The "barsoomcore" blog is going to scale back, in favour of a bigger, hopefully better, Scratch Factory blog.

The new and improved Scratch Factory blog will feature, most excitingly, new bloggers! A couple of folks who share many of my eccentric enthusiasms will be posting there, and we look forward to providing you with an even wider mix of things piratical, prehistoric and pulptastic.

Anyway, we're sorry to say goodbye to the old reliable barsoomcore address, but the new home is going to be even swankier!

Well, actually, it's going to look exactly the same. But rest assured big things are afoot. HUGE. HUGE-FOOTED THINGS.

Remember, kids: pick up the new RSS feed!

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

I've been rereading an old treasure from our bookshelf: a collection of Byron's letters that S gave me when I went off to Japan. I have been a Byronophile (Byrophiliac?) since my university days, and the older I get and the more about him I understand, the better I like the man.

His letters are some of his best writing. Condensed narratives and scenes from his often hilarious, often tragic life. His heartbreaking letters to his estranged wife contrast sharply with his uproarious tales of life in Venice. It's hard to select passages because as always with Byron, context is so important. He is not a writer of pithy remarks and self-contained couplets but rather a sprawling, ungainly teller of tales who plays on the ongoing context of his works. But reading his letters in a sustained period builds up a very satisfying view of the man. And he never fails to surprise.

This collection is some 800 pages or so, and even at that is but a fraction of Lord Byron's total correspondence. There's an edition of Byron's Letters and Journals that is perhaps more complete: it's published in TWELVE VOLUMES -- and that's only considering his side of the story. Include all the letters others wrote TO him, and there are thousands upon thousands of pages of what is, essentially, data. Data about Lord Byron and those he spoke to, and of.

It's a vast amount of information. Staggering.

And yet there remain so many mysteries about the man. Who he was and what his opinions TRULY were on so many subjects. His writings are filled with contradictions and controversies, with such sly twists of meaning, that people still argue over some of the most basic facts of his life and personality. Was he a sexist monster? A romantic knocked about by the world or a cynical manipulator of public opinion?

All of which puts me in mind of Charles' Stross' astonishing book Accelerando. One of the conceits of this book is the idea that we will, in the not too distant future, find a way of codifying and storing personality. Which is the real key to immortality, of course. Once we know how to record and store a person's character intact (I should think a non-lossy format will be required here), then we can pull them up at any time and they live again. Which I guess means turning off the computer is a form of murder, but fortunately a reversible one. Keep backups.

But is this feasible? Is it reasonable to suggest that there will EVER be enough data to record a person so thoroughly that we recognize a manifestation of them as THEM? Look at the vast amount of data we have on a character like George Gordon, Lord Byron, and consider how feeble our ability to truly understand him is. How much more data will be required to have a definitive recording of a human being's personality?

Perhaps I'm just a Luddite on this issue. But the essential unknowableness is important to me. A friend recently asked for help in dealing with people suffering personality disorders: he found these people so perfectly predictable that it actually became hard to see them as human beings, rather than just objects in the world he could manipulate. We discussed the need in all of us to maintain the awareness that ALL people are capable of surprising us, no matter how many times in the past they may have played right into our expectations.

Heck, DOGS can surprise the most experienced trainers -- how can we imagine that people can be perfectly recorded and duplicated?

As for Lord Byron, people keep trying to reproduce him. I recently read John Crowley's The Evening Land, which purports to be a novel written by Byron. It was a healthy effort, and yet it did not convince in the end. Byron is dead, and he will never be among us again. All we have are the words he left behind, but these must be a pale shadow of the man that was.

But damn, he writes a great letter.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

Come on. When a giant robot gets all cranky, it's comedy.



Via Pulp 2.0.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

Okay, I don't know what Slagsmålsklubben means (although I suspect it's the name of a band), but it's my favourite new word. And this video is even more clever and charming than you think it's going to be when it starts.



Very very charming.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

First of all, THAT is an awesome poster. Nobody makes movie posters like that anymore.

Second of all, HUGE shout out to JD, who told me to watch this film (and its sequel, The Four Musketeers). They were every bit as awesome as you said they would be.

The Three Musketeers is one of the classic stories of male coming-of-age. As Steph observed, the male coming-of-age story is a violent one, and is even more violent when it's presented in a metaphorical context as in Dumas.

We watched the David Mamet martial arts film Redbelt and my issue with it was that it spend most of its life as a gritty, realistic, decidedly NOT metaphorical story, and then at the very last minute tried to resolve itself as a pulpy metaphorical story. Which doesn't work.

Because the pulp adventure story is always metaphorical. We all understand that bloodshed, violence and warfare are horrible, traumatizing things. We don't actually want to be the kind of people who just run around randomly murdering folks, and yet we sure have a good time watching imaginary people doing just that.

The pulp story has useful wisdom for us, even it doesn't present a realistic view of the world or human nature. Pulp stories are our modern myths, the stories we need to tell us truths that cannot be explained or rationalized. Because no matter how smart we are, we must recognize that there are truths, important truths, that we cannot put into words. That's what art is for -- to tell us what we know, but cannot say.

The Three Musketeers tells us things about companionship, and loyalty, but mostly, this time through, I was struck by what it has to say about violence. d'Artagnan is told by his father as he sets out, "Get into as many fights as you can."

Times have changed. Folks nowadays are, I think, less likely to give this sort of advice to their children. Now, Dumas is almost certainly being comic here as he is throughout, but d'Artagnan does live in a world where the cheerful exercise of violent death is just part of being a well-rounded human being.

Well, except for Constance (speaking of well-rounded), but look where that gets her.

It's in the ending that Dumas displays the most sophisticated thinking -- and where he pulls aside a bit of the comic veil he's cast over all the antics up to now. Milady's ending is not comic at all, nor is it entirely... satisfying. There's something bloodthirsty and troubling about this whole affair, and I suspect most people in the audience sympathize with d'Artagnan's desire to interfere. Things get serious suddenly, and I believe Dumas intends for his audience to suddenly wonder about these charming rogues they've been following around up to now.

It was interesting watching the film with Steph, who didn't know the story. She was cheering for Milady throughout much of the film, and hoping that things would work out so that she and Athos could get back together. She rightfully points out that Milady is the only female character with any power of her own (which makes her eventual fate so utterly unsurprising), and yet by the end there's no question that she deserves what she gets.

But Dumas (and the film-makers in this version), do not allow the audience to distance themselves this time from the horror of death and the lack of humanity that must exist those who deal it out. Indeed the character of the headsman, who ultimately performs the deed, seems to exist in part to illustrate the cruelty of those who condemn the woman. As cold and uncaring as the headsman may be, he horrifies us less than Athos in those final moments, when he is ready to kill d'Artagnan should the young man interfere.

Dumas does the opposite in The Three Musketeers that Mamet does in Redbelt; he takes a metaphorical story and at the very end makes it literal and specific. It's a very difficult trick, but Dumas pulls it off beautifully. And the best thing I can say about this fantastic version of the story is that the film-makers appear to have understood it and reproduced it faithfully.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

I saw the ad at right alongside the latest 37 Signals' blog post. Now for all I know Microsoft Expressions is an amazing piece of software that changes the world and humanity's relationship with it. Maybe.

What I do know is that this ad tells me nothing about this software except that I need training to use it.

And frankly, I don't have time to get trained on how to use your software. I have way more solutions than I have problem, to be honest. If you want your solution to be compelling to me, you need to explain to me why it's better than all the other solutions that are currently vying for my attention.

That said, I'm almost definitely not Microsoft's target customer. Maybe this is killing with THEM. Maybe.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

This was inspired by an overheard exchange. I'm not usually one for large amounts of profanity, but this really fucking amuses me:

The Sopranos Meet Abbot and Costello

A: They give ball players some funny fucking names these days.

B: All right, fucking wise guy, tell me about the fucking team.

A: Well, we got Who on Fucking first, What the Fuck's on the second and Fuck You on third...

B: You don't know their fucking names?

A: Fucking right I do.

B: All right, who's on fucking first?

A: Fucking right.

B: I mean the fucker's name.

A: Who.

B: The fucker on first.

A: Who.

B: The first fucking baseman.

A: Who is on fucking first!

B: I'm fucking asking you who's on fucking first.

A: That's the motherfucker's name.

B: That's who's fucking name?

A: Fucking right.

B: Fucking tell me.

A: That's fucking it.

B: That's who?

A: Fucking right.

PAUSE

B: Look, you gotta a fucking first baseman?

A: Of course we fucking do.

B: So who's playing fucking first?

A: Fucking right.

B: When you pay the fucking first baseman every fucking month, who gets the fucking money?

A: Every fucking dollar.

B: All I want to fucking know is the name of the fucker on first fucking base.

A: Who.

B: The fucker that--

A: That's fucking it.

B: Who gets the fucking money?

A: Well, sometimes his bitch rolls down and collects it.

B: Whose bitch?

A: Fucking right.

PAUSE

B: All I'm trying to find out is what the fuck's the guy's name on first fucking base.

A: No. What the fuck's the guy's name on second fucking base.

B: I'm not asking you who's on fucking second.

A: Who's on fucking first.

B: One fucking base at a time!

A: Fuck. Take it easy.

B: I'm just fucking asking, who's the guy on fucking first?

A: Fucking right.

B: Ok.

A: All right.

PAUSE

B: What the fuck's the guy's name on first base?

A: No. What the fuck's on second.

B: I'm not fucking asking you who's on fucking second.

A: Who's on fucking first.

B: Fuck you.

A: He's on fucking third, we're not fucking talking about him.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

FINALLY caught up on my blogroll. Blogs seem so 2007 all of a sudden. Anyway, some awesomeness for you:

Via Mind Control Division:



Somebody over on Circvs described the Japanese film industry as follows:

Director: "I have an idea for a movie, honourable Producer!"

Producer: "Ooooh. Is your idea TOTALLY INSANE?"

Director: "Yes, honourable Producer! TOTALLY INSANE!"

Producer: "Here is yen. Make your film. Bring us honour. And make sure it is TOTALLY INSANE!"

On a less TOTALLY INSANE moment, here's Oli's latest photo-set: some gorgeous shots he took in Costa Rica:



Browse around his site, there's plenty of staggeringly beautiful images there.

And finally, this sweet, sweet little piece of animation evoking a daughter's memories of her mother:



Just lovely.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

After practice tonight I was polishing my sword (no, that's not a euphemism (and yes, I can hear you snickering back there, Joshua)) and D mentioned that while she feels like she's able to do the stances when we're just practicing the stances, she has a hard time recognizing them in the katas.

And I missed out on the classic "Horrible Things Great Teachers Say" moment -- I totally FAILED to say, "Don't worry, you aren't doing them right in practice, either." Damn. That would have been pretty funny.

What I DID say was something or other about how they're supposed to be different, because the kata aren't just there to link together each stance in a particular order so that you can pretend you're swordfighting. The kata are living, breathing intellectual artifacts that only exist because people embrace them, possess them and then pass them on to others.

I said, "It's a practice, not a formula."

So I was riding the Ossington bus back down to King Street and listening to the Propellerheads' version of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (which if you don't know is MIND-BLOWING) and thinking about D's question and how that principle of practice over formula really applied at every level of Katori practice.

When I am going through the kata with my partner, I cannot just "do the moves". The "right" stance will be fatally wrong if my partner is doing something other than what I expect. Katori asks you to pay attention with your WHOLE self to your partner, and to adapt your body, your posture, your soul, to what they bring.

To respond with attention and focus and vitality. With life. Respond with life.

And I thought, as John Barry's fantastic horns rose up around me, as the bus turned onto Strachan Avenue, that "Respond With Life" was just a great... I don't know. Thing. Saying. Stance.

Hey, yeah. Stance. The "right" stance in Katori, always, is to Respond With Life. SEE what's really there, shed your expectations and see through to the heart of things, and then see into yourself and find exactly the position, the posture, the STANCE that will make the most of it. That will be alive and vital and strong and courageous.

Respond With Life. It's a stance.

Photo by Arty Smokes

Labels: Swordfighting, Unspecified Coolness

Alan held up that card at the end of a conversation late in 2008 (that's LAST year) and three words echoed in my head.

PARTICIPATE, DON'T ORIGINATE

I grabbed a Post-It Note (there was no shortage of Post-It Notes there) and jotted those words down. I think they're going to be my slogan for 2009.

PARTICIPATE, DON'T ORIGINATE

I have been guilty throughout my life of rejecting opportunities because they weren't MINE. I'd come up with an idea, say to myself, "That sounds worth doing," and then discover somebody else was already doing it, and toss the idea.

Which is selfish and retarded and I realised, in that moment of insight, how dumb I was being all along. I'd beat myself up for not coming up with an original idea, and forget the most important lesson of finding someone already on it: that it WAS a good idea. If somebody else is already on it, then it's probably a great idea. Whereas if nobody is doing it, it's probably a bad idea, no matter how clever it seems to me, odds are it's a dumb idea.

Getting involved in HoHoTO was a real watershed moment for me. Instead of starting something, I was just joining in with others on something underway. My contributions weren't even all that significant, but as I noted in a Twitter conversation, the whole point of events like HoHoTO is about the ability to pull together many many SMALL actions into a meaningful context, so that good things can result.

There's so much going on in Toronto right now. Things with strange-seeming names like #themvmnt, #svc, #tsTO, none of which are "mine", but then they aren't so much anyone else's, either. But they're all things I can meaningfully participate in, maybe with huge contributions, maybe with small ones. The point is that there's stuff that needs doing, and I can help.

Somewhere or other I read the quote: "Don't ask what you can do; ask what needs to be done." This past month has really brought home to me how important that can be, and maybe helped me see a framework within which that statement leads to action, not just musing.

PARTICIPATE, DON'T ORIGINATE

My reluctance to engage in other people's initiatives only makes it less likely that I'll get my own off the ground. Heck, why would anyone want to join in and help me if I haven't rolled up my sleeves and gotten to work on theirs?

I think this is the biggest thing I learned in 2008. So my resolutions are all about participating.

What about yours?

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

This is Donnie Yen's MOTHER, showing how Praying Mantis Kung Fu happens. Holy beautiful:



I'll repeat: that's his mom. Good grief. Why don't they cast HER in more movies?

And this is a guy with lots of time on his hands, making a pretty darn cool action sequence out of World of Warcraft. If only more Hollywood filmmakers showed this much inventiveness and fun:


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

And then there is this: The Most Inspirational Video of All Time (thanks to Kyle Voltti):



That is all.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

This is Anne Filipowski, one of my favourite people ever.

When I first came to Toronto, I was shuttling back and forth between two offices: the offices of BetCorp's software and marketing division, on Richmond Street at Spadina, and the offices of Bodog Music, on Yonge Street -- at FINCH (or thereabouts -- for you non-Torontonians, that's like TEN MILES from downtown). It was February, 2007, and after ten years in Vancouver, Toronto was ghastly. Cold, howling winds, and mile after mile of flat, unbroken cityscape. No mountains. No beaches. No bald eagles. Very very few harbour seals.

The Bodog Music office was a bit of a ramshackle affair, with customer service reps in dingy grey cubicles, office supplies scattered about and my team -- a couple of php developers, a few designers and a project manager -- stuffed into dark offices seemingly as far away from the rest of the company as possible.

There was a really kitchen area, though. And a great balcony, which in Toronto in February is not quite as enticing as you might think.

I knew not a soul in Toronto. I could barely find my way to the office. And Torontonian are, well, Lord love them, but they just aren't quite as... friendly... as Westerners. They try.

Some of them.

So it was kind of lonely for Corey in those first few weeks. But I always looked forward to the long trek up to the Bodog Music office, because I knew I would end up crossing paths and inevitably sarcastic barbs with the operations manager, Anne Filipowski. At some point in my day there would come the solemn exchange:

"Reid."

"Filipowski."

I actually had to practice saying her name so that I could deliver it in the same deadpan monotone she did mine. I'm not kidding. I'd be on the subway, repeating "Filipowski, Filipowski, Filipowski," the whole way up. Maybe the apparent unfriendliness of Torontonians isn't so hard to explain.

But of course, that was only the opening salvo. Then came the exchange of sarcastic quips, sneers, and non sequiturs. The goal was always to make her laugh before I cracked up, but I came off the worse most of the time. Filipowski had a serious deadpan, and had that knack for sprinkling her outrageous sarcasm with enough outrageous sincerity that you were always wondering if she really meant that or if... and then you'd see that grin and you knew she'd gotten you again.

It was exciting because it was a challenge. Filipowski had that effect on people -- she raised everyone's game. You had to pay attention around Anne, because she was so smart and always paying attention and if you didn't keep up, you were going to get shown up. But always with humour and always with respect for others.

Even if Toronto had stayed as unpleasant as it was that February (and it hasn't, by the way; love this town), it still would have been worth coming here to meet Anne. Last time I saw her we went to an Argentinian restaurant for lunch (Argentinian food means steak, apparently) and she told me wacky stories about driving around Greece and we laughed about the lunacy of this business we both worked in. I had hoped at some point that FreshBooks would find itself needing a woman of Filipowski's immense talents, but it never happened.

She also promised to take me out to lunch next time. Damn it.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

So I've been involved in the planning of what looks to be the coolest holiday party in Toronto: HoHoTO! This is going to be a kooky event with Twitter DJ request, live video and photo feeds projected on big screens, drinks and dancing and all kinds of fun, all going to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

Sounds like something that took months to organize, right?

Wrong.

Try days. And without any official organization, no club secretary, no corporate sponsor (to start; we've got a bunch of them now). Basically a group of folks started talking about the idea on Twitter, and some of us met up on... Tuesday. Four days ago.

And now there's a website, a venue, a logo, sponsors and tickets selling like mad. Thousands of dollars raised and hundreds of people coming to something that didn't even exist at the start of this week.

It's phenomenal. People can sure be awesome.

Like YOU! You can be awesome -- especially if you come to HoHoTO!

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

So we were walking back from California Sandwiches and Gauthier started telling a story about clearing minefields with sandbags and I offered the suggestion that before long, someone would make a mine that compensated for that technique.

Kevin noted that land mine design is really just a special case of interface design. Special and murderous. We decided land mine manufacturers should hire Jeffrey Zeldman or someone to design their land mines. Kevin came up with a slogan:

"Never more than two clicks away from DEATH!"

This is the sort of thing we talk about at lunch. Current events, interface design, and DEATH. I love my job.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

So I originally posted this over on the FreshBooks blog and I kept meaning to post it here but now it's November. Oh well, I still think it's cool.

Fellow Freshbooker Taavi and I came in on the weekend before the big day with a can of spray paint and a defenseless Bondi iMac and today the FreshBooks office is now properly festive for Hallowe’en with our new iMac-O-Lantern!



We got the idea from this awesome Instructables article. Today somebody went and added a FreshBooks leaf to our newest little orange friend, so he’s properly branded.

The face changes every twenty minutes (I made them with OmniGraffle), using the JPEGView application described in the Instructables article. Here are some shots of the process:



Primed and Ready to Go!



Painting the iMac's bottom. He does look pretty helpless, doesn't he? Poor little guy.



And there you have it! Unfortunately, the iMac is kind of noisy — it emits a peculiar sort of high-pitched whine. Which was kind of unpleasant for the poor fellow (Rich) who had it right next to his head. But he seems to have survived and is no more peculiar than prior to the holiday. Which is good, cause we liked him the way he was.

Anyway, it's late, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

Some links that have built up over the past while and ought to be shared.

The best commentary I've read on the U.S. election:

Yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.

The Homeless World Cup. People can sure be awesome.

Utility-scale solar power. Plus Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Finally, I spent my morning re-reading one of my favourite stories of all times: Bad Aliens, Zombie Toddlers and Drunk Southern Girls With Guns, by the same author as the recent Transformers movie. And about six thousands times more fun (no offense, John, but there just weren't enough drunk southern girls with guns in the movie. Try to fix that in the sequel, okay?). Just so you understand how completely freaking awesome this story is:

“That,” Denis said authoritatively, “was no mutilated cow. It was just mutilated.” When the others stared blankly, he continued. “UFO mutilations follow a very distinct pattern. That cow – if it’s like the others – didn’t have that pattern. It was not clinically dispatched, it was killed, then the soft parts were eaten away by small carnivores. But not the ones you’d think.” He produced an evidence baggie. Within it was a small tooth. “I recovered this from within the brain matter remaining in the skull.”

“Doesn’t look like an animal,” Ross said.

“It’s not.” Denis held it up for all to see. “It’s got a silver filling. This is a human tooth.”

If that doesn't make you giggle with glee then, well, you're probably not a DM.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

Notice anything extraordinarily cool about this picture, besides the fact that it's extraordinarily cool? No? Stunned by the extraordinary coolness?

Note the colours in the picture. Notice how they MATCH the colours on this website.

Amazing! How'd I do that?

Simple. I used Tin Eye's outrageous colour-based photo search.

Who thinks this stuff up? Clever people, that's who.

Photo by Vieeto Voom

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

I am helpless to explain this. But if you are the person who put that fez on that snowman, and gave him that facial expression, I love you.

Via "UnicodeSnowmanForYou.com". I assume "UnicodeSnowman.com" was already taken.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

...and yet more. From the blogroll:

The Price Of Freedom

From WorldChanging: What Else Could We Buy For $700 Billion? How about debt freedom for Africa, for one?

Always Amazing

Some pictures from the always-amazing Astronomy Picture of the Day:



Say "Hi!" to everyone in the NGC 253 Galaxy, only 13 million light-years away. Like somebody once said, if we're alone in this universe, that seems like an awful waste of space.

And on your right you can see a sight much closer to home, but possibly even more amazing. That is a single exposure you're looking at, presumably a pretty long one, but partway through the exposure the photographer set off a flash inside the cave to illuminate it for the film. Fantastic. Read about it here. People sure can be all kinds of awesome when they need to be.

The Dread Blonde

Speaking of all kinds of awesome, the d20 Blonde sums up what has swiftly become one of my favourite games ever: Dread. I played in a game this past year run by the d20 Hubby, and let me tell you, when a Scooby Doo episode turns Daphne into an axe-wielding madwoman, something in the universe has gone terribly wrong. But in such a fantastic way. Anyway, the Blonde does a great job explaining why this game is so incredibly awesome, and her later posts include some great tips on how to run a game of your own, so if you're into having insane amounts of fun, check it out.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness

Been catching up finally on my blogroll, and a few choice tidbits to share around:

Via Drawn -- Gremlins, in other movies. Fans are getting more and more fun to watch.



Via Kung Fu Monkey -- Ninja Tales online, from Boom! Comics:



And lastly, from Evil Bat -- another fan-made video, this time an animation around a Radiohead song. Arresting and original:



Okay, enough with the linkage. Soon, actually writing. Promise.

Labels: Unspecified Coolness