Just plugging myself again (or For Rod)

Just wanted to let you guys know (aka Rod) that I got Google Adsense working for my site. I just thought it would be a neat experiment to see how it works and stuff like that. Anyways you can check it out here.

And here's a cat so you don't think that this is all about my site.

Refresh Refresh

So, I fixed up my website (selsine.com) after I looked at it in Internet Explorer, and realized that it didn't look so hot.

"Do people still use IE?"
"Why yes they do Mark, in fact most people still browse with it, something like 90%."
"Really? Do they dual boot into Linux?"
"No they don't Mark, they don't care about that sort of stuff at all."
"Ahh Mac users..."
"No, Windows."
"What about the spyware and Kazaa and things like that?"
"Well they install those because they want to steal music."
"It's not really stealing you know, it's copy write infringement."
"Bah, semantics! You don't even dual boot anymore do you?"
"Well I would if I could, it's Danielle she's always on my computer."
"Really Mark, it's not your computer anymore, think about it you haven't touched a command line in months."
"Not true, not true, just the other day I was playing around with Ruby on Rails and you have to use the command line for that."
"Ow, you self-righteous nerd, try getting some fresh air, maybe a tan."

Ahem! It was also my birthing day on the 27th, I went out for dinner with Danielle, or what I thought was Danielle, to this Buddhist Vegetarian place. Seems that Danielle has orchestrated a little surprise for me, and invited more people to the dinner. Sneaky girl that she is, knowing that I'm a birthday party-pooper she hid the details from me, effectively disabling my poopy responses.

Either way it was nice to see my friends and eat simulated meat with them, even though it made them all nervous. After that we went back to out place, and had some cake and champagne since it was my champagne birthday. I'd like to thank everyone who came out for, err, coming out (of the closet) and for the lovely gifts.

Sizznaturday

All right, so Saturday was Danielle’s Toronto based stagette, which meant that there were these three guys who had nothing to do because their Wives/Partners were out looking at gay porn and drinking out of penis straws.

So Fiachra, Rod, Matt and I hung out on my back deck and drank a few beers, and a little bit of Champagne thanks to Fiachra. After that it was off to the Victory Café for some food and a beer, and then to Paupers for some darts and some beer. There Rod and I showcased our terrible math skills and our mad dart skillz.

Beer and lamp not getting drunk

After a few hours of beer and darts we left for some pool where the team of Matt and Fiachra assured Rod and I that they would be victorious, which they were. This was not due to any sort of skill on their part it was due to my total lack of skill and the amount of beer that had been consumed had during darts (ahh takes me back to my first year in a dart league). I think I potted like two balls the entire four or five games. Rod tried to hold his own, but alas he was no match for their combined skill.

So that was about it, we got a free pitcher of Hemp beer because the owner of the brewery was there (pretty cool) then we headed back to my place at about 3:00am, which (as far as I can tell) was exactly the same time that the ladies were prowling around down town for a bar to go to, or at least a bar to sneak into and use its washroom.

darts!

Beers were opened back at the pad but remained un-drunk. Fiachra and Matt went off to bed, while Rod and I played some video games for an hour before retiring.

So there you have it, Saturday.

So? A new domain right?

So, while I should really be recounting what occurred on Saturday night, what am I doing? I'm working on my website. Sheesh, you can view the results here: http://www.selsine.com/

I'm enjoying working on it right now, plus I forced myself to go through a CSS tutorial so that it was done well and so that I actually learnt something.

Will it be updated? If it is updated what will it contain? Are the questions, the answers are: "Yes." and "I'm not sure, but not a blog."

Next post...Saturday night.

New Domain

So, I have a new domain, welcome to selsine.com, well actually selsine.com/blog since selsine.com is nothing so far...but soon it will be.

For now enjoy the fact that you can actually type this address in, rather then having to bookmark the long string of digits and letters that it used to be.

Welcome to the future.

Medieval Times

So this Friday Danielle and I went to Medieval times. Yes that place that they go to in Cable Guy where they watch some dudes joust and eat with their hands.

It's pretty expensive to go, but if you ever have a free evening, are in one of the cities where Medieval Times exists, and are into "silly" things like Medieval Times, then I would recommend going.



The evening starts off when you arrive at Medieval Times and get your crown that tells you which knight you are cheering for. Then it's time to wait in the waiting room, Danielle and I did this with two Medieval Times souvenir flagons, and a pitcher of beer. You are advised to arrive about an hour before the evening starts so that you can get better seats, and hang out in the waiting room and buy things. During this time you can also get knighted, but it's mostly nine-year-old kids that do this.



Then it's into the main arena and time for the festivities. This is where you watch the actual show and where you get to eat. If you eat meat (shudder) you get potatoes and a little BBQ'd chicken that you eat with your hands. Vegetarians get mixed veggies, a backed potato, cheese quesadilla, and a spring roll, that you eat with plastic cutlery...tres 11th century.

While you eat the show goes on in front of you, there is a little plot involving a war and a tournament and things like that (I won't ruin it for you in case you go). The tournament consists of games of skill, some falconry, some horse training displays and the battle between the knights.



The show lasts about two hours, and in addition to the food you get two pepsi's and a coffee. Here is a quick video you can check out: VIDEO our knight was the red and yellow knight.

More on Saturday night later.

On oldy but a goody

So I was perusing old Slashdot today and they had a link to a old article that I was a big fan of back in the day. The article is basically the top ten worst video game box art ever, and it quite funny. I've seen other articles that try to be as funny, or cover the same information but they always seem flat compared to this one. Here's an example of why I think it's funny, if you don't find this funny you probably don't want to bother with the article:

Making fun of TurboGrafx-16 artwork is like making fun of dead people for not being able to square dance. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but the point is the box art for Final Zone II isn't very good. If you look closely, you'll see that it's so bad that the guy in the blue armor is ashamed to show his face.

And I don't blame him, would you want to be associated with this rag-tag bunch of tubby losers?

Classic! Tubby Losers! Brings a tear to my eye...Anyways you can check out the rest of the article here at Gamespy.

For people that like Paris

For people who like Paris but have never been there, check out this neat blog that I stumbled across today. Basically this guy takes one picture of something in Paris each day, you can check them out here.

Bill C-38

Well some good news this morning, the Canadian Senate passed bill C-38 47-21. This means that Canada will be the fourth country (after Belgium, The Netherlands, and Spain) to legalize same-sex marriages federally once the Governor General give Royal Assent.

This, of course, gets:

Karaoke

Karaoke and Claire's birthday were this weekend, well Claire's actual birthday is next weekend but who's counting. So some people came over to the pad, where we hung out on the back patio and drank some beer and had some snacks. After about an hour or so we headed over to the Karaoke place above Clinton's and went to sing. Turns out that an error had been made with our reservation and it was for Saturday rather then Friday, luckily there was a room open so they let us in anyways.

So we started singing, Claire (as always) did many Huey Lewis and the News songs, she especially likes picking songs of his that she doesn't know.



Luckily I was there to pick up the pieces and re-energize the crown with a stirring rendition of Stairway to Heaven, which if you talk to anyone was the highlight of the night. I didn't do that one alone though, ow no, Jeremy helped out.

Tomasini and Annalise were there as well singing their stuff, Annaslize suffers from being able to actually sing, something that I've never let hold me back.



Another highlight of the night would have been the all girl 80's revival that kicked into highligh gear just before we were leaving but sadly I cannot remember what song they sung...was it "The Rose." The scrotummed, sadly, we not invited to participate in that one.



I thought I took more pictures, but it turns out that I didn't and those that I did, didn't.

Shaving Shaving Shaving

Stumbled across this article today: How to get that perfect shave. An interesting peice if you are a man who shaves. I was pleased to note that I already follow most of the suggestions that the article makes:

1. Shave after a hot shower - Check, well I mean I shave in the shower so I figure it counts
2. Use a shaving brush - Check, been using one for years, works great.
3. Use old fashioned shaving cream - Check
4. Use a good non-disposable razor - Miss, I'm using the old Mach 3, but the article mentions using one of the old DE razors:
   
   

I think that I'm going to make one of them old fashioned type razors my next purchase. I am scared by the fact that the article warns you when you start shaving with that type of razor not to push down on the razor or you will cut yourself, and then goes one to say that most people that use modern razors push down to hard.

An interesting side note about this wet shaving idea is that it has been how I have been shaving for years (since !ahem! high school !ahem!) and I have never really suffered from razor burn or any of those other problems...unless I was in a rush and did a quick jobbie in the sink.

The only problem is the Badger haired brush...which isn't too cool, so try to find yourself a synthetic haired brush.

Ernest Miller Hemingway

So Hemingway right:



Well yesterday I ran accross this story at Yahoo, it was about some of Hemingway's friends in Idaho, I was intrigued by this quote:

Tillie Arnold was working at an Idaho mountain resort back in 1939 when she came across an adventurous writer named Ernest Hemingway, who was at the lodge's restaurant eating marinated herring and drinking a beer for breakfast.

"I burst out laughing and said, 'Mr. Hemingway, is that breakfast?'" Arnold wrote in her 1999 book, "The Idaho Hemingway." "He said, 'Yes, daughter. Have some. It's good for the kidneys.'"

I thought, 'Hmmm beer for breakfast that's pretty neat.' so I decided to read a little bit more about his life over at the Wikipedia. So I read his biography there and one of the things that I learnt, that I did not know before, was that after World War I, he moved to Toronto to take a freelance job with the Toronto Star.

So there you have it Hemingway worked and lived in Toronto, a little factoid that I never knew.

Sin City

Well I saw Sin City last night, directed by Robert Rodriguez, and I must say that I thought that it was quite a fantastic movie. The way that this movie looks is great, it looks like a graphic novel in the way that it plays with colours and the black-and-white-ness of the movie.

The movie is basically a series of tales that take place in Basin City involving a large cast of characters that sort of overlap from story to story. The movie is extremely violent, but because of the way that the movie is shot the violence feels almost cartoon-like. For example, the movie is shot in black and white, so when (some of) the characters bleed it is in white. So you get shots of characters lying white pools of their own blood, which looks very cool.

Here is a comparison between the original graphic novel and the movie:



And another:



So all in all I think I would give this movie:

What is up with this heat Toronto?

I mean really, what sort of temperature is 35 Celsius? It's basically the temperature where everyone sweats no matter what you do and everyone just has to be cool with that. Just walking down the street to rent a movie means that you will be covered in that lovely oniony sheen.

Thank the powers that be that we did not end up having a garbage strike; otherwise these parts would have stunk to high hell.

Saturday

So this Saturday it was another hot and sunny day here in this smoggy city, so danielle and I decided to go and then down to catch a which we road until we got to where we transferred. Then we road it all the way down to where we untill we got to which was home to the worlds biggest outdoor art show. We walked around it for a bit till we got to the . At this point we were pretty hungry so we walked down and then stopped to get something to . After that we caught a and road it to . Then we walked down till we got to and then rented a movie for the evening. We went over to Matt and Natasha's to watch their , water our and watch our movie.

Ahh another day in the big city.

Another weekend with visitors

So it was a long weekend here in Canada, and my sister and her husband were in town, stopping off on their way back to Winnipeg from Europe.

So what did I do this weekend...hmmm well I went out for dinner on Friday night with Danielle and Kristen (cleaned for most for the day) and then went to pick my sister up at around 3:00pm the next day. That night we really didn't do much, just hung around here on the back deck and then went to Fresh for some food. My sister and her husband were quite tired so Danielle and I let them go to be early.


Everyone down at the harbour front.


What everyone looks like.

The next day we went down to the harbor front centre because apparently there was something going on there. We didn't find it but we did take a boat tour of the Toronto islands and stop over on the Toronto Islands. On the islands we took a tram ride around via Centreville, ran through the hedge maze and then headed back to shore.


Ahh centreville...what a ride...


Just some sound advice.

On dry land once again we went out for some Indian/Nepalese cuisine and then headed back home for a bit more wine and then to bed. All in all it was a nice weekend and I'm glad that my sister and her husband got the chance to see us here in old Toronto.


Nice short of the skyline and some boats

Note: Did you know that there is a free frisbee-golf course on Toronto Island? Or I guess I should say disc golf. Either way I know one dude who will be playing a few rounds of disc golf this summer.


Weird flag promoting the Fantastic Four movie that was being dragged over Toronto by a helicopter.

Interesting Google Search

While stroking my ego and searching google for selsine recently I noticed something...it seems as though my strippie based cafepress shop has overtaken this blog as the number one google result when searching for selsine, and this site has slipped to a lowly fifth position.

Now why in the world would that occur? Is there not enough selsine content on this site? Should I increase it? And what is up with mister (or miss) seventh place, selsine.com? Why that site doesn't even exist anymore, and if it did it should be mine.

The tenth site finds my massive assault battles with Adam listed, ahh those were some good times.

Other then that it seems to be some people misspelling words and my posts at slashdot, ahh what a magical world we live in...the Internet has drawn us so much closer.

On a related note, beware of JAVA people who want to tell you that pointers are evil. They are not evil in any way, they can be missued and become evil, but overall I find them more useful then evil.

I'll end this with a liittle bit of dodger: