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I’m not into manscaping

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We’ve moved into our new house, and by design we have a longer than usual bench in the bathroom, along with a matching mirror. We’ve only got one shared sink, but we each have two cupboards and three drawers in which to put our “stuff”.

A complete list of my “stuff” is as follows:

  1. A toothbrush.
  2. Two sets of electric hair clippers.
  3. A bottle of Lynx aftershave.
  4. A bottle of Nutrimetics aftershave.
  5. A Mach3 razor.
  6. A can of Lynx deodorant.
  7. A can of Rexona deodorant.
  8. A comb. I’m pretty sure this came with the clippers.

Of course there are a couple shared items like toothpaste and soap which my wife and I both use, but I’m not going to count those.

Having two sets of electric hair clippers is, I admit, pretty excessive but I just can’t bring myself to throw out the older set since they come in handy for trimming my goatee. Also, I normally would only have one can of deodorant but I’ve found one of them actually turns out to be “odorant”. I wore this a couple times before I figured out that it was the Lynx causing me to smell like an unwashed jock-strap by the end of the day. Seriously, I cleared out an entire train carriage by myself with this ugly stench. Hence the Rexona.

I don’t have the time to document each and every item on Suzanne’s side of the bench. But I can tell you that at this very moment there are more than 50 separate items. For every body part (face, hand, foot and the more general “skin”) there are different scrubs, cleaners, toners and more general “lotions”. Thats at least 16 items right there.

Then there’s the hair care products like sprays, straighteners and curlers, driers and hydrators. Throw in the perfumes (nice “odorants”), the deodorants and the, ahem, women’s sanitary products and you’ve got a set of fairly bursting drawers and cupboards contrasting my own near-empty drawers.

Which raises the question: do I have enough “stuff”? Should I have more of these things for myself? Should I submit to a manscaping session and queer myself up with hair, skin and facial product? I’m a fairly down to earth guy and have so far shunned this metrosexual lifestyle, but perhaps it’s time to get into it and maintain my youthful good looks. It seemed to work for Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

Waking up in the new house

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So we spent the first night in our new house last night. I’m pretty tired from painting until late after work for the last week or so. Mercifully, dad has come up and stayed a few nights to help me out. We moved all the heavy stuff yesterday which leaves Suzanne (mostly) the task of getting all the smaller stuff.

We still gotta do the crossover from the street to our driveway, the flooring and some curtains pretty quick. Fencing should be done today, and landscaping is thrown in the developers some time at the end of January. Until then, unfortunately it’s going to be a bit dusty.

Your regularly scheduled program will continue shortly. Probably after Christmas.

The Internet makes you stupid

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I dare ya, I double dare ya mother fuckerI’ve been thinking lately on my online patterns of behaviour. I spend a lot of time online. I work in IT, and Internet is critical to the job I work in and the customers I serve. I research solutions to technical problems using various intranet and extranet resources, and have the ability to remotely log in to customer sites all over the world to perform hands on support. This week alone I have digitally “visited” sites in all six inhabited continents, managing servers as if I was sitting at the keyboard.  Outside of work, how much time I spend online depends on who you ask. I think I’m fairly restrained in my usage, and don’t feel the need to spend a great amount of time in front of the computer when I come home, since I’ve already spent 9 hours at work.

I hear about Internet addiction all the time. I’ve read interviews about people, mostly kids but sometimes those more mature, who go through a withdrawal if they’re away from their digital life for more than a few hours. The moment they wake up they’re on their computer checking Facebook or other social media sites. On the way to work they’ll be tweeting like their life depended on it. If it’s not Twitter or Facebook, it’s Texting. You’ve heard of Tennis Elbow? Try SMS Thumb for size.

It’s not until people get to work that the full cost of peoples seemingly endless appetite for distractions is realised. I must say that I don’t observe this at my own work place (hi guys!) but I know people who spend more time on Facebook than they spend on their duties when at work. Between Facebook, Twitter, Texts, Instant Messengers and emails it’s a miracle they get any work done at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the social media aspect of the Internet and often hit up Facebook at home and even at work. Unlike some people, though, I do all this in moderation. I can’t even say I really enjoy Facebook all that much, as there’s sometimes a very low signal to noise ratio.

Having said that, there are other online distractions to tempt you. I compare the Internet to a large Newsagent which has magazines on every subject you care to name. I have absolutely no interest in about 90% of the mags I find at these news stands, and there’s about 1 in a hundred I would find indispensible and would buy without thought if I had the money. Browsing the Internet is like flicking though the rest of  the “fringe” magazines, the ones that aren’t central or vital but catch your eye and pique your interest enough for you to reach out and open them up. You quickly turn the pages, skimming the titles and articles for something interesting. You look at the pictures and graphics for something attractive and meaningful. You might quickly cover the whole magazine by flicking through it in under 15 seconds but you may spend a minute skimming one or two articles which seem interesting. You never really spend the time to sit down and read the mag from cover to cover, at least not without the owner kicking you out.

So it is with the Internet. Any web page has text and pictures, and may include other rich media covering the subject at hand. But there’s also handy hyper-links to other related articles which lead on to yet other pages. Hell, even at Wikipedia you can get completely distracted from your original train of thought or research and wind up at completely unrelated articles before you can say “six degrees of Kevin Bacon“. I find myself doing this all too often.

What I have noticed is that this has effected the way I think. I’ve change the way I use my brain and how I focus on tasks. Rather than being able to focus on one particular task for any amount of time, I find that my focus switches from one task to another in rapid succession, often coming back a number of times to the same task to progress it a little more before switching to another new task. This seems normal to me now. I’m distracted by emails, phone calls, alarms and instant messages, but these are all evil necessities in being able to perform my duties. While writing this very article, I’ve checked Facebook, the current Commonwealth Games medal tally, the latest Formula 1 Grand Prix news, how F-Duct technology was developed, tonight’s TV schedule, when the next episode of Caprica will be available for download, what other movies Eric Stoltz has been in… and so on. It’s why I found it so difficult to sit through a trial when I had jury duty. There was nowhere to escape. There was no control. I had to sit there and focus on one tedious subject for a few days and it was hard.

At work I can be working on many different calls on different subjects at any one time, and I have to switch between, say, hardcore VB or C# coding to a  more artistic user interface design solution and anything in between very quickly. The range of products we have is hard to keep up with, and when you introduce new versions of these products each with new features and sometimes new bugs I find that I am swamped with too much information, too much stuff to remember.

Internet makes us (well, me, at least) think broad and shallow, rather than narrow and deep. I can’t tell whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, really. It could be argued that this is the way of things, now. To live in the 21st Century is to think fast, move from task to task, have many transient and temporary relationships as opposed to a few deep and lasting ones. It means rent rather than buy, and to be a jack of all trades and master of none. To know lots of facts and have many experiences, but to understand little and have few meaningful memories.

What do you guys think? Leave a comment if you can pull yourself away from Farmville long enough.

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Bad kids movies: The case against “The Clone Wars”

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This is an article I wrote at a Star Wars collecting forum in September 2008, discussing the release of The Clone Wars animated movie. I’ve been reflecting lately on the quality of what my kids watch and comparing it to what I used to watch. With my kids now coming to better appreciate Star Wars, should I introduce them to The Clone Wars movie and the animated series? Read on!

If you can't make it good, make it 3DKids shows are often written poorly, and the excuse is that kids don’t need good plots, just smarmy messages. And if they aren’t exposed to quality stuff, then they pretty much expect everything is supposed to be that bad, and think of it as normal.

When you consider how many kids (including me) were raised to think so many bad shows from the 70s and 80s are “classics” despite them being essentially just advertising disguised with some minimal plot elements, it shows part of the problem that film goers and TV audiences accept the poor state of film and TV writing as normal. They simply do not know any better.

Which, I suppose, is part of the point. Why would you invest in decent shows and writers if you didn’t have to? Why break away from the formulaic style if people don’t expect anything different?

Yet, then we decry the state of TV, and the horrible films, and the tissue thin plots and barely cognizant themes. People are willing to accept bad film and television, because they just don’t know that there can be anything better. Part of the problem is also Political Conservatism. Kids movies can’t have swear words now, or nudity let alone an intricate story line. Some of the best movies of my childhood have naughty words and boobies.

Childrens’ literature is fine wire to walk. You have to have plots and characters that resonate, and that are understandable, and expose kids to good writing. Reading well, they will be able to have a bar set to shoot for themselves. Same with TV and film. If you hold that bar low, that’s what they’ll shoot for. They may extend beyond it eventually, but the bulk is going to be mediocre at best, and if the bar is set low to begin with, then that is where it will stay.

As far as the animation goes, Pixar and old-school Disney (the original movies up to the early 90′s. None of the direct-to-video sequel garbage, certainly almost none of the new stuff) prove that childrens’ movies can be excellently made on almost all levels. When the possibility for quality is proven, it leaves studios no excuse for sub-standard crap, even if it’s sub-standard crap for kids.

Compare the Pixar movies to the Dreamworks /everyone else releases that inevitably copy them. Both studios ostensibly make kids’ movies, but Pixar produces wholly excellent stuff like clockwork, while Dreamworks’ films are all over the place and are sometimes quite amazingly shitty.

Clone Wars comes from Lucas’ inability to put together a compelling narrative or create characters we can sympathize with. It’s just another example of Lucas losing all track of what made Star Wars great to begin with. That Lucas used the same excuses for Clone Wars as he did for the prequel trilogy, and that the Clone Wars suffers from the same weaknesses as the prequel trilogy, indicates that it’s a failing of a movie as a movie, not just as a childrens‘ movie.

Maybe we all look at the original trilogy through rosy glasses, but I can still watch the first three films and enjoy them, and also the prequel trilogy though I accept some can’t stomach them. The special effects hold up, the lines are more memorable, the pacing is generally better, and it generally just felt… more cohesive. Not some hastily cobbled together mess which turns Star Wars into a horrendous whirling abyss of sulphurous feces. I maintain that the six movies by themselves are great. It’s every other SW movie which is bringing things down – Ewoks, Caravan of Courage, The Holiday Special, and the special editions. Those animated Cartoon Network SW CW cartoons do have some merit, at least for me.

You could argue “Well, you’re an adult. Your opinion doesn’t matter because it was made for kids.”

In conversations about movies, there is nothing that pisses me off more than a statement like this. (Well, if you were to say Keira Knightly is unattractive you’d see me go all Hulk on yo ass). What you’re saying is that if a movie is made for kids, then nobody need bother trying to make it good as long as kids enjoy it.

It’s this attitude that leads to cheap, crappy, mind-numbing, toy-selling Saturday morning cartoons and pure shit movies like “Shark Tale” and “The Country Bears” that have no standards beyond keeping kids still for 90 minutes.

Anyone setting out to make a kids movie should be aiming for Pixar/”The Iron Giant” quality. If you don’t get there, at least you tried. But the people who make kids movies without any ambition toward doing quality work that stands up to scrutiny are just out to make money off the fact that most parents have very low standards for their children’s entertainment.

Of course, in a world where “reality” shows and talent competitions dominate pop culture, these same parents clearly have low standards for their own entertainment too.

The point is, kids are not dumb, and adults shouldn’t underestimate their intellect. Being a “kid’s movie” is no excuse for lazy movie-making, something Pixar has proven over and over again. Dreamworks frankly just doesn’t “get it” – they think the key to success is running formulaic franchises into the ground (Shrek 3 anyone?). But Pixar enjoys massive commercial and artistic success by purposely avoiding formula, being inventive and original and talking to kids like real people (something Walt Disney used to do). I find it difficult to truly classify their movies as “kid’s films”, because actually, they’re not – they’re just great films that also happen to be very kid-friendly. Maybe that’s the example Dreamworks and Lucas should follow.

As for George Lucas, I give him all the credit in the world for being a great visionary and bringing the original Star Wars to life. At the same time, it’s very clear he’s lost his way these last 20 years, and he’s only a shadow of the artist he once was. In a funny way, the independence he so boldly sought was his undoing once it was granted.

Time-saving email tips

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My stats:
938 unread work emails.
1002 unread personal emails.

The madness has to stop. What was once a 30 minute annoyance is now my full-time job.  Here are 5 time saving tips:

5: Add a http://three.sentenc.es/ email signature and keep them short.

“Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.”

Example signature:
——————————————–
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es
——————————————–

4: Type “Sent from iPhone” under your short responses.  People don’t expect long responses when you’re on your phone. Don’t forget to mispell a few words.

This all looks graet +1!!
Sent from iPhone.

3: Create a ‘VIP’ filter. Easy to do on GMail.  Add your boss, investors, and close friends. Flag them red and throw them in a separate folder. This is the first place I check every morning.

2: (Gmail only) Keep the spam out.  If you’re giving your address to a potentially shady website, tack on +spam to the end, example: yourname+spam@gmail.com. You can then filter those emails into a spam folder you check periodically. (ProTip: the +spam is a variable that can be anything you want, eg. yourname+football@gmail.com etc., make as many as you like)

1: Setup an email bankruptcy filter.  This is a little bit of a dick move, but if you’re getting hundreds of new emails a day, it just might work.

Step 1: Create a filter that auto-responds to all unopened emails > 14 days old w/the following message:

Your email (below) is now 14 days old and has not been opened.  To minimize email buildup your email has now been placed in the archive.  Should you still require a response simply respond back and you’ll automatically be added to the priority queue.  Thank you.

Step 2: Setup another filter that looks for the text “Your email (below)”, this will catch the email responses back to you from those still requiring your response.  Filter these into a special folder you check and respond to daily.

Good luck!

Via Kevin Rose

On the Highway to Dental Healthcare

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Jett finally learned to ride his bike last weekend. He’s not as naturally gifted as some kids at physical activity, so this is quite an achievement and he should be very proud. We’ve had him practicing his balance by riding on his Razor Scooter for the last two weekends, and he finally got up the courage to tackle his bike sans trainer wheels. I wanted to have a ceremonial tossing of the trainer wheels into the wheelie bin, but he still wants to keep them around in case he forgets how to ride. It followed pretty much the same script as how most kids learn to ride: dad holds the back of their bike for a few test runs, giving pointers on balance and steering along the way. Then on one pass, dad keeps running along while the child is unaware that dad is no long providing any support after surreptitiously removing his hand from the back of the bike. Sometimes panic sets in and the child realises that he’s no longer being held up and is under his own power, but Jett had such a look of exhileration! It was a good moment for him.

It didn’t quite end all that well, though. He still has trouble pushing off from a standing start so he needs a hand to get going but once he’s got a little speed up he can keep going. At least, he’s OK until he needs to turn. Still needs to practice a bit.

And, yes, he did have a spill. I thought he was going to keep it under control but he got a bit of a slow motion “death wobble” happening and the front wheel slid out. He landed pretty squarely on his face, cutting his lip and leaving a couple wobbly teeth. This was ironically after we agreed that safety is important, and wearing a helmet would be a good idea. I’ll bet he’s wishing he was wearing a full face helmet. He didn’t cry as much as I expected, which is good, and I think he’ll be ready to give it a go again next week.

We are hopeless at charades

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We had an impromptu session 0f charades during dinner the other night, in response to the question of what we could do for family home evening the next time it rolled around. I’m surprised that we haven’t actually done charades in our family, but also surprised that the kids didn’t know what it was at all. I can’t believe that they hadn’t done it at school before. So, to prepare them for our family night we explained some of the rules of charades. They got the idea that you have to act out something without using words. We tried to make it as easy as possible by choosing some examples of movies we own or they had recently seen, such as Edward Scissorhands and The Karate Kid. Jett said he wanted a go and decided that his movie was 4 words. He made many gyrations and actions and it turns out that his movie was “Helicopter Running Robot Dog”. It must be the new Pixar movie or something. Ashton tried “Labyrinth” by walking around in random directions and searching which was a good try but a very difficult one.

I decided to test Suzanne, and there was also the off chance that the kids would get it too. I wanted to do Michael Jackson.

I figured the easiest way to convey “Michael Jackson” was to invoke his best and most well loved dance routine from Thriller.

Look, I’m not Michael Jackson. I realise this. I a fat, balding, middle aged white guy with little to no coordination or artistic credibility. But I did a pretty damned good Zombie Dance from the Thriller music video, including most if not all of the most easily identifiable dance steps. But could Suzanne get it? She just pointed and laughed and started thinking up random words and names which had absolutely nothing to do with thriller or Michael Jackson. The kids could be forgiven because they weren’t around in the 80s or 90s, but surely Suzanne knew what she was looking at.

Eventually, with a bit of humming and whistling, it was Ashton who finally got it. I really don’t know what was going on in Suzanne’s head. Heaven help us in our next FHE.

Thriller Zombie Dance Steps

Happy Canada day

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Apparently there were other proposed names before Canada was chosen by a name selection conference held in London. While the provinces’ delegates spent little time, if any, in settling on ‘Canada’ as the name for the new country, others proposed a variety of other names:

  • Albion
  • Anglia- To honour of the main religion of the protestant British
  • Albionoria—”Albion of the north”
  • Borealia – from ‘borealis’, the Latin word for ‘northern’; compare with Australia
  • Cabotia – in honour of Italian explorer John Cabot, who explored the eastern coast of Canada for England
  • Colonia
  • Efisga—an acronym of “English, French, Irish, Scottish, German, Aboriginal”
  • Hochelaga – an old name for Montreal
  • Laurentia
  • Mesopelagia—”land between the seas”
  • Norland
  • Superior
  • Tuponia—derived from ‘The United Provinces of North America’
  • Transatlantica
  • Ursalia—”place of bears”
  • Vesperia—”land of the evening star”
  • Victorialand – in honour of Queen Victoria

Canada Day