Twitter Tweets for 2008-10-31

• just bumped “Across The Universe” by Edwin Tejoz on thesixtyone.com - http://tinyurl.com/6f8px7 #

Beyond the Dots: I

New article over on Gamer-Geek.com: A series called Beyond the dots, where I talk about how to take your role playing character beyond the dots on the page, and make them into a more three dimensional character.

Wish List

Right so, every year I get asked by members of my family what I would like to have for Christmas.  I usually end up saying things like “nothing” or suggesting a book or two, simply because the things that I really want are too expensive.

Christmas is coming.  Its coming quickly.  I know this, because its not even Hallowe’en  yet and there are malls with Christmas displays up.  I was in the local department store the other day, and they already have their tress for sale (I’ve never seen so much tinsel trees.  Well, not since the 70s, anyway).  Since the festive season is apparently coming so quickly, I thought I’d post some things I wish I could find under my tree on Christmas morning.*

Acer Aspire One – This little laptop (or Netbook, as they call them) is probably one of the sexiest I’ve seen.  The Asus EEE PC was a neat idea when I first saw it, but other companies have come along and completely PWN3D Asus.  Let’s face it, the EEE has a tiny keyboard, and the Aspire One, while smaller than conventional keyboards, still has enough space for all your fingers.  And the screen is a decent size.  Its got memory and speed to boot. 

Geek work shirt – Let’s face it.  I am what I am: a geek.  I’m unrepentant about that.  And so, why not advertise?  This shirt is hawesome in its combination of geek/cool.

Phone – Yeah. No link here.  See…my current contract with my cell phone company is up in December.  I’d like to get a next gen phone, and though I drool over the iPhone, the price available in Canada is not what I would call…reasonable.  My current provider doesn’t offer Blackberry phones.  So, a nice 3G phone would be awesome.  I kinda want to try out the Gphone, but there’s no one in Canada who’s providing it.  So, I’ll probably want to get a nice, sleek crackberry, but I’ll have to decide which provider to use before I can do that.

iPod Touch – Oh, I know.  I have an ipod.  But its not as sexy as the touch.  And since I won’t get an iPhone…why not the touch?  It’ll do cool things…and it plays music.  And video on a decent sized screen.

Wii – I, like many other people, would love a Nintendo Wii.  Not much more to say.

Eye Fi – One of the best gadgets I’ve seen is the eye fi card.  It works like a flash card that you put in your camera, but you don’t need to connect it to download your images.  For example if I have the Eye Fi “home”, when the camera is within the proximity of my computer, it automatically downloads the images to my images folder.  Something like the “Share” will upload your photos to Flickr.  Pretty cool.

Boba fett hoodie – I mentioned it before, but its still cool.

A collection of awesome notebooks would also be nice.  See, I can’t get enough of notebooks, especially in the Moleskine style. 

That’s more than enough for now, I think.

* By "under the tree" I am speaking metaphorically. I have not had a Christmas tree in my home since the infamous Cat/ornament battles of 1995.  Also, I don’t actually expect to find the bigger ticket items anywhere near my metaphorical tree.  There’s only so much money I’m comfortable asking people to spend on my behalf.

Maybe the platform was in the sweater

Used to be, in the old days, that a party up for Federal election would present its election platform at the outset of the election process.  That’s the traditional way of doing it.  This allows interested voters to take a look at what you say your party will do in power.  It also provides fodder for your opponents, but their platforms likewise provide fodder for you.  That’s the way it was always done.  But not Harper’s Conservatives.  Not this time.  With a week left in the election process, they released their platform yesterday.

Now, from a strategic point of view, this is a wise choice:

1. It prevents voters from actually having time to look at what your campaign promises to do in the event the Conservatives manage to get elected.
2. It allows you to use the other party platforms against them, while preventing them from using yours against you.

What it isn’t however, is fair.  Canadians deserve to know more about the intentions of the party in the lead (according to the polls) than “Harper wears a sweater vest and misses playing cards with his son”.  Canadians deserve to know things like:

The Conservatives are overwhelmingly not listening to Canadians, since they are committed (according to their platform), to re-introducing Bill-C61 and continue to support the very frightening ACTA Treaty:

A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will reintroduce federal copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance among the rights of musicians, artists, programmers and other creators and brings Canada’s intellectual property protection in line with that of other industrialized countries, but also protects consumers who want to access copyright works for their personal use.  We will also introduce tougher laws on counterfeiting and piracy and give our customs and law enforcement services the resources to enforce them.  This will protect consumers from phoney and sometimes dangerous products that are passed off as reliable brand-name goods.

I think its important to remember that Harper has never cared what Canadians think, no matter what he tells you when he’s wearing a sweater vest or whatever.  He doesn’t care what ordinary Canadians (a phrase he loves to use) think, since his platform completely ignores the the objections of so many “ordinary Canadians” who have overwhelmingly protested this bill, an with whom the conservatives have no interest in meeting.  You can’t strike a “fair balance” without consulting the people this bill threatens to criminalize.

Don’t fall for Harper’s sweater vest ruse.  Check the Conservative platform, to see what Harper really intends to do.

Oh.  One final thing: Harper…maybe you didn’t want to say the exact same thing as John McCain when talking on the economy:

"the fundamentals of our economy are strong"
- John McCain.

"the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are strong”
- Stephen Harper

It just makes you look dumb.

Silent Picture show

This past Saturday, I spent the day with the Keystone Ensemble in a nice little pioneer village type place out by Guelph.  We were there to take some promotional shots for the upcoming Keystone Theatre fundraiser (and the project as a whole).  Thought I’d take a moment to share a couple shots with you.  First up, a shot of the ensemble, sans Siobhan Richardson, who is sadly out of town.

Next up, Me and Adam Bradley (who observant types might recognize from DragonQuest).

Finally, just me.

There’s more on the Keystone Theatre Fan Page, and there will soon be many more there and on the Keystone website.

Debate post follow-up

The only thing that would have made the Canadian debates better would have been a guy who’s job it was to shout “Oh Snap” whenever someone got told.

He would have been very busy.

“Is it under your sweater?”

Last night, I went upstairs to watch the American Vice Presidential Debate with craftygrrrl and her husband.  I know, watching the American debate makes me a bad Canadian.  The problem is, that we didn’t last long.  After a couple of questions, and a bunch of Palin’s winks to the camera and answers to questions that weren’t answers, but anecdotes about soccer/hockey moms, we were done.  There was only so much eye rolling we could do.  We just couldn’t take it.  So, we flipped over to the Canadian English Language debate.

I’m glad we did.  The Canadian debate was lively, and exciting.  All the party leaders, sitting at a table, questions asked by Canadian Citizens (via video), each leader giving their answer to the question, followed by a free-for-all which was only barely controlled by the moderator.  It was an exciting debate to watch.

And it was interesting to see which leaders did the best.  Dion didn’t do too well in the English debate.  I’m told that he was excellent in the French debate, but clearly his English is just not his strong point, an though he made himself understood well enough, he didn’t come off strong. Most impressive performance: I have to say its a tie between NPD’s Jack Layton and the Green’s Elizabeth May.  Jack Layton was just on fire, very strong, and funny.  He got in a few good zingers, like “Either you don’t care or you’re incompetent” to Prime Minister Harper on the economy, or "Where’s your platform? Under the sweater?" which was a clear and enteraining jab at the infamous Conservative “fireside” commercials that have been running this election.  Elizabeth May, on the other hand, was a strong force for calling out Harper on lies and obfuscations.

One problem that I have is with the Green Party itself.  Do we really need another political party in Canada?  We have the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NPD, the Bloc Quebecois. Do we need a fifth, to further split the left in this country?  Under May, the Green party sounds more like the NDP, and I wonder why the two haven’t joined up.  They might be more effective that way.  But I fear that a fifth party will split the left vote enough that no one Middle to Left party could ever gain a majority.

In the debate, Harper did his best, but he didn’t look as strong as some of the others.  He stared at the table when talking, making me remember that even in his commercials he doesn’t appear to make eye contact with the person “interviewing him”.  Something bothers me about that.  He was also continued his practice of telling anecdotes rather than answering the question, a gift he clearly shares with Palin in the US, and added in a few out and out lies.  But in the end, I came away with the feeling that for all Harper’s talk about caring about “Ordinary Canadians” that he really doesn’t know much about the “ordinary Canadians” he spends so much time talking about.  Throughout the election, he has been separated from “ordinary Canadians” showing up for a choreographed photo opportunity, or to talk to a group of friendly supporters.  But any time there’s been any chance to meet someone who doesn’t agree with him, he’s avoided it.

Getting to crunch time now.  Have to decide who to vote for.  And I have to do it soon.

Keystone Theatre Fundraiser

This morning I posted the Facebook event for the November 13th fundraiser for Keystone Theatre at the Bloor Cinema.  Yesterday, finally online payment for the event on the website (via paypal, which has its downside…but we do want to make it as easy as possible for people to buy tickets).

I’m really very excited by the people we have performing at this fundraiser.  People like the Rumoli Brothers, Chris Mysterion, and Brent Carver, to name just three.  We’ll also have a couple of examples scenes from the show we’re developing in the silent film style, in addition to showing two films: Buster Keaton’s “Cops” and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Tramp”, but instead of relying on pre-recorded music, we’re going to have live accompaniment to the films, just like they would have had when they were originally shown in theatres.

I hope that Toronto people will be able to come, not only to support this show that I’ve been involved in for about 2 years, but also to have a great time at this event.

Also, feel free to become a fan of Keystone Theatre on Facebook (if you do that kind of thing), or simply by checking the website for updates on a regular basis.