Let me first get this out of the way: Yes, I haven't posted much of anything about our trip. It was great. I haven't written anything about it because I'm sort of crushed under the weight of my own expectations to write something insightful. So instead, if you want know stuff about it feel free to ask me specific questions. I know it's a cop out, but if I don't get past this point, I may never write again. =) Assorted information will of course be revealed as it relates to things I want to write about, but don't go looking for some big definitive travel post (as if anyone would anyway.)

On to other things! Despite my having been enrolled in kendo class for close on a year now, because of my own schedule flakiness I have lagged behind other students in the class, and yesterday was the first day I got to put on the full armor for practice. Now, U of T kendo club seems to be one of the foremost in the area (country?) so as you might expect, there are a lot of people there who are very serious about kendo. What this translates into in class is an expectation that things are going to be done correctly, and a focus on actual practice rather than hand-holding training of beginners. Please note that these two goals are to some extent mutually exclusive. Not only is putting on the armor really quite complicated (it has its own knots and everything), but because it is a Japanese martial art, you also have to do it the *right* way. Last night was successfully executed, if a bit frustrating, but I am not looking forward to next practice where we're expected to know how to do it already.

And why, of course, would we bother putting on our armor if we weren't going to hit each other? This morning, in addition to my usual post-workout soreness, two out three of my target areas are swollen and/or aching (head and wrist; stomach seems to have survived intact.) We have a special practice on Saturday where there will be testing, and my first attempt at an actual bout. The senior student who was helping me yesterday said, "Don't worry about it, just keep charging at them." Probably sound advice, but I think I will take the Advil before practice tomorrow.

Since we did the part of our trip that involved a train ride through the Pyrenees Mountains, I have been sort of obsessed with the Belle and Sebastian TV show that used to be on Nickelodeon. I have been trying to find a cheap copy of DVDs of the series, but so far my usual anime outlets have struck out. Apparently, people aren't interested in the heartwarming story of a boy looking for his mother and a giant white dog who only wants to be understood.

My partner makes the best cookies.

We interrupt this morning of productive work to report the fact that Robarts Library has a RIDING FLOOR WAXER.

Yes. It's like a riding lawn mower, but for floor waxing.

I want to work here even more now. And I am *so* going to get to know the maintenance guys.

I hate April Fools' Day.

Oh well, at least it gives me enough justification to stay off the Internet today and do work.

Seriously though, when did a day based on practical jokes turn into a national holiday for useful news posting? Sure, I got fooled the first time, but for the rest of the day I would still like to be able to get real information.

Sorry it's been so long since I have written. School has been very busy, but things are going well. Yesterday was a Very Good Day. =)

Today, I am doing some literature review for a research proposal I am writing for a class, and that I hope to collaborate with B___ on. One of the topics I've been looking at this morning is accessibility services in libraries (that is, services for the blind / deaf / differently abled), and came across this list from Library Trends, by a visually impaired library scholar / user, talking about things that blind people cannot frequently get.

• contemporary academic material
• popular nonfiction and lifestyle material frequently based on public service broadcasting
• serious fiction (as opposed to Grishams, chick lit, etc.)
• ephemera
• pornography

The last item has the following footnote:

"On this point I recall that when I was in high school the Braille transcriptions of the Roman poet Catullus were censored."

Are people familiar with MAME? It a emulator for almost every existing type of arcade hardware out there, and I heartily recommend you check it out if you have any interest in arcade games.

Well, MAME is all well and good, but over the weekend, I discovered something new and exciting. It turns out that a fork of MAME has been created to emulate the computing hardware of pinball machines. It's called PinMAME. So basically, what this gives you is the ability to emulate the dot-matrix displays that you see on modern pinball machines. This isn't too exciting in and of itself, but some enterprising soul has combined PinMAME with a piece of software called Visual Pinball, and the results are compelling, to say the least.

Visual Pinball is a pinball construction set. It allows you to build a virtual pinball tables to your specifications, adding bumpers, kickers, orbits, additional playfields, whatever. The cool part is that it then allows you to play those tables using a pretty decent pinball game engine. The catch here, of course, is that Visual Pinball itself doesn't support any kind of advanced features, beyond the kind of stuff you'd find in your typical late 70's table. However, there are plenty of those tables out there, and the large Internet pinball community has done an amazing job of recreating actual pinball tables in Visual Pinball, which means that you can play a ton of classic pinball tables, emulated through VP.

The magic doesn't stop there though. VP also allows PinMAME to be plugged into it, so that VP handles the table emulation, and PinMAME handles the computer-y bits. Do you see where this is going?

( Visual PinMAME allows for the emulation of new, complicated tables. )

The emulation experience isn't the same as playing the actual table, but the physics are pretty decent, and it's fun to play. And for me at least, it can help learn the tables. So far, I've got LOTRO up and running on it, as well as a couple of older tables and No-Good Gofers. Medieval Madness (my favorite table) seems to have a ROM issue so I'm still trying to get it to work, but there's plenty of other tables available at Pinball Nirvana, which also incidentally has an all-in-one installer for VP and PinMAME. Of course, I didn't find that until well after I had been through manually configuring them. =P

I know only a couple of people reading will be interested in this, but I thought it was *damn* cool.

STOP SAYING THE WORD OCARINA!

Bonus points to anyone who can make it through the whole 12 minute video though.

This is how I spent my lunch. Watching the Manic Street Preachers do a cover of "Suicide is Painless."



Back to studying statistics terms!

Have I ever talked about how archive.org basically superceded the entire subculture of Grateful Dead show trading?

They did. The funny thing is, they did it right about the time I started getting into tape trading. It was kind of awkward. But it's a happy story! In the end, we all basically have access to almost every show ever put to tape. Some days I even remember to listen to them.

Today was one of those days. =)

The only downside is that it makes me really homesick for California. But other than that, I have been filled with a sense of well-being that I haven't felt in a long time, and it's resulted in me getting a lot done in a very short time.

Oh my.

Today, after banging out an assignment, I went down to Chinatown with my friend A_____ to go to this awesome dumpling place that she had been hankering for. Well, it was quite delicious. I ate so much that I could barely walk afterwards, which was a bad thing because I had to go around and collect groceries for dinner this evening.

Then, shortly after arriving back home, I got an email from B___ that said, "Is this the restaurant you went to today?"

Yes. Yes, it is. Please note the date on that story, folks. Today. Meaning, it got closed right after we left.

I am feeling fine. Frankly, I'm not too worried about plague or anything, but I guess it's an amazing coincidence. Or something.

In honor of this turn of events, we watched Ratatoille tonight after dinner. It was a cute movie, and cleared up a lot of things up for me.

This morning, I'm working on putting together an annotated bibliography (which incidentally seems to be a very library school-ish assignment, I'm finding out). This necessitates looking at a bunch of articles in tabs in firefox, and while most of the articles have serial identifiers as the tab title, one of them says, simply, "SCIENCE."

I might have to close it, because I keep laughing every time I look at it.

I know it probably seems impolitic to complain about the weather right now when my family and lots of friends live in Tennessee, but damn.

It is cold today. The temp is reading -16C, but Environment Canada says with wind chill it "feels like" -31. I wouldn't really know, because I don't have any idea what -31 feels like, but I know that when I walked outside the library to come home for dinner tonight, my eyelids hurt.

Right now, I'm peering out the window with a equal measures of fear and mistrust. What is this place, anyway?

XSLT is confusing.

My brain hurts.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, an article about the breakdown of the membrane between IT departments and libraries.

I found it interesting that some of the institutions being discussed in the article have eliminated the job of head librarian altogether. It's an interesting paradigm, and it may work well for smaller institutions, but is it possible that there is some value to having a capital-L Library run by capital-L Librarians?

Beyond that, this seems to just be going right along with the trend, and as libraries try to keep their fingers in more of the campus informatics pie, it seems like it stands to be even more common.

On a somewhat related note, OCLC releases a Facebook app. Now you can search through their catalog while you're spamming your friends with Vampires invitations!

Apparently, this is a Microsoft marketing scheme, and written by a fake psychologist, but it's pretty funny nonetheless.

Mommy, why is there a server in the house?

In lieu of any meaningful post, I'm just going to list all the different books, movies, etc. I consumed this holiday season, along with my thoughts on each.

Still here? OK, the reason for this post is I feel like writing something, but not anything terribly meaningful at the moment. Maybe this will jump start me into writing more, an activity I have been sorely remiss in as of late.

So.....um, let's see here.....

MOVIES

Sweeney Todd - Damn good, and I'm saying this as someone who saw the musical when it came through Toronto. I'm not sure I liked it more than the stage show, if for no other reason than the virtuosity of the stage performers was pretty amazing, but I liked it a hell of a lot. Of course, if you know me, you know that I am a ho for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and musicals in general, so there are no real surprises here. Sasha Baron Cohen was good. Helena Bonham Carter was good. Alan Rickman was good. Jeez, the whole thing was pretty good, OK? No wait, I didn't like the guy that played the judge's sidekick. He was better in the stage show.

National Treasure (2): Book of Secrets - Yes, we payed good money to see this, although it might have just been to get out of the house (unclear). I may catch it for saying this, but I thought the first movie was not that bad. Sure, it was a watered-down ripoff of a bad Indiana Jones movie, but it was sort of enjoyable as a ridiculous adventure flick (or maybe I was on pain killers). The second one not so much. It was way too long and totally disjointed, and felt like it was written by a marketing committee. A committee composed completely of rabid monkeys and lawn jockeys, that is. Olmec ruins in South Dakota? Sure! Why not! Helen Mirren swinging over chasms in a really low-cut shirt? Brilliant! The good guys plot to break into Buckingham Palace and kidnap the President? Makes sense to me! The only way this movie could have improved is if Nicholas Cage would have been shot during the presidential kidnapping scene. I mean Nick Cage the actor, not his character.

I am Legend - Not a bad zombie apocalypse movie, overall. I loved the book, but the movie was only so-so. Will Smith was a lot better than I expected, but I didn't need to sit through a 10 minute ad for Ford Mustang first thing in the movie, thanks. Not much to say here, they fucked up the ending. It sorta changed the whole point of the story, but what can you do. They took a first-rate vampire book and turned it into a just-fine zombie movie.

Juno - For some reason, I can't come up with anything pithy to say about this movie. It was really good. Yep, see, no pith at all.

BOOKS

The Road - Well, I liked this book OK. Frankly I was a little disappointed because it had been talked up so much and I was expecting more. I liked Cormac McCarthy's writing style, and it made me want to read some more of his stuff, but I feel like there's only so many ways you can describe a burned out wasteland before it becomes monotonous. Yes, I know that's sorta the point. I also didn't feel like it was the most effectively disturbing depiction of humankind's descent into an animal-like state in the wake of an earth-shattering catastrophe (please see The Painted Bird). Maybe I'm just another de-sensitized American asshole. It did make me realize, however, that anytime I read about events in a book taking place on a beach, I always have the same picture of a beach in my head. It's only really noticeable when there are long stretches of beach action in the book, but I totally recognized this place from The Drawing of the Three (quiet, you.)

The Phantom Tollbooth - B___ gave this to me as a gift after being shocked to learn that I hadn't read it as a kid. It's going right up on the shelf with The Dark is Rising as books I should have read a long time ago, and that I will definitely give to my kid. Just the right mix of quick-moving plot, life lessons, and shit that totally makes no sense whatsoever. A++

The Night Watch (in progress) - I'm really enjoying this. It's basically Harry Potter for goth kids, set in Russia. Well, not that goth kids don't also appreciate Harry Potter, but you know what I mean. More in-depth analysis once I'm finished.

VIDEO GAMES

Orcs and Elves - This game is a bizarre creature. Created by id Software (the DOOM/Quake folks, better known for creating and licensing 3D game engines nowadays), this is a DS port of a mobile phone game. I get the impression that this game has been catching some flak in the gaming media because of this fact, but guess what? It's actually pretty fun! It's a single player, turn based dungeon crawl, with all that entails. It's not going to push any boundaries for story or technology, but it does manage to keep up a decent challenge throughout the whole game, and keeps giving you new toys to play with and strategies to use all the way to the end. If you're going to be spending ~20 hours in a plane over the space of two weeks, I'd recommend it for you too. Added bonus: re-used art assets from DOOM (the original)!!!

Mass Effect - I think I was expecting something a little different, but I am really enjoying this one. I blame myself for not reading enough gaming media over the past 6 months (stupid school!) but I somehow thought this was going to be a big huge free-form game, like the X series. Nope, this is a Bioware game, through and through. Please note: I am not saying that is a bad thing. It is really well polished so far, the writing is top-notch, as you would expect, and Bioware's classic goodguy/badguy dialog trees are in full effect. In fact, at least as far as I've gotten, it reminds me a lot of Knights of the Old Republic. Just replace the Force with plasmids blastochlamydiads some made-up pseudo scientific tomfoolery. Wait, now that I think about it, they did that in Star Wars too. This game is Star Wars. Without wookies. Only it's good.

World of Warcraft - Shut. Up. Seriously, I can hear you snickering over there. They have added a lot to this game since I left, and much of it looks to be for the better. I'm busy taking my troll rogue through the Blood Elf starting area so I can have a chocobo  sunstrider of my own.

Sooooo.....I think that's about it. I got hooked up with several CDs of Canadian music, courtesy of some friends in the program, so B___ and I have been enjoying that. Notables include Hayden, Emily Haynes, and the Wet Secrets. Fun!

Shit, I just wrote 1000 words about basically nothing. I wonder if I can find a way to turn this in for an assignment.

I wasn't going to do this meme either, but an album titled 'National Forest Adventure Pass' was too good to pass up.

Apparently, we are obsessed with geography and obscure European gentry.


1. Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
2. Click random article again; that is your album name.
3. Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.



Band Name: Adolf Frederick II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Album Name: National Forest Adventure Pass

Track Listing: (I only did 7. Call it an EP.)

1) Siphonostomatoida
2) List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 217
3) Nemasket River
4) Pyotr Saltykov
5) Brionne
6) Acquaviva Picena
7) Roy Horstmann

It's 12:15am on a Saturday night and I'm sitting in my chair, working on an assignment and watching snow pile up outside.

It's not the most exciting life, but it's got a kind of quiet charm that I'm sort of digging at the moment. I'm starting to think I could get used to this place.