Jean Valjean Raymond

I haven't posted in a while. I tend to be more introspective during the Christmas season, and I've been planning a somewhat epic entry in my head for some time. I don't know if it will end up getting posted, but we'll see.

In any case, the semester is nearly over and I'm glad. It's been tough. I only have two exams, on the 13th and 15th, which is nice. Then after Christmas my family is going to Mexico. It means I'll be missing this year's RGC Winter Conference, but given the choice between Winnipeg and Mexico in winter, I think most people would choose the latter.

For a very long time I've been noticing that my t-shirts seem to gradually get slightly bleached on the collar at the front. This has been happening for so long and on pretty much all of my shirts that I figured it was just something that happened as a t-shirt got old. Collars didn't hold the dye well or something.

Yesterday, though, I had a brainwave, and solved the mystery. The culprit? Benzoyl peroxide. Every night, before getting changed for bed, I put benzoyl peroxide on my face. I do the same every morning after I get out of the shower. In both cases, I either put on or remove a t-shirt shortly after. As the shirt goes over my head, it rubs against my face and gets a good dose of freshly applied benzyl peroxide.

I use benzoyl peroxide, of course, to help control acne (I use a 5% water-based gel). It also happens to bleach clothing. It warns about this right on the package. D'oh.

I guess I'm going to have to change my routine.

I suppose I haven't updated for a while. I'm back from Japan now. It was an excellent trip. If you're friends with me on Facebook you can see all my photos.

I start work on Monday. I'm not too excited about it, but I guess it's a source of money and something to do.

Anyway, it's late. I'd like to start making proper updates again, but not tonight.

Here are 40 photographs of notable people. Most of them are Canadians. How many can you name?

This is kind of funny.



Hockey is irritating ;-/.

Every morning before I leave I visit Environment Canada's weather page for Calgary. Here is what I saw today:



Yuck.

Once again it's late on Sunday night and I'm still awake. So much for being productive this weekend.

Here's what this week looks like for me.

Monday: GLGY quiz
Tuesday: GLGY lab due
Wednesday: JPNS test
Thursday: GOPH lab reports due

I finished most of the GLGY lab tonight, and studied for the quiz. Unfortunately I failed to even start my GOPH reports, so I'm going to be busy for the next few evenings. Fortunately the JPNS test is a "throwaway"—the overall test mark is best three out of four, and I have an A average on my tests so far. I'll still write the test, since it's good practice, but I don't have to worry about it too much. The GOPH reports are much more important.

I'm going to have to force myself to not waste too much time over the next three weeks. Two more weeks of classes, with a bunch of assignments and stuff due, and then a week of exams. They aren't spread out at all this semester so I will have to have some overlap in my studying. I have an exam on April 23rd, 24th, and 25th, and two on the 26th.

This weekend is Anniversary Bash 10, celebrating 10 years of Jazz Jackrabbit 2. I guess I've been part of the community for around 8 of those years, even though I haven't played regularly since 2003 or so. I'm finally starting to drift away from the community as well, which gives me mixed feelings. 2 AM is not a good time to write about sad things though, so I shall not continue right now. In any case I will try and dig out my JJ2 installation and participate in some of the weekend's events.

My journal's subtitle is "Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle". This is a German phrase meaning "Every man for himself and God against all". (It is also the original title of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which happens to be a very good film.)

I find it to be a very powerful phrase. I suppose it summarizes my utterly cynical world outlook. What I wonder though, from time to time, is how the "and God against all" part applies to someone who doesn't believe in God. I can't quite wrap my head around it. I understand the essence of the phrase and I don't see it being any less applicable to an atheist, but if God doesn't exist, what does it mean?

Perhaps some non-supernatural force that works against us? Human nature, or just…nature? But that's kind of implied by "every man for himself". And in the long term at least, it would be false. If some force were really working against us, we would never progress as a species.

Maybe I'm wrong, and the phrase is in fact redundant. "God against all" may just be equivalent to "man against man".

You know, I just realized that I completely missed this year's Rabbit Hole Day. I thought about it back in December, and I should have marked it on my calendar or something, but January 27th flew by this year with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happening to me. Oh well. Maybe it's a dying trend.

So a few weeks ago I stopped stalling and bought Keyboardmania II for the PS2 on eBay. I had been monitoring its availability over the past few months, and it got down to only one listing remaining, so I figured I had to act. I haven't been able to find a torrent for this game, and it seems to be unavailable pretty much everywhere else. Certainly out of production by now, and it was never popular to begin with, so it's just going to get harder and harder to find.

Anyway, I got it today. Shipped from Hong Kong on January 10th, arrived at customs in Vancouver on January 12th, and arrived in Calgary on the 25th. I couldn't pick it up at the post office until today. The declared value was USD 15, and as a gift, so customs probably didn't even examine it. It must have just been sitting in their warehouse in Vancouver for over a week. Canada Post is so slow right now.

So Keyboardmania…is a wonderful game :-D. I don't yet have the right adapter (the Yamaha UX16; I need to stop being lazy and phone some stores—it's a popular product and I'm sure there's one in Calgary somewhere) to connect my keyboard to it, but I can put it on autoplay and watch or play along with the music. And I really like the song selection. Keyboardmania II for PS2 includes the songs from Keyboardmania 2nd and 3rd mix for the arcade. There's probably a complete list somewhere on the Web, but here's a few of my favourites that are included:

Ride on the Light
Sabre Dance
AKUMAJO DRACULA MEDLEY
Beyond the Ocean
Pink Rose
NEW CENTURY GENERATION
Frozen Ray
Citta' del sole
Klungklung 1655
Carezza
DEAR MY FRIEND
CLASSIC PARTY3
CASSANDRA
エリーゼのために (Für Elise)

Most of the songs I've played using DoReMiMania, the simulator for Windows, but they're all just MIDI files. Now I get to have actual recordings :-D.

Something I just realized. In Apocalyptica's En Vie (the French version of the single based on Quutamo), there's the line:

Faut-il que l'on soit aussi con?

Roughly meaning "Do we have to be so stupid?" (Most literally, 'con' translates to 'cunt', but that doesn't work idiomatically in this context.)

Anyway, my impression has always been that the justification for using "que l'on" rather than "qu'on" is to avoid saying something that sounds exactly like 'con'. There's no grammatical reason to insert the 'le'—technically "que l'on" is interchangeable with "qu'on".

So now I'm convinced that this line is a bit of clever intentional wordplay. Use a sanitized grammatical structure and then say 'con' anyway ;-D.