Painting the forest blue

Saturday, 16 August found us out playing paintball. It was my first time but LP had played before in China. Rod organized the whole thing for his co-workers and a few friends. He had played before when he was younger along with Alex. Jesse made it out too for his second time or so. A few of Rod's co-workers came wearing camouflage and packing their own guns. If this was something I was going to play a lot more, I'd invest in my own gun too 'cause the flight of my paintballs was quite random. I had Jesse and Rod on my team with LP and Alex on the other team. At most, we had about eight players on each side.

We started out on a field which had two ridges on either side, sloped down in the middle towards three small bridges and fences and has some mounds in between. I was surprised that a few people shot a few rounds right off the bat at such a long range but one of these shots found LP's mask and she was out in the first few seconds. Our team held the fence and pinned the other team behind the earthen mounds until Michelle just walked across a bridge and stood in the open shooting the other team. Her move took even us by surprise but we tried to shoot a few shots from long range to keep the enemy in place while Michelle walked up close. This strategy would prove costly for Michelle later in the day. We were on an urban setting and she pushed ahead without other people knowing. Three of us were working together on that side when she came running back towards us into a house. She has a similar build and was wearing the exact same coveralls and LP, who was on the other team. Jesse showed some great reactions by shooting her in the leg as she burst back into the house he was about to occupy. It left her with a bit of a bruise.

We got in about eight games in our three hours on the field. I went through about 500 paintballs but only had about two confirmed kills. I spent a lot of time hiding behind different structures but I was usually quite far forward. I was also using quite a few shots to fix the enemy in place while team mates came up to help. I would also shoot a number of rounds as tracers so I could find the range with my gun. The rental gun was anything but a straight shooter so I usually shot a number of rounds at a person and hoped for the best. I was only shot four times. In the third game, I was out of ammo and one ball hit me in the elbow but didn't break. Since I couldn't do much at that point, I gave up. In the fourth game, my team started behind a very small van with large windows which didn't have the glass anymore. The other team started in a large house with very small openings to shoot out of. Alex shot my goggles and then my hand as I raised it to surrender. In the last game, Rod declared a free for all in the middle so we could waste the last of our paint. I got shot in the thigh from across the map and have a very small welt to show for it.

In the end, I had lots of fun playing paintball for the day despite wearing coveralls over long pants and a long sleeve shirt as the temperature climbed towards 30°C. It sounds like we'll organize a similar outing again in the future.

NIN

On 28 July, I went to see Nine Inch Nails with Alex, Rod and Robyn. Alex was a huge NIN fan at the beginning and I've been a big fan for a long time as well. I've kept up to date with their recent stuff which I enjoy almost as much as the classics. Rod was a big fan and knows the classics as well and Robyn just thought it'd be a fun thing to do.

The Opening Act

Crystal Castles has to be about the worst opening band ever. There was a download on nin.com where you could get a sample of the opening acts for the tour and the Crystal Castles song wasn't bad. That was their best song and their live performance wasn't anywhere near the quality of the studio version. That was also the only song where the lead singer had her voice run through a synthesizer. The other songs had her screaming unintelligibly and wracked with posing fits to show "I'm really into my lyrics!" She was striking all your standard "my lyrics have deep meaning" poses which included the squat-down-lean-into-the-audience-and-clench-your-fist pose and the lie-on-the-ground pose. The backing back was playing music I could create in Garageband if I had a free afternoon. I'm not sure how many people are in the band because they could only afford one spotlight so I never saw anyone other than the lead singer. Bad music, bad effects. They had it all covered. Luckily, they only had about five songs.

The Main Event

Nine Inch Nails was definitely worth tolerating the opening act. Trent et al. played for at least two hours straight. They played a great mix of the old songs I remember from high school and their latest works. I can happily say I knew all the lyrics except for maybe two songs. Rod and Alex knew all the classics and Robyn knew two songs. Trent even let the audience sing the chorus to "Head Like a Hole" (I think that was the one) and Robyn just looked around with a blank stare when I noticed her not singing and gave her a poke. Watch "The Family Guy" where they go to the KISS concert and you'll know what I mean.

I enjoyed the light show quite a bit. Unbeknownst to me, they had a sort of see-through light curtain which they dropped while it was dark part way through the show. I just though the stage was suddenly a lot shallower than it appeared previously. They shone some brightly coloured patterns on the curtain which left Trent et al. as backlit silhouettes. Trent et al. retreated behind the curtain for "Breathe" which was filmed with a handicam with a night-vision effect and broadcast on the curtain. I kind of wondered what was going on 'cause you could see lights moving around behind the curtain and then Trent and the camera guy came out front briefly. The next song just had the band playing behind the curtain which was showing bright colours again. Suddenly, like they had been watching Bonanza while planning the stage show, the middle of the curtain became completely see-through and the audience could see the band playing behind it. They used this effect a few times in different ways but always enjoyable.

The one thing that struck me as odd was all the little blue lights you could see in the audience; people using their cell phones to take pictures or video or record audio. I also noticed a wide range of ages at the concert. That's to be expected since NIN has been around for twenty years or so. We did find ourselves out of touch since we repeatedly wondered where the young kids go to have a good time in the evenings when we tried to play our after-concert fun. I think we ended up at Urban Lounge but we didn't last long 'cause some needed to work in the morning and some needed to get back to their children. I bought a shirt but I was given a medium instead of a large so LP got a souvenir from my going out and having fun.

Listening to podcasts

I love podcasts. Actually, I love professional podcasts. Way back when, I listened to one Formula 1 podcast which sounded like two yokels with bad recording equipment who didn't seem to know anything about Formula 1 other than what they saw earlier that day on SpeedTV. Currently, I subscribe to one Apple podcast, three in German, four from CBC, one F1, four about digital photography, one from Gordon Ramsey, a short comedy video podcast, one from each of John Cleese and Stephen Fry, one in Chinese, one NHL, two from the Onion, one science video podcast, one from Sesame Street for Julie and Strong Bad Email. I found a solution to put all my audio podcasts into a playlist so that I don't have to select each of them individually. I just press "shuffle" and then I'm good for a bus ride downtown.
In order to have a playlist with all your audio podcasts and have them play in random order, you have to jump through a few hoops. You'll need to set up a smart playlist; a screenshot of mine is above. You'll need to match the following rules: first off, "podcast is true." No-brainer. My second rule was to exclude my Chinese podcasts 'cause I need to be in a certain frame of mind to feel like learning Chinese. The next three rules exclude videos, movies and pdfs from the playlist. On my iPod touch, video will play in audio mode but, if the Onion is trying to make a joke by telling me to "look at this shocking graph," I'll miss the punch line. I only match checked items so that I can save a podcast and not have to hear it everyday just by unchecking it and live updating is essential.
Jumping through hoops really comes when you're updating your iPod. Every time I open iTunes, it looks for new podcasts. Normally, I plug in my iPod and let it update. Old podcasts will now have a play count of 1 and new podcasts will be downloaded to iTunes. Once the update is finished, I delete podcasts I no longer need and uncheck ones I'd like to save. Once all downloads are finished, I need to do a quick Apple-A, Apple-I for "Select All" and "Get Info." At the bottom, I select "No" from both the "Remember Position" and "Skip When Shuffling" pop-up menus. I like to start at the beginning of each podcast and, if you skip when shuffling, your playlist will play one podcast and then return to your playlist menu. Annoying!
This technique works quite well for me except when podcasters use enhanced podcasts with a slide show. I have only two podcasts which do this and one announces every new picture so I know when to turn on my display and check the picture. The other, I tend to listen to once and then skip through the pictures later but I can miss why the picture is important.