Superfluous Matter
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One more day of work left and then it's back to Waterloo for me. This term has some potential to be good. Summer is always fun and Graphics will be neat. Plus my other courses require very little effort.

I just finished reading "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson (author of Neuromancer - a very Matrix-esque book that existed before the movies). It was really cool because I was able to identify with a lot of the stuff in it. It is set in the present and since it was written in 2003, it actually is the present (more or less). The characters are heavily into the Internet, and the word "Google" is used multiple times as a verb in the book. I just liked how real some of the aspects of the book felt. Like the use of the Internet and the attitudes of the people. Not quite sure how to explain what I mean.

On a mildly related note, my communication skills continue to decline.

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I forgot to mention something neat that happened yesterday (well, not neat, but Jen will appreciate it at least). I had to get new peanut butter because I ran out, but when I went to the store I noticed that the packaging of my favourite type (Kraft Extra Creamy) had changed. So I took a quick look at the nutritional information and guess what? Zero trans fat!

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Kim came to visit this weekend and we did a few fun things. I really love how you can just get people to come to Toronto and then figure out what to do later because there is always stuff to do.

On Friday night we went out for supper at The Marche which is now known as Richtree or something. It is market style so you go around picking out food from places and they record it on a card you carry around with you. When you are done you give your card to the people and that tells them how much to charge you. I had fajitas and fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade (yum!). Also a big piece of chocolate mousse cake that was really good.

On Saturday we went shopping a bit, I picked up one last book at BMV (see my booklist) and then we decided to do something a bit more cultural. Kim saw a poster for a double bill of operas playing at the Elgin Theatre on Yonge, "Acteon" and "Dido and Aeneas." Kim's really into ancient Greek and Roman history and mythology (she's even minoring in it) so she was really keen to go (since both were based on Greek/Roman mythology). We went to the theatre and found that we could get tickets for that evening for just $15 since we were students. The seats were really good too; they let students buy any available tickets for only $15 regardless of the section. The actual performances were both pretty good; niether of us had been to a real opera before so it was quite an experience. The stories tend to be fairly simple so it was easy to follow even though it is sometimes hard to understand the actual words. Acteon was in French with translations projected above the stage. Dido and Aeneas was in English. The company was extremely talented and the production was quite well done. Also neat was the orchestra which was apparently using antique, priceless instruments, like 200-300 year old violins. Really amazing sound.

Today I dropped Kim off at the bus station and then went with Matt and Adrienne to Pacific Mall, which is always an experience. Got some precious precious Pocky and also had a Lychee fruit ice cream waffle. Sweet!

Earlier this week another nice thing happened, I got an offer to return to Alias in the Fall! So sweet! It's been a great place to work and I'm looking forward to returning. Not sure where I will live yet though since I can't return to my sweet downtown condo. I'll probably end up back in North York which is far but still on the subway line so it will do.

On an unrelated note, my good friend Mike Jutan has begun his California work term adventure at Pixar! Check out the link to his blog if you're interested. It will definitely be full of neat stuff.

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I am investigating ANOTHER new feature for my website, I'm quite industrious lately. I want to make it so that users can create custom themes for the site so that it can be whatever colours they like. This is pretty easy to do with CSS, but the fact that I have an image makes things a bit trickier.

I looked into dynamic image generation with PHP and found that I could do a good enough job. So, I made this little tester page that lets you enter choices for the four main colours on my site and then you get to see the image that is generated by those choices. Feel free to play with it, and if you create something that looks nice you can copy the address in the browser and send it to me. I may add it to a list of predefined themes if I like it.

At some point I will need to make code that writes cookies for user themes and also lets you switch themes and stuff, but that stuff isn't as interesting as the image creation so it might not happen right away.

I wish the school would change how PHP is compiled on its servers just a little bit. If they would link in the FreeType libraries I could have anti-aliased text in my dynamic images. That would be very sweet indeed.

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It's nearing the end of the term and although I have greatly enjoyed my co-op placement at Alias, I am looking forward to getting back to school and Waterloo. It's always nice to see people and I normally like my classes. Also, at the end of terms I get anxious to go back to whatever I'm not doing. If I am in school I can't wait to get to work and if I am at work I can't wait to get to school. I like both, but I am strange. I think this comic sums up my feelings nicely:

Calvin and Hobbes, don't like the present
Calvin and Hobbes, don't like the present

Sorry for the poor quality, I had a lot of trouble finding this.

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Weekly update time!

Adrienne is visiting Matt this week, so I went to see them on Sunday. We went to The Distillery District and looked through a bunch of shops and stuff. We also got super good chocolate from Soma. We then went to Rainbow Cinema and saw Sin City which is the new winner of most violent movie I've ever seen. It was pretty good though, and had a very cool style. I'll be tempted to pick it up on DVD and I hope there will be a sequel.

For lunch on Sunday we had Bahn Mi (Vietnamese subs), which are cool because they taste good and only cost $1.50. For supper we went to Sushi on Bloor and had sushi...on Bloor. We sat at the bar and I got to sit in front of an Octopus leg. Not very hunger-inducing in my books, but the sushi was still really good.

Tonight was wing night and we went to Pizza Rustica which is an award winning pizza place that just happens to be attached to my apartment building. Sweet! I had asparagus pizza which was totally amazing. The asparagus tasted fresh which is pretty special since it is only April. Jen brought cake for everyone but she didn't have time to stay and eat it so she left without having any. She still rocks for bringing it though. We ate in the lounge area of my building while wondering why the furniture all seemed to have been designed for very unusually proportioned people.

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Inspired by conversations at work today, I am adding a new feature to my site. I really enjoy reading so I am starting a Booklist of things I've read so I can keep track and give it to people who ask me for suggestions. I also might do things like comment on the books and stuff, but that is a lot of effort.

Basically the list will have sections for currently reading, recently finished, and all others. It will take a while to populate, but if I do a bit at a time it should come together. I will probably store the data as XML on the backend and I want to add a feature that lets other people give book suggestions.

Hopefully this feature doesn't take me a year to implement, even if it takes that long to populate with data.

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Double update today, I just found out that Google maps now has satellite photos built in! Here is my my apartment in Toronto and here is Alias. So cool!

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There is a new condo going up across the street from my apartment, although currently it is just a hole in the ground. The crane you see in the CN Tower picture below is the crane for this condo. Anyway, there is a portable toilet for the workers I guess, but I don't think anyone will be using it:

Sinking Port-o-Potty
Sinking Port-o-Potty

Tonight was wings night, but we went to Chris and Jeff's new place instead of going out. Jeff made wings and Chris made pasta and we all played some GameCube.

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This weekend's story:

On Friday I left work early to catch a bus to Waterloo to go out for Kellie's birthday. I got there just in time to have a drink and then we left for the Bomber. Lots of people went and it was really good. We got there a bit early, but it turned out well, it got busy quickly.

I spent the night at the apartment on the couch and on Saturday I visited Mike before he leaves for California and Pixar. Pretty good visit, we went to Maharaja Palace for supper with Ans, Kristen and Norm and I got a gigantic amount of food. It was pretty decent and I was completely stuffed. Good times. We followed that up with some gelato and then I caught a bus back to Toronto.

Today I just sat around, watched a movie, did some laundry and went to the gym for a bit. And obviously I watched the Simpsons which, contrary to some opinions, is as good as ever.

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I need to create a section of my website just for pictures I think, otherwise my main page will become to large and cumbersome with lots of images. This is taken from the balcony of my apartment in Toronto:

Some tower thinger
Some tower thinger
2005-03 | 2005-05