Great demo by Bobby D of the new Tech 21 Boost D.L.A.

Sick company. Sick pedal. Can’t wait for mine!

I switched to Wordpress, started publishing feeds with Feedburner, and changed web hosts, all in the span of about a month.

Stupid me, I forgot to update my Feedburner info to take note of some of those changes. Everything’s kosher now – the Internet is safe once again.

The following post is only relevant for people using Wordpress.

Ok. So, let’s say you read a blog post, and you want to comment on that post on your own blog. So, you write your post and include a link back to the original post. When you publish the post, Wordpress sends what’s called a pingback to the other blog, letting it know that you linked to it. This pingback shows up in the comments section so readers reading that article can click on to yours and read your response.

Enter Gravatars. These are avatars that follow you whereever you go online so if you comment on a blog and enter your information, it will automatically retrieve your Gravatar (if the blog has the feature enabled). Beside every comment you leave, your own custom icon is displayed.

Well, I discovered that when a blog sends a pingback to another blog that has Gravatars enabled, a generic placeholder shows up. No good! When my blog sends a pingback, I want my Gravatar to show up, just as if I had left a comment.

Well, if you own a Wordpress blog, there’s a very simple way to make sure that your Gravatar appears when your blog sends a pingback. To make YOUR Gravatar appear on the blog you’re pinging, you need to do the following: (more…)

I just submitted my remix of Nude. Vote for me here!

I’ve recently come to a conclusion, and it was over a lunch with my father that the point was seared into my mind: most people live in the shadow of threat. This threat is often nothing more than a naive perception and it springs from the well of insecurity. When one doubts himself in a deep and fundamental way, what recourse do they have when life issues a challenge? More to the point, what recourse do they have when someone who does not doubt themselves, issues a challenge?

The sad realization is most people are not effectively trained to handle conflict. The tendency is to withdraw, ignore, resort to bile, or simply appeal to others to fight on their behalf. I am constantly amazed at how we allow insecurity to dismantle civility and camaraderie.

Stand up and be counted! Wrestle a while and come out stronger for the trial. Such are the actions of one who has in fact grown up — boys flee and cower and malign, but men do battle and this, with honour. Instead, most cast their vote toward misunderstanding as misunderstanding, I think, is a device people most often use to enable their weaknesses. I constantly note people glossing over important pieces of communication, missing critical details, and ignoring honest intentions, choosing rather to extract that which best sees their fragility preserved with no concessions made.

Confronting another, receiving a challenge, and staring wounding in the face, all take courage — where have all the men gone?

Is it just me, or is Battles a little overrated? It seems like any emerging band that plays weird time signatures, experiments with effects, and uses atypical song structures, is all of the sudden God’s latest gift to the music scene. Mozart reincarnated, or something like that.

I don’t get it. It just seems like a bit of a rehash to me. What happened to the songs man? It used to be about the songs!

Days like today make me seriously question the mental health of the European settlers that thought this “New World” was really worth conquering. I live in Toronto, and over the past week we’ve received close to to feet of snow in some places.

Horrific winters. Natives that are rightfully pissed that you’ve decided to stake claims. It’s amazing how far people will go, and how blind to obstacles they can become, when the opportunity to possess shows up.

So often when we trace every sin back, we find the root, the first sin, to be pride. But ownership, it seems, is a viable candidate (and I’m not speaking strictly of material ownership) or at least an interesting re-framing of the concept. It’s hard to know what is really antecedent: the desire to own (whether it be reputation or glory or self-approval) or the validation to pursue own (I’m great, so I will seek to own).

On this blog, two recent topics of discussion have been place (as in, finding yours), and side (as in, picking a political one). I think so many of the qualms, grievances, and tragedies that take place in either private or public life come down to matters of ownership and the struggle to obtain it.

The real animosity surfaces when we realize that in fact there are no Deeds to be had, and so the rest really becomes a matter of saving face or continuing on in struggle as the struggle is all you know. Or, perhaps in the realization striving increases, as one tries to assert that for them, things are different.

None of this is say that life is simply a matter of pursing ownership and realizing there is none to be had. Just consider; where there is struggle or failure or conflict, perhaps the impetus to own is working against you.

Man is outward. Woman, inward. Man’s ambition is to extend himself and by doing so, prove that he is in fact a man. Woman need not prove anything, but rather desires that she might feel, herself, a woman. Men revere force and resilience and lastingness. Women, depth and permanence of a different kind — where men erect monuments, women would rather a field where upon life is the monument. Where a man’s complexities are rather exposed, a woman’s are buried and seldom encountered with full disclosure — and both would be glad to keep it that way.

Where man is a tower, woman is a canyon, the limits of each identical to each other, save the distance of polarity. Where there is fit, there must too be contrast and opposition, thought not necessarily strife — there must be difference where there is found complement.

For what thrill is a plain when it is on heights and in depths the human finds their vigor?

When the two at last concede — to share the horizon — there is no seam to be found. They continue on toward their limits, and it is by a mystery done together. By this same mystery the fit will not, by the end, have been lost. Both will have fused into one continuity of form, where, as the man extends the woman deepens, and where the woman deepens, she allows the man to extend again.

It is in each other they see the distance, complement, and furtherance that only gender can effect.

Should we be passive and see the hills and valleys washed away for tundra? I treasure the uneven terrain; humanity finds its colour in the slopes.