The Internet writings of Blayne

Subject:	In Korea now, Part1
Time:	10:10 pm.

Just a quick note until I can visit a net cafe of some kind. I'm biliting with this really cool family in Chonju, South Korea with another guy from Peterborough. He's Korean, and is my impromput translator. The father in the family knows pretty good English, and would relay comments from the family during our huge dinner. Gabe, the guy from Peterborough commented to me that he lived in korea for a few years, and even he's never seen some of the traditional dishes they cooked for us. I was really honoured - they're really nice people, and their appartment's really nice with hardwood floors.

I did find it pretty funny that when the neighbours came over, the man commented that I was very handsome - and later, one of the sons said he wanted (wished?) that he had my sideburns and nose.

Apparently not too many foreigners come to this city, so the neighbours coming over to see the skinny, handsome white kid (who wasn't fat or the size of a basket ball player) was expected.

I'll drop people some specific emails when I'm not all tuckered out from a day of hiking. Korea is a very hilly country.

-Blayne

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Subject:	The Moped Rides again, with epilogue
Time:	1:16 am.

I finally got the bike back today, and did some errands about town (buying socks), and visited with Rebecca.
We noticed some Peterborough hooligans driving by my bike earlier in the night, but they left quickly.

The epilogue: Turns out they stole my #!*&ing Moped license plate. Again. That's another $30.00 I'll never get back. The fun factor quickly ramped up with these additional discoveries:

a.) When I turn the mopeds gas tank switch from ON | to OFF --, it leaks gasoline!
b.) There are exposes wires in my dash that touch the speedometer's metal housing and send off sparks!
c.) The entire Headlight / Turn Signal assembly likes to turn its self off, and only comes on when I steer into a pothole.

I'm glad my mechanic in bloody Oshawa did such a great job. Frankly, I'm furious.

On the ride home something did go well - I missed an EPIC rain & thunder storm by 10 seconds. As soon as I stepped inside the house, the sky opened up.

I suppose I've had enough bad luck for one evening. [Crosses fingers, knocks on wood] The last thing I need is that leaky gastank exploading in the garage -- directly under my bed.

G2 test (2nd try) on Monday. Here's hoping I can ace that and score a sweet ride of the four wheeled variety in August.

-Blayne

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Subject:	KILLDOZER - the worlds first smalltown supervillian
Time:	10:09 am.

In addition to guys who dress up in daffy superhero costumes to patrol their neighborhoods, the world now has mad scientist-type super-villains. Or it did.

I came across the story of Marvin Heemeyer's Killdozer rampage, and couldn't keep it to myself:

"On June 4, 2004, frustrated over the adverse outcome of a zoning dispute, Heemeyer used a Komatsu D355A bulldozer modified with armor in the forms of steel and concrete to demolish the town hall, a former judge's home and other buildings in Granby, Colorado."

I kid you not.

[...] "In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor. This made the machine impervious to small arms fire and resistant to explosives; three external explosions and over 200 rounds of firearm ammunition fired at the bulldozer had no effect on it. National Guard units were placed on standby orders by Governor Bill Owens."

[...] "For armament the bulldozer was fitted with a .50 caliber semi-automatic Barrett M82 sniper rifle pointing out to the rear, a semi-auto FN FNC assault-rifle pointing out to the front, a .223 Ruger Mini-14 to the right, [and] a 9mm Kel-Tec P-11 semi-auto pistol..."

That's not all - according to the article, for visibility, Killdozer had two external video cameras mounted to internal monitors and a life support apparatus installed inside the cabin.

[...] Heemeyer's rampage resulted in 13 buildings destroyed, resulting in total damages estimated at over $7 million.

[...] The sheriff's department argues that the fact that no one was injured was due more to luck than intent. Heemeyer had installed two rifles in firing ports on the inside of the bulldozer, and fired 15 bullets from his rifle at power transformers and propane tanks.

[...] One officer dropped a flash-bang grenade down the bulldozer's exhaust pipe [...] . Local and state police, including a SWAT team, walked behind and beside the bulldozer occasionally firing, but the armored bulldozer was impervious to their shots.

At one point during the rampage, Undersheriff Glenn Trainor managed to climb atop the bulldozer and, in the words of Allen Best, rode the bulldozer "like a bronc-buster, trying to figure out a way to get a bullet inside the dragon."

If more people solved their problems using the same 'comic book logic' that led to Killdozer's creation, I think local news would be the most fascinating hour of television around.

-Blayne

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Subject:	The Ghosts of St. Petersburg
Time:	3:33 am.

"Alexey Titarenko's "City of Shadows" is a series of haunting, gorgeous long-exposure shots of street-scenes in St Petersburg, Russia. The long exposure-times turn the people in the shots into ghosts and suggestions of motion."

Via BoingBoing.net

This has to be done with a ND (Neutral Density) filter. I've always wanted to play with one - you can set up a 10x ND filter on a camera with a wide open aperture(letting lots of light in) and do the kind of photography usually reserved for the night time.

I love the ghost effect above, but I'd want to shoot with an ND filter with a single person standing still. Depending on traffic, a busy intersection would look deserted. Imaging shooting Queen Street West like this...

-Blayne

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Subject:	A new addition to the Peterborough Zoo
Time:	11:14 pm.

I noticed this the last time I was at the Peterborough Public Zoo: A diagram explaining how children can have "Boulder Fun" with climbable sculptures. I particularly like the "Jugs", "Undercling", and "Pinch" moves.

Can't say I've ever done the "Crimp" or "Side Pull", but the "Cup" looks like a good time.

Also - good advice to give when trying to have Bolder Fun : "No rings on fingers - chance of severe injury". These people know their stuff.

-Blayne

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Subject:	Dreamscapes, Metafiction, and David Lynch
Time:	12:58 pm.

Somehow I slept through one epic rainstorm here in Lakefield. This generated another in my list of bizarre dreams: A television series.

The conceit of this series was this - the first season was explicitly written as the dream of a writer - one where the spaces, moods and behaviors of the characters reflected the ever changing dreamscape.

The events of the first season operated in a very Lynchian way: Actors purposefully became other characters while maintaining the same appearance, but the 'threat' of the initial season was revealed as the end of the dream - a conclusion to a fictional dreamworld.

The second season, as described to me by my father in-dream was equally fantastic: The events of the first exist in the second as a detached outline. In this second series, the writers dream is made into a series that loosely takes events from the prior season, and fills in the gaps with new fictions. Character relationships shift and meld, often overwritten in a way that the characters themselves are constantly remembering events of their previous lives.

In this shifting narrative, the only hints that the entire series is a multi-layered metafiction are strange objects or writing that appears in the series set design: News paper clippings pinned to a wall, paintings of a man at a typewriter, etc. The whole concept reminds me now of John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" - a film where the protagonist gradually realizes he's a scripted character in his own movie, controlled by a horror writer with Cthulhuian ambitions.

In the end, the small black/white television in my dream revealed to me that the writer dreaming the TV series was in actuality a product of my own dreams - I dreampt the writer. Circles within circles, layers within layers.

I feel like my entire dream-fiction television show was actually a distorted, meta-fictional version of Twin Peaks - but there was no backward speaking, dancing midgets. There was however, a character who looked like Tom Cruise who hid in air vents shooting people with barbed arrows.

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Subject:	Tinfoil + Cereal Box = Parabolic WiFi Reflector on the cheap
Time:	12:00 am.

Frustrated with the crappy signal strength my grandmothers computer was getting downstairs, I decided to build a wireless reflector for my internet router. Basically, it's this printout, slathered with glue, pasted to a cereal box and wrapped in tinfoil.

I managed to boost my routers signal through the (presumably?) lead-lined walls of my house, achieving roughly a 20% boost in speed with downstairs net access. Awesome.

I'm hesitant to try this modification and solder a new antenna on to my router. I'd rather not enable kids with wireless devices to check their myspace while in Math class up the street. That, and fusing metal together then plugging it in scares me.

-Blayne

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Subject:	Vinyl cutter makes CDs into 45 RPM records
Time:	1:01 pm.

"[...] [A]rmed with a vintage vinyl record cutter, Aleks Kolkowski attended Manchester's Futuresonic 2008 festival, burning audio files for festival goers on old, discarded compact discs and making them capable of being played on any old phonograph."

Found here at Boing-Boing

Taking things a step further, a German company manufactures dual sided discs:

"The vinyl disc is a combination of CD or DVD and a special record. It consists of two interconnected layers. The silver layer includes the digital information, the upper black Layer can be used on every [record player]"

This is spiffy on many levels. I wonder what the audio quality of these plastic-cut discs is when compared to a vinyl recording of the same? The Kolkowski method would probably be pretty hard on your needle, but the German manufactured hybrid would probably come off like any 45.

While most of my memories of LPs come from those neon-plastic Sesame Street psudo-records, there's something fascinating about the actual medium.

-Blayne

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Subject:	The Harsh Realities of Visiting My Past
Time:	10:46 am.

After being x-rayed on a tilting science table at the hospital today, I walked down the road to my old Elementary school where my father now works.

The schoolyard was empty, so I went around behind the school, past the basketball nets and over the aged concrete. This place has so much memory and dreams wrapped up in it for me - somehow, all rolled into one, taller than life, and longer than the lunchtime recess.

I have reoccurring dreams in two particular places at this school - the back yard concrete area, and the schools stage area/gym. Some defy description, while others are full of fun and wonder - colourful Chinese dragons rippling through the air of a darkened gymnasium like water, or the time when I was Spider-Man, but hooked up to a series of pullies that allowed me to jump and cling to walls.

None of these images are real in any physical sense, but they're bound up with the glowing experiences I had in this place - the times I put aside my fear and doubt by going on stage in annual lip-synchs (or 'air-bands' I've heard them called), my first kiss on the tall hill at recess, my first real friendship, or countless other memories.

I went into the school and signed in with the office, letting them know I was Mr. Scott's son and I was waiting for him. I was directed to sit on the bench outside the office to wait. Over the next 15 minuets, each and every teacher or educational assistant who walked by made a point of coming over to me, and with no sense of kindness or warmth demanded "Who are you?" or simply "What are you doing here?" After the fifth person to address me like I was selling crank to their children, I just felt crushed. The welcoming atmosphere I remembered for both visitors and students was non-existent.

When I approached the school, it was with the same sense of awe I had as a child. I wanted so badly to stand in the darkened gym and remember. Instead, like an unsettling dream, there were walls where there was none before - the hallway murals of children's characters were painted over with beige - and all the playground equipment was gone. No longer did the images drawn inside my head of places, people or how I was treated match up with the world around me. Sitting outside the office, I wished to have never visited - if only so I could still cling to my dreamscapes.

While the dreams and shining memories of my childhood remained static, the rest of the world moves on.

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