I Admit it, I’m a Lost Fan Too! People Hate Me for it.

February 13th, 2010 Thomasso

For Ten long agonizing months I waited while rerun after rerun played before the launch of season six kicked in on the boob-tube, or flat-screen this month. As of two weeks ago, season six of the television show Lost finally started, and life seems to be back to normal, although normal is such a loose word these days. I have being capturing the last two episodes on my home-made PVR so I can watch it during the times I have to myself. Many I know love the show. I love the show becuase it has a cool narrative and a plot that would make a prime-time soup-opera look like a skit on kid’s TV.

The nice thing about the whole plot are the never ending twists that each character takes. I mean you really need to take notes on some of these details that go on. I also enjoy finding mistakes, especially the continuity of one scene to another, or editing mistakes where make-up changes dramatically–a cut, or gun shot location on a actor’s piece of clothing. There are some really good websites too that have hundreds of them listed.

I also love it when people poke fun at the show. The Onion News Network is probably one of the best American parity shows on the web that I have seen. There are many spoofs of the show Lost on the web, but this one has a lot of truth to it–you either love it, or hate it to death.

We will see what the final season of Lost brings, 17 episodes of suspense, drama and gut wrenching plot. Hopefully they (the writers and producers) can really make everyone heads spin with weirdness as the plot goes where no plot has gone before. I can’t wait!

Posted in Events, General, Humour, Video | No Comments »

I Tip My Hat with Honour

August 15th, 2009 Thomasso

Since I’m on a run with catching up with all the of the blogging I have missed from writing exams over the last two weeks, I thought I would pay tribute to those who have worked hard and made it to graduation, before I call it a day. I know how much of a big deal it is when you climb the highest mountain, swam the deepest water or completed the highest degree, you just want to stand for a moment and breath it in, those priceless few seconds as you reach the summit. It is when your pen drops on the desk and you walk over to table at the front of the class and hand in the fruits of your labour that those few seconds start.

Very dew people will know how much effort, time and money went into reaching that point, the end of a very long road. This year, from my institution, an estimated 30 student will have reached that milestone in my degree program. Although I will not be up there with this term’s group of graduates, basking in the limelight of the convocation, I will be there as a spectator as several of my friends have invited me to share this highly prestigious moment with them.

From my last Monday class, lovingly called CRIM4900, I found that six or seven of the student in that class alone were spending there last few moments as students as they handed in their exams. At this level, all of them will have completed their Bachelor of Arts in Criminology or some other degree. They all have paid their dues, four years, 120 credits, 40 to 50 courses. It’s nuts eh?

So I raise my glass to you all for a job well done! Aaron, who I have had the privilege of sharing many group and research studies with in all those classes we shared. Carol, who showed me that no matter how hard-ass the prof is, they to are people and have feelings—although they sometimes don’t like to show it. Evelyn, Sheryl, and Candace who made poster making in social sciences that much more enjoyable—glue bonds more than the word to paper—it bonds the pen as well. Parhm, the silent genius who rescued me from the wrath of hard-base quantitative statistics and foiled the bell curve. There are many more, and I will miss you all.

Please queue the song, “School’s Out Forever,” by Alice Cooper 1972.

Posted in Criminology, Events, General, University classes, Video | 2 Comments »

They didn’t say it was Going to be This Ugly Out?

July 26th, 2009 Thomasso

Yesterday had turned out to be a very muggy, wet, stormy day as a small thunder storm rolled through over top of us. It sort of approached us really slowly, and we could hear it from about 5:00pm onwards, but by 9:00pm, it was right over top of us, and it seemed to have just parked for the night. Right up until 2:00am there were random flashes of light and the distant rumbling of thunder.

What was so bad about yesterday was the sudden down-pour of rain. It came down hard and fast. And the temperature was not dropping either, so you had this muggy effect that left us hot and sweaty, but soaked from the rain.  I was with some friends doing the BBQ over on Brey Island, aka the Fort Camp site in Fort Langley, when all this happened.

Awe-yes, the barbecue. We planed for this a few weeks ago, and the weekend looked like it was going to be one of those very nice ones, you know, with the sun and all of that perfectness that you need for the best group outing ever. In fact, right up until Friday we figured that we were going to be in camping utopia.

The video was taken from the cell-phone.  The resolution is garbage, and there is no audio; however, I may have access to a copy of it taken from a really nice video camera that one of our compatriots had with her—who braved the elements and took some really good scenes of the lightning. When I get a copy of it, I really want to post that here. The lightning was spectacular! We don’t get lighting shows like this very often here.

Posted in Bitching about weather, General, Video | 5 Comments »

Hate is Alive and Doing Well In My Own Backyard

July 12th, 2009 Thomasso

I don’t like talking about this, and I know most other people don’t either, but this is something that keeps popping up in a country that everyone here thinks is a utopia of the most tolerant place on earth. I see it, and most of my friends see it as well. We do it without even knowing we are doing it. And worse, we have buried it so deep that we can easily say, with a strait face, we would never do it.

I have read authors who have spent the better part of their lives tracing the root causes of racism, and they try to explain how it trickles in from within our society. They write about how laws and social norms are created to protect the dominant class from the “in pure” creeping into their ideals. How law enforcement seems to use surveillance of ethnic groups more closely with this concept call the “white gaze,” that authors such as Carol Tator and Frances Henry who write about this in their book called, “Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of a ‘Few Bad Apples.’”

Canada is by far no perfect place. All you need to do is look at our legal history to see how deep this ethnic divide is. See one of our current laws, the Indian Act for example, where an entire group, a race of peoples, is effected by status and class, and where they carry cards that identify them as aboriginal, and they have special communities that they can live in that we call reservations of which they cannot own the property individually. A reservation is no grand place to live, and statistically these places have a ten times higher rate of poverty than the rest of Canada.

Then you should look back further into our history of legislation where there were laws that targeted most ethnic groups through exclusion, limited mobility, and even gender. Even though most of our laws today reflect a more somewhat equal society, the deep seeds of racism are still germinating throughout society.

Am I surprised that hate crimes like the Phillips beating in Courtney, British Columbia are happening? No. Education is the key to correcting this wrong.

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law and Order, Social Justice, Video | No Comments »

The Squirrel Relocation and Witness Protection Program

June 25th, 2009 Thomasso

The Squirrel Relocation and Witness Protection program was started to help protect squirrel victims and the relocation criminal squirrels from the community and send them to remote areas for rehabilitation.

In this particular case, Mr. Fur Face, was apprehended for grand larceny of a free-standing bird feeder that is privately owned and run in the Fort Langley area. Mr. Face was relocated to a unknown secret location about 15 kilometres outside of town today just after his capture. He was only in custody for less than one hour after the crime took place, and witnesses say he acted without remorse.

Posted in General, Video | 2 Comments »

Did Everyone Go Away for the Weekend?

May 16th, 2009 Thomasso

I was getting a little bored sitting around reading so I decided to phone a couple of friends to see what they were all up to, but all of them had gone out of town for the long weekend. This is bad. I feel jealous. The price I pay for my higher education—dealing with the homework issues–the shackles of my weekends.

Anyway, I took a long walk by the river this evening. I brought my trusty little Kodak camera with me so I could attempt to take a whole pile of sunset shots, but the walk was cut short because the pesky little blood-sucker flies are out. I have bites all up and down my arms and legs. Fortunately, I brought my jacket just as a precautionary measure because it looked like it could start to rain, but instead I put it on when it was baking hot out. I wasn’t the only one taking a walk with long sleeves on while the sun was out. I envy those who earlier on in the day could walk barefoot along the sand.

On my way back during my little walk I took this shot, below, that shows Billy Brown Road, looking West from off of Glover Road. The white structure in the middle is the seniors home for the “40s and up.” The green building on the right, if you notice, is actually sitting over on where the pavement and  sidewalk should be. I guess that will get taken down to make the road its rightful width very soon. That sand pile is where there might be some stores, as I heard that it was set for commercial usage. Maybe they’ll put in a big-box store! That would be interesting for Fort Langley.

It looks like summer could be here after all, for the West Coast at least. I heard on the news that Manitoba got snow today? I feel so sorry for those people—OK I don’t because it could have been us getting the white stuff here the way the weather has been so far this year. Now our worst nightmare is going to be what the spring run-off is going to be like. Perhaps a super flood will take place here in the Fraser valley for our June/July flood period? I hate flood warnings.

Great! A mosquito snuck inside my place. I’ll never sleep with that buzzing around biting me all night. Where’s the sticky-tape!

Posted in Bitching about weather, General, Photographs, Video, flood | No Comments »

Another Winter’s day of Snow

January 5th, 2009 Thomasso

Last night as I was driving home from a friends place, the visibility from the snow was so bad that I almost had to drive at something less than 30 Km/h. What was forecast on the radio as a night of rain turned into a sudden freakish snowfall. Boy did it snow.

Later that night I heard a crackling noise outside my front door. It was a tree that leaned onto the power lines. The more it snowed, the frequency of sparking from the tree increased to the point that the fire department was called in . When I walked around the driveway I noticed that my next-door neighbour was outside too, also looking at the tree that was getting electrocuted. We had to duck falling branched too!

She pointed to another utility power pole where the trees forced it to lean over into the yard across the street from me. Every power line was dropping and at the other end of the street I could see another tree with its branched sparking away as it leaned on the wires.

Oddly our power never went completely out except for the odd flicker and two second dimming. I think we were lucky.

The real fun was this morning when everyone was heading off for their work. I had the day off. From 6:00am till noon the sounds of spinning tires was heard. One poor fellow with a very small car with summers tires almost damaged his engine as he kept on spinning his tires. When he gave up his car was making popping sounds as the engine kept back-firing when idling. I think for a lot of people this was a “Snow Day.”

With my municipal government stead fast on not doing snow removal for residences, I wonder what the true costs are for everything barely moving because of it. Many companies could not work today because of the conditions of the roads. My friend’s garbage has not being picked up in two weeks now because the garbage trucks are not out in his area. He hired a bobcat (a small tractor/scooper)to remove and clear snow in his cul-de-sac, but never touched the street. Him and his neighbours all pitched in and rented the bobcat to take care of their driveways. He told me that if we truly had a right-wing government that we would all be responsible for clearing our own streets. I laughed—I think we are already there?

Posted in Bitching about weather, Diatribe, General, Social economics, Video | 2 Comments »

Talk’n About Space Rocks

December 27th, 2008 Thomasso

When I was up to my neck with term papers and exams there was a huge meteorite that travelled above Alberta and Saskatchewan that was seen by thousands of people last month, but I was too busy to catch all of the news on it.  So I’m sort of catching up on what I’ve missed. I’m kind of a back yard astronomer, so stories like this really catch me attention.

Seeing meteorites are rare events. We all have seen little ones that streak across the sky, but not too many have seen ones that have hit the earth. What is even more spectacular are the numerous video cameras that caught the fire-ball lighting up the night sky on November 20, 2008. When I watched the videos on You-Tube, and the quality does it no justice, I was amazed at just how bright that object was when it burnt up in the atmosphere. And from what I have read people did managed to find bits and pieces of it.

A bright fireball lit up the sky over parts of Canada and was probably a meteor which may have hit the ground in central Alberta. Reports from all over western Canada said the bright flashes occurred at 5:30 pm MST on Nov. 20. The bolide split the evening sky and fragmented during a series of booming explosions. Source: Universe Today,  November 21, 2008.

For the people who were really close to the event they heard the explosion that it made when it entered the atmosphere. That would have being very cool to have witnessed. I’m sure there were people who thought it was American or Russian space junk falling out of orbit and landing in our back yard.

I caught a little bit of it on the news last week when CBC said that experts did manage to find small chucks of the meteorite from November 20, but I have yet to find anything on the net. I just started my search today, so hopefully very soon I can dig up some dirt on what the scientist think it was, or how big? I would like to know.  So Far from CBC I found this story that had some intersting facts about how people perceived what they saw.

ADDED December 27, 2008: Thanks to Dean for giving me the right TV station for the location and search details of that meteorite site.  Please see this link for photos, information and video of what has being found up until then at CTV Edmonton, AB web site.

The group, organized by the University of Calgary, has recovered more than 100 meteorites from the site near Lloydminster, on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and says many more are still out there. Source: CFRN, Alberta.

I think that would be cool to find a 4 billion year old rock that up until November 20th, 2008 was floating out in space.

Posted in Astronomy, General, Video | 1 Comment »

When the Shoe Flies & Shopping Regrets

December 16th, 2008 Thomasso

First the funnies. I just about fell off of my chair when I saw the news footage of George Bush’s near miss with an irate Iraqis who threw both of  his shoe at him while he spoke speaking at a news conference. Unbelievable that it happened, and doubly unbelievable that George could move like that. The Shoe jokes just started to fly at work when we talked about that. CBC, the Current had in there promo for today:

It’s Tuesday December 16th.

U.S. President George Bush narrowly dodged a pair of shoes thrown at him by an irate reporter at a press conference in Iraq

Currently … Boy, the president is lucky this didn’t happen in Iran where he would have been carpet bombed.

This is the Current.

See for yourself if you have not seen it on the television:

I made the mistake of going shopping this evening. I should not have gone-period. It was a zoo down town. The first store I went to to do some food shopping, I literally spent more time in the line-up than I did walking around shopping. The couple at the front of the line paid with gift cards. The poor cashier spent so much time dealing with them that it took well over ten minutes to get on their way.

I think gift cards are a great idea if you are not sure what to give someone for a gift for whatever occasion you are celebrating during the holidays, but they are a hassle to cash. And if you have ten of them, think about how much time it will take to go through each one after all of your stuff has been run through. The poor couple were not happy at the trouble is caused. Which brings me to the rest of the people standing in the line-up…

OK, people, listen up: check your balance before you go out on your shopping spree. It’s really simple to do. Know how much you have on your plastic, or credit, depending on how far in debt you are because we the rest of the world don not have time to waste while you get the cashier to sort out what you can afford. Plus, we will stare at you, and think, “oh that poor person, overdrawn and in debt… maybe you are going through a really bad divorce and your spouse just cleaned out your bank account.” Check your BALANCE, for crying loud, before you go shopping.

Anyway, I made it home in one piece. I did not get all the stuff I wanted because I sort of gave up and headed home once I realized that even though it was 10:00pm, the crowds were not letting off. Weird, on a Tuesday night? People are still buying.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Social Justice, Video | No Comments »

Video Experiment with VIMEO

December 7th, 2008 Thomasso

I was playing around with my video settings here on the Blog because this is the third time in a month that the Creator of the plug-in has fixed bugs in it. I stuck with Viper’s Video Quick Tags because it seems to have the best interactive control panel out of all the WordPress plug-ins I have tried.

While I was re-setting my tweaks for my Blog, I started viewing some of the other video formats that I never bothered to look at before and came across VIMEO. I never really paid that much attention to VIMEO before, so I went over to at the website and then started poking around. I came across this:

I thought the animation was interesting; I’m thinking that it could be made by an armature, even the music–but sounds good. It is the X-mass story, and the song is in Spanish, I believe. Oh, and one of the wise men looks like Santa in this video! The screen credits said that this was in HD for TV, though the audio was suffering from the bandwidth, and it was is stereo. I really like this type of animation, and I have made a few myself when I had lots and and lots and lots of time to render them. Did I say lots of time to render them right–yeah, even with an Intel Quad-Core it’s slow going?

So enjoy–that’s about as far as I’m going with decorating the Blog this year for the holidays–unless I get really board and I have some time to spend getting creative.

Posted in Blog Problems, Blog and Web Tech, General, Video | No Comments »