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This is perhaps the worst thing I have seen come out of Iraq. Frankly words will not express my anger and outrage. (Viewer discretion is advised)
Video of Random Shootings in Iraq.
It’s a video apparently taped by US mercenaries in Iraq shooting random civilians [cars that are getting too close] while driving down the freeway. (via)
The Telegraph.co.uk’s report: ‘Trophy’ Video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers.
It’s impressive that he can play anything on such a huge instrument.
jeanbaudin_mario11.mov (21 MB)
My team won the University of Lethbridge’s intramurals water polo championships for this semester tonight!
Shaun Eden, one of the guys on the team, is trying to organize a club team next semester that will play against the University of Calgary’s and University of Alberta’s teams. Too bad I most likely won’t be around.
I’ve heard a little bit about a new video streaming service called YouTube. Apparently you can host your files there and link to them via your blog. Check out this popular video that I have embedded on my page from youtube.com: (you will need the flash player plugin to see the video)
I first saw the I/O brush featured on a rocketboom clip a few weeks ago. Here is some extra information about it:
“[The] I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by “picking up” and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.”
More information here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~kimiko/iobrush/
I had an interesting night out last Wednesday evening. I met a potential client to discuss a potential web page project. It started off a little rough with me heading to the wrong Boston Pizza (there are two on the South side but it wasn’t specified which one) anyway when I figured out where I was supposed to be I had an interesting time chatting with a couple of guys from the prospective client company.
I don’t want to get into too many of the details of the conversation but there were a couple of things that hit me the wrong way. They asked me what if I was LDS to which I responded in the affirmative. Technically this is true. They laughed and said something along the lines of, “Good, you’ll fit in perfectly at work—we’re all LDS. We even start each work day with a prayer”.
Fit in perfectly? Somehow I doubted that but I nevertheless nodded and smiled. I thought he was joking about the prayer but as the conversation continued I realized he was completely serious.
The product they are pushing is some kind of natural health supplement. They raved about its amazing ability to cure various mental illnesses including bi-polar and ADD/ADHD. My main contact explained that he believed the primary cause of mental illness was purely not getting the right natural nutrients into the body. He mentioned his strong belief in following the Word of Wisdom (the Mormon doctrine of healthy eating and living) and how their supplement was designed in the spirit of that doctrine. Even as he was extolling the virtues of healthy eating a giant platter of chicken wings materialized on our table. Then another one; then a third one. For someone like me — I don’t eat a lot of meat — it seemed like a rather unhealthy choice for dinner. I suppose ignoring the rule “eat meat sparingly” might not seem at the surface to be extremely unhealthy but it certainly is hypocritical.
I had lots of questions for them about their product and what they wanted me to do as far as their webpage was concerned. I got a fairly bad taste in my mouth when I heard that they had about 50 different sites all designed to help increase the search results of their main page. The image went from bad to worse when they started discussing how there were people out there whom they believed to be connected with the pharmaceutical industry that were trying to give them a bad name. This in itself wasn’t so bad because it made sense that when a company selling a natural supplement encourages someone to go off their prescription medication and take their “natural” product instead, you’re going to upset the pharmaceutical fruit-basket. Not to mention potentially putting someone in serious risk—a thought that caused me to raise an eye-brow.
But what really bothered me was how they reacted to the supposed slander — they fought back with a fax and internet smear campaign painting their accusers as child molesters!
Woah! Hold the phone just a minute guys. Maybe you guys need those morning prayers after all. I honestly don’t know the truth behind any of the libel directed against you, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. However I can’t see how you can feel justified in accusing someone of abusing children when you don’t know straight up about where those stories started. Frankly the whole story sickens me.
I’ve now found myself in somewhat of a moral dilemma. I could really use the money right now, what with being short on roommates and having student loans to pay back but I certainly don’t want to be associated with this hypocritically religious company. The question in my mind now is do I stand up for my integrity or do I help promote a company which operates in such a sleazy manner just for the cold hard cash?
Ironically it’s the Mormon in me that says stick to your virtues and gratefully decline their offer. It’s the greedy bastard in me that says, well just charge a little bit more and if they take the offer then it will be worth it, but if they don’t then I can tell myself that I didn’t really want the job anyway.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Will I be joining them in the hand-basket? I think not.
I went on a date.
My friend Steve is a financial advisor (at least I think that’s his title) for Foresters Securities (Canada) Inc. Anyway, on Wednesday night Steve organized a Foresters sponsored Salsa and Latin Dancing at Fiesta del Sur. I was just going to show up solo but I ran into a friend in the parking lot at the University and as luck would have it she agreed to go with me.
We had a very good time snacking on tortilla chips and learning to Salsa dance. Afterwards we hit up the Starbucks at Chapters for some pastry goodness.
I am not certain at this point, but things went nicely and I think there might be some potential there… I’m just going to take it slow and see what happens.
Tuesday was the evening of my Video Games class. The semester is winding down and I really need to get working on my final project — not to mention finish up some other somewhat overdue items.
I’ve been asked by some friends what the class is actually about. In it we talk about everything from gameplay and graphics to the cultural and philosophical implications of popular (and sometimes less popular) video games. The professor shows video clips from rare or unusual games and we learn about different genres and how things like setting and ambiance change the mood of a game.
We also talk quite a bit about gender stereotypes, violence, and the way the media portrays video game culture. It’s pretty clear that although there may be statistics out there claiming a lot of girls play video games, there are only two girls in the class and 30 very nerdy boys. (They’re not all nerds, some of us are in there doing research for blog postings). But seriously there are a couple of fairly nerdy guys in that class that drive me insane. Before this semester I wouldn’t have believed it possible to become THAT immersed in video games.
I think the most ironic thing for me is, now that I’m in the class I’ve probably played less video games than I did all summer, and yes playing video games is a requirement. I can’t explain it, but I guess it just goes to show — I’ll do anything to avoid doing homework.
This Monday will be the last intramurals water polo game of the semester. My team is in the finals and it’s going to be quite the match. We’re going up against the number 1 team and to my knowledge I don’t think they’ve lost a game. The last time we played them we barely lost but I happened to be held up and missed the first half, so maybe things will be different this time.
As for last Monday’s semi-final game, it started out pretty rocky when they scored on us twice right off the bat. We came back strong though and in the end we won 15 to 5. Not a bad score for a semi-finals match.
I found this linked all over the net but I think it’s pretty cool so I am posting a link to it here. It’s a homemade mitten with a built in pocket for your iPod. The coolest part is that the iPod actually warms your hand while you listen to music. It looks like it’s falling out in the image but the iPod fits completely in the pocket — it’s shown halfway out here for illustrative purposes.
Knitted iPod Mittens with PDF instructions so you can make your own. Now, if only I knew how to knit…