I never knew

This is one of the best stories I’ve heard in a while. I’m sure everyone knows about the Make-A-Wish Foundation which helps sick kids get their wish. A lot of them ask to see Disney World, get a computer, a trip somewhere, etc. Ben Duskin asked to build a computer game and thanks to Eric Johnston at Lucas Arts he got his wish.

The game he created is about fighting cancer, and it reflects Ben’s own battle with leukemia. It takes place inside the body, on a playfield of mutating cells. The hero, a boy on a hovering skateboard, uses high-tech weapons to destroy these cells by collecting the seven shields that protect against common side effects of chemotherapy.

Very very cool project. Looks like Johnston had as much fun making the game as Ben did imagining it plus a lot of other kids will benefit form that wish.

In terms of actual money, we had a little tradition of having Limeade every week, ... I’m sure that came to 12 bucks … I had in this project exactly one person to please. It’s kind of nice to have your entire audience on the design team.

I’m still getting a lot of blanks stares when I say “blog” and some more when I say one of the first things I do when I wake up is check email and then fire up the feed reader since it’s where I get most of my news.

If the blank starers could turn their eyes to some of the good election coverage on blogs they might start to get it. Case in point, Michael who talks about his un-separatist understading of the Block vote (I agree) and Luke who presents some very good points and analysis concerning the media “calling” the results early and proportional representation. Good stuff on par or better than what can be found in the papers but from people not owned by converged media giants and on blogs where you can discuss their thoughts with them.

I’m not big on politics though so I’ve got a question. In principle I absolutely thing proportional representation is the way to go but how does it work in terms of who gets the actual seats? Does the party decide who they send? Do the representatives get elected but only some of them are part of the “sitting team” their party decides to use?

One of those 20” or 23” sure would look good on my desk! Sweet.

I’m also looking forward to trying out the new RSS feature in the next Safari which will be included in Tiger, not expecting it to replace a real feed reader though. Dashboard doesn’t look all that hot but since I use stickies quite a bit having them “reavealable” with Expose will be fun.

Hier j’ai passé la soirée à un petit party de fête. Dans ce “cercle” on retrouve toujours une bonne moitié de “Français de France”. Cette fois il y avait aussi une jeune femme de Toronto en visite pour quelques jours.

Avant de passé à mon vrai sujet, et sa question, je mentionnerai deux choses; 1. Les Français sont en beau maudit contre les grecs (voir Euro), mieux vaux ne pas aborder le sujet. 2. Tout le monde de la région de Toronto que je rencontre déménagerais illico à Montréal si ils parlaient un meilleur français.

Le vrais sujet maintenant, l’accent Québécois vs l’accent Français. La demoiselle de Toronto comprenais à peine assez de français pour suivre certaines conversations et elle ne remarquais pas la différence entre les deux accents. Normalement quand je dois expliquer la différence entre les deux à un anglo je compare à la différence entre les Anglais et les Américains ou entre les Américains et les Australiens.

Dans ce cas-ci toutefois certains tentaient de lui expliquer les différences de prononciation, les _â_ au lieu de a, les intonations plus molles, la diction moins précise, etc. Pour lui donner une meilleur idée j’ai comparé l’accent Québécois vs Français à l’accent de Boston vs l’anglais “Canadian”, ce qui a semblé lui éclaircir la chose. Est-ce une bonne comparaison?

Ah ah! Finally a Monkey I can write about! Ed and Martine have been coming up with briliant subjects but not ones I have anything to say about. This one is about monkeys on your back, things you hate doing and/or don’t get around to doing. I’m so there.

Recurring monkeys:

• Washing dishes. Need I say more? God I hate doing that. It’s not like it’s that long, or though, I just don’t like it. At all.
• Paperwork. Taking care of bills, putting some order in old ones. Huh.
• Paying my Visa account. It’s been years since I’ve needed to wait to pay up because I didn’t have the money and yet, something like every other month I pay late. Dumb.
• email people. This one isn’t really my fault, I’m very good at keeping touch by email. Through the last few months though I’ve kind of lost touch with some friends I met traveling and I’ve been meaning to get that going again—even though it’s “their turn” ;)—but it’s been an item in my to do since spring.
• Read more and cut more tv watching.

Longer term monkeys:

• Anotate my pictures. Since europe in ‘99 I’ve done at least one trip a year, taken loads of pictures and although they’re all in albums in order there’s nothing written on any of them. “Where the hell was that?”, “Who was that?”.
• Start up Yulzine. It’s been 6 months for Pete’s sake!!
• Start up Mediavore.
• Learn Spanish. I was actually enrolled in a course 5 years ago in Sherbrooke. Got a call for an interview here in Montréal the same day as the first class, got the job 4 days later. Never went back.
• I have a pile of non fiction books that keeps getting higher but I always stick with fiction and never get to them Shame on me.
• Get “seriouser” about this whole freelance thing.

This list is pretty similar to a todo list but Ed said “I suppose that’s one of the things that differentiates a monkey on your back from a simple to-do item—the sense that you might never get around to it!” and, sadly, I think they qualify.

One Week Baby

Two Weeks Baby

Of course, I haven’t seen anything since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind months ago so who knows when I’ll see either one of those…

Not sure if anyone keeps track but on the off chance that some do, I’ve added stuff to the “Recently Read and Seen” list at the bottom of the page, all the books and movies I’ve seen since leaving for France. Plus, thanks to the wonderful design of Textpattern, it was a simple thing to add commenting to those items, go wild.

I’m also mentioning it because I realized that although I had created a “Book Pile” list it wasn’t displayed anywhere, now it’s right next to the “Read and Seen”.

Spaceland

I have two questions:

1. How the hell come I never realized Curb Your Enthusiasm was on Showcase?
2. How the hell come no one ever told me??

New season starts Sunday. One less reason to be pissed we can’t get HBO in Canada.