Randoms.

Been flipping through the NYT runway slideshows, and it seems like that season of madness that was the mid-2000s has passed, with the booming economy, towering platforms, and garbage-bag silhouettes. I'm sure there's tonnes of articles out there on how fashion reflects the highs and lows of the economy and consumer confidence. I'm not sure. Maybe tighter budgets mean tighter waistlines, and practical sensibilities mean practical shoes (practical can be relative?). Or maybe Timberlake's been busy off-stage bringing sexy back. I particularly liked the United Bamboo shots. Never heard of the label before, but I'm wondering if it's hinting at a boom in asian/american designers (along with names like Derek Lam, Peter Som, Jason Chu, Richard Chai, and Alexander Wang).

Spring fashion shows means its actually fall. I'm not sure where that came about, maybe it's just a symbolic gesture on how detached from the real world these designer folks are. But anyways, fall means winter is coming, and that means my mind's detached and is running 3 months ahead. Well, that's what happened when I saw this video.


Yeah, I got that from browsing too much YouTube. Some other awesome stuff on YouTube. I might try doing some time lapse videos. After I get around to uploading vacation pics.


And finally, somehow I found this video. Now last year I had thought Lady Gaga was some forgettable flavor-of-the-week dance music singer(?), prancing around in her music videos with her tight little swimsuits and funky makeup. The whole attention whoring outfits didn't help. Never realized she actually could sing. Now I want to go see her live. Maybe she'll be the Elton John of the 2010s...


Here's another one, with absolutely lo-fi audio, from a Marc Jacobs party. Which brings us back to fashion shows. Darn.

A different pace of life.

I can't believe that I was on vacation just 2 weeks ago. I also can't believe it was already 2 weeks ago.

Not that I want to live in a village in the middle of nowhere, where there's nothing to do but farm quinoa and llamas, but the slow pace out there is kinda relaxing.

Figs.

Apparently my coworker has a neighbor with a fig tree, that drops a tonne of figs each summer and makes a mess. So the neighbor gives boxes of figs to the coworker, who doesn't happen to like figs. So now I get a box. Now I just gotta find me some prosciutto or jamon serrano.

I hate Ticketmaster. With a passion.

Every time I buy a ticket for an event through either TicketMaster or LiveNation, a swell of an rage and anger floods my being. Ok, LiveNation is a little better because of their occasional sales.

But get this:
Full Price Ticekt: 22.50x2
Facility Charge: 2.50x2
Convenience Charge: 8.50x2
Delivery: 2.50
Order Processing Fee: 5.40
Total 74.50

That's practically 40% in fees on top of the ticket prices. It's insane.

Views from above.

Lima's pretty dim at night. I'd have expected more lights from a city its size.

La Paz spreads like a brown blanket over the Andean hills. The size is surprising, as well as the violent layer of air that you pass through right before you land.

Miami is big and bright; the energy of the city pulses, lightning flashing through the clouds above and around.

Los Angeles is burning, choking in the billowing smoke.

I recognized the contours of the Los Altos hills on the way down, with a warm sense of familiarity. Does that make this home?

Book.

I'm a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' flowery style. I'm almost halfway through "Love in the time of Cholera". It's nowhere near as epic as "100 Years of Solitude", but it's still a decent read. I've learned a new word, "atavistic", but I haven't figured out "the bicycle on the sea, or the chicken on the grill, or the drawn-and-quartered angel".

Looking forward to the flight home, I might finish on the plane.

Unprepared

One thing I forgot to do before taking off was to install photo software on my netbook. There's two apps I usually use. Breeze System Downloader Pro copies photos off of my camera's CF card, and gives you a bunch of options on how to organize the photos as they're downloaded. I organize mine by date. It makes my life easy, since it doesn't copy photos that have already been copied before. All I have to do is plug in my CF card, and photos are automatically copied over and organized quickly.

I'm still using C1 RAW to convert RAW images to JPGs that I can upload to flickr. RAW files are much preferred, since they contain a lot more colour information than JPGs. That is, you can fix the white balance, or find detail information in areas that appear to be all white or all back. C1 is far from being the top app out their for this purpose. I'm using both apps because they were more or less the best of their breed a few years ago, and they're purchased and legit.

Unfortunately, after the first two days in Cuzco, I realized that I was filling up my CF card. Although I had a few more cards, I suspected they proably wouldn't last too long. Luckily I had a trial version of Adobe Lightroom installed. Lightroom's probably the best of the breed right now, but I'm still not certain I'm ready to drop $200 to replace C1 which is sufficient on the most part.

That's the long way of saying that Lightroom was useful on the first day of the trip, I got a few photos up on flickr, but trial period expired within a couple of days. I managed to extend it a few days by never shutting down and only using hibernate. Unfortunately, Win7 crashed once when I unplugged my memory card reader. I can try shooting in RAW+JPG, but I won't have a chance to put up any MP pics before I get back.

July was awesome.

Hm, I keep thinking of blogging about things, like visiting Montreal and eating at Au Pied de Cochon, visiting Crater Lake, weekends in SF, meeting strange online people IRL, or water-balloon-sniping the CEO at a company fundraiser, but I never seem to get around to it.

I can't believe it's already August. Last month was packed, and the birds are all out chirping this month.

Things I didn't expect to find in Toronto.

We can make this an entirely unfair scavenger hunt. Next time I'm back I'll bring a present for whoever can identify where these are. If I remember. If you were there when I took the picture, you don't qualify.

It's not the same Toronto.

People change. That's a given. For better or worse, I'd run into people after a few years and find they're not quite as I remembered. Recognizeable of course, but usually the interests aren't necessarily the same as before. Some people grow more adventurous, others a little more settled and staid. Others have additions they carry around in diapers.

Toronto's a little different too. Don Mills and York Mills used to be kinda dead, now it's upscale. The condo on the corner of Bayview and Sheppard used to be a big grassy hill on the edge of a parking lot. The garbage dump on the corner of Bayview and Leslie used to be a parking lot too.

While still flooded with immigrants, it seems like the faces are changing. I'm noticing more people with darker skin then before, and hearing more Arabic, along with other languages I don't recognize.

I was wondering, listening to the radio, whether 102.1 was still the Edge. It seemed somehow, a little less edgy. Like how alternative's gone mainstream. Then just yesterday I read about the suicide of Martin Streek. I've been listening to the Edge for so long that his voice had become a fixture. Even though I *know* they come and go (like morning show hosts "Don and Erin" and "Humble and Fred", I still find it mind-boggling when they change or disappear, especially in such a tragic manner.

Speaking of celebrity, does it strike anyone else as kinda odd how the protests in Iran kinda toned down with MJ's passing, and now they're back up and at it now that his tribute's done?

Ok, I know I'm writing about YYZ, but I've been listening to a band from SFO.

Retro Monday.

I seem to be keeping myself pretty entertained these days. I haven't even blogged about camping out in Joshua Tree in June, and already it's July.

There's a deep subtle thrill to camp out in the middle of nowhere. Not at a campground with facilities, but just out there, where there isn't another soul in a 10 mile radius. It might not be as exciting as night in the hustle of the city, but for a moment the world falls into another perspective.

I felt so small and insignificant in the vast emptiness. Looking upwards just revealed an even greater vastness of an incomprehensible scale. The rest of the world seemed so far away and inconsequtial; only the blinking lights of high flying planes or slow moving satellites reminded me of that high tech society on the other side of the mountain range. It felt like the world could end, and I'd miss it entirely. It was brilliant.

On another note, I heard a Matthew Good song on the radio the other day. Haven't heard any of that down here. How's this one for going back a few years?

I do requests.

This NAFTA thing clearly isn't working, because whenever I make a trip back to Canada, 3/4 of my suitcase ends up carrying things that are cheaper when bought online in the US. Take for example:

Anonymous Stranger: hi
me: hi Anonymous Stranger.
AS: can i ask a favour?
me: yes?
AS: do you have room in your bag to bring something for me from US?
me: a lens?
AS: no....
AS: a colon cleanse system?

Yes, my friends can be incredibly funny. In this case, even without joking.

On healthy eating.

Remember those drink your vegetable commercials? Do hops count as vegetables?

What about pesto?

Reminder to self.

The world isn't all bad.

Beyond all expectations.

It's a McG movie, so there's the lowered expectations and all. But how bad can a Terminator movie be, especially with Christian Bale as John Connor? I'll have to say, this wasn't the movie I thought from the trailer. It didn't for a moment, feel dark or gritty. This is the cheeziest, most cliched, feel-good Terminator yet. So, the answer is: about as bad as you can imagine, and maybe a little bit more. Thanks McG, you've exceeded my expectations again!

Whatever happened to winter?

I like looking forward to that last snowboarding trip of the year, the one where you end the season with a bang and wave goodbye to the snow capped peaks for another seven or eight months. Some years don't quite work that way though, a few busy weekends here, bad weather there, and before you know it, it's 35C out and the grass on the east bay hills is golden again.

I had an idea to blog about music, but the days flowed into weeks and months, and I've forgotten most of it. I have noticed that imeem's somewhat become my new radio (Pandora seems down a lot, and YouTube audio quality just isn't that great).

Not that any of these are new, but just an assortment from the past couple of months:

Your Hand In Mine - Explosions In The Sky

<

im good im gone - lykke li

Hope For The Hopeless - A Fine Frenzy

L.E.S. Artistes (Single) - Santigold

1901 - Phoenix

Bach: Partita No. 2 in D Minor - J. S. Bach

Quixotic.

I just got $300 in Amazon gift certificates. At first I thought it was spam, but then I found the certificate codes work. I think someone out there can't type their own email address.

Braindead.

How come every so often, I'll read something intriguing or inspirational, and I'll never get around to blogging about it?

And when I do come around to blogger, my mind draws a blank?

Work is sucking out my brains. <slurp>.

Now where's that schmassion?

what monoculture?

Toronto's always boasted about it's multiculturalism. But since there's a small group discussion going on in Hindi in the cube to my left, and my coworker's talking on the phone in Mandarin in the cube to my right, I don't feel *that* far from home.

On Storytelling.

Part of the appeal of studying the sciences is the immutability of the physical laws. There's the hope (or perhaps fantasy) that contributions to the field will last as long as the physical laws themselves, to be applied universally by mankind, years and millenia down the road. Like how Einstein's theory of relativity is still constantly applied to physics and astronomy. The arts on the other hand, are subject to fashion, politics, and the capricious winds of humanity's trends. One man's epic may be another's satire; a woman's fashion statement may be the laughingstock to the next generation; a failed artist can die in poverty - either to be hailed a master posthumously, or to remain in the obscurity for the rest of history.

Perhaps unchanged over the millenia of human existence is the enjoyment of a good story. The intriguing characters, the rise and turn of the plot, the ideas and commentary all serve to play upon both the intellect and emotions. Story after story, fact or fiction or some combination of the two, have been repeated across the globe and through the ages. The story's taken many forms, spoken by a grandparent, sang by a bard, a puppet show, a play, a dance.

Today's most popular medium is probably film or television. But the video games industry is already bigger than Hollywood. I still recall playing "Grim Fandango" a decade ago; the story there was entirely captivating, in a way few following games have succeeded. Some recent titles, "Dead Space", "Mirror's Edge", and "Need for Speed: Underground", all from EA, all shared the same story. You do task after task (kill zombies/jump across buildings/drive your fast car) to get to some goal, just to realize that the character who's been giving you directions is a traitor and you have to defeat them.

There was no great storytelling, but all three games attempted to create some sort of cinematic atmosphere, and it's just an indicator that the industry is moving beyond twitch-based entertainment to a real storytelling medium.

After reading "Watchmen" a month ago (after having heard about it for years), I was struck by the stupendous storytelling genius behind it. In my mind, Dostoyevsky was literature, comic books cheap entertainment, and graphic novels somewhere in between. "Watchmen" firmly put itself into my literature category, with its allusions to religion, discussion of humanity and exploration of (anti-)(super-)heroes buried in the plot. And compared to your standard novel, it was rendered two-fold, in both the text and the symbolism in the art. Perhaps four-fold if you include the comic-book-within-the-comic book.

Just as the comic-book matured into something like "Watchmen", I suspect it'll just be a matter of time before a game of such epic proportions would be created - provided game creators aim above the teenage male demographic (just like graphic novelists).

That being said, I'm skeptical of how well the "Watchmen" will translate to film. I'm sure there's plenty like me out there. It would be extremely difficult for some of the nuanced symbolism to come across in a moving picture. Plus, let's face it, comic book text bubbles just need to have that little extra bravado and flair. Speaking it aloud in a leotard onscreen would be just - cheezy.