Designer & bike rider in British Columbia, Canada

Blog

  • Making breakfast video

    A friend mentioned an idea for a series of short film collaborations involving breakfast preperation, and what do you know, I already have my own breakfast video (Quictime, 1:14, 2.75 MB). Recorded March, 2002.

  • Fridge light

    After a year without it, the lightbulb in the Sears Kenmore Coldspot fridge has been replaced. Its original lightbulb was removed to replace the one in the lavalamp. And so now when you open the fridge door, instead of murky darkness, everything is illuminated and you get the feeling you forgot to turn the light…

  • On antibiotics, DuoDerm

    A gel-like, green substance was growing from the pothole in my left palm yesterday, which prompted the girlfriend to take clinical action. I was obliged to see my doctor, who hadn’t attended to me since my last bout of road rash like four years ago. After a little local anaesthetic, some iodine-brush scrubbing of the…

  • Speed bumps should be yellow…

    …not black. Because I was hit by one today on my bike and didn’t see it coming. Well, I could have paid more attention. In fact, I was actually preparing to dodge a nice friendly yellow speed bump in the Family Foods parking lot (McKenzie at Cedar Hill) when an ninja stealth assassin black speed…

  • Current Tracks

    Morrissey / Smiths – Various Various Artists – Clap Mix Pixies – Live in Victoria April 21 Hot Butter – Popcorn MC Hawking – More Science Tenacious D – Various Tito Puente – Various DJ Danger Mouse / Jay-Z – Grey Album Note: Want the new Morrissey album You Are The Quarry… seven years in…

  • Current Reading

    He Died with a Felafel in His Hand – John Birmingham, 1994 The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist, No. 1 [comic] – Michael Chabon, 2004 Songbook – Nick Hornby, 2002 High Fidelity – Nick Hornby, 1995 Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation – Lynne Truss, 2003 The Elegant Universe – Brian…

  • Andy Kaufman to return May 16

    Andy Kaufman, if his May 16, 1984 death was in fact faked as he reportedly told friends it would be, should be fulfilling his twenty-year return prophecy next Sunday, May 16, 2004. See event planned by friends at the House of Blues club in Hollywood. Cross your fingers. Tony Clifton ‘posed to be there, too.

  • Marketing damage control

    This TV spot “Evil Twin” for the European-issued Ford Sportka has been making the rounds online and in the news. At first I wasn’t shocked, but really: it crosses the line. A little too senselessly sadistic. But well done. In other extreme marketing news [AdAge.com], baseball has killed a component of its latest revenue scheme…

  • Olives

    I’ve been recently learning to appreciate that small ovoid fruit of a certain ubiquitous Mediterranean tree, that biblical of food stuffs, the olive. I’ve always kinda liked them: as a kid grabbing a whole slim, green-lidded jar from the fridge, unable to control myself, eating half a jar of those kind with red cubes that…

  • Bottle Game

    Bottle Game, a new website created by a co-worker, artist and friend of mine.

  • Body Worlds

    Prof. Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds – The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. This exhibit features actual deceased people, their skin removed, preserved with a unique process called plastination – “an impregnation technique where tissues are completely saturated with special plastics in a vacuum” – and displayed in all their glory. “Anatomically prepared whole…

  • Hometown news

    Couple Kootenay-related stories popped up this week. CBC is running a brief story entitled “Kootenays joining wired world” on G. Campbell promising broadband access to rural Kootenay residents. As far as I know at least every city over 5,000 has had high speed internet for years. Nelson certianly has. But the Moms is pulling up…

  • Jen’s website

    My good and long-time friend Jen has her own website now: www.jenmclean.com.

  • PIXIES tonight

    Ya, Pixies, tonight at the Victoria Curling Club! I lined up for these tickets early one morning like two months ago with two friends of mine. We braved the chill and sleep deprevation (I believe we had done some socializing the night before) with venti-sized coffees at 7:30am with a hundred other shivering fans. Tickets…

  • Toe blister

    I have a sort of four-tiered, multi-staged blister on my left big toe. Fascinating. I formed a blister a couple days ago playing squash, and then that blister got a blister, and this second-level blister got its own blister until the whole triple-decker came loose today, like pooled layers of velum, revealing some very red-with-blood,…

  • Tired

    Seven straight days of non-stop CSS website construction. Immersed in a world of W3C specifications, cross-browser and cross-platform testing, debugging, retesting. A labyrinth of glitches, discussion boards, tips, tutorials. Holly Hacks and Tantek Hacks, box models and stray floats. Three Pixel Jogs. Peek-a-boo bugs. IE 5.x, IE 6.x, NN, Safari! I have six hour stretches…

  • Coffee and Cigarettes

    Quote of the day, from Jim Jarmusch’s latest Coffee and Cigarettes, staring among others Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, the White Stripes, Roberto Benigni, Steve Buscemi and Bill Murray, most of them appearently playing themselves. Oh, that quote: I drink a lot of coffee before I go to sleep. Then I can dream fast.

  • Update: CSS, Exhibits, Journals

    CSS website formating on the mind this week. Have taken my basic knowledge of W3C-validated CSS2 and kicked it up a major notch for a current zero one project to be launched in a few weeks. Will also soon implement complete CSS control over this, my personal website. Bye-bye hacked tables and gif spacers and…

  • New Online Ad Model (Slashdot post)

    Was searching for CSS information this week as I take my web development to a higher and more standards-compliant level. Found a helpful forum via Google (keywords “id versus class CSS”) and in a forum post were a number of seemingly helpfull double-underlined green links for certain keywords, which annoyingly revealed themselves to be targeted…

  • Free wire coat hangers

    As a side note to my Bubba Ho-tep entry, as I was riding home this evening I noticed about 20 wire coat hangers clinking and hopping in the middle of the road under my tires as I powered up Cedar Hill X right across from that new senior home. And I bought a new shirt…

  • Bubba Ho-tep

    This review contains spoilers. Was mildly disappointed with this film (USA 2003), which both in reviews and its first on-screen hour promised to hold some sort of insight into human truth, or at least some very entertaining camp horror via the Bruce-Campbell-as-Elvis in a Texas nursing home teaming up with Ossie-Davis-as-JFK to battle an Egyptian…

  • Ware gets Graphic

    The UVic student newspaper, the Martlet, published my review of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware, Random House, 2000). (Link active April 1-7).

  • UVic Grad party

    Just completed attending the $20 ($5 for actual grads) UVic 2004 Graduation Party, theme: It’s a Jungle Out There. Seeing as I didn’t go to the 2003 party when I actually finished school, and the fact a friend invited me along tonight, and that I’ve been feeling overly corralled in my bachelor first-floor suite for…

  • Flash Pint

    How well can you tap a pint?

  • UVic Tutoring

    Spent Monday morning tutoring the Writing 216 class at the University of Victoria. 216 is a four-month magazine journalism class I’ve been called in to regularly over the past year in order to orient students with designing, directing and printing a final-project magazine with Quark and now InDesign. I outline the major issues they can…

  • G.G. Cookies

    Ate an entire box of Girl Guide Cookies today. Felt obliged and embarrassed enough to fork out the 4-bucks-for-a-good-cause at UVic yesterday when a couple of pretty young UVic students I know glanced me mounting my bike and so came running and smiling ecstatically in my direction. I assumed the two ladies simply couldn’t pass…

  • 21 degrees of bike riding

    It is 21 C outside, very little wind, very sunny and I went for one of the sweetest waterfront rides I’ve done in a while. Everything felt faster, smelled fresher, looked cleaner. All-Star and I did a hot lap in Bastion Square, coffee on the sidewalk at Il Torrefazione, watching the new flux of tourists.…

  • 100 Movies Someone else thinks you should see

    100 MOVIES THAT DESERVE MORE LOVE (Chud.com) Pretty good list. I’ve read to number 25 so far. I liked Gattaca and Contact, and have been told before by a reliable source to see Iron Giant. And Mouse Trap looks nice.

  • Punctures

    Got another flat – or as the Brits would say “a bloody puncture” – on the Gardin today, my fourth in half as many months. That’s way up from my like 0.5 flats/year average over the last decade. I’m certainly not fatter or something. It’s really a combination of less-than-steller replacement tires – which I…

  • Trademark Test

    This Retail Alphabet Game is the second of its kind I’ve seen this month. Fun and maybe a little disappointing if you get a high score. I tried 12, got 9 right on my first try. I swore the J was Jiffy, as in the p-butter. I bet Naomi Klein gets like 25/26 and then…