Spilling my Guts

Sitrep, Montreal, Day 28

So, stuff has happened. Lots of stuff. Lots of lots of stuff.

Not including the reason I’m actually here (which I’ll blog about later prolly) there’s a lot to talk about. There’s been crazy warm weather. Crazy cold weather. Me in a french newspaper. Lots of new friends and experiences with said friends. Protests in the streets. Language confusion. Writing on hands. AND SO MUCH MORE!!

Here’re some pictures for your filthy eyeballs. Seriously. Take a shower.

So to summarize: yee haw and/or yummers! (Except for the glasses thing. That wasn’t tasty times.)

My Murderous Rage or: That in Which I Get You to Throw Your Underwear at Me

Everyone talks about SAD during the winter, but there’s another issue that affects me from time to time. That is: blinding, all-consuming, murderous rage.

I’m a pretty happy dude normally, but sometimes the little things get in my way so much I want to drive a shotgun blast through them.

I’ve never been a fan of the 100s of little things we have to do every day just to live. You know, the things like commuting, buying groceries, doing laundry, and so on. But normally I go on with my day and don’t complain.

Winter, though, adds considerably to the overhead. Just the time it takes me to put on my boots makes me angry. That I’m doing it while wearing 16 layers because I have the body fat of a dead oak tree only makes it worse.

And now that I’m living in a new city (Montreal) in a new apartment without a car and it’s so bloody cold here … it’s all compounding.

All I wanted to do today was work, cook a nice meal, and wash my underwear. And when it takes me all day just to get all the life overhead done so I can sit at my desk with clean undies, well, hello angry-town.

I write this not as a complaint, but as a warning. If you see this guy, throw your underwear at him and run in the other direction.

My reaction to the new Google privacy policy

It’s fine, whatev—stop telling me about it!!

How to be good at anything

I’m going to tell you how to be good at any given profession, and then I’m going to watch as you continue to be mediocre at everything. Ahem.

If you wanna be good at business, look at everything that happens in your life and think, “how can I make money from this?”

If you wanna be a good comedian, look at everything that happens to you and ask yourself, “is there anything funny here?

If you wanna be a good actress, respond to everything anyone says to you with a well-crafted lie.

Getting it yet?

If you want to be good at making apps, look at EVERYTHING in your life and ask yourself, “can an app make this better?”

Doesn’t matter who you are or what it is, if it’s the only thing you ever think about then you will get good at it. Also, you will be boring and probably have no friends.

You’re welcome.

Shovelling snow is like sex…

My brother posted this:

Earl and I riffed on over IM later, and here’s a bunch more that we came up with. Ahem.

Shovelling snow is like sex…

• …no matter how careful I am, my socks still get wet.
• …I always need a shower afterwards.
• …it’s hard on the wrists if you’re doing it yourself.
• …if you marry the right guy you’ll never have to do it again.
• …when you’re done, there’s white stuff everywhere.
• …you don’t want to do it at your parents house, but sometimes you have no choice.

And my personal favorite:

• …the hardness is proportional to the wetness.

Hang out on the floor more

My new apartment (which sucks) came with those fake wood floors (which suck.) The fake thing I’m totally cool with, but wood? On the floor? C’mon!!

So to lessen the sting of the hard floor I bought a fluffy rug. Fluffy? Um. Shaggy! (It wasn’t me.) It’s a giant thick rug anyway. I would still prefer wall-to-wall-to-ceiling carpeting, but this rug is sweet. And though not intentionally, I’ve migrated to doing everything on it.

Even with a brand new couch and workspace, I still spend at least 90% of my home time within the confines of the rug. I’ve gotta leave it to cook and get dressed and do bathroom things, but otherwise: floor. I watch Community on the floor, I write Javascript on the floor, I eat pickles on the floor (from a jar on the floor) and I drink beer on the floor and I’m writing this blog post! On the floor! Oh and I sleep on the floor. And I build blanket forts on the floor.

I don’t really have a point. But maybe furniture is overrated? Maybe a soft floor with an assortment of pillows and blankets and cushions makes for a better, simpler, more natural living space. So put your pets in a dumpster and buy a rug. Done.

I don’t want a great Facebook app, I want a great Angus app

I’m about to tell you what’s wrong with the internet. You might wanna get an adult beverage, cause this is gonna be somethin’. Seriously, years from you’re gonna look back and be like, “well what do you know, that ugly bastard was right.”

Alright, here’s the problem: everyone is making amazing specialized-task apps that everyone can use.

What they should do: make amazing every-task apps for specific types of people.

For illustration, let’s take Twitter. They have brilliant apps for the web and phones and whatnot. But it works the same for everyone. There are several ways in which people interact with Twitter. Some want to read every tweet. Some want to read every tweet from 6 people, then when they are using the toilet, read through the rest. Some just want to post and never read anything.

So let’s call those ways of interacting T-A, T-B and T-C.

Now, let’s toss in Facebook. Again, they have one app. But just like Twitter, there are many ways people use Facebook. Some check it first thing every morning. Some leave it open all day long. Some keep the chat turned off all the time and only send messages.

Let’s call those F-A, F-B and F-C.

And let’s extrapolate for other services people use every day. Weather (W) and news (N).

So, say my usage profile is T-B, F-A, W-C and N-A. I guarantee there are a giant pile of people who use all those services in exactly the same way. And yet no one is focused on making my use of those services efficient.

One day, you’ll be able to pick your usage profiles and a device like an iPad will completely adapt its UI to the way you use the services. A custom Angus app. The only app I’ll need for 99% of my life.

Microsoft’s Phone and Windows 8 tile interfaces are gonna kickstart the trend, starting with a common usage profile for everyone. But do you really trust MS to do anything?

So there you go. A billion dollar idea for the low low price of free. Now go build that shit, would ya?

Holy monkey balls, I have 50 goals for 2012

Fifty goals! That’s like more goals than have been scored in every football match throughout human history.

To make the list more readable, Imma toss in some weird pictures from 2011 I found while dumping my phone pics this morning.

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1. Sit in an orange chair.

2. Do 10 stand-up sets in at least two different venues.

3. Go to a place which I’ve never been, stay at least a week.

4. Attend some sort of multiple-day event.

5. Use up my Aeroplan points.

6. Launch an app of any sort.

7. Launch another app of any sort.

8. Put something on a mobile app store.

9. Increase the number of Illuum users tenfold.

10. Buy/steal a wingback armchair.

11. Learn to swim.

12. Watch a movie with subtitles.

13. Make a non-christmas non-family video for no good reason.

14. Go for a walk in the rain wearing shorts, sandals and a lightweight stretchy v-neck shirt.

15. Give a stranger a cookie.

16. Make a big life plan and listen for God’s laughter.

17. Go to a church on a Sunday-morning-equivalent.

18. Watch four movies in one day.

19. Read 10 books.

20. Exercise 100 times. Walking for > 30mins (in a stretch, not a day) will count only if there is no destination.

21. Finish the single player whatever of a video game.

22. Buy an expensive bottle of scotch and drink the shit out of it.

23. Get a new suit. Wear it somewhere.

24. Take any two of the following lessons: dance, musical instrument, voice, swimming or flying.

25. Take a working vacation, whatever the hell that is.

26. Have people (2+ guests) in on average once a month. Don’t murder any of them.

27. At some point have enough liquor in my apartment to intoxicate a family of elephants.

28. Actually do the math to find out how much liquor is required for #27.

29. Turn 29. (Should be easy.)

30. Don’t turn 30. (Should be even easier.)

31. Host a party. Invite lots of people. Hope some of them show up.

32. This is getting hard.

33. Figure out how #32 could be considered a goal, and do it. Avoid the too-easy sexual inference.

34. Get kicked in the balls (metaphorically) harder than I’ve ever been kicked in the balls before. Because I can’t directly kick myself in the balls, this will require putting myself in potential ball-kicking scenarios … balls.

35. New glasses.

36. Replace the HDD in my Macbook.

37. Start the lengthy, painful and expensive process of making my teeth nice.

38. Write the GMAT.

39. Miss my old glasses.

40. Get a whole new pajama rotation.

41. Paint my nails.

42. Hang something on a wall.

43. Hang with someone near a wall.

44. Jump.

45. Have some sort of sexual relations with a willing human participant.

46. Replace my Grados headphones with ones that don’t rape my ears after an hour of listening.

47. Write 25 blog posts.

48. Confront someone about something outside of any regular conversations about said something.

49. Apologize to someone about something outside of any regular conversations about said something.

50. And lastly we end on my subjective, overarching one-word goal for 2012: Fight.

Goals for Twenty-Eleven: Revisited

It’s time to recap my goals for 2011 and see how I did.

1. Move out of my apartment.

Done! My subsequent travels may not have worked out and I may hate my new apartment but I sure did move out of my last one. I hope to one day eventually find a place to live that I actually like, but until then it’s good to shake things up.

2. Eat a >250g bag of potato chips in one sitting. And no, I’ve never done that before.

Done! Doritos count.

3. Take a (legal) drug.

Done! Ibuprofen counts. (Which I think is the only drug I took all year. Go go gadget immune system!)

4. Watch four movies in one day.

NOOOO! This was the only one I didn’t accomplish. I watched three a few times, but never got through four. If any of them I thought I’d do this one, but a failure do I be.

5. Exercise at least 50 times. For it to count, it must be uncomfortable and require a shower afterwards. (And not be sex.) Must be tracked through some sort of computerized file.

Done! I didn’t technically track it, but I ran and or did weights so many more than 50 times I’m counting it as a win.

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I have to say these goals weren’t that exciting. Seems I didn’t do more than part one of the intended goal series. Oh well. 

Next up is twenty twelve. Will life get better and better or will I fall into a pit of my own cromulence? Stay tuned bitches.