Recently in Nerp! Category

It's been a bit of an odyssey, but things are back to my particular brand of normal. After a couple of weeks off the 'air', I was able to get the site back up and running (albeit on a slower connection), over in Whitby.

For those that don't know, I've recently moved out of the place I had in Toronto and moved all of my belongings to my parents' home in Whitby, where I'll be living from April to September. I've been lucky enough to stay at a vacant condo unit owned by friends, for the month of March. They've recently moved into their new home (also in Whitby, coincidentally) and the couple they're going to rent the condo to, won't move in until the start of April. This all works out well for me, as my contract ends on April 4th, which means I'll only have to commute from Whitby to Toronto, for a single week.

Although I'll be jobless and out of the city at the time when I most wanted to be there, I'll at least be living for 'free', until school starts in September, so I can't complain too loudly (if at all). I've been fortunate to have an unfortunate set of circumstances, that ended up working out almost as well as they could have.

For the past two weekends, I've been hitting up the old/new room, to assemble furniture and set up the ridiculous assortment of consumer electronics that I now have. It's a fortunate thing that I put together that fabric wall (which I exported to Whitby), since it would be a jungle of wires, otherwise. I think this is the last time I plan on moving it all around, which means it's going to stay in Whitby until I'm done school. The thought of wall-mounting a 95lbs. monitor for a fourth time, come the fall, is slightly depressing. I'll just have to visit it on holidays.

Anyway, two more weeks here, so I'll be making the most of it with a couple of trips to see the TSO and whatever else I can think of.

First things first, my apologies for the month-long absence, although I don't know that many of you were very torn about it. I haven't had internet since my move to the city, which is a problem when you host your own site.

Anyway, I'm back and what better way to return, than with The National. I saw them on Thanksgiving (Cdn) Monday and it was quite a show. The best one I've seen in three years, in fact. I ended up arriving 30 minutes before doors opened, but that was okay, as it allowed me to get the best spot in the house, that being front and centre. I was also able to meet a lovely couple that actually drove 8 hours from Timmins, to catch the show.

Doveman opened, which was their two members, plus three members from The National helping out. In my mind, if the opening band is even okay, this exceeds my expectations. They were really quite good, so I felt like I saw three exceptional performances, for the price of one (I'll get to the third, later).

To make a long story short, The National were amazing and they put on a fantastic show. They played 18 songs over about 90 minutes and the crowd was totally into it, quite audibly singing along to every song. It was especially exciting to actually be right in front, even with the swinging mic stands, cords and boots, coming at me.

During the encore, we got our third great performance, when the band invited Hayden, to take the stage, for the second-last song. If I remember correctly (and I'm not sure I do), he chose 'Don't Get Down' and it was absolutely amazing.

Anyway, enough typing. Head over to the phlog section, to see the pictures.

If you're a fan of Animal Collective, they've released the first video, for their upcoming Sept. 10th album. I'll simply say that it's an odd video and leave it at that.

So in order to keep me sane, you can't leave comments, unless you've registered for either LiveJournal, Vox, or Movable Type (think comment spam). It's a simple step to register for Movable Type authentication, so go ahead and do it! The only thing is your comments won't show up until I republish the site... I still have a lot of nerping to do behind the scenes, to get things working properly.

I've added a couple of things to the page. There are now picture squares of the most recent photos I've uploaded to the site, as well as a tag cloud, letting you know what I'm talking most about. Since I've only inputted the archives for 2007, the cloud isn't necessarily accurate, but it's there and it works.

So I basically destroyed my webserver, a few weeks ago. Normally not a problem, but my webserver is actually a floppy-less and CDROM-less little fella. It took me this long, just to figure out how to get it working again and I'm no slouch in the nerping deparment... Anyway, everything is back to normal and I took the time to upgrade the software that runs the blog, so it's all fancy and new.

Like / dislike the new look? Let me know. Everything is really customizable, so it's no big deal to try something new. I don't know what I want, so it's always good to get some suggestions.

Although there's no link section, the 'phlog' section is still alive and kicking and you can find it here. Once I get everything sorted out, it won't look quite so empty and sad around here, but until then oh-so-sorry.

Not to bore you (although it is this blog's official mission), I've made a few changes to the site, which should hopefully be unnoticable.

After an internal board meeting, my brain has come to realize that this website doesn't require all that much computing power. This comes after commenting on the wastefulness of my computer fetish and means I've retired the webserver. Instead of a big box, chock full of hot CPUs and lots of hard drives, I'm now using a power-sipping 600Mhz IBM Transnote.

In addition, the FTP has now taken on a much smaller role. I'll be serving only recent albums instead of the much larger collection that was previously made available. This will also mean that the available albums will be updated more often than the previous never.

Well, another weekend down, another relationship down the drain. Yes, once again single, but as always things could be worse. On the bright side, I was able to come home and watch the 'big' game on the big television. It would figure that I'm finally able to enjoy a lovely picture and and American feed, only to have the commercials generally disappoint. To see for yourself, check out ifilm to take them in.

A nose plug is advisable.

Do you live in the northeast of the fine continent of North America? If so, your ass is freezing cold. I'm glad that it can still get cold up here (t-shirts in January was a bit odd), but I wouldn't mind some relief from the traditional Canadian winter and -30 to -40 temperatures.

I was at my parents' house this weekend and if you know my parents, then you'll know that they're Luddites. Anyway, I was walking by the family room, when I happened upon this oddity. I felt like I was in a dream, as I picked up a leather-bound computer(!?). It was as if Victorian 'sensibilities' had been transposed to the year 2001, when they okay'd this thing. I haven't a clue why my parents would be in possession of something like this and needless to say, I stole it.

So the latest update on the Arcade Fire album is that they charged my credit card and so I can only assume that the album is making it's way to me. Unless they've gone with FedEx bipedal ground, it will hopefully be here in the next week.

So I've been taking a look at the stats for the site and noticing an unfortunate trend. People that are looking at the pictures over in the Phlog section, are only looking at the first page of pictures. Despite both dialogue and visual aids, a lot of you bastards aren't paying attention to the notice page before you get to the pictures.

So if you just clicked that link, you'll notice two things. I wrote out instructions on how to navigate the page. Of course, I realize that a lot of times people aren't so much into reading per se, so I put up a visual aid as well, so people could just look at the picture and understand what to do.

Still not working.

The point is, you've gotta scroll up to see the navigation to get to the next page.

I don't really have the time to make it more logical at the moment and I understand that it's a bit funky, so my apologies.