March 20, 2010

The Last 24 Hours

Have been really good.

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October 28, 2009

Dinner With The Timmites

Thumbnail: Philly melt
Thumbnail: Quesadilla
Thumbnail: Ham tortellini
Thumbnail: Veggie burger
Thumbnail: Zoom H2

Tim was in town for a pre­sen­ta­tion this week­end, so a few of us went to din­ner at a restau­rant close to where he used to live. It turns out this place used to be called Drumlin’s Pub, which I knew from sec­ond year of uni­ver­sity, ohhh…seven years ago? I dis­tinctly remem­ber being in there once, doing shots at the bar1 while sit­ting next to an older guy who was over $30k in debt to OSAP, telling me to go after the big­ger girls cause they do way more “stuff”. On our drink­ing tours of the city back then, we would always try to find a place that served good, cheap wings, and Strongbow. If I remem­ber cor­rectly, Drumlin’s had hearty honey gar­lic, but no cider.

Now that it’s under new man­age­ment, it has a really generic name — like Sandy Hill Bar And Grill — though it makes up for this fact with much bet­ter pub fare. Such social oppor­tu­ni­ties are great for test­ing out the 360° sur­round capa­bil­i­ties of the Zoom H2 sound recorder I recently pur­chased as an invest­ment towards bet­ter sound pro­duc­tion in my videos.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In his defence, Tim was sur­prised to dis­cover that Jess has a new boyfriend, and was being (jok­ingly) self-deprecating about his sex life. Next at the table was Reagan2, who was asked about hers. Jess picked up the mic and pointed it at me, per­haps to shift the atten­tion away from Reagan and shield her from embar­rass­ment. Of course, it all plays out much nicer when you have a record­ing of it.

  1. Back then I drank with Iain, so it would have been tequila. []
  2. Note to self: pro­nounced “Ray-gun” []
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August 14, 2009

equivocality.com Web Clip

equivocality iPhone app

Are you a reader with an iPhone or an iPod touch? equivocality.com is now opti­mized for mobile web brows­ing. I also cre­ated a spe­cial icon (it’s kind of hard to make out the grid back­ground in the pic­ture, but it’s there) that will replace the screen­shot that Safari takes when sav­ing a site as a web clip. Updates are only one click away!

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June 28, 2009

Melodica

A demon­stra­tion of the Melodica app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There are sim­i­lar apps out there — Tonepad, Synthtopia — but none of them are as sim­ple and pol­ished. That being said, there are a few fea­tures that could make Melodica stand out even more, such as the abil­ity to save com­po­si­tions on-the-fly and layer them under new ones, or the abil­ity to change the sam­ple sound, so I’m hop­ing they’ll be added in an update. Regardless, I’ve only had this app for a day, and I’ve been enjoy­ing it immensely.

Some tips for composing/performing songs in Melodica:

  • The rests, or spaces between the notes, are impor­tant too. Don’t feel that you need to fill the board with notes. Just like in jazz, it’s impor­tant to hear that notes that aren’t played. Sometimes a melody is strong enough that a few spar­tan notes by them­selves are enough to estab­lish some­thing beau­ti­ful. Or you can places notes on every beat of a mea­sure, except the down­beat, which sub­tly implies “this silence is where the down­beat is sup­posed to be, even though no note is being played”.
  • Don’t feel that you need to use bass notes to estab­lish a rhythm. You can switch it up with high notes as well, and have the base­line as the melody.
  • Syncopation is pos­si­ble. If you imag­ine each of the 16 squares going across as quar­ter notes in four bars in 4/4 time, then you can estab­lish as rhythm by hav­ing a note at the begin­ning (count­ing as the “one”) of each bar, and the third note if you like. You can achieve a nice syn­co­pated sound by putting a note on the sec­ond and fourth quar­ter note of a bar. But be care­ful; if you decide to remove cer­tain notes, don’t remove the rhythm before you remove the syn­co­pated notes. Otherwise, the lis­tener eas­ily loses a sense of where the down­beat is sup­posed to fall, it begins to sound like you’re mak­ing a mis­take, and the song eas­ily falls apart.
  • Try to have a pur­pose, or an idea of where you want to go. Improvisation is totally one of the main advan­tages of Melodica, but you can still decide where you want to go dur­ing a song. If you can see the struc­ture then it’ll be eas­ier to work up to that ahead of time. For exam­ple, if you want a song that starts quiet, builds slowly to a cli­max, then crashes dra­mat­i­cally before re-establishing a steady pace, then you can plan out which notes to add and take away that will quickly and effec­tively achieve these changes.
  • End your songs. Instead of just stop­ping, or clear­ing the board, fade out by tak­ing ele­ments away. And if you can, end your phrases, which means remov­ing the notes from left to right as they’re being played. If you remove notes from right to left, it’ll sound like you stopped abruptly in the mid­dle of a song. Sort of like hear­ing Westminster chimes with­out the last note, leav­ing the lis­tener to won­der where the res­o­lu­tion is.
  • Use sev­eral notes of the same pitch in a row spar­ingly. This is totally a per­sonal pref­er­ence, but I find I get tired of hear­ing these quickly.
  • Songs sound bet­ter with con­trast. That means keep­ing some space between highs, mids, and lows. Or aban­don­ing the mid-range sec­tion alto­gether, since there isn’t much ver­ti­cal room to com­pose. This is because you can cre­ate the illu­sion of more lay­ers by hav­ing strongly defined parts of a song. Otherwise, it all sounds like one com­plex melody.
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June 4, 2009

Feather Fountain Pen

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feather foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medium, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.

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March 21, 2009

Model Cat

Model cat

My Uncle Joe and Aunt Vivien bought me this model cat from Taiwan. It looks so real that I thought it was stuffed at first glance. It’s life-sized, though on the small side, so appear­ing to be a kit­ten. You can only tell that it’s fake when you look closer at it’s nose (plas­tic, with­out the same tex­ture as a real cat’s nose) and ears (too much hair — I’m guess­ing mem­branes are too dif­fi­cult to fake). If I wasn’t a cat lover, I’d def­i­nitely be fooled.

I’m going to put it in the back win­dow of my car; I’ve been look­ing for a dec­o­ra­tion ever since I got my car a year ago, and this is per­fect. Hopefully no one will smash my win­dows in an attempt to save it.

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March 21, 2008

Update: March ’08

It’s been a full year since I did one of these update entries. It’s inter­est­ing to read the last one. Addressing the sub­jects I wrote about: I’ve changed lay­outs three times, I’ve received over 2000 com­ments, Balls of Fury was hilar­i­ous, and my trip to New Hampshire changed my life.

The Car

I finally, finally, finally got a car.

For years I took the bus, just so I could put the money — oth­er­wise spent on a loan, insur­ance, gas, or main­te­nance — towards my mort­gage or photo gear. Things like heavy gro­ceries, pur­chases of large or bulk items, and trips to remote areas with no bus ser­vice would leave me depen­dent on the favours of friends with auto­mo­biles. No more.

2008 Honda Civic Coupe

It’s black 2008 Honda Civic Coupe, like the one above with­out the tint­ing. At first, I wanted it in grey metal­lic but it looked rather blah in the showroom.

I should have it next week. Trips to Montreal (for pho­tog­ra­phy and food) and Toronto (to visit John and Darren) have already been planned, as well as the sur­round­ing areas dur­ing the spring­time. And if Bronwen and I were still on speak­ing terms, I’d drive her to the Casino du Lac-Leamy to gam­ble on the horses.

The Temporary Housemate

Alex is stay­ing with me for two weeks while he does a med­ical intern­ship at CHEO. The com­pany will be a wel­come change. It’ll be nice to have a room­mate for a bit and give me an excuse to watch movies that I don’t oth­er­wise make time to watch.

The Photo Gear

Fed up with the deep red of my stu­dio and tap­ing black con­struc­tion paper to the walls, I bought a black muslin backdrop.

Dolly against the black muslin backdrop

Dolly, being a cat who must sleep on any­thing new in the house to mark her ter­ri­tory, promptly set­tled her­self on the back­drop as soon as I had fin­ished iron­ing it.

I also got a Chimera XXS soft­box for one of my next projects, which will heav­ily use macro shots. The soft­box will allow me bet­ter con­trol of light, as well as more even dis­tri­b­u­tion of light than an umbrella.

Me in a softbox

Next on the list is a sec­ond flash and stand, but it’ll be some time before I can afford that.

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March 12, 2008

Moo Minicards

Moo Minicard montage

Thumbnail: The Moo box
Thumbnail: The Moo Minicard package
Thumbnail: The Moo Minicard holder
Thumbnail: The Moo Minicard detail
Thumbnail: The Moo keyfob

My Moo Minicards are in! I wanted a set to hand out at art shows and to peo­ple I ask to model for me. I also throw a few in with each print I sell. People have really enjoyed them; many have a hard time decid­ing which one they want to take. The great thing about the Minicards is that you can order up to 100 dif­fer­ent pic­tures on the front, so that peo­ple get a sense of the range of pho­tog­ra­phy you do.

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December 16, 2007

Christmas Wish-List ’07

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updated for 2007. This list is some­what shorter than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ately waited two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quickly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lenses in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extremely chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flexibility.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extremely light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2-Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar model for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­ual stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can never be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pretty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­tasy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite anime of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rently have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phrases.

    Found a copy of this for download.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the other side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the decision.

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August 12, 2007

New Camera Gear and Twin Portraits

Thumbnail: Differences between twins
Thumbnail: Orthogonal twins
Thumbnail: Body shot
Thumbnail: See no evil, hear no evil

Okay, okay, I admit it, I bought more cam­era gear. This time it was a flash, an umbrella, and a com­bi­na­tion stand to hold the two. The flash is a Canon 580EX II, the most impor­tant fea­tures being:

  • Can act as mas­ter flash to trig­ger my 420EX in slave mode
  • Can turn off the flash to use bet­ter aut­o­fo­cus assist beams
  • Easy-to-use con­trol dial and set button
  • Maximum guide num­ber of 58
  • Sweeeeet lock shoe stand

I was able to test it out the rig on Andrew and Alex, who hap­pened to be in town that week­end. Out of all my friends and acquain­tances, I’ve known Andrew and Alex the longest, since ele­men­tary school. We got to hang out for a night and catch up before they had to take off. I can still tell them apart from face and voice, although it got quite a bit harder.

It was a good prac­tice in doing por­traits of two peo­ple, and fig­ur­ing out how var­ied the same scene can look with the main light source at dif­fer­ent posi­tions. Overall, I’m very pleased with how they turned out.

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December 1, 2006

Christmas Wish List ’06

Thumbnail: Christmas cupcakes

You know it’s get­ting close to the hol­i­days when the fresh cup­cakes at the local bak­ery start hav­ing Christmas tree sprin­kles, so I thought I’d make a Christmas wish-list. Usually I have no prob­lem spend­ing money when I want some­thing, but I’ve been sav­ing my money as a goal lately. I’ve been good too, only spend­ing $120 on myself in November (two movies, a toque, and win­ter shoe spikes) as opposed to the $500+ I nor­mally do.

This isn’t a fan­tasy list by any means; these are prac­ti­cal things I even­tu­ally plan on buy­ing. I just can’t jus­tify get­ting them at this moment. Of course, I don’t actu­ally expect any of these things to show up under a tree on the 25th, since I don’t cel­e­brate Christmas, although this isn’t by choice.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D cam­era body ($3800) — The 5D sup­ports a very nice 12.8 megapix­els, but most impor­tantly, it has a full-frame sen­sor that would let me take full advan­tage of my wide-angle lenses.
  • Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens ($950) — For those extra-wide group shots, and styl­ish fish­eye distortion.

    Bought a used ver­sion of this great lens for roughly half the MSRP in early 2007.

  • Speedlite 580EX flash ($600) — I cur­rently have the Speedlite 420EX, which can used as an off-camera slave to be set off remotely. It takes a flash like the 580EX to act as a wire­less master.

    Bought this flash with an umbrella and light stand in the sum­mer of 2007. Extremely happy with the off-camera results.

  • Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX ($750) — Macro pho­tos have been espe­cially dif­fi­cult because of the exag­ger­ated cam­era shake with a 100mm lens. A nice macro flash would allow me to increase shut­ter speed, and get evenly lit shots.
  • Wacom Intuos 6x11” tablet ($450) — For edit­ing my pho­tos in Photoshop. I have one of these at work, and I can’t get over how much bet­ter a tablet is over a mouse.

    I was start­ing to get shoot­ing pains in my wrist and fore­arm, so I bought this tablet in early 2007 to ease the strain of mouse pos­ture. It has greatly helped, and on top of that, work­ing with brushes in Photoshop is a delight.

Games

  • Playstation 3 ($650) — I’m cur­rently wait­ing on this one, since none of the launch titles inter­est me, but it’s my next-generation con­sole of choice. I wanted the Wii for the longest time (back when it was code­named Revolution), but the lack of HD sup­port and dated hard­ware quickly turned me.
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ($60) — I can’t pass up the leg­endary last game in the Zelda series. It’s com­ing out in 12 days for the Gamecube, although I may see if I can bor­row Pat’s/Aaron’s/Trolley’s Wii to play it with the Remote and Nunchuk instead.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 ($60) — I’ve been wait­ing for this game ever since I fin­ished the orig­i­nal Neverwinter Nights over two years ago. My next pur­chase was either this or Company of Heroes, but John bought me the lat­ter for my birth­day and so we could play online together. It was as much of a gift for himself.

Furniture

  • Saga sofa ($1400) — Getting this in a nice dark-brown leather is one of the options with which I’d like to replace my old Ikea couch. I wasn’t par­tial to leather until I saw the unit in the store, but it boosts the price closer to $1500.

    Bought a Scotch couch in October 2007 from EQ3 in a black leather instead. Sold my old Ikea couch to help pay for this.

  • 2MORROW side table ($150) — To go with the sofa.

    Bought a frosted glass sidetable from the same series as my cof­fee table from Zone in late 2007 instead.

  • B2C 36″ stor­age ($550) — A place where I can store my books.
  • CONICK pen­dant light ($120) — I’d like to have this above my din­ing table. The light fix­ture I have now is a lit­tle dated.

    I bought a rail light fix­ture from Ikea instead. It’s bet­ter for direc­tional light, and much cheaper.

Appliances

  • Grind & Brew Thermal Automatic cof­feemaker ($150) — This baby grinds, brews, and can be set on an auto­matic timer to do both right before you wake up. Unfortunately, it’d be all decaf for me.
  • Ultra Power Series stand blender ($180) — For smooth­ies. Because lunch sand­whiches get bor­ing quickly.

    Got myself a nice Hamilton Beach Eclectrics Blender at the begin­ning of the year. Been mak­ing smooth­ies almost daily ever since.

TV Shows

  • Six Feet Under ($230 for the com­plete series) — I’ve been want­ing to watch these with Bronwen for a while now. I only got to the mid­dle of the sec­ond sea­son, but it really put the hook in me.
  • Trailer Park Boys ($150 for sea­sons 1–5) — I’ve seen up to sea­son 3, and every year, the Trailer Park Boys keep me guess­ing about how much mad­der things will be in Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

    Bought these up to the sixth sea­son in early 2007 to watch with Bronwen. She loved them. Still look­ing for the Christmas special.

  • Battlestar Galactica ($100 for sea­sons 1 & 2) — I only got as far as the first sea­son, and this is one of those shows that you can’t watch out of order because you’d be com­pletely lost.

Movies

  • Best In Show ($20) — This movie charmed me the first time I saw it. One of those movies you can watch at almost any time. Christopher Guest at his best.
  • Punch Drunk Love ($16) — P.T. Anderson’s sim­ple, beau­ti­ful love story.
  • Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle ($15) — Because every­thing about this movie reminds me of sum­mers with John.
  • Contact ($16) — The begin­ning of my fas­ci­na­tion with astron­omy. And Jodie Foster.

    Louise bought me this for Christmas 2006.

  • Boys n the Hood ($16) — A movie that touches me, even though it’s set in a world com­pletely removed from my own.
  • Waking Life ($10) — I wish I could explain what it is about this movie that draws me in so much. Maybe it’s the fact that every time I watch it, I under­stand some­thing new. Also the first movie I ever saw high. Triptastic.
  • The Breakfast Club ($18) — The ulti­mate teen angst movie. Also cur­rently the only movie to use the term “Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie”.
June 11, 2006

HomeStar — 21st Century Home Planetarium

Featured on Slashdot on June 12th, 2006, under Toys, Space, and Science.

Introduction

Pat once told me that he har­bours an inex­plic­a­ble com­pul­sion to be in space. His belief is that when he’s finally there, he’ll have all the answers. Life. God. 42. The meta­phys­i­cal impli­ca­tions don’t make sense, yet this is what he truly thinks. It’s a strange hole in the log­i­cal being I know as Pat, and only the enig­matic curios­ity of the night sky can do this to someone.

I’m no excep­tion. Something borne in us from child­hood is a fas­ci­na­tion that stems from the unknown. The stars pro­vide enough for us to won­der about for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, for those who live in the city, there’s lit­tle chance to see the sky with­out “sky glow”, the annoy­ing phe­nom­e­non that drowns out a large num­ber of stars vis­i­ble to the naked eye and tele­scope alike. As a by-product of indus­tri­al­iza­tion, light pol­lu­tion has taken the sparkle out of the stars, and this is where the HomeStar comes in.

What Is A HomeStar?

Thumbnail: Hoodie view

According to the offi­cial Homestar web­site, (trans­lated through Babelfish):
“It is the plan­e­tar­ium for world­wide first opti­cal type home. It is pos­si­ble to exceed sev­eral thou­sand num­bers of stars that to project approx­i­mately ten thou­sand thing stars it can see gen­er­ally with naked eye of the human.”

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December 10, 2005

The Canon Speedlite 430EX

Thumbnail: Dolly saucer 1

Thumbnail: Dolly saucer 2

The Canon Speedlite 430EX flash lets me take advan­tage of a 1/200 X-sync speed, which means that high-speed shots such as these are now pos­si­ble in low light­ing con­di­tions. I picked one up this week, so most of my free time has been spent learn­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of an exter­nal flash unit. The tilt-and-swivel head means that I can bounce the flash off a ceil­ing to soften the light, or take advan­tage of the sur­round­ings, such as bounc­ing it off my stove (the pic­ture on the left) or off my fridge (the pic­ture on the right). There’s also a low-profile AF assist beam that’s a huge improve­ment over the seizure induc­ing on-board flash unit.

I decided to go with a Canon brand flash so I could have full E-TTL meter­ing sup­port (which fires an unde­tectable low-powered pre-flash for eval­u­a­tive meter­ing done through the lens) to match the Rebel XT shell. One of the coolest things about the 430EX is that a set of motors auto­mat­i­cally adjust the zoom range to match the lens, and it can be used as a slave unit that can be opti­cally (which also means remotely) trig­gered from a mas­ter unit for up to four light sources.

Even though there are tons of other acces­sories I’d like to have, such as a Sunpak hand strap (which would be a good com­pro­mise between the safety of a neck strap and the con­ve­nience of no strap), some Kenko exten­sion tubes (for macro pho­tog­ra­phy), or a portable micro­drive, I thought that a flash would cur­rently best serve my needs. This isn’t even to men­tion the options for some sweet glass, like a lens with image sta­bi­liza­tion, a tele­scop­ing range, or even some­thing from the L series which I’d have to put a sec­ond mort­gage on my house to afford. I think that I’m only begin­ning to under­stand how expen­sive a hobby pho­tog­ra­phy is.

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July 31, 2005

New Computer ’05

I finally got my com­puter, and have the week­end to spend set­ting every­thing up.

Let’s talk geek.

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Dual-Core) 4400+

Thumbnail: Large CPU heatsink

The sex­i­est stock heatsink I’ve ever seen. Notice the dense fins, and the sym­met­ri­cal cop­per heat pipes. I didn’t dare take it off the cpu for a pic­ture. One time, after I pulled the heatsink off a P4, I noticed that the proces­sor was stuck to the bot­tom while the proces­sor lock was still in place. The ther­mal paste had caked and turned to glue. The edges of the cpu were chipped and a few pins were bent, but I care­fully put them back in place and it still worked.

This one is an AMD though. It’s clocked at 2.2 GHz, with two megs of level 2 cache (one per core). Even though it can almost be con­sid­ered unrea­son­ably expen­sive, I went with a dual-core proces­sor because I wanted some­thing that could han­dle both single-threaded and multi-threaded apps. All the reviews I read said that the Pentium Extreme Edition chips were slightly bet­ter for the lat­ter but much worse for the for­mer, so this marks my first foray into the use of an Advanced Micro Devices proces­sor, at work or at home.

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December 16, 2004

Feeling Lost, New Camcorder, Wide-Angle, Etc.

I’m break­ing my writ­ing cycle today because I feel like writ­ing. Well, no, I don’t feel like writ­ing, I feel like express­ing, venting.

For some rea­son, I felt lost all day. At one point it made me nau­seous, and I started to break into sweats and get flushed in the face. I thought I could make it an entire week with­out one off day, until this day hap­pened. There was a very gen­eral feel­ing of uneasi­ness, but that may be a con­tin­u­a­tion of yes­ter­day. I was really ner­vous before Doug’s birth­day gath­er­ing; I didn’t know who was going and that made me really ner­vous. I still don’t know why.

So I admit, I dropped an exces­sive amount of money on a Hitachi DZMV550A Digital DVD-RAM cam­corder. My only excuse is that I had been plan­ning on pur­chas­ing a cam­corder since the sum­mer, and vowed to do so as soon as I could afford it. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was a care­fully incu­bated desire which kept grow­ing into the per­fectly guilt-free shop­ping expe­ri­ence I had. Besides, Aaron talked the man down $110, but I saved $210 in total from addi­tional sales.

I had been look­ing around for a wide-angle lens all day, but none of the four major(ly acces­si­ble) photo stores had them in stock. I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed in the stock range of the wide-angle, and have been find­ing it dif­fi­cult to capture…basically more than one per­son. In any case, I’ll prob­a­bly have to order it online, and hope­fully it’ll come in before I see John in the new year, which is why I bought the camcorder.

I also admit that I had absolutely noth­ing planned for today, aside from pick­ing up my duvet from the dry-cleaners because Dolly had an acci­dent last week. Normally, I have the next night planned the day before, usu­ally either writing/hanging out with Trolley or gaming/hanging out with Trolley, so an unplanned evening is gen­er­ally a good thing. Today, I only real­ized that I had noth­ing planned when I got home, and it just made me feel uneasy.

And I also have to admit that I lis­tened to the audi­ologs of a “goth” I found online, for part of the day. It was strangely com­fort­ing, because of how humourous his mono­logue is, in a very deathly seri­ous, non-jocular way. He laughs to him­self a lot, and talks about his (hor­ren­dous) site updates, his smok­ing, his drugs, his self-proclaimed “flat­ter­ing” copy­cat from vampirefreaks.com. Just know­ing that I’m not as com­mis­er­able as this guy makes me feel bet­ter. I sub­mit­ted it as an awful link of the day on Something Awful, and I’m almost cer­tain it’ll make it. Funny note, Jackie used to date the guy who runs that site.

I really, really don’t know what this mood is now. It’s not mali­cious. It’s a lit­tle stoic, and almost con­fi­dent as a result of that. I’m also a lit­tle scared.

Of what, I don’t know.

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