Radical Hive

My how time flies. It’s almost time to re-register HeadsDown, and considering that I did almost as much with it in 2001 as I did in 1998 (the year I first registered it), what a waste. Other than this site, and my e-mail accounts, HeadsDown could have died and nobody would have been the wiser.

Work’s been pretty fun lately, I’ve finally started really working on the Encoding Stations, and built about 3/4 of it today. Tomorrow I’ll be adding the final wiring to it, and then I’ll be able to start actually using the thing. I’m going to make sure that I take some pictures of it for posterity’s sake, and also so that I can show people I actually know what the heck I’m doing. From looking at it, one would swear that I have stock in a wire tie company.

My current diagram is absolutely hilarious. I took a piece of paper and drew out the equipment I needed, and added the connections, and then drew lines all over it to the pieces. It looks like something a three year old did, but it actually makes sense!

Here’s the obligatory “Best Of” section.

Album Du Jour: My 2001 remix disc (track list coming soon)

DVD of the week: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Wicked two disc set with all kinds of goodies.

Game of the week: I played Grand Theft Auto 3 until 3 in the morning the other night. It’s evil.

Website of the week: I don’t go to it nearly enough yet, but PopCultureShock is an awesome site. It’s by the designer of Psycomic V2, and it’s really well laid out. I love it.

Here are a couple of cool links:First off, here is a very important link for Opting Out of Popup Ads! Very handy.

Second, a little Windows XP helper. Microsoft’s Cleartype link. Now I want XP on my work and home machines so that I can take advantage of this feature.

This is my first full update for the new year, and I’m making it wirelessly in my living room.

We’re launching the TSNMAX Magazine on Monday which means lots of work this weekend, but we’ve still managed to catch The Royal Tennenbaums and A Beautiful Mind.

Album du jour: 2001 Year in Review album

DVD du jour: Almost Famous - Untitled. It’s amazing, there’s so much good stuff on this disc.

Game du jour: I bought Grand Theft Auto III, just before Christmas, and it’s amazing.

Website du jour: Well, if this was Monday, I’d say TSNMAX The Magazine, but since it’s not…

Not much to say right now. The Holidays are taking their toll on my work schedule, but I have managed to catch a couple of movies. Look for little blurbs on Lord of the Rings (kick ass) and Vanilla Sky up here soon. In addition, we are going to see the Royal Tennenbaums tomorrow night, so that should be a blast.

Saturday begins our four day weekend in North Bay, where the Toronto Gang will be spending the New Year.

Until then.

It just gets better! ActiveSync Pass Through Connection with PocketPC 2002

Not only can I now use my Pocket PC wirelessly in any room in my house at blistering 1 meg speeds. Not only does my web connection not require any third party programs/apps to connect to the internet now since I have a wireless hub, but now I have figured out how to use my Pocket PC in the cradle at work to surf the internet. Why is this a good thing? The wireless hub doesn’t want to work here at work, so I’ve been looking for another solution to see stuff I’m doing on the web from work. With PocketPC 2002, it’s easy as pie!

I managed to get the aircard working on my iPAQ yesterday, and it was so easy. I just went to the Samsung website, grabbed the software, and installed it…in less than five minutes from the time I started the search, I was online and surfing on my Pocket PC.

Now if I could just find a good cgi based message board for HeadsDown, all would be good.

I’m writing this from my PC, but I started it on my Pocket PC.

For the next several months, I have unlimited use of a Wireless Samsung MagicLAN-RG, a Compaq iPAQ with a Wireless Samsung card. This means I can access my network from anywhere in my apartment. I’ve already surfed PocketPCThoughts, TSNMAX, and ComicCon. I’m going to create a new webpage on HeadsDown which will be a Pocket PC Portal to take me to all my favourite websites. Very very cool.

I’ll be doing a lot more development for the iPAQ now that I’ve got this bad boy, and it will allow me to check the work that I’m doing for the iPAQ on TSNMAX. I also want to get the aircard working on my personal iPAQ because it has Pocket PC 2002 on it, and I want to see what the internet looks like on IE 6 for the PPC.

That’s really all I’ve got to say about any of that.

Album Du Jour: Bare Naked Ladies Greatest Hits Volume 1

DVD of the week: SSX Tricky! How cool, this PS2 game also had tons of “behind the scenes” stuff on the making of the game.

Movie of the week: Vanilla Sky, Kate and Leopold. We won free tickets to Kate and Leopold, pretty good for a chick flick. Vanilla Sky on the other hand was just weird. It was very dark, had a great soundtrack, and had a totally bizzare ending. While I thought it was a good movie, it wasn’t great, and wasn’t one of Cameron Crowe’s better films. I’d put it just above Singles, but below Say Anything.

Game of the week: SSX Tricky. I rented it from Jumbo, and stayed up until 3 am two nights in a row to play it.

Website of the week: Spider-Man Movie website. The new trailer is out…and damn is it good!

Comic of the Week: Weak, weak week for comics this week (that’s a lot of weeks). I’ll have to give the nod to X-Force, which once again was totally quirky, and really fun. Sadly, it was the weakest issue of the series thus far. Next week will be better with New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and Ultimate X-Men all out on the same week. The X-comics have never been better reads than they are right now.

It seems like I’m getting a 6-1 ratio of Spam to e-mail, and the only culprits I can think of are such reputable places as “Network Solutions”, my bank, and a few others. So I’m going to start phasing out bgarside at headsdown dot com and only use brian at headsdown dot com It will be much easier for clients to remember (well other than the “Is that Brian with an ‘i’ or a ‘y’?” questions), and hopefully I can keep this as an e-mail address that only my friends and clients know.

I’m still looking for an affordable, decent second video card so that I can make use of my second monitor. Having two monitors at work has really spoiled me, and now I can’t wait to get a second one going at home too. Just having a place to put all of your photoshop tools is worth the price of admission.

Movie of the Week: We went and saw Ocean’s 11 last night. Very fun. Brad Pitt and George Clooney just owned the screen, and how can you go wrong when Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, and Elliot Gould are in your cast? Steven Soderberg is very quickly becoming one of my favourite directors. He’s got such a cool, very fluid style to his movies, and no two movies look exactly alike.

Well, certain people who shall remain nameless (but who were the best man at my wedding) say that this site isn’t dark enough. They want a full on descent into madness.

Well tough beans! This is my random ramblin’s. It’s whatever’s buggin’ me, whatever’s on my mind, whatever I’m doin’.

I will tell you this though…I’m making plans baby. Big plans. Huge plans. Ground shaking, earth shattering, life altering directional plans. My new year’s resolution this year will be to do something that’s all mine. My days of making other people money are at an end. It’s time that I stood up and put my money where my mouth is. If I’m as talented as I think I am, and as valuable a commodity as I keep marketing myself as, then it’s time to stand up and do something with it. I’m writing down my tricks and tips for making streaming media viable for everyone from the one-man start up to the uuber network, and I’m going to put them together into a book. That’s stage one. Stage two is taking that info out into the real world and turning it into a buisness. Not just streaming though, web design, application development, Flash development, video, ASP…everything I know.

I posted a small little teaser to HeadsDown a year ago, it said “Change is coming”.

It’s time I live up to that teaser.

Album Du Jour: I picked up the Barenaked Ladies Greatest Hits volume 1. I’ve never bought a BNL album before, so this was a pretty good idea. They are one of those bands who’s songs I’ve always liked on the radio, but who’s albums I’ve never picked up.

DVD of the week: Made. John Favreu and Vince Vaughn reprise (sort of) their roles from Swingers. Not as clever as Swingers, but it wasn’t bad.

Movie of the week: Watch this space for a review of Oceans’ 11

Game of the week: SSX Tricky demo for the PS2

Website of the week: Mojo Radio. Talk radio for guys. I listen to this all day at work. Don’t ask me why…it’s what I do.

Comic of the Week: Dark Knight Strikes Again. 15 years in the making. Did it live up to the hype? Nope, not really, but it’s got potential. 80 pages, thirteen bucks. That’s a lotta coin, but it was a pretty good read. A close second was The Authority, which was on a four month hiatus, and will end in three more issues. This is the one comic that I’m gonna really miss.

Reality Factory

An open source gaming platform designed for non-programmers. This is something I definately need to look into. Very cool looking, mucho potential. Very very cool.

Album Du Jour: I haven’t really been listening to that much music lately, mostly Mojo Radio.

DVD of the week: We watched Legally Blonde on DVD this week…that’s been the sum total of my DVD experience this week though.

Movie of the week: No movie this week…yet.

Game of the week: Metal Gear Solid 2

Website of the week: DC Comics has put out a web site for Dark Knight Strikes Again which is pretty darned cool.

Comic of the Week: Although normally I would say New X-Men, I’ve given it a couple of nods lately, so I’m going to go with Legion #2. This re-launched Legion series is a really good read so far.