Nicolas Demers – Page 39 – Web, photos and assorted geekery

Riding The Rails

16:59. I sit on the train, looking out at the water and the mountains. As we come up to Second Narrows, I see dozens of crows flying about and perching on the trees. Yep, it’s that time of day. Hi, guys. Long time no see.

I was laid off last September, and spent the next few months looking for work. I haven’t written about it because… well, it just wasn’t that exciting to live through, and wouldn’t have been much fun to write about. Maybe some other time. But all’s well that ends well, and I’m again gainfully employed. This is the fourth week of my new job, and it’s been pretty interesting so far. A different culture (much larger and established company), different technologies, and a different routine, which honestly I’m still adjusting to. But on the whole it’s a positive experience, and part of that is my commute: for my new job is downtown, which means taking the West Coast Express.

And this train kicks so much ass. No more fighting rush hour traffic, all by myself in my car. I can relax, sit down, buy a muffin, listen to my iPod and read (or I would, if I weren’t so prone to motion sickness) and/or chat with friends and coworkers. And I’m magically whisked from the boonies to downtown (and back again, in the evening) in just over half an hour.

Best of all, I get to see the sights. Part of me feels like a tourist discovering Vancouver for the first time. Some things I’m familiar with: Burrard Inlet shrouded in early-morning fog; the North Shore mountains topped with snow, tinged orange-pink in the sunrise; the twinkly lights of North Vancouver. But I’m close to the water, and there are things I get to see close up, or from a different perspective. The ducks on the shore, completely unafraid of the big noisy metal thing rushing by. Passing under the Second Narrows Bridge. The big-ass cranes in the harbour, surrounded by containers from all over the world. The old sugar refinery, which for the longest time I thought was abandoned. The West Coast Reduction plant. The Shellburn Oil Refinery with its tall chimneys next to Burnaby Mountain. The sulfur storage facilities in Port Moody—which as far as I can tell consists only of honkin’ great piles of sulfur amidst the machinery. I’m not even clear how they transport it to and from the place. It has to be by train, though, since I can see streaks and piles of bright yellow on parallel tracks for a couple of miles westward.

Great stuff. Maybe I’ll get jaded someday, but right now it’s all new and fascinating.

Mind you, I also get to see decaying, graffiti’d building fronts as we get nearer downtown, with homeless people peeing in corners or sleeping in doorways. I’ve seen those sights enough times walking down Granville Street or driving through the East Side. It’s not all pretty scenery or productive industry. But, that’s part of my city too, and I won’t ignore it.

He Had A Dream

Would you believe I’d never listened to the entire speech before last night?

Happy belated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day from a non-American!

Would you believe I’d never listened to the entire speech before last night?

Happy belated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day from a non-American!

Yeti Crab

Coolest-looking crab ever.

It lives near deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Pacific. It’s different enough from known decapods (in both physiology and genetics) to rate its own genus and possibly its own family. And it’s fuzzy.

Coolest-looking crab ever.

2006: The Year In Review

Lowlight: the flight back from Ottawa in early January. The plane took off late, landed to refuel in Calgary (or Edmonton, I forget) for a bit without letting us out, crying children, constant turbulence especially over the Rockies…

Highlight: repainting my condo over the summer.

Lowlight: the flight back from Ottawa in early January. The plane took off late, landed to refuel in Calgary (or Edmonton, I forget) for a bit without letting us out, crying children, constant turbulence especially over the Rockies… I was hot, vaguely claustrophobic and definitely nauseous (if I hadn’t loaded up on Gravol™, I’m sure I would have puked) and it was the longest 35 hours of my life. Oh, sure, my watch says it was only 7 hours, but I know better.
Highlight: repainting my condo over the summer. I got a colour consultant from Benjamin Moore to put a palette together, but I bought all the materials and did all the work myself. It was a huge project even though my place isn’t that big, but it gave me such a sense of accomplishment.
Lowlight: Being laid off in September, and spending the next 3+ months looking for work and feeling sorry for myself. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start figuring out where I wanted my career to go. My previous job, interesting and challenging and enjoyable as it was, didn’t have many opportunities for advancement, and didn’t give me experience in technologies that boost my resume. I liked the work, the work environment and the coworkers, and I guess I was… comfortable there. Given the choice, I probably wouldn’t have left on my own. Yet in hindsight, I’m glad it happened.
Highlight: Getting a new job, which will start January 8^th. It’s quite an interesting one (software development for a high-profile consulting/outsourcing corporation) with lots of cool technologies to play with and more opportunities for advancement than my old job. The salary’s a bit lower since I’m starting over in a junior position, but that’s okay. This is much better for my career, both short- and long-term than my old job.
Highlight: For various reasons I didn’t go back East this year (my first holidays away from home), but I had some fabu parties with local friends, on Xmas Eve, Xmas Day and New Year’s Eve. There was Monopoly and gifts and caviar and inappropriate touching and Dance Dance Revolution and Harry Potter Scene It™ (I’m not actually a fan, but most of the people at the New Year’s party were). Good times.

So there you go. Overall, 2006 was a pretty good year. Certainly a lot better than 2005. Now looking forward to 2007! Happy New Year, bonne et heureuse année to all.

The Star Wars Holiday Special

I’d only heard about it, in hushed and disbelieving whispers over the Net. I knew it had aired exactly once around Thanksgiving of 1978 and was apparently made with minimal input from George Lucas—who some say hated it so much he tried to destroy every existing copy, although that seems to be an urban legend. It sounded so horrifyingly bad that I figured I was safer not looking for it.

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My mind is still blown. I think the question to ask here is, “What the fuck?” No, seriously. What the fucking fuck? Why am I watching a dumbass variety show? Why are the Star Wars characters reduced to cameos in their own universe? Did the producers not get what Star Wars was all about, or did they just not care? (I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the people involved really didn’t know what to do with the genre. Legends of the Superheroes—also done in the late 70’s, maybe coincidentally—is another fine example of a geeky concept fucked up all to hell.) We’re stuck with is this cheesy “Life Day” story where the Empire is reduced to a lame plot device, stupid and unscary Stormtroopers, Wookiees howling at each other for an entire scene that went on forever, nauseating schmaltz, and Princess Leia singing. Bleagh.

So, okay, it fails as a Star Wars adventure. What about as a variety show? Well, the extent of my experience in that area is from watching The Muppet Show, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge. But it seems to me the acts should be… oh, what’s the word?… entertaining. Those little holographic acrobats? Meh. Harvey Korman as a 4-armed TV cook, then as a robot who keeps powering down? Not even funny for a second. Diahann Carroll in a virtual reality softcore porno? Well, she’s pretty and all, and a good singer, but the song was kind of boring and the whole scene was frankly creepy as hell. Nobody needs to see Chewie’s father Itchy getting off to Carroll being all sexy and seductive before she starts singing. Jefferson Starship in another holographic show? An unexceptional song with silly special effects. Pass. Bea Arthur? Actually, her bit was the best. She’s got a nice voice; the song was quiet and low-key, with no distracting special effects, horny Wookiees or attempts at cheap laughs.

The most horrifying moment came near the end when Chewie was reunited with his family, and he and his wife… almost kissed. I froze like a deer in headlights, only one thought screaming through my brain: EW EW EW EW WOOKIEE SEX EW! But then they just hugged. Thank God.

In conclusion: Wow, this was really very bad. And not even entertainingly bad (like, e.g., those old Gerry Anderson marionation shows, the Super-Friends, or all the movies on MST3K), but just confusingly, irritatingly, boringly bad. I can’t even laugh at it; part of me thinks I should, but I’m enough of a geek to be offended at the watering down of a sci-fi epic by people who just used the sci-fi elements (alien names, guys in funny rubber masks, advanced tech) as props for dumb jokes. Still, I don’t regret watching it, even if it’s just to understand what all the hype was about, and to appreciate just how wrong things can go. I could say that this abysmal TV special should never have seen the light of day, but then my life (and that of many Star Wars fans) would have been much poorer as a result.

Happy Life Day, everyone!

The Long Night

Hey, the power’s back on.

So as you may have heard, there were massive windstorms in my neck of the woods, causing about 250,000 people (according to BC Hydro) to go without power. I was one of those people. Starting some time Thursday night to around noonish Friday, my appartment building (and indeed, my entire neighbourhood) had zero electricity. Then we had partial power in the building. The lights kind of worked—noticeably dimmer than usual, but good enough to read by—and we had some heat. But no elevators, no hot water, no major appliances and no cable. It could have been worse. As of last night there were still chunks of my neighborhood without any power at all.

It’s been an interesting day and a half. I walked to the mall yesterday, partly to shop and partly to soak in as much sunlight as I could. It was sunny but cold, and the wind was still really strong—what my forebears might call «un vent à écorner les bœufs.» Still, I was grateful for the sun, since I knew it’d get dark very soon. And man, without streetlights it really gets dark.

In hindsight, I really wasn’t prepared for a longer power failure. I had very little food that I could eat without a microwave (thank gawd the nearby Quizno’s had power by Friday evening—mmm, Teriyaki barbecue sub), not enough blankets, and no flashlight. On the plus side, without the TV and computer to distract me (they weren’t getting enough juice), I was free to get most of the way through Foucault’s Pendulum.

In Praise of Stargate SG-1‘s 200^th Episode

Oh my Lord, that was just about the funniest hour of sci-fi I’ve ever seen. I may get the Season 10 set just for this one episode. The in-jokes were flying, the actors seemed to have a great time, it was all meta and silly and over-the-top and I just couldn’t stop laughing.

The plot is that Wormhole X-Treme!, a campy sci-fi show inspired by the real Stargate program, is inexplicably being picked up for a movie. (What studio does that, when only 3 episodes were ever made? asks Jackson. “It allegedly performed well on DVD,” replies Teal’c. Tee hee. Are Joss Whedon’s ears burning?) So SG-1 has to sit through a brainstorming session, shoot down Martin Lloyd’s goofy lowest-common-denominator ideas (Teal’c: “I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode.”) while pitching their own.

Mitchell fighting zombies! Lloyd in love with Carter’s technobabble! A younger, “edgier” SG-1! (“Dude, that hot chick was so totally a Goa’uld.”) O’Neill and Carter getting married! By Thor! (Uh, I think. All Asgard kind of look alike, don’t they?) Cheyenne Mountain exploding! Teal’c P.I.! Completely ridiculous cliffhangers!

SCENE:

SG-1 is on an alien planet, running from about a zillion Replicators. “We’ve got ten seconds before the time dilation field is activated. If we don’t make it through the Gate we’ll be stuck here forever!” yells Carter, just as they come upon the Stargate surrounded by Jaffa, with loads of bombers and gliders. “Okay, this could be a problem,” says Mitchell.

CUT TO:

Stargate Command. SG-1 is emerging from the Gate, safe and sound. “That was close, huh?” asks Mitchell.

I laughed so freaking hard at that. It’s right up there with Princess Bunhead’s “I escaped somehow!” from Thumb Wars for sheer unapologetic silliness.

And the homages: The Wizard of Oz, with Vala as Dorothy, and Gen. Landry as the big floating head of the Wizard Ascended Being. Her wish was first to go home, “But now I’ve decided I’d quite like to be a part of something. A regular part, if you catch my drift.” Farscape, with the characters rattling off that show’s made-up swear words (and props to Amanda Tapping for doing a kickass Chiana, complete with the weird posture and head twitches). Star Trek, with Mitchell as the intrepid commander of the Daedalus battlecruiser, facing an exploding singularity with weapons at maximum. And marionation… although that bit dragged a little, and most of the good jokes were already done in Team America. But really, everything else was gold.

Props to the SG-1 people for poking fun at themselves, and letting us laugh along.

The Stone Snake

This is pretty neat.

Of course, there’s a lot of speculation as to what this stone snake was actually for. Was it indeed the site of religious rituals? What kind of religion did humans have 70,000 years ago? What did they believe, and how did they express it? How much of a language did they have, to tell each other stories? Maybe language didn’t play a big part; still, the collective art of a giant snake is pretty good evidence of abstract thinking (because you have to imagine a snake before you carve it out of the rock)—as is the sacrifice of the spear points, which seem to have been deliberately burned or blunted, because you wouldn’t make a ritual out of it unless you expected something in return: good weather, good hunting, lots of children, or just the Snake God generally smiling upon you.

Actually, that reminded me of similar happenings in the bogs of Northern Europe. I saw an exhibit on them at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa a few years ago, including a bit on how precious objects were ritually “killed” (e.g.: a pot would have a hole punched through it) before being placed in the bogs.

And I’ll tell you something else: I’ll never look at money thrown in fountains the same way again.

White Out

As you might have heard, we’ve got a lot of snow here.

Of course, “a lot of snow” for Vancouver is not a lot for, let’s say, my home town of Ottawa. But it’s thick and soft and has fucked up traffic and power lines, and even though the weather’s warmed up some now, it’ll be hanging around for a while. There was a bit of snow on Saturday, in the higher places, but it’s been coming down hard between Saturday night and Wednesday, with just a few breaks. We haven’t had this much snow since that sudden cold snap in… 2002, I think. In March, of all months. I had to buy a snow brush & ice scraper for my car. Never needed one before, and I don’t think I’ve needed it since, except for this week.

And my gawd, it’s beautiful. This is one thing I miss about Ottawa, the pretty white Christmases. I don’t enjoy them like I should anymore when I go home for the holidays, since I’ve become way too sensitive to cold from living out here on the balmy West Coast. The snowflakes are just hypnotic, drifting to the ground like so many dancing constellations, and everything is just so bright at night. The soft pearly light from the clouds and the ground is a hell of a change from the dull orangeish glow of reflected streetlights.

In fact, though the sky’s been mostly overcast and grey, and the landscape seems to be all in black or white, there’s something quite magical about this snow-covered scenery. I know it won’t last, and frankly I don’t want it to. A couple of weeks of snow is plenty for me, thanks very much. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

Comic Book Review: Death: The High Cost of Living

I admit it. I love Death. Have from the first time she appeared in The Sandman. She’s beautiful, perky, compassionate, and not afraid to tell it like it is. If she’ll pardon my saying so, she’s the most human of all the Endless… and it seems there’s a good reason for that. It is said that “One day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: and this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.” This quietly enchanting 3-part miniseries, written by Neil Gaiman and published in 1993 (during Sandman’s run, near the end of the “Brief Lives” storyline), follows Death as she spends twenty-four hours mortal in New York City, tasting life and making new friends.

We meet Sexton Furnival, a sullen and angsty teen vaguely planning suicide because he feels life is pointless. We catch up with Hazel and Foxglove, the lesbian couple last seen in Sandman’s “A Game of You” storyline. And we meet Didi, the incarnation of Death (whose name just has to start with a “D,” like all the Endless). It’s not clear exactly who or what she is: a temporary shell for Death? A real girl imbued with a bit of the Endless’ essence? Didi does seem to have a history and friends who remember her, but that might just be a bit of retroactive memory. What’s obvious is that she’s not just some delusional mortal girl: a few of her offhand remarks (“As my older brother would say, some destinations are inevitable.” “My sister has rats. She loves them deeply.”) indicate she knows way more about the Endless than any mortal should.

And all of these characters deal with death (small “d”) and life in different ways. Sexton contemplates suicide but eventually learns to appreciate life. Hazel is expecting a baby. Foxglove sings about her dead ex-girlfriend. Didi, as is her function, enjoys the hell out of every experience: breathing, eating, meeting people (even the creeps), the good and the bad, living her perfectly ordinary, perfectly special day.

(There are a couple of plots, but they’re not terribly important. Mad Hettie, an immortal homeless woman previously seen in Sandman, is looking for her heart and demands Didi’s help. A blind wizard called The Eremite plans to steal Didi’s ankh and thus gain power over Death… to stop people from dying, maybe. That’s the problem with being Death, I guess: too few people appreciate your work. There are always sorcerers and whatnot trying to control you for the “good” of humanity. Roderick Burgess did it way back in Sandman #1, and he probably wasn’t the first.)

The art, by Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham, is phenomenal, and in my opinion consitutes the best representation of Death. They perfectly captured her sweetness, innocence (maybe not the best term when talking about the second oldest being in the universe, but there you go), serene wisdom, and, well, lovability. Some of the visuals were quite striking: I especially loved the scene of Didi helping Sexton to his feet, in the garbage dump where she found him. It worked on an additional level, since Death usually takes the recently departed by the hand as she leads them to what lies beyond. (And I could go on about Didi pushing the fridge off Sexton’s legs being deep and complex symbolism for Death releasing us from the burdens of life, but I think I won’t go there. Sometimes a fridge is just a fridge.) And the panel of Didi by the fountain, silently embracing the world moments before her death, still gets to me, even ten years later.

Death: The High Cost of Living is conveniently collected in a trade paperback, which offers a nifty little bonus: Death Talks About Life, a six page insert in which Death discusses safer sex, assisted by John Constantine and a banana. It’s as awesome as it sounds.