Canada’s Google
I see that Rogers is getting into the home security business.
This fills me with such dread I can barely contain myself. Thank god I have a blog.
Information is the currency of the internet. The more you have, the more power you wield. And who wields the most information in Canada? Righto, my tin foil hat followers – Rogers! Okay I’m not going to go conspiracy theory on you but I will speculate something here: Imagine a large corporation collecting data on what time you came home, when you usually took vacation, when your kids were online, when you take breaks at the office to check up on your house. Basically all your “down time” collected in a nice pie graph so that they knew when you could be reached for…ads?
Would that not be the greatest thing Rogers could sell to their own marketing people? Or third party ad agencies for a delicious price? Why else get into the home monitoring business? It’s such a innocuous vertical that it baffled me at first – why not update their dinosaur like On Demand channels or improve their digital media streaming infrastructures and make millions like iTunes?
Because right now the money is being made online is knowing where you will be, what you will do and how best to market to you. Rogers has never done anything out of the goodness of their corporate heart and I see this “protecting your family” garbage is the warm piss flying into your face while they take note of when’s the best time to hit you for an iPhone upsell.
Then again, reading through all their online crap about the service makes me think they’re just bumbling their way through another product launch, and that wiring up your home with crap wifi and web cams is a cheap way for them to make a buck. I could be 1000% wrong.
Pics o Fun Pics
Thanksgiving Photo Challenge
Saturday was a beautiful day, wasn’t it?
SharkBoy and I went for a very long walk up into David Balfour park and took some pictures! Again we call upon you, dear readers, to choose which set of 10 pictures you like better.
Mine are below, SharkBoy’s are here.
Remember, a vote for me is a vote for freedom. Clicking on the image blows it up and blows your mind.
Parkourperating
2:30am and the cats leap off the bed simultaneously, waking me instantly, wondering when the first wave of the apocalyptic earthquake will start. It doesn’t come. Instead I hear banging and footsteps just outside my window.
Someone was on the roof of the building next to our apartment.
Long time readers will know that we’ve had troubles with the next door roof for some time:
SharkBoy chases a would-be thief down the street in pink pajamas
A guerrilla art instillation goes up at 3am.
…And we’ve been good this year. Not once did we have to chase any kind of exploratory idiot off the roof during the hot summer months.
Until last night, of course.
As I wake up, I flick on some lights to give the roof dwellers fore-knowledge that someone is around watching what they’re doing. I’m not stupid enough to run right out there and start confronting some titwad who might be dangerous. Our neighbourhood may border on some of the most expensive homes in Toronto, but just south, west and east of our house is some of downtown Toronto’s worst.
I put on my clothes and exit the back door to the fire escape. Why our landlord can’t install a one-way door or a down-ladder only system is beyond me. Oh that’s right, he’s cheap. He’s taken last summer’s water and electricity hike personally and blamed us for the near doubling of his bill. Especially when I take 2-3 showers a week at the gym.
I digress.
Two buildings over, across the rooftops, I can see two guys unsteadily shuffling down a slanted roof, leading to our neighbour’s back patio. They jump one after the other, landing on what sounds like the hood of a car. After a moment they come around the fence of the patio next to our house and I hear “Oh man… there’s someone watching us!”
I can smell them before they come over. Drunk. Immediately my past doorman training kicks in. I stand, hands at my side, blank look on my face.
They side up to the fire escape where I’m standing. One leans over and looks at the roof structure that juts out directly from our back door. It covers a storage area for the store beneath us.
“Hhhh–heeeyyy-y,” the Greeting Guy says to me, unsure if I’m going to be mad or be, like, a dude and be real happy they’re up on our property at 2:30am doing stupid shit.
The Leaner Guy sizes up the storage roof next to us and says “Think we can make it?”
“You ever hear of Parkour?” Greeter Guy says to me.
Time stops for me right there. They’re considering jumping onto a roof that is less than 2/3″ thick plywood. They would have gone through it like a fist through a seasoned bottom at a sex club. For the briefest of moments, I consider encouraging them to jump (or keeping silent) and letting them fly the 15ft across the divide onto the flimsy roof which would have resulted in a broken bone somewhere on their bodies. That would teach them something. But then I’d be a villain and I’m sure a 911 call would have to be made as well as a call to the owner of the store to come get two broken drunk assholes out of his ruined storage locker.
“You. Better. Go.” I say slowly, calmly and clearly.
They get the hint. They leave.
I go back to sleep dreaming of the “what-ifs”
Thursday’s List Ain’t Far To Go
Things I like:
My crock pot, now that the weather is cooling off. I freaking love coming home to a house full of stew-y delicious smells and hey presto, have dinner completely done. If they could make a Gin and Tonic crock pot I’d be in heaven.
Fallout: New Vegas. I hated it at first – 45 minutes into it, after a couple cascading bugs halted the game, I felt that something was different. All the design was there, the story was playing out but it was missing the character of the FO3. Not like “Hi! I’m Bob!” the character, I mean the charm, the spark. FO:NV seems like you spend a lot of time walking. But recently I started to play the game again with intentions to finish it before Uncharted 3 comes out. Progress: I found the sex bot. Now I need to fix the dog.
Our new couch. Holy crap I will die like Keir Dullea in 2001 on this couch, gasping as I point to our monolithic TV.
Instagram. I’ve been on for a while but I’m loving the visual Twitter feel. Unlike Twitter, if a post is boring on Instagram you can still get some appreciation from it.
My new fave expression: Fuck balls and Lemonade!
Steve Jobs
I’m profoundly sad.
I’m not one to get caught up in the death of a celebrity. I didn’t know the man, I only know what I’ve read and seen in cheesey made-for-TV movies. I can’t say if he was a “nice” guy or a shrewd business tyrant. I didn’t follow the man, Steve Jobs, that closely.
But I do know his product. And I know how his product changed the world.
Back in 1996 I won $5000 in a bingo hall while on a weekend trip to Vancouver. I came home with a promise that I would use that money to make my life better. I decided that I was going to go back to school and finish getting my Graphic Design diploma and start working in this “new media” that was touted as the future of how we did things, how we entertained ourselves. The internet was starting to explode.
The first thing I did was purchase an Apple Performa 530. I loved that one piece. I remember being all excited about the 68040 CPU chip inside and how strong it was. I learned as much as I could about how it worked, it’s limitations and it’s strengths and started to create “things” with it… digital files, images, sounds, funny movies.
Speaking of movies… that Performa was my first window to the internet. My first video I ever saw not sourced by TV was The Exploding Whale – a 3:30 minute video that took over 5 hours to download. I started to download it in the morning and then came back to it after a day at work – hit play and pissed myself laughing.
I also got my first internet date from that little box. It went horribly but I can remember telling a friend that I just had sex by picking someone up off the internet. I literally was shaking with excitement. I had successfully bypassed the bars and got laid without drinking or sorry excuses!
The future was going to be awesome.
Wired June 1997 cover
I traded it up for a stronger PowerPC Performa (a tower) and continued to stay with Apple through some pretty rough times for that company. After years with the Tower, I fell in love with the colourful Mac line up. I had a Blueberry ‘Tosh, the one with the funny puck mouse, which I shared with my boyfriend at the time. I can still remember tearing a strip off the Bell customer service rep when they told me that the “guy who handles Mac calls was out for the night” and that no one could help me with my internet connectivity. Thus was the bane of Mac ownership back in 1999.
I left Mac for a while there, convinced by a (now ex) friend that PCs were cheaper and much more modular. Yes they were. Still are. But when I think back to the number of times I had issues with the damn beige box, compared to the number of times I’ve contacted AppleCare (twice in all the years of ownership), I’m reminded of this quote from Steve Jobs:
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
I got the iPhone a solid year before it was released in Canada, thanks to a man I do truly love. That lead me down a dangerously obsessive road of hacking and ultimately questioning Apple’s closed mentality towards their hardware and software – when the hackers broke open the phone, allowing it to be used on any network, Apple would release a patch, along with insanely great new features. You’d have to re-lock your phone if you wanted to be part of the fun. After a year of jailbreaking and reinstalling dubious code downloaded from mysterious strangers off the web, when the iPhone finally did come to Canada, I stopped cold turkey and embraced the concept of a “Walled Garden”. I now chant “it just works” and like it.
I came back to Apple 2 years ago after a 7 year hiatus. It was a great day when I transferred what I could from that Frankenstein PC over to the PowerMac I bought second hand. And even better when I upgraded to my current iMac 21.5, which I’m using right now to type this. To my left is my iPad, my iPhone and down there in the junk drawer is my Newton 130. Awesome products that allowed me to make some awesome things.
I tear up every time I see or hear that scratchy video of Walt Disney dedicating the opening of Disneyland, back in July 1955. But those are tears of happiness. I know the strength behind those simple words, spoken in a barely contained supernova of pride. Now, tonight, I had a good cry over the loss of a man who was a visionary, just like Disney who loved bringing the “next insanely great thing” to the masses. I can’t help compare the two.
I never knew Mr Jobs, but have enormous respect for him and his accomplishments. I must thank him for the tools that shaped my life.
Steve Jobs – 1955 to 2011.
Thank you!
The New Looney Tunes
I’ve said it before: I friggin’ love The Looney Tunes Show. The update, not the hacked apart film classics neutered for TV. And not the crap last 30 years of Looney Tunes, either. Screw Space Jam, Back In Action or the head-scratchingly stupid Loonatics Unleashed. They’ve reigned themselves in and Battlestar’d themselves. This stuff is good!
We were told in animation school that when the writing compliments the animation, then you’ve got a great cartoon. Many great animators have said: “If you close your eyes and still understand what’s going on, then the cartoon is crap.” and the new LT keeps that in mind while freshening up the design of the characters.
The dynamic between Bugs and Daffy has been ramped up since their “Rabbit Season” short yet the insanity style has been toned down, with both toons playing off each other like a neurotic Odd Couple while never crossing over into vaudeville. Bugs is less cocky and more quietly confident than his post-war zaniness, which compliments Daffy’s inability to filter himself. They’ve tweaked the two into a classic comedic duo while keeping true to their original characters. Meanwhile the pop culture references that Warner’s cartoons strive for are still present: the duo live in a sitcom perfect house in the suburbs surrounded by returning Looney Tunes characters with midway through each episode, a spoof song leading you out to commercial break.
The fact that Jeff Bergman voices Bugs AND Daffy, plus most of the other characters on the show makes it all the more fascinating for me. He’s much like Billy West (there’s a name that deserves an IMDb link) in terms of being able to churn out so many individual, distinct voices for one show. Other talents to note, purely because they tweek my geek nerve, is Rob Paulsen (Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc…), who voices Mac, half the gopher team of Mac and Tosh. Rob does an excellent job of pushing the duo into that zone of “are they gay or just Ernie and Bert-ing?” Also on the show is Maurice LaMarche (Brain, from Pinky and the Brain, Futurama) who expertly voices Yosemite Sam, drawing parallels with Ned Flanders – a crazy neighbour to Bugs and Daffy who the animators seem to delight in drawing him shirtless. And of course, Christian Wiig, playing a stalker/love interest to Bugs. She’s brilliant. I have no other words. Just watch:
The show surprised me last night, sealing my love for it utterly and forever. Yes, gone are the slapstick anvil-in-the-face comedy bits, the violence is still there. Daffy and Foghorn, as well as Bugs and Yosemite separately get into full on fist fights – and I mean unflinching fists into faces, something that I thought was pretty daring for a television cartoon nowadays. Seeing how history has all but incomprehensibly edited down the old cartoons to show no mention of violence, this was pretty startling to see.
And pretty damned funny.
Can’t wait for iOS 5,
Happy B-Day WDW!
Forty years ago today Walt Disney World opened it’s gates to the world, creating, arguably, the last “greatest American establishment”. Steve Jobs and Apple (inexplicably entwined with Disney) comes close as a corporation but it’s not exactly selling “memories”, per se.
I digress.
Covering more land than they know what to do with (27,400 acres of Florida swamp, or 6.5 square miles), Walt Disney was going to create a utopia (or dystopian to some) of modern living, community and recreation, where Disney himself (without any formal urban studies training) would oversee and maintain the city of the future. But after Disney’s death, WDW thankfully became a near-carbon copy of it’s Californian cousin, but with much, much more room. While his vision of a perfect community may never have come to fruition, he did create the means towards a company that brings happiness to millions of people (as well as bitter fodder for millions of others, and in a way, making them happy!).
I’m saying Thank You, Walt Disney World. And I’m sorry it took me so long to get there.
When I was a kid on a Sunday night, I, like SharkBoy, like so many others, would watch the opening of The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC and marvel at the over saturated video of DisneyWorld shown in the titles. Monorail across a beautiful Floridian sunset! Space Mountain! Smiling kids! Cartoons! GARRRAAAHHH!! I had to go!
Later in life, I chose to make animation my career and took to Sheridan College where somehow I shunned all things Disney, thinking it was too structured, schmaltzy and rejected it’s child-like sensibilities, favouring the insane comedy stylings of Warner Brothers (truthfully I still do but in my older age, appreciate the craft of Disney more).
Then I met SharkBoy – and he taught me that loving Disney isn’t a crime, even at 42 years old. He took me to WDW at a point in my life when I needed to believe in dreams and magic and all that shit. I do believe that if I hadn’t experienced Walt Disney World when I did, I might have gone down a really dark path in my life where I think I would have lost my youth. Truth be told, I *am* a 16 year old kid (emotionally) living in a 46 year old crumbling body but I seriously don’t care if people see that part of my personality as a negative.
In the course of writing this little birthday wishes card to WDW I’ve gone back and re-read most of my pre and post Disney blog entries. And I find they make me happy. Go up into the search bar and look for “Disney” and you’ll see it has more written about it here than gay sex, career angst or robots – and I know robots. You’ll see me gush about the anticipation I felt before the trip, the planning of the suitcase, the trolling for facts and for travel tips inside the parks, the scheming of surprising SharkBoy with a trip there without any fore-knowledge, and you’ll see it all made me giddy as a kid in front of a TV on a Sunday night.
I wrote so much about my experiences there that some days when randomly pick up WDW specific travel books, I think to myself, I could do better than that!
And I may…
So I have to thank Walt Disney World for their little resort they have down in Florida. I can’t wait to see you again, old friend!
My first ride ever, in WDW. And also one of my favorite of SharkBoy.
Finding my first Hidden Mickey! I win!
How long had I waited for this parade??
I didn't know about the Water Parks. Thanks SharkBoy! Beautiful!
I was against it when I first heard of Star Wars and The Mouse merging. Now I love it!
Our First Gay Days
Alway perfect...
Added Bonus: CBC’s video effect happy early 80s intro:
Here’s the CBC’s 1984 groovy disco video version: