-nyms for the day:

Heteronym: A word that holds different meanings with different pronunciations while spelled the same (eg "Polish", "tear", "bow", "lead", "bass")
Antagonym: A word that can mean the opposite of itself (eg "clip", attach to or cut off from; "fast", moving rapidly or fixed in position)

And from there, I and some friends formed some other informative terminologies today:

Protagonym: A word commonly recognized as a superhero name, but having darker connotations (eg "Spider-man", "Batman", "Punisher")
Neonym: A new and/or fake word formed in order to define a term that isn't yet defined (eg "protagonym")
Winonym: A word formed to define a term for which it is itself far better than the term it defines (eg "neonym")
Nymonym: A neonym formed specifically as a word definition (eg "neonym", "winonym")

It is worth noting that nymonym is also self-referencial, as well as a blatantly neonymous winonym.

I know I've not updated in forever, but I just felt utterly compelled to post this given the news of the major earthquake in Haiti, and the fact that my sponsor child lives there.I just tweeted about Compassion's Disaster Relief Fund, and I noticed sitting in my Inbox was an immediate contact from the organization regarding the fund. I have great respect for this company.

	As you probably already know, disaster struck the country of Haiti yesterday afternoon with a 7.0 earthquake. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with over half of the population living in abject poverty, it is not known what impact this disaster will have on the country's already weak infrastructure. Compassion's staff in Haiti is doing all they can to ease the pain and suffering of children and families affected by this terrible tragedy ... but the anticipated need of this catastrophe, while still unknown, is expected to be great. Compassion has started an emergency relief appeal for the children of Haiti. We have more than 64,000 children in the country, including 5,000 sponsored by Canadians.   While phone and internet connections remain down, I have received a report from our area office describing the situation as "catastrophic" and "a sad day for the country". Unfortunately, time is already against us. The devastation caused by the earthquake means that basic needs are currently going unmet. Food, water and shelter will be just a few things that your support will help provide for children and their families around Port-au-Prince. Damaged child development centres will need to be repaired and destroyed homes rebuilt. Compassion staff and volunteers are doing all they can and have already started providing basic emergency assistance, but your immediate response is more urgent now than ever. Please give to the Haiti Disaster Relief Fund today and help us deliver emergency relief of food, clothing, blankets, fresh water and hygiene packs to children and families affected by the earthquake. As information becomes available, we will keep you up-to-date on Compassion’s recovery efforts via the "Crisis Reports" section of our website here. If you sponsor a child in Haiti, we will contact you if we receive specific information about your child. We greatly appreciate your patience in this. Additionally, for the latest news on the Haiti earthquake, visit CNN here. We covet your prayers in this time. Please pray for all those affected by this terrible tragedy - and the world's response to it as we remember the truth of God’s Word in Psalm 9:9-10: The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. God has not forsaken the people of Haiti in their time of need. I invite you to open your hearts and minds to the children and their families in Haiti, to pray for them, to love them, and to give generously to help provide them with emergency relief. In Christ, Sincerely, Jim Bartholomew Director of Operations
After a specific need is met, we reserve the right to reallocate funds raised to where they’re most needed to provide for the needs of Compassion-assisted children, families and communities. COMPASSION CANADA,   985 Adelaide St. S, London ON N6E 4A3   Tel:  519.668.0224    Fax:  519.685.1107   Toll Free:  1.800.563.5437   www.compassion.ca Copyright © 2009 Compassion is a registered trademark of Compassion International Inc.

Last night I had to say goodbye to one of the special twins. Jersey and Durga were born June 23, 2007, and after a short while I adopted them from a friend.

From day 1, Jersey was a strange kitteh. She'd swat at the air, run frantically in circles, (ok, not from day 1, but you know) and generally be an unusual handful. Jersey, ironically, was supposed to be a boy. I'd decided on the names Jersey and Durga in honor of two of the best characters ever, from the Halo 2 ARG I Love Bees. Durga being an AI, and Jersey being the angsty techy geek boy who had to put up with her. :)

Jersey, for all intents and purposes, was given to me being told that it's a boy. A very short while later, on a whim, I noticed that, uh... Jersey... is a girl.

Thankfully the name Jersey was unisex, so I could just pretend I always knew :P. From then on, I had two girl kitties, who'd run around and play with each other, yet apart from that were complete opposites.

Durga would come and rub against you for affection. Jersey would butt her head.
Durga would come and lick my hand when I bent down. Jersey would approach then run away.
Durga would lick anything in front of her nose. You'd be lucky if you ever saw Jersey's tongue.
Durga's weapons are her claws. Jersey's is her pee.
Durga's fur is all slick and black. Jersey's is soft and fluffy black and white.
Durga's the small, feminine, sculpted-face kitty. Jersey's the bigger, tougher, butch kitty.
Both would lick each other's rear at the same time.
Durga, by general interaction, is my kitty. Jersey was my roommate's.
Durga's a friendly, come-to-you house kitty. Jersey's an I-do-what-I-want, you gotta catch me kitty.
Durga sits and nestles on you when you're laying down. Jersey will be sitting on your back when you wake up.

Both are cute, tiny little devils.

Two cats, however, was just too much at this time to take care of. Durga is generally much better behaved and a better house cat (at this house at least). Jersey - I don't know, maybe she was just never really as happy and content as Durga was here. But coupled with a number of reasons, and the fact that the humane society is filled over capacity with homeless cats and kittens, starbursidereus managed to find someone who looks like the perfect match for Jersey. Seriously.

We dropped her off last night, and after a little bit of poking around, it looked like Jersey was right at home, and affectionately rubbing up to her new owner right away.

It was a bittersweet farewell, but it was the best for everyone.
It didn't hurt so much that I was getting rid of Jersey, as it did that I was breaking up this dynamic duo who've never been apart from each other. :(
Durga will now be getting all my love. I hope she doesn't feel too lonely now.

Jersey, you'll be missed. A bit. Mostly from Durga though. Be a good kitteh in your new home!
I'm dedicating some upcoming local geocaches to you... ;)

Current mood:Current Mood

It starts...

Earlier this week, a "flash forward" vision of my life 6 months from now which I shared at a booth at Comic Con was published. I don't know if this bodes well. The Mosaic Collective is collecting these visions which everyone experienced simultaneously, worldwide, for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Mine was... troubling. =/

I really hope that the Mosaic Collective are trustworthy, and perhaps they'll help protect me if this vision starts to really play itself. Otherwise, I really hope that having this vision published means my future has changed, and I'll remain safe.

Anyway, I've written about the experience in more detail over at Wikibruce: Connecting The World one Experience At A Time.

Well, here's my first mobile iPhone lj post!

In other news, this week will see the end of half-an-era. I've decided that it's time I took one of the dynamic duo away for adoption. Ironically, of Jersey and Durga, the Indian goddess of chaos is far less of a disturbance than the boy-who-was-actually-girl (wow that poses some interesting plot points for ilb!).

At this point, I just don't have the money for two spays, and there no guarantee that would help stop the peeing (which, seriously, is more territorial than bladder/litterbox it seems). Durga, who has a relative angel in that area is far more of a behaved indoor housecat than Jersey.

It pain me to split the sisters up, but it's the best for her, and my and the rest of my house's occupants' sanity. Going to the humane society to verify procedure, and head over tomorrow. *sigh*

For those cat lovers out there - please don't tell me I don't care about my cats because I haven't spayed them. There is time for everything, and I've weighed every choice with many opinions and much experience. This is a choice made now because I care, and it is the best choice right now. I can handle 1 cat, and with a roommate who's said they are MY responsibility, there's only enough love, time, and space for one of them. :(

Farewell Jersey! it's been a blast, but it's also been a few pees too many. Hope your little sister can live withoutcha.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Really I am, I'm alive... I'm just floating around, the side effect being a lack of interaction with Livejournal :(
I do plan to update more, it's just been crazy hectic the last couple weeks...months... etc.
Should I start doing the daily Twitter->Livejournal feed? :P
*sigh*

Nutshell:
Portland & SanDiego - ARGfest and ComicCon were awesome!
Geocaching is going great, still have to log all my finds over the last couple of weeks

Check out this video and following photos from our excursion to the 5/5 (top rating) desert cache "Tomb Raider" just outside San Diego!



And the photo collection!

That's all for now... more coming later :)

I have vastly underused this blog. I've been extremely active using twitter and, and blogging at wikibruce.com, while avoiding using twitter-review tools to post summaries here.
Should I start? :)

So once again, my active updates can be found at twitter.com/thebruce0 and Wikibruce.com. Heck, even my Flickr account has been getting more activity than LJ (and thus thebruce.net) :)

Sorry y'all!
I have a lot of catching up to do... and I will do it... soon... sometime... *sigh*


As a quick status update:
* I'm going to see Star Trek tonight in IMAX. heeeeeeeeeeee!
* I've been keeping quite busy lately...
* I'm a little behind in updating my BPOD (pic-a-day) project for '09. gotta get on that!
* ARGFest Portland and Comic-Con San Diego plans are fully booked for July, heeeeeeeeeeee!
* I has a iPhone!
* Cats are annoying and lovable. I hate that dichotomy.
* I finished Halo Wars. Just need to complete it on legendary now, and finish the multiplayer achievements.
* I want to visit the moon.
* Micropups.

Shutterfly
Srsly, sign up for Shutterfly. They have occasional promotions where you can either redeem or earn free prints. 20-40 prints a couple times a year, imo, is a great deal :D Got my next batch of free Shutterfly prints to put up in my little office cubicle.

Cake
Does PC-Cola (basically no-name coke) and microwavable chocolate cake mix sound like a regular (or trendy?) cake recipe?

Volleyball
Yep. Forfeiting so many games put us in last place in the round-robin. First game of the tourney, we played the 1st place team, and the highest score we got was 15 (games to 25). Three up, three down. Lots of fun though, and the best game was the for-fun game we played after. Good times. Until next year. Hopefully we'll get a more full, committed team :)

Subway Eat Fresh
Customer appreciation day at Subway - brilliant! BOGO day, no coupon needed. Suffice to say, the places, around the city, were packed. Got two footlongs at lunch, and headed to another one on my way home after work for two more. Deal was done at 7, but the place went to was out of bread at 6:30. Anyone willing to wait still got their free sub. Others stopped in saying the other stores they visited were out of bread too. Well I hope they got more customers, in the long run maybe, to outweigh the cost :). But all the stores seemed to be in on it, and not bothered by it, so franchise HQ must have really pushed for it, or offered great reimbursements.
mmm subway...

Viewer discretion advised.
Watchmen. First, TSCC (Terminator, for those not in the know). What..on earth..was with showing a guy get his eye stabbed with a needle? Why could that not just have been implied? Rhetorical question.

Which leads to Watchmen. I haven't finished the novel yet - got through the first 25 or so pages before seeing the movie. Probably should have read more.
I did not expect the movie I saw.
I have opinions from multiple perspectives on this one. (minimal spoilers below? discussion of themes, but no detailed plot points)

* Philosophically - wow; deep, questioning, challenging, difficult to swallow, well written.
* Visually/artistically - loved the cinematography, creativity; you can see the comicbook influence in the visuals, though not nearly as blatant as in 300, for instance. I was watching for scenes that looked like comic book illustrations.
* Visually/content - w. t. f. seriously? How much stuff in there was gratuitous? In a nutshell: lots made sense given the theme of 'human nature', the dark human condition.. but there was stuff in there that simply did not need to be in there. I'm of the opinion that they had to match the shock value the comics introduced in the 80's for content, but relative for today. Stuff you see off-frame is on-frmae, in your face, extremity times 10. An R movie it certainly was.
* Christianally(?) - can't recommend it. Not unless the person is really strong and capable of taking in things that one should not be forced to watch, and doesn't feel that seeing it is condoning it. HOWEVER - it poses amazing discussion points, great subject matter that can give rise to deep, thought-provoking explorations of faith and the supernatural. Bring on a censored version and I'll be more willing to recommend it. While I personally truly enjoyed the philosophical content of the movie, the characters and events- I saw parallels, allegories, analogies, and unanswered questions. The movie was very dark and hopeless, really. But with a theme of 'human nature', how else could it be portrayed?
Inevitability. Humanity is all there is, thus we, in a sense, must overcome ourselves. The lone glimmer of hope is the 'good' humanity can bring amidst this darkness. It's an endless, depressing cycle. ...When it's left as that.

Anyway, point being - depending on who asks me, or from what perspective I'm asked, I'll have different answers about how good the movie is and whether to see it. It's not for the faint of heart, nor the weak of stomach. I think it'll skyrocket, from the die-hard fans seeing it the first week or two, but it'll certainly die off. After hearing reports of people leaving the theatre just after seeing the full (computer generated) body of Dr. Manhattan, and seeing newspaper reviews that can't get past the extreme graphic, violent content in the movie, I think it ultimately shot itself in the foot. And we got to see that foot get shot in slow motion, close up, and in excrutiating detail.
(it's a love/hate thing for me :P)

Now, to finish reading the (tame, by comparison) graphic novel.


ETA:
Trailers
Transformers - niiiiice
Terminator Salvation - Oooooooh
Star Trek - IMAX, most definitely.

Ugh. Too many things have come and gone, and I've been letting LJ gather dust.
Ok, point form, then details...

This Is Not A Game
My order for Dave Szulborski's book "This Is Not A Game" arrived last week! Now, I need to find the time to read through it. It's praised as a wonderful, detailed book about Alternate Reality Games and the genre. I don't think I've heard or seen any critical reviews :).

Dave just got out hospital again, and has been the subject of quite a segment of the community's good thoughts and well-wishes. A campaign was even set up for him called Folding The Wish, when he was first admitted a while back. So I made sure to give my own little tribute in my pic-of-the-day :). I was also fortunate enough two Christmases ago to be randomly chosen as Dave's Secret Santa at Unfiction. That was nerve-racking! I set up a little puzzle for him in the book... I still don't know if he solved it ;) Dave was the brains behind the arg for the movie "The Host" called "Monster Hunter's Club", from whom I received a collectible monster toy of the Bionic Bigfoot.

It's been a privilege to meet him in person at ARGfest, and to have so many indirect communications with him :) hehe. It's great to know he's doing ok again, and I wish him the best for a speedy recovery...

ARGFest/ComicCon
Dates are announced! yay! And the dates are perfect... ARGFest July 17-19, followed by ComicCon July 22-26. Now, it's just a matter of organizing transportation for a week and a half, and accomodations...

ARGFest is in Portland, Oregon, and ComicCon is in San Diego. Which means leaving Buffalo or Toronto, to Portland, joining a big group of people for the exodus to ComicCon in San Diego folloing, then returning from San Diego to Buffalo or Toronto. I have vacation enough for the 8 or 9 days I'll need, but money is the other factor... gotta find out what's available, what's possible, and what's required.

Thankfully, writing for ARGN and Wikibruce, I should quality for a press pass entry to ComicCon (and there's plenty of relevant subject matter there!) which means free ComicCon. Getting to both ARGFest and ComicCon should satisfy my geekdom for the year, I'm sure. There were a couple of other events I was interested in, but I think this year it'll just be ComicCon. I would love to get into E3 one year, but that requires a heavier duty press certification. I don't work for a video gaming magazine or media resource. :)

reminder-to-self: take plenty of business cards to both events!

PS Home Mystery
I just picked up a tip from this 'arginsider' twitter, that something was up in Playstation Home - mysterious text messages and video snippets containing the greek letter Xi... I've had a PS3 for months, but had only begun setting up PSHome. I'd never actually booted it up. This gave me the nudge... Home is pretty nifty, and I believe it's got a lot of potential for...interesting content :). It's still in beta stage, but I believe it's getting to the point of Alpha or full release very shortly...

Anyway, I've reviewed the details at wikibruce: http://wikibruce.com/2009/02/home-is-where-the-mystery-is

( Volleyball )

( Retreat weekend @ Miller Lake )

I think that about covers it. I'm sure I missed something. But I always do. Stupid brain.

Surprisingly fun and addictive! A collaborative thought and forecasting experiment from IFTF (a Jane McGonigal project :) lab.signtific.org Go check it out! (the profile embed code doesn't work with Livejournal, so here's the link$#160;:)It works like this: there's a situation (#1 is based on the premise that space becomes free and essential to business, much like the internet today), and you respond. Then others respond. Then others respond. You gain points for responding, and for accomplishing achievements (like how much you've contributed, how popular/controversial/active your contributions are, etc). This turned out (frankly) better - more engaging - than I thought it would be. hehe. Also, I earned a MacArthur Genius achievement :) - "Micro-forecast most worthy of five-year funding" By far my favourite "positive imagination" is: Artificial Intelligence is birthed, utilizing the entire cubesat network. Too powerful to manage, this literal "Skynet" becomes self aware.:D