So, today is it.  The day that I've been talking about for a while...no, it's not demo release day (although that day will too someday arrive).  It's the day when I buy a house.  People have been asking me if I'm excited and guess what?  I'm not.  Yes sure it's a big step but the whole process has been quite sedate.  Back in April the agreements were signed and the bank approved me.  Then for a few months, nothing really happened.  Last week I had the electricity, water, and gas accounts created (15 minutes total including hold time and one call to the wrong company).  I obtained insurance inside of 10 minutes as well and aside from a 5 minute trip to the bank and a 20 minute visit to the house there wasn't really much to do.

I suppose one of the reasons I'm not in much of a panic or excited is that I haven't packed anything yet.  The move is within town and I have many days to move so there's no real sense of urgency.  The first real tangible step shall be this morning when I pay ze money...and then nothing.  Later on today I will get the keys and at that point I think things will get real...mad real.  After that I shall plant a tree in the backyard (but not before plenty of photographs to document the house) and I guess...well, that's the plan so far.

So, await word on more. 

Poster for The Bourne Ultimatum.  Feels like a first spin but it feels interesting.  The gritiness belies the probable action in the movie but hopefully not the shaky (physically) camera work like we saw in the last one.  He's also holding a gun and clearly walking down a street which instantly forms many questions:  Is he expecting somebody?  He's not running so he must be planning on a breach or initiating a confrontation.  Is he rescueing somebody?  He doesn't seem to be injured or bleeding so is this early on in the film?  He's not hiding the gun so did he just come from a gunfight?  Has he already been attacked during this walk?

It's not just a poster. 

In case you didn't know the Hitman game series were quite well designed and entertaining to play (lots and lots of hours spent figuring the environment out).  The actual violent component of the game was quite limited and it is of course an M title due to those parts (as it should be).  The story within Hitman is an interesting one as well as it's not purely about being a Hitman but why one is a Hitman (yada yada yada).  There's quite a bit of mystery surrounding the character in the game and it should make a good movie adaptation.  Lately though there have been quite a few of terrible movie game adaptations and well...everybody is on edge to see if they'll finally make a good movie from a game.  If the Hitman teaser-trailer is any indication then we're in for quite a good ride.

Watch Hitman Teaser-Trailer.

Update:  Fox has asked JoBlo to remove the trailer but IGN has it here.

Lenny and I went skating today.  Not ice skating mind you but good old fashioned wooden rink skating.  It's the type of rink where almost everybody is wearing quads.  Lenny and I wore inlines.  Skating on a smooth wooden surface is amazing...it's been so long (I think grade 7 was the last time and I played Rampage more than anything back then) that I completely forgot what it was like.  There's a few comparisons that I draw between ice and wood:

1. Wood requires more work to keep moving.
2. Wood is more forgiving and less forgiving in the corners.  To expand, you need to keep your crossover going throughout an entire turn.  On ice I can (if I want) keep a single edge throughout the entire turn which is nice from time to time.  On wood you will lose a lot of speed in the corners.  You can also fix errors in your technique as if you let your push under ankle touch the floor you may go down immediately or you'll get a severe bobble.  In just 15 minutes of skating my cornering technique has raised my ankle up so I can get a better edge.
3. Speaking of edges, WHERE ARE THEY?  Very frustrating not having an edge but instead having to use friction.
4. Wood is more forgiving of straight pushing technique but now is a good time to develop the fundamentals.
5. Since wood requires more work it's a good place to work up the stamina and endurance for the ice.

I may go to a softer wheel rating for indoor skating so I can get a better grip but I was pretty happy with tonight and I hope ya'll go as well (for the locals that is).

The place where we skated is known as "Rollerama".  It's in Cambridge just off of highway 24; more details here.  Call to double check times as some dates are now unavailable due to it being summer.

Starship Troopers 3 (!!!) is in production!!!  Starship Troopers:  Marauder.

It was obvious from the other movies that each movie is simply a single small part of the whole war.  The cartoon series is especially nice in terms of how it adds more detail.  Starship Troopers is interesting in that it takes place in the very near future and doesn't create fantastic new weapons but instead takes a small incremental step forward making it seem far more plausible.

Yesterday I had dinner with one of my mates from University:  Lukasz.  He's a very bright guy that's one heck of a programmer and we had a long chat about what each of us was working on and life in general since the disconnect (thanks to Facebook for the reconnect...damn you Facebooook!).  Anyhow, Lukasz co-founded a company by the name of ContingencyWorks.

CW claims to make backing up workstations incredibly easy.  I was skeptical of the claim and the business (I'll be honest here) as I thought to myself:  "Well, I rsync up data on my servers all the time, what's the big deal"?  I'll clarify that my servers are running some flavour of Linux and so backups are slightly easier there.  Is Windows backup such a big deal?  After a bit of research it turns out that it is.  Windows backup has no clean or simple solution.  One of the biggest concerns I have with doing backups is not using up an enourmous amount of space with the actual backup but also having incremental backups.  There simply aren't any good solutions out there because of the complexity.

Turns out that it's quite complex but CW has a solution.  As the demo progressed I could see more and more uses.  In addition to that the user side UI is quite simple to use and a user in a corporate environment doesn't have to worry about anything once an admin has setup their machine for backup.  The backup servers (EpochBox) are also incredibly easy to setup and that's what CW is really aiming for:  easy of use.

I was duly impressed as there are many usage scenearios for the backup servers and given how valuable data is these days in the corporate environment I think it's definitely something that can work out well for the founders of CW.

More details as I learn about them and am allowed to reveal them.  If you're a business owner/IT manager interested in a demo or a personal introduction please let me know and I'll set it up.

Out on August 24th, 2007: 

Indiana Jones still looks like himself!  More details and a larger picture here.

Perhaps one of the biggest issues I'll have to deal with when I move is the lower temperature of my room.  Presently I have several machines (servers and desktop) running 24/7 and it gets might hot in here (hovering around 31 last night...ambient air temperature) since we tend not to run the AC.  I believe I'll be fine with no AC in the new place but will likely still set it to keep the temperature somewhat controlled.   So to those of you around me that find it "hot" at night...you have no idea.