Small Break

I've been SO busy lately with school. It's just been project after project. Actually, the way it works, I should be able to multi task but it hasn't been happening. I've been working countless hours to finish somehting just in time and right after handing it in, I'd have to START the next project which in the last case, was the next day. This week, I've also got the house ot myself since my parents are in Toronto watching my nephew, Charles, while my brother and his wife are in Vegas for his 40th birthday trip (even though it's in August?!) so it's been quiet in the house and with staying up late all alone working on stuff, I started to go a little crazy... I hadn't something in today half assed btu got an extension and on top of that instead of actualy having ot redo my stuff due to the mistakes, all I have to do is write a note stating I understand what I did wrong and what I would do to fix them. My teacher rocks!

Thankfully, I'm at the end of the hump for a short while since all my next projects aren't due for a few weeks. I was totally dying earlier in class and was totaly about to fall off my chair. Things are going to get crazy again but in the meantime I'm taking a break starting tonight. I'm gong to go see Nacho Libre with my bro. Tomorrow night is a sushi party at my place which should rock. Friday I'm off to Ottawa to hang out with Owen and celebrate Canada day. Nothing beats his e-mail I recieved the other day:
Dude before you come i need to know a few things: 1. Is there antyhing you can't eat besides pork? 2. What time are you do in? 3. Are you afraid of titties? We'll be seeing plenty on Canada Day 4. When is your train back to Montreal?
Oh Owen, how much we'll have together.

I better get back to work since i"m still in class but a quick blurb: We use a program called Quark that basically is a text editing program (for layout in magazines, books, panflets, etc.) and a feature in it is called Jabber Text. It basically fills the area with random text. I had apractice example to do in class and this is what came up in the jabber paragraph:

The Klingnons fight Quark. one Jabberwokcy marries two.

Holy Crap I'm screwed....

I don't understand what I did wrong but school is just going crazy. I've been trying realy hard to keep up to date with things but today felt like it was all for nothing. I have this assignment due tomorrow. We basically only had a week to do it plus we have all kind sof assignments for our other 5 classes. The prof made a special class today to realy break into the assignment. My whole plan was to get most of it done during class and finish it off tonight for tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the 4 hours of work I spent this morning was all lost. When I was transfering my file from my computer to my USB, I accidently transfered the file from my USB to the computer, thus erasing my new file with my old file. I tried cancelling the transfer once i realized my error, but upon doing so my new file diappeared completely. I t was frustrating but I kept my cool and realized I'd have to stay up late tonight to finish it.

There are 5 parts to the assignment and I was halfway through the first part this morning. Once the first part is done, the other 4 are the smae thing in different variations, thus would take less time to do. I finally finished th efirst part after a few hours and then flew through part 2. Things were looking good until I came to part 3 and was unsure what to do. Not to worry, I decided to just take a chance and get through the work, since it was already after 11pm. Then all of a sudden, what I was doing stopped working. I couldn't understand what was going on. Everything was fine and then it just stopped working. I then realized somehow I accidently changed one of the modes in the computer program. Unfortunately for me, I must have done it at the beginning for I noticed that both part 1 and 2 which I finished, were all set in the other mode. WhenI tried switching back to normal mode, all my work disappears meaning everything I did may be wrong.

Now I am frustrated and tired.

It' snto really a big deal since if I hand it in late I only lose 10% and now i cna really make sure i get everything right. It's just that I have another huge project due wednesday which I also have not finished and was planning on working on that tomorrow. Now that I can't I may ahve to hand that one in late too! I feel totaly swamped with work and don't understand how it happened all of a sudden.

I know I'll get through it all eventually but I just had to rant. It's shitty being in shitty situations.


It's 12am and I'm goign to be exhausted tomorrow which won't make getting my work done before deadlines any easier. I may have to become a hermit for a the next couple of weeks if this keeps up.

I could really use a hug right now...

Manhunt 5: The Return Home

Yesturday was the 5th edition of manhunt. This time it was held back at where it all began, Carre St Louis (crack park) at the end of Prince Arthur and St Denis.

This time, instead of it being from St Laurent to St. Denis and Pins to Prince Arthur it was Prince Arthur to Sherbrooke. For added bonus, it WASN'T raining AND we had the St. Laurent street sale to help for cover.

For the first game the hunter was Marc D. Rowland, he's the real version of the character Robert Patrick portrays in Terminator 2. I ended up at Sherbrooke and bumped into Jason whom organized Frosh with back in 2002, so that was cool. Afterwards I hit up St. Laurent and saw no one so I thought i was safe. I was wrong. I turn onto Prince Arthur and was spotted. I ran back through the crowd and turned into a parking lot which led to a dead end. In the end Andrew caught me. The rest of the time I spent hunting people and got a couple of victims.

Round two was a lot better. I ended up staying incognito for 20 minutes. I was walking aorund the streets and then due to a scare, ended up at Carre St Louis and didn't notice anyone with the orange arm bands. I walked around, sat on various benches and hid behind numerous trees. Ken was standing behind one tree the whole time but I ignored him for he was definitely not caught. Some bystanders were kind enough to give me the heads up of hunters hidden in the grass on teh other side of the park. A couple of 11 year old girls walked by me as I peeked out from behind a tree with my hood up and said somethign rude to me in french and placed their hands in my face like I was thinking of molesting them or something and them showing me I was way out of their league. Finally I decided to make myself comfortable against a tree, glancing around every now and then. I kept that up for about 10 good minutes until out of nowhere Andrew comes and gets me. I was so confused as to how he found me until he pointed out to me that literally 15 feet directly in front of where I was standing were all the hunters who decided to quit a few minutes early, relaxing by a bench. I can't believe I didn't notice them. Admitting my fate, Andrew and I decided to get Ken. As We chased him, the two people who were hiding in the grass, Adair and Rebecca, thought they were going to get caught and jumpped out of their hiding place. I saw this and immediately changed my course for them. In a quick effort to escape, Rebecca jumps into the fountain and gets soaking wet. Apperently it was both her and Adairs plan the whole time but Adair chickened out last second.

Fun was had by all and we got to converse about it over great bbq food and some beers. Can't wait until the next one. Unfortunately I won't be around for the immediate next one since it's on Canda day but for those who can, I highly suggest it!

Rocking out with your block out!

Friday night I went to see We Are Scientists and The Arctic Monkeys at The Medley. I had an extra ticket and was looking for someone to go with. In the end I went with Rachelle. I met her at Lauren's birthday party and she's Lauren's coworker at Starbucks. She's probably th emost positive enthusiasitic person I've ever met and never heard of either band but was really excited to go.

As for the show itself, I think I enjoyed We Are Scientists more than The Arctic Monkeys. I never heard of W.A.S. before buying tickets but I downloaded their cd and it wasn't bad. However, at the show, I really gotinto them because a) I knew all the songs and b) they had great stage presence. Their last 3 songs really rocked. The way the stage was set up, rather then take away the first band equipment and replace it with the second's, they had both drum kits on stage,one behind the other. Durting my favorite song on the album, I notice some guy walk on stage and take a picture of the crowd. At first I thought it was some roadie but then he sits down at the second drum kit and I immediately knew it was the Arctic Monkeys drummer joining in! He totally started to rock out with them. It was awesome to see TWO drummers do this kind of drum roll accross their kit at the SAME time!

After a great set, the Arctic Monkeys came on and they looked SO bored. The music was good but at this point I was farther away from the stage (we went for a bathroom break and lost our spot) and would have enjoyed myself in the mosh pit for I couldn't really jump around since it was so packed on the floor. When the singer did speak, you just couldn't understand him.

After the show I bumped into Dave Kolin. The last time i saw him was at the Franz Ferdinand concert. He STILL has to walk on crutches and he's going to rock concerts! He's truley crazy.

In the end, I did enjoy myself for having discovered a new great band, hanging out with Rachelle and buying a sweet Arctic Monkeys t-shirt (for almost the price of the show)

Celebrating Birthdays In Style Since 1998

Today is Aussie Lauren's 19th birthday! Happy Birthday! To celebrate a bunch of us had dinner at Le Taj a fancy Indian Cuisine restaurant. Norm had told me it was a dressy night for us, so I wore my blazer, shirt and tie all day since I couldn't go home and change beforehand. All day people at school were wondering why I was dresed so nice. After the twentieth response of "to impress you!", I got bored and decided to tell the truth.

After a long and frustrating day (actually week) in front of the computer and not getting good sleep, I felt totally at ease (and tired) at the dinner. The food was great (I had butte chicken) and the company was even better. I had bought Lauren two Canadian tank tops at Old Navy and she appreciated them (or is really good at lying, haha), while Norm and Amin bought her a wicked dark red cowboy hat. Now I have a partner to hit the streets with in our fancy shmancy cowboy hats. To check out photos of the night click HERE!

Tomorrow is work and The Arctic Monkeys show. Yay!

This One's For Norm

Been working all on an assignemtn that's due tomorrow. The assignment was to take something out of it's context. I don't how my crazy mind cam eup with it but I decided to take the poster for the Usual Suspects and replace them with characters from Looney Tunes. I drew all the characters by hand, then scanned them and traced it in Ilustrator and finally added color and text. I ran out of time and couldn't make all 5 characters so settled with 4. I'm totally exhausted and have a big day ahead of me tomorrow but promised Norm I'd post it before bed.
So here it is, enjoy:

Stupid Rain

So the weather has been really crappy lately and I think it was starting to get to me. Thursday I finished one of my assignments but jsut couldn't get into the next one. I finally gave up and headed over to Amin's where he was having a "dye your hair" party. Well sort of. Him and Norm dyed their hair the other week (his a blue mohawk and Norm,s head was completely purple save a bright red exclamation mark on the side) and wanted to redye their hair again to make it more vibrant. Lauren decided to add red streaks to her hair and due to peer pressure decided to let her bleach a few streaks in my hair. She did it pretty randomnly. You can't notice it but I could tell that the hair where it was done looks all frayed and thin. In fact whenI was thanking Lauren on my cell phone and explaining what had happened to my hair, I was in the car with my mom and upon hearing the words "dye in my hair" my mom stops the car, put it into park, turned on the inside light and started to examine my hair. It's a good thing I didn't dye it bright red...

Friday I worked all day and for the first time in a long time had a headache. At the end of work, one of the employees (a girl still in high school) comes and gives me a hug and says "that's because you look so sad today". See how much the weather affects me!

Saturday was no better, I tried working on my MP3 panflet, right now it looks good but I wanted to move on and add thigns to it and just couldn't come up with anything that looked good so I gave up. Thankfully I had something to take a break from it for saturday night I headed over to Lauren's apartment to celebrate her birthday. In fact it was the first event of a week of things involved to celebrate her birthday (lucky suck...). We had desdert, some drinks and even some skipping in the rain. I ended up getting home and going to bed at 3:30am.

Bright and early this morning I got up and went to work (well only at 10am but still that was 5 and a half hours of sleep) and actualy had a lot of energy. I realized that outside it was sunny for abit and maybe thats what changed my mood. In fact I was so good I asked a coworker if she wanted to go to a concert together (I have an extra ticket) but things got awkward because I then realized that all the other staff memebers were around us (we were all exiting the mall) and I think it toally looked like I was asking her out which probably isn't the best since a) we're not really supposed to date co workers (not that that is my attention) and b) my boss ended up being right next to me and overheard. I lost my cool and hid myself in my jacket. Once outside I said goodbye to everyone and forgot to get my coworkers cel number so I could remind her about the show since it was like a "that sounds cool, maybe I'll come" kind of answer. I don't know when I'll see her next since the next time I work is friday which is the day of the concert. Oh well, at least I didn't pull a Budman and actually asked her to join me. Baby steps.

Portfolio Update

I realize it's been a while since I've shown my progress in the work I've been doing for school so here's a few treats for my fellow friends and family.

For my image processing course, our assignment was to find a picture and make 7 copies. To each copy we had to make a drastic change like change the texture and color. Once that was done using this tool funciton in Photoshop called the History brush, where I was able to paint on top of the original using my 7 versions as if they were 7 different paints. It sound complicated but it's not at all.

Here is the original photo I used, a pictre of Sydney, Australia:



and here is what I came up with. I quite like it.



For my Visual Communication class, I have 3 small excercises I have to complete. I already finished the first 2. The first one was to make a self portrait without using your photo. In other words, to show something that represents you, soemthing that someon can look at and go "from this I can totally understand it's Josh". Wanting to be a little creative, instead of doing my first idea of making a collage of items that are meaningful to me and arranging them to look like a face or body (it's been done a lot), I decided to compile a bunch of words that represent me and arrange them so from far it looks like a picture of me.
Here is my result:



If you save it and then zoom in on my face you'll notice that my hair, mouth, contour of my face, glasses, etc. (basically everything except my clothes) are made up completely of various words. It took me a while to do but was more tedious than difficult.

Finally, the last new thing I have to show you all is the second excercise for the same class, which was to create a coin that has on the front some sort of image that represents my view on the economy. I don't really have a view but ended up somewhat choosing a view and came up with this.

More cool stuff to come, I promise.

Manhunt 4 et al

This morning on the way to class, I was sporting my cowboy hat, my shades and was listening to INXS - Guns In The Sky. I'm the coolest guy ever.

in other news, I went to Manhunt on saturday and it rocked. As usual, it was raining off and on but was enjoyable none the less. This time it was played at Parc Jeanne Mence. There was a lot more open space and less building and pedestrians (especially due to the shitty weather) than the other times we had played.

During the first round I was walking with Adair, figuring out our strategy on how to play at the new region, just as we turned the corner to see the first hunter. Adair used me as bait and quickly disapeared as I was hunted down. I cheaply tried my open umbrella trick ( at the guys face - I know I"m an asshole) but it failed and I was caught. I spent the rest of the round running after everyone one and got tired fast. I did manage to tag at least 3 people.

During round two I decided to try something different. I was tired of running and thought if I pretended i was a hunter the whole time I wouldn't have to run as much. I was wrong. Fortunately it kept me untagged for 20 minutes. I fllowed Amy for a good 15 minutes pretending to hunt her and she just kept walking ahead. To keep up my facade, I kept stopping to breatj like I was out of breath (for the most part I was) and at one point I even deliberately dropped my umbrella to give her a chance to run away. Then I spent the next little while chasing after everyone I saw. It totally worked until Emily (who had known I was not a hunter at first) had since become a hunter and saw me and came to gave a high but when I jumped out of the way and ran, my gig was up. Out of nowhere appeared Norm, and I was a dead duck.

After the game we headed to Phil and Adair's for the usual beer drinking, hot dog eating, resting party. This time they were kind enough to let us throw our socks in the dryer. Thanks guys.

On another note, last night I saw X-Men 3. I liked it and totally needed to disappear into Movie Land for a while but if I had to rank the 3 movies from favorite to least favorite it would be X2, X3 and then X1. This movie definitely had a lot of action but they killed off a lot of people which should have brought a shock factor but it lacked something, and they also introduced a lot of cool new people but again did it in such a way and didn't use them so much that it lost it's appeal. Plus there are like a billion characters in the comics that I don't see the point in making up new characters for the movie.