Category: Life

Yep, I was wrong this whole time. FOX News is actually fair and balanced, hiring professional reporters and commentators that do not let their political leanings bias their reporting.

Just kidding. Here’s a clip of Ann Coulter calling Edwards a faggot:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/02/coulter-edwards/

If you’ve never heard of Ann Coulter, she’s written books such as “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism” and “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” She also spurts out quotes like “[Canadians] better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.” and on Islam “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” She’s also a staple commentator of FOX News.

Today was the IT Fair Day at the University of Ottawa. It was a chance for various computer-oriented interests in the university to show off. There were corporate displays (Apple, VMWare), retro-computing tables with 1960s-1980s mainframes and hardware, robotics research engineers, reps from the Library proxy system. It was a good mix. Led by Dr. Sawada, fellows Zoran, Sam, Jennie, Sierra, Eric, and I were there to represent geomatics and GIS.

In other news, my webserver is extremely slow today. I have no idea as to why.

I’ve designed a few posters for the Piracy documentary. Of them all, this was the one that stood out the best:

Well, in case you haven’t been following my exploits, I’ve finally completed the “On Piracy” documentary. You can catch more info about it, and where to download, at the main website.

The original intent of the film was that the views would be presented in such a way that every side would be happy with their representation. Industry people would be happy, consumer groups would be happy, artists would be happy, etc. My biggest concern remains that the industry isn’t getting a fair shake.

The only relief I’ve had is that my step-dad has become completely polarized in the stance that CRIA detailed, esp. at the end of the film. Combined with the fact that certain consumer adovates have also voiced their approval, I breathe a little easier. That said, I won’t be doing another documentary on such a polarized issue for some time to come.

So onto the fiction titles: H4CK3R5 is on hold. Simply said, the scriptwriting is near complete, but I need $10,000 to get it off the ground. Given the fact that I’m barely able to pay for university, that one’s out the window. Instead, I’ll be shooting a comedy called Docks. The shoot starts this June, and the film should be out by Winter 2007/2008. It’s been in the works for a while now, and is financially much more viable. We’re looking at a cost of no more than $1,500. I’ll be using my share of the revenue from that film to finance H4CK3R5.

Docks is about a day in the life of a ticket seller in a disfunctional boat tour company. Think of it as Clerks meets Trailer Park Boys. With Youtube hitting it off, there’s been lots of user-based content generated over the last year. This film will not be of that calibre. The idea is that at the end of the day, you won’t be able to distinguish our work from an indy title with a $300,000 budget. Sorry to H4CK3R5 fans, but recent realities made funding the film unrealistic.

Those were the final words of a CNN on-air personality, as he berated music industry execs on the foul thing that was hip hop. He also managed to put in the fabled “as a parent” in there, somewhere.

There was an industry rep to represent the opposite side (as well as an old school hip hop artist), but the reporter gave neither a chance to reply. To conclude, a particular song was called into question, which to be honest, wasn’t all that lewd. I’d post the lyrics here, so that you’d have an idea of what I’m talking about, if it was legal to do so.

In any case, of course it’s about money. If the song is catchy, it sells. Lyrics aren’t all that important. Think about all the people that like Nirvana out there. Now how many of them do you think actually know what the songs are about? I just don’t see what’s the point of grilling the industry over this. It’s not like it’s even real hip hop.

If they have a problem with lewd material during Much Music prime time, that’s something else. If they want to enforce a ratings system to protect minors from such crap, that’s something else. But it’s almost as if the reporter wanted the complete elimination of this genre. Somewhat anachronistic.