Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

Last week I got the notion in my head that I would like to see Battlestar Galactica music composer Bear McCreary perform his pieces live. I am a huge fan of his work with the series and the two shows he performed last April were well received by everyone in attendance.

Logistically speaking this would be a mess and anything but cheap. Last year the tickets were $20 but when you include airfare to fly into Los Angeles, transportation, food and a hotel room it would definitely inflate the cost; but what a trip it would be.

There is no guarantee that a live performance will happen, it’s all speculation. However it is something McCreary wanted to do again and with the series wrapping up next month I think it would be a nice send off. Although all of this could just be one giant Cylon pipe dream.

I will stay on the look out for any performance rumors. If you would be interested in an Alberta to California trip to hear the live musical performances from a science fiction show (as I try my best to sell the nerd factor) get in touch with me.

Thinking about making such a trip for Bear McCreary got me wondering about the artists in my top ten list, according to my last.fm. How many of them had I seen live? If I was such a fan of their studio music then at the very least I should see them perform live.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were only three I had not seen live. Besides the aforementioned Bear McCreary The Beatles is one that I will have to live vicariously through historic footage on, but Radiohead is still very around and touring and a possibility.

I may not go out of my way to see Thom Yorke and company live, like I have with U2 or The White Stripes, but if the opportunity presents itself I would do my part to complete this last.fm Top Artists challenge. Or maybe I am going about this all the wrong way and should listen to artists that are more prone to touring Canada?

So say we all.

In the fall of 1993 I had just turned eleven and saw something I would not appreciate until over 15 years later. I saw a lot of movies when I was growing up, but one in particular stands out. In November Mother dragged Dad and I to see Baraka in theaters. I hated it. For an eleven year old I found no redeeming value in the movie, there were no words, it had strange music and peculiar visuals.

Dad and I bugged Mom for months, even years, following that movie. It was the movie that we compared all movies to after the fact but I just did not understand it. Even now when I told Dad about the movie he groaned and asked if I knew what I was doing, after all these years that wound never healed.

The powers of technology have allowed Baraka to return to my life, this time in the form of a beautiful transition to Blu-ray. When visual aficionados list must-have movies on Blu-ray this one is high on their list and on the weekend I realized why.

What I could not understand 15 years ago I appreciated now. I understood what the movie was saying and even after all of this time the message could still be interpreted.

I can’t say exactly what did it for me in this movie but I felt an emotional connection to several scenes and thought the images were very powerful. Every shot felt like a beautiful photograph and I would be lucky enough to witness just one of those moments for myself.

I’m glad to have given this movie another chance even if it was the punch line to so many jokes all those years ago.

This is not the first time I have done this, but this attempt was certainly more demanding.

In July I listened to every song in my iTunes library at work. Back then the challenge was 3873 songs and seemed like such an easy task compared to the 9000 that were laid before me now.

In August the hard drive to my Mac Mini, which I listen to music on at work, crashed. In doing so it took all of the previously stored play counts with it. I took this as an opportunity to bring in my collection of music from home and do some necessary pruning, updating of tags and adding album art.

I am not sure how many songs I brought in with me back in August, but I figure for every two albums I removed I added another in the last seven months. iTunes was kind of like a revolving door and as it stands now the song count is 8997.

August 27, 2008 at 8:38 AM my first song was listened to and on February 13, 2009 at 10:45 AM my final song on this journey was played. Five and a half months later my mission was complete.

Unlike my Playcount Zero challenge in July I did not end on a meaningful or important song, I was simply trying to get through it. There are some songs that really need a mood to listen to. And the full discography of bands I have (The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who) are great and each album offers something different, but it can be so tedious at times.

Now that my library has all been played at least once, I will take this time to enjoy the liberty of my playlist and listen to songs without feeling the guilt of neglecting other un-played songs.

When I go periods without updating seagurs I usually have something to show for it at the end. Perhaps I was busy at work, out of Internet range or on vacation, but none of that applies here. This is essentially a ‘nothing is going on’ update and I’m ashamed to say my pockets are empty and I have no stories to tell.

… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

I have also noticed my Twitter activity has decreased in that span. I was under the impression that Twitter was responsible for bloggers having less to write about, not that both would both see the same lack of updates. I am trying to be a little more conscience of what I tweet and that may have affected my decline as well.

However, I was one press conference away from the perfect storm of television. This is when every show I watch, which is currently on the air, had a new episode. It would have been a monster week but now it seems that will have to wait until next month.

Stay tuned for something to happen, because I know I will.

George: You think she would care about the red dot?
Jerry: It’s hard to say.
George: I don’t even think she’d notice it. Can you see it?
Jerry: Well I can see it.
George: Yeah, but you know where it is.
Jerry: Well what do you want me to do? Not look at it?
George: Pretend you didn’t know it was there. Can you see it?
Jerry: It’s hard to pretend because I know where it is.
 
seinfeldscripts.com

Once you see something it is hard to un-see it. This was the case for me over the weekend when I was editing photos taken from a wedding on Saturday. In the lower right corner of the photos was a peculiar red dot. I know what a dead or stuck pixel looks like and all the photos taken on Saturday had the dot in the exact same spot throughout.

I changed lenses on the Canon Rebel XTi, tried a different camera setting and the red dot persisted. I went back to photos taken from Revelstoke and did not see the blemish. It is entirely possible that I wasn’t using a high enough image quality at Revelstoke to see the dot or it developed in the span of the week, but I was immediately heart broken.

Click here to view an uncompressed 2MB file with the pixel outlined.

I did some research and came across a very helpful blog post on dead pixels on a XTi here. Reading through the comments an update was posted from the author about a potential fix, via Flickr, was uncovered:

1. Put on a lens on your camera and set your camera to take RAW+L (raw & jpeg) photos on your camera.
2. Go into a dark area and take a few photos with varying ISO and shutter speeds, possibly even going as long as ISO 1600 with a 30 second shutter speed.
3. After you take the pictures press the menu button, the right arrow button and go to the “Tools 2″ setting, far right. Now select the “Sensor cleaning” setting — generally set to “Sensor cleaning:Auto”. Click on it and select “Clean now”. The sensor cleaning takes a few seconds. Wait 30 seconds.
4. Take another pictures in RAW+L (raw & jpeg), compare the pictures to those take in #2. Your hot or dead pixel should be gone.

I followed these steps exactly, returned to a dark room to see if the fix was successful and saw even more dead/hot pixels than before. You can click here to view the JPG version of the original 10MB RAW file that shows the pixels in question. I did the best I could to troubleshot this so I returned the camera to where it came from, and fortunately such a problem was covered under the extended warranty.

To continue my string of public service announcements, I am posting this in hopes that someone may try the sensor cleaning/dark photo steps if they come across a hot, dead or stuck pixel in their DSLR.

This is more of a public service announcement than anything, but thinking about the history I had in the last twelve months I wonder why no one noticed anything before. This is the story of my Petro-Points MasterCard.

I signed up for the Citibank MasterCard in 2005 and it came with a four year shelf life which expired January 2009. As we entered January I still had not received my replacement card and called MasterCard’s customer service inquiring about the status of my new card. I was told not to worry and that it would be delivered by the middle of the month.

Last week, the final week of the month, I still had not received my new card so I called MasterCard again and confusion abound. The agent I spoke with said that a replacement card was not sent because the last card they sent me was in 2008.

What?

In the last twelve months I have made several calls to MasterCard for various things (out of country usage, etc.) and they called me when some large items were charged (wedding reception) and no one, at any time, mentioned anything about a card being sent out in the beginning of 2008 or that I was using a card that was to be replaced.

The agent I spoke with did not provide any help or comfort in this matter, no explanation other than that it would take 7-10 business days for my new credit card to arrive. As it was the end of January I would not receive the replacement until February.

Normally this would not be a bad thing, I’m sure I can go weeks without using my credit card but when you are physically without it you do not realize how many things are tied to your credit card: iTunes, Amazon, PayPal, monthly renewals for products and gas to name just a few. All of those rely on a card that is now void and expired and I have no replacement.

I would have canceled my card with MasterCard at this point but I have developed a fairly nice credit limit and was afraid what would happen to my large collection of Petro-Points if I did.

Of course, over the last four years I have found no use for Petro-Points because they either have promotions not available in Alberta or only limited to participating locations.

I have been left fairly scorned by this whole experience, and this is not the first time a company has failed to send me a replacement card (Alberta Treasury Branch). I will wait patiently for another week and hope this is the last sour experience from MasterCard/Citibank as I will not hesitate to drop them and whatever redeemable points I have at Petro Canada.

Mortars, MRE’s, Kraut, foxholes, oscar mike, Easy company and Hitmen Victors have been my lingo for the last month. In that time I have watched Band of Brothers and Generation Kill. One has been touted as one of the best mini-series ever made and the other was ignored during this years award season.

Band of Brothers had been recommended to me by several people and I decided to see what made this show amazing. Halfway through the first episode I realized what was so great about this show. The characters had distinct personalities and there was something that made me immediately connect to them and want to know more.

As I went through the series I was amazed by the production value and emotion that the story evoked. There were several times I had to remind myself that this was a mini-series and not a movie because the visuals were outstanding. Before I was even completed watching the series I bought it on Blu-ray thanks to an Amazon Deal of the Day.

Generation Kill was based on the book of the same name which is about Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At first I wanted Generation Kill to be more like Band of Brothers, and while the premise is similar, that is where their similarities end.

Generation Kill reminded me of Jarhead for the first half of the series because the Marines we follow are not seeing any action. Most of them just want to fire a round in combat and never get the chance because they are not being utilized properly and are put in bad tactical situations. The story is neither pro-war or anti-war, instead it does a fantastic job of describing what a soldier goes through in a time of combat and how management of troops can be almost as deadly as the enemy.

While Band of Brothers was a remarkable display of visuals Generation Kill created a tension and uneasy feeling by showing the companies progression to Baghdad and questioned if they were doing a ravaged Iraq. I am glad I took the time to watch Generation Kill but there were many times something reminded me of a Band of Brothers episode and a characters action would remind me of someone from Easy Company.

I would easily recommend each series but with heavy emphasis on Band of Brothers because what it created is more of art than it is television.

My Tube Challenge