Month: September 2007

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2007/09/25/4526179-cp.html

Unfortunately, a twenty year old man died at a Smashing Pumpkins concert a few days ago in Vancouver. Very upsetting news. The cause isn’t determined but they believe it to be from crowd-surfing, which could very well be the cause if no one catches the guy on the way down to the floor and he may have hit his neck.

Either way, it’s a sad story to hear. I don’t crowd-surf myself but I do help people get up above the crowd if they would like to.

Ugh…I must admit that I would hate to be the band right now. It can’t be easy to think that your music which gives so many people happiness, was somehow related to someone accidentally dying also.

So the plans for our corn roast were a success and as far as I could tell, everyone had a great time.

The corn roast almost never happened as Eric told us that corn season ends near the end of September. Mike went to five different places before finding some corn at Sobey’s. After picking up four dozen corn, our realization that this corn roast would happen were upon us. Success! We would have been pretty upset if we had to feed everyone some cream corn.

Mental Note: Have the corn roast a month earlier.

Saturday turned out to be the most beautiful day in September (that’s right, I can see into the future) so Mike and I started out the day by jamming outside with a few beers until the patrons appeared.

A big bunch of people showed up and I would like to put a shout out to Chef Losier as he seemed to have everything under control. The corn was delish, the meat was great, and the drinks were fab. Let us not forget the great weather outside which had everyone in a good mood.

We ended up with 2 dozen extra corn which is fine with us. Mike just sliced it up and it’s in the freezer now. Serves me right for not looking at the evite for the number of people showing up.

The night descended in groups hanging out and chatting, some Flight of the Conchords playing on TV, and an impromptu jam session when most of the people left for the night.

I also presented Rob, Joe and Matt with pictures I had from ten years ago when Rob and I first moved to Ottawa. Yes, it has been ten years ago since we appeared in the great Nation’s capital and no one has been the same since. We had a good laugh at the photos and I’m glad to see that these guys have stuck with me throughout the time in Ottawa. There are quite a few people from Algonquin who turned out to be school buddies and that’s about it. But I’m sure if you put us together, we would be like old friends.

I’m actually trying to hunt down some ‘six degrees of seperation’ software so I can see how I’ve met my friends throughout the years. If anyone knows of any, let me know!

Thanks to all who came out to the Corn Roast and we’re looking forward to it next year!

Uh..I’m assuming if anyone is looking for pictures of the event, you can just go on Facebook as SO many people told me during the corn roast. Essentially, if you’re not on Facebook, you’re not a good enough friend to see pictures from your own event. 🙁

iplaying: For Your Love – Djali Zwan

Months ago, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) released his Year Zero album (which is a pretty great album).

Along with this, he released the multitrack audio files for each songs so fans could remix them at will. Multitracks: Well, in a regular song, there may be a track for vocals, a track for guitar, a track for bass guitar, a track for drums, etc. With Nine Inch Nails, there may be up to twenty tracks going into a song. In an unprecendented move, he released all the tracks for fan to rip apart and put back together in a new form (otherwise known as remixing).

Anyhow, a fansite 9inchnails.net went ahead and opened up a contest to build remixes and the results are compiled in a release called The Limitless Potential, a 2 CD set with 21 tracks which are remixed from all open-source multitrack files. 99% of them are from Year Zero but there are a few from their With Teeth album.

I’m listening to this album and so far it’s really, really good (if you like remixes). NIN is notorious for releasing remix albums for all their albums (usually making their own or having others perform a new mix) and if they were smart, I think they should look to the fans remixes for an official release. I am intrigued with some of the creations out there and would like to try my hand at a few of my own using Garageband.

Anyhow, if you are a fan of NIN, I highly recommend you head out and download this album. It’s download only – no tracks are available for purchase.

iplaying: Vessel (Losing Control Remix) – Pushing Reality – The Limitless Potential

For those who have no interest in technical talk, move onwards…

So I bought a 320GB external awhile ago which was an amazing purchase to accommodate my heavy television show downloading habits, as well as my live Smashing Pumpkins archive that I am building (which…may not be needed anymore now that the official archive.org project has begun allowing uploads? Hmm…maybe I should get rid of them…). I love the hard drive and the portability factor. I got this idea from Philipp since he had a laptop and I figured I would pick one up later on in life and would like a portable hard drive.

So I did end up picking up a MacBook last year which is great but I realized that I couldn’t write information to my hard drive for some reason.

After some research, I found out that the thing was formatted in NTFS which doesn’t allow Mac’s to write to the drive. They can read, but they can’t write. So I realized I had to format the entire drive into FAT32.

This posed a problem because there was no easy way to take off 280GB of information off of my external hard drive considering I didn’t have another drive handy.

Lo and behold, the heavens parted and Mike ended up picking up a 320GB hard drive WITH NETWORK CONNECTION (!!!) so I spent yesterday transferring the data, formatting the drive and transferring back. The entire process took about 12 hours I would figure.

So my issue is the fact that someone needs to get out there and make a new file system which is a global standard so we don’t end up in these situations! It would be highly convenient if I didn’t have to go through this process again!

Friday was a honey of an o day which made Krista and I decided to head to the Elephant and Castle for a few drinks after work. I enjoy the Elephant and Castle, mainly for it’s excellent proximity to the Rideau Centre (aka, it’s right there). After a few drinks and discussing life in general, I had to hightail it to Vero’s place as she was making supper (awwww yeah!).

Let’s backtrack to the crazy Friday afternoon I had and I couldn’t really have the time to check out my emails. I quickly scanned one from Vero to Mike which had bus directions to her place. I recall seeing the 16 and the 3 bus going to her place. I discussed this with Krista and she mentioned that the 16 may go out near Vero’s place but she wasn’t sure.

Fast forward to me coming outside to the bus stop, looking for the map and lo and behold, the #16 bus was there and was about to take off! Rather than waiting 30 minutes for another one, I hopped on board. The time is 5:45PM. I am due at Vero’s by 6PM.

As the bus snakes it’s way through random neighbourhoods, I realize this must be the bus Vero was commenting was VERY SLOW in getting to her place. No worries, I had some music and a book to keep me company.

I look up when the bus driver yells out “Last stop!”. What the heck? Last stop? I’m at the hospital somehow, nowhere near Vero’s pad! I ask the bus driver what’s happened and he says I had to get the #14, not the #16! Doh! Time: 6:20PM.

At this point, I had to hoof it back on two other buses to get to her place around 7PM. Talk about fashionably late! Vero, being the kindred spirit she is, was very nice about my ordeal on the bus and we sat down to have some amazing chili and veggies. YUM!

Case in point – No matter how much time you think you will save by taking a gamble on hopping onto a bus, it won’t save you much time if it brings you an hour out of your way.

Anyhow, the night went well after that. We headed out to MIFO where we caught an Improv game where Vero’s roommate was substituting for a team. It was a good time and I was surprised to see people drinking alcohol at the event! I had only gone to one match before and that was in the afternoon. This was a packed place on a Friday night. I find that Improv is a hit and miss. Sometimes you see some real hot teams and sometimes…not so much. I think you need a lot of practice together as a team to be really good at Improv.

I’m hoping that one day I’ll get to see Vero substitute at a game which would be great!

iplaying: (Can’t Stop) Me, I’m Not – Halo33 – The Limitless Potential

Well, it pays to do some research. I looked up my office building (Place du Portage) on Wikipedia as I had heard some grand rumours over the years like the entire complex holds 50,000+ employees, or it’s the second largest Government building in the world next to the Pentagon.

If you’ve heard me spew out this garbage, let it be known that if Wikipedia is right, then I am wrong.

Turns out that the entire building houses 10,000 employees and my tower houses 3,500 employees. Surely not the sprawling metropolis I thought it was!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_du_Portage

Turns out that if your cell phone company is telling you that the System access fees they charge you ($7-$9) are due to some federal cellphone regulation, then they be plain lying to yo’ face.

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/258049

My favourite part is when they speak about how it is comparable to buying a radio for $100 and then having them charge an extra $10 JUST BECAUSE. It does make sense when you think about it. The System Access Fee is just more of the monthly cost. Stop running around the point and put it into the monthly fee directly!

I must admit I am jealous of the marketing that went into that one. Genius.

“Gentlemen, let’s just take $7 off of the monthly price and tag it as a SYSTEM ACCESS FEE!”
(round of applause and an instant promotion to that guy who suggested it).

iplaying: Why Part Two – Collective Soul – Blender