Live From Here

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Don't ask me about the title, that just popped into my head and I really don't have time to come up with anything more appropriate. Though, as I'm typing this, I don't know what this blog post is going to be about, so I guess it is one of the more appropriate titles.

Anyway, I'm Gonna Fight Chu had a gig tonight (or, played an open mic... whatever, I'm gonna call it a gig) and we killed it. We got encored, the first time that's happened, no doubt because the last song of our set was the debut of our first song featuring theatrics. That sentence seems confusing. Oh well, I direct you to the first paragraph - I have no time to make this good. I don't even have time to come up with a more elaborate and eloquent way to write "make this good".

Why do I have so little time? I'm going to a job fair in Toronto tomorrow, and I'm getting picked up in about 7 hours. I still have to pack, and I have an assignment that I have to do at some point this weekend, I don't know when, because the job fair is all day tomorrow and Saturday, and I might be going to a Superbowl Party on Sunday and then taking a midnight bus back, or if that doesn't happen I'll get a ride back earlier on Sunday then go out and watch the Superbowl, no doubt getting drunk and in no state to do an assignment, and anyway the point is I don't even have time to write periods as no doubt you've noticed over the last several lines ok seeya later

10 Things I Did Today

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It's a constant struggle. Every day I arrive at the blog, sit down, clear my thoughts and automatically begin typing "today i...". This is, of course, how Luke starts every one of his excellent blog posts. His schtick has become so ingrained into me that that's automatically how I think about blogging. So, in an effort to get that out of my system, today I'll be "borrowing" Luke's format, with a couple caveats: 1) I'm a lot more long-winded than Luke, and 2) I'm much more liberal with my use of capitalization. Seriously, I'll capitalize things like words at the beginning of sentences, proper names... man, like pretty much everything.

1) 3:00AM: Today I came up with a song idea for the band I'm in (I'm Gonna Fight Chu). Our "thing" is playing humourous covers of ultra-pop songs by artists such as Britney Spears, Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys. My idea is a little different in that it's a song by Radiohead, but it's similar to a lot of our material because the humour is based on the fact that it's played in a style vastly different from the original version. The idea: "Fitter Happier", sung in the style of "The Cat Came Back". (The Cat Came Back part of the idea isn't that important, it's just the first chord progression I came up with)

2) 6:00AM: Today I got <= 1 1/2 hours of sleep. I had run into Ben (my roommate) last night around 9, as I was on my way home and he was on his way to a nearby bar. I decided to join him since I needed some dinner anyway. After 2 pints, I knew that I'd be way too tired to finish the many homework items I hoped to get done, so when I got home I had a Red Bull that had been in our fridge for a few weeks because it wasn't sugar-free, meaning Ben didn't want to drink it, and I'm not a Red Bull drinker. It was a mistake.

3) 1:00PM: Today I had the 2nd interview for a math tutoring job. It wasn't my best interview, but according to a girl I know who works there, getting a 2nd interview basically seals the deal. We'll see.

4) 2:30PM: Today I got a free cab ride for 3 blocks because of basic human kindness, re-affirming my faith in humanity.

5) 3:30PM: Today I had one of the weirder conversations I've ever had. I wanted to play my new song idea for Poisonous Dart, another member of IGFY, so I told her to go on Skype. When she did, I heard a man's voice speaking in a formal tone, and thought she was watching TV. I was wrong; she was in class. So the conversation involved me talking and her responding via IM, which is bizarre enough, and even weirder when there's a lecture happening. So I played the song, which made her crack up, and, I think, get in trouble, because her last 4 messages were something like "oh man, he's looking right at me... i am so busted... gotta go... ttyl". 

6) 4:00PM: Today I hired a tall, handsome rebel to pursue the prude older sister of the girl I'm interested in, because her father won't let her date until her sister starts dating. It didn't work out; the tall, handsome rebel died.

7) 4:10PM: Today I decided that since I'm Gonna Fight Chu has a variable membership which seems to keep growing (we're up to 6 at least part-time members now, even though we only play at open mic nights), we should consider ourselves an "elastic band". Shortly after I thought of this brilliant pun, I realized that one of my favourite bands already came up with it (the Joshua Redman Elastic Band), and even though I've known about them for several years and I generally consider their album Momentum to be among my top 5 of all time, I never got the pun until now.

8) 4:13PM: Today I spent a few minutes waffling on whether to call this post "10 Things I Did Today" or "Ten Things I Did Today". I ultimately decided on "10" to make the reference to "10 Things I Hate About You" more obvious, and since the reference to Luke's blog is already obvious enough.

9) 4:17PM: Today I had another weird conversation, this one involving gchat. Ben had to hand in an assignment and forgot it at home, so he went on gchat and asked me to go to his computer and e-mail it to him. I did that, returned to my computer, then when he responded I heard the gchat noise coming from his room, so then I went to his computer and started conversing as him, to him.

10) 5:00PM: Today I had a 5 hour nap because of that stupid Red Bull. We'll see how much sleep I get tonight; the consequences of one little 250 mL can may prove to be much more far-reaching than I could possibly have imagined.

Me Being an Idiot #3: The Fall

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The "Me Being an Idiot" series has quickly become a regular feature and fan favourite here at Xave's Xlog (see Me Being an Idiot #1 and Me Being an Idiot #2), and today that series continues.

The Set-Up: as devotees know, I partake in the ultra-Canadian pastime of using frozen water and shoes with blades attached as a form of transportation every day. Unfortunately for people who crave efficiency (i.e. me), the Rideau Canal only has entry points every so often, and even though I live literally less than 30m from it, I have to walk either 5 minutes in the good direction or 3 minutes in the bad direction to access it. So, several days after I started skating to school, I just said screw it and started climbing over the fence and jumping down 1.5m directly across the road.

This was working great and saving me 5 sweet, sweet minutes every day... until today. Now, usually when I perform my leap of faith, there's nobody around. This is because it's either in the early morning, it's too cold, or it's just not that popular a stretch on the canal, so there aren't many people around. 

Today was different.

It was fairly warm today (-10... okay, at least not as cold as many other days), and I didn't head to school til about 2:30, meaning high school students might have been on the canal, and in general lots of people like to enjoy the mid-afternoon sun. One guy in particular seemed interested in my escapade, and slowed to the point where he was pretty much standing there and watching.

Now, before I tell you what happened I should mention that I had a rehearsal today and was carrying my trombone. This meant I had to jump down with trombone in hand, since I couldn't throw it down ahead of me, or leave it on the other side of the fence (since the bars weren't spaced out enough to grab it and pull it through, as I could do with my skates). 

Anyway, I assume you've already guessed what happened. I jumped, my foot got caught on the ledge, becoming a pivot point, I rotated 90 degrees in the blink of an eye, and I landed on my side. To be more specific, I landed on my trombone. Which was a good thing in that I didn't get the least bit hurt, but it was a bad thing in that I landed on my trombone. And about half of Ottawa saw it. I'm sure the dude who was specifically watching was totally unsurprised. Nobody asked me if I was okay... which I'm cool with.

It must have looked pretty clumsy. Picture a guy crouching awkwardly on a ledge, clinging to the fence because there isn't much room to stand and what room there is is covered by sloped ice, making it near-impossible not to slip, and then he does slip, limbs flail wildly, and he thuds to the ground on top of the trombone he was carrying. Or maybe he was trying to jump. It must have been hard to tell.

Fortunately, after rehearsing and not noticing any ill effects, it seems this adventure turned out a bit better than Me Being an Idiot #1 and 2.

Glasses

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You may remember from Me Being an Idiot Part One that I lost my glasses on New Year's Eve. Well, my vision is pretty good, so getting a new pair hasn't been particularly high on my priority list. But I finally got around to it this morning - I planned to go to a generic Hakim Optical type of place that I know exists near the Rideau Center, but while walking through the university center I stumbled upon a quaint little campus-affiliated glasses service. Well, as I found out, all U of O students get a $100 glasses credit every year, so my new pair will only cost me $40, and I could have had a crappier pair for $10. These glasses aren't on the same quality level as the optometrist glasses I'm used to, but seriously.... $10 for a decent pair of glasses is a good deal. I urge anyone at U of O with glasses to take advantage of this situation. Want a back-up pair just in case? Want to try a different look? Need to spice up your sex life? Interested in discovering what glasses taste like? Once again.... ten bucks.

gvideochat

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Sorry, devoted fans - I know I haven't posted since Thursday, and it's not as if I didn't have time, since I watched 2 1/2 movies (Doubt, The Visitor and Th Bi Lebo), 2 episodes of Lost, and 1 episode of 30 Rock, The Office and Arrested Development this weekend, among other time-wasting activities (notably, sleeping). But I have been very busy - besides little snippets of homework and errands here and there, I'm building my professional portfolio for a job fair next weekend, and this is a grand undertaking, especially since I'm aspiring to create a corresponding ePortfolio in the format of a webpage. I'm not 1/4 of the way there, and I want to finish it by tomorrow morning... bleh.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get back to full-time blogging soon, but in the meanwhile, I'll just tell you that I installed voice/video chat on gchat today, and used it for the first time with my newly-arrived-in-California parents. It's very simple and easy to use, high quality, and as far as I'm concerned makes Skype obsolete. (Of course, Skype can do other things like computer to phone, but I never use that sort of thing, hence the "as far as I'm concerned"). Google just introduced this feature last week, which is why you haven't heard of it, and it should grow quickly. Obviously, the person you're talking to needs to have gmail, but everyone has gmail, and if you don't you suck, so there. Ok Dave out.

My Fantasy BBall Team Can't Shoot a Free Throw

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Okay, seriously, this is getting ridiculous. My fantasy basketball team (Beasliality) couldn't hit a free throw if it was a grade school student from the early 20th century.

Sorry, I should be a little more introductory and a little less stream of consciousnessy. I love sports, but the only sport I know well enough to be really confident about my fantasy ability is baseball. So when I say I don't know why my free throw percentage is so low, WEEK AFTER BLOODY WEEK, I actually might just not know enough about my players, and they might be performing exactly according to expectations.

But it just seems like I should have a better FT%, and I'll tell you why. My team is built around little guys (not by design... as I said, I don't know basketball well enough to design anything). I have lots of guys who are really good at shooting 3 pointers, like Roger Mason, Rudy Fernandez, Manu Ginobili. I have a ton of point guards: Allen Iverson, Baron Davis, Keyon Dooling, Russell Westbrook. Big men have been my weak point all year.

Now, maybe I'm totally wrong about this, but little guys are usually better free throw shooters than big guys, right? I know the opposite is true for field goal percentage - big guys take most of their shots much closer to the rim, so it makes sense that they make a higher percentage of them. But since they don't take a lot of outside shots, they're not good shooters. Therefore, little guys should be better at shooting free throws. 

That's my hypothesis. Clearly it isn't working for my team, so let's look at some data and see if I'm justified in my frustration.

(click to embiggen)

Okay, we've got a number. I should be shooting at 75%.

Method: I found each of my players' career and 2008 free throws attempted per game and averaged them, and then did the same thing with free throw percentage. Then I added everything up.

Checking league standings: in actuality, I'm shooting 76.1%, and that ranks me 12th out of 14 on the season. Huh, mystery solved I guess. Tomorrow I'll dive into the stats and find out why my team is worse at free throw shooting than I thought based on general impressions.

Do You Write a Blog?

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By writing this post, I'm killing two birds with one stone. The first bird is the fact that I'm still one entry behind my goal of a post a day, despite the fact that I've already written two entries today. The second bird is a robin that just flew in my window. 

Ha ha, just kidding. the first bird was actually the robin's baby. I f***ing killed both of them.

Okay, but seriously, the second bird is the fact that this question has been on my mind ever since I started this blog. Currently the only two active (*ahem* Dan Kricke) blogs I follow that my friends write are Luke's excellent one thing i did today (self-explanatory) and Ben's fantastic The Boys of Summer, in which, each day, Ben picks a pair of baseball players to compare based on their value in fantasy baseball.

But there have to be more of you out there! I want to read your blog, so let me know what it's all about!

Best Albums of the Year

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Just to be clear, this isn't my personal list of the best albums of the year, because I don't follow current music closely enough to put out such a list. I probably couldn't even fill a top 10. But I started following music a lot more closely in the fall (I'll explain why in future posts), and that newfound interest taken in combination with my affinity for rankings led to my taking an interest in the various year-end rankings put out by magazines and other publications. If you know me well, you'll know what's coming next: I made a spreadsheet combining several of these rankings. This is the first of the spreadsheets promised in the inauguration of the blog.

By the way, of course I meant to publish this shortly after 2008 ended, but better late than never. (Also, I'm 2 posts behind my daily schedule, and this is an easy one to whip off.)

Anyway, here it is.

Notes:

• column "d" is nothing, and I can't remember why it's there. Deal with it.
• No idea why 5 random artists have decimal values.
• My favourite is probably also Fleet Foxes. Yeah, yeah, it's a cop-out to go with what's being ranked #1 by the experts. In my defense, I've listened to very few of the albums on here. 
• Yes, I realize that this exact same thing has been done way better already, but you know what, screw those guys.

Why Starting a Blog is a Good New Year's Resolution

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Now, just to be clear, I don't really consider this blog to be a New Year's Resolution. I don't like New Year's Resolutions, because I feel like if I don't stick to them for even one day, I lose. And if you've been following the blog, you'll notice that that's already happened - I didn't write anything on Friday or Monday. I plan on publishing multiple entries today to make up for it, but technically nothing came out of here on those days. If I had made a New Year's Resolution to start a blog and update it every day, I'd feel like I broke the resolution and I'd probably give up.

I guess I just decided that starting a blog was something I wanted to do, and New Year's is a time when people generally start new things. I dunno, maybe I'm splitting hairs - for some reason I have this idea in my head that a New Year's Resolution is something that you try to do every day, like practicing the trumpet or exercising. That's clearly not the case, as lots of people make non-daily resolutions like losing 20 pounds or even more vague things like improving at a skill. I guess I'm just trying to convince myself that the blog isn't a NYR because I don't like NYRs for some unknown reason.

Anyway, if you've gotten this far after all that boring pre-amble about how this blog ISN'T a NYR, here is why I think starting a blog IS a good NYR: it encourages and facilitates your other NYRs. To be specific, if you set a goal of writing a blog post every day, then you can kill two birds with one stone by writing posts related to your other goals. If I resolve to read a book every week, then one of the features of my blog could be a weekly book review. If I resolve to learn how to sculpt, I could chronicle this process through my blog. If I resolve to try whitewater kayaking, I could live-blog the event.

Of course, this idea isn't specific to New Year's Resolutions. Blogging is just generally an effective way to learn new things or improve at things you already enjoy doing. My Sunday post was a movie review, and writing the review forced me to be more analytical, something that I don't often do with movies. The other day I received my glasses prescription in the mail, which I had never really understood. I'm thinking about writing a post explaining how the weird numbers on your prescriptions relate to your actual vision; if I wasn't writing the post I'd probably only look up my own prescription.

Movie Review: Happy-Go-Lucky

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Disclaimer - if you start reading this and wonder why I tagged you in some random movie review, it's because the movie is sort of a teacher movie. Thought some of my b. ed buddies might be interested!

It's Oscar season, so I've been watching a lot of movies lately. I don't plan on writing reviews for all these films, because a) I don't consider myself to be a very good movie critic and b) I don't feel like it. I will be writing a couple of posts shortly before the Oscars, and I have a cool idea for how I'm going to present my picks, so stay tuned.

The reason I decided to write a review of Happy-Go-Lucky is that it's the kind of movie you probably wouldn't watch otherwise. It's not particularly well-known 'round these parts, since it's a British film with no Hollywood stars. Mike Leigh is an acclaimed writer/director who's been nominated for 5 Academy Awards, but honestly, have you heard of him? 

My favourite part of this movie (with apologies to lead actress Sally Hawkins) is Leigh's screenplay, particularly the dialogue. Okay, it's pretty much exclusively because of the dialogue, but it sounds more professional to say "screenplay". I'll admit, I have trouble gauging how well-written a movie is using any criteria other than dialogue, because it seems to me most other aspects of a film are part of the director's domain (who is also Leigh, but let's not complicate things). I won't get into this discussion any further, because I plan on doing just that when I make my Oscar picks in a few weeks.

Anyway, back to the screenplay, I mean dialogue. I've seen most of the big comedies of the year: Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, etc. Unlike those movies, Happy-Go-Lucky has no overweight naked dudes, white guys playing black guys, or overweight naked dudes. And yet, despite the instant hilarity of those things, Happy is probably the movie that made me laugh out loud more than any other. This is, as you've surely figured out by now, a result of its fast-paced clever British dialogue, much of which is superbly executed by lead actress Sally Hawkins.

Hawkins plays Poppy Cross, a 30-year old primary school teacher whose personality is perfectly captured by the film's title. She's bubbly and optimistic, almost to a fault, the kind of person who wants to make everyone around her happy. As she discovers, though, this isn't always possible. Hawkins is fantastic in the role, and by the way, she's winning everything for it.

The movie also deals with issues in education, albeit tangentially. Now, the movie isn't a "teacher movie" per se (for those in section Q, it wouldn't make the cut on Ralph's list). The way I see it, there are generally two types of teacher/school movies - those whose plots focus on teachers or issues in education (Dead Poet's Society, Stand and Deliver, etc. i.e. Ralph's list), and those which just so happen to include school in some form, whether it be the movie's setting (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) or one or more of its characters (Billy Madison). Happy-Go-Lucky is in the rare middle ground: a fairly significant plot element revolves around a particularly troubled child in Poppy's class, but the purpose of these scenes is to set up a more important part of the plot which is not related to education.

All in all, I give the film a hearty thumbs up and encourage everyone to check it out (even non-teachers!) It's certainly in the running for a couple Xacademy Xawards, to be released in a few short weeks.

Europe Excerpt #2: The Awkward Couple

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This summer, I went to Europe for a month. I spent significant time in England, France and Italy, and comparatively insignificant time in Germany and Monaco. I kept a detailed journal throughout this trip, one of the best decisions I've ever made. This blog entry is an excerpt from July 5's entry, which was my first day in Italy's beautiful Cinque Terre region. Other Europe Excerpts:

Europe Excerpt #1: The Europe Playlist - A list of all the songs that got stuck in my head while in Europe, and the stories behind a few of the more interesting ones.

Setting the stage: on July 5, I traveled from Nice (in France) to Cinque Terre, stopping over in Genoa. I arrived in the late afternoon, unpacked my things and then headed downtown. There was some sort of public outdoor concert, which was awful, so I didn't stay for long before finding a dinner spot. This excerpt details an observation I made while at dinner.

"...but the best part of dinner was observing the couple beside me. We had sat down at the same time because there had previously been a big group there, so they separated the tables to make room for our 2 parties. Anyway, it was this North American couple, probably in their low 30s, and from their rings I assumed they were married, but they had the most awkward dinner I've ever seen. This middle aged woman from New Zealand turned around and chatted me up for about 5 minutes because I reminded her of her son, and I think we had more conversation than the Awkwards had all night. Also, they were speaking in extremely low voices, as if they didn't want anyone to hear what they were saying (I couldn't hear them, and I was right next door). Furthermore, they only really spoke shortly after food arrived, leading me to believe the only conversation they could come up with was in regards to the food. There was so much tension at the table, when I tried to leave I got clothes-lined. My guess was that they came to Italy to try to save their marriage, and it totally wasn't working. It's cruel, but I loved every minute of it."

Funny story: I ate a pasta dish as part of my dinner, which was trenette with pesto, cheese and potatoes. It was one of the best meals of the trip, and I just found out last night that a friend from Teacher's College had the exact same dish at the exact same restaurant earlier in the summer.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this Europe Excerpt! There will be more to come another time, so stay tuned.

A Bizarre Dream

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Oops! I wrote this yesterday, but forgot to post it because I was hoping other parts of the dream would come to me throughout the day. They didn't.

Last night I slept fitfully, because putting pressure on my giant ears was painful. Perhaps it was the sporadic nature of my sleep that led to one of the weirdest dreams I've ever had. Unfortunately, I didn't think of turning it into a blog as soon as I woke up, but I think I can re-construct a relatively complete version.

I remember being at a hotel, not one I've been to before, but a pretty nice hotel that may or may not have had a view of a fancy Cancun-like strip. I say may or may not because even though I remember the view, I think the hotel morphed later in the dream into something closer to the low-key 12ish room place in Tulum my family stayed at for most of our Mexican voyage over Christmas.

Fast forward to the main event. The hotel was operated by a middle-aged woman, not unlike the one who operated the hotel my family stayed at in Tulum, Mexico. Only this woman was a murderer, as witnessed by me. I saw her kill another woman of similar age and then dispose of the body. 

Then it got weird, because I turned into the woman, and repeated what had just happened with someone else.

Shortly thereafter, I transformed back into myself. At this point, I suddenly became aware that the winner of the World Beer Pong Championship was staying at the hotel and would become the landlady's next victim. This part throws a wrench into my assumption that the dream took place in Mexico, because the WBPC was recently held in Las Vegas, which works with my original vision of a fancy hotel strip. 

Anyway, I remember that the beer pong champion was a middle-aged Canadian guy from the west coast, and I even remembered his name when I woke up, though I forget now. Apparently, I also knew what he looked like, and quickly found him snorkeling. For some reason, I think he was actually snorkeling inside the hotel, in some sort of basement-lagoon. I believe this basement-lagoon was part of the hotelkiller's body disposal scheme. Anyway, it took a few minutes to convince him that he was in grave danger, but eventually I managed, and we were on our way. We tried to stroll casually out of the hotel, walking right by the manager, but something on my face betrayed the fact that I knew she was the killer. We started running, got past the front gate, and thought we were home-free.

And then Mickey Rourke's character from The Wrestler, apparently a hotel henchman, came charging out and tackled my beer-pong companion. This is where the dream ended.

You know how dreams are often based on the last thing you were thinking about before falling asleep, or at least something you've been thinking about recently? Well, this dream was no exception, but it was unique in that it combined several recent thoughts:

• watching The Wrestler a couple of weeks ago
  
• going to Mexico over the Christmas holidays with my family
  
• reading an article on competitive beer pong yesterday

Other random memories from the dream:

• For some reason, one of my sister's friends was there too (along with my sister). 
  
• I remember specifically that the beer pong champion was the "singles" champion. This is not actually a category at the WBPC; teams are always 2 people. Also, most of the competitors in the actual competition were in their 20s, whereas this guy was closer to 40 or 50.
• I think the basement lagoon/body disposal room was also a communal shower room, the kind you'd find at a rec center. What a strange room. I wonder how the snorkeling was. This is likely a result of the fact that I showered in a place like this 2 days ago after a squash game.
• I believe the first part of the dream may have involved my sister and her friend and I hanging out in our hotel room, but I can't exactly picture this.
• Part of the dream was also set in Canada, as I remember some cold weather.
• I clearly remember that the hotel had a locked front gate which was operated by a woman of about 30. When she saw beer pong guy and I running, she smiled and opened it quickly, realizing we were in a hurry. Luckily for us, she hadn't got the message from the front desk that we were wanted, or she wouldn't have opened the gate.

So, have you had a stranger dream?

Me Being an Idiot #2

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The inaugural post of Xave's Xlog (apart from a brief introductory post) was entitled The Mystery of Downsview Station and chronicled my New Year's Eve adventure. That was Me Being an Idiot #1, and today I'll present the second installment in what may prove to be a regular feature.

Today's story is actually directly related to New Year's Eve. In case you haven't read it, I lost my toque that night (among other things). Well, as I'm sure you can guess, Ottawa is a cold place, not the sort of place you want to be without a hat. Furthermore, I've been skating to school since the semester started a week and a half ago, and the increased speed that goes along with skating combined with the wind tunnel effect created by the layout of the Rideau Canal creates even more of a hat necessity.

Now, I'd been getting by okay so far. Some days I wore a hoody and sometimes it just hasn't been that cold. I did intend to get a hat; I even went hat shopping on Monday, but the stores I went to were over-priced, and the hat I got in the fall had only cost me like 8 bucks (and it was really nice!). So I didn't get a hat on Monday, and it didn't seem like a big deal. This would prove to be a costly decision.

Last night it dropped 20 degrees. 

I had early class this morning, so I rolled out of bed, trudged to the shower, had some breakfast, got my lunch together and put my coat on. I opened the closet and saw my roommate's scarf hanging there. I had borrowed this scarf several days earlier because he was out at the time. But I wasn't sure if it was an extra scarf, or if it was his primary scarf and he had just forgot it that day. Since he was asleep (meaning I couldn't ask him), I decided to leave it in case he needed it. Bad Decision #2. 

When I got outside, the cold wind hit me like I hit the bottle on New Year's Eve. (how many times can I plug that entry in this post? Stay tuned to find out!) I got down to the canal, laced up my skates, and set off on my journey. Now, on these skates to school, sometimes I put my shoes in my backpack, and sometimes I just hold them. Today was one of the holding days, simply because I was too lazy/cold to take my backpack off and shove them in. Bad Decision #3.

When my ears started to discover how cold it was, I tried to alleviate the cold by holding my mitts to them. Unfortunately, I could only do one ear at a time since I was holding my shoes with the other hand. The skate was treacherous; apart from the cold and the wind, the ice was in bad condition. It seemed like the snow was packed really deep into the ice, whereas it usually sits on top of the ice allowing the skates to cut through and still get a smooth ride. I even had my first wipe-out of the year, which was actually kinda fun, because I was low down and leaning forward at the time, and even though I couldn't see myself do it (given that I'm me) I think it probably looked like I was sliding headfirst into second base (like Pete Rose).

When I arrived at the other end, I sat down beside another student-skater, who remarked to me something along the lines of "dude, you got some frostbite going on". I felt my ears, and sure enough, they were totally numb, and when I got inside to the bathroom I discovered that parts of them were totally white. Now, I've never had frostbite before, at least nothing worse than anyone who's lived in Canada has, so I had no idea what to expect. Would I be good to go in 5 minutes? Would I need amputation and reconstructive surgery? I was not ruling out any possibility between these 2 extremes.

Well, the first 10 minutes were the worst. I was in excruciating pain as my ears thawed, and I stayed in the bathroom pacing, waiting for the pain to subside, even though class had already started. Eventually it felt a bit better and I headed up to class. About an hour into class we had a break, at which point I went to the bathroom and discovered that my ears had swollen up and were seriously huge. So I headed over to the bookstore and bought an overpriced U of O toque, the kind I had tried to avoid on Monday. The rest of class was mildly painful, though I didn't have to deal with the embarrassment of looking like a monkey. 

At lunch I went over to health services and set up an appointment for after my second class of the day. The good news: for now it's just a first degree burn, and if I take care of it, it should stay that way. If it blisters or opens up I'll have to go back, and then technically it'll be a second degree burn, but the outlook is good all things considered. According to the doc, I'll have trouble sleeping tonight and I'll be in serious pain tomorrow morning, but otherwise things are rosy (especially my ears).

So, I guess you're all dying to see Me as a Monkey. Well..... okay. 

/************ WARNING***************/

if you're grossed out by huge ears, do not pass go, do not collect $200, turn back now before it's too late!

Yeah, I'm an idiot.

Apple's Next Big Thing

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I started writing this post last Monday, so here it finally is!

Apple's tremendous success in recent years has been thanks in large part to two incredible devices: the iPod and the iPhone. Yeah, they make great computers with an excellent operating system, but the iPod and iPhone were revolutionary shifts in the tech industry. 

So what's the next big thing for Apple? Is it going to be a gadget? I doubt it - the iPhone is at the cutting edge, and they'll certainly improve on it continually, but I'm not sure anyone even knows what the next generation hand-held device will be.

(side note: there are rumours Apple will soon be releasing a large-scale iPod Touch, with a 7 or 9 inch screen, which is pretty cool, but I don't see it as a huge new innovation)

Obviously, unless you're Steve Jobs, you don't have the answer. But I have a guess.

The next big Apple product will be......

drrrrruuuuuummmmmrooolllllll

iTunes Online. Or, as I will now dub it, oTunes. (eTunes might be more logical, but I think the eInsertWebsiteNameHere market is saturated)

I can see you're not blown away. I guess I should explain what I mean.

More and more, stuff is going into the cloud. By the cloud, I mean online storage, webspace hosted by someone else. You can put your files online - photos can go on flickr or facebook, videos on youtube. Instead of downloading TV shows and movies, you can stream them - legally on sites like hulu, or illegally. It's not just files, either - whole applications are moving to the cloud. You can create and share documents in Google Docs, which isn't as powerful as Microsoft Word, but contains the basic functionality that most users need. Calendars and address books are managed online, and as time goes by, more and more powerful applications will be moving into the cloud.

Soon users won't need hard drives at all. The internet is so widespread, you'll be able to store everything online and access it anytime, from anywhere, and modify it using any application.

Now this isn't going to happen tomorrow. But it's already started with many types of media, including music.

Okay, you say, so what? So we can store and access our music online. How is that a product on the same level as the iPod or iPhone? Well, I'm not done describing what oTunes will be capable of.

Have you heard of MySpace Music? If you're reading this blog, I would guess not, since you're probably Canadian, and MySpace Music is only in the U.S. for now. It launched in September, and the basic idea is that you can stream any song online for free. And it's legal.

Wait, what? How did MySpace do that? Well, the basic idea is they made deals with all the major record companies and thousands of indie labels. The labels get a stake in the company in exchange for allowing the music to be streamed for free. (the major labels do, at least... I'm not sure what the agreement is for indie labels)

The problem: MySpace's interface sucks. This has never been their strong point. I used some thingee that masks your IP to make the web gods think you're connecting from the U.S. in order to try out both MySpace Music and hulu, and was very disappointed (in both cases). It's not intuitive, and it takes forever to build a library. 

Now, there are start-ups out there right now that are trying to do what oTunes will do (such as LaLa), but they simply aren't big enough to negotiate deals that offer unlimited free music and stay in the black. Apple is a major player in the tech industry, so this won't be a problem. Furthermore, they have a very good track record of UI design, and tons of experience with music, so I see this as a logical step for them.

In summary, here's what oTunes will be capable of:

1. you will be able to automatically import your existing iTunes library into your oTunes library
   
2. you will be able to easily discover music using the oTunes Store, and add it to your library at no charge
   
3. oTunes will look exactly like the extremely user-friendly iTunes, the only difference being that it's web-based. Similarly, the "oTunes Store" will be a copy of the iTunes Store, but things will be free.
   
4. oTunes will likely start with mostly music, but just like the iTunes Store expanded to the realm of TV, movies, podcasts and more, the oTunes Store will as well.

Here's hoping Steve Jobs is reading this and hasn't thought of it yet. Steve, just leave a message with my assistant, I'll get back to you when some other stuff clears up.

Thought Bubbles #2

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Jeez, 2 days in a row with no time to blog. On the plus side, I spent my evening practicing a Backstreet Boys song for a couple of open mic nights this week. Wait, is that a plus?

Without further ado, here is the second consecutive re-used cartoon.


Click to enlarge

Previous comic

Thought Bubbles

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I didn't have time to write anything thoughtful and long-winded today, as I spent much of the day at a friend's house playing Settlers of Catan followed by dinner with another friend and then a couple hours working on a secret project. So, here's a cartoon I made about a month ago. I was originally thinking of starting a web-comic but it only lasted 3 days for some very good reasons. However, I plan on incorporating some web-comicy sort of stuff into the blog, so here's the inauguration of that facet of Xave's Xlog.

Who Pukes in the Sink?

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(for those who weren't there, this post is in relation to the party that Ben and I had on Friday night. Also, if you were involved with any of the paragraphs described below, I actually don't care, you expect this sort of thing when hosting a party. So don't worry about it)

And now we return to "Really? with Seth and Amy"

Who pukes in a sink? I mean, really. In most cases (including ours) the toilet is like 3 feet away. You really didn't have the time to move 3 feet? Really?! Even if you didn't, you probably could have projectile vomited the 3 feet to the toilet. Puke in the sink is gross. It's extremely difficult to clean up, since the drain gets clogged easily. And that's the sink that every single party-goer uses when they go to the bathroom. When there's puke in the sink, nobody washes their hands. And you know what else happens at parties? People meet new people. Meaning handshakes. So now we've got gross hand germs spreading like wildfire, all because you couldn't take the one step to the toilet, Sink-Puker. I mean, really.

Who pukes on a towel hanging in a bathroom? Really. It's hanging ABOVE THE TOILET. If you had rotated your face 90 degrees, the puke would have landed in the toilet. Really. I wonder what was going through your head at the time. "You know, this seems like a decent enough towel, but I think it would be more effective at drying wet persons if it had vomit on it. BLLLEEEAAAHHHH. Ah, much better." Really.

Who pukes on a couch? Nobody wants that. Really, Couch-Puker? Really? People want to sit on that couch. The least you could do is, um, I dunno, not puke on the couch. And what happens if someone gets too drunk and has to sleep on that couch? Actually, I guess the most likely candidate for that is you, Couch-Puker, so maybe it'll work out. Then again, maybe it's just disgusting. Really.

Who pukes on themself? Really. Who is just sitting there, having a good time, not realizing they're about to spew, and then all of a sudden just throws up in their own lap? And who actually has the composure to keep the vomit contained within the space occupied by their body and not let it reach their host's furniture? That is very impressive, Auto-Puker. Really. Kudos.

This has been another episode of "Really? with Seth and Amy"

So F***ing Canadian

Most Canadian stereotypes are completely unfounded. I don't say aboot, I don't live in an igloo, I don't ride a polar bear, I'm not friends with any meese and I don't produce maple syrup when it's that time of the month. I don't even have a lot of friends who play hockey.

But I did skate to school today.

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No word of a lie. It's almost 5km from my house to the University of Ottawa, and now that the UNESCO World Heritage Site Rideau Canal is almost completely open, I can skate about 4 of those clicks (which is especially handy given the current transit strike in Ottawa, which has been going on for almost a month now). Lacing up my skates this morning in the -15 degree cold was probably the most Canadian I've ever felt - the only possible exception being when my dad and I did Bob and Doug McKenzie for our family's Christmas talent show when I was 2. (Those of you on facebook may remember my former profile pic from the occasion, featuring a tiny version of me drinking out of a stubby.)

For those who have never skated on the Rideau Canal before, there's a tradition you should be aware of: Beaver Tails, which are basically fried dough with toppings. Today I had my first Beaver Tail of the winter, which is really the only way to kick off an Ottawa winter. I had the most basic type: cinnamon and sugar. It tastes like a more delicious version of cinnamon toast. Within a couple of months, I plan to try all the different flavours of Beaver Tails, as well as the other food the canal has to offer, and write my own review of canal food. Stay tuned!

Live-Blogging the Vasectomy

On Monday, I espoused my desire for live-blogging to be a more varied and wide-spread activity. Well, I'm happy to inform you that I'm not alone in this thought.

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How does Teacher's College work?

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Today's entry will be short because I'm developing a cold and haven't had the energy to do much today. I suppose that means I could have spent all day blogging since it really doesn't take that much energy, but sometimes you just want to not think, you know?

So I've had an idea swimming around about describing teacher's college for those who are curious. I'll probably do some follow-up posts eventually with some thoughts and analysis, but for today I'll just describe the program.

Specifically, I'm talking about the University of Ottawa B.Ed program, intermediate/senior division. I don't know how different programs are across Ontario, and I know for a fact that they're very different in other provinces, so maybe this isn't instructive at all, but whatever.

P.S. in case you're wondering, there are 4 age divisions in schools:

-primary = JK-3

-junior = 4-6

-intermediate = 7-10

-senior = 11-12

And in teacher's college, there are three teachable age groups - P/J, J/I, I/S. So you can either apply to teach JK-6, 4-10, or 7-12. This is different than what you might think, since I think people generally perceive a sharp divide between elementary school teachers and high school teachers, but in reality a lot of elementary school teachers are qualified to teach some or all high school grades, and all high school teachers are qualified to teach at least 7 and 8.

So each semester we take 6 courses, and these are divided into 4 categories.

1) Teachable Subjects - in I/S, you need 2 teachable subjects (mine are math and physics), and you take a course in each of them each semester. First semester is intermediate (for me, math and general science since physics is only senior), and second semester is senior

2) Mandatory General Education Courses - there are 2 of these each semester. Last semester there was one on Curriculum Design, which was a) an online course, b) taught by an awful prof and c) BS. The other was called Schooling and Society, which was certainly more interesting and relevant, though not the sort of work that generally appeals to me (i.e. essays). This semester we have one called Learning Procedures and I Forget the Rest of the Title, which, as I was remarking today, sounds like they needed one more course for the program and just made up the title. The other is something about exceptionalities, which sounds like the most practical of the 4 courses in this category. Also, we had our first class today and the prof is very cool, so I'm pretty pumped.

3) Electives - one per semester. Last semester I took Holistic and Non-Traditional Approaches to Education, or more appropriately, Hippie Approaches to Education. I'm not kidding; the prof was the hippiest hippie I've ever met in my life by a country mile. I might have to write a whole post describing her. Not to take anything away from the course, which was decent. My elective this semester is Technology in the Classroom, one of my most anticipated classes of the year. Hopefully it's not How to Use an Overhead Projector 101, just like that grade 9 business course (which I didn't take thankfully, but I heard the stories) was How to Type 101. 

4) 2143 - this course needs a category of its own, and I'm too lazy to think of an appropriate title, but there are 2 main purposes to this course: 1) everything to do with our practicum, i.e. discussing issues, getting support from our prof, creating our practicum binder, etc. 2) creating our professional portfolio. This course is not as interesting as some of the others, but it's easily the most useful course we take. 

In addition to the courses, there are a few other things that the program entails:

1) Practicum (aka placement) - clearly the most useful part of the program. We have a 5 week practicum both terms. In the fall we had 1 week of observation, came back to school for 2 weeks, then returned to our practicum for 4 weeks, with the expectation that we would take on 50% of our associate teacher's course load by the end of the 4 weeks. Mine was at a private girls school, and it's pretty likely I'll do a follow-up post or 2 on that because it was great. In the spring term we have 5 weeks straight at a different school (presumably in the other age group and teachable, i.e. since I taught intermediate math last time I should be teaching senior physics this time), and if I'm not mistaken we're expected to bump our teaching up to 100% of our associate. 

2) Professional Development Workshops - all J/I and I/S teachers have Tuesdays off by design so that we can attend these PD workshops. Unfortunately they have limited spaces, and if you know me you can guess that I didn't get around to signing up quickly enough to secure spots in any workshop (in my defense, they filled up in like the first week of school). Most of them don't sound very interesting, but you do get a certificate saying you completed the workshop, which is apparently somewhat valuable, so I might try to sneak in to a few this semester.

3) Some sort of week long conference thing - after our classes end this semester and before our practicum starts, there's a 3 day conference and I have no idea what goes on during it. It sounds intriguing and worthy of its own post though, so I'll probably do a recap after the fact.

Okay, hope someone found that interesting/useful!

Europe Excerpt #1: The Europe Playlist

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Yesterday I mentioned a playlist I made based on my month-long foray into Europe last summer. The basic idea was that I kept track of all the songs I got stuck in my head on the trip, since I didn't bring an iPod or anything. Today I'll tell the stories of a few of these songs (the more interesting ones at least). The complete playlist (in approximate chronological order of getting-stuck-in-head) is at the end.

1) Killing in the Name Of - Rage Against the Machine - I got this stuck in my head thanks to a cover band at the "North American bar" in Nice. I went to the bar with some people I met at the hostel, and it was a pretty mixed crowd - a Swede, an Aussie, a Canuck, a Yank (named Randall... OF COURSE the American was named Randall), and a Norwegian. Even though it sounds lame, it was actually a lot of fun. Also, I'm pretty sure the Aussie dude brought back a girl to our hostel room where 8 people were sleeping. I say pretty sure because I arrived before him and only half-saw the girl leaving in a sleepy haze in the morning. In any case, that's gotta take balls.

2) Theme from Indiana Jones - this was in yesterday's entry, but I'll re-iterate. I got it stuck in my head on a train from Nice to Genoa because some American kids were watching one of the Indiana Jones movies on a little portable DVD player instead of marveling at the beautiful Cote d'Azure. (by the way, I know for a fact they were American, New Jerseyan to be specific, I'm not just jumping to conclusions here.) Okay, okay, I watched a little too from my seat.

3) American Boy - Estelle feat. Kanye. I got this song stuck in my head in the small Italian Alps town Trento because it was playing in the breakfast room in my hostel in the morning. I had actually never heard the song before (I think it had just come out), but it's so catchy that it stuck. I don't particularly like the song, which is generally not the case with songs that get stuck in my head, so I wasn't too happy. To make matters worse, that was the day I had one and only one task: to climb a mountain. Meaning I had very little contact with civilization (I only encountered one other hiker all day). Meaning it was very difficult to get out of my head. It did eventually depart from my brainwaves, but I stopped at a mountain town for a drink around 4PM, and guess what song was playing. Yeah. 

(By the way, this day was one of the best days of the trip and I wrote a great journal entry about it including the story of an Italian lady who spoke no English desperately trying to warn me about "serpenti". I will probably post the journal entry as a blog entry someday.)

4) Robot Hell Song from Futurama - the story behind this song getting stuck in my head is completely uninteresting, but I wanted to mention it because the song is SO GOOD. An unbelievably arranged musical-type song with brilliant lyrics, extremely catchy music, hilarious animation and a fantastic performance by Dan Castellaneta as the Robot Devil. Everything about that song is amazing. Man. You really should watch the full episode (it's one of the best Futurama episodes). but here's an extremely low-quality version of the song.

5) Overture to the Barber of Seville - my mom had encouraged me to try to attend some operas while in Italy - I mean, duh, but more specifically she recommended checking out some outdoor summer operas because they're often cheaper and more intimate than going to the huge opera houses. I went to 2, the first being The Barber of Seville in Florence. Even if you know nothing about classical music, you know this overture. Skip to 2:06. Funny story about the event - at one point some clone-looking girls had to leave in the middle of the opera because one of them was too drunk. They made a huge racket walking down the temporary aluminum grandstand type thing in their heels and pissed a lot of people off, though I enjoyed it.

6) Autumn Leaves - another Florence based entry. I saw this amazing gypsy band in a public square in Florence, and they played a great version of Autumn Leaves. That's not particularly interesting, but it was watching that band that I ran into two good high school friends, Grace and Amy! We were mutually aware we were in Europe at the same time, and planned to meet up in Rome, but didn't know that Florence would overlap as well. It was fantastic.

Complete approximately chronological list:

Don't Speak - No Doubt

A Wolf at the Door - Radiohead

Myxomatosis - Radiohead

Hide and Seek - Joshua Redman

Blue Bossa (no artist in particular, the one on my playlist is Dexter Gordon)

They Can't Take That Away From Me (no artist in particular, the one on the playlist is Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald)

The Way - Fastball

Out of My Head - Fastball

Johanna (from Sweeney Todd)

My Friends (from Sweeney Todd)

Pretty Women (from Sweeney Todd)

The Four Seasons (couldn't remember which movement) - Antonio Vivaldi

Killing in the Name Of - Rage Against the Machine

Theme from Indiana Jones

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

Spain - Chick Corea

Barbie Girl - Aqua

Sunday Morning - No Doubt

American Boy - Estelle feat. Kanye West

Robot Hell Song from Futurama

One Jump Ahead (from Aladdin)

Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz)

Short Skirt/Long Jacket - Cake

Overture to The Barber of Seville

When Doves Cry - Prince

Symphony no. 40, 1st Movement - Mozart

New - No Doubt

Play That Funky Music - Wild Cherry

Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin

Frank Sinatra - Cake

Autumn Leaves (no artist in particular, the one on my playlist is Bill Evans)

Pirelli's Miracle Elixir (from Sweeney Todd)

The Contest (from Sweeney Todd)

The Story of the Kalendar Prince (from Scheherezade) - Rimsky-Korsakov

Tape-Delay Live-Blogging the Train

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I think live-blogging is an activity that should be more widespread. I've only ever read live-blogs for 1) sports games, 2) tech conferences/product announcements and 3) U.S. election debates. Here is a list of things I would like to see live-blogged:

-paint drying
-writing a blog post
-sex
-whitewater kayaking
-eating turducken
-diahrrea

In order to try to spur this live-blogging revolution, I will be live-blogging my train journey from London to Ottawa today. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to shell out the 20 bucks or whatever it costs to get internet on the train, so consequently this live-blog will actually be a tape-delayed live-blog, which will air later tonight.

12:03 PM: On the train! It's a fairly empty train since most students went back to school yesterday. Snagged a spot in one of the 4-seat sets, meaning more leg room. Yeah!

12:08PM: just booted up Revolutionary Road. It's Oscar season - watched Milk a couple weeks ago, The Wrestler last night and Slumdog Milllionaire is waiting on my desktop.

1:05PM: part 1 of RR just ended, decompressing part 2.

1:07PM: decompression finished! Yeah!

1:10PM: at first the audio of part 2 was misaligned, and I panicked. Then I came up with the brilliant idea of playing the movie in Quicktime and VLC simultaneously, muting one, and aligning the audio of the non-muted one with the video of the muted one. Then the problem somehow resolved itself, which was a little bit disappointing.

1:56PM: with about 20 minutes remaining in the movie, we're about to arrive at Union. I'll have to pick it up again later.

3:43PM: A friend came down to Union to drop off boots that I forgot at his house on New Year's Eve. My hour and a half between trains consisted of waiting for him, going to the bank, and waiting in line for the next train. I'm now on said train, hurtling towards Ottawa eating some grapes.

3:44PM: I was disappointed when, despite the fact that the train car was only about half full, some dude sat down beside me, possibly making me the first person on the train to get an unknown companion. Maybe I should be flattered for being such a welcoming and unthreatening looking guy. Or offended. Either way, there were a lot more people getting on that I hadn't noticed and the car ended up full, so no big deal.

3:45PM: Back to Revolutionary Road.

4:03PM: done the movie. It was fantastic, probably my favourite of the year so far (with the possible exception of Batman). Kate Winslet is every bit as good as she is purported to be, and Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon are excellent in supporting roles. I like Leonardo DiCaprio a lot, and he was fine, though not as good as in other recent roles such as The Aviator and Blood Diamond.

4:12PM: since movies are the only thing I brought to entertain me on the train, time for Slumdog Millionaire.

6:09PM: finished, and it was also very good, but RR is still topping my list for the moment. Slumdog had awesome music though, as I'm reminded by the credits music currently playing. I have some more movies on my computer and almost 2 more hours on the train, but I think I'm all movied out for today.

6:17PM: you know what sucks? When you put your sweater in the overhead compartment and sit in the window seat and someone else sits in the aisle seat and then you're cold. Oh well, I have to go to the bathroom anyway. At least he's not asleep.

6:24PM: Seven minutes later, I still haven't gotten up, due to equal parts laziness, aversion to making people get up even though it's expected and I shouldn't even have to thank him, and concern that my computer will fail to wake up when I get back, a problem that first manifested itself last night and has happened twice already today.

6:31PM: HOLY SHIT! Some guy just sprinted down the hallway followed by a Via Rail dude, bowling over some poor soul who just wanted to use the bathroom.

6:34PM: We just stopped in Cornwall, and a bunch of cop cars sirened up and they're apprehending the sprinting dude!

6:34 1/2PM: They seem to all be pointing at a black case that he's holding, but he won't let it go.

6:35PM: WHAT?! Police brutality! A cop just punched the dude in the gut, forcing him to drop the case.

6:37PM: The cops can't open the case. They've tried their nightsticks, some of which are stuck on twirl (just kidding, Simpsons reference).

6:38PM: The "renegade cop" who punched the guy just shot the case open! As if that weren't enough, a brightly coloured bird, which the cop's bullet apparently missed, jumped out of the case and flew away! This is bizarre, to say the least. Unfortunately, the train's moving, so I'll miss the rest of the situation. But I think I got the gist of it... the bird was a metaphor, right?

6:41PM: I just remembered none of that happened. Must be some sort of weird magnetic field around Cornwall. That or I'm really grasping for straws to make this live-blog interesting.

6:44PM: I'm listening to a playlist I made themed around my Europe trip in the summer. It consists of all the songs I had stuck in my head at some point on the trip (might be missing a couple, but I was pretty diligent about writing them down... though I'm definitely missing the theme from the SNCF in France). I might devote a whole post to it at some point, but for now I'll just say the song I'm least proud of having on the playlist is Barbie Girl.

7:21PM: I've spent about the last half hour fleshing out a post about my prediction for Apple's Next Big Thing. Stay tuned over the next few days if you're interested!

7:30PM: Playing Minesweeper with no mouse is really unsatisfying, since the crappiness of the trackpad ensures there's no way you can get a good time. I just placed 41st on the all-time list with a time of 455.9 seconds (on expert)! w00t. Then again, I am improving quite a bit at playing without marking any mines, since that requires right clicking, which is also annoying with no mouse, and is an important skill if I ever decide to devote my life to becoming the One True Minesweeper.

7:33PM: The theme from Indiana Jones just came on my Europe playlist, which I got stuck in my head on a train from Nice to Genoa because some American kids were watching one of the movies on a little portable DVD player instead of marveling at the beautiful Cote d'Azure. (by the way, I know for a fact they were American, New Jerseyan to be specific, I'm not just jumping to conclusions here.) Anyway, the music is making Minesweeper WAY more fun and now that I've spent most of the song writing this update I'm gonna have to start it again.

7:43PM: The 10-minute warning just aired. Live-blog out!

Elizabeth Shepherd

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One time, a few years ago, a good friend of mine called me up and asked if I wanted to head over to The Rex (a popular jazz bar in Toronto) to hear someone named Elizabeth Shepherd. Since I love jazz and am rarely doing anything, I took him up on the offer. To be more specific, it was the Elizabeth Shepherd Trio, featuring ES on vocals and piano, and a couple dudes on drums and bass. Even though I'm generally more inclined to instrumental jazz, it was a fantastic show, one of the best I've seen.

For some reason, though, I never followed up on the trio, never searched for their recordings, never found the schedule of more live shows, and quickly forgot about the concert.

That's not the end of the story, of course. No doubt you've already guessed I recently re-discovered the Elizabeth Shepherd Trio. But I bet you can't guess how I once again came across their music.

No?

Okay, I'll tell you. It was on Air Canada. Yep. Air Canada apparently has this new media device - a touch-screen built into the back of the headrest in front of you that offers up movies, TV and music. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, the music selection is pretty soft-rock/adult contemporary, but I was surprised to find a few hidden gems. Notably, the new Beck and TV on the Radio albums have found their way into Canada's airspace, and so has, of course, the new Elizabeth Shepherd Trio album. After watching Wall-E for the first couple hours of my flight last week, I turned on Parkdale (the name of the album) and am now fully on the bandwagon.

The trio has only been around since 2004, but is already making quite a name for themselves on the Canadian (and especially Torontonian) scene. They were nominated for a Juno in 2006, and Parkdale was recently named one of the 10 best albums of the year by the Globe and Mail (unfortunately the online version of the Globe isn't free, but here's the link if you have a membership).

Elizabeth has a beautiful voice with very little vibrato. She hits every note with piercing clarity, and is nimble as well, skipping from note to note with ease, but doesn't fall into the pop-singer trap of over-embellishment. She is also a very good pianist and her backing band is solid. For me, the best part of the Trio's music is Elizabeth's song-writing/arranging. She has a knack for producing catchy motifs and melodies, but if you peer under the surface you'll find the complex rhythms and harmonies that make great jazz. This is a rare ability, and you can bet I'll be keeping tabs on the group as they continue to be a bright spot on the jazz scene.

Check out Elizabeth Shepherd at her MySpace page. There's a much more extensive bio than what I've mentioned, and a number of videos and songs. In particular, I'd recommend Parkdale, Shining Tear of the Sun, and Sicilienne, a beautiful arrangement of a classical piece originally written by Gabriel Faure.

Blogs and Facebook Connect

Note - this blog is automatically imported into facebook, but unfortunately it loses some formatting in the process. Click here to visit the real thing.

One of the parts of starting a blog that excited me most was the ability to integrate it with Facebook Connect. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Facebook Connect is this thingee that links your actions across the web, and it's very new - though it was announced months ago, it only came out in December. 

You can check out FC in action over at TechCrunch. Click on any post and then scroll down to the commenting section. There's a button saying Facebook Connect. If you click on it, you can comment using your facebook identity, and your comment links to your profile (it doesn't bypass privacy settings, of course, so random blog readers can't just stalk your profile). Additionally, if you make a comment on TechCrunch through FC, that action will show up in your news feed. 

This is just one basic example of the service. I plan on writing a more detailed post about the merits of FC in the future. Suffice it to say I don't think it's something that's going away, and though many people I've talked to are resistant, I think it'll be mainstream within a year or 2. (Google and MySpace have launched competing products.)

The reason I think it's a great tool for blog owners such as myself is that it gives me an instant audience made up of people I know. Here's what I want FC to be able to do: when I write a blog entry, I want it to automatically show up as an item in my news feed. Now, I can (and do) do this a different way: I have my profile subscribed to the RSS feed of my blog, and it automatically imports blog entries as notes. But there are some drawbacks. First, as mentioned above, some formatting is lost. Second, and more importantly, the note and the blog entry are 2 separate entities, so when comments are made on one, they aren't synchronized to the other. 

In an ideal world, my news feed would produce something saying, for example "Dave wrote a new blog entry entitled The Mystery of Downsview Station" (yesterday's entry). Clicking on the link would take you to the actual blog, so I don't have 2 separate versions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this is possible yet, at least not for the casual non-developer blogger. I spent a lot of time over the last couple days trying to figure out a WordPress plug-in that seemed to do the trick, and finally I discovered that the plug-in is for wordpress.org, not wordpress.com. There's a difference. Seriously. Wordpress.org is a method for publishing blogs from your desktop using an FTP client, and I don't want to have to deal with all that.

Facebook Connect is very new though, and I don't think it'll be long before blogger or wordpress or some other mainstream blog hosting site integrates FC the way I want it to.

The Mystery of Downsview Station

My New Year's Eve began with a near-miss. Around 1:15PM, I asked my mom, who had been graciously doing some laundry for me, where my jeans were. She was horrified to report that they had not made their way to the dryer yet. My friend Fed was set to pick me up for the drive to Toronto around "1:30 or 2", and since I spent most of the Christmas break in warmer weather, the jeans were the only pair of pants I brought back from Ottawa. I almost had to go to Toronto wearing no pants.

As it turned out, another friend was delayed getting into London from New York, and my pants were given ample time to dry, so it all worked out. I did have one alternative: my engineering coveralls, clearly not an outfit fit for a big night on the town. But as you shall soon discover, dear reader, perhaps wearing the coveralls would have been for the better.

Fast forward to arrival in Toronto around 6:30. We settled in at our first location, a friend's house in Cabbagetown. We stayed for 3 or 4 hours, have dinner, watched some Canada/USA hockey, and began the night's consumption. I won't catalogue all that was consumed, but suffice it to say it was varied and extensive.

Around 10 or 11 we headed to another friend's house, this time around Bloor and Ossington (I don't know what the name of that neighborhood is.... I think it's close to Koreatown). We hung out there for a while and then headed to a bar near Queen and Bathurst shortly before the countdown. 

According to my friends, I probably wandered out of the bar around 12:30. I woke up at Downsview Station at 4 with two freakish rips in my pants, an injured knuckle, bizarre residue from my iron ring, and a lack of my hat, gloves, scarf, and most importantly, glasses. (For those who don't know Toronto, Downsview is the end of the main subway line, very far away from downtown.)

These are the facts. A multitude of questions spring to mind, and perhaps we can make some inferences that will help in solving... The Mystery of Downsview Station.

1) Why did I leave the bar? Was I not having fun? Given my state, that seems unlikely. My friends asked at the end of the night whether anyone had been bounced from the bar, and the only culprit was "some guy with a f***ed up face". Despite all that had transpired, I don't think I fit that description.

2) Where was I planning to go? I was staying with my friend Mark who lives downtown, near the bus station. But Mark was part of the group at the bar, and didn't leave until I had been gone for more than an hour. I wouldn't have been able to get into Mark's place without him.

3) Why did I get on the subway? The streetcar would have been a much more logical way to get to Mark's place, since it zips along Queen. To get to the subway would have required either walking up to Bloor and Bathurst or over to University and Queen, both fairly long walks.

4) What happened to my glasses and auxiliary winter clothing? My friends later informed me that the coat situation at the bar was extremely disorganized, coats were lying all over the floor, and one friend had his coat stolen. That evidently did not happen to me, as I was still wearing it upon waking up. However, that could have been the fate of my hat, gloves and scarf. I consider this possibility to be unlikely though, since it doesn't explain the disappearance of my glasses; despite my state, I don't think I would have taken them off in the bar.

Therefore, it's more likely I left the bar with all that stuff intact, and we didn't part ways until the subway phase of my journey. Perhaps I took my hat etc. off when I realized I was drifting off and put them on the seat beside me, available for any jerk to snatch.

5) When and how did I rip my pants? And how did they get ripped in such a non-random way? 

The 2 rips are exactly the same length and dead straight, at right angles to each other. Also, there's a small-scale version in the exact same shape on my other knee. Finally, why isn't there a corresponding injury? This whole pants rippage might be the weirdest part of the night.

6) When did my iron ring start leaking weird black stuff? (I tried to take a picture, but my webcam has terrible resolution, and it's mostly faded by this point anyway.) The ring leaving residue on my finger is not a new thing; most notably, salt water produces an orangey hue. I've never seen black before, though. What substance did my hand immerse itself in to produce this blackness? Is this connected somehow to the pants rip?

As you can see, this is a complicated situation, and I'm not sure I have the sleuthing ability to solve it. What prompted me to leave a bar where I was presumably having a good time? Did I rip my pants at the bar and decide to search for late-night mending? Is extra-terrestrial life trying to send a message to humanity through my pants? (I may need to re-phrase that...) Does the black residue have something to do with my intended destination? 

A new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. is coming out in November, but I can't wait that long to know what happened to me that fateful night. Perhaps there is another detective in our midst, one who can piece together the seemingly unconnected fragments of my memory to solve... The Mystery of Downsview Station.

Xave's Xlog (pronounced Zave's Zlog)

Welcome to the inaugural post of Xave's Xlog. 

Starting this blog was inspired by New Year's, but it's not a New Year's Resolution. I had a bit of an adventure last night, and wanted to put it into writing. Originally it was to be a facebook note, but on the bus on the way home from Toronto today, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could do with a blog, and I'm pretty excited about the idea now.

It'll be a "personal blog" in the sense that I'll write about whatever I feel like writing about, but it won't just be about stuff that happens to me. I'll write about the things that interest me most: music, sports esp. baseball, the internet, my education and my eventual career (education, coincidentally). Sometimes entries will take different forms, such as a comic strip or a spreadsheet I've made (yes, I do that for fun) with accompanying analysis. 

So bookmark this page, subscribe to the RSS feed, or just watch your facebook news feed closely, and stay tuned: tomorrow Xave's Xlog will present "The Mystery of Downsview Station".