Category: Life

Every other post.

  • Earthquake!

    Earthquake!

    Ottawa was hit with a magnitude 5.5 earthquake today. The epicenter was just north of town.

    I was in the office at the time. The first rumbles started, and then it really started to shake. We evacuated the building. At home there’s no damage; one of my two monitors tipped over from its stand and knocked over one of my external drives; that’s about it.

    It was kind of interesting to be outside at the time, seeing everyone else on the street being on at the same time.

  • Trolling PlentyOfFish.com

    Trolling PlentyOfFish.com

    Two nights ago, I just couldn’t sleep. So to pass the time, I decided to create a fake profile on PlentyOfFish. I took a picture of an 18 year old model from an adult entertainment website, slapped on a description from a PhD student in Toronto, and waited.

    Fake PoF Profile

    It didn’t take long. Within minutes I had 5 messages. Within 5 hours, this character had received more messages than my legitimate account on PoF had had in two years. Here are some of the golden conversations.

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  • First Shoot – A Marathon Run

    First Shoot – A Marathon Run

    Yesterday was the first shoot for Botnet, and I’d say it was a success. It was the introductory scene for the movie, which features the character known in the script as Black Hat. But what a marathon run it was to get prepared.

    The character is played by DJ IDE, who is one of the driving forces behind this movie. There are three of us: me (writer, director, camera), my boyfriend (producer, lighting, sound, camera), and DJ IDE (organizer, motivator). His help is crucial to get this film off the ground.

    It was my initial intent to shoot three scenes yesterday: the black hat introduction, the black hat discovering that his botnet was uncovered, and the recently added closing sequence. Time constrictions (DJ IDE had to leave for a show) meant that we had to leave the two latter scenes for another time.

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  • Celtx Character Summary Script

    Celtx Character Summary Script

    I’ve been using Celtx to write the script for Botnet. It’s a great little application. It has this neat feature whereby it automatically creates a list of characters from your script, and then notes what scenes they appear in.

    Unfortunately, Celtx doesn’t have the ability to “refresh” that list of characters. After it’s the characters and the scenes in which they appear are initially indexed, the info stays – even if the characters/scenes are removed.

    So I wrote this Python script to keep track of the characters. First it dumps the complete list of characters according to Celtx, and then indexes its own list by reading through the script, and notes in which scenes the said characters have dialog.

    Sample Output: Here
    Script Available: Here

  • Wind Mobile – 2.5 Months On

    Wind Mobile – 2.5 Months On

    A while ago, I was asked if I could do a review of Wind Mobile a few months on. I feel like I’m now at the stage where I can talk with more confidence on the service.

    For the record, I have two packages with Wind Mobile – the $45/month “Always Shout” (unlimited airtime, unlimited long-distance to Canada, unlimited text messages, voice mail, call waiting) along with the $35/month unlimited data/tethering plan. That’s a total of $80/month I pay.

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