tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13627952830183840172024-03-05T21:23:59.214-05:00Human Fail MachineDesigned to fail and fail again until I succeed.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-26791452779698636862012-01-24T17:00:00.000-05:002012-01-24T17:00:02.366-05:00The Tool Stimulus ContestOnce in a while we get together as a culture to celebrate the truly important things in life, like music, and there is no greater celebration than that of the concert.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEOj1ISoIBUVPChKdM63_SF6a_IJEWDKfxw7jHyNRVcg_84AqoKanEn32HVfXi-3k6OHh1Q4JwK_k27kgp6_ZLjjndJTcoUBm-cdrSIXbtzEqYMlp32-2W8r9NbjBblhTN4GyWP2fhyphenhyphenc/s1600/01-26-12-tool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvEOj1ISoIBUVPChKdM63_SF6a_IJEWDKfxw7jHyNRVcg_84AqoKanEn32HVfXi-3k6OHh1Q4JwK_k27kgp6_ZLjjndJTcoUBm-cdrSIXbtzEqYMlp32-2W8r9NbjBblhTN4GyWP2fhyphenhyphenc/s320/01-26-12-tool.jpg" width="313" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tool image "courtesy" of JLC</td></tr>
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During the recent Holiday season I was thrilled to hear that our own <a href="http://johnlabattcentre.com/calendar/012012-26.html" target="_blank">John Labatt Centre</a> would be host to the incomparable Tool, one of those bands whose lyrics never seem to run out of things to say. As I celebrated that I would have both the means and the opportunity to enjoy this rare treat I realized it wasn't always the case. Haven't I been trapped in the fiscal confines of school or unemployment in the past and missed out on seeing bands on my bucket list?<br />
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It was a tweet from <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Kenini_I">@Kenini_I</a> (Teri) that made me realize this. She had tweeted an entreaty to the world at large to make it possible for her to see this concert as she was just not able to make it work. It was that moment I committed to <strong>The Tool Stimulus Contest</strong>. I would give away two tickets to the unemployed and/or students of London on my own sweet whims, and the very first winner was Teri for giving me the idea and meeting the criteria. She already has her ticket.<br />
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Now YOU have the chance to win the last ticket. In the next 24 hours you must comment on this blog with your email address or Twitter account (and be following me so we can DM) and state whether you are a Student or Unemployed and include a personal anecdote about Tool. It can be your favourite song, the first time you heard it, or anything at all, but something so I know you are real.<br />
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The winner will be drawn at random, there are no wrong answers or best posts. You stand to have a VERY high chance of winning since I only have 6 semi-regular readers. The winner will be posted here and contacted by email or Twitter after 5PM tomorrow Wednesday January 25th and I will deliver the ticket to you that evening or before the concert.<br />
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In summary.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Contest Rules:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Meet the Eligibility:</span><br />
1) Student<br />
2) Unemployed<br />
3) A really good liar that can fake 1) or 2) and won't feel bad stealing the ticket from someone who is less fortunate (jerk)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Comment below with your email address or Twitter account (and follow @Oathbreaker) before 5PM Wednesday<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"> January 25th</span></span>.</span><br />
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Good Luck!Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com5London, ON, Canada42.979398 -81.24613842.793529500000005 -81.561995 43.1652665 -80.930281000000008tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-67287916592944803192011-12-12T21:45:00.000-05:002011-12-12T21:54:26.472-05:00Book Review:: Ender's Game<br />
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Orson Scott Card is an author who's words I've read several times and nodded along too in agreement, and yet I had never once read any of his fiction. I've read works of his dedicated to the craft of writing and his knowledge there finally convinced me to make reading Ender's Game a priority.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0812550706/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=humfaimac04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=390961&creativeASIN=0812550706" target="_blank">Ender's Game</a> closely follows Andrew Wiggin, known as Ender, as he is selected and groomed for a great destiny within the military defence of Earth. In this future, mankind has found an uneasy peace on earth after surviving two waves of invasion from a ruthless alien race known only as "buggers". As a planet they collude to build a massive fleet and harvest from the brightest and best children the future stars of this war machine.<br />
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Ender is one such child, only he is worked harder than all the others, as he is the most promising. The story does a wonderful job, in the classic "hard SciFi" way that focuses primarily on the technology and the world around it, of unfolding a detailed "what if" scenario to completely flesh out the world and events to follow.<br />
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It asks and answers questions such as, how do you train children from a young age to be armies, to lead armies? How do you train them to fight in zero gravity? To think in zero gravity without the limitations of earth-like thinking? How do you fight an interstellar war? How do you help children cope with the mental strain?<br />
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Much of the novel is gruelling, and tortuous as we follow along through Ender's trials and triumphs, such as they are, and it is all fascinating. I did feel it wore on me. There wasn't much for hope, or compassion in this story, and there felt to be precious little positive emotion in it. I believe this was by design as Orson Scott Card set out to make us understand the unbearable cost of what was done and from the payers perspective, from Ender's.<br />
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Many people will and should enjoy this book, especially young people, because in many ways it celebrates the ability of youth to achieve great things and is at it's heart an underdog story, albeit a brutal one. Given the main events it'd be easy to expect this to be a cautionary tale, but only in the final pages does this really occur and then it feels more like a segue into a sequel then any real message.<br />
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My main complaints against the book are it's muddled theme especially in regards to the end. While this is written and titled as if it's the story of Ender, it's treated in end and at various stages much more like the story of Earthlings in the Third Invasion. I think this allowed OSC to explore many more ideas he had but ultimately took away from the power of his central material and at various times made us more interested in largely unimportant characters (Ender's siblings).<br />
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I guess in the end I just wished there had been some moralistic message after going through Ender's trials with him. What was there was handled in such a wash of denouement exposition it didn't really resonate. Orson Scott Card exhibits a very analytical understanding of cause and effect in relation to human emotions, relationships, and society and science. His work is solid and well written here, but to my disappointment, it is not Lord of the Flies in Space.<br />
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I give Ender's Game <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">9/10.</span></div>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com2London, ON, Canada42.979398 -81.24613842.793529500000005 -81.561995 43.1652665 -80.930281000000008tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-81124858418890808372011-12-07T19:27:00.000-05:002011-12-07T19:27:15.555-05:00The Importance of Capturing the SparkLaying in bed the other night I was suddenly struck by what seemed an extremely cool idea for a story, so, as I've read I should, I grabbed my iPhone from the nightstand and jotted it down as a note for later.<br />
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This is what I wrote,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Soul sipper soul light<br />
Flicker of detectable flame of life of magic user. One is dead steady black flame, etc<br />
Illegal to sip souls, addicted to it was a game for rebellious youth. Now killer...</blockquote>When I read it now I can only guess what was meant by "etc" or the ellipsis "...". The moment of clarity has long passed. Aside from the obviously vague items, most of this takes a fair amount of reconstruction and imagination to turn into anything useful, and yet it's enough to spark a creative process down a pathway my mind has been once before. The ideas may be terrible, cliche and tired, or impractical for a story of any real length but I certainly can see the value in capturing a moment's creative spark for later.<br />
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This got me thinking of the Moleskine I had carried around last year during my writing classes and writing experiments. Hadn't I kept a section as a journal of story and scene ideas? Once I had its leathery cover in my hands and had removed the elastic binding, I flipped it open to the very back and amongst others found these little dusty turds.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">A battle or ritual with Prime Evil leaves a mark. Protag now struggling to fight [Prime Evil] climactically discovers the evil is inside him and was all that time. Becomes blured borders between identities IE. Horror Harry Potter<br />
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Data heist from High Security data centre, no one expected physical attack, Maybe Botnet DDOS misdirect attack (paid some kid/fallguy)<br />
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Encryption with a human key/cipher. Either genetic or something taught/learned.</blockquote><br />
Maybe nothing special there but some things to get me thinking. Flipping around I found the Scene Ideas/Chance Moments sections and was truly struck by some of the scenes I had seen in my real life or imagined.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">Teens raving about "Bees! Bees! They are really important. If they die we die."<br />
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Two super goths [Editor's note: I don't know proper terminology] as a couple, him an Alice Cooper, her female Marilyn Manson (eyebrows shaved painted white with drawn eyebrows) and between them, cute normal little girl in My Little Pony clothes. [their daughter]<br />
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Near office buildings gust of wind catches yellowed leaves of branches and they dance in a column through the intersection catching the sun and turning into Golden Dancers in the middle of the air over the busy, distracted masses.<br />
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Elderly man waiting forlornly, solemnly, at a set chess table in the library/park no longer waiting for an opponent who will never arrive again. Staring at me.</blockquote>As I read those now, some of them seem interesting, and some of them strike me deeply as I remember exactly what I had seen or imagined. Each of them could help break a spell of writer's block or be included to flesh out an otherwise mundane scene.<br />
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If nothing else, these captured little sparks of creativity and observation, so hastily preserved in ink like so much dinosaur DNA in amber, have prompted me to finally break the multi-month draught of postings on this blog. And that alone is proof of the importance of capturing the spark.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-66966349875658438452011-05-11T13:11:00.000-04:002011-05-11T13:11:07.181-04:00Why Canada voted for the Blue Man GroupMay 2011 a small percentage of Canadians elected Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada to a majority government. Blue swept the west and staked new claims in Ontario, routing Liberal strongholds, while the NDP swept forth from Quebec, turning the baby blues to orange.<br />
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As we handed Stephen Harper the keys to the Canadian kingdom I had to ask myself, how did this happen? I've spoken to a number of Conservative voters I know and in almost all situations ignorance was key. Voter apathy is so virile in Canada that either citizens simply don't vote, or they vote based on hunches. Most that I spoke to that voted for the Conservatives, voted for Harper because he seemed inoffensive, or worse, voted against Ignatieff or Layton because they "didn't like them", and Harper was the safe choice. When asked what was wrong with Iggy, my friends and family had no words for it. He was simply not for them. If you ask me, that is the result of absorbing years of attack ads. Character assassination is a wonderful tool in politics because it leaves people distrusting someone on unfounded claims years after they first witnessed it, when they can no longer remember what it even was. And Stephen Harper himself has been the King of Character assassination.<br />
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The other straw leg that propped up the blue wave was the Economy. Yes, Canada has weathered the global recession decently, but we also went into it with a fiscal surplus thanks to the Liberal party. Let's not forget the collective opposition parties had to also threaten to topple the Conservative government and form their own just to get economic action to prevent the recession taking root here. Of course, I'm generous when I say they threatened it. In fact, the opposition parties were thwarted from enacting it only by a backdoor maneuver by Harper to disable the Parliament of Canada for an entire session to save his job. But don't worry, he set a dangerous precedent of favouring hanging onto power over respecting the elected representatives of Canadian citizens for us. After all, the Coalition was bad. Losers shouldn't win, and a collection of losers, never should. Even if they represent the majority of Canadian voters. Mr. Harper has continually shown not only a blatant disregard for the design of our democracy, but also a caustic willingness to degrade public understanding and faith in it and to sidestep its controls at every chance.<br />
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But hey kids he's the new boss. Don't worry, first up will be to get rid of those disgusting public handouts to political parties for election funding. You know, that $1.70 that the Green party gets for every vote they receive, so that they can continue to be a viable representation in our political scheme for those that share their views.. in example, those who voted for them. I can't imagine they are flush with cash from corporate sponsors like the Oil Fields-loving and Corporate Tax-cutting Conservatives that want to take away that lifeline, but I guess that just means they are taking up valuable oxygen and need to have life support cut off. In a nation that is so apathetic towards voting, among other reasons because they feel their votes don't matter, we will strangle off fringe parties and further diminish the power of a vote. That's not just smart that's S-Mart, as in Stephen smart.<br />
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The final reason I heard for voting blue almost made me throw up in my mouth: election fatigue. Apparently the unfair toll taken on some Canadians by requesting that they represent themselves at a voting station for 10 minutes every 8 months to a year is just intolerable. And how dare we! Better to hand control over to someone, anyone, and not have to worry about it for 4 years. I mean, how much damage could they do? Canada has got to be one of the easiest and safest places to vote, all you need is 10 minutes and a name in mind to mark. But lo there be'est the quandary. Election fatigue isn't the problem, the problem is citizens that are tired of being bothered to think about choosing a government, they are tired of deciding between leaders, and tired of trying to understand where they themselves even stand on the issues. Often I hear people complain that they don't even know the party platforms, where the platforms are generally stable year after year on the main issues, and I think they are just upset no one has told them what the current issues ought to be, because they surely don't know. Let's face it, if you voted for a majority on that basis alone, then you voted for a babysitter to take care of everything for you while you worried about your Me Time. It was selfish and spits in the face of representative democracy.<br />
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What's done is done, and over the next four years we get to start blogging all the things we need our next government to undo. But every staple of our current parliamentary democracy that Harper tears down, will invariably stay down. After all, this election has proven that Canadians do not care about them. As long as you can don a cardigan, fake smile at your kids, and say "the good ship Canada is O K", while burning Robert's Rules of Order behind your back, well, we'll give you a bloody promotion.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-35673125806164177332011-04-19T14:37:00.000-04:002011-04-19T14:37:23.916-04:00Why is it so Hard to Write?For as long as I can remember I had a knack for putting words together. My ideas were often innovative and my stories contained a through-line that made them eminently readable, at least for a grade-schooler. Yet for as long as that has been the case it has also been true that for me writing has always been extremely <b>hard</b>.<br />
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When I say writing is hard for me, I don't mean that it is difficult to slap words down or make sentences that work. What I mean is that the act of writing well, writing to my own expectations, is a lot of <b>hard work</b>. As I start work on a blog post or a speech ideas swirl around in my head like a magnificent maelstrom and it's all I can do to try to capture the essence of a single sentiment, let alone weave that tempest into a coherent tapestry of ideas. I can see glimmers of the final picture I want to paint in my head, but as I plod through one poorly rendered concept after another I realize how much more work it needs, how far from the path I've deviated. And at some point I forget what path I was on as I find forks in the road that seem to lead me far from my opening paragraph.<br />
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I've never understood how someone can be lacking words in a composition. For me I am always flooded with them. A half dozen lines per idea and I've prose'd my way into an amalgam of related concepts that spans many pages and, like modern Physics, with no clear Unifying Theory of Everything to help it make sense. It is hard to write well because it is hard to express the million micro epiphanies I have as I explore an idea in my mind. It is hard to write well because every line I write is a "little darling", to quote popular literature on writing, and I cannot sacrifice enough of them to earn the cogency that I need to powerfully make the point that plays within the powers of my mind.<br />
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It is hard for me to write because it takes so long to do it. I am a perfectionist. I was inspired to write a speech recently for Toastmasters and instead of jotting down some ideas, I spent an hour and a half researching the barest roots of the essential fundamentals surrounding the topic. Does a normal person when writing a short speech about freedom of ideas and intellectual property research Platonic Idealism? Perhaps they do and they are simply faster at it than me. Despite my own derision towards my approach I yearn to read the results that ultimately await. I want to see come to life a powerful and insightful speech about the relativity of ideas and ownership contrasted with the concept of underlying truths and greater good. It would be a speech about society and our futures as humans on this floating rock, which is a lot to evolve from the quote, “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.”. I become crippled by the burden of that concept, it is too big for me to treat adequately. My skill is not enough.<br />
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Words challenge me. They challenge me to be used as they pop unbidden into my head from some netherworld of forgotten references. Half the time I have the meanings wrong and the spelling worse, yet they demand my attention as if they alone can solve the riddle of a sentence. More often than they should they wend their way into my rose garden and present their difficult barbs to my readers and diverting my careful tending. It is a weakness I suppose, and one that author's like Stephen King have nearly completely abolished to their great success. The track record is clear, run without the added weight of complex words and you reach the finish line straighter and faster and everyone remembers how you got there. Yet, it remains a perniciously persistent predicament which faces me endlessly, needlessly, and heedlessly.<br />
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In the end, deep down, I know most of my problem is lack of practice. Even author's like Stephen King struggled through their first novels and developing a writing system and routine. Now they bang out a book a year, business as usual, and are having a great time doing it. So maybe I need to take a page from their book and just write. Get the first draft on paper, even if it is equivalent to what one of my old English teacher's called "Verbal Diarrhea". At least then that steaming mess of verbs and nouns and ideas has been parked somewhere and I can move on to working with it, flushing it, or starting on something new.<br />
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I've written this blog post that way. Grabbed time I didn't have and blurted it all out. No revision, no review, no second guessing. Not even the poop reference. And aren't we all the richer for it? If you are reading this out in writer/blogger land, let me know how you deal with the difficulty of writing. What challenges you and makes writing <b>hard</b>?Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-75134292783523934662010-09-22T09:36:00.000-04:002010-09-22T09:36:11.467-04:00Why #yxu is a Bad LabelIn the Twittersphere for London, Ontario there has been a trend recently to change what we use as a hashtag, or label, to identify tweets pertaining to our City and area. For years now I have been using #LdnOnt as the hashtag for London. As you can guess, simply using #London is often confused with London England and searching on that hashtag brings up both resident's tweets. Recently, there has been an influx of competing hashtags, such as the current favourite #yxu. Primarily, I see no reason to change my tried and true hashtag but let's see why I don't like #yxu.<br />
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Why is #yxu a bad Label? It is Cryptic, Elitist, and Immemorable.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">It is Cryptic </span>because it is nonsense. The letters do not stand for anything at all and you can not decipher its meaning by simply looking at it or cross-referencing it to any knowledge of London aside from it's actual precise representation. So in other words, the only way to understand what it is, is to look it up and even then, it means nothing more than a code for London's Airport.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">It is Elitist </span>because if you do not know we are all using it, you would likely not intuit to use it. My argument for this? How many people in London actually fly in or out of our Airport? I've lived here for 6 years and have flown to British Columbia twice and don't even know where our airport is, let alone the code, I fly out of Pearson. I have flown out of the Powell River airport twice and have no earthly idea what it's airport code is. Nor do I know the airport codes for Prince George or Orillia where I also resided for a number of years.<br />
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Ask yourself if someone in Hamilton or Chatham would think to look for London tweets by our airport code? What about someone in Somalia? I understand some major Canadian cities are using their codes, namely Vancouver and Toronto, but let's face it guys, those are two of the busiest International airports in all of Canada. London is not. So the way you'll know how to find our tweets is if... you already know the password into our elite club.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">It is Immemorable </span>because it is nonsense! There is no mnemonic property at all to #yxu or any other airport code aside from pure coincidence. For example, nearly every time I fly to Vancouver and decide to use the airport code at booking I have to double-check whether YVR or YYZ is Vancouver or Toronto - and that one even has a coincidental mnemonic in it (YVR has VR for VancouveR) but I start wondering, "or was it the opposite of what makes sense." You see I can get doubtful because I know YYZ means nothing. I know YXU means nothing. How am I to remember them other than through sheer repetition?<br />
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In my opinion a good label, a good index, a good way for people to find each other is not something they have to learn. It isn't something WE have to learn to use and memorize. It is whatever comes naturally, whatever makes sense, and whatever means something. #ldnont isn't perfect, but it at least means something when you read it.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-40029497689953371682010-09-21T20:41:00.001-04:002010-09-21T20:56:08.436-04:00An E-Prime Character IntroHomework for my Writing Class had us writing a page in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-prime">E-Prime</a> and also beginning to jot down ideas for a Character we'd like to write about.<br />
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E-Prime, as explained in the link, has a great deal of potential as a tool to free up the English language from the constraints of too much reliance on the verb <i><b>to be</b></i> and with the pleasant side effect of improving readability for a broad range of individuals with difficulties reading contemporary writing. The example given being persons with English as a Second Language (ESL) who have a difficult time following what is meant by our many subtle uses of the verb.<br />
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That sounds good, but writing in that mode takes a great deal of attention as I discovered when I combined the two objectives and wrote a story opening with a heavy focus on the main character and entirely in E-Prime. <br />
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The result follows, hit the break to see it and my thoughts on the exercise.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<blockquote>Oliver started the day pretty sure something had gone wrong getting out of bed. All through his morning routine everything appeared normal; he showered, shaved, and dressed without a hitch and had even remembered to set the coffee timer the night before.</blockquote><blockquote>As he sat drinking his coffee (decaf these days) and enjoying a bowl of 'delicious' FiberMAX, he stared off into space, pondering the feeling that still twitched in the back of his brain with a foreboding urgency. As with all Oliver's morning ruminations, whether lamenting the absurdness of the latest spinner flights in Darts & Boards Monthly, or the steady decline of quality darts coverage in the local paper since Ol' Larry lost his column, he quickly collected his thoughts, or more accurately, discarded these invading ones, and proceeded on his way to work.</blockquote><blockquote>Oliver spent his life a stalwart defender of public transit, believing that the chief problem of city life lay nestled behind the wheel of every hybrid import and giant SUV on the road, namely yuppies, and as such he avoided driving at all costs. By 8:05 Oliver had huffed up to the Bus Stop on Spencer St (huffed because this gentle slope amounted to his day's primary workout) with one hand in the pocket of his dated sport jacket clutching his bus pass and the other patting the balding patch on the top of his head with his checkered handkerchief.</blockquote><blockquote>At 8:10 the City Transit #16 Southbound came hissing to a stop in front of Oliver and the doors swung aside revealing the first shock of our day.</blockquote><blockquote>"Good Morning Vince!", the young man behind the wheel said to our Oliver, flashing a small grin.</blockquote><blockquote>"Good Day Billy," said Oliver mounting the bus and bracing himself against the hand-holds as the bus began to slide forward. "Right on time, 3 days in a row, you might kick your tardiness problem yet."</blockquote><blockquote>Billy, clearly amused by this outlook let slip another small grin, "Well I just hope I can '<i>continue to serve the citizens of this fine city in a timely, efficient, and professional manner</i>' until my well-deserved retirement, Vince."</blockquote><blockquote>Vince, or rather Oliver as we know him, raised his eyebrows at this, "Well I hardly need to hear about a well-deserved retirement from a young one like you! And I don't appreciate your taking liberties with my official city services critiques Billy."</blockquote><blockquote>"Oh, now we are calling letters to the Mayor, City Council, and my boss down at the transit commission complaining about me '<i>city services critiques</i>' are we? And here I thought you just had a soft spot for me Vincey!"</blockquote><br />
I sincerely hope you didn't notice a single form of the verb <i>to be</i> as I put a bunch of effort into that. I had to cross off whole sentences more than once and re-write it back to front. What I noticed about the times I did this clarified for me why E-Prime has a valued role in a professional writer's toolbox - I almost always found myself re-writing the 'next line' that had come to me easily following my main creative thought and almost every time it took the form of a 'writing clich<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">é</span></em></span>'. Simply put, a boring sentence structure that I had read or written dozens of times in the past.<br />
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I came to the conclusion, after this exercise, that keeping E-Prime on-hand and 'primed' up as a tool, would be an invaluable asset for your re-writing and editing phase, when you really want to sweep out the cobwebby writing. Not so much for the first draft, when you want to spend more time writing pages and less time worrying about how to say the same thing better. Even then, I didn't find better writing resulted every time I E-Primed a sentence as often it became up to twice as long and actually convoluted a simple concept.<br />
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And what about my poor schizophrenic Character, Oliver? Or should I say Vince? Well, we'll just have to see if anything comes of that or if the explanation ends up being as simple as a strange nickname. Oh and that strange feeling he had? Well, I've already discarded that invading thought myself.<br />
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<i>Did you notice I E-Primed this blog post?</i>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-9443081678580317452010-09-20T12:20:00.000-04:002010-09-20T12:20:36.204-04:00Intro to Fiction Class 1 - It Starts.You may recall my fiction blurbs from last year, well they are about to resume. Last week in Intro to Fiction we were given 10 or so minutes to jot down something in 1st Person narrative that would hopefully be intimate to the character. This is what I threw up on the page:<br />
<blockquote>I stepped out into the dim memory of a beautiful summer afternoon, diminished now to the half-light of coming night. It was cooler and not least of all for the absence of the glowering sun overhead.<br />
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I love this time of the day, it always reminds me of the evenings I spent with my childhood friends many years ago. How long has it been now since I last stayed out at kevin's place debating which comic book villain was best under an observant graveyard of stars? Too long. And yet, who thinks much of comics these days?<br />
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With a long breath I exhaled old thoughts and stretched my back, releasing old knots. Where is that cat?<br />
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Furball is usually croaking his tired voice at me before I'm even halfway down memory lane to Kevin's old home. I keep meaning to let him in before he can annoy the neighbours with his nighttime challenges up and down the neighbourhood and it looks like tonight I'm too early... only, I'm not.</blockquote>I didn't edit this much, just a few typos and carriage returns, although a whole bunch of it is singing at me right now, not least of which is a little ditty about adverbs and useless words. That said, it was fun to flex the creative muscle again, even if this one is highly unoriginal. I also started reading a book on Characterization & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card which is very insightful. I'll post whatever I write each week. Our current assignment is to create a character of some sort so I'll post that soon.<br />
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Classes are on Wednesdays so stay tuned!Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-34662304005414688562010-09-20T12:03:00.002-04:002010-09-20T12:05:38.583-04:00MMO Review: Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxHcvgfvaQTiY2JI_aPNy4dgUHkhUB-Zo8GZfOv111boqBK2SLGOjO6VFD31r7Qt3z733bmQ6EQG59XTfaHbsQ7Z-O5RQMtmD-Q4ls2TOc4RE2kW5VpZ4S4OI4__e2w6bmwnnGKqsFPw/s1600/lotro_mirkwood.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" qx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxHcvgfvaQTiY2JI_aPNy4dgUHkhUB-Zo8GZfOv111boqBK2SLGOjO6VFD31r7Qt3z733bmQ6EQG59XTfaHbsQ7Z-O5RQMtmD-Q4ls2TOc4RE2kW5VpZ4S4OI4__e2w6bmwnnGKqsFPw/s320/lotro_mirkwood.bmp" /></a></div><a href="http://www.lotro.com/">Lord of the Rings Online</a> (LOTRO) has gone Free to Play in the same style as previous Turbine games such as Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO). The main difference here is that LOTRO is a superior game.<br />
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While it vied to capitalize on the recent successful movie franchise, LOTRO licensed the video game rights from the books and as such, uses none of the imagery from the movies. That said it does a wonderful job of evoking a cinematic experience with such innovations as clever little intro videos for each race and class and nice short segue videos for important transitions in the main story arc of your character.<br />
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The game obviously takes the written works of Tolkien very seriously and there is a great deal of care taken to imbue every character and location with every factoid you could mine from it. <br />
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More after...<br />
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The story takes place shortly after the three hobbits of the fellowship leave the shire and currently extends all the way through the Mines of Moria and into the Mirkwood. I've been playing a fat little Hobbit of the Harfoots and am delighting in the charming and yet exciting life of a Bounder within the Shire! From the veritable capital of Michel Delving to peaking into Bag End (saying hello to Lobelia Sackville-Baggins on the way in) in Hobbiton I've found everything in place. LOTRO provides a naming guide at character creation and it seems to really payoff - the vast majority of characters I've met are appropriately named for the world.<br />
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The gameplay dynamics are at the least MMO standard fair with a few twists and it really seems like a 2nd Gen AAA MMO. They appear to have tried very hard to make every class interesting to play, I noticed classes sech as Wardens have interesting combo mechanics. On top of that there are Fellowship Maneuvers that classes such as Burglars can initiate for large party buffs,, healing, damage, or creature debuffs. Crafting is straight forward but again with a twist. In example, once you complete Apprentice Tailoring you both unlock Journeyman Tailoring and also the ability to level up Apprentice a second time to Master it, at which point you can use rare items to massively buff your chance to Crit on recipes which produces the Rare version of the item you are trying to craft. Also innovative is the fact you choose a profession bundle or vocation and not individual professions.<br />
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While there are the standard drop, kill, and delivery quests I've yet to be stuck on one for any length of time, they all are easily achievable, alone or in a group with many of the drops and lootable objects being shared. If you've ever played WOW you know how terrible this can be if done wrong.<br />
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The game augments quests with Deeds, which are akin to acheivements, only these very often will result in a new title or a Virtue. Virtues are buffs that can be socketed onto your character through the legend-making skills of a town Bard. An example would be the wolf slaying Deed which initially yields a title of Fur-cutter when you kill something like 25 wolves, but if you go on to kill 50 more you will gain the ability to use a Virtue that provides buffs to your defences and the Vitality stat (I'm going from memory so this may be wrong).<br />
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The graphics in this game are really very nice and it is a pleasure to bound around the Shire for hours on end. That is, when I'm not rocking out some Johnny Cash on my lute. You see LOTRO has the interesting feature that anyone can equipment two out of 6 or so instruments and then press keys on the keyboard to play around 30 different notes. For the lazy, you can download ABC files to your LOTRO music folder that contain alphabet-coded sheet music in plaintext. <a href="http://www.thefatlute.com/">Sites exist</a> that have libraries of community made ABC files for all your favourites.... this includes synchonized 8-part renditions. Yes, you and 7 friends can all synchonize and play an 8-part version of Coldplay's Viva La Vida in the The Prancing Pony while onlookers enjoy the local brew.<br />
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To be fair, my experiences have stopped short of any real instances, or fellowships larger than 3 people, or anything beyond level 16, so there is much of this game I cannot comment on. But from what I've seen so far... I can't wait to meet Tom Bombadil!<br />
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<strong>Recommendation: </strong>If you love Lord of the Rings - play this game. If you want a solid MMO that isn't WoW - play this until The Old Republic.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-67964995872171739622010-08-10T12:26:00.000-04:002010-08-10T12:26:56.935-04:00Classic Movie Review: Beat the Devil (1953)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00005A0QS?ie=UTF8&tag=humfaimac04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=390961&creativeASIN=B00005A0QS" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0kO_-9_Dj370kMN4lwPeNKjgEU5iJmWjLyrohk6Tm5x1wguxFpK_cWYRtYf3YMz_icUUU0UuOb7Tfx9Y_llt2_SnB1PLJbL1dhB-T1EJYvDxNc5ww3re8cKrmJsOKAUxlTjss3tzBlKg/s320/Beat-The-Devil.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>I still can't remember why I got my hands on Beat the Devil to review - it is an obscure movie with a very peculiar comedy to it. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, and a supporting cast of four "desperate fellows" on an ill-fated trip to Central Africa to exploit a lead on a Uranium-rich tract of land.<br />
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The trip serves to provide the setting, first an idyllic seaside stop-over then an ocean voyage, and the intrigue. a 5-way business arrangement held together more by suspicion then trust. The real story here is not the Uranium mine at all, but the bizarre antics of these characters as they all interact with one another.<br />
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Much like while doing <a href="http://humanfailmachine.blogspot.com/2010/06/classic-movie-review-bringing-up-baby.html">my review of Bringing up Baby</a> I was surprised at the timelessness of the comedies of the 50's. Co-written by Truman Capote, the script was produced day-by-day and the actors tasked with performing them hot off the presses. This plays through in the way this movie feels more like skilled improv than a traditional movie. There are some wonderful characters at play, from the Chilean German with an Irish name who waxes poetic about the meaning of time, to the Blonde Beauty who is fickle with her affections yet liberal with her imagination.<br />
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Beat the Devil is punctuated by stunning set pieces of dialogue. Tongue-in-cheek interchanges and occasionally insightful mini-soliloquys make quick work of your defences and will render you raptly aware of the bizarreness of each character. For me, it is reminiscent of the distinct characters found in Charles Dickens - lively, colourful, and just a bit bent. Although there is at most 3 settings throughout the movie it has the feeling of being a mad capering adventure in that the situations seem as improvisational as the acting. Whether it was the dialogue or the situations, I found myself laughing out loud more than once and chuckling over the few recurrent gags that sneak in under the wire.<br />
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I've never seen Humphrey Bogart in a film before and I'm not sure this was the best introduction of him as an iconic actor, although it has the benefit of my seeing him disarmed from any affected grandeur. Now I know him as an interesting actor, who can turn a deadpan phrase and still seem the dashing lead. I want to note also that I had never heard of Jennifer Jones before, but after her charming, intelligent turn in this film, I can imagine she had the hearts of many young men firmly entrenched in wishful thinking.<br />
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One thing you can expect from Beat the Devil is never to hear a bland or clichéd statement responded to without a cupful of wit and on that topic I'll let our protagonist Billy have the last word, "The only thing standing between you and a watery grave is your wits, and that's not my idea of adequate protection."Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-10681675481548241582010-08-09T16:10:00.000-04:002010-08-09T16:10:55.762-04:00Book Review:: World War Z<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0307346617?ie=UTF8&tag=humfaimac04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=390961&creativeASIN=0307346617" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu2ZaJyaYL5CmUy8dh5_9Ue4Qi0cSQXzfIOkRdbXfLrRnkJACLTsdAhcMjE5nuuwCjSSQfQ4wmOPM2ZI4gP8DLgpUTSuAvCDoj8pwt2IzEYxMvkZnygAXzE_Kv7h6ljAZWzad_w-9cxxo/s200/WorldWarZ.jpg" width="130" /></a></div>In tomorrow's generation, many of us will be known as Generation Z - the survivors of a brutal World War that nearly ended our race once and for all. What's the Z you ask, why that's Zombies of course.<br />
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What would happen if in the next 20 years a deadly new virus were to break out in central China, one that kills and then reanimates the corpse as a deathless evisceration machine unstoppable short of brain destruction. How would their government react, how would their people, what if it got out of their country?<br />
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Taken from the point of view of a UN sanctioned researcher investigating the cause and events of this frightening plague, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, takes us through a series of interviews with the people that were there on the front-lines fighting with ill-suited weapons, in the offices of power making the gruesome choices, and in the back rooms of the black market making a fast buck.<br />
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The book is an easy read, at only 300+ pages it engages in a conversational style and spans so many cultures and situations that you will never get bored. You will be turning every page, eager to learn a little more about the bigger picture and you won't be disappointed.<br />
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Overall I enjoyed the book, although in a lot of ways its strength is its weakness. The contagious element of the book keeps you reading it for extended periods and that's when the interview style wears thin. So many of the interviewees ended up spewing out litanies of events they witnessed in too similar a style that by 2/3rds through the book you wonder how half of it would be possible for one person to do, see, and remember so much in one conflict. From the soldier who seems to have personal knowledge of dozens of unique scenarios to the International Space Station astronaut that personally observed every major event in the war from space while simultaneously jerry-rigging satellites and space vehicles for unintended purposes it seems like everyone interviewed in the book had more things to say than they should.<br />
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Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like the author's research and brainstorming was writing this book. Aside from the dialogue, somehow only a dozen or so years after an event that devastated the majority of the human population and had untold impact on our elemental resources, infrastructure, and culture folks are running around with cutting edge science, technologies that are only ideas now and maybe 20-30 years of dedicated R&D away. I don't buy it and often the new tech references were so off-the-cuff and devoid of explanation that you are left simply saying to yourself, "Ok, whatever that is". In my opinion, it was unnecessary and jarring.<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1400049628?ie=UTF8&tag=humfaimac04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=390961&creativeASIN=1400049628" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMY9HQHgRwy2olQ3QOgeb61snTz-iGdQ3z-PjAjuCLqWv2jmM0ArNZo9IMdfKd1lbaDC3VoEaj2pxLkRJJmOJNQMBOW82rUWApDinxvCbd8S9-gpDci8AtPva8e0RzNLgJFhzwoXbD-A/s200/ZombieSurvivalGuide.jpg" width="132" /></a><br />
That all said, if you are a zombie fan, this is a fun and clever read and will really get you thinking. Clearly the author Max Brooks leveraged his research from The Zombie Survival Guide and if you enjoyed that book, check out how it all turned out in this one.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-8276752352807950412010-08-09T15:15:00.001-04:002010-08-09T15:22:47.953-04:00Movie Review:: Shutter Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Q8bnGWOvL0Ld6Gd4FtXUflkMh9dZAEJ7JCqULBPZhzyCD52avTsEX9WcOB-cVTo-rqOX3DVmAAMuJu4t93tOUvGRQLEQJYWMHFSg1kvOu1dkQcm3eNWILN9Ij2zBWmeLDofA5ejskuo/s1600/200px-Shutterislandposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Q8bnGWOvL0Ld6Gd4FtXUflkMh9dZAEJ7JCqULBPZhzyCD52avTsEX9WcOB-cVTo-rqOX3DVmAAMuJu4t93tOUvGRQLEQJYWMHFSg1kvOu1dkQcm3eNWILN9Ij2zBWmeLDofA5ejskuo/s320/200px-Shutterislandposter.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br />
It is the 1950's, the Nazi's have been defeated and the Cold War looms and for U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck something about the Penitentiary/Hospital for the Criminally Insane on Shutter Island just doesn't add up.<br />
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Leo DiCaprio continues to refute all my claims against his acting with movies like The Departed straight through to Inception and this is no different. In fact, this is a must see. Ironically when I was watching Inception I thought, "Leo sure does remind me of Jack Nicholson these days, but what he really needs to be in that calibre is a The Shining or a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Well folks, this is it.<br />
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Teddy Daniels is ostensibly on the island to find an escaped prisoner, but his real purpose is much deeper, darker, and fitting. This movie is a psychological-thriller with a wonderful 50's ambience and a lot of attention to the troubles of the time. Just keep an eye on those shells, the ending isn't where you expected it.<br />
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The movie was directed by Martin Scorsese and this Goodfella hasn't lost a trick. The visuals and the sound are used to wonderful effect. Driving your experience of the protagonists environment to wonderful and gut wrenching levels. Waking dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, reality, all start to wash together and this is one rabbit hole that goes straight to hell.<br />
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<p>Some movies pull you in, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B003ITZBS6?ie=UTF8&tag=humfaimac04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=15121&creative=390961&creativeASIN=B003ITZBS6">Shutter Island</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.ca/e/ir?t=humfaimac04-20&l=as2&o=15&a=B003ITZBS6" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> threatens to never let you go.</P><br />
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</div>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-12967632354335837652010-08-09T14:57:00.001-04:002010-08-09T15:15:57.982-04:00Movie Review:: The A-Team<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEija_xTRoYoLyU8zrR3_DkPn7NsCZcvnd420FtzrfeF2C8qUuV0Fk9-j-swQ0l-ZWAVpCOxFoAQ981O8FKxPKjiREvM2yrnSbpxIGyDbmeQE7TQU4y-SWMhfPjx0BHG_3lf8PcheIan1YE/s1600/A-teamPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEija_xTRoYoLyU8zrR3_DkPn7NsCZcvnd420FtzrfeF2C8qUuV0Fk9-j-swQ0l-ZWAVpCOxFoAQ981O8FKxPKjiREvM2yrnSbpxIGyDbmeQE7TQU4y-SWMhfPjx0BHG_3lf8PcheIan1YE/s320/A-teamPoster.jpg" /></a></div>Four Army Rangers form a crack team of special operators, running 80 successful operations over 8 years. This is the kind of success and off-the-books team the CIA needs for a Top Secret op that involves as much money as you can print with your own private U.S. Mint and as much protection as the worst of Iraq's underworld can muster. Too bad it blew up in their face. Now they must get the bad guys and clear their names.<br />
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If that sounded vaguely familiar, chances are you were thinking more along the lines of this summers hit The Losers than the 80's iconic TV Show. In fact these movies have a lot in common, maybe too much, to the detriment of this A-Team reboot. While the movie ditches the main premise of the majority of seasons of the TV show in favour of a palatable 3-act introduction to these characters, replete with massive action set pieces, it does manage somehow to sneak in the 'feel' of these characters we know and love. That said, this remake lacks the heart the TV show had.<br />
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In the 80's this show was a child of the times, it was after Vietnam, America was a lot of things and confused might have been one of them. Enter four Desparados, wrongly convicted men, who travel the country and risk their lives to help the innocent, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. Often for a pittance, fashioning what they would need for their cunning plans out of the vehicles and farm equipment so often at hand.<br />
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Fast-forward to 2010 and we have Iraq-vets trying only to help themselves in a tongue-in-cheek Bourne style war with the CIA. Leave that to The Losers, in a lot of ways, they did it better. Don't get me wrong The A-Team is a funny movie, and the action scenes are memorable. The key was the casting, all the characters came out on screen and I enjoyed watching the interplay. I was impressed to learn B.A. Baracus is actually played by a UFC fighter, I had no idea this guy was not a character actor. All said, I would have traded in Liam Neeson for another actor, but maybe I just never got over Star Wars.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-H3dUzWdNBCmPUvquwnSkpS3zrmBhZvh-YmGxMeQ4321zXrK-PW2GIAlp3hEp6xIG8DoHE-HaHLpdbbIUxM1CDL7Dzm_gwvAWSRiw2kA2G2nJre9lu8fhyphenhyphenIxqjdtFfAu1PX7ESoSfqco/s1600/Original-Ateam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-H3dUzWdNBCmPUvquwnSkpS3zrmBhZvh-YmGxMeQ4321zXrK-PW2GIAlp3hEp6xIG8DoHE-HaHLpdbbIUxM1CDL7Dzm_gwvAWSRiw2kA2G2nJre9lu8fhyphenhyphenIxqjdtFfAu1PX7ESoSfqco/s200/Original-Ateam.jpg" width="134" /></a>As with so many of these reboots what we got was a script written as a revisionist back-story introduction to the characters we used to know and in so doing, we rob them of the setting and actions that made us love them. If Hollywood's plan was to cash in on yet another 80's memory with no clear understanding of what made it a phenomenon, well, I guess they must love it when a plan comes together.Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-44414334685131116682010-06-23T00:43:00.000-04:002010-06-23T00:43:35.074-04:00Classic Movie Review: Bringing Up Baby (1938)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Bub1938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Bub1938.jpg" /></a></div><b>Why this movie? </b>I asked twitter to suggest a great movie that came out before I was born in '79 and <a href="http://heylady-blog.blogspot.com/">HeyLady33</a> suggested <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947/">Bringing Up Baby</a> as one of the most memorable. I was skeptical at first but I found that it was on both an <a href="http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/movies.aspx">AFI 100 Movies list</a> and also on <a href="http://www.filmsite.org/momentsindx.html">Filmsite's 100 Greatest Films</a>.<br />
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<b>The Story</b> is a screwball romantic comedy sparked by a chance meeting on a golf course that throws a million dollars, a marriage, a leopard, and rare dinosaur bone all into mayhem.<br />
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<b>My Thoughts </b>Wowee! This movie was an absolute rollercoaster ride. It picks up staidly enough and gets quirkier and quirkier as we go until it becomes an absolute free-for-all of mile-a-minute banter and comically misconstrued wordplay. Hepburn's character Susan is an ab<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">solute charmer with her carefree and flippant approach to the quibbles and concerns of Grant's hapless David as she tries to win his affections, however haphazardly. </span> There is a real duality between these characters, two peas from a pod, and their interactions bring out a part of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">David that is polar opposite to the side his </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">fiancée evokes.</span></em></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a>It's not hard to see how the movie should end for these two wacky kids. Aside from the charming romance, the plot twists and turns but in a fairly tight scope. In only a few days and a few locations they manage to get a lot of mileage by revisiting situations and gags in such a compounding manner as to have you grinning or laughing most of the way. The film isn't shy about the situational humour all this confusion evokes and a dash of clumsy moments adds a touch of slapstick to the film that feels just right. I found myself roaring at least a handful of times at the absurdity of it all!<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">About all that holds this movie back is how dated the technology was when it was filmed. The picture quality is decent for black and white but the sound quality really lacked the fidelity to make every zany line of wordplay pop out. I couldn't help but feel I was missing out on a real good zinger or two as the most climactic flurries of dialogue blurred together. For today's post-<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167404/">M. Night Shyamalan</a> audience, the ending is a tad compressed and predictable but in no way takes away from the movie. Something all these twist ending screenplays these days forget is that the ending is only the last 5 minutes of the film, it very rarely will save 85 other minutes of boring. Instead this film serves up 97 minutes of fun and tops it off with a perfectly expected 5 minute cherry.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>In the end</b> I would most definitely recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't discriminate against a movie for the colour of it's film and enjoys fun and funny romantic comedies, very much in the spirit of The Taming of the Shrew. A clever movie, great dialogue, well acted, and a good time!</span></span>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-59336295770052541232010-06-15T19:35:00.002-04:002010-06-15T21:01:29.245-04:00Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-ca.amazon.ca/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FF8B8B&fc1=000000&lc1=FFFFFF&t=humfaimac04-20&o=15&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=0316017922" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
This was my first Gladwell book and won't be my last. I had heard that he has a very approachable writing style that tackles research and statistics based premises adroitly and he didn't disappoint. The premise he puts forward here is simple, profound, and important. He basically sets out to prove to us that no <em>real </em>element of success is self-driven and even the greatest success "outliers" are indeed products of their environment. This is a casuality subscribing cynics dream come true but doesn't read like one.<br />
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In a fairly small package, he very clearly shows some startling corollaries between when groups of athletes were born and their career potential. He delves into the makings of computer giants like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. He points out the biggest single reason The Beatles became "bigger than Jesus" <strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>(*1)</i></span></strong>. This is all in his signature style and leaves you wondering how you could ever see success any other way but his.<br />
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</div>Don't worry it isn't a demotivating revelation as he points out some ways how a better understanding of success can help us generate it and foster it proactively. Tip number one is do not push your kids ahead a year in school - if they are of that on the fence age - unless you plan to make up the difference with a rigorous summer learning routine! There are many more insights for parents of athletes and students and even geniuses. For my part, I've finally given up the childhood hope to be the next Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, or Mario Lemieux and that is incredibly liberating.<br />
<div style="height: 8pt; min-height: 8pt; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://gladwell.com/images/biopic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="http://gladwell.com/images/biopic.jpg" width="200" /></a> </div>I wonder though, is it too late to be the next <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.gladwell.com/bio.html">Malcolm Gladwell</a>?<br />
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</div><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">*1 - </span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In an ode to Gladwell</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><strong><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(*2)</span></i></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, I'll take a footnote here to point out that it bothers me how misrepresented this off the cuff remark of Lennon's is when quoted as I have done here. It's a shame because Lennon was an insightful guy at times and this quote always takes that and makes him look like an arrogant git. Mind you, I'm not saying he wasn't at least a little arrogant...</span><br />
<strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">*2 - </span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He does have a distracting habit of writing a book-within-a-book via very lengthy footnotes that take his asides to up to half the page height, while interesting they are excessive.</span>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-41479409492813684332010-06-04T17:16:00.001-04:002010-06-04T17:16:51.000-04:00What are your theories on deja vu?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">As a teenager I had a theory that Time has no bearing on us after we die, and so Deja Vu is our spirits revisiting important moments in our lives. Perhaps this all happens in the "life flashing before your eyes" moments and each flash is a stop and moment of past Deja Vu.<br />So at the time I used to take especial notice of my situation and surroundings and conversation during Deja Vu and try to savor it. <br />Maybe these critical moments were critical mistakes and God provides us one last chance to correct our lives at death? Look for the novel based on this next year.<br /><br />Today what are my theories? Gosh I don't know. Maybe it is simply that it is a common situation that you have encountered before and your brain gets tricked and misfires and writes memory in the same place it is reading it and so you feel like you know what's coming, like listening to a reverse echo sound effect - you can't quite make it out but when it arrives it sounds like it was always coming.<br /><br />I just made that one up for you HeyLady33, that's how I roll.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker?utm_medium=social&utm_source=blogger&utm_campaign=shareanswer">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-18484706918174801982010-06-04T17:09:00.001-04:002010-06-04T17:09:22.629-04:00What is the most annoying thing that someone could do to you?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">Shatter my ego in front of everyone I know and love. Actually that's a bit past annoying and on into terrifying.<br />Let's go with constantly doubt and second guess everything I say and play Devil's Advocate whenever I complain about something.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker?utm_medium=social&utm_source=blogger&utm_campaign=shareanswer">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-32178388472471556822010-05-04T14:05:00.001-04:002010-05-04T14:05:06.445-04:00So why the "screen name"? What does it mean?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">Oathbreaker, who are you, really?<br /><br />I once wrote a rather exhaustive, yet tantalizingly light retrospective on my various "screen names" and what they meant to me. You can find it here: <a href="http://humanfailmachine.blogspot.com/2009/10/ice-cream-assassin.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://humanfailmachine.blogspot.com/2009/10/ice-cream-assassin.html</a><br /><br />I'm curious if my answer now changes from then. Oathbreaker to me is a character, he is a mode of being that I can fall into for online games and those rare moments when defining yourself in egoic terms is useful. Oathbreaker is a person who does right, by his reckoning, with or against the rules of society. He is haunted by a past shame that is also that which allows him to follow his contrary course. I see him as a free man in an age of thralls and lords.<br /><br />Of course, when ti comes to twitter and other things, it's just a convenient way to hide my real name from the intertubes and still have a recognizable moniker for those who know me. <br /><br />Read my other blog post for a FULL accounting of the history of my "screen names" and other aggrandized back stories.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-69817468546559275612010-04-26T10:54:00.001-04:002010-04-26T10:54:57.320-04:00What hobbies, sports, or other leisure time activities do you enjoy most?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">When I was a teenager in (I don't recall exact years so this is a guess) Gr. 9 and 10 (maybe) my friends and I used to do two things. Before school, at lunch, and after school we would bat some tennis balls around the dilapidated tennis courts. We were terrible and we spent as much time hacking through the brambles and bushes on the other side of the fence as we did actually volleying, but it was loads of fun. The other thing we used to do, and we did it most of our childhood together to various amounts (once I moved to the same neighbourhood as them I got to do it a lot more) was play street hockey. Throughout University and while working up in Orillia I joined rec league floor hockey teams and killed myself pounding floorboards and being generally terrible at it, but I haven't played it since. Partly because Ice Hockey is much more popular and I never learned to skate growing up on the West Coast (no natural ice might have contributed) and partly because of low faith in my physical ability to keep up and my expectation that my peers would expect more actual hockey knowledge from someone my age. The fact is I always found it loads of fun but I didn't really watch it much or care to learn subtleties of the game for mostly 1-on-1 driveway matches or the occasional 5-on-5 with 2 subs neighbourhood game.<br />Tennis I never played once we changed schools, I went through an introspective and mostly depressing period of life and didn't do much until I moved out of town for University. Then last summer I got into tennis through my work's in-house tennis league. I'm not as terrible as I thought I would be and spent a lot of effort on taking it seriously. I was still playing with my racket from when I was a kid!! I've just signed up this year and I hope to take it just as seriously and have a great time playing with all the wonderful members of our league.<br />As for hobbies, well, I play video games and they are my bane. I waste so much time playing them that I fail to achieve my other goals for myself. It's a damn shame I won't be able to some day save the world with my game playing skills. Otherwise I like to read, I enjoy /having written/ but dread /writing/, and I would love to actually pick up my guitar and (learn to) play versus thinking about it and then not.<br />You all know I am also in Toastmasters and take it slightly more seriously than learning the guitar.<br />Well, I could go for awhile longer on this rather all-inclusive question but I will stop hear AND I think this post has /just enough/ of my own failure in it to justify a post on my blog (looking @HeyLady33 ;).</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-76568290938616068612010-04-06T18:02:00.002-04:002010-04-06T18:02:23.601-04:00You always seem to be analyzing people and trying to figure them out, do you think people do that to you as well? How do you think you come across?<div class="formspringmeAnswer" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I do always seem to be analyzing people and trying to figure them out. I think it's a habit I got into a long, long time ago first to analyze myself and then to understand other people for myself. A lot of people ask you to analyze them or people they know but without consciously doing so. By sharing their concerns or problems with other people they are appealing to you to analyze themselves or their neighbours to offer insight or advice.<br />
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We all want to understand each other (and ourselves) and often I am in a position to offer a different perspective on someone. I'm not concerned with being expressly right or wrong, so much as circling in on an understanding of each person. I realize we are all dynamic and many-faceted but fundamentally we all do things for similar base motivations and they are almost always noble in our own minds.<br />
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I think in the vast majority of situations I come across as either insightful or off the mark and possibly offensive. That's simply because a lot of the time people are offended if you say something that doesn't match their personal self-image or image of another person. We humans are also easily offended even when no malice or even any attempt to assert an opinion is made. Just because I might argue my reasoning for a view doesn't mean I think only I am right, I just want to be clear in my line of reasoning before tossing it aside. Online, I'm sure people might think I'm a jerk, because we all have this lovely view of our piece of the internet being a private island of our ego's on the seas of open sharing. We don't like it if someone busts down the non-existent door and pretends to know us based on a few incidental observations. And you know what, that's fair - I've actually recently chastised myself for doing this - I really don't need to make myself more of an e-ass than I am through my already controversial opinions.<br />
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I suppose all I can do is console myself in the fact that everyone does this, whether they tell you or not. Many of us hide behind quick prejudices, some selected from stereotypes, and others elected by one or two statements from the recipient. At least I give you the opportunity to rebut my thoughts and the resultant opportunity to attempt to expand my understanding of "you".<br />
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If I had more time to write this and more than the 3x8 window on Formspring to re-read it I could attempt to make this sound more dickheaded but as it is this will have to stand. Comments are welcome on my Blog.</div><div class="formspringmeFooter" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></div>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-85334596830876897152010-04-01T11:33:00.001-04:002010-04-01T11:33:47.889-04:00What is the proudest moment of your life so far?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">The proudest moment of my life so far was my sister's wedding. Seeing the first one of us kids committing to a lifetime of happiness with one person and joining into a whole new group of relatives was quite a moment.<br /><br />I was proud of her and what she was doing and what it would mean to the new family she was just starting to create. I was happy and proud that my entire immediate family could make the trip from Ontario to British Columbia and all of us through Aunts, Uncles, and new distant in-laws managed to get along for a couple days and just be genuinely happy for these two kids exchanging solemn vows.<br /><br />Pride is a funny thing. It can be an evil construct of the ego, undermining the goodness and purity of man's actions, or it can be the glue that makes a defining moment in your life resonate and continue to define you. I'm thankful to my sister and her husband for giving me some glue to work with.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-6212310330088654102010-04-01T10:52:00.001-04:002010-04-01T10:52:59.324-04:00What is your favourite place in London?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">There are so many places I could mention that are my favourites for different reasons. For example, my favourite place for the particular brand of cheddar poutine I like is Billy's downtown. My favourite place for quiet contemplation is Victoria Park on a crisp winter's night. My favourite bridge is Blackfriars. My favourite venue (so far) is Centennial Hall. But those are pretty specific and I think this question was more general. <br /><br />I guess my favourite place in London is my house's back deck on a cool, bright, promising early-summer morning. It's quiet, with only the birds playing overhead. Sometimes they sit on the roof of my shed, or my neighbour's, observing me as I sip coffee and watch the sun slowly crawl across my lawn towards me. I can see the last remnants of due glistening in the green and I can smell the freshness of the air, itself just a bit chilly and rapidly warming. In time the sun will crest my roof at my back and fill the day with summer thoughts but for the next 20 minutes it is the glorious birth of spring.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-71643482622714607032010-03-31T17:33:00.001-04:002010-03-31T17:33:55.107-04:00What do you enjoy the most about being part of Toastmasters?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">So many cliches jump into my mind!<br />An easy answer is the people. The only thing like this would be a religion or a cult. Everyone is accepting and encouraging and working towards a common and difficult goal: self improvement. Their is a real fraternity in that.<br />As great as that is, that thing we strive for? That's what gets me back. That's what I walk away thinking about each meeting - How did I do, what did I learn from everyone who spoke, how can I improve.<br /><br />What I enjoy most about Toastmasters is that enables me to constantly think about and practice the fundamental and finer elements of human communication.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-58448230714855654202010-03-31T17:24:00.001-04:002010-03-31T17:24:55.886-04:00What is an I.S. lackey?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">It's a bucket term I coined, perhaps unoriginally, to represent any generalist job in Information Services.<br />In a nutshell, regardless of my current Job Description I build, change, or fix things on, of, and for computers for other people.<br />It carries with it some of the connotation that I'll basically learn and do anything related to computers, like a good lackey, and most people's 'expertise' is just them having a headstart.<br />Not to be confused at all with the much more noble IS Entrepreneur.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362795283018384017.post-67818740561065464782010-03-31T16:47:00.001-04:002010-03-31T16:47:16.115-04:00Are you married?<p class="formspringmeAnswer">No, I am as single as that endless point in time that you are captivated by a sunset.<br />I was once closer than it feels good to think about and I don't consider it having never occurred a 'close call'.<br />I'm looking forward to that special day in both our lives.</p><p class="formspringmeFooter"> <a href="http://formspring.me/Oathbreaker">Ask me anything</a></p>Tim Shirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06392006887055498954noreply@blogger.com0