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"he's dead john"

May 27, 2004 19:13 +0000  |  Miscellaneous 1

sad news today. the actor who played "doctor stephen franklin" on babylon 5 died yesterday. this marks the second occasion in which the actor playing the doctor on a large-scale sci-fi series has been the first of the cast to die. the other case of course, was deforest kelly, who played "our man bones" or "doctor leonard mcoy" on the original star trek series.

according to toronto's metro newspaper, "parameditcs who treated biggs suggested 'the cause of death was "either an aneurysm or massive stroke'". biggs was 44.

natasha

May 24, 2004 09:59 +0000  |  Personal Life Why I'm Here 6

it's nearly 6am now and i have to try to get some sleep before i get on a bus to guelph tomorrow, but i wanted to blog something before i went to bed. pavel introduced me to a girl some time ago, but these past few days with her have been exceptional. since thursday, i've spent nearly every waking hour with her (and some not so waking) ...and for the hours not spent with her, i've been thinking about her a great deal. the details of who she is aren't really the kind of thing you discuss on a blog i don't think, but i do what to say that she makes me happy ...and at times, i'm absolutely taken with her. more to come... i hope.

eulogy for an angel

May 20, 2004 04:25 +0000  |  Miscellaneous 6

well it's over. angel is finished. i don't think i liked the ending though. it didn't feel like an end -- probably because it was never intended to be. they killed off my favourite character and the whole thing ended in a hopeless battle... normally you'd think that that sounds like a cool ending, but in joss' world, you just know something really freakin' cool woulda happened next. what could joss have topped "well personally, i kinda wanna slay the dragon" with? i'm sad...

really sad to see it go. not only because it was an excellent show, but because it was good storytelling... storytelling that's being replaced with absolute garbage. sigh. o well. i guess i'll just have to buy the dvds and pretend there's still something good on. i'll be cancelling my cable in the morning.

some interesting quotes from the finale:
  • illyria: "i'll make trophies from their spines"
  • connor: "how do ya like that 'dress for less'?"
  • illyria: "would you like me to lie to you now?"
  • spike: "ephulgant"
  • gun: "what would you do if i said that nothing you do here mattered?"
  • angel: "can you guess which word in there you should have left out?"
all of the above paraphrased of course. joss is really quite brilliant -- i only hope that one day he'll find backers who are really interested in telling good stories as opposed to whatever the hell the wb is interested in.

even more nifty links

May 18, 2004 22:01 +0000  |  Nifty Links 0

i've run across the following links lately and thought i'd include them in one shot:

blogger v0.11

May 18, 2004 13:28 +0000  |  Geek Stuff 0

well some of you may have noticed but i uploaded the new blogger code changes a couple days ago. i just didn't want to mix this post in with mention of iraqi prisoner torture or my trip to ottawa. but it's here now. new features include:
  • fixt the anti-spammer code in the comments. now only specific code is allowed in there including basic stuff like: <div>, <span>, and <a>. yes, i'm aware that with some creative coding you can do some rather fun stuff with even those tags, but it'll prevent dumb shit like javascript auto-redirects and intentional breaking of the layout to some degree

  • blogger links are now highlighted: wyrdsister, jeanie, lavendarglass, anna, smyli. see? isn't it nifty?

  • the search engine has been modified to let you limit the number of days you want to search. this is handy if you only want stuff from the last 10days or so. i've also set it up so that an administrator can search for '' (nothing) and bring up everything... handy if you want a list of comments posted in the last x days.

  • i added two new modules to the sidebar: "tv that doesn't suck" -- 'cause it occured to me that there's so very little, and a content licence handled by the creative commons. the gist of the licence is that you can copy and distribute anything you see here, but not for profit.
...and that's about it. small update this time through i suppose. i'm working on a better way to handle the stylesheets lately, so that'll likely be the next big change.

...and then there was soup

May 16, 2004 23:39 +0000  |  Personal Life 7

i just got back from ottawa. possibly my last trip up there... ever. can you feel the tears? the sorrow? the loss? ...didn't think so. the trip up was interesting though. after getting a very late start out of the city (i got lost... go figure) i ended up in the middle of a horrendous thunderstorm complete with torrents of golf ball-sized raindrops and sheets of water coming up off the road.... at 100km/hr. the visibility was uhhh "soupy" hence the tile of this posting.

but when i finally got to the little hamlet of ottawa (did you care that it's tulip festival week there? neither did i) i dropped in on the elgin street diner and had yet another bowl of their vegetarian vegetable soup. i swear, if i ever go back there, it'll be entirely for the soup. it's fantastic. i stayed the night @chrystal's and spent the better part of saturday walking and napping as "hellboy" wasn't playing anywhere in town and in ottawa, even with something as amazing as the tulip festival brewing, there's still really nothing to do unless you're a tourist. we did however meet angela and her friend matt for breakfast at eggspectation so i could say "hi" and get my babylon5 dvds back (yay!)

after breakfast, some walking and desperate looking for something to do, we gave up and headed to blockbuster (apparently, chrystal doesn't like independent video stores... big american chains are apparently "better" somehow). we rented the final instalment of the matrix trilogy (chrystal had yet to see it) and "big fish" and watched them both on her tiny, mono, 19 tv... there's something seriously wrong with that thought, but she refuses to get a better setup. big fish however was really quite good. i recommend a rental or a download. since it's tim burton, i'll likely be buying it once i cancel my cable and have nothing to watch.

next day came too soon and we packed up syntax for her big trip down to the big smoke. i stuffed her in that box she hates so much and started out on my drive, this time in daylight and for the first time, ontario appeared pretty to me. it's actually quite nice outside the smog when the landscape isn't frozen and you're in an air-conditioned rental car... not mountains though... i miss my mountains.

so syntax is with me now. and she'll be here for about 3months while chrystal makes the transition to living with the americans in raleigh. apparently, the security folks on the american side insist on holding her stuff for near a month while they look it over, but won't even hold syntax in quarantine for an hour, so when she gets settled down south, i can just put syntax on a plane and chrystal can pick her up on the other side.

it's a bit hard on me though. tough to explain without sounding ridiculous. but when i left ottawa, i left a girl i loved and a cat i loved to come to a smoggy city alone. it made sense then, and it still does now, but that doesn't mean that i don't miss waking up next to the both of them on my sundays. and now they're both moving so far away. far enough that i'll not likely see them for years unless some coincidence brings us together for a day or two. i'm going to miss them both terribly.

pictures of a smogg-ed city

May 14, 2004 04:14 +0000  |  Society & Culture Why I'm Here 2

today was my first real encounter with smog. for those of you who don't really know, smog is not just that yellow-orange haze that rests on the horizon at twilight. no, real smog is the stuff that is so ever-present that glancing down the block requires a full minute-long stare... just to make out whether or not you see the streetcar coming.... less than a block away. the air is no longer even pretending to be clear -- a thick, suffocating gray rests on everything... it's downright scary.

but in spite of it all, i managed to go out and take some nice photos. full sized versions will be on the imager soon, but not yet:

just a buildingwhere i liveexperimentations in macro photography
experimentations with high shutter speedyes, that is what you think... garbage piled on the sidewalk... twice a weekjust a pretty tree

untitled

May 13, 2004 03:03 +0000  |  Society & Culture 5

there really isn't a title appropriate for something like this. i remember now why i stopped watching the news. me, a person who's fascinated by society and culture, faith and war -- stopped watching television that showcased all of that in an intense 30minutes.

i stopped watching because it was breaking my heart.

the cbc's national did a story on the "iraqi prisoner scandal" tonight. "scandal". that's what they call it here. human beings were stripped of their clothing held at gun point and posed in humiliating positions while american soldiers stood by laughing and taking pictures. one woman, by the name of "lynndie england" who's featured in a few of the better known photos is "speaking out" now, claiming the "i was only following orders" excuse... but that's just what it is -- an excuse.

i understand. really i do. war is a dirty business. a task requiring nations to sometimes do questionable things to attain a specific goal. but this... this is wrong... i know that "wrong" is a very weak term to be using here, but anything else would take away from the absolute truth of this. it's despicable, and horrifying... and it makes me seriously question the righteousness of their cause.

not that i've ever supported the american "efforts" in the middle east. gods know they've historically done more damage there than any measure of good. but a small part of me was happy that saddam was gone. hopeful that this could actually be what the american media was pitching it as: the bigger bully kicking the hell out of the smaller bully so the little guy can be free. sure it's naive, but i wanted to believe.

and now this. how can they claim the righteousness of their cause with one hand and commit acts like this with the other? i spit on you lynndie england. you're a disgrace not only to the united states army, but the whole damn human race. "i was only following orders" will not help you when your time comes.

the cbc did however take note of the fact that the united states isn't the only nation marred by this kind of disgusting behaviour. both britain and canada have shown examples of the same behaviour in this and other wars. and all i can say to that is that i wish i could just point to the americans and blame them... but i know i can't... and it makes me wonder: are we really so much better than the terrorists?

more details on the job

May 11, 2004 18:48 +0000  |  Employment 0

turns out the job is for a frontend designer at a .com in downtown toronto. $50k/year for design? at a .com? and i have to work in windows? ACK! if the job was for a "noble" company or had something exciting/interesting about it, maybe then i mght consider it. but the company i'm working for now is just too cool to me and i get to do so much more interesting stuff. o well. anyway, if you're a web designer/developer who for some reason likes windows and lives in the downtown toronto area, i might be able to hook you up with a guy. maybe. i dunno. but i'm not going anywhere.

the greatest Canadian: decision made

May 11, 2004 01:19 +0000  |  Society & Culture 2

so i finally went to cbc.ca and cast my vote for the greatest Canadian. for those who might be interested, here was my reasoning:

ignoring for a moment the fact that he brought home our constitution and ferried us all through the flq crisis, trudeau was what all Canadians need to aspire to be. an honest man of principle and guts who stood up to the united states, quebec and the rest of Canada when he knew he was right. he believed in national unity and in Canadian sovereignty. We should be so lucky that someone of his calibre comes along in the next hundred years.