They may be memory hogs and they might be useless but they’re frikkin’ cute! Konfabulator is now offering free Widgets now that Yahoo has swallowed them up. Here’s a cartoon to help you understand where they came from and what they do. Currently I have the temperature for Toronto, the Simpson’s Random Quote, Werewolf monitor (no, not when Warren Zevon will be popular again… just phases of the moon and the goldfish swimming across my desktop. Of course, if you’re on Mac OSX.4 then you already have them. Point and laugh at the slow Windows drones.

Speaking of Simpsons, Sharkboy tells me that every episode of The Simpsons has a flame somewhere in it. I have the first season and can’t recall if it’s true for those shows. I have my doubts but so far all the shows we’ve watched, there has been a flame of sorts either by explosion or someone lighting up a smoooooth Laramie cigarette. Snopes can’t confirm it. Anyone know where I can prove this?

I would also like to direct your attention to that little button that appeared within the last 24 hours on your Google Customized Start Up Page. Right up there in the left: “Add Content”. That’s right! Click on it and the toolbar DHTMLs out. You can then add all your RSS feeds from your favorite sites and when you’re done, drag them around the page to create your own layout. What? You don’t have a Personalized Start Up Page? Ask nicely and I will send you a Gmail account.

I tell you people, the web is becoming fun again.

I know of a beautiful 2 bedroom condo sublet at Bloor and Bay. If anyone is interested, comment here with email!

I love movies, don’t get me wrong, but the Toronto Int’l Film Festival is beginning to grate on my nerves. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see The AGCO go after these big “schmoozefest” parties for liquor infractions like they did for the Church Street bars during Pride?

“Your honour, on the night of Friday September 9th, I did willfully see David Cronenberg walk between licensed and unlicensed zones at Sassafraz with an open container of alcohol in his hands. As well I observed a Mr Downey Jr. obtain an unspecified amount of cocaine from the stomach of a woman in the ladies’ washroom via his nose. Also, Nicole Kidman was wearing a gown that was in fashion last season and should be given a citation for that… just because.”

“Guilty! 30 day suspension! For all of them!”

So exactly why would a gay person want to be part of this organization? So rife with understanding and compassion.

And they couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate picture.

The Guardian is reporting that Siemens has developed a paper thin TV screen for cheap (about $50/metre). The screen is powered by paper thin batteries and can receive a charge remotely but currently the screens aren’t expected to last much longer than a few days.

Scan ahead a few decades with me and indulge my imagination: You’re lost in the city. You extend your arm and your sleeve accesses the nearby access station wirelessly. You touch your appointments icon and an arrow appears across your forearm directing you to where you want to go. With an abundance of cheap video I suspect that written language will die or at least be pared down to a base level and we will rely on sound and symbol more, cutting out the need to s-p-e-l-l everything out. Visual communication will be reverted to a curious mix of Nintendo icons resembling Celtic runes/Egyptian hieroglyphics, created for fast download and maximum impact. I can imagine English being morphed into a video-Esperanto.

Think of it… Graphic Design will superceed English language lessons in school. Crazy! It’s a future I could live with.

Why do teen girls wear those track pants with words printed across their butts? It makes them look whorish. Especially when they choose words like “Baby” or “Wiiiiide Load”.

I’m just sayin.

Is it wrong that I wanted to laugh hysterically when Harry Potter said “When Voldermort and I touched wands in the graveyard…”?

There are some pretty boring people out there. My fave commercial played before Harry Potter and the Advancement of Story: the Virgin Xmas cell phone ad (the one with the stuffed reighndeer). While the girl hissed like an angry cat, the people behind us tsk-ed and poo poo-ed it, not “getting it”. They later revealed (in conversation during the trailers) they all worked as lawyer underlings, so no big surprise that their humour is stunted.

My other fave commercial is the Future Shop hommage to a Kraftwerk video with two shop clerks repeating “get it for less…guaranteed!” over and over. Funny!

I bought short cropped cop’s leather gloves yesterday, like the ones Ponch wears on C.H.i.P.S. Sexy.

MLT was a good time last night. The music was fun from song one and the comedienne was funny. She was no Elvria, but funny. No surprise that the body and not the brain was voted Mr Leatherman Toronto. Two people on stage made a point of scolding the gay community for letting drugs take over. Finally. Backbone! And what was up with closing one of the washrooms right when the place started to fill up and putting a washroom attendant in the only open one? Sharkboy was shooed out of the women’s despite the fact that there were about one woman to 100 men at this event. Methinks its time to move that venue or to suggest some changes in policy. I gave the evening 8.5 out of ten.

And speaking of music: remember when I was all drooly over Dayglo radio? Its back under a different name: Nigelradio.com! (that’s iTunes>Radio>70s & 80s> Nigel Radio (80s With Attitude). They’ve even salvaged the same station ID movie samples from Dayglo!

Good. Freaking. Lord.

When does this guy/gal have time for …like… hygene?

I am sure Dawn (of Dawn’s Brain) and Evil Panda (of Dark Designs) can back me up on this:

You are contacted by a potential client (yay!), usually sent to you by word of mouth, and you’re making a shopping list with the money you will make as the client begins to explain their needs. Then it starts going south. You get a bad vibe and you start feeling that if you get involved with this project you might as well pick up your banjo and join the band on the deck as the design takes on icy water.

I just deflected a job that stank of sink. The client sent me a url of a site in development that the wanted my opinion on how to make it “better”. They also offered “suggestions” of what they would like to see. One of the questions they asked was “What program created the code?”

How odd…

I looked at the site and other than some garishly coloured graphics, I could find no fault in the code or the site layout. Whoever created the site knew their stuff: the CSS was like looking into the face of God. It was compliant to all standards and worked extremely well in Opera, Safari, Firefox and IE. The layout was smooth and professional and in the end I really could not see why they wanted to revamp this development site. I basically said to them that the site is done, just change the colours, dump the bright graphics and stop spending your money on redesign after redesign.

I got this back:

…your input was excellent.
In one paragraph you described the problem and
Offered (sic) the only solution possible.

Thank you again

I breathed a huge sigh of relief as there was no “…now can you do it?” attached.

Of course I just spent 2 hours of my freelance life for free but I think I deflected hours of aggro.

Mike brought me a t-shirt from Vancouver…my second favorite Sushi restaraunt in the world.

My sister took us to the Dragon Pearl in Calgary where they served the best Salt and Pepper Lemon Seafood I have ever tasted. She went on to Freudian Slip-Up the soup appetizer into “Hot and Sewer Soup”. Laughs all around. I got my dad to eat Ethiopian food. He was cool with eating with his fingers but he was more interested in picking up the waiter. “Should I go? I could leave you two alone…”

I had 4 – 5 cups of tea in the morning with the paper. It was heaven. Ive not done that in a long time. Rhino (bro-in-law) insisted on making bacon in the microwave, which was ok, but nothing beats the gooeychooey of fat on a nice piece of smokey.

The last meal we had was at the Chicago Chophouse. $50 T-bone steaks ($5 extra for the garlic mashed potatoes) and (I kid you not) $20,000 bottles of wine. No lie. I had to rub my eyes to make sure the comma was in the right place. The restaruant was total “Beef and Oil” old-boy kinda place with the largest fully stocked bar I have ever seen (to impress the American investors-including the career bartender who knew every single drink on either side of the border, ever) and golf on the bigscreen tv in the pre-dinner lounge. The waitresses were nice in a classy Hooters kinda way. Dinner was about $100/person after dessert.