Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

In the last week I have read The Watchmen and The Time Traveler’s Wife. While reading these books it dawned on me why don’t I think about reading digital books? It makes sense, everything else around me has converted from a physical copy of something to its digital cousin, so books would be a logical change.

Assuming a device like the Kindle 2 was available in Canada and had all of the books I would be interested in reading I still wouldn’t take it. For as digital as I am there is something very satisfying about reading a book. A well read book shows its age while reading a brand new book is engaging because everything about the book (the cover, font, page thickness) is fresh and it is immensely satisfying seeing the bookmark progress along the spine.

It would be the physical qualities of a book I would miss. There is a certain pride with seeing all seven Harry Potter novels lined up on the bookshelf that could not be had if all seven books were digital in your hand. This feels like a weird argument for me to make, seeing as album art and liner notes of a CD are something I don’t miss but others claim that make the CD a little more personal.

What makes flipping through lyrics of a new album different than skimming the pages of a new book?

My week of night shifts comes to a close this evening…or rather early Sunday morning.

It has been anything but easy, there have been nights where I got between two and four hours of sleep. The two nights I was able to get six hours of sleep felt amazing. The downside to all of this is that I have been spending a lot of time by myself. Such quiet time has lead me to penguin hunt around the office the last time I worked nights so it does take its tole.

However this stretch has had less interaction with people and I kind of forget that there are others that work here. It can happen quite easily when you are alone for so long…you begin to imagine things.

I have to be honest, between 2AM and 4AM is my most productive time. I don’t take care of business, I own business. I speak with clients, plan out a new module for CORE, do some coding and put in an honest days effort.

The action isn’t limited to there, I even get work done at my desk. In between providing support for the curling game I look over some stats, have a little chat with myself and do some recreational reading.

Lunch gets a little tight on space but we all make room. Sometimes we will share items with each other, others will just sit in silence with their head in their hands but we all get on.

The frightening thing is that when I return home I am still in work mode, and even kicking back to relax has more of the same!

As obvious as it may be, I am looking forward to returning to a normal work schedule and interacting with real people at the office.

For the last few days I have been working night shifts to cover a CurlTV broadcast from Korea. This is the second event I have switched my schedule around for, not that it makes it any easier. However, night shifts have some good to them, see what gets me through the long days…

Benefits:

1. You know that at any given moment all bathrooms are unoccupied
2. The volume of music does not affect anyone but you
3. You can have breakfast twice a day
4. You can consume meals in opposite order, ending your day on the most important meal
5. Dress code is not enforced, when people see you they expect you to be a little frayed
6. You can have beer when you wake up (as it is the afternoon) and a beer after work without it sounding too bad
7. The lineups at Tim Hortons are minimal
8. You can drive home into the sunset, which is more poetic than riding with the sunrise

Cons:

1. You still have to drive with a rush hour, even if the morning one is the equivalent of a busy Saturday
2. You cannot refer to Thursday evening the same way anymore as that is your Friday morning
3. Dates and times get confusing, but people won’t question your logic (ie: see previous point)
4. Sleep is your enemy and friend all in one tired state
5. You check your email less and easily drop out of touch with what is happening when you are sleeping

With that said night shifts do not work for me. I have always had problems sleeping in, and when the only sleep I get through the day is by sleeping in I routinely get three to four hours of sleep a night; a far cry from the eight hours I was getting a night last week.

What may have troubled me the most since losing my data to 1and1 last week is the status of my Tube Steak Challenge. The posts documenting my adventure may eventually return but I had such a wonderful source image to keep track of my progress that after a few minutes of searching on Google Images, Flickr and iStockPhoto I have been unable to find it.

Going through the depths of Google Images I did find a few seagurs references to my Tube Steak Challenge, and one of them says I was at 38. I don’t know what date that was or how many I have had since then, so until I get that sorted out I shall keep track of the number of dogs since the purge: x + 3

Where x is the number of hot dogs I consumed prior to the purge for my Tube Steak Challenge.

I have had several days, two complete viewings and a few hours of discussions among others but the hole left by Galactica is still pretty painful.

I still find myself thinking about the finale, the story, the music used and what it all means an awful lot. Fortunately I am not the only one still reeling from the finale. You could say that following the finale I didn’t sleep for over twenty four hours. It is an unrelated point but it’s still valid.

For something I love so much I don’t think I could ever give it’s final chapter a proper review, but my initial feeling was that I loved it. Going into the finale I wanted answers on Starbuck, the meaning of the Opera House and insight into the Head characters. I did not bat a perfect thousand but what I got was good. To my surprise there were some other character redemptions along the way that further added to my enjoyment.

It was a solid send off that gave the fans beautiful visual displays as the remaining CGI budget was spent, some ambiguity left for debate, a few issues that could spur arguments among fans and some thoroughly touching moments between seasoned characters.

I am not sure what my perfect finale would have been. I have come to expect the most grim and dire from this show and I anticipated a lot of death. However to do that would have been very dark, even for a show that killed off almost all of the human race at the very beginning.

I am currently in the process of watching the series again for a third time and what happened in the finale has directly impacted several of the episodes I have seen, even as far back as season two. I may have issues about how certain topics were dealt with but if a show can change the light I view past episodes, characters or decisions in then it successfully did its job.

I hope to never forget the moment the end credits rolled for the final time on the show. I put my head in my hands and asked Gord to give me a minute. Like watching a really good live performance you close your eyes to remember everything and hold onto that feeling of what it was like when you watched Battlestar Galactica on Friday evenings.

There must be some kind of way out of here…

For the last few weeks I have working on various stages of this post. Some versions had the beginnings of what made this show appealing to me. Other revisions had a simple graphic and a thank you. Each time I wrote something I felt that it wasn’t doing proper justice to the show or what I was thinking and for a show like this I think it would be difficult to properly convey everything you feel about it.

With that said, tonight is the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. Since the air dates of this season were announced over six months ago I have had March 20th noted on the calendar. It seemed like such a long time to wait, I felt that I could prepare myself for its end, but once 2009 began and the final episodes of the season started to air it flew by.

For the last sixteen months I have devoted a lot of my time and energy into this show, probably more than I have with any other show in that time. It is a bittersweet thing to see a show you love go off the air, one that I haven’t felt before. How did fans of Six Feet Under, The Sopranos or The Wire react when their show drew to a close? What will it be like watching the final minutes of the show air before wrapping up the television season for good?

I haven’t thought about what life after Battlestar Galactica would be like, it’s a topic I don’t want to dwell on. Instead I will focus on the now and realize that in five hours it will all be over.

To Galactica, the best ship in the fleet. You will be missed but never forgotten.

So say we all.

The last 24 hours have been pretty busy around these parts as I put together the pieces. I have taken this ‘fresh start’ opportunity to separate the blog and gallery onto their own sub domains, something I have thought about doing for a while.

Keith started a mission to retrieve my previously lost blog posts from the depths of Google, and more successfully, Yahoo’s web cache so it is likely that seagurs could regain its former glory. What he has done is fairly impressive and I will post his method here so that someone else may use it if they find themselves in the same position I was in.

However the name seagurs is so close to being mine but it is so far away. When 1and1 canceled the web hosting and domain information the domain did not come back on the market for purchase. When looking at the WhoIs information for it I see that I won’t have to wait much longer.

domain: seagurs.com
created: 20-Mar-2005
last-changed: 16-Mar-2009
registration-expiration: 20-Mar-2009

Almost four years to the date my seagurs domain would have expired, I find something very odd about the timing of that and everything going belly up.

If Gord doesn’t buy the domain out from under me I will go ahead and buy the domain name back because it is easy to type (all but one letter can be typed with the left hand) and everyone that visited the site knew the address.

Soon things should return to their former self around here, however the gallery will take a little longer to rebuild. I have found many gaps in my Project 365 archives so none of the albums will be complete. If this whole adventure has taught me anything it is to always have a backup and that I can access it at any time.

I was going to write one of two posts. This is the one I didn’t plan out, nor ever want to write.

Three and a half years of seagurs blogs, photo gallery updates, hosted audio files have all been deleted. Everything that the Internet knew of me was erased.

I have no one to blame but myself. All of this started when Dad canceled 1and1 payments for the domain and hosting for his business. Unbeknownst to him he took out everything I had because I was piggybacking on his account. I should have done regular backups, I should have been on my own hosting plan, I should have been more proactive…I should have done a lot of things.

When seagurs was inaccessible I was torn. Was this my chance to start fresh or walk away from it all together? I have recently wondered what it would be like to shut down the blog, but in that story I could always return to it with my files intact. However, not having it accessible was forcing my decision to face a cold truth: it could all be lost.

I realize that what I lost wasn’t important. I lost 1′s and 0′s, non-physical things. Still, I lost years of memories. I have spent countless hours going through old blog posts, reading about the experiences I have had, the highs and lows of my life as it was an in depth journal into my life.

Since I started seagurs I changed jobs, moved into a condo, got engaged, got married, been to Cuba and Mexico, traveled from BC to Saskatchewan for concerts and many other memories and allowed me to grow as a person.

Can seagurs be the same or is the archive what defined the site?

I had a problem with my music library, but the thing was I did not realize it was a problem until I read about the following on last.fm:

Sometimes the endless rows of music in my media player leave me at a loss. I have a music collection that I?ve spent years lovingly crafting. All my favourite bands. Yet as I spin my mouse wheel its full length, nothing springs out. I scroll up, scouring the rows for something fresh. I scroll down, searching for some long forgotten treasure. After a few minutes I select ?shuffle? and go make a cup of tea.

I agreed with everything! I have found myself cycling through my music with no goal or objective in mind. Now that does not have to happen because earlier this week Last.fm introduced Boffin which allows me to create a radio station with my selection of music.

First off, it scans everything in my collection and keeps track of all labels and tags. From here, and with the help of magic from last.fm HQ it checks what others have classified that music as and voila I have Sean Radio.

Now, whatever mood I am in for I can find it. If I want to get a splash of alt-country, punk cabaret and rock I can do that. It is like Party Shuffle and Genius from iTunes combined with last.fm to make a great product. I have spent hours going through my library and was never bored or uninterested in what I was hearing. Now when I want casual acoustic I won’t be surprised when Stone Temple Pilots or AC-DC come on.

A good company is one that makes a product you use every day. A great company is one that makes a product for something you never realized you needed and does it seamlessly.

Over the last few months I have been holding out for that one perfect week where every show I watch aired. Battlestar Galactica and Lost returned in the same week in January and Dollhouse was premiering in February, and with shows that started in Fall 2008 still ongoing I figured there would be plenty of opportunities for the worlds to align and I would be treated with Monday through Friday of television.

It never played out that way. I was always robbed of this magical week because of many reasons. Several weren’t aired due to Presidential press conferences, networks went dark on others because they were avoiding the DTV switch that went into play in some markets and then the usual scheduling issues that networks have prevented other ones from airing.

In the next three months I will say goodbye for good when three of my TV wrap for good and while their absence from the weekly program grid would increase the odds of this television storm aligning I wanted every show I watched in the 2008-2009 season to be on at once.

This week is as close to the storm as I would get except ABC robbed me of that with Scrubs and Lost not being aired. Even Jenna’s programs almost had a 100% turn out rate. It seems I was chasing an elusive dream that was never meant to be.