GI Joe Utterly Defiled
I remember fondly days spent pitting GI Joe against Cobra... I think everyone liked snake-eyes and stormshadow. Even back then we knew ninjas were cool. And with these memories, it is fun to look back and recall those fun and naive times.
But I don't think that GI Joe was meant to be
defiled in this way. Some enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to show us our childhood heroes in ways that both
scare and
confuse.
Back Home
I'm back in Toronto finally. Phew.
The plane ride back went a lot better than the ride out. It was pretty quiet and I was able to sleep most of the way.
One thing that I gotta say: When you land in Canada, there are no separate lines for Canadian citizens, and that sucks. So I had to resort to racial profiling and seek out the line with the most white people in it. Actually that worked pretty well... which is sad. But hey, if I could know which line had the most "Canadian" people, I would have chosen that one. The brutal truth is that you get held back if your line has a family of 10 which insist on ALL going up to the counter at once. And empirically I have only seen visible minorities pull that stunt.
Of course my racial profiling idea backfired on me at Heathrow airport's passport control. The guy in front of me was white, but he wasn't British, and not only did he over stay his visa, but he was also trying to be tricky with the official customs lady. "You have over stayed your visa date..." she says as he gives her a blank look, "Have you re-entered?". Seizing his chance "Oh yeahh that's it.. um... yeah" he says. "Really? Why don't you have an entry or departure stamp on your passport? When did you re-enter exactly, and where?" she asks. At this point I realized I chose the wrong line. Damn you racial profiling!!!
Anyway I did get to hang out with Kevin on Sunday, we got up pretty early and went out to get "Roast". I guess its normal to go to a pub for breakfast and get whatever meat they happen to be roasting up. I got roast chicken with yorkshire pudding, chips, and veggies. Kev got a pint of ale, but I wimped out and got some cranberry Schwepps. We played some more games...
Culdcept, Mario Party 5, even a little Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I have to say, Culdcept is really cool. A neat mix of Monopoly and Magic.
Oh yeah, fun fact: Cambridge has some creepy creepy schools. I think this was the school of the creepy giant mr. potato head hunters...
Mmmm needs some sour cream and bacon bits...
Bridge of Sighs
Today I ventured out around Cambridge with my 3 companions. There were a lot of very posh schoolgrounds - the kind of that little wizard boy Harry Potter, so I am told - with amazing architecture and a lot of signs telling visitors and tourists where they can and cannot go. It would be horrible to have so many tourists visiting your campus that they have to restrict access to everything. But I guess that is the downfall of having the priviledge of attending such beautiful and prestigious universities. And to explain the title, the
Bridge of Sighs is a stone bridge, which people "punt" under (pushing a boat with a stick), and it is made to imitate the original in Venice.
I tried "
Mead" which is a very unique drink, made from Honey. I don't think it could get much better than that. Honey is good in all its forms really.
Also I played "
Citadels" tonight which was very cool. It is a board game (without a board.. more like a card game) that is filled with psychological intrigue. A lot of the game takes the form of the prisoner's dilemma. You have to guess what your opponents are going to do in order to make your own play. A lot of double guessing and double crossing, with the survivor often being the quietest, most incognito player.
Oh yeah, and I sliced up my hand real good with a razor blade. That really smarts. Try to avoid this.
One more (partial) day in Britain... then back to Toronto tonight.
From Stratford to Dick and Doms
Yesterday morning I took a bus to Stratford with Kirstin and Kathy where we explored the birthplace of William Shakespeare (or W.S. as he likes to be called by his homies), and the houses of his various relatives. Unfortunately his line has completed died out, no direct decendents exist. A shame really. We need more W.S. DNA don't you think?
After hanging out there, we took a train through Birmingham to London, and then to Cambridge. Arrived quite late to a KUI. Kevin under...
Today we'll probably "punt" around, whatever that means. I've been enjoying watching "
Dick and Doms" on the Telly this morning though. That show is seriously pure comedy gold. The best part had to be where they were having a crying contest. Whoever can cry tears first wins. To help get the right crying atmosphere, they started playing some sad orchestral music. Then they brought out a little kid who looked all sad walking with his Grandma. She looked REALLY happy, and was licking a big scoop of vanilla icecream in the cone. I guess the kid was sad because she took it from him? Well anyway then she DROPPED the icecream and then she and the kid looked all sad. THEN a little dog came up and started eating the icecream and they looked even more sad. Then to top it all off, a pitifully sad looking man starts walking on stage with a big hamster cage. Sticking out of the top of the cage is a piece of paper that says "My only friend". The camera zooms in and... in the cage is a big rat, but its dead. hAHAHhahaa HIS ONLY FRIEND IS DEAD... man I was cracking up.
Why don't we have shows like that here!?
Labels: business trip, Cambridge, UK
Warwick Castle
I arrived in Warwick yesterday (pronounced 'warick' ... they don't like pronouncing more than one 'w' per word), checked out the very nice castle here, church... and then by a very happy coincidence I ran into Kirsten and Kathy on the street. I was meant to meet up with them in London, but somehow that got all screwed up.
It was pretty crazy, I was walking around Warwick carrying my suitcases, with no place to stay that night and no number to reach them at. I had just called Kevin on a red payphone and left to pick up a suitcase I had locked away in a locker by the castle. When I came back to the payphone to call for a hotel, Kirsten was in the phone booth waving at me. Talk about things working out, I'm pretty lucky!
So I'm now off to Stratford and then back through London to Cambridge to meet up with Kevin.
London Ho!
No, it isn't the title of a new blaxploitation movie, I'm on my way to London (in 30 minutes I leave for the airport).
Basically I was on a conference call this morning and then... "Warren, we need you in London. Tomorrow. Morning."
Alllll righty then.
So the work of the international traveller continues. Interesting stories made with the aid of Kevin to follow.
Ghost in the Magnet
Fridge Magnets that is! This site has you moving letters around, a la fridge magnet fun from when you were a kid, but the kicker is that 30 some other people from around the world are doing it at the same time too! You have to fight to make words or phrases before others pilfer your letters. Sometimes amazing group-think occurs. Everyone starts to cooperate to organize letters by colour, or make shapes, even faces. It is quite interesting when you see that kind of thing happen.
Of course quite often you get the oh-so-hilarious potty mouth coming in and forming "bad words" tm. /me raises hand. Yeah, that was me. Hahahah and it was fun!
And a BF2 update. Today was so great. Indesin piloted as I took out transport helicopters with 5-6 marines in them. That was amazingly satisfying... Screen caps to come soon.
Under Byen "Plantage"
I found a
dreamy Flash music-video of sorts that definitely has a Bjork or Cocteau Twins feel to it. The track is "Plantage" by the group
Under Byen. In fact this really reminds me
of a set of weird interactive Flash. Which... after careful investigation, makes total sense, because the designer is the same Jakub Dvorsky guy (from
Amanita Design).
I hope you can share something similar if you find it. There is too much music and art to explore and enjoy out there, and too little time.
Nintendo Nunchaku Controller
You have to see the new Nintendo "Nun-chuk" controller in action. This
video from IGN shows it in all it's glory. I can't wait to try these babies out. The possibilities for new gameplay experiences is just incredible. Maybe I should really buy some Nintendo stock before everyone else realizes how cool this is. I'm surprised, but in a good way. And I want it now!!!
Perfect Bird
I was listening to the Ambient channel of CBC's galaxie.ca service and heard this really cool track called "
Perfect Bird" from
Hexstatic. The album is called "
Master View" released through
Ninjatune.
I realize that is a lot of links. But if you click on the Perfect Bird link, you can actually listen to the song. I really like it, because I enjoy ambient songs with decent beats as well as that dream-like, relaxing laying back in some Raspberry scented water, drifting away listening to my heartbeat kind of vibe.
I think that the singer is singing in Japanese, but I wasn't really paying attention to the lyrics. The cool thing is that in that way it becomes part of the ambient nature of the song rather than
forcing itself down your throat in that it's-a-small-world-after-all-stuck-in-my-head way.
If only I could pick this up locally... very nice. Pass on the sweet tunes if you have some to share.
EDIT: The singer is known as
Guitar Vader and yes she is from Japan. Maybe I should check out some more of her stuff, wonder if it has the same atmosphere as this?
Labels: music
Ninja Frisbee
I created a sequel to
"Frisbee Fun" called
"Ninja Frisbee Fun". Oh yes I am that bored.
Actually I admit it, I had grand plans for a cool Ninja BATTLE but it degenerated into something that can loosely be called "Frisbee Fun" or "I'm tired of drawing the same thing over and over so I'll just end it in the most convenient way possible".
Enjoy.
Lovely Help
Sometimes computer stuff doesn't work the first time (I know I'm being generous with the "sometimes", but let's go on), and then you get a nice stream of text explaining the deal. Maybe it is an error code you need to look up, maybe it is as simple as a short summary telling you how to run that command you just tried to run.
Alternatively you get this:
put routine from availreceipts.spa owner db2inst1 use registers
SQL0443N Routine "*OUTINE_SAR" (specific name "") has returned an error
SQLSTATE with diagnostic text "-970,55009,
/home/db2inst1/sqllib/function/routine/sqlproc". SQLSTATE=38000And you diligently look up the error code for more information...
I think the result is best summed up in this online conversation:
Co-Worker: i like this db2 IBM help:User Response: The user will need to understand the meaning of the error. See your Database Administrator, or the author of the routine. Blight: lolBlight: I got three letters for thatBlight: two are the sameBlight: the first letter is different than the last twoBlight: and it starts with ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCo-Worker: hahaYes, it would be funny, but we're really laughing in pain because we would actually really like to know what the error was so that we could continue.
EDIT: Ok so there was a pretty fast happy ending to this tale of tragedy and torment. After talking with our friendly neighbourhood support people, someone mentioned looking at the db2diag.log file. Something that would give us more information than the filtered (watered down) version that we were getting indirectly through our application server.
Sure enough, I see this little gem:
PID:26418 TID:1 Node:000 Title: SQL procedure initialization:
0xD4667850 : 696E 616E 6365 206F 776E 6572 2064 instance owner d
0xD4667860 : 6F65 6E6F 7420 6265 6C6F 6E67 2074 oes not belong t
0xD4667870 : 6F20 6E63 6564 2075 7365 7227 7320 o fenced user's
0xD4667880 : 7072 3434 6172 7920 6772 6F75 70 primary groupThe problem was that someone neglected to follow one of the myriad set of steps in the installation guide. That would explain it eh? Well after adding the instance owner to the fenced user's primary group, and restarting the db2 server.... PRESTO, it works!
Blue Jays Kick Red Sox Ass
Today I was invited to a night at the ball game by a cool co-worker from the USA. A true Red Sox fan. Well I felt sorry for him because he came all this way just to watch the Red Sox get creamed. We had one amazing inning (bottom of the 3rd) with 5 runs in! Everyone was cat-calling this cool hitter called "Manny" from the Red Sox. The guys behind us wouldn't stop talking about him. "Yeah he should have his own reality show. Yeah, he should replace Ozzy. Yeah, I'd watch him walk his dog, that would be teh hilarious! Yeah and Manny Junior haha that would be hilarious!"
Needless to say it was all we could do to not turn around and.. er... throw peanuts at them. Or look like we're going to fight and then say "hold me back! hold me back!" to our friends. The real reason I didn't unleash my twin pythons on them was that there was a peace officer right in front of us. Although he was mostly watching the game and not the crowd.
And the view was pretty cool, the Toronto CN Tower rises up right beside the stadium, and you can see it since the roof is open!
I'm glad there are not too many baseball fans in Toronto, it sure keeps parking and ticket prices low. Parking was $6.50, and a ticket around 3rd base, in the 3rd row only cost $39 including tax. Can you really get a better deal for professional sports? Mind you I'm not a huge baseball fan either, but we WON! And that made it that much more enjoyable.
Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children - Early Release
It's been going around since last night that some Chinese group of pirates broke the seal on the new CG movie based on FFVII... and it's true. I just finished watching it (with the aid of some English subtitles) and the animation was pretty cool. I don't think that it would appeal to anyone who hasn't actually played through the FFVII game itself. There are too many inside jokes and tear jerking moments that will mean nothing to a FFVII outsider. That said, I did play through the original game (twice, I am embarrassed to say) and I chuckled and winced a couple of times. No theatrical release for anywhere outside three lucky sites in Japan, so we're stuck with DVD only.
Kevin told me about
his blog, so I'll be adding him shortly to my list of links on my sidebar thing. If any of you other yahoo's get a blog, let me know.
And yes,
fighting zombies is fun.
Frisbee Fun
I created yet another
animated masterpiece. This one has a lot of frames, but obviously I cut corners to save myself hours of work. Actually I ended up losing the work I was doing last night... oh well. So check it out and again, let me know if you have made anything cool or if you find something neat. But please, we have seen enough stick figure
sex; focus on something else, like
violence.
You know it's time to go to bed when
You know it's time to go to bed when you hit "Stumble" on your toolbar and the first thing that pops up is a
herd of sheep jumping and singing "Go to sleep". Creepy. I'm working on another
Flipbook animation, but instead of staying up until 8am to finish it, I'm going to hit the sack now and finish it when I wake up. Smart eh? Of course the next link I stumbled upon was this site telling me how to
forge fingerprints to get around biometrics. Which, doesn't really mean anything, but it's cool!
On an unrelated note: I kicked major ass today in BF2, Indesin is a bad mofo when it comes to helicopter piloting/shooting, and we were an awesome squad to contend with. The best part had to be when we would go over to the enemy base and steal their Hind. As Kevin would say, "Yoink!"
Plumber's Nightmare
Well for some reason I was supposed to go to bed before now, but ... this
damn site kept me up. It let's you make your own little flip book animations. Of course I got suckered into making one (yes I know I'm a victim). Y0u can check it out
here, feel free to rate it like crap, but I spent like a good hour on this stupid thing. Hopefully you enjoy it... a little bit. And if you make anything, it is your duty to post a link to it in the comments section!!
EDIT: Damn this DAMN website. I decided to try my hand at something more mushy. And this is
what you get... 2 hours later?? It is 7am... damn damn damn. Ok going to sleep now.
Hot Hawaiian Honey
Oh man... tonight I enjoyed some hot hawaiian honey, too bad I had to share with 5 other guys. So sweet, and as Kevin would say, "spi-ceeeeeey!". Or was it "spankalicious"? Anyway before I lead you astray, I will clarify that I am talking about one of the 135 delicious flavours of chicken wings you can enjoy at
All Star Wings and Ribs in Markham. I went out with some coworkers and we got 100 succulent wings - split up into 4 flavours: "Hot Hawaiian Honey", "Bubba's Backfire", "Pandora's Box" and "Honey Garlic". The Hawaiian honey was my choice and was one of the tastiest. The hottest of the 4 was Bubba's and it was just right, not uncomfortably hot. They had some crazy "Armeggedon" sauce that requires you to have signed a waiver before they let you eat it. Maybe next time. I guess if you eat enough of those they take your photo and give you a t-shirt. If you search google for "All Star Wings" and "Markham", you'll see just how many people recognize how good that place is. Good luck getting a seat quickly though. It's small and packed, but obviously because the wings are so good.
Push the button!
Well after a day at work, I came back to enjoy some chocolate soy beverage... and found this cool gem -
Galvanize! The game may not be the best (it's a promotional game), but the music is rockin'. It definitely makes me interested in The Chemical Brothers' new album. Their last one was a piece of work (Thanks Mike!) but this sounds amazing. Definitely check it out if you are into sweet bad beats. You can check out the music video for "Galvanize"
here.
If you click on that guy, I think you'll see a (poorly) animated version of him dancing. We'll see.
So now, its BF2 time!
Labels: music
Mario World: Overrun
Ok I lied. Instead of playing BF2, i ended up playing a fairly
addictive Flash game from this website I found. Actually perhaps it would be better to say a website I
stumbled upon. I totally love this "Stumble!" menubar I added for FireFox that lets me find some really neat sites without having to search for them at all. I recommend it, although you may end up spending a lot more time than you planned stumbling around.
Ok so now I have to decide... watch more Alias, or play BF2... or go to bed so I can get to work on time for my sick coworker to share his flu with me.
Hookie
I'm not even sure if that is how you spell "hookie", but I kinda feel like that is what I played today. If I wanted to think of it in another way, I guess I saved some money on gas, saved time travelling, and saved myself from getting the flu-like-symptoms that my coworker has begun exhibiting. Besides my other coworker and manager weren't "in the office" so I shouldn't feel guilty. I did work remotely from home today, and I got productive stuff accomplished, so it's all good.
So now after a day of hard work. It's time to go play some BF2 - my screen name is CSIS_Blight in case I happen to gib you.
Yet another blog
I really don't think anyone needs another blog. Also I don't want to think of anything witty to add for my first post. Too much pressure. So... this is it. Wow pretty cool this blogging stuff.
Right.
I remember fondly days spent pitting GI Joe against Cobra... I think everyone liked snake-eyes and stormshadow. Even back then we knew ninjas were cool. And with these memories, it is fun to look back and recall those fun and naive times.
