__________________________________________________________________________________________________


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"The 10 greatest video games everrr..."
2010/10/19 17:31


++ ...in my opinion. So anyway, I figured everyone loves looking at top 10 lists and so forth, so why not do one myself about my absolutely favorite time sink. This was originally going to be a top 5 thing, but then felt it was just way too hard to pick my favorite 5 only with so many options out there.

# 10 - Command and Conquer: Red Alert - This game brings back a lot of memories. I pretty much consider this game to be the gateway game for me in terms of PC strategy gaming and more specifically RTS. Its just one of those classics.

#9 - The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - I

#8 - Black and White - 

#7 - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 

#6 - The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind - 

#5 - Counter Strike - 

#4 - World of Warcraft - 

#3 - Dwarf Fortress (Slaves to Armok : God of Blood Chapter II) - 

#2 - Sim City 4 - 

#1 - Civilization IV - 

++So that's the list, feel free to disagree.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Transition - I am what I am because of who we all are"
2011/09/07 00:42

++ As you can all tell by now, the website looks a bit different. I am trying to change it up 
again, it has been almost 3 years since I've changed it aesthetically and I feel like I've 
neglected the v.3.0 a bit. Well with a lot of new things going on with me in RL and online, I 
feel like I need a new setup for my blogging practices. Therefore, if I haven't posted about this 
yet, I have opened an actual blog which is called "existential machine" on blogspot. The reason 
for that is because it is much easier to post as well as it to navigate the blog. I like how I 
can tag posts with their subject and this allows readers to quickly find my posts on different 
subjects. This is something practically impossible to do on this website, so I will keep this 
website for more personal posts as well as some of my favorite ones, where I feel they can make 
my front page for a while. I'll also try to keep the other pages of the website updated with the 
content I've had before as well as possibly a few new things. I've also updated some of my 
favorite links on the side bar, there are some great new links there.

++ Back to my blog... I named it "existential machine" because in the past few years I became a 
big supporter of the main concepts of existialist thought. I have been trying to conciliate my 
personal religious beliefs and my existentialist perspective in order to understand myself a bit 
better. This has been quite an enlightening endeavor. The machine part of the name ties back to 
my materialistic way of seeing humans as machines that are controlled by the mind in a very 
physiological way rather than believing in the existence of a soul or some other kind 
of "human essence" which controls the body. Now, I do realize that what I've said is somewhat 
paradoxical, but I feel that perhaps just because WE are controlled by matter and nothing else, 
doesn't necessarily make the human phenomenon any less amazing. I also don't necessarily think 
there needs to be a "supernatural" aspect to the mind that makes us special, and our current 
understanding of neurophysiology and science in general does seem to indicate that what is 
often referred to as the soul, is located in the frontal lobe or our brain. Anyway, I will be 
probably posting more on these ideas on my new blog, so make sure to check it out a few times 
a month. Aside from philosophy, I will be posting about politics, economics, current events 
and technology.

++ Finally, I will probably be changing the name of this website from what it was for a lot of 
years (The indispensable Carlin and Leo), the reason for that is that as much as I would like, 
Carlin doesn't seem very interested in blogging and so forth. I'll try to keep this particular 
website better kept and more personalized than it has been for a while. It may take me a while 
to get it all done, so in the mean time expect the site to look a bit all over the place.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Recem casados"
2011/06/29 18:05

++ I have some big news, I've gotten married about a week ago. Carlin and I have been together 
for over 8 years and we had been engaged for a while so we were very excited to finally get 
married and make it official. We decided to do a private ceremony and we also did a nice romantic 
trip to Algonquin Park. We rented a cabin at Killarney Lodge there and it was great fun. We did 
some hiking, some canoeing and lots of eating. We also went for dinner at the 360 restaurant at 
CN tower and that was a lot of fun as well. The food was probably not as good as it should be 
but the view up there was spectacular. I think anyone in Toronto should try it out at least 
once as it is a great experience. Got quite a few pictures of it all on Facebook.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Hackers R Us"
2011/06/03 09:02

++ There have been a lot of hacker attacks in the news lately, it seems like it's happening 
more and more frequently now due to an increase in the number of hackers and interest in these 
services from advertiser and marketing people around the world. We do after all live in the 
age of information and information is money. Sony was one of the bigger attacks recently, causing 
PSN to shut down for a while and costing the company a huge stain in their image as well as 
millions in law suits. Now I hear Honda Canada has just been attacked as well, and I'm not even 
mentioning Air Miles and all the other North American databases that have had their networks 
breached for customer data. So what can companies and customers do to prevent being victims of 
these crimes?

++ I have been hearing about the end of human biological evolution for a while now. It is believed 
that biological evolution is too slow to compete with the technological evolution that humans 
have been experiencing for the past centuries. The mechanics of this evolution in this age of 
information is way too complex and fast for nations to overlook and control. Networks are faster 
and more integrated then ever and the trend is not changing anytime soon, and just like copyright 
issues we've been seeing for a while, privacy is going to continue to be a major area of 
discussion in the future years. These are issues that will not be countered by governments 
fast enough and the ignorance of people in these matters will eventually cause one of two things. 
Governments will enforce much more regulation on networks then necessary just to prevent issues 
such as these to propagate, or they will attempt to educate people more about vulnerabilities and 
corporations will eventually see that more attention needs to be paid to hacking and data theft.

++ I'm not a hacker, but I do find a lot of what hackers do fascinating. For years I've been 
learning just how vulnerable we really are to people that want to people with knowledge of 
networks and computers. The best thing to do at this point is to play safe, corporations 
should not be storing unneeded information and they should invest more in network security. In 
the end the consumers pay part of the price and companies are damaged as well. More and more 
technologies like this will be areas heavily explored for crimes and I am still waiting to see 
a digital act of terrorism. Unfortunately, much like flying nowadays, the Internet may very well 
be changed for the worst with cyber terrorism, this may be inevitable however.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Dilino's ranch and the rest of my trip"
2011/05/30 10:29

++ Just got back from Brazil last Friday. I had a pretty good trip, saw lots of family and ate 
a vast amount of great food. The most notable place I ended up eating was probably the simplest 
and cheapest, "Rancho do Dilino" (Dilino's Ranch). My uncle Zeh took me and my mom to his 
ranch in Sao Joao da Boa Vista, and while there he took us to this restaurant located on some 
guy's ranch. It was in the middle of nowhere, SJBV itself is already a rural area and to get 
to this place we had to drive about 20 minutes in a dirt road. You get there and there is a 
little lake and 2 parking lots next to the cafeteria like area you eat. One parking lot for 
cars and one for horses, turns out the horse parking lot was a lot busier than the car one on 
that particular Saturday. The place only opens on weekends and holidays. The food was divine, 
everything made in clay pots and wood stoves, lovely "comida mineira" (Minas cosine), everything 
really rustic, flavorful and delicious. I couldn't name half the dishes but every single item 
I tried I loved. I saw someone order an orange juice, and the owner left to pick up oranges 
from the tree and squeeze them into a cup, that's how fresh the food was in this place. They 
produced almost everything on site, including pigs, chicken, fish, vegetables, fruits, it was 
just an amazing experience of cozinha mineira.

++ Overall my trip was great, it was interesting to come back to my birth place and see it 
with the eyes of an adult. It seemed like the place had changed quite a bit from what I 
remembered, but I also know I also see things a bit differently now. Seemed like the country 
has seen a lot of prosperity in the last 2 mandates and the people have a higher standard of 
living now. The rich seem richer than ever and the poor not as poor as they used to be. 
Unemployment seems to be a problem of the past (at least in SP) and lack of skilled labor 
is more of the issue nowadays. I feel that despite the hundred of colleges available now, 
the quality of the majority of these isn't high enough to supply skilled workers to the 
growing economy. Corruption and white collar crime has improved as well, except in the 
government. I truly believe that if the country had less corruption it would be a much more 
prosperous place, potentially a first world nation. The only problem is that for us tourists 
things are not as cheap as they used to be.

++ Well, there is much I could talk about from my trip, but that would be boring to read, so 
I'll stop here. Thanks to Tio Zeh and Tia Vera for the hospitality, I had a great time. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"a clever fool and a foolish wise man"
2011/05/19 09:35

++ I'm off to Brazil today, I haven't visited the old country in almost 10 years. I bet a lot of 
things have changed and a lot of people have moved. Unfortunately I'm not actually going anywhere 
touristy, this will be mostly a trip to see family and old friends. Should be nice. I do get to 
eat some of that great Brazillian food I grew up with, that's definitely something I'm looking 
forward to.

++ Aside from that, a lot has happened in the last little while. Carlin finished school, and was 
very fortunate to have found a job a month before the end of her exams. I'm very proud of her. 
The job is near Guelph for an environmental consulting company, which is really the kind of work 
she was looking for. She had to move to Guelph which fits in nicely with our long term plans of 
moving to Guelph at some point. The only problem is that we're living apart for the next 9 months 
or so. I've seen Guelph a bit since she moved and it does seem like a nice city. It feels a bit 
smaller than Barrie, but still has almost everything you may need there. Everything has been 
going very smoothly for us really, the only exception was dealing with Toronto hydro and Guelph 
hydro. The two seem very unorganized and it feels like in order to get anything done with them, 
it takes a few phone calls and a lot of persistence.

++ Lastly, my work is fine too, I've been doing a lot of work with operant conditioning for 
the last 5 months, it has become my main focus this year. I even posted a short video on youtube 
but the animals were sort of shy, I hope to post another video in a little while showing the 
model in more detail and giving a brief explanation of what it is. Speaking of youtube, I've 
also posted quite a few "let's play minecraft" videos, which if you are a fan of the game you 
should look them up by searching "zoah minecraft" on youtube.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"on 2011 elections"
2011/04/28 09:41

++ We are getting close to Election Day in Canada, and candidates and parties are working very hard 
to earn our votes. This is unfortunately the first time I am actually getting informed and I would 
like to share my opinion.

++ All parties ultimately have the best interest of the country in mind (ideally) but the bottom 
line is that you can’t make everyone happy. Furthermore, we don’t live in a world with perfect 
political structures or ideal economic policies. I may come across somewhat socialist to some, but 
I wouldn’t want anyone to judge my opinion on those premises since that would be a logical fallacy 
and would go completely against my goal here, I just want to paint the picture I see and let the 
reader be the judge. I would love to get some feedback as well, maybe learn something as well.

++ As I said above, there is no perfect form of government, to quote Churchill “Democracy is the 
worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried”. I agree with that 
statement that democracy is the best we’ve come up with so far. In Canada, unlike many other developed 
nations such as the USA, we use a parliamentary form of democracy which has many great aspects as 
well as some drawbacks. From observing discussions and how politics are made in Canada, I believe 
the parliamentary system allows more areas and communities to express their voice, as well as it allows 
parties that are not in power to still have the opportunity to participate in decisions made in the 
House of Commons. On the other hand, this also causes politics to move very slowly and sometimes 
irrelevant rhetoric occurs just for the sake of gaining popular support over some particular issue. 
I will point out Jack Layton here, since watching him over the past 4 years or so, I began to realize 
I have no idea what he wants or what he believes. His opinion is ALWAYS just the opposite of the 
majority, it gets very annoying and it perfectly illustrates the problems with parliamentarism. I do 
have to point out this type of party leader is not very different from what you see in other countries, 
the only problem is that Layton has a much more active political role than John McCain for example. On 
the other hand, Stephen Harper has a very distinct way about conducting himself since he’s been in power. 
He is often not very interested in the opinion of the opposition; he often makes decisions on his own 
and keeps much of the important information away from the public. I can use a few examples of how 
Harper is more of a guy that doesn’t care much for our parliamentary system. In some ways that’s not 
a bad way to rule a diverse country like Canada, but it does require decisions to be made which reflect 
the will of the people. I have to say most decisions I can use as examples here don’t reflect what I 
think is best for our nation. Some people may like his style, and I can’t argue much with that, but 
his disobedience to the Supreme Court in the Omar Khadr case is a perfect example of how he is not 
great at playing in a team. I grew up hearing that the best leaders are the leader that can hear what 
others have to say, Harper is just not that kind of leader. The other example I would like to bring up 
is the purchase of our CF-35s in recent months, this was a decision that had very little input from 
the opposition, and the information given to the public before the purchase was false, stating just 
about 50% of the actual costs of such decision. Personally I do think there are good reasons to invest 
in our military, but I also feel that given our current political state and relations with other nations, 
we may not necessarily need such an expensive upgrade to our air force at this time. However, given 
the current state of our economy, national debt and ultimately the world economy, I definitely believe 
there is a large need for investments in related areas.

++ The Conservatives are not as right winged as the Republicans in the United States, however in a 
comparative scale; they are the party most similar to them. In terms of views of how an economy should 
work, they share some of the same core values, these include:

- Lowering spending in social programs
- Lower taxes 
- Increase military budget

Unlike the US, fortunately for us, they are not as enthusiastic about increasing national debt to 
allow for economic growth, which in my opinion uses similar principals to a Ponzi scheme. 

++ I think there is enough debate on why republicans and conservatives hold such views. I think people 
should be allowed their opinions of course, but I can’t refute the fact that some opinions are just 
wrong. I could go on all day giving examples of how these economical strategies causes an increase in 
the gap between social classes, and I could even more easily talk about examples of how the vast 
majority of underdeveloped nations adopt these forms of strategies, but the relevance of those examples 
would be too easily contested. On the other hand we have a perfectly good example of a world super 
power of the 20th century slowly becoming more like a developing nation with a huge economy. I’m talking 
about the USA, with its significant increases in uneven distribution of wealth, increases in poverty as 
well as a massive decrease in the level of education of its population. America has been moving towards 
this kind of nation since the 80’s. There are many opinions on why this is the case, and I’m not going 
to get into much detail on this, but perhaps Cold war propaganda, corporate greed and the fantasy of 
the American dream are some of the factors. It is shocking to me how socialism is almost a swear word 
in the USA, “No, we don’t want equal opportunities, look at Russia and Cuba”. Unfortunately, they 
fail to see that socialism is not communism, and socialist tendencies have been very effective in 
countries that are actually growing sustainably. By socialist tendencies, I would use examples such 
as increased taxation which can then be used in the development of infrastructure as well as social 
programs, and even the management of essential services being a national affair (ie. Universal healthcare, 
policing and education). Now what are some examples of nations that are managed in a more socialist way? 
I would like to point out Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway which have 
consistently been on the top of charts of best nations to live in. These nations are well managed, all 
of them have some form of universal healthcare, and the gap between social classes is nowhere near what 
you find in developing nations and the US. These are countries with smaller but stronger and stable 
economies, and a lot of attention to research and infrastructure.

++ Now let me talk a little bit about tax cuts. In theory, Harper’s plans of cutting taxes has good 
intentions, which is to help people out in difficult times by giving people a little bit of extra 
spending money, which in turn should go back into the economy helping it get back on it’s foot. Sounds 
good doesn’t it? However, the part that is not entirely illustrated in this picture is the fact that 
taxes are paid by people who are employed and people who are making money; therefore you really aren’t 
addressing the problems of unemployment and sustainable growth. Implementing things like infrastructure 
spending, incentives for low income students to be able to afford higher education as well as more 
interest free student loans on the other hand are more long term plans that would actually help economic 
growth as well as unemployment. Also, it is not very politically advantageous to do too much long term 
projects because if the other party gets to power before you can reap the benefits of these projects, 
then other party can take all the credit. That’s very unfortunate, and much like what is seen in 
microeconomies, sustainable growth is a result of a long term strategy, band-aid solutions are just 
good for getting elected. This brings me to one of the first points in Michael Ignatieff’s campaign; which 
was to increase funding for higher education in Canada. This is a long term project, unlike Harper’s 
tax cuts. 

++ Now let me talk a little bit more about the Liberals. I have to say I am not the biggest fan of 
Michael Ignatieff, and I just don’t think he is necessarily the right leader for the party. My 
opinion of him has improved somewhat since he started his tour last month, but I’m still not 
convinced. The thing is, I can’t say I like Stephen Harper and I specially don’t like Jack Layton 
for reasons I’ve already pointed out. Elizabeth May is likeable but she has no chance and I 
wouldn’t want to waste my vote on her. I also think her party is not necessarily minority material 
anyway. So based on that I have to look past the leaders and into what party I believe can do 
the best for Canada. Historically, the Liberal Party has been the most influential party in Canada 
with notable leaders such as Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. Paul Martins mandate was tainted 
by a scandal, but I would imagine that a lesson had to be learned from that, unfortunately that 
scandal is definitely part of the reason Conservatives became popular. Cretien was another decent 
leader, perhaps not the most revolutionary politician, but one that was honest and kept the 
country in the top of the list of best countries to live in during his time in power. Since the 
Conservatives took over with their minority government Canada has slowly dropped in the ranking, 
and I feel Canada has moved somewhat to the right during this period. Therefore, these are some 
of the reasons I feel that it is important for me to vote this May 2nd, and it’s important for me 
to vote for the option I feel could make the best option available. I hear a lot of people 
say “I won’t vote because I don’t like any of the parties/candidates”, and I’ve said that a lot 
in the past. However, that is not a great way to exercise my opinion; a better way is to weight 
out the available options and vote for the best one, even if it isn’t perfect.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"From blocks to creations"
2011/04/01 09:27

++ Just recently I've found out about yogscast. Not sure if I ever mentioned but I'm a fairly 
avid podcast listener and I'm always looking for new good shows. One of my favorites is "The Shaft" 
which is a Minecraft related podcast. In a show a few weeks back they invited the 2 guys that make 
the Yogscast podcasts and youtube videos. Well it turns out they are absolutely hilarious. There 
is a big problem though, I can't listen to their show on the subway, it just makes me laugh the 
whole time and I feel like an idiot. I don't think it's acceptable to be happy and laughing 
hysterically in the subway during rush hour. People just keep looking at you and making you feel 
out of place. But I suppose that's my predicament. Anyway, anyone looking for some cheap laughs 
look no further, either look for yogscast on youtube or the itunes store for their podcast. You 
don't necessarily need to be a minecraft fan or even a video game fan to appreciate it.

++ On another note, I've recently started a Let's Play series on youtube, so if you are curious 
to see it just click on this link to my youtube channel. I'm hoping to also post a video that my 
mom keeps asking me about, which shows my operant animals from work. I might do that soon as I 
have the footage already, just have to make it into a reasonable format. It comes in some MTS 
format I've never seen before.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Projetos novos"
2011/02/16 09:11

++ It's been a little while since I last updated but like always I can come up with an excuse. This 
time around I've been working fairly hard on a presentation I had to give out about animal models 
of stroke. I think I ended up with a pretty decent one. Also, because of all the work I ended up 
putting into it I'm even considering uploading it to youtube or something. Not only it was quite 
a bit of work but, I'm curious about screen capturing programs and video editing lately. I figured 
this would be a nice little project to get my teeth into that and learn more. The other reason 
for uploading it is also the lack of videos on the subject. I find that the youtube crowd is not 
well represented by the scientific community. The types of folks putting out videos tend to be 
more tech oriented and they often have less diverse interests. I do enjoy watching a lot of the 
content out there, but an example of what I mean is for example the number of minecraft videos 
you can find compared to the number of biology related videos. It's not necessarily an even comparison.

++ I've also rekindled my interest for programming so I'm starting to fool around with C++ again. I'm 
hoping I'll get a bit further this time around. If anyone knows of any good books, websites or 
videos that teach C++ well I'd be very interested. I'm comfortable with a lot of the basics but 
I'm having some problems understanding some things conceptually. I found a great set of lessons 
from XoaX which have been absolutely great, the only problem is that he doesn't chew some of the 
harder concepts down, making it somewhat challenging for me. A friend has also been very helpful 
in explaining some of the harder concepts as well.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Fundamentally against fundamentalism"
2011/01/13 9:20

++ Some of the most heated arguments since this last weekend have been about the shooting in Tucson 
that occurred last Saturday. After observing a lot of the discussion going on in the US I feel 
somewhat perplexed with the reactions from both republicans and some of the democrats. I think it 
is fairly obvious that the shooting was not directly caused by messages from republicans, and to 
make that direct link is to me just as absurd as linking the shooting to marijuana like the David Frum 
tried to do. Obviously the shooter was a nut case, but the fact is, this is the perfect opportunity 
for Americans to reevaluate the way their country is moving more and more into a polarized political 
division that is mainly driven by extreme forms of discourse. Not only that, but perhaps using 
some common sense and avoiding language filled with hate and propaganda aimed at achieving their 
goals without instigating reason or healthy discussion.

++ A few good examples of the kind of language that makes me sick are the way tea partiers like 
Glenn Beck will freely say "Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about 
killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire 
somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I 
could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?". Sara Palin is on that same boat as well 
with her "Don't retreat, just reload" mantra. That kind of language is not healthy, and it only 
instigates weak minded republicans to view anything democrat as their enemy. It is very scary to 
think about how many Americans jumped the fence on the last mid-term elections due to propaganda. 
The tea party in a lot of ways reminds me of the rise of fascism in Italy during one of their 
worst economic periods. It is easy to manipulate people's political views when the situation is 
bad, especially with extreme points of view and propaganda that targets uninformed citizens.

++ On the other hand, last night I watched President Obama give his speech in the Tucson memorial. 
He did a good job when he talked about the victims and I felt that portion of his speech was 
effective. However, he attempted to use the shooting as a way to allow Americans to review bigger 
political issues such as gun law's and other possible aspects of American politics that may need 
revision. Unfortunately, Obama failed at really being true to the victims in the sense that he 
did not use the opportunity to really say anything meaningful regarding the current political 
scene in America. I really feel like Obama is always trying to please too many people which 
prevents him from actually being able to do anything meaningful. In the end he talked a lot about 
nothing and probably kept a lot of democrats wanting more out of that speech. Unlike the clinically 
insane tea partiers that went as far as using the shooting to say that Obama hates white people, 
the republicans are using the shooting as an opportunity to do what they have been doing for two 
years now, bend over. Americans need a strong and charismatic leader, Obama is just not it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"It's better than keygen music"
2010/12/07 15:57

++ There are only rare moments on a gamer's life that you discover a truly new and amazing game. 
Usually when good games come out, you either know about it a really long time beforehand or it is 
a sequel or it is an improvement on another game. From memory, I can only think of one other time 
I discovered a true gaming gem. That was with Dwarf Fortress. Games like that really make you 
happy to be a PC gamer. Anyway, I recently came across an article on IGN about an indy game called 
minecraft. I read the article and did some more research to find out what this game was and I just 
couldn't understand its appeal. Basically, this is an independent game with very simple graphic 
and no defined goals. Mind you this game is still in alpha phase of development and it already has 
a huge following. I had to look deeper and find out what this game is about.

++ Minecraft was the idea of one "Notch Person????", who was a programmer that left his job in 
early 2009 to begin working on his own little project. He wanted to develop an independent game 
and possibly make some cash with it. Well, very early (I don't remember but I think it was something 
like 2 weeks after he started) he allowed users to try out the early game over a weekend. Forgive 
me since I forget numbers, I'm writing from my blackberry, but I think he sold around 20k copies 
of this very early alpha after one weekend. This kind of showed him that his idea had a lot of 
potential. Long story short, it is now almost 2011 and he's still in alpha phase having sold 800k 
copies of his alpha pre-order copy. Each copy going for 10 euros equals a lot of cash. He has now 
founded a company in Stockholm where he has started to hire a small team and he's living his dream.

++ This really is an inspiring story for fans of indy games. The Minecraft community is growing a 
lot and is very much alive. I always admired the DF community but Minecraft is a much more mainstream 
indy and I think it really captured all DF offered in terms of indy experience but for a much 
broader audience. Well, I've said all this but I still haven't really talked about what the game is.

++ Minecraft is a single/multi player survival sandbox. You are basically a first person character 
that wakes up in a strange land. You walk around in this procedurally generated world with different 
biomes and neutral creatures during the day. You start with an empty inventory and from there you can 
harvest almost anything in this blocky environment to create whatever you want within its limitations. 
The very first day you basically should use your time to build a hideout. The world appears nice and 
friendly during the day but as soon as it is night, all sorts of hostile creatures appear and try to 
kill you. Most notably the Creeper, which is a green hoping monster that blows up when he gets close 
to you. The world offers a great array of places to explore and looking for new areas to explore is 
great fun, especially in the underground cave systems where the really cool resources are . After all, 
the game is called minecraft. This is a really solid game and I intend to try out the multiplayer feature 
soon. I hear the multiplayer is really where it's at.

++ So if you are into games that allow you a lot of freedom and open endedness you should try this 
one out. I've posted a page with my creations from my first world. Unfortunately this was 
pre-halloween patch so I had no biomes.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Audiofile"
2010/11/26 08:19

++ So I've been doing quite a bit of shopping around, Xmas is coming and this year our big purchase 
will be a new sound system for the TV. I did quite a bit of research and in the end decided the 
best thing to do at this point would be to get a decent receiver and a 2.1 set of speakers. Later 
on I can finish buying speakers, I just don't have space to put a 5.1 setup in my current apartment 
and this way the blow in my pocket won't be as severe. I decided to build my own system for a few 
reasons, I hear you get more bang for your buck this way and it is a new area for me to get nerdy 
with. I've never done much with sound systems before despite my appreciation for good sound. Last 
year I bought a solid headphone (Sennheiser HD555) and that purchase really showed me what I was 
missing using crappy earphones. This time I want that experience with my home theater.

++ So I ended up getting a Denon AVR-591 receiver, which was in my opinion the right pick. I was 
in between this Denon and a few other models (Yamaha HTR 5063, Harman Kardon AVR-1600, Pioneer 
VSX-820K, Yamaha RX-V567 and Onkyo TX-SR508). The Denon seemed to be the best for me due to its 
price was was much better than most of the other options and the fact that I didn't see a good 
reason to go with a 7.1 receiver. I don't think I'll ever have a particularly large living room so 
7.1 is pretty much just gimmick for me. The AVR-591 is a 5.1 receiver, which apparently is the 
exact same receiver as the Denon AVR-1611. I found out these are identical in the inside and the 
1611 (7.1) is usually sold at more specialized stores where the 591 is usually sold in more general 
stores such as best buy and Future Shop. It was good to know that.

++ Looking for speakers on the other hand, was very different and I really had to just go to 
stores and test them out to find out what I like. I knew I was going to buy only an entry setup 
this year and I was in between getting a 3.0 setup with 2 towers and a matching center or a 2.1 
with 2 bookshelf speakers and a sub. After quite a bit of reading I discovered the 2.1 setup would 
probably be a better start and possibly a cheaper option for now as well. This way I can worry 
about spending the big bucks on towers later on if I want. So after looking at quite a few speakers 
from Klipsch, Polk, Bose, Energy and Martin Logan I had a better sense of what I like. In my 
opinion I found the Energy speakers to sound a little too weak and flat unless I was looking at 
a pair of towers. The Bose speakers were just bizarre, they looked good, they were priced like 
they were good but I couldn't figure out their sound, it wasn't as plain as the Energys but they 
just didn't sound natural at all to me. I found the models I was looking at to be just plain 
overpriced for what it was. My two favorite brands in the stores were Polk Audio and Klipsch. The 
Klipsch speakers were definitely the coolest looking speakers but the Polks in my opinion offered 
the best value with pretty reasonable aesthetic appeal as well. In the end I ended up liking the 
Polk RTiA1 speakers which were also on sale but I knew FShop was going to have a big sale yesterday 
so I waited. So I found out that for an extra 20 bucks I was able to get the RTiA3s yesterday, 
which are a step up in that line and I'm so happy with the price I paid for them.

++ Lastly I did some shopping around for subs as well. I listened to a few at the store and the 
two I liked were a Klipsch 10" and the Martin Logan Dynamo 500 (also 10"). After doing quite a 
lot of reading on audiophile's opinions on subs, I concluded that the Martin Logan's are fairly 
well respected subs. At similar price range the only other options I seemed to have in order to 
get a really solid sub were from SVS and HSU, which were both an online only option for me. SVS 
seem to be the absolute best subs out there according to "them" audiophiles. Well it turned out 
I was able to get a really solid deal on the Martin Logan subs which made me very pleased, as 
ML's are considered a very high end brand. Anyway, this is a summary of my findings from the 
many hours of research I did since last weekend on the topic. I hope if anyone out there is 
looking to build up a HT that this may be useful information. Oh, on a very different note, I 
promised a few people I would post a starting guide for DF on my website, and I have, it's on 
the main menu.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Invisible hand or imaginary hand?"
2010/11/07 16:09

++ This is probably one of the funniest things I've heard this week. Watching Bill Maher, he asked 
Bill O' Riley why he thought the rich were worth roughly 27% of the wealth in the US, where in the 
beginning of the 80's they only owned about 9%. O'Riley's response was that this was an effect from 
our technological advancements.

++ But anyway, I have been learning and reading a bit of "Capitalism and Freedom", which is a book 
by Milton Friedman. Seemed like an interesting book and let me say first that I am a true supporter 
of capitalism and all it has done for humanity. Having said that, I have to say I believe there is 
a fundamental difference between capitalism and free market. In some ways I feel Friedman uses the 
word capitalism when he is really referring to free market. So that was a flag right away that I 
wouldn't really agree with a lot of his ideas.

++ Friedman claims that humanity's biggest achievements were a result of individual genius and not 
as a result of governmental directives. He uses examples such as Newton, Shakespeare, Bohr, Edison 
and Ford. While those are examples of what he is trying to argue, I would mention the involvements 
of governments in the development of more recent achievements such as the understanding of nuclear 
physics, space exploration and the internet as being some of the most important achievements of the 
20th century, all only possible due to governmental support. I know most of these examples are recent, 
but I would argue the progress in politics and the improvement in the way nations are runned are 
also part of the reason for that. Putting all that aside, I would also like to bring up that the 
quality of life should be seen as important as well, and that technological progress should not be 
used as the sole way to measure human achievements.

++ "Free market, not government, ensures the protection of individual rights and standards of quality 
and delivers extraordinary prosperity to those who seek it." I don't even know where to start on this 
statement. I think I may instead just mention, Sweat shops and social alienation that are clear 
consequence of greedy corporations doing anything possible to increase profits. These two examples 
illustrate how free market is able to exploit social and economical disparities between countries, 
lacking ethics and taking away work that could actually benefit the people of their countries of 
origin by providing more reasonable wages at the cost of increased profits. This fits a concept I 
always fall back to, that nothing comes from nothing. Increased profits come from the exploitation 
of less fortunate people to benefit those who don't need it.

++ Friedman also believes free markets are the basis of personal and political liberty. Friedman goes 
as far as saying that a healthy private economy naturally provides a check on the power of the 
state. While I don't necessarily disagree with this statement, I believe a free market with too much 
power doesn't stop at providing checks on the power of the state but at some point they begin to 
influence the state into making decisions to benefit those with too much power. I don't think there 
is much arguing that powerful corporation in many sectors spend a lot of resources on lobbying to 
make sure the state doesn't anything too drastic that could negatively affect their business. That's 
part of what makes me believe it is imperative to have a strong economy based on capitalist ideals, 
but a sustainable economy that benefits the people and is monitored by the state. I believe it is 
just as important for the state to keep checks on the power of the corporations as it is for the 
corporations to keep check on the power of the state. 

++In Capitalism and Freedom, the author also talks about the great depression. He says that the view 
it as a failure of the markets is false, arguing the depression was largely a failure of government. 
His argument is that the failure of the government to increase money supply in the wake of bank 
collapses is what caused the depression. However, and this may be just me, it sounds a lot like 
Friedman is blaming the government for the great depression for not doing something and saying at 
the same time that governments shouldn't try to control the economy. I know I have the perspective 
of someone living in a recession after the great depression, where a lot of funds were injected into 
the economy from federal funds in order to minimize the impact of the recession and seeing its 
effects. As much as I think the money allocation for the most part was a half ass response to what 
was wrong and continues to be wrong, I can't deny the effects it had on the economy. A lesson was 
definitely learned from the great depression, and that lesson was not to let it work itself out. I 
think the only aspect of this topic I agree with Friedman is that the money spent as stimulus 
packages are mostly inefficiently allocated.

++ Lastly, Friedman talks a lot about governments controlling people to act against their immediate 
interest to promote a "supposedly general interest". As much as he does have good examples of bad 
regulations that originated from governments in the past, I would always argue that his examples 
are clearly the error of the people in charge at the time but not of the government as a whole. The 
same way markets are highly modulated by individuals in good and bad ways, the government is also 
subjected to "bad calls" from the people in power. People are bound to make mistakes, but the error 
of the few should not invalidate the value of the whole. In the same manner influential individuals 
have the ability to destroy their company, individuals can also destroy their own political parties 
and open the way for a change in power. As I said there were some good examples of what he calls 
unjustifiable government regulations, there are many I'd like to say I strongly disagree such as 
relation of banks, pensions, minimum wages and public housing. Friedman claims minimum wage 
implementation simply increased unemployment; he says public housing concentrated poverty in pockets 
and social security created dependence for people who might have otherwise contributed to the economy. 
I feel most of his examples are circumstantial and simply point out flaws in the implementation of 
good policies rather than weaken the value of the policies themselves.

++ Its interesting to read Friedman's ideas and note that his right winged views are still used in 
politics today. I think he does bring a lot of interesting ideas to the table and he points out a 
lot of flaws in social programs and government regulations. It is important however, to look at his 
views with the knowledge that he lived in a different time without a lot of the advancements we've 
had in the understanding of economics in the last 30-40 years. It is similar to reading the works 
of ancient Greeks in the natural sciences and admiring their ingenuity for their time. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Not much of a deepwater horizon"
2010/11/19 9:53

++ This year we heard a lot about the disaster involved with spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico. 
There was a lot of bad press on offshore drilling and BP. Now that the spill is not making headlines 
a few times a week, how much do people care? How much has anyone learned with that particular 
disaster and what was done to avoid new disasters like that one from happening. Like with everything 
else, catastrophes tend to be a time where politicians are expected to display leadership and justify 
voters' confidence in them. Obama obviously cannot be blamed for the BP spill any more than his 
predecessors but he had the spotlight for a while and didn't really accomplish much with it. BP was 
punished for their corner cutting conduct but the problem doesn't seem to be getting tackled any more 
than before. I have actually heard more being done here in Canada about it than in the US, such as 
Nova Scotia's ban on offshore drilling in certain areas. This is obviously very little and doesn't 
really attempt to tackle the bigger issue which is our dependence on oil.

++ I know its easy to criticize without really suggest any way to improve things. Well, a possible 
way to start changing the way we consume petroleum would be to change things where people actually 
care, their pockets. It's very nice and noble to talk about ways to save our environment from our 
lifestyles, but the truth is nothing significant is likely to happen just because we want to save 
the earth, unless people find ways to make more money out of it or if people are loosing too much 
money the way it is. So a possible way to start shifting people's mentality is the introduction of 
a meaningful carbon tax. This is in no way a novel idea, but it just seems to make sense taxing 
things that we want to discourage, such as oil use and cut taxes on things we want to encourage, such 
as employment. There needs to be more incentives for decreasing consumption of oil as well, which 
could affect people more directly. Just as important should be the investment in research toward 
alternatives.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"They hide in plain sight"
2010/10/19 17:31


++ I just started to work with a addiction/withdrawal model recently. This is a model that 
involves administering nicotine to adult rats chronically for just over a week. This is done 
using an osmotic pump filled with nicotine that delivers the drug at a constant rate. This is 
supposedly a very effective way of creating nicotine dependence in a short amount of time, 
opposed to just giving them nicotine in discrete doses a few times a day. Anyway, once the animals 
are dependent on the stuff, its possible to precipitate withdrawal very abruptly by giving them 
a dose of mecamylamine. This drug is a nicotine cholinergic receptor antagonist, which just means 
it binds to the same receptors as nicotine preventing the drug from having an effect. The thing 
is, in a normal scenario where a person is trying to quit smoking, the levels of nicotine in the 
blood/brain drop, where in this case the levels of nicotine are maintained constant, they just 
have no effect. The result is the same really, except that using the antagonist is a lot easier 
to control in an experimental situation.

++ In order to do an experiment however you also need to be able to quantify things, and since 
rats can't tell me how they feel, I have to find that out some other way. That's done in my case 
by conditioning them to develop an aversion to a particular environment. Meaning these nicotine 
dependent rats are put in one of two environments after they receive the memamylamine and they 
are put in the other environment after been given a "placebo". This way animals will associate 
one environment with feelings of withdrawal, and they will associate the second environment 
with not feeling withdrawal. On a third session then, animals are placed in a situation where 
they can chose whether they prefer one environment or the other by spending more or less time 
inside them. It's sort of a way to see whether the animal felt sick after we precipitated the 
withdrawal.

++ If all this works (which does) and its conducted properly, then it becomes possible to test 
compounds that may either diminish the dependence on nicotine (or any other addictive substance) 
or diminish the discomforts associated with withdrawal.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Civing hard"
2010/09/07 09:40


++ I couldn't deal with the temptation of playing the newest game in the civilization series. 
Recently I had been playing civ4 quite a bit as I felt it was still too early after civ4 to 
release a civ5, so I wanted to enjoy the previous game until the last moment as I feared the new 
game would do what civ4 did to civ3, which is to make me never look back in the series.

++ Well so yesterday after installing it I started a game as Alexander. I had read enough about 
the game to know pretty much all the changes and I knew what to expect. I also knew that I would 
only see if I like the game once I try it, which was true. Keep in mind. I've only played the 
game for about 5-6 hours so far so this may not be my final opinion of the game.

++ The first big thing I noticed was obviously how amazing the game looks. Unfortunately that also 
translated into a more sluggish experience than what I am used to in civ4. This is not a new 
feeling to me as I remember basically getting a new PC when Civ4 came out so I wouldn't judge the 
game negatively for that. Anyway, the game looks great and does feel a bit more streamlined than 
civ4. It also seems to have much less micromanagement opportunities, which may not be a good thing 
for more serious civers. The thing about it having a cleaner UI is that things were not terribly 
obvious to begin with. The basics were very intuitive but things that I was used to doing as a 
more veteran player I had to look around for a while on how to do it. The civilopedia concept is 
back but I feel that it is much less in depth about the game, spending a bigger portion of the 
resources giving historical information about things. I think it's great to want to immerse players 
more into the game as well as giving them bits of history as well, but firaxis shouldn't do 
that at the cost of gameplay information.

++ Yes, gameplay. I still haven't really made up my mind about that yet. It feels very different 
from civ 4. I can with certainty that I really like what they did with the military aspect of 
the game. The higher individual value of units is great, I like how it makes you more attached and 
invested in particular units you build. Not only that but the one unit per tile and the ranged 
units add a much more interesting tactical dimension to combat. Terrain just makes the whole 
thing even better. The tech tree in this game seems a lot smaller. This and maybe the higher cost 
of things makes the game feel like you are not doing as much. The game doesn't seem to move any 
faster even though you do last so somehow I feel like it doesn't have as much room for in depth 
strategies, maybe I'm wrong. The other thing I don't really like at this point is how my empire 
doesn't feel as much of an empire, something about the dynamics of cities makes me feel like I 
control a bunch of city states instead. The actual addition of city states was actually interesting 
and good, I just think they can probably do more with it than what they are now.

++ Overall I like what I've seen so far but I have to say the wow factor I got from civ 4 was 
most definitely bigger. At the time I had no doubt civ4 was superior to civ3, this time I'm not 
as sure about it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"The hanse and me"
2010/09/23 09:07


++ Civ 5 just came out this week, I've been waiting for this game a while and I'm very much 
looking forward to picking up a copy. In anticipation for 2 games I've been eagerly waiting I've 
tried a few games in the last little while. I tried the Lord of the rings MMO once it became free 
and I'm glad I didn't pay for it before. The game is really not that good. After playing WoW for 
several years, trying Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I would say LOTRO was the least interesting 
of all of them. Wow was the most successful one of those games for a reason, it's the best one. I 
don't understand why AoC didn't do a bit better, it was glitchy on its infancy but the game was 
pretty good. Great looks, the best MMO combat system and it was actually very fun to play.

++ Another game I tested out recently was Left 4 Dead, which I had only briefly played before. The 
game is kind of fun and the co-op online option are quite fun. The problem I have with the game 
is the lack of options in weapons, and mostly the engine. It wasn't the most realistic shooter 
I've played. The game does also gets a bit repetitive despite the randomness of waves and enemies. 
It got old really fast I guess.

++ The most recent game I played was Patricians 4. I had played Patricians 3 before and thoroughly 
enjoyed despite how old the game was when I tried it. Patricians 4 is not all that different from 
Patricians 3, very little was added I think but they updated the game to look like new and fresh. 
Overall, I've spent a lot of hours already on the game. It is probably my favorite trading game. 
Nothing really matches it, I find the economy is quite realistic despite some very fundamental 
differences from a real economy. Anyway, it's the only game in the genre that makes trading feel 
fresh and fun. The game progresses in such a way that you are always looking to get more and find 
more to do, and the content is there to keep you engaged. Anyway, this is what I've been playing 
while waiting to get the much anticipated Civ5 and FIFA11.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Butt funk proliferation"
2010/08/07 09:16


++ So Carlin has been looking for a new laptop for this upcoming school year. Fortunately she is 
not getting a mac this time around. So the first option she decided to look at was IBM. I guess 
that wouldn't be a surprise for someone converting from macs to PCs. Well I was slightly against 
the IBM idea because I didn't want her to pay the premium for an IBM, but she convinced me it was 
a good idea because she actually found a reasonably priced model. It was an ideapad, I can't 
remember the exact model. Well she bought it about 2 weeks ago. After a few days IBM called and 
said they ran out of that model and were asking if she would be OK with a slightly better model 
with an i5 processor and a bigger HDD. She was all right with the change since she would still pay 
the initial price for it.

++ Tuesday she calls them because they still hadn't sent her the e-mail confirmation they said 
they would send her. She called them and they said they ran out of the other model as well. They 
then said that they would call her back and tell her what was going to happen. They said they'd 
call in 2 days. Well, yesterday they still hadn't called so Carlin called them. After leaving 2 
messages to this Nate guy, who contacted her about a week ago, she talked to another couple of 
people at Lenovo and the basic message they were trying to get across was that Carlin should 
assume her order was canceled. Why would Carlin assume her order was canceled if they never 
called her to tell her that? Also, time is passing, she doesn't have a computer, her order on the 
Lenovo website is still up and she has no idea of what will happen and how long it will take. Bottom 
line here, we will never considering buying an IBM / Lenovo ever again. Lenovo's customer service 
is terrible and to me the shocking part is that they are still in business despite their disorganization.

++ Last night Carlin decided to start looking for another laptop. In the end she narrowed the 
search down to the Dell Studio 15 (I think) and the Alienware M11x. Now, as a gamer I do have 
wet dreams about Alienware computers. After doing quite a bit of reading on the specs of both 
we decided that overall the M11x would be a better option. The computer has a much better GPU, it 
is only 11.6" which might sound small but it makes it a rather mobile machine, it has quite a 
bit of flexibility when it comes to energy consumption and its battery life seems to be quite good 
as well. For Carlin there really aren't that many cons for getting that beautiful machine. Oh 
yeah, did I mention it looks extremely sexy with a backlit keyboard? Yep! The only problem I saw 
in the model she wanted was the fact that it comes with Windows 7 64-bit and only 2Gb of RAM, really
doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you wanna do some gaming. But that was solved by getting an 
extra 2 GB of RAM. So now we just have to wait. In the end Lenovo's horrendous customer service 
was a blessing in disguise.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Not Worthy"
2010/07/02 14:58


++ So today we got eliminated from the world cup. It is the 5th time I've watched the world cup 
and as a Brazillian, you never really expect our team to lose. There are very few occasions where we 
are not the favorites. Well today was no different and we started the game playing beautiful football, 
with a lot of flair and a lot of good opportunities. Didn't take long until we scored but it was 
an offside, which was the right call. By 10 minutes we had a beautiful goal from a poor defensive 
play from the Dutch. The whole first half we really were dominating the game despite some terrible 
calls from the referee. The Japanese ref didn't really make any terrible call the whole game, but 
he had absolutely no control of the game and things that should have been called weren't and a lot 
of dives were called. Brasil had 2 iffy chances where a penalty could have been called. Perhaps 
the first one was somewhat debatable, and it really isn't a shock that it didn't get called. However 
in the second half there was a clear push of a Brazilian player that should have generated a penalty. 
Well that kind of thing happens, but the entire game I was more concerned with what kind of bullshit 
the ref was going to call. I don't really even think I am just being biased, because was was feeling 
that way the whole game, even when we were ahead. And there were bad calls the other ways as well. A 
red card that should have been given to Michel Bastos and a red card that shouldn't have been given 
to Gilberto Silva ( I think it was him). Overall terrible game from that standpoint. In terms of the 
opposition, I really don't think Holland was playing that well, but they scored when they had their 
chances. Very few of their players really stood out, and obviously Sjneider played his part very well. 
I feel like he won the game for the Dutch even if it was through the use of sneaky methods at times. 
Kuyit was fairly good as well, and even if he didn't stand out as much he definitely used more skill 
to do his part.

++ I don't think Holland will win the cup, and in my opinion their team is not worthy of the cup. I 
have rooted for the Dutch in many occasions in the past but I won't be supporting them for the rest 
of this tournament. After watching enough of their games this year I find they play a very mechanical 
football, very different from Brasil despite their identical formation. I almost find insulting 
when I hear both teams have similar style. They have similar formations but play very different 
football. Now I'm just sounding like a sore loser.

++ Finally, I just wanted to say that Dunga, in my opinion, did a great job at the world cup and on 
the way there. His pragmatic approach produced a very efficient team that really performed well 
this year. On the CBC the commentators blamed the coach once again for today's upset. Saying Dunga 
couldn't keep his cool today and that his emotional instability spread to the players. I strongly 
disagree. His attitude and the fact he was talking to the assistants of the ref the whole game had 
little to do with emotional instability and all to do with the fact that they assigned a bunch of 
amateurs to ref a major world cup game. Perhaps, there was room for Dunga to rise to the occasion 
and keep his team calm, but in no way I think he overreacted to anything. The ref tested Brasil 
enough to get our whole team to become nervous in that game.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Leo cancels task: interrupted by Dwarf Fortress"
2010/06/28 00:46


++ So it turns out the government were not overreacting by spending close to a billion dollars on 
security for the G20. As most of the world know by now there were a lot of protesters walking 
around downtown Toronto, and not only that but some group of idiots that called themselves the 
black block were breaking things and setting police cars on fire on the weekend. It is quite 
upsetting to see how far these low lifes went to cause trouble. The worst part is that the only 
thing these morons accomplished was the validation of the ridiculous security spending. It would 
probably be more effective to just stay home and make it so all that spending was in vein. 
Hopefully a lot of these thugs will be going to jail where we'll end up paying for their meals 
for a few years. They really should make inmates have to work for their food, damn useless people. 
They aren't worth the air they breath.

++ Now aside from all these, it really confirms my opinion on the stupidity of the masses, when 
after seeing all that has been happening in Toronto, people criticize the police on their approach. 
If I may say, I think the police has been doing an incredible job at maintaining relative peace. 
I wonder if anyone criticizing the police would feel the same way had the protesters been trashing 
their homes and terrorizing their relatives. And let me give a little advice to those folks, if 
you don't want to get wrongfully arrested in a situation like what we had this weekend, stay home 
or anywhere far from the trouble. If you are stupid to the point of getting involved, you probably 
deserve anything that happened to you. Unless you are a journalist that needed to be in that middle, 
in that case you knew the risk. On a different subject, happy B-Day Bah, I'm not the only one 
getting old here.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Pobebora Aksurus, Wheelmine the Harsh Baldness"
2010/06/23 12:43


++ The only thing better than a long weekend is a long weekend that shouldn't be one. The reason 
this Wednesday feels like a Friday is because of the G20 summit that is taking place in Toronto 
over the next 4 days. Due to security threats in previous summits, the government has been spending 
a lot of money to keep the city safe during the event. In order to avoid incidents a lot of 
companies located downtown Toronto are taking a break. Not only that but the University of Toronto 
will be closed during the summit. So this all means I'll be able to stay and home and chill. Well 
I have a bit of work I took with me but I'm sure it is all stuff I'll be able to do while 
watching some of the round 3 games of the group stage of the world cup. To top all this up Brazil 
plays Portugal on Friday which should be one of the best games of the group round. Don't miss it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
"I love the world cup"
2010/06/16 08:35

++ Yesterday was Brasil's first game and theoretically the easiest one. Well the North Koreans 
certainly looked sharp defensively, making the Selecao work for their 3 points. Brasil was playing 
a 42211, with my favorite player, Maicon, playing very offensively on the right back. He scored 
the first goal from a very nice run on the right wing, very similar to the goal he produced on 
the Confederations Cup final.

++ Kaka and Luis Fabiano which are probably some of the most popular players for Brasil were 
relatively quiet yesterday, but that's likely a consequence from NKorea's strong defensive effort 
on the middle. One player I did not know much about, but who had a rather big presence was 
Michel Bastos who plays for Lyon. He created a few good chances and I will be looking for his 
first goal in the next matches.

++ Now there is one player I have not liked since his first appearance on the team in 2002. I'm 
talking about our central defender Lucio. Somehow he also managed to be our captain. I don't know 
exactly why I dislike him so much but I just find he's a bit of a diver and he does make a few 
too many mistakes for a player so highly rated like him. Just like I've been saying Portugal is 
overrated for year, I've always thought Lucio gets too much credit.

++ Lastly, Julio Cesar. I don't think he was really tested yesterday. Overall I have to say I have 
more confidence in him than most goalies I've ever seen use the Brazilian shirt, but that's only 
because historically we've always had lousy goalies. But hopefully our opposition plays more 
negative football so we don't need to test Lucio and Julio Cesar.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"It begins"
2010/06/14 23:05


++ Last Friday the 2010 FIFA World Cup started, and of course it brings back the incredible 
passion people have for the sport and the event. I have seen quite a few matches so far and fully 
plan on watching as many as I can. Some of the best football in the world is played at the World Cup, 
and there is no reason to believe this time will be any different.

++ France played last Friday against Uruguay, and they ended up the game without score. The 
Uruguayan team has a lot of history, including a record amount of Copa America titles (14 in total), 
as well as the first World Cup title from 1930 (as well as 1950). Both teams looked a bit 
uncoordinated and I felt like passing was a major issue on both sides.

++ Some teams stood out a bit from what I've seen in the games so far. Germany is the one that 
looked very strong on their first game against the Australian team. The Paraguayan side was 
another team that looked relatively sharp tying the Italians 1x1 on the first game. Italy didn't 
look particularly well, but that is one of those teams that will surprise you with good 
performances when they require results.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Pobebora Aksurus, Wheelmine the Harsh Baldness"
2010/05/28 08:53

++ So I finally found out the roster for the Brazillian world cup team is out and is:

GK - Julio Cesar (1), Gomes (12), Doni (23)
D - Maicon (2), Lucio(3), Juan(4), Michel Bastos(6), 
Dani Alves(13), Luisao(14), Thiago Silva(15), Gilberto(16)
M - Felipe Melo(5), Elano(7), Gilberto Silva(8), Kaka(10), 
Josue(17), Ramires(18), Julio Baptista(19), Kleberson(20)
F - Luis Fabiano(9), Robinho(11), Grafite(21), Nilmar(22)

++ Coach Dunga said there is no real surprises on this roster but, I think most people were expecting 
to see Ronaldinho on the roster, who has been having a strong season in his club. I'm not entirely 
sure of his rationale but I think it may not have been a bad move necessarily. The other surprise 
for most is Pato, who also has been playing well in Milan. Personally, I like the team he picked, 
and I have more faith in Dunga's ability to put together a team than most coaches we've had.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"What did you find in the other media"
2010/04/16 09:16

++ So the NHL playoffs began this week, and Carlin and I have been watching quite a few of the games. 
On Wednesday we saw Ottawa win against the Penguins, which was a surprise to both of us, making 
Car even lose a bet. Yesterday, both our favorite teams played, the Canadiens beat Washington, 
which was a huge shocker to everyone, and it was a great game. It finished the regular period on 
a 2x2 tie and Montreal won the game with an awesome shot from Plekanec. Later last night the 
Canucks played another really exciting game against the LA Kings. Vancouver did dominate the game 
but Jonathan Quick made some spectacular saves to keep the game going to overtime. Luongo was 
also forced to make a few huge saves on OT, which allowed Sedin and Samuelson to create a calculated 
goal to finish their 3x2 win in home ice.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"The mind in the V-Tunnel"
2010/03/22 01:05

++ Recently I have discovered a new podcast that became part of my weekly download list. This 
podcast is called "The brain science podcast" by Dr. Ginger Campbell and if anyone is interested 
in neuroscience I can certainly recommend it. It isn't terribly difficult to understand since it 
doesn't get too deep into the physiology of it, but it is still very informative. The very first 
episode I actually heard was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot as it was about consciousness 
and the guest shared a lot of the same views I have about the human mind. Not only that but he 
brought up a lot of concepts that I never heard before. 

++ This whole post might make me sounds like a nerd but I'm sure most people reading this already 
know I am one. The reason I say this is because this guest, Dr. Thomas Metzinger, really reminded 
me of questions about the relationship of the human mind with the world that came up when I 
watched the pilot for Caprica, which by the way was one of the best 2 hours of television I've 
seen in a few years. *spoiler alert* Basically Caprica brought up the questions about what makes 
a person, and how important consciousness is in defining who you are. *SPOILER* In the show, one 
of the main characters is Zoe, who is a very bright teenager that was able to copy her mind into 
a virtual avatar, basically making a copy of herself. Without really getting into how feasible 
this kind of mind xerox is in reality, it was very interesting to think about this copy as being 
a sentient being. The show becomes even more interesting after Zoey dies in a terrorist attack 
and the only piece of her left is this avatar which has her personality, memories, ideas and 
essentially everything that made up the original Zoey, with the exception of her body. To most 
people this all sounds like pure science fiction and isn't a real problem. I would even guess 
most people would not even consider the Copy as a person in any way because she is not real. 
However, the way I see it, this Copy is essentially just as real as the real Zoey. Perhaps it 
is not really Zoey since there was never a real connection between the two. On the other hand, 
someone that believes the mind is just a dynamic compilation of information in the brain, 
could look at this copy and argue that there is no difference between Zoey's mind and her 
avatar's mind. The main difference lies on the fact that Zoey was biologically born and had a 
body to interact with the universe, where the Copy at this point can only interact with a 
virtual world. Well this is where Dr. Metzinger brought some very interesting points, that 
changed my perspective on this even more. 

++ Well let me start by talking about ideas on the relationship of the mind and the brain. 
Which in my opinion is not even as interesting as Dr. Metzinger's take on the relationship 
between the mind and the body. One way to look at the mind, is to see it as being the "essence" 
of an individual. The mind is made up of information of all kinds which can be retrieved and 
modified in different ways, and the use of this information is done in a very particular way 
which relates back to each individual. This is in a sense what makes up someone's personality. 

++ Dr. Metzinger used an interesting phrase to illustrate his ideas on the mind-body relationship, 
which is "consciousness is the appearance of a world". What he means by this is the idea that 
a world appears to you when you wake up in the morning, since you did not perceive it before 
that point. In the same way, when you go from a NREM deep sleep state to a REM sleep and you 
start dreaming. This dream world also appears to you. This same idea can be used when you wake 
up from fainting, or anaesthesia since if you are not conscious, you don't even know that 
there was ever a world or that there was ever a self. This concept becomes even more interesting 
when he talks about the problem of "Phenomenal consciousness". He uses the example of a person 
looking at an apple on a table. The person looking at the red apple sees that image and processes 
it to create this picture of his/her world. Now if you take this exact subjective feeling but 
the person is hallucinating, now his/her world is actually the same as on the other scenario 
however, there is no apple on the table. Regardless of what is real, the point he wants to 
make is that there are common elements in both cases, and the subjective "appearance" of the 
world is what defines what world is out there for each individual. There are of course differences 
between the two cases, and most importantly the fact that in the hallucinating scenario that 
person is not in contact with the physical world, even though he/she can have the exactly same 
conscious "feel". The other problem Dr. Metzinger brought up was the evolutionary reason for 
developing senses in the way we have. He wonders why animals developed something like conscious 
color vision, instead of something that simply analyses wave lengths, why do senses have a 
feel? Then if you ask these questions at a deeper level, why did biological organisms developed 
a conscious first person perspective in the first place. He has a lot of possible explanations 
for these, but one of the more interesting examples he used to show the advantages of being 
conscious was the importance of "selective motor control". This is in essence the idea that 
being conscious makes you more context-sensitive, allowing for more flexible and fine tuned 
movements and decisions related to motor control. The example he gives is of a sleepwalker, 
who is able to do all sorts of things like walking, opening doors and in some cases even 
driving a car. However, sleepwalkers have been show to have relatively motor impaired, they 
more more like a robot, and have little context sensitivity.

++ Now, what is the relevance of this? Well, there is a common idea that this subjective 
appearance of the world relates back to neural correlates of consciousness. So regardless of 
whether the apple is real or a hallucination, your mind understands what that apple is from 
its shape and colors. In the same way, the mind is able to make up a picture of the world using 
colors, sounds, smells and other senses using memories of experiences. So in a sense Dr. Metzinger 
believes that everything in an individual's perceived world is related to these neural 
correlates, meaning consciousness is in the end an internal affair. This is a very neat idea, 
which doesn't mean to say that there is no outside world, but instead it is saying that our 
conscious world is made up of experiences that are properties of the internal models in the 
brain, which create the reality we see. A good analogy would be to think of our brain as working 
as a user interface of the world, much like the experience *Spoiler* Zoe's copy has when she is 
connected to the cylon body.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Physiological equivalent to tautology"
2010/03/01 15:01

Work has been quite busy in the last 3 weeks or so. We've been trying to set up quite a few new 
models to the list of what we can already do. One in particular has been much like a solo project 
for me. This is a model for schizophrenia, and it has already generated fairly good data for me. 
The model essentially looks at rats under the influence of certain compounds that generate 
schizophrenic like behaviour. The particular effects we look at are a sense of dissociation of 
the animal from external stimuli. There is a notion that people/animals with this condition do 
not process stimuli like normal subjects and the idea behind this model is to use this impaired 
ability to put stimuli into context to see if drugs can reverse the effect. Pretty neat stuff really.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Raisin' Heck"

++ The Vancouver 2010 Olympics just finished this Sunday, and our Men's Hockey gold medal was 
certainly the perfect way of concluding the games. I have to say, these Winter Olympics were done 
very well, and the organizers did an amazing job at making every Canadian feel proud of their country. 
We not only won the most gold medals in Winter Olympics of all times, but we also put together one 
of the best opening ceremonies I've ever seen (not so much the closing one). I know I will definately 
miss comming home and watching different events every night, but everything good eventually comes to 
an end. Fortunately we have great moments to remember from these Olympics, including one of the best 
and most exciting hockey games I've ever watched, of course I'm talking about Canada 3x2 US. 
Oh well, now we'll have to wait 4 years for the next Winter Olympics, and hope that the Russians do 
a comparably good job.
++ Carlin and I also started skiing a bit lately. It's nice to enjoy all the snow we get up here, 
and since we're planning to go on a ski trip for our honeymoon, it's good to get back into it now. 
We even got some new equipment for some sweet prices since it's almost the end of the season. We'll 
be raisin' heck in Mont Tremblant next season.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Isn't it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty?"

++ A few weeks ago Carlin and I finally got a chance to see Avatar. It was actually my 4th attempt to 
go see it, on my first three I went into sold out shows and didn't feel like waiting 3-4 hours for 
the next available show. Anyway, the movie was exactly what I thought it would be, pretty much a 3 
hour massage to my visual cortex where I was able to let my frontal cortex sleep for a bit, as 
the movie could have been writen by an infant. Although the infant would have to have been exposed 
to enough movies to be able to pick up all the cliches. All that pretty much matched my expectations. 
Now the interesting part for me was listening to the people talking after the movie. I heard a lot 
of comments praising the movie on every aspect. I agree the movie was nice visually, but besides 
the 3d, it was no better than an intro from a Blizzard game. People were in awe of what they had 
just seen, and honestly I can't help but feel that the only reason so many people had that reaction 
was because they were supposed to. There has been so much advertisement, and hype over the movie 
that most people already have their minds made about the movie even before they see it. Not only 
that but the movie has just the right amount of depth (not much) to be able to capture the general 
public's attention. It's basically shallow enough that most people get it. I have to take off my 
hat for James Cameron for once again making a major Blockbuster that captured everyone's attention.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"The Silicon Plague"
2010/02/??

++ How often do you hear people saying bad things about video games. Most of the time the same people 
bashing video games are people that don't play video games and possibly never had any interest in 
them in the first place. While I can certainly agree that they may have some harmful effects on 
people, kids in particular, people often ignore the good things video games can bring. This is all 
my opinion of course, but ever since Carlin and I got a TV an a PS3 I have been finding myself 
playing less and less PC games. When I talk about PC games, I usually talk about strategy intensive 
games and other games that do require thinking (such as DF, civ4, FM, Galactic Civ, Dominion3, EU3, 
Supreme Commander). These are games you would have little to no interest in playing if you are 
drunk for example. But anyway, not until last week I really stopped to analyse my own thinking 
about this, and I noticed that everytime I would get that urge to play a PC game I would often 
think "Well, maybe tomorrow, I'm tired so I'll just play something on my Playstation". Obviously, 
I don't mean I'm physically tired, since sitting on a chair in front of a computer would rarely 
make you break a sweat. No, I'm usually mentally tired, wanting a break from actually having to think. 
This then started to get me worried that I am turning into console gamer (lazy gamer). For real 
though, if playing these video games provided just as little incentive to thinking as television, 
I would not be having trouble motivating myself to play on my PC right now. I need to start getting 
off my couch and back to my "healthier" addiction, PC games. My goal now is to start playing DF for 
the third time, and get back to playing challenging video games. Having to download 50 page 
strategy guides and read those during lunch just to be able to get a bit further into the game.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Even though it's hard, it's filled with fluid"
2010/01/05 15:14


++ Since we got our PS3 we have been struggling to find a good game that Carlin can enjoy. Finally 
last week we traded in a couple of games we weren't going to play much more for "Little Big Planet". 
For those that don't know what that is, it is a plataformer that came out for PS3 a while back that 
allows players to really customize their characters and their game in other ways. Basically, as you 
play though the regular story line, you get new items which can be used to decorate you character. 
Each player controls a tiny little doll that you can do all sorts of things with, these dolls (or 
sackboys/sackgirls) can then be customized with all the stuff you gather from playing the levels. 
Not only that but as you move on you get stickers and other decorations that you can even use 
anywhere in the levels and pods. Finally, players also have available tools to design their own 
levels with all the stuff they pick up on the way.

++ We've played quite a bit of the story line already and it's a really great game for 2 players, 
which is definitely something we've been having trouble finding for PS3. The game is also quite 
interactive between players, so that some places may only be reached if you are playing with a 
friend. We'll see how much replayability this game has, but it really does seem to have quite a 
bit of potential. I suppose it will all depend on the user made content and its quality.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


"The only way to win is to not play"
2010/01/13


++ Since we went to BC last year Carlin and I have developed a taste for board games. I guess 
playing Monopoly and Risk is really limiting and not knowing what else was out there prevented 
us from really exploring more options. When we were in BC with my sister and her boyfriend we 
played quite a few games of Settlers of Catan which was new to us and it was a ton of fun. When 
we came back to Ontario we decided to look for other board games that we could play here, and 
we hoped to find something more suitable for two players since that would allow us to enjoy it 
more often. After discovering Boargamegeek.com and looking a few other websites we decided to 
get "Dominion". This is an Euro type card game which can be played by 2-5 players. The game is 
actually quite good and learning the rules was very easy after watching a video tutorial on youtube. 
Dominion is a hand management card game, where you are trying to build a strong deck in order to 
get the most victory points before the game ends. For the most part we have played it just the 
two of us, and it works quite well with two players even though I feel like the game is even better 
with 3-5 players since you can use a few cards more effectively. It is also a very quick game, as 
it only lasts about 30-40 minutes a game. After we gained some experience, we can finish a game 
in 20 minutes or so.

++ The next game we got after Dominion was "Agricola" by Uwe Rosemberg. This is a very different 
kind of euro board game. Agricola is relatively new, and it has been one of the most liked games 
in Boardgamegeek.com for the past little while. It is also a 2-5 player game, which so far has been 
a ton of fun with two players. There is a solo option for it as well, but I'm not sure how good 
that would be. Agricola is a game about developing a farm using resources that can be gathered by 
your family in the game. The game has some really interesting mechanics, where all players only 
have a limited number of rounds to play, which makes the game last a certain amount of time. It is 
also extremely balanced in the sense that everything you do well in the game gives you more points 
but maintaining a diverse farm is just as important. The essence of doing well in this game lies 
on balancing your farm and being a jack of all trades rather than a specialist of some type. All 
this to some extent as there are variables every game, which do benefit certain tendencies like 
investing more on planting wheat or having a lot of cattle. Carlin and I have only played this 
game twice using the regular rules and a couple of times using the family rules. The game definitely 
gets more interesting with the regular rules, and I think yesterday we played our best game yet. 
Unfortunately Carlin beat me 45 to 43, which are pretty decent scores for noobies.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Into the K-Zone"
2010/01/05 15:14


++ Well, this is my first post of the year and it has been a while 
since my last one. A lot of things happened since then, including 
our move. Carlin and I finally moved in together, we got a nice 
little apartment in the Davisville area in Toronto. The building is 
a bit old compared to the condo I was living before, but it is much 
more spacious and it is in a nice neighborhood. I did enjoy the downtown 
neighborhood I lived in before, and I can definitely appreciate how 
convenient things were for me, but the new place has a lot of other 
conveniences and it is kind of nice to come out of the apartment to 
parks and residential areas, rather than the stinky Dundas and the traffic 
noise. I know Carlin definitely prefers the place we are now, and I 
definitely enjoy the amount of room we have. Overall it was a great 
change for both of us.

++ Soon after the move we took some time off of work to go visit our parents 
in Barrie. It was very nice to spend Christmas there, and having Xmas eve dinner 
with my parents and their friends and go eat some Christmas turkey with 
Carlin's parents and family. It was also nice to see my sister again before 
she goes on her next destination to learn some French. The other nice 
thing about Christmas is that we end up buying a bunch of stuff, succumbing 
to our capitalist needs. For the new apartment Carlin an I got a new 
LCD TV from Samsung, which was a really nice buy, we found a good price for 
it on The Brick and since Future Shop was a much more convenient place to go, 
we asked them to match the price from the Brick which worked. So for all you 
out there, make sure to check if your electronics are cheaper elsewhere before 
going to future shop. Also, to go with our new 40' TV, we also got a PS3 on Boxing day. 
My sister and I went to Future Shop before it opened @6AM to get some yummy electronics. 
She got herself a Nintendo DSi and I got a deal for my PS3 plus 3 games (Uncharted, 
Infamous and Killzone2). I pretty much finished Killzone 2 in two days, and played a 
lot of Infamous for the rest of the time. Killzone was actually pretty sweet. I'm not 
very used to FPS on consoles but I got the hang of it quite quickly. So finishing 
Killzone wasn't terribly difficult with the exception of a few tougher encounters. 
The game also has a nifty multiplayer system where you join a game and the server 
rotates different objectives which keeps the game fresh. The other cool thing 
about this game is the Skirmish mode that allows you to play the multiplayer 
features of the game without being online by playing bots, which is one thing I 
wish I could do on CoD4.

++ Infamous was also not a bad game either, and being able to move around so freely is 
definitely fun. The only problem is that I tend to get sick of games like this before 
I'm even able to finish it. It always ends up making me want to play some other open 
ended game like GTA, which in contrast allows you to do so much more. Carlin on the 
other hand got herself a few new pieces of gear for her snowboard, so she's been 
trying to go hit the slopes for a while now and I'm hoping she'll get to do that a few 
times before the end of the season. Well I'll stop here, and finish it off just 
wishing everyone a happy new year and happy new decade. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style"
2009/12/07 08:52


++ It's almost Christmas, and winter weather is finally starting to kick in. November was 
quite warm I think but I supposed I shouldn't complain about that. Last week Carlin and 
I went to an Andrea Bocelli concert. It was sort of a Christmas/cd release concert with 
a few very good guests including David Foster and Ana Maria Martinez. The concert was 
incredible and we got to see some of our favorite songs live as well as a good 40 minutes 
of Christmas songs from his new CD. We had a really good time and it was a great way 
to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit for this year, very nice way to end such an eventful year.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Check the airways"
2009/11/26 8:52


++ I just learned today that SI will be restarting all FML servers in 
March. I've mentioned here before about a new game I started to play, 
an MMO called Football Manager Live. Well much like any MMO the main 
point of the game is progression in some way or another, and lately 
my team has been doing quite well. I was getting really into the game 
too. Having said that, today they announced that there will be a general 
reset of the game, meaning everyone in FML will have all their teams, 
skills, stadiums and everything we've worked on improving so far, ERASED. 
Clearly, anyone that knows anything about MMOs knows that they tend to 
have a very opinionated forum population, and as expected this is already 
causing people to go wild on the forums, with plenty of reasons. Now 
that I've introduced the issue, I am ready to do my rant.

++ Much like most MMOs I've played, I tend to stick to long term strategies 
with the most sustainability. Well, since I haven't been playing the game 
for too too long I have not even reached the full effect of my initial 
decisions. I have now built my stadium so that it holds 30k fans which is 
significant. This cost me basically over half of all the resources I've 
had for the entire time I've been playing FML. So SI is taking away all 
this effort and time I spent in getting all that ready, just as I am ready 
to make full use of it. Not only that, but a few seasons ago I started 
investing heavily on scouting for young players, a few of my star players 
are just turning 17 and 18 now. This means that in March when the 
server restarts these players will disappear with 20-21 years of age. 
Meaning all this effort in picking great future players was a waste of my 
remaining resources and of course my time looking through databases and 
making formulas to look for the best buys. These are my two main issues 
with the whole thing, but by reading the forums, losing skills is probably 
another one of the biggest concerns people have.

++ I believe this was a terrible business move, and I really have my 
concerns on whether FML will survive such a drastic blow to their fan 
base. Let me remind that FML has been trying to recruit more subscribers 
for some time now, and one of their biggest campaigns was the "play 
21 days for free" which is how I decided to try out the game. I have 
noticed that this campaign has been steadily been less and less effective 
with each season, bringing in less new members every time, while losing 
current members steadily. My GW shrunk about 40-50% since I've joined it, 
which honestly hasn't really bothered me much. I don't have any business 
training, but my impression is that anyone in business knows that it is 
priority to maintain current customers while trying to get new customers. 
SI for some reasons decided that it would be a great idea to slap all 
the loyal customers in the face in an attempt to fix a problem. This will 
result in a lot of subscription canceling, and I have to say I will 
probably be one of those cancellations. If this happened once, I have a 
feeling it could happen again. I don't see SI coming with a plan that 
will completely revamp the game to avoid this problem again, so using 
a Band-Aid solution on such a major problem, causing most of the fan 
base to be upset is certainly as dumb of a move as it was to launch the 
game prematurely. Now, to be fair I will also acknowledge all the 
people in the forums that support what SI is doing (this is perhaps 
about 5-10% of the subscribers, for the most part new managers that 
will benefit from this). I can understand that SI is only taking these 
measures to resolve an inevitable issue, and I also understand this is 
aimed to maintain a healthy future for FML. Well, let me say this, why 
the hell would we be paying for a beta version of FML then? If this 
game has not been thoroughly planned before they started charging 
subscribers, then basically we have been paying for a beta version. I 
really enjoy FML and I think that the idea behind it is great. However, 
it did not have proper planing behind it, and by taking such drastic 
steps to fix some fundamental issue with the game they have to be fully 
expecting to lose a solid portion of their fanbase. It is a terrible 
move and I am 100% sure if this had happened on any MMO it would have 
disastrous consequences. There will be no "bailout" for SI for making 
mistakes, so FML may take the fall.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"You Lie"
09/27/2009 01:41

++ I'm sure everyone has been hearing a lot about Obama's health care 
reform in the US, but I feel that most of what we get in Canadian news 
is about how republicans are relying on propaganda and confusion to 
try and disrupt this idea from moving forward. What we don't hear much 
is what this reform really means. Well, it really isn't a surprise for 
most people, but the US spends the highest amount of money per capita 
in health care in the world. By this I mean that on average, every 
year, Americans pay over 70% more on health care than any other 
industrialized country. The part that doesn't make sense, is that the 
US are the industrialized country with the worst health care records, 
being on the same level as countries such as Albania and Puerto Rico 
when it comes to numbers like life expectancy and infant mortality. 
Not only that, but there are over 45 million Americans who do not have 
health insurance (roughly 14% of the population), and portion of the 
people that do have find themselves in trouble at times when they need 
the most help. A popular example was the woman who was denied a 
mastectomy because she had not divulged to her insurance company that 
she had acne during her adolescence, so it does seem like there is a 
problem there. Personally I think it's wrong to have a system in place 
where people's health is a means for profit, after all it's called 
health"care", but leaving that aside, what Obama wants can at least 
mean an improvement for Americans in general. But what exactly does he 
want?

++ Obama isn't actually the person writing the proposals, he basically is 
leaving that up to Congress, however, they do have to meet a few of 
his principles for reform which include:

- Provide every american with affordable health coverage
- Remove restrictions and obstacles for people with pre-existing 
conditions trying to get health insurance
- Keep people covered even if they are unemployed
- Prevent bankruptcies related to health for families
- Maintain Americans their freedom to chose their doctors and coverage plans
- Prevent further increases in costs related to health care
- Improve its quality
- Invest in preventive care

++ Now what will really come out of all of these is still unknown. I 
think one of the biggest concerns at the moment is the possibility of 
having a public option. For some odd reasons a reasonable portion of 
Americans feel that by creating a public option for health insurance 
is like moving their country towards what countries like Canada have, 
and this is supposedly really bad. Apparently there is a circulating 
idea (*clears throat* Propaganda) that making a public option is a 
step towards communism and a blow to the free market mentality 
Americans have, despite not living in a free market economy. What is 
really strange to me, is that creating public options for other 
services in the US such as postal service and Universities did not 
cause the same type of polemic we see with health care. The other 
weird part of the arguments you hear is the fact they people are 
against giving Americans a public OPTION. I don't understand, if you 
don't want the public insurance just don't get that particular 
insurance. Now putting the stupid arguments aside, there is one issue 
with the public option that could be a source of problem, especially 
during a recession. I'm talking about the cost of this public option. 
What has been said is that the goal is to have this public option be a 
financially self sustaining service, which would provide affordable 
care creating competition for private insurance companies. I don't 
know, to me it does sound like a step up from what Americans have at 
the moment. It's not as good as it could be, but then again, we'll 
have to wait and see what really comes out of all this discussion. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day"
09/22/2009 01:21

++ Carlin and I just started watching "The Sopranos", we were talking about picking up 
the show for a while and I'm not sure why but last week we had the time and just watched 
a few episodes. I'm glad we did, it is a really good show and we're really enjoying it 
so far. A few of our favorite shows are now also coming back with new seasons, 
including "Big Bang Theory" and one of my favorite shows "Dexter". I've actually seen 
the premier for Dexter already a couple of weeks ago, somehow it got leaked, and I have 
to say it was a great first episode, it looks like there is potential for this season, 
maybe even as good as last season.

++ On a different subject, after a really long time waiting for good games to come out 
for PC I think I finally have a few to look forward to now. I'm not sure of the date 
but Modern Warfare 2 is coming out in the near future which is great since the first 
one was amazingly fun to play single player and multiplayer. Not only that but SI's new 
Football Manager 2010 is also coming out in the end of October, I absolutely can't wait for that. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"New Land of Cattan"
09/09/2009 18:39

++ Well the last part of our west coast adventure took place in Victoria. After leaving 
Parksville, where Brent's mom lives (who was a great host), we drove south to Victoria 
where my sister lives. Victoria is definitely very different from Vancouver, it has a 
small town feel to it and it's a lot more relaxed. In Victoria we saw Royal Roads University, 
which is where my sister works and it has a beautiful campus, with a few gardens that are 
just stunning to look at. One of the main buildings in her school is also the school for 
mutants from the X-men movies as well as the Luthor Mansion from smallville. It's a very 
nice castle, and we were even fortunate enough to get a tour.

++ In Victoria we also went to a few other cool places, you know some touristy stuff. We 
watched District 9 one night as well which was sort of a neat movie. We also spent a good 
amount of hours during the night playing a game my sister had just bought called 
"Settlers of Cattan". It's a board game that as Brent described "was just like playing 
age of empires with a dice". The game is a lot of fun and it didn't take us long to get 
addicted to it. Really great game, one which I hope to get here and find some people 
interested in playing with me and Carlin. Anyway, that is a brief summary of our trip to 
British Columbia. I also took some pictures and hope my sister will send me the ones she 
took. When that happens I'll make sure to post them here. I've already posted some on 
Facebook, but I'll post more when I have them.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


"The quartet"
2009/09/09 18:18
++ Very well, so we got to Nanaimo where my sister and her boyfriend Brent had left their 
car. We then drove to his mom's house in a town called Parksville. The area was definitely
very nice and we spent 2 days there, which made a trip to Tofino much easier. So on that 
Tuesday we went to Tofino, it was probably the day with the worst weather we had the whole 
week, except we got barely any rain and it wasn't even that cold (we're lucky). Tofino was 
beautiful and the rain forest there was very interesting, nothing I had ever seen before. 
Very unique and dense vegetation. Carlin and Brent at one point even went down to the ocean 
for a dip, but it was cold enough for me and my sister to know better and avoid it. Canadians 
are nuts when it comes to going into the water. At the end of the day we were treated 
by Brent's mom with a dinner at the Wickaninnish Inn resort in Tofino, which I have to add was 
very fancy and very nice. The restaurant was amazing with a sunset view over the rocky 
shore and the ocean. The view alone was enough to win me over, however the food was the 
best part of it. I had a succulent Halibut on a green curry creamy sauce (the sauce was amazing), 
Carlin had the salmon which was probably the best salmon I've ever tried. My sister had the 
pork which came with 3 different cuts of pork and it looked just perfect and fatty, while 
Brent had a great looking lamb dish. The desert seldomly is the highlight for me, but I ordered 
the best creme brule I have ever tried. It was a creme brule quartet, which included chocolate, 
vanilla, strawberry and saffron. All flavours were good, but strawberry and chocolate were 
just amazing, it was a memorable dessert.

++ That was pretty much it for that Tuesday, on the way back we got stuck in the highway for 
a couple of hours because of a head on collision between a Range Rover and transport truck, 
it looked pretty ugly, but despite us being the first car in a long line waiting for the 
highway to open, we still didn't know exactly what happened.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Topo da montanha"
2009/09/09 13:53
++ Hello Everyone, I just came back from a trip to BC this last Saturday. Carlin and I went 
to Vancouver and Victoria to visit my sister and took advantage of the trip to see a bit 
of the West coast. The trip overall was amazing, we got there on the 29th around noon, so 
we had enough time to check out the B&B we stayed at and go see Lynn Canyon Park and its 
respective suspension bridge. It was a very nice start to our trip despite the fact that 
the city was extremely busy that day. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called "Pacific 
Spirit Sidehouse" if I'm not mistaken, and it was simply great. The house was spacious, 
rooms were very nice and the service impeccable. Our first breakfast was very good too, 
with a lot of local fruits and delicious Scones, our second breakfast wasn't as good as 
the first but still had a lot of tasty items, if I'm allowed to make any complaint I just wish there were more savory items. Overall the place was very much worth the price.

++ On the second day there we had planned to climb Grouse Mountain, on the so called "Grouse Grind". I have to say it was likely the hardest climb I've been too, it was a solid 1:30 hour of 
steep trails and rocks. There were points where our group was getting tired but we made 
it up top in the end, the view up there was definitely worth the grind. Once we got up 
there we had lunch and walked around to see the different exhibits they had there. That's
not all though, I had previously arranged with my sister so that I would sneak in a bottle 
of champagne in my backpack and I would separate from my sister and her boyfriend for a 
little bit. So Carlin and I ended up taking a chairlift to the very top of the mountain. 
The ride up there was just gorgeous with a spectacular view. When we got to the top and 
found a more private place, I proposed to Carlin, which was my big surprise for her. 
Despite her previous suspicions and my slight nervousness at the chair lift, I think 
I successfully surprised her. It was all very nice and I think we both enjoyed that 
day very much. To close up the day we had some take out sushi, which was surprisingly 
cheap and much better than sushi in Ontario. It really makes a huge difference when 
you have access to fresh fish/shrimp.

++ Our last day in Vancouver was a bit less eventful, we just drove around Vancouver a 
bit and eventually took the ferry to Nanaimo where the next part of our BC trip was to 
take place. (to be continued...)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Rehab is for quitters"
08/21/2009 14:45


++ It has been a while since I last posted, and I must admit I miss it a little. A few things 
have happened lately and I would like to mention one in particular, which will likely not 
matter much to most people reading this post, but hopefully I'll have a few extra readers 
that will care later on.
After a long 4 year journey I am going to stop playing World of Warcraft. It was not the 
easiest of decisions but my free time has just not been enough and with a few major things 
comming up in life I really feel like this is the time to stop. So I figured I'd share a 
bit about what these 4 years in Azeroth were like.

++ I basically started off with my paladin in the summer of my second year of university. I 
basically decided to try WoW after reading so many good things about the game and after 
finally giving a true chance to RPG games (Morrowind was the one that converted me). I picked 
a paladin mostly due to their versatility as a multiple role class as well as their 
resillience. I played my character as a retribution paladin for pretty much my whole time 
playing "vanilla". During that period I did meet a lot of nice folks and played in a guild 
which lasted a very long time called "Alliance of Trinity". I ended up becomming the GM of 
the guild for most of its life. Once The first expansion came out and my guild needed 
healers desperately I decided to switch to Holy and started learning how to heal. Well I 
think it was a great move as I really enjoyed healing and I especially liked being such an 
important part of any sucessful team. After some time I decided to go to a raiding guild 
since AoT was no longer allowing me to see new content, that's when I joined MoF.

++ It's been great in MoF and not too long after I joined back in the summer of 2006 I 
became the leader in the healing team. I've been dedicating many hours every week to keep 
my team in shape and helping out the guild in other ways. We've accomplished a lot during 
this period and we even became #2 alliance guild in our server, as well as being one of 
the oldest and most consistent raiding guilds in AP. However, as I mentioned, I feel like 
I can no longer dedicate so much time to the game. I feel like I did learn quite a bit 
from my experiences in this game and I met a lot of great people as well. I hope some of 
them keep in touch and keep checking my blog in the future, and I'll try to do the same. A 
few notable folks I enjoyed playing with and would like to mention are: Aegiro, Krackalakin, 
Soupy, Aurar, Delphia, Kathlyn, Rostam, Liiris, Thorngold, Ellwyntar, Kemistry, Dominique, 
Magecarin, Jeb (Miluchra), Perceo, Lyressa, Okissaki, Panda, Homelessbum (Strangewoman), 
Zorena, Loadcoil, Sanchopearl, Shrike, Taterlee, Tetsushima, Mysterymeat, turning. I am 
sure I forgot some folks but there are just too many people I've come across in the last 
4 years. I wish you all the best of luck and who knows, maybe I'll see some of you in 
another MMO in the future.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Mourinho and me"
08/01/2009 18:52

++ Recently I've gotten back to playing a game I retired a while back, Football Manager 2009. 
For those not familiar, it is just a strategy type game where you manage a football (soccer) 
club of your choosing. You don't actually play the soccer in it, all that is done by the AI. 
May sound a bit boring but it is tons of fun for anyone that enjoy strategy games, and even 
more if you are a soccer fan. It' a bit difficult to get into, but very rewarding in the 
long term.

++ well since I was in the mood for FM I also decided to try out a newer game from SI, 
football manage live. Which in a way is similar to fm09. The differences are in the fact 
that the game is played online similarly to an MMO. The other big difference is the fact 
that you don't chose from real life teams, instead you create a team and are given money to 
sign real life players. The game ends up having a very different type of strategy involved 
since you are only playing real managers. Its quite challenging to balance the financial 
part of the game with the quality of your team. I'm still quite new to the game so I'll 
get a better sense of the game once I finish my first season.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


"A difference that makes no difference, is no difference"
08/01/2009 18:25

++ This is the first post I am writting a post from a bus. I just go a tad bored being here 
without Carlin. I haven't posted in a little while. This is mostly out of lazyness and perhaps 
I have been a bit busy. At work I have been doing quite a few interesting experiments. We 
just finished a fairly long feeding study so things have been a bit more calm. So I have been 
doing a lot of work with nicotine. For the past little while I have been giving a group of 
rats nicotine in order to sensitize the to the drug. By now they are actually quite used to 
their daily dose, probably even a bit addicted. We are now testing some potential anti drug 
compounds. Due to the nature of the study and confidentiality I probably shouldn't give too 
many details about the compound.

This study couldn't come at a more opportune time. Last month the FDA just blacklisted two 
of the most used anti smoking drugs. Xantix and zyban, which have been in the market for a 
while have been linked to complications involving patients with psychological problems like 
depression. Apparently a lot of these subjects have developed suicidal behaviour and other 
detrimental psychological imbalances. So this study may turn out to be very important 
depending on our result. So we'll see what happens.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Money can't grow on trees, unless you plant it."
06/19/2009 17:00

++ So recently I became aware of a few very polemical comments the Brazillian president made 
during one of the G20 meetings. During a discussion regarding the current global economic 
crisis, Lula said that he felt the current crisis was cause by the inconsequential lifestyle 
of "people with blond hair and blue eyes". I can't be completely sure about what was meant 
here but his language during this interview suggests to me that he didn't mean literally 
blondes with blue eyes, but more likely meant rich americans (which tend to have those 
characteristics). These comments got Lula a lot of bad international press, and I do think 
his choice of words (even if it was in Portuguese) were extremely poor. It certainly damages 
the notion that Brazil is not a racist country, which in my opinion is something Brazillians 
are proud of. 

++ For those that don't know, people often say that Brazil is a country with little racism, 
and it is not because people avoid using racial slurs and making "innapropriate comments". In 
Brazil these comments are just often seen as non offensive, and even used by the targeted 
ethnic group. It is a bit hard to convey the mentality, but in a nutshell it's ok to make 
comments on race since they are not used in an offensive manner. A good comparison would be 
if all of a sudden people started using the term Canadian in a pejorative manner, so that at 
that point people would avoid using the term even though originally it just meant that the 
person in question was born in Canada. So now people come up with another term for the same 
thing just to be politically correct, yet the idea that being Canadian is bad remains within 
that culture. I almost feel like in North America the avoidance of racism is what prevents us 
from moving away from the offensive aspects of it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"You don't understand, I was born to be driven"
2009/06/19 3:32

++Now going back to talking economics, I do have to say I agree with Lula's comments to some 
extent. Obviously ethnic background has nothing to do with the problem, the real issue is 
the irresponsible lifestyle of most americans. Americans live in an uncontrolled credit 
economy, and the people that should be in charge of overseeing this economy are greedy to the 
point that they take advantage of the system without considering the consequences of their 
actions. It really is frustrating to see such a super power like the US living above their budget, 
which really reflect the mentality of the people. It is impossible to ask the people to change 
their lifestyle, when people in the financial sector are not willing to change their ways first.
++ There are definately benefits in living in a credit economy, but it really needs to be 
something closely watched by the government. Many people like to think the USA is a free market, 
but that is just not true. The USA is managed capitalist country. It is also unfortunate that 
a lot of people managing that economy make bad decisions because of the interference of 
their own personal interests. I was not shocked to find out that the US has the biggest debt 
in the world, and this debt at this point is actually growing almost exponentially. While 
that wasn't shocking to me, it was shocking to find out that the US pays hundreds of billions 
of dollars just in interest every year, and that is one of the biggest expenses of the US 
government. Now you may be thinking, what are they doing to fix the problem? Well there are 
a few tools they can use and are using, including foreign governments that buy the US' debt. 
These includes China (owning over 700 billion dollars of this debt), Japan ($600+ bi) and other 
countries like Britain, Brazil and Russia that own over 100 billion. The other big solution 
is to have their federal reserve buy the US debt. How does that work? Well the federal 
reserve uses their own currency to buy the debt, which is basically just printing money. 
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"I am sevice !!"
2009/06/18 5:00
++ So recently I became aware of a few very polemical comments the Brazillian president 
made during one of the G20 meetings. During a discussion regarding the current global 
economic crisis, Lula said that he felt the current crisis was cause by the inconsequential 
lifestyle of "people with blond hair and blue eyes". I can't be completely sure about what 
was meant here but his language during this interview suggests to me that he didn't mean 
literally blondes with blue eyes, but more likely meant rich americans (which tend to have 
those characteristics). These comments got Lula a lot of bad international press, and I do 
think his choice of words (even if it was in Portuguese) were extremely poor. It certainly 
damages the notion that Brazil is not a racist country, which in my opinion is something 
Brazillians are proud of. 
For those that don't know, people often say that Brazil is a country with little racism, and 
it is not because people avoid using racial slurs and making "innapropriate comments". In 
Brazil these comments are just often seen as non offensive, and even used by the targeted 
ethnic group. It is a bit hard to convey the mentality, but in a nutshell it's ok to make 
comments on race since they are not used in an offensive manner.  A good comparison would be 
if all of a sudden people started using the term Canadian in a pejorative manner, so that 
all of a sudden people avoid using the term even though originally it just meant that the 
person in question was born in Canada. So now people come up with another term for the same 
thing just to be politically correct, yet the idea that being Canadian is bad remains within 
that culture. I almost feel like in North America the avoidance of racism is what prevents 
us from moving away from the offensive aspects of it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"katajjaq"
06/01/2009 22:48

++ I was just talking to Carlin about different cultures which kind of got me searching around 
on the web for some unique music and I came across Inuit Throat Singing. I've been in Canada 
for eight years now and I had never heard of it. So I went ahead and asked a friend of mine 
who's inuit about that, and I learned quite a bit about this very unique type of music, which 
apparently is usually sang by a pair of women that use each others mouth as a way to resonate 
sounds produced by their throats. Very cool stuff and very different from tibetan throat 
singing which is really neat as well. It was sad though to see how little Inuit/native culture 
is known even in Canada. It's really a dying culture and I just wish there was more incentive 
to perpetuate that part of Canadian heritage which is actually very rich. For some years 
after I moved to Canada I always sort of found Canada to not have much of a culture, I always 
felt Canada was too much like the US. In reality Canada does have a lot of culture, it just 
seems that people I've met maintain so much of their European culture that there is little 
room for other less popular ones to become part of Canadian culture.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"It's their world, we just live in it"
05/22/2009 19:15

++ Finally I am going to have a full weekend in which I don' have to go to work. I just 
finished a very long study that I kind of ran solo at work and it is now over after my 13 
day week. Worst part is that included in these 13 days is a Victoria Day long weekend I didn't 
have. Oh well, what can I do. During this period I don't believe much happened besides going 
to see the new Star Trek movie which was pretty decent even though I'm not a huge star trek 
fan. Oh I have also recently seen the pilot for my new favorite show (which isn't really a 
running show yet) Caprica. For those that are not aware, this is a sort of spin off / prequel 
of Battlestar Galactica. The first episode was simply brilliant, I hope I do not spoil 
anything for anyone, but it takes place about 60 years before the Cylon attack. It is a drama 
about a lot of things, much linke BSG, but it seems like it will focus on a few different 
topics including Artificial Intelligence, religion, the nature of scentient machines, human 
nature and of course a bunch of moral dilemmas. Overall I recommend it...
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Tentativa sem sucesso"
05/05/2009 16:48

++ Things don't seem to slow down much at work so I always feel like I'm having a busy week, 
which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I definately don't get bored at work. My last project 
with Object Recognition has finally come to an end, and the results do look fairly 
promising. I will be starting a new solo project like that soon but this time it will be a 
Water maze experiement, which is unfortunately a bit more dirty. Anyway, outside work things 
are OK, with the exception of some problems Carlin has been having with her new job which 
she was already supposed to have started. It kind of just proves my opinion that dealing 
with government requires patience with their incompetence and unreliability. In WoW we have 
been doing quite well too, we've cleared Ulduar all the way to Mirmidon getting us the 2nd 
position in terms of progression of our server, this is the best we've done since I joined my 
team almost 2 years ago. Outside that I only watched a few movies such as 
"Zack and Miri make a porno" which sucked and "Iron Man" which was also not as good as people 
tend to say it is. I don't think I watched too much else though.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"and the pirates win again" 
04/23/2009 17:17

++ This morning I was doing my morning "before work" mining in EVE, which is great as all the 
asteroids replenish over night and early in the morning not many people are playing and getting 
all the ore. Well most mornings it is pretty slow and I just make my coffee, eat my breakfast 
and watch my ship mine away. Well this morning halfway my session some pirate popped by in an 
Assault ship (Ishkur). To be quite hones I did not have much knowledge on that kind of ship but 
due to its size I didn't think it would have been a huge threat. I quickly got my mining barge 
(Retriever) out of there and picked up my fighting ship which happens to be a Battlecruiser 
(Drake). I also called for help from a corp member who came in a frigate (incursus). I figured 
this would be enough to get the guy. I jumped in first and started tossing missiles at him, the 
incursus quickly jumped him as well and jammed his warp drives and web so that he couldn't get 
away. Well turns out Assault ships are quite sturdy and it took all our damage very well. The 
frigate did not last long once the enemy released a swarm of drones on him. At that point he 
had already webbed me and jammed me so that I couldn't run anywhere. After a few more minutes 
it was over and I had lost my precious and brand new Drake. The ship plus all the mods were 
worth a pretty large chunk of my assets, probably about a third of it. It was an expensive 
morning that's for sure but at least I learned a few good lessons there. Nothing better than 
getting my ass kicked to learn that I should be more careful when picking up targets.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."
04/22/2009 20:23

++ I've just had a few very busy weeks with work but it now seems like things are starting to settle 
down again. Haven't had much time to do much besides work, see Carlin when she's not studying and 
playing wow/eve. Right now at work I'm working a new experiment. I'm doing object recognition tests, 
the idea is to put rats in a box where they are given 2 objects. During the first trial you let 
the animal interact with 2 identical objects such as a cube or cylinder. During the "choice trial" 
the animal is put inside the box again, however now it is given a choice between the old object 
and a novel object. The test compares the amount of time spent interacting with either objects. 
The idea is that without any training or incentive the animals usually spend more time with the 
novel object. So I have different groups where I vary the amount of time in between trials (1 minute, 
1 hour, 3 hours and 24 hours). You may now be asking what is the point of this? Well if the 
animal will spend more time with the new object, we can use this information to find out how 
long it takes for the animal to forget the old object so that both objects become novel after 
long enough (yep, rats don't have very long lasting memory). The results are actually looking 
pretty promising, right now I'm just comparing aged animals vs. young animals, and ideally the 
young animals would have better memory retention. Potesh angurison. On another note, I can't wait 
for Caprica to come out.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere, Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."
04/17/2009 8:25

++ I did not know, but apparently in the beginning of this year there was a major trial in Sweden 
where four of the important people in Pirate Bay were charged for promoting other people's 
infringements of copyright laws. They were all given a sentence of one year in prison. It's too bad 
that after so many years of Pirate Bay and so many attempts against them they finally got in trouble. 
As much as I can understand people being pissed off over the whole thing, it's impossible to deny 
that this will have absolutely no impact in piracy in general and will probably not even affect 
Pirate Bay's activities in the short term. I have to say thanks to these guys though for the amazing 
services they have provided over the years, and their valiant fight to promote the sharing of 
information. Sure Pirate Bay was heavily used for piracy, but it also helped to make a lot of other 
information available to people. In the end it's hard to imagine that this may happen when they 
actually have not necessarily done anything illegal. Truth is Pirate Bay is a search engine, next 
logical step would be to start suing Google since you can find illegal copies of all sorts of 
things there as well.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Phillip's pottery retrieval"
04/05/2009 20:32

++ I've had a few very eventful days, lots going on in my life. It's been stressful in a way but 
everything that is happening are actually good things so it is a bit of an odd situation. I can't 
talk too much about it now, but I will once I can. Besides that, I've had a chance to try out a game 
I wanted to play for a while, "Assassin's Creed". The game is actually pretty neat and fun. The 
gameplay is quite awesome, despite the tutorial being a little fast paced and crowded, good thing 
the game itself is pretty easy. The graphics, sounds, music and mood of the game are great, very 
well done. I guess in general I would certainly recommend it to anyone. The weak points of the game 
for me is the fact the game is not as open ended as I would like. I guess I'm being picky, but I'm 
a huge fan of games where you can just do your own thing like Elder Scrolls, Farcry 2 or Fallout 3. 
The combat system while is pretty fun is already sort of feeling repetitive, but I'm hoping it will 
get better as I progress. The storyline is slightly lame too but just because the science makes no 
sense.

++ Changing subjects, yesterday Carlin and I also made some Fish (Cod) and chips (which were homemade) 
and they were really tasty. Even without the tartar sauce I ended up just wanting more. Now the 
next item I want to learn how to make is bread. As much as I enjoy cooking I have not attempted to 
make bread yet and I intendo to change that. If anyone has any good bread recipes and techiniques 
please let me know.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again"
03/25/2009 15:00

++ It is unfortunate, but all good things must end. After 4 seasons of the highest quality of 
television content available, Battlestar Galactica came to an end last night. I have to say, that 
was probably the best finale I have seen, and despite heavy criticisms over how this last half 
season was going, the show came full circle to an exciting and emotional ending. If there is such 
thing as a perfect conclusion to a show like this, that was it. For those that follow the show and 
saw it they will know why. For those that are not fans, I strongly recommend you check out the 
show. I recognize the sci-fi aspect of the show gives people the impression it is too "treky", 
well that's just not true. I think most people that enjoy a thought proviking drama, enjoy special 
effects and awesome combat scenes will appreciate this show. As Carlin likes to say, it is a show 
with true role models. It also has very good values, even when topics are not black and white. I 
can even think of a few times in the show where the characters face moral dilemmas that are 
complex to the point where me and Carlin would disagree completely with each other regarding what 
was the "right" thing to do, and we'd still have nothing to say to counter each others argument. 
The show always had this underlying religious theme, where most of the time you are even wondering 
if it is just all made up. I always enjoyed the role religion plays in the show, and even more 
important is how religion ended in the show with a unifying message.
++ Focusing more on the last episode, I am very pleased about the way the show was wrapped up and 
how many of our questions had a satisfying answer. I also enjoyed how some of the questions didn't 
have a blunt answer but they still gave us something to think about and perhaps a few possible 
answers. Overall, I do enjoy how much we got to find out and how they accomplished that. *SPOILER* 
For example, what Kara was supposed to be, which the show seemed to imply she was 
an Angel watching over everyone. This seems to fit her role appropriately, and explains a 
lot of things. The fact that Kara was supposed to lead "humanity" to it's end. Well as Carlin 
pointed out,
the way the wording is, it probably meant that she brought humanity (the human aspect of humans 
and cylons) to an end. She was also supposed to be the harbinger of death, well she was the 
harbinger to everyone, as she brought everyone in Galactica/fleet to safety by inputing the 
coordinates to Earth. The episode had just way too many strong scenes that I can't really go into 
them, but I urge anyone reading this to watch the show and find out exactly why that was an 
awesome ending. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as me and Carlin did, I know these characters 
will be missed.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"The Ninth Wave"
03/16/2009 22:04

++ To continue the musical suggestion from my last post I have another crazy band to share with 
anyone that enjoyed Norma Jean from below. This is another band from Solid State Records and they 
rock pretty hard and fast, so if you are curious try "Composure", very cool song. This other band 
I'm going to mention was also a Solid State band before and they are not new but they sound pretty 
pimp. I'm talking about The Agony Scene, and here is a sample of what they sounds like, 
"Old Scratch". They don't have too many videos, and my favorite songs don't have one so I posted 
this one.
++ So changing subjects. During one of my random searches on the Internet for interesting content 
I came across an interesting article from Josh Clark (one of the hosts of my favorite podcast) 
regarding a very unique service. Apparently there is this service called Deathswitch which allows 
people to save a message they would like to send a number of people upon their death. The service 
basically works by checking on the person regularly, and once the client dies and is no longer 
able to respond, an automated message is sent to relatives and friends with a message like "if 
you are reading this message, I've died, blah blah blah". I think that's actually a neat thing, 
whenever I think about this type of scenario I always feel like it would really be important to 
me to have closure and give closure to everything before I die, and what better way is there to 
write something up before this event and have all your closest friends and family read it once 
you are gone. I guess it's not too different from writing your will, except with this your are 
leaving your thoughts to the people you love, not your assets.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"So I begin with the end in mind"
03/16/2009 22:04

++ It appears that tomorrow one of my favorite bands, if not my favorite is playing right here in 
Toronto. I didn't really find out about that until tonight and I would probably not be able to 
go anyway but I figure this would be an opportunity to post here a few videos for anyone curious 
to know what they are like. Well, here are some links to a few of my favorite songs, I have to 
warn you they like it heavy, very heavy. "Face:Face", "Creating a Universe of Discourse" and how 
could I forget my very favorite one "Memphis will be laid to waste". Enjoy responsibly.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Would you like some personality on the side? "
03/12/2009 23:00

++ I am currently about to finish a 20 day long study at work this upcoming Saturday. I have 
been extremely busy and even had to work last weekend and this weekend. However, I'm still 
enjoying my new job, and it is pretty nice to be working. Aside from work I have been also 
trying out a game that I've been looking at for a while, EVE online. This is an space simulator 
type MMO, which at first may seem a bit dull and simple. I had heard a lot about the game and my 
personal experience so far is that the game is fairly easy to get started if you follow the 
tutorial, but it can be slightly intimidating if you start going deeper into it. One of the 
coolest aspects of this game, which is the main reason I had to try it out is the fact that 
unlike other MMOs, EVE is mainly player driven in all aspects. Other games usually have much of 
its content being released by the companies that make them, and the progression of the game is 
very much controlled by them. CPP, the developer of EVE, rarely intervenes with game matters. 
They release content (ie. the world EVE takes place and the backbone history) but what happens 
in the game is up to the players. Players in EVE can form corporations which are groups of 
people that have similar goals and organize themselves. Corporations have the opportunity to 
form alliances with other corporations which sometimes can also help protect their interests. 
In EVE there are many different sections that are launched with no owner, however corporations 
can appropriate those sectors for themselves, which costs quite a bit of money. Once that happens, 
another corporation can declare war against this corporation and attempt to conquer their sectors. 
This all costs a lot of in game money and resources which must be maintained by the players of the 
corporations. All this happens in the EVE universe, which is very very large, and since there 
is only one server, all the players in the world are competing for the same sectors, which makes 
the game quite intense. The other very cool aspect of EVE is how the economy works, unlike other 
MMOs, everything bought and sold inside the game is produced by players, which creates an economy 
that is completely free of developer forces, and is completely molded on supply and demand.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Hypoxic Moyen-Orient"
18/02/2009 22:16

++ So, turns out I actually got that job I mentioned before and I already started working this 
week. Basically I am working in a contract research company here in Toronto. Most of the research 
they do is on canines and felines in Fergus, but they are starting to do some work with rodents 
which is where I come in. I will be working mainly with rats doing drug tests of all kinds 
among other experiments. The job actually seems very interesting and it looks promising for a 
business, may even develop into a carreer, who knows. So that has been taking a great portion 
of my time lately. Besides that I did have a very pleasant weekend. As most of you know it was 
Valentine's day on Saturday, for the occasion me and Carlin went out to get some brunch. This 
time we went to a french restaurant at Front St. called le papillon. We had been there for dinner 
before and it is very good. We both had the French Onion Soup to start, which was delicious, 
just as good as last time. Turns out the French Onion Soup that Carlin and I make at home is 
actually just as tasty. For entree, I got a shrimp and scallop crepe, which for those that 
enjoy seafood and creamsauce I can highly recommend the dish. I wich I could eat that meal right 
now. Carlin got the tortiere, which was ok but nothing special. It came with some killer french 
fries though, and those were very good. Overall the restaurant does not disappoint.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Leo's golden spiral"
02/13/2009 03:01

++ I have finally resumed working on the new design. After a few months of procrastination, I 
finally found myself able to actually have some productive hours on dreamweaver. After some 
reading, researching and thinking, I decided to make some structural changes to the blog as well, 
and hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to implement those. I think one of the biggest 
goals at this point is to have this website looking more like a blog. The other main thing is 
that I want to remove all the useless crap I've been adding to the site. This means the website 
will look neater, simpler, more functional and hopefully always updated. Yesterday I completely 
removed every page and started from scratch. It really does feel nice to see my main folder 
empty with only the bare minimum.

++ In this post I wanted to write about this website, I guess with the new changes it is a good 
time to do that. It's been so long since I started making websites. Everything started when I 
was around 14 years old, when I was living in North Carolina with the Blalock's. I guess I was 
just fooling around on the computer a lot back then, when the internet was still pretty fresh to 
me. One day I went to a mall with my american mom (Saundra) and started to look at computer books. 
I found a nice cheap book on HTML. It didn't look that hard so I bought it and read it. It's 
kind of weird that the first book I ever read out of my own interest was a manual on a markup 
language. After that I started writing very basic pages using notepad and eventually a free 
software called "Arachnophillia". After writing a few pages I found a way to host them online 
for free. Later I worked on a website with my cousin Andre, which we never actually uploaded, but 
it was very nice for the time and looked so great. We spent over a month working on that almost 
everyday. It was a lot of fun. Later I worked on websites for my band and eventually I started a 
blog. After some success using what was available online for blogging, I really felt restricted 
by their templates and formats. That's when I decided to develop my own blog, doing all the code 
myself. That way I was also able to have more than just a blog, but also some space to post 
pictures, essays, texts and whatever I wanted to post really. I started this website around June 
of 2004, I finally found a advertisement free host at my university. This was a small space but 
it finally allowed me to run a website that looked the way I wanted without having pop ups all 
over the place. Since then I have been through 3 major changes in design. I guess I changed a 
lot since I started doing this, and the designs are an indication of that, but the content is 
probably a more obvious way to see the changes.

++ Well, that's probably enough about the website. I also have a lot of news to share about what 
I have been doing. Since my last few posts I have finished taking my last university courses. 
After that, and after having a wonderful Christmas break with my family and Carlin in Barrie, I 
came back to Toronto. I started looking for work, when I was lucky enough to get some 
part-time/temporary work at the Teaching Labs, all thanks to Dr. Perumalla for the help. Since 
then I have also had the chance to apply to several other jobs, including a very promising 
position at a drug development service company here in Toronto. After having an interview with 
them I have been called back to see the facilities and tomorrow I am meeting the big boss. I am 
almost certain I have the job, which would really be great. I am so thankful that at such hard 
times like this I am still able to find a good job. Not only that, but this job looks like it 
could lead to a serious carreer for me. Everything is still uncertain but I have a good feeling 
about the whole thing.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Pseudo-Associativity with the older model"
0x/16/2008 12:16

++ As you all can appreciate, I have made some changes on the website. I felt like after a good 3 
years (maybe more?) using the same look, it was getting old. So I decided to redo the website and 
this is the first post after the change. If you haven't noticed, it is still a work in progress. 
As time permits I will be making changes to all the sections so that the whole website follow the 
same theme again. I hope you all enjoy it, and let me know if you notice any bugs, typos, or 
broken links.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

"zOMG u teh very cool lolz!1111oneoneoe"
14/10/2008 11:09

++ L33t speech is just plain funny, I'm sure not all of you think so but the stuff people 
come up with just makes me laugh. It's so stupid. Anyway, I just came back from Barrie yesterday, 
went to spend some time with the family during our Thanksgiving break. I had a good time, and 
for thanksgiving dinner I went over to Carlin's house, where we had some Turkey and the typical 
meal with her family. Unfortunately now I have to start working hard as midterms are approaching 
pretty quickly.

++ Besides Thanksgiving and the elections going on today here in Canada, the other big topic we've 
been hearing about is the financial crisis that we are seeing now which is likely far from an end. 
This crisis started during the housing crisis in the US due to subprime mortgages. This was likely 
caused by the big demand for mortgage-backed securities, which caused banks to start selling 
subprime morgages in order to maintain a supply of thse securities. Basically US banks were giving 
out large mortgages to folks without appropriate funds and appropriate earnings. I mean, there is a 
good reason for credit checks on things like that, and I'm not sure what kind of moron thought that 
this would be a good move. Anyway, this boom in the housing sector caused a rise in prices and 
consequently, homeowners began to default on their payments. As this started to happen, banks are 
all of a sudden repossessing these houses. Now this caused two problems, one would be that banks 
now have tons of houses which they need to turn into capital, which begins to decrease the pricing 
on houses. Two, the banks which lent all that money to people, don't have the money anymore because 
many couldn't pay their debt, so now the banks can't keep as much money circulating.

++ This situation spread out to other sectors and the effects of it on the stock market are a clear 
indication of how weak the global financial system is and how there was very little regulation to 
prevent this crisis. Perhaps this shows the weaknesses of having somewhat of a free market, but 
that's another story. In summary, we are looking at the biggest debt Americans have seen in a very 
long time. Obviously if people are in debt they will spend less money and the economy begins to slow 
down in pretty much every way. Sectors dealing with necessities will be less effected but any 
commodity that is less essential will likely see this crisis at full force.

++ The US does have a chunk of money on their reserve to work with, and they are and will put some 
of it back in the economy. However, they are considering putting that money in the banks, again a 
bad move from what I can see. Instead of injecting this money in the banks, why not give it to the 
people that need it. It may be late for this, but if people had money to pay for their houses in 
the first place the whole crises wouldn't have happened this way. People, with money would pay their 
mortgages and have their homes, while banks would still be profiting and seeing that money anyway. 
Anyway, be ready because the situation is not likely to get better anytime soon.

++ On a last note, I am going to change the looks of this website, I've already been working on a 
new layout. During this period I will not be posting anything new, hopefully soon I'll have the 
new website out.