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Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 Happy Birthday To Me! Update by Clayton |
It's my birthday and that's all I'm going to say.
Oh wait, I'll say a bit more.
Fans of Chisai Sudoku will be saddened to learn that in March of 2009 my house was robbed and they stole the computer that I developed Chisai Sudoku on :(. However, fans of Chisai Sudoku will be happy to learn that I recently discovered a long-forgotten backup of the source code!
After I do an upgrade to Claytopia.net my next project will be the creation of Chisai Suodku's successor; Chisai Suite. It will still play classic sudoku ala Chisai Sudoku but it's going to do much, much more. I've just started development so it'll be awhile before I have anything more concrete to show you.
Now let me have my cake in peace!
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Monday, August 23rd, 2010 CreateTV Update by Clayton |
Taking a break from my whirlwind schedule of media appearances and midget tossing, I decided to sign up for a free workshop that Shaw Communications (a Winnipeg cable provider) was offering. It was called CreateTV and ran on the 19th of August. I phoned Shaw TV celebrity Meera Bahadoosingh and was added to the list.
When I was a little kid I lived in an area not serviced by cable, but a few times I would visit relatives with cable and learned about public access channels. Videon (a now-defunct provider) and Shaw both had them and the average Joe was able to run their own TV show. I thought it was great and when I got older I phoned up Shaw in 2001 with ideas for shows in my head and asked them who I could talk to about getting my own show. Unfortunately I was informed that I was too late and they didn't have public access any more, with most programming coming from Calgary. When I learned about this workshop I had hoped that this had changed, which is primarily why I went.
Arriving early, I was given a folder of materials, a pen and a stick-on name tag. Meera ushed me and some other guy named Mike who showed up at the same time (and who looked a lot like a guy I know named Dave) to a studio in the back where they had set up about four rows of chairs. Following my tried-and-true practice of sitting in the back row of any type of workshop/classroom/church I sat in the back row.
As the place slowly filled up with attendees I noticed that they all started introducing themselves to each other and exchanging pleasantries and other sundry details. I was actually watching networking happening live, which was kind of cool. What sort of sucked was that nobody introduced themselves to me or talked to me at any great length. As I sat by myself quietly and listened to the conversations that were happening it became apparent that while this workshop was open to anyone, the target audience were people in the industry. And sure enough when they had everyone go around the room and introduce themselves, only 3 out of 24 (myself included) had no background in television, film, or public relations. There was a girl who was there for general interest, a black guy whose name tag simply read 'B' who said that he was there to learn about making YouTube videos, and me.
The workshop turned out to be focussed not so much on creating television shows (as the title, CreateTV implied) but on reporting news. The hosts were Meera Bahadoosingh (a reporter) and Lynsay Perkins (a videographer, i.e. cameragirl) and after going through a short glossery of industry terms, (such as A-Roll, and B-Roll), and confirming a number of suspicions I had about most news reports on T.V. (that most B-Roll stuff is staged) we were divided into groups of three to do little interview skits. The skits had one reporter, one camera-person and one interviewee. I chose to be an interviewee because I didn't want to take a spot away from the people that were seriously there to brush up on journalism or videography skills. I had to play the part of Mayor Sam Katz. Our time was short, my height made it difficult for the camera to work and I kept making the mistake of leaning forward towards the microphone (though in reality such an interview probably would've used a lapel mic). I managed to get one joke out suggesting that the mayor is secretly a cross-dresser and my time was up.
After the session I asked Meera about running ones own television show. She told me that Shaw has gone away from that, preferring only to work with graduates in the field. She said if I had my own equipment (which I don't) and did everything myself (which I can't) I might be able to get air time, provided of course that it met their broadcast standards. It might be possible to borrow equipment or talent from Shaw, but without any background in the industry I figure that it's quite unlikely.
So I've concluded that if one wants to get a start with their own TV show, they should probably get a good digital camcorder, a good shotgun mic, some friends to help and an account on YouTube.
So far I've got an account on YouTube.
Oh...that reminds me....if anyone cares, some Winnipeg papparazzi guy with his own website was at the workshop and took some photos. If you're a fan of Where's Waldo, you might just catch a glimpse of me in the last pic on his article about it.
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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 Looking for Mugs in All the Wrong Places Update by Clayton |
My girlfriend's favourite mug's life came to a crashing halt on her kitchen floor this morning.
It was a cheap mug, something she had purchased from a dollar store (or some other similar "purveyor of useless crap that nobody else could sell" shop) but it had a lot of sentimental value to her.
I realize this is a longshot, but if anybody out there has this mug, I'd be willing to buy it off you. View my ad at UsedWinnipeg to contact me about it.
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The Front of the Mug
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The Back of the Mug
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Monday, July 12th, 2010 A Fiery Weekend Update by Clayton |
I saw smoke on Saturday and decided to go investigate it because I was bored.
As I got close to the source it became apparent that most of Winnipeg's north-west population had decided to come and watch as well. It turns out that a house in the community of Amber Trails (on the street name, appropriately enough, Amber Trail) had caught fire and burned up pretty good. Returning home after the 20 minute crawl through the traffic jam of fellow gawkers and human-tragedy enthusiasts I made the mistake of going to the online newspaper sites to find out exactly what happened.
It turns out there were a lot of fires in Winnipeg this past weekend:
The Amber Trail one was interesting because the Winnipeg Free Press quoted a neighbour who complained bitterly about the response time of the Winnipeg Fire Department. To quote the article,
Jagroop Hayer, who called 911 after seeing smoke from his deck a couple of blocks away, claimed it took firefighters more than 20 minutes to arrive on the scene and once they were there, they didn't seem in any rush to put the fire out.
"This was a disgraceful performance by the fire department. The fire hall is just a 10 minute walk away," he said.
I have to say...Mr. Hayer was clearly looking for his 15 minutes of fame and making outlandish accusations. The original article I read only contained Hayer's comments, but the link above actually contains the rebuttle from the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic services. It turns out the actual time from the 911 call to the arrival on-scene was 6 minutes and 43 seconds. Hardly 20 minutes.
Now I'm no firefighter (I just play one on TV), but I know enough to know that these guys typically have to drop whatever they're doing when that bell sounds, slide down a really fun pole get dressed in a bunch of heavy gear, hop on their big red truck and race through the legions of morons that were given driver's licenses in this city to get to their fire. The fact that they got there in under 10 minutes I find extremely impressive. I know I couldn't do it.
I'd also imagine that when firefighters arrive at the scene of a fire, the first thing they do is determine if anyone is inside the building. If nobody is inside (as was the case with Amber Trail) I would imagine that they proceed very carefully and time take to examine the situation before rushing headfirst into a raging inferno.
Anyhow, enough about me complaing about the complainer.
I've always found it interesting that events like fires sometimes show up in clusters. Those fires took place in different parts of the city and had different causes; this wasn't simply a string of arsons. I wonder why that is?
As for my earlier statement when I said I "made the mistake" of checking out online news is that I got fairly up-to-date on current issues in Winnipeg, most of which just made me angry. I'll be making posts about them over the next few days.
In other fiery news, I've actually started an overhaul to Claytopia that I'm finally happy with. In the next few weeks I hope to make the transition to Claytopia 3.0!
Not that it matters. Nobody reads this anyway.
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