Facebook Ads Quirk

Just a short update about a weird issue I ran into when I was creating some Facebook ads.

Facebook allows you to advertise to a number of different sources but for whatever reason they take features away from you if you're advertising to other Facebook pages. One of those annoying features is that Facebook takes over the title of your ad if you advertise for a fan page or an event.This can be annoying as the title is the only text in your ad that's presented in a big eye-catching bold font. My revelation was that you can subvert the normal title stealing behaviour by choosing to link to an "External URL" for the event/fan page but ONLY if your URL is not HTTPS.

IRSSI Notification Mod

If anyone still uses IRC these days (and you should because it's cheap, flexible group chat with support for file transfer, private messaging and pretty much everything else) you might appreciate some of the work I've done to increase the utility of IRC in this Smartphone age.

1. I'm running IRSSI off a Linux server I have set up from home. This is pretty par for the course for IRSSI but one of the easiest and most liberating thing you can do with it is run it inside of a program called "screen" and setup SSH on the Linux server. Whenever I'm at a Terminal (in Linux or OSX) or have access to PuTTY (Windows) I can SSH into my home server and open up screen to have full access to the IRC client (among any other programs I have running on the server). You can even extend this functionality to your Smartphone in at least two different ways, one if you have an SSH App (i use iSSH on my iPhone) or if you want to set up IRSSI to run as a proxy you can use any decent IRC app to login to that proxy and go from there. The proxy tends to be faster and easier to type on as every SSH app I've ever used has some terrible lag on the keyboard or has some other annoying twitch. Even iSSH cuts some of the terminal window off if you hold the iPhone portrait style and if you hold it landscape it makes the keyboard see-through and puts it over where you're reading the text.

Updates and Namedrops

We're getting into Doubleclick for Advertisers at work. I find it endlessly amusing that they refer to it as DFA constantly which reminds me of other things. Doubleclick is a monster but in a good way. AdWords was one thing but this seems to take all the nice conveniences of the Google Display Network and does away with them in favour of supporting everything who doesn't want to completely comply to Google's rules. I think I've got the basics down but I'm still expecting to have to figure some more things out.

I'm also working on CSS again. A new design for this site is on the way as a trial by fire for what I'm learning. I think I've got a lot of the basics down, but now I'm finding the idiosyncracies to be a far bigger issue than the concepts and methods. The CSS community seems to be pretty good at categorizing their hacks so that's been a smoother process then I was expecting. Now I just need to find the time to get the practice in.

Lots of other stuff going on but the only important thing right now is that my recent fling with programming means I'm addicted to IDM again. My good friend Heather directed me towards The Glitch Mob, Of Porcelain, and edIT. I've tangented off of that into some more ambient tracks though Machine Drum, Tim Hecker and some good old Boards of Canada.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Lots to say, not enough time to say it.

Thought I'd carve out a little time for a book review. Considering that I don't finish a lot of books these days and the lack of writing overall I've been doing I thought I'd do up something quick on the topic.

I finished "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" last night. You've probably heard of it. It's a murder mystery with a lot going on for it. Written by the late Stieg Larsson it's already an international bestseller, seen one set of movies made about the trilogy and has another trilogy coming up by David Fincher. The protagonists, such as they are, are Mikael Blomkvist, a finance reporter, and Lizbeth Salander a PI/hacker of considerable talent. While there's certainly a lot to roll your eyes about, possibly because the novel was written in swedish, possibly because it tries pretty hard to impress the reader with descriptions of the "bleeding edge" tech from 2004, the story is well crafted and Lizbeth especially I found to be an extremely endearing character.

El Topo

Alejandro Jodorowski is name that will come up if you spend enough time watching acclaimed cinema. Unfortunately he tends not to be quite as acclaimed as his contemporaries. This is probably due to his movies being phenomenally messed up. I was introduced to Jodorowski several years ago when some of his more famous movies got DVD releases after nearly 30 years of floating around art houses and midnight showings. These movies, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, have a fascinating history that's tightly tied to the popularity of The Beatles of all people. All that background is available on Wikipedia if you want to take the time to read it but this article is about my experience watching El Topo.

El Topo is a parable wrapped in a western taken with a heavy dose of psychedelics. The movie follows El Topo, "The Mole", who is played by Jodorowski himself. El Topo is a magnificent gunman who considers himself godlike. The movie starts with El Topo taking his son, who remains completely naked aside from a hat for the portion of the movie he is in, out into the desert to bury his first toy and his mother's mirror in a symbolic act of manhood. They find a massacred village and ride out to find the bandits who did it and get vengeance on behalf of the dead. The bandits act crazy to the point where their antics are a mix between goofy and perverted including a scene where three bandits challenge El Topo to a duel that starts when a small red balloon fully deflates and another where the bandits are torturing a group of monks by riding them around like horses and other demeaning/sexual acts. El Topo arrives and kills the bandits after which a woman who was with the monks forces El Topo to abandon his son with the monks so they can run off and be lovers in the desert.

The woman, Mara, eventually demands that he prove he is the best gun-slinger by killing 4 master gunmen. El Topo is challenged by the masters and by the fidelity of his lover but eventually defeats them all only to be stricken with remorse by what he's done before he is betrayed by his lover and left for dead.

The second part of the movie occurs many years later when El Topo returns to life or out of a coma. He is worshiped as an idol by a community of "freaks" who have been imprisoned in a mountain. El Topo realizes that his life has been lived selfishly so he endeavors to make amends by digging a tunnel to get the freaks out of their prison. To do this he must earn money by begging at a local town where the townsfolk live a dual life of religious fanaticism in public and incredible depravity in private. During this period El Topo is accompanied by a dwarf woman who becomes his close companion and eventually lover.

Meanwhile a mysterious monk appears in town and is revealed to be the son El Topo abandoned many years before. When they are reunited his son is furious and vows to kill El Topo but upon seeing the tunnel El Topo is digging, agrees to wait until after the tunnel is completed before killing him. El Topo's new found sense of charity softens his son's anger towards him but eventually he decides that he cannot wait any longer. El Topo is possessed by a holy power and finishes the tunnel almost immediately. The freaks, seeing their new freedom, make a run for the town where the townsfolk are waiting with guns. The freaks are all shot down El Topo must watch helpless. He is thrown into a rage and kills all the townsfolk before covering himself in oil and immolating himself like a Tibetan monk. El Topo's son, the dwarf girl and the son she bore him while he was killing the townsfolk ride off into the desert.

El Topo is hardly subtle but that doesn't mean it's easy. The story of downfall due to hubris and rebirth/redemption is easy to pick up on but almost everything that makes up the elements of that story are insane. The first gunman, for example, is aided by two men, one with no legs who rides on the shoulders of another with no arms. This is not special effects. It's actually an amputee stacked on the back of another amputee. The freaks who have been imprisoned are all dwarfs and people with various bone or muscle disorders. This movie should also have a warning on it that says 'many, many animals were killed in the production of this movie'. There's a scene involving one of the gun masters that involves probably 20 rabbits and several crows being killed, some on screen. Later the massive pile of dead rabbits and crows are set on fire resulting in a huge bon-fire. All the things you think couldn't be done in cinema because of concerns about offending certain parties are done in this film and done excessively.

If you're sensitive to things like this or naked 7 year olds or old ladies slutting all over their black adonis slave to get him shot for "trying to rape them" or sex scenes involving dwarfs or any number of other insane things then this most certainly isn't the movie for you. But El Topo is utterly unique in the world of cinema. This kind of movie will probably never be made again and while it might be easy to say that this uniqueness is all this movie has, it's not quite true. There's considerable skill to the way Jodorowski constructs his story and the magnitude of what is happening in this movie, and how it's presented, allows even the excessive overacting by all parties to fit in. El Topo is crazy. El Topo shouldn't exist. But I'm kind of glad it does.

Assange Being Charged For Sexual Molestation of Minors?

Through the course of today Julian Assange is being arrested by Interpol agents regarding a Swedish Sexual assault charge.

More here:
The Daily Mail - The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange

A discussion with some friends on the issue got me wondering what the legal terms of the charges were. I found my way to the Swedish Prosecution Authority

Reading a blurb about Assange's proceedings

The matter concerning Mr. Assange
Director of Prosecution, Ms. Marianne Ny, will hold a press conference concerning the proceedings in the Assange matter.

Time: 16.45 pm Tuesday 7 December

Address: Police Headquarters, Ernst Fontells plats 3, Göteborg (Gothenburg)

Next to the article there's a column for More Information, Background information and some other legal jargon. The Background section, however, contained a link to the Swedish Penal Code and a the relevant sections

The Swedish Penal Code

See Chapter 6, On Sexual Crimes, sections 1, 2, and 7.

See also Chapter 4, On Crimes against Liberty and Peace, section 7

Checking out Chapter 6, Section 1 refers to rape or coercing sexual intercourse through violence or threat of violence. Section 2 refers to coercion by unlawful means that aren't covered by Section 1 (probably where the bulk of the case is going to be focused on). Section 7 however refers to the molestation of minors and the coercions of minors from 15-17 to participate in pornographic material.

I don't know if this means anything yet but I find it extremely strange that they would list that section so directly when none of the women currently involved are minors.

Writing a Novel is Hard

Have you ever seen one of those 10k runs that all people are encouraged to participate in? There's a funny thing about the first couple of kilometers of those. The first aid stations in the beginning third usually see a LOT of people who are completely unprepared for a 1k run, let alone a 10k. I'm kind of feeling that way about my novel. 50,000 words in 30 days. That works out to about 1600 words a day assuming you don't miss any days (which I have).

I can see why writing is considered a full time job now. Even when I do manage to sit down and write I'll rarely get my full quota for the day done in the 3 hours I generally have. It's also become pretty clear to me how important the editing process is. Trying to keep momentum going when you're writing is a challenge. You can't always, and in fact, probably shouldn't, write linearly. If an idea comes into your head you've kind of got to sketch it out before it's gone. That kind of stuff puts you in a mood that might not fit the previous section you wrote so I've ended up mixing tones and styles all over the place.

It's a good thing this isn't to write a novel you're proud of or I'd really be in over my head. I've got a story figured out though and I'm satisfied with my characters that have appeared so far. It's just filling out the words in between.

National Novel Writing Month

I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year! I'm excited to see how far I get. I've got an idea and a few hundred words written already but that 50,000 word goal is looking pretty intimidating. I really like the idea I've come up with though and think that if I can figure out how to make enough content for it I'll be pretty pleased with myself.

I remember reading Stephen King's on writing last month and how much that motivated me to write more. This year I'm going to try to take it to the next step with a full novel. I probably won't be releasing it because, hey, who ever wrote a good novel on their first attempt, but there's got to be some jumping off point.

(Apparently the rest of the world also had this idea too because nanowrimo.org is crawling at this point.)

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/737370

So This Happened...Daft Punk Join Phoenix at Madison Square Garden

For the past few months I've been falling farther and farther into a hopeless addiction of those synth jammers and their motorcycle-stunt-men getup, Daft Punk. So when I heard that the boys had come out of hiatus for the first real time in three years (aside from a cameo at the 2008 Grammys) I almost got junk sick on the idea of there being a whole bunch more to enjoy come December and the release of the Tron Legacy Soundtrack. But for the time being I'll have to make due with Daft Punk randomly deciding to kick out a few tunes with Phoenix at Madison Square Garden the other night.

(via Stereogum)

Hurricane Igor

Of all the times to be without a camera, one of the worst hurricanes that has come through Newfoundland in a very long time is not a very good one. I've seen so many road signs ripped up and thrown across the road, trees uprooted, lamp posts knocked down and rivers flooding to fill a book but I haven't been able to take any pictures of any of it.

I suppose other people's photos will have to do (and are probably better than anything I would have taken anyway):

http://www.colinpeddle.com/featured/hurricane-igor/



http://hashalbum.com/igornl

Making of Star Guitar

This video is "Star Guitar" by Chemical Brothers.



It's a pretty amazing music video on its own but there's a lot to it that's not obvious on first viewing. First of all: the director, Michel Gondry who is a fascinating story on his own. He's best known for his auteur films "Eternal Sunlight of the Spotless Mind" and "The Science of Sleep". Aside from that, he's done a number of music videos including the one above. The depth of the video might not be obvious at first but what it represents is a blending of film-making and the creation of electronic music. Like most music there are patterns that represent certain musical phrases and beats. Sometimes you get this in the form of formal music notation, sometimes you get something like this.



That's a kind of sound map that Brian Eno used for his landmark "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" (also one of my favourite albums). The following video is like that for Gondry's Star Guitar. Check it out and appreciate the insane depth of Star Guitar.

9 Songs About Waking Up

Why do so many songs about waking up fail to actually entice anyone to get up and start your day? Here are 9 songs about waking up, about 3 of which actually might get me up instead of just hurling the radio across the room.

Arcade Fire - Wake Up

My pick for song that I'd most like to rip me from the sweet embrace of sleep in the morning. Great percussion, a sing-a-long chorus, upbeat tempo; the only problem is that I'd want to listen to it a few more times and probably miss whatever it was I was getting up for.


Rage Against The Machine - Wake Up

Total bomber. This should get you up, albeit not much much finesse. I think it's a great song but as a wake up call it's about one step above having a dumptruck back through your bedroom wall every morning.


John Legend & The Roots - Wake Up Everybody

This song's got potential but it should be followed with a little more energetic kicker to get you moving. This is a wake up song for people who like to ease into their mornings, like those folk who tune into the classical station to wake up to the gentle sound of a string quartet. (This has never worked for me and only led to the inevitable 15 minute morning sprint to get you to wherever you need to be once you realize you've slept in.


Coheed and Cambria - Wake Up

What the hell is this? The only way this song is waking anyone up is if Coheed and Cambria are actually jumping on your bed while playing this slow dance.


Three Days Grace - Wake Up

The prospect of not having to listen to this Chad-Kroeger-esque crooner for any longer is certainly enough to put a spring in my step


Mad Season - Wake Up

Now we're talking. A slow, gentle first half with a kicker of a bridge featuring a shredding guitar solo. Slows down near the end but at least you're cajoled with a series of "WAKE UP"s so at least you can pretend Layne Staley is your dad (although in Layne's case he's probably just trying to get you up for some money so he doesn't have to sell the TV to get his heroin fix for the morning)


Korn - Wake Up

WAKE THA FUCK UP! It's songs like this that make you wonder why you secretly (or not so secretly in my case) like Korn way back when.



Hayden Panettiere - Wake Up Call

That cheerleader chick from Heroes who was Paris Hilton's skank understudy for a while does some pop/ska nonsense about whatever skanky pop starlets sing about these days.


Maroon 5 - Wake Up Call

Maroon 5 seem as good as any modern day soul/pop derivative. I wouldn't want to wake up to them though. This song especially seems like it would both unoffensive and slow enough to leave me passively accepting as it intruded upon my sleep.

INCEPTIONAUTS!

The Internet has been swamped these past few weeks with so many Inception mash-up trailers I'm starting to feel like we will soon have an Inceptionized trailer for every significant movie of the last 20 years. Up, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, THE SECRET OF NIMH! I was on the verge of saying that the whole meme had been officially beaten into horseburgers until I saw this: Inceptionauts.

If anyone remembers this criminally underappreciated game, good on you. It's Psychonauts from Double Fine which is the company Tim Schafer founded after working on such amazing games as Monkey Island 1 and 2, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle Full Throttle and Grim Fandango for Lucasarts. If you haven't, add it to your bucket list. (Though people still give Psychonauts crap for having the difficulty spike near the end that hits you like like a volleyball player after an adrenaline shot to the heart. I didn't think it was that bad. Your mileage may vary.)

Paging the Real Iron Man

Sorry all you other Iron Men. There's another Iron Man in the house and he SHOOTS ELECTRICITY FROM HIS FISTS.

OK. Not really but this video involves Black Sabbath, Tesla Coils and some badass metal suits so who really cares.

CCTV Footage Of One Stormy Night

CCTV footage of a Pacific Sun Cruise liner that MIGHT be doing barrel rolls.


LiveLeak.com - Pacific Sun Cruise liner in very heavy seas. Internal CCTV footage.

The Wilderness Downtown

It's not often that I see something truly new online but the recent interactive video by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin is an extremely fresh and interesting experiment in both interactive art and HTML5. The website/video/art project (or whatever it is) blends video, elements from Google Maps and the users personal sense of nostalgia to weave a surprisingly personal experience. Apparently the experience can be viewed in other browsers with some trickery but it's been optimized for Google Chrome so I'd suggest going with that. Check it out at:
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

If you found it as imagination capturing as I did check out the behind the scenes work at the link below. For what it's worth I have a hard time not thinking about The Wildnerness Downtown whenever I hear the Arcade Fire song that provides the accompanying music.

http://creativity-online.com/news/behind-the-work-arcade-fire-the-wilderness-downtown/145696

James Hance Mashes up Star Wars and Children's Stories

I could see "The Kessel Run" hanging in my living room.
James Hance - Relentlessly Cheerful Art

This guy gives me a Brandon Bird vibe and that's usually a good thing.

Chrononauts

I enjoy board games quite a lot. There are some truly interesting games out there that are unique in many different ways. The actual mechanics of many of these games aren't all that disparate but there are a lot of innovative themes and story behind some of these games. Tonight I played a game that had a fascinating twist on a somewhat average concept and an inventive theme with which to rationalize your game plan: Chrononauts.

Chrononauts is a game about manipulating time. It's played with cards that are split up between action cards and a 8x4 grid of events that have happened between the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Columbine shootings. Your job, as a chrononaut, is to manipulate time in a variety of ways to achieve one of several goals. You can be the good solider and just fix everything that goes wrong, manipulate time in order to achieve a certain combination of events that satisfies your characters MO, or collect a series of historical artifacts to sell on the black time market to get rich. The time events are separated between lynchpin events and dependent events. If you change time so Hitler is assassinated a whole series of dependent events occur like the 1936 worlds fair is never held in Germany, WWII never happens, and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're playing the "good" chrononaut you'll want to fix all the paradoxes that occur because of the altered time stream. This might, however, give your opponent an altered event they need to satisfy their character MO success. One of the characters I played wanted to ensure that the Russian Space Program was the first to get to the moon. There are a whole lot of different characters and artifact sets you can collect to win.

So the gameplay isn't all that new. You draw cards in the hope of getting actions that let you change time or alter the other players game in the manner of interrupts or stealing cards they've played. It's the theme that makes this work for me. I like that you've got a selection of motivations for your character so if you're getting a lot time changing actions you can choose to play towards either manipulating the time-stream or setting up your MO. Likewise for artifacts. I did find the actual gameplay to be largely based on luck. There are several "search the deck" or "search the discard pile" or those kind of actions but getting them depends on what cards you draw and while there are also ways of accelerating the cards you draw it always seems like all your work could be in vain at any moment by someone stealing something you spend many turns acquiring or reversing something you spend a long time looking for a way to change. It's hard to say whether playing more games will make it easier to anticipate or plan for the actions of your opponents but I get the feeling that there will always be someone ready to pounce on your last action to their own advantage.

Regardless of how it plays i really enjoy the inventiveness of what you're doing. You're an agent of time, out to use your skills to manipulate the 20th century for good or for personal gain. There's a really smart series of lynchpins and dependencies as well. If you make sure the right presidents never get the opportunity to be impeached then you can keep Richard Nixon in office because there's no longer precedence for it. There's even a timeline where John Lennon becomes a senator and abolishes gun ownership, effectively preventing Columbine from happening. It's extremely entertaining to see the crazy timelines that come out of everyone scrambling to make the perfect series of events. Lincoln might have survived assassination and Tokyo was nuked instead of Hiroshima but John Lennon still abolishes gun ownership. I like the stories Chrononauts tells and I like the way you can control your own story but I'm not sure if the gameplay will hold up like Catan or Puerto Rico.

Baking with Trub

That there is what we call “trub”. You might also call it sponge or in my case “bread starter”. Under normal circumstances this stuff probably shouldn’t be used for baking but I was just going to flush it anyway so here goes.
After some googling (and learning a few new terms like trub and sponge) I found that two cups of sponge is roughly 1 packet of starter yeast. So that’s what I’m going on.
2 cups sponge/trub
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp oil


Mix it all up add:
1 cup of flour, mix

Add another cup and mix until it firms up. Throw it on a cutting board, add up to another cup a little at a time until it’s not sticky anymore.

Knead until it’s ready, throw it in a bowl, rub with a little oil and cover the bowl with a wet cloth for the next 12-18 hours.

That’s all I’ve got so far. I think this is going to be a very hop flavoured sour dough but only time will tell if it’s at all edible.

Beer Transfer

Beer update time! I transferred my wort to my secondary fermenter today. Nothing special but I got some photos and a special bonus!
Here’s a few days in. The yeast must be enjoying itself.

Really nothing to do at this point but wait until the foam dies down. Once racking day comes along you should move the bucket to a highish surface. As long as bottom of the bucket with the wort is above the top of the one you’re transferring to you’re fine.

Look at all that yeast!

We’ll see more of that stuff later.
The reason we want the bucket high is that we’re going to let gravity do the work. That’s right, siphoning! I learned a little trick since the last time I made beer and it’s worked real well. Instead of using your mouth to suck the water through the tube you can fill the tube up with water and drain it into a bowl until the beer comes through.


Not a whole lot left. Once the beer is flowing put the other end of the tube in the second bucket and let it go. To avoid letting the sediment get into the tube and maximize what you remove you can prop the bucket on a board like I’ve done and hold onto the rod so you can keep it above the sediment line until all the liquid is gone.


At this point I’m dry-hopping as well so in they go.


Fill the airlock up about halfway with water, put the cap on and you’re done.

Well, there are a hell of a lot of photos here already so I’m going to split the rest of them into a separate update but all you need to know is: “trub bread”.