Here’s a small xmas themed story I’ve been working on:

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One thing that myself and Ruby would like to do with OddCo’s products, be they music, comics, games, or movies, we want to do whatever we can to make things better. By better, I mean, showing people how to deal with the mental issues that plague western culture.

Our culture has both great and bad things about it, and that should not be seen as ‘just the way things are’. A culture that encourages fun, by taking drugs? Has a few problems at the least. Its not the drugs, or the usage, that is the problem, but the prevalence. And yes, I consider alcohol a drug as well.

The manager of the government run liquour store near my work came in the other day. They had just done $100,000 in sales. And it was just 4 o’clock. And, his store is in a slow area of town. He makes only one quarter what the liquor stores downtown make! Theres two downtown, and thats almost a million dollars in booze in one day.

Its Christmas, so people are buying more liquor, so they can deal with their family. You know, the ones that in some other cultures are valued, and even treated with respect when they are older. Us, we send them to retirement homes.

A culture that thinks the only way to have fun, is to use drugs (completely negating all of those anti-drug ads in comics, like the Archie’s “You don’t need drugs to have fun!”) No, I’m not kidding. Canadians spent $1.3 billion dollars on beer, wine and liquor stores. (source)

(Of course, thats excluding bars and clubs which would likely be an even higher number!)

In September. One month. Just one. Lets divide that by the approximate number of adults that can legally purchase liquour(27,612,646 adults according to the CIA factbook). Which comes to an average of $47 on booze each month. Of course, thats just the mean, but consider the median liquour purchaser, and how much they spend a month.

By no means, do I have an issue with drinking itself. Or even any drug use. Its the maturity and response to the drugs that matter, in my view. Far too many people do not handle drugs, even the legal ones, well. According to a study by the McGill university, 300 000 university students will eventually die due to alcohol related issues. Those are people that did not handle their drugs well.

We need to equip our population with effective tools that help them deal with this problem, among others. There are measures in place, but still, 300 000 deaths. Avoidable deaths, if their friends had stopped them, if they had recognized the problem themselves.

And those were deaths caused by a legalized drug. Imagine the amount of money spent on other, harder drugs not controlled by the government. Imagine the senseless, wasted deaths from those. Now, don’t you wish you knew better ways to deal with these issues? In your life, in a friends life? I do.

So, I bought a new media player. Its this beauty, a Creative Zen 8 GB model. Its very feature packed, with everything from an FM Tuner, to contact management.

First, I’m going to detail a few problems I ran into, and how to fix them.

First issue: Linux support for the Creative Zen.

Here are the steps to solve this for most distributions:

First, download Gnomad2. In Ubuntu, that is as simple as:

sudo apt-get install gnomad2

This will make sure you get all the necessary files. However, to get gnomad2 to work with the newest Zen players, you need to follow the steps on this site:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=643512

That allowed me to interface with my Creative Zen. One caveat: some distributions will reverse the file changes you made, even with sudo access, on reboot. So, you will need to redo the last four commands in there every time you restart. Thankfully you don’t have to restart often in Linux!

The next issue I had was converting movies for the Creative Zen 8Gb model. Since I was using linux, obviously the included media software would not work.

My solution: iriverter. This program converted my movie files into a format suitable for the Creative Zen 8Gb, and the movies worked. Just worked. Granted it technically converts for the Creative Zen Vision:M, but it works!! Thanks guys for the hard work!

Now, I can watch my favourite animes, on a crystal clear screen, with crystal clear sound, while I’m on the bus, in class, anytime I’m supposed to be paying attention…

I happened to click across a showing of “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” tonight, but it was a very different format than I was used to.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is one of my favourite reality tv shows, because he goes across the country, to bad restaurants, and tries to make them better.

Its a great show because Gordon Ramsay is such an entertaining character, smart, dedicated, yet, foul-mouthed and aggressive at times. He runs his kitchens like a drill sergeant punishing raw recruits. Harsh and unforgiving, he lets nothing by him, and at times drives his cooks to tears (Though in his words, “Salt water ruins the fucking sauce, so suck it up!”)

However, underneath his brash exterior is a man that knows his job, and business very very well. He understands how to make people perform better, and is a great judge of character.

Which is why, as I watched the UK verion of Kitchen Nightmares, that I was fascinated and entertained.

The differences between the American format and the UK format were pretty astonishing. The first thing I noticed was the sparing use of background music. In the US version, there was lots of ‘dun-dun-dunnn’ type music as events turn dramatic. However, in the UK version there was very little use of music, usually one or two strains of background music in the constant shots of Ramsay walking around.

The next was the different editing. In the US version, the show is edited to highlight any interpersonal conflicts and drama, complete with dramatic music. In contrast, the UK version represented most things rather evenly, like the lack of skill in areas, the competition, the area around them, their daily lives.

Seeing the different editing leads one to wonder just what is missing from the US version, and why. It makes one feel that the producers of the show have very different goals, and results to show. The american one is to show conflict and issue in everything that is done, showing Ramsay swearing and being angry, and no reaction from the abusee. The UK version instead showed off the various nuances of running a restaurant, from the skill of the cooks, to your supplier and your books.

Frankly, this annoys me. I want to know how a restaurant is run, and what the problems are. What they could be, what to watch out for. But I do not think most of the american audience cares what the problems are. They want to see foul-mouthed Ramsay make people cry. They want to see drama and rejuvenation, and heart-felt “Ramsay is so awesome!”.

Well, I suppose this means that shows with culture and intelligence will just become even rarer and rarer.

Ah, books. I love reading, and I have but one wish: a great e-book enviroment. Actually, there is no e-book enviroment. Its sparse, filled with trees and no books. Theres no hardware to speak of thats actually worth the money they charge. And the e-books that are sold with nasty locks on our rights.

The issue, as I see it, is there are many issues. First, lets look at the hardware, or rather the lack. There is the Amazon Kindle, however, but it does not fit the bill. Good e-book hardware would need to be small, light-about the same weight as a paperback- and read any type of e-book format.

Pretty basic requirements, but it would be awesome if the hardware didn’t wash out under bright lights. Then I could take the hardware anywhere and everywhere, read while I’m eating, read while on the bus… etc etc.

Now, a few more requirements, well, okay one. NO DRM! If I buy a book at Chapters, I can resell that book, share it, loan it out. Why can I not do that with my e-books? And, why can I not use my e-books on Linux?

Also, why are the e-books the same price as regular books? There is no tree, no carbon footprint. There are less costs. In fact, an e-book of say a paperback that sells at ten bucks, should be had at five bucks. Enough to cover bandwidth, royalties, and profit. Even eight bucks would be great.

Yeah, I’m hard to please.