Building a fence is hard. It takes a lot of screwing and some nailing, sore muscles, and lots of sweat and beer. Basically, it's like an orgy, but way less fun.

We spent the entirety of Saturday and Sunday working on the fence, and it's still not done. But almost. One more day should do it. Most of Saturday was spent straightening the badly cemented posts that were leaning to the east. This involved digging out the posts, bracing them using a variety of techniques, then recementing them. We got them pretty straight but not perfect, so the fence isn't exactly perfectly straight.



During this ordeal I got to listen to a lot of everyones favourite radio station CFRV, A.K.A. The River. The best (worst) part being a chunk of it was repeated in it's entirety on Sunday, that being "Hollywood Confidential" hosted by Leeza Gibbons, a woman you may know as dumbing down America. The show basically consists of her sucking the cocks of Hollywood. By that I mean, any (minor) celebrities she interviews she praises to no end. "I love your character on that show nobody watches! The writing is great and so is the acting! How is it not cancelled yet?!"
It would probably be more entertaining if there was actual fellatio involved. It would make for some more compelling radio.

Let me point out that Sunday Morning on the River is actually not bad, because it's when they play "oldies" which is to say, mostly sixties music. So you can't really go wrong there.

I did hear some bad stuff though.

• I really dislike Sarah Mclachlan. "Ordinary Miracle" is cheesy and terrible and I hate her voice. She does that voice-crack thing which I suppose makes people think she is some great singer but really it's terrible and a sham. A sham I say! If anyone plays her music at my funeral it will act as a sort of Necromancer's spell, turning me undead and spurring on a killing spree not-seen since The Evil Dead.
• There is a brand new song by someone I haven't heard of called "Weak In The Knees". Here, let me Google it. Ah here it is, Serena Ryder, who is not to be confused with the "Nissan Serena Rider" which is a Japanese Mini-van. Apparently she is a Canadian, from Ontario. Visit her Myspace page and experience her music. I think it is lame.
• It needs not to be said, but seriously, that Avril Lavigne "Girlfriend" song is just really really the opposite of good. It's like, so whatever you know?
• Hatin' that Michael Buble song really a lot

At one point on Sunday I tried to tune the radio to CKXU to listen to the "History of Rock n' Roll show, which I figured might go over well. However the radio wouldn't pick it up and instead somehow picked up CJOC which I thought hadn't been on the air for a decade. I am wrong. CKXU needs a stronger signal.

My hands hurt.

Due to a series of circumstances, we are hosting a dinner at our house tonight for 4 old women whom I don't even know. They are all in their 80's. We are barely even related to them.

What do you talk to 80 year old strangers about?

WW2?

Sock-hops?

Gold panning?

Gramophones?

Coal mining?

Box socials?

Today I went to an Adobe Seminar in Calgary which was basically just showing off the new features of Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3).

Adobe CS3 encompasses 13 products in total, some more interesting than others. The most interesting being, of course, Photoshop, and more importantly Photoshop Extended.
Highlights:

• Automatic Panorama: A new menu item which will take a series of photos taken with panorama in mind (photos of a long horizontal scene for example) and align them without ANY further input from the user (although you can tell it "horizontal" or some other options, but you can also pick "auto"). An example given was a series of photos of San Fransisco, which it aligned automatically, figuring out how they should be pieced together. And, even better was a second menu item (I forget the name used) which would then adjust the "seams" (for example, brightness differences in the sky due to different exposures) to give you a near perfect blended panorama. Total awesome, and has to be seen to really get how awesome it is.
• Similar to that, the ability to align multiple photos which are taken of the same scene, but possibly slightly askew to each other. For example, taking a few photos of a group of people, not on a tripod. It will align them so the backgrounds line up, at which point you could take your now in-sync layered photos and pick and choose aspects of each photo to create one final perfect photo. Example: take one persons face from picture 1, and another from picture 2, to create a nice blended version that looks like it was an original
• Next, and probably the most visually amazing, was the 3D-izing of 2D photos. The example given was a photo of a building with some minor architectural features, on which 2D grids were placed in 3D. So, you would align several 2D grids at the angle of the buildings walls for example. After that, you were able to rotate the building in 3D. They should call it Adobe Photoshop CSI. Truly awesome. And only in the "Extended" version BTW, which is of course more expensive.
• Non-Destructive Filters: meaning, rather than trying out a filter, then having to Undo it when you realize it sucks, or trying out a few filters, and wishing you could undo the first one but keep the later ones, filters now are more like properties to a layer, which can be turned on or off. What took them so long to implement this? Awesome.
• Two words: Copy Merged

A hell of a lot of other stuff too, but I am not getting paid for this so try it out yourself.

Also very cool was their new Audio editing app, Soundbooth, which is intended for editing simple stereo soundfiles (and not intended for recording or any multitracking). The coolest thing ever was being able to edit using a spectrogram view of the audio, which basically treats the audio like an image, meaning you can do Photoshop-style commands on it. The example given was audio (from a video) of a man talking, with the sound of a phone ringing sporadically in the background. Viewing the sound in the spectrogram view, you can visibly see the squiggly line that the phone makes. At that point, you can highlight in the squiggly line in two dimensions, and "Heal" it, essentially removing the phone noise, and ONLY the phone noise. I could see great uses for this in fixing up annoying noises in a variety of recordings. Totally cool. Try out a Beta of Soundbooth here (Mac and PC).

They also showed off Adobe Premiere (video editing), Adobe After Effects (video special effects) and Adobe Encore (DVD Authoring), all programs I have used and enjoy. There are lots of crazy effects possible.

The most disappointing, and boring, was the demonstration of Dreamweaver/Fireworks. I don't think the person presenting it was quite prepared (he was apparently filling in), and many things simply did not work. As is normal with Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver continues to be the tool that is not quite right for anyone. It is too complicated for someone starting out designing web pages, and it is too annoying/non-standard/non-helpful for a hardcore web developer. I will continue using it for 5% of my job when I just need to format some content, and continue to never use it for doing any visual web design.

As for Fireworks, it's still seems like it's only good for mockups and image slicing. The ability to create a Web Page mockup is a good one though, and I could see putting it to use. But it still feels like it's just there because Adobe merged with Macromedia and they didn't feel like integrating Fireworks few unique features into either Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign or whatever.

So, it seems the things that excited me the most were the things I don't actually use in my "real job". That being all the video and audio stuff, and Photoshop. But I wasn't really expecting anything from Dreamweaver anyways. I recognize that it would be a bitch to make any sort of GUI Web Page editor that fit everyones needs, so at least they are still trying.

So anyways, if you want the full deal, it will cost you over $2500. That gets you EVERYthing however, which is a lot of pretty rad stuff. So I'll definitely start saving.. for my new deck.

And I didn't get any free stuff except for some coffee and cookies.

Today or tomorrow I will be moving into some new office space. You might feel like you've read this blog entry before, like it's a summer repeat. But no, I am moving offices for the fifth time in three years.

Let's see

1. D422: Probably my favourite office. It was a little 4 office group with a common area, which was luckily shared with 3 other coworkers that were very easy to get along with.
2. D421: Actually an upgrade from D422 as it was bigger. However I had to share it with 2 Co-op students for the summer, which really irked me. They turned out to be fine though, but I didn't enjoy that setup too much as I am a hermit who lives down by the river in a home-made house constructed of garbage-can lids and plywood.
3. D422: Back to D422, by myself. This was the least painful office move of them all. Plus Ed moved into D421 (right next to me) so we could yell at each other whenever we wanted.
4. D556: This was a move upstairs that I didn't like at first, because I was used to our quiet dungeon like office area. But I got used to it and it was nice being on the same floor as most of the coworkers. Ed and I could still yell at each other too.
   The main problem with this office however, was that the previous occupant was on holidays when we had to move, so I had to move all his stuff myself. And there was a lot of crap. Like, monitors from the early 90's that used technology that has probably been proven to cause cancer now. And that weighed a ton. Seriously, one of the monitors had individual inputs for Red Green and Blue of some plug design that was developed in Soviet Russia. Also, there was food splattered everywhere. Vietnamese food. The office reeked something fierce. It was sort of like moving into a dumpster; I had to remove all the trash from the bin, then Febreeze the fuck out of it. I seriously almost gagged a few times from the grossness. I should let you know, me and mystery stains do not go together well. When I was a kid I would get grossed out buy a splash of milkshake on the counter. I blame my Mom and her neatness. I don't get grossed out as easily nowadays, but when I find brown something splattered all over my future desk, it makes me ill.
5. L1118: This was a bit of a shocker. The "idea" of moving Ed and I upstairs to join some of the other Web people was "thrown out there", and the next week we were moved. So I moved from my private office to sharing one with 3 other people. This made me cranky of course, but I got used to it quickly. So far I have been lucky to share my offices with good people. And quiet people at that.
   This brings us to...
6. C460: Our new office space of what used to be the crappy computer "training" lab, which is on the south side of the laundry/common area for students whereas my old D4 offices were on the north end. This time we are ALL in the same room, which won't be too different from my current situation, but the room is a bit ghetto. We are doing our best to make it nice since we have some budget to work with.

That was dull.

So I am at Wendy's yesterday, because it was June 20, which is of course Flag Day in Argentina, traditionally celebrated with a Big Bacon Classic at Wendy's, according to this fake Wikipedia page I just made.

After ordering I proceeded to the Vat of Ketchup Dispenser, to dispense one of the Top 10 Condiments as determined in a 2006 poll by myself and a hobo I paid $5 bucks to carry my clipboard (figure 1)



Well, what do you know, the dispenser is on empty. So, being the friendly citizen that I am, I inform the staff. They semi-acknowledge that I just spoke some English. Then, expecting a Wendy's employee to come out and replace the empty bag with a fresh bag of red sauce, I stand there and notice that no, they aren't doing that.

So I tell them again it's empty, and ask for ketchup. The manager I have never seen before hands me 5 measly packets, one of which is covered with dried gross ketchup. I give that one back and ask for more, because clearly this man does not understand I am getting ketchup for 4 and I have an high voracity for Ketchup, if that is a proper phrase in this context. He gave me like 5 more, and I sat down because it was busy as hell.

During the entire span of my meal consumption, no one ever filled up the Ketchup. Apparently it was preferable for the customer to buy their food, go and attempt to get ketchup, and then come back to the counter, having to wait for the huge crowd of people who are already ordering, and ask for some measly ketchup packets of questionable origin.

Perhaps they were out of Ketchup bags. Well, could they have not put out a bin of some sort, with ketchup? Wouldn't that of made sense? Or what?

Needless to say, it upset me for the rest of the day and I will be having an extra long session with my shrink tonight just to get my mind back to a place where I can function in society.

Last evenings night terrors were the worst in years.

Damn you Wendy's. Damn you to hell.

Black version.

Thanks to my connections within the Cellphone and computer industry, I have received an iPhone. The delivery slip came two days ago and I eagerly went to pick it up at the local postal outlet.


So far I've mostly used it as a door stop. For example, if I am going through a door that automatically locks, and I need to prop it open, I will jam my iPhone in there. It forces the door to stay open just a bit so that I am able to open it later.


Another good use for the phone has been as a stylish coaster. I had a nice cold can of Coke yesterday and I didn't want to mark up my desk, so voila, I set down the iPhone and put my coke on top. Works perfectly!


And did you know that an iPhone makes a pretty decent replacement for an air hockey puck? Well, it's true.

Well worth the $600+!