Highway

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Turns out that once again the city needs to do some construction at Dufferin and St. Clair thanks to the street car track replacement going on on St. Clair that prevents cars from crossing St. Clair on Dufferin. As such my street has been turned in a detour or Highway Norton Ave. I went out yesterday night and luckily left during a window where there were hardly any cars. I peeked outside a few moments ago though the line of cars extended all the way down the street. I need to run to the liqour store today so I’m guessing I’ll be walking instead of driving. Heading to a BBQ later so I’ll probably be walking somewhere where it’ll be easier for my buddy Nick to pick me up. All in the name of progress and improvement right :) ?

Mirror

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Specifically, my driver’s side mirror. Fate would have it that an Italian win during Euro 2008 doesn’t come without drunkenness and drunkenness doesn’t come without destruction of property, mainly mine. So $235 dollars later I have a shiny new mirror. The nice Portuguese family that lives 2 house over had their car (a VW Jetta) vandalized as well to the tune of $500. The third car that was damaged has an owner that is currently out of the country and probably won’t be too pleased to find this “present”, a missing mirror as it wasn’t lying around anywhere nearby (or dangling on the side of the care like mine was).

In other news Portugal was eliminated from the tournament by Germany today which brings a smile to the face of just about every Italian person I know :) . Not mine of course, I like to stay neutral ;) .

NIN

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So Nine Inch Nails released a new album entitled “The Slip” yesterday completely out of no where. They released a new single “Discipline” about 2 weeks ago which had a message in the file’s ID3 tag saying “Go to www.nin.com May 5″ (yes, I just copied and pasted that directly). Yesterday came around and viola, a brand new album was available for download in MP3, FLAC, M4A and High Quality WAVE 24/96 (clocking in at 1.2 GB in size) formats. Everything but the MP3 version was being distributed via torrents. I don’t even think you can buy the thing in stores for another 2 weeks.

I have to admit, Trent Reznor is pretty brilliant by beating the pirates at their own game. Instead of the album leaking out two weeks early, he put it online himself two weeks early. It’s hard to say if this is really where music is headed though as Trent himself said in an article I read a while back that his experiment with the Saul Williams’s “Niggy Tardust” album didn’t go as planned. Then again, he did make a reported killing on “Ghosts I-IV” but that was because he put out a limited edition deluxe version that sold out and went for a few hundred dollars. So while this approach works for a band as big as nin, it debatable if the idea is for everyone.

I’ve listened to the album and it’s decent. None of the songs have really jumped out at me just yet besides “Discipline”. Maybe if my computer would stop acting retarded I could listen to it a bit more…

IV

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No, I’m not talking about Godsmack’s album of the same name which funnily enough I finally heard in full for the first time recently. I’m talking about the new Grand Theft Auto game that everyone is going crazy about. Many stores around the city are going to be open at midnight in order to deliver the game to eager fans. I’m sure lots of people are taking the day off tomorrow to spend some time with cousin Niko in Liberty City (I read a story where someone use this exact line on his absence request form).

Personally, I think this game is going to help persuade people still clinging to their PS2s to upgrade to the next gen. The general consensus is that the PS3 version looks prettier whereas the Xbox 360 version will have a plethora of downloadable content to extend the experience. I lack a PS3 or Xbox 360 but seriously gave purchasing one of the two consoles some thought. I just couldn’t live with myself playing either console on my ancient CRT television though and I’m not really interested in upgrading to an HD TV just yet. I think the Xbox 360 version offers the better bang for the buck since apparently the online capability of the PS3 version isn’t all there just yet whereas the Xbox 360 version uses Xbox Live which is already proven to be rock solid (even though it will probably be crashing all kinds tonight). I’d still probably go with the PS3 version though since I know I’ll inevitably be buying one for Final Fantasy 12 (I refuse to use Roman numerals for the games anymore). If the PS3 hardware itself were a little cheaper, I’d probably be all over it. Anyway, have fun tonight (and tomorrow) boys and girls.

Johnny Lee

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This gentleman has been making waves all over the world with his custom software that helps turn a Wii Remote in an affordable white board display and head tracking device. The TED talks people invited him to showcase his work:

The really cool thing about Johnny Lee’s story is what he touches on at the end of the talk. The fact that he’s just a humble researcher but thanks to the internet and sites like YouTube, everyone around the world know about his work. There is no doubt in my mind that without the internet, no one would have ever heard of Mr. Lee and the fact that we are hearing about him is a remarkable thing.

Earth Hour

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On March 31st, 2007 the people of Sydney, Australia turned off their lights for one hour and dubbed it Earth Hour . So today marked the first time this event was acknowledged or carried out globally. Toronto took part of course along with other cities from around the globe. Google drew attention to the cause as well and even made their normally white homepage all black for the day. They of course covered their butts by saying that they are aware that a black homepage wouldn’t actually reduce world wide power usage like some people surmised as this was later proven false and it instead just a gesture to raise awareness of the cause. Anyway, I turned the lights out here. Anyone that knows me knows that try to be energy conscious in all of my actions. Sadly everyone takes a “my little contribution doesn’t really count for anything” attitude when it really does. It’s not just when it comes to climate change, which can be debated backwards and forwards, but more when it comes to any kind of change.

Foo Fighters

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So I checked out the Foo Fighters yesterday with my brother Peppe and it ended up being probably one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I had never seen the Foo Fighters before but based on how Dave Grohl carries himself in interviews and the like, I was totally expecting him to talk to and engage the crowd and put on a great show.

The first surprise was the appearance of Pat Smear, an original member of the band. He helped out with the opening song. The second surprise was the appear of Geddy Lee and another dude from Rush who preformed YYZ with Taylor Hawkins. There was the whole acoustic bit that had the stage with the acoustic instruments drop down from the arena ceiling. Here I also got the chance to get up close to the absolutely beautiful Jessie Greene (I cheated and looked that up just now) on cello and violin. You also can’t forget the triangle solo. Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t you wish you never gave that up when you were 9? Dave swore a little too much for my general liking but he is a rock star after all so he’s forgiven. Hopefully there weren’t too many kids in the audience, which is totally possible at a Foo Fighters show considering I got in to them when I was pretty young and Peppe was even younger at the time. I’m still trying to determine if his Iggy Pop story is true or not. The gist of it being he was  years old and in Toronto for a 1987 gig with his pre-Nirvana punk band Scream and asked at the last minute to play drums for Iggy Pop at a record release party. Too bad people didn’t post tour dates, set lists and schedules on the internet back then…

Blu-rays

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A little late but Blu-ray has officially become the de facto standard medium for the sale and distribution of high definition content. Circuit City in the US is letting customers trade in any HD-DVD players they bought within the last 90 days (which includes late Christmas shoppers as well) for credit towards a Blu-ray player. Microsoft is basically giving away their HD-DVD add-on drive now. The movie studios, which sealed HD-DVDs fate, are all releasing their content on Blu-ray only now as well. The PS3 gets an obvious boost from this as well since it’s the best Blu-ray player out there thanks to it’s upgradability via firmware updates. The original Blu-ray 1.0 format has already been superseded by 1.1 which the PS3 can properly play. First generation Blu-ray players are unable to play all the content on a 1.1 disc and probably never will be able to.

Anyway, the entire HD-DVD and Blu-ray debacle is all Sony’s fault. HD-DVD is the successor to DVD standard from the makers of the DVD standard. Sony just crashed the party with their Blu-ray format and threw they weight around to get it widely accepted. The consortium of companies behind HD-DVD (mainly Toshiba and NEC) just don’t have the financial backing that Sony has. Personally, I think the PS3 played a big part it in too. The PS2 remains my only DVD player and a PS3 will probably my only player for HD content.

We need another war now.

Oscars

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For 30 seconds during yesterday night’s Oscar award ceremony, the World saw the Wii:

[EDIT: Aw, YouTube took down the video and broke my page :( . ]

No one is commenting if any money was exchanged between the parties involved or if the writers for the show were just highlighting tidbits of popular culture since earlier in the show Jon Stewart was fiddling with an iPod of some sorts as well. Funnily enough, Phil Harrison announced his resignation from his position at SCEA just after making remarks about him being upset with SCEJ (I’m honestly sure if that abbreviation is correct but he was mad at the execs in Japan) with regards to their stance against family gaming which the Wii has clearly shown is being accepted by gamers and non-gamers alike.