Dave Kellam

It’s transition time here at eightface.com, one of those antsy times when I need to change the functionality of my site(s). Anyway, eightface.com will still be around, but it’s likely to become more of personal gallery/artsy-web-playground sort of thing. The log and associated crap will be migrating to davekellam.com.

I’ll also be changing content management systems. Moveable Type has suited me well for the last few years, but it’s time to move on. I’d still recommend it to anyone who is willing to pay for it (or sign-up for the developers network). For anyone using Dreamhost, i’m more likely to suggest WordPress, as it can be installed from the WebPanel with one click (and a bit of typing).

And what will I be moving to? That would be Drupal. Why Drupal? Because I want to make my life difficult. We’ll see if I come crawling back with my tail between my legs.

Happy Holidays. One of my big presents for the season is a Flickr Pro account, courtesy of Alanah. There probably won’t be too many pics appearing yet, as most of my archives are sitting on my computer in Kingston.

I added a Flickr badge to the sidebar of my site, so you should be able to see the most recent photos that I’ve uploaded.

I’m back in Brockville for the week, staying at home. I left my mac at home, but brought my xbox back. My mom and brother now know how to launch the Xbox Media Center and watch DivX/Xvid movies. Not having my computer around hurts though, it’s one of those times that you wish for a laptop.

I brought home a Ubuntu and a Gnoppix liveCD, so I could avoid using Windows. It’s working fine, but neither of them seems cable of saving my settings to my USB key. They also seem to have trouble creating a persistent home directory right now. Long and short of it is that I have to resetup my computer everytime I boot it up. I could use Knoppix or some other liveCD, but I prefer the Gnome desktop to KDE. The liveCDs also seem incapable of booting on the family’s old pIII 450, it’s not worth struggling over.

I’ll be home for a week or so, then back to Kingston and on to Toronto/Missassauga for a few days. School starts again for me on the 3rd, yea!

**Guided by Voices**
**Blimps Go 90** (2.10mb)
Alien Lanes (1995)

I downloaded this mp3 three years ago. I thought it might be incomplete, and wanted more, so I went out and bought Alien Lanes. This has been followed by obtaining many more albums and songs by GBV, as well as the attending of three live performances. I have a lot of their music, what could be a very large catalog for most artists, but it represents a fraction of the band’s output.

The band will cease to exist soon. Or Bob Pollard is retiring the name, take your pick. He’s the only consistent member and unlikely to stop song-writing any time soon.

Introducing Song of the Moment, stealing from the world of mp3 blogs. It’s not quite perfect and probably has some kinks to be worked out. The songs will stick around for a week or two or until I remember to remove the link. Unless they start sucking up a huge amount of bandwidth.

**Ted Leo & The Pharmacists**
**Me and Mia** (2.48mb)
Shake the Sheets (2004)

This song is pretty damn catchy. I must keep listening to it.

I downloaded some mp3s from the band’s website, listened to a few tracks and then purchased Shake the Sheets and Hearts of Oak from their label. Unfortunately, the source is taking it’s time getting the product to me. So, I have to kill time by creating a website to showcase whatever song I happen to be listening to at the moment. I thought downloading music was supposed to be bad for an artist. Hmm…

Update: My cds have arrived and have been encoded with AAC at a nice bitrate. I haven’t used AAC for anything else yet.

It was ugly outside yesterday, the school board (or bus company) canned the buses and rightfully so, the roads were unsafe. We were about to head for Brockville this morning and discovered that the buses had been cancelled again. It was a pretty nice day, we even had sunshine in the afternoon. I’m not going to complain, but it’s hard to be productive.

I’ve been pretty lazy about updating my reading list, I guess it’s because I found All Consuming kind of sluggish but was too lazy to convert it to weblog format. I should do it soon. The drop-down lists are gone for Archives, they’ve been consolidated into one page, along with the feeds.

There’s been a stink lately about EA’s development process and the hours they force their employees to maintain. Here’s a good article from the New York Times that talks about the company not being much different from any other game or software developer.

Here’s my favourite quote from the article:

Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, spent a sabbatical last spring as a researcher at the company, he wrote, “I am 43 and I felt absolutely ancient during my time there.” He said the place felt to him like “Logan’s Run,” the 1976 science fiction movie in which no one is allowed to live past 30 – and he felt even older when he realized that the 20-somethings were too young to know the reference.

It made me laugh, it just seemed like something i’d read in the Onion or some other rag.

And then a largish post swoops down to save a floundering front page from the depths of quicklink hell. I’m in to my second practicum stint and will be doing that for the next four weeks. A good chunk of any given day is given to teaching, prep and commute. And sleeping. I also spent a good chunk of my day dealing with computer problems and tend not to spend as much time it when I’m home. Beyond that, nothing outrageous to report.