Kid A In Alphabet Land Assails Another Abject Abstraction

12:36pm: Blender
Many thanks to all at Blender for having me as a guest DJ last night. This was my first time ever performing at a club, and as such, I learned a few _very_ important lessons. First off, 45 minutes is not a lot of time. I don't mean this as a complaint. Rather, being afraid I'd run out of stuff to play, I threw down a few 'filler' tracks, which did little more than waste my time and chase people off the floor. :) Then 4 or 5 tracks into my set I realized I probably only had one or two tracks left before my time was up. It didn't help that I did exclusively 8bit for my very first set when I could have been dropping some fast and hard DJ Hell or Vitalic. So yeah _big_ lesson learned: Don't worry about running out of tracks. You won't.

I suppose I'm being too critical about myself. I had a fantastic time on the decks last night, and I am greatly indebted to Herr Doktor, Dfens, R-lex, Sickbot, Techtard, and Contrasoma for one of the most entertaining and exciting nights of my life.

And thanks to all my friends who came out. It was great to see so many people come out to cheer me on. Special thanks to Tyler (and a happy birthday too) who unbeknownst to me, made 'Ryan Fantastic' tees with my LJ avatar. The design he used can be seen here.

9:43am: CiTR has a new look in cyberspace! Coinciding with the new website, CiTR has made a podcasting framework available to us DJs, and last night was our first podcasted show.


Podcast link here for your convenience. Enjoy!

8:16pm: CiTR 090906
Many thanks to r_lex for coming out to Synaptic Sandwich last week. I've always enjoyed his sets, and Saturday night was no exception. If you liked what you heard on Saturday, you can check r_lex out at Blender and Sin City.

6:38pm: Sexbaiting
By now you've probably heard of rfjason's deceptive craigslist stunt. Today I noticed that seoblackhat.com is hosting a $500 "contest" to see who can predict when criminal indictment, civil damages, physical harm, or death is visited on Mr. Fortuny. This "contest" is eerily similar to Jim Bell's usenet essay Assassination Politics. In a series of usenet posts in alt.activism, Jim Bell proposed a system whereby those who could successfully predict the demise of government employees would be rewarded by others using anonymous digital cash. Jim Bell was convicted and jailed in connection with Assassination Politics.

7:33pm: An update of sorts...
It's been a pretty good week. The new Vitalic Bells EP came out last week, and I should be getting my copy in the mail soon. Saw Scanner Darkly today too (thanks hisroyaldudenes!). Although I didn't top my list of Linklater films (that spot belongs to Slacker), it still blew me away.

I had an interesting episode at Blender on Thursday too. I was out on the floor and this girls came dancing up to me, leaned over, stuck her tongue out and roared like a dinosaur! I swear this happened. She caught me off guard, so I started to laugh, and she then rolled her eyes back in her head, lowered her bottom eyelids with her index fingers, and moaned like a zombie! I then made a zombie face at her and roared the best zombie roar I could muster, which seemed to frighten her off 'cause that was the last I saw of her. weird...

1:08pm: CiTR tonight!
kudos to contrasoma et al. for a swicked night at Blender on Thursday. It was the first time I've heard The Hacker in a club since he played here in September.

contrasoma will be our special guest tonight on Synaptic Sandwich. Show starts at 21:00, goes 'till 23:00 on CiTR. FM 101.9, Cable 101.9, mp3 stream here.

8:01pm: It appears *someone* vandalized the UBC engineer's website.
tsk, tsk...

EDIT: The site was fixed, kinda... The engineers have blocked access to http://pace-1.mech.ubc.ca/~eus/jax_calendar/event.php, which was where malicious javascript was inserted to redirect visitors. The image visitors were redirected to can still be seen here.

EDIT 2: Looks like the vandalization is back up!

8:43pm: ok, I'm back
So, I went to Pacific Centre today for this month's 2600 meetup, but noone was there. I can't say I'm surprised. There were 6 other people at the last meetup I went to (in December), and none of us seemed to be legit. Oh well. I'll be there next month with a big, fat, hand written "I'm here for the 2600 meeting" T-shirt, and perhaps some info on war dialing from construction sites.

12:57pm: Fun with Flickr
UPDATED 2008-02-05: The technique described below no longer works. Flickr has tightened things up a bit...

I was messing around on flickr, when I noticed that some images show an 'all sizes' button, which allows you to view all sizes of the image you are viewing, while other images strangely withhold this function. This image here contains the 'all sizes' button, while this one here does not.

If you hit the 'all sizes' button you are taken to a page like this. When you replace the 'id' variable in the url so that it points to a image with the 'all sizes' button disabled (like this), you will notice that you are prompted by flickr to login in order to see the page. Well, I do have a flickr account (Actually I have 15, but that is another story...), but I don't think that I should have to log in to see this, so I won't. You will notice that on the 'all sizes' page, it provides a static link to the image so that you can link-to/download this image in the desired size that you want. This link is formulated as follows:

http://static.flickr.com/server/imageId_image'secret'_imageSize.jpg

We already know the image id, and we can obtain server and image 'secret' from the original page. the image size can be any of the following:
s_d - square
t_d - thumbnail
m_d - small
d - medium
b_d - large
o_d - original (largest)

The HTML source of the public page for image 70608568 (the original image we saw that did not have the 'all sizes' button) has the following javascript code snippets:

var _img_root = 'http://static.flickr.com/';
...
global_photos['70608568'] = new Object();
global_photos['70608568'].id = '70608568';
...
global_photos['70608568'].server = '18';
global_photos['70608568'].secret = 'd6349bf93f';
global_photos['70608568'].url = '/photos/nur/70608568/';

Now, if we are correct, we should be able to view the original sized image with this link: static.flickr.com/18/70608568_d6349bf93f_o_d.jpg, which in its original format is approximately 3 Mb in size.

This trick should work for all images in flickr, but I gets to be a pain to have to view the source every time. Thankfully for you, there is an easier way...

All you have to do is go to the public url for the image (like this one), and copy/paste the following code into your browser window, which will send you to the original image file:

javascript:window.location = _img_root + global_photos[document.forms[5].id.value].server + "/" + document.forms[5].id.value + "_" + global_photos[document.forms[5].id.value].secret + "_o_d.jpg"

Enjoy!

UPDATE: the above code nolonger works. use this instead:
javascript:for(var i in global_photos){window.open(_img_root + global_photos[i].server + "/" + i + "_" + global_photos[i].secret + "_o_d.jpg")}

10:19am: NSA patents
The NSA filed a patent in 2002 claiming a new, more efficient way of sending data packets over a packet switched network. The method disclosed in their patent, however, is the same as the method disclosed in RFC 2018, which was written a full 6 years prior. Unfortunately the patent has already been approved. What the hell is going on in the USPTO?

1:18pm: Strange occurrences have happened as of late. I seem to have lost my keys inside my apartment. That was on saturday, and I still haven't found them. I used them to get into my place and when i went to leave they were gone. I checked everywhere for them on sunday. I even checked the fridge. Also, yesterday I called a friend and unknowingly left a message for my grandfather on his answering machine.

These keys are really starting to bother me though, so today I will do a DFS of my entire apartment.

5:56pm: Electro Mix Available!
Just thought I'd post an Electro mix I made a while back. Hopefully someone out there will enjoy this. I've posted the mix as a single .mp3 file, which I recommend, as well as a .zip file containing the same .mp3 divided into individual tracks. Again, I strongly recommend downloading the single .mp3, the individual .mp3s will hiccup between tracks.

Links to the files are provided below. If the download is slow, it's because the files are on my server at home. Let me know when the link dies.

Download here.

Here's a track list:
1) Spektrum - Kinda New (Teifschwarz dub remix)
2) Bangkok Impact ft. Kassen - Bounce Baby
3) Kiko - Italomatic (Kiko and The Hacker remix)
4) Tiefschwarz - Ghosttrack (Blackstrobe remix)
5) Hong Kong Counterfeit - Metal Disco (Legowelt vs. Orgue Electronique remix)
6) The Hacker - Radiation
7) Agoria - Stereolove (Villeneuve Me and Timy mix)
8) Bolz Bolz - Take a Walk
9) David Carretta - So Lonely
10) Blotnik Brothers - Ergo
11) BBE - Seven Days and One Week (Tomcraft Remix)
12) Vitalic - My Friend Dario (Dima Needs Newbeat remix)
13) Legowelt - Disco Rout
14) Southsoniks - My Lead

Anyways, Don't forget to tune in to Synaptic Sandwich every Saturday from 21:00 to 23:00 on CITR (101.9 fm). You can also listen live via MP3 Streams by opening http://live.citr.ca:8000/stream.mp3 with you favorite media player. This Saturday will be our special Halloween show.

2:26pm: Webcam Fun


Last week I found a webcam on our university network. It turns out it is accessible outside the university network too! Initially it was in an office, facing a lego man on a toy sailboat. I could move the camera via the web and checkout the people in the office. They have since moved the camera to the office window, thereby giving away the location of this camera. Note the similarities with this picture. This picture shows the glass roof clearly visible from the webcam.

It's website provides a very functional interface to manipulate the camera. Have fun and play nice!

P.S. For those interested, I will be posting some electro mixes very soon.

7:09pm: The government of canada is considering the proposal of a new bill, requiring canadian telcos to incorporate built-in wiretapping capabilities into their existing systems. The proposal would create a system much like Carnivore, which is used by the FBI to monitor email communications routed through ANY U.S. ISP (yes, your hotmail, gmail, etc., accounts are compromised by Carnivore).

This new proposal would establish a system whereby communications (both analog and digital) would be duplicated and forwarded to relevant law enforcement agencies (subject to standard court proceedings). Rather than physically tapping the communication line as is practiced now, law enforcement agencies would be able to monitor lines remotely, creating a system much more susceptible to abuse and misuse.

This isn't really anything to get worked up about. Besides, if some entity (government or otherwise) wants to know certain information about you, chances are they can get it. If They want your PGP key, They get your PGP key. Nothing to be surprised about.

1:34am: OSX



Well, I finally got around to snapping a pic of my OSX86 install.
Yes... I'm just another script kiddie following the guide here.

4:20pm: Had a decent show at the CITR last night. Went to see The Hacker the the Waldorf after. It was a great show. Coincidentally I also saw The Hacker last friday in Toronto. That was an even better show. Bigger venue (the Mod Club), larger audience, and the resident DJ's actually played electro.

I'm trying to install OSX on my laptop, but I'm not having much luck.

Anyways. I've spent my Sunday watching TRON with the volume down and the electro up.

11:49pm: Transmit
I went to Transmit at The Arch on Friday and found out that I had stumbled into their last official show! I've really enjoyed Transmit (great music, wicked visuals) so It's a shame to see it come to an end. Hopefully we'll se more of resident djs Morgan Muffler, Snailrider, and Conrad Black in the not so distant future.

On another note, DJ Cyber will be spinning at The Arch this Friday for Transmit's last night CANCELED. If you enjoy Synaptic Sandwich I would strongly encourage you to check it out, and as always, tune in to CITR Saturday nights from 9-11 to hear DJ Cyber and yours truly spin electro and 8bit for your aural pleasure.

11:01pm: Gordon Campbell Spotted!



We spotted Gordon Campbell at the 10th and Alma 7-11 on Monday. He was buying a taquito...
And yes, I know its a shitty picture.

12:47am: LCD Soundsystem
I was there

11:37pm: NEW VINYL
Yeah, got a new record today

"The Amazing Adventures of Pac-Man." It should make an apperance on next weekend's show.

3:43pm: "The Ryan"
So I was extremely bored the other day and i decided to find entries for peoples names at urbanictionary.com. There were a few definitions of "welch" that  bubbleteagirl and hisroyaldudenes might find funny, but nothing interesting... Until I found this definition for "The Ryan":


Dude, the ryan is here! I'm 100% sure this was written about me, seeing as I am the real Ryan and all the others are phonies...

Yesterday I got a flickr account, check it out here

2:14am: Saskatchewan...
I had heard stories about the sad sate of affairs in Saskatchewan over the last 20 years, but I had no idea exactly how bad it s. Today I logged onto www.mls.ca to see what kind of houses one could buy in rural Saskatchewan. The results are shocking to say the least. There are no less than 43 houses (with their lots) for sale for les than $10k!!!
Ch-ch-check it out here.

I don’t even think that you could put a down payment on a place in Vancouver for $10k.

Below is a full province by province report:

British Columbia 0
Alberta 0
Saskatchewan 43
Manitoba 10
Ontario 12, but only 3 are legit
Quebec 3
New Brunswick 4
Nova Scotia 1
P.E.I. 0
Labrador and Newfoundland 6 out of 73 are legit for sale
Yukon 0
N.W.T 0
Nunavut 0

11:07pm: An update of sorts.
So I was taking the bus today when I overheard a guy discuss a scenario he claims proves that democracy does not work. His argument was basically as follows:

Imagine a train traveling on its normal route. Up ahead the tracks fork in two directions, one is the normal, well maintained route, while the other is an abandoned route. The train conductor notices that on the main track there are five children playing on the tracks and on the abandoned track there is one child playing by himself. The conductor makes a few calculations and determines that he will not be able to stop the train in time. Also, we must assume that these children cannot get of the track, and therefore that there death is ensured if the train passes through their route. It is here that the difficult question is posed. Which path should the train conductor travel down? (Assuming he has the ability to select which track the train will travel along)

The man who recounted this dilemma claimed that the correct choice would be to travel down the abandoned track, killing the child who did nothing wrong to spare the lives of five others who made the choice to endanger their lives. This, he claims is proof that a minority can suffer from the actions of the majority. While I agree that a majority can cause harm to minorities, I don't really agree with this specific example. My biggest problem is that sending the train down abandoned tracks would endanger the lives of all the passengers of the train. Therefore, I would argue that if the train contains less that five people then the abandon track should be chosen, however, if it contains five or more, then the regular track should be chosen, thereby ensuring the safety of all the passengers.

Anyways, I thought that this was an interesting problem, but to me, it was more of an argument against utilitarianism than anything else.

- Ryan

10:45am: So I gave up on my own blog. I think...
I got my Christmas present from Travis yesterday. He bought me a second hand photocopier. I heard that it worked when he bought it, and he spent good money on it too... Anyways he decided to smash it, and burry it down by the ocean. What a great idea, buy someone a gift, but ensure that they will never get to use it. You're really just destroying something they like in their honour, a sacrifice of sorts.

Anyways, this useless present got me to thinking. I'd like to buy a nice present for someone, destroy it and then give it to that person. You know the saying: “it's the thought that counts” right? Well then, why don’t I just give the thought as a present? I could just write down the gift I would have gotten someone if I could get them anything they wanted. Hmm...

no...

I like the idea of destroying presents. For a few years now I've been contemplating the idea of burning my presents while they're still wrapped. I'd get a big fire going and I'd put them on one at a time. Then I'd watch as the wrapping slowly burnt away to reveal the gift inside. I'd take note of what it was and who gave it to me so I could thank them, and let them know that I could have enjoyed it. As I see it, opening a gift should be done entirely for the gift giver, just to ensure that they know you appreciate that they have gone out of their way for you. Gifts are largely symbolic, so when a gift is destroyed, all that remains are the thoughts and feelings it once represented.

The film Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam seems to be set in a perpetual Christmas of sorts, and the characters constantly give each other the exact same gift. It can be argued that Gilliam did this to point the view that our relationships are becoming more and more shallow; that most of our interactions are just superficial "rituals" we feel we are obliged to do to avoid being rude. But maybe Gilliam is trying to make a less cynical statement. Maybe by trivializing the gift himself he is trying to draw the audiences attention to the people and their relationships...

Look at me here. I'm rambling right?
O.K.

Merry Christmas everyone! I sincerely hope it's not your last.

- Ryan

8:23pm: NinToaster.com Up and Running!
Check it out:

http://www.nintoaster.com