hack the planet.

i always enjoy the opportunity to catch up with my other tech savvy friends and see what they're up to, what portables they're sporting, and what approaches they're taking to hacking their lives. last night, i got to do some long overdue catching up with my friend t, who just happens to be one of the savviest of the bunch.

for all those of you who don't speak geek, here we go. portables could be a myriad of things. in my case, my portables are my mp3 player, my cell phone (pictured above, it's a moto w385 if you're curious), and my digital camera. i also have another camera (this one doesn't come with as much, although it should).

as you may be able to tell by the ghosties chasing pac-man across my phone's lcd, i like to customize my gadgets. i carry these things pretty much everywhere, why not make them mine? this may not necessarily increase functionality of the phone, but the fact that i can now store data on the phone certainly does. i guess i should also take steps to point out that these were most certainly not out of the box features. the lcd originally read out the name of my cellular carrier, and the thing didn't even come with a usb cable. i also crammed a gps program on there as well as a few other little goodies.

here comes the really impressive part. one of my friend t's main portables is a nintendo DS, among a few others. he also recently got a nice new digicam, but we'll save that for another day. like me, t likes to customize said portables, and has done so with his DS. after installing a shell on it, he loaded a VoIP client and was well on his way to free long distance phone calls.

had you asked me 10 (or so, i lost count) years ago, upon my first viewing of one of my favorite movies if i thought i'd be taking part in digital phreaking and hacking of my own, i'd have called you crazy, then asked you to pass the popcorn.

they put a story in every ad and and ad in every story.

earlier this evening i was watching a pbs frontline special, downloaded for your viewing pleasure, called the persuaders (you can watch the full program on the website thanks to public programming).
basically, the piece discusses many different facets of advertising and the incorporation of trust, experience, and yes, even love that some companies base their ad models on.
one brief case study was a cheerios commercial using a grandmother and her grandchild, playing with cheerios on a highchair as if they were pins on a map at christmas time, explaining where everyone came from and how far they traveled to be there that year. obviously meant to tug at the heartstrings. close-ups of the baby. you know the drill.
another example that they focused on, the one that caused me to utter the title of this post, focused on the hbo show sex in the city. in the episode, kim catrall's character convinces her latest love interest to appear in a fictitious (read: very very real) ad campaign.

if you know me, you'll know that i usually don't bother myself with the personal lives of celebrities past, present or future. i don't know them, so basically, i don't care. that's still the case, although this next bit may seem misleading.

[plucked from a friend's LJ, which was referencing an article seen on IMDb]

Newlywed Sweetin To Be a Mom

Former child star Jodie Sweetin is expecting her first child just weeks after marrying new husband Cody Herpin in Las Vegas. The wild former Full House star wed movie set designer Herpin on July 14 weeks after meeting him for the first time. And now the 25-year-old former crystal methamphetamine addict is getting ready to be a mom.

i really enjoyed how the article was informative and kind. until the last sentence. oh my.

anyway, to finish the recap of last weekend.. saturday was a VFest afterparty / show at bovine, with a friend's band songs from a room, and toronto french indie the denumonts. it was a good show and a bit of a change of pace from the regular bovine crowd. only complaint is that i don't like the renovations that were made to the back room. it used to be all dark and dingy, po-mo art instalments everywhere and a motorcycle in the middle of the floor serving as an island/high-bar table. the seats that lined the walls were about 4 feet further off the floor than they are now, and the walls were either painted black or were covered with so much stuff that you couldn't see the original paint.
now, they've lowered the seats, brightened the place up a bit, got rid of the pinball machine in the back corner and motorcycle in the middle of the room(!). it just seems like you're stepping into a different bar when you go in there, and not really in a good way.

on the docket this weekend?
more from songs from a room, jetplanes of abraham (who have a delicious website, in my humble opinion, sweet thing, buck 65 and skratch bastid at the TIFF afterparty at drake underground on friday.
eric's trip, rick white, julie doiron, moonsocket at lee's on saturday.

i just walked down the hall behind a lady that smelled like flintstones' vitamins. all of a sudden cold, dark winter mornings of my childhood flooded my memory. begrudgingly getting myself out of bed and trudging down over the stairs with the 90 degree turn after a few steps, blanket wrapped around me tight, rubbing sleep from my eyes and wondering what to have for breakfast and which color/character vitamin to have today. my sister and my mom were always up before me. except on christmas and weekend mornings. not even the sun beat me those days, for the most part.

this past weekend was fairly eventful. friday after work, after finding out that the show we (my roomate/good friend and i) would be attending started at 5 as opposed to 8ish like i had figured, i rushed my way home and got changed and made my way back downtown. i was reluctant, to say the least, to go see a stars show in semi-formal wear.
so, i arrived at the show, which was free - put on by U of T, and met up with the roomie and some new-to-me folks - a couple of gals and a guy from australia on a traveling vacation. meeting people at or during a concert can always be a bit awkward, as everyone is trying to pay attention to the band, but at the same time try to seem like they're not being arrogant and ignoring the new folks. it's also especially awkward when there are five of you, two of which are possibly a fledgling couple (nothing concrete, just for the sake of the record), and the other two seem like they are (although you later find out they are not, forcing some of the awkwardness to fade, taken over quickly by the fact that you miss your absent girlfriend).

the show was great. the band has a new guitarist, and it didn't come anywhere near the time i saw them at the marquee in halifax, but it was still quite enjoyable. they played all the old favorites, and some not-so-well-known greats, and amy millan's voice was as heavenly as ever.

post-concert dinner and a drink at sneaky dee's were satisfying, if not gluttonous. i hadn't eaten much all day, which would normally make a welcome stomach, but i think mine had taken its belt in a notch or two, making my el-gringo sandwich nearly impossible to finish. daquiris for the ladies, beers for the gentlemen, and faux-mexican food all around. good times.

on to the high-ceilinged (i like lofts and anything of the sort) apartment of one of the gals for post-dinner relaxation, conversation and less-and-less-awkward silences. our aussie friend decided to take his leave earlier rather than later, and was on his way. conversations of music and work and life in general ensued amongst the four of us that remained (don't forget discussing whether or not the high, noisy ceiling fan would work its way out of its holding and hurl itself toward us in a propeller-like fashion, chopping us to bits).

more music, some yawning, and a dire need for fresh air and a bit of solitude later, i excused myself and made my leave. my roomie took this as a cue and decided to walk his possible sweetie home, and i skated off for bathurst station.

and that was only friday.

more on saturday later.

so i've been trying to find the time for a while now to write a post about this new book i'm reading. it's by Anthony Bourdain, and it's called The Nasty Bits.
it's proving to be a great read. the book takes a departure from the full-steam-ahead, drug-addled, testosterone-rich descriptions of his coming up in the culinary industry as told in his previous book, Kitchen Confidential, and, as the book is a collection, gives a very seasoned (pun fully intended) insight into the state of many aspects of the business..what's wrong, what's right and, most importantly, good food.
Bourdain is a particularly sardonic, dry writer, which i like. and he's become successful as a writer for a reason, i think. he manages to be a so-called celebrity chef without succumbing to the arrogance that has wasted so many of his breed. plus, as learned in his first book (more memoir than world tour, as the nasty bits is, somewhat correspondent to his cook's tour series), the guy has paid his dues. he's worked in shitty kitchens and got yelled at, belittled, and run ragged by the best of them.
i'm just over halfway through the book (which is divided into volumes, two of which form a dichotomy commonly found in Asian cooking, 10 points to whoever can guess them) and i absolutely love it so far. it's one of those books that i just wouldn't put down if i didn't have so much to do. i tore through Kitchen Confidential, and even reading it almost solely in transit, i'm doing the same with this.

and now, after revisiting this post many times for edits and updates, i go back to work.

p.s. i think i'm addicted to fruit smoothies. yogen fruz makes a crazy good one with strawberries, blackberries, blueberries (maybe raspberries too), cranberry juice and pear sorbet (hooray for non-dairy!). i also had an amazing one at a little Thai restaurant in the bloor / gladstone area the other day with my friend mike. wish i had gotten the name of that place.

kind acts of randomness, and vice versa.

after weeks and weeks of saying it, i finally dusted off my photoshop palettes, and cobbled together a few pieces of text and eyedropper-picked colors into a neat little banner for myself.

i've always adored the ability of PS to grab colors from external documents anywhere on the screen (or parts of the OS and GUI themselves, for that matter) without having to open said items in the program. before i knew about this lovely little marvel of modern technology, i would spend much time sitting with a color picker and a visual reference, trying desperately to color-match. efforts such as these were almost always in vain.

this blog is titled thinking on the clock for a few reasons, some obvious, some not so evident. the glaring one being that i write almost exclusively while i'm at work (be it here, a random musing on a napkin during lunch, livejournal, emails to myself etc). at work i get some much-valued time to be alone with my thoughts, and thusly, they are allowed to come out with a slightly higher degree of clarity than at other times, when they may seem a bit more muddled.
the other is a bit more remote, and comes from a lyric from a song by a band called hey mercedes. in the song, titled 'the frowning of a lifetime', our friend 'kelly got caught, thinking on the clock', suggesting that a creative mind in the workplace isn't always encouraged.

and now, for something completely different.

so, it's now mid-august.
since last time (these are way too few and far-between, i know) quite a bit has happened.

i went home for almost 2 weeks in early-mid july. i had a stellar time. it wasn't nearly long enough, however. i start to wonder how my life would be right now had i actually gone all the way to calgary. since my departure last june, i've been home twice, seen my mother twice aside from that (she's been in the city), my sister has been through once, various other friends have found their way through the city, and i've had the opportunity to find my way back to another incredible part of my life in my girlfriend, who is also going to be able to come for a visit this month. if i take a look at how many of these things would have happened had i gone to calgary, i'm hard pressed to say for sure that any of them would have.

this past week i also saw a few bands that i've been really looking forward to. sherwood opening up for motion city soundtrack.
there were also a couple of other bands, one called the forecast (who, while energetic and technically great live, had the worst sound of the show, which is sadly the fate of many first-on-stage bands: they get the least time with sound techs, and are generally kinda hurried, and often have lower-end gear than bigger bands) from peoria, illinois, and another called the higher from las vegas i think, but i didn't much like them or their attitudes, so i'm not even going to bother linking them.
i had been waiting to see sherwood since i met them at warped tour in montréal in 2004, and their set got canceled due to low ticket sales or something. great live show, as i had hoped. and motion city... well, they were just stellar live. everything i had hoped for and more. i'll probably go see them again when they come back in november.

and now, since this post has set off upon an enormous tangent (i always manage to run on at length when i've got a lot on my mind) i'll end it here, with a few images.

the first is a view of a pool/maintenance shed in the middle of eglinton park, here in toronto. i live about a 65 second walk from this park, which is pretty convenient for late night escapes from the apartment or mid-afternoon enjoyment of sun. this particular shot was quite late at night or quite early in the morning, depending on what kind of a person you are.


















this shot was taken while i was home in nova scotia, and is of jenn grant backed by the boys from in-flight safety, whose drummer can be seen here.

part i. tuesday.

greetings.
since i'm at work right now, i can't really access my own photos for display here (i know i could, but i don't want to risk a remote login while at work), so i thought today i'd pass along a great photoblog that my sister passed along to me a while ago, but i've only delved into quite recently.

the guy's name is Sam, and you may already know him, but for those who don't, he's the creative whiz behind DDOI, otherwise known as Daily Dose of Imagery.
Sam lives and does most of his shooting here in Toronto, which greatly enthused me, since i'm somewhat new to the city, but i've seen quite a bit of it. his photography presents some new and quite unique perspectives on landmarks and scenery that i've seen about the city.
just this past saturday, i passed the phone booth from his photo crime scene in blue, on my way to rotate this to pick up some concert tickets.

part ii. wednesday.

so i wrote all of that yesterday, and saved it as a draft with the intention of adding some of my own photos at home last night, but that never happened. a recent and sudden addiction to HBO's Entourage, my guitar, and some very worthwhile conversation kept me occupied for the bulk of the evening.

today, i hope to post actually post a few pictures when i get home, as well as getting some more taken. it's good stress relief, which is much needed after the day i had yesterday, and the general drama of the past month or so.

ciao.