wtfudge

FINISHED.

2005-02-22T19:14:00.000-05:00

The new HellaBoss site is live. Please disregard this site as it will not be updated from now until doomsday.

killer

2005-01-15T17:06:00.000-05:00

the cms is done (as in, can put it online now). whee.
now to cut out the design elements and code them into the pages. i can't believe i'm this close to being done this project! hoo-ray!

i am a hipster

2005-01-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

i bought index cards today. oversized ones because i like to doodle. i think i will take them back after work however and get smaller ones. i also like to doodle on smaller cards. i am silly. hear me roar.

man, when am i going to get my cms up? jeeze!

last night i almost did it

2005-01-14T08:25:00.000-05:00

i almost bought my first audiobook. after being a daily reader of merlin mann's (where'd you go?) 43 folders weblog for close to 4 months, i decided to check to see if the much-touted "getting things done" (or gtd) book was available through itms-c and it is/was. the trick is though that it's an abridged version of the 2002 printing of the book. i've since mailed the company to ask them what the abridged version is missing over the regular one. anyone have any wierd experiences with abridged books? any suggestions on how to handle abridged materials? i've heard to avoid abridged stuff (mainly dictionaries), but no official word that i'd follow as gospel. you?

last night i beat the water fiend in ff 1 (the kracken - named phil) and tried my hand at the new *-gift shrines scattered about. the two that i tackled (earth and water) are both rough. i managed to beat cerebus in the earth one, but the water one and gilgamesh has me getting rocked and rocked and rocked. i'm looking for a walkthrough on it. currently, i'm at level 42 with all of my characters (geek note: no one has died yet - and when they do, the do it all together. when one gets a new level, they all do. that's tough to do in final fantasy). with this game done, i can finally start to write that review for... whoops! i've said too much.

yesterday i bought my new meds. 60 pills cost me $215 canadian dollars. luckily, they're turning my feces to solid gold, so in the end (haha) the trade-off is good.

2 things

2005-01-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

thing one: how do you change your email address in your apple account at the apple store?

thing two: iwork == ordered; will be reviewing it as soon as it comes. est. ship date: 8 business days.

not an order but an offer

2005-01-13T09:02:00.000-05:00

i didn't order iwork last night because i forgot to. believe it or not, i was actually very busy last night. i got some chores done, stripped wallpaper in our parlour for a couple of hours (it's really an annoying and exhausting job - more later), and finished the design for the new HellaBoss web site.

that's right, you heard me - finished.

i'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out up to now. i'll be slicing it up and making it work over the next couple of days. i plan to have something online at HellaBoss.com this weekend (even a shapeless blog rather than here). i will let you know.

so, no iwork. i'm going to order it right now however. good luck tracer getting the jeepers to go for it. you might get him to get a macmini for his peecee too? hehe. if i was packing the cash, everyone i know would get a macmini. shoot, i might even get one! the small box is faster than my emac already! the niffer posted her thoughts on the shuffle at her site.

mwsf-c

2005-01-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

comments on macworld since i'm not quite finished with HellaBoss yet. the design is 80% and it staying so don't worry about that. i've got the cms working now with jez and frank's help. i'm working on a comment system now that'll allow you to post comments (though maybe i should just launch it and get it over with and add commenting later? haha!).

however, because it's distant and not here yet (i'm looking at this weekend to get the design done), i'm going to post about macworld yesterday. anyone who didn't hear anything about it has been living under a rock. here's what's what:

ipod shuffle: i'm doing the ipod shuffle. the new dance craze. and it's sweeping the nation. someone should create a dance based on it. anyways, when i showed it to her, my wife said, "i would totally buy one." that's huge for the niffer. while she loves the mac (and, luckily, the mat too - at work she has an apple sticker on the back of her peecee monitor to pretend it's a mac), she's never as excited as i am about technology when it comes out. not only is the shuffle the perfect size, but it's also the perfect price. i was thinking about it too - there is no display (which is a good way to keep the price down) which might be bad for most people. but my wife, who uses a portable cd player to walk to work (and has to carry it because it won't fit into her pockets), would appreciate its size and doesn't care about the lack of display because her cd player doesn't have one either. she just "knows" the tracks on the player based on the cd. just like the shuffle would be. even better, if you set it to randomly fill the shuffle, even better - then she wouldn't be stuck hearing the same shizer over and over and over again. 120 songs in her pocket is really a good idea. carrying around ~10 cds and player is heavy and awkward. carrying 1 stick of gum isn't. :) (lifted directly from a post i left at garrett's manrage) i want to buy one of these for the niffer badly. once another freelance project payout comes in (frank?), it's done.

macmini: before this came out, i've been working hard to get my macs networked together so that we can share a printer via my network switch. i finally got things working and it works well. i was thinking that it would be great to have another mac around so that i could use it as a network backup unit. i was thinking of replacing the niffer's imac and using it as backup. i figured that it was too big and that i'd have a hard time keeping the imac out of the way. it was like someone was inside my head with this item. i want one. it's cheap and powerful. the ram (even though they say that you should get it upgraded by trained peeps) looks easy enough to upgrade.

ilife: i just bought ilife on the 27th of december. i cannot upgrade it. boo-urns. great stuff however. if you're into garageband, be sure to pick it up crazy-style. from the keynote, things looked rather amazing re: it.

iwork: i was waiting for this to come out more than anything else. and i'm buying it when i get home tonight. it looks great though there is no spreadsheet app (yet). i like the look of pages and have been looking for a replacement to office for a while. short of excel, i can ditch office (i use mail for email rather than entourage and don't use powerpoint because it stinks). the interface looks 10000% better than appleworks which i've really wanted to use for a while now but couldn't get over the interface to engage it.

other: i'm all over the new imagery on the ilife and iwork boxes. they remind me of scandinavian folk art for some reason. very impressed.

i don't care much about fcphd, etc., or idvd, or imovie so i won't comment on them. i will say however, that it was incredibly interesting to see the president of sony onstage with jobs. anyone else think that?

what was your favourite part of the keynote?

daang, a few more posts then

2005-01-06T08:48:00.000-05:00

work at home continues smoothly. i've actually started work on a cocoa application that should help me get some work done more quickly. since i've no idea what i'm doing in cocoa, it's been difficult. i've learned quite a bit, however. cocoadevcentral has been a huge help. i just wish the search and most of the links worked? :
other things occupying my time are my new ruby gbasp, metroid: first mission, advance wars 2, and final fantasy 1 & 2: dawn of souls. i try to play ff at least 1x per night since i'm doing a big review of it you know for... whoops! i've said too much already.

i'm actually getting lots done on the new HellaBoss too. i've got a design that i'm in love with that i'm tweaking instead of ditching (which is saying an awful lot!). truth be told, however, i'm having too much fun with the HB cms to work on the front-end. ta-ra-ra!

lastly, let's talk xmas. i got: metroid prime 2: echoes, bubba-ho-tep on dvd (brilliant), a neck pillow and travel light (for our trip to florida), some arnold palmer black slippers, a big box of bacci chocolates, a screw-caddy for my drill bits, nails, screws, etc. (now i really need to build a workbench!), and more.

what did you get for xmas?

dang, a few more things. hehe. finally saw the excellent napoleon dynamite, wondering where frankieshakes went off to, and pictures from florida are online using flickr. did you know that using the flickr standalone app for os x, you can drag and drop images from iphoto and upload them in 1 shot?

that is all.

really.

wow.

2004-12-23T15:32:00.000-05:00

i should mention that the reason i'm not really posting here much is because i am building a cms at HellaBoss where I am planning to release something (sans comments for now) tangible by the end of january. sorry for the lack of posts, but i've been very busy over there getting things ready! :)

this close

2004-12-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

friday we're leaving for miami with the family. i had originally planned to hit up the miami apple store and to tour the everglades on a fan boat. alas, tours of that nature are against the law now so that's shot. i'll have to find sommat else to do now. any ideas?

in other news, the things are starting to roll-in now, xmas cards, gifts, freelance payments, and more importantly, freelance jobs. i'm becoming much more certain of my skills and it's helping me secure clients and be more assertive. branding is moving forward and so is the new HellaBoss site. i'm working on the cms as we speak.

more music

2004-12-17T08:44:00.000-05:00

last night the everdelightful dubs sent me a $10 gift cert from itms-c and i used it to buy 5 songs by mewithoutyou and 2 songs by the detatchment kit. all songs are terrific and i was actually surprised to find that they were on itms-c seeing as much of the things i'm searching for were not. i'm this close to picking up all of the nick drake that i can find on there as well as he rocks out on the soundtrack to garden state and i'm loving it.

thursday theatrics

2004-12-16T08:21:00.000-05:00

last night you: got the niffer to buy pizza which you doctored up with tomatoes, green tabasco, onions, pineapple, oregano, and ninjastars; downloaded and installed the demo of burnout menu, the os x 10.3.7 update, and the css master guide on HellaPod (omg, i love hyperlinks on the ipod!); had the great pleasure of watching "bring it on" on city tv; started reading "glenn gould: the performer in the work" (again with all the cancon); isight chatted with jezbian; started using newsfire again; window shopped for digicams; went for another walk around the neighbourhood at 10pm (i've been doing this for the last few nights because i love walking in the snow and feeling the wind pummel my hood as i walk with HellaPod); drew a monkey; had a shower; got chewed out on mike matas' weblog by anonymous; thought a bit about working on the new HellaBoss site; did not do so; and slept with the most darling niffer.

itms-c revisited and bookmarks

2004-12-14T08:33:00.000-05:00

you can't use gift certificates purchased at itms-c at itms-usa. that is very much too badsir since i was going to get a couple of pals a nice gift for xmas. still waiting for some hot indierock tunes to arrive at the store. that said, my pal vince at cyclop media said that their artists were going to be on itms-c in 2005 which is exciting to no end. sitting with $36.08 in my account with no non-mainstream music to use it on! i'm this close to blowing the stack on a bunch of old and great oscar peterson tracks. gotta keep up that cancon.

in other news, i've an idea for a fun project - the great december bookmark swap. here's the way we'll do it up (if you want to participate): export all of your "daily" bookmarks as html and upload them all to your web site. post a link to the document in the comments and share with your fellow geeks some of the sites you check up all the time. i'm sure there are many sites that some of us are looking at that the others are not. ie: there are likely some great design inspiration sites, weblogs, etc. that people would benefit from knowing about, so get to it!

cancon

2004-12-13T08:19:00.000-05:00

this weekend was the great "franksandbeans giftswap" wherein frank and i swapped xmas gifts. in both cases the gifts turned out to be the most excellent itms-c gift certificates that were redeemed for goodies. i should note that i think frank went a little overboard, but i certainly won't turn down the maad cash.

first impressions of the itms-c:

it's just as easy as everyone has said to connect and download tracks. once you've an account set up, simply clicking the "buy song" button gets the deed done quickly and painlessly. even though i haven't used it yet, i really appreciate the "are you sure you want this song" alert that comes up before you finalise it.

the store is missing stuff. lots of stuff. i'm aware that it's fresh, new, and tasty and that things will get changed quickly. right now, however, if i search for that "band of bands", rancid, i get only their most recent album and no operation ivy stuff. there was a lot of music i wanted to purchase already but could not since it wasn't available.

there is a language issue with itms-c for some reason. for fun (after seeing that there were a few bands missing (catpower, yo la tengo, the constantines, evil pupil [where are you, cyclop media?] etc.) i went to the itms-usa to see if the bands were missing from everything or just itms-c. logging back into itms-c (whew!) changed all of my text to french and i couldn't find an option to switch it back. anyone know where to do this from? logging out and back in seemed to do the trick.

the music:

i bought the wilco: a ghost is born album, 2 tracks from snoop dogg's rhythm and gangsta disc (drop it like it's hot and pass it pass it), and to ensure the proper bit of cancon (canadian content) i had to score the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald by gordon lightfoot. all are delightfully "protected aac format".

i've still credit in my account and can wait a couple of weeks before buying more music (provided that some shows up quickly!

this weekend was more "new HellaBoss-working-on". with jez's help, i've created a cms that lets me manage posts to the site so that i don't have to do it through blogger anymore. i will put out an official abp on this site when things switch over. don't expect it for a while tho. the site is looking just fine, however.

posted at yayhooray

2004-12-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

i posted this at yayhooray today:

"hooray for canada. i'm very glad that people can do what they like now, even though it's been the same "free country" this whole time. it takes 9 judges to make a ruling that simply looks at the canadian charter of rights and freedoms and says, "ohshit, we've been mucking with homosexuals this whole time!".

i am certainly glad that conservatives exist in canada/around the world as it takes all types to make up a country and it is good to get everyone's opinion on topics.

when it comes, however, to those ideas restricting citizens of a country based on emotional responses perpetrated chiefly by religious ideas (that are constantly in flux - girls can be "altar boys", women can be ministers, for example), i can't help but think of historical circumstances where religion influenced politics and kept people in-line. the ideas that kings and queens (pun intended) were the direct representatives of god on earth, that girls with birthmarks were witches and must be burned, that the native peoples of various continents were tools to help make an empire great, etc. are luckily things that the whole of a country/society have risen up against and realised (after a lengthy fight where many people are killed, injured, humiliated, etc.) that just maybe there are much bigger things to worry about and that religion and emotional responses perhaps are not the best way to dictate the actions of nations.

when i remove myself from the emotional responses generated by events such as this, as canadians did when women got the right to vote, when americans passed laws that slavery wasn't such a good idea and segregation maybe isn't the best way to deal with people who are different from us, or when the british did when they decided that they should stop paying the crown tax for the light they were using for their crops, i am proud that we are moving forward, finally overcoming trivial obstacles, and are now able to concentrate on more important issues like poverty, health care, separation, starvation, and more.

really, i think there are more important things to worry about than whether 2 fellas can get married or not. i think that terrorism, environmental waste, etc. could be a little more important.

sometimes i think that religious groups in canada who are against things like the freedom to marry (i hate the name gay marriage as much as i hate when people tell me about friends of theirs, and make sure when they're describing them, that they say that they're black if they are - who cares?) are against it so much because if it passes, they won't have anything else to get upset about except video games and that hip hop music. their group might get disbanded. they might stop being paid to complain all of the time. just like unions would if all corporations started treating their employees like real people. if that happend, the unions would certainly be against the disbanding of unions and they would make up a big stink.

just a few idears. sorry to offend, but where i come from, we care about people and encourage and empower them to be all they can and want to be. natives can be lawyers and blacks don't have to be rap stars to be millionaires. white people don't have to be the powerful elite, and women don't have to give birth if they don't want to.

be what you want. do what you want. it's supposed to be a free country - let's make it that way and see what happens!"

mugatu

2004-12-10T09:17:00.000-05:00

actually, i'm redesigning HellaBoss and will be moving my blog over there shortly (read after xmas maybe?). i've shown a couple of people the new look and they're all over it, which is delightful. i really think that i'm coming into my own with this design stuff as i become more comfortable with my work and my ability to get what's in my head onto the screen. it's been a long-time coming, but what can you do? maybe this medication is helping.

3way

2004-12-09T14:47:00.000-05:00

work: xmas party presentation. after the party, i'll post one of my slides. such a geek. what a pixel freak. editing docs that were written in "Claris Home Page version 3.0" - including stripping "livesrc" descriptors from the guts of it. taking photos, trying to get windows to recognise a brand new fuji s7000 camera (stupid windows), and finishing up some projects.

freelance: finished frank's job up. payment arrives this week. new client on horizon with him which is great. working on things with garrett in nyc (specifically, designing one of the best logos i've ever done - i'll ask him if i can post it..). trying to secure some work with jez in oz, consulting with a client on windows (ugh), getting laptop-envy, and more.

home: xmas shopping. the niffer is almost done. shawnwall is done. frank is almost done. i know what i want to get him, but he's shifty. and i'm cheap. hehe. new pills that are 1x/day now instead of 2x/day. they are $106.90 for 30 tablets. there is 36mg of "happy junk" in them as opposed to 20mg before. my hand hurts after a fight with our cat the other wherein he bit into my hand - hopefully nothing's too busted up. i want to buy things using itms-c but cannot. i did buy a great new journal booklet tho. it's all over hot. i'm going to redo some wtfudge stuff in its likeness. be on the lookout.

you: update.

early morning hijinx

2004-12-06T06:46:00.000-05:00

last night i was experimenting with evocam and using my isight to take snaps of me and upload them to my server every 2 minutes to create a sort of tableau. the last picture taken of me was this one, clearly just before i figured that it might be time to head off to bed. evocam's a pretty neato little product, with the ability to stream video to a web server via ftp, to a local web server, take snapshots, use the desktop as a video source so that people can see what you're up to as you work, and more. it's $20 usd. i'm really considering picking it up after my 15 day demo period is over. learn more about it here.

in other news, i had a kernel panic this weekend. i was working on a really basic mockup for a project for dictator garrett in illustrator. i finished it and took a screengrab, expose-d my desktop and renamed the file. since garrett was on ichat, i dragged the file to his picture in my buddy list and boom - kernel panic. restart. forgot to save *anything*. even lost screengrab. ugh. fairly easy to recover, but annoying.

and lo, my first adventure into electronics went well this weekend. we bought a universal garage door remote (we've now 2 of them, 1 for the car and 1 for the house so we can get into the garage more quickly). i had to take the entire thing apart and reset the dip switches according to both insane korean instructions and what was preset in the garage's overhead motor. i've never reset dip switches before! anyways, taking a page from jez's mame cabinet manual, i was all over them and finally got it to work after standing in my garage in -6dc weather with frozen fingers mucking with tiny bits of metal and plastic.

apple idea

2004-12-03T18:37:00.000-05:00

in panther, you should be able to designate labels to files you're saving for the first time right from the save as dialogue. not just "save as file type" but also "save as file type with this label".

nothing purchased, nothing gained

2004-12-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

so, nothing bought from itms-c yet. i wanted to go to the mall last night to check some "real" prices before hitting the itms-c for tunes. i got home last night on the bus at around 8pm or so. what a loooong day.

while out after work (xmas shopping), i checked out music world and humvuh (hmv) for prices on the k-os cd featuring the tracks "bboy stace" and "crabbuckit". the disc was $16.99 and $18.99 respectively. on the itms-c the entire disc is $10.99. can't complain about that.

one thing that i want to figure out 100% is the whole "there are limitations as to how many times you can burn, transfer tracks" thing. anyone know the official rules for this?

work is going well. i've started the custom cms for seminars and trade shows. i've got a little form that allows people to upload all of the data to the database but i can't seem to figure out how to create a hyperlink that lets people delete records directly from the table. searching online hasn't really yeilded any reasonably understandible results yet. i'll keep looking. i would prefer not to link to another page because i don't want to go anywhere else to "confirm that it worked". i'd like the table to update automatically (a brief refresh might be in order, no sweat). ideas?

itms-c

2004-12-02T08:22:00.000-05:00

last night just before bed i discovered that the itms-c was online and kicking. i was too tired to buy any music, but i'm rather happy that it's there finally. have you bought any music from the itms yet? if so, anything i should keep in mind? any suggestions as to what's good out there?

i try not to do it..

2004-12-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

but i'm very excited to see this app. i'm going to download it tonight, try it, and possibly buy it right away. there are very few apps that i've seen that have a brilliant looking interface. this is one of them.

apple updates galore!

2004-12-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

canadian itunes music store by end of november == 0;
where is the music store? i've no idea. canadians today can launch itunes and still get the "sorry, no store in your country yet, sucka" message. clicking on the previously do-nothing browse link dumps you to the usa store again. we seem to be back to square one. ugh. if you see that it's been updated before i do, please make a post. i want to try this thing out right away (though i should wait until i get home..)!

isight webcam in under 12 days (actual time: 6 days total) == 1;
the isight was shipped on sunday. there was an attempted delivery yesterday at 13:23 by purolator courier. a message was left over the keyhole on my front door.

brilliant placement i thought - put the paper in the way of where someone has to go to get into their house. the paper uses a simple sticky section that ahderes it to the door (or whatever). the niffer and i do that sort of stuff if we've a note that the other person needs to read. we don't have a bulletin board or "spot where we look as soon as we come in" except for 3 places: my computer screen, the toilet (to be honest), and the television. so, we use sticky notes to put notes where we're sure to see them. the niffer's getting more into the computer now with her weblog so i might have to change "television" with "tangerine imac". we'll see.

anyways, the note for puro said that i need to go to the puro depot to pick up my package and that i need gov't id to do so. natch, the shipment was under the niffer's name so i was fudged. she had to write me a note and i went to pick it up before my class at fanshawe. after a 20 minute wait, meeting a guy bleeding from the top head in the puro office while he was waiting for a package, and listening to puro employees tooling each other in the back room, i was off (rounding the corner and driving past my old place of work, evil, inc.) back to the college.

loving said webcam == 1;
got the camera. carefully sliced open the box(es), shrink wrap and opened the camera. i was worried a bit about the camera. it's a pretty delicate thing with all the lenses, etc. i wasn't sure how well it would stand up to puro's potential rough-handling of the package. when it arrived, it was minty fresh. i was actually a bit worried that it was just an empty box since the contents were so light. inside the main cardboard shell was a smaller box and a ream of crumpled brown paper to act a shock absorber, and a picking slip. oddly enough there is no apple branding on the slip at all.

anyways, inside the smaller box was the isight, in a box that's exactly the same size as an ipod. the same look and feel too. even belly-wrapped with cardboard that slides up and off the fold-out box. inside the package were a few items:

the camera
a plastic pill-bottle that is used to transport the isight about without damaging it
an apple-branded firewire cable (2 male ends)
multiple stands to put the isight into
a magnetic cable clamp to hold the camera to metallic displays, etc.
an instruction/user guide and warranty information slip

true to apple form, there was no installation cd involved. it was literally "take it out of the box, plug it in and it works". brilliant.

notes:
it took me a bit to figure out how the stands and clips and cable and isight plugged in and the firewire port in the isight was a little snug on the plug-in and unplug. after a couple of uses, however, things were fine. the paper sticky stuff is brilliant and very strong. i'm a little worried what'll happen if i have to unplug it and want to take the mount off (i'm looking at buying one of these - for xmas?). i read on apple's web site that you can use goo-gone to get rid of any sticky residue.

shippers

2004-11-30T14:25:00.000-05:00

update: the isight shipped sunday night. arrived in canada this morning. likely arrived at my house at around noon. i was not home and will have to pick it up at a later date.

i've also been asked to continue teaching at fanshawe for the winter semester of this continuuing education course. very fun.

how have you been?

null and void

2004-11-29T06:52:00.000-05:00

and after a good night's rest, you wake to find 2 messages in your inbox from apple:

"The following products shipped on 11/28/2004. Transit time will depend upon whether you have chosen standard or premium freight options. If your order is shipping standard freight, it should arrive within 12 days of shipment."

it's as though someone heard what i was saying last night and decided to go easy on me. anyways, within 12 days of shipment, i should have my isight. just in time for xmas. hopefully, this week (but am not counting on anything..).