“Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…”

Today marks the 402nd Anniversary of the Gunpowder plot. One of many failed attempts at assassination of King James I of England.

“On 5 November each year, people in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries and regions^[5] celebrate the failure (or among some groups, the attempt) of the plot on what is known as Guy Fawkes Night, Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night, Cracker Night or Plot Night; although the political meaning of the festival has grown to be very much secondary today.”

Source: Wikipedia - Gunpowder Plot

Remember, Remember….

There’s something to say about one waking up on the right side of the bed early in the morning. Wake up on the wrong side, and you can get pretty snappy with friends, family, and co-workers, or worse, your boss. Know we all know that no-one wants to have/sea the outcome of the later (snapping at the boss that controls your job, and therefore your salary, and hencemore, your happiness; probably not a good idea).

So why not try MyWakeupTunes? I myself prefer to download the album and use my own method of an alarm clock system, but the score that Will Musser has composed for mywakeuptunes.com is simply amazing.
Heres an excerpt from their site..

MyWake-UpTunes is the only fully customizable wake-up assistant that offers you unlimited wake-up options while giving you the flexibility to quickly set up and enjoy wake-up experiences that meet any emotion you desire. Your wake-up experiences can now be soothing, relaxing, energizing and rejuvenating.

Head on over to MyWake-UpTunes and download Will Musser’s Enjoyable-Wakeup-Inducing album, its worth every penny of the $5 cost.

 D-I-Y Taser?

“This article should teach you how to build a simple heart monitoring device, ECG/EKG (electrocardiograph). In the United States and Worldwide million’s of people are losing their life because of heart failure. It is a disease that comes with diabetes, stress and etc. Before I continue to explain what I did, I would like to WARN you! 500mA (miliAmps) on 220V will completely destroy your nervous system (so run it from battery supply), check everything twice and you are responsible for it on you own. OK! I think I can continue. There was a student job which I wanted in the Biomedical field, so to make my CV look even better I wanted to have something from this field so I built an ECG. First what I did was I went to google.com and looked for similar projects and I found a great number of similar projects. Some were for logging data of heart disease patients, some were for some futuristic health monitoring devices and some were just for fun, as mine.”

source: e-DSP

The last five beers of my life……..

Im currently the apprentice for WCT (Western Canada Theater), if you havent noticed already. For the past….week and a half?, I’ved been working on setting up (which involves moving Light fixtures, light bulbs, electric wires, being 50-100ft in the air in a cherry-picker [rolling ladder w/ wheels], pushing buttons on lighting and sound consoles and controlling a projector with slides using powerpoint) a show called “The Last Five Years” by Jason Brown. A show about two people.

No……really, its a show about two people (internal joke [A fellow employee was volunteered to do a mock-Pre-Show chat script, on the fly. He proceeded on saying “Hi, and welcome to Blah Blah, This is a tale about two people. Enjoy The Show.”]). It was amusing, (commence laughter) and the director/design people laughed.
(Excerpt from Wikipedia: The Last Five Years

The Last Five Years is a one act musical written by Jason Robert Brown and produced off-Broadway in March of 2002. It explores the five-year relationship between Jamie, a rising novelist, and Cathy, a struggling actress. The show uses an unorthodox form of storytelling, with Cathy traveling backwards in time (beginning the show at the end of the marriage) and Jamie traveling forwards (starting with their first date). The songs are presented as soliloquies, except for a wedding song in the middle, where the two characters share a duet. Sometimes, this show is performed in such a way that Jamie and Cathy only interact during their wedding.

Being the apprentice for WCT means that I have no pre-determined job before/after shows, which means that I can help with many aspects of a show. This includes painting, carpentry, prop setup, wardrobe and various other things as they arise. Very much a new experience for me, where I run the show, and also my first time working on a musical.

Officially my job on this show is to operate the Lighting console, sound console, projector w/slides powered by PowerPoint remotely triggered by the lighting console connected to a computer, and a fan triggered yet again from the lighting console that creates the Marilyn Monroe “moment” seen in this picture taken during rehearsal.

In all, its starting to shape up nicely. With the show opening to an audience today, my hours might now return to sane ones, with time to sleep in (being evening productions @8PM), YAY!
Just another chapter in my amassing book..

Found a new album I really like by Metric - Live It Out.

My favorite song/s in this album is “The Police and The Private” & “Poster Of A Girl”. Check it out if you get a chance!

“You’re working for the police and the private, the pirates and the pilots
Fingerprinted waiting for the train
The doctor, the writer, the hairdresser,
Felt up and fingerprinted waiting for the train.”

Physicists in Switzerland are inching closer and closer to bringing the most feared space monster to Earth, but don’t worry, they’ll be making harmless, microscopic versions of the fiend just so we can understand the universe better.

Using the Light Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists Henriette Elvang of MIT and Pau Figueras of the University of Barcelona are pulling out all the stops to test theories regarding space and time. The version of the black hole that they will be making will look a lot different from the ones in space, though. Elwang explains that the Earth-made hole will look more like a tiny black Saturn, meaning it will have one central black orb and a black ring, both of which will spin at high speeds to maintain the existence of the body if only for a few milliseconds.

“If you just had a ring, it would collapse. It’s essential that it rotates to keep balanced,” says Elwang.

Both the ring and the core are defined by their event horizons- virtual boundaries where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. What can be seen would be very similar to a flattened microscopic chocolate doughnut.

So why don’t they make bigger ones so everyone can see?

That’s because they can’t. These tiny black holes can only exist in a plane with four dimensions- length, width, height and time. We humans exist in three dimesions, so in a manner of saying, we don’t live in the same reality where these things exist. However, scientists have discovered that in very small spaces, the third and fourth dimensions can actually be reconciled. If they smash protons in very small quantities with about a thousand times the gravity of the same subatomic particle, a tiny black hole will be born.

Of course, all of this is theoretical, but if all goes well, detectors in the LHC will light up to herald the vindication of theories by Stephen Hawking and those who followed him.

There’s still a lot of doubt as to whether or not the black hole can stabilize before it dissipates, but the scientists in Geneva say that in a few years, it is very likely that they’ll create a much smaller black hole to actually bridge the gap between the third and fourth dimensions.

source: New Scientist Space

My friend “alerted” me to a new Linkin Park Underground album, 6.0!
Great stuff, havent listened to any for a while, its a nice change :).

RSS Is so great. Why is it great you ask? Well, Let me explain.

Its great for grabbing the attention of those who reside in the netherlands, pirates attempting to overrun Sealand, and wordpress dust bunnies.

Yes, I reminisce about this often, Yes Indeed.

A long while ago, almost a year now, I was asked to help tear down a play setup (strike). I dont even remember what the name of the play was, I was just called and asked to come help. They (Small Theater companies) are always short people, either from running out of money, or no-shows. It’s really a shame that this happens, as many aspects of a play/show are affected by a shoe-string budget. From amazing dependence/reliance on volunteers, to near-insurmountable expectations from paid staff (often paid just slightly over minimum wage), to Apprentices paid “honorarium’s” equalling approximately $2-3hr, with expectations equal to/greater than paid staff. Size and location of a theater in a given city weighs heavily on this as well. I found it interesting, certain times being extremely labour intensive, but not mentally stimulating, to other times of glorified button-pushing with bouts of “Drama” and psychological games.

While working at the theater as a stage hand, I became increasingly interested in the other technical aspects. During the Spring/Summer season, I had a great opportunity to assist a College course instructor/actor/carpenter with constructing a Mock Globe theater, from initial design, to construction, to setup of the completed project. Over the next few months, I would be called more often to fill-in spots when needed. During this time I had the chance to speak with an individual about my interests in P.A. (Public Address) setup, and technicial sound design. This interest stemming from helping staff a show featuring a travelling band with a few other local bands mixed in that night. From there it all goes downhill! It was suggested I pursue an apprenticeship. Sounded fun and cool to me, but then I dropped off the face of the planet with them, and decided to work so I could make some money after quitting my desk-job the prior year. I kept in contact randomly/sporadically with them but never pursued it further.

Months later, after working four different types of jobs, with no real interest sprouting from them, I decided to take the apprenticeship.

I will elaborate more on this apprenticeship I have taken, and pictures too!

The grizzly man is back, and this time he’s ready to take on bullets and bombs.

Troy Hurtubise, the Hamilton-born inventor who became famous for his bulky bear-protection suit by standing in front of a moving vehicle to prove it worked, has now created a much slimmer suit that he hopes will soon be protecting Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

He has spent two years and $15,000 in the lab out back of his house in North Bay, designing and building a practical, lightweight and affordable shell to stave off bullets, explosives, knives and clubs. He calls it the Trojan and describes it as the “first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armour.”

Id wear it to work! Pretty cool looking, although not as cool sounding (in theory), or as likely to happen as this one is, being R&D-ed by DARPA.

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