Apex81

Apparently all of my posts about music, and hockey, and school has gotten me some serious hate from the nation of China. What did I ever do to you?

I was bored today so I decided to check my blog at greatfirewallofchina.net and much to my suprise I’ve been blocked. No on in the nation-state of China can see my website. I kind of got a chuckle about it at first, but then I got a little bit angry. Talk about paranoid! Set your people free… geesh. If you don’t believe me check it out for yourself.

So, i’ve had to signup for usenet access yesterday for a number of reasons (primarily school).  I was a little unimpressed with the price for a month of usage.  But, let me tell you this–download speeds are amazing.  I’m easily getting 1.2 mbps down.  That sure blows the doors off of any bittorrent files I’ve gotten.  I think it might be worth it especially  since I need to use it for school.  I managed to download 5 Office episodes in 10mins.  I think I’m in love! lol

I’ve been having a pretty difficult week up until this point. Things seemed to be going wrong left, right, and centre. I was starting to get super frustrated with this whole web design company. It has turned into quite the big-little thing. I keep getting emails for design work, which normally would be an excellent thing. But… Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had it. There is an article over at wired magazine that talk about how the RIAA is trying to destroy open wifi networks. Essentially they’re trying to make users with the internet account responsbile for the bandwidth that passes through their wireless networks. THIS IS LUDACRIS. You should read some of the comments… Read the rest of this entry »

I finally got some time to do a quick update on the hockey game I went to. It started of slow as my boys were down 3-1 going into the midway mark of the third period, and holy crap what a finish. The oilers managed to climb back and tied the game up late in the third period with their goalie pulled and setting on the bench. I went absolutely nuts on that goal… well not as nuts as my little bro, but more than I did previously to that time in the evening.

Watching a live NHL game was pretty bizarre for me though. I spend every second evening glued to the television watching the oilers, cheering for them through the worst and best equally. Seeing them for the first time live was surreal. Ryan Smyth’s hockey-mullet is even more impressive in real life!

I thought I had a great appreciation for the game, but seeing those guys live, brought my appreciation to a whole new level. Television does not do justice to the game. The skate faster, and hit a lot harder than it looks on tv. Amazing.

I’d have to say the best part of the evening was booing Comrie, and out cheering the Ottawa fans along with the rest of the Oiler fans in attendance. It was also the most exciting overtime game I’ve seen to date with mulitple scoring chances for both teams. Talk about tense.

Finally, I have to say, I know Ryan Smyth is a large part of the Oilers organization, but once again I didn’t realize just how much until I saw him live. Being the last one off the ice during the pregame warmup he scooped up a couple of pucks from the net and found a couple of young oiler fans in the crowd and tossed them the pucks. Talk about a class act! He’s the epitomy of what the Oilers organization should be, and if he gets traded I have no problem hunting down lowe myself! Hah!

Also, I forgot my camera, so I snapped that shot with my cellphone

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Jaimie and I took in winterlude yesterday, and damn it was cold.  If it wasn’t for the sweet taste of beaver tails, and hot apple cider I don’t know how I would have survived.  We were so damn cold by the end of it that we couldn’t bare to stand outside and wait for the bus.  We decided to take a small shopping trip for a couple of hours, just so that our legs wouldn’t snap off in the cold.  I must say though it was probably one of the more enjoyable evenings I’ve had in the last couple of months.  Nothing like taking an uncharted stroll with the women you love!

I’ve spent some much time immersed in my schoolwork lately that I have been abandoning some of my techie needs! So, I promise to post some interesting stuff I’ve stumbled onto in the last couple days sometime tomorrow. It also seems like I’ve been focusing a lot lately on music, and there is a perfectly good example for that. For me, schoolwork and music go hand in hand. I have a bit of an active mind (which quite possible could be a mild form of A.D.D), so I cannot focus on one thing for more than 10-15mins, unless my senses are being over stimulated! It’s kind of weird… but in order for me to focus on any readings/essays I might have I need to have something else going on. Since I was in Grade 8 I’ve been felling that need with music. It’s a passive enough art form that it doesn’t need all of my attention, but it’s active enough to get me into a rhythm while I study. It’s become a necessity. I can’t stop or I’d surely never get any work done! So, it’s become quite easy for me to get into my “music” mode and rant about albums I’ve been listening to while I study! So without much further ado here is another, and quite possibly the last one for a while!

I owe a huge thanks to Mr. Jeff Burrows for pointing out this album to me. I’ve always been a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, but I can’t believe I haven’t stumbled upon this up until now! These two guys, Burrows, and Hendrix…. well three… add Cobain into the mix, are the reasons I picked up the Guitar in the first place. They opened Pandora’s box. I haven’t been the same since. Anyway, Hendrix’s album titled Blues is by far the best album I’ve heard in quite some time. It’s insane, breath-taking, awe-inspiring….. and I could probably write a whole slew of other catch phrases, but they would not even begin to sum up how great this album really is.

So i’ve been bombarded by this song every single time I start up NHL 2007, and to be quite honest I was starting to get annoyed.  For some reason I got it off itunes as a free download of the week, but I didn’t really appreciate it until the other night.  “Barely Listening” by Pilot Speed has been catapulted to a new status on my play list.  I was watching a show called Whistler (I’ve only seen like 2 episodes), which has been labeled as a Canadian OC, when this song was included in a pretty dramatic scene where a guy kills himself.  During this final scene Barely Listening is playing.  I immediately gained a new perspective on this song, and it has been a favourite ever since.  I can’t get enough of it.  You should Check it out.  Just don’t blame me if you can’t get it out of your head.

I’m in the middle of the hardest assignment I’ve had to do to this point in my academic career! Strangely, its not an obscure programming assignment, or an essay on some minute point of the political world…. it’s a film studies essay! WTF! So, my assignment has me watching a movie (I chose Psycho, by Hitchcock), and explain how it has positively, or negatively influenced the genre in which it is categorized. I thought it would be a cake walk, but then I realized i’d pretty much have to watch a ton of “slasher” films to even begin to answer the question. How uncool is that. Considering this is an intro class, I’m having a hard time figuring out how in the hell they can even begin to expect me to paint even the faintest picture of the influence it played. What do I look like? Robert Ebert? By the time this is assignment is done i’m going to look a lot more like Gene Siskel! ZING!

So, as most of you are probably aware by now I’m getting married next June. I’m pretty excited about it. But, with that excitement came a bunch of headaches! Not wedding related at all actually, but, business related. I’ve spent the better part of a month now trying to get everything in place for my move so that once I decide to move my servers I will be faced with minimal down times. Well, my search has not been very fruitful.

I’ve been trying to get a business connection run to my residence so that I can host my servers from home, without having to worry about finding an office right now. We’re doing great, but not that great! I can’t really afford to be paying rent and service fees in a place I will not be living in. So, i’ve been canvasing the local internet service providers all week, and i’ve been getting the same answers from all of them. “You’re not in a commercial zone, so we can’t give you the package you are requesting. But, we can offer you this shitty package instead! Frankly, these packages are quite excellent for a home business” So being polite I ask them some questions like… what kind of bandwidth speeds will i get, and can I get a static ip with this service? The anwers are always a bit jumbled, but I get a reply of “oh about 768kb/s upload, and no we can’t give you a static ip address”. Well then… this package clearly is not that great for MY home businesses now is it! Sometimes I wish I lived in Japan, where they easily get 24mb/s to their homes, and about the same upload speeds (This isn’t a typo… is should read twenty-four). Hell. They can even get 100mb/s fibre to their damn door step.

So i’m in a bit of a conundrum! Do I try to run these services of a crappy as personal connection, or do I leave my servers in Cornwall! Uggh. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth!  Its kind of Ironic that in a medium sized town they’re more willing to bend the rules and provide me with a business line to my door, and in bigger cities where these types of breaks will likely go unnoticed I get stuck companies who are being real sticklers.  The Irony is that one of these companies will be living right across the street from me.  A freaking Internet Service Provider 2 seconds from my door, and for some reason they can’t provide me with a business account, but they are able to provide the entire city with Internet services.  How messed up is that.