A Bright Cut Across Velvet Sky

The new Ad·ver·sary disc is finished. I’m listening to the final master now to make sure there’s no glitches, and then off it goes.

Tracklist:

  1. Ancients (Cyanotic Remix)
  2. Waiting for Gira (Patience is a Virtue Perceived Remix by ESA)
  3. Creatura (and the sea)
  4. Just (Spookier Remix by Iszoloscope)
  5. Bone Music (Disparition Remix)
  6. No Exit (Sartre Wasn’t Kidding Remix by Candle Nine)
  7. Friends of Father (Oil Sands Remix by Monoculture)
  8. Dresden
  9. Waiting for Gira (Still Waiting Remix by Stendeck)
  10. Darker
  11. Just (Boo! Remix by Synkro)
  12. Waiting For Gira (Phylr Remix)
  13. Number Nine (Square Prime Remix by Autoclav1.1)
  14. Just (Passed Away Remix by Salt)
  15. Cyanotic – Deface (Ad·ver·sary + Dirtybunny = Industrial Strength Mix)

Fuck yes.

pew pew pew

You know what’s really fucking awesome? LASERS.

You know what’s even awesomer? NUCLEAR FUCKING FUSION.

Do you know what happens when you put the two of them together? MOTHERFUCKING LASER-BASED INTERNAL CONFINEMENT FUSION, that’s what!

That’s where you take 192 big fucking lasers and put them in a room like this:

NIF Target Chamber

…and then point them all at this:

Fusion Microcapsule

…and you make it so they all hit that little fucking ball at the EXACT SAME FUCKING TIME and heat the thing up to 100,000,000 ˚C.

THAT is what fucking happens.

The National Ignition Facility in California broke the one-megajoule barrier a few weeks ago, and appear to be well on the way to the first energy-positive fusion lab ever.

Godspeed, you crazy bastards.

SXSW PBP

I am safely returned from Austin! The conference was good, and the city was fantastic. The only other place in the states that I’ve enjoyed as much is Chicago. Maybe it’s because of all the extra people and chaos around the SXSW festival, but the amount of music and amazing food (two of my favourite things) was unbelievable.

Friday morning I discovered the wonder that is the breakfast taco at Cicso’s Restaurant Bakery! In the afternoon it was to the Museum of The Weird, and then to a (terrible!) laptop music battle. The idea was really cool: A dozen pair of musicians battle, each one gets exactly 3 minutes, crowd decides which ones move on to the next round. Unfortunately, the music was (seriously) horrible and (even more seriously) boring. I would love to sign up for next year and kick some ass.

Saturday morning was more delicious breakfast, and Saturday night was a party full of wonderful and weird entertainment. A lot of fun until the lineup for the washrooms became longer than the lineup to get in. Ended up at a place called The Jackalope, which is quite likely the most awesome bar in the world. Pulled pork quesadillas are like a sex party for your mouth.

Had lunch Sunday with the WordPress crew, and then a night drive to Driftwood, Texas, where we made a pilgrimage to the best barbeque in a day’s travel: The Salt Lick. I tried to take photos of it, but there was no way to capture the scale of the place. It’s two or three huge buildings, with a parking lot the size of Rideau Centre. Serious fucking food. (Also, serious fucking drinking: Driftwood is in a dry county, so it’s BYOB — there were families there who brought massive coolers-on-wheels full of beer and whiskey.)

Spent a beautiful Monday day walking around South Congress, which is what Queen Street West would have been if everyone there listened to psychobilly instead of post-punk.  In the evening was the EFF party, which reminded me of the Dark Carnivals, except with cooler vendors and less interesting visual artists. The headlining artist was Ian McLagan (formerly of the Faces [with Ronnie Wood, Kenny Jones, and Rod Stewart], aka The Modfather), and we snuck backstage to hang out with him for a few hours after the show, where he gave us many drinks and told us hilarious stories about Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg. Stopped by the Casino El Camino on the way back to the hotel for a delicious dirty cheeseburger (and to say hi to The Amazing Mr. Lifto) before calling it a night.

Then Tuesday a brief stop at Austin’s finest haberdashery, a bunch of hours on a couple of planes, stopped by Zaphods for the last few hours of the night, and (finally) home.

How was your week?

It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

In 1981, before George Lucas was killed in a tragic accident and replaced by a robot that hates all art, he made a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark with Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan.

Three years earlier, Lucas and Spielberg sat down with Kasdan for five days to talk about the ideas they had for the movie, and flesh out the storytelling. Today, a transcript of the story conference has just leaked online, and it is fucking awesome.

Indiana Smith

There’s also a fantastic analysis of the transcript that anyone who loves film should read.

Now where’s the one for Blade Runner?

(Via Rob Sheridan’s Twitter)

In the trenches

Just came back from PodCamp Toronto, where Audra and I gave a presentation on Social Media in the Public Service. It went over really well, and it’ll be up on SlideShare once the video/audio archives are up at PodCamp so I can stitch it all together.

I spent a fair amount of the trip feeling ill, and to my horror, I’ve realized that I always started feeling sick about twenty minutes after having a few cups of coffee. Caffeine is one of my most treasured addictions, and I don’t know how easily I would be able to function without it. I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where I was caffeine-free.

…

I’d like to go back and spend some more time wandering the city once it warms up a bit. I think I’m slowly coming to terms with my relationship with Toronto. We’ll never be what we were, but I think we could learn how to be friends.

Let me just hold those conventions for you, sir.

WHAT THE FUCK CANADA

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will be ordered to attack opium traffickers and drug facilities when there is proof of direct links to the Taliban, CBC News has learned.

The new order follows a heated debate among NATO allies over whether the attacks could be declared war crimes.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News soldiers would indeed target drug traffickers and drug production facilities.

First, using military force on civilian targets — even if you don’t like what they do for a living — is a war crime.

Second, our military is in fucking Afghanistan fighting DRUG DEALERS WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK ASDFKASODFKOAWEF

trying to break into an electric lightbulb

It has been a long winter, and I’m finding myself in places that I never thought I would be.

I don’t know exactly how I got here, and I don’t know exactly what comes next, but I’m happier and more optimistic about where things are going than I have been in years.

The next few months are going to be busy: finishing production on a friend’s album, releasing an Ad·ver·sary remix album, going to SXSW Interactive, preparing for Kinetik, and a half-dozen other Big Things — but I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Good riddance to 2008.