Gaia Community: Jason's Blog

Notes from William Gibson's talk last night

http://ht.gaia.com — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 15:12:07 GMT

I saw yesterday in the Toronto Star that William Gibson was coming to town that night for a talk as part of This is not a Reading Series to promote his new work, Spook Country. I didn’t have time to pick up tickets, but gave it a shot at the door and sure enough there was room, so for less than the cost of a beer I got to spend an hour or so listening to Gibson on a variety of topics.

It’s funny, I can remember buying Neuromancer, down to a mental picture of the shelf of the store I picked it up at (W.H. Smith in the Quinte Mall in Belleville), and I remember that I knew to look for the book and it had some important ideas that I should read, but this was the late ’80s, so how did I know to buy it? The internet didn’t exist as we know it back then, so what was my recommendation engine?

Given the speaker and the topic, I thought it would be fun to try to take notes on the talk on my Nokia e61. I’m not an contender for the Blackberry Olympics, but fortunately Gibson has a bit of a drawl in his speech that slows him to a point where I could capture about one in every five sentences, so here are some quotes I picked out - in a lot of cases the quotes are verbatim, but due to the relatively low bandwidth provided by my thumbs, they shouldn’t be attributed directly to the speaker as they’re written here.

On the MacGuffin in Spook Country

For a while I didn’t know what was in the box… I had a list of possibilities, but they were no more than the standard items that a reasonably educated person would think of after reading the setup. When I finally knew what was in the box, it was a lovely day in the basement, a lovely day indeed.

On his writing process

“He writes with Google on…” That’s the meme that’s replaced “William Gibson writes with a mechanical typewriter.” Bruce Sterling used to write with a 12 inch television on top of his computer and headphones on to listen to something else, so compared to that what’s a little Google?

If it disappeared tomorrow, you’d miss your Google.

On eBay

eBay is a vast and constant rationalization of the world’s attics… The ultimate democratization of connoisseurship… You become Sotheby’s worst nightmare. This goes on all the time.

You can see every toy you ever had as a child. I’ve collected jpegs of every frog toy… I don’t want them… that would be sad… eBay’s an interesting tool with which to explore one’s life.

On books and novels

Books are the oldest mass [media? meme?]… We’re still making wheels. They’re titanium, they’re really fancy, but they’re still wheels, so we’ll still be making books.

Learning to read novels is a very culturally complex activity… We don’t recognize the creative contribution of the reader versus the writer… (tree falls in the forest thing)… The person who reads the marks [Gibson refers to writing as “putting marks on paper”] performs an equally creative act. The movie of your favourite novel never equals the one you’ve seen in your forehead. Nobody else has seen that movie.

On the settings of his works

Science fiction is always about the day in which it’s written. Having written about the 21st century since 1979, the ability to write about it as the present is really a hoot.

When I wrote Neuromancer I thought I was committing an act of almost ludicrous optimism… Nuclear armament was getting us all down… [Neuromancer’s setting was] a very simple extension of Reagonomics… Mexico city as North America… It’s not commented on in the text but I think it’s there… People think it’s dystopian but there are so many people in the world who would instantly and happily move to that world.

The final question yielded a fitting closing:

As wonderful as life is a fair bit of it is fairly creepy… Happy endings are about when you close the curtain, more a part of art than a part of life because life goes on and usually ends kind of creepy.

Tags: William Gibson, Spook Country, books

Signs of the terror-addled times

http://ht.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:38:06 GMT

OK, so today we have both the MIT student who went to Logan Airport with a fake bomb on her chest as some kind of art project, and then there's Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank's campaign that left fridges lying around the downtown core as a marketing statement about being unable to fill fridges, which security teams dutifully removed to an undisclosed location (appliance Gitmo?).

The fridge one kind of bums me out, but if you walk around with a fake bomb strapped to your chest, I think you can expect some kind of defensive response. Or not: the test will be when someone walks around a mall kicking people in the nuts but stopping just before contact.

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At least he's not fighting kryptonite for the 47th time

http://ht.gaia.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:03:41 GMT

Ange forwarded me some photos of the shooting they're doing for the next Hulk movie, which is being filmed here in Toronto. The last Hulk movie left a bit to be desired, but I think this one's going to be really awesome.

Possible spoilers...

You've been warned...

OK...

It looks like the Hulk's going to beat the crap out of a bus!

Tags: Hulk movies

Dragons, cars... They're doing it.

http://ht.gaia.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:51:48 GMT

OK, I saw this while going through my Warren Ellis feed backlog, and it's NSFW and probably only funny if you're three years old, but what can I say.

So the URL has the phrase, uh, reworded slightly, "Dragons doing it with cars," and you think, OK, what? But it's exactly what you read. It's a simple truth. And I laughed so hard I cried. It's funnier than the "I kept drawing dicks" scene in Superbad, if you want a hint on whether or not you'll like it (in a funny way, not in a "like it like it" way.)

I declare this site Web 3.0 (beta).

Tags: funny

You will learn the difference between travel mug and mug

http://ht.gaia.com — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:58:51 GMT

A warning from the future:

As a bicycle commuter, you will one day find yourself in need of a coffee while you are late for some event. You will notice that you have a handy travel mug with you, because you love the environment, hello, bike. You will think that it is a brilliant idea to get the coffee and ride one handed.

You will forget that without a lid, a travel much is simply a mug. You will get coffee all over your hand and shoe. You will try to brake harder than usual with your free hand to compensate for the one-wheel braking, and you will almost fall off of your bike. The coffee will not enjoy this experience.

These facts are not destined to be. If you act now, you can change the future. Do so.

Update: damn, I thought by changing the date on this post I could make a difference. What'd the interweb good for then?

Tags: cycling coffee

An example of "can" versus "should" in podcasting

http://ht.gaia.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:51:55 GMT

From the "I Love Warren's sound bites" department:

I'm not looking for high production values in podcasts. But I'm also not looking for a gaggle of hillbillies yakking away about nothing in their fucking meth lab. The podcast guides are full of this shit. "Skeeter and Mothra are cousins, brother and sister and husband and wife, and every morning on trailer-radio they shriek in an unknown language about the price of Sudafed while their eighteen children rape dogs in the parking lot outside." Fuck the democratisation of radio. That's nothing but retarded people trying to emulate what they already hear on American radio.

Granted, the production values on both shows I'm involved with (the TVP and the Eazy Vegan) aren't stellar, but there are good reasons in each case (the TVP because sometimes the hosting crew is computer illiterate and the process needs to be as simple as possible, and the Eazy Vegan because we actually want the cooking to look easy, so dishes in the background sometimes helps convey that versus a flashy kitchen). OK, maybe not "good" reasons, but I'm inspired to think about the content a little more now - maybe a "is this just talk radio" poster in the recording "studio" would be helpful.

Tags: podcasting

Working from home hits the spot

http://ht.gaia.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:41:05 GMT

Since Ange is up at school, I'm working from home today, which I haven't done in a while. The temptation to goof off isn't that great, since in the age of the internet pretty much everything I procrastinate with at home is available to me in the office anyway. So, uh, technically I guess the temptation to goof off moreso isn't that great.

Having the place to myself is one attraction to the home office today, but mostly it's because I've got a work-related event to go to tonight and since it's not far from home, I'd rather save myself the 1.5 hour commute and get a bit more work done, though I'll miss the exercise.

What I won't miss is the stress of parking the bike. It's super easy on the street, since Toronto has custom bike posts pretty much everywhere, but the bike locker at home is a little full, and the spaces are unsassigned. This creates an environment where the only way to keep a great parking spot is to never ride your bike. I think there are about 5 regular riders that use the locker, out of maybe 150 bikes in there, and if I end up working late, I almost always lose my spot until I manage to come home a bit early and steal it back.

Things have gotten to the point that there actually aren't any spots available, so I've been reduced to leaning my bike against an abandoned one at the end of a row. Hopefully people will notice that and feel pity for me, so when they arrive and their spot's taken, they won't take my "spot." It'd be like, uh, taking something from someone who doesn't have anything, only expressed in a wittier fashion.

In theory, I could zip down at some point today and reclaim a decent parking spot, but it's a lot of work for something so temporary. All I can really do is wait for the snow to hit, when nobody else is dumb enough to ride, and then I can enjoy the ease of keeping a nice spot while my teeth chatter and I slide around the ice.

Tags: cycling

Some waiting while you're waiting

http://ht.gaia.com — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:47:43 GMT

So Ange is away for the weekend, which means I get to ~~party~~ upload a zillion Eazy Vegan files. Each one takes around 5 minutes to set up, and there are 20 of them, but at least they'll be done today and the show will be available on iTunes again. Yay.

I was going to play some Warcraft while that went on, but some file is corrupted, so I'm waiting on the repair utility.

I was going to burn some files to DVD to free up some disk space while the game got fixed, but half of the files are on another computer, so I'm waiting for the transfer to complete.

In theory, I'm multitasking, and things are getting done, but multiwaiting would be more accurate.

Tags:

Ange gets cred on Torontoist

http://ht.gaia.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:10:30 GMT

hummingbird news

Ange is famous

The pic's pretty cool too, if a little sad. The new signage is pretty much crap.

Tags:

'Tis the season to move my blog...

http://ht.gaia.com — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 01:05:15 GMT

Not that I have anything against Zaadz, but I need to spend some time actually using the site I work on every day, so I'll be moving my sporadically updated blog to Vegan Porn. If you're using any of the old blog URLs or the FeedBurner RSS feed, everything will get magically repointed in a day or two. In the meantime, I'll post links.

This just in: people in Portland can't drive in the snow.

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Contact!

http://ht.gaia.com — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:47:06 GMT

Some of you may remember that they've been building new condos across the street from us. I understand if you've forgotten; after all, it started back in March.

So, what have they been doing all this time?

Digging.

No kidding, almost a year of digging. They've been going at an almost archealogical pace. Like they're looking for something...

And yesterday they found it:

Here's the close up:

Notice the grid they've set up to spearate the area into documentable regions.

Today they're trying to pour concrete over it all. My guess is that they found something evil, and now that it's been exposed to the rays of our yellow sun, it's trying to push through. They'll keep trying to weigh it down with concrete, but I suspect this is the beginning of the end, and it'll keep pushing up until it reaches, say, 33 storeys in size.

Repent!

Tags: Construction

Initiated

http://ht.gaia.com — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:54:12 GMT

I could hear it against my window all night, and it was confirmed when I checked the weather in the morning: Toronto got hit with between 5 and 15 mm of freezing rain today.

And yes, I rode my bike to work.

It was actually pretty, uh, cool. The way home was the worst part, even though the roads weren't as slippery by then (on the way there I was fishtailing everywhere on the less-travelled side streets), mostly due to the cold. It's one thing to ride in -4 weather, but it's another thing to do it coated in a sheet of ice. At one point I was stopped at a light and I moved my arm, and it made a bunch of cracking sounds as I shattered the icicles that were hanging from my jacket. Even going slow and on an alternate route, the trip only took about 50% longer than it usually did.

OK, now I'm a proper member of the winter bike commuter club. To celebrate, I may never leave the house again, or at least until winter is over. I am so working from home tomorrow.

Tags: cycling, winter, Toronto

And now the sequel...

http://ht.gaia.com — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:50:49 GMT

As followup to the last entry where my super hero identity was revealed, here's my super villain identity:

Your results:
You are The Joker

The Joker		80%
Green Goblin		80%
Lex Luthor		70%
Dr. Doom		60%
Venom		60%
Apocalypse		60%
Riddler		56%
Mr. Freeze		56%
Dark Phoenix		55%
Magneto		55%
Kingpin		54%
Mystique		48%
Juggernaut		48%
Catwoman		44%
Poison Ivy		40%
Two-Face		32%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

I took a different approach to this quiz, answering only on the extreme edges and using none of the middle choices, so it was either all the way yes or all the way no. While doing so, I had to catch myself a few times where I went on this cascade of "yeah baby, that's what I'm about!" followed quickly by "wait, I'm not like that at all..." Still, this is what the interweb quiz says I am, so it must be true.

This is a good result for me - I don't think there's been any big Flash/Joker interaction in the comics, so it's entirely possible that they're the same person, and that they moonlight as a vegan pornographer.

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Don't overlook that "flirtatious" part

http://ht.gaia.com — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 23:06:27 GMT

In lieu of actual content, here's the result of a superhero quiz:

You are The Flash

The Flash		65%
Spider-Man		65%
Superman		60%
Iron Man		60%
Robin		50%
Catwoman		40%
Green Lantern		40%
Batman		35%
Supergirl		30%
Hulk		30%
Wonder Woman		20%

Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Tags: quizzes, which super hero are you

I still like cycling I still like cycling I still...

http://ht.gaia.com — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:23:45 GMT

Hills? No problem.
Cold? No problem.
Traffic? No problem.
Wind? That sucks.

Tags: cycling

Learning about Lou

http://ht.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:50:06 GMT

I know very little about Lou Reed, but this quote gave me some opinions:

...I can turn up the music. I can turn it up so loud it will hurt. Do you want me to turn it up? Do you want me to make it hurt?

When I read the full quote (available here), my opnions changed a bit. Not a lot, because my thoughts on most celebrities are confined to "what is this thing I'm reading, listening, or watching doing to my mind right now,"* but a bit.

*Aside: adopting this attitude was necessary to help me enjoy the fact that I'm enjoying the Sunday Star's celebrity photo spread, even though I don't know who half of the people are and suspect that I should be old enough to know better. It's not online so I can't link to it, but their list of people who weren't invited to Tom & Katie's wedding was hilarious, and not just because it ended with "Suri's dad."

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Remember to vote on the 13th...

http://ht.gaia.com — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:47:09 GMT

Best mayoral election debate ever.

I think I've written about Kevin Clarke before - he's the (usually) homeless Toronto guy who always runs for mayor (the article says this is his third attempt, but I believe he also ran in East York before amalgamation.) Last election, he came in around number 10 out of approx. 40 candidates, which means there should be 30 or so men and women reading about the last debate and shaking their head in wonder.

Tags: politics, Toronto

On shipping human testicles

http://ht.gaia.com — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:39:00 GMT

I swear, this started out as legitimate research, but somewhere along the way, it went horribly wrong and I decided not to use it for its original purpose. Still, it'd be a shame to waste it, so here you go:

There are approximately 6 billion individual human testicles on the planet. Ranging in size from 14 to 36 cubic centimetres in volume, the combined genetic power of all males on the planet take up something between 84,000 and 216,000 cubic metres. Of course, since they're round, it'd take a bit more space than that to hold them, but as you'll see, it's not a big deal.

I went looking for a reference volume to compare that against. Humanity's balls are much smaller than Pluto, which measures in the billions of cubic metres. Toronto's Rogers Centre (formerly Skydome) can hold 1.6 million cubic metres, so the dome could easily stay closed for that. I was feeling discouraged, but the good news is that we couldn't fit everything on a 747, which only has something like a thousand m3 of cargo space. I ended up going with shipping containers, which are 8 feet by 8.6 feet by 20 feet, or about 39 cubic metres. That's not a lot, but they go in cargo ships that hold 6000 of them, giving 234,000 cubic metres of space. That should be enough.

So there you have it - I don't know what it means, but humanity has developed the technology to put all of the world's human testicles on a boat. We rock.

You know, I'm kind of glad I didn't use that for my column. About as glad as you are that I didn't post a picture, I bet.

Tags: real world math

Endings: TV Guide, Ford Taurus

http://ht.gaia.com — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:47:20 GMT

I just got word that the Canadian edition of TV Guide will be shut down in a month, and will switch to an online-only version. I guess with the increase in onscreen guides and the internet, this isn't a huge surprise, but I thought it'd take longer than this. For me, they lost when they switched to a larger format. Granted, it was probably necessary due to all the new channels and increased paper costs, and I haven't had cable for years, but I liked the thickness of the older version. Now it looks like the stuff you get for free with the weekend newspaper.

I wonder what's going to replace it on the supermarket rack? It'll have to be something that has "people might buy this on impulse" as a core part of their business model. Too bad the slot's not big enough for the Weekly World News, I haven't seen that paper in years at my local store.

On a related note, the Ford Taurus is also going out of production. It's just as well, as it wouldn't have fit into the checkout aisle anyway.

Do you think there was some visionary out there who would go to parties and talk about a future with no TV Guide or Ford Focus, and everyone would laugh at him or her? Wow, who's laughing now, eh?

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It's been a while since I was in school, clearly.

http://ht.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:53:40 GMT

So I'm flipping through the Feynman Lectures on Physics, because I always wanted to flip through them (as opposed to actually studying them, which would be hard work), and my brain's already broken:

"...if an apple is magnified to the size of the earth, then the atoms in the apple are approximately the size of the original apple."

But wait, there are already apples on the earth. Is the planet made of apples? Ow.

Tags: physics, apples