Advice for the day: Easily solve problems by declaring parts of your life to be non-canon!

Now, with that out of the way, a bit of housecleaning seems to be in order. Apparently I actually have readers on The Horrible Fanfare now. It seems that shamelessly advertising my link via MSN is paying off – a couple people have already messaged me, apparently entertained by the fanfare.

Google analytics has come in handy as well, for tracking usage, statistics and the like. That, in conjunction with the Google Adsense data fed to me, makes for a fairly comprehensive site-tracking tool. It’s just so damned easy these days that it almost makes me miss the stat-counters of old – I’m tempted to put one in for nostalgic purposes.

That, and :blink: tags, perhaps. The nineties were awesome.

In other web-related news, myself and a few others around Ryerson are attempting to set-up a residence-oriented publication. While it was originally meant to be released in print, complications and costs means it’s been bumped to a web-based presentation. Which means I get to flex my web-design skills yet again:

A couple things regarding my adventures in web design: I’m completely self-taught, working mainly from books, web examples, and the advice of friends. Like most things in life, I really think this is the best way to go about learning things, particular when it comes to technology. With the amount of breadth and depth technology possesses, it’s impossible to cover it all within the constraints of a course – practice and observation seem to be key.

Next up: coding the beast.

Sometimes I think I could have been an engineer. Almost.
And then I realize I’m a failure at maths and sciences and should stick to Journalism.

Despite following through with my first love of writing, there’s still the inner geek inside of me, which is just simply fascinated with all thing technological, whether it be hardware, software, or a combination of the two. I think it comes from this innate desire to know how things work – or more specifically, the quest for that knowledge, sine I don’t really have any sort of skills to do the initial discovering myself.

Wiibrew has been a good point of interest for me lately. It’s a wiki devoted to Nintendo Wii hacking that’s been around since the console’s release, but has really only gained steam in the last year or so, with the huge discoveries made by Team Twiizers. For those living under a rock, the system has been hacked to do pretty much anything users or developers want.

For me, the hacking process is easy enough. In fact, it can’t really be considered hacking by the end user, since the process is already done for them – the whole affair is so stupidly easy, that all a user needs to do is drop a couple of files onto an SD card and *blam*, custom applications. No, instead, what I’m far more interested in is how the hack is done. Perhaps it’s just the part of me that wants to know what’s being done to potentially brick my console. But really, I think it’s just my interest in knowing how the hell all the little circuits and silicone come together.

That being said, if you’re up for a largely technical, yet nonetheless interesting look into how consoles work, check out HackMii. The personal blog of Team Twiizer member Bushing, the site is simply an amazing resource, and really provides some amazing insight into the power of reverse engineering. Interesting stuff!

For the most part, I respect the elder members of our society. Sure, they’re wrinkly, often smell like old books, and aren’t as quick on their feet as they once were, but they are, on the whole, fairly interesting individuals. You can learn a lot from old people.

Unless the topic of discussion is technology. Computers seem to be the one area where society’s geriatric simply cannot succeed. Anomalies like the 86-year old Youtube user aside, it’s simply become a fact of life that the elderly do not understand technology.

Ignore, for a second, the fact that I’m only regurgitating what already seems to be a well-established – albeit, not conclusively proven – fact. My point is that, today, I truly realized just how out of touch seniors are with the technological world they so depend on today. The following is a quote from my afternoon in Ryerson’s Journalism lounge. Let it be known that he was a nice enough man; we talked about theatre. Tea was served. Yet, nothing could excuse the following gem which burst forth from his dentures:

“You know what they have in the U.S now? Well, they’ve run out of email addresses, right? So people actually add these…numbers to emails now, you know? So, you get emails like Kate35@aol.com. I think they have them in Toronto now too.”
- Senior citizen, Age 524, inexplicably lounging in the Journalism lounge.

HOLD THE PHONE. WE HAVE RUN OUT OF EMAILS.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a situation that can only be rectified by but one man. A man so large, that you might go as far as to liken him to a big truck.

Ted Stevens.

I must admit, I’m a bit of a slave to Eric Idle and the Monty Python troupe. There’s something strangely appealing about trouts and dead parrots that I really can’t resist. But now for something completely different…

Spamalot’s been in Toronto for a couple weeks now, its second run in the city after going back to Broadway for another successful outing. Due to a bit of Ticketmaster magic on my Dad’s part back in April, myself and the parents had three tickets for Sunday’s performance, the last week for the show here in Toronto.

I must admit, it was my first true theatre show, high-school outings nonwithstanding. Yet, I felt strangely at home with the whole affair, which made the whole experience a whole lot more enjoyable. Of course, that wont stop some people, like the man beside me who felt it necessary to talk incessantly throughout most of the show, much to my dismay.

Spamalot, for the most part, loosely follows the misadventures of King Arthur found in the Python’s Holy Grail. You get everything you’d expect from a Python film of this magnitude, from the Knights of Ni to the Holy Handgrenade. Yet, there were a couple surprises which made for interesting diversions from traditional Python lore. Gone were the castle virgins, only to be replaced by an amusing, pride-themed Lancelot coming-out party. Additionally, it was to the delight of the audience that Idle was able to work in Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a Python staple.

Yet, while much of Python’s humour still shines through, you can’t help but feel it would be so much more effective with the cast fans have come to know and love. Staples of Grail, like the farting Frenchmen and shrubbery-crazed Knights of Ni, simply don’t seem to have the same punch in their delivery as they should.

For the most part, though, Holy Grail translated surprisingly well into a theatre-bound production. The humour appeared as fresh as it was some thirty-odd years ago, and part of the fun was simply seeing how some of the sketches could be pulled off in a convincing manner. Scenes, like those with God and the killer rabbit, came at the behest of a particularly ingenious set, which succeeded in appearing as whimsical and engaging as the material which inspired it.

All in all, breaking the fourth wall has never been this fun.