Before you click, please note that I can no longer guarantee the integrity of the following links... That's the nature of the web, baby!
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Saturday, June 30th: The times, they are a-changin'... My old high school buddy Kevin Hilditch and I went to a rock concert last night, just like we used to back in the day. Things have definitely changed. Maybe because we're both condo owners, our musical tastes had grown from the dinosaur bands of our past to something a little more current. More significantly, though, this show was in (gasp) Mississauga! We decided to make it an evening of slumming, suburban style, and began with a mediocre meal at Jack Astor's, the suburban eatery with a name that's almost a play on words:
Get it? Then it was a quick trip down the road to Hershey Highway Centre (or something like that), a lovely new (if smallish) indoor stadium, where we were somewhat shocked to find that the show wasn't sold out. This was more than a bit of a drag for yours truly, as he had an extra four tickets he was hoping to sell. Once inside, we were treated to our first non-smoking rock 'n' roll show, and the salutation: "How ya doin', Missah-fucking-sawwwwwgaaaaah!!!" from the stage. To be fair, the band did let three lucky youngsters come up on stage and take over the instruments for a jam, and there was no lack of moshing and crowd-surfing to be had in the front row. But there was definitely something missing from the experience; at the very least the smell of weed... And urine... And puke... |
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2001: Okay, okay... Uncle, already! Every time I check my email, I get another copy of that jingle, and another request for a link to god knows where. So the jingle is gone. I guess folks missed my point; I was hoping to spark some sort of correspondence on the subject of copyright on the 'Net, not publish another hundred links. Haven't you people learned that you can't monetize hits on a web counter? Of course, if you only want to share sites for the sake of community, then check out Blink, a new service where you can store your favourite bookmarks and see what's popular with others. I haven't tried it yet myself; seems that Blink won't upload bookmarks from Opera or iCab. Tsk, tsk... That's one stroke against ya! |
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Saturday, June 23rd, 2001: I read an interesting and timely article in today's Globe. Some snippets: "Unless Canada starts developing broadband Internet content to satisfy growing consumer demand, it will become vulnerable to foreign competitors, according to a report released Friday. The 50-page report states that Canada needs to create an environment that 'fosters collaboration among industry participants and enables smaller companies to thrive where they cannot now.' 'Canada should be a leader in the broadband content area, but today there are few mechanisms that allow Canada's interactive media brain trust to explore innovative uses of broadband,' The report states that the future of the media rests in a high-bandwidth environment where consumers are able to access useful interactive content any time and from anywhere. Large companies don't seem to want to invest in interactive content production because they get little or no return on their projects, the report states. Among its recommendations, the report calls for funding to develop interactive products worthy of export. It also calls on the public and private sectors to foster innovation within small and medium-sized companies." I for one, wholeheartedly agree that Canadian new media producers need more subsidies than what the Bell Fund offers if we are to successfully compete in the web we call world wide. If they don't get it, you poor Internauts will have to settle for more crap like ItchTV.com, a site featuring an "interactive broadcast machine", or more accurately, a simple engine for assembling pat segments from the show in the order of your choosing... They got money for this?! |
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Wednesday, June 20th, 2001: Never underestimate the power of a good edjumucation. The first two successful code-crackers from yesterday are both alums of my old high school. They are Ray Deonandan and Linda Holland... Congrats! What did we learn from this little experiment? That no recorded media is safe from piracy in this age of 1s and 0s? Hell, no! I learned that my site gets two hits a day with meaningless challenges! In return for those hits, the lucky parties now have a shameless plug for their own cyber-domains on this high-traffic site (two hits a day, remember?). And as for the jingle, it stays. I've changed the rules, because I can :-> |
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Tuesday, June 19th, 2001: What's that tasty jingle you're hearing? Why, the musical sting for 3 Points Mall of course, and the latest teaser for our nerd school prototype! If you can't hear it, it's because you don't have the proper plug-in for your browser. If you don't want to hear it, too bad; I've hidden it deep within the codes of this page. Tell you what, though... If you can figure out how to get at the particular MP3 file, download it and email it to me, then I'll remove it and consider you a master hacker, or a thief. |
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Friday, June 16th, 2001: What is this, anyway? DeVry?! Today we were informed that Wednesday and Thursday of the week after next will be "recruitment days" at the Film Centre. I've no idea what that means, either. But wouldn't it make my folks proud to know that I dumped five grand to find a job at the other end of four months as a web designer for Naked News, project manager for Hamster Dance 2, or (dare I even dream it?) a customer service rep for Sympatico... |
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Thursday, June 14th, 2001: It's after midnight, and I've just staggered home. My contribution to tonight's improv set at The Second City was certainly adequate; after a rocky start I pulled off a pretty good scene and a moderately clever reference back to it later on. Woo. I shared the stage with SCTV and SNL alumnus Tony Rosato, and current SNL cast member in training Jerry Minor. But the biggest treat was seeing my pal Jack Mosshammer, freed for the moment from the black hole of the entertainment industry. As Al Howell says, you know you've had a good night when you stick around after the show. I guess tonight was one of those nights :-) |
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Wednesday, June 13th, 2001: Last night I represented my fellow residents at a recruitment session for The Film Centre's upcoming fall term. Having a small crowd around me afterwards asking me questions and listening to my opinions made me feel like quite the new media big shot... Tonight I'm returning to an old media haunt. It's alumni week at The Second City, and my number has come up. I may be lost in a sea of any number of other funny former mainstagers, but since I haven't done any public make-em-ups for about two-thirds of a year, I'm actually quite nervous, and it sucks! I'm supposed to be way more self-confident than this :-( |
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Monday, June 11th, 2001: Tales from the sofa: Last night I indulged in some divergent behaviour with my new iBook. While watching Clash Of The Titans on the Family Channel last night, I surfed to the Internet Movie Database to see what Harry Hamlin had been up to since. Thank god for LA Law, eh Harry? While at imdb.com, I was saddened to see more evidence of the dotcom downturn's business model scramble. Check out my very own entry to see what I mean, then see if everyone's favourite Perseus forked over sixty bucks for headshots on his page... |
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Saturday, June 9th, 2001: It's been a week... For me, a pretty good week. After spending the first half of it trying to figure out an alpha-channel bug in the object-oriented program I'm using (impressed yet?), I finished off with two solid days of productive work on our nerd school project, and this spiffy logo for the shopping mall that it's set in:
Okay, I didn't actually do up this logo myself, but I did find the graphic in a clip art book and pass it on to our entrusted designer. And for that effort I was karmically rewarded at week's end with, gasp -- a brand-new iBook! If you haven't already been subjected to my portable pinings, you can get an eyeful in my most recent archives. Now that I finally have it, the only thing I hate about it is the keyboard. I didn't think you could sell a computer at any price with it's human to machine interface mounted on a piece of cardboard... What an age we live in! A more pleasant surprise is Apple's AirPort technology. I had it up and running on two Macs within half an hour; it would have been sooner if not for the software updates I had to download. And I still can't believe I'm surfing the 'Net on my couch at half a megabyte a second, without any wires! Now that I've got my gadget ya-yas out, I can get back to my incredibly insightful observations of 21st-century life... Last night some friends and I happened upon a lame techno street party deal, hosted by Molson. What wasn't surprising was that beer was for sale; what was were the scores of suburbanites willingly getting their driver's licenses swiped by card readers for the privilege of getting on the mailing list of their favorite brewery. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess... |
| Monday, June 4th, 2001: With my new AMEX card came more than three thousand bucks of fraudulent charges. To the person responsible I have this to say: I know where you live, fucker!
Speaking of fraudulent charges, I also got my monthly fee for Sympatico's Internet service. You may remember that an extended anti-Bell tirade was followed by a switch to Rogers@Home last March. In case I found that Rogers wasn't any better, I downgraded my Sympatico account to a $9/month dial-up deal so I could switch back if I had to. Well, guess what? All this time they've been charging me the $40/month high-speed fee, even though I mailed their piece of crap Nortel modem back to them almost three months ago! It makes me wish I had thought of an idea like this first; I wouldn't have been nearly so kind! |
