First the end, then the beginning...

In less than 31 hours, this decade will end. Ah, the new year…a time to take stock, a time to reflect, a time to make resolutions that you have not even the tiniest morsel of an intention of keeping…no man. Not this year. NOT ON MY WATCH!!

Okay, perhaps a little overdramatic, but the point is: I want this blog to be a welcoming…a welcoming to a new me!

No..no, again way too dramatic. I’m not profound, hell, I’m not even all that intelligent, but what I am is better than good enough, better than most. My intentions are simple: my other blog over at thewindowep.blogspot.com is reserved for all of my musical endeavours and up until now this blog was nothing more than a project for school, nothing more than an experiment to see how devoted I actually am to putting my thoughts on a digital page. The answer is: not so devoted. That’s something I wanna change. Call it a new year’s “sortaresolution” if you want.

I’ll keep sharing interesting links, keep on making nonsensical humorous references, but I feel like I would really benefit from doing those journalistic blog entries like I used to. Sharing my philosophies, thoughts, opinions, even poems and short stories.

And before you judge, know this: this isn’t a new concept. I am not jumping on any sort of bandwagon. The proof is in the pudding: my old MSN Spaces blog, somehow still alive and kicking after all these years, and under the same name as this one (not a coincidence). I made reference to it when I first began this blog just a few weeks ago, and I actually stumbled upon it again recently and sifted through some of the memories. Despite my whiny teen angst, I enjoyed what I did there. My creativity, my philosophy, all from the perspective of 18/19-year old me. It was kind of inspiring.

Imagine that, starting a project for the future by examining the past.

Maybe I am just a LITTLE bit profound.
Who knows?

Adios, and I’ll type to you in 2010. You can count on it.

Happy New Year everyone,
Joe

Twenty-three

Today, I turn twenty-three years old.

I find that on our birthdays our perception of time really gets warped and we don't realize how long ago or how near in the future certain events are.

I released my first EP of original music over a year ago...
I'm gonna be graduating in four months...
I started learning to play the guitar five years ago...
In two years I'll be twenty-five years old...
I met my first serious girlfriend 6 years ago...
I'll have been with my current girlfriend for two years in just 7 months...it's been my longest relationship yet...

I think for a moment, just one moment every 365 days after we are born, when we spend all this time contemplating time and where it's gone and where it's going, we have that same innocence we carried with us the first time we realized that we were celebrating our growth and evolution as a person...that this day or celebration of our birth was indeed all about us, and about an increase in the arguably arbitrary number that we as a species were assigned so much time ago...

And there's my attempt to be profound.
Can't blame a guy for tryin'!

Happy birthday to me.
-Joe

Christmas in recession

Have you stopped lately to realize that not a whole lot is being said about that big recession we were apparently all going through? It’s been a while since I’ve heard the media pump out another story about our deficit, or how to save our economy and as a result, people are drifting back to into happy naivety. Can I say for sure if we’re still in recession? Of course not, I’m not an economist. But I can tell you that myself, and many people I know are jobless and having a very hard time finding employment. Sure, it’s always difficult to find an entry-level job in the field you want to get into, but I’m talking about your basic, seasonal, run-of-the-mill retail jobs.

Is it something about my resumé? Doesn’t seem like it, seeing as the three out of 50 organizations I apply to that DO get back to me are just like any of the others. For instance, I got an interview at Chapters, went in, NAILED the interview, answered all of the questions well…didn’t get a call back.

Anyway, whether the recession is or isn’t still going on, I know I’m not the only one with a shortage of green this year so here’s a few ideas for some inexpensive gifts:

• Chocolate is always appreciated, and not too expensive if you don’t go nuts with it.
• Find some old picture frames and then go grab a few digital prints of your friends’ favourite photos (very inexpensive). Or you can take that one even further and make a scrapbook.
• For any writer’s or musicians out there, you can never go wrong by writing a poem or a song for a loved one.
• Burn them some mix CDs or even some DVDs with there favourite movies, shows, stand-up or video games, but design the CD like a real CD and put together some cover art customized for the person you’re giving it to.
• Be creative! Sometimes the gifts you make are better than the ones you buy, if you put enough thought into them.

Where has all the music gone?

Again jumping off the technology kick for a little while, I want to talk to you about music…being an independent musician, fending for yourself. It’s a tough life to live, but even tougher when you can’t get any gigs anywhere. I live in Ontario, in the GTA: the Greater Toronto Area, more specifically, Mississauga. These days, I‘m finding it damn near impossible to find any kind of place to play music in this city. It’s always so easy when you’re close to the downtown core, no matter what province you live in.

Mississauga is losing its venues. My girlfriend and I used to play at a place called the Executive Snooker Club, a haven for small-time musicians like us, and people used to come from all over to play there. Imagine that, someone from the surrounding cities driving past the buzzing bar and club district of Toronto to play a gig in Mississauga. Well, the ESC closed down a couple of months ago. It wasn’t exactly the best place to play but it was cozy and it was fun and it was home…and it was also home to a couple of big names from Mississauga who started out playing there years ago. Guys like Meligrove Band and, ummm…what was that band’s name again? Oh yeah, BILLY TALENT! So you think they’d keep a place like that around, but no dice.

Well that’s all well and good, there are always places that host open mics right? One place I frequented here in good old Mississauga when I first began playing in front of people was the Streetsville SoundBar. Great sound set-up, friendly workers (who also happened to be the very talented back-up band) who would kick off the performances and back you up if you played any familiar tunes. Well unfortunately, the SoundBar went under as well to make room for…a pizza place. Yeah, because we don’t have enough of those in Mississauga.

So to any small-time singer/songwriters like myself out there in those small towns, heed my advice: find a Starbucks. They won’t pay you, but the nice ones will let you sell your CDs and you’ll sure as hell at least have a place to play your music.

We need more places hosting open mics in this fair city, more places for guys and gals like me to hone our skills. And if you’re not going to do that, at least ease up on the busking laws here…for god’s sake they have EVERYTHING in Toronto.

Ah hell, better stop before I get even angrier.
Rant to you again later folks,

-Joe

Virtual Wii-ality

The Nintendo Wii, although it dominated the console wars against the X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3, was still criticized by some people for its "inferior" hardware. Others commended the Wii developers for the innovative integration of motion tracking into gameplay, having gamers wave their arms to control what goes on. From what I've heard, rumours have flown around that the Wii's hardware is actually more powerful than they are letting on. I was a bit skeptical about that particular statement until I saw this:

A fellow by the name of Johnny Chung Lee has been experimenting with the Nintendo Wii's infared components. The way that the Wii's motion tracking technology works, put simply, is an infared camera reading signals of infared light. What Lee has done is use the Wii's infared sensor bar and the the Nintendo Wii-Mote the other way around to create the illusion of a 3-dimensional room.

Lee was able to do this by synching his Wii-Mote with his PC, which actually isn't too difficult. But I'd imagine that it also wouldn't be too difficult for Wii game developers to integrate this kind of head tracking technology into upcoming Wii games. I personally think that Nintendo is intentionally holding back, waiting for Microsoft and Sony to really get the upper hand in their sales...and then BAM! "We've got virtual reality games, beat that suckas!"

Of course that's just my conspiracy theorist opinion. Either way, this is some seriously cool stuff and if games like this actually start to pop up for the Wii sometime in the near future, I may have to break my resolution to stop buying new game consoles.

Anyway, Lee's got some other awesome projects using the Wii-Mote technology, you can check it all out at http://johnnylee.net.

I'm off to plunder craiglist and kijiji for hot deals on a Wii...wow if I had a nickel for every time I said that...

-Joe

It Byrnes when I laugh

Hey there! Well so far I've gone on about technology, but let's take a short break from that for a while to talk about my other passion: stand-up comedy..No, no, not performing it...although it was on my long list of aspirations when I was much younger, before high school instilled in me the harsh realism that I carry with me to this day(I really seem like the comedic type don't I?) I'm talking about watching it, and loving it, and occasionally, writing reviews on it! Okay to be fair this is my first ever review of a stand-up routine, but having watched it twice in the last week I think I've got a fair opinion on it.

The name of the comic is Ed Byrne and his newest DVD stand-up special is called "Different Class." Byrne hails from Ireland so right away that awesome accent scores him points on the comedy scale. As you can probably tell from the title, Byrne talks a lot throughout the show about how class separates us, but he also talks about the other things that divide us. He gives his two cents on relationships, family, and even performing.

What I like about this guy is that he can be quick-witted and clever and downright raunchy at the same time, which is no easy feat. Because of this, I find his comedy caters to the side of me that likes topical humour and clever observations as well as the side of me that can really appreciate a good fart joke. He's even able to joke about the fact that his first DVD titled "Pedantic and Whimsical" didn't sell that well and was beat out by the WAG's workout, which is apparently a workout DVD featuring three WAGs(wives and girlfriends of soccer players). He then proceeded to rip into that DVD, again only peppering in crude put-downs to accent his more clever and witty observations.

I personally think it's a travesty that the WAGs DVD outsold his, because if you haven't heard of Ed Byrne and are planning to get into his stuff, "Pedantic and Whimsical" is the best place to start. It's just as hilarious as "Different Class."

Bottom line: Ed Byrne rules and you should go watch his DVDs. I'll always be a fan of Carlin, Rock and Chappelle, but I also like finding out about these new comics who are a little bit more obscure but very funny. I always like to have a new bit of stand-up comedy to watch whenever possible, because I like my stand-up like I like my technology: ON ALL THE TIME.


Don't judge me, just find a reason to laugh at life, that's the beauty of comedy.

Showing you the funny,
-Joe

Return of the Mac...OS X...Software

So as long as I'm on the the Mac software kick, why don't I introduce my fellow Mac users to another wonderful site that has ALL sorts of different tools for your Mac. From conversion and editing to emulation and gaming. The website is called Pure Mac and it is the quintessential Mac software website. It's one of a few very good Mac-exclusive software websites, which brings up an interesting point in and of itself. Why are there so few of them?

Well it's been a PC dominated market but since the iPod and iPhone, the entire Apple company has exploded in popularity and you're probably going to see a lot more websites like this. Not to mention gaming...for a while Macs weren't considered gaming machines, they were more for pretentious Starbucks drinking "artistes." Well, last time I checked, I don't exactly fit into that demo...although I have been known to show up at Starbucks with my guitar and just start playing...but that's neither here nor there. The point I was supposed to be driving at was that more and more PC games that are being released now are being ported to run on Mac machines...and why not? Have you seen some of the specs of the newer Mac desktops? There may be an absurdly higher price point than a standard PC desktop, but for the coin you pay you get a pretty solid machine for both video-editing AND gaming without having to stick a bunch of new bells and whistles into your computer.

The fact of the matter is that Apple's key demo has expanded greatly, and it will continue to expand. They've made it cool to own a Mac. And that doesn't bother me because I'd like to think I bought my MacBook not to be cool, but because I thought it was a powerful machine...or moreso because my college forced me to buy one for the program I'm in...but hey I grew fond of it.

And while I'm glad that more graphically-charged games are being ported to Mac, the fact that I'm super excited about THIS 2-dimensional masterpiece coming soon to a Mac, may be slightly going back on my point.

Well what do you want? They tried it in 3D and frankly I thought it sucked. As far as I'm concerned, this series was perfected when they made Worms World Party, and I think this 2D update is gonna be sweet.

Don't tamper with a good thing people. As a matter of fact, don't tamper with anything...just..just go, just get outta here.

-Joe

The gloriousness that is eCamm

Howdy! This is the flagship post of my new blog, named after my old blog...my first blog. People who use MSN Messenger may or may not remember the awful "MSN Spaces" blogs that Microsoft had made...I guess it was to compete with the rest of the blog sites out there as this is when blogging was really starting to pick up steam. Jeez, how many time can I say the word "blog" in this blog...? BLOG!

But anyway...my old MSN Space was called "Congregation of the Mind" and it consisted of my own personal poetry, lyrics and a whole bunch of random ranting and raving about nothing in particular. Well since this blog is part of a school assignment, it's recommended that we post stuff that's actually USEFUL to other people...huh, what a concept.

And so I present to you: eCamm. From what I make of it they are a small software company who have made some pretty cool and useful programs. Two of them in particular that I have used and that I'm sure will be useful to my fellow students are iGlasses and Call Recorder.

The first one(iGlasses), is a software add-on that once installed will tack itself onto pretty much any of your Mac OS X Programs that use the built-in iSight cam(QuickTime, PhotoBooth, iMovie, etc). Once you've got it, you can open the file menu of any program using the iSight, click "iGlasses Settings" and then change things like, zooming, angle, white balance, contrast, hue, saturation and a whole slew of other things. I find this program super useful because I record YouTube videos with my iSight cam, and I find that while it's a useful tool, the quality leaves much to be desired unless you are lit perfectly. Having the freedom to play with the settings really makes things easier, and the little program also includes a few neat video filters to tinker with.

Now the other cool program from eCamm is great for vodcasting if you're planning to interview someone via Skype. Call Recorder does just that...record your Skype calls. There's a decent selections of ways to encode the video and audio and you can choose to record different views like picture-in-picture and side by side.

So check out eCamm.com for this nifty software.

Now get outta here you nerds!
-Joe