Fungii.com

P2P Legal in Canada

A Federal judge threw out an attempt by the CRIA, a Canadian version of the American RIAA, to force ISPs to disclose the identity of file sharers on their networks. This probably won't last, as the music industry will probably put huge pressure on our politicians to make it illegal, but hey, today the little guy won.

My bike's having a seizure!

My headset suddenly seized up today. One minute it was fine, the next, I hop on my bike and I can't turn! It was brutal. I turned my handlebars back and forth, trying to break it free, but it was still really screwed up. So now I have to try to take it apart to fix it, which will probably be a major pain cause of all the snow and salt that rusted everything up over the winter. I really didn't want to work on my bike tonight. :(

Update: the good news is that it all came apart pretty easily. The bottom bearings were pretty thrashed, I think pieces of the ring they were in came off and grinded away at everything in there, not good. I cleaned everything off and installed some new bearings, just loose ones this time. I greased everything up real good and put it back together. Now it feels "notchy"! I tried loosening off some bolts just in case I overtightened things, but that didn't help. So I guess I'm stuck with this notchy feeling as I can't think of anything else I can do other than getting a new headset. It might snow tomorrow or Thursday, so no point in putting a new headset through that torment. Besides, it might not be so bad, I hope. I need to get a new set of forks sometime this year so I'll just replace it then.

Haplopelma schmidti

My new tarantula is tentatively identified as a Haplopelma schmidti. He was fairly active running around his cage last night, which makes me think he might be a male. I hope not. Also, looking at my Haplopelma lividum, looks like he might be a male as well. Major suckage, I hope I'm wrong on this. Anyway, here's some pix of the new critter. You can see in the closeup, his front [Leg I?] left leg is deformed on the final segment. Hopefully this will be fixed on his next molt.

It's Playtime!

I woke up with this song [and images] in my head this morning. Make it stop, please.

Jerry Orbach leaving L&O

Law & Order without Lenny Briscoe? Hard to believe, the guy's been there forever.

Wonderfalls #3

Just finished watching the third episode of Wonderfalls. [Penguin?] Wow, was it bad! The story sucked, the editing was bad, the acting, everything was just horrible! Brutal. It did have a few good one-liners, but everything that wasn't a one-liner just fell flat. A lot of people hate the boyfriend, Eric. I didn't care for him, but he never really bothered me before. Now you can count me in the hater camp. He had a much bigger role in this episode, so his presence wasn't so easy to ignore. He is just so irritating, he seems like he's on the verge of falling asleep all the time, slurring out his lines in the most uninvolving way. It's like "I don't even care what you're saying, why are you saying it? Why are you even here?". He reminds me of Riley on Buffy, just doesn't work. And his haircut, isn't that what we used to call a "bowl cut" when we were kids? And his sparse wannabe beard, ack! If you can't grow a decent beard, why even bother? Just shave the damn thing off and be done with it. The brother also got more face time, and it brought the show down another notch. Her family revealing that they're a bunch of religious cultists didn't help matters much either. The worst thing about tonight's show was that it wasn't even funny. It was actually painful to watch. And the way it ended, ugh! Totally manipulative, awkward, forced. The way the father and daughter smiled at each other, screamed fake, should have been left on the cutting room floor. Along with the other 39 minutes of this turkey.

I'll watch again next week, just because the first two episodes showed so much promise. But if they keep going down the same road as this one, I'm outta here. They're changing it's slot from Fridays to Thursdays. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

In other TV happenings, this week's Law & Order:CI is supposed to be a new episode and Sarah Michelle Gellar is guesting on The Simpsons, both this Sunday. Hopefully not at the same time. And what the hell is happening with Angel? Christ, first they cancel the show, then they stop airing any EP's, new or old, for three weeks. All we get is double Smallvilles. Should I even bother anymore? Or just wait for the DVDs?

Haplopelma minax?

Here's my new spider, it was sold to me as a Haplopelma minax, but I have my doubts. I had a minax a few years ago and it looked nothing like this. The guy at the pet shop said it was about to molt, so maybe I'll have a better idea of what it is after it does.

No thank you, my penis is large enough

This comment spam is getting out of hand, I must get at least 10 or so spams every day. I keep banning their IPs, but there's either a hell of a lot of them or they keep changing their IPs. Probably a bit of both. I was going to install the MT plugin to deal with spam, but it requires a newer version of MT and I'm not sure I want to upgrade right now. It's always a pain, I've hacked some of their templates and my Perl is set up different from the way MT expects. Bleh. I looked at the comment CGI file and it should be pretty easy to hack in some code to do some filtering. Nuke them fuckers right outta there.

Riding on my rim

Had another flat tire today. Just had a flat tire yesterday. Am I acursed or what? Leaving for work this morning, I remembered I didn't have a spare tube with me and I thought "doesn't matter, just had a flat yesterday, can't happen again so soon". How wrong I was. I think I'm closing in on 30 flats so far this winter. The funny thing is, I recently installed that Mr. Tuffy flat tire protection crap, and it hasn't made one whit of difference. Somebody out there doesn't like me. >:(

Splinter Hell

Played a little bit of Splinter Cell on my Gamecube today. Can't say I'm terribly impressed. I used up all my bullets and then it was hell getting through the last bit of the first level. Doesn't anybody leave boxes of ammo lying around anymore? Maybe I'm just spoiled after playing the awesome Prince of Persia, but this game is definately a step down. My neighbours probably think I have Tourettes after hearing my um, running commentary while playing this game.

Weekend drudgery

I installed a new drive train on my bike today. Great fun. The quick link on the chain wasn't as quick as it should have been. And my hands got caked in oily dirt that I can't get completely off no matter how raw I scrub them. I hate that, people think you're an unsanitary slob, but I really, really tried to get them clean. Really. Perhaps you have to wait for the outer layer of skin that's been stained black to die and sluff off. Feels good having the new chain tho, no more skipping every time I crank on it.

Wonderfalls

As somebody who hates, I mean hates, Joan of Arcadia, I had my doubts whether I'd like this new series that has drawn a lot of comparisons to that wretched show. But the ads made it look interesting and the critics seem to like it, so I decided to check it out when they repeated the series pilot on Thursday.

I've only seen bits and pieces of Dead Like Me, but this series was created by the same guy [Bryan Fuller] and has the same kind of dark, twisted humour. Todd Holland [Malcolm in the Middle, My So Called Life] and Tim Minear [X-files, Angel, Firefly] are also involved. Pretty impressive, but how did the show stand up? Pretty good, actually. The lead actress, Caroline Dhavernas, plays the sardonic slacker Jaye Tyler perfectly. The other great thing was the dialogue, very funny, a lot of dry, witty humour. Very much like Buffy, maybe even a little darker. I won't quote any of it here and spoil it for you, but it's definately memorable. The pilot did lose a little steam in the second half, it seemed to try a little too hard to tie up loose ends and the story seemed a little scattershot. But I think that's a little understandable as the series pilot has to introduce all the character's and tell some kind of story at the same time.

So while I liked the pilot, I couldn't say I was hooked. Then I caught the second episode last night about Binky, the psy-psy-psycho stalker. This entry had a much more cohesive story, much better flow to it than the pilot. And they managed to keep the same level of sarcastic humour going as in the debut. The whole "crazy chick talking to tchotchkes" didn't really get played up much either, which was encouraging as it shows that they aren't going to rely on that gimmick to carry the show. This episode was still very much a stand alone, I hope they have a bit of a story arch that carries over from ep to ep. I'm rather partial to that kind of thing. And yes, now I'm hooked, it's a pretty good show. I just hope FOX gives it a chance, I guess the numbers for the pilot weren't that great and the Friday night slot they have it in is not the best. Whatever, it deserves a chance.

TWOP thread with all the good quotes.

Little x's where my pictures should be

Looks like Shaw's web server is flaking out again. If my pictures aren't showing up in your browser, then that's why. [I try to use their included homepage space for my photos, saves bandwidth and I think their servers are faster, when they're up!] Pisses me off though, their e-mail and webpage servers have been really unreliable as of late. Funny, their main page is working fine, just not member pages.

The Universe is shrinking!

Anderson Cooper [CNN] just anounced that scientists have discovered the furthest object from us in the universe, a planetoid beyond the orbit of Pluto...

Tall People

The tall people behind the Public Education building on Macleod Trail SE.

Lougheed building fire

There was a fire on the roof of the Lougheed Building downtown this week. The fire started last Sunday night, I think, and they still had the area around it blocked off on Friday. What a pain in the ass.

The sandman has moved in to stay

Ever have days when you do nothing but sleep? Yesterday was like that for me. I think I woke up at 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Watched a movie on TV, "The Italian Job", which was alright for a 1960's era British heist movie with Micheal Caine [and Benny Hill!], although the ending was kinda silly. Ate some food... then dozed off again! I don't know what's the matter with me. I always think I'll get so much accomplished on weekends, then I end up getting nothing done, doing nothing. I must be getting narcolepsy or procrastinationitis.

Bertuzzi suspended for rest of year

The NHL has suspended Bertuzzi for rest of season, including the playoffs. Seems about right, Moore isn't going to be playing in the playoffs, Bertuzzi shouldn't either.

The league said his future status for next year's season will be determined by Commissioner Gary Bettman prior to the start of training camp.

I wonder if they're going to make him take anger management courses? Some people were calling for a full year's suspension, but I think this is harsh enough. Missing the playoffs this year when Vancouver has [had] such a good chance at the cup is pretty severe, as far as these things go. If Vancouver doesn't go anywhere in the post season, they'll probably blame it on him. And there might not be any hockey next year, so he might not be playing for a long time anyhow, making this suspension that much more painful. Plus the police are probably going to charge him for assault. Altogether Todd Bertuzzi's life has been turned upside-down and that should be punishment enough.

Mp3 Information Program

I'm still not finished my mp3 information program, but it's coming along. Here's what I've got so far if you want to check it out.

The first choice on the main menu let's you choose which directory to search for mp3 files. For example C:\MyMusic. It can also search the subdirectories one level down, so if you have C:\MyMusic\Monkees and C:\MyMusic\Ozzy it can search those to. After setting the directory to search, selecting the second option, load data from mp3 files, goes through all the mp3's it finds and extracts their information, saving it into a temp file. [TEMP.MPI] Then you can choose option three to view the data. The detailed view isn't properly set up yet.

This is a DOS program so it doesn't support Windows long file names. It's just a program I'm working on to learn how to program in C/C++. I'll eventually do a Windows version, once I get this DOS version working properly. I'd like to have it generate an html file for easier viewing. And to be able to edit the information in mp3s. And maybe create playlists. Right now, it only reads ID3v1 tags, adding ID3v2 tag support will come soon I hope. It doesn't measure the bit rate of variable bit rate mp3s properly, I'll have to fix that later. Anyway, check it out, but it's very incomplete. Possibly buggier than hell. :)

Baby Blue

My Haplopelma lividum hadn't eaten any crickets for a couple months and I was getting a little worried about her. The crickets I put in her cage last week weren't taken and she never came to the top of her burrow anymore. So I decided to poke the end of a wooden spoon in there, gently, just to make sure she was still alive. There was no reaction, so I tried prying the webbing back a bit to at get a look at her. That's when the whole tunnel collapsed! Now I had to decide whether to dig up her burrow or take the chance of her suffocating in there. I opted to dig her up. Well, I dug her up right after she had molted, apparently. Bad timing. She seemed a little traumatized, of course, but undamaged. At least this gave me an opportunity to have a look at her before she builds another burrow and disappears for another year. She's getting bigger. And looking good.

Freeze!

I was on my way home the other day and I came across this commotion. It was kind of interesting, this big cop with a shotgun would point his gun at the ground but when he came to the alley, he would raise it up and aim it down the alley. Then when he got to the other side, he would point it back down to the ground. Just like on TV! I didn't have time to stay around and see who got shot, but the body count couldn't have been too high, they didn't even mention it on the news.

Email Viruses

There's a lot of email viruses being spread around the internet right now. Check out this thread on the Digital Home Canada forums. I just got an email, supposedly from staff at Rogers, telling me my email account would be terminated if I didn't respond by opening the attachment. Thing is, it was my Blackberry account, and I can't open attachments with my BB 950! Dumbasses. The sender address spoofing can be really tricky, some emails appear to be email sent from my account being bounced, when in fact they aren't at all. I just used this and this, everything came out clean.

Hedging their bets

I hate it when, on Monday, Enviro-mental Canada says Thursday's high will be +8. On Tuesday, Thursday's high will be +3. Today, Wednesday, they say Thursday's high will be -11. The future looks worse every day. :(

Evil Fred

Fred looks hot when she's evil!