Tree Planting Video

Well, I just finished editing and rendering a little tree planting video. It's only about five minutes long, so it isn't anything too fancy, but it will be a nice addition to my tree planting website. All the footage is from the Summer of 2003, and the backing music is a song called "Take A Solo" by Mike Allison. Here's the link:

http://www.replant.ca/multimedia.html#videos

Now you can all see what I do in the summer (and by that I mean what I do at work, not that I stand around filming videos all day).

Computer Repairs

I get a lot of questions from friends and family on how to fix various computer-related issues. Today my father wrote me about another computer-related issue:

"This computer is acting crazy today--when I walk in front of it to sit down it shuts off--without me touching anything. Any ideas on that one? Maybe I'm radioactive or something."

After a quick laugh, I sat down to figure out what might have caused it. I thought maybe the power cord was loose and he bumped into it when he sat down, knocking out the power. I asked if it happened more than once, and he said that it had happened four or five times already today.

I drew a blank. I told him that I didn't really know what to say, but then he said that he eventually came up with a solution on his own. Now, when he wants to use it, he "sneaks up on it," and it works fine.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Canadian Elections

Well, our federal government had an election yesterday. The Conservatives took power for the first time in a decade and a half, winning a minority government (which will probably only last a year or so).

A lot of people have said that it will be good to have the Conservatives in power to "clean up government," after a series of Liberal scandals. What younger people seem to fail to realize, and older people forget, is that the Conservatives had an equally impressive string of scandals in the 1980's. So basically, Canadians didn't have a lot of choice in the election, to sum things up.

I did vote this time, for the first time in years. However, I couldn't decide who I was going to vote for until I reached the voting hall. I didn't "flip a coin" to decide, but I certainly didn't have a lot of faith in the party that I voted for. I ended up picking who I thought was the best local candidate, rather than considering partisan issues.

I'm not a fan of politics. Most people who would probably be good at running this country wouldn't want to do the job.

Lack of Creativity in Culture

I just saw a list of some of the movies that are expected out in 2006. Here's a partial run-down: Superman Returns, Mission Impossible 3, X3, Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest, Poseidon, Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code, Ice Age 2 The Meltdown, World Trade Center, Flight 93, Miami Vice, Charlotte's Web, The Pink Panther, and Basic Instinct 2.

Why is it that the majority of these movies are just sequels and spin-offs of older movies or books? Is it that difficult for something new and creative to succeed these days?

The same thing is happening in the world of music - look at the enormous success of remixes, mashups, re-edits, covers, and songs based on obvious samples of previous pop hits. And I'll be quick to point out that I'm as guilty as the next person, both in some of the tracks that I play when I'm DJ'ing, and in the fact that I'm working on a remix of a popular 80's hit right now.

Where is this going? Is our culture stagnating?

Socks To Be You

Well, I had a rather amusing end to my evening running the club tonight. After we had everything cleaned up and all the staff were sitting around having a beverage after work, someone started banging at the side door. One of the staff opened it, to see what the commotion was about, and one of our best customers walked in.

In boxers. Nothing else. For those of you from around the globe, this is January in Canada and it is not exactly the best time of year to be wearing nothing but boxers.

Apparently, the gentleman in question had offended his girlfriend somehow. This was not surprising to us, after listening to his alcohol-induced speech impediment for about thirty seconds. The lad was sloshed, and in Olympian proportions. The fine young lady whom he dates had apparently been unimpressed by his level of intoxication, and fired him out into the streets at 2am, sans pants. Nor shirt. Nor socks or shoes. And locked the door behind him to prevent re-entry, just to make sure the message got through.

I was humbled and flattered that in his alcoholic haze he decided that our Pub was his best refuge, but after video taping his antics for a few minutes, I paid for his cab and sent him on his way, wearing my own socks. Shelley just bought me new sneakers, so I couldn't quite part with those.

I've never given my socks to a customer before, no matter how significant the time of distress. Let me just say, however, that tonight it was "well worth the price of admission."

Zach, I'm having a big fat Jack Daniels and Coke right now. A great big cheers to you - customer of the month!

Iranian Oil Bourse

Two months from now, on March 20th, Iran is expected to commence operations of an international oil bourse (trading market) which is based on the Euro. Currently, there are two bourses in New York and London, both of which use US dollars as their base currency.

The reason this is important is because a Euro-based bourse will have huge strategic implications for the value of the US dollar. Countries around the world will no longer be forced to hold US currency in their central bank accounts to buy oil, since they can opt to use Euros. This means that, in layman's terms, the US dollar will become less "useful" in the world, and demand will fall. As demand falls for the dollar, the value of the dollar will therefore fall.

This may seem to be unimportant on the surface. Some Canadians might say "oh, well that's good, because that means that the Canadian dollar will increase in value." Unfortunately, at the same time, the Americans will have significantly less purchasing power, and Canadian exports will suffer tremendously. So will tourism. In fact, there will be all kinds of problems. This seemingly innocuous event could be the "straw that broke the camel's back" and cause the US real estate and stock market bubbles to burst, throwing the country (and world) into recession. Forget Iran's supposed push for nuclear fuel enrichment - this event will be far more significant.

Things with Iran could get pretty messy in the next few months.

On a positive note, it's a Friday!

Scotiabank Visa Problems

Today I became extremely frustrated with Scotiabank and Visa. The problem stemmed from the fact that I was trying to buy a large liquor order (for the club) from our local liquor store. The card (which was not anywhere close to being over its limit) was declined and the machine suggested that the clerk needed to call Visa to obtain authorization for the transaction.

The problem was that this was the fourth time in three weeks that this has happened. Each time, it took half an hour on the phone, several transfers to other departments (about five), and a lot of explaining from me as to why I spend several thousand dollars per week on booze. It apparently doesn't matter that I have been running the club for about fifteen years, that I always buy my alcohol from the same merchant, and that I have had my Visa (a gold card) even longer than that. And apparently it doesn't matter that I keep doing the same thing, week after week.

Today's "customer service" rep suggested that I should go down to my local bank branch and get them to "put a VIP flag" on my card. When I replied that I had been told the same thing each of the last two weeks, and had done exactly as suggested with no apparent success, the telephone representative was less than forgiving. I refused to go back down to my branch for a third time, so I made a suggestion at this point myself, something along the lines of indicating my willingness to cut up my card and switch to a Bank of Montreal mastercard.

Perhaps the allure of talking to a man who spends $150,000 per year on alcohol tempered her subsequent reactions, because after I gave her the phone number of my branch and a couple names of people to talk to there, she said that she'd see what she could do.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they have security procedures in place so that if someone steals my card, they aren't likely to be able to rack up a whole lot of purchases on my account. However, I'm curious to see what will happen next time I try to ring through a pallet of beer. I am fully confident that it will be declined, and the liquor store clerks will immediately go postal on the debit machine.

Mike Allison CD Release

Mike Allison did his CD Release party at the Pub last night for his first professional CD, "Things That Move Us." There was a very good crowd, and it was a great show. The sound was good, and the people were excited to hear Mike. He's very talented, and will go far in the music industry. I think I'm going to try to put together a small promotional video for him over the next couple weeks, to have available on the website.

After the show, one of my friends, Jill Cassidy, came back to our place. She was a bit drunk, and somehow managed to flush some of her money down the toilet. I still haven't quite figured out what her money was doing in the toilet in the first place.

Tour Tech East Trade Show

I was out of the province earlier today attending a trade show. Two specific seminars caught my attention.

Al Dripchak of Maxell was talking about the impending conflict between Blu-Ray & HD DVD, but then went on to show off a very interesting technology that Maxell is going to be releasing to the public in October of 2006. It's a disc, similar in diameter to a CD-ROM, but thicker (at least half a centimeter). It is a "holograph disc" which will be able to store, in its initial configuration, about 300 gigabytes of data. Kind of like a DVD-ROM, but about 80 times the capacity. Instead of spinning, the holograph disc shakes and wiggles while the write head etches holographic data streams into the gel inside the disc. Successive generations should see the capacity of a single disc increased to almost 2 terabytes within 3-4 years.

And speaking of large storage, Tab Bulter of SeaChange was talking about his company's hard drive system (used in video-on-demand systems like The Movie Channel and The Weather Network). His large system stores 350TB. Yes, you read that correctly: terabytes, not gigabytes. I can't even begin to imagine filling that. I was pretty happy that I picked up a 250gig portable drive a couple weeks ago for $129 after rebate. His drive system (RAID 5 striping) is the equivalent of 350,000 gigabytes!! I have about 20,000 (legal) MP3's and they only take up about 100 gigabytes or so. At DVD quality (which is a compressed video format, of course), his system would hold enough video to play for about 60,000 hours (6.85 years). Now THAT is a hard drive configuration to brag about.

On the way out, I was looking at a nice 24-foot stage with rigging system, full monitoring system, light show, 48 channel sound board, full lighting board, and laser system. It was pretty cool. On the off-chance that I could afford one for the house, I asked about the price tag. The lighting guy figured that it wouldn't be much more than one million dollars. Too bad my Visa is at its limit.

I love trade shows ...

Robert Schumann

So here we are, I now have a blog. I have thought about putting one of these together for a long time, mostly just so I could occasionally vent my frustrations about idiocy that I encounter in daily life. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of it these days.

You may wonder what the title ("talent works, genuis creates") refers to. It's a quote by Robert Schumann, a German composer who lived from 1810-1856. One of his more memorable quotes was, "I have arrived at the conviction that with work, patience, and a good teacher, I would be able, within six years, to surpass any pianist. Besides... I have an imagination and perhaps a skill for the individual work of creation." I like his attitude. I think that a person can do just about anything if he or she puts their mind to it.

Here we go ...

[Edited on November 18th, 2006: I just changed the title to, "From the Ridiculous to the Sublime," which is loosely based on a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, and more directly based upon my life, in a nutshell].