The gorgeousness continues

It’s another summer-like day here in T-dot.

For those of you who’ve never been to Casa di AccordionGuy, the entire south wall of my bedroom/office/pleasure dome is glass — a wall-sized window and a glass door leading to the back deck. I’ve got the back door propped open so that I can catch some of the nice air outside as I type this. Once I get the back deck cleaned up, I should be able to take the laptop out there and even have wireless Internet connectivity, thanks to our AirPort. I’m at the computer with Flaresound’s Deep Beats on the sound system and a lemonade in my hand. For an unemployed guy, I live pretty well.

Actually, I’m not quite unemployed anymore. Today marks my first steps into the Land of PDA Development (that’s PDA as “Personal Digital Assistant“, not “Public Display of Affection“). It’s also my return to contract work, something which paid my bills between 1997 and 2000. Dave Groff, a friend of mine as well as one of the partners and creative directors at the first place I worked after graduating (Mackerel Interactive Multimedia — here’s a story Cory wrote about the place), dropped me a line the other day. I’m now on contact to develop some apps for him, the first one being some kind of Palm application for a drug company. I’ll be doing it in NS Basic, and I’ll write about my experiences with it soon.

Those daily trips to the gym are beginning to pay off. My pants seem a little bit looser and the accordion sure feels a lot lighter. Two months ago, I’d have called you insane had you told me I’d be hitting the weight room every other day. I may have to cultivate an accent like Arnie’s.

I just had a phone conversation with a cute girl who makes me laugh more than anyone in recent memory.

It’s good to be the king.

More on the dearth of singles

One dirty trick the record companies use to squeeze money out of customers — I’m really beginning to loathe the term consumer — is to entice you to buy the same album over and over. The Arbiter Online explains how it works:

The dearth of commercially released singles is bad enough for hits that are available on albums, but worse when the version that hits the radio is not the version available on the album. Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s hit duet “Nobody Wants to be Lonely,” is not the version on Martin’s album – which features a lackluster solo vocal by Martin. Same with the percussion heavy version of Enya’s “Only Time,” a far cry from the traditional rendering of the song featured on the album. Anyone who wants to purchase the last two hit Jennifer Lopez records will have to shell out another $20 for her latest remix anthology, the R&B versions of her songs popular on the radio are very different from the dance pop versions of those songs on her album.

Remixes, too, are increasingly unavailable to consumers even as expensive maxi-singles. The remixes of Dido’s songs, often better than the originals, though huge hits at clubs, were not released to consumers at all. To get a hold of those, fans would have to buy an expensive reissue of her “No Angel” album featuring a bonus disc of dance mixes. Recently, Mary J. Blige’s latest album was also repressed and re-released with bonus mixes. So much for people who already bought the albums in their original forms.

It’s a clever trick. The costs of creating the original tracks in a re-issue have already been covered, yet the re-issue costs the same as the old album. Money for nothing and chicks for free!

Here’s my favourite line from the article:

I can see buying a whole album by some critic’s darling or classic act, but it’s not as if I’d purchase the $20 Baha Men CD just for “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Woof woof!

From an article in the Australian newspaper The Age:

Taking photographs that could “humanise or personalise” asylum seekers was banned by former defence minister Peter Reith’s office, the Senate inquiry into children-overboard claims was told yesterday.

People who issue such orders have “de-humanised” themselves. As far as I’m concerned, Peter Reith and company have effectively revoked their memberships in the human race.

I say we scrap these fucknozzles for parts.

Lyric of the Day

Make that lyric of the year:

“I’ve enough hope to float an ocean liner…”

(from Lindi’s song, Many Moons)

Kick Ass Karaoke tonight!

It’s that time of the month again….

I think it might be time to do the Eric Cartman version of Styx’s Come Sail Away.

But then again, it’s also how Bush got to be president

From an article in the New York Times:

Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela’s legitimate president, one administration official replied, “He was democratically elected,” then added, “Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however.”

Of course, favouring dictatorships over democracies when it serves their needs is nothing new for the U.S., or even the Bushes. In the 1970s, the was the overthrow of Chile’s government by the CIA.

In the 1980s, then-Vice President George Bush the Elder toasted the opposition-jailing, martial-law declaring, IMF-fund-for-the-poor-embezzling, media-censoring, election-rigging president of my home country, Ferdinand Marcos, for his “adherence to democratic principles”. At the time, the U.S. maintained two vital bases in the Philippines (Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base) and it was also the home-away-from-home for the Navy’s 7th Fleet.

It just makes me want to say kantutin mo ang nanay mo. Beeyotch.

I do have a lot of stuff backlogged…

Such as Zooko’s and Jill’s visits to Toronto, the Lindi gig at C’est What, and all kinds of other happenings, but it’s a gorgeous day in Toronto today. Sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and it’s 28 degrees Celsius (that’s 82 degrees Fahrenheit for my American friends) outside! The Queen Street girls have already switched to tank tops and shorts, so I’m wasting time just sitting here and typing this in.

Besides, not only did I have a big client meeting today, I even built a quick-and-dirty prototype to prove that the program could be built in timely fashion, thus making a nice little pay-my-immediate-bills short-term contract very likely (I’d give myself 9 in 10 odds of getting it). I’ve earned a little bit of a life this evening. It’s time to haul out the accordion and busk.

All you programmers that are in the same nice weather bubble as Toronto (or experiencing a similarly glorious day): I strongly suggest you shut off the machine and go outside and experience the fully-immersive zillions-of-polygons interactive experience out there.

I don’t think the non-programmers out there need to be told that.