Our CEO came for a visit and a motivational talk on Thursday. We decided to remind him, in case he had forgotten, that it is a dangerous idea to bring customers, investors, journalists, etc to our R&D MontrealOffice, by getting as many people as possible to not wear any pants.

Mission accomplished.

Music

The Yann Tiersen concert was amazing, and so much more than I expected since my only prior exposure was his beautiful work on the Amélie score. We got a lot of lovely piano music, yes, but we also got some pretty unique solos on accordion, violin, viola, and, I kid you not, he used a violin bow on a xylophone. His ability to play the piano and accordion at the same time is equally remarkable.

The man is the kind of mad genius modern composer I admire without hesitation. As a performer, talented and highly volatile. Full of anger, full of sweetness, alternating on a whim. He throws himself with no warning at all into raging passages, quite literally shredding his violin bow on the strings, and demonstrating that there aren't enough impassioned, fearless, bitter accordion virtuosos in the world today. A travesty, that.

The encore contained a 15-minute segment of echoed, feedback-laden electric violin and space-guitar noise. I've never seen anything quite like it.

I must hunt down some CDs.

Planes

YUL to LHR tonight on AC 864.
(Posted on August 1, 2004 15:47)

I have arrived in London. This is a pelican.

After a day in London and a day in Cambridge, I have arrived in Leeds for the UKUUG's Linux conference.

Unfortunately, I can barely walk due to having messed up my knee while spending the last two days walking constantly, so I haven't seen much of Leeds yet, although it does look nice.

I still need to get both my talks in order for the conference. Isn't that always the way?

"Rising Bollards" -- the English do have a way with words

In Cambridge I met up with my friend Tony, who I know from a past life during one of my co-op jobs. I hadn't seen him in three years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. We traded stories, laughed a lot, drank beer, ate curry, and discovered that while we weren't paying attention our lives went and developed some eerie parallels that neither of us would have expected.

The new Westminster station on the Jubilee Line extension, with suicide prevention barrier

I am reasonably impressed by the quality of English train travel. They've always had a reputation for being late, but from what I can tell they're not nearly as bad as Canadian trains. That said, they're also clearly not as on the ball as the German ones, but then they're more comfortable and at least as frequent. Who's to say?

West End (Charing Cross and Shaftesbury)

I did some night photography in London, followed by something mind-blendingly stupid. I lost my tripod. I still have its carrying bag, but no tripod. I suspect I was too lazy to put it back in its bag on my way home, and then I just left it sitting on the seat of the Underground like some sort of idiot. I liked that tripod, too. Thus, I suppose it is fitting for me to conclude with the last photo I ever took with it.

Last photo with tripod

I've been meaning to write a conference wrap-up thingy after getting back from England, as well as posting all my pictures from the conference, but I'm afraid I haven't got around to it. Soon, soon...

Bulging Capacitors

I'm afraid after they bulge, they start to leak.

turkey

This was my server at home, shortly after the point where it completely stopped working.

Work/Life

Lots of both lately, sometimes intersecting. Playing catch-up, fixing bugs, and so on. On Sunday, countless crazy people from NITI had a beach party at Oka. Loads of fun, pictures are here.

Mich

Presently a whole lot of family is visiting because my cousin is getting married in Montréal on Saturday.

Zombie Dave needs sleep. And food. And a new apartment.
(Posted on August 19, 2004 21:03)

Today I signed a lease for a new apartment, we observed mich's birthday, and mrwise farted in a can. A suitable end to ... The Weirdest. Summer. Ever.

Work

A new batch of co-ops will be arriving starting next week, and the current batch are sadly on their way out. In addition to being productive and energetic, they always help to maintain a generally high level of insanity around the office, which is nice, but it's interesting to observe the different forms it takes. lkosewsk, for example, is a completely different kind of insane than mrwise, jdeboer, and pcolijn, and yet they're all quite clearly insane.

mrwise

jdeboer has been doing lots of hacking on WvSync for me over the last couple weeks, which is very much appreciated. He's rewritten most of my protocol to simplify the state machine, and he has it synchronizing a directory full of files now. I look forward to working on this again soon!

jdeboer

Apartment

So, yeah, if you're looking for a 4½ in NDG for October, or if you know anyone who is, please get in touch.
(Posted on August 27, 2004 23:55)