Okay, this is really a blog now. The random rants, the news of my life, the "Best Outpost 10F Blog" award. Now, thanks to the griping of certain young people who shall remain nameless, I have a photo gallery.

The one thing I hope that retains me some status over the millions of blogs at Livejournal or Xanga or Blogger is that I administrate this website myself. Not the server, but the workings. I used some of Andrew's Automated Filing Services website code to make myself the news editor I'm using to type this post. I have my own domain name. And when the time came to have a photo gallery, I installed and configured that myself.

On Christmas afternoon my sister found me furiously working on my laptop downstairs. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I'm trying to get this Gallery software to work so I can have a photo gallery on my website," I replied, "But I'm having trouble figuring out which Linux binaries for the image translator work on our web server."

"Why don't you just get a Photobucket account?" she asked. I turned to her and snarled, as if I would had I heard the word "Geocities" or "Hotmail" or something else that was technologically below me, as if I would not filthy myself with such things. She merely shrugged and played with her eMac.

But perseverance has rewarded me. Gallery is working fine and now all I have to do is upload some more photos. I'll get right on that, girls. =P

Posted at 12:00 AM

I just wanted to share something with you quickly before I go back to cursing my *#&$ing landlord for selling our house out from under us, thus forcing us to move out in two months time. Merry #$&*ing X-my-ass. More on that later.

Nearby our place, there's a residential tower development going up in Burnaby. It's at one Madison Avenue, and so it's called "OMA", and the billboards are loudly encouraging us to discover OmaLife. Omalife, eh? Perhaps you dumbasses in marketing aren't familiar with the huge number of us with Central European descent. You see, to us (Germans, Dutch, some Scandinavians) "Oma" means "Grandma". So the billboard is in fact encouraging us to live like elderly ladies. Good job, guys! That's the most engaging argument I've heard in years.

Posted at 12:00 AM

Looks like Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise have teamed up again to bring another classic Sci-Fi story to screen. In summer 2005 we'll be seeing a brand new movie version of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Now, after the travesty known as I, Robot which unfairly attempted to use Issac Asimov's name to codify itself as legitimate Sci-Fi, I can be rather skeptical about these types of movies. However, the last effort by Spielberg and Cruise was the absolutely brilliant Minority Report, which I still laud to this day as a masterpiece of Sci-Fi moviemaking and storytelling. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, they managed to elaborate on the story without betraying the concept or the marvellous spirit of irony that the concept provides. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that Spielberg and Cruise can work that magic a second time.

Posted at 12:00 AM

Phew! My German exam is done. Done poorly, but done nonetheless. This now gives me time to do those things I really like... such as thinking my own thoughts.

The day after my last bitchy post about the iTunes Music Store, Apple launched the Canadian version. Seems I can use this website to conjure up things I want or people I was too chicken to ask for their phone numbers the last time I'd met them. You know, now that I think about it, it's a real pain in the ass that a few thousand dollars has never just fallen into my lap. A real pain. To quote Jay of Jay and Silent Bob fame, "Beautiful, naked, big-titted women just don't fall out of the sky, you know!"

Got Fable in the mail this week... more on that soon. Now back to work...

Posted at 12:00 AM

Bah! So when Apple launched the EU version of the iTunes Music Store back in October they said that the Canadian version would be coming in November. Well November has come and gone and I'm still not downloading music like crack. MacWorld has now officially confirmed my suspicions. Perhaps Apple isn't hustling because Canada doesn't represent as large a market share as the US and EU. Ironic, isn't it?

Posted at 12:00 AM