November 28, 2002
New Digital Camera
I bought a new digital camera, a Canon Powershot S200 Digital Elph. Its seems pretty damn cool, its small and has 2.0 megapixels. I spent the night going through the user's manual, trying to figure out all its features, and it has quite a few considering its small size. Doesn't seem to have any defects so I wont be returning it, at least not yet. Did a couple test shots and they turned out pretty good. Must sleep soon, but I'll be packing this baby to work tomorrow so I can take a few shots while I'm downtown. Oh yeah, I also picked up a 128 meg memory card [it only comes with an 8 meg card] so I have tons of room. Woohoo!
November 26, 2002
Evil Bike
Never got to fix my bike last night, I tried to use a spoke from an old wheel that I had sitting on my balcony, but the damn thing was so rusted I was unable to salvage even a single spoke. So I rode around with a wobbly wheel again today. But now I have a spoke, just need to install it.
It was not supposed to rain today. I washed my bike. It rained. I am surely accursed.
November 25, 2002
Bad Day
Paid my cargo bond [again] this morning. They charged me an extra $25 for the bounced cheque. So the total damage from my mathematical misadventure came to $45. I hate this world. As if that wasn't bad enough, my back wheel had a spoke break today, rendering it all warped and wobbly. Oh the humanity!
November 23, 2002
Five Last
Created a last five thing in the banner. Those aren't the last five books and movies I watched, just placeholders. The music is what winamp last played. The DoSomething plugin does the automatic updating whenever I play something in Winamp, pretty cool.
I bounced a cheque!
I paid my cargo bond bond last week. Its a requirement that the city needs to license me as a courier. I kept checking my bank account but it seemed that they never cashed the cheque. Then today I noticed a $20 presentment charge. The cheque bounced! Apparently I had miscalculated by a few dollars! So now it cost me $20 and the insurance company is probably going to charge me at least another $20. And the policy was supposed to begin tomorrow, which is a Sunday but with this bounced cheque they might cancel my policy, and notify city hall who might cancel my courier license. Their offices are closed today, I can't even contact them until Monday. All because of a simple miscalculation on my part! I am so bummed. This will probably screw up my credit rating too. Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!
Winamp Plugin
I think I got the Winamp plugin DoSomething to work. It updates the latest songs I'm playing onto my webpage.
November 22, 2002
Is it safe?
Went to see the dentist this morning and he uttered the two vile words that I so did not want to hear: root canal. Damn! Its not so much the procedure as the cost involved. I have no dental coverage and its very expensive. He told me I have two options; have the tooth pulled or have the dreaded root canal. Well, I'd like to keep my teeth if at all possible so I made an appointment for December 2. He also mentioned having two teeth capped, teeth cleaning and replacement of my silver fillings. Yeah, I'll get that done on my way to pick up my new GT-40. Bloodsucking bastards.
November 20, 2002
Just Another Day
I feel so tired today, I came home after work and pretty well crashed out for about four hours. Guess it might be because I helped Borden Ladner pack stuff for their big move last night and didn't get home till around 10 pm. Not that late, but it was a long day. Then I had a horrible thing happen to me, my tooth that lost its filling the other day, broke. A piece of it came off, leaving a huge gaping hole between my teeth, very disgusting. So I went to the dentist, but they can't get me in till Friday, so I have to live with this deformity for awhile. Its really bugging me, its like I'm obsessing over it. The edge where it broke off is razor sharp and is cutting into the inside of my cheek. Hope they can fix it on Friday, and that its not too expensive, I am not rich dammit. I think its because I made fun of Michael Jackson the other day, bad karma coming back to bite me in the ass, or tooth as it were. Sorry Mikey, I'll never say another bad word about you, so help me God. Really.
And today was my birthday. Whoopee fuck.
Winamp
Found this Winamp plugin, sounds useful. I'm too tired to mess with it right now tho. Lazy bastard that I am.
DoSomething
What it is :
A Winamp General Purpose Plugin which is geared toward Shoutcasters. Whenever a song changes (or predetermined time interval) this plugin is responsible for doing "something". The somethings that are supported are as follows :
- Submit A URL
- FTP A file
- Generate an HTML Playlist (Just like MusicTicker)
- Run a command
- Gather XML Statistics (this uses the Shoutcast XML admin interface to gather statistics about your broadcast, you can then use tags to substitute this information into any of the above actions)
November 18, 2002
Movie Day!
Actually, I spent most of the day cleaning up and doing work related crap, but I did have the TV on and kinda half watched a few movies. Most were on Scream, what has to be the best cable TV station ever. [Nancy's a hoot!]
First up was Who Slew Auntie Roo? Shelley Winters stars in this movie as Auntie Roo, who's daughter is dead and she kidnaps a couple of children to replace her. The young boy is a little demented and believes Antie Roo is like the witch in Hansel & Gretel and wants to cook them up for dinner. But the kid is not alone, Auntie Roo is quite insane, keeping her daughter's corpse hidden away in a secret nursery, the butler is a sadistic little bastard and her spritualist is a fraud and a drunk. Its a fun little movie, mostly due to Ms. Winters acting so sweet and nice one moment and totally psychotic the next.
The next movie was Horror Hotel, also known as The City of the Dead. It shared the same cinematographer [Desmond Dickinson] as Antie Roo, strangely enough. It involves a tale of witchcraft as told by a fairly young Christopher Lee, with him ending the tale with "Burn, witch, burn. Burn, witch, burn." A witch is burned at the stake, and she and her cohorts apeal to Lucifer to save her in return for their souls. Three hundred years later, she's still alive and running a hotel in the same little town she was burned in, Whitewood. Christopher Lee is a professor teaching, of all things, the history of witchcraft and sends an eager-beaver student off to Whitewood to do a little research. She disappears, and soon half the city is off to Whitewood to look for her, most following in her ill-fated footsteps. Not a bad little flick, particularily Chris Lee being deliciously evil and Patricia Jessel likewise as the witch/inkeeper. The end with the whole "shadow of the cross" smiting down the Luciferians was a bit over the top.
Third on the slate was, deja-vu, Burn Witch Burn also known as Night of the Eagle. Now this is a really cool movie, the best of the three. It has great atmosphere, great story. Its about this university professor who's wife is practicing witchcraft. The hubby is a staunch non-believer in such nonsense, so when he finds out about her shenanigans, he insists that she give it all up and throw away all her charms and talismen. That's when the fun begins, as his life begins to fall apart without her safeguards. Aside from the silly "Do you believe?" at the very end, this is a suspenseful, intense little thriller. Like "Bewitched!", only deadly serious. Peter Wyngarde makes it all work, with a little help from Janet Blair as his witchy wife and Margaret Johnston as well, another faculty member and wife.
November 16, 2002
Michael Jackson's Face
How can somebody with so much money manage to ruin their face like this? You would think he could have hired a good plastic surgeon to do competent work, or better yet, just leave it the fuck alone in the first place! Its not like he was that bad looking before he began this mania. Then again, maybe he ran into complications that we know nothing about. Kinda sad. But if someone as rich as him can't get proper plastic surgery, no way a poor guy like me is ever going try it! [Not that I would anyway] I'll just stay really ugly.
Five Day Forecast
Added a five day forecast link to the bottom of the page. Needs to be cleaned up, but it works.
Movie Details
I found this news article on the movie "A Problem with Fear".
- Laurie - Paulo Costanzo
- Dot - Emily Hampshire
- Director - Gary Burns
- Co-producer - Shirley Vercruyesse
Memorial Ride
There was a memorial ride last night for Terry Tuck, a bike courier who died last week after being hit by a van, also a courier. This was the first death of a bike courier while on the job in Calgary. It seems like most of the bike couriers in Calgary showed up for this, myself included, which was nice as its pretty hard to get couriers to come together for anything. There was a wreath laid, somebody made a speech [ Terry was a courier for only a short time, but he was one of us], we had a moment of silence in his memory and then we lit sparklers and went on our ride. We kept to one lane of traffic going down 4 Street, turning on 5 Avenue and back up 1 Street to the Castle pub. Most drivers were cool about it, some courier drivers honked their horns to show their support and some non-courier bikers joined the ride.
At the Castle, I decided to go in for one beer, but I ended up staying for a few hours. West Direct bought us all a beer so we could have a toast to Terry. We watched the news item A-channel did on the ride, with Domenique hogging all the air time. LOL Then they had stationary bike races, which I didn't enter, but the people who did sure torqued out racing each other! Crazy bastards, after riding a bike all day, they go to a bar to do this... Saw Mike [hi! sleepingeagle], Roy, and a bunch of other couriers I haven't seen in awhile, which was cool. Then I bailed and rode home.
November 14, 2002
King for a day...
After sitting around for a couple more hours, we went outside at 635-8 Avenue SW to shoot another scene. In this one I actually got to ride my bike! Woohoo! As the two leads walked towards the camera, I swung in front of them, around a pillar and over to a bike rack. The scene ended with the camera pointing straight at me, which was kinda weird, but I'm sure they'll just edit that out. After that we went back to the staging area to have lunch and wait. Lunch was great, prime rib roast and stuff. Then we waited almost till sunset.
The last scene was back at the same place, this time a driver whips his door open in front of a bike courier. I was not the courier in this scene, that was Andrew. I was across the street with a bunch of other extras playing background.
Overall, I had a great time. It was easy and the crew was really nice. Sometimes it was tedious just waiting around but it was cool to see the film-making in progress, it really gives you an appreciation of all the work and preparation that goes into the process. And I feel sorry for those actors who have to wear that greasy make-up day after day. Icky.
I couldn't find an entry for this movie in IMDB but this is what I gathered from people talking and watching the takes:
- It just started filming today.
- Its a small Canadian independant film, with a quirky, dark comic feel to it. Sounds like your typical Canadian film, eh?
- The story involves a near-future society where fear is monitored with electronic bracelets and if your fear level goes too high, the police come after you? [I'm a little unsure of what the consequences of that is] There's this chick who has these fears that she somehow projects onto other people, like the elevator plunging to the ground, somebody getting run over etc. There is also this thing where she wants to kill dogs that keep yipping at her.
- Not sure who the chick is who plays the lead, but she's a funky young lady with braces and kinda strange voice, I think I've seen her in movies before. We did a scene, then right after, we did another with a girl who looked just like her but with totally different clothes and no braces, so I don't know if it was her or a chick who looks just like her.
- Then there was a guy who was the other lead, he was young and really skinny, really hyped about his part in that he was wandering around nervously, reciting his lines aloud. At first I thought he was some wacko that had just wandered onto the set.
- Its not X-Men2, dammit.
- The director was some guy from Montreal.
- There's at least three bike couriers in it!
Well that's about it! Back to my mundane, ho-hum life tomorrow!
Boy, these peanuts sure are salty!
Correction: the director [Gary Burns] is from Calgary not Montreal. I guess it was the cameraman that was from Montreal. My bad.
A Problem with Fear
So I'm here on the set of A Problem with Fear. We spent the morning in a +15 doing 2 or 3 scenes. I was part of the background, just strolling by as people talked. The movie is more of a dark comedy than a horror movie, although some people die in an elevator, get run over by a car and other mayhem. So far I think they filmed like 30 seconds worth.
November 13, 2002
Movie Extra
I was going into a building today and there were these notices for a movie that would be shooting in the area tomorrow, some kinda horror movie I think as it had the word fear in the title. Strangely enough, a courier approached me later on and asked if I would be interested in being in a movie. It involved taking the day off, which kind of made me hesitate as I can't really afford to take time off work right now, but then I thought what the hell, I'm game. Now I must go to bed as I have to be downtown at 6:45 am to do this thing. I must act as a courier. Now thats a stretch, lol. I just hope I don't have any dialog. Or I hope they don't expect me to do any stunts or shit. *groan* OH well, should be fun!
November 11, 2002
RIM Super Mario
Downloaded RimMario for my Blackberry 950. Finally, a decent game for my BB!
November 10, 2002
Calgary Weather
Added the current weather for Calgary at the bottom of this page. Its a perl script that grabs the info from the Enviroment Canada Calgary weather page and loads it in an i-frame. Guess I should add the five day forcast as well when I get the chance.
November 09, 2002
Zone Alarm
Am I the only one getting like a thousand blocked accesses with Zone Alarm everyday, usually on ports ~1025-1030? Anyway, I decided to patch my copy of ZA to the latest version today and it caused all kinds of problems. [a dll was missing that I had to find and move over to ...windows/system manually] The only way to get ZA up and running properly was to uninstall the old version and do a clean install of the newest version. Bleh!
After ZA was up and working, my desktop was all messed up so I had to spend time getting everything back to normal. The last thing that I noticed screwed up was the system tray, the icons were oversized and ugly. So I went Googling looking for a way to fix them as there did not seem to be an option in the desktop settings. In my quest, I came upon Litestep which looks like a cool replacement shell for windows. Might check it out sometime if I have the time.
Checking my system tray after surfing awhile, I noticed my icons had magically transformed themselves back to normal, small and pretty. Doh! The moral of the story? Contrary to popular belief, ignore your troubles and they will go away!
November 08, 2002
Got a new phone-bone!
After putting up with my old, decrepit Nokia 5120 for the past few months with it acting strange and dying on me all the time, I finally broke down and bought a new phone, a Motorola 280. It has a lot of features, like conference calling and voice-activated dialing [I tried it, it works!], GPRS [although I don't have any data stuff activated except receiving e-mails] and a whole bunch of other crap that's gonna take me forever to figure out. I like it so far, much nicer than my old one, smaller, prettier, more features.
November 07, 2002
MovableType Upgrade 2.51
Upgraded from 2.21 to 2.51, then had to fix all the perl shebangs and flock() errors. Tested everything and seems to work fine. Now to find out if there's any new goodies in this version.
Marijuana - The Growing Debate
Found this series on the Montreal Gazette website:Marijuana. I don't smoke the evil weed anymore, but I am totally for legalization. Its just so ridiculous to ostracize people and label them criminals because they choose to use the illegal drug marijuana rather than the legal drugs of alcohol or tobacco, even though the legal drugs are arguably more damaging. I could go on [and on] but I just hope our MPs are brave enough to make some long overdue progress on this issue rather than cave in to the hysteria and threats emanating from south of the border. God help us if the Alliance ever gets in power, we'll probably have an Americanesque War on Drugs. Yuck!
Funny, the link to Canada's Drug Strategy gives you this message:
We're sorry, we're not able to find the page you requested. It has either moved or no longer exists.
Too Funny
I don't know what this blog is about, but the description of it had me spewing coke all over my keyboard. ROTFLMAO!
-- A Bunch of Crap From a Moron --
November 06, 2002
Links
Added a links page to my site. The link is the first one under Internal Links. Pretty sparse right now but I will add more when I get the chance.
November 04, 2002
Weblogs.com
I read something about weblogs.com while at work today, but I was using my Blackberry which wouldn't work with the site, so I checked it out when I got home and its like this vortex that sucks you in and you waste all your life there. So, don't go there. Dude.
November 03, 2002
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
****spoilers****
Caught tonight's episode MALIGNANT about a pharmacist who dilutes cancer drugs so he can fund his church project to build a basketball court [?]. This show can be a hit-and-miss affair, but sometimes its really good, like this one. I can remember reading about this case in the news not so long ago, what a horrible thing to do. But what I wanted to say is Vincent D'Onofrio is the one who really makes this show worth watching. 
The way he tilts his head at people when he asks some sarcastic, rhetorical questions cracks me up. And he's always pulling these wacky stunts, like buying a lighter in the pharmacy and trying to set off the sprinklers. Or jumping in the wrestling ring and trying to get the young kid to go a couple rounds. [he's a big boy] Hilarious, not sure how legal that shit would be in real life but it is pretty funny on the show. Sometimes I think they rely on him too much to carry the show, but when they put together a good script, it makes for some very entertaining television. The best part on this show was at the end, when they confront the pharmacist in front of his fellow churchgoers and Goren says "...who knows, maybe they'll [pause] forgive you!". Just dripping with sarcasm, totally humiliating this poor schmuck in front of his peers, although he deserved it, the bastard. Good stuff.
November 02, 2002
My Saturday
Spent the day doing laundry, cleaning the floors [which sounds easy but you should see the entranceway where I keep my bike after it snows for a few days!] and other household chores. My CD storage unit has been like the leaning tower of Piza lately and I was about to give up on it but I thought I'd take another shot at fixing it before giving it the heave-ho. I removed all the cd's and dismanteled the thing, re-assembled it by glueing all the pieces together and then used some metal brackets at the base for extra strength. One of the shelves was missing its pegs that hold it up, so I improvised by using plastic presta valve caps, of all things, but hey, they worked. I reloaded all the cd's and it seems to be holding up pretty well, I might just keep the POS yet. Can't help but look over every few minutes to see if its begun leaning over once again.
In my quest to fix the cd unit, I came upon what apeared to be some kind of firecracker, it said "screech-e-roo" on the side. So I thought "what the heck" and went onto the balcony to light 'er up. Well the fuse burned down and then I thought for a minute it had gone out, but then it emitted this ear-shattering screeeeech as it shot off a bright red flame and a cloud of noxious, blue smoke. Yikes, I guess that's why it was called a "screech-e-roo"!
And tomorrow I do my billing. Not sure if my heart can handle all this excitement.
November 01, 2002
I'm getting sick
I bought a new digital camera, a Canon Powershot S200 Digital Elph. Its seems pretty damn cool, its small and has 2.0 megapixels. I spent the night going through the user's manual, trying to figure out all its features, and it has quite a few considering its small size. Doesn't seem to have any defects so I wont be returning it, at least not yet. Did a couple test shots and they turned out pretty good. Must sleep soon, but I'll be packing this baby to work tomorrow so I can take a few shots while I'm downtown. Oh yeah, I also picked up a 128 meg memory card [it only comes with an 8 meg card] so I have tons of room. Woohoo!
Never got to fix my bike last night, I tried to use a spoke from an old wheel that I had sitting on my balcony, but the damn thing was so rusted I was unable to salvage even a single spoke. So I rode around with a wobbly wheel again today. But now I have a spoke, just need to install it.
It was not supposed to rain today. I washed my bike. It rained. I am surely accursed.
Paid my cargo bond [again] this morning. They charged me an extra $25 for the bounced cheque. So the total damage from my mathematical misadventure came to $45. I hate this world. As if that wasn't bad enough, my back wheel had a spoke break today, rendering it all warped and wobbly. Oh the humanity!
Created a last five thing in the banner. Those aren't the last five books and movies I watched, just placeholders. The music is what winamp last played. The DoSomething plugin does the automatic updating whenever I play something in Winamp, pretty cool.
I paid my cargo bond bond last week. Its a requirement that the city needs to license me as a courier. I kept checking my bank account but it seemed that they never cashed the cheque. Then today I noticed a $20 presentment charge. The cheque bounced! Apparently I had miscalculated by a few dollars! So now it cost me $20 and the insurance company is probably going to charge me at least another $20. And the policy was supposed to begin tomorrow, which is a Sunday but with this bounced cheque they might cancel my policy, and notify city hall who might cancel my courier license. Their offices are closed today, I can't even contact them until Monday. All because of a simple miscalculation on my part! I am so bummed. This will probably screw up my credit rating too. Fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!
I think I got the Winamp plugin DoSomething to work. It updates the latest songs I'm playing onto my webpage.
Went to see the dentist this morning and he uttered the two vile words that I so did not want to hear: root canal. Damn! Its not so much the procedure as the cost involved. I have no dental coverage and its very expensive. He told me I have two options; have the tooth pulled or have the dreaded root canal. Well, I'd like to keep my teeth if at all possible so I made an appointment for December 2. He also mentioned having two teeth capped, teeth cleaning and replacement of my silver fillings. Yeah, I'll get that done on my way to pick up my new GT-40. Bloodsucking bastards.
I feel so tired today, I came home after work and pretty well crashed out for about four hours. Guess it might be because I helped Borden Ladner pack stuff for their big move last night and didn't get home till around 10 pm. Not that late, but it was a long day. Then I had a horrible thing happen to me, my tooth that lost its filling the other day, broke. A piece of it came off, leaving a huge gaping hole between my teeth, very disgusting. So I went to the dentist, but they can't get me in till Friday, so I have to live with this deformity for awhile. Its really bugging me, its like I'm obsessing over it. The edge where it broke off is razor sharp and is cutting into the inside of my cheek. Hope they can fix it on Friday, and that its not too expensive, I am not rich dammit. I think its because I made fun of Michael Jackson the other day, bad karma coming back to bite me in the ass, or tooth as it were. Sorry Mikey, I'll never say another bad word about you, so help me God. Really.
And today was my birthday. Whoopee fuck.
Found this Winamp plugin, sounds useful. I'm too tired to mess with it right now tho. Lazy bastard that I am.
DoSomething
What it is :
A Winamp General Purpose Plugin which is geared toward Shoutcasters. Whenever a song changes (or predetermined time interval) this plugin is responsible for doing "something". The somethings that are supported are as follows :
- Submit A URL
- FTP A file
- Generate an HTML Playlist (Just like MusicTicker)
- Run a command
- Gather XML Statistics (this uses the Shoutcast XML admin interface to gather statistics about your broadcast, you can then use tags to substitute this information into any of the above actions)
Actually, I spent most of the day cleaning up and doing work related crap, but I did have the TV on and kinda half watched a few movies. Most were on Scream, what has to be the best cable TV station ever. [Nancy's a hoot!]
First up was Who Slew Auntie Roo? Shelley Winters stars in this movie as Auntie Roo, who's daughter is dead and she kidnaps a couple of children to replace her. The young boy is a little demented and believes Antie Roo is like the witch in Hansel & Gretel and wants to cook them up for dinner. But the kid is not alone, Auntie Roo is quite insane, keeping her daughter's corpse hidden away in a secret nursery, the butler is a sadistic little bastard and her spritualist is a fraud and a drunk. Its a fun little movie, mostly due to Ms. Winters acting so sweet and nice one moment and totally psychotic the next.
The next movie was Horror Hotel, also known as The City of the Dead. It shared the same cinematographer [Desmond Dickinson] as Antie Roo, strangely enough. It involves a tale of witchcraft as told by a fairly young Christopher Lee, with him ending the tale with "Burn, witch, burn. Burn, witch, burn." A witch is burned at the stake, and she and her cohorts apeal to Lucifer to save her in return for their souls. Three hundred years later, she's still alive and running a hotel in the same little town she was burned in, Whitewood. Christopher Lee is a professor teaching, of all things, the history of witchcraft and sends an eager-beaver student off to Whitewood to do a little research. She disappears, and soon half the city is off to Whitewood to look for her, most following in her ill-fated footsteps. Not a bad little flick, particularily Chris Lee being deliciously evil and Patricia Jessel likewise as the witch/inkeeper. The end with the whole "shadow of the cross" smiting down the Luciferians was a bit over the top.
Third on the slate was, deja-vu, Burn Witch Burn also known as Night of the Eagle. Now this is a really cool movie, the best of the three. It has great atmosphere, great story. Its about this university professor who's wife is practicing witchcraft. The hubby is a staunch non-believer in such nonsense, so when he finds out about her shenanigans, he insists that she give it all up and throw away all her charms and talismen. That's when the fun begins, as his life begins to fall apart without her safeguards. Aside from the silly "Do you believe?" at the very end, this is a suspenseful, intense little thriller. Like "Bewitched!", only deadly serious. Peter Wyngarde makes it all work, with a little help from Janet Blair as his witchy wife and Margaret Johnston as well, another faculty member and wife.
How can somebody with so much money manage to ruin their face like this? You would think he could have hired a good plastic surgeon to do competent work, or better yet, just leave it the fuck alone in the first place! Its not like he was that bad looking before he began this mania. Then again, maybe he ran into complications that we know nothing about. Kinda sad. But if someone as rich as him can't get proper plastic surgery, no way a poor guy like me is ever going try it! [Not that I would anyway] I'll just stay really ugly.
Added a five day forecast link to the bottom of the page. Needs to be cleaned up, but it works.
I found this news article on the movie "A Problem with Fear".
- Laurie - Paulo Costanzo
- Dot - Emily Hampshire
- Director - Gary Burns
- Co-producer - Shirley Vercruyesse
There was a memorial ride last night for Terry Tuck, a bike courier who died last week after being hit by a van, also a courier. This was the first death of a bike courier while on the job in Calgary. It seems like most of the bike couriers in Calgary showed up for this, myself included, which was nice as its pretty hard to get couriers to come together for anything. There was a wreath laid, somebody made a speech [ Terry was a courier for only a short time, but he was one of us], we had a moment of silence in his memory and then we lit sparklers and went on our ride. We kept to one lane of traffic going down 4 Street, turning on 5 Avenue and back up 1 Street to the Castle pub. Most drivers were cool about it, some courier drivers honked their horns to show their support and some non-courier bikers joined the ride.
At the Castle, I decided to go in for one beer, but I ended up staying for a few hours. West Direct bought us all a beer so we could have a toast to Terry. We watched the news item A-channel did on the ride, with Domenique hogging all the air time. LOL Then they had stationary bike races, which I didn't enter, but the people who did sure torqued out racing each other! Crazy bastards, after riding a bike all day, they go to a bar to do this... Saw Mike [hi! sleepingeagle], Roy, and a bunch of other couriers I haven't seen in awhile, which was cool. Then I bailed and rode home.
After sitting around for a couple more hours, we went outside at 635-8 Avenue SW to shoot another scene. In this one I actually got to ride my bike! Woohoo! As the two leads walked towards the camera, I swung in front of them, around a pillar and over to a bike rack. The scene ended with the camera pointing straight at me, which was kinda weird, but I'm sure they'll just edit that out. After that we went back to the staging area to have lunch and wait. Lunch was great, prime rib roast and stuff. Then we waited almost till sunset.
The last scene was back at the same place, this time a driver whips his door open in front of a bike courier. I was not the courier in this scene, that was Andrew. I was across the street with a bunch of other extras playing background.
Overall, I had a great time. It was easy and the crew was really nice. Sometimes it was tedious just waiting around but it was cool to see the film-making in progress, it really gives you an appreciation of all the work and preparation that goes into the process. And I feel sorry for those actors who have to wear that greasy make-up day after day. Icky.
I couldn't find an entry for this movie in IMDB but this is what I gathered from people talking and watching the takes:
- It just started filming today.
- Its a small Canadian independant film, with a quirky, dark comic feel to it. Sounds like your typical Canadian film, eh?
- The story involves a near-future society where fear is monitored with electronic bracelets and if your fear level goes too high, the police come after you? [I'm a little unsure of what the consequences of that is] There's this chick who has these fears that she somehow projects onto other people, like the elevator plunging to the ground, somebody getting run over etc. There is also this thing where she wants to kill dogs that keep yipping at her.
- Not sure who the chick is who plays the lead, but she's a funky young lady with braces and kinda strange voice, I think I've seen her in movies before. We did a scene, then right after, we did another with a girl who looked just like her but with totally different clothes and no braces, so I don't know if it was her or a chick who looks just like her.
- Then there was a guy who was the other lead, he was young and really skinny, really hyped about his part in that he was wandering around nervously, reciting his lines aloud. At first I thought he was some wacko that had just wandered onto the set.
- Its not X-Men2, dammit.
- The director was some guy from Montreal.
- There's at least three bike couriers in it!
Well that's about it! Back to my mundane, ho-hum life tomorrow!
Boy, these peanuts sure are salty!
Correction: the director [Gary Burns] is from Calgary not Montreal. I guess it was the cameraman that was from Montreal. My bad.
So I'm here on the set of A Problem with Fear. We spent the morning in a +15 doing 2 or 3 scenes. I was part of the background, just strolling by as people talked. The movie is more of a dark comedy than a horror movie, although some people die in an elevator, get run over by a car and other mayhem. So far I think they filmed like 30 seconds worth.
I was going into a building today and there were these notices for a movie that would be shooting in the area tomorrow, some kinda horror movie I think as it had the word fear in the title. Strangely enough, a courier approached me later on and asked if I would be interested in being in a movie. It involved taking the day off, which kind of made me hesitate as I can't really afford to take time off work right now, but then I thought what the hell, I'm game. Now I must go to bed as I have to be downtown at 6:45 am to do this thing. I must act as a courier. Now thats a stretch, lol. I just hope I don't have any dialog. Or I hope they don't expect me to do any stunts or shit. *groan* OH well, should be fun!
Downloaded RimMario for my Blackberry 950. Finally, a decent game for my BB!
Added the current weather for Calgary at the bottom of this page. Its a perl script that grabs the info from the Enviroment Canada Calgary weather page and loads it in an i-frame. Guess I should add the five day forcast as well when I get the chance.
Am I the only one getting like a thousand blocked accesses with Zone Alarm everyday, usually on ports ~1025-1030? Anyway, I decided to patch my copy of ZA to the latest version today and it caused all kinds of problems. [a dll was missing that I had to find and move over to ...windows/system manually] The only way to get ZA up and running properly was to uninstall the old version and do a clean install of the newest version. Bleh!
After ZA was up and working, my desktop was all messed up so I had to spend time getting everything back to normal. The last thing that I noticed screwed up was the system tray, the icons were oversized and ugly. So I went Googling looking for a way to fix them as there did not seem to be an option in the desktop settings. In my quest, I came upon Litestep which looks like a cool replacement shell for windows. Might check it out sometime if I have the time.
Checking my system tray after surfing awhile, I noticed my icons had magically transformed themselves back to normal, small and pretty. Doh! The moral of the story? Contrary to popular belief, ignore your troubles and they will go away!
After putting up with my old, decrepit Nokia 5120 for the past few months with it acting strange and dying on me all the time, I finally broke down and bought a new phone, a Motorola 280. It has a lot of features, like conference calling and voice-activated dialing [I tried it, it works!], GPRS [although I don't have any data stuff activated except receiving e-mails] and a whole bunch of other crap that's gonna take me forever to figure out. I like it so far, much nicer than my old one, smaller, prettier, more features.
Upgraded from 2.21 to 2.51, then had to fix all the perl shebangs and flock() errors. Tested everything and seems to work fine. Now to find out if there's any new goodies in this version.
Found this series on the Montreal Gazette website:Marijuana. I don't smoke the evil weed anymore, but I am totally for legalization. Its just so ridiculous to ostracize people and label them criminals because they choose to use the illegal drug marijuana rather than the legal drugs of alcohol or tobacco, even though the legal drugs are arguably more damaging. I could go on [and on] but I just hope our MPs are brave enough to make some long overdue progress on this issue rather than cave in to the hysteria and threats emanating from south of the border. God help us if the Alliance ever gets in power, we'll probably have an Americanesque War on Drugs. Yuck!
Funny, the link to Canada's Drug Strategy gives you this message:
We're sorry, we're not able to find the page you requested. It has either moved or no longer exists.
I don't know what this blog is about, but the description of it had me spewing coke all over my keyboard. ROTFLMAO!
-- A Bunch of Crap From a Moron --
Added a links page to my site. The link is the first one under Internal Links. Pretty sparse right now but I will add more when I get the chance.
I read something about weblogs.com while at work today, but I was using my Blackberry which wouldn't work with the site, so I checked it out when I got home and its like this vortex that sucks you in and you waste all your life there. So, don't go there. Dude.
****spoilers****
Caught tonight's episode MALIGNANT about a pharmacist who dilutes cancer drugs so he can fund his church project to build a basketball court [?]. This show can be a hit-and-miss affair, but sometimes its really good, like this one. I can remember reading about this case in the news not so long ago, what a horrible thing to do. But what I wanted to say is Vincent D'Onofrio is the one who really makes this show worth watching. The way he tilts his head at people when he asks some sarcastic, rhetorical questions cracks me up. And he's always pulling these wacky stunts, like buying a lighter in the pharmacy and trying to set off the sprinklers. Or jumping in the wrestling ring and trying to get the young kid to go a couple rounds. [he's a big boy] Hilarious, not sure how legal that shit would be in real life but it is pretty funny on the show. Sometimes I think they rely on him too much to carry the show, but when they put together a good script, it makes for some very entertaining television. The best part on this show was at the end, when they confront the pharmacist in front of his fellow churchgoers and Goren says "...who knows, maybe they'll [pause] forgive you!". Just dripping with sarcasm, totally humiliating this poor schmuck in front of his peers, although he deserved it, the bastard. Good stuff.
Spent the day doing laundry, cleaning the floors [which sounds easy but you should see the entranceway where I keep my bike after it snows for a few days!] and other household chores. My CD storage unit has been like the leaning tower of Piza lately and I was about to give up on it but I thought I'd take another shot at fixing it before giving it the heave-ho. I removed all the cd's and dismanteled the thing, re-assembled it by glueing all the pieces together and then used some metal brackets at the base for extra strength. One of the shelves was missing its pegs that hold it up, so I improvised by using plastic presta valve caps, of all things, but hey, they worked. I reloaded all the cd's and it seems to be holding up pretty well, I might just keep the POS yet. Can't help but look over every few minutes to see if its begun leaning over once again.
In my quest to fix the cd unit, I came upon what apeared to be some kind of firecracker, it said "screech-e-roo" on the side. So I thought "what the heck" and went onto the balcony to light 'er up. Well the fuse burned down and then I thought for a minute it had gone out, but then it emitted this ear-shattering screeeeech as it shot off a bright red flame and a cloud of noxious, blue smoke. Yikes, I guess that's why it was called a "screech-e-roo"!
And tomorrow I do my billing. Not sure if my heart can handle all this excitement.
Felt really dragged out yesterday after work, came home and basically crashed right out. Woke up this morning and could feel the beginings of a cold building within my innards. Remembering watching something on TV the other day, a commercial about some new-fangled medication that isn't the cure for the cold but shortens it and makes it less severe. Asked around today about it, asked pharmacists, bank tellers, lawyers' assistants, young children, bums... nobody knew what the fuck I was talking about. Did I just dream this thing up or what? People suggested echinicia [sp?] and decongestant, but thats not it, this was some kind of new drug thing. Dammit, they'll never play that commercial again and I'll probably die from this cold thing.
The other day I did fall asleep watching TV and Night of the Living Dead came on, the old 1968 version, and that chick started freaking out about her brother [Billy?] and the black dude is like "don't freak out!" but she keeps getting more and more hysterical, and somehow this all got integrated into my dream, and I slowly wake up and grogily watch the TV and think to myself "hey I was dreaming about a chick freaking out about her brother just like this chick in the movie! WEIRD!" And then the black dude slaps her but good, and I realize that I was dreaming about that shit because I heard it on the TV, subconciously-like. Maybe this whole cure-for-the-common-cold thing came from something like that, the Andromeda Strain mebbe.
I'm getting sick
Felt really dragged out yesterday after work, came home and basically crashed right out. Woke up this morning and could feel the beginings of a cold building within my innards. Remembering watching something on TV the other day, a commercial about some new-fangled medication that isn't the cure for the cold but shortens it and makes it less severe. Asked around today about it, asked pharmacists, bank tellers, lawyers' assistants, young children, bums... nobody knew what the fuck I was talking about. Did I just dream this thing up or what? People suggested echinicia [sp?] and decongestant, but thats not it, this was some kind of new drug thing. Dammit, they'll never play that commercial again and I'll probably die from this cold thing.
The other day I did fall asleep watching TV and Night of the Living Dead came on, the old 1968 version, and that chick started freaking out about her brother [Billy?] and the black dude is like "don't freak out!" but she keeps getting more and more hysterical, and somehow this all got integrated into my dream, and I slowly wake up and grogily watch the TV and think to myself "hey I was dreaming about a chick freaking out about her brother just like this chick in the movie! WEIRD!" And then the black dude slaps her but good, and I realize that I was dreaming about that shit because I heard it on the TV, subconciously-like. Maybe this whole cure-for-the-common-cold thing came from something like that, the Andromeda Strain mebbe.