Dan Colquhoun

Yes, this LJ is effectively dead

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:33:59 GMT

It's been over a year since my last public post, so I think this is dead for all intents and purposes. I kind of went "friends only" after taking on a new job (not that there have been many friends only posts either). If you care, I'm on facebook, which I also don't update frequently.

Goodnight and good luck.

As Triumph said, "You are a huge nerd!"

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:26:07 GMT

Pure Nerd

69 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 43% Dork

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 99% on geekosity
You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Yay Onion

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:10:25 GMT

Thanks, I had no idea that this movie had been released. "Luke Wilson stars as a quintessential everyman who hibernates for centuries and wakes up in a society so degraded by insipid popular culture, crass consumerism, and rampant anti-intellectualism that he qualifies as the smartest man in the world." Yeah!!

Did someone say "rocketjump?"

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 00:17:17 GMT

Ho. Lee. Crap. Plus, wicked soundtrack! Hallucinogen - Gamma Goblins!!!

Sigh, I shoulda kept my FPS gaming skills sharp ;)

Webcomic "Diesel Sweeties" to run in print newspapers

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:47:53 GMT

Starting on January 8, 2007 Diesel Sweeties is going to be running in newspapers through United Feature Syndicate.

[bl. note: vindication. i've read every one. i love it.]

read more | digg story

Once again

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:32:25 GMT

Diesel Sweeties hits the nail on the head :)

Attention dudes in "performance tuned" budget imports

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:11:08 GMT

This is what the rest of the world thinks of you. Looks like fun to me! :)

garrrrrkk

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:42:04 GMT

that's it. garfield today just broke my brain.

Comics

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 22:21:46 GMT

Seriously, re. Garfield: Four people in one frame, all speaking, and one of them admitting an interest in Jon. And no Garfield. What's going on?

Also, Dilbert has been killing me all week. Just... Too... Funny...

Has anyone been reading Garfield lately?

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:04:57 GMT

Can they fill me in on why it seems "different" now? Is someone new taking the lead in the "story" development?

Where's my Oscar(R)?

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:04:05 GMT

Seriously. I just watched the film I shot four years ago again and I'm wondering this. Cinematic masterpice.

[edit]updated post to 2007 Home Essentials version to take advantage of the youtubes that the kinds are using nowadays FTW[/edit]

No shock there...

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:45:01 GMT

The Olympic Spirit pavilion or display or whatever was shut down on Wednesday. I just learned of it Tuesday as it was in my peripheral vision when I was at Yonge-Dundas square watching Planet of the Apes. I thought "shouldn't that be gone by now, aren't we out of any current bids?" Turns out, it was somehow supposed to support the Vancouver games in 2010...

Also, I just got out of an hour massage. First one since the Dragon boat races and a 3 day canoe trip this past weekend. Ahhh....

My new favourite website

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:09:39 GMT

Can be found here. That guy really bugged me in 2002, and this year he's just gone beyond...

Props to Roman for organising a fun nerd reunion. Mmmm, tapas...

Resonant lyrics of the week: Marco V - False Light

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 01:43:18 GMT

I guess your state of mind
Is not yours to design
And all you need is time
to find your space in false light

There, now I can die having led a full life

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 07:05:44 GMT

My MySpace profile is complete, and I have lots of friends. Pfffft.

Lookie what I did

Mon, 15 May 2006 13:40:41 GMT

Well, I didn't really "do" it, but I worked on it. And it was about a year ago that I was acutally involved. But at least I was somehow involved in something that's making headlines.

Didn't realize my bedroom is bird-flu free

Wed, 10 May 2006 16:37:22 GMT

but apparently it is.

The homeless need better PR

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 03:25:20 GMT

With press like this, people may start to think the homeless _living on the streets of Toronto_ are lazy bums.

Seriously, I wonder if this survey will really scope the sample set properly. i.e. would they have surveyed our livingroom between the months of February and April last year for the homeless. Had they, they could ask Pete why he was homeless in Toronto. But I kid. Again.

They really should differentiate between a homeless survey and a bum survey.

a-freaking-men

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 21:44:32 GMT

brotha

I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you...

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:50:27 GMT

OK, So I'm not actually Arthur Brown, but I was born on the same day that shooting for The Empire Strikes Back began. So that's gotta be worth something, right?

Speaking of sampling, which is the subject this quarter's post... M.A.R.R.S.'s hit Pump Up The Volume sampled Eric B. and Rakim's I Know You Got Soul, and Aaliyah's Try Again lifted a bit from Got Soul too, but in that more obnoxious way where they don't sample it, they just use 99% of the phrase and musical structure of what should have been the sample. Leaving you to spend the next 8 years going "I know this, where the hell's it from?" everytime you hear the freaking song. Anyway, my point (well, I'm not sure there was one when I started this, just felt like posting) is that the worst abuse of sampling I've heard lately is Nasty Girl featuring a phalanx of Bad Boy artists. It takes the opening verses of Biggie's Nasty Boy but lays some really pussy R&B crap over top and cuts the rest of his track (the better verses)... Biggie with Usher and Jagged Edge? *CRINGE* Someone at Bad Boy should be shot. Again.

Oh, and a month or so ago I found a dozen cassettes in the garbage room (in a carry case, none the less!). I now own (and therefore can legally download decent MP3s of) Asia, April Wine's Greatest Hits, Hall and Oates, Billy Joel's Piano Man... It's good to have in the car for the daily commute (rather short on tapes). Anyway, that's how I discovered that De La Soul's Say No Go sampled Hall and Oates' I Can't Go for That. Which, as you might have guessed by now, is another useless music-related fact I'm happy to now know.

Anyway, just had to get that out of my system. I tried to espouse most of this to Tracey last night, but I could see her eyes start to glaze over. So we popped in Crash. No, not Crash, Crash. Strike one; using the same title as another major release of the past decade. It managed to have me loving it, then so-so-ing it, then just annoyed at it by the end. Started out good; nice cast, I like those movies set in LA that are shot like and have the feel of Heat (pacing/cinematography thing I guess), and it had that multi-character/plotline deal going. But then it became annoyingly obvious what was going on and was going to happen and that I'd seen it all before and in a much better movie: Everyone was going to meet someone else and have a little epiphany that they're a racist raging prick and end up on the path to being a Good Person in the end. It somehow managed to spend two hours discussing racism and prejudice without being at all interesting or challenging. Bravo, here's your Oscar. But at least I was allowed to legitimately dislike Sandra Bullock, points for that. I imagine the conversation the producers had when they took on this project may have gone something like this:

Setting: Some kinda upscale bistro thing, wrapping up a California pizza lunch.

Cathy Schulman: Paul, I want an Oscar.
Paul Haggis: [bored, distracted] Mmm?
Cathy: Seen any good movies lately?
Paul: Magnolia was really good, just watched that again last night.
Cathy: Let's water that down and focus it on racial prejudice. Have lots of scenes that make people a little uncomfortable but don't make them think, so they can pretend the're donating to the NAACP just by watching our movie. Ooh! Set it in LA! That way we don't have to explain to people that cops are racist.
Paul: [Flicking his napkin around the table, half-listening] I like the part where it rained frogs.
Cathy: [Her massive arm pounds a fist onto the table; wood is heard to crack] Just keep it simple! Have it snow during the climax if that'll make you happy. That's strange enough for LA.
Paul: [Shocked to attention] OK! OK... I'll take the todo to make sure the message is as obvious and as digestible as pablum. Sheesh.
Cathy: And make sure all the characters have some kind of happy ending. Remember, focus on the Oscar.
Paul: Sure, I mean, we want Oprah and her army to like it right?
Cathy: Exactly. With Oprah, her army, and my unstoppable arm of death on our side we'll be, well, unstoppable.

Jackasses.

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:00:05 GMT

It's funny because it's meta-blasphemous.

OK, so my head hurts too much right now to read all this,

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 05:39:25 GMT

but this post on The top 25 money tips of all time looked good after a skim. The one I stopped to read was number 5 :)

The Wisdom of Parasites

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 17:17:13 GMT

Ampulex compressa, a species of wasp, is able to modify the neural networks of cockroaches, turning them into "zombies".

Amazing, and really pretty gross, too.

read more | digg story

DVI-D problems with the ATI All-in-Wonder 8500

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:20:49 GMT

So I got a nice new Samsung 960BF monitor yesterday, and hooked it up to my card with the (included!) DVI cable. Amazing picture, but with a problem. There was some noise in the image, and the occasional flicker. It took a while, but I found that at 1280x1024x60Hz the video card just couldn't output a DVI digital signal cleanly. After a bunch of digging, a post on USENET led me to try out Powerstrip to lower my refresh rate from 60Hz to 59Hz. Bingo! Problem solved!

The man who saved the world

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:14:04 GMT

Thanks, Pawel, for passing this along.