Dave Kellam

Well so far, the daily section hasn’t been all that daily. I’ve been taking lots of pictures and i’ve wanted to get moving on the site design, but i’m kind of limited by the resources on this computer at home. Maybe I’ll get something done once I’ve found a copy of photoshop.

Merry Christmas to all those that celebrate. I’ve been finding that I have quite a bit of trouble with Christianity and believing in any of it. Like any other religion it should be taken with a grain of salt. The bible, koran and so forth are really just a two-thousand year old books about better living. They give good advice, ie don’t kill people, don’t eat uncooked meat. See if you eat meat with blood still in it, your lible to get sick because god is angry at you (a nice way to explain things in the absence of science). I can just imagine someone finding one of those self-help books fifteen hundred years from now and creating a new religion based on the teachings of so and so.

Back to Christmas, it’s still a fun time of year whether you believe in the true meaning or not. People say that you shouldn’t need a special time of year to be nice to people, to give them gifts and so on, but that’s not really true. The concept of commercial christmas isn’t really all that old, it’s really a byproduct of the hustle and bustle of the modern world. People need a time of year that’s designated to being nice to other human beings, it’s almost a form of stress relief. It really just give us a chance to catch up with everyone else and pay attention to someone besides yourself. No longer focusing on your own problems and your own attempts to get ahead in life. I don’t really know where i’m going with all this, it was really just supposed to be a merry christmas message. I think the gist of it is that in the modern world, we need a period of time to relax, be friendly, be merry, be happy, be nice and be courteous to the other human beings. Call it whatever you want, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Duck Soup… it doesn’t really matter, it just won’t happen without a time period, place and name to pencil into our busy schedules.

Here’s an article about trying to find the funniest joke in the world, while I didn’t find the highest ranked joke all that funny, I found the highest ranked british one to be pretty damn funny:

A man goes to the doctor and says: “Doctor, there’s a piece of lettuce sticking out of my bottom.” The doctor asks him to drop his trousers and examines him. The man asks, “Is it serious, doctor?” and the doctor replies, “I’m sorry to tell you but this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

I just finished reading an interesting article comparing 2001 with Kubrick’s vision. A good chunk of the article talks about AI and essentially the past, present and future of computing science. I really don’t know what I’ll be doing in 10 years or what computers will be doing then. It’s crazy.

I basically spent the last couple of days doing nothing. Now I have a couple of weeks off from school, time that I can use to get caught up on some reading and whatnot. I came home last night but I’m apt to only stay for about a week. I left my computer in Kingston, so it’s not likely that I’ll have the site totally redesigned in the next few days. I brought my camera home, so maybe I’ll have some pictures to show. I have another site or two to rework as well once I get back to Kingston.

It’s kind of odd being home, I feel detached from the whole christmas/holiday thing after spending the last couple weeks in a bubble. I’ve got a couple of days to figure out what I’m doing as far as gifts go, maybe I’ll do some shopping this afternoon. I’m allergic to my cat, it makes me sneeze.

Wheeeee, exams are done and it’s time to get stupid. I finished my computer architecture exam a bit on the early side and came home. Just as I started typing this the doorbell rang and there was a delivery man with a digital camera for me, great timing. I ended up going with the Kodak DX3215, it’s a little bit low on the megapixel side but it should suit me mine for my needs. I never used to get 8×10’s developed with my film camera anyway. I purchased it from Henry’s, they had the cheapest prices around, better by $60 canadian. They had pretty fast shipping too. Time to play and then get stupid.

Instead of studying this afternoon, I decided to create the about section. That chewed up a couple hours of study time, now to get down to it. One left; computer architecture. I’m not too worried about it, i’m doing relatively well in the class.

I was going to watch a movie last night with some friends but ended up falling asleep instead. Just before it started I came downstairs, presumably to check the email or something and ended up being drawn to my bed. I proceeded to sleep for about fourteen hours, guess I was worn out from studying and the exam and whatnot. I had my Intro to Business exam yesterday, it went alright; I put an answer down for every question but there was some stuff I didn’t know.

I’ve been mulling over getting a digital camera recently. For one it will give me more material to work with for the website, as well as opening up the possibility of some photo archives. I enjoy taking pictures but I don’t have a good quality camera and find that I generally tend to be too lazy to go pick up film and get it developed. The quality of digital camera’s has become a lot better over the recent years and you can also take digital photos to a photoshop to get developed (or upload them to a website and get hardcopies delivered). Now I just have to find the funding for such an endeavor; I believe that I still have a bond in my parents safety deposit box that my grandfather left me. Years ago when it matured I used a portion of the interest to buy a cd player that had treated me very well over the years.

Of course I’m very hard at work studying and have little time to do anything else (*cough, cough*) but I have come accross a few goodies: the new spider-man trailer and a little flash game called incriminati. The flash game involves hiding things from your parents; relatively simple but somewhat challenging. The spider-man trailer is interesting, it shows that the movie has the potential to be pretty good or pretty bad.

Wow, this little flash thing is pretty impressive [via davezilla].

I didn’t really sleep all that well last night, i think my brain was too active from studying. All in all, i’ve been up for quite a long time today combined with the very little sleep, which makes me feel rather tired. The stats exam this morning fried my brain and sent me into a vegetative state for a large portion of the afternoon. Of course I probably needed some downtime.

I jump started my brain a short while ago by going out and seeing Waking Life. It’s been out for awhile, but in a town this size it takes awhile to get some of the more artsy films. I watched it with one of my housemates and we were both totally blown away. First off, it’s atypical in that it uses rotoscoping; a technique of animation overlaying film. Of course there are the people who’ll say that rotoscoping is nothing new and a number of the concepts in the movie are introductory collegiate philosphies. There’s a lot more there; lots of layers and levels that are integrated and applicable in that scene yet convey self-references to the film as whole.

Overall, I thought it was a great movie that opens your mind up a bit. It’s probably the first time since Memento that I’ve walked out of a threatre with my brain still very much active. I didn’t end up with that feeling of drooling pacfication suffered at the hands of a movie surgeon who opened up my skull and went to town with an egg-beater. I’d recommend seeing it.

Wow, stats sure are mindnumbing. I spent the afternoon going over old exams and I’ll probably be spending the evening doing that as well. At least I feel a little bit more confident, although I still don’t think i’m apt to do very well.

Two of my housemates are putting together a ‘feast’ of sorts; duck, sweet potato, pepppers, triffle and so on. I think they’re planning on eating sometime around eight, I told a couple friends that I’d meet them again at seven to continue studying. We’ll see how things work out for me.