alot. There is nothing scarier than driving with a live cougar. Except maybe Silent Hill, which is one of the best horror movies I've seen. Did you like that segue? Yeah, you know you dug it. It's amazing to like a movie based on a video game for reasons other than funny camp or Angelina Jolie.

Taxes

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 03:22:33 GMT

So, the other day at work, everybody had to fill out tax forms, for how much the govrenment should be taking off our paychecks automattically. This is because, effective June 1rst, the basic personal exemption changed. That is, the amount that every Canadian can have tax free. The confusing thing is... it went down. Like, $480 or something. Which is odd. Of course, at first, we all just figured that this little trick was to balance out Harpers dumb-ass GST cut. But that would be too sensible and obvious for the Conservatives. So i did a little bit of digging. Under the 2005 (Liberal) budget, the exemption was meant to increase over the next three years, to hit $10,000. Even the 2006 budget says it's supposed to increase. And we won't be paying more income tax. Because the income tax rate for the lowest bracket decreased by .5%. And in accordance with the Conservative philosophy of doubling the length of the tax code, there is a new $500 credit for working Canadians. You get it if you are employed. Sorry, old people and cripples, nothing for you. Oh wait, theres the transit credit. 80 whopping dollars. woooo!

nose goblins

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:33:50 GMT

So, as mentioned before, i've started painting my minis again. I have one unit that is painted from before, two years ago i think.

I call these my "Night Smurfs". They are just night goblins, but i painted their skin blue instead of green just to be different. I was inspired by the realization that, being nasty little critters, with funny caps and a mushroom obsession, night goblins are basically just evil oversized smurfs. You may be able to tell that i put a bit more effort into the fanatics (the crazy guys with the huge flails) than the regular archers. This is because there are three of the one, and thirty of the other. I've got a standard, champion and musician i'm going to add to the unit, but other than that all the rest of my goblins will be normal green ones.

Currently, I'm trying to plow througha unit of old spearmen:

i'm not worried about making these guys very fancy looking. not only are they over a decade old, many of them have had the top half of their spears reattached, on account of when I put them together 12 years ago, and had them laid out on the floor, i fell backwards on top of them. Those things are pointy. A couple of them have shields glued to them already, which makes painting them annoying, and one poor bastard is just going to keep his terrible, patchy Testors enamel paint job. Serves him right. A few of these grots who have lost the top of their spears entirely, I am going to attempt some conversions on, to make a unit command. The most difficult will be making a musician.

At this point, i've gotten all of the bases green, and started working on the spears. I'm going to start doing tunics next, and i'm dabbling with the shields.

Once i get this unit done, my next project is a box of Wolfriders.

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 04:17:27 GMT

New Doctor Who, season 2, episode twelve:

Dalek to Cyberman: You are superior in only one way.
Cyberman: What is that?
Dalek: You are better at dieing.

oh SNAP! Dalek burn.

horrors of War(hammer)

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 19:26:08 GMT

So i'm sitting at my work table, cleaning off somme plastic shields, drinking a glass of water. Then, on one sip, i notice that the water is much colder, than the somewhat tepid glass i got out of the kitchen. Which is when realise i have picked up the cup I clean my brushes in. Fortunately, i wasn't painting that moment, and i walways put clean water in when i'm done. Still, kinda gross. More on my return to plastic crack later.

how to feed yourself, part one

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:55:44 GMT

I do a fair bit of baking. I find it relaxing, plus i have a killer sweet tooth, and anything made from scratch is better tasting, healthier, and usually cheeper than what you buy at the supermarket. I tend to stick a few standards: Banana Bread (with chocolate chips or cranberries), sugar cookies around Christmas. On occasion, i would make choclate chip cookies, but much less often that the others. Until now, anyways.One thing I started to really learn last summer was how different ingredients affect the final product; eggs give consistency, baking soda makes it fluffier, salt neutralizes the bitterness from the bakind soda. And the ratio of white sugar to brown sugar determines how soft a chocolate cookie is. The recipe i used to use produces a very crunchy cookie, not my preference. So i looked around the old interweb for a "chewy" recipe, and tried one that has worked perfectly. I doubled it, of course, letting one batch last for 3 days in my house instead of 2. And I use vegetable oil instead of butter, becuase butter is a pain to measure, soften and mix when i could just poor out of a bottle. For banana bread i use olive oil, but when I used some olive oil for the cookies, a few of them kinda tasted like olive oil, so i'm sticking to canola oil for tonights batch. The other trick i have found with cookies is, when they tell you how much chocolate chips to use, they tend to say "1 small package". This is a huge load of crap, unless there are small, snack size bags of chips. I just judge by eye how many to poor in to the batter, but it's closer to 1/4 of the bag i've got, and even one of the smaller bags would be too much. You'd just have chips left i the bole that you couldn't get to stick in the batter. wasted.

Anyway, here is the (doubled) recipe, with instructions.
Mix 1 cup of butter (or vegetable oil), 1 cup of brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of white sugar. MiX in 2 eggs and 1 tsp of vanilla.
Seperately, combine 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 tsp of salt, and 1 tsp baking soda. To combine the wet and dry ingredients, a mixer will not work very well, so use a wooden spoon, or do like i do and get in there with your (clean!) hands. After the flour is well mixed in, add an appropriate amount of chocalate chips and mix. Bake at 325 degrees for about 6 min or until they start to brown. About 10 mins with my oven.

Update: they lasted two whole days. oh well.

it's all Pat's fault

Sun, 28 May 2006 14:22:36 GMT

If you are kind enough to leave a comment on this entry,

1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours

Sometimes even super-heroes get thirsty

Sun, 28 May 2006 02:16:06 GMT

Pat asked me, when did I first get into comics?

The best dating tool i have, is probably the cards. I have most of the Marvel Series 2 trading cards. These are all dated 1991. I also have alot more comics from that year than I usually remember. All Marvel stuff. I've got the Infinity Guantlet, a short run of Adam Strange from '92, a couple of West Coast Avengers, and perhaps most notably, although i woldn't have noted at the time, a few issues from McFarlane's run in Spiderman. Huh, i guess those Super Mario Brothers comics are from '91 to. Funny to think that all of those are from the same year.
Anyways, i always read cartoons, like Farside, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, and I used to read the ones in Dragon Magazine, at the library.
In '95, i picked up a whole bunch of DC comics from "Zero Hour", and from 96 I have a few Superboys, and a Batman annual, future thing.

Almost forgot; In 1993, i had a subscription to Spiderman 2099. That one was about new versions of the traditional Marvel heroes in the year 2099, mostly dealing with a society in which giant corporations had replaced governments. Corps controlling the world, what imaginations those writers had! Ha. ha. ha. sigh. I remember choosing that title because it was a whole new thing: I have issues 1-13, and issue one of Doom 2099 (Doctor Doom reapears spontaneously in the middle of Latveria, and sets out to retake his country from the big evil company. Ended up taking over, and saving, the world).

Which is funny, because just this past week, i suddenly decided to subscribe to 52, DC's new weekly comic which will run for 52 issues to fill in the gap between "Infinite Crisis" (IeIeIe-I, Superboys dead) and "One Year Later", when Batman, Wonderwoman and Superman come back. Having a decent job lets me do crazy stuff like that. I probably won't get any more subscriptions, or renew that one, but that's just because i realised it's simpler and cheaper just to go to the shop in the Mall, which is right across from the library. Where I coincidently also borrow various graphic novels. Also going to be getting Shadowpact, about a team of magic-related superheroes, including Detective Chimp. He's a talking chimp, who's a detective! And an alcoholic. Going to check out some other new series in the near future. For example, Garth Ennis has written another Kev miniseries. Oh, Mr. Ennis. You are so fucked in the head.

Why am I doing this all of a sudden? Well, it's a hobby that, doesn't cost too much, get's me away from the computer screen, and doesn't rely much on having other people around. That, and the major characters of 52 are Booster Gold and The Question. Booster is funny,and I love the Question. He's like Batman, only instead or having Bruce Wayne's wealth and childhood, he's got no facial features and paranoia.

SIN Episodes: Emergence

Sat, 20 May 2006 03:51:41 GMT

I preordered Emmergence over Steam on a whim, a way to get a Source engine fix before HL2 Episode One comes out at teh end of the month. It is very much an old-school shooter. It is pretty short, and there are only four weapons, including an incendiary grenade, but it is also only $20. One cool feature is that difilculty is chosen on a fairly broad sliding scale, after which the challenge system adjust the dificulty to match your preference and play. Four days after release, Ritual managed to put out a patch that fixed not only a bug in the challenge system, which made the dificulty near impossible for people who played a certain way, but also fix all the known porblems that were making the game crash for many people, including myself. Sadly, also for people like myself, with graphics cards like the Radeon 9000, who can't run using DirectX 9, there remains a problem that a certain bullet-time like effect in the game turns the screen dark green, so you can't see anything. This can be worked around by using a command line option to run in DirectX 7, but then the game doesn't look nearly as pretty.

Other than that, many are bothered by the end of the game, where you have to fight through wave after wave of chaingunners, who can do alot of damage, and take a lot of fire to kill. Fighting 20 of them in one game might be fun, 100 is not. Still, most of the game is exciting, and it takes nice advantage of Steams capabilities. medical stations use canisters of blue gas. You can put a canister into an empty station, eject one from the station, or break a loose canister to release the gas if their isn't a station around. The grenades light the area on fire, and i love burning things.

With the major bugs fixed, $20 seems good for this game. If Ritual gets a bit more creative with level design for the next episode, I may end up sticking with them for all eight planned episodes. On the other hand, if it's all just fighting, fighting, fighting, with interesting bits like the brief car scene few and far between, maybe i won't.

Oh yeah, and the menu music is really good. Unfortunately, it's DRMed because they are trying to get people to actually buy the soundtrack. I guess they think they are Bungie or something.

New X-men Trailer

Fri, 19 May 2006 23:58:18 GMT

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uHYiWoiuwSs

Best Trailer ever. Really.