:: theMediaman journal ::

:: Thursday, August 30, 2001 ::

Only 31 days this month, eh? Looks like I've got to speed up my move. The loose stuff will be moving tonight, but I'm babysitting my bubble-loving niece in Ajax Friday night. I think I may take my computer down tonight so that it can be moved, leaving only the big stuff for Saturday.

My new place is huge. The video capture feature on my camera only takes 15-16 second shots, but if I group them together I can post them on the web tomorrow. That's the best way I can think of to show the place to everyone who won't be helping me move this weekend.

Oh.... and if you want to help me move... feel free. I've got some genuinely big stuff to move and only a Ford Escort hatchback to do it in. I'll be getting Paul to grab the van from work so I can move some of the bigger stuff, but stealing borrowing John & Seiko's sofa will probably have to be done at a later date.

All this has to be done before Monday... I need spend that day at Nathan Phillips Square.

>>>>>>>>>>

On another note, don't watch Jackie Chan's "The Prisoner". He has top billing but only 10 minutes of screen time. Most of it is Sammo Hung (third billing), Tony Leung (fifth billing!) and a really, really lame plot - even for a Hong Kong action flick. The movie ends - and keeps going for another fifteen minutes afterward. Not even the sparce action sequences could save this one - it relied too much on gunplay rather than good-old-fashioned street fighting. There is a clever twist at the end, but it's lost in the sub-idiot scripting for the previous 85 minutes.

Definately one of the worst movies I've sat all the way through.... but The Bodyguard still reigns as the worst.

:: Stephen 3:12 PM [+] ::

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Just a few quick notes so I don't go a full week without updating.

I'm starting the move tonight. My new place is up near Major Mac/Yonge St. (see the map). I get the key tonight after work and will probably make a couple of loads from Bayview/Sheppard. One of the most difficult things to get used to will be the distance from the 401. It was kinda nice being 30 minutes from anywhere in Toronto and only 20 minutes from my Ajax family. However, last night I closed my window before bed to shut out the noise - but the glass and garbage bag curtains did little to muffle the downshifting dump-trucks. Falling asleep to the lullabye of V6 Civics burning by will not be missed.

Last night I went to the first (big) meeting of "Flash in TO" - an organization of Flash designers. Most of the people there were students at Humber college, so I wound up telling stories more than hearing them.... However, it was one of the first venues I've been in for months where I could rant on about my trials and tribulations with Disney Online.

The programming I did for Bitcasters didn't even come up - that excellent online game that I did for Disney in a bizarrely unrelated story. A few prospects were met, but for the most part I was interested in getting my foothold in the Toronto Flash users' scene. Working in Markham rather than King St W between Spadina and Dufferin results in A LOT of missed opportunities and contacts. Hopefully my participation in this group will compensate.

*A definate bonus*
A number of cute women there - half were post/part grads that decided to move into Digital Media. Deja Vu. One really interesting person (forgive me for forgetting your name) has family in Japan and feigned interest in stories about my trip. Bless her. The other half were WebGRRLs - Bif Naked-types with cooler T-shirts than my usual Eddie Bauer-wear.

There's an eerie thing I learned while playing around on IMDB (which I am prone to do). In 1891 there was an actor named "Steve Clark" born. He was in nearly 240 films - but mostly as an extra in 1930's - 1950's westerns. Near the end of his life in 1954 he was in a number of 50's Sci-Fi's including "Phantom From Space" - never as a star or co-star, but usually in the top dozen billings. The spooky thing is his birthday - February 26 - the same as mine.

Same name, same birthday - I gotta see if I can find one of his movies. If it seems familiar, I might be a reincarnated Steve!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - goes for souls too, I suppose.

Also, "Doug" from the latter seasons of "Wonder Years" and is kind of like my friend, Paul, was played by Brandon Crane - who has the EXACT SAME BIRTHDAY.

I don't know what that means, but it's still cool. Find out who shares your birthday!

:: Stephen 2:36 PM [+] ::

...

What?

A Freddy Prinze Jr. movie with only two words? Is my assumption about the "three word rule" for teen movies wrong ?

No, just flawed. I have to modify the rule.

If we look back through some of the big movies that Freddy Prinze Jr. has been in, we get all three-word titles:

Head Over Heels
Boys And Girls
Down To You, and
She's All That.

Another one of note, is Wing Commander, which also has only two words... what is the pattern?

Teen girl cheesy romantic flick = Three word title.
Teen boy flick featuring action, and 2-dimensional characters = Two word title.... and Matthew Lillard as a co-star

If I am right, then the next movie will follow the same pattern. So what is his next movie?

Freddy Prinze Jr.'s next performance in a feature film will be as "Freddy" in Scooby Doo.... featuring 2-dimensional characters - and Matthew Lillard is Shaggy.

Is anyone else disturbed by this Studio Still of the cast?

:: Stephen 8:05 PM [+] ::

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Wow. It takes a lot of dedication and time to keep a daily journal up-to-date *wipes sweat from brow*

Keifer Sutherland will be starring in a new TV drama called "24". The series takes place over a 24-hour period, with 24 one-hour episodes. My interest in this show is peaked for two reasons. First, it sounds good (no cryptic explanations there). Second, this is the first major project Keifer Sutherland has really taken part in for years. Since his brilliant performance in Dark City (where, in my opinion, he emulated some of his father's style), he has performed mostly on stage and in at least one bad, theme-driven suspence/drama with a Blair Witch budget.

Since watching Dark City, I've been anxious to see if he's finally maturing as a true ahh-ktor or if that film was nothing more than a one-off performance like Kevin Costner's directoral success. However, "24" isn't slated until late October for the premiere.

I have a copy of the pilot episode.

One of our clients at work is a CanWest employee. She occasionally gives us advertisements to digitize into MPEG video format, allowing her to include them in her PowerPoint presentations. Often it is only Sleeman ads or the like, but once I had to watch Will & Grace for a full three minutes to grab a video clip. It was a bad day and that is a very, very stupid sitcom.

Yesterday, I was asked to digitize some more content. Another Sleeman commercial, a 5-second bumper ad and the first 2-3 minutes of the "24" pilot episode. I took a long look at the tape, and it DOES HAVE THE FULL EPISODE!

I knew that getting a job in this industry would pay off for my geeky, media-obsessed addiction. The show is great. Just as good as I expected it to be, if not a little more. The television bumpers and intro have pretty basic graphics, but that may be what they're going for. Since there's another two months until the broadcast premiere, they have lots of post-production time to clean up things like that.

Really, only two things annoyed me. The first was how everyone's character had a central or peripheral storyline around sex with some other character. There are a lot of people to keep track of but I believe they could have figured out a better way to round out character development without making the common factor "how each reacts to sex".

Oh, well. I watch TV to escape - so plentiful sex would be appropriate.

The second point about the show that annoyed me was that the show was SO DAMN GOOD. It is painful for me to know that I don't get to see the second episode until the first week of November. I have two and a half months before I get to see what happens from 1:00 AM - 2:00 AM.

...and incase you're thinking of asking - it would be SOOOO illegal of me to distribute copies of this episode that you shouldn't even bother asking.

One more quick note.... go see the movie Rat Race. This movie had me laughing so hard I almost suffocated. Very, very, very few funny movies these days are made with so few "body function jokes" - not that a good Leslie Neilson movie isn't good now and then.

....and the blonde actress, Amy Smart, was born exactly one month after I was. I think this means that we are destined to be together. Besides, I've already seen her naked in Road Trip.

Rat Race is definately the most laugh-out-loud, funniest movie I've seen in years - and it's even clean enough that my Mom could (probably) enjoy it.

:: Stephen 1:20 AM [+] ::

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Justice comes back and bites me in the bum.

For a few years I've been mocking my older brothers, friends and co-workers about their music. When "Retro-80's" hit and every album included a copy of Devo's "Whip It", I could be found pointing and laughing at my five-to-ten-year elders.

"You know that you're getting old when your music is considered Retro" I said to Howie at Fed Hall during my first year at UW. The joy was not so much in pointing out his premature geriatric condition as much as reminding myself that I am currently enjoying that point in my life that will some day be considered "retro".

Five years have passed and - anticipating the collapse of my cast-iron forged, protective state of youth - I have resorted to a few last moments of enjoyment. Watching the 80's fad pass, I mock my older brothers by pointing out that "their music" isn't even considered retro anymore.

"That's how you know that you're REALLY getting old" I proudly state.

>>>>>>>>>>>
Flash forward to the present:::
>>>>>>>>>>>

.....Driving back from dinner with the folks and some cousins located somewhere on the family tree (still unsure where), I had Edge 102.1 cranked. I had four cushions filling up the rear half of my Escort hatchback, so the muffling requires maximum blast to hear even a peep of Nirvana's glory. The KLF comes on with their 1990 hit "3 A.M. Eternal". Rocking down Bathurst I reminisce about the days when I used to listen to this song - spun by DJ-of-choice, Tarzan Dan - on a radio station that has since gone over to exclusively news and claims of regular traffic reports "on the 'ones'".

It hit me.

Sunday nights on Edge 102 are when they broadcast "Retro Night" from Whiskey Saigon. The daggers I once threw at my semi-elders have reacted as boomerangs. Catching me unaware, I'm struck hard in the noggin. I say a nasty word I wouldn't repeat in front of my mother. I cry for 20 minutes.

I've entered my mid-twenties crisis.

:: Stephen 1:06 AM [+] ::

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Description on the back of "Police Story" - a Jackie Chan movie from 1985:

>>>>>>>>>>>
A renegade cop, Kevin Chan (Jackie), is assigned to protect a dishy secretary who is about to spill the beans on her powerful drug-lord boss. Kevin finds himself being framed for the murder of another cop and must prove his innocence. Meanwhile he has to keep himself from being killed or arrested, and keep his girlfriend from leaving him.
>>>>>>>>>>>

...hmmmm... I hate to say it, but it sounds like a typical Jackie Chan storyline...

:: Stephen 10:37 PM [+] ::

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Sorry... another geek posting. I'll try to keep my techie journal entries down to just one at a time.

Last night I was so annoyed at how unrealistic it is for me to spend $3500 on a new computer system, that I decided to see if I can overclock my current PC.

For the uninitiated, your processor speed is a function of how fast your motherboard goes (eg. 66 MHz) and a clock multiplier (eg. 2.5x). In my case, my PC goes 166 MHz. My chip never crashes. If it overheats from overclocking it, the it will either crash, give wierd errors or be outright destroyed.

First was to find out how to change the settings. The documentation on the ASUS website was helpful, but not fantastic. My motherboard is an older version of the one they have information for - so I had to figure a lot of stuff out by trial and error.... and crashes.

The first thing to try is being overly ambitious. I tried to overclock my processor to 200 MHZ (66 MHz x 3.0). It could not even make it all the way through the boot process. It would usually die after detecting the Plug N Play cards in my system and before detecting the hard drives.

Next was to test a slower motherboard speed. I bottomed out the bus speed to 50 MHz and brought the multiplier back down to 2.5x. The result was a system running at 125 MHz and was really, really stable - but slower. Same effect when I ran it at 50MHz x 3.0. It was very stable and was actually almost as fast as the (66x2.5) 166 MHz.

Set the computer at the slowest setting of 50 MHz x 1.5 = 75 MHz..... the computer took nearly five minutes to boot. Useless.

Now I know that a slower motherboard helps stability, I set it to 60 MHz, and ran the multiplier up to 3.0 (the maximum the board supports) to get 180 MHz - a 10% speed increase at the expence of a 10% decrease for the motherboard). There was no noticable boost in speed, but when I ran 3Dmark99 (a program that tests how well your computer can run 3D games) the raw processing power saw a boost of about 1%, but the rest of the system took a hit of about 2-10% depending on the test. Sort of like swapping your mind for Stephen Hawking's, but in exchange you have to swap bodies with Stephen Hawking.

Looks like it's back to Dell.ca for me.

:: Stephen 1:06 PM [+] ::

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New announcement from Maxtor - a company that makes computer hard drives. They've developed technology to break the current IDE barrier of 137 GB on a hard drive.... here's the quote from the website.

>>>>>>>>>>>
This breakthrough allows the creation of ATA hard drives that can access more than 100,000 times more data than the current 137GB interface standard.

The "Big Drive" interface initiative succeeds in breaking through the barrier with an upgraded ATA interface allowing for up to 48 bits of address space on a single drive, and therefore the maximum capacity of an ATA device up to 144PB.
>>>>>>>>>>>

hmmm.... it goes kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte - right?

144 PB hard drive.... that's a lot of MP3s. Approximately 30 billion songs.

Where did they get the name "PETAbytes"? What does the Ethical Treatment of Animals have to do with my music collection? I don't like this one bit.

(NOTE - you probably missed the pun on 'bit')

Playing on the net to find out what comes after a Petabyte, I found a site that explains Data Powers of Ten. It includes what is widely accepted to be the next levels of storage - Exabyte, Zettabyte and Yottabyte. The last two have not yet been accepted as the "official" terminology for lack of real-world use and the fact that they are based of a new system of naming data storage. They probably will not be accepted until Maxtor figures out how to break the Exabyte barrier. I'll be happy when I have that so I can download even more illegal bootleg movies.

:: Stephen 8:58 PM [+] ::

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Once again I have more proof that my existance is little more than to serve as God's little play-thing.

Yesterday I was out looking for a new apartment in Thornhill. The place I was looking at was probably a little too disturbingly close to Simone's place, but that's her problem. My main concern is finding a place near the Rogers Video.

After looking at the place (nice, but the kitchen is too small for the oven door to open all the way. It's a little thing, but it's still a thing) I decided to stop off at the place where my brother John and his family lived. One of the reasons I wanted to live in the Dufferin/Centre area is because I am familiar with it after so many babysitting nights and AMC nights. Pulling into the driveway, the familiar sights were there. Kids playing the the crescent at the end of the road. The small tree at the end of the driveway I'm always convinced I'm going to hit when pulling out. The Winnebago in the next driveway over is still there.

I knocked on the door and explained who I was and the guy told me that the place had been listed for a couple of weeks and they had just taken first/last month's rent from someone EARLIER TODAY *grrrrrrr*

Today, I looked at a place waaaaay north - up near Elgin Mills/Bayview. As a reference for those who don't know, about 1/2 way between the CN Tower and Barrie.

Huge place, lots of driveway, lots of storage, all appliances including dishwasher (altho' I'll probably never use it), shared laundry, big living room big kitchen with one of those windows that lets you look/serve into the living room, big bedroom and the tenants upstairs are a family with three kids (who are pretty quiet - according to the people currently living there) and the father is a Pastor.

They like the fact that I'm a Pastor's Kid. That's twice that being a PK has helped me out in the secular world.

:: Stephen 12:55 AM [+] ::

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Feeling too much pain.

I woke up with a stiff neck Saturday morning but thought nothing of it. It's something that doesn't happen often for me. Later in the day I held my niece for nearly an hour as I put her to sleep. Few things will aggravate a sore neck like a 30 lbs. dead weight. We played, I taught her to say "Ohayo" (good-morning in Japanese) and I enjoyed banana pancakes on Sunday morning. Happiness is banana pancakes.

Microsoft has agreed to allow Kodak and other digital camera and scanner manufacturers use their own proprietary drivers in Windows XP. Microsoft is attempting to standardize something called Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). It's already been implemented for Windows ME (Fisher-Price) and was set to be the way still images are transferred off cameras. The term "protocol" leads me to believe that they wanted to implement this in an Internet fashion? Great. More open ports on your Net-enabled computer.

...and speaking of finding open ports on your computer - I got ICQ junk-mail pages from two people this weekend. I downloaded a pretty good port scanner and saw what damage I might be able to do.

One person was coming from a DSL connection (64.xx.xx.xx) and had no open ports - maybe because of the firewall in DSL gateways? The second was on cable (24.xx.xx.xx), so you know he's vulnerable. Did a port scan and found port 515 open - the Windows 2000 Internet print server. I wasn't quite bored enough to do anything with it, but it does pluck at the curiousity strings of the mischievous.

:: Stephen 11:08 AM [+] ::

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The World Wildlife Fund has won a court order against the World Wrestling Federation for their use of WWF.com citing that it is in violation of an agreement between the two organizations from 1994. Once again the rules of old are applied to a media that needs different rules.

Ridiculous. that's why the top-level domains .com, .net, .org and .edu were created. Other than those four there are only country codes (.xx). Sometimes businesses buy them because they're marketable (i.e.. .to, .am, .fm, .md) but that's the purpose of .com..... capilitalist companies are supposed to register that. If Vince McMahon owned WWF.org then I could understand.

This is the annoying thing about the Internet being regulated by a bunch of old farts that were around when radio was the dominant communication source. Because WWF (the organization) is one of those big-name, non-profit organizations that politicians donate to because they're so visible, they get higher stature. Imagine if they were called IBM.org? Figure out who would win that argument. The WWF (wrestling) has never capitalized on the similar lettering. How can you sue another company because your clients are too stupid to use the internet properly?

....and the WWF.org website is pretty ugly too.

:: Stephen 5:04 PM [+] ::

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I've lost. After months of trying to build my own PHP-based web journal in the spirit as Hwan.com I've decided to resort to outside content creation contribution.

Blogger has been around for a while, but I was reminded of it in a recent Shift Magazine article. The main selling point was the opportunity to host it on my own site instead of pointing to some other server. If the company goes under (as dot-coms are prone to do lately) then I don't lose my archive.

There's a lot of bugs to work out, but at least I can now get back to designing my website instead of programming it.
(feedback would be appreciated ,^_^)

:: Stephen 12:58 PM [+] ::

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