This is your brain on buzz.

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2006-09-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Video Blogs

2005-12-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

Explore the Video Bloggers at vSocial! (Tag: vlog)

Double F5!

2005-12-06T22:47:00.000-08:00

So, Refresh 2 went off tonight. Increase in attendance, bunches of faces from the last time, a bunch of new faces, everyone very excited. I had to stand up and speak, so obviously I picked the far corner (behind the camera! HAH, in your face James/James/Dan/Aaron -- no facetime for me!) and went into a random esoteric spiel about the things I truly believe Refresh is going to kick ass for. Hopefully, of course, it made a lick of sense to anyone else in the damned room.

There was a bit more of a "commercial, we're here to solicit" feel to this one -- as far as the dialog and "who am I" bits. Not sure where that's headed, but hey, if that's what the folks want, that's what'll happen.

I have about 45 mins worth of footage I'm capturing tonight, I'll edit that and up to vSocial and post 'em here.

Fun stuff, and fun times!

Tags: refreshphoenix

Colbert Report - Capital Punishment

2005-12-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Capital Punishment
Uploaded by HH32

This year's 1000th execution by Stephen Colbert. Also, the intro is of the Turin olympics' mascots. Those things seem pretty dumb.

Very funny, definately worth the watch!

This is Your Brain On Buzz 11/29/05, 11:30PM

2005-11-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is Your Brain On Buzz 11/29/05, 11:30PM
Uploaded by webba

Refresh Phoenix -- Check it out!

Recap (VERY quick recap) of talk had with James Archer, James Britt and Dan Ritzenthaler (Yeah, I can type it.. but YOU try to say it)

As an aside.. I need to shave and get a haircut. I'm starting to look like a scrubby geek (hey, wait...)

2005 Hurricane tracker

2005-11-29T04:21:00.000-08:00

2005 Hurricane tracker
Uploaded by HH32

Radar view of the 2005 Hurricane season. Extremely cool and scary at the same time.

You can totally see these things just rolling across the landscape. Nature can kick my ass.

Videoblog #7 - 11/26, 2:00PM

2005-11-26T14:44:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #6 - 11/23, 8:45AM

2005-11-25T00:57:00.000-08:00

How funny...

2005-11-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 9 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

What I'm curious about, is how many of YOU people, and by you people I mean Americans, could get that (FYI for the uninformed, I'm a Canadian ex-pat living in Arizona)

Dude!

2005-11-21T15:43:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #5 - 11/20, 4:30PM

2005-11-21T09:27:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #4 - 11/20, 11:30AM

2005-11-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #3 - 11/18, 2:30PM

2005-11-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #2 - 11/18, 12PM

2005-11-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Videoblog #1 - 11/17, 11PM

2005-11-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

It's... FRIDAY!!

2005-11-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

So here's my Video Roll for this week. Simple, quick, easy. The most popular vids on vSocial. Enjoy!

Goodness of the Pod Variety

2005-11-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

Image040.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

So... I finally sprung for a Video iPod. Man is this thing sexy. Of course, vSocial is entirely Video iPod friendly, so I've loaded all of my videos and a few others onto it... so cool. I also downloaded the episodes from Season 2 of Lost onto it, because I wanted to check out the Video store, how it worked, etc. Hopefully they'll open the damn thing up, because there's plenty of talented folks that could really use a source of exposure + revenue that Apple could open up for them. But, seeing their track record, I'm not holding my breath.

My son is a badass

2005-11-17T10:00:00.000-08:00

Image046.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

He's watching The Santa Clause. He's going to rule the world one day, as your Poet King. Bow down.

Pup in his HOT automobile

2005-11-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Image045.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

Yeah, T-Pup in an effing minivan. Who woulda thunk it? What the hell is happening in this world when the T-Papsmear is driving around an effing soccermobile? Ugh.

My uber stack

2005-11-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

Image044.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

So I didn't get to go see hockey, but I won a big shiatload of chips. =)

...I (HEART) APARTMENT COMPLEXES!

2005-11-16T16:44:00.000-08:00

Image043.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

So this is the letter we got about our "noise." I've been bitter enough on the subject, so I'll pretty much leave it at that. *BANGS THE WALLS*

Random thoughts from a random day

2005-11-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

Yeah, today was very "eh.." :(

Also, hockey game is a no-go. Dan got out very late.

Just another Amazing Monday!

2005-11-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

Audioblog #2! Enjoy.

Damn it feels good to be a gangster...

2005-11-14T21:48:00.000-08:00

Image042.jpg
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

I have no idea what I'd do without my comfort foods. Mac & Cheese is literally my favorite meal in the world. Yes, that sounds entirely too white trash, but it reminds me of a time that I didn't have to worry about anything except Transformers and Soccer. I miss those days sometimes, which is when I hit up my blue and orange box.

Long live Mac and Cheese!

Pwned!

2005-11-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

Who says europeans aren't tough hockey players?

DING DING DING!

My Sunday, My Words

2005-11-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

So I got a random comment from a girl who loved my Nerd Chick post (and my tshirt..), and I checked out her blog, and she was using audioblogger. So I figured.. what the hell, I like random things that will run up the long distance on my cellphone!

Enjoy.

My favorite new vs tag...

2005-11-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

whitegirlsdancing.

That is all.

Finderizing

2005-11-12T15:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've been getting into realtime search, or "Blog Search" recently, because I've been trying to keep up on coverage, discussion, etc on vSocial this week. The two leaders in the space right now are (first by a LARGE margin) Technorati, and Mark Cuban's porfolio company Icerocket. Both seem pretty interesting and good at what they do, but there's an issue.

They both return different results.

So, how do I rectify this? I want to only search one set of data. Unfortunately, right now, I have to search twice, but I'm trying to figure out a CURLy way of making this a simpler task.

As an aside, no, Google's blog search is not worthy of listing here. It's simply a splog search, and not worth talking about right now.

We need more Geek Chicks!

2005-11-12T14:58:00.000-08:00

Just read a great post on Beth's Blog, via the Videobloggers Group, on a lecture she went to recently. The topic: Revenge of the Female Nerds: Myth Busting.

Seriously, are we still at the point that Girls can't be nerds??? That bothers me, and not for some overly-feministic tendencies that I don't have. It's simply because.. no nerdgirls means no dating nerdgirls. That's not a good thing.

From Beth's coverage:

Myth 2:
Smart women (geeks) aren’t pretty and women should be pretty

You have to be unattractive and wear glasses to be a geek. Smart girls don’t code because they rather ice skate, date boys – how does a brainy girl become a real girl, have the same experiences as other girls. The girl takes off her glasses. If she wants to be successful and pretty (and get laid), needs to take off her glasses. That's bullshit.

Society is giving women a false choise: Either keep the glasses on and do the technical work or take the glasses off and have a full dating life.

Dude. Leave the glasses on. Infact, if they're off, put them back on. You probably look more hot that way. Seriously, we dig smart girls. We don't like dumb ones. If we have to make a choice, we'll take the smart one. Given the societal conditioning that makes women think that dumb=good for dating, but isn't this just driven by the neanderthal's that don't want to date women smarter than them. I do! I think lots of guys do! Guys who are used to being "that smart guy" usually do.

Anyways, great writeup on a relevant topic. Go check it out and comment.

And introduce me to your smart female friends. =)

This weekend

2005-11-11T12:49:00.000-08:00

I hope to:

Spend some quality time with the pwner of a son I have

Actually READ the damn Wheel of Time book I bought (#11, the one I posted the image on before)

Prep my camera for the RPG/D&D vlog that I still need to convince Clark he's going to let me shoot on Sunday

Do my first question8ion

~~Sleep too much~~ Actually work on di for more than 20 minutes

Finish the api for vSocial

So yeah, no relaxation for me. Oh well, I can always relax when I'm dead. =)

Everyone have a great weekend, I'll be posting for a great deal of it if you're bored!

Friday is Roll Day!

2005-11-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

Here's my Video Roll for this week, it's all about the vlogs!

This should be growing soon, due to the fact that we're working with sull and the videobloggers. I hope to do another one next week with a tonne more. =)

Happy Friday!

Refreshing

2005-11-08T20:26:00.000-08:00

So I just got back from the first Refresh Phoenix meetup. It was pretty cool, if a bit disjointed, which was to be expected, and infact it was announced as such, so it didn't come as a suprise. Some interesting folks, to be sure, and it will be very cool to watch the ecology that was seeded today grow. Phoenix has a TON of talented, smart and innovative folks, and this kind of group will only help grow them into succesful folks. This was a lot less pretentious than these things usually are, which was.. er.. refreshing(???) to experience. No ass-kissing, no "my resume is cooler than yours" -- just peers wanting to know they're not in a wasteland by themselves. Which they're not. The meeting was lead by Aaron Post, who I thought did an excellent job, and whom I hope to get a chance to actually talk to next time. =) I totally get where he was coming from, the whole "okay, I know this is a big city, and I'm not the only one who gets this stuff" feeling. Hopefully Refresh will change that.

I also returned to see the email from Michael, from vlogdir, and it turns out he's even more zealous than I am at making the "ecology" concept work! Man is that nice to see, the passion and enthusiasm I have for the space matched and outdone! Very cool, very productive, very informative and EXTREMELY good day!

Now if I could just find some time for a nap...

Tags: vSocial, refresh phoenix, meetup, work, vlogdir

Sleep

2005-11-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

I don't sleep enough. The problem is, I know I don't, but I LOVE to sleep. If I don't crack myself out of bed after 4-6 hours, I'm there for 10. So I'm writing this basically out of sleep deprivation. I've had some great conversations today, on the Yahoo! Videoblogging group, and then offlist as well, with Michael Sullivan (aka sull) and Jack Olmstead. Both have been pretty receptive to vSocial, and it looks like I'll be doing some things with Michael pretty soon here.

The reception to the announcement on TechCrunch yesterday AM about vSocial has been pretty interesting to watch. The spread across the blogosphere is really fun to watch.

Hopefully I'll get some sleep. I'm going to the initial Refresh Phoenix meetup tonight, so that'll be pretty cool. For a quicky about Refresh Phoenix:

Help define Refresh Phoenix

In case that description above was a little vague, here's your chance to make it clear. This is exactly what our first meeting will be about. We want to meet and connect with the people interested in creating a community before we define the community.

So that, should, be fun. I like networking with peers at the very least. Geeks amongst geeks, as it may be.

I'll post back tommorow about how that goes, for now, I'm going to try not to fall asleep!

Tags: vSocial, vlogdir, vlogs, networking, refresh phoenix

I'm male

2005-11-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know the subject is a bit startling for some folks, but I am male. Even worse, I'm a male geek, which really amplifies my maleness in some regards. Websites are one of these regards, case in point the first part of this post, FlickrLicious - SFW. This is the Safe For Work link, there's also an XXX link which I recommend when it's apropos. So, how's this make me male? Well, it's women, mostly good looking, and on the good link, they're naked or better. How amazing is this? Well, since all the images are pulled from FlickR, and their RSS feeds, FlickrLicious has turned around and put their own feeds out. So if you go back 2 posts on this blog, and read my Google Reader post, you'll see where I'm going with this.

Syndicated Porn!!

Yeah, I know, lots of you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but for those that do, this is simply an indication that blogs, syndication, tagging and social networks are for real, because once porn starts to adopt a technology, it will succeed.

Back in Web 1.0 land, my other favorite site recently has been What Boys Want. Think Maxim of Pwnage +5, and you get this site.

Sorry if this bothers some of my female friends/enemies, but hey... I'm male, women are beautiful, and I really like looking at boobies. I'm not weird, wrong, or disgusting for doing and/or wanting to do so. I mean seriously, go check out a really nice set of boobies some time, you'll totally understand where I'm coming from. This aside, anyone who's truly upset at me for this post should realize that this is a good part of my demisogynization process, so cut me some slack (not that you shouldn't anyways)

This one's for Jay

2005-11-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have a couple more posts to do today, but this just hit vSocial, and made me think of Jay (he likes the show, and well.. have you seen him dance?)

Enjoy!

Some Web 2.0 Googness

2005-11-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

So I was bored a couple days ago, and part of my Bored Routine™ is hitting up Google Labs to see if they've come up with anything cool and/or relevant (work-wise) recently. I've heard about Google Reader before, but really hadn't played with it, figuring it to be Yet Another Syndication POS. But it really is quite slick. All AJAX, very quick, has tags, tho' not sure where the relevance/context comes in with them, and a top-notch interface (that's almost IDENTICAL, both in look & feel and functionality to the Media Browser I wrote for the old vSocial about 2 months back.. so maybe I'm a bit biased)

If you have a Google account, definately worth checking out!

Working from Home.. Yay!

2005-11-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this is the first day in awhile where my WFH productivity has above-and-beyond surpassed my in-office productivity. Usually when I'm working from home, on-par or a bit below my in-office productivity, which (and this is entirely not humble) is extremely high anyways. But today, I really, REALLY tore it up. Started around 5:50am, and didn't stop until I needed to take a nap around 1pm, and just picked it up again. I got the "Story Telling" features in vSocial really fleshed out, and I'm really happy about that. I also did all this with my son, Raymond, wandering around about as sick as I am. I love being really good at what I do, being able to perform under non-ideal situations and shining, and really coming through in the clutch. It makes me feel good about myself.

Still sick as hell, but what can you do?

Being sick

2005-11-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

So I have been feeling under the weather for a few days, and I have a pretty full-blown ear infection now, including the accompanying nausea and vertigo. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except I need to really kick some ass at work this week. So I'm kind of fighting through this crap right now. I also have my personal stuff that's come back in my face and I've been forced to deal with, that's sucked too. So I'm not only sick and weak physically, I'm really quite drained emotionally as well, so much so that I just COULDN'T do Hallowe'en with the kids last night, which was really disapointing. I hope they had a good time (I'm sure they did.) I get paid today, which is nice, but I really feel like I need a reset somewhere right now. Like maybe just a good weekend amongst trees and nature and shit. Dunno, the last time I did that was only a month or two's worth of reinvigoration.

At least I can start getting my car fixed finally.

Here's a good visual for how I've been feeling:

Later!

One last thought for the (work)day

2005-10-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

DO YOUR LAUNDRY, LAZYASSES!

Books: Wheel of Time - Knife of Dreams

2005-10-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well, my weekend is shot...

Expect a full review from me sometime next week, or whenever I get finished. Is he ever going to finish this thing????

Today's Videos: dalailama

2005-10-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Today's Video Roll is a set of clips that Richard snagged from the Dalai Lama's trip to the Thunderbird School of International Business Somethingorother. Very cool, best part to me is the comments at the end (which, ironically, is the first clip in the Roll!)

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

question8 precursor

2005-10-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

So I have the URL, and I've made a logo:

...and I've written the questions. Now I just have to get wordpress to where I want it, and start shooting video. I'm going to be doing a trailer (this weekend hopefully) so that the concept can be visualized a bit more, but I've run the idea by some folks who's opinions matter to me, and they seem interested, so that's a great start.

Just the fact that I wrote the questions down means I'll at least do something with it.

Pizza!

2005-10-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Pizza!
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

Another attempt at getting fatter. Clark poses by this one. These things are RENORMOUS! We got double dough on this one, which increased the under-crust from paper-thin to about normal. It was a little bit too crispy on the edges for my tastes, but the fatasses I was with didn't mind so much. No leftovers.

Crazy Canadians...

2005-10-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Yes, we Canadians love our beer. McGill University, especially, apparently. Case in point:

vSocial - Short attention, short conversations and video clips

2005-10-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Mark has done his first blog entry about vSocial, go check it out!

Here's a good quote:

The web is evolving from a web of text and links to a web of pictures, movies and sounds. While this may seem like a great big "DUH" to some folks, actually seeing how the model is coming together and the early applications that are emerging to address this trend, and of course, how all of this coverges with trends like the RSS-enabled blogosphere and user-generated content has me really excited about the road ahead.

...and I couldn't agree more. The fact that it's taken this long to evolve (heck, begin evolving) into what we're looking at today, has been very frustrating for this bleeding-edge mofo. We're getting close, both as a company and an industry, and for me personally, it's a very exciting time.

Go check out the entry: Short attention, short conversations and video clips

Random Saturday...

2005-10-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well, today was weird. I was up early, because my son decided I was going to be (as he usually does.) So it kicked off to an early day, which was fine because Mike and I had to drop his truck off. No big deal. So I decide today is laundry day, and 7 loads later... done that. Cool. Make lunch and dinner for the boys, a healthy dose of cheap carbs, and I didn't get sucked into any dishes. Got to watch the Canucks kick the Avalanche in the junk, so I'm happy. Okay, that's all good.

Then the weirdness starts.

Mike and I finally get around to putting in Crash, which we've both have heard great things about. I get a phonecall about 45 minutes into it from Brent, my boss. It's 10:45. This is either really bad, or really good, but it's not just a "hey, how're you?" call. We've heard back from TechCrunch, a popular blog which highlights Web 2.0 applications. Cool, says I. Except they want some details on some things that I'm really the best qualified to answer. Okay, so I jump on the laptop and hammer that out. During which time Mike asks if I could maybe just knock it off, because my typing is kind of interrupting the movie. Ugh! Okay, so after a quick look, he understood that:

a) I wasn't working just to work, or because I was feeling worky.
b) No, it couldn't and wasn't going to wait for him to finish his movie.

He was mostly understanding after that point (he turned up the volume.) Okay, so we get the reply back to TechCrunch, and I get an email about 30 seconds later from Mark about a bug, a rather important one, with vSocial. So, I jump on that, and work some other issues that we had both been putting off, that were becoming more and more important to address. So now I'm sitting here at 1:15AM, totally wired, totally awake, and bored out of my skull. So I browse around vSocial, and find a new video from problem, and laughed more than I probably should have, but I figured I'd share it with everyone.

I'm going to bed!!!!!!

Crazy Go Nuts!

2005-10-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

New Friday Ritual - Post a videoroll for an interesting tag from vSocial

Today's: Parody

One month away!

2005-10-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the Xbox360, and my personal financial demise, is only a month away! To celebrate, I give you the Quake IV trailer. All bow down to the 360!

28" pizza

2005-10-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

28' pizza
Originally uploaded by Defcon Squared.

Largest pizza ever. We were watching Hockey and figured we should be fat. We measured it, it was infact 28" in diameter. The box was 40" diagonally.

Mmm... Pizza...

First!

2005-10-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so again, I'm going to try to do this on a regular basis. Hopefully I find the time to post some professional, personal and generally interesting things. I'm also going to post time-to-time updates of my question8 project, which I'll explain in more detail soon, probably today.

Anyone who actually knows me, knows that sometimes if I lose passion for something I find all kinds of reasons to ignore it and hope it'll go away, so I'm hoping I can cover enough different subjects that this isn't the case.

Hopefully this doesn't suck.