The Nature Of Sleight Of Hand.

In the magical world of Ca-Na-Da, where kids eat bacon with their maple syrup and dollar coins are bigger than 25-cent coins, they have a show called Just for Laughs. It's segments of the Montreal International Comedy festival, cut up into half-hour bites of several comics. It used to be on CBC, then was on the Comedy Network, just before Whose Line Is It Anyway.

It was on this weekly, then nightly bastion of rerun that I first saw Penn & Teller, stage magicians. This was far before my current interest in magic, which was reignited with Brian Brushwood's work on Scam School making it accessible (cutting through the curtain that made magic seem impressive, astounding, but overall difficult and the amount of effort put in inequal to the amount of interest given by those watching).

In the 3-minute sketch, Penn played bass and Teller moved through the motions of putting out a cigarette and lighting a new one. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, I don't have to explain it. Just watch:

You see? You see? My 14-year-old mind was blown. It was the mysterious and astounding being shown as ordinary, then it somehow, through critical thinking and explanation, tends to come back around to astounding. To imagine the amount of practice, brainstorming, stage design, rehearsal, and troubleshooting involved in making something look as absolutely ordinary as this... well, it's astonishing. And it's only once you know that you understand.

It may be bullshit, but hey, they tell you that it is. And once you know it's bullshit, it frees you to understand it.

I think I lost myself with that last sentence. But I think people understand.

You understand, right?

Hyp(irate)ocritical

So I buy iTunes cards with some vague regularity. Let's say one or two at a go, maybe every 1-3 months. Usually I won't bother unless JB has some sort of deal like two $30 cards for $40. Most of the time I'll get one around the same time as The Word magazone and after I'm done with the magazine, I trawl through the reviews, make a list of the stuff I like and try to find it on iTunes. The reason for this is simple: most of the stuff The Word talks about isn't available to be pirated, so I stopped trying. Also, iTunes store is accurate, high-quality, and I know what I'm getting is the real deal.

Now I've been a pirate since Napster at university and am not averse to torrenting something if I'm not able to get it legally due to Coming-To-Australia-lag (I'm looking at you, Avatar: The Last Airbender, True Blood & Dollhouse). Conversely, I have the stance that when I like something created by the little guy (be it an iPhone App, or a podcast like TikiBarTv), I'll pay to help support them (like buying the Apps instead of jailbreaking, or buying merch for TBTV).

This leads to some interesting situations. Last month I had a $20 iTunes card. I read The Word, and found a bunch of tracks from Half-Man Half-Biscuit, Zoot Woman, Wintersleep, Hockey, and an oddball English Beat track. However, one of the reviews was for She Keeps Bees, a two=piece that drew comparisons to the White Stripes, which got my attention. Nowhere to be found on iTunes. So? Straight to PirateBay, where I found an EP and a CD. Turns out they weren't that impressive and I only kept a few tracks.

On the flipside of that anecdote, I bring you another: today, $30 iTunes card in hand, I looked up Kill It Kid, and bought two of their tracks, then, on Sam-from-work's recommendation, looked up Them Crooked Vultures. Quickly, I found 5 or 6 tracks I liked, then thought "Bugger me, I want the whole album." iTunes had it for $19.95 ($3 more than usual!) which gave me pause. I like the album, sure, but did I want to spend 2/3 of my rarity-finding-money, with half the magazine left to browse, on 1 album by one artist?

So I bought one single, then pirated the rest of the album.

Am I a hypocrite?

Also, here's a video from Zadi at Epic Fu, whose message about copyright I completely agree with.

Comical

I'm worried about the in-progress Scott Pilgrim movie. Not a big, angry, comic-book-nerd worry, like some people had for Watchmen. More like a little, quiet, deep-in-the-stomach worry, like the kind you get when you watch someone toss and catch an egg, or try to fix a TV by thumping it, or try to ride a bike for the first time. I've complete faith in Edgar Wright, but I just don't know. I don't know if they'll capture what I love about Scott Pilgrim the Comic in their quest to make the next Juno or whatever. I see stuff on the Oni Press site, or on Bryan Lee O'Malley's blog or Twitter and I get the worry: a little "nyeeeeeaah" feeling, like when you see someone balancing on an edge and you're worried for them.

Demos and Trials

Last night we had some people over for one of our dinner/movie marathon nights. The theme this time was Hellboy and tacos. I made beef tacos, chipotle roast pork tacos, and chicken fajitas. Booze flowed freely. We warmed up with the Predator Rifftrax and then rolled on to both Hellboy movies, the second in Blu-ray (whose audio we had trouble controlling; the dialogue was quiet, but the music and effects were loud enough to shake the walls!). We all got very sleepy as the night moved on. I totally blame the food. Fun was had by all.

So this morning, Tanja goes up to the mountains to see her ma, and I get a bit of a lie-in (and checking of my Twitter feed from bed, hee). I decided after a morning of updating album art on iTunes (yes, I'm that kind of user) I'll check out the demos I downloaded for my PS3. So, my thoughts, in my patented bullet-point-style:

[-]Bioshock: Adored the story and the look and the steam-punk feel of the game, but hated, HATED the game play. I ended up using all my special weapon energy just trying to stun someone or all my bullets trying to get a headshot with the revolver to the point where I fall back on the basic wrench weapon 9 times out of 10. It does however, make a satisfying *thwack* when you wallop someone. And like I twittered, wrench don't run out. I might see if Tommy or someone has this for me to borrow.

[-]Kane & Lynch: Dead Men: third-person shooters have never been my forte, but this one lost my interest immediately by not letting me invert the y-axis, so i couldn't FIND the enemies, let alone hit them. Oh, and the squad AI? Boneheaded. NEXT!

[-]Soul Caliber 4: Very pretty! However, as I explained to Ted yesterday, I haven't enjoyed buying a fighting game since Mortal Kombat 2. Possibly because I don't play much versus, so it's just me bashing my head against the single-player mode. This was the problem I had when I (briefly) owned Virtua Fighter 4. Might rent this (along with DC vs MK) but would never buy.

[-]Lemmings: 2-d Lemmings! But it's so hard to play without a mouse and I'm not buying one just for this.

[-]Timeshift: ZOMG did I love this. It's a shooter, but you have the ability to stop, slow, and reverse time. Think Prince of Persia with guns. You can take the gun out of someone's have, move behind him, and see him realise what's happened before you cap him. Also, the guns are great, in particular, the sniper-crossbow, which fires glowing arrows that explode after a 1-second delay. So you get to see the guy react before he explodes into a pinkish mist. All the explosions look shiny in the slow-mo as well. I was shocked Gamespot gave it so low a rating (6.5!) when it's one of those rare shooter that I actually have fun playing. Definietly looking for the full version.

[-]Warhawk: See previous entry. I've got the full version winging its way to me now, but I could have happily played the demo forever.

[-]Wipeout HD: Gorgeous-looking and smooth-as, and I was a HUGe fan of Wipeout on the Saturn, but I just can't seem to get into this. Also, Ted is better than me at this/all video games ever.

[-]Dead Space: Creepy, scary look, caused a funny aneurysm moment when I "killed" something, only to have it cut me in half as I walked past its "corpse". Ted response: "Yeah, those'll do that." Not sure I could stand a whole game of it, though.

[-]Lego Batman: Cute, funny, like the look of it, but ugh, jump puzzles. Freakin' jump puzzles. Never mind. And only 1 punch and 1 throw button? That's it for combat?

[-]Pixeljunk: Eden: Very wierd, and seemingly simple game. Not sure if it's hooked me.

[-]Killzone 2: Blah. Boring shooter.Guns are so "accurate" that YOU have to be a staggeringly good shot to hit ANYTHING. Although Brammall at work just thinks I don't like it because I suck at it.


Oh, and without warning, Firefox has gone back to have the "open background tab" option, and opening a new tab when I click a link and write in an address. Thank Moby.

Falling behind

Ack! I've been meaning to update this thing for the last week. First I wanted to blog about the terrible morning I had, then about how I tend to subconsciously boobytrap myself when I'm stressed, causing me to try to grab things, misjudge, and knock other things over, stressing me more. Then after a few days I still wanted to blog about the morning from hell and was starting to wonder why I wanted to blog about that so much. Then I thought about blogging about how I tend to hang onto bad experiences, turning them over and over in my head. But I didn't.

So now I'm blogging about how I didn't blog about all that.

The fires in Victoria are terrible beyond belief, and watching the newscasters hovering like vultures waiting for someone to step out of the wreckage to say how it feels to have all your belongings burnt to a crisp makes me a bit sick. On the plus side, I found a bottle of Gold Wasser which tastes lovely and will allow me to make Duck and Covers.

Mark Millar sums it up.

I was watching an interview on iFanboy with Scottish comics writer Mark Millar (who's written all sorts of things, like Ultimates and Civil War and stuff, and has, I can say with a staunch record of heterosexuality, the cutest accent ever). His latest project is called War Heroes and it's set in Iraq and it involves super-powered parties on both sides of the conflict. He's been getting a lot of flak for writing about and commenting on American politics while not being an American (which is dumb, because as Tanja points out, if that were the case, only Germans could write about Nazi Germany). Millar's response was basically that an outsider can often get a better view due to the lack of personal involvement. He summed it up with a line that I'm stealing for use whenever I can:

"You don't have to be a horse to be a vet."

Classic.

Well, there goes my night.

Genius.

Star Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles" told in LolCat form.

Inevitable, really.

So tech guy came out.

Called twice, once from his office, once from exchange. Signs were leading towards faulty modem. He gets here. Runs a reset, no joy. He checks the line on his modem, gets full signal. Looks like faulty modem. He's just packing up when he looks at the splitter by the modem. He notices the splitter is closer to the modem than it is to the wall. He reads the writing.

"Hmmm," he says. "looks like your splitter is backwards."

I tell him it's always been like that, and it worked until last week. He flips it. Resets again.

It fuckin' works.

Apparently the backwards splitter meant I couldn't get line sync after a reset. Problem solved.

So. Wasn't the modem.

I'm happy the Net's back. What i'm NOT happy with is thus:

Why the bollocks couldn't PHONE tech support ask a few questions?!? Like "have you reset the modem?" Or ANYTHING?!?!?

I have a new site to be hooked on.

It's a true Hydra site in that upon reading it, you end up (while reading) opening up 15 other windows to check later. This is where I started. Fans of Transformers, Buffy, Angel, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, The Simpsons, anime, professional wrestling and any other nerdcore niche will love this. Just go read.

Yesterday at lunch and last night I lost an hour to this page without meaning to. It sucks you in, man!

The Joy of Jonathan Coulton.

This isn't what i was going to blog about before, but it's something to talk about anyway. Jonathan Coulton is awesome. I first his song Code Monkey from the just-ok show of same name, then got the full version and found the song that most encapsulates how I feel about my workplace. After some iTunes digging, I also found songs of the following topics:
[-]Having an ex-boss try to negotiate his way through a door to eat your brains (because he's a zombie) framed as a performance management and development meeting.
[-]How customer-built-test-tube babies can lead to a doctor being hands-on with your missus
[-]How it's hard to celebrate the holidays when you've been banished to a barren asteroid by robot overlord, er, I mean protectors.
[-]And of course, how even though the girl you love broke your heart, it's ok, because it'll be the future soon and you can genetically engineer that stuff away. Plus robots and flying cars!

Oh, and for all you DIYers out there, Coulton makes all of his music copyright free if it's not used for profit. So TONS of machinanima and other videos have sprung up for his songs.

Most impressive, though, is the Thing-A-Week series (from the Wiki):

"Thing a Week" is the name that Coulton gave to a creative experiment which ran from 16 September 2005 to 30 September 2006. In this project, Coulton undertook to record 52 musical pieces in the course of a year, one each week. This target was mostly achieved, missing only a few weeks. The objectives were: (a) to push the artist's creative envelope by adopting what Coulton describes as a "forced-march approach to writing and recording"; (b) to prove to himself that he was capable of producing creative output to a deadline; and (c) to test the viability of the Internet and Creative Commons as a platform capable of supporting a professional artist financially. Early indications are that the experiment succeeded in generating a large number of high quality songs, boosting sales of music downloads, expanding Coulton's public presence and enlarging his fan base."

I look forward to forcing music upon you soon!

Friday Off

dDue to my ATLing this week, I have to work a Saturday and have Friday off. It's been ages since I had a weekday free that wasn't annual leave or a sick day.

I went into the city and got a new cover for my iPod. I had bought one before, but apparently the new 80 gig Pods are thinner than the old ones. So I had to get a silicone case that could stretch.

Got an interview next week with this place. Looks promising.

Watching the Rifftrax version of Eragon. It's silly.

Went to see the David Hylton Band play at the Sando last night and took a buttload of pictures. He won't be short of Myspace pics for a while. I also slightly overimbibed. Well, I don't think I did, but my head this morning seems to think so.

I also dragged my laptop into the CBD looking for Wireless networks that all the cool kids are talking about. All I could find was the Tesltra Hotspot one. I ain't paying for Internetz!

Free malling

Yet ANOTHER reason why Parkour is so damned cool.

Oh, well.

Ok, now I'm mad.

I noticed through the Diggnation podcast yesterday that EA was giving away Command & Conquer Gold as Freeware. Fucking great, right? I loved that game like some kind of computerised, violent, surrogate child. So I download the ISO file, all 500 megs of GDI and 500 Megs of Nod disc. So I extract the files to a folder and try to run the install.

(( Error: Not all files are present. Please run the installation from the CD-ROM. ))

I don't HAVE the CD-ROM!

I've tried it every which way. I downloaded a patch off the website, tried running install within WinRAR, tried using the Autorun feature in the file. No fucking go. Knew it was too good to be true.

I, Drinkbot

This is too cool for words.

Since I'm so lazy...

...I'll just repost from an email I sent my mom:

"As for my teeth, I went to see that dentist that Tanja's been going to for 20 years (since she was a tiny wee thing) yesterday and he gave me some shocking news: I only have one abcess! Not two! And the one I have is small enough that he can do a root canal from the back of the tooth, and seal it with a resin filling. No pulling, no crown. He said the other dentist guy was, in his words, "trying to shaft me". So I'm going to still have quite a few appointments, and it'll still be expensive, but not nearly as much. Good news. Well, not GREAT news, but better than before."

And we are living la vida broadbanda.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

Yeah, I wish I was meaning that in a more figurative way, but no. I do want them. See, I'm probably going to lose them. Well, not both front teeth, but the right one and the one to the right of the right one. It turns out that those infections I've been having every so often for the last year or so (you know, the ones where my face swells up like a boxer and I'm in a rather unnecessarily large amount of pain?) are signs that I have a couple of abcesses. Which means either a root canal and crown or they remove the teeth and I either get dentures or bridgework. It's going to be pricey. We're talking at least 4 grand and above, depending on what we do, and how many appointments it takes. Plus, I'm going to need a bunch of fillings and cleanings until then, so I'm basically going to be getting dental work until February of next year.

On a happier note, training at work is going well. There was a Fairy Tale dress up day, and in true Pratchettian traditions, I went as one of the evil overlord's Dread Guards. You know, the ones who run in when the baddie yells "Guards! Sieze him!" and get slaughtered? Yeah. Me. Craig, however, was the Fire. From Bambi. Calls of "Don't make me burn you!" resounded through the centre.

Oh, and we got Broadband. Well, I say got, I mean getting. It turns up on Monday.

Locate Me, Musically. Hey, that rhymes!

I am spending far too much time on this site when I should be working. I love being told what to think!

Music Map

Oh, and...

...I got a new job. Sales Executive. At a publishing company that does career guides. I'm to be selling to schools, colleges, libraries, etc, as well as looking after this website, adding links and tiles and stuff. Decent pay, 9 to 5 hours, Monday to Friday. Huzzah. Hope I don't screw it up.

Oh, and...

...I've decided to reformat InSprite into a blog. No real reason, it's just that I HATE FTPing. Heavily. Hate it.

So here: Go see. Nothing new, but I haven't looked at some of those old ones in a while, and jeepers. The first few don't really hold up under scrutiny.