farwell to douglas adams

My favourite part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series was the frictionless spaceship. You could touch it, but not feel it.

Douglas Adams died this week at age 49. I wonder how long it will take Amazon.com to start peddling merchandise related to the deceased.

 

In addition to being an award winning web designer, I am also a humble, humble man.

smart people
After a humbling (read: humiliating) experience in last year’s 5k competition, I enlisted the help of my good friends Nick & Nathan from silverorange with a simple goal: To create an entry that would not be mocked openly (like last year).

Once this year’s entries went up on the5k.org, I was amazed. Our entry couldn’t compare to some of this year’s amazing submissions (two of my favourites where the 5k Chess, and the 3D Dolphin). While our entry was put to shame by the other entries, it was not openly mocked. The goal was met.

Then in a bizarre turn of events the5k.org published this year’s winners and our humble 5k audi tt vr gallery was among them. First shock, then disbelief, then joy, then a king size (fr: GRAND FORMAT) 85g Oh Henry! bar to celebrate. In the HTML Only category we were #2 for Function, and #3 Overall.

How our entry was more functional than a working 5k chess game I’ll never know. That said, it is nice to see the judges steer clear of turning it into a javascript-writing competition. The other winners are not the most technically impressive, but are all definitely very cool.

 

Kittie – Spit – NG (RED) – 1999

“Choke”

Granted, I have not actually listened to this song. Nonetheless, I’m sending it out to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

 

The Weakerthans – Fallow – Sub City/Hopeless – 1999

John Samson, also of Propaghandi

“Sounds Familiar”

A song about childhood and growing up, which is good and sad and over before you know it. Will either make you want to build a treehouse or hide in your room for a couple weeks.

 

ronnie martin is a genius

I’m following Matt’s example and I shall suggest a fine musical group.

Joy Electric is a fine example of analogue synth pop. It grows on you. I liked it because I spent many hours in front of a Game Boy enjoying the musical score to the Final Fantasy Legend series, and I believe that you just can’t beat a good square wave.

I just listened to an unreleased track of Ronnie’s (he’s the frontman, but sometimes he works with others) at mp3.com and suggest that you go take a look.

Monosynth and Parlor Inventor are my favorites.

 

Wire – Pink Flag – EMI – 1977*

bounce.

“Strange”

Sludge-punk meets psychedelic stoner-rock. Resulting sound is not unlike a body being dragged across gravel, but funky-like. Road trip ensues.

* For those not in the know:
Artist – Album – Label – Year and “Song”. Dig?

 

genius recognized

matt is the one on the right with the condescending smirk

Our own Matt brings home the Milton Acorn Poetry award. Congratulations.

If you are not sure whether or not you should be congratulating him, you can read one of his poems at ForgetMagazine.com and decide for yourself.

 

my kingdom for an educated octopus

the fine staff of the 4077th
In my short 18 years as a television watcher, I have come to the decision that M*A*S*H is one of a handful of shows which I consider to be good. I’m sad to say that I’d watch almost anything if I was bored, but not necessarily enjoy it. Steven likes Northern Exposure. Maybe I should watch it, but I never seem to be sitting on the couch when it’s on.

A lot of people also like “All in the Family” but, I get frustrated at the old guy. TLC has good stuff on it like Junkyard Wars and Battlebots, which I try to watch frequently, but, I often find myself missing stories and learning about characters and watching them develop as they do in M*A*S*H.

Apparently there is a M*A*S*H spin-off with Trapper working at a hospital when he gets home from the war. I guess it wasn’t as good, because we don’t get 2 episodes a day of it on Prime.

I’ll finish this with a quote I found:

“It is amazing how the show is enjoyed by people who were hardly on the planet when we made it. Amazing and terrific.” -Alan Alda (Hawkeye)

(The title is one of Hawkeye’s finest lines, when the OR was shorthanded. But, it’s possible that educated should be intelligent I can’t remember.)

 

forget the Quebec protests

ForgetMagazine - image stolen from mike leckyThere are a few fine articles on the FTAA protests in Quebec at ForgetMagazine this week.

I’ve avoided commenting on the protests on aov so far, since the topic is so amorphous (globalization, free-trade, corporate rule, human rights, media, ect.). It’s hard to have a discussion when there are no parameters. However, this isn’t to say that there can’t be meaningful discussion.

I watched CounterSpin on CBC (a fantastic show) the weekend of the protests and felt at the end of the hour that a lot of smart people had made a lot of appeals to emotion. I was left more confused than I was at the start.

 

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

George Orwell is cool. 1984 and Animal Farm are staples of the high-school English class. If you read them in high-school, reread them. If not, read them. I was directed to an article Orwell wrote which feels like a hopeful obituary for the English language.

If you do any writing, professionally or personally, you must read Politics and the English Language. I wonder how his comments pertain to web-log writing where there is little editing and the tone tends towards speech. However, anyone writing in any medium should benefit from these ideas.

A few highlights from George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language:

“If you simplify your English, […] when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.”

“Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.”

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”

“What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.”