I am trying so hard to make it work.
Once I finish the class I'm currently taking, I am 2 comp sci classes away from finishing my 3 year Comp Sci degree. I am already registered for one next term (A class on Video Game Design, sweet). So I'm going through my work schedule plans to see how many extra hours a week I'm spending at work. Currently, if I work 6:30-5 everyday, except Tuesday Thursday, when I'd leave at 3 (for nap, and travel time to class) I'll log about 46 hours a week. Which means I have 6 hours to work with. If I make a better effort to always get to work by 6, that bumps me up over 8 hours to squeeze one more class in. Then I can get my degree in the spring. Which would be awesome.
The hard part is finding a good time of day to fit a class. Monday Wednesday Friday classes suck, because I have to allot for travel time 3 times instead of 2, which is an extra hour a week.
Wait. Looking into it, I see that I may be able to change one of my EP classes to a CMPT equilvalent. Which means I may not need another class... That would be awesome.
So I have now booked advising next week. We'll see what the prof says I need to do to finish my degree. Maybe I can already apply to graduate.
I'm excited.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Interesting
First off, a new post! Celebrate!
I've noticed, as I monitor my traffic, that I seem to get more hits when I don't update, than when I do. I guess it's more exciting to not hear my thoughts? Maybe just as it's longer since my last post, people check more often, hoping for a new post. Maybe I'm just making it all up. Who is to say!
Ok, so today, I want to share a meme. I was quite surprised at how mine turned out. It works like this. First, you go here. It's a random wikipedia page. The first article title, mentioned in the page you end up, is your band name. (I got "Passenger Train"). Make a note of it. Then, head to here. It's a random quote page. The last 4 words of the last quote listed becomes your album name. Here I got "cannot be reasoned out". Finally head to here. It's just some interesting flicker images, somewhat random. The third image is your album cover. Now for the fun part. Take all that information, and make your album cover.
Mine all strangely worked out. I didn't load any random page twice or anything. This was the result.
I didn't alter the photo pretty much at all. I felt that to connect Passenger Train to the image, it pretty much needed the full image. I suggest all you folks with blogs do the same, have a bit of fun, and see what you come up with. I may do another one...
I've noticed, as I monitor my traffic, that I seem to get more hits when I don't update, than when I do. I guess it's more exciting to not hear my thoughts? Maybe just as it's longer since my last post, people check more often, hoping for a new post. Maybe I'm just making it all up. Who is to say!
Ok, so today, I want to share a meme. I was quite surprised at how mine turned out. It works like this. First, you go here. It's a random wikipedia page. The first article title, mentioned in the page you end up, is your band name. (I got "Passenger Train"). Make a note of it. Then, head to here. It's a random quote page. The last 4 words of the last quote listed becomes your album name. Here I got "cannot be reasoned out". Finally head to here. It's just some interesting flicker images, somewhat random. The third image is your album cover. Now for the fun part. Take all that information, and make your album cover.
Mine all strangely worked out. I didn't load any random page twice or anything. This was the result.
I didn't alter the photo pretty much at all. I felt that to connect Passenger Train to the image, it pretty much needed the full image. I suggest all you folks with blogs do the same, have a bit of fun, and see what you come up with. I may do another one...
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Well this would be fun
Ok, so I know I'm a huge geek. I'm fine with that. When I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog today (Wesley, from Star Trek... I said I was a geek) he was mentioning this event in Illinois. For those who want a quick summary, It's essentially a large game of D&D where you use yourself instead of mini's to act it all out. Very geeky, but for folks who enjoy D&D, it would be a lot of fun. They got a 40 000 square foot warehouse, and are building a medieval city, and dungeon for people to play in.
I think this is the sort of thing that would be very well suited for Saskatchewan. We have lots of space. Prairieland Park has like 200 000 square feet. And you can rent smaller divisions of it. So I started thinking of all the logistics of getting something like that setup and running. Things like props become a concern. Getting a variety of weapons for people to use, building the buildings, and dungeon. So I thought, what untapped labour sector can I exploit? My first thought is always Kids, and Elderly whenever I need to exploit labour. Maybe I could contact some high school art teachers, and part of their program could be making props that are appropriate for a medieval D&D theme. To get the Elderly, I thought about using a small town instead of Prairieland. If a town of say a hundred residents all got on board, it could be a tourist boom, for a weekend anyway. Take a town like Clavet, get a hotel deal in Saskatoon, and setup a shuttle to go back and forth. Convert the downtown area into a medieval street. Setup booths on the street, a bit of prop work in the hotel to make it more like an Inn, and you've got your medieval town starting point. Find a nearby field, and pop up some temporary walls to make a dungeon, and you are pretty much done. Then just get volunteers from the town, or sponsored workers to staff the medieval town, and DM the dungeon rooms. I'm sure I'm making this more basic than it really is.
Attendance is obviously the hard part. I wonder how big the community is in town to support that, and how many people from say Edmonton, Calgary, and other major centers nearby would be willing to travel for something like that.
Just something that sounded interesting, and has made me think. I have some time to kill at work here, as I'm waiting for a co-worker to show up to fire a question at him, and he's awfully late today. Let me know what you think about it.
I think this is the sort of thing that would be very well suited for Saskatchewan. We have lots of space. Prairieland Park has like 200 000 square feet. And you can rent smaller divisions of it. So I started thinking of all the logistics of getting something like that setup and running. Things like props become a concern. Getting a variety of weapons for people to use, building the buildings, and dungeon. So I thought, what untapped labour sector can I exploit? My first thought is always Kids, and Elderly whenever I need to exploit labour. Maybe I could contact some high school art teachers, and part of their program could be making props that are appropriate for a medieval D&D theme. To get the Elderly, I thought about using a small town instead of Prairieland. If a town of say a hundred residents all got on board, it could be a tourist boom, for a weekend anyway. Take a town like Clavet, get a hotel deal in Saskatoon, and setup a shuttle to go back and forth. Convert the downtown area into a medieval street. Setup booths on the street, a bit of prop work in the hotel to make it more like an Inn, and you've got your medieval town starting point. Find a nearby field, and pop up some temporary walls to make a dungeon, and you are pretty much done. Then just get volunteers from the town, or sponsored workers to staff the medieval town, and DM the dungeon rooms. I'm sure I'm making this more basic than it really is.
Attendance is obviously the hard part. I wonder how big the community is in town to support that, and how many people from say Edmonton, Calgary, and other major centers nearby would be willing to travel for something like that.
Just something that sounded interesting, and has made me think. I have some time to kill at work here, as I'm waiting for a co-worker to show up to fire a question at him, and he's awfully late today. Let me know what you think about it.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Opps
My how time can fly.
We had a release at work last week, so I've been pretty busy testing and fixing last minute bugs before that. Then last weekend a friend was moving, and I helped her move, and well, I've just been busy.
Well the 3 night gig I mentioned last post was the worst gig I've ever played. It was so poorly organized. The first night, Thursday, the room started as a private function, and was a public lounge when we started. No one mentioned that it was public though. And all the private people went upstairs to try the wines, and snack. So we had about 5-10 people come all night, through our 2 sets. Friday wasn't any better. There was no signage or announcements, and people just didn't know we existed. Awesome. Then Saturday, my parents came. They were told by the staff that there was no band playing anywhere. They weren't allowed to bring their drinks to the lounge, and the bar they had setup the previous 2 nights down there had been removed. Great. So end result was 6 hours of playing, over 3 nights, to a total of about 30 or 40 people. It felt far too much like work.
We discussed an album though, and it's sounding like sometime over the winter, or early spring we'll be laying down some tracks. Hopefully we can get something good done before the Jazz Festival pitch season, so we can get some bookings a little further away. Should be good though, I haven't been on a full album in a couple of years now. You will continue to get updates as things progress, largely so I can take your money once it's done. =)
I started the actual assembly steps of my bass. I have the neck attached, and all the tuning pegs hooked up. I dropped the pickups in, but I haven't wired them yet. I got held up because I need a screwdriver. All the PC based tool sets in our house just don't work awesome with the instrument work. I should be able to get something from work here. Hopefully I can finish it this week. It's looking pretty hot. I'm pretty excited to see how it sounds and everything when I get it all finished up.
My gospel group met for the first time this season, and played our first Sunday morning show. It went well. We're learning a bunch of new tunes this year, which are going to be a lot of fun. I was starting to get a little sick of our old material. I know some of you are thinking, "Toad? in a Gospel group? Isn't he an Atheist?" I get that a lot. I know there isn't a god, but some people believe there is. I can still enjoy making music, and they can interpret it as they want. I just enjoy making music, and entertaining. If they see divine inspiration from it, all the power to them. As long as your incorrect beliefs aren't hurting me, go nuts. Maybe it'll help me catch some nice christian girl to corrupt. I'm not holding my breath though. The crowds we play to are often out of my age range. And my parents age range.
If Hell exists, I'm definitely going there. (And I learned today that Hell is Exothermic! http://www.bash.org/?301963. Of course the flaw in his argument is ignoring the equilibrium condition of Hell expanding at exactly the same rate of soul increase, but I digress)
I got more invites to Halloween events this weekend too. Looking like I'll spend the 31st at a Nolto show (The Halloween Breakdown, Macguires), and the 1st at a techno show (Jeepers Creepers After Party, Walkers). Makes for an interesting weekend. Should be a lot of fun though. I should start thinking about a costume... Feel free to post ideas.
We had a release at work last week, so I've been pretty busy testing and fixing last minute bugs before that. Then last weekend a friend was moving, and I helped her move, and well, I've just been busy.
Well the 3 night gig I mentioned last post was the worst gig I've ever played. It was so poorly organized. The first night, Thursday, the room started as a private function, and was a public lounge when we started. No one mentioned that it was public though. And all the private people went upstairs to try the wines, and snack. So we had about 5-10 people come all night, through our 2 sets. Friday wasn't any better. There was no signage or announcements, and people just didn't know we existed. Awesome. Then Saturday, my parents came. They were told by the staff that there was no band playing anywhere. They weren't allowed to bring their drinks to the lounge, and the bar they had setup the previous 2 nights down there had been removed. Great. So end result was 6 hours of playing, over 3 nights, to a total of about 30 or 40 people. It felt far too much like work.
We discussed an album though, and it's sounding like sometime over the winter, or early spring we'll be laying down some tracks. Hopefully we can get something good done before the Jazz Festival pitch season, so we can get some bookings a little further away. Should be good though, I haven't been on a full album in a couple of years now. You will continue to get updates as things progress, largely so I can take your money once it's done. =)
I started the actual assembly steps of my bass. I have the neck attached, and all the tuning pegs hooked up. I dropped the pickups in, but I haven't wired them yet. I got held up because I need a screwdriver. All the PC based tool sets in our house just don't work awesome with the instrument work. I should be able to get something from work here. Hopefully I can finish it this week. It's looking pretty hot. I'm pretty excited to see how it sounds and everything when I get it all finished up.
My gospel group met for the first time this season, and played our first Sunday morning show. It went well. We're learning a bunch of new tunes this year, which are going to be a lot of fun. I was starting to get a little sick of our old material. I know some of you are thinking, "Toad? in a Gospel group? Isn't he an Atheist?" I get that a lot. I know there isn't a god, but some people believe there is. I can still enjoy making music, and they can interpret it as they want. I just enjoy making music, and entertaining. If they see divine inspiration from it, all the power to them. As long as your incorrect beliefs aren't hurting me, go nuts. Maybe it'll help me catch some nice christian girl to corrupt. I'm not holding my breath though. The crowds we play to are often out of my age range. And my parents age range.
If Hell exists, I'm definitely going there. (And I learned today that Hell is Exothermic! http://www.bash.org/?301963. Of course the flaw in his argument is ignoring the equilibrium condition of Hell expanding at exactly the same rate of soul increase, but I digress)
I got more invites to Halloween events this weekend too. Looking like I'll spend the 31st at a Nolto show (The Halloween Breakdown, Macguires), and the 1st at a techno show (Jeepers Creepers After Party, Walkers). Makes for an interesting weekend. Should be a lot of fun though. I should start thinking about a costume... Feel free to post ideas.
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