Exploration of Mayhem

The last blog post was on May 7^th. On May 8^th I went out for a night on the town with the guys instead of staying in to write a blog. I enjoyed some of the best chicken wings I have ever experienced, hung out with some of my best friends, and took in the Halifax nightlife. I didn’t even regret it, which was weird. Old Man Lever didn’t believe me, but his grasp on reality is being distorted by a Photoshop power trip anyway.

“Little John is starting up his own KKK. He has the burning cross, now all he needs is Walmart to start a sale in the linen department”

You know what the most rewarding part about taking part in a blogging competition? That feeling of relaxation you get to enjoy once you are no longer a participant. Being obligated to write at least 300 words a day is, to put it nicely, tedious. But once you stop, you suddenly gain an appreciation of the free time you otherwise would have squandered.

 

It feels like writing that last word on your final exam and just sitting there, soaking in the world as everyone else struggles to finish. A world which, for a that moment only, expects nothing of you. It feels like that first moment of summer when you realize that you have no commitments and can do as you please. Driving around in GTA without a mission, only you and the hooker riding shotgun, looking for ramps to jump off of and pedestrians to hit.

And in this case only, it felt like pulling a grueling energy-drink fuelled all-nighter to finish an assignment. Knowing that there are improvements you could make if your eyelids weren’t so heavy, but passing it in with a sense of pride anyway. It wasn’t your best work, but it was still better than most of your peers.

 

I’m happy with the IMBC bronze medallion. I’ll wear my consolation prize with pride. I’ve enjoyed my break, so I guess I can start writing again.

 

I’ll be the first to admit, I miss seeing “Exploration of Mayhem” pop up in my RSS feed. And I talk to myself all the time, so it’s not like I was missing out on anything. But you poor creepers, I’m not entirely sure how you have survived. I suspect it involves joining a vampire cult and feasting on the blood of unsuspecting arts students. I’ll be buying a garlic watch-strap just in case. You aren’t getting any of my delicious type-o negative goodness.

 

Right there, I almost went on a tirade about my blood type, giving blood and a phobia I’d need to battle. Then I realized that I don’t have a word quota anymore, so I don’t need to start typing as soon as an idea strolls into my head like he owns the place. This blogging without rules thing really is going to take some getting used to.

As of now, I am finishing up the final week of my 5 week project. I’ve been emailing resumes like crazy with little to no reply. At this point I think I’m going to bite the bullet, take a walk to the gas station down the street and hand them a resume. It’s in walking distance so gas money wouldn’t be an issue. With gas prices as they are, it may even be more cost effective to walk to a minimum wage job than it is to drive to a higher paying job.

But if I was to walk to work, what in the hell would I do with that car I bought? I purchased a used car for the sole purpose of driving to whatever summer job I found. Well, that’s not the only reason. Not relying on people for transportation is a major bonus too. That, and I needed a way to get to my classes next year because A-ron and I are taking different classes, so our schedules wouldn’t match up. Now I am in the process of relearning how to drive. It’s been a year and a half since my road test, which was my last time behind the wheel. And that didn’t involve driving a stick, which is a whole different ballgame in itself.

I am also going to be looking for a new blog host. Try out a couple and pick the best one. I really don’t like the fact that you need an account to make a comment on vox. I like readers input and don’t want to lose that as soon as a registration screen pops up. I understand the Piratebay guys set up some sort of blog service, I think that will be my first stop. I’ll certainly post a link here when I finally make the transition.

 

Get back to your bloodsucking and avoiding mirrors, and whatever the hell else you fanged transylvanian freaks do. I’m out.

I have officially royally screwed up my sleep schedule. Its not the first time I have done this, and it certainly wont be the last. I generally operate through the entire school year running on 4 hours sleep per night. When I don’t have a reason to be up I sleep in. When I sleep in I stay up later. Let that happen for a couple nights and all of a sudden I am lying awake until 7am and cursing at the sandman, waiting for him to show up so I can snap his sleep dust sprinkling neck.

 

Breaking a messed up sleep schedule is never fun either. It will either involve oversleeping or under sleeping. At this point under sleeping seems easiest. I could set my alarm and get up early tomorrow. I tried that earlier this week, and woke up 3 hours later than I had intended, my alarmclock blinking after having had every button pressed in search of the “shut off that god awful racket” button as I flailed around still more than half entrenched in the dreamworld. Maybe I should just accept it, and start doing productive things at night instead of rolling around counting sheep.

 

Well, I guess I wasn’t entirely unproductive last night. I did some more online job hunting. I sent off a couple more resumes with nothing back yet. It wasn’t until today I found a job ad which I got a response from. There was a nanny agency looking to have their website maintained for $9 an hour from home on an as-needed basis. I have spoken to the guy who runs the show over there and he seems pretty cool, and my web development skills far surpass what is needed of me. It wont be my summer job, but it will be easy spending money from the comfort of my own home after a hard day at my yet to be determined summer job. Plus relevant experience for my resume as well as a reference if I play my cards right.

Works for me.

May 6th, 2008.

I started using MSN messenger in elementary school. I had tried ICQ, and had dabbled in IRC, but neither of them could match MSN. Somewhere along the line MSN became the standard IM program.

I understand that this isn’t the case everywhere. I have this theory that geography plays heavily into the IM application of choice. For instance, while working the call center I would sometimes need the customers e-mail address and 90% of the time they would have a yahoo email address. And scores of people were calling in about yahoo messenger, which I didn’t even know existed. This shocked me because nobody in my area uses yahoo for anything, let alone email. The only person I know who uses a yahoo email address is Oldmanlever. AIM is another one. I know one guy who uses AIM, and only because he has a lot of friends in the states.

I watched MSN messenger grow. I started using it somewhere between versions 2.0 and 3.0. At that time it was a pretty basic IM application, and it was especially popular because all of my friends had hotmail accounts already. I spent a lot of time talking to friends on MSN messenger, so I was always looking for ways to spruce up the experience. It started pretty innocently with block checkers, finding ways around the words which they would not allow in contact names, displaying multi-line contact names, creating ascii art and things like that.

Then people started coding messenger bots. Suddenly I had a contact on my list which would tell me a joke when I issued a command, or do a quick math calculation or return a definition from the dictionary for me. I was squeezing functionality out of the program that nobody else knew about, no matter how lame it may seem now.

That got old pretty quickly too. But then the patching started. Programmers all over the world were putting out these patches which kept on adding functionality to messenger. There was the polygami patch which would allow you to have more than one instance open. There were patches to make the window transparent, and to change the alert noises and the logos. You could send emoticons until someone elses computer crashed, or just use login pop-ups to show a message on your friends machine. Then a guy named Patchou came out of the woodwork and dropped a pretty hefty piece of messenger history onto our laps. Messenger plus.

Messenger plus took all of the patches and combined them into one application which integrated itself right into the background of messenger. Suddenly MSN names could be rainbow coloured, and chat sessions were being logged, and you could send messages with noises. There were more font options, dynamic msn names, custom scripts you could install. The sky was the limit for these people.

The place to find out the latest messenger news was a little Belgian site called mess.be. These guys were ahead of everybody when it came to messenger. If there was a new version of messenger they had it 2 months before it was released, with patches ready to go within the first couple days. If some Russian Microsoft developer took screenshots of a new feature in the next build they knew about it. If there was a vulnerability, bug or easter egg they were the first to report it. I spent more time on this website than I should have.

Now, as a 19 year old IT student I don’t screw around when it comes to my instant messaging. I make sure my MSN is pimped out to the brim because Microsoft sure as hell didn’t get it right the first time. I use a combination of WindowsLiveMessenger 8.5 MessengerPlus and the messpatch to make my IM experience fit my exact specifications. Some of the non-standard features I use the most are;

•             Chat logs encrypted with 1024-bit encryption
•             Timestamp added on the end of every message
•             Unlimited nudging
•             Tabbed message windows (Firefox spoiled me)
•             Password protected preferences
•             Show users as idle rather than away when appropriate
•             Boss protection; hides messenger with a keypress
•             Extension of message length limits

This makes things difficult for me because my tricked out messenger can’t follow me across platforms. If I could port this and utorrent to linux I would switch to Ubuntu in a heartbeat. I’ve tried things like Pidgin, and truly wish I could switch to an open source messenger without losing all of my features. Maybe it will happen some day, until then I'll be rubbing elbows with Bill Gates.

April 5^th 2008

Today I restarted the job hunt. First thing was to touch up the resume. I was never good the whole resume thing. Something about summarizing everything I have to offer to an employer in a sheet of paper is damn near impossible. These kinds of things are the kind of thing I think I can best show off in person. Its hard to show how personable you are through a generic piece of paper. Having very little work experience to put on my resume also isn’t very comforting.

 

Sometimes I wish I had started working earlier. I wanted to focus on studies so I held off on getting a job until I was finished with high school. Figured I would focus on studies instead. Probably would have been a good idea to find a crappy restaurant to work at and build up some work experience. As of now all I have as far as real work goes is a 5 month stint in a call center. I did well there, but we were essentially numbers in that place, so despite doing well in that place it wasn’t like I was getting a reference out of that place.

 

I’m hoping that I don’t need to go back to the call center this summer. I’m going to exhaust every option short of fast food before I hand in a resume at the call center. And if I find a job that is IT related it would count as a work term, and I wouldn’t have to do the 5 week project. I’d hate to do that to my team, but it would be nice to get paid and get a school credit rather than spending 5 weeks working on an application. I love cash.

Douce wanted me to comment on how he just scratched his balls. And again, second time. Merry Christmas Remer. I don’t know what your going to do with all of this internet fame.

 

Later folks.

 

IMBC: 330

Sometimes you have one of those days when there is absolutely nothing happening. You sit at home on your ass wondering why in the hell there isn’t anybody available or some fun to be had. You dream of finding something to do as you sit there being bummed out. Last night was not one of those nights.

I have a pretty close group of friends who I hang out with almost every weekend. The guys who stuck around the neighborhood instead of moving away or living in residence.  Some of my favorite dudes in the world, but outside of that group of friends I don’t see as many people as I would like to. I thrive on social interaction, meeting new people and talking to them. Hearing their take on the world, their experiences and their attitudes. Last night I got to hang out with some people I may have seen once since High School, which is great. Other people I haven’t seen in five or more years.

Last night was pretty relaxed. People had some beers, sat around listening to music and chatting with old friends. Then midnight hit, and everyone climbed out of a second floor window and sat on the roof with an acoustic guitar. Friendly acoustic sing-along’s under a clear moonlit sky. The Halifax Harbor dancing in the distance with the lights of the city. Voices booming into the night over an otherwise dead neighborhood, smiles had all around as we just enjoyed each others company.

Then we said our goodbyes to the hosts, piled six people into a car and drove home listening to Phil Anselmo sing sweet nothings in our ears. Cramped in the backseat with 3 other people but rocking out just the same. Stopped into the gas station to gas up and decided that we weren’t quite ready to call it a day yet. Rather than driving home we started blasting Acid Bath’s Pagan Terrorism tactics album (my favorite) and started down the dark twisty roads which lead to the beach. Too cold for the water, and too dark for much of anything but we pulled up to Lawrencetown beach regardless, got out and walked down the rocky sand until we were just beyond the reach of the waves. Just as we pulled up we had reached the part of the song Dead Girl which goes "The sound of the ocean is dead, its just the echo of the blood in your head. Sister, burn the temple and stand beneath the moon." It seemed so fitting. The only lights which were even visible were the stars, which always come out in full force that far away from the city. We just stood there watching the waves crash amongst themselves then rush towards us, each time making a little more progress. While the rest of the world was sleeping, I was standing on a beach with my favorite band stuck in my head, just being. Its the little things that count.

The night was so awesome that I almost forgot about the part where I saw cocaine in person for the first time, as it was on its way up a tube and into nostrils of some of my friends. It didn’t sadden me so much that they were doing it, just that I was having just as much fun, if not more, without such things. I wish there was some kind of secret I could share, or that people in their early 20's would believe that they can enjoy themselves without booze or pot or whatever else is around. Its all a matter of perspective I suppose.

On a related note, I just walked out on my back porch where my father was sitting on a chair in the sun with the dog lying in the shade beneath him as he sipped a beer and listened to the radio. I asked him "What's going on?" to which he replied "Nothing. Just enjoying life."

I think I know where I get it from.

This blog is an extension of yesterdays blog which can be found here;
http://torbox.vox.com/library/post/more-movie-talk.html

... Another film which had that effect on me was A Beautiful Mind. I guess it must be movies that show a distorted sense of reality blending into the real world. I think even the Matrix has the same quality to it to a lower extent. But that is neither here nor there.

Another film which ‘The Signal’ reminded me of was Shawn of the Dead. One of the directors has a sick sense of humor, and it shines through amazingly. For the most part the action is taken seriously, but during a few scenes they throw in some of the darkest humor ever. They contrast a ridiculously terrible scenario with some laughs, which I always think is a great combination. Not nearly as comical as Shawn of the Dead, but that mood which is set by cracking jokes while surrounded by zombies is still there.

So as of now my description would have you believe the movie is 28 Days Later meets Requiem for a Dream meets Shawn of the Dead meets From Dusk Till Dawn. With comparisons like that I don’t think there is any logical way to avoid seeing this movie. Then you can watch it, hate it, and pop my delusional bubble about the awesomeness of this movie. I encourage this type of behavior because I am always interested in a discussion, although sometimes its hard to have a debate on such an objective topic as a film.

I am currently searching IMDB to see what else these directors have done, perhaps they have pulled off another film like this that I haven’t heard of. I’ll keep you posted on my findings, if there are any. The search for cinema greatness has only just begun.

TOTD: What is your favorite vegetable?

Seeing as this blog is the tail end of a film review I didn’t finish yesterday I am out of words. Looks like the topic of the day will have to remedy that.

I was always one of those kids who didn’t get along well with vegetables. I’d eat broccoli or celery with cheese whiz, or onion on a burger, or potatoes if they were in the form of a french-fry. I’d eat a salad with red or green peppers in it. But I was a picky eater and didn’t make any ventures into the world of vegetables much deeper than that. Well, I still am a picky eater. To this day I can’t stand the consistency of cooked vegetables. Its weird, but I’m fine with it. I take my vitamins so there’s nothing to worry about.

I have just finished watching one of my favorite movies, which is weird to say because I have never seen this film before now. Sometimes I just watch a movie I know nothing about, in hopes that it is a hidden gem which would have otherwise been swept under the rug with the generic pile of metaphorical movie dirt that lies with it. I adopted this strategy because I have come to the realization that generally I don’t like popular films. If I have heard of a movie from advertising then chances are it is cookie-cutter enough to have won the heart of some movie exec who just so happens to control all of the ad money

I don’t want to sound like every indie jerk who doesn’t like something because it has hit the mainstream, but for some reason big Hollywood films barely ever move me in the way a film should. They typically don’t advertise the types of films I really enjoy, because they don’t bring in money. It’s sort of like that local band which you think should be at the top of the charts, and you can’t figure out why they don’t have record labels beating each other to the death with hammers just to get a piece of them.

Only I know why people aren’t clambering over these movies. Dark comedy doesn’t sell. Gore doesn’t sell. Anything that makes the viewer think rather than spelling out the plot doesn’t sell. There are exceptions of course, and I absolutely love that on occasion a movie with some of those attributes will break through and prove the world wrong. Quentin Tarantino is one of those exceptions. Rob Zombie seems to be another example, although I’m not particularly fond of anything but his Halloween remake. 

But, back to tonights film of choice. The film is called The Signal. The plot seems kind of generic, so you’re going to have to give me some time to explain. Basically, all of the TV’s, radios and cell phones stop working and start sending out this static signal. This static signal gets in peoples heads and they almost immediately go crazy, turning the entire town into homicidal maniacs. I know what you’re thinking, this is another generic “technology is going to kill us” movies that have been all over the place lately. Luckily for us, at this point the film makes a sharp turn from generic into unexpected territory. 

The film is one of the darkest films I have ever seen, yet they contrast it well by using some gorgeous camerawork. In that regard it reminded me of 28 Days Later, only without the artsy windmills, trailing country roads and beautiful open fields filled with running horses. The great camera work probably stems from the fact that the film has three directors. Yes, three. That aspect reminded me of From Dusk Till Dawn, which turned from what seemed like a serious crime film into an outlandish vampire film on a dime because it was a joint effort of both Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. In The Signal the three directors add a distinctive feeling of chaos to the film, which acts as a great way of emphasizing the chaos of the stark-raving-mad characters.

The film is both hectic and downright crazy. That theme just doesn’t let up, although there are periods in the film where the characters clear their minds and you are given a little break before diving right back into the madness. That madness reminded me a lot of the drugged out psychosis you saw in Requiem for a Dream. I don’t know if it was just me, but during Requium I was so barraged by crazy visuals and thoughts from the characters perspective that it took some time after the film ended before I felt like I was back to normal.

TO BE CONTINUED --
I've gotta go, I will continue this film review later tonight. or tomorrow if I dont find time.

IMBC: 664

    Tonight I spent some time writing up some information on the 5 week project I must complete with my team for school. I figured it would be easier than writing up a blog, so it will double as my post for tonight. If you don't feel like reading fairly boring details on a sodoku program, please feel free to not read the post, you wont be missing much.

    During this week all five members of the team were spending their week completing research which will be necessary to complete the tasks which are ahead of us.  Aside from building on our knowledge base, we found that the research phase also became a feasibility study.
  
        Initially we had been under the impression that facebook was able to host the applications which are created for their platform. It became apparent during the first three days of the research phase that this simply was not the case, and in order to complete the facebook application we would need to come up with a server. We had neither the resources nor willingness to purchase a server, so it was decided we would have a team meeting about the issue.

          
    On Thursday of the first week, we all met at the school for the meeting. We discussed our limitations, what we were worried about, and our options. We soon realized that we could eliminate the issue entirely by building a desktop application rather then a web application. This was discussed in great detail, and all group members came to a consensus of what we intended to do. We decided that we would pursue the desktop application, and adjust our initial Gantt chart to show this change of course.

            We then discussed the functionality of our application, and how we would adapt our web application plans to our new desktop application. We realized that without the complications of a web application we are able to add more functionality to the application and worry less about things like PHP and the facebook API. At this point we sat down as a group and brainstormed different things we wanted our application to do. This was important because it allowed the group to come to an understanding of what each group member was thinking, discuss good and bad ideas and really have fun with the idea.

            At the end of the brainstorming session we had a pretty detailed outline of what our Sudoku game would do. We decided that the game would offer both single and multiplayer modes. The single player mode would allow a player to generate puzzles of various difficulties, and race against the clock to complete them. The data about the users performance, average time and number of puzzles completed would then be entered into a database which would keep track of player information. By completing a certain number of puzzles or completing a puzzle in a shorter period of time the user could then unlock different ‘avatars’ for multiplayer mode as well as skins to further customize the Sudoku experience.

The multiplayer mode takes the classic Sudoku idea and turns it on its head. We aim to allow this game to be played over the internet by two parties running the software on their own computers. The screen of each player would display their custom avatar, their opponents’ avatar, their puzzle board as well as an outline of their opponents puzzleboard which shows the boxes which the opponent has filled in, but not the actual numbers they have used. When a user completes a line or block of numbers they are awarded the opportunity to mess up the opponent through various tools which are chosen at random. These tools include but are not limited to;

• Making some of the opponents blocks read only for a period of time.
• Inserting a random number into one of their blocks.
• Applying a blur over the opponents board
• Erasing several of the opponents numbers

I'll update you guys as the project leaves planning and codeing starts. It should be a fun project.
Thats all for tonight. Cheers.

April 30th, 2008.

I have a headache. And it just won’t go away. It feels like someone is carving away at the front of my brain right above my right eye. Why they chose the right eye, I have no idea, but it is irritating the hell out of me regardless. I figured I would set my alarm to one hour from now and hopefully the headache would be gone after a quick nap, but then I realized I ran the risk of waking up with a worse headache than before. Or lacking willpower and swatting at the alarm clock until it shuts up.

I really don’t want to risk getting out of the IMBC. I am now in the top 4 competitors which is a pretty impressive if I do say so myself. There were people who seemed like expert bloggers in the competition, people who I never would have dreamed in a million years I would have beaten. Before the last couple days of March I had never written a blog, now I have over 30 under my belt. That is a pretty scary thought. If I had written the minimum of 300 words each day, that would be a total of 9000 words written. And we all know I stretched it well beyond 300 on many occasions. I think I’m going to sit down and figure out exactly how many IMBC points I have in the near future, I’m curious to see how far beyond the minimum I have gone. 

I actually discovered I enjoy writing these things. That being said, I would definitely like the freedom of doing it without always checking the clock to ensure that midnight hasn’t snuck up on me. That way I could take my time and perfect a piece of writing before letting the eyes of the world feast on it. I have written some stuff which quite frankly is of no interest to anyone, and I feel as though I’m wasting peoples time with them. Those are the nights I would rather be spending throwing an idea around in my head until it has taken shape and is ready to be written out properly. Once this Iron Man Blogging thing is out of the way, chances are I’ll save posting a blog for those times when I actually have something to say.

I like to take pride in my work. And generally I do. I usually comb one of these blogs over for spelling mistakes, grammar errors or things that can simply be done without. When you see one of my long posts, you know that is when I have something I really want to talk about in detail, rather than talking for the sake of talking. Things I am passionate about, like horror films or music or computers. On those days I generally opt to skip the topic of the day, because I feel as though tacking it on the end of something I have worked on passionately is almost like selling my work short for a couple measly points.

To be honest, I want the IMBC to be over. With only four of us left I see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I know that it could be months until I finally reach that light, depending on how long the competition hangs on. If I saw this written in anyone else’s blog I would start counting down the days until they dropped out. Not me. I have too much pride to just drop it now, which is a curse I will live with for the rest of my life. It could also be a blessing in disguise, but we will wait and see. There is no prize at the end of this, so logically there is no penalty for failing to make a post other than some friendly jabs from OldManLever. But that would mean admitting defeat, which is something I don’t take all that lightly. The competitive nature I talked about when I started the IMBC is starting to show his dastardly face.

This is what happens when my thinker hurts, I start spewing serious conversation at you with no humor or entertainment value. I will be seeing this competition through to the end, I assure you that. Until then I will try to find things I am passionate to write about, but we both know that inspiration doesn’t strike every day. That’s life I guess. Up’s and down’s thrown into a lottery machine and drawn out at random. Speaking of downs, I’m going to go pop some Tylenol and plop my head down on my pillow.

Have a good one.

I am a follower of most things nerdy. Television isn’t an exception. There are all kinds of nerdy shows I could talk about, ranging from Mythbusters to Daily Planet, but there are two shows that hold a special place in my four-eyed heart. The shows I’m talking about don’t just deal with nerdy concepts. They also deal with the social awkwardness of the geekiest of the geeks, and I have always found that hilarious. I am talking about the IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory.

Last night I discovered that there have been 5 new Big Bang Theory episodes since I last tuned in. Usually I am on top of things like this, I don’t know how it weaseled by me. It was a pleasant surprise though, because it meant that I had some quality television to watch. 

The Big Bang Theory is a show about two physicists, Leonard and Sheldon. They share an apartment where they essentially hang out with their friends doing geek things, like LAN parties, having in-depth discussions about the holes in superhero movies and arguing over who has intellectual superiority. As some of the most brilliant minds in physics, they have more experience with books than social situations, which becomes an issue when a hot blonde moves in across the hall. It sounds cheesy as hell, but they really found some spectacular writers who have written some really great geeky humor.

The second show is one which makes my inner computer nerd sing beautiful songs of ones and zeroes into the early hours of the morning. Now that I think about it, the IT Crowd is essentially the same premises only instead of being physics nerds the two guys are the IT guys in an office building. And rather than moving in across the hall, the female who tears the world as they know it apart is hired as their new boss. The twist is that she knows nothing about computers, yet was able to bullshit her way into the position as their boss, which obviously pisses them off. It is a British comedy, although there was talk of an American version being made about a year ago although I havn’t heard any more about it. 

Topic of the Day: Cubes
There is an old Canadian horror film which very few people have seen called ‘The Cube’. It is about a group of people who wake up in this square room, which has a door on each wall, including the ceiling and the floor. They soon start exploring and discover that each room looks exactly like the one before it, only some of the rooms are booby trapped. They must rely on each other to find their way out of their trap, that is if they can remain civil long enough to do so. It kind of reminded me of saw, and the acting was about par. It’s a fun movie though, and you should probably watch it.

 

That’s all for today folks. Later.

 IMBC: 500 + 25 = 525