Today is election day. It’s been a pretty horrible federal campaign, I think. There has been nothing but bullshit being slung by all three of the major parties. It reminded me of a kindergarten fight. “Wah wah wah! He did this! He did that!” Cue lots of stamping of feet, pointing of fingers, tears, and balling of fists.

I think the right thing to do here is to vote for the Green Party. In the past, the Green Party has been considered a bit of a joke vote in Canada… people would vote for them almost as a protest against poor choices. That’s not the reason I’m going to vote Green though. I think their party platform has evolved to become more representative of what I believe, which, in short, is that we should be responsible to our society and environment, yet remain sustainable at the same time.

Of course some of the Green policies would be harmful to me personally. Gas prices would go up, for instance. I am not opposed to higher taxes though, unless I feel like that tax money is being wasted.

Dad and I have been talking about how the economy is usually the number one election issue. Supposedly all this money will trickle down and make everything else better. Yet, look where that’s gotten us? Government books are more cooked than anything in Emeril Lagasse’s kitchen. Meanwhile, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Healthcare, education, the environment and society in general is in decline.

My trip to Finland was an eye opener. The place is clean, affluent, and the population is largely satisfied with its governance. Finland is rated the number one most competitive country in the world. Guess who’s held power there since 1995? The Green Party.

I don’t actually believe that any Green Party candidates will win this time around. They didn’t have the budget to advertise, and weren’t allowed to participate in the debates. But, each vote gives a political party $1.75 from Elections Canada. Maybe next time, they’ll be able to get the word out to a wider audience. Maybe some day they’ll be able to mount some opposition to the tired old guard, and at the very least, propagate some fresh ideas. It’s worth a try.

Anyway, if you’re Canadian, and you haven’t voted yet today, what are you waiting for?

I embarked on a massive procrastination project yesterday, and I’m pleased to announce it has all worked out for the best. It all started because I’ve always been fighting with the computer that I have hooked up to the TV to play movies. The picture quality has always been somewhat questionable, the sound has been unpredictable, and it has, in general, always sucked. I’m always looking for new drivers and fighting to make it work properly. It was functional, but just barely.

First of all, I realized that I have an Xbox. I don’t really use it, but it’s there, and it’s hooked up to the TV. I wondered if an Xbox could be used to play video. Some research led me to some software called Xbox Media Center (XBMC). I installed it, and found out it’s incredibly awesome. It plays movies, music files (with crazy visualizations), Shoutcast streams, shows weather reports, searches the IMDB database for movie info, outputs progressive scan video and Dolby Digital audio, and can stream content off of a network share. Not only this, but it has a severely hot and sexy interface.

XBMC on the Xbox does all of this much better and much easier than the computer that was hooked up to the TV. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that this is what I should do.

Step two was to make better use of the computer assets on hand. I now had this TV computer that was redundant. So, I converted it into a Linux server to hold movies and music. I’ve been wanting to have a small server around, but didn’t have appropriate hardware handy for it. I like the TV computer for this purpose because it’s small, quiet, and doesn’t use a lot of electricity. I used Linux because it doesn’t take up a lot of space on the hard drive, so most of it can be used for storage. Also, I can run an Apache web server and MySQL database so I can test websites before putting them on the Internet.

Previously, I was storing my music and movie collection in three different locations: the TV computer, my desktop computer, and my laptop. Now that I’ve moved everything to the new server, it’s freed up lots of space on my desktop computer for photos. I’ve got at least 30GB more space than I had yesterday, which means I can hold off buying more storage for a while. Not only that, but I can get to the same multimedia files from my laptop and my desktop. I don’t have to worry about hunting all over the place to find things. They’re all where they’re supposed to be. Anyway, today it is good to be a geek.

I did a shoot with Melanie, a local photographer. She has never modeled before, but wanted some nudes done, so she contacted me. We met last week and bounced some ideas around, then agreed to meet tonight for the shoot. We did the shoot at her studio because I wanted to use the backdrop of her home for some of the photos. I also decided to use her lighting equipment instead of mine.

I felt some pressure to really make these photos great. It’s not that I don’t always try to hold myself to as high a standard as I possibly can, but it seems even more important when working with another professional for some reason. On the other hand it went pretty smoothly because she understood what I was doing when I was adjusting the lights and her pose.

Anyway, using her lighting equipment was a real challenge for me. Everything worked differently from how I expected it to, and I felt like a beginner again. At times I wished I had brought my own lights as a backup, but I was glad I didn’t, because it forced me to learn a few more tricks.

It was very strange for her too, to be photographed in her own studio. She kept wanting to ask me to take off my watch, because that’s what she asks her clients to do, but then she’d realize she was naked. I said it was just like one of those dreams in which you’re at school and realize you’ve forgotten to put any clothes on.

I think we got a few keepers. I’ll be working on them for the next week or so.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written in my blog. I didn’t mean to neglect it, but it seems that craziness has ensued. I kind of decided to work harder this year, because I think 2005 was the Year of Leisure. 2006 is the Year of Digging Out from the Hole That Leisure Created and Getting Back into Pre-Leisure Shape. Yeah. I know. 2005’s nickname is too short.

Anyway, as soon as I decided this, things got really busy. Work picked up, and people started buying computer equipment like it was going out of style. I couldn’t talk them out of it. All kinds of people seem to want to be photographed too.

I decided to go back to the gym at least twice a week in the mornings. I haven’t been in ages, and it’s starting to show. I’m not quite comfortable in the body of an out-of-shape guy. It doesn’t feel like me, and it doesn’t look like me. It feels good to be doing something about it. I was so sore last week from lifting weights, and I loved it. I am concentrating heavily on doing cardio too. If I don’t make it to the gym, I go for a long walk. The weather has been decent so this is a non-lethal activity.

I’ve been doing some more improv too. I had about a month away from improv because of the holidays and travelling to California, so when I went back to the Big in Japan rehearsals, I felt really out of touch with it. I was on stage for the last two Sundays in a row, and my improv instincts definitely feel dull. I felt pretty mediocre about last night’s show, and I was lying awake all night being angry at myself because I was piecing together what I should have done instead of what I did up there. I have been doing improv for long enough to realize that once a scene is done, it’s done, but I also know that instincts can be trained, and mine have suffered terribly from lack of recent training.

I had the opportunity to wander about Toronto for a few hours yesterday. I went to the Gap, where I exchanged the generously-well-meaning but not-really-me stripey shirts that What Not To Wear told Jadine to get me for Christmas. She was considerate enough to give me a gift receipt, so I exchanged the stripeys for a new wool coat.

Thanks for the coat, Jadine! I think I’ll go buy me some stripey shirts to go with it…

I also decided that I would try out some of those crazy DVDs being sold in Chinatown. Every store seems to have a huge display of them, 10 for $20. Has this suddenly become legal while I wasn’t looking? No one seems to be stopping them, so I figured I was in the clear. I picked out a bunch of Hong Kong movies, starring Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun Fat. I also grabbed a bunch of artsy looking Japanese movies, and a couple of Japanese gang movies. The front cover of the Japanese gangster flick Brother has an endorsement from AHEHA TV that says: “QIWYREI Through AETRAF AIE!” in big letters. That must be good, because Siskel and Ebert’s “Two thumbs way up!” is left for the back cover. Check out the synopsis:

Abandoned by the brotherhood of his yakuza clan, tough guy Yamamoto is forced to leave Tokyo. He flees to Los Angeles and finds himself quickly back into the routine violence of his old Tokyo life there. Before long, his gang grows in number. Business flourishes, money flows. Soon after he starts an all-out war against the Mafia, his brothers betray him again…

Most of the movies seem to have a similar plot. Vengeance, betrayal, tough guys. All you have to do is switch the names and places around and you’ve got a whole new Asian action movie. They’re all filled with a wide assortment of chop socky ass-kicking, so they should make for some tasty watching.

For the second time in a couple of weeks, I took the memory card out of the camera and put it into the computer, only to find out there are no photos on it. This is really weird. It’s possible in both of the cases that I accidentally formatted the card, because I was distracted after shooting, but it’s highly unlikely. The 5D works exactly the same way as the 10D if you want to format a card, and I never accidentally formatted a card in 2 years of owning the 10D. So, yeah. It’s a bit weird, and a bit scary.

Anyway, hasn’t been a major disaster. All I had to do was to recover the images using PC Recovery Smart Recovery. The program works well, but it takes forever. I couldn’t afford to have this happen during a middle of a shoot. I wonder if I should buy a new memory card. The problem is, I don’t really need more memory, and it could be the camera causing the problem. I guess I’ll sit on this problem for a while…