the truth about fermentation

I was laughing, and with the volume muted.

For those interestinged, or not in the know, I've written up a mashup of the weekend's events as they pertain to the Lost Ring athletes' return home and the Lost Sport of Olympia, over at wikibruce (including numerous video links).
* Lost Ring Allies Travel Home

I plan to write up my own personal take on the ARG soon.

Jane's posted a behind the scenes on her own blog which reveals a lot about the team behind the project, including the actors who played the characters themselves.

Congratulations for an epic-scale project, and a long, amazing experience. It was an enormous journey from beginning to end - a labyrinth in its own right :)

My current big ARG right now is another 42 production, for Resistance 2 on the PS3. The element is similar in style to the Dark Knight's periodic 'trails', though this comes back essentially to a twice-a-week update schedule, where Friday reveals results of a vote, and the Tuesday becomes a hunt for top secret documents.

I've definitely enjoyed the puzzles so far. I'm wondering where the veteran puzzle-sovlers are though! Seems like the majority of the people following the arg are relative new-comers to the genre (which a great thing!). I've been participating in these weekly puzzle trails, and kind of surprised at typically being within the first five people to submit the final code (identifying top secret documents).

( Anyway, here's a brief overview of a couple of the nicely formed puzzles we've had to push through... )

If you're not yet following this game yet, the main sites to start with are ProjectAbraham.com, GetAWarJob.com, and AmericaFirstAmericaOnly.com. The player wiki is at fallofman.wikibruce.com (linked to the timeline). The video game itself is set in an alternate timeline (a different history than ours) in the 50's during a war-time with (what else) aliens/genetic mutations, etc... I'm not fully up to speed on the franchise's story yet :)

My favourite RPG-of-old is still making its rounds today! Via referrer stats from on my bardstaleonline.com site, I came across this article Retro: Tales of the Unknown: The Bard's Tale where a new discoverer of the classic trilogy discusses his experience, and reflects on dungeon-rompers of yore... and touching on how the art of mapping is virtually forgotten these days. hey, even mapping was covered to a degree in a recent ARG - Eldritch Errors had a period of 'exploring' a virtual landscape and generating an overhead map of this dreamscape. I found that intriguing even though I wasn't heavily participating at that point.

There's also an article the likes of this one posted by steve at mysdirection called Puzzles are for Geezers about the shift in gaming from heavy puzzle-oriented games to FPS, action, run-and-gun, etc...

Man, gaming has evolved over the past couple of decades. Has it really been that long? And the feel of that kind of gameplay just won't be captured again.
I think this is why I love ARGs - it's like it has the potential to bring back all the old elements of classic gaming (from a puzzle/intellectual standpoint) in a new form, only the story takes place in real life. (and yeah, I prefer realism and believability in this genre over 'role playing' stories, like pretending to be legitimate secret agents and whatnot)

Comments from that Retro article seem to be rallying behind Etrian Odyssey on teh DS as a valiant return to a similar mapping-style game. I've made a note of it for if/when I ever get a DS :P
Anyway, I won't be taking down bardstaleonline.com any time soon :)

-----the personality meme!

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test...

I decided to try the test a couple of times, kind of a habit now just to see how 'accurate' the results may be (testing variation and whatnot). A couple of questions I could gone either way, so it's nice to know what effect different answers may have :)
So I think I'm somewhere between ( The Daydreamer and The Guru )

-----Slow-mo imagery

This ultra-slow motion video footage of lighting is astounding. Now it makes me more curious about the point we learned in science that lighting travels from the ground to the sky :P (I could google-fu and I know there's an answer, but I just like watching this video :)

-----Braid

Having played through the awesomeness that is Braid in the XBL Arcade (and occasionally working on the 'bonus' feature), I'm still greatly impressed with its ambient soundtrack. And conveniently, the official site has a page listing the songs/artists included in the game with links to downloads and info.

-----Random engrish!

I lol'd -



-----Pushup challenge

Week 2 of hundredpushups ends tonight - sets of 15, 15, 12, 12, and 15+ pushups with 2 minute breaks. Then a re-evaluation this weekend for next week. So far I've been over the max each day, which is good... but I think it's going to really start kicking in the next couple of weeks... week 6, for instance, ends with *9* sets of 27, 27, 23, 23, 23, 23, 20, 20 and 56+ on the high end o_O and by the site's wording, it doesn't sound too many successfully finish week 6 in actually 6 weeks. :P
The final test is 100 consecutive pushups (potentially broken up slightly into smaller chunks if necessary). man...

-----Olympics, FTLR

Olympic closing ceremonies are on August 24th, Sunday (though, Beijing time, so likely late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, Live.

I think we're expecting something The Lost Ring related. Currently most of the main chracters are actually in Beijing, preparing for a final event (including *cough* Jane McG ;) Don' know if there will be anything officially Lost Ring related in the actual ceremonies, but hopefully something those of us following the game will see and recognize (even if it's just a creative element of the ceremony to people who have no clue)

But Sunday will be the culmination.
Now, how long will people keep playing the lost-sport labyrinth run after the game's done? :)

ALso, this video message made me smile :D hehe

-----Leftovers

I've still gotta get write-ups done from my Hollywood/Hellboy trip, and ARGfest '08 :P

Also, I really, really want to start playing volleyball again! When the tourney start up again? *sniff*

ARGfest:



eta: argfest should always be at a hotel with wifi internet.

fanha, why?! Now it's in my head :P hehe



Why does it have to be so catchy? :)
I do love the whole world though. Now to figure out how "boom de ah dah" is relevent... *head asplode*

100pushups is going strong (well, for 1 day so far). Managed to eek out 3 over the max for day 1 of week 1. Tonight, day 2!
(no I don't plan on updating every single day :P)


Running hellboy.wikibruce.com as an ARG wiki and partial fan site, registered with bigredsqueakyclean.com has reaped another reward... the "Big Red's Private Room" (for the top 10 most active fan-sites, of which the wiki is ranked #2) had an exclusive offer where the first 5 to email a specific address would be sent a Hellboy II poster signed by Guillermo and the cast of Hellboy II.

This makes little-missed-getting-autographed-Hellboy-figure happy:



Definitely another poster to frame nicely, and share the wall with the Peter-Cullen-signed Transformers poster.

Before:


During:


After:


Ah Cheers, I <3 you so!

Enormous propane facility explosion in Toronto at 3:45am this morning... only just got around to checking out the news...


* Canadian Press news article
* CTV active coverage
- subway area closed down, a no fly zone, evacuations, highway closed... it's nuts.

Loads of videos:
* from the 401
* long coverage (about 16-17 seconds in is the major explosion that began the nightmare)
* blurry but shocking (about 1:50 in you see the enormity of the main explosion)
* close view from higher up
* street level with emergency vehicles
* high quality close up
and there's much more, of course...

and a few pages of pics on flickr

Thankfully so far no injuries or fatalities... waiting word from the facility itself apparently, but the nearby homes seem fine (well, the people, not necessarily the houses)

So tunaman just linked to an interesting exercise program - One Hundred Pushups in 6 weeks.
It's been some time since I've done consecutive pushups (within the year at least), so I was curious. I didn't do as many as I thought I'd be able to (big surprise).

My initial test produced 20 pushups before I had to stop. I might have been able to squeeze out 1 or two 2 more but I could also feel some stress on my appendix incision from October :P. (I've found if I clench really, really hard for a while with my stomach, I can start to feel the incision stressing - wouldn't be good if something happened there).

So, I guess my limit for this test, technically, is when I start to feel that wound... =/ thankfully, that was pretty much my actual limit, heh.

I think I may try this... see if I can get to 100 pushups in 6 weeks. Based on their initial grid, I'm starting at rank 3 of 7 (and they report that most people start between 2 and 3).

I'm thinking... start on Monday, and do the Mon-Wed-Fri weekly plan.
It's not a hugely complex or lofty exercise plan with big expectations or goals, but it'll be an interesting and positive thing to stick in the weekly schedule, and a good goal to aim for :).

Also, Nighthawk brought it up again at uf, but this xkcd totally needs to be bookmarked and brought out when forum/blog debates get heated...



:D

Garfield minus Garfield

Posted in the 0hyourgod debate community...

Dear God,

My name is Susie and I am 8 years old. My mother and my father were recently murdered. Why did this happen? How could you let it happen? I am so sad I don't know what to do, or how to live. What am I supposed to do? Where am I to go without my parents? Why can't you stop these things from happening? Why do you let bad people get away? I'm very sad but also a little angry.

Dear Susie,

I am very sorry for your loss. Such things are very tragic and indeed a terrible evil. You are young, so I won't be too hard on you. In fact, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: people aren't good or bad, the things they do are good or bad. Your question is asked by a lot of people, but what these people fail to understand is that there are no "good" people or "bad" people. I can't just pick and choose on something that doesn't exist. Should I punish only some people, and not others? Should I ignore the liar, and smite the killer? Should I punish the cheating husband, even if he has kids, while I let the man who hates his brother go free? Where do I draw the line? Who do I punish and who do I not punish? Do you want me to punish you, Susie? Remember last Sunday? Yes, I know. Do you want me to spank you? I don't think you do Susie. My hand is great, yea it is mighty. What should I do? Who should determine what gets punished, and what goes unnoticed? Is that any way to run things? That wouldn't be a very just thing to do. Indeed, if "bad people" existed, we could just get rid of them right off the bat, before they did anything at all, right? And we wouldn't have much of anything or anyone left if we did that, would we?

God is a best-selling author, Creator, Lord of Lords and King of Kings whose books have been translated into over 200 languages and syndicated on six continents.

thought it might be interesting to re-post... now you may continue on your merry way :P

ETA: obviously, ymmv about it; not surprisingly, the original post is stirring up quite a hornet's nest (note:excessive language; and by language I mean foul, not grammar :P)

(was tempted to say 'ketchup', but that would just be lame :P)

So I haven't really been blogging much, but I've been twittering like mad (though Felicia Day's twittering at Comic-Con takes the take *cough*)

So let's see if I can sum up the recent, oh, some period of time...

Today
Starbucks today! And missed my bus... so I had a nice long walk to work, rather than waiting for the next. That's a good thing right?
I'm also wearing my Cheers shirt. <3 Cheers.


Find the Lost Ring
In an effort to help save the worlds, I offered to do a city labyrinth, counting towards the 27 cities necessary to create a portal to parallel worlds through which certain athletes at the upcoming olympics can travel home. Sunday evening I completed it! woo!
It took planning a labyrinthine path around streets and various places, as accurate to the real shape as possible (which isn't easy in Kitchener!). I managed to get a route approved by Eli, which takes a walk around downtown and Victoria Park. A very picturesque route :).
Once approved, I was sent a trackstick (the tool everyone requires to 'prove' their completion of a labyrinth 'run') - a GPS tracker which records exact coordinates up to every 5 seconds, and is able to export directly to Google Earth to view the path on a satellite image.
The result:

( Some of my favourite photos from this 2 hour trek... )

And now Kitchener R on the map! w00t! (but to clarify, Kitchener wasn't the location of the first modern lost sport game - it was actually in Guelph, though I did help record it ;) so, same general vicinity; about 20 minutes apart or so, hehe)

Also recently just got the video up for the Toronto labyrinth I did with dreamerblue, hojo, and melody - on youtube.
edit: oops, already blogged that :P


Journey to the Center... aw forget it
- That 3-D movie. Saw it recently in 3D (for $13), and walked out with the only thought being I paid $13 to see a 3D movie. That's really all the movie has going for it. Nice 3D scenes. Even then, the best scene was the closing sequence. Well, perhaps a roller-coaster ride through some mine shafts. But FWIW, it's a children's movie. It's not as 'freaky' as you might expect, so I say take your kids. It'll be entertaining for them. But for feasibility? Ok, aside from the obvious fantasy/sci-fi element... realistic details (like cell phone use, for one) - absolutely ridiculous; I actually guffawed out loud at one point (and that never happens!). I still laugh thinking about it... oh my.
Plus it didn't help very much sitting next to a large group of kids (probably a birthday gang) who were sipping pop, chewing popcorn, laughing and talking (loudly), and commenting about the awesome 3Dness, even reaching out to the screen every time something popped out - throughout the entire movie.
Anyway, it'll only be worth seeing in 3D in the theatre. So if you're going to see it, see it now. And only go for the 3D :P


Vertical Skyline
Our band is still doing stuff... not too often, but we are. We recently played at a fundraiser at the Church of God (that name's like "First Baptist" afaic - unbelievable common :P). This one's a black/jamaican church. And man can they jam! We were on last, with a 1/2 hour set or so. Still reeling from the gospel choir, the pure jazz vibe with some other artists, and just... man... pure musical genius. Thankfully Ken really knows how to engage the crowd, and we managed to provide, from we observed, quite a close. Awesome time. And it was the first 'gig' where we're actually getting paid (as in, money no longer goes straight to paying off the CD/studio time, but split among us; though even so, it's not a lot :) but the experience was payment enough).


Comic Con 2008
Having been a doing a lot of traveling lately, I'm getting more anxious to get up and out and around... seeing all the immediate coverage of ComicCon this year (twitter is a godsend), now I'm really tempted to book tickets and attend next year. I'm even tempted to work towards attending PAX (which, as thunderclap8 noted, will be on the east coast, NYC, in 2010). Annual geekish events are getting enticing :)... and really, I thank ARGfest for my getting used to traveling alone :)
Anyway, CC08 had a bunch of ARG/viral content... campaigns related to Resistance 2 (sony/42), District 9 (blomkamp movie), Fringe (fox tv), Infex (graphic novel), Lost (abc tv), The Prisoner (amc remake), Eagle Eye (labeouf movie), True-Blood (hbo series)
...it's getting hard not to want to attend!


ARGFest 08
I'll have to rant about my 26 hour return trip in a different entry... the one where I review ARGfest '08 (though the return trip really isn't reflective of ARGfest in the slightest)


Dr. Horrible
on Extra.
Watch. Now.


Twitter link dropping
* The curse of the Dark Knight (it starts...)
* Movie lineup Fail (a rare legitimate occurance...)
* Foxtrot (more geek humour ;)
* Labfly's recent presentation - ARG Pitfalls (great slideshow, yay Jan!)
* On the Manitoba Greyhound stabbing/beheading (still in awe)
* The Onion: The Beijing Olympis - Are they a trap?
* Tamron 15x zoom lens o_O (29mm-432mm)
* Twitter as newswire (news about the recent Cali earthquake spread in seconds, minutes before the first official news report)
* The Onion: Study finds young people remain apathetic about office politics
* Tr2n (Tron 2). That is all.
* Just watched the Caruso one-liners again, followed by Jim Carrey's take.
* ARGN became sci-fi's site-of-the-week, yay

Ah, that never gets old! You can never have too much... *shades* ...of a good thing! YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

And just because I can, once again I say to you:
( Happy Monday! )

(and you know, I really like the look in this entry icon... I'd so go for it again if I didn't have a big growing bald spot on the top of my head :P)

:D

This is unbelievable:


"Western Spaghetti."

Toronto labyrinth video is done and complete. Got it rendered last night and up to youtube.
Now seeing if I can get a labyrinth approved for Kitchener and help save the world! :P



That was a fun task! :)

These are the two designs I have currently for Kitchener:



I personally like the first one, not just because it's smaller, but I think it's a little more reflective, more scenic, etc... they're both downtown, and they both start and end at decent landmarks.
The first starts at the historic Joseph Schneider House, and ends at the clock tower.
The second starts at a helicopter pad and ends at... my house :P

I still like the first...

I just got my wireless bill from Rogers for July.
For context: I've been to the US for two weekends this months, with my primary form of (cheap) communication being texting and twitter.
I purchased a plan from Rogers that pretty much covers everything I'd do - texting, local calls, evening/weekends, etc. I'm covered.

I failed to read beyond the prominent wording... (my bad)

* Roaming incoming calls are charged, as well as outgoing, plus long distance.
* Roaming sent text msgs don't count towards the month's included plan (even doubled up, for instance) - they are each charged extra.
* Roaming data airtime doesn't count towards the monthly limit.

-> I was charged 41 minutes roaming airtime + $12 long distance, for a total of $75.20
-> I was charged 192 roaming/international sent txt msgs (my plan included only 10 at $.15/ea, the rest at $.60/ea), for a total of $110.70
-> I was charged for 300KB of roaming data (a session or two of trying for mobile twitter), for a total of $9.00 (300KB!!)

All this on top of my regular monthly plan. Plus tax.

This month ended up $194 more than usual. (I expected some long distance charges, however, for some calls I made)

I immediately called up Rogers customer support looking for some sort of mercy, some form of remedy.

The first person I talked to, once I'd explained the situation, surprisingly without question reversed the roaming airtime and data charge - so, less $72.30 right off the bat.

To handle the text msging, she passed me to another service department, and the rep was very nice, very helpful, very knowledgable, and reduced my text msging by 50% - less $54.60

Between the two of them, my $282 bill was reduced to $152.
No questions asked.

Granted, it may very well be a one time grant, but honestly, I've always been happy with Rogers, and this is a great demonstration as to why.

Of course from now on, I just have to deal with all that is (or isn't) included with their plans, but thankfully they're understanding and competent in this context - the accounting side of things at least...

As for tech support? blech. Avoid at all costs :P

also, iPhone upgrade is still $300 + a small plan increase =/