I got my new motherboard today. It’s an nForce 680iLT from XFX. I got it in a pretty good deal from TigerDirect, it came with 4GB of 1,333mhz RAM.

I’ve had a RADEON x1950PRO that it’s going to be coupled with for about a year now, and now I’m finally going to get to use it.

Still need a case and a CPU, I’ll probably grab a quad-core once the prices come down a bit. Oh, and a copy of Age of Empires III.

Categories: Games
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I just got Balthier and Fran to join my party, and we’re making our way out of the dungeons. Got killed last night against the energy-draining thingies.

Gonna go back for a few more rounds this weekend

Categories: Games
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Hitman is a pretty bad movie. Taha seemed to like it, but overall, it was a very lacking movie.

The plot made no sense (”We need a public execution but to make sure no one knows what happened”) and the acting and dialogue were laughable.

Terrible.

Categories: Movies
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I was talking with Simon E. and Robbie H. tonight about music.

The three of us are all musicians and we talked about why music today seems to not be so good.

I blame EVERYONE!

The public stopped thinking about what is good music, and started buying ‘lifestyle tunes’, utterly disposable and vacuous tracks. I think it was probably the first real big superstars that are to blame for this, once Elvis became a hit or something (probably going back further than that) the marketing people got involved. It’s just been a slow devolution to this point since then.

Music production stinks. When I was in high school I liked hip hop, hard rock and metal. The newer stuff is all homogenized. It used to be that a band would have a signature sound, now not so much. You’re lucky nowadays if you can tell the singer apart from another band’s singer. On my iPod I have tracks by famous artists that are awesome, but that would never get released in this day and age. You couldn’t release anything that sounds that bad now. Now it sounds like an engineer goes through each instrument’s track, and messes with all the EQ and levels to take all the personality out.

You can record an album in 2 months now. Before, recording was a laborious process. Now, all you have to do is get a copy of ProTools, some VSTs and a singer. Oh, and for the important parts maybe a studio player. An increasing number of pop, rap and rock songs feature blatant samples from original songs in order to cut down on writing time, speed up time to market and maximize revenues.

Marketing is hard. It used to be that a band would go on tour to promote itself. Now, you make a website and hope that one day someone will find your stuff. Of course since you won’t have a marketing budget or any marketing reach there’s no chance of that happening. Or, you sign to a big label which has the big budget but is going to force you to make a homegenous record. So it’s a no-win situation.

Categories: Music
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Like, duhhhh.

But Chantal Hébert writes that his leadership is primarily at fault for the declining Liberal party in this story.

I for one am kind of tired of there being this automatic naming of a Liberal leader from Québec. Martin, Chrétien, Tory Mulroney, Trudeau…..it seems like there’s an assumption that a French Canadian from Québec is the automatic way to go. It’s as if they sit back at their leadership conferences and say, “Hey! He’s the safe choice, he’s a Québecer!”

The Harper Tories have done a pretty good job as far as I can tell, I’d rather they pay down the debt as fast as they can, but they’ve been pretty good as a minority gov’t. I’d just like to see someone from outside la belle province get the opportunity.

And not Ignatieff

Categories: Controversy
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Jimmy James is in Japan (Tokyo, to be exact) probably having himself a cool old time.

I can’t imagine getting around in a place where you don’t speak the language, and that’s so culturally different than Canada.

I have a pretty poor imagination.

Knowing him, he probably got there, decided to go out and explore the city and fell asleep in a booth at a restaurant for an hour and a half. At least, that’s what he does when we hang out at my place.

He’d better bring back some pics.

Categories: Friends
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Just saw No Country for Old Men tonight with Simon E.

Great flick! Loved it, though it had a great message too.

A warning that there’s violence and criminal insanity in it.

Categories: Movies
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I get so much spam, and the intentional spelling mistakes they put in to bypass filtering makes me do a double-take sometimes.

Today I got some legitimate e-mail, and I nearly thought of hitting the ‘Junk’ button in my mail client (the excellent Thunderbird, btw) because the product name in it wasn’t an english word. I get so many funny spellings of real words, that when I see a misspelling (for trademark reasons I’m guessing) of anything, I think it’s spam.

I’m probably getting a couple hundred spam messages a day between my 4 regularly used personal mailboxes – work’s filter does a good job, and only lets through a message or two a day.

Categories: Fun with words
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Got this off Digg.

Someone has made a mod of Toronto (City 7) for Half-Life 2. I’m going to have to get this once I get my new computer built.

Here’s le media:
www.torontoconflict.com

Some thumbs:

Categories: Games
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This is Gil Gerrard:

Who is a spitting image of what my friend Mikey T will look like in 10 years. Mikey, you’re the next Buck Rogers!

Categories: Friends
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