Time and Money Well Spent

I sure am glad that two fifths of my tuition money this term are going towards learning difficult concepts like "how to find an average" and "how to change a page orientation". I know I'd be lost without these borderline rocket science concepts. The problem is that courses that have been mandatory for my program for some time have evolved over the years and tend to be geared towards other disciplines, except perhaps my statistics course which so far seems to be focused toward about a Grade 5 curriculum.

There are much better things out there I could be spending my money on; more topical courses would be a good start, but not necessarily even for myself. Unfortunately there's not much I can do to buck the system at this point, so I'll just have to bend over and take it.

On the bright side, tomorrow is Logan Day, where the Earth Science department gets together to celebrate one of the godfathers of the Earth Sciences in Canada. In other words, the profs, staff and students from all levels get together, play some games, and then move on to the bar for the real fun to ensue, and I'll attempt to find temporary happiness at the bottom of a beer bottle (pictured).

My signed copy of Matt Good's In A Coma came in today, complete with bloggers in the liner notes. The interweb has been embraced to yet greater extent again. And the album so far is extremely solid, not that I expected any less. Its partially a greatest hits album, so all of you out there that only enjoyed him a little, but not enough to buy a full album should check it out.

Autumn in the Air

Brisk evenings and cooler and cooler days. The smell in the air as a haul my less than rested ass off to school. The leaves of the maples starting to turn from green to that distinct purple. The pennant races. The NFL Sundays. The NHL training camps. The season premieres of all the good shows. The fact that I'm back in school, and that less than rested me is one year older, and supposedly wiser. It all adds up to one thing, fall.

Every year at this time I get this weird feeling of nostaligia as I think of goin back to school as a kid, and watching the Jays (before the 94 strike) make a run at the championship. The years gettin to know new classes, and new schools. The excitement involved with both the sports and the new chances, and yet, eventually all the leaves fall. The excitement recedes...and the temperature keeps falling, and exams come knocking, and my birthday comes rollin up in the driveway tellin you to get out and party it up, only for ice storms or Christmas celebrations, or exhaustion to ruin all that.

The grass and leaves, and squirrels foraging for walnuts on the lawn all too quickly falls to 2 feet of snow, slushy roads, and excessively cold air.

And once again I get caught looking too far into the times ahead, while thinking about the experiences past.

Coming Soon....

Right now I'm looking at coding a new small page with links to my fantasy sports teams incase there's anyone out there that's as addicted to the games as I am. Apparently I'm missing something in the coding right now and it looks like shit (as do old entries of mine if you click on them individually). If a buddy of mine and I can't figure out what I've managed to fuck up though, I'll just design something new and make the masses deal with it. Because I can.

In other news, the vote on the book covers over at Busblog is done, and cover 5 won. Cover 5 wasn't mine, but was one of my faves. For those paying attention, mine was numba 3. Tony however decided that he's gonna make all 6 of those covers available, which is a pretty sweet deal. I'll have no official credit out there, but I'll know, and so now will you, and that's all that matters. I'll post a link when he's got the books available for sale...

Matt Good posted a show for Kitchener at Elements October 20th...I think I have a midterm the next day, but fuck it, I bailed on the shows near here earlier this summer, no excuses this time around. Its an all ages gig, which means I might end up having to contend with the dumbass young kids that decide they want to mosh to an acoustic version of Apparitions and to Can't Get Shot in the Back if You Don't Run, but a couple well placed elbows will solve that.

School's on in full force now. I know this because I've taken a look at my first large assignment, and skipped my first class (of many to come) for the term....I've settled in.

Googlogger

Well, Google has now released a Blog search engine that supposedly goes beyond its own Blogger engine and Technorati. Between the scholar search for educational/professional papers, google earth, gmail, and now this, these guys are on fire. I recognized that when they first put stocks on the market, but I'm one of those who's not left with the money to buy into solid prospects.

The rich get richer... etc etc. blah blah. woof woof.

In the end it comes down to this: Google is offering some kickass free services, and driving Microsoft itself to rewrite search algorithms. Yes I bitch with no end about Microsoft, only because it has run seemingly unchecked for so long. But competition like this, and that from other alternatives for various services (web browsers, e-mail, word processing, etc.) only serves to increase the quality of the product we're getting, while keeping prices down.

The same goes for processing with battles between AMD and Intel over who can produce the most efficient, reliant, fast, and yet affordable PC computer chips (no disgrace to Apple, who've done some awesome things on their own in the past few years, and have me thinking about getting one simply to play around with laying tracks in ProTools). Or nVidia and ATI who have battled for the past several years over the video processing market.

Without competition, there is no motivation to do better, to better serve the customer, and give them the most effective, no frills version of a product possible. Political parties here in North America should have a read from the digital electronics notebook on this one....there has to be a significant challenger waiting in the wings, pounding down the door, waiting for you to slip to take over the reigns.

In Canada we have our two 'big boys' and then the NDP...the more the merrier, but even then, no one ever really causes enough of a fuss to get real shit done. In the U.S. it only seems worse, with only two parties, and the Democrats not very visible at all besides the occasional jabs here and there.

Unfortunately the 'customer' in politics case doesn't have a 1-800 line to dial and lay into and demand better, save for approximately every 4th year, and even then, specific demands are never truly heard, things need to be changed.

Tony Pierce Book Cover Contest

The cover I designed made the final six of Tony Pierce's book cover contest. I'm not gonna say which is mine though...any guesses?

Infact, four of my favourites are in the top six, I don't really care if I win, there were some cool covers.

Provincial Government Stands Up

I just came across an article from the CBC on the Shariah law movement in Ontario. There were protests this weekend around the world against adopting legislation that would allow Islamic law to be used as a proxy in Ontario. Now from what I've read, when practiced properly these laws are generally fair to all parties, but I agree fully with not allowing religious practice into the judicial system. Yes we here in Canada live in a very multicultural society, with many different religious backgrounds, but in order to maintain a society that is fair to all those parties, the central bodies should not have a whole bunch of different separate laws that are applicable to the church bodies in the province. I understand that there are currently other bodies afforded the same special privilege to impose their own law, and I think those too should be abolished.

The fact is that Canada is the cliched mixing pot of the world, and that everyone should respect all the other beliefs in the society around us. But I also feel that once you have become a member of a new society, in most cases to escape the practices of an old culture, one central system of law should be followed.

I've always believed that the central ideas of all religions are on the right path, but I also feel that there are far too many openings to misinterpretation, and arbitrary 'rules and regulations' in each religion. To start allowing each and every group that comes along to provide their own variations, while being the neighbours of people of completely different belief is unfair to everyone.

Feedback and debate on this is welcomed, maybe I'm missing some key points?

Cable versus A Dollar Well Spent

Its come to my attention a couple times in the past few days that I am missing some particularly interesting television. A couple different bloggers out there have posted links back to Crooks and Liars with at the very least humourous, and usually quite relevant discussions or quips by those in media. I sit here with the basic cable package and the next step up which basically gives me coverage of the big broadcast networks in the U.S. and some iffy Canadian cable (along with some admittedly good stuff). And while I'm sure there's stuff on the networks that I feel I'm missing that I really should miss, there's some stuff I'd love to see without either downloading, or staying up all hours of the night to see.

The Daily Show on Comedy, and Bill Maher on HBO in particular, and at times MSNBC even. The only 24/7 news network I can actually get 24/7 here seems to be CNN and the CNN Headline News. Aside from being generally redundant there are just certain personalities I can't take. With the CBC being on strike they've been carrying more BBC news lately, and I try to watch that when I can.

But there is a whole assload of shit on my cable that I don't want or need....American and Canadian Idol are everything that's wrong with music, most of the new sitcoms on TV are tired, and the old classics are only so funny the first 10 or 20 times.

I guess what I'm basically asking for, while knowing that it will never happen in a fair way financially, is that I could pick and choose the 10 channels I actually watch and forget about the rest.

Maybe the internet has just done too good a job of taking over and offering me almost everything I want to see at a couple clicks, and a file transfer's notice.

Boredom

I am worth $2,296,398 on HumanForSale.com

Reference: Zona Boy from the West Coast