For My Sister

A gracious commenter named Tom, came  by my blog today led to my site by a Google search I have no doubt.

He answered a question and provided lyrics for a song that my sister heard many years ago and could never find again.

Tom, as I did in the comments I will do again here… thank you very much.

So Kim, here are the lyrics and song title copied from Tom’s comments:

The name of the song was “Cowboy from Rue St. Germaine” it was written by “Adam Mitchell” (Canadien)
I have a vinyl copy of the Good Brothers doing the song on a album called “Pretty Ain’t Good Enough” (1977)

The Cowboy From Rue St. Germaine

It was four hundred bucks ago I saw Paris
I like the city, the city liked me
I was out on my own, and I thought I was free,
But I kept on thinking of home.

It was late nights, the left bank,
And lot’s of french wine,
It was OooLaLa stuff like that, Right down the line
But somebody kept on crossing my mind,
And that’s why I’m headed for home.

So Louis The King, if your up in the sky,
Tell marie Antoinette I said Goodbye,
The Cowboy from Rue St. Germaine gonna Fly,
Back to his Darling at home.

When the winter may come,
And the tourists may go,
It might be the statues and me in the snow,
How I’d love to be with them,
But Darlin’, Oh no,
It’s time I was headed for home

Chorus

It was two nights upstairs
In a demi-couchette,
With a Madamoiselle who said,
She’d make me forget,
But the memory of you,
Oh, it’s still with me yet,
And that’s why I’m headed for home.

Chorus

and here is cowboy.mp3 a cover of the song from the Good Brothers. I hope you enjoy it.

Share The Love

I have been listening to this song repeatedly since I stumbled upon it. I immediately went and bought the album, because when you hear an artist like this you just want them to get enough money so that they’ll make more stuff.

Oddly enough the video I am linking is not the one that I saw first for this song, but it is the one I like the most. The way all the musicians are pent up in that one little room remind me of people looking at a TV and wondering how the little man got inside.

Buy her album Sea Sew, you won’t be sorry.

The Whole Kitten Kaboodle

My wife mentioned to her friend that she was thinking of getting a tattoo. Her friend piped up with her favorite sign that she had seen in a tattoo shop in Sarnia that read, “Suck it up Princess, kittens don’t lick them on”.

And thus was born our constant reference when talking about Darlene getting her tattoo.

From dars tat

So if you click the link in the image above you’ll get directed back to my Picasa web album for her tattoo that shows the initial sketch and2 interim shots up until 2 shots of the final product.

The angle is a bit deceptive, it’s center back for her. Well, upper back not right smack dab middle, but not off to one shoulder or the other.  While taking the photos I’m off to the side because I didn’t want to be overly intrusive in the tattoo guy’s space. When getting a tattoo, it’s a good idea to KEEP THE ARTIST HAPPY!

Originally, Dar was scheduled to get it done last weekend, but Charles (our new favorite tattoo artist), had to reschedule. This however, gave me an entire week of needling my wife (hahahahahah).  Kitten references abounded for the entire week, it’s a wonder she didn’t get hives.

To Dar’s credit, she did indeed suck it up. She survived her kitten attack like a trooper.

Science Is Cool

So, an article on Slashdot caught my eye today.

There was a link in it to a cool article about the color of dinosaur feathers.

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/01/what_colours_were_dinosaur_feathers.php

I’ve discovered in life, almost everything will remind me of a song, a joke or a book I once read.

In this particular case, the article reminds me of a book I read… about 28 years ago. The book, Mastadonia by Clifford D Simak, was actually written in 1978, but I am fairly certain I didn’t read it until at least 1982. Back around the age of 10 I wasn’t exactly buying books, but at the age of 14 I was certainly devouring them in the library.

I actually even remember the cover of the hardcover of this novel; I would track down a used copy of the paperback, many years later in Toronto in my quest to own everything I could that Simak had written. I would have borrowed it from the Glace Bay library, which for a small town in Nova Scotia had an incredibly good science fiction section.

Anyway, the story of the novel is classic Simak. Man in rural setting meets amicable alien and has grand adventures. In this particular case, the alien resembles a cat and has crashed on earth. The alien cat has the capability to engineer gateways in time, in fact it has a yearning desire to do so because it’s sort of his “purpose”. The alien cat doesn’t do it randomly because a random tunnel has no intrinsic meaning or use, but is very happy when the human of the story would like the alien cat to use it’s powers.

I can’t recall the main characters name, I have a good memory but come on, it’s from when I was 14 and I’ve read several thousand novels since then… so I shall simply refer to him as the human. The human has the alien cat set up a time tunnel to the very distant past fearing temporal paradoxes (don’t want to kill grandpa right?). As you can now guess from the title, man finally gets to play in the world of dinosaurs. The human and his friends in the town set up a big game safari business.

The reason the Slashdot article brought this book to my mind, is that Simak loved to throw in wonderful startling moments for his characters. The one that stood out in my mind was the vibrant color on some of the dinosaurs. In particular his T-Rex (the plural of T-Rex is T-Rex, and yes I had to look that up) had bright rainbow colored dewlaps.  I loved this so fucking much. This wonderful man didn’t want to stay bound by the greens and tans and that dominate museums and dinosaur books.

I love the thought of him being right.

Anticipation

So,  in 1986 I bought a book that changed the way I read.

Until then, I’d browse a bookstore, look through the books, read a lot of back covers and see if the segment chosen by the publishers caught my interest.

The Architect of Sleep by Stephen R Boyett changed that for me. It was the first book that made me look for any scrap I could find that the author had previously written. I can still picture in my head every single detailed scene that he wrote.

Every time I go into a used bookstore I look for this book and if I find a copy, I buy it and give it away to someone who hasn’t read it **. I just loved it so much I wanted other people to enjoy it too. The irony is, that my wife, who is also an avid reader has never read it. I believe I still have a copy, but it’s in storage. She always hears me gush about the book, but I haven’t been able to find a copy recently because it’s been out of print for over 15 years.

It remains to this day a bittersweet book for me. The book cries out for a sequel that never happened. Mr. Boyett was a new author. He had one previous book, Ariel that I devoured as soon as I found a copy. He had disputes with his publisher and unfortunately for the literary world, he was also talented in a completely unrelated field.

As a result of the disputes with his publisher, he didn’t write anymore, well at least he didn’t have any more books published since 1986. Mr. Boyett is also a talented DJ and successful businessman. He puts out a podcast intended for working out to you can download most of his stuff for free from his website here.

So I am in my least favorite bookstore in the world last night. Why do you go to your least favorite bookstore in the world you ask? It’s by the movie theater that we go to most. But, back to the bookstore I am there and I see something that literally gave me chills. A new novel by the author I have been waiting to see new material from for 24 years.

I had it in my hands and I was going to buy it last night, but even though I wanted buy it, rush home and read it savoring every last page, I seriously hate that fucking bookstore. I hate it to the point that I will no longer purchase books from it, I will just browse to see what is out and buy from another source.

But, my book is on the way. It should be in my grubby little hands before the end of the month and it will cost me $10 less than what the shitty bookstore was selling for.

** I estimate I have bought this book about 16 times if you are wondering.

Thoughts On Contest Results

OK, so the results for the Clarity of Night flash fiction contest came back on Wednesday.

My last post was my entry into the contest.

I managed to snag an honorable mention, this is the second time I’ve gotten one.

As the contests go forward, Jason is gathering a larger and larger following, and there are more entries that I am competing against for those coveted top spots. The first one I entered was Silent Grey, there were 51 entries, this contest had 237 entries.

If the order that the honorable mentions were listed in means anything, I came in 8th. If it doesn’t mean anything, I came in top 25. This means I broke into the top 3 to11%

Either way, I’m ecstatic.

Of all the entries that I am competing with, many of them are published authors. The fact that I’ve done so well, is very encouraging and the community at Jason’s site is stellar. The comments that you get just make you want to write that much more.

This was the 9th time I have entered Jason’s contest. Maybe 10 will be the charm

Karma

My name was Mary-Joe Wallace and by the way, the Hindus are right.

Rebirth is scary. When you are used to boring suburban life in nowhere Nebraska, hatching 300 feet in the air in northern British Columbia is shocking to say the least.

But damn, what a view. Well, at least when your eyes finally open.

You don’t get it at first. I lived a good life, I really did. I respected my parents, I went to church, I even did volunteer work at the local nursing home. Sitting up in that tree shivering in the cold, always hungry, I thought what did I do that was so bad that I’ve been reborn to this life of cold and hunger and fear?

Then I flew.

I FLEW!

When you are out in the wilderness and you hear that scree from a hawk and think it is such a lonely sound, you could not be more wrong. It’s the sound we make when we can no longer hold in the joy. It’s the sound of ecstasy.

And it gets better.

Some days you just know things.

Today I caught a field mouse for lunch. The life of a field mouse is not fun. There is no flight. There is only fear and hunger and a constant sense of doom. Every shadow from above is a hawk like me coming to end you. And I knew that field mouse was the man that ended Mary-Joe Wallace and he knew me.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The above story is my entry to the Clarity of Night flash fiction contest. Please go over and enjoy the multitude of entries that will come over the course of the contest.  You’ll also see the beautiful photo that inspires the entries.

This time around I am entry #21

Have A Happy New Year

2010 has one thing going for it in my opinion.

It does not have to do too much to be a better year than 2009.

Looking back on 2009 it has been one of the worst years we’ve ever had, and I have had a few really shitty ones if truth be told.

I don’t go for the whole new years resolution thing usually but this year I am actually going to make a conscious effort to make sure 2010 is a better year.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a looking for pity post. I’m not going to list why 2009 has been so bad.

Instead it is just my greatest hope that 2010 really will be better and that I make the effort to help it get there.

Pure Win

If you don’t play WoW you won’t get as much of it as you should, but trust me on this one, it’s fucking hilarious.

Wohoo!

I have been working on a programming project. It is a card game called Tarabish,  played in a very remote section of Canada where I grew up.

I’ve been learning a bunch of different programming languages trying to decide which one would best be suited for the project. I decided to go with Flash. The programming language in flash is called Action Script.

There are 3 versions of Action Script. They are very different from one another in the complexity of what you can and cannot accomplish.

Creating a one player against the computer version would be fairly easy.  Unfortunately it wouldn’t be a lot of fun. One of the fun things about Tarabish is that cheating is allowed to a certain extent.

You are not allowed to communicate with your partner or sneak a peak at their cards… that’s unacceptable. But there is an order in which you have to play your cards. For example, if the first person to play lays down a spade,  say the 9 of spades and you have the Ace, 7 and 8 of spades in your hand, you must play the Ace.  The reason is as follows; you must follow suit and you must play your cards with the intention of beating the highest card played when you played your card.

Now the way that cheating is allowed is as follows. In the above scenario, you played the 8 instead of the Ace and no one calls a misplay when you play the ace a a later time, you got away with breaking the rules. If you get caught perpetrating a misplay, your opponents get all the points that were possible that hand.

The reason why a one player version would not be that funs is twofold. First, a computer will always know if you misplay if programmed correctly. Second, it’s very difficult to program a computer with the ability to cheat in a non blatant way.

So as a result of this I have been working on making my project multi player. I finally have things to a point where when a multiple users connect to the server they will see the same deck of cards.

If you go to http://bish.servegame.com/test/ and click on the show cards button, it will bring you to a screen with 4 hands of cards dealt face down. You can click on the cards to turn them over and anyone that connects will see the same cards. I can change the cards at the server level to a new deal at any time. Believe it or not this is a big hurdle, most flash games that you see out there are just executing a bunch of code within the flash file. Once it is on your screen there isn’t any communication with the server.

With the file that you are seeing, when you press the show cards button, it is going to the server at my house, asking what the cards should be and then returning the values to your computer. For your average professional programmer, not really a big deal. For someone just starting out, it’s actually very difficult and I am very happy I got it working.

**Note

Depending on the speed of your computer and internet connection there may be a delay between when you press the show cards button and the cards showing up on your screen. It’s just the time it actually takes to login to the server and get the original card info. I haven’t refined the code to give a connecting or loading bar yet so it’s very raw. Be patient.

Best Cover EVER!

Begging 2.0

So, Darlene and I are in our way to the drug store Saturday. There is a guy that begs for money outside the drug store on a semi-regular basis.

Beggers always hit me up for money. Always. 15 people will pass by a begger on the street and they won’t get asked, yet I walk by and they will hit me up every single time. Ask Darlene, she’ll tell you this is true. She has observed the phenomenon in action and has mentioned it to me on occasion.

It’s obvious that they know a particular mannerism or body language or style of person that will give money to people begging, because I will indeed give spare change or even a few bucks to people begging on occasion.

I know that probably 30-40% of the time it will go to drugs or booze and maybe 10-15% of the time it’s someone who does not need the money at all. But I don’t mind, I’ve been very down on my luck before and have had to rely on the charity of strangers. It’s one of the ways I like to give back.

Anyway, I don’t like regulars when it comes to begging. I feel that if you can come back and sit in the same spot day after day like clockwork and bother me for money, really you do have the ability to show up at a job and can theoretically make your own money. I do work for mine.

But to get back to the occurrence on Saturday outside the drug store. We go in and get hit up. I say sorry man not today and he’s pleasant about it.  We don’t see him on the way out until we get back into the car.

He’s moved over to a bench away from the entrance and he’s chatting away on his cell phone. Nice to know he’s making enough to stay connected.

Very Happy

I’ve been trying to create an online card game.

Last post I mentioned that I was going to stop trying to re-invent the wheel and use tools that other people have already created.

Well, I found a very key tool in the last few days. One of my problems was that I couldn’t figure out how to handle persistent server state functionality. In online games, if you create a routine where a deck of cards is shuffled and dealt and you hand out the program for your users, you have to obviously make sure that they are all playing with the same deck.

Well I found a program that does this and I can see all the code. While I don’t understand it yet, all the steps are there and it’s just a matter of tearing apart a small amount of code to figure out how it’s done.

If you want to see what a persistent server state environment looks like,  go HERE to see a brilliant little piece of code written by Chris Lindsey.

A Better Solution

So, a couple of weeks ago I saw a deal on dedicated server hosting.

I reallllly wanted to buy it.

Now I realize, that the better solution is to just use the second computer at my desk as my hosting server until I get to the point where I want to test live connections.

Even better, I do have a way to test live connections at home. I have hosted a sever from home in the past, but when I want to get into really stress testing someting I can get a dedicated server. That’s a ways down the road yet though.

But I’ve also decided to stop trying to re-invent the wheel too.

While I’d like to learn enough to be able to write the thing I want from scratch, there are perfectly good tools at a reasonable price that have a lot of the hard stuff written for me.  I’m going to try and learn to use those tools. It looks a lot easier.

So, here’s hoping that the tools can do what I want. I think they’ll help.

Book Review

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan has always been one of my favorites. There are few authors that I had been willing to spend the extra money for the hardcover, he’s always been one of them.

I was really bummed out when he died in 2007 and not just because it was a possibility that the series would never get finished. He’s also one of the few authors I made the effort to go out and meet at a book signing event.

After listening to him speak to the fans that showed up and getting maybe 5 whole minutes of one on one time when he signed my book, he struck me as a genuinely down to earth nice guy. Now I know, you can’t make a proper assessment of someone after just an hour question period and 5 minutes of one on one, for all I know he could have delighted in hurling puppies at Orca whales, but damn he really seemed great.

So yeah, I was bummed when he died outside of the self interest way, he was nice to me when he signed my book and seemed to like talking to me.

Anyway, when I heard that Brandon Sanderson was going to be the author to finish the series, I picked up the books that he had out to see if I liked his style.

I did. To an extent. I very much enjoyed his stand alone work Elantris . I also loved his Mistborn series but I was pissed at the ending. I am not going to spoil it, but go read it and send me an e-mail when you are done and I’ll tell you why.

So I had great hopes for the ending of the Wheel of Time series. I liked the author that was going to finish it and I knew that Jordan had left a crapload of notes and had verbally informed his very competent staff and wife how the story wrapped up. They got a good author and he had great crib notes to make it easier.

Now Sanderson and Jordan have completely different writing styles. Jordan I feel better on plot and story idea by a smidge, Sanderson, much better control and structure. Put together Jordan’s crib notes with Sanderson’s ability to structure a story, well shit, that’s a good damn book.

So if you felt that Jordan was just floating away on too many tangents and stopped reading the books after number 8 or so, I encourage you to pick up the first 11 read them and then pick up The Gathering Storm. Sanderson has picked up the pieces and is doing a great job of tying up the story to an exciting finale. There will be 2 more books after this one and I am  very much looking forward to them.