Eye Over You

The proliferation of mobile devices and cost of GPS hardware implementations have raised interesting new methods for positioning end-points on the globe. IP address lookups are completely inaccurate (when in downtown Toronto near the lakeshore, one IP locator placed me near the 401, about 10km away.) I thought it was interesting that the iPod Touch OS doesn’t contain GPS (as its iPhone sibling), but instead uses Skyhook Wireless, a location lookup based on the (password secured or not) wireless router MACs within your range. Needless to say, it’ll only be accurate in dense urban areas. But almost pinpoint it is.

Jays’ Fan Duality

The meteoric rise and fall of the Toronto Blue Jays this season has allowed fans to experience all the emotions that happen to a championship club after their fall from grace. Blame escalating salaries, small markets, poor management, or under-performing athletes; sometimes it’s fun to just be along for the ride. The past 10 days: not so much.

R-tard Writing

The article “Underrated Overground: Give Contemporary R&B a Chance”, published in Best Music Writing 2008 praises overproduction, abandonment of autonomous authenticity, the embrace of corporate-branded commercialism, and lyrical gems such as, “No I don’t strip in the club/Nor trick in the club/But I got friends that do/So my girls that’s getting the dough/The best way they know/No hate girl, I got you.”

I’m a Vaporware Marksman

Someday I’ll figure out how to finish what I started.

Like a Burmese Python

I guess Microsoft’s sad attempt at playing catch-up on the social media game led them to start pushing Messenger status updates on their rarely-visited Windows Live user profiles in order to force an activity feed that nobody will follow. No biggie, except by default they’re published to anyone.

I Can’t Bear to See It End

Paypal Development: The Art of Obfuscation

Create simple management tools for a subscription site. Find your payment gateway, solidify a set of packages, and program the elements to interface recurring payment options with different payment methods. At this point in e-commerce’s maturity, such systems should be dead simple to implement but some jerks are still around to ruin your day in the name of poor management and pursuit of the Yankee Dollar. Enter PayPal.

Never Change

As Conan’s time winds down before moving in Leno’s slot, I think I’ll most miss the obscene bit characters and hilariously inappropriate on-site shoots. Last night’s episode contained yet another terrific sequence involving alcohol and an awkward Irish man, but the episode went into side-splitting territory once Norm MacDonald and Gordon Ramsay got together. Late Night always had a low-budget vibe to it that allowed anything goes, so it’ll be disheartening if his humous has to be toned down to fit in with the pedestrian Leno demographic (hey, tell another fecking Lewinsky joke!)

Week in Music, February 1-7

Contrived – Blank, Blank, Blank

Best Buy is Murdering Our Insect Population

A pair of iAudio 8805 Metallic Earphones purchased (only because I had a $50 gift card) from the Bay/Dundas Best Buy contained a decomposing corpse of our friendly flying brethren within its packaged seal.

Poor little bugger.

Week in Music, January 25-31

The Armada – The Armada

Footy Training, Day 1

Shrinebuilder

Shrinebuilder is a new underground metal supergroup of sorts that has a blog called We Burn Through the Night that’s updated by Neurosis guitarist Scott Kelly. These updates make me believe he’s a man whose intensity places himself constantly on the brink of a psychotic breakdown. The line-up:

Guitar: Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus/Obsessed/Spirit Caravan/Hidden Hand)
Guitar: Scott Kelly (Neurosis/Tribes of Neurot)
Bass: Al Cisneros (Sleep/Om)
Drums: Dale Crover (Melvins)

Fearless

Here’s a pretty fascinating documentary on the 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232 created for the TV series First Person. You may recognize this story as being the inspiration for Peter Weir’s Fearless starring Jeff Bridges but this is a very different perspective on the story.

Abandonment

Ageless art begets poor parody. Now everyone can agree that Daniel-Day Lewis’s portrayal of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood was one of the most solid acting performances in recent memory. While trying to deny the fact I wear conversation pieces, I came across a couple solid impressions that I thought deserved attention.

Unnecessary Revisits

Why not ring in the New Year with a post on the upcoming remake of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left? From the trailer (which tells the whole story, of course), you can gleam, “Rated R for sadistic brutal violence including a rape and disturbing images, language, nudity and some drug use.” Fascinating. Sounds like a must-watch.

Deus Ex

Given my propensity for procrastination and petty pretentiousness, my alliterate self sometimes take its sweet time when it comes to taking in media that has long ago hit critical mass, such as the case with Deus Ex. While its namesake cues intercourse jokes amongst the intercourseless demographic, this super fucking subversive action FPS/RPG title was created by the niche of Ion Storm the unwashed (literally) gaming hardcores really can’t hate (well, aside from the sequel.)

Best Music of 2008

Another year of quantifying tastes, this time with more links and less prolix. Begin!

He’s Going for That Anti-Marketing Dollar

That’s a good market. One (and only one) of my eyebrows were raised by Facebook Connect’s implementation policies, specifically two clauses:

Best Programming Error Message, Ever

I came across this doozy today:

Catchable fatal error: Argument 2 passed to Opm_Project_Milestone::findForProjectInTimeframe() must be an instance of int, integer given