Venturing Into Vim

So I heard that there's this new code editor out, and it's been out for about three decades now... so I guess when I say new I mean new to me.

As an aspiring Ruby on Rails developer, I looked around to see what was the best code editor I can/should use for handling the development of a RoR web application. The vote went almost unanimously to Vim - a minimalist as (according to its veterans) extremely powerful code editor.

So this week I took a journey into Vim land to see what all the buzz was about and boy was it a rough one. Vim is not Notepad++, Komodo Edit or any other code editor that you've used before, and that's a key concept to remember when learning to use Vim, because operating as you did in your previous editors will send you into a mad swirling fit of rage and confusion.

Vim is it's own beast. The fact that you have to press a key before entering text and press another key when you've finished entering text should tell you a lot.

After a week of use, though, I must say that I chose wisely in the investment of my time and I would like to encourage my fellow coders to do the same. Get in the know with this great (yet sometimes frustrating) piece of software; it's powerful, simple and fast.

There isn't an opinion of Vim that wasn't stated by Jeffrey Way over at his blog, so I'll leave it up to you do some further reading.

Happy Vimming!

Regular Expressions

I'm sure most of you from the programming world are familiar with regular expressions. For most of you that are from the programming world and aren't familiar with them - you should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm only this haughty because I only figured out how to use regular expressions LAST NIGHT. Can you believe that? In the middle of a large project where the deadline looms among the next sunrise and validation on a HUGE form is key, I learned to master the use of ye ole RegEx... But not without a large amount of help, though. I really have to give credit to the guys over at GSkinner.com for their RegExr tool. With this tool, I was able to turn my email address validation code from this :

function echeck(str) {

  var at="@"
  var dot="."
  var lat=str.indexOf(at)
  var lstr=str.length
  var ldot=str.indexOf(dot)
  if (str.indexOf(at)==-1){
     alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
     return false
  }

  if (str.indexOf(at)==-1 || str.indexOf(at)==0 || str.indexOf(at)==lstr){
     alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
     return false
  }

  if (str.indexOf(dot)==-1 || str.indexOf(dot)==0 || str.indexOf(dot)==lstr){
      alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
      return false
  }

   if (str.indexOf(at,(lat+1))!=-1){
      alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
      return false
   }

   if (str.substring(lat-1,lat)==dot || str.substring(lat+1,lat+2)==dot){
      alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
      return false
   }

   if (str.indexOf(dot,(lat+2))==-1){
      alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
      return false
   }
  
   if (str.indexOf(" ")!=-1){
      alert("Invalid E-mail ID")
      return false
   }

    return true     
 }

function ValidateForm(){
 var emailID=document.frmSample.txtEmail
 
 if ((emailID.value==null)||(emailID.value=="")){
  alert("Please Enter your Email ID")
  emailID.focus()
  return false
 }
 if (echeck(emailID.value)==false){
  emailID.value=""
  emailID.focus()
  return false
 }
 return true
 }
 
 

To this :

function validateEmail(str) {
  var RE_EMAIL = /^[a-z]+[\w-_]+@[a-z]+\.[^@]*\w\w$/
  if(RE_EMAIL.test(str)) {
    return true;
  }
  else {
    return false;
  }
}

If you are like me and you never understood regular expressions, I would advise you give them a try. If you're a web developer, one of these days you are going to have to develop a form component that needs validation. Learning regular expressions is a definite time saver and I would suggest you invest the necessary time into learning them.

Afraid of Clowns?

Take a look at this dirty gem I found while surfing Reddit.

Clients from Hell

Me: “Ok, we’ve pushed the site live.”

Client: “Why isn’t the site #1 on Google yet?”

Me: “We just pushed it live five minutes ago.”

Client: “Optimize the fireball.”

Me: “I’m sorry? Do you mean the firewall?”

Client: “I need more hits NOW, so I need you to optimize the fireball. I know what I’m talking about!”

Me: “We’ll get right on it.”

This is what makes my job so damn difficult. These types of clients.

Taken from: Clients from Hell

Productive Unproductivity

As a programmer, you learn to set deadlines for yourself - progress checkpoints along a timeline of activities that will eventually result in the completion of the application you've been assigned to create. As a programmer who went to one of the top computer science schools in the country and is now the only person in the history of that school to finish their software engineering degree in a year, you set deadlines that are to the average person highly unrealistic, but to you are a shoulder badge of confidence in your triple-A, hot shot programming skillz.

Unfortunately this confidence is the source of your frustrations as you will find that the deadline for that multi-faceted, highly featured business web application is closing in and you realize that you've spent an entire day trying to find out why the jQuery.post() function isn't receiving JSON information from your PHP script on the login page.

With just a few days left to finish this app, and a myriad of other documents, reports and meetings to tackle, this is going to be one interesting week.

Left FB For Good

I left FB for good the other day. Starting to feel those old withdrawal symptoms as of late, Facebook's team did a great job planting that seed of backtracking possibility in my sub conscience when they mentioned that "All your stuff will be there when you sign in again using your email address and password..." - talk about confidence.

The internet is really a lonely place when you're doing everything your friends aren't. In this case, i'm glad to be alone though - FB was a giant waste of time and a huge distraction from more important things.

Oh well, on to the next thing I suppose.

Lovely Titan Robot on Gitex Exhibition 2009 - Dubai

As a (soon to be certified) Computer/Software Engineer, it really would amaze me if I even glimpsed the components and programming that went into creating this machine.

As a primitive citizen, seeing a walking singing robot of this size is just plain scary!

Spiderman, ALHC Showcase 2007

Who thought that the spider man theme song had so many woprds? Oh, and the dancing is pretty cool too :)

No School Today

Well this is a pickle! I’ve reached a point of stay-at-home-iness where I feel saturated by boredom. The fancible colours that once graced my daily routine of pacification actions have all faded to a ghastly and dowdy grey.

A mix-up of some academic records has left me without a torture pit (school) to call my own for the next few days. What’s worse is the fact that ALL of my friends have found something to do in the mean time. The ones who weren’t victims of the mix-up have all gone back to school, or are setting foot on the bottom rung of ye old career ladder. The others who have stayed back to do over a subject or two to raise that pesky GPA are enjoying the sweet life, walking on that wonderful duplicitous edge of “I’m in school but not really”.

And that’s just my school mates; I have other friends whom I witness cresting the sweet, sandy dunes of campus life. There are the ones at UWI aka the fun-central of all Trinidadian academia and the intellectual mating ground for all post-pubescent young sluggers of all shapes and sizes. Yes I would love to go there, yes the thought of every fine, sexy kaiyo from here to Caracas all in one area is a formidable one, yes I know that guys who go there get luckier than a dollar bill at a strip club and yes, I know my girlfriend goes there (I try not to think about it, especially after previous point) stop! … I really forgot where I was going with this paragraph…

Look the point is, is that it’s usually an old friend of mine sweating his brains out through the ear at some academic institute who would ask me what I’m doing with my life these days. What am I to tell him, that I’m in academic purgatory? Or that old chestnut, “Residing in a temporary state of limbo”? I mean come on! It is in these times that I stand and babble for words because I feel like I’m wading in the shame surf because I chose to vacation on Incompetent Island. I want to be sweating my brains out through the ear; it’s how I feel most comfortable. WHERE IS MY PORTION OF SCHOLASTIC TORTURE???!!

The point is I’m bored as hell, and right now I feel like life is passing me by like a black cab in London. Sadly, I can do naught but wait, wait for my little “sichiation” to be resolved and for the schooling system to open its mouth up wide and swallow me with a gulped chaser of immense workload and unreasonable deadlines.

Hey coming to think of it, this is kind of like Burn Notice except that Michael Westen was accused of selling secrets to Bosnian intelligence agencies, and I’m being accused of… well, nothing; one of my grades was just misplaced. Oh, oh, I got a better one – Michael is trying to get back into the Central Intelligence agency and I’m trying to get back into… UTT… ok this is nothing like Burn Notice at all. Dammit!!

Garfield is real

talking cats

An old Around the Net classic

He's Not So Tough

Ok i'm kidding, if were this tough I wouldn't have gotten beaten up yesterday :'(

Taken straight from the intro to Vybz Kartel's "Badda Dan Dem", the title is both relevant to this entry and solid proof that I do in fact listen to music other than Riot Radio from The Dead 60's or We Had Love from The Scientists.

I say the title is relevant to this entry because this is just one of those entries where the words glaze your eyes and sentences form leashes that choke your mind in bordeom/entertainment/utter despise for yours truly or an overwhelming sense of WTF. It's one of those entries that are anagulous to director's notes to the director of photography on the movie of my life. Yes I just used the very cliched expression "My life is like a movie" only i'll add to the end of that expression, "that is constantly being raped by Hollywood".

I can't really complain about the current state of things you know, but I would say that things are a little...bland these days. No explosions, no chases or elaborate fight sequences, just one of those scenes where two characters sit in a diner and have a discussion that serves to move the plot forward and give you an opportunity to make out with your girlfriend/horner woman of choice.

If it's one thing that HAS been distubring me however is my near complete lack of social interaction. It's just school, home, church (not as often :( ) and the only people I interact with are the people who are in one of those places. It's like i'm stuck in one medium sized, steel bubble of repitition.

I don't even update my facebook status or sign on to MSN messenger any more. I'm going a.w/o.l. in a lot of people's books and a select few have expressed their curiousity and concern for my wellbeing/whereabouts, and when i'm questioned about my ghostly presence as of late, it's always the same, tired excuse - school.

Now mind you, I know that school does this to people (isolate them from the fun of life) TO AN EXTENT, and even though school is no bed of roses (more like thumb tacks with serrated edges as a mattr of fact) it's only natural and expected that I find a balance between the two social spheres - hell/school and social life.

This habbit i'm developing is serious cause for concern. I could imagine my married life (if/when i decide to do so) - i'm in the study room curled up next to the warm glow of a Netbeans project while my wife, she is awake, cuddling with demons of zero satisfaction. Not a pretty picture when you come think about it.

So I guess the reason the movie of my life is so boring right now is because me, the writer/director, has made it so through plot concentration on an arid topic. I think it's time I up the screenplay a little bit, dash on the colours of drama (and maybe even throw in a few *** scenes) to make this film pop. Though I think i'll have to check with the studio execs on the last one :D :P.

Who knows, maybe i'll sign in to facebook more and appear online, (same with messenger), dial other numbers than the ones that start with 633, 725, 627, 730 or dare I say 759 :O. Maybe i'll go a party or two, make a new friend from off the street and maybe even make friends with an old girlfriend or two (apparently that's the thing to do these days). So we'll see what can bake from all this shakin'

Now, I bet the only long-winded question on your mind is "who the hell do you think you are to think that I am even .00000001% interested in reading all this stuff about YOUR pathetic life?" to which I employ the use of my almost prerecorded response - "dude, it's 3 in the morning. Go get laid."

Thank you!

What's that you say Glassfish? Data doesn't match column count at row 1?

The pic says it all

Weekend With

Now it's been quite some time since I've written something with a light and happy spirit. Truth be told it's been some time since I've written anything at all. I don't know, but for some reason there isn't much time in my schedule for blogging these days, but I suppose that when I do in fact have the time, I can shoot a few words up to ye old internetz.

So what's this one about? Nothing earth shaking, just an account of weekend past.

The agenda was fairly simple - attend a special youth service at the Redemption Worship Center in Chaguanas. Now executing the one task on the agenda would have been a quick, clean cut operation had it not been for my own little personal On-Star navigation system packaged in the form of my mother, bubblingly overconfident with her geographical and navigational prowess. You see, had she been more modest in saying that she knew where the church was, we wouldn't have spent nearly an hour driving around Chaguanas pulling up on people asking for directions; I could have just asked for directions when directions were being offered. *grr!!*

There were two things that I learned from Chaguanas people on that day:

1. Apparently everybody is blissfully unaware of their surroundings, so much so that you can get away with holding a kidnapped person hostage in a shack ten meters away from their place of residence. By this I mean nobody in Chaguanas knows where anything in Chaguanas is.

2. People in Chaguanas are very suspicious of drive-by shooters. And here I was thinking that growing up in La Puerta was bad. People would literally jump or clutch their possessions, mate or child closer when they see the car pulling up. I mean sure the tint is a bit heavy on the windows, but through the windshield I'm pretty sure you could see a middle-aged woman in the driver seat and two *very well dressed* but not devious looking young people in the back seat. I mean come on, when was the last time someone was killed by a mom and her "two children" in a stationwagon? Better than that, people of Chaguanas.

Aside from the driving, there was some walking around to be had. This part I was not particularly fond of since my girlfriend wanted to hold hands. Now on a regular day in a regular part of Trinidad this would have been fine, but on this hell-strip of activity and potential murder suspects I preferred not to have a "soff-man" appearance in case anybody felt like trying on a coffin and attempted to snatch my "bling". I'm telling you, most of the dudes I came across looked like they would mug you and demand your teeth because they look shiny when they're slick with saliva. My face stoned harder than usual in attempt to ward off potential trouble-makers but my efforts were COMPLETELY nullified by the fact that I had a sweet little Indian girl clutching on to my hand, and to make things worse, she would occasionally stop to look at dresses... and I would have to accompany her. I'm sorry but my current level of "gangsta" doesn't permit me to look gangster in a dress shop... or in a shop selling guns, knives and bitches for that matter. Oh well...

After much ado (and painful jaw clenching) we finally found the church. Gladly we weren't given the stink eye for traipsing in about an hour late; the audience was too engrossed with the testimonies given by the youths that have volunteered to do so. But as I sat down and listened to what those individuals had to share, my eyes lost their interest in their surroundings, my vision was tunneled and my heart began to overflow with love and compassion. The experiences that were shared shadowed mine in an eclipse of misfortune. My past issues and trials seemed small and frivolous compared to the battles and tribulations that others of my age have fought.

At that point in time, I came to realize two things:

1. Just how blessed I am and how much Jesus has protected me from
2. Just how powerful Jesus is, and His ability to save any soul and anybody who is willing to be saved.

He has gone down to the pits of personal hell, braved the fires of their mental torment, broken the chains of their spiritual bindings, unveiled their eyes to the truth of His love and brought deliverance and salvation to resuscitate their dying souls. He is truly an awesome God whose power far greater than anything I have ever known and ever will.

Sitting there, listening, I felt great pity and sadness in my heart for my friends and those who I love who still do not know Him, for those who reject offers of salvation, for those who have grown cold towards Him. Knowing that there is nothing you can do but pray, wait and hope can be frustrating sometimes, but keeping the faith is important in knowing that if he could have saved those young people, he can do the same for the ones who are still in need of it.

After the sharing and a brief yet powerful prayer and fellowship session, we were treated to an exceptionally well-portrayed and perfectly executed play/skit. I must say that along with being deeply entertained I was truly inspired. I think my next big film project is going to follow that storyline (if not one similar). I think it's time I write something that's both entertaining to watch and spiritually uplifting; something that everyone could relate to that has a positive element of enlightenment. We'll see how that goes.

Well my faithful reader, I don't know exactly how I've reached here. I was really going to write about the humour I caught during the dinner and socialization session but I guess God wanted me to share something a little more substantial and meaningful, maybe even reach a special someone... oh well... I guess a laugh lost is love learned ;)

NEW VIDEO!!!

Well it's been so long since i've updated this site with anything useful and/or mildly entertaining. Well here's hope of changing that.

Over the past semester, me and a few of my friends have been working on a short video. The video had to be something short (obviously), amusing and entertaining enough to keep people's minds off of the massive delays of our signature project.

For this piece we decided to center the story around gang activity in our society and a very unorthodox means of solving it (a la Donald Love of GTA 3).

Anyway, here's the vid:


Hope you enjoyed it :)

Forever and Never

When the day is gone, when darkness shrouds as twilight crawls across the sky, it's nice to have thoughts of someone special flood your mind. Just the very thought of that person creates an eternal day within you, with them as your sun.

I come home from a day in which work was my master and pain was my portion. Academia, it's a cruel mistress of sacrifice. I throw my belongings on the chair, my shirt drapes the arm rest, I sit, I close my eyes and there she is; my angel, my desire... my love.

I think back to the last time we were in the trance of each other's company...

Seeing is believing and in seeing her on that dream-like afternoon, I believed that everything in my world was going to be alright... for at least the next six hours.

I skipped from acquaintance to acquisition; the point in the evening when we found solace and we were all there was left in the world. I looked into her eyes, all I could see was forever - a universe of stars, promises, peace and comfort.

I see her face - a true work of art mounted on the easel of pulchritude that is her body, carved from the stone of refinement by God's angels of allure. Her lips, oh her perfect lips, moist and warm on every kiss - residue from the waters of the fountain of happiness.

I reach over to hug her; her body is soft and warm to the touch. The heat is mirrored in mine. My arms find their way around her, they know the path, I’ve been here before... in my dreams. The embrace is smouldering, her breath upon my neck, and my cheek against hers. The fire can burn us both, but it's ok - as the fire rages between us my troubles are reduced to chaff and cauterized into non-existence, this is one of the few times in my life where I can say I am purely me, exposed and absolute. The inferno rages as the shackles of my fears evanesce and I am light and soluble. We melt into each other, the bond would unbreakable save for the axe of time.

We seize the moment. We engage in a kiss. Rainclouds spit forth lightning bolts of jealousy; lightening reaches down from the heavens with needy desperation to be nigh over our shoulders to learn of that which rivals its electric charge.

I'm electrocuted, jolted by her kiss and kept warm by her embrace until the gongs of expired time ring out in a frequency that energizes our electrons of love and breaks our bonds once again - we are rent one from another without mercy.

I open my eyes and the fantasy that was once lived comes to an end and I am filled with explosive acerbity as I realize that she is no longer in my arms and I must face another day without her. Just then I feel like throwing it all away if it would mean me being able to spend every waking moment with her.

I can't take this distance!! The gap is too large for me to clear, my love. The cruel bridge keeper refuses to release the bridge of time to let me come across to you. But I will forever keep you in my mind and heart. I will forever be with you, my love, my angel, my newest found reason for change.

I will forever have you, in my thoughts and dreams... always, forever and never.

That Time of the Year Again

Now, when I was younger I thought it safe to blurt out the very open ended yet cliched seasonal slogan "It's that time of year again" and expected that it would ring the same nostalgic bell in everybody's brain and wallet that it's Christmas; but 10 years, 1 puberty stage and a Niagara Fall's worth of cold showers later and I realize that it could mean other, less pleasurable things, and end up ringing bells in other people's lives that would make faecal matter fly out of their back ends faster than the elf Santa caught groping Mrs. Claus.

Examples of such events would be child support collection date, annual couple's time at the state prison or the one time of the year the menstrual fairy visits that special girl with the very irregular cycle.

Fortunately none of those apply to me, but the one event that does is worse than all three of them put together, pressed down, shaken together, put in a shotgun and shot with it. This device of evil i'm talking about is exams. Funny thing about exams is that if you use chat speak, you could actually get the word "xams" out of "xmas", unfortunately that's about the only thing funny about them. To most they're the minor hindrance on the fun times. To me, they're like herpes - everybody has them, one form or another and they come out at least three time a year with minor breakouts in-between. You can apply all the cream you want before they arrive but as surely as the sun rises from the north, they come, and you MUST go through your time of pain, itchiness and unmitigated unattractiveness before they clear up and you feel comfortable around people again.

I'm not saying that exams are a bad idea (well actually, I am) but i'm sure there are other ways of proving that you know stuff. Take my ex girlfriend for example - we'd start off well enough on an argument but from the time she realises she's losing the hits the clutch and kicks in panic gear and goes on to babble on about ancient Mayans and why China didn't invent the steel pan and other sociological hob nobbery. Meanwhile I stand there, listening (strangely) and by the time she's done I give her the win and in my quiet time (post conflict) I reflect on just how knowledgeable she is about... that stuff and how perfectly right it sounds. While this fills my head, I totally forget the fact that that we were arguing about why it's wrong to randomly poke people in the rectum.

Which brings me to my proposal. Instead of stretching the fabric of human sanity by forcing us to regurgitate the integral of x divided by used toilet paper, give us a podium, a glass of water and let us ramble on before a panel of University professors who wear fuzzy sweaters and find everything terribly fascinating. If our yapping sounds like we could convince a crowd of natives to plant poisonous plants in their children's play area or use a hand grenade to knock out that shaky tooth or give their senior citizens nuclear powered Gundam suits, then let us proceed to the next semester. If not, and by not, I mean if a person sounds like they've sneezed out a chunk of brain while guzzling down a pint of Vat 19 on a Dentist's chair in the middle of a root canal, then give him the failing grade and tell him to come back when he's learned not to go to dentists ;).

Politicians do it, and look how far they've reached.

If you don't want to do it that way, then give us a check list containing all of the topics we've covered for that course and let us tick off the things that we're sure we know how to do. I promise we'll be honest :D. If we lie, then rest assured that our employers and our wives would teach us a lesson when we get older, get a job and something goes wrong at work and we don't know whether to integrate by second order or run like hell. Subsequently we lose the job and come home to find our belongings keeping the lawn furniture's company and a man named Ted with a rather hairy chest standing in our doorway with our wives wrapped around him like a hot towel. The metaphor of my life... sigh... Anyway!

We better find another way of testing our knowledge in our respective areas of study before I put the gun to my head and the hammer slams down on the only chamber with the live round in it.

Take me as an example of what human sanity looks like when it reaches its elastic limit - my first exam is on Monday and I have completely lost my compass of priority and where the toilet is. I spent the entire day stacking my DVD collection and peeing in shoes. This is the result of a pretty hard semester; a semester where my lecturers crammed so much work up my tailpipe that any thought I had of having fun had to tiptoe past my lecturer's laser pointer. My brain has completely shut down at a rather inconvenient time I must admit. Is this what genius is all about? I could do those things if I were selling blue crabs to tourists on Red square or vying to become the world's best scab collector. Mind you I don't want to stop pursuing my fancy-pants degree as a Computer Engineer to do either, but me and the other heathens in the world have the same worded question on our minds - there has to be another way (mine pertains to an alternative to exams, theirs pertains to avoiding partying with the guy downstairs).

Look, at the end of it all, exams are something that we have been faced with since the age of three or four (I don't know about you but my prep school had finals) and it hasn't harmed us till this day (except for the guy that jumped off of UWI or the dude that hung himself over CAPE. That wasn't a joke by the way). The point is we all have to do them and score really high, so that our "intellectual superiors" can sleep well at night knowing that their past postponements of suicide wasn't in vain. The only way to get through them is to develop discipline and work hard at it, and in the end we only turn out better and slightly more eccentric individuals with twitches, paranoia and/or other slight mental defects. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stranger, right?.

It still doesn't change the fact that finals and the concept of school are still worse ideas than a sleepover at Freddy Kruger's, though.

Good luck in exams everybody.

Trimming the Fat? Careful Where You Snip

Now we all know what Facebook is by now - a single point on the graph map of the internet where millions of people, with millions of friends while away hours of their day looking at statuses, relationship drama or the pics one of their so-called friends posted of them from the party the other night when they were drunk, stripped down to their underwear, defecating in wine glasses and straddling the lamp stand.

It's no doubt that www.facebook.com has become so popular that people are wondering why they're not making keyboards with just the w, ., f, a, c, e, b, o, k and m keys since navigating to that website is all that the computer's uses have been widdled down to over the past year. No need for quad core processors, 1gb graphics cards and X-fi speakers, give me a keyboard with 10 keys, a browser, a mouse and a pocket full of "I don't care about outside" and i'm set for all of my daily functions.

Now the main purpose of facebook was to keep in touch with people you already know - share pics, see what's going on in each other's lives and generally stay in the know with people in your network. But (I know you shouldn't start a sentence with but, but) as surely as zombies love brains, boys (and some men) love the p-word that i'm not allowed to say, and facebook is proving to be a sure means of bloaks potentially grabbing some of that thing that makes the world go round.

Chances are, that a male in a network of friends, some of whom might be female might have the luck of being the town whore like that guy from Nastaja's Calabria 2007 video or the town Haunch back like that guy from that animated film that I never saw. One way or another, they're going to get bored of the same old same old (whether it be "ease of access" or successive, unrelenting and hardcore rejection) and they're going to venture outside of their little group and start hunting sheep from another shepherd's flock; in other words, they add random pretty little things that they know nothing about, and the said pretty little things innocently accept the lustful friend request. You know the friend request is lustful because there's usually a bulge a little below the waist of the "+1 Friend" icon.

So now that your "target" has accepted the request it's time to put your game face on and play the waiting game. You log in to the site and pretend to be tending to your business while waiting for your "target" to come online. When she does, the conversation bit can begin. I don't need to go into the ass-crack of this process since i'm sure most of you know how it goes. The end result can be one of two things:

1. The convo went well and you eagerly await her next appearance online
2. The convo went horribly and you eagerly await her next appearance online to redeem yourself

No matter which, you leave your target on your friends list hoping and waiting for the day that you finally get some of that sweet stuff. Unfortunately for some, the day never comes.

As time passes and this process of trial and blue balls repeats, your friends list becomes a mixed bag of people that you know to a T, and others that you won't be able to identify in a crowd unless they have their profile picture taped to the part of their head where their face should be.

Get me wrong, not, strangers can end up on your friends list by other means such as mistaken identity (especially if you're one those tards that hid your profile info from search) or by pure peer pressure when a friend of a friend adds you. On that last point - why do they do that? Where does that compulsion to add you, a perfect stranger to them, come from? They always leave me with the difficult choice of unwillingly accepting, or rejecting and running the risk of having that person go back to the person I actually know and tell them that I'm a long streak of piss because I don't accept requests from "people". Knowing some of my friends, they might actually turn on me because I didn't accept their friend as a friend. Ridiculous, I know.

At any rate, at one time or another, there comes a point in every facebook-er's career when he must clean up that friends list and weed out the scraps. That time came for me today.

I realized that it's all dinner and strippers when you have to add people but when the deletion time rolls around, I deliberate on touching that "x" button more than deliberating whether or not to wear pants to leave the house on a morning. Deleting these "extended" friends tends to put a strain on friendships.

First off was the "failed attempts" group. Deleting them was easy for very obvious reasons. Next was the "mistaken identity" section, then came the "spoke to a few times, never really hit it off" set, then the "friend of a friend" section. The friend of a friend section was difficult because of the aforementioned complications of word getting around to my actual acquaintances. In some instances I said bollocks to that and hit the "x" harder than a white boy at a rave. In other cases, they remained there, the warts on my friends list's buttox. My success with "other ventures" remains hinged on their existence on my list.

The next category is a VERY touch and go one. One wrong deletion and it could mean some friendships that would end faster than a fight with a monkey. The category in statement is the *long inhale* "We went to school together, we weren't that close at school but you added me on facebook but we haven't really talked since then and now I have to delete you" group.

These are the people that you met already, be it through a friend or a glance and they added you on this crackbook or you, them. Since you added them you haven't really spoken to them or been very interested in their well being or recent activities even though they've probably been in every party you've been to over the past several months. You just don't really care about these people that much to have their life stories cluttering your activity feed. Come on, you have more interesting people's business to mind ;)

I really have to be careful when trimming the fat in this layer because I could be passing the shears next to a very vital organ and not know it. If you happen to be in this quandary, do as I do: label them as hot rocks and let them be. They're just occupying space, not spitting in your tea and passing it off as cream. Sooner or later, they might delete you and save you the headache.

I'm saying this because I once deleted someone from this category and in about three days time, they added me back with the personal message "Why did you delete me?" then there was this conversation as awkward and jerky as a virgin's first time. This convo lasted seven painful minutes, and I hope never to relive them ever again.

At the end of it all, my friends list is clean. Not spotless, but sanitised. Before it was as sludgy and black as the Beetham swamps, but at least now it has that dingy brown colour your water has when it now comes back. A much better state, I must admit.

So what was the purpose of this note? Well I'd say it was just something to bide my time until my next engagement, but I suppose it can be a lesson to you - yet another excuse for your conscience to kick in before you do something trivial. Use it as a yard stick fro cleaning out the old friends list of yours, ridding it of the vermin of unknown people (yes I called people vermin) and in the process having less chunks in your straw when sucking up all the juicy gossip on your activity feed.

Prepare for Payne

This entry contains spoilers about the Max Payne film currently in theaters. It's also a fanboy rant, so uninterested parties can stop reading right about... now!

Ok so in case you didn't know, I recently went to see the new Max Payne movie that Fox produced. Yes, I went - it was a Friday and I went all by myself. Just for the record it was a personal decision, and I won't appreciate anybody who saw me at the Cineplex last Friday (walking around like the grim reaper of fun) making fun of me.

All insecurities aside, let's get down to the marrow of the article and that is, how was it?

One word - PAYNEful! (Don't laugh) After the movie was finished I couldn't help but wonder if the opening line was aimed at the audience to prepare them for the hour and a half long gritty, grimey turd that was wrapped elegantly on the film reel instead of the actual movie. A prank portrayed by a masochistic joker who gets his willys off of PISSING ME OFF!

Let's start with the facts:

The movie was based off of the first installment of the Max Payne series. Us fanboys should know how this plays off, but for the wanks who haven't played it yet, buy the game or look for a synopsis somewhere. (Gotta love the lead-on haha)

First off, let's do a comparison as to how 'close' the movie characters were to their video game counterparts:

Michelle Payne (Max's Wife)
Game: About 5'5", 28-32, blonde, straight, short-cut hair. Gave birth to a girl
Movie: About 5''6", 28-32, brunette, long, wavy hair. Gave birth to a boy

Jim Bravura
Game: 5'10", 54-65, White, Spokesperson for AA
Movie: 5'7", 28-32, Black, Has rap career

Mona Sax
She was close

Max Payne
Game: 6'6", 38-42, White, Blissfully naive
Movie: 5'8", 35-40, White, Bit of a jerk

As if that wasn't enough, the story was the further from the game than a middle-aged mom in the suburbs.

Trivia:

Max, at the beginning of the first game, was a ranking DEA detective. He was not a recluse working in a cubby hole at the local police precinct filing papers in the "Cold Case" department. Though not the brightest of sunbeams, Max was never regarded as the "office weirdo" or "that guy". Though people knew he was two shakes short of a lamb's tail, he still had friends in his department and on the force.

Though Max (in the second game) called a sex hotline, he was never closely associated with Russian prostitutes. Nor, in either of the games was a suspect in a "whore murder" case. He seemed to have more sinister deeds on his criminal record, such as being wanted for blowing away an entire office building of mobsters by himself and shooting a lady cop in the chest. The police never chased Max for the alleged murder of a prostitute he kicked out of his apartment after not having sex with her.

Max also quit smoking just before leaving the office to go home on the same night his family was murdered. He NEVER took the Vlkyr drug!!!

Jack Lupino was a crazed drug user and mob boss. He did not hang out on rooftops stalking prostitutes and/or cutting people up with machetes. I would have quicker associated Frankie "The Bat" Niagara with that kind of scene. Though hatterly insane, Jack was not an axe murderer. He spent his days dispatching orders to mob whimps such as the Finito brothers and dining on the flesh of fallen angels.

Lt. Jim Bravura was a man on the downhill side of the age hill. He beat the bottle and became the spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous by the time the second game roller around. He was also Max's direct superior and was not an internal affairs officer and part time rapper. He worked in the same department as Max.

In the game, bullet time was supposed to simulate an exaggeration of how your body works on adrenaline i.e. the enemies moved slower while you moved at more or less normal speed. Bullet time was not a major slow-down that caused you to spend two minutes just pumping a shotgun, giving a guy enough time to squeeze three shots off at you.

At the end of the first game, Max shot Nicole Horne's chopper down. She died in the subsequent explosion - the game did not end with the murder of a fat sweaty guy in an overcoat.

Now these are all the things that were out of synch (that I can remember), but when the writers could get such basic things as the gender of Max's child right, I have to ask the question of whether or not anybody ever even played the game before putting posterior to paper to write the script.

Sheesh, now I know how you tossers felt after watching the Doom movie.

I say they should have let Fergle make his movie. I bet the folks at Fox feel like a gymnast that tries to show off with a fancy flip and lands awkwardly on his head. I feel like that ominous mother figure that stands over your bleeding body wagging a finger, after you impale yourself doing the same thing she ordered you not to do - You see, Fox? I told you you should have let Gibson have his film, now you're a few million dollars poorer, a few haters richer and your company review rating is as middle of the road as a confused deer on a night time highway.

Mr. Gibson, sir, I wish you all the best - show the internet what a real Max Payne movie is about.

A Mass Infection

Ugh... this bleeming virus. It's taking the whole country by storm, that's what it's doing. I mean, at first when I saw my mate at school all hunched over in the foetal position I just thought he was panzying out over the bad cafeteria pigeon he unknowingly consumed for lunch, but when he eventually uncurled and staggered out of school like an alcoholic in the desert sighting a Johnny Walker mirage I knew things were not as trivial as they seemed.

So anyway, the next day comes and falls right on my lap like a tarted out pole dancer, and I find myself in an air-conditioned class fighting off the sandman (ICT guys know who this is) and all his sleep devils as I try to untangle the knotted up slotch of indistinct words that crawl out his mouth in a volume that falls just under the human range of hearing. Yes, it's a task already, (trying to stay up and understand through this greuling two hour snooze fest) but throw in this new variable of unexplainable nasal cloggage and a higher than usual level of fatigue and you have yourself a recipe for stress that will clog the arteries of even the most avid of adrenaline junkies.

The first ten minutes of the class were well spent absorbing the material as all there was to do was plagiarize the note being scribbled on the whiteboard, but after that, the shit officially went pear-shaped. I could literally feel the mucus in my nose solidify exponentially with every turn of the internal AC fan. My head got heavy and my vision showed more motion trails than usual as my head bobbed on my neck in a helium balloon type fashion. The symptoms intensified until I was sprawled out on my desk like an exasperated rape victim. My classmates were concerned, caring and kind enough to take pictures of me in my derelict state to post on the expletive internet :S I dunno where the pics are right now, though. I suppose they'll surface sooner or later.

Anyway, with the sound of the last shutter click, I awoke to my lecturer (still babbling) and a subtle nuance of "when will it end?!!!" moaning. This room was no place for me to be, no sir! So I upped and stepped outside for some fresh air. The compound was as hot and desolate as ever with the commonplace decals and scenarios that make it a true UTT John D. campus - a few girls scampering here and there to avoid the ever horny testosterone-pumped beasts; a few guys sitting on a bench hoping to get a glimpse of a girl or two from the Fashion programme; one guy walking down the hall in some overly tight jeans with a look on his face that says "I'm metro, and not hetero". The sight just depressed me more and made me sink further down into the depths of un-wellness(?) so I decided to return to class.

As I cracked the door I saw the dingy light of misery peeking out from behind its hinges and as I opened it further, the boredom train slammed into me and relentlessly ran over my will to stay at school like a dog with it's paw stuck in the crack of the train-tracks. I didn't care at that point, my health and sanity seemed to be on their last leg - I had to leave school. Mark looked like he was about to pass out anyway...

Day 2

Congrats common cold, you finally have me where you want me - sweating and sprawled out on a bed like a Copa. employee. I feel terrible - nose clogged up; throat lined with mucus; hacking, hagging cough; sneezing fits - yeah, I got it bad. I didn't go to school today, yesterday or the day before but each day that came, passed me by as a man lost in a mountain of snat stained tissue paper. In my spare time though, I tired to narrow down the cause of my infection so that I might have a direction to point an infected finger at - Mikhail - no; mommy - highly likely; swimming in close proximity to that prostitute at Toco - that's the damn ticket! Yeah, I spent the day at Toco with my homie last Sunday and I got in social with this chick in the water. Further down into the chit-chat she said she was a whore... The cold that is now running rampant in my body had to have come from her, this might not even be the cold coming to think of it - might be a benign strand of AIDS that leaked out of her.... whatever (you know where I'm going with this).

At any rate, things weren't made any easier by the massive sunburn I got. At first it was the pain, now it's the look. Feeling the pain made me feel all manly and stuff, but looking at it makes me want to cry :( You see, it's reached the peeling stage and I've begun picking away at it. Unfortunately I did not wait until the whole things started flaking off so I could tear off big chunks of dead skin. No, I started picking away at myself like a tightly wrapped Christmas present and now I look like I was tried to the back of a chariot and dragged over a field the size of Russia... only the field is made up of broken glass and pitch. I look like I'm wearing the most skin-tight military camouflage uniform ever!!. At least my face looks ok. Then again, i'm thinking of systematically peeling the skin off so that i'll end up looking like This guy but:

1. 1. My lighter complection isn't sky blue


2. 2. With my luck, my skin won't peel in that manner


3. 3. The ladies might not find that skin pattern attractive

Bollocks!

Anyway, back on topic.

I have the flu, not just me but a large portion of the youth population - it's an epidemic. From Diego Martin to St. Augustine and beyond, this flu is just screwing things up on an epic scale, and stomping a mud hole in everybody's fun plans. If you don't have it, don't get it. If you are F.L.U. negative, take steps to remain negative.

Proper sad, though - they can come up with a machine to clean the shit out your ass, but they can't come up with a cure for the common cold. Oh well, I guess they still need a viable means of getting people to use good old toilet paper :P