you should...

...volunteer? Go to www.2005worldmasters.com and sign-up.

I'm helping out with these games this summer (well, up to and including this summer). I'm sitting on the Volunteer Logisitcs committee with a bunch of interesting people who have adopted me as their resident techno-geek. We sort through lists of names and committees and ultimately we're going to try and figure out how to fit a round peg into a square hole: or perhaps just how to organize, train, accredit, uniform, feed, and generally manage a few thouand volunteers across the big ol'city of Edmonton for ten days.

It can be daunting.

And seeing the internal workings of something both [a wee bit] bigger than a track meet and [a wee bit] smaller than the Olympics is often mentally boggling. (You know, I might start making my experience all-around with the whole games a general sort of topic here. It's sure to occupy more and more of my time as it nears and progresses. ) And alongside the boggling-bit of mental exercise we, the daunted, feel the co-worry of it all: we don't have nearly enough volunteers yet.

So, PLUGPLUG, go sign up. I'm high on the program of folks doing a lot of the sorting about who-gets-what-job, and though I can't offer any preferential treatment, now's the time to get in there and get a good position: lots of cool things left available. I might even be able to offer you a place to sleep (new house, woohoo!) if you're from out of town and want to drop by for a week or so to help out.

Oh! And you get some free stuff. PLUGPLUG

03:24 PM on 01/03/2005 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

evil corporate blog

Events connecting as they do through the ebbs and flows of data exchange, I have pushed forward with expermental evilness. Google has long offered an AdSense program for websites, targetted ads pop up here and there as designed, and [rubs hands together] generates cash for the webmaster. I thought I'd poke in an application and see if I would qualify. Oddly enough, this site fits within the realm of their criteria.

Some of you might complain. Ah well.

Thing is, from an experimental perspective I can examine a number of weak justifications:

1) Look at the ads that appear with the site. Some of them are actually relavant or interesting. I've already clicked on one for mere sake of interest.

2) The cheaper this website is for me to operate, the longer I will.

3) A possible thought experiment (and something to write about) as I see how much "click-revenue" a site like this cheezy little thing can actually generate.

Commence complaining now...

12:49 PM on 25/02/2005 | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

legal crap

I spent my lunch pretending I am a lawyer.

Well, sort of.

A bunch of things about websites, blogs, privacy, and all that fun stuff got me thinking: You know? I'm putting myself out there everyday, sticking my neck out just a little further, fishing just a little deeper in those digital waters for an interested audience -- and unfortunately the nature of the internet means it's easier to cast it out than reel it back in. Who knows who could turn up these very words in a few minutes, days, weeks, years, decades -- and, well, sadly enough try to hold them against me for their content or even just their existence.

The internet isn't the wild-west anymore. It used to be something like that: metaphorically. But now? It's a cut-throat virtual land of commerce and trade, with crazy lawyers and other folks with sway patrolling it's streets. A guy needs a little protection.

So here's the thing: I don't know if it's legally binding. I don't care if it's legally binding. But effective immediately, every single byte of original content on this webpage is hereby proclaimed private and confidential. Every single byte of original content on this webpage is mine and I get to decide (a) who reads it, (b) who stores it, and (c) what I want to charge for that use.

But don't worry: for most of you it's still free and always will be. Most of you -- that's like 99.999% of you -- only need to be honest, interesting people, and I'll never charge you a cent. Family? No problem. Friends? Go right on in. Fellow bloggers? Well, watch your step, but we all know you're cool, right? So that's it. Not one penny. Just enjoy.

But here's the catch: if anyone, ever, uses this site or the information on it to hurt me, my family, or my company, or tries to sue me or fire me based on any sort of information or data contained here... bang! That's when the other shoe drops -- there's the line: and it-ain't-free-no-more. In fact, it could get very pricy for you, evil-dude. Why these words alone could cost you upwards of $5000 just to read them -- one time.

Huh?

The wild-west is being bound and gagged: Certain folks have been getting fired because their bosses have read their blogs. Other folks have been getting sued for comments that visitor.people have written on their sites. Malicious others have hunted down personal information and background data on bloggers to use it against them. So here's the deal. New policy: No such thing as free anymore, at least if you have evil thoughts or otherwise wouldn't have my permission to use this stuff.

Stated. Fact. Expect an invoice if you don't make the cool-list. By the time you get it we'll probably be in court for some other reason, anyhow. Maybe a settlement is in order? Just make sure to read the EULA I wrote over lunch. I hate those things, but the world (wide web) is a scary place these days.

03:30 PM on 11/02/2005 | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

stuff and stuff

meetings of stuff

Today is the day of the many meetings. I have three specific locations to attend within the span of nine hours this afternoon. For some, this would seem trivial. For I, who is seeking the concept of less-meetings, it is not trivial.

eyes wide shut

I was practicing typing with my eyes shut last night. I was awake, but I was trying to enter a zen-like oneness with the computer and... well, actually I just thought it was pretty cool that I could type about fifty words a minute with eyes shut and only make an occasional mistake. Of course, all the source material needs to come out of your brain, so it wouldn't work for data entry or anything of the like, but....

breaking up is hard to do

Or easy if you are ABC. Have you noticed how many television stations are exclusively digital feeds all of a sudden. If you have a regular old co-ax coming into your set, but still see the picture go all boxy and pixelly once in a while, it means the station is on a digital feed. And if you start to see little artifacts and pixelation during quick movements or transitions, it means they're using digital source and they're probably being cheap with their compression. Karin was trying to watch Exteme Home Makeover last night, but the image was stubornly breaking up into wonky little colour mosaics. Suck.

calendar dudes

Now's the time. We picked up two calendars yesterday for 75% off the retail value. That meant we spent less than nine dollars.

fishing in the dark

I'm not sure I mentioned it before, but Karin and I have got two fish at home now. Including Blue at my office, we have a total of three Bettas in our lives. Karin named the two newbies Fire and Ice. (I think I've explained this...) They've been alive for a little over a month now, so I think they'll survive for the moment, especially now that I've learned how to feed them. The trick, since they are in a divided tank and can see each other, is to feed them separately. If you put food in both halves at the same time, they both ignore the food in their own tank and try to eat the food floating on the opposite side, splashing and thrashing, and ultimately knocking down most of the pellets to the bottom rocks where they sit and rot. I've discovered, however, that by feeding them separately no such problem exists: feed Ice, and Fire goes nuts while Ice casually eats his food. Wait three seconds, then feed Fire wherein Ice goes crazy while Fire casually eats his food. Repeat as necessary.

09:21 AM on 17/01/2005 | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

black christmas

I think my news years resolution should be to work on my enunciation. Heck, I'm a writer not a speaker -- but things being as they are, you know, self-improvement and the drive to better and brighter futures, I think it's something I should work on.

For example, this morning...

This morning I wandered over to Tim Hortons for a cup of coffee, a semi-regular morning ritual. Sometimes I drink the office brew. Sometimes I brew my own. Occasionally, and mostly rarely, I stop at Starbucks and try one of their blends. But about once or maybe twice a week I cross the road to Timmy's and get an extra-caffienated cup. This morning was such a morning.... and being as the Tim's across the way is one of the busiest in Edmonton, regularly lined up out the door, a progressive, no-nonsense ordering system is understood by those who frequent. The line-up moves quickly as one is to step to the next available grumpy old woman working the register, state one's order, pay, and step to the right to receive the purchased goods. Somewhere in that procedure the order is translated from me to the cashier and the cashier to the pourer, ultimately resulting in a cup of coffee less than thirty seconds after ordering.

I usually take my coffee black with one sugar.

I stepped to the counter this morning, said in (perhaps) a not-so-clear mumble: "Large coffee, one sugar."

"One forty." The cashier grumbled and I paid.

But then, as I was dutifully stepping to the right, she turned and said to the pourer (and I heard her clearly and distinctly, though it took a few moments to register) : "Large, four sugars."

I hestiated. Blinked. Laughed a little private laugh, thinking who the heck would order a coffee with four sugars? And I took the cup and walked away.

Sitting at my desk this morning, one very cold walk later, I sipped the brew. It was a little on the sweet side.

Maybe I need to make the new years resolution to be a little more reactive to my environment. That would help, too.

03:20 PM on 20/12/2004 | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

election and seclusion

I would comment on the election, but I'm supposed to got o California in a couple weeks and, well, you know that ol' saying about Big Brother.

What November 2nd usually means is that NaNoWriMo is once again in full swing. And correlating to that, my faithful readers may notice a minor drop in my posting here. (I always say that, but it never really happens.) Yesterday, I kicked off the process with good start, round off the evening with nearly 8000 words. And having spent my lunch break burning up the keyboard I can now say that I'm gently toeing past 8500.

I'm also being a little bit more liberal with the whole reading thing this year. As promised. (I've even let Karin read the first wind.) I might even post it some time. If I have time. If I feel like it. Yeah.

01:49 PM on 02/11/2004 | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

strikes again: nanowrimo?

And then there were three?

Distractions of work, home, and life aside, I think it might be time to write another book. I've been tossing the concept -- think green salad -- in my mind since re-discovering the nanowrimo event site again last week. At first I shied away, remembering how much effort went wasted last year when my employ dumpled a massive web-redesign project on me half-way through the month.

Too bad. So sad.

And this year, our skipping town to visit California for a week could either (a) really severely cramp the momentum required to write like the wind, or alternatively (b) provide a break, rebreather, and opportunity to refresh the brainstem for the last home stretch. Pick one.

Either way, I think I'd have to slap myself in the face with a wet fish if I didn't jump on the bandwagon once again and push forward with the novel-writing-thing. I'd be disappointed in myself, and my lack of motivation. I couldn't, honestly, call myself a writer -- and besides explaining the size of my hole (see the section on home-building) I would end up having very little to discuss here if I didn't write.

But, things are shifting: I'm going to change it up a little. Maybe. It depends on the feedback I get from this space. So, if you're keeping up, these are the (my personal) rules (amended) from last year:

1) Bugger off.
2) Don't talk to me.
3) Don't even think of discussing the book with me.

But that was mean. And boring. And no one followed them much anyways. So I'm switching it up a little bit. This year, I think I want to go interactive. Full out. Audience play along: interactive. Live. Fresh. Whatever.

The plan goes something like this: Every couple of days, here, on this blog, I'm going to put out a "call." I want you (the valued and highly intellegent reader) -- yes, you -- to leave a comment and answer that call. Provided it's both (a) serious and (b) not too bizaarely obscene, I'll play along from my end.

For example...

Today, I'm asking for characters. That's right. i want your imagined character. Invent one. Share and enjoy. Something fresh and original. Tell me who they are, what they do, and why they are screwed up enough to be in a fifty-thousand word novel. Describe that character. Comment: him or her or it. And I'll try my best to squeeze a place for them into the novel. If I like them, they may even be a main character. More requests coming soon, to be sure, so get busy on this one.

(And PS: if you don't play along, well, then it's back to the same old rules.... blah.)

02:03 PM on 12/10/2004 | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

years pass

A year ago today I was contemplating writing a novel, pondering characters both simple and complex, and readying myself for a grand story. Today, I sit quietly and ponder the activation of one of my largest publications to date. Oddly enough, it doesn't fizzle my brain too much.

01:59 PM on 30/09/2004 | comments (0)

on live-ness

Building a website is nothing like building a house. For example, if you build a house and decide you want to change the location of the kitchen, you have until a certain time in the process. Then, tough. The kitchen is where it is, and no amount of complaining will adjust that fact.

A website on the other hand is maleable. It's like modelling clay. Fundamentally, it is difficult to manuplate and change, but once you get the hang of it, the clay can be anything.

I've just spent the last nine months of my job building a website. No, correction. A Website. A massive and complex database of information fronted by a glistening facade of images and text, menus and buttons.

Tomorrow, it goes live.

Now, don't get me wrong. I live and breathe Internet. It is the railroad of my generation -- people's fortunes are lost an made in it's construction and operation. HTML puts food on my table, water in my sink, and DVDs in my DVD player. I write code for fun (case in point, look at what you're reading) and profit. It is a fundamental part of who I am these days.

But, tomorrow, it goes live. It is a project of a scope of which I have never before undertaken.

And tomorrow, it goes live.

I'm not saying it's anything special. It's a website. It's sixteen hundred pages large. It's a few dozen megabytes in size. It's a complex maze of decades woth of information, readable, printable, savable. It still needs to mature, like a fine wine, with the effort of time and dozens of people who need to hop on board (finally) and add their two cents. It is just a website.

But. Tomorrow. It goes live. Sigh.

02:40 PM on 29/09/2004 | comments (0)

lawn yogurt

I thought it might be fun to bring some life to my life, so -- about three weeks ago -- I picked up some potting soil and a little, wee, bag of seed. Call it a green thumb. Call it a strangely cheap and portable hobby. Call it whatever. I've decided to go into the mini-lawn business.

I've had some limited success growing little pots of turf on my windowsill in my office. Plants are great. They just sit there getting bigger and bigger. And the joy of growing grass, is that every so often, when you need a break, you can take the scissors and give it a quick mow. Zen.

I'm not actually going into business. I just thought I'd entertain myself. And I thought I'd write about it now to ease the crankpot tension of that previous post (next post, depending on which order you're reading)...

Unfortunately, my greens are off. Blah. Colours.

11:59 AM on 24/09/2004 | comments (1)

rudstuff

Flow and gush. I don't know where in the lurkings of the city my plain-drain existenz has been drizzled. It seems to flood by, and then disappear.

Karin and I are doing this, this weeknd:

Let's work together to end cancer and keep Terry's dream alive. All money raised goes to cancer research; please support my participation by clicking on this link and donating: http://www.terryfoxrun.org/ENRunner/default.asp?s=1&RunnerID=11351

No obs, but ya'know. I feel it necessary to endorse and put the call out for the so-little I ask otherwise. My audience of you eight or so.

Otherwise, drizzle. We lurchingly find ourselves digging deeper and deeper. Rooting. Etching a place, where we think we might belong. Odd how that happens. And time passes, quick, slow, always.

I think I want to write more substance, but I don't know where to begin. Someone should suggest a topic, and we'll go from there. Hey, I haven't even been out with the digicam lately. What's with that? That's like words, except with color and shape and light extrapolated from photons and pixels. How the line blurs.

And other things. I'm sure this isn't the last.

11:30 AM on 15/09/2004 | comments (0)

for the sake of sanity

I'd say it's been a queit week, but then I'd be lying.

For a brief reprise: sharyl is moving to edmonton after being accepted to university | blue, despite the bettacam disappearing, is still alive, even perky | the cable guy arrives on Saturday | Derek and Shannon arrive tonight | the parents are in town on the weekend for a relative-event | I took Tuesday off and spent it feeling nostalgic for my big U days as I showed sis around the campus | work is work is work | we bought Hot Shots Golf Fore! for the PS2 on the weekend, and have wasted far too many hours playing | Brett and Lenore's housewarming was a blast | work on the new wedding (not us, duh) website has reached the deep infrastructure stage, and now needs design input | I'm writing PHP out my @$$ these days, and have put together an entire CMS to manage all my writing projects, which is like 98% done | the jackhammers have subsided | the sun is shining, briefly | I need to take some more photos, though I did take a series of feetsacross the high level bridge the other day to add to the gallery soon -- soon | 208 with effort | databases are looming, and I think I need to focus -- at least based on various emails and phone calls | I am tending towards the cryptic | and other things too...

And that was just in the last seven days.

One of these days I'll open up the world to it all: In fact, that aforementioned CMS is a branch of a new idealism I've stumbled across. I've been scribbling words on to both paper and silicon for years now. It's not for the sake of publication: in fact, 98% of what I write off-hours is for a very small audience. If it's useful or interesting for someone else, then great. But I tend toward the idea of vastening for publication. Or at least, I have in the past. Most writers are struggling under two false pretenses: (a) that someone cares what they are writing, and (b) that someone cares enough to publish and/or purchase what they are writing. I struggle under that -- and not just internally. When you inform the world that you write, they immediately want to know: are you going to try and get it published.

Define publication.

I'm working on a author's CMS. Ultimately, it will be an online tool for working on any document, long or short, but geared towards the novel or book. The beauty of it will be that instant publication online will be the result of it. Sort of a blog for fiction, where stories are broken into chapters, and chapters are broken into modules. Modules can be shuffled, moved, edited, recycled, or whatever. Everything is sortable and editable: and instantly navigable in different forms.

It's just a little pet project, but as I get work done on it (read: content filling it), watch for me opening the doors to the whole thing. It could be fun.

Meanwhile, I'll sit back and imagine the city is stalking me. It is.

10:03 AM on 26/08/2004 | comments (0)

Preparation-L

Long weekends in a warm city. Anticipation looms.

12:10 PM on 30/07/2004 | comments (0)

days of the code monkey

Somehow I've become a programmer.

It's not really my title. I'm a scientist. An educator on my good days. A white-collar, nalgene-holding, keyboard-jockey with a short commute, the radio bouncing between CBC and JOE depending on my mood.

Somehow, I'm writing code.

It started innocently enough: knowledge begets responsibility, responsibility begets power, power begets contempt for the system, and all this leads to a tinkering effect wherein the norms become clouded and ripe for change. And here I sit, burning the garbage scripts that melt across our servers like egg yolks drizzling across a steaming grill.

And then other possibilities emerge. Private projects loom on the horizon. The city, it's midnight thunder storms ring electric along the skyline cityscape, taunts for something more. And I hunker, lurk, wait patiently for ideas to spawn while I scratch out bits of hypertext and riddle them with preprocessor strings, like bullets mocking a paper silhouette of a generic villian.

It is odd how quickly those concepts form in the mind, each query locking neurons into tighter elegance and spurning new paths for data to run free through the oceans of my silicon logic. Text is just data, isn't it? Stories, books, and narratives are just the logical paths through created universes, no? Publishing has become much too linear, I think as I reflect on how easily a plot melds into a datasphere, and a datasphere launches countless possibilities for something grander.

But then what do I know?

09:38 AM on 28/07/2004 | comments (0)

a night at the one-ness

I spent two hours last night in a nearby cafe, sipping green tea, my computer pried open on my lap. I was -- if I could be so bold as to say it -- writing.

Flipping through, and levelling might be a better descriptor.

And I'm torn. Where to go. Where to go back. Where to move on. And then what...

11:30 AM on 21/05/2004 | comments (0)

where the heck am i?

And I wanted to write something of consequence...

All this babbling about this and that: it seems trivial right now, for some reason -- a reason I can't quite grasp. Sometimes it's important. Other times, not.

I think sometimes we fool ourselves into feeling more stability that we really have. Sometimes we need more than that illusion.

Everything is spinning, in a way, and I just want it to slow down so that I can enjoy it. Despite this, time lags, days draw out, and the world creeps along while I draw circles around the ticking hands of the clock.

And then what?

03:49 PM on 18/05/2004 | comments (0)