I eventually came across this “NES-Rock” band from Chicago called I Fight Dragons. I pretty much instantly became a fan because they sing about stuff like Zelda and robots, and they covered Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ but with some Mario tunes thrown in. On stage they perform all their NES synth stuff by playing actual Nintendo controllers and peripherals that they’ve programmed to play music.

I somehow managed to get some free stickers from them by replying to one of their twitter posts. Here they are, sent all the way from the US in a hand addressed envelope:

I think that was pretty AWESOME of them.

Coincidentally one of my favorite songs of theirs, ‘The Future Soon’, is a cover of a Jonathan Coulton song of the same name. Jonathan Coulton is the guy who wrote the ‘Still Alive’ song from Portal. I started listening to him a lot as well. While playing the Left 4 Dead 2 demo I noticed his song ‘Re: Your Brains’ playing from one of the in-game jukeboxes. My head pretty much exploded.

I highly reccomend listening to I Fight Dragons and Jonathan Coulton if you think you’d enjoy either NES-Rock or happy/funny songs about random stuff like what it would be like to live with a T1000.

I live in an apartment building so I get my mail via one of those boxes where you can see into the mail room if you look through it. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to push ALL unwanted junk mail back through my mailbox onto the floor of the mail room, hopefully causing chaos and mayhem for whoever works or resides there. It’s a perfectly untraceable crime, and no one can stop me.

No one.

Apple has won this round and the future isn’t looking too good as I’m planning to save for a MacBook Pro.

I might as well accept that Apple is going to take lots of my money.

I did feel bad about leaving my KEYBO though. That phone was good to me and I have no complaints about it. I’m selling it and my 32 GB iPod Touch as well so if you’re interested let me know.

(totally wrote this post from my iPhone btw)

The crappy thing is that I’m not going to have internet until the Shaw technician comes over on Thursday, so unless I find some unsecured wifi it looks like I’m going dark for a few days. If I don’t make it out, make sure the government runs good…

…make sure the government runs good.

Flickr Uploadr lets you select a bunch of photos from your computer, add the titles, descriptions and tags you want, and then upload them to Flickr in one batch. It’s worked great for me until now. I’m not sure if my internet cut out (Which it does. OFTEN. Thanks telus.) or what, but when the upload “finished” my photostream had multiple duplicates and it hadn’t actually uploaded all of the photos that I had selected. ODD. I deleted the duplicates and went to try uploading the one photo it missed via the website instead, and I got this message:

Weird. I’ve uploaded more photos than this in a month before. Flickr Uploadr probably got screwed up by telus, which would explain the duplicates. OH WELL. I decided to upgrade. I’d been thinking of trying it for a while to see what the stats were like. Plus it’s only 24.95 USD for a year, might as well try it out. Added a 1 Year Flickr Pro membership to my cart, entered my billing info, and BAM:

Wtf. I got the same result trying in Firefox, IE7 and Chrome, on XP and Vista. I figured I must have typed my billing info incorrectly or something, but after trying a bunch of times I was forced to assume that Flickr must not like money.

That sounds pretty cynical but I actually really like Flickr and it sucks when you want to support something like this and they won’t even take your money. A quick look on the Flickr Help Forums showed me I wasn’t alone in having upgrading issues. There are plenty of people who are getting the same error I am, but also people whose payments went through and have yet to be upgraded to Pro status.

I still plan on using Flickr (once they reset my bandwidth on June 1st), but this is definitely something they need to fix. Or so help me I will migrate to Picasa.

Also: Here are my photos from Video Games Live that made it up to the site.

We decided to head down on the Sunday because we had some stuff to do on Saturday. At the time we decided to go (about a week before the event), the website said that Tahmoh Penikett (perhaps better known as “Helo” from Battlestar Galactica) was going to be signing autographs. Being a big – if relatively recent – Battlestar Galactica fan, this was great news. Scrolling further down the list I saw that Geoff Lapaire, Jarett Cale, and Joel Gardiner from Pure Pwnage would also be there. This blew my mind. I’m not sure this is a well known fact outside a few people, but Pure Pwnage is one of my all-time favorite shows. That’s saying something considering it’s not a “TV” show. (If you consider yourself a Gamer, or if you like video games at all, I urge you to watch this show. It’s amazing. Start from Season 1 episode 1, noob.)

So the week went on and I prepared myself. I had my signed “Jeremy Bandana” (which they don’t sell signed from the store anymore) all ready to be re-signed, and a couple questions to ask Helo. I decided to check the comic con website again to see if I missed anyone who was also going to be there. The front page headline read as follows:

Well frak me.

I never would have guessed that I’d have the chance to meet the Old Man. The website went on to say there would be photo-ops with Adama at noon on Sunday. I guess we’d just have to leave a bit early, then.

Cut to Sunday morning, a little after 11 am. We’re beginning to stand in line to get an autograph from Edward James Olmos. I’m thinking of what to ask him, or at least something to say. I’ve got nothing. Heather says something to me like “I’m sure he’s used to talking to nervous fans.” I don’t remember much of our conversation at this point because I was so nervous. I notice the sign says “Autographed photos: $50. Photos with Edward: $20″. Turns out the photo-ops that were going on at noon were if you wanted to actually go in and get “professional” photos taken with Adama for $80. I was already willing to pay $80, and I just wanted to use my own camera. I decided to just get the picture with my own camera, to minimize the strain on my already wrecked nerves. Edward’s assistant (I’m guessing) – who is dressed like some kind of insect version of The Green Lantern – asks me what I would like. In a very quiet voice (at this point Adama is talking with the person ahead of us) I say I’d like both. A few more seconds of trying to think of something to say, and it’s my turn.

It’s pretty hazy, and I can’t remember who spoke first, but at some point he asked me my name and after I respond he starts signing the photo. He asks me if I’m a fan of the show, and I explain how I recently got into it thanks to a few people at work, and that I managed to watch the entire series in a few months and that I really enjoyed it. He smiles and says that I was lucky to have watched the series without having to suffer through the extended gaps between seasons that most fans – and apparently Olmos himself – had to wait out. He finishes signing the photo, and at some point his assistant comes over to take the picture. Heather was planning on taking the picture, but apparently Adama wouldn’t hear of it. So his assistant takes the camera and Edward James Olmos, Heather and I pose for the picture:

The photo reads:

Brendan
Thank you for taking the journey…
“So Say We All”
Edward James Olmos
“Admiral Adama”
4.26.09

The next 30 mins or so were a daze. I finally had to go put the photo in the car for fear of dropping it or otherwise tainting it. So, with the photo safe and my nerves returning it was time to take in the rest of the show. Hell, It wasn’t even noon yet.

I had to pass by the Noobstore booth (the Pure Pwnage store) a few times before I saw anyone from the show. Eventually I saw Jarett (who plays Jeremy) behind the table of merch talking to some noobs and signing their DS’s. He sees my shirt and asks if I want anything signed. I show him the bandana and explain that it’s one of the ones they used to sell from the store signed. He laughs as he looks at it and says he hasn’t seen one of them in a long time. Before season 1 ended no one know their real names because they didn’t credit the show. There was actually quite a bit of mystery around the show as to whether it was a documentary or a mockumentary (if you’re lost at this point, you’re gonna have to watch the show). He re-inks the old signature – as it’s fairly faded at this point – and signs it again with his real signature. I buy the first season on DVD and he signs that too. I go to buy a new “i pwn noobs” bumper sticker as well (as my old one is on the old mazda, which must be a metal cube by now) and before the merch girl charges me he tells her to just give it to me cause I’ve got one of the old bandanas. Sweet Deal. He says “Kyle” (Geoff) and “Doug” (Joel) should be around later, and that I should come back to get them to sign the DVD as well. I had to come back a few times but I eventually got Geoff and Joel to sign the DVD. I talked to Geoff about fans who still call him “Kyle” and he said it happens all the time. Joel was pretty quiet, I think he was just glad I didn’t ask him to say “Boom Headshot!”.

Signed bandana and dvd

All in all, it was a pretty amazing show. Everyone seemed to be there for the fans. Heather got a really sweet deal on two big hardcover comics worth $90 together. The writer gave her both books for $40 and signed them and even got the artist to sign one as well, and threw in a free print and signed that too. We both got some pretty phat lootz.

I’d definitly go to another comic-con.

I was wrong.

The Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 could very well be a prime example of one of the best uses for 50 bucks on the planet. A mere squeeze of the trigger and your target is beset by 25 whistling darts of fury at the overwhelming speed of 3 rounds per second. 25 not enough for ya? Well, how another 25? Yeah, you read me right. Just when the enemy thinks you’re empty and comes storming towards your bunker to smoke you out, you’ve got another 25-round chain to wreak more havoc upon your foes. Yessir, no better use for foam than raining down on charlie.

It’s been real fun so far, and I haven’t even figured out all my camera’s functions yet. So watch out world-of-really-really-amateur-photography, here I come.

I took a trip down to Red Deer this Christmas season to visit my family and long-lost red deer friends. Gifts were given, fun was had, and generally speaking everything was pretty awesome. In this post however, I am going to be focusing on the various car-related trials and tribulations I had to endure while enjoying my Christmas.

In retrospect, I guess I’m lucky the van didn’t break down on Highway 2 like the ol’ Mazda did earlier last year. The van was showing no signs of strain or making any weird noises leading up to its colossal crap-out on Christmas Eve as I was finishing my shopping. As I was slowing down approaching a red light, it just died suddenly. And this was on one of those streets where you rarely see any vehicles, but of course (possibly due to the abundance of other last-minute shoppers like myself) this was the day when traffic was backed up to the other side of town. To my surprise most people offered assistance and the only dirty looks I got were from a elderly couple who appeared to think I was committing some kind of heinous evil by standing next to a van on the side of the road. Eventually some guys stopped and helped me push it onto a nearby side road where it was out of the way of most of the traffic. I called my sister and she brought her AMA card and got the van towed back to the house where it still sits to the day I’m writing this.

After boxing day, my dad and my brother and I drove to Calgary to look at some used cars. The first one we saw was too much of a fixer-upper and had a constant crunching noise whenever the clutch WASN’T in. The second one was a nice little ‘97 Honda Accord which we eventually decided on. Going to look at the third car was quite an adventure. First off, we called the guy and rather than having us meet him at his home, he insisted we meet him at a Macs. When he pulled showed up we could already tell something was off. We were supposed to be looking at a Honda, but this car had a plan no-name grill instead of the “H” logo. Also, when talking to any of us he kept saying “my friend.” I don’t know this guy. I’m not his friend. We decided to be polite and take it for a test drive anyway and then just get the hell out of there. We drove about six feet before we heard cop-sirens and saw flashing lights behind us in the Macs parking lot. We were told by the police to stay in the car while “our friend” assured us that there must be some mistake. They took him out of the car and questioned him and then each of us. It turned out that in addition to being made of salvaged parts, the car wasn’t insured and the guy had no registration. My dad was almost given a hefty ticket for being the one driving at the time, but it was only six feet and they must have believed that we were just test driving it. So we peace’d the hell outta there when the cops said it was ok, and went and got some lunch. The guy had the audacity to call a little later to ask if we were still interested in the car.

Fast forward a week or so. I’m back in Edmonton with my new ‘97 Honda Accord. It’s running great with no problems. The weather drops to the -30-ish zone and it refuses to start. I didn’t think much of it because most other people’s cars weren’t starting either. But when it warmed up mine still had to be boosted, and even after driving around for a half hour after being boosted it didn’t keep a charge. So apparently, this car’s battery decided to wait until I had the car to just die. Either that or Calgary’s winters made it soft. Either way, I found myself buying a new battery for my new vehicle, just like I had done for the van 2 weeks before it died.

….Maybe I’ll just start taking the bus.