A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
I’ve added the following songs to my backmasking page:
Imagine – John Lennon
Kiss, Kiss, Kiss – Yoko Ono
My Name Is… – Eminem
Pokemon Rap
As well I’ve made some minor changes to some of the older clips. Feel free to comment on my backmasking page here.
I read an article by Matt Haughey on possible ways of using BitTorrent to broadcast the Olympics.
It made me wonder if I will be able to find swimming torrents. So far my google searches have turned up nothing but I’m hoping that either something new will show up on Suprnova.org once the Olympics start, or perhaps someone reading this will be able to point me in the right direction.
After finishing my four week stint as a New Media Movie Making Camp instructor at the University of Lethbridge, I’ve been keeping myself busy helping Anna-Maria with various odd jobs at her work and spending the weekend at Banff. We stopped at Lake Louise and Lake Moraine. The thing about those lakes, besides the fact that Lake Moraine used to be featured on the back of the Canadian $20 bill, is that they are both a very rich and almost unnatural shade of blue-green.
Notice the rich but almost unnatural blue-green tone.
The trip was a lot of fun with very little out of the ordinary happening. After a sad goodbye at the airport Anna-Maria and I headed back to Lethbridge and now she is in charge of another group from Japan and the fun activities get to start all over again.
There is a mother that is suing a Walt Disney World worker accused of groping her 13-year-old daughter while dressed as Tigger.
I asked Anna-Maria what she thought about the possibility it was an accident since she has actually tried on some of the Disney costumes.
She says that, “[While wearing the costume] your vision is greatly, greatly reduced. Furthermore, the suit is not just one layer. You have, generally, an under layer of padding followed up by a fur costume with large mittens on your hands that are often three times your regular hand size.
I tried out many costumes. One was a cat costume, the cat from Pinochio and the sleeves go almost all the way to the ground on them so your hands are covered.
Your feet are the same, you have shoes on followed up with a big fur boot, or depending on the costume a giant rubber shoe or boot.
Also it’s so hot in there you don’t function properly. You’re biggest concern is getting enough oxygen. Definitely not groping someone — although I could be wrong. But I don’t think you could even think about that in that costume. It’s like a pure mental exercise just to stand wearing the costume.
If it was one of the face characters, Santa Claus, Aladdin I could see it. But those other costumes are just unbearable.
I danced for half an hour in one and I was gasping for oxygen. Even when I just tried it on I began to sweat and breath heavily as if I had just run a marathon completely untrained.”
So when I asked her one more time if she thought the accused was truly innocent she replied, “Do you think a fat kid with asthma being chased by a pack of wild dogs could think about that? Because that’s what it’s like being in one of those costumes with parents and kids trying to run you down. You are in survival mode.”
About a second after publishing this post I discovered this AP News Story. It turns out “Tigger” was acquitted earlier today.
The acquittal came less than an hour following a three-day trial during which the defense attorney for Michael Chartrand donned a Tigger costume in an effort to show jurors how difficult it is to maneuver and see in the outfit.
[…]
Chartrand’s defense attorney has contended that the girl’s mother was merely after money and planned to sue Disney. The mother also claimed Tigger touched her breast during the visit to Disney World last February, although no criminal charges followed her allegation.
The University of Lethbridge New Media Movie Making Camp for July 2004 is done. I’m now an unemployed movie maker instructor / lifeguard. Actually I’m technically employed as a lifeguard but I’m not on the working schedule at present.
The camp itself was, in my opinion, a great success. I’ve become a better teacher and I believe the program will grow as word spreads about how fun it is to make your own movies. I wish I had the storage space and bandwidth required to show some of my favorite parts on this blog, but you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that for kids averaging between 11 and 13 they made some mighty fine movies.
I came into the University today to finish up some things and to meet with my boss for a little review of the job. I’m getting a pretty good feeling about my chances of doing it again next year. Also next year they will likely try to stretch it out for an additional one or two weeks.
In the meantime aside from hanging out at the University I’ve been putting out ads for a new roommate, trying to get my student loans application filled out, working out in the pool, running errands, and mostly waiting for Anna-Maria to be done work so we can go home. :)
I used to hate camping. It’s a secret from Anna-Maria and most of my family, but I don’t think it would come as a big surprise to those that have been with me on Scout Camp. I’ll try not to delve too deeply into the bad memories.
It’s not that Scout Camp is inherently bad. It’s not even that LDS Scout Camp is inherently bad. Which as you can guess is what I went too. But do I ever hate those bastards. Please don’t take offence if you are reading this and happen to be the one or two people from Scout camp that actually made it bearable. I’m hoping you know who you are.
The thing about Scout camp was that our troop had a very motley crew of people that I would never hang out with in real life. Nice guys – most of them, but so many of them just weirdoes or mental cases. They were either too different in their interests or too anxious to start a fight with us. It was especially bad after they split our ward. Which meant that most of the people I liked to hang out with were no longer in our troop. I sometimes snuck in to the other wards camps because ours sucked so badly.
Anyway having had enough of this tangent I’ll be getting to the point of this post.
I went camping with Anna-Maria on the weekend and we had such a good time. Trust me when I say that I was extremely skeptical (even though I kept my skepticism to myself).
I’ll try and keep it condensed. On Friday we left and arrived in Sparwood (we = Anna-Maria and Sophie the Dog). Saturday: after eggs and bacon for breakfast we went bridge jumping on a VERY HIGH bridge. I’m guessing approximately 5 or 6 meters 10 meters &8212; I didn’t realize it at the time but it was about twice as high as the 5 meter platform at the University. This bridge was HIGH! There were a wild bunch of guys there jumping off and one of them even did a backflip. There were signs that said, “No Jumping – No Diving” but we got into our wet suits and promptly ignored those signs.
I joked to Anna how we would probably still be here after those locals were gone and the RCMP showed up. I was half right. The RCMP showed up when Anna was dangling on the side of the bridge and the others had all dried off. She quickly scrambled onto the bridge but it was pretty obvious that the two of us dressed in our wet suits were up to no good. I thought for sure he was going to give us a hard time. Just then the wild backflipper guy climbed out on the edge of the bridge. I felt immediately relieved because it wasn’t Anna or I that would be getting into any trouble today. He smiled at the officer and leaped head under heals down towards the frigid water. I looked at the cop who just said to us, “Tell him that next time I want to see a double back-flip with a twist.” They laughed and the tension was broken. I guess he was cool with it (maybe because nobody was drinking? Or maybe because he really didn’t care. It wasn’t a dangerous place to jump and he probably wasn’t looking for a confrontation anyway.) Either way it made me have a lot more respect for him as a guy who can tell the difference between harmless fun and reckless self endangerment.
Later that night we had a game of Frisbee golf and then late night partying.
Sunday – We drove to Trail, BC to visit my cousin Don and his family. They just had a new baby girl last week.
Monday – Drove home, bought some fresh BC cherries, a peach, and four cobs of corn at a roadside shop. I can only describe how good they were with a sound that has no English word to represent it. (Think Homer Simpson drooling over donuts).
And when it was all over we were very happy to be back in a familiar bed.
In conclusion, camping isn’t that bad when you can shower in the morning, free fall into a cold deep river for at least 3 seconds, drive to the store for lunch and take off for relatives if those you are camping with are too boring or having marital problems or both. You can’t go wrong camping with Anna-Maria.
P.S. Camping with the Medicine Hat First Ward still would have sucked even with daily showers, but maybe not if I had had my Jeep and someone warm with whom to cuddle.
I’m not exactly sure of the date but soon this blog will be moving. My parents were having trouble with their Internet connection a couple of weeks ago. My mom took her computer to Memory Lane (the place where this blog is hosted) and they said the Internet was working fine. They did reinstall her copy of Windows 2000 and charged her $80 for it, but it turns out the reason the Internet stopped working was because they shut her down on their end. I’m not exactly sure of the reason, but they said she was connecting through some test lines not meant for the public and they were suspicious that because I had once worked at Memory Lane that maybe I knew how to hook up to those private lines giving them a faster connection. Well I have to say they’ve hit a new low accusing me like that (they did state that, “We’re not accusing anyone of anything”). Yeah right.
Anyway they did refund her for the 3 weeks of Internet that she was disconnected from but she is too shy to ask for her $80 back that she would have saved if her Internet had not been shut down. I told her to email keng@memlane.com and tell him why she has decided to leave them for Telus but I guess she’ll just take her business (and the rest of our friends and families’ business) elsewhere. It’s so weird because I used to work there and can’t understand what has happened to them over the years that they would turn into a dishonest operation.
Anyway as a result of her switching service providers I’m going to be hosting my blog over at Telus now. The new address is http://www3.telus.net/jefmil/. Who knows if I’ll bother to transfer the photos too.
I should really use this as an excuse to get my own domain name, but alas I guess I’m too lazy or too poor or both.
Update: I’ve now moved my site to https://jeffmilner.com.
I went to Waterton this weekend with my parents, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Roger, and Anna-Maria. Here she is doing a little jump near the Prince of Whales hotel with her dog Sophie in animated .gif format:
I just completed a Photoshop tutorial I found online. What do you think? I think I like it — a lot!
Ralph Klein was pleased to announce yesterday that the provincial debt in Alberta has finally been paid off. When questioned about where he got the money Klein apparently responded, “I finally got around to returning my empties.”
