Oh yeah I need this.

diesel sweeties: indie t-shirts (AKA tshirts)

The end of it all

Follow the links, easy instructions.

101 Salivations: For the Love of Dogs

Even if I wasn't a dog lover I have to admit this book is full of great imagery. As photography goes, the less is more rule applies and allows you to see the portraits for what they are: portraits of some great personalities.

The Stills/ Logic will Break Your Heart

I had to pad an order on Amazon to get the free shipping (Freaks&Geeks
is great BTW!) Took a chance on this one due to the reviews and the
fact that their from Montreal. Very catchy, very good! You can hear all
the influences mentioned. It deserves to be HUGE.

I am sure it will be revealed I have had given this on one of the many
discs of MP3's that's been passed around, about 11 months ago! Oh well
you gotta support CDN music!!

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000D9PI4/qid=1101478062/sr=1-8/
ref=sr_1_2_8/701-0964716-8501148

From Amazon.com
With pretty synth lines; chiming, chugging guitar riffs; the right
influences for a rock band, circa 2003 (the Smiths, Echo and the
Bunnymen, the Cure , New Order, Radiohead, U2, Chameleons) and another
sexy singer with a melodramatic, soaring tenor, this well-hyped
Montreal band could very easily be another lame Interpol cover band.
But the Stills are far more than the sum of their influences; they've
actually recorded one of the best debuts of 2003. The first clue that
this band is for real lies in their songcraft--hear the soaring "Lola
Stars and Stripes" once and you want to hear it again. Hear it again,
and it's stuck in your head all day. Check out the words ("We all need
to feel secure, we're so middle class/ But I'm still waiting for next
week's chemical blast") and you realize Logic deals with topical
issues, such as the aftermath of 9/11, in a way that's neither cheesy
nor histrionic. It's definitely ironic in parts--they've stolen the
title for their moody "Let's Roll" from Neil Young's ill-fated tune of
the same name, for instance. But this is still soaring, meaningful pop
music. --Mike McGonigal

Review
On their debut album Logic Will Break Your Heart, the Stills are
stubbornly unyielding when it comes to being put in the same class as
the Walkmen, Interpol, and the like. The Stills aren't boastful in
doing so, but they are indeed different and stylishly unlike their
counterparts. The modern sound of Logic Will Break Your Heart is
undoubtedly rooted in post-punk threads of the Cure and the Smiths, but
the Stills create something that's partly glamorous and fully
imaginative. One will notice that they're still a young band and
bright-eyed in developing a sound that's magical and solid to them.
Their Rememberese EP barely hinted at such, but the charm of songs such
as "Lola Stars and Stripes" and "Changes Are No Good" indicates that
the Stills are on to fully realizing what they're capable of. They
flirt with a dark, art-pop design not unlike Interpol, but the Stills'
approach is tangible. Singer/guitarist Tim Fletcher gives a warm,
haunting delivery as the band molds a blackish romance throughout the
dozen-track set. Guitarist Greg Paquet complements his passionate
presentation with his strict, aggressive playing style, in turn
manifesting the Stills' dreamy kind of rock & roll. From the shimmering
synth beats of "Ready for It" to Dave Hamelin's surging percussion
crash on "Animals and Insects," Logic Will Break Your Heart is posh
enough to stand alone. The Stills were so intent in writing and
recording a vibrant new sound and they succeeded. As songwriters,
there's an innocence dancing with a bittersweet fantasy on Logic Will
Break Your Heart. It's a fantastic pop record and, as much as some
would like to disagree, these Canadians pulled off a sound that has
nothing to do with New York City. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide

Freaks and Geeks

Just picked this up based on the hype and reviews. The Pilot episode was good, well written, well acted. The dvd package is amazingly complete. commentaries and extras abound.

One Day in September

http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/onedayinseptember/

A very well done doc on the events surrounding the terror attack at the
1972 Olympics. An event from out past that seems to say a lot about
present day terror concerns. Some amazing footage from the games and
the stand off.

Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in the Winnipeg airport

Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in the Winnipeg airport

A whole site devoted to sleeping in airports. Seems we get a pretty good review. The Observation Deck is the spot!

Moog the doc

Needless to say, this is on my want to see list. electronic music meets independent film? SIGN ME UP!

Brian Eno & Laraaji Ambient 3: Day of Radiance

One of the least accessible of Eno's Ambient series, but one which stayed with me for so long. I recall renting the Cd from Mary Scorer Books and being amazed. This was in 1989. It's stayed with me ever since. I just downloaded a couple tracks from the net and it's reminded me to buy it. I will.
What is it? It's just repetitive, layered and loop and treated hammer dulcimer. It's like a hot summer day, with light coming off the water. It's like a quiet hike up a hill to a monastery. It's like memories that make you smile.

Hooters Comes to China

Hooters Comes to China: "China already has 580 McDonald's and over 1,000 Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, not to mention the ubiquitous Coca Cola signs. But tomorrow, the country will reach a milestone in its growing embrace of all things American with the opening of China's first Hooters restaurant in Shanghai. Most of the aspirng Hooters employees are students wanting to practice English with expatriate customers. They will earn just US$1.36 an hour. Cameron Jiang, the director of operations, says the Shanghai Hooters has gone for friendliness, rather than hiring waitresses according to their conformity to the physical build typical of American Hooters servers. 'It's different, but Chinese girls have their own beauty,' Jiang said. – YaleGlobal"

Open-source VoIP 'will be bigger than Linux' - ZDNet UK News

"on 'Maddog' Hall, the president of open-source organisation Linux International, told the LinuxWorld Expo in London on Wednesday that open-source voice-over-IP (VoIP) will be bigger than Linux.

'I predict that over next three years, VoIP using an open-source solution, such as Asterisk, will generate more business than the entire Linux marketplace today,' said Hall.

Halls explained that the open-source project Asterisk provides a cheaper alternative to proprietary PBX solutions, which are used by many companies today to provide telephone services.

'Today's PBX solutions are incredibly expensive, closed source and proprietary. Asterisk is approximately one-tenth of the price of a proprietary PBX system,' claimed Hall.

According to the Asterisk Web site, the software can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware and provides features such as voicemail services, call conferencing and call queuing.

Hall said to ZDNet UK that he expects numerous companies to start providing services for Asterisk, including installation, support and third-party applications.

Hall is not the first to predict a bright future for VoIP. Michael Robertson, the founder of SIPphone, which specialises in Internet telephony, said last week that he believes that VoIP will grow much faster than Linux, although he did not mention the role that open -source could play."

W NETWORK.COM ::: TV Shows ::: The Barefoot Dancer ::: Episodes

Ok NOW I know how all these crunchy granola hippy chicks learn how to dance in a real pretentious way at the FolkFest. They watch this show!

In the future we'll all have our own TV show. I want one. I wanna teach people how to be a grouchy photographer!

Taoism and the Philosophy of Tai Chi Chuan

I am once again back into Tai Chi. It's been about two years when I walked away from the Taoist Tai chi club. The problem at the time was it had become far too political. The efforts of the head office to maintain standards of teaching managed to alienate the instructors I respected, reward lesser qualified people and the result was the intent and focus of the classes were lost.
Then a group found a new teacher and broke away. Then people were starting to get competitive about that. Everything was adding up to a scene that was so far removes from the principles of Taoism I walked away.

Now I have searched out the group that broke away and tried their practise sessions. Everyone leads the class at some point, you are encouraged to practise in your own style or speed and we just do the practise and thats it! No standing and and arguing about one move, we do our thing and we're done! I like this. We'll see how I manage to keep this up 3 times a week but I am going to need this release.

Trading in used books

Link is to one of the main used book shops in town. It's been kinda emotional for me to finally admit that I should trade some of the lesser books in my "collection". And it's been kinda emotional to finally give up a title only to find someone not take it in trade!

First time I took a huge pile to a shop specializing Canadiana, I was miffed when he passed up a really Canadian title, I even made my case for him taking it. The assistant said I should get a job in book selling! This past Saturday though, I remained relaxed and didn't think twice about the why or how of his selection process.

Ultimately I have come to realize that I read just enuff for books to have an emotional attachment to them. I need to reach the point where their just like Harlequin romances, read em and weep, and trade em!

The Future Heads

Bought this Cd today in an old fashioned way. I read a brief snippet of a review in rolling Stone and then I went and looked for it at a music store, thought it looked kinda cool and bought it, without hearing the music. Seems so weird now but back in the not too long ago thats how we bought music!

Anyway its kinda timely I bought this CD this way, since the music is like 1983 new wave. Loud and poppy, its like old XTC or something! It's one of several bands I have bought this year who remind me of the new wave of the early 80's.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

What a freaking weird movie this was. I mean I knew it would be off kilter but there are some strange wacky moments in this one! No raining frogs thankfully, but close!

Peters Map

Peters Map: "The Peters Projection World Map is one of the most stimulating, and controversial, images of the world. When this map was first introduced by historian and cartographer Dr. Arno Peters at a Press Conference in Germany in 1974 it generated a firestorm of debate. The first English-version of the map was published in 1983, and it continues to have passionate fans as well as staunch detractors.

The earth is round. The challenge of any world map is to represent a round earth on a flat surface. There are literally thousands of map projections. Each has certain strengths and corresponding weaknesses. Choosing among them is an exercise in values clarification: you have to decide what's important to you. That is generally determined by the way you intend to use the map. The Peters Projection is an area acurate map."

Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther

Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther:
sympleko (Matthew Leingang) writes "In Neal Stephenson's manifesto In the Beginning was the Command Line, he writes about his favorite command-line utility: wc. As simple as can be, wc counts characters, words, and lines in a file. There's no GUI analogue, perhaps because anybody tempted to make one would add too many "features" that cluttered its ease of use. Think: do you know how to count the words in a Word file? BBEdit is a little easier, if you know the button to click." Read on for Leingang's review of Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther, which seeks to reconcile the conception of user friendliness in OS X's Aqua with the sometimes-denigrated command line.

How It Works...The Computer

Some great vintage photos and graphics from the 1970's.

The White Room

hydropia: "The White Room is a set of photographic prints resulting from an in-game photo shoot that documents a series of constructed disasters. These interiors were set up by the artist using the videogame Max Payne 2, a 'Film Noir' thriller that tells a tale of lost love, deception and betrayal."

on the street report from Falluja

Photos and an on the street account of the house to house battle. Pretty compelling stuff. Wouldn't want to be there right now.

remote webcams that actually work!

Woah, that's an amazing Net stat!

"The webcams are often used to increase web site traffic. According to Kozik, webcam pages are among the best-linked pages on the net. For example, 'the webcam pointing at the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone Park currently accounts for nearly one half of the traffic on all U.S. national park websites combined', he says."

thttpd notes

This is an example for the kind of stuff I have to read to make the Kuro work. This is the documentation for the tiny webserver. Careful, it's not for the faint of heart, non-geeks eyes will glaze over in 10 lines or less. But I find it kind of fun to delve into.

It reminds me of the book that got me hooked on computers back in 1991-92 Cukoo's Egg. That was a pivotal book on hacking that ignite interest in the net. In it the author explains UNIX based stuff and it sound so otherworldly and weird, I had to get in there. Then after a few years the Web grew and the UNIX stuff wasn't need to get online, but it funny how these things go full circle, cuz here we are in 2004 and I am geeking out to *nix based stuff!

LinuxDevices.com -- your embedded Linux resource

My KuroBox has me thinking more about embedded Linux devices. everyone at this link believes in them. I think once I have the Kuro rocking in the right way it's gonna be stable and solid. It's getting there that's the hard part. Basically I am playing with stuff that programmers are doing, and I am way way over my head. But that's why I bought two, the LinkStation is the out of the box solution I'll implement at work immediately while the Kuro will be the version I can screw with at home. That's the theory anyway, execution and implementation will be quite different.

Panic retires Audion, posts app's 'True Story' | MacMinute News

Panic retires Audion, posts app's 'True Story' | MacMinute News:
Panic has officially ended development of Audion, its once-popular MP3 player/encoder. The company is now offering the audio application free of charge. "This obviously wasn't an easy decision," said Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser. "So, why do it? Put simply, it all boils down to an inability to compete fairly with iTunes, which is free and, you know, pretty good. But the story isn't that simple -- there's much more to Audion's past than one simple sentence. That's why we've put together the 'True Story of Audion.' It's a bit long, but in it you can learn many things you probably never knew, like how Audion almost became iTunes, how Panic almost became an AOL company, how our Apple boardroom meeting with Steve Jobs went, and more." Editor's Note: The 'True Story of Audion' is one of the most interesting Mac stories you will ever read

AskMen.com - Monica Bellucci

AskMen.com - Monica Bellucci pictures: "We'd like to say that Monica Bellucci is just a woman, but we would be lying. She is not a mortal woman; she is a cruel joke from Mother Nature with the sole purpose of driving men of all ages to the point of insanity. How can anyone be so beautiful? Why are perfect women like Monica rarer than a Chicago Cubs World Series title?

Alas, my friends, there are no answers. All we can do is enjoy the sight of a woman as irresistible as Monica Bellucci, and hope that the gods will be kind to mere mortals like us and give us more Monicas -- except those with 'Lewinsky' as a last name. Lame joke, yes, but we can't help but be lame at the thought of Monica Bellucci. Even her name evokes beauty. We are weak, lame men because of her.

But who is Monica Bellucci? Actually, she's Italy's hottest acting export (after Sophia Loren, of course). This model-turned-actress generated a lot of buzz for her performance in Malena -- a story about a Sicilian woman who charms and enrages a little village.

Until 2003, she had limited exposure in large American features except for appearing in Dracula with Keanu Reeves and Under Suspicion with Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, but ever since her roles in Tears of the Sun and the Matrix sequels, North American audiences have been under her spell.  "

CNN.com - How to play a dead body on 'CSI'

Am I the only one who's ODing on the CSI phenom? I am at the point when I watch I pick apart the absurdity of the situations? First thing, turn on the lights!

Eliminate Gophers, Get Rid of Squirrels, Mole Eradication, More!

Classic case of finding your niche and selling it! Saw a demo of this on tech Tv's Unscrewed of all places. Geeks like stuff that can blow stuff up!

UsedMac.ca Not Caca

UsedMac.ca Not Caca:
UsedMac.ca Not Caca

As a favor to a brother (Mac user), here's a shout-out for UsedMac.ca, an online trading post for Canadians to buy and sell used Mac gear. The site is well organized and nicely executed. Items can be browsed by popularity, ratings, or a handy thumbnail gallery. Another good reason to move to Canada.

Shaw is censoring Internet feeds and lying about it

Shaw is censoring Internet feeds and lying about it:
When customers of Canada's Shaw Cable high-speed Internet service noticed that their filesharing activity had slowed down dramatically, they didn't know what to make of it. Calling the ISP didn't help: Shaw's tech support people swore that they were delivering all the packets they received from their customers, just as you'd expect. After all, who'd want an ISP that picked and chose which of your communications got through -- imagine if the phone company or the post office just silently threw away some of your messages based on secret criteria!

So the Shaw customers went to DSL Reports, a community site for posting about DSL and other high-speed providers, and they found that they were not alone and not imagining things. Lots of Shaw customers were getting really crummy performance out of their Internet connections.

Then someone claiming to be a Shaw insider posted an explanation: Shaw had secretly installed a packet-filter on its network that was using hidden rules to silently discard some of its customers' packets. And they'd instructed their tech people to lie about it when customers called in and asked.

It might have been a fake, but not long after, DSL Reports got a letter from Shaw's lawyers telling them that this was confidential info from a Shaw employee and that they'd be sued if they didn't take it offline, so it looks like its true (says DSL Reports, "Needless to say, we've never bent over for an ISP upset at bad publicity, or forked over anyones identity, and we're not about to start.")

Here's the facts, then:
Shaw is indiscriminately censoring its customers' Internet feeds. It's not blocking infringing files (hell, Shaw can't even know for certain what files are and aren't infringing for each customer), it's blocking protocols, applications used to transmit and receive tens, hundreds of millions of public-domain, copylefted and non-copyrightable works.
Shaw is lying about censoring its customers' Internet feeds.
Shaw is threatening to sue people who tell the world about its lies.
Are you a Shaw customer? Do you still want to be, in light of the above? Link

Kuro Box

My Kuro Box is working! I slapped a 160hd in it, ran the install and formatting and set up the sharing on it. Some real geeky linux stuff happening!Woman from the album "Zombie Heaven (Disc 1)" by The Zombies

Jill Greenberg :: The Manipulator

some real nice stuff here.

Probably the geekiest thing I will blog all year

I was reading how to config netatalk RPM's on a Linux embedded NSA device I just ordered, when I realized I was late for the chess championship!

If you can understand that statement, then you're doing quite well. The linked title of this thread sends you to the Open Source version of the LinkStation I ordered. You slot in your only 3.5 ATA HD and configure all you want.

Buffalo Technology LinkStation

Picked one of these up, well I mean I ordered it online. I want to use it to store images, backups and MP3's. I have a 6 inch high stack of MP3 discs that I have recieved full of music I haven't even listen to yet! As well the itunes library on my laptop is hogging my HD. We'll see how well it performs. If nothing else, I'll make it my web server!

On a side note eCost, the retailer I bought from was using BorderFree CanadaPost's ecommerce solution for retailers selling to Canadians. I guess the backend figures out all the taxes duties, brokerage, and you get the bottom line in CAD when checking out. No more surprise UPS handling fees. I like this.

LCD styled to look like 50s classic TV

LCD styled to look like 50s classic TV:Cory Doctorow:RCA has released its "Astro" TV, which is styled to look like a classic 1950s set, save that it is built around a flat-panel LCD. Expect to see a lot more of this as LCDs get cheaper and more available: remember when FM-radio-on-a-chip costs fell to approximately zero and the market was flooded with FM radios built into pens, sunglasses, and novelty baseballs and pencil-sharpeners? Modestly-sized LCDs are certain to follow suit in the next year or two.Link(via Red Ferret Review)

squint magazine

Man would it be nice to work on something like this. Even an online version is cool...

UsedMac.ca Not Caca

UsedMac.ca Not Caca:
UsedMac.ca Not Caca

As a favor to a brother (Mac user), here's a shout-out for UsedMac.ca, an online trading post for Canadians to buy and sell used Mac gear. The site is well organized and nicely executed. Items can be browsed by popularity, ratings, or a handy thumbnail gallery. Another good reason to move to Canada.

Recursive Desktop

Recursive Desktop:
A beautiful recursive desktop, which wasn't as easy to make as it looks.

It's creator, Bullet-Dodger, writes, "Actually, it's a series of still shots. What I did was: I took a picture of the monitor and I set that picture as the background on the screen. Then I took another picture of that, ect. about 5 or 6 times. Which is why our dog in the window is only in one of them. And yes, I was very bored :)"Gödel, Escher, Bach

Death of Film based imaging perhaps overstated?

On 30-Oct-04, at 10:38 AM, Robert A Szkolnicki wrote:

> If we all continue to run around like headless chickens, then all the
> worst case senarios will happen. We will have made it happen
> ourselves, let's stop wringing our hands and weeping into our
> keyboards, and get out and take photographs in whichever way we enjoy
> most, and film and digital will continue to exist for a long time to
> come!! Then we can start to worry about what is waiting around the
> corner waiting to replace both of them. 8-))
> John R

think about how long 8X10 cameras have been rendered obsolete yet still
some artists use them extensively?... Think of all those wacky old
cameras from yesteryear that people dust off and play with.

I think film based cameras will be just another choice we make in the
years to come. think about this,... as far as we've come in digital,
the popularity of the Holga, the lomo, etc has never been better and in
fact I think continues to grow! my friend Bruce who manages
Photocentral has seen it already with the generation of shooters after
us discovering the darkroom.

The same thing happened in the late 60's-70's when shooters discovered
alternative processes. Suddenly every hippy-shooter was sticking it to
"the Man" (aka Kodak!) and making their own chemicals and coating their
own paper. That kind of trend will appear. That's why I am holding on
to things, rather than sell. Even shooting one roll of film for Naked
in the Exchange was a great reminder of everything mysterious about
shooting film.