das loft

yes, 8bitpeoples is awesome. I'm going to make music like this, I'll have you know.

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following Evan and Jon's recommendation, I downloaded and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. what a fantastic movie. everyone should see it, because it's really great. it made me cry a bit. it's hard to say what it's about without giving away the plot, but here's how Evan described it:

Not only was it very cool in terms of editing and direction, it had a lot of interesting ideas: ideas about memory, ideas of the ethics of forgetting (that makes no sense, but it's about as accurate as I can get), and ideas about romantic relationships. Plus, it's pretty funny to boot, and has really interesting characters.

I liked the actors too.

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pushups: 28+12. crazy. my sleeping pattern goes nutty and I skip doing pushups for a few days, and all of a sudden I can do 28. please go figure.

I hung out with all my friends in Oakville this weekend. it was so much fun. I wish I could do that all the time. it's so seldom that I get to see them wonderful friendlies. maybe that will change if "The Company" ever comes to fruition. I do want it to. I just think we'll have a problem all agreeing on what kind of company we'd form. I think Jon, Nathan and I eventually want to grow most of our own food, and naturally that desire is not shared by everyone. some of us want programming to be a part of it, others want art... some of us need to pay for a horse, others need to be doctors... it's a dilemma indeed. "The Company" was such a compelling idea four years ago, and now it just seems like a highly idealistic dream. maybe I'll make a fake documentary about the failure of "The Company" to materialize... something depressing, like à la Spinal Tap...

I think I might have just avoided getting sick for the third time this winter. I was sneezing a bit yesterday and today, so I had some echinacea last night and some echinacea in carrot+apple+ginger juice today, and I'm no longer sneezing. it's like magic! I highly recommend it. if you're in Toronto, surely there's a good juice place nearby that will make you something delicious with carrots and ginger. don't forget to add the echinacea root extract (and before you're already really sick).

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does anyone know whether the operating system called Fedora (sponsored by Red Hat) is a Linux distribution or a different operating system entirely? I can't seem to get the answer from their website. it never mentions that it uses the Linux kernel, so I'm guessing that it's not Linux at all. I just found out about it yesterday from Slashdot, and now I'm noticing that some of my classmates are using it. what confuses me is that one of my classmates said "x works on Fedora (Redhat) distros of Linux." so Fedora is a Linux distro, or what?

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I just had a nap. do you have naps? they're fun. one dreams. (well, I do.) at first I dreamt that I punched down the dough that's rising on my desk. that was a needless dream. then I dreamt that Michael Moore or Godfrey Reggio or some other documentarist had mounted some camera under a net that was suspended from the highest building in New York. this was being broadcast on TV. Meta was there and I told her that I thought that was a really silly idea, seeing as how high up and scary that is, and I was reassuring her that people don't usually mount cameras this high. hrm. well, onto my next dream.

I dreamt that I was buying something at some store, and I was trying to give the cashier exact change. I had my black knapsack on the counter (after filling it with whatever I bought), and the cashier was a girl about my age. there was an old woman behind me in the line. the cashier seemed to be really impatient for some reason. as soon as I started counting my change she just sighed and started ho-humming to herself. I apologized and then somehow managed to get really confused trying to come up with 35 cents from a plethora of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies that I had. so I handed her some mess and she started counting it. then I announced that I came up with a better combination and she probably quietly remarked something like, "oh, for the love of god!" I apologized again and handed her a quarter and a dime, and attempted to get all the unused change back into the change pocket of my wallet. then she somehow managed to snatch my digital camera away from me and started playing with it.

she immediately started taking picture after picture of me, saying she wasn't going to stop until she had taken 10 or so. (at this point I believe the old lady behind me was getting a bit irked.) she was taking them with the flash, and I wasn't really looking at the camera while she was taking them. I was still trying to put the change into my wallet and buckle up my knapsack or something, and saying how it seemed a bit silly that she was taking pictures of me. then she started looking at the photos that were already on there. in my dream, I had taken some autumn photos of a large estate near my house in Oakville (this is a real place that I used to deliver newspapers to, but I didn't actually photograph it last fall). in the photos there were two littered plastic bags caught in the branches of a tree and there was litter elsewhere in the grass. and suddenly the cashier and I were there. (at this point, the old lady behind me at the cash register was not very pleased at all, seeing the cashier and customer in front of her suddenly vanish.) the cashier started taking pictures of me against the fall colours. I asked her, "doesn't this place remind you of my third assignment for art class last term?" she said it didn't, because she'd never seen my third assignment. and that's when I woke up.

in other news, I'm thankful I didn't win an award for my other German class, someone else did. now I won't be embarrassed at the awards ceremony.

I'm making whole wheat sourdough bread. I intend to have a very high degree of success this time. I've decided not to follow Jon's idea of letting the dough rise in a plastic bag, since that brought me failure pretty much every time. I guess Jon doesn't keep his dough very moist so it doesn't stick to the bag, and somehow he can still produce a wonderful bread that way. he must be on a different level than me. maybe he's got so many experience points that his dough will never stick to the bag, even if he tried.

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crap.. why do these assignments pop up. I've got to build an "Unlambda" interpreter in Prolog for thurs. I don't even know how to write in Prolog. crap, crappity crap. damn, and I was in such a good mood for actually starting and completing an assignment for another course. "thanks, Paul, and here's another! now get cracking!!"

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last night I saw Dead Man, starring Jonny Depp. it's a pretty funny, kind of dark movie. I guess you could call it a western, although it's nothing like any other western I've seen. I liked it.

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pushups: 27+12.

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pushups: 26+16. interesting.

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Here are some opinions of other viewers of Naqoyqatsi (posted in the discussion board of the official "qatsi" site), which I agree with entirely:

• I watched Naqoy just after it was released on DVD and I must say that I was extremely disappointed in the third of the series. Koyaanisqatsi was a great film and Powaqqatsi was good too, not as good as Koyaanisqatsi, but still good. So I though the third in the series would be at least as good as Powaqqatsi and I was hoping it would be on par with Koyaanisqatsi, especially after seeing the trailer online....boy was I wrong!!! After the first 15 to 20 minutes, I wanted to take the DVD out of my player and hurl it out into the street. It was a horrible film...wait, let me correct that...the first 15 to 20 minutes were great and the rest was horrible. I have no idea what Godfrey Reggio was trying to accomplish in this movie. It looked like all he did was take some old stock footage, television, commercial and other footage, put it through a computer and slapped some effects (much like anyone could do in Adobe Photoshop) on it! I am sure I am simplifying the process, but I think most people know what I mean. I though this film was supposed to be about the future and mankind's role and how we would change. Maybe I missed the point, maybe the overuse of effects were supposed to drive the point home that the future is now and that it is all technology. I am sure Godfrey Reggio could have made that statement in a much better way. Maybe used some footage of good old Dolly, the cloned sheep, and shown some scientists splitting genes to create the clone. Who knows. All I know is that I was disappointed in this film. Maybe Godfrey Reggio should have brought back Ron Fricke and had him shoot some scenes!! Look at Koyaanisqatsi and look at Baraka, then watch Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi and see what I mean. The first two films are very similar in their shooting style, that's because Ron Fricke shot them; the other two seem like they have no style at all. I could go on, but won't because I am sure people will come back here and tell me I don't know what I am talking about and missed the point and that I am an idiot or not into the films. I am into the films, Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, just not Naqoyqatsi, it doesn't fit the other two in the trilogy.
  
  
• Well, we did see Dolly. The fact that you didn't notice shows how completely ineffective this film is. I looked at the DVD counter upon thinking, "I'm surprised that the movie hasn't seemed to get going yet..." and was shocked to see that the film was over half over. As I wrote elsewhere, it's kindergarten Stan Brakhage, and it's embarrasingly bad. And I do wish that Phillip Glass would stop trying to channel Cesar Franck.
  
  As far as opinions go... it looks like you're not alone. I did notice the difference between Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi but hadn't made the connection with the cinematographer. I hope that the friend I watched this with will be willing to watch Koyaanisqatsi now; his only reaction to this was, "It looks like a commercial selling the obvious."
  
  
• and here's a really harsh one

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I finally got some real, organic meat. it seems my health food store has stocked up quite a bit on meat, and I managed to find some relatively cheap, anonymous "stew meat." as long as it's organic, I don't care what's in it. :)

I don't think I'll be recommending Naqoyqatsi to anyone. it's a little bit... hmm, what's the word... embarrassing? the music is all right (if you like Philip Glass), although not too original. maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions yet; I'm only about a third through. but I'm still waiting to be moved. right now I'm watching sports footage. yeah. it's kind of sad. I almost wish this was the version of Naqoyqatsi that never got released, but they redid it from scratch and put together something amazing instead. like the way Nintendo didn't release their first version of Super Mario 2 and instead did something completely original and rocked the world.

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let's see if this works. I'm posting this blog from within gaim using the gaim-blogger plugin.

holy crap! this is awesome. I'm e-mailing Jon.

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I'm here at Ebytown doing a shift. they don't have the Internet, but I have a laptop and I discovered an open wireless network to connect to here. crazy. it's called "linksys". funny, in Toronto there was another open wireless network called "linksys", too. but you know, if I had a wireless hub, I'd want to make it free for anyone to connect to. I want people to have easy access to the web, just as I have now.

btw, I got 47 on my computer architecture midterm, and the average was 72. wack.

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damn. I'm winning an award for my German linguistics class. she keeps giving me the most undeserved marks in that class. she's doing it so much that I'm at the top of the class. meanwhile, my spoken German is so bad I can hardly get out a single sentence, whereas the other students sound much like native Germans. I put about half as much effort into a class I get mid-90s marks in as I do into any of my CS classes, in which I get marks in the 50s and 60s. I guess the CS classes are considered more valuable or something. those arts kids are so spoiled.

I sure hope my other German prof doesn't nominate me for an award, too. that would be so embarrassing. hopefully my participation mark is low enough in that class that he'll pick someone else, even if their marks are lower overall. oh man.

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pushups: 25+14. back up there.

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everyone has gotta check out this: overdubbed G.I. Joe cartoons.

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pushups: 24+11

question: what's wrong with Baraka? I personally liked it more than Koyaanisqatsi (although I like K's soundtrack more). I thought it was so beautifully done. the photography was incredible and I found it highly moving, even more than I did Koyaanisqatsi. but it has been brought to my attention that a certain J. P. wouldn't put it on his list of recommended movies (if he had such a list). pourquoi?

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pushups: 22+12. someday I'll get back up there.

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the moon. I was looking at the moon over and over again last night. it looked beautiful with the low-lying wisps of cloud rushing past it. a gentle pearl slowly sinking into the distance. I was up until 6:00am trying to write a tiny German essay that shouldn't have taken all night, but did. there wasn't thunder.

at one point last night I got rather depressed. I accidentally saw the word "Wartburg" in my German-English dictionary, which was defined as "a castle in the Thuringian forest." naturally, I was intrigued, so I looked it up on the web and came across this site. ugh. look at this. I imagined myself actually being there, and for some reason that just made me overwhelmingly depressed. partly because I knew I probably wasn't going to be back there for at least another year; I wasn't going to experience that feeling of being in Europe. Canada's just not the same, not even in B.C. I mean, it's Canada. it's normalcy. Canada with its ugly little towns and cars and houses. sorry, I don't want to make you depressed, too.

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